America's First Defeat: Northwest Frontier 1790

1787.

Eleven years have passed since the United States of America declared

their independence from the British Empire.

But for the Americans, building a new nation is proving a formidable challenge.

The infant republic is mired in debt, as well as political and economic turmoil.

Veterans of the War of Independence,

unpaid and desperate, mount an insurrection, ‘Shay’s Rebellion’.

The new federal government survives this crisis – but it is

hamstrung by the Articles of Confederation – the

country’s first constitution, which severely limits its power.

So later that year, lawmakers gather in Philadelphia to draft a new US constitution,

with much stronger powers for the executive.

Meanwhile, in America’s newly-proclaimed

‘Northwest Territory’... another crisis is brewing.

In theory, this vast region has been ceded to the United States

by the British, following the Revolutionary War.

It stretches from the Appalachian Mountains in the east, to the Mississippi River in the west;

and from the Great Lakes in the north, to the Ohio River in the south.

It was 300,000 square miles of untamed land,

abundant in natural resources… and as far as the US is concerned, ripe for expansion.

The federal government plans to sell the land to settlers, to pay off its

enormous debts from the Revolutionary War – about 40 million dollars in all.

There is no shortage of demand - thousands of settlers are eager to travel west,

to build new farms and towns, and start new lives on the frontier.

But there is a problem.

Not only have thousands of settlers already crossed illegally into the Northwest Territory…

The Native American tribes who already live there will bitterly resist

any invasion of their ancestral homeland.

The United States is stumbling into a war of conquest: a war for which

it’s badly unprepared – against an enemy, it woefully underestimates.

European settlers had been encroaching into Native American land for nearly two hundred years.

The violence was endemic.

Some eastern tribes had been virtually annihilated.

And the War of Independence, in which most Native Americans backed the British,

saw intense fighting across the frontier.

Warriors from tribes such as the Miami, Shawnee, and Lenape (also known as the Delaware),

targeted US settlements along the Ohio River – hoping to drive away the intruders.

Local militia companies – part-time settler-soldiers - responded with reprisal raids.

One notorious incident occurred in 1782, at Gnadenhutten.