Books: The Touch of a Feather

ARK OF EMPIRE by Dale Van Every. 383 pages. Morrow. $6.

The first brushfire war in U.S. history began—like many such wars since—with a peace treaty. When Britain came to terms with American independence in 1783, the fighting ceased in the populous east. But west of the Appalachians, the frontier settlements found themselves still at war. Indians, supplied and encouraged by the British, attacked forts, raided settlements and terrorized isolated settlers. The British, with well-conceived malice aforethought, were trying hard to stem the westward surge of the energetic new Americans. They came in on foot along Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road or down the Ohio River on flatboats. A flatboat, though little more than a raft thrown together at the headwaters of the Ohio for a one-way trip, could carry a family or two with children, slaves, cattle, even a wagon. “The lowly raft had become an ark sweeping a whole people into possession of an empire,” writes Historian Van Every in the third installment of his projected four-volume chronicle of The Frontier People of America.

Secession Sentiment. As the settler population doubled and doubled again, the rising ferocity of Indian resistance was not the only danger. Beyond the Indians to the southwest were the Spanish in New Orleans, the “stopper in the Mississippi bottle,” blocking the only cheap export route. Behind the Indians to the northwest were the British, arming the tribes, pre-empting the fur trade, still holding Detroit and the other lake posts they had agreed in the peace treaty to give up. The feeble Continental Congress in Washington was weeks away by hard roads and not much interested in backing up the settlers.

By the late 1780s, every influential western leader was “publicly proclaiming his loss of faith in the national government.” Separatist plans were rife: one scheme set up the state of Franklin, complete with constitution and elected governor. In Washington’s phrase, “the touch of a feather” might have turned the frontier to independence, or even to an alliance with Great Britain.

Swagger & Treachery. From the turmoil rose truly remarkable men, who swagger through Van Every’s pages. Joseph Brant was a sophisticated Mohawk chieftain, who was born in a wigwam but was equally at home in London society. He was perhaps the only Indian leader who fully understood the fatal consequences of Indian disunity. Alexander McGillivray, the son of a Scottish trader and an Indian beauty, became paramount leader of the Creek nation and a diplomatist of genius, who maintained his people’s independence long after the other tribes had surrendered.

Even more remarkable was James Wilkinson, an adventurer who became political boss of Kentucky and eventually the U.S. Army, while taking huge sums in bribes from the Spanish, the English, the French and home-grown land speculators.

Fallen Timbers. The figure in the background who dominated them all was Washington. As President under the new Constitution, he used the strengthened powers of the national government to prevent war with Britain while the settlements grew, to negotiate the eventual British evacuation of the lakes posts, and to appoint “Mad Anthony” Wayne to command a federal army to take the field against the Indians.

On Aug. 20, 1794, in the battle called Fallen Timbers near a British fort in northwestern Ohio, General Wayne’s disciplined infantry routed a large Indian army. The pursuing Americans saw the gates of the British fort close in the face of the fleeing Indians. Indian trust of their British allies disappeared in smoking rage, and their attacks ceased. The national government had proved itself. Separatist sentiments evaporated. Less than a decade later, Napoleon sold the U.S. a Louisiana Territory he couldn’t have held. The flatboat and Fallen Timbers had made it clear who owned America.