Revolution . What kinds of changes did it initiate in american society, american law, American Government . Why should we think of the American Revolution as a revolution rather than simply a war for independence . So, we talked about weve talked about this in various frameworks. We talked about whether the revolution altered the social structure of the states that were involved in revolution. On the last time we met, we talked about the impact of the revolution on africanamericans and on the institution of slavery. We saw that in that case the legacy was quite mixed, right . The revolution set the institution of slavery on the path to destruction in the northern states but was instrumental in kind of deepening and strengthening the institution in the southern states. Today i want to talk about two topics that were closely interrelated and that are really two sides of the same coin. I want to talk today about how the revolution affected native americans and how the revolution created a new system for thinking about making western lands widely available to ordinary people. And those are two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, the revolution initiated a new kind of commitment to pretty rapid westward territorial expansion and a widely democratic system of land holding, Land Ownership, which was a really powerful engine of Economic Opportunity and democracy for a lot of ordinary white men and women and their families. But it also implied a pretty exploitive new approach to relations with native americans. So, as i say, these are two sides of the same coin. And to begin kind of thinking about this just in the most abstract sense, there were people involved in the American Revolution. And foremost among them, Thomas Jefferson, who thought a great deal about this problem, who believed that one of the most revolutionary aspects of the revolution ought to be making land more widely available to ordinary people on relatively easy terms. And this constituted a fundamental revolution in old european ways of thinking about the availability of land because in the old british system, in the old english system, land was a byproduct of aristocratic privilege. And land holding was something that flowed from the top of society downward. In england, the land was owned by a relatively small number of people who owned a lot of it. And they made it available on their own terms through, you know, through rental agreements. If you think about the feudal system, this is a system where tenants farm the lands of great lords, and its a system that really where Land Ownership and the power associated with it resides at the top of society. And that principle was woven into the fabric of colonization because if you think about the way lands became available in the colonies, the buggest colonies began with proprietary ownership. If you think about a colony like pennsylvania, the first principle of pennsylvania is the king gives all the land to william penn and tells him he can do whatever he wants with it, right . So, this is a kind of an offshoot of the same aristocratic model where land starts at the top and is distributed downward according to whatever principles the powerful people who control it want to employ. And we talked last week about the fact that far from seeing that stuff die away, we talked about the idea of a feudal revival. There were a lot of absentee land owners that had control of a lot of land. And they were beginning to assert their privileges more strongly. They were collecting rents in a way that they couldnt in an earlier period. So, this idea of land being tied to privilege, the privilege of a small number of powerful men, just foundational not only to English Society but to the way the colonies were organized. And for jefferson, this was one of the most important things that needed to be overturned. We talked about his attack on trying to break up the great estates of the powerful family. This is a parallel idea. One of jeffersons cornerstone principles was the idea that the best social foundation for a republican government was to have a large number of yeoman farmers that owned relatively small, relatively similar amounts of land in fee simple, meaning they did not pay rent to great land lords. They held the land on their own terms. And so this idea of yeoman society, a republic of yeoman farmers, was one of the foundational principles that many people, including especially jefferson, wanted to work pretty hard to implement after the American Revolution. The problem is, of course, that making abundant amounts of land widely available on cheap terms means you have to control that land in the first place. This was not that simple because of course the lands that the United States aspired to control and redistribute were lands that were occupied by native American Populations with their own claims, with their own sense of legitimacy. And in the process of trying to enact this theoretical revolution and the availability of land, what well see is that the United States took a very exploit t exploitive approach with its relationships with the native peoples. And that is a process that began in the revolution itself. And in order to kind of focus our discussion of this issue, i want to focus on the ohio country and the ohio indians. There were indian populations all up and down the eastern seaboard and the kind of transappalachian west. And there are a lot of different stories associated with these groups. For our purposes, just to kind of focus on one of these groups, i want to focus on the ohio country, which weve already talked about, because the ohio valley was the focus of lord dunmarchs war. Weve talked about dunmoores effort to claim what is now kentucky from the shawnees through his victory in the war. The ohio country population is kind of an interesting and complicated population because in the early 18th century, the ohio valley was largely depopulated for complicated historical reasons. So, in the decades before the American Revolution, it was being repopulated by a pretty large and Diverse Group of indians that were coming both from the east, from pennsylvania and new jersey and new york, and also coming from the north and the west. So, from the east, groups that were basically being displaced by the growth of pennsylvania, new jersey and new york were three populations in particular, the delawares and shawnees who were migrating west out of pennsylvania and new jersey, and the western iroquois. So, a group of iroquois, socalled mingos. Thats the name they were given in the ohio country. And these groups were forming, in many cases, shared communities. The most important communities in the ohio valley were often multiethnic communities, and