Northwest Indian War

In this episode, we examine the Northwest Indian War, a pivotal conflict between the young United States and the powerful Northwestern Confederacy as Native nations resisted American expansion into the Northwest Territory after the Revolution. We explore how Britain’s cession of Indigenous lands without consent ignited years of fierce resistance and delivered shocking defeats to early U.S. armies, exposing the weakness of the republic’s frontier defenses. The story follows President George Washington’s decision to appoint General Anthony Wayne, whose disciplined “Legion of the United States” secured a decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and forced the Treaty of Greenville, opening much of present-day Ohio to American settlement. This episode unpacks how the war reshaped federal Indian policy, strengthened the professional U.S. Army, and left a lasting legacy of dispossession, contested sovereignty, and broken promises that would echo across the expanding American frontier.