How can the relationships between the European settlers and Native Americans best be described?

Native American

In the fifteenth century, when European settlers began to arrive in North America, the continent was richly populated with Native American communities. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in a wide range of environments from shore to shore, each community or nation with its own distinct culture. The centuries that followed the arrival of Europeans were years of tremendous upheaval, as the expansion of settler territory and the founding and growth of the United States resulted in Native American communities being moved, renamed, combined, dispersed, and, in some cases, destroyed.

These dislocations and changes took place across many centuries, and each individual episode was marked by its own set of unique circumstances, from public negotiations and careful planning to subterfuge and deceit; from declarations of friendship to calls for genocide; from disease, starvation, and bloodshed to perseverance, resistance, and hope in the face of persecution. But all were driven by the relentless expansion of European settlement and U.S. territory, and by U.S. government policies that relegated the independence and well-being of Native Americans to secondary status, if that.

Native American communities today span the continent and continue to grow and change. But the mass relocations and other changes, most notably those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, shaped many aspects of U.S. society in ways that persist today.

Before permanently settling the western territories, the United States had to consider the presence of Native Americans already living on these lands. Great Britain may have agreed to give the United States the land, but no one had consulted with the Indian people concerning this change. Reacting to the pressure of American settlers anxious for new land, Congress sought treaties with Native Americans to insure the safety of the settlers, and to obtain clear title for the land.

Congress Tries to Appease Southern Indian Peoples

Although treaties with the Indian people were usually negotiated in good faith, the Congress found itself politically unwilling and actually unable to halt illegal settlement of Indian lands by a growing number of American settlers. These treaties are attempts by Congress to establish friendship between Congress and the Shawnee and Cherokee nations; the Southern states, as typified by North Carolinian delegate William Blount, objected so violently to the treaties's moderate land claims that the agreed-upon boundaries became impossible to enforce.

Congress Increases the Army in the Northwest

By the early spring of 1786, Congressional commissioners had signed several treaties with a number of Indian nations. However, the Indian people were far from satisfied with America's increasing expansion into the west; many Indian tribes of the Northwest, such as the Mohawk nation, represented by Mohawk Joseph Brant, were not willing to concede that all of their land was destined to be occupied and settled by Americans. By the summer of 1786, skirmishes between Native Americans and settlers were on the rise, and war was a clear possibility. Unwilling to halt the expansion, on October 20, 1786, Congress responded to the crisis by calling for additional troops and increased fortifications in the west.

A Cash-Poor Congress Decides to Strive for Peace

Although confident that America would continue its western expansion, Congress altered its policy due to the threat of warfare with the Indian people, combined with an empty treasury. In response to a report from Secretary of War Henry Knox, Congress retreated from its more aggressive attitude towards Native American lands, and on February 20, 1787, admitted that "certain encroachments are made on the lands of the Creek and Cherokee nations." Congress promised to strive for "peace with the Indians, provided it can be obtained and preserved consistently with the justice and dignity of the nation."