A Renegades’ History of the Revolutionary Frontier: Contesting Race and Nation in the Early American West
The fourth 2025-2026 David Center for the American Revolution Seminar will take place May 6th, 2025 at 3:00 p.m. ET on Zoom.
The speaker will be John William Nelson. John is Associate Professor of history at Texas Tech University, where he specializes in early American, Indigenous, and borderlands history. He is the author of the 2023 book, Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent which was recognized by the Western History Association as the best first book on the American West that year. The book, and Nelson’s work more generally, examines the cross-cultural interactions between Native peoples and European colonists from early contact through the Revolutionary era. His writing has appeared in the Michigan Historical Review and the William and Mary Quarterly. His work has received generous support from the Newberry Library, the Bentley Library, the American Philosophical Society’s Phillips Fund for Native American Research, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the William Clements Library.
The paper will be pre-circulated to registered participants in advance of the seminar meeting.
To attend the seminar and to receive a copy of the paper, please register via Zoom.
The David Center for the American Revolution Seminar serves as a forum for works-in-progress that explore topics in the era of the American Revolution (1750-1820). Questions about the series may be directed to Brenna Holland, Assistant Director of Library & Museum Programs, at [email protected].
NOTE: Seminars are designed as spaces for sharing ideas and works still in-progress. For this reason, this event will not be recorded.
A Renegades’ History of the Revolutionary Frontier: Contesting Race and Nation in the Early American West
When General Anthony Wayne finally found the time to write back to his superiors eight days after his victory at Fallen Timbers in 1794, his expressions of triumph were mixed with consternation. While Wayne’s American forces had prevailed against the Western Confederacy of Native peoples arrayed against them in the Ohio Country, the commander reported to Henry Knox that the field of battle was “strewn for a considerable distance with the dead bodies of [the Indians’] white auxiliaries.”1 In a contest that was supposed to be between the U.S. army and Indians, Wayne was perplexed at these white bodies littering the woods along the Maumee River. Who were they, what were they fighting for, and for what had they died?