The Revolution becomes an Indian war

In Indian country the American Revolution often translated into an American civil war. While British regulars and Continental troops fought campaigns in the East, in the backcountry – which usually meant the Indians' backyards – whites killed Indians, Indians killed whites, Indians killed Indians, and whites killed whites in guerilla warfare that was localized, vicious, and tolerated no neutrals. Dissension and disruption in Indian councils increased as militant voices drowned out words of moderation.

In Indian country and Indian communities the outbreak of the Revolution usually generated division and confusion, not united tribal action. Some people saw in the Revolution and the promise of British support a chance to drive Americans from their lands; others hoped to keep out of it; still others volunteered to fight alongside American neighbors. Abenakis in western Maine debated night after night as to what to do now that Englishmen were killing one another. One Abenaki woman said she thought the world was coming to an end. Catawba Indians in South Carolina “were alarmed, and could not tell what to make of it.” George Morgan found Indians in the Ohio Valley “much confused and unsettled in their Resolutions” in the spring of 1776. The Spanish governor of Saint Louis, Fernando de Leyba, told the governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez, in the summer of 1778 that the war was “causing a great number of Indian tribes to go from one side to the other without knowing which side to take.”

Not all Indian people were living in Indian country when the Revolution broke out, and Indians responded to the event as individuals, not just as tribal units. Joseph Burd Jaquoi, a Mohegan Indian from Connecticut, had served in the Seven Years' War and was in England on a lieutenant's half pay when the Revolution began.