African Americans, Native Americans and the Early Republic

1. Expanding settlements
   1. By 1790, federal government declared that Amerindian land could only be taken by treaty with Federal government
   2. Although large areas of land passed to settlers under treaty, the treaty process did not meet increasing demands for land
   3.  States entered into own treaties, and settlers moved onto Amerindian land illegally
   4. Amerindians also found themselves increasingly dependent on corrupt traders for guns and manufactured goods
   5. Government and churches sought to assimilate Amerindians through education and missionary work
2. Forms of Resistance
   1. Under influence of Seneca leader Handsome Lake, Iroquois gravitated to new religious ideas that mixed Christianity and traditional Iroquois belief 
      1. Renewed group pride of Iroquois
      2. Revitalized social and cultural institutions
   2. Cherokee and accommodation
      1. Cherokee sought survival by adopting and adapting settler culture
      2. Cherokee National Council formed in 1808
      3. Established written constitution and legal code
      4. Established small private farms based on settler models
      5. Built sawmills, blacksmith shops, and other aspects of the settler economy
      6. Eventually entered the cotton economy and used slave labor
      7. Settler resentment of their success however would eventually lead to their downfall
   3. Tecumseh and resistance through violence
      1. Beginning in 1808, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh began to promote idea of pan-tribal alliance to resist the settlers
      2. Defeated in battle by Indiana governor William Henry Harrison in 1811
      3. Remerged in war of 1812 to fight on side of British, with victories in Michigan and Indiana
      4. Finally defeated and killed outside Detroit
      5. The Creek War, 1813-1814
         1. Tecumseh's allies among the Creek were called the Red Sticks
         2. Did battle mostly in Alabama
         3. Defeated finally by Andrew Jackson
      6. As a result of these defeats, settlers poured into Creek and Shawnee lands, taking millions of acres
      7. Amerindian ability to resist settlement from Appalachians to the Mississippi had been broken
3. Slavery, Free Blacks, and the Early Republic
   1. After the Revolutions, slavery quickly withered in the North
   2. The development of cotton in the South, however, led to a rapid rise of slavery there
   3. Gabriel's Rebellion (1800)
      1. A group of American born slaves who worked in skilled jobs planned an assault on Richmond, Virginia
      2. Rebels numbered about 1000 - led by a man named Gabriel
      3. The rebellion was discovered and put down before it started
      4. Like the Haitian Rebellion, scared southern states into enacting harsher slave codes
   4. Abolitionism fades
      1. Though the Revolution inspired anti-slavery sentiment, by very early 1800s, this had almost completely disappeared in South
      2. Weakened in the North as well, as slavery there disappeared while racial attitudes hardened
      3. Accompanied by the rise of a colonization movement, the idea of freeing slaves and returning the Africa
   5. At the same time, free Black communities were developing, primarily in port cities
      1. Stable family life strengthened as a result
      2. These communities also fostered the rise of independent African American organizations, including mutual aid societies, Masonic lodges, schools, and more
      3. One of the most important new institutions was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1815)
         1. Many free Blacks had joined the Methodists, in part because of their anti-slavery stand
         2. However, increasing racism in the Methodist Church inspired a group of Black pastors to form first independent African-American denomination
         3. Independent Baptist congregations began to form around the same time
         4. Helped strengthen family and community ties