There's a myth about America's westward expansion.

It goes like this.

America grew quickly, buying or taking land by force as it pushed towards the Pacific Ocean, while the indigenous people of the land resisted, nothing could stop the new countries march.

At least that's how the story goes.

But what if I told you that I almost didn't happen?

And that America almost got stopped right here?

As the US celebrated its independence, a powerful tribal alliance was gathering that would hand the new country one of its most devastating military defeats ever in a powerful act of resistance.

This is a story of Native resistance to defend their land and the true origins of America' expansion.

Our story starts in September 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the revolutionary War.

In the agreement, Britain not only recognized American independence, It also handed over vast land east of the Mississippi River.

The only problem?

Most of that land wasn't actually Britain's to give.

It belonged to Indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years, and whose representatives were conveniently left out of the meeting.

This is, of course, a world war right?

So involves lots of other nations at the table, but some very important nations who were missing.

The treaty-making process, was to for colonial powers to decide how they how they envisioned proceeding forward with negotiations with tribal nations, with the ultimate goal in mind of carving up lands for themselves.

Many Native tribes were appalled by the treaty, and they rejected America's claims that Indigenous people had lost the war.

So the same month that the treaty was signed, 35 Native nations came up with a new plan on the shore of Lake Erie.

Forming a strategic alliance they agreed to uphold a boundary that was previously set by the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Ohio River.

They decided that no more land would be ceded without their unanimous consent.

These nations included the Shawnees, Miamis, Delawares, Cherokees, Haudenosaunee, and others.

Some of the tribes call this area their original homeland.

Others had been pushed here by European aggression.

This system of alliances, wasn't born solely from this period of wars with the Americans or what we call the Mihi-maalhsa Wars.

It predates it.

But it was a very powerful cultural tool for us to use to help resist American attempts to seize our homelands through force.

With the alliance in place, Native leaders pushed bac on a series of American attempts to negotiate for territory.

But this didn't stop U.S.

Representatives from signing treaties with individua and smaller groups of nations.

And they sometimes resorted to underhanded tactics to secure their agreements.

Like mistranslated treaties, or getting them signed under coercion or by unauthorized tribal members.

Building on the 1783 alliance, 11 Nations met three years later at a council by the Detroit River.

These Nations had different cultures and politics, but they came together under a common cause, officially forming the United Indian Nations.

This multinational allianc committed to defending the Ohio River boundary against encroaching white settlers.

They made their intentions clear In a communique warning the US government that the alliance would not be at fault if conflict ensued, and that they would use their united force to defend the rights.

Meanwhile, the fledgling U.S.

government could hardly control its settlers, even if it wanted to.

In the mid 1780s, a weak Congre was the only national government States were constantly bickerin with each other about borders and trade.

The Continental Army had been disbanded.

There was no post office or federal mint, and the country was broke.

the US owed about $79 million in domestic and foreign war debt, and defaulted on its loans from France in 1787.

Congress needs to fix its finances quick.

So they hatched a scheme.

They could sell newly acquired land to speculators or investors In October, Congress issued an official call for proposals and kicked off a land rush.

Bids for millions of acre flooded in from land speculators who are often wealthy lawyers, planters, former continental officers with ties to politicia or were in Congress themselves.

But the United States was promising land that wasnt theirs to give.

Driven by dreams of unbridled profit margins, speculators bet that even though these land were contested by Native nations the US government could secure it one way or another.

Within a year, Congress sold nearly 35 million acres of unseated land northwest of the Ohio River.

These private contracts went to like the Ohio Company, Scioto Company, and a prominent speculator named William Duer.

Remember that name.

He is going to be important later.

By the end of the 1780s, the government had made huge bets, promising unceded Native land.

Yet land surveyors and frontier settlers in the Northwest Territory constantly skirmished with tribes defending their land.

These early Americans demanded protection and were beginning to question their new government' capability and even legitimacy.

So Congress decided they would take the land through bloodshed.

In the fall of 1790, President George Washington sent General Josiah Harmar and 1400 troops to destroy the Miami town of Kekionga in response to Miami raids and settlers, this was the first U.S.

battle post Revolutionary War.

Warriors of the Alliance ambushed Harmars troops armed with superior fighting skills and knowledge of the land Chief Little Turtle of the Miamis and Chief Blue Jacket of the Shawnees led Miami, Shawnee and Ottawa forces to a decisive victory.

The Alliance's win was a wake up call for the U.S.

and successfully stalled surveys and settlements in the area.

However, this victory came at a cost as Harmars troops retreated, they burned five Native villages along the Maumee River and burned massive amounts of crucial food stores.

Just before winter.

President Washington hoped the victory was a fluke and quickly sent another contingent the following year, led by General Arthur St Clair.

St Clair led 1400 troops to the banks of the Wabash River, where they were promptly crushed by Native forces.

