In our Revolution, most of the Iroquois Confederacy sided with the British
and attacked white Americans in New York and northern Pennsylvania. In
1778 the United States suffered a major defeat when several hundred Tories
and Senecas routed 400 militia and regulars at Forty Fort, Pennsylvania,
killing 340. After the Revolution, although Britain gave up, its Native
American allies did not. Our insistence on treating the Indians as if we had
defeated them led to the Ohio War of 1790-95 and later to the War of 1812.
The never-ending source of dispute was land. To explain this constant
conflict, half of the textbooks I examined, including several current ones, rely
on the cliché that Native Americans held some premodern understanding of
land ownership. When students learn from American Journey, for example,
that the Dutch “bought Manhattan from the Manhates people for a small amount
of beads and other goods,” presumably they are supposed to smile indulgently.
What a bargain! What foolish Indians, not to recognize the potential of the
island! Not one book points out that the Dutch paid the wrong tribe for
Manhattan. Doubtless the Canarsees, native to Brooklyn, were quite pleased
with the deal which, just for the record, probably didn’t involve beads at all,
but more than $2,400 worth of metal kettles, steel knives and axes, guns, and
blankets, in today’s dollars. The Weckquaesgeeks, who lived on Manhattan and
really owned it, weren’t so happy. For years afterward they warred
sporadically with the Dutch. Perhaps the most famous street in America, Wall