they were moving into the ohio valley both to move away from the immediate pressures of the growth of colonial settlement and also because the ohio valley was a really good place to hunt and trade. Pennsylvania traders started traveling into the ohio valley. So, as they moved into the ohio as these groups moved into the ohio valley, pennsylvania traders followed them, and they had a pretty robust set of Economic Opportunities in the 1740s and 50s and 60s. So, you have these groups moving in from the east. And at the same time, again in response to the Economic Opportunity created by a trader from pennsylvania, a pretty wide array of groups from the north and west that were moving out of the french sphere and into the british sphere in the 1740s and 50s, including wyandottes, chippewas, pot watt mys, and others. Relatively diverse population of native groups. When we talk about the ohio indians, we are talking about a diverse array of peoples that had not functioned together they were not a coherent political unit. They had not operated together for a very long time at the time of the revolution. And the revolution forced them to make new kinds of collective choices in response to the pressures of that war. They had relied on a pattern of trade with pennsylvania, an alliance both with pennsylvania and really with each other for a number of years without really having further coalesced as any kind of a political unit. And then this was the group, of course, that was directly attacked by virginia militia in the war in 1774, particularly the shawnees who dunmore thought was the most hostile of these group. And the shawnees were engaged in that war. There was one battle in 1774. You remember that dunmores war accomplished the principle, at least in the minds of virginians, that kentucky was now open to settlement. So, one of the oddities of the American Revolution is that in the spring and summer of 1775, this is the same time that the shot heard round the world was fired at concord, the battle of lexington and concord, the battle of bunker hill, at the same time all that stuff was going on in new england. In central kentucky, parties of virginians were moving into this newly claimed land in the summer of 1775 and without permission from the crown, without any legitimate authority from above. But having participated in dunmores war in 1774, dozens hundreds of people began to occupy central kentucky in the spring and summer of 1775. This is a map that just i just want to take a minute to look at so im sure that you have a vision of what were talking about. Im talking about the ohio country. And this is actually a map that depicts battles in the during and after the American Revolution. But when you talk about the ohio country, im basically talking about this area mostly north of ohio river. Heres where the three rivers come together at fort pitt to find the headquarters of ohio. This is the ohio country. And then kentucky, the territory that people were beginning to occupy in 1775 and 1776 is down here. And you can see some of these early stations, boonesboro is one. Reynolds and mertens stations. This became kind of the leading edge of angloamerican settlement even before there was an American Revolution nare war. So, this is a process moving forward independent of the revolution, yet it intersects with the revolution, and the revolution fundamentally changes the fortunes of these people who are moving west. Under the auspices of the crown, they were criminals, right . They were beyond the proclamation line of 1763. What they were doing was illegal. But under the you know, in the context of the American Revolution, as the Second Continental Congress was sitting, as revolutionary legislatures were taking over in the states, it was possible for them to make new claims to legitimacy. Thats exactly what these kentucky settlers did. In the course of the of American Revolution, these kentucky settlers made common cause with the United States and with the revolutionary governments that managed them. And they made very specific pleas about the legitimacy of their occupation and settlement. They specifically talked about the fact that the king had limited, had restricted access, to these western lands, but that they had fought and bled for these lands at the battle of point pleasant. They had a legitimate and meaningful claim to these lands. They were also interested in liberty. They really thought what the United States was talking about was pretty great and they wanted to be part of it. And they said the United States would be foolish to miss the opportunity to incorporate such skilled riflemen into their ranks. They petitioned congress and said, you know, if you support us out here, we will fight for you and we will keep the native peoples off of your backs. So, they basically made the case that in addition to the fact that they adhered to the same principles of liberty that the United States did, they also made a strategic argument that they could be very useful allies. And that was an argument that got traction. It got traction with the new revolutionary state of virginia, which began arming and supporting their little forts. The communities that were settled in central kentucky all took a form Something Like this where cabins were built in a circle with palisades so that the community became a kind of makeshift fort because these guys recognized from the beginning that they were operating in territory where they would be regarded as hostile invaders. And it was incumbent upon them to defend themselves against both native americans that might not want them there and also as the war progressed against the pressures of british arms as well. One of the key people involved in this process let me ask you this. So, when you think of daniel boone, do you think of the American Revolution . Do you think of him as a figure of the american revenolution . Hes familiar, right . Daniel boone is familiar. Everybody knows who daniel boone was. Hes a Great American frontiersman. Think of him in the era of dave sri crockett. But its weird because daniel boone and davy crock credett. Davy crockett was at the battle of the alamo. When was that . 