Some estimates say more than half of St Clair's troops were killed or wounded in the battle, making it one of the worst defeats in U.S.

history.

Here's how it happened.

The alliance forces were confident after their last win, and they were well supplied with weapons from the British, who still maintained forts in the region.

Native scouts, including a young Tecumseh who later became a famed Shawnee War Chief easily tracked the U.S.

Army's noisy, wagon heavy approach.

The genius of the encirclement the envelopment that the tribal nation had done to St Clair's forces.

They had trapped him in a basin with a bog land behind them, which led to the decimation, a true decimation of, his army.

On the American side, St Clair was ill almost the whole time, and his troops were untrained, barely paid, and prone to abandoning the fight.

Perhaps the army's biggest weakness, ironically, was thanks to William Duer, the land speculator I mentioned earlier.

Duer had received a private contract from the government worth $175,000 to supply the new army.

Duer used 75,000 to pay off his personal debt.

It gave another 10,000 to his friend, Secretary of War Henry Knox, to speculate land in Maine.

Duer had totally sold out the troops.

When news of St Clair's utte defeat hit, it shocked society in a flurry of newspaper articles and pamphlets.

Citizens criticized the government and accused it of corruption at the highest levels.

One person wrote in the Boston Gazette Who stood to profit from the war The Indian war was cruel and unjust.

The nation already had more land that it could settle for at least a century.

For land speculation companies like the Ohio Company.

Their shares tumbled in value.

William Duer went bankrupt after an unrelated financial panic, and spent the remaining years of his life in prison for debt.

Momentum was on the side of the Native tribes.

War Secretary Henry Knox was terrified that the alliance could grow even stronger with the addition of southern tribes.

So in February 1793, President Washington gathered his cabinet to try to make a deal with the tribal alliance.

They proposed still taking over the land.

But this time they would pay for it.

the reply came signed by 16 Native nations.

They rejected the deal outright, holding firm to the Ohio River boundary Instead, they suggested the U.S.

take the money and use it to deport settlers from their country.

The nations of the alliance had their might and sovereignty, and had stopped US expansion.

This is obviously not how the story ends.

So what happened?

In March 1792, Congress had passed an act expanding the President's power to draft militia forces into a standing army named the Legion of the United States.

A year after the Native alliance rejected the US deal in 1794, the Army returned to the Ohio region with 2200 infantry and 1500 Kentucky militiame led by General Mad Anthony Wayne Around this time, Chief Little Turtle began pushing to negotiate peace with the Americans, fearing that their forces had grown too strong.

But he could not convince the council, and so the fighting continued.

Although the alliance held its ground, its strength was starting to weaken.

The sheer number of Native forces, crop destruction by the hands of the Americans, and bad weather had put a strain on food supplies.

The alliance had also lost Britain's support.

It was busy fighting a war against France, and would soon leave their forts in the regio to ease tensions with the U.S.

Finally, the alliances bond and suffered from growing rifts between tribes and American attempts to sow distrust.

on August 28th, 1794.

The US won decisively at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

Following the battle, US forces once again burned villages and fields.

The next year, the allianc signed the Treaty of Greenville.

After months of negotiation.

The treaty ceded two-thirds of Ohio land, portions of Indiana, and the future city of Chicago.

But it also allowed Native people to hunt and move through these ceded territories.

In contrast to the treaties that would later follow.

Its a document that really lay out how we're going to, live at peace with each other.

And it in the end, it doesn't endure.

Right.

Many leaders on the US side, as even as are saying this treaty, they know there's going to be future treaties.

And they already have in their minds the notion that Indigenous people will either disappear, or be assimilated into, a US society, that the future is not to be as neighbors.

But I think many Indigenous people really did believe this document was going to lay out a way for us to live as neighbors with each other Although the alliance's victories were short lived, these wins were historic.

Through coalition building, they tapped into incredible strength that pose a real threat to the growing U.S.

empire.

A number of the alliance's Native warriors continue the fight, and west with leaders like Tecumseh, who continue to resist U.S.

expansion.

Ultimately, American colonizers pushed many Native tribes from the Ohio area into reservations where many nations live alongside one another today So what can we learn from this moment in history?

Let's go back to the myth of America's founding.

The country's westward expansion wasn't predestined.

It didn't simply unfold like the opening of a map.

Instead, our early expansion was driven by two things; the need to pay off more debt and the greed of wealthy land speculators ready to turn a profit.

Both coming at the cost of Native lives and land stewardship.

By turning land into a financial asset to be bought and sold, the American government founded the republic on a radically different relationship to the land.

For Native tribes resisting expansion, they weren't just defending their ancestral homelands, they were defending their sovereignty and way of life.

And they're still fighting today Tribal nations are aliv and well, we don't exist solely on the pages of history books despite all pressures and all forces to the contrary, we yet remain.