The subtitle of this book is “The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation”. Calloway starts with a detailed description of the French and Indian War. And not really discussing just the battles, but going into detail about the combatants. He also discusses how and why George Washington ended up as a participant in this war. But much of what he discusses is the interplay between the French, the British (including their colonial subjects), and the various tribes of Native Americans. The French had been working with some tribes, especially the more northern groups for years, and the British had some work to do to convince other tribes to work with them, and not the French.
While we know from the name of the war that Native Americans were involved in the French and Indian War, I don’t remember hearing, at least not in this much detail, how much they were also involved in the Revolution. Some tribes tried to remain neutral, but sometimes the younger braves wanted to fight, even when their elders did not. One of Washington’s challenges was to keep tribes from helping the British, even if they didn’t want to help the colonists. And once the war was over, Native Americans were the only thing standing the way of westward expansion. Between settlers wanting to move west, and land speculators (including Washington), there was really no chance that they would be able to keep their ancestral lands intact.
Washington’s presidency was complicated by the conflict between Native tribes, who wanted to keep their lands, settlers, who want to, well, settle in those lands, speculators, who wanted to make money from the same lands, and the Spanish, French, and British, who all had colonies near all this land. And while Washington believed that the Federal Government should be the one making treaties with the various tribes, some State governments felt otherwise. Add in the question of which chief, or chiefs, you should be making the treaty with, and things could get very complicated.
If this was your family, how would you research them? You may already know if you had ancestors who fought in the Revolution. Check the DAR and SAR websites, and the National Archives has many records available. You can find some information on Ancestry, and of course on Fold3. If you descend from Native Americans, NARA might also have some information on the various treaties, and of course FamilySearch is not a bad place to start.