Revolutionary History Series Continues With a Focus on Indigenous Relations
By Beth Folsom, 2026
In January 1776, General George Washington met with a delegation of diplomats from the Caughnawaga Mohawk Nation at their Cambridge camp, where they had been staying for over a week, awaiting word of a possible commission for their leader, Atiatoharongwen, in the Continental Army. As Dr. Ben Pokross recently explored in an article for the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historical Site, Atiatoharongwen had come to Cambridge once before, offering to raise a force of at least four hundred men to fight for the colonists against the British Army. But he had gone away – as he would a second time – with no definitive assurances given or treaties signed.
Over the course of his short stay in Cambridge, Washington would be visited not only by the Caughnawaga, but also by representatives from the Abenaki, Oneida, and Haudenosaunee peoples, all offering their assistance to the colonists. The ambivalence that Washington displayed during his interactions with these Indigenous representatives highlights both his personal experience with Native nations and broader Anglo-colonial attitudes toward the original inhabitants of the land over which they were battling for control.
As part of Cambridge’s commemorations of the 250th anniversary of independence, the Longfellow House, History Cambridge, and the Cambridge Public Library are hosting a speaker series exploring the various facets of Washington and public memory in the city and beyond. On January 22, the series continues with “The First President and the First People: Washington in the Native Northeast.” This program features a conversation with Dartmouth College Professor Colin G. Calloway, author of The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, and Kabl Wilkerson, enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and doctoral candidate in the History Department at Harvard University. Calloway and Wilkerson will explore the complex relationship between the British empire, the North American colonists, and the Indigenous peoples who had already endured a century and a half of dispossession and diplomacy with the settlers whose thirst for their land and resources seemed never-ending.
Although the story of American independence is framed around the events that began in and around Cambridge beginning in 1775, Calloway’s and Wilkerson’s works highlight the importance of recognizing the political, economic, and social relationships that had long existed both among various Indigenous communities and between those communities and colonists from Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and other European powers. In particular, the tensions and shifting alliances of the 1750s and 1760s during what was known in the colonies as the French and Indian War had left the American colonists and the Indigenous nations in the Northeast highly suspicious of one another. The lingering effects of the previous decades, including Washington’s personal experiences in the Virginia forces, were instrumental in shaping his approach to Indigenous participation in the Revolution and his vision of American-Indigenous relations in a post-Independence nation.
The carefully calibrated interactions and fluctuating relationships between colonists and Native peoples in the Northeast were a crucial aspect of the Revolutionary period, and serves as a lens through which to understand the complexities of the political, economic, and physical landscape of the fight for Independence and the establishment of a new America. This program will give attendees the opportunity to explore these and other aspects of Anglo-Indigenous diplomacy during this era. The event is free and open to all, either in person at the Main Library or virtually, and registration is requested.
