Virginia: Indigenous people

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5:35

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Indigenous responses to the Revolution varied sharply by location. The Pamunkey of Tidewater Virginia—some educated at the Brafferton School—chose to support the Patriot cause, breaking a longstanding treaty obligation to the British. By contrast, the Shawnee on Virginia’s western frontier clashed with colonists in Dunmore’s War of 1774, part of a broader pattern in which colonial demands for Indigenous land were themselves embedded in the grievances driving Revolution: the Declaration blamed the British for encouraging who the writers termed “merciless savages.” Dr. Ashley Atkins Spivey, an anthropologist of Indigenous peoples and member of the Pamunkey nation, emphasizes that Native nations were sovereign entities choosing among competing powers—not colonial subjects selecting sides. The Patriot victory ultimately accelerated the dispossession that Indigenous Virginians had long feared.

Interviewees

Maggie Creech
- Director of Education, Virginia Museum of History and Culture
James Herrera-Brookes
- Melanie Trent De Schutter Senior Director of Research & Publications, Virginia Museum of History and Culture

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