British and Indian Trouble

Britain was considered a threat to the whole nation at this time, in particular the western territories.  Britain was fighting Napoleon and had shut off her ports to tobacco, cotton, salt pork, and grain.  The agricultural west was in deep economic trouble.

Rumors persisted that British officials in Canada were arming Indians of the Northwest Territory,
encouraging them to stop land cessions and attack the settlers so Britain would retain the fur trade of the Great Lakes region.

By 1806 Shawnee chief Tecumseh was roaming the frontier from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, urging tribes to form a great coalition to resist US demands and establish a sovereign Indian state in the yet unsettled upper Mississippi Valley.  He would fight or negotiate whichever was needed.

Next time...Tecumseh - Great Warrior and Indian Statesman
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Today in Pioneer History: On February 11. 1807, Sacagawea, the Shoshone Indian interpreter and guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition, gives birth to her first child, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.