The Northwest Indian War was pretty directly caused by events in the Beaver Wars, the French and Indian/Seven Years War, and Native participation in the Revolutionary War. Tribes had a tendency to flip alliances when their own side failed to uphold its own treaties and turned genocidal. So you had tribes in this time period who'd fought alongside Frenchmen, Englishmen, and American Rebels, sometimes in the same generation. Tribes like the Shawnee and Miami saw the French territory of Quebec get sold off to eventually form Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, while others like the Odawa, Wendat, Lenape, and Ojibwe had been diplaced from East Coast regions and were re-settling in new towns they built in Ohio's Swamps.
Immediately after the Revolutionary War, the British were attempting to maintain some of their forts in Lower Canada/the Northwest Territory, with the plan to pull out slowly and create a native buffer state between the US and Canada (so that the British could maintain their own borders and treaties against US expansion).
So anyway, the US decided to say fuck all that and sent the Kentucky Militia into Ohio and Indiana to burn, rape, pillage, scalp, impale, and be a general nuisance to the local populace (this technically occurred a few decades before the revolution but continued up until the cusp of the Northwest war, which they participated in). It became clear the Kentuckians were such raging hogs that they didn't have the discipline to get the job done. So George Washington formed the first incarnation of the US Army — called the Legion (led by General "Mad" Anthony Wayne) — to formally crush Native resistance in the Northwest Territory.
The campaign was basically a long march toward the Miami capital of Kekionga (now called Fort Wayne) to establish or refortify white settlements and delineate a Military Canton in Ohio Country.
This is where @WhoaSlowDownMaurice post on the Battle of the Wabash comes into play. The Northwest Confederacy very nearly won the war. But at the later Battle of Fallen Timbers, random chance basically changed the situation completely.
The Americans were 3 days late to their own ambush, as the confederacy had set up a solid position in a forest that had recently been hit by a tornado. As a result, a significant number of warriors, who'd been fasting before battle, needed to take a break at the local British fort. The Legion arrived right at that inopportune moment and pushed through the front line. They were nearly shaken once the confederacy re-stabilized their position, but what shots they did get in somehow all managed to hit multiple tribal leaders around the same time. The confederacy actually didn't have that great of losses, but without leadership they began to retreat back to Fort Miami. At that point, the Brits had decided they didn't want to turn a cold war into a hot war and locked everyone out. Their forces were scattered to the north and west and didn't reconvene until Tecumseh (who was a young recuit at the Battle of Fallen Timbers) started his own religious war against white expansion.
https://hexbear.net/post/195617/comment/2457682
The Northwest Indian War was pretty directly caused by events in the Beaver Wars, the French and Indian/Seven Years War, and Native participation in the Revolutionary War. Tribes had a tendency to flip alliances when their own side failed to uphold its own treaties and turned genocidal. So you had tribes in this time period who'd fought alongside Frenchmen, Englishmen, and American Rebels, sometimes in the same generation. Tribes like the Shawnee and Miami saw the French territory of Quebec get sold off to eventually form Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, while others like the Odawa, Wendat, Lenape, and Ojibwe had been diplaced from East Coast regions and were re-settling in new towns they built in Ohio's Swamps.
Immediately after the Revolutionary War, the British were attempting to maintain some of their forts in Lower Canada/the Northwest Territory, with the plan to pull out slowly and create a native buffer state between the US and Canada (so that the British could maintain their own borders and treaties against US expansion).
So anyway, the US decided to say fuck all that and sent the Kentucky Militia into Ohio and Indiana to burn, rape, pillage, scalp, impale, and be a general nuisance to the local populace (this technically occurred a few decades before the revolution but continued up until the cusp of the Northwest war, which they participated in). It became clear the Kentuckians were such raging hogs that they didn't have the discipline to get the job done. So George Washington formed the first incarnation of the US Army — called the Legion (led by General "Mad" Anthony Wayne) — to formally crush Native resistance in the Northwest Territory.
The campaign was basically a long march toward the Miami capital of Kekionga (now called Fort Wayne) to establish or refortify white settlements and delineate a Military Canton in Ohio Country.
This is where @WhoaSlowDownMaurice post on the Battle of the Wabash comes into play. The Northwest Confederacy very nearly won the war. But at the later Battle of Fallen Timbers, random chance basically changed the situation completely.
The Americans were 3 days late to their own ambush, as the confederacy had set up a solid position in a forest that had recently been hit by a tornado. As a result, a significant number of warriors, who'd been fasting before battle, needed to take a break at the local British fort. The Legion arrived right at that inopportune moment and pushed through the front line. They were nearly shaken once the confederacy re-stabilized their position, but what shots they did get in somehow all managed to hit multiple tribal leaders around the same time. The confederacy actually didn't have that great of losses, but without leadership they began to retreat back to Fort Miami. At that point, the Brits had decided they didn't want to turn a cold war into a hot war and locked everyone out. Their forces were scattered to the north and west and didn't reconvene until Tecumseh (who was a young recuit at the Battle of Fallen Timbers) started his own religious war against white expansion.
https://hexbear.net/post/195617/comment/2457441