A Native History of the American Revolution

The American Revolution was, in many important ways, an Indian war. It was one in which Natives fought and died in great numbers. It unfolded beyond eastern coastal locations like Valley Forge, Lexington, Concord, and Yorktown to reach deep in the interior in skirmish after skirmish on the frontier between Native America and backcountry settlements. It was conflict in which ordinary Natives assumed critical, pivotal roles as fighters, spies, and scouts. And it was a war that would reshape the balance of power between Europeans and Native Americans on this continent drastically and permanently.

Join University of Maryland historian Richard Bell for a survey of the Revolutionary War in Native America, paying particular attention to the life and times of Molly Brant, an Iroquois woman who emerged during this long, bitter period as the most important military and cultural broker in Native America.

The widow of an important British diplomat who died just before the Revolution began, Brant would spend the war years trying to hold together a fraying alliance between Britain and the Iroquois Confederacy by speaking at war councils, bribing leaders, delivering strategic intelligence, and ministering to Native refugees displaced by the chaos around them.

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