After being hectored by the fast and loose talking Isaac Stevens, the Washington Territory Governor, into signing a treaty that would see them removed from their ancestral lands to reservations in 1855, the native tribes of present day eastern Washington state became restless with the intruding white settlers and miners. Repeated raids and revenge killings spiralled the area into open confrontation between the U.S. Regualr Army of the Northwest and combined tribes of eastern Washington.

Background

Prior to the War of 1812, the British and the Spaniards had been forging alliances with Indians on the American frontier to try to slow American expansionism, and therefore power. One significant Indian Chief, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, used this time and support to try to build an Indian Confederacy along the western edge of the American frontier. Tecumseh's Shawnees were based predominantly in current day Indiana, Illinois and western Kentucky, but were historically linked to the Creek people of current day Alabama and Georgia. Tecumseh travelled to Alabama to rally the Creeks to war against the whites in the region.

Below is Tecumseh's speech to the Creeks at Tuckabathcee in October 1811 as told by Sam Dale to JFK Claiborne;

The War of 1812 coincided with an uprising amongst part of the Creek Indian nation that was rebelling against the U.S. governments attempts to "civilize" them. For the "volunteers" of Tennessee, including future President Andrew Jackson, the majority of the War of 1812 was spent fighting Indians and not the British.