American. Land-hungry southerners eager to replicate the old wealth they saw in the original colonies needed to wait until George Washington died, which he did in 1799. Washington had believed the native tribes should remain independent nations within the United States but he could tell this was a losing battle. His correspondence is full of his fear that the nation he’d helped found would erase these tribes. “If the same causes continue,” his friend Henry Knox wrote in a letter, “the same effects will happen and in a short period the idea of an Indian on this side of the Mississippi will only
...more