1840s . Were talking about 1775. This is when Daniel Boones single most famous act of pioneering took place. He led a party of settlers in the wake of dunmores war through the Cumberland Gap and into central kentucky. And one of the first towns founded in central kentucky was here. His most famous act occurred before the United States existed. Its fascinating that we dont in the popular imagination, we dont place him in time here. We dont think of the American Revolution as a pioneering era. But the American Revolution is the first pioneering era and the first intrepid western explorers occupiers swung into action in the revolution and in kentucky. I want say a little bit more about daniel boone in just a minute, but hold that thought. Just to kind of talk quickly about the war experience in central ken. The various communities of central kentucky petitioned both the Virginia Legislature and the Continental Congress for support. And they received that support. They the Virginia House of delegates first of all extended its jurisdiction across all of what is now kentucky. It created a great big new western county so that those new communities in central kentucky would have, you know, a kind of framework for government. And it started sending regular supplies of powder and lead so that these settlements could defend themselves. And the Continental Congress also responded favorably to these petitions. And beginning in july of 1776, the Continental Congressman man and supplied three new forts on the ohio river that were designed to protect and support these new kentucky settlements. During the fall and winter of 1776, it sent two tons of powder, four tons of lead, boats to carry 1,500 men, and food to support 2,000 people for six months. I mean, thats a fair amount of war material that the Continental Congress was providing to kentucky at a very early stage. Then when conditions deteriorated in the following spring, congress sent a thousand rifles and another ton of lead. So, you know, from the beginning of the war effort, these small embattled kentucky communities were fortunate to receive the support of revolutionary governments both at the state level and at the national level. The ohio indians, meanwhile, were in a difficult position. They were somewhat divided in terms of their sense of loyalties. The article that i asked you to read for today talks a little bit about the ohio indians and their decisions, their loyalties. The ohio indians had had a fairly long connection by 1776 to the british empire, but they had also had a fairly long connection to the pennsylvania traders. So, they had preexisting relationships with both the british and the americans that could have led them in either direction. Initially, both governments hoped that they would remain neutral. And u. S. Leaders pleaded with them to just stay out of the revolution, told them it was just an internal spat between the colonies and the english and they didnt have to have anything to do with it. But it became clear quickly that in fact the United States was putting a lot of new pressure on their territory. So, gradually, by about 1777, a Large Coalition of ohio indians had decided that their interests lay with the british empire, with the efforts of the british to defeat the americans, and they began fighting against the kentucky settlements with british support. So, from 1777 on, most of the ohio indians found themselves alun aligned with the british, even though you know from that article we read earlier in the semester about white eyes in the delawares, there was an earlier period where there was white eyes and a large faction of delaware that thought maybe their best bet was to align themselves with the United States. The kentucky settlements helped change that dynamic for them. The war ended in 1783. The fighting ended in 1781, but the war was formally concluded in 1783 with the treaty of paris. One of the wellknown facts about the treaty is that in this document that defined the peace between Great Britain and the United States, no mention was made of britains native american allies. Just simply, the native American Population is not a subject of the treaty of paris of 1783. And this meant that the United States could interpret the significance of this treaty for native peoples any way that it happened to. And it chose, the United States chose to interpret the treaty of paris, where britain basically says we lost the war. United states interpreted this treaty to extend to britains native allies and, in fact, to all the natives peoples in the near east whether they were alive with Great Britain, whether they were neutral, or allied with the United States. In the case of oneida indians, it didnt help them at all in the postwar period that they had been an ally of the u. S. During the war. The logic of victory in the revolution for the United States meant that not only Great Britain, but all of the native peoples of the near eastern region, the trans appalachian west had been defeated. The ohio indians did not accept this premise. In fact the ohio indians had never been defeated themselves in the course of the American Revolution. They were in a strong position in 1783. Kentucky was still starting to grow a lot faster, but it was still embattled. And they simply did not accept the logic that the u. S. Applied to the treaty of paris. So, at the end of the war, everything was unclear in term of relations between the u. S. And the ohio indians. In this sense it was a similar situation, the u. S. Relation with indian groups throughout the trans appalachian west. I want the just pause at this point and talk a little bit about daniel boone because the you know, his placing him in kentucky in 1775 is a little bit surprising. You know, if you dont know a lot about him, if you havent thought very much about daniel boone. I want to talk for a minute about how daniel boone first became famous because he became a famous figure right after the revolutionary war. He became famous as a result of the publication of this text. John filsons discovery and settlement of kentucky. John filson was interested in encouraging the rapid occupation of kentucky. He published this book on the discovery and settlement of kentucky which is kind of interesting. It narrates the story of the occupation of kentucky and its experiences in the revolution. And it includes an appendix, entitled the adventures of colonel daniel boone containing the war and it included this appendix. The appendix included the illustration that shows daniel boone with his rifle and his hunting dog, the earliest depiction of boone. And the purpose of this well, the purpose of the pamphlet was to promote settlement in kentucky. And both to describe his heroism and the harrowing experiences of the war and also to stress that those harrowing experiences were now over. So, boone became the First American pioneer hero. And his fame took off rather quickly. He became famous even in his own lifetime. This is the first this is the first portrait painted of boone. This was painted late in his life by a man named chester harding. Its a wellknown image of boone later in life. Theres another early unattributed painting depicting him. Its interesting to look at the clothing in these three portraits. What