I don’t think many of the conflicts we talked about could truly be called “Indigenous revolutions,” mainly because although Indigenous people took part in them, they weren’t really about Indigenous peoples’ lives or rights. I don’t believe that just because a war, revolution, or other type of conflict is started with one purpose that it can’t become concerned with another purpose, but I guess I don’t believe that was what really happened with the Seven Years’ War or the American Revolution. That is, despite the involvement of Native peoples, these conflicts never were really “about” them or their goals of revolution.
The main exception to this from the list of conflicts is definitely Pontiac’s Rebellion, which was concerned with returning to Native lifeways and rejecting the changes brought about by colonizers, as described in The Master of Life. This is another reason why I don’t really think I would consider the Seven Years’ War an Indigenous revolution, despite it being a conflict that certainly involved Indigenous people—Pontiac’s Rebellion, which I believe started immediately after the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, arose from dissatisfaction with the new British rule that resulted. Alibamo Mingo, Choctaw leader, Reflects on the British and French, 1765 speaks to this dissatisfaction very well. I also think the pan-Indigenous alliance that took part in Pontiac’s Rebellion is a notable part of what makes this event an Indigenous revolution, since the rebellion clearly concerned issues that were important enough to a wide variety of Native communities to warrant a big alliance.
Aside from Pontiac’s Rebellion, it often seems like Indigenous people were involved in these wars to protect their lands and work with whoever could best help them do that, but the conflicts themselves were pretty much solely about European interests. The alliances and relationships between Indigenous peoples and Europeans would shift depending on these kinds of benefits, as well as because of the fluctuation of valuable trade goods—an example being Indigenous alliances beginning to shift from the French towards the British in 1757 when French trade goods were becoming scarce, as discussed in class. There was also the aspect of the understanding of cultures, participation in the gifting system, and learning Native languages, as well as the building of familial ties through French men marrying Native women that encouraged these relationships.
Overall, though, it seems like Indigenous involvement in these conflicts was largely about maintaining control over/access to their lands, and working with whoever might have been able to help protect that. I feel like it’s mainly in events like Pontiac’s Rebellion that we see “liberty” (as we may be more inclined to understand it) as the primary goal.