Treaty of Greenville signed, ending the Northwest Indian War

On August 3, 1795, the United States and Northwest Indian Federation, a confederacy of tribal nations from the eastern Great Lakes region, sign the Treaty of Greenville, pausing two decades of hostility over territory disputes. The Federation, comprised mostly of Shawnee, Delaware, Iroquois, Ottawa, Ojibwa and Miami nations, had formed to collectively defend its member nations’ ancestral lands from being overtaken—often violently—by European settlers moving westward since the American Revolution.

The hostilities, sometimes called the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795), were marked by brutal cycles of settler attacks on Native villages and equally intense Indigenous reprisals. These conflicts were further complicated by tensions in the region with Britain, which sought to protect its adjacent Canadian territories to the north. Competing imperial interests drew Native nations into shifting alliances, setting the stage for broader confrontations that would lead to the War of 1812.

One of the most egregious settler attacks against Native people came in 1782 in Gnadenhutten (in present-day Ohio), when an American militia, led by American Revolutionary War veteran David Williamson, executed 96 Christian pacifist Delaware Indians. The victims—men, women and children—were killed in a slaughterhouse with clubs and hatchets.

Three years later, reprisal came when Northwest Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair suffered the loss of nearly 1,000 men to the Northwest Indian Federation, the highest number of U.S. casualties to an Indigenous force in history, nearly four times the number of U.S. deaths than at The Battle of the Little Bighorn decades later.

In 1792, President George Washington, who had plans to settle the Northwest Frontier with veterans from the Revolutionary War, ordered Major General “Mad” Anthony Wayne to destroy the Native resistance in the region.

At the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, Wayne’s force of approximately 3,300 men, including 1,000 Kentucky mounted horsemen, routed 2,000 Federation Indian soldiers. The Native forces had expected support from the British, but that aid never arrived, as Britain’s resources had been redirected to confront Napoleon. The Indians scattered and were later forced to surrender.

Led by Miami Chief Little Turtle, the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanees, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pattawatimas, Miamis, Eel Rivers, Weas, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws and Kaskaskias ceded land under the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The agreement surrendered territory that would become much of modern-day Ohio, as well as portions of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. It would also break a period of Native resistance that had been bolstered by the British as part of their effort to limit the expansion of the United States.

Little Turtle’s concession was viewed unfavorably by Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, whose own tribal confederation would form an alliance with the British against the United States during the War of 1812 in hopes of regaining Native control over the Northwest Territory.