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Navajo and Apache Wars
During the nineteenth century, the U.S. military went to war against many western tribes. These wars depleted the Native Americans' numbers, divided their leadership, and drove them onto reservations, often located far from their homelands and in inhospitable climates. -
Sand Creek Massacre
The Sand Creek Massacre was an atrocity in the Indian Wars of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory. -
Red Cloud's War
Beginning in 1866 Red Cloud started one of the most successful wars ever fought against the United States by an Indian nation. In the summer of 1867 Red Cloud met with a council of 6000 tribes at Bear Butte. All of the tribes pledged to stop the whites from moving any further into their territories. -
Red River War
The Red River War led to the end of an entire way of life for the Southern Plains tribes and brought about a new chapter in Texas history. A number of factors led to the military's campaign against the Indians. Westward-bound settlers came into conflict with the nomadic tribes that claimed the buffalo plains as their homeland during the nineteenth century. -
Battle of Little Bighorn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer's Last Stand, was an engagement between the combined forces of the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne tribes against the 7th Cavalry of the United States Army. -
"A Century of Dishonor"--Helen Hunt Jackson
In 1881 Helen Hunt Jackson published the book "Century of Dishonor" in which she outlined all the inequities perpetrated against the Indians. -
Dawes Severalty Act
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was the culmination of decades of policy work designed to free up western land for white settlers and acculturate American Indians to American values and practices. The Dawes Severalty Act broke the land of most remaining reservations into parcels to be farmed by individual American Indians or nuclear American Indian families. -
Battle of Wounded Knee
The Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense. Trouble had been brewing for months.
