Dec. 18, 1786: United Indian Nations Demand U.S. Government Stop Seizing Land

The British lost the Revolutionary War in 1783 and ceded the “Northwest Territory” to the United States. The Northwest Territory referred to a region spanning most or all of present-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and northeast Minnesota. But this area was already home to many Indigenous tribes who rejected both countries’ claims to Native lands. They responded to swarms of U.S. settlers and flimsy peace treaties by forming a collective — the United Indian Nations — to confront the encroaching United States. 

Excerpt from the United Indian Nations Speech in December 1786. Source: DocsTeach — National Archives

In this speech dated Dec. 18, 1786, tribe leaders urged the U.S. government to stop invading their communities, and instead “pursue just steps” toward a unified treaty and lasting peace: 

[W]e shall briefly inform you of the means that seem most probable to us of effecting a firm and lasting peace and reconciliation. The first step towards which should in our opinion be that all treaties carried on with the United States on our part, should be with the general voice of the whole confederacy and carried on in the most open manner without any restraint on either side. . . . we hold in indispensably necessary that any cession of our lands should be made in the most public manner and by the united voice of the confederacy. Holding all partial treaties as void and of no effect. . . .

You kindled your council fires where you thought proper, without consulting us, at which you held separate treaties, and have entirely neglected our plan of having a general conference with the different Nations of the confederacy. Had this happened we have reason to believe everything would now have been settled between us in a most friendly manner. . . . We say let us meet halfway. . . we beg that you will prevent your surveyors and other people from coming upon our side of the Ohio River. We have told you before we wished to pursue just steps, and we are determined they shall appear just and reasonable in the eyes of the world.

Rather than accept these terms, the United States would begin the 1790s by going to war with the United Indian Nations.

Read more in the lesson “Founding” Documents We Don’t Learn About.