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Battle of Fallen Timbers: Defeat of Western Confederacy of First Nations by Americans under the command of Major-General “Mad” Anthony Wayne on 20 August 1794. The British refused to open the gates of Fort Miami to the retreating Indigenous warriors, which caused a breach in Indigenous–British relations.
Brock, General Isaac: British general who fought alongside Tecumseh in the War of 1812–14. He believed in the skill of Tecumseh’s forces and considered Tecumseh to have the abilities of a general. He was killed in battle at Queenston Heights on 13 October 1812, after which Tecumseh’s forces were treated with much less respect.
Mihšihkinaahkwa: (Little Turtle 1752–1812) Myaamiaki leader believed to have been a leading strategist in the Ohio Wars. When he faced St Clair alongside Shaawanwaki leader Weyapiersenway and Lenni Lenape leader Buckongahelas in 1792, Mihšihkinaahkwa lost only 21 warriors, while the American forces suffered a 97.4 per cent casualty rate, one of the most decisive defeats in American History and a greater victory than that at Little Bighorn.
Moraviantown: Village established in 1792 in what is now southwestern Ontario by the Moravian Brothers, a Protestant missionary group founded in 1727, for refugee Lenni Lenape people on the Canadian side of the future international border and originally called Fairfield. By the early nineteenth century it was thriving and wealthier than near-by settler communities. It was burned to the ground in a battle on 5 October 1813 which was part of the War of 1812–4 in which the community fought alongside Tecumseh and the British. The Lenni Lenape were never granted clear title, and the federal government turned the settlement over to the Canadian Methodist Episcopal Church in 1903.
Ohio Wars: Although the 1783 Peace of Paris officially ended the American War of Independence between Britain and its former colonies, Britain’s Indigenous allies and the Americans continued to fight due to consistent settler encroachment and aggressive colonial land companies. The Americans tried to claim that all of the lands north and west of the Ohio River were theirs by right of conquest, but the Indigenous nations living in those lands disagreed and formed a confederation that annihilated significant American military forces sent to the region in 1791 and 1792 before finally being defeated in 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
Queenston Heights: Site near Niagara Falls, Ontario, of a battle in October 1812 that saw invading American forces defeated by British and Haudenosaunee forces led by Teyoninhokarawen and the British General Sir Isaac Brock, who died in the battle.
Tecumseh: (Shooting Star, Panther Crouching in Wait, c. 1768–1813) Shaawanwaki chief whose descent from both the Shaawanaki and Maskó:kí and marriage into the Cherokee gave him the kinship ties which, alongside his role in the large western Great Lakes confederacy that resisted American expansion in the Ohio Wars, gave him the relationships needed to establish the largest multi-national Indigenous resistance to a colonial power. The prophetic movement led by his brother, Tenskwatawa, provided unity to the movement aimed at retaining Indigenous land. Tecumseh sided with the British in the War of 1812–14 and died at the Battle of Moraviantown in 1813.
Tenskwatawa: (“Open Door,” Shawnee Prophet, 1775?–1836) Brother of Tecumseh who, following a series of prophetic visions in 1803, promoted a revival of traditional customs and values with some Christian influences. Most importantly, its doctrines reinforced the diplomatic conception that territories did not belong to particular nations, but rather to Indigenous Peoples as a whole.
Treaty of Ghent: (1814) Treaty that concluded the War of 1812–14, in which the British tried to negotiate for the establishment of an Indigenous territory in the western Great Lakes but failed.
Treaty of Greenville: (1795) Treaty of peace between the US government and the Wendat, Lenni Lenape, Shaawanwaki, Odaawaa, Ojibwe, Boodwaadmii, Myaamiaki, Ugpi’ganjig, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Onondowaga, and Kaskaskia, who collectively comprised the Western Confederacy involving huge land cessions on the part of the First Nations and opening the Ohio Valley to European settlement. Despite the loss of land, the treaty also was a victory for the First Nations as it recognized Aboriginal title and agreed that the United States had not attained their lands through right of conquest by winning the American Revolution.
War of 1812–14: British impressment of sailors on US trade vessels during the Napoleonic Wars led to conflict in North America, on both land and sea, between US and Britain, with the US seeking to annex British North America, believing that Lower Canada would “greet them as liberators.” Many scholars see the conflict as a continuation of the American War of Independence. It was the last colonial war in which First Nations people held the balance of power, comprising about 10 per cent of British forces in North America, and were key to the defence of Upper Canada.