Native Americans and American Identities in the Early Republic

Abstract

The early national era was critical for eastern Native Americans. Colin Calloway reminds us in his contribution to Native Americans and the Early Republic that “despite massive inroads in Indian country and Indian cultures, Indian people were still virtually everywhere in colonial America” (4). Jonathan Edwards lived among the Housatonics at Stockbridge as he composed Freedom of the Will (1754). Thomas Jefferson was familiar with Indians who camped near his family’s plantation en route to Williamsburg, while his sometime adversary John Adams knew many who lived near his home in Braintree (Native Americans 337). The new nation’s policy remained uncertain for some time, but in the mid-1820s the government began to remove eastern Native Americans west of the Mississippi. By the mid-1840s, Removal had destroyed what remained of the “middle ground” that had linked indigenous and European cultures since the early days of colonization. 1