Native Negotiations of Empire — Eighteenth-Century Wars in America

In the 18th century, British, French, Spanish and even Russian empires fought for North American land. Native peoples were caught in these struggles, but they were not passive. Indigenous nations played a central role in these wars, shaping events through alliance, resistance, and diplomacy. As historian Kathleen DuVal notes, it was often “Indians rather than European colonists… [who] were more often able to determine the form and content of the relations” between the two groups. In each conflict — from the Yamasee War in the Southeast to the French and Indian War in the interior, Pontiac’s War in the Great Lakes, Cherokee wars on the Southern frontier, and Russian incursions in Alaska — Native leaders weighed their options and made strategic choices often tipping the balance of power between European rivals. This chapter examines those Native decisions. It shows how Indigenous nations negotiated, resisted, or allied in the face of empire.

Yamasee War (1715–1717)

By the early 1700s, South Carolina’s relationship with its Native neighbors had grown deeply strained. English traders dominated the deerskin trade, but many cheated their Native partners, charged unfair debts, and enslaved Native Americans into slavery when they could not pay. Colonists also raided Native villages and shipped thousands of captives to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations. At the same time, expanding plantations in the Carolinas threatened Native homelands. A South Carolina report later admitted the colony’s policies were bound to cause violence, blaming the uprising on “the misconduct of some English traders” and the “open enslavement of Indians.”

In April 1715, South Carolina officials sent John Wright and other traders to the Yamasee town of Pocotaligo, claiming the mission was meant to calm rising tensions. But to the Yamasee, these men embodied years of cheating, debt, and enslavement. Before dawn, Yamasee warriors struck, killing Wright and most of his party as they slept. This act ignited a massive coordinated uprising. In the days that followed, Yamasee and their allies—including Creek, Apalachee, and others—swept across the Carolina frontier, destroying plantations, seizing captives, and threatening to “extirpate the white people.”

The war nearly destroyed the colony. Charleston itself was on the verge of collapse until South Carolina forged new alliances with the Cherokee and Catawba, who chose to fight alongside the colonists. Their motives were complex: some sought to curb Yamasee power, others to secure trade advantages, or to protect their own lands from both Yamasee and colonial expansion. For two years, South Carolina relied on Cherokee and Catawba fighters, colonial militias, and imported reinforcements to gradually beat back the uprising.

By 1717, the British colonists had gained the upper hand. The Yamasee were driven from their homelands, and survivors fled south into Spanish Florida, where they later joined other Native groups to help form the Seminole people.

The Yamasee War was not a simple clash of “Indians versus colonists.” Native groups made calculated choices: some fought to punish abuse and defend autonomy, while others allied with colonists to safeguard their own security and influence. The war revealed both the dangers of colonial exploitation and the difficult decisions Native leaders faced in a rapidly changing world.

The French and Indian War (1754–1763)

By mid-century, European empires in North America had divided the land. Britain controlled the Atlantic colonies; France held vast territory across the Great Lakes and Mississippi, and Spain ruled parts of Florida. As each empire tried to expand, North American Indians were “stuck in the middle”. Many tribes exploited this rivalry. For example, the powerful Haudenosaunee Confederacy often remained neutral and played the French and British against each other to get the best trade goods.

When the French and Indian War (the North American front of the Seven Years’ War) began in 1754, Native nations across the interior carefully chose allies. The French attracted tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes (like the Shawnee, Miami, Ottawa, and Huron) by generations of marriages into their societies and trading on fair terms. The British, by contrast, drew support from the Haudenosaunee and from southern tribes like the Cherokee and Catawba, who had diplomatic ties with colonial neighbors.

But many Native leaders in these tribes distrusted the British, and particularly British colonists, for good reason. The British attitude was shown in 1763 when Pontiac and other chiefs noted that the French had treated Indians as “brothers,” while the incoming British “were like strangers” demanding submission. Indeed, the Algonquin prophet Neolin (whose message inspired Pontiac) said the Creator made the land “for you and not for other people” — rebuking tribes for accepting European (especially British) goods and urging them to “drive from your lands those redcoat dogs who will do you nothing but harm”.

