George Washington's War on Native America

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George Washington's War on Native America

Barbara Alice Mann

312 pages
2 maps

Paperback

January 2009

978-0-8032-1635-8

$19.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

The Revolutionary War is ordinarily presented as a conflict exclusively between colonists and the British, fought along the northern Atlantic seacoast. George Washington’s War on Native America recounts the tragic events on the forgotten western front of the American Revolution—a war fought against and ultimately won by Native America. Although history texts often erroneously present the Natives, primarily the Iroquois League and the Ohio Union, as “allies” (or lackeys) of the British, Native America was in fact working from its own agenda: to prevent settlers from invading the Old Northwest.

Throughout the war, the unwavering goal of the Revolutionary Army, under George Washington, and its associated settler militias was to break the power of the Iroquois League, which had successfully held off invasion for the preceding two centuries, and the newly formed Ohio Union. To destroy the Natives who stood in the way of land seizure, Washington authorized a series of rampages intended to destroy the League and the Union by starvation. As a result, uncounted thousands of Natives perished from New York and Pennsylvania to Ohio. Barbara Alice Mann tells how, in the wake of the massive assaults, Native America nonetheless won the war in the West and managed to maintain control of the land west and north of the Allegheny–Ohio River systems.

Author Bio

Barbara Alice Mann is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Toledo and the author of several books, including Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas, and the editor of Make a Beautiful Way: The Wisdom of Native American Women, available in a Bison Books edition.

Praise

“[Mann’s book] serves as a powerful statement of the native side of a conflict which has been sugar coated for two centuries. . . . The book should be required reading for all students seeking to understand the conflict on the frontier that lasted until the late nineteenth century. Given the extensive documentation provided, it will serve as an extremely valuable reference for college students and authors.”—Walter Dunn, Journal of Military History

“Mann’s grasp of primary sources makes her narrative one of the most detailed recent studies of the military campaigns in western Pennsylvania and New York during the American War of Independence.”—Patrick Spero, History

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction - "Niggur-in-Law to Old Sattan": How the West Was Really Won
1 - "The Vile Hands of the Savages": Countdown to Total War, 1775-1778
2 - "Shooting Pigeons": The Goose Van Schaick Sweep through Onondaga, April 1779
3 - "The Wolves of the Forest": The Brodhead March up the Allegheny, August-September 1779
4 - "Extirpate Those Hell-Hounds from off the Face of the Earth": The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, 9 August-30 September 1779
5 - "Keep That Nest of Hornets Quiet": The Ohio Campaigns of 1779-1781
6 - "Two Mighty Gods with Their Mouth Wide Open": Settler Assaults on Ohio, 1782
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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