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three ships in Boston Harbor and dump 10,000
pounds worth of tea into the water below. The
protesters are dressed as Mohawk Indians and sing
“Rally Mohawks, and bring your axes/and tell King
George we’ll pay no taxes on his foreign tea.” Their
costume is only one of many instances of colonists
using American Indian imagery to express a new
American identity that distinguishes them from
their European forebears.
1774The Quebec Act creates borders between
Indian and non-Indian territory.
The British parliament passes the Quebec Act,
which establishes a border between lands held by
the English colonists in Canada and British terri-
tory reserved for Indians. It extends the boundaries
of the province of Quebec south to the Ohio River
and west to the Mississippi. This provision out-
rages colonists in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
Virginia, who claim much of the land assigned to
Quebec. This challenge to colonial land claims will
become one of the primary causes of the American
Revolution.
The First Continental Congress allocates
funds to Indian affairs.
Representatives to the First Continental Congress
vote to put aside 40,000 pounds to finance its deal-
ings with Indian groups. It also establishes the post
of commissioner of Indian affairs to negotiate with
Indians. As the colonies move closer toward war
with England, the commissioner’s most important
responsibility is to try to persuade tribes to declare
neutrality in the coming conflict.
April 30
An attack on Mingo Indians incites Lord
Dunmore’s War.
In 1773 Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia,
declares that lands in what is now western Penn-
sylvania are part of his own colony, even though
the area was guaranteed to the Shawnee by the
Treaty of Fort Stanwix (see entry for 1768). Ig-
noring this treaty and the Proclamation of 1763
(see entry for OCTOBER 7, 1763), in which the
British king forbade white settlement west of the
Appalachians, English squatters flood into the
area claimed by Virginia, infuriating the Indians
of the region.“Such was my love for the
whites, that my countrymen
pointed as they passed, and
said, ‘Logan is the friend of
white men.’ I had even thought
to have lived with you but for
the injuries of one man, Colo-
nel Cresap, in cold blood and
unprovoked, murdered all the
relations of Logan, not even
sparing my women and chil-
dren. There runs not a drop of
my blood in the veins of any liv-
ing creature. This called on me
for revenge. I have sought it; I
have killed many; I have glutted
my vengeance.”
—Mingo rebel John Logan in a
1774 letter to Lord DunmoreGrowing tensions between the Indians and
the squatters erupts into violence when a group of
settlers kill five Mingo warriors and the sister of
Mingo leader John Logan. Logan, who had been
an advocate for maintaining peace with whites,
vows revenge. He tells of his change of heart in
an impassioned speech he submits in writing to
a peace council he refuses to attend. The speech,
later included in McGuffy’s Reader, will be taught
to millions of non-Indian school children in the
19th century.