The war itself was brutal. Initially, the British suffered major losses: General Edward Braddock’s 1755 defeat and Pontiac’s subsequent uprising were warnings. Indigenous warriors attacked British forts (killing many at Fort William Henry in 1757, inspiring legends). When Britain finally won (taking Quebec in 1759 and defeating the French in Canada), Native nations lost a valued ally.

With France gone, many tribes suddenly faced only the British and their land-hungry colonists. After the war, British policy changed markedly. Colonial governors cut off gift-giving that had been part of diplomacy and tried to regulate fur trade. King George issued the Proclamation of 1763, drawing a line at the Appalachians to stop settlers from crossing into Indian lands. He did this partly in response to Native pressure — the British had been caught off guard by Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763 and by Cherokee attacks in the South. But for colonists, these new limits were intolerable. Land-hungry settlers and speculators “were quick to cross into Native territory”, resenting any British attempt to hold them back. So the Proclamation only made both colonists and many Indians angry.

Pontiac’s War (1763–1766)

When British soldiers took over former French forts, relations quickly soured. British General Jeffrey Amherst even ordered officers “to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians” to crush resistance. Such cruelty confirmed Native fears. In May 1763, the Ottawa chief Pontiac and his allies launched a broad uprising in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes. They captured eight forts and laid siege to Fort Detroit. In speeches, Pontiac reminded warriors that the land was theirs, and he used powerful imagery: the “Master of Life” told an Indian prophet to “drive from your lands those redcoat dogs who will do you nothing but harm”. He urged tribes to “make war” on the British and send them back “to the lands I made for them”. In other words, Pontiac and Neolin called for a return to independence: no more British on Indian land.

Many tribes joined or supported the rebellion (Ottawa, Potawatomi, Delaware, Mingo, Shawnee, and others). Fierce battles ensued. At Detroit and other posts, Native fighters initially drove out the British or besieged them. The war ended when the British, after much fighting, offered concessions. At the Treaty of Fort Niagara in 1764, they promised to stop expansion past the Proclamation line and to restore gift policies. In practice, these promises were partly kept: the Proclamation line held for a few years, and British officials briefly treated the tribes more respectfully. But frontier conflict soon reignited (Pontiac’s War had helped trigger the Cherokee War of 1760–61 in the South), and the crown couldn’t fully enforce Indian boundaries.

Pontiac’s War showed that Native nations could still unite against imperial powers and force changes. It also hardened British resolve to place Indian relations under tighter control. Most significantly, however it convinced British Colonists that the empire was holding them back from their dream to acquire more native land, helping to create the context for a revolt that would become known as the American Revolution a decade later.

Cherokee Strategy before and after the Seven Years’ War

In the Southern Appalachians and Piedmont, the Cherokee were the most powerful nation. In the early 1750s, Cherokee leaders sought friendship with the British. When the French and Indian War began, the Cherokee allied with Virginia and South Carolina to defend the frontier and help drive the French from the Ohio Valley. Hundreds of Cherokee warriors marched north with the British army; some even participated in the 1758 siege of Fort Duquesne. The Cherokee saw this as a way to secure their own borders and gain trade benefits.

Unfortunately, British colonists abused these alliances. After Cherokee men helped capture Fort Duquesne, Virginia and South Carolina refused to pay them the promised goods and money. Cherokee warriors, angry and underpaid, began raiding frontier farms in Virginia. Alarmed settlers retaliated. South Carolina authorities sent troops against the Cherokee without distinguishing friendly from hostile Cherokee. What followed is called the Anglo-Cherokee War (1759–1761): a bloody fight between the British and the Cherokee. Cherokee villages were burned and many people were killed. In the end, the Cherokee were pushed into signing peace treaties, ceding large tracts of land.