strikes you about this one . What do you see . What is he wearing . Yeah, ian . Hes wearing a lot of furs, implying he hasnt spent time in the west sort of in the f furtrading areas. Rather than just being settled in the east. Hes wearing a lot of leather. Hes carrying a rifle. He looks like hes armed to odd to take on the frontier rather than in the portrait where hes much more of a gentleman, scholartype individual. Yeah, you can see the fur trim in these clothes. You can see the leather legs and the coat. The coat is stitched together. This is obviously not factorymade clothing. You can also see his trademark coonskin cap. Hes got a powder horn around his shoulder and a rifle. This portrait does seem, as ian just said, to depict him as more of an urbane gentleman. Of course this is a later period. This is not fancy clothing. But he does seem to be wearing, you know, an ordinary suit of clothes with a white collared shirt. This depiction begins to, i think, take on some of the familiar trappings of daniel boone as a kind of mythic figure in American Culture where the collared shirt and wool jacket that we saw in the previous portrait has been replaced by a fringed buckskin jacket. And its unclear what kind of shirt hes wearing, but its not a fancy one. The most famous depiction of daniel boone of the 19th century is this painting that was done by George Caleb Bing m in the 1850s. Bingham is one of the great genre painters of the 19th century. Really if youre not familiar with his work, i recommend checking it out. He did a lot of really interesting stuff. This is a one of his most famous paintings. Daniel boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap. Hes depicting something that occurred four generations earlier. This is a much later painting. What strikes you about this depiction of daniel boone . And of the party that he was leading . What do you see here . I think its interesting hes choosing to portray the party as coming out of the shadows and into the light and the light is entering new lands. But the end it was still more of the new unexplored things themselves, very much depicted as the beginning of an era, i suppose, if you want to put it that way. Thats really well said. You definitely have the sense of coming out of darkness into light. And to think of that as historical as well as geographical i think is really useful. This is a dangerous wilderness that these people are travers g traversing, right . You can see by the blasted tree, by the threatening weather, by the craggy rocks and by how dark everything is. You see the swordsman in the background. I think these sorts of men in the background, i think that is a sort, presumably fending off enemies. Probably hostile native peoples. In fact, boone party was attacked by native warriors. What else . The woman on the horse is kind of reminiscent of the virgin mary it seems maybe, which would suggest maybe that Divine Providence is smiling down on this act. Yes, exactly. This female figure is clearly echoing traditional artistic depictions of mary, the virgin mary, and so there is the idea of a Divine Providence at work in this emigration i think for sure. I had a very different interpretation of the guy in the back when i first looked at this. Due to his elevated status, it strikes me that he has a crop. It could be a crop. Striking an ox or. inaudible he could be driving livestock forward, that is true. Im not sure which it is. To tie those two comments together, there is the passage even though i walk through the valley of shadow of death i shall hear no evil. Theyre walking out of this valley and look confident and the Divine Providence and theyre walking out of that valley into the light. It does make you think of the 23rd psalm. Though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i shall fear no evil. What about boone . Sorry, go ahead emma. I was going to say its interesting to see how you can clearly see the perspective of the artist in this and how it kind of seems like this party is the saving grace. Like theyre going to say kentucky and make it so much better. They do not seem to be struggling even though there is all the wood around them. Like you pointed out, how wilderness it was. It just seems like were going to come and do this no problem. We are just that good. Yeah. Thats a good point. They are surrounded by dangerous, but they dont seem to they seem to be apart from the dangers. And bringing a new kind of civilized existence into the wilderness. What about daniel boone himself . What would you say about the way that he is depicted . He seems depicted as a very plain and ordinary man. Plain and ordinary . My interpretation of that is that hes trying to lead regular normal American People into the west and that its a place for people of the United States to go west. To enter this brave new world and that any man can do it. Its not just some military officer or some wealthy person whos paying for the expedition. Its normal men who are exploring into this new world. Yes. Yeah, thats interesting. I like that emphasis on ordinary, the ordinariness of this party. I also think its interesting that he seems to be wearing kind of the leather suit that is appropriate to picture him in. And bingham has transformed it into a very respectable looking, kind of, he looks almost like a middle class gentlemen. Particularly i think that by giving him a different type of hat. Theres a way that hes being kind of dressed up from those earlier depictions. Anyway, this i think is a very interesting and important painting and one that really captures the sensibilities in mid 19th Century America about the whole west or western enterprise. The whole idea that american westward expansion is about bringing civilization to a howling wilderness. This is another painting that i cant find in a description for. I think its a very interesting variation on the bingham depiction. I think its very characteristic of mid to late 20th century values associated with the same process. What strikes you here in contrast . How would you say this painting differs from bingham other painting in depicting the enterprise of westward and inspect expansion . The light really is just shining on boone. Here, the light is on everybody. You can see all the way across, its not just the guy in front. Yes. The light is on everybody, so its a more democratic depiction of the group itself. What about the natural setting . Its a lot softer. It looks like their way is being a lit through the trees. It looks a lot easier for them than the first painting. Yes, its softer and looks easier. Its a cathedral of nature, right . Its not a howling wilderness. That seems to capture a lot to me the difference between 19th century sensibilities