The Return of the Fathers: Franco-American Relations and the Politics of Nostalgia in Native North America, 1778-1803

David Nichols
University of Kentucky

The trans-Appalachian frontier in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was an open field for negotiation, mediation, and intrigue, and few played the diplomatic game better than the region's Native American leaders.  Since Indians traditionally negotiated from a weak military position, they became skillful political operators, "playing off" European powers (and the U.S.) against one another to preserve their people's political independence and improve their economic situation.  During the 1780s and '90s, however, the United States occupied a similar position of weakness, and sought to make up for it in the same fashion: through diplomacy and mediation.  And in at least one case, Anglo-American officials sought to "play" one power -- France -- against the Indian nations whom the U.S. had fought during the Revolutionary War.

Anglo-American leaders were keenly aware of the respect which France had formerly commanded among the Indians, and after the two powers concluded a military alliance in 1778, U.S. officials tried to use the new connection to win the allegiance of the western tribes.  They invited French officers like Rochambeau and Lafayette to speak at treaty conferences, employed French traders and habitants as intermediaries in the Old Northwest, and informed Native American leaders that France had approved and legitimized the transfer of sovereignty in North America to the United States.

The Oneidas, Chippewas, and other nations initially welcomed Anglo-Americans' portrayal of themselves as the successors of the French, hoping (albeit cautiously) that the United States would restore the atmosphere of conciliation and mutuality that had characterized eighteenth-century Franco-Indian relations.  By the 1790s, however, it had become obvious to all the western Indians that their new Anglo-American "fathers" were quite different from their French predecessors -- U.S. officials were generous, but they expected to be repaid for their generosity in land, and they informed their Native "children" that they would henceforth have to obey Anglo-American laws and yield to the authority of U.S. officials.

As relations soured between the U.S. and the French Republic, some Indians (like the Creeks) began to entertain rumors that France was planning to return in force to mainland North America, and to contemplate a military or diplomatic alliance with their old "fathers."  Where they had once used the French to mediate disputes with the western Indians, Anglo-American officials now had to separate the two groups in order to prevent a second French & Indian War.  Their efforts culminated in a series of negotiations in 1802-3 wherein American officials sought to purchase all Indian lands on the east bank of the Mississippi River, to resettle those lands with white farmers, and thereby create a barrier between the U.S. and French Louisiana.  Like their Native American counterparts, Anglo-American leaders had learned that using one nation to gain concessions from another was a difficult enterprise, with potentially dangerous (though in this case certainly ironic) consequences.