Early American history: key periods and developments

¶ … Divided Ground

The book the Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution by Alan Taylor is an engrossing and enlightening book of Native American history and perspective. It masterfully investigates the transition of the alliance of the Six Nations, (Iroquoia) from a cohesive nation with a central borderland, to the division into two, bordered lands, which transformed into New York State in America, and the Upper Canadian province in Canada. It shows this division from differing perspectives, and highlights how the Natives were mishandled, abused, and robbed of their traditional tribal lands through broken treaties, ignorance, and sometimes abhorrence.

The book centers on two historic friends who turned into bitter enemies, Mohawk Indian Joseph Brant, and white Samuel Kirkland, a clergyman's son. They were schoolmates at a school training them to teach and work with the Indians, but Kirkland became a revolutionary supporter, while Brant supported the English, and their friendship turned into a tragic feud. The author also introduces many other historic characters that had a hand in the division of the tribal lands, and shows how the colonists simply took what they wanted when treaties and promises stood in the way. The author writes of one treaty that negated cleverly negotiated Native American land leases. He writes, "State and colonial leaders declared imminent and inevitable their acquisition of Indian land, diminishing aboriginal title to a temporary possession" (Taylor 2006, 10). Later, President Washington signed a bill that "invalidated any purchase of Indian land, whether by a state or an individual, unless conducted at a treaty council held under federal auspices" (Taylor 2006, 242). While this invalidated the kinds of purchases that divided the Six Nations, the government continued to grab land, ignore treaties, and move Indian Nations throughout its history, and this book chronicles only one of those tragic events.