What were the major causes of conflict between Native Americans and white settlers in the 1800s?

Main Content

Most Native American tribes during the War of 1812 sided with the British because they wanted to safeguard their tribal lands, and hoped a British victory would relieve the unrelenting pressure they were experiencing from U.S. settlers who wanted to push further into Native American lands in southern Canada and in the lower Great Lakes and the south. Although some tribes remained neutral and some supported the United States, the majority allied with Britain.

The Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his charismatic younger brother Tenskwatawa, a religious revivalist known as The Prophet, spearheaded a movement for Native American political and military unity to resist settler encroachment. When war began, Tecumseh persuaded activist warriors from tribes like the Fox, Chickamauga, Iroquois, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Mohawk, Ojibway, Piankeshaw, Potawatomi, Sauk and Shawnee to form an alliance to aid the British. This confederation supplied vital support to British forces on the western frontier and in Canada, notably in forcing surrenders of U.S. outposts on Mackinac Island and Detroit and aiding British victories at Queenston Heights and Beaver Dams in Ontario. After Tecumseh was killed in October 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada, the alliance began to fall apart, considerably diminishing the power of Native Americans east of the Mississippi to retain their homelands.

In western Georgia and eastern Mississippi Territory (now Alabama), General Andrew Jackson's forces defeated factions in the Creek Nation's ongoing civil war that opposed expansion of U.S. settlements in Creek territory, raising Jackson's national profile and forcing the Creeks to negotiate a peace treaty. The resulting Treaty of Fort Jackson compelled the Creeks to surrender about 23 million acres (most of southern Georgia and half of present-day Alabama) to the United States.

During the colonial period, Native Americans had a complicated relationship with European settlers. They resisted the efforts of the Europeans to gain more of their land and control through both warfare and diplomacy. But problems arose for the Native Americans, which held them back from their goal, including new diseases, the slave trade, and the ever-growing European population in North America.

In the 17th century, as European nations scrambled to claim the already occupied land in the “New World,” some leaders formed alliances with Native American nations to fight foreign powers. Some famous alliances were formed during the French and Indian War of 1754–1763. The English allied with the Iroquois Confederacy, while the Algonquian-speaking tribes joined forces with the French and the Spanish. The English won the war, and claimed all of the land east of the Mississippi River. The English-allied Native Americans were given part of that land, which they hoped would end European expansion—but unfortunately only delayed it. Europeans continued to enter the country following the French and Indian War, and they continued their aggression against Native Americans. Another consequence of allying with Europeans was that Native Americans were often fighting neighboring tribes. This caused rifts that kept some Native American tribes from working together to stop European takeover.

Native Americans were also vulnerable during the colonial era because they had never been exposed to European diseases, like smallpox, so they didn’t have any immunity to the disease, as some Europeans did. European settlers brought these new diseases with them when they settled, and the illnesses decimated the Native Americans—by some estimates killing as much as 90 percent of their population. Though many epidemics happened prior to the colonial era in the 1500s, several large epidemics occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries among various Native American populations. With the population sick and decreasing, it became more and more difficult to mount an opposition to European expansion.

Another aspect of the colonial era that made the Native Americans vulnerable was the slave trade. As a result of the wars between the European nations, Native Americans allied with the losing side were often indentured or enslaved. There were even Native Americans shipped out of colonies like South Carolina into slavery in other places, like Canada.

These problems that arose for the Native Americans would only get worse in the 19th century, leading to greater confinement and the extermination of native people. Unfortunately, the colonial era was neither the start nor the end of the long, dark history of treatment of Native Americans by Europeans and their decedent’s throughout in the United States.

What was the major cause of conflict between Native Americans and white settlers?

Why was there conflict between white settlers and Native American people in the West?