and the westward enterprise and 20th century enterprise sensibilities. Its interesting to think about why boone is it missed place in our imaginations. Why we tend to confuse him with the sort of davie crock it era. I do have one theory and this might not relate at all to your generation, but it relates to mine. When i was a kid, i think i confused daniel boone and davey crosscut because the same actor played them both in walt disney tv shows. If im not mistaken, he wore almost exactly the same costume for both roles. So that is what i blame my confusion on. I do think more fundamentally that we dont really think of the era of the revolution as being also an era of westward expansion, but it really is. And in fact, in the experience of those early kentucky settlements, the American Revolution legitimizes westward expansion. It kind of unbridled form of western expansion for the first time in American History. This is the map that was printed in that john phils son, that 1784 book about the discovery and settlement of kentucky. What strikes you about this image . If you were renting land in new jersey and contemplating the possibility of moving to kentucky, what would this image tell you about what you could expect in kentucky . Its empty. There is nobody there. Its just open land. It looks like open land. If you look carefully, you will see some of the early settlements, but there is a lot of open space. What else . Ian. It seems to me that there is a lot of detail on the river networks, but there is not a lot of detail on a whole lot else. To me, that would tell me that they dont really know what is out there. The government owns the land and controls the land, but they do not know what is out there anymore than anybody else does. So i have no idea what im getting into by actually ending up their. Yeah. Its true. Theres not a lot, there are not a lot of political demarcations, but i think the point that you started with is the one i would emphasize most. Which is, if you are a farmer, what you want is well watered fertile land. This is a picture of what appears to be extraordinarily well watered fertile land. In fact, it is. If you go to the kentucky bluegrass, i mean, this is a great place to be a farmer. And filson is basically in this pan flip, and especially in this map, throwing the doors of peoples imaginations open to the possibility of settling in kentucky. So it is an interesting question. First, did it work . And second, if you chose to follow filsons advice and move their, what would your experience be . The answer is, man, it was complicated. People who took up land in early kentucky stumbled into a kind of nightmarish set of problems associated with land distribution. The problems are really embodied in the Virginia Land ordinance of 1779. Remember that i said virginia extended its jurisdiction over all of kentucky. It created a big new western county. So in 1779, the Virginia House of delegates passed a law that set out the terms by which people could claim land in this new western county. And it was really complicated. The first thing about the Virginia Land ordinance of 1779 is that it gave priority to settlers rather than speculators. So in this, you can see a sort of revolutionary impulse to make sure that some rich guy who is never out there doesnt get control of all the land. It gave priority to people who had already ready settled the land. But it created a bewildering and expensive process. They had to follow that process in order to actually gain title. So the process was multi staged. The first thing you had to do, first of all you had to go to kentucky in order to have a legitimate claim. It gave priority to settlers right . But then once you had gone to kentucky, the next thing you have to do is go back to richmond in order to pay the fees that would allow you to claim the lands that you had already visited. So you would go to the Treasurers Office in richmond to pay a patent fee. You would get a treasures receipt. Then you would go to the auditors office, sorry, that is where you would get the treasurers receipt. Then you would go to the land office where the receipt and certificate entitled you to a land warrant. And then with a land warrant in hand, you could return to kentucky. And in kentucky, register with the county survey or and have the land surveyed. So you go first of all to kentucky to find out where you want to be in the first place. Then you go back and go through this elaborate series of steps enrichment to get all the legal paper that you need to go back to kentucky. Then you have to hire a survey or to do a survey. This is a lot of people are doing this at the same time and there is no system in place in kentucky to make sure that any of this occurs in a kind of orderly way. Then the survey or issues you a certificate along with an endorsed warrant. Then you would go back to richmond to receive a land title. This is impossible nobody can do this right. So what happened in the course of the revolution, especially after the revolution, break quickly is that a lot of people went to kentucky and chaos ensued. The population of kentucky rose very slowly as long as there was active fighting going on. It kind of ebbed and flowed during the war years. But in 1783, there was 12,000 people in kentucky. The date of the treaty of paris. After that point, it rose really fast. By 1790, there were 100,000 people in kentucky. By 1800, 220,000 people, 40,000 of them and slaved. So this is obviously a very rapid pattern of population growth. If you look at what resulted from all of these people going to a place that had a bad land distribution system. The early history of kentucky as a state features legal documents with a lot of pictures like this. This is a plot that was made by hancock taylor. Im not even sure which one of these is, near the falls of the ohio, near what is today louisville, kentucky. It shows all of the other claims that overlap and competed with hers. The early history of kentucky is a history of nonstop litigation over surveying problems like this. But this kind of problem is woven into the structure of that land distribution, that Land Ordinance of 1779. The kentucky legislature, i mean the Virginia Legislature thought they were creating a system that would be fair and democratic. Right . Because you had to do all of this stuff in the right order and in the right way, but nobody can actually do what the statute describes effectively. Or at least many people cant. And so what you get is chaos on the ground. So it is with this in mind that people like Thomas Jefferson in the 17 eighties were rethinking in fundamental ways the problem of land distribution. This is a process, a reconceptualization process, that