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Red Dreams, White Nightmares: Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind, 1763–1815
From the end of Pontiac’s War in 1763 through the War of 1812, fear—even paranoia—drove Anglo-American Indian policies. In Red Dreams, White Nightmares , Robert M. Owens views conflicts between whites and Natives in this era—invariably treated as discrete, regional affairs—as the inextricably related struggles they were.
As this book makes clear, the Indian wars north of the Ohio River make sense only within the context of Indians’ efforts to recruit their southern cousins to their cause. The massive threat such alliances posed, recognized by contemporary whites from all walks of life, prompted a terror that proved a major factor in the formulation of Indian and military policy in North America. Indian unity, especially in the form of military alliance, was the most consistent, universal fear of Anglo-Americans in the late colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. This fear was so pervasive—and so useful for unifying whites—that Americans exploited it long after the threat of a general Indian alliance had passed.
As the nineteenth century wore on, and as slavery became more widespread and crucial to the American South, fears shifted to Indian alliances with former slaves, and eventually to slave rebellion in general. The growing American nation needed and utilized a rhetorical threat from the other to justify the uglier aspects of empire building—a phenomenon that Owens tracks through a vast array of primary sources.
Drawing on eighteen different archives, covering four nations and eleven states, and on more than six-dozen period newspapers—and incorporating the views of British and Spanish authorities as well as their American rivals— Red Dreams, White Nightmares is the most comprehensive account ever written of how fear, oftentimes resulting in “Indian-hating,” directly influenced national policy in early America.
As this book makes clear, the Indian wars north of the Ohio River make sense only within the context of Indians’ efforts to recruit their southern cousins to their cause. The massive threat such alliances posed, recognized by contemporary whites from all walks of life, prompted a terror that proved a major factor in the formulation of Indian and military policy in North America. Indian unity, especially in the form of military alliance, was the most consistent, universal fear of Anglo-Americans in the late colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. This fear was so pervasive—and so useful for unifying whites—that Americans exploited it long after the threat of a general Indian alliance had passed.
As the nineteenth century wore on, and as slavery became more widespread and crucial to the American South, fears shifted to Indian alliances with former slaves, and eventually to slave rebellion in general. The growing American nation needed and utilized a rhetorical threat from the other to justify the uglier aspects of empire building—a phenomenon that Owens tracks through a vast array of primary sources.
Drawing on eighteen different archives, covering four nations and eleven states, and on more than six-dozen period newspapers—and incorporating the views of British and Spanish authorities as well as their American rivals— Red Dreams, White Nightmares is the most comprehensive account ever written of how fear, oftentimes resulting in “Indian-hating,” directly influenced national policy in early America.
- GenresHistory
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 16, 2015
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About the author
Robert M. Owens
6 books6 followersA graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Robert M. Owens is Professor of History at Wichita State University.
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November 18, 2019
In his now-classic A SPIRITED RESISTANCE, Gregory Dowd described Native Americans' efforts, sometimes successful but mostly not, to build a “pan-Indian” alliance capable of deterring or resisting white American expansion. In this 2015 follow-up to Dowd's opus, Robert Owens argues that the promoters of Indian unity achieved some of the psychological effects they wanted, but that their success in this regard eventually proved their undoing. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Native Americans did try to build a substantive military resistance movement, but its core membership included only a shrinking number of Shawnees, a varying number of Anishinaabeg, the Chickamauga band of Cherokees, and the Creek faction headed by war captain Alexander McGillivray. Yet the mere prospect of a confederation between southeastern and northeastern Indians, fomented by France or Britain, frightened British and American officials. Americans, in particular, turned the mere process of Indian alliance-building into a terrifying specter, a massive multitribal “conspiracy” that stretched from Canada to Florida and included runaway slaves and wily Europeans. Their fears led white American elites to turn against Native Americans the growing resources of the new American nation-state: money, wherewith the American government tried to bribe influential Indian leaders; armies, which the United States used to break two Northwest Indian confederacies; and the media, which opinion-makers used to spread anti-Indian hatred through the United States.
