[1] Following centuries of conflict for control of this region, the land comprising the Northwest Territory was granted to the new United States by the Kingdom of Great Britain in article 2 of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War.

However, numerous Native American peoples inhabited this region and were unaware of the British ceding land or the results of the war with the newly formed United States.

[4] Natives (primarily Shawnees and Cherokees) who used present-day Kentucky as their hunting grounds had not been consulted in the treaty and denied that the Iroquois had the right to sell the land.

[7] As a result, the Shawnees fought and lost Lord Dunmore's War in 1774 with only a few Mingo allies, and they were compelled to assent to the Ohio River boundary between the colonies and Native lands.

In the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war, Great Britain ceded the region to the United States, making no mention of Native land rights.

[18] Among the attendees at the conference were representatives from the Iroquois, Shawnees, Delawares (Lenapes), Wyandots, Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi), as well as a few Cherokees and Creeks.

[17] In the following years, U.S. states relinquished their claims in the region to the federal government, which intended to pay debts from the Revolution by selling lands north of the Ohio River to American settlers.

[22] After many raids and counter-raids along the Ohio River boundary, in 1786, the Kentucky militia launched the first major frontier military action since the end of the Revolutionary War.

[28] In July 1787, the U.S. Confederation Congress created the Northwest Territory north of the Ohio River in preparation for widespread, organized American settlement of the region.

Natives attacked flatboats on the Ohio River and raided into Kentucky, killing, capturing, and torturing settlers in an attempt to stem the tide of immigrants.

[37] In 1790, George Washington, recently inaugurated as the first President of the United States, and Secretary of War Henry Knox decided to attack the native confederacy to secure the Northwest Territory for American occupation.

The Natives had scattered for their annual winter hunt, but Blue Jacket, the principal Shawnee war chief, and Little Turtle, his Miami counterpart, dispatched messengers calling for the warriors to regroup.

[49] Harmar's advance detachment under John Hardin reached Kekionga on October 15 and spent the next few days looting and burning Native towns, as well as destroying the crops.

[56][57] Blue Jacket and Little Turtle hoped to strike again at Harmar's retreating army, but a lunar eclipse the following night was regarded by many Natives as an ill omen, and the attack was called off.

When Blue Jacket's request was relayed to Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), the Governor General of British North America, he replied, "We are at peace with the United States and wish to remain so.

[66] Although these raids were limited in success, Sword (1985) argues they "significantly altered the course of frontier history," demonstrating that American settlement north of the Ohio River could not proceed until the United States defeated the Natives.

[81] On October 31, St. Clair sent the First Infantry Regiment southward to prevent deserters from plundering the supply convoy, depriving his army of 300 of its best troops and leaving him with about 1,400 people, including noncombatants.

[88] Little Turtle and Blue Jacket decided to abandon Kekionga, which had proven to be vulnerable to American raids, and relocate their towns at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers, where the principal Shawnee chief Kekewepelethy had already settled.

[95] In March 1792, fifty Iroquois leaders met with U.S. officials in Philadelphia, where they were asked to attend an upcoming council of the Northwestern Confederacy and present U.S. peace terms.

[108] When Red Jacket reported the council decision to an American official in November, he omitted the confederacy's demands about the Ohio River boundary and the destruction of the forts.

Knox agreed to send treaty commissioners to the 1793 council and suspend all offensive operations until that time, angering General Wayne, who had hoped to launch the next American invasion in 1793.

[109] Following the Glaize meeting, Red Pole began an extensive tour of the south, an unsuccessful attempt to enlist more Chickamauga Cherokees and Creeks in the confederacy.

[111][112] While General Wayne awaited the outcome of the peace negotiations, he prepared his army known as the Legion of the United States at Legionville, a camp on the Ohio River near Pittsburgh.

He had to keep peace with the United States to avoid opening another front in the war with France while at the same time maintaining British influence among the Natives in case they were needed to help defend Upper Canada against the Americans.

Nevertheless, Brant spoke for the delegation, asking if the commissioners were authorized to create a new boundary line and inquiring why Wayne's army was preparing for war while peace negotiations were underway.

"[123] The confederacy offered a solution: the U.S. should use the money it would spend on buying land and fighting a war and instead pay the settlers to relocate south of the Ohio River.

[135][136] In February 1794, Lord Dorchester told an Iroquois delegation in Quebec that Great Britain could be at war with the United States within the year and that Native lands lost to the Americans would be restored.

[139] Dorchester's words and actions caused an uproar in the United States; the construction of Fort Miami on what Americans regarded as their territory was considered an act of aggression.

[151][152] After the battle, Little Turtle and Tarhe (Wyandot) made trips to Detroit to ask the British for support, as Blue Jacket had done on previous occasions, but the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Richard G. England, told the Natives he could not fight the Americans without orders.

[167] Utilizing St. Clair's defeat and Fort Recovery as a reference point,[168] the Greenville Treaty Line forced the northwest Native American tribes to cede southern and eastern Ohio and various tracts of land around forts and settlements in Illinois Country; to recognize the U.S. rather than Britain as the ruling power in the Old Northwest; and to surrender ten chiefs as hostages until all American prisoners were returned.