culminated in the northwest ordinance of 1787. For today, i asked you to read not about the northwest ordinance of 1787, but the Land Ordinance of 1784 in the jefferson papers. The editors of the jefferson papers have a really good essay on the kind of evolution of thinking about western lands. Then i asked you to take a look at that. So there are a lot of details in the Land Ordinance of 1784. That then got modified for the Land Ordinance of 1787. In your reading of that essay in the jefferson papers, what particularly struck you as the kind of maine take away points that the editors emphasize in describing this process of developing a land system . Do you remember any key points . Particularly those focusing on jefferson and his evolving thought on about the trans appalachian west. That part of u. S. Territory beyond the bounds of the existing states. I think the editors might have diluted what jefferson was trying to get across. I think jefferson was really radical in thinking they should really close off these lands and kind of just settle them and get it over with. The others really wanted to look at the land as extra resources the colonies had into not just put it off and say we cant keep expanding. Thats interesting. Yeah. You think the essay kind of dilutes the ex radicalism of jeffersons intention. Yeah, you can see jeffersons thought actually evolving. They talk about the fact that he was considering one or a couple of western states. Eventually, this evolves into this is a map there is no map in jeffersons hands of his intention, but there is a surviving map that the essay talks about from 1784. One of the things that jefferson had in mind, and a lot of people had in mind, thomas payne actually wrote a pamphlet about the importance of this. Its that all the colonies that had claims to western lands that extended far into the interior, because a lot of the early colonies had sea to see charters. Virginia was advantaged in this, new york, certain colonies were advantaged in this. The first thing that jefferson and others believed was important to do was to have all of the individual states seed their western land claims to the United States. So that the United States could collectively deal with all of them together. So you can see that jefferson has a match and western boundaries, including a pretty aggressive western boundary for the state of pennsylvania, to open up these lands to new settlements. Then you can see that by 1784, jefferson is imagining the possibility of 14 different new western states. Right . And both the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the northwestern Land Ordinance of 1787, they are conscious of the problems that Virginia Land owners created in that time. They want to have a system that will allow for rapid westward expansion in a more orderly way. So uniform surveys and public sales are principles that are kind of woven into these early ordinances. And then the thing that is most ykykyk]< also i think most easily overlooked by americans, because we take it for granted, the territorial system. What do i mean by this phrase . , the territorial system. What is the territorial system . Isnt it areas with less than a certain population cannot yet be incorporated as estates until they reach a certain number . Like technically, theres some states in the u. S. Today that wouldnt even have reached that number. No, kentucky is big enough to be a big state. But thats right, you cannot become a until you reach a certain population. So it creates a territorial status. That is to say, it is an area that is governed by the federal government, but does not yet have state status. In the northwest ordinance, it ultimately states that win 60,000 people reside in the territory, then they can gather together and apply for statehood status. This is so unusual. Its really contrary to the british model colonization because Great Britain creates the colony, nina connie, virginia. But there is never a time when virginia is going to become a part of Great Britain. It is permanently a colony. This is a crazy idea to envision for a nation made up of states, to envision this kind of elastic western boundary. Elastic number of states. Jefferson here has drawn a map in which new not get existing states outnumber the original 13 states of the United States. Which nation would do it to itself . Its a strange idea to have woven into the fabric of the constitution, a system that allows for the indefinite expansion of the nation through space and through the a creation of additional political units that have the power, overtime, to overwhelm the original political units. The states that originally made up the country. I have a question about the expansion part. What did france or spain or Great Britain think of this map . This very clearly incorporates territories that they supposedly claimed or had claim to like the northwest or in the southwest. Thats right. The United States had to worry a lot about the hostility of foreign powers in the early decades of its existence. Even in territories that had been seeded to United States by Great Britain by the terms of the treaty of paris of 1783. Britain never gave up its western posts in the Great Lakes Region and continued to harass or encourage native allies to harass them. The war of 1812 is a British Assault on american sovereignty on multiple fronts at once. And similarly in the southeast, spain in particular challenged american sovereignty over the american southeast. Erin burr and others considered conspiring. Many who settled in kentucky and tennessee spent some time thinking about whether an alliance with spain would serve them better than an alliance with the United States. United states had a real problem. This map is envisioning a system that will encourage the rapid occupation settlement of a gigantic New Territory of land. But as people take up the challenge or take up the promise of that possibility, theres very good possibility that the United States would not be the sort of superintendent power that best would serve their interest. In the early republic when a lot of people in the southwest were more interested in spain as a possible ally then they were in the United States. Wasnt the oregon territory, i may be overstepping the bounds of the class a little bit, but wasnt the oregon territory split between britain and the United States for a good long time . Right. The oregon country was split and its not resolved until the 18 forties. That it is resolved without a fight. But originally, the dividing line between u. S. And british claims in oregon was fuzzy. The treaty of paris didnt really draw the line that far out hard. This territorial system, i just want to stress, it is a very