Madison's Presidency and U.S. Expansion

In his first Inaugural Address upon assuming office on March 4, 1809, James Madison stated that the federal government's duty was to convert the American Indians by the, "participation of the improvements of which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state." Like most American leaders at the time, Madison had a paternalistic and discriminatory attitude toward American Indians. He encouraged American Indian men to give up hunting and become farmers and supported the conversion of American Indians to a European way of life. Although there are scant details, Madison often met with Southeastern and Western American Indians, including the Creek and Osage. 

President Madison's policies toward American Indians

This image illustrates Benjamin Hawkins teaching Creek men how to use a plow in 1805. Madison believed that learning European-style agriculture would help force the Creek to adopt the values of British-American civilization.

Continuation of the American Indian Wars

As European settlers moved west, encroaching on large tracts of Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw territory, Madison ordered the U.S. Army to protect some of the American Indian lands from intrusion. His military commander, Andrew Jackson, however, disagreed with this order and resisted carrying it out. As U.S. expansion continued, American Indians resisted settlers' encroachment in several regions of the new nation, from the Northwest to the Southeast and into the West, as settlers encountered the tribes of the Great Plains.

Tecumseh's War

East of the Mississippi River in the Indiana Territory, an intertribal confederacy led by Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, fought a number of engagements in the Northwest during the period of 1811 to 1812. These conflicts became known as Tecumseh's War. In the latter stages, Tecumseh's group allied with the British forces in the War of 1812 and was instrumental in the conquest of Detroit. 

Many consider Governor William Henry Harrison's victory over the American Indian confederacy at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 the climax of the war. However, Tecumseh's War continued into the War of 1812 and is frequently considered a part of that larger struggle. The war lasted until the fall of 1813, when Tecumseh died fighting Harrison's Army of the Northwest at the Battle of the Thames (near present-day Chatham, Ontario) and his confederacy disintegrated. Tecumseh's War is viewed by some academic historians as being the final conflict of a longer-term military struggle for control of the Great Lakes region of North America; it encompassed a number of wars over several generations and was referred to as the "Sixty Years' War."

In the Northwest Territory after the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, American Indians were pushed off of their tribal lands and replaced entirely by white settlers. By 1815, 400,000 European settlers lived in Ohio, and American Indians' rights to their lands had effectively become null and void.

The Creek War

During his presidency, Madison's also saw conflicts with the American Indians in the Southeast. The Creek War, also known as the "Red Stick War" and the "Creek Civil War," was a regional war among opposing Creek factions, European empires, and the United States, taking place largely in Alabama and along the Gulf Coast. It is usually considered part of the War of 1812 because of its connection to Tecumseh's War in the Old Northwest and because the Red Stick Creeks sought support from the British and later aided British advances toward New Orleans.

The Creek War began as a conflict within the Creek Confederation, but U.S. armies quickly became involved. British traders and the Spanish government provided supplies to the Red Stick majority due to their shared interest in preventing the expansion of U.S. territory. The war effectively ended with the Treaty of Fort Jackson (August 1814), in which General Andrew Jackson insisted that the Creek confederacy cede more than 21 million acres of land from southern Georgia and central Alabama. These lands were taken from allied Creek as well as Red Sticks.

The Seminole Wars

The Seminole Wars, also known as the "Florida Wars," were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole—the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of Native Americans and African Americans who settled in Florida in the early eighteenth century—and the U.S. Army. The First Seminole War (1816–1819) arose out of tensions relating to General Andrew Jackson's invasions into northern Spanish Florida and offensives against the Seminoles beginning in 1816. The governments of Britain and Spain both expressed outrage over the "invasion"; however, the Spanish Crown ultimately agreed to cede Florida to the United States in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 (after Madison's presidency had ended). According to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek of 1823, the Seminoles were required to leave northern Florida and were confined to a large reservation in the center of the Florida peninsula.