Unlike Dowd, Owens focuses his work on the fears of Anglo-American officials. This may make the book less appealing to those who believe Native American history must always center on the beliefs and experiences of Indians. However, it gives Owens's book strengths – considerable ones – that A SPIRITED RESISTANCE lacks. Owens, unlike his predecessor, observes that whites' fear of an Indian alliance or “conspiracy” frequently meshed with their fear of a slave rebellion, instigated by the same foreign agents they suspected of “stirring up” Indians. Revolutionary Virginians believed (correctly) that Britain employed both Indians and slave rebels against them; fear of slave rebellion, stoked by arson in several cities and rumors of rebellion in Charleston, spread in the eastern United States at the same time as fear of the first Northwest Indian confederacy; Creek insurgent leader William Bowles developed a malignant reputation because he freed slaves in Florida; and Spain allegedly (and Britain definitely) employed black soldiers in the Patriot War (1812), the Creek War (1813-14), and the 1814-15 Gulf campaign. This combination of foreign white officers, vengeful slave rebels, and fearsome Indian warriors Owens calls Americans' “nightmare trifecta” (203).
The author also draws on the work of recent scholars like Peter Silver (OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS, 2007) to explain how American elites' fear of a pan-Indian alliance birthed the complex Silver called “the pan-Indian sublime.” Fear, Owens notes, rarely makes people reasonable; it initially induces a fight-or-flight impulse, and over the long term leads to exhaustion and misery. American elites welded these responses into a culture of “violent self-pity” (181), a complex of “captivity narratives, newspaper editorials, stage plays,” novels, art, and tropes (like the oft-used phrase “tomahawk and scalping knife” [205]) that cast whites as the innocent, violated victims of fearsome, savage Indians. Silver deserves credit for exploring the creation of the anti-Indian genre, but Owens takes that genre's story several decades forward, and helps us understand how, for Indians in the early American republic, the printing press could prove more deadly than the gun.
Is it fair to note that Owens also has a better sense of humor than Dowd or Silver? I think so. This is another advantage of focusing on fearful whites rather than Native Americans: it's a lot easier, or less morally opprobrious, to make fun of self-deluded honkies than of earnest, beleaguered Indians. No-one wants to pick on history's losers.
Unlike Dowd, Owens focuses his work on the fears of Anglo-American officials. This may make the book less appealing to those who believe Native American history must always center on the beliefs and experiences of Indians. However, it gives Owens's book strengths – considerable ones – that A SPIRITED RESISTANCE lacks. Owens, unlike his predecessor, observes that whites' fear of an Indian alliance or “conspiracy” frequently meshed with their fear of a slave rebellion, instigated by the same foreign agents they suspected of “stirring up” Indians. Revolutionary Virginians believed (correctly) that Britain employed both Indians and slave rebels against them; fear of slave rebellion, stoked by arson in several cities and rumors of rebellion in Charleston, spread in the eastern United States at the same time as fear of the first Northwest Indian confederacy; Creek insurgent leader William Bowles developed a malignant reputation because he freed slaves in Florida; and Spain allegedly (and Britain definitely) employed black soldiers in the Patriot War (1812), the Creek War (1813-14), and the 1814-15 Gulf campaign. This combination of foreign white officers, vengeful slave rebels, and fearsome Indian warriors Owens calls Americans' “nightmare trifecta” (203).
The author also draws on the work of recent scholars like Peter Silver (OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS, 2007) to explain how American elites' fear of a pan-Indian alliance birthed the complex Silver called “the pan-Indian sublime.” Fear, Owens notes, rarely makes people reasonable; it initially induces a fight-or-flight impulse, and over the long term leads to exhaustion and misery. American elites welded these responses into a culture of “violent self-pity” (181), a complex of “captivity narratives, newspaper editorials, stage plays,” novels, art, and tropes (like the oft-used phrase “tomahawk and scalping knife” [205]) that cast whites as the innocent, violated victims of fearsome, savage Indians. Silver deserves credit for exploring the creation of the anti-Indian genre, but Owens takes that genre's story several decades forward, and helps us understand how, for Indians in the early American republic, the printing press could prove more deadly than the gun.
Is it fair to note that Owens also has a better sense of humor than Dowd or Silver? I think so. This is another advantage of focusing on fearful whites rather than Native Americans: it's a lot easier, or less morally opprobrious, to make fun of self-deluded honkies than of earnest, beleaguered Indians. No-one wants to pick on history's losers.
Displaying 1 of 1 review