How the American Revolution looks when Indigenous diplomacy is brought to the foreground
At the British Museum in London, a new exhibition is reframing the story of American independence through objects that point to Native alliances, treaty-making, and displacement. “Declaring independence: USA 250” gathers artifacts that place Indigenous nations at the center of the Revolution’s political landscape, rather than at its edges.
The display includes the Washington Peace Medal, a pipe tomahawk associated with Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, and a Lenape wampum belt. Together, they sketch a more complicated picture of the era: one in which Indigenous nations negotiated with British and revolutionary forces while trying to protect land, sovereignty, and diplomatic standing.
The exhibition’s curators argue that the Revolution was fought on Indigenous lands and that those histories remain underrepresented in popular memory. The Washington Peace Medal, engraved in 1777 by Paul Revere, was presented to the Wabanaki Confederacy, later confiscated by the British, and given to King George III. The pipe tomahawk, a gift from the Duke of Northumberland to Brant, reflects his efforts to advocate for Mohawk land rights in Parliament in the early 1800s. After fighting alongside the British, many Mohawk ultimately fled to British-controlled Canada and received land along the Grand River in Ontario.
The Lenape wampum belt adds another layer. Used to record treaties and important agreements, it marks diplomacy between the Lenape and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in 1712. The Lenape later became the first Indigenous nation to agree to a formal treaty with the revolutionaries in 1778.
Halfway through the exhibition’s run, a fourth object will be added: the Sussex Declaration, a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence on sheepskin parchment. Discovered about a decade ago in the archives of the West Sussex Record Office, it is the only handwritten copy known besides the original manuscript held by the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Scholars believe it was produced in New York or Philadelphia in the 1780s, and may have reached Britain through the Third Duke of Richmond, a supporter of the American colonists.
The British Museum is not alone in marking America250. In Berlin, the German Historical Museum is showing a German-language version of the Declaration of Independence aimed at the large German-speaking population in America in the 1770s. In Paris, the National Archives Museum is exploring the role of Gilbert Du Motier de Lafayette in the Revolutionary War.
Taken together, the exhibitions suggest that the 250th anniversary is becoming less a celebration of a single national origin story than a wider reckoning with the people, alliances, and contested lands that shaped it.
“Declaring independence: USA 250” is on view at the British Museum, Great Russell St, London, through November 29.