radical system. It is a radical thing. Theres no clear precedent for a nation inventing a system for occupying New Territory in this way. The idea that new states would be admitted on equal footing with old states is particularly striking. Ultimately what you see in these provisions is the creation of a and elastic nation. Here is a map that shows the Northwest Territory as it is ultimately created in 1787. This is a map that stands. In 1787, it was an act of the Second Continental Congress. This was before the constitution had even been drafted. So this is at a point where the United States is still kind of in ill defined nation. Yet this map stands as an open invitation to people who are interested in westward expansion in moving on to new lands on easy terms. Its kind of an open invest invitation. That somehow the United States will oversee and guarantee that process. The idea of a kind of uniform public system of land distribution was partly undermined by a more complicated set of arrangements in the revolutionary period. In an ideal sense, jefferson thought it would be great to have this sort of blank slate where you could ensure some kind of open public access. But in, fact congress had all kinds of reasons to favor and support other kinds of purchases. Particularly because Congress Needed money and was always willing to take shortcuts with western lands. And so at the same time that it was inventing the territorial system, it was also proceeding with other kinds of private sales. For example, in 1787 it sold 5 million acres of land to the ohio company of new england. This was a company that was made up of former officers of the Continental Army. This 5 million acres became the original core, the core settlements, of the new state of ohio. That group subcontracted a sale of about 1 million acres to a second company. Congress sold over 300,000 acres to a guy in 1788. At the same time, connecticut was claiming lands that resulted in a socalled western reserve of 3. 6 million acres. The point of this twos to say that even at the same time that congress is trying to map out this uniform system, it was also sowing confusion in various ways by allowing other groups to purchase or claim lands on their own terms. Then there was the problem of officers words from the revolution which also gave Continental Army officers a claim to western lands. State officers as well. So that results in the creation of the Virginia Military district a 4. 2 million acres and the u. S. Military district of 2. 5 million acres. Its interesting because we think about that northwest ordinance as being a clear and clean set of provisions about how western lands that nobody occupied. But at the very same time that congress is formulating in that policy, it is also hastily disposing of gigantic parcels on different terms in the west. And so in the fall of 1787, Congress Also auctioned off 73,000 acres in the First Federal range under the terms of the northwest ordinance. So all of this stuff is Going Forward together at the same time. That is one that results in a map, ohio does not exist at this time, but this is a map of the modern state of ohio that shows all of these things laid out in relation to each other. The ohio company purchase. The u. S. And Virginia Military districts. The sims purchase. The connecticut western reserve. The seven ranges that were also being surveyed under the terms of the northwest ordinance. This is a kind of really complicated and chaotic system. And by the way, every inch of that ground was claimed by some combination of native peoples. They still had a legitimate claim to control that land. What this meant, because the United States was so enthusiastic about western lands, it was proceeding on all of these fronts at once. Because it desperately desperately needed the money that western land could produce, that means they could deal quite hastily and expeditiously with a very large and complex native population that occupied the ohio country. As i said, they believed they had one whatever battles were fought in the course of the American Revolution. They implemented a series of policies which could only be described as sham treaties. We often say indians were cheated in the treaty making process. The truth is that different treaties have different stories and some of them were very legitimate enterprises. But this was a series of sham treaties where in most cases, the United States did not have legitimate representatives of the indian nations that they were trying to deal with. There was a liquor involved. There was coercion involved. The first of those treaties was the treaty of fort stan wicks in 1784, right after the treaty of paris. Representatives of the comment Continental Congress raced off to upstate new york trying to get there before new yorks own representatives could get there to deal with the iroquois confederacy. The treaty of fort stan wicks, this is one of the treaties in which the native representatives present explicitly said that they did not have the authority to sign any binding document. However, the United States presented them with a doctrine that they had been defeated as a result of the british defeat. And they insisted that the seed all of their claims to lance in the ohio country. They got a document that was signed, though it was consisted by the iroquois from the very beginning. Something very early similar happened at Fort Mcintosh and. Ultimately, congress came to recognize that these treaties were also problematic that they tried to organize a single treaty meeting at fort harm our in 1789. It would bring together representatives of all the ohio indians in one mass gathering. Again, the United States walked away with a signed document. But from the perspective of the native americans that attended, it was completely chaotic and indeterminate of. They again contested the outcome. In that context, with those failed treaties in the background from 1787 until 1794, the United States was back at war with the ohio indians. This was a war that really was the First Military undertaking of the new United States army. The first function of the u. S. Army was to try and defeat this coalition of ohio indians. The United States had failed to bargain with them in the form of treaties. The United States really needed to get out of the way if it was going to proceed with its western land enterprise. Arthur st. Clair was the first commander of American Forces in the ohio country. He did not do very well. In 1789 and 1791, he suffered major defeats. He was succeeded in his command by anthony waynes, so called mad anthony wanes. He had more success and defeated in a decisive fashion the Ohio Coalition at the battle of tempers. After that battle, the