Contact and Conflict

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Hendrick Peters Theyanoguin, Chief of the Mohawks
Great Britain’s alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy — the Covenant Chain — was central to its Indian policy in the mid-eighteenth century, and the Mohawk warrior and sachem Hendrick Peters Theyanoguin emerged as its most powerful spokesman. His speech at the Albany Congress of 1754, in which he urged Great Britain toward war, was reported in newspapers in Britain and the colonies and made him a transatlantic celebrity. This print was advertised for sale in London bookstalls just as his death at the Battle of Lake George (1755) was being reported in newspapers there. Hendrick wears a rich silk waistcoat, an overcoat trimmed with gold lace, a ruffled shirt, and a tricorn hat — gifts from his British allies — while he holds a wampum belt in one hand and a tomahawk in the other. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Alongside the diversification of colonial populations and the rise of the British Atlantic, the eighteenth century was shaped by contact and conflict: between colonies and their Native American neighbors, and also among rival European empires. In Europe, the period after 1689 has sometimes been called the Second Hundred Years’ War, when Britain, France, and their European allies went to war against each other repeatedly. As these conflicts came to the North American theater, they decisively influenced Indian relations. Native American populations shrank dramatically or disappeared altogether during the seventeenth century, devastated by the effects of the Columbian Exchange (Chapter 2). The rise of imperial warfare encouraged the process of “tribalization,” whereby Indians regrouped into political structures — called “tribes” by Europeans — that could deal more effectively with their colonial neighbors and strike alliances in times of war. Europeans, in turn, employed Indian allies as proxy warriors in their conflicts over North American territory.

This pattern culminated in the Great War for Empire, which began in the North American backcountry, engaged thousands of provincial soldiers and Native American warriors, and reshaped the map of North America. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 gave Britain control of the entire continent east of the Mississippi. Events would soon show what a mixed blessing that outcome would turn out to be.