Books:

Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Study of eight Indian communities during the Revolutionary War. Emphasizes Indian agency in tracing their diplomacy, strategies, and conflicts.

_____, ed. The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Blacksnake, Governor. Chainbreaker: the Revolutionary War Memoirs of Governor Blacksnake as told to Benjamin Williams. Edited by Thomas S. Abler. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

Memoirs of war chief “Chainbreaker,” nephew of Handsome Lake, as recorded by fellow Seneca Benjamin Williams in 1833-34. Chapters include “prelude to conflict,” “Commitment to the King’s Cause,” “Blacksnake Takes the War Trail,” “Negotiating Peace,” “Ambassadors to the Western Nations,” and “The Revelation of Handsome Lake,” as well as several speeches recorded in the appendixes.

_____. Chainbreaker's War: a Seneca Chief Remembers the American Revolution. Edited by Jeanne Winston Adler. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, 2002.

“This authentic narrative of a Seneca war chief recounting his experiences during the American Revolution has been edited for readability, freeing at last the clear, strong voice of the Seneca leader known to American colonists as Governor Blacksnake, who, together with the Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant and other leaders of the powerful Iroquois Confederation scourged the New York and Pennsylvania frontiers from 1777 to 1783.” –from the press

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Traces intertribal relations and religious revitalizations during the last half of the eighteenth century. Dowd explores commonalities and pan-Indianism among the Delawares, Shawnees, Cherokees, and Creeks.

Fitzpatrick, Alan. Wilderness War on the Ohio: the Untold Story of the Savage Battle for British and Indian Control of the Ohio Country During the American Revolution. Benwood, WV: Fort Henry Publications, 2003.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. and James Kirby Martin. Forgotten Allies: the Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Covers the Revolution from the Oneida perspective and demonstrates both their support and cultural changes caused by the conflict.

Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972.

“In tracing the Iroquois part in the Revolution Professor Graymont has dealt with a larger theme—the irony of Indian history. In her words: ‘Wherever whites and Indians came into contact, the latter both gained and suffered. In reaching out for the white man and his civilization the Indian was, in large measure, bringing despair upon himself.’ (p. 295) Iroquois involvement in the Revolution hastened this process.” –Alan S. Brown, The History Teacher, vol.6, no. 2 (Feb., 1973), p. 326.

Grenier, John. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

“This book explores the evolution of American war, showing how the first war waged against Indian noncombatant populations and their agricultural resources became the standard method of war employed by early Americans and which ultimately defined their military heritage. The bloodthirsty American conquest of Indian communities east of the Mississippi River helps demonstrate how early Americans embraced warfare shaped by extravagant violence and focused on conquest.” –from the press

Hagan, William T. Longhouse Diplomacy and Frontier Warfare: The Iroquois Confederacy in the American Revolution. Albany: New York State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1975.

Jennings, Francis, ed. The American Indian and the American Revolution. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1983.

_____. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America. New York: Norton, 1988.

“Empire of Fortune brings Jenning’s larger work to its conclusion by reexamining the Seven Years’ War, which pitted natives and the rival empire of Great Britain and France in a contest for hegemony over eastern North America. Yet, when set against its predecessors, it offers readers much less that is new or especially challenging. Those familiar with recent reevaluations.... will recognize Jenning’s theme that empires at war are as much a threat to the political rights of their own subjects as to the security much a threat to the political rights of their own subjects as to the security of their enemies.” –Michael McConnell, Ethnohistory, vol. 37, no. 3 (Summer, 1990), 314.

Mann, Barbara Alice. George Washington's War on Native America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.

“This book is about people. Brave and determined Americans motivated by a commitment to individualism and love of liberty struggled for independence against incompetent British bureaucrats and inept military leadership undercut by quarreling generals and inflexible tactics. Less an account of “George Washington’s war,” this is a history of the actions and motives of the British and American military leadership during the American Revolution.” –Lawrence Delbert Cress, The American Historical Review, vol. 98, no. 4 (Oct., 1993), 1318.

