Introduction

Abstract

Indigenous people along the tributary rivers of the Ohio River created a functioning society that responded to their needs and was shaped by their cultural traditions. Indians engaged in rational and deliberate social action. Following contact with Europeans, the economic structure of the Ohio River region changed. The evolution of an Indian-controlled fur trade led to prosperity rather than decline. A complex, agrarian landscape created in great part by Indian women supported and sustained a village world where women controlled the food supply, processed furs, and influenced the fur trade exchange process. This prosperous village world was undermined in the 1780s and 1790s by the terrorizing and plunder of Indian villages, which disrupted agrarianism and the fur trade. Federal support for frontier violence and the kidnapping of Indian women threatened to undermine this world but simultaneously encouraged Indians to ban together in a Pan-Indian Confederacy and inflict two disastrous defeats on U.S. armed forces. The success of Indian resistance gave President Washington a reason to overcome public resistance against the creation of a large, standing army. Victory over Indigenous people finally took place at the Battle of at Fallen Timbers in 1794. However, this defeat did not signal demise, and western movement was only fully secured following the War of 1812.