By the time the American Revolution began.

Many colonists had already picked which side they were on.

Some were British loyalists, some sided with the Patriots and some just wanted to stay out of it!

Much like these colonists, the indigenous peoples of North America also had to make this delicate decision.

The Cherokee Nation at that time was a massive and powerful confederacy of towns primarily located in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

While the towns were connected culturally, they each largely govern themselves at the time.

Both the British and the colonists knew of the wide reaching power of the Cherokee, and wanted them as allies, or at the very least, not as their enemies.

To win the Cherokee over.

The British offered them firearms and ammunition, as well as trade goods and money.

The settlers, on the other hand, simply didn't have as much to offer.

When traditional diplomacy didn't work some settlers resorted to intimidation tactics to bully the Cherokee into remaining neutral.

Although this may seem shortsighted, Cherokee neutrality was the best the colonists could hope for.

After the French and Indian War, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by British King George the Third, formally preventing colonists from expanding westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

However, without any enforcement mechanism, it was no more than a symbolic boundary between the colonists and the Cherokee, and was largely ignored by settlers traversing the Appalachians.

Once in Cherokee territory, colonists squatted on the land and attacked any indigenous people that stood in their way.

As resentment between colonists and the Cherokee grew.

Some indigenous towns retaliated by attacking frontier settlements.

This ultimately led to the Cherokee American Wars, which lasted from 1776 until 1794 near the colony of New York, was another great power.

The Six Nations Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee.

Each of the Six Nations had their own leaders who had to choose for themselves whether to support the colonists or the British.

Each of the Six Nations had different experiences with foreign intervention over the preceding 150 years.

These experiences shaped tribal leaders opinions regarding the British and the Americans, leading to fractures in the coalition.

The Mohawk and Seneca nations sided with the British, and the christianized Oneidas supported the separatist settlers.

The Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Onondaga tribes remained largely neutral, though factions within these nations gradually aligned with one side or the other.

In 1779, frustrated by indigenous resistance, George Washington issued a chilling instruction to a Continental Army officer, to quote.

“Lay waste all the indigenous settlements around the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them.” With the coalition split, the Oneidas and the Mohawks eventually fought on opposite sides, enacting Washington's vengeful request and inflicting irreparable damage to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Even after the American Revolution, fighting between settlers and indigenous peoples continued for over 100 years as American colonial settlers moved westward, using the same scorched earth tactics as before.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in her book, ‘An Indigeonous Peoples History of the United States writes, quote, “Somehow even ‘genocide seems an inadequate description for what happened.

Yet rather than viewing it with horror, most Americans have conceived of it as the country's manifest destiny.” End quote.

Despite this, the resiliency of indigenous peoples has persisted to this day.

Funding for this video was made in part by a community engagement grant from the American Revolution, a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt.

You can stream the full film starting November 16th on the PBS app.

We'd like to thank the following funders.

Simple civics.

Brought to you in part by the Indiana State Teachers Association.