Merrell, James Hart. The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

“James H. Merrell paints a cultural landscape in which native peoples, Europeans, and Africans blend together yet maintain their distinct hues and forms. The Catawabas, who emerged as a nation in the eighteenth century, dominate the picture. Composed of Esaws and remnants of once independent peoples of the Carolina piedmont, the Catawbas gradually shifted from their central position to the margins of colonial society.” –Theda Perdue, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no. 2 (Apr., 1990), 288.

Mohr, Walter H. Federal Indian Relations, 1774-1788. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1971.

O'Donnell, James H., III. The Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973.

“His story depicts British interjurisdictional difficulties and the efforts of various American states to achieve a just peace for the tribes despite the land lusts of suspicious and vengeful frontiersman. The result is a sound, comprehensive study with many fresh insights. It is the best current survey of the subject.” –David H. Corkran, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 31, no. 3 (July, 1974), 509.

Skaggs, David Curtis and Nelson, Larry L. eds. The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.

“The coeditors have assembled a showcase of individuals whose expertise in a multitude of fields (Native-American history, naval and military history, diplomatic history, political history, frontier history, religious history, cultural history, and biography) is brought to bear on this subject.... One of the main purposes of The Sixty Years War is that it brings a Great Lakes perspective to the French and Indian, American Revolutionary, and 1812 Wars as well as to the ubiquitous European-Native American conflicts.” –Michael D. Carter, Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 22 (Spring, 2002), 135-136.

Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763-1783. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

“First, the author presents his work as a confrontation with Turner’s thesis of the frontier’s influence upon American institutions. His argument that, in social life and government, the frontier made new modifications in the forms brought from the seaboard is somewhat halfhearted and not entirely new.... [H]is other subject: the role of land speculation in western expansion. He emphasizes the importance of large-scale speculators and developers in opening the West, and thereby modifies the romantic picture of the lone hunter and humble yeoman on the frontier. He provides and excellent, succinct summary of British and American land policies, the activities of land companies, and some of the prominent efforts to found colonies beyond the mountains.” –John Cary, The American Historical Review, vol. 73, no. 4 (Apr. 1968), 1236-1237.

Waller, George Macgregor. American Revolution in the West. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976.

Walling, Richard S. Patriots' Blood: the Indian Company of 1778 & its destruction in the Bronx. East Brunswick, NJ: The Author, 2005.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Traces the exchange between Great Lakes region Indians and the European cultures they met. This geographic and cultural location, which White terms “the middle ground,” illustrates the strategic interactions of European and Indian cultures and demonstrates how the two interacted for their mutual benefit in some common forum.

Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2005.

Wright, J. Leitch Jr. The Only Land They Knew: The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the Old South. New York: Free Press, 1981.

“Wright writes mostly about the 16th through 18th centuries and he is primarily interested in the cultural interactions of Indians, Europeans and Blacks.... Wright opens his book with an ethnographic summary of the Southeast and he assumes a far broader cultural homogeneity than actually existed.... The next several chapters deal with the Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia frontiers from settlement to the end of the 18th century. Unlike most scholars, Wright’s emphasis is less on trade than on slavery.... Wright’s final chapters suggest how the cultural and genetic mixing shaped the early South.” – Michael D. Green, Ethnohistory, vol. 31, no. 2 (Spring, 1984), 133-134.
“Wright has made a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to compress the complex stories of the southeastern Indians into a coherent whole. The problem, in part, stems from the need to cover so much material in so brief a compass.” –Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Journal of American History, vol. 68, no. 3 (Dec., 1981), 636.

Theses and Dissertations:


Dennis, Jeffrey William. “American Revolutionaries and Native Americans the South Carolina Experience.” Ph. D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2002.

Fisher, Doris B. “Mary Musgrove: Creek Englishwoman.” Ph. D. diss., Emory University, 1990.

Sheftall, John McKay. “George Galphin and Indian-White Relations in the Georgia Backcountry During the American Revolution.” M. A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1983.

Stevens, Paul L. “His Majesty's ‘Savage’ Allies British Policy and the Northern Indians During the Revolutionary War: the Carleton Years, 1774-1778.” Ph. D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1984.