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Editor says, after the abortive American rebellion, Great Britain adopts a more aggressive settlement policy as one means of pacifying the colonists for the long term. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
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In 1808, the "Leap Year Day Massacre": American settlers in the Ohio Territory are attacked by hostile Indian tribes.
Leap Year Day MassacreMany are killed. When news of the slaughter reaches colonial authorities, British troops are dispatched to "restore order" and avenge the settlers' deaths. Dozens of Indian villages will be burned to the ground and their inhabitants killed. In the aftermath, the British will repudiate the tacit understanding which had existed between them and the tribes that white settlement would be restricted and the natives' sovereignty respected.
Ohio will be formally organized as a British colonial province, and the offending tribes' lands will be confiscated.
The result of this action will be a series of bloody so-called "Indian Wars" which will seriously harm relations with what had been friendly tribes in Ohio and the neighboring Michigan Territory. As one result, British negotiations to acquire formal sovereignty over Michigan will collapse. They will not be resumed for more than twenty years, after the deaths of several key tribal chiefs.
Entry posted by
Eric Lipps
© Eric Lipps,2007-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Liberty Fails Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ohio, Settler Massacre, America, First Nations, British Empire. Editor says, this event never occurred at all in our history. It's a "butterfly" following the collapse of the American Revolution in the 1770s because of Southern rejection of the Declaration of Independence due to Thomas Jefferson's refusal to excise a assage condemning the African slave trade (a passage he reluctantly cut out in our history).
~ This is a big shift from previous British policy, which was hold colonization at the Appalachians (one of the causes of the Revolution, as land-hungry colonists disagreed). With this kind of move, we'll see Manifest Destiny, albeit twenty years behind OTL, at least in the beginning. Could postpone expansion into Texas, which could cause even cause California's Bear Republic to join before the Texans do, provided Swiss Sutter gets out to "Albion" to discover the gold there.
~ I'm assuming that after the abortive American rebellion, Britain adopted a more aggressive settlement policy as one means of pacifying the colonists for the long term--and also to counter moves by other coloniaal powers (France and Spain especially) to acquire territory in North America.
~ Would the British organize something like OTL's Royal Canadian Mounted Police to keep the peace on the frontier? I think the Mounties were one reason Canada had a lot less Indian trouble. (Of course, different Indians also made a difference).
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
