Originally Posted by Pannonian:
Something I've wondered, as I've read articles bigging up the British side but I'm not entirely trusting of them, is what effect the Revolution had on relations between European settlers and natives. I've read that Britain was in favour of leaving the plains to the natives and limiting expansion, but was this really so, and did the Patriots have a different view?
The patriots did have a different view. One of aggressive expansion. The British had a clear policy toward new colonizing efforts. One aimed at the idea of, even if they fell short in practice, peaceful coexistence. Colonial magistrates were all supposed to negotiate treaties with native tribes before founding new settlements. I've read of several instances of Governors being officially rebuked by the crown for not following treaties with the tribes or not properly making new ones. But in many of those cases the Governors were in a position of either abandoning the settlers who broke the treaty (in which case they would been attacked) or supporting them. The native were regarded lowly by most Europeans. The crown regarded them as being worth keeping around to turn into Englishmen.
And even today there is a pervasive negative attitude toward natives among the European majority in North America.
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