Definition
The Western Confederacy, an alliance of Native nations north of the Ohio River that included the Shawnee, Miami and Delaware, had beaten two U.S. armies in 1790 and 1791 with British supplies. On August 20, 1794, General Anthony Wayne's army defeated the confederacy near present-day Toledo, Ohio. The warriors fell back to Fort Miamis, a British fort on American land, but its commander shut the gates. Wayne's army then burned cornfields and houses for miles along the river, and in 1795 the confederacy's leaders came to Greenville to make peace and gave up most of present-day Ohio.
Why it matters on the AP exam
Fallen Timbers broke the Western Confederacy's resistance in the Ohio country and opened it to American settlement, and it is a common example of how relations between Native nations and the United States changed in the 1790s, from winning battles to signing away land. Britain's refusal to open the gates of Fort Miamis, and its promise in Jay's Treaty to leave its forts, left the confederacy without British support. Questions ask students to describe a change in relations between American Indians and the United States or to evaluate how settler expansion shaped North America.
In the sources
“nor have I ever before beheld such immense fields of corn, in any part of America, from Canada to Florida.”
Connections
- Northwest Ordinance: organized the territory that settlers and Native nations fought over
- Jay's Treaty: Britain promised to leave its western forts three months later
- Treaty of Greenville: the 1795 treaty in which twelve nations gave up most of Ohio
- Pontiac's Rebellion: an earlier alliance of Native nations that attacked British forts in the same Great Lakes and Ohio country in 1763