The historians cited below, some of whom are leading figures in the new Indian history movement, have tried with respect to the Seven Years' War (called the French and Indian War in the North American colonies) to uncover Native American perspectives in order to elucidate the actions and significances of the war more fully than previous scholarship had accomplished. They have merged methods and purviews of military, political, social, and cultural history in efforts to adequately account for the war's complicated causes, development, and consequences.

Francis Jennings has categorized France's wartime Indian allies in terms of their reliability. So-called "domesticated" Indians, who converted to Catholicism, left their tribes, and settled in French missions, were considered the most reliable. Potawatomis, Ojibwas, Ottawas, and other Indian groups who traveled long distances to join the fight were perceived as the next most reliable, as they could be counted on to remain after a battle and hold newly won territory rather than embark right away on the long trip home.

During the first four years of the war, however, Indian allies from the Ohio Valley region, most prominently the Delawares and Shawnees, became France's most important allies. They "unenthusiastically came to terms with the French," Richard White relates, when war began between the two European empires and especially after English General Edward Braddock failed to capture Fort Duquesne at present-day Pittsburgh. In that battle, most of France's Indian allies were Ottawas, Mississaugas, Wyandots, and Potawatomis fighting for captives and booty, according to Fred Anderson. After Braddock's defeat, the Ohio Indians, rebuffed by the arrogance of the British and fearing attack by the other tribes allied with the French, joined the latter in large numbers. Until they reached a separate peace with England in 1758, these Ohio Indians conducted devastating raids on frontier settlements in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Shawnees and Delawares, originally "dependents" of the Iroquois, had migrated from Pennsylvania to the upper Ohio Valley during the second quarter of the 18th century as did numerous Indian peoples from other areas. Unlike the others, however, the groups arriving from the east came as "village fragments, families, even individual hunters," White notes, rather than as whole villages or tribes. They formed multiethnic villages, what White calls "the first republics," in lands claimed by both England and France, and were "trying to establish some basis for collective identity and action for the first time as the events of the war began to unfold," Eric Hinderaker relates. The Ohio Indians sought to "use the French to defeat the British," White contends, with the understanding that afterward, in the words of a Delaware, "we can drive away the French when we please."

In October 1758, the Ohio Indians reached a peace agreement with England stipulating that the British would relinquish claims to their lands on the Ohio, an agreement on which the British subsequently reneged. Without the support of the Ohio Indians, the French abandoned Fort Duquesne to the British, "a pivotal moment in American history," James H. Merrell has written. The Catholic Indians of the St. Lawrence missions remained allies of the French as the war continued, until the late summer of 1760, when the mission Indians ended their support of the French, and the latter shortly thereafter surrendered to the British. War between France and England, concluded in North America, continued elsewhere until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763.

In 1744, Canasatego, leader of the Onondaga nation and spokesman for the Iroquois Confederation, advised the British colonists:

". . . We heartily recommend Union and a Good Agreement between you our Brethren. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable, this has given us great weight and Authority with our Neighboring Nations. We are a Powerfull confederacy, and by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power."

Canasatego’s admonition and other evidence has led some scholars to believe that Native American, particularly Iroquois, governments served as models for the new nation’s government. Others refute that theory and argue that the framers of the United States Constitution and other documents did not need the example of Indian governments because they could refer to numerous English and Continental European political theories for their ideas.

The Iroquois Confederation is the oldest association of its kind in North America. Although some scholars believe that the Five Nations (Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Seneca) formed their Iroquois League in the 12th century, the most popular theory holds that the confederation was created around 1450, before Columbus’ “discovery” of America. These five nations bore common linguistic and cultural characteristics, and they formed the alliance to protect themselves from invasion and to deliberate on common causes. In the 18th century, the Tuscarora joined the league to increase the membership to six nations.

Those who support the theory that the First Peoples influenced the drafting of the founding documents point to the words of founders such as Benjamin Franklin, who in 1751 wrote to his printer colleague James Parker that “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.” Native American Studies Professor Bruce Johansen and American Studies Professor Donald Grinde, among others, argue that American colonists, in Johansen’s words, “drew freely on the image of the American Indian as an exemplar of the spirit of liberty they so cherished.” These scholars argue that the framers of American governments understood and admired Native American government structures, and they borrowed certain indigenous concepts for their own governments.

Other scholars are not convinced. Anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker, for example, argued that European political theory and precedent furnished the models for American Founders, while evidence for Indian influence was very thin. Although the concept of the Iroquoian Confederation may have been similar to the United States’ first efforts to unite alliance, the Iroquois constructed their government under very different principles. The member nations of the Iroquois League all lived under matrilineal societies, in which they inherited status and possessions through the mother’s line. Headmen were not elected, but rather clan mothers chose them. Representation was not based on equality or on population. Instead, the number of Council members per nation was based on the traditional hierarchy of nations within the confederation. Moreover, the League of Six Nations did not have a centralized authority like that of the federal system the Euro-Americans eventually adopted. These arguments are, however, intriguing. Curious to know more? Read the debate between Elisabeth Tooker and Bruce Johansen, and the articles in the William and Mary Quarterly Forum (1996) cited below.