WI: A Native state in the Ohio Country?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Eyes

In 1778 White Eyes helped negotiate a treaty of alliance between the Delaware Tribe and the young United States. Stipulated in the treaty was that the Delaware should organize a state and send representation to the Continental Congress. IOTL, White Eyes was murdered before any of this could happen, probably by a white frontiersman. What if, through some circumstance, he wasn't? It certainly wouldn't be a sure thing that a Delaware state could survive in the long run, but if White Eyes had survived they almost certainly would have tried to send a delegation to the Congress in Philadelphia.

One immediate butterfly here is that the alliance holds. IOTL, after White Eye's murder, the alliance fell apart and the Delaware joined the British. Without the animosity of having fought a war against each other, is it possible that whites and natives could co-exist? By this time the Delaware were already farmers living in villages, as opposed to hunter gatherers, so there's still a lot of free space for white settlers to move into. If the movement westward could be negotiated between Native governments and the Confederation government in Philadelphia, perhaps a precedent can be set and the long-run genocide committed against Native Americans could be avoided?
 
Jaded,

AmIndHistoryAuthor is probably the best member to tackle your questions, but I'll get things started and hopefully he'll chime in with a more detailed answer.

If White Eyes hadn't been murdered and the treaty held, I see no reason why an organized territory with a majority Native American population could not have been the result. I also see no reason why the territory would not have achieved statehood after 1789 and the adoption of our current Constitution.

What I do see being a problem however is this territory/state remaining a majority Native American region.

White settlers are still going to arrive and the United States is most certainly not going to enact legal barriers to internal migration so soon after fighting a war of independence in which such legislation was one of the primary complaints against Britain.

The Native Americans are simply going to be swallowed up by sheer numbers which, at the very least, will lead to political losses on all levels. Furthermore, the settlers' predilections for cheating, bamboozling, robbing, and murdering natives whenever given the chance means that this erosion of political strength will occur far more rapidly than simple population numbers would suggest.

There is no Voting Rights Act in the late 1700s, the very idea of such an act would seem an absurdity to the people of the time, and that means there won't be any racially gerrymandered voting districts on either the local or federal levels to help maintain even a shred of Native American political representation and the power that goes along with that.

The Native Americans who may have been part of the political process early on during either territorial status or statehood will soon see themselves removed from office by either the ballot, legislation, or force. After that occurs, the Native Americans will be further marginalized to a point of irrelevance.

It's nasty, it's despicable, and, sadly, it's the mindset of the period. There would have to be a cultural shift resembling a major earthquake to prevent the process from playing out.


Bill
 
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Is it possible that the Native American 'State' could give upland for ethnic population density?
 
I actually give this as an essay question to my students. Like Bill points out, the biggest problem would be being swamped by incoming whites.

But that takes some time. In the OK Territory, you had Indian judges, Indian police and militia, Indian owned businesses (including newspapers), farms, and ranches, and in many cases whites working for more well off Indians on said businesses, becoming accustomed to seeing Indians in terms other than as threats or inferior.

Dispossession took a long time in OK Territory, in some aspects not entirely happening til the 1890s, with strong resistance still going into the 1910s, eg Crazy Snakes Rebellion and another mass protest in alliance with white farmers and union workers during WWI.

That's 50-70 years, and you can make a strong case much of it would not have happened without outside interference. The Dawes Act breaking up the rezzes did not come from a white Oklahoman, and its intent was severaly misguided notions of being benevolent, rather than vicious biological racism.

The Ohio Valley being much closer means the demographic swamping may come sooner, perhaps half that time. But in the meantime...

You have some very different things from the OK Territory situation:

Two senators and at least one US congressmen are Indians for several decades. Congress and Presidents become used to dealing with Indian leaders as equals perhaps all the way to the War of 1812.

That itself leads to some interesting butterflies. I'd like to hear from military buffs of the war how they think its outcome would be affected...

Does the Delaware state become a refuge/dumping ground for other tribes? Does Congress pressure the Six Nations to relocate there?

(Chances are at least some choose to. IOTL there are Oneida in Wisconsin, who probably go to Ohio Valley instead under the WI.)

Other Midwestern tribes relocate there? That may hold off the demographic change for awhile longer.

Also how does this affect the Five Civilized Tribes? They may push for a similar arrangement, a state going across what IOTL is N Geogia, N Alabama and W North Carolina. Does the Trail of Tears even happen? Or if it does, do they choose to join the Delaware also?

Assuming no Trail of Tears, that leads to all kinds of implications for the Civil War. How more cautious are Confederates about breaking away by violent uprising with an Indian state in their midst? IOTL the Confederates had big problems with Lumbee guerillas, but both the Catawba and E Cherokee allied with them out of necessity. (The Catawba had held onto their land by frequently hiring out as slavecatchers.)

Assuming, in the most optimistic scenarios, that a Delaware state and a Five Tribes state survives with an Indian majority, does that lead to a Black state being held up as a solution during Reconstruction? I'd argue the most likely candidate would be Mississippi, since it had the highest Black population. Or there may be a push to send Blacks to a territory out west.

Would the same kind of solution also have been proposed for Mexicans following the US-Mexican War? The most likely candidates would be the former Nueces Strip or Southern California.

Unlike the Indian states, none of the potential Black or Mexican states would be swamped demographically.

All of this is under the most optimistic of scenarios. Some of my Anglo students argue the doom and gloom scenarios, "It'll just lead to race war forever and ever!"

Then I point out you have states like Maryland, (set up as a refuge for Catholics) and Utah (for Mormons). Do nonCatholics or nonMormons get persecuted in those states? Of course not. Are the states very different culturally (and in Utah's case still demographically) from their neighbors? Yes, and that's a good thing.

Nonwhite students (and some white ones) get quite excited about the possibilities. I had a very moving essay from a Navajo student thinking about his ancestors not going thru the Long Walk.

I'd also suggest that, if the idea of states as refuges becomes a practice, you might have two final Indian states, N Arizona and NW New Mexico for Apache and Navajo (Hopi would probably opt to stay with Arizona), and a East and West Dakota instead of North and South, with West as the D/L/Nakota state.

A final butterfly: How would having, potentially, Senators and Congressmen from four Indian states, one or two Mexican states, and one Black state affect US entry into 20th century wars? Sooner or later, and which ones?
 
Very interesting stuff. I suspect, though, that any Ohio Valley state is unavoidably going to be demographically European inside two generations. Nonetheless, it would radically alter the history of the United States.
 
I know very little about this aspect of American history, being "WASP" and in England to boot! However I find your WI and the erudite comments facinating, bloody good writing!

I wonder how much support the potential state(s) would have received from Great Britain? particularly before they achieved statehood, and whilst war was possible with GB.
 
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That kind of reminds me of a TL over at CTT, where the Iriquois(for one reason or another, it looked too much like a handwave to me) stay neutral in the ARW for awhile, then after Saratoga make a deal to become the "14th State" of the Union. After that, the Cherokee make a similar deal and guides from the Iriquois and other Northern tribes allow the Continental Army to make it to Canada faster and conquer it. It was a silly Ameriwank idea, but it made me think along similar lines as your ideas:Would ethnic groups be pushed towards certain states afterwards, now that it's seen as a solution? An Irish state out west, German ones in the Great Lakes/Plains? Once I started thinking like that, It seemed like it could go two ways 1) idealistic multicultural republic or the more likely 2) splintering and secessions leading to several new nations.

As for the OP, the main problem is Ohio will be European-heritage very quickly, but as has been said, for a few years it will have Indian senators, representatives, governors. The butterflies from such an occurrence would certainly be interesting.
 
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