ohio indians signed the treaty of greenville to bring an end to the conflict. They agreed to sign away some of their lands. And so the treaty of greenville is the first treaty in the ohio country that was the product not of negotiation, but of warfare. The Ohio Coalition agreed to sign away a big chunk of the modern state of ohio and also part of indiana. So you can see the result of this warfare was to basically allow the United States to claim control of most of the territories that we just talked about that they had already arranged for the sale and settlement of. This pattern of really rapid westward expansion without regard for native territorial claims and in a process that really accelerated violence between the United States and native americans and the kind of rapid dispossession of native lands. This series of experiences in the 17 1780s 1790s sets a pattern that the United States will follow for a very long period of time to come. Because the u. S. Very soon comes to believe that it would not only be great to settle everything west of the mississippi, but in fact that this was a nation with a continental destiny. A manifest destiny to overspread the continent. That was a doctrine that bore very hard on the interests of native peoples in north america. Did the u. S. Think of this as an effective way of dealing with native americans . War . They continue to do this to them until the Industrial Revolution right . Its a good question. Is it an effective way to deal with native americans . I think the u. S. Increasingly started to think that it was the only way to deal with them. That is because of the fact that it was the u. S. Was invested in such a rapid form of territorial expansion that it could not really take native claims to territories seriously. And the flip side of this story is the story of not only warfare against indians, as well as sham treaties, but also the fact that the United States chose to perpetuate european doctrines about the idea that native americans did not really own the land. That european claims superseded native american claims. That is the famous discovery doctrine. So european crowns from the 16th century forward would say that, for example, you could divide up north america among france and britain and spain based on who discovered what. The presence of native americans was only incidental. It would have been possible for the United States, in the era of all men are created equal, this say that discovery doctrine is pretty problematic. We really ought to think about putting the claims of people who were already on the ground on a different footing and treating them more fairly and respectfully, right . But that is not the doctrine that involved in the United States. Instead, the doctrine that involved in the United States, the Marshall Court in the 1820s and 1830s, explicitly says in a couple of important treaty documents, that the european doctrine of discovery remains in force. Its funny because marshall almost sounds bemused by this doctrine, but he says its the way its always been done and the way were still doing it. The two famous cases which still get sided all the time in this context are johnson the mcintosh. That involved land sales to indians which was decided in 1823. And here, John Marshall explicitly says the discovery doctrine that crowns used in earlier centuries is still the doctor that holds today. He described the indians in this opinion as perpetual inhabitants with diminutive rights. He goes on to justify that description by saying that they were in inferior race of people without the privileges of citizens and under the perpetual protection and people edge of the government. In order to justify the perpetuation of this discovery doctrine, he also needs to characterize them as racially distinct and inferior in american law. The same kind of ideas are further articulated in further cases. Marshall coined the phrase domestic dependent nations to describe the legal status of indians, which is a weird phrase. Domestic dependent. Its unclear how you could be a nation but also dependent. Because nation implies sovereignty but domestic independent does not imply sovereignty. The apparent contradiction inherent in that race is at the heart of the legal status of the modern reservation system which continues to govern the relationship between Indian Tribes and the United States. Its an interesting, when we stepped back from this and think about our return to the question of, what did the American Revolution mean for native americans . Was the American Revolution revolutionary for native americans . No, not really. In terms in doctoral terms, its the opposite. It explicitly perpetuated a doctrine that regarded them less than legitimate claimants to territory. It was revolutionary only in this sense that it put in place a set of mechanisms for national expansion. A set of mechanisms that dramatically accelerated the means by which they could be dispossessed. Through violence, through treaty making, through a inexorable territory expansion that had a logic of its own that ignored the legitimacy of native claims. Any questions or thoughts before we finish for today . A thought on domestic dependent nations. We talked a lot about this in one of my classes in high school. That colonists would only natives with weaponry and learn to hunt with rifles. Through learning to hunt with rifles, they became dependent on colonists for rifles and gunpowder. I think it describes that idea very well. The idea dependency the deals with the idea that native communities came to rely on european manufacturers, its a concept that anthropologists and historians have developed. I think in this case, he means what marshall meant by dependent was not dependent on manufacturers, i think it meant dependent on american law. That is to say they are not independent. They cannot run their own affairs. They are dependent in the sense that, ultimately with the United States says goes. If you think about the reservation system, it is still true, right . They have certain limited autonomy within the system, but they are dependent on the United States and they cannot act independently as nations. That idea of domestic dependent nations is still the way native american tribes operate in relation to the United States. All right, i think that is everything for today. I will see you on wednesday and we will talk about virtue, gender and citizenship. Now on American History tv, Clemson University professor c. Bradley thompson teaches a class about the preamble of the declaration of independence. He reviews each line and explores what the Founding Fathers may have intended by their word choices. Good afternoon everybody. So for the last six weeks in