After the war, British-Indian relations continued to sour. With the French gone, Southern Indian nations were less essential as an ally to the British and respect for them declined. British traders began cheating the Cherokee and charging high prices. Settlers ignored old treaty boundaries and moved into Cherokee country. Over the late 1760s, the Cherokee used diplomacy to try to protect their land. For example, Cherokee leaders traveled to London to petition King George III directly for justice. They also negotiated treaties in 1768 (the Treaties of Hard Labor and Fort Stanwix) to redraw boundaries, though colonists again violated those agreements and began to reject England’s authority to enforce boundaries in the Americas.

Russian Incursions and Alaskan Resistance

While North America’s eastern third was contested by Britain, France, and Spain, Russia was expanding south from Siberia into Alaska. Russian traders arrived in the 1770s, eager for fur. They set up hunting camps on the Aleut and Pribilof Islands. The impact on Alaska Natives was catastrophic. Slave-raiding and disease: Russians often enslaved Aleut men to hunt sea otters. Within a few years, 80% of the Aleut population died from smallpox and other European diseases.

When Russians moved to Kodiak Island and the Southeast coast, they collided with Tlingit and Haida nations. The Tlingit saw the Russians as invaders. Local Tlingit launched an attack on a Russian trading post in 1802. They destroyed the post and built a strong “sapling fort” to defend against retaliation. In 1804, a combined Russian-Aleut force attacked, but Tlingit warriors repelled them in fierce fighting. In fact, Tlingit and Haida “continued to wage war on the Russians into the 1850s”.

Russia’s misrule eventually helped the United States. In 1867, fearing continued conflict and seeing Alaska as too costly, Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. The purchase treaty treated Alaska Natives merely as “uncivilized groups” under federal law. ignoring their own claims. But the fierce resistance of tribes like the Tlingit ensured that even Russian America never fully subdued Alaska Natives.

Conclusion: Survival and Sovereignty

Across the continent in the 1700s, Native nations survived by skillfully choosing how to engage with empires. Some fought as warriors, others as diplomats, and many as both. They negotiated treaties and boundaries whenever possible, and they formed the coalitions they needed at the time.

A constant theme was that British colonists were seen as especially dangerous. Unlike the French or Spanish, the British settlers were numerous and insatiable in their hunger for farmland. They often ignored treaties and kept pushing boundaries. This made negotiation difficult, so sometimes the only way to protect sovereignty was to wage war. When war ended, surviving tribes used diplomacy to claim recognition of their rights. They convened councils, signed treaties (even if often broken), and sent ambassadors to London and Madrid to plead their case.

In the end, what emerges from these struggles is a picture of resilience. Indigenous nations used every tool at their disposal — alliance, neutrality, military resistance, and legal diplomacy — to maintain their homes. Their goal was not to conquer empires, but to survive as sovereign peoples. As one Native account put it during Pontiac’s time, the land was made for Indians and “they could live just as they lived before” Europeans came. That hopeful vision of freedom underlay each decision. The story of the eighteenth-century wars is really the story of how Native Americans strove to keep that vision alive.

References:

• Alan Taylor, American Colonies;
• Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
• “The Yamasee War,” Access Genealogy
• “American Indian Wars: Timeline,” History.com
• William R. Griffith IV, “The French and Indian War (1754-1763): Causes and Outbreak,” American Battlefield Trust (2025)
• Encyclopedia Virginia, “The Treaty of Hard Labor (1768)”
• Jared Aragona (ed.), “Speech at Detroit (c. 1763)” (Pontiac’s speech), Renewable Anthology of Early American Literature
• Tribal Governance (UAF), “Russians in Alaska and U.S. Purchase”
• Zach Zorich, “Found: The Lost Tlingit Fort That Defended Alaska From Russian Attack,” Atlas Obscura (2021)
• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2014)
• Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Oxford University Press, 2006)
• Library of Congress, “British Reforms and Colonial Resistance, 1763–1766,” U.S. History Primary Source Timeline.