Native American Resistance 1785–1842

Having been ceded western territory under the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the newly independent America doubled in size. It established settlements east of the Mississippi, south of the Great Lakes and into the Gulf coastal plains. This generated competition for land, much of it Native American, and ensured continuing hostilities between Native Americans and the United States, creating a recurring cycle of battles and fortress building. The highest concentration of Indian wars were in the northwestern territories of Iowa, Indiana and Ohio and in the Mississippi Territory and Florida, where guerrilla tactics by the Indian tribes were met with armed resistance. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed which, though ‘voluntary’, saw the eviction of many thousands of Native Americans from their homelands, to the west. The Florida Seminoles were very resistant to the Act and this is reflected in the proliferation of wars in the 1830s–42 in the Florida peninsula.