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The Gnadenhutten Massacre
In 1782, a group of militiamen from Pennsylvania killed 96 Christianized Delaware Indians, illustrating the growing contempt for native people. Captain David Williamson ordered the converted Delawares, who had been blamed for attacks on white settlements, to go to the cooper shop two at a time, where militiamen beat them to death with wooden mallets and hatchets. -
Office of Indian Affairs is Created
In 1824, the Office of Indian Affairs was created in order to resolve the land issue. The position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs was established by an act of Congress in 1832, and in 1869, Ely Samuel Parker became the first Native American to be appointed to the position. The Office of Indian Affairs was renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947. -
Indian Removal Act of 1830
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 institutionalized the practice of forcing Native Americans off of their ancestral lands in order to make way for European settlement. The US government forcibly relocated the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) to territories that would become the states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, in a death march that became known as the Trail of Tears. It was the start of something that would continue for many years. -
Indian Appropriations Act of 1851
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, also known as the Appropriation Bill for Indian Affairs, authorized the establishment of reservations in Oklahoma and inspired the creation of reservations in other states as well. The US federal government envisioned the reservations as a useful means of keeping Native Americans off of lands that white Americans wished to settle. -
Mankato Executions
While Lincoln commuted most of the sentences, on the day after Christmas at Mankato, military officials hung 38 Dakotas at once—the largest mass execution in American history. More than 4,000 people gathered in the streets to watch, many bringing picnic baskets. The 38 were buried in a shallow grave along the Minnesota River, but physicians dug up most of the bodies to use as medical cadavers. -
The Sand Creek Massacre
On November 29, 1864, a former Methodist minister, John Chivington, led a surprise attack on peaceful Cheyennes and Arapahos on their reservation at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. His force consisted of 700 men, mainly volunteers in the First and Third Colorado Regiments. Plied with too much liquor the night before, Chivington and his men boasted that they were going to kill Indians. -
Sioux Treaty of 1868
This is when a tribe of Sioux Indians sign a treaty with the US government. The Sioux agreed to live in the area of the Black Hills in a a way similar to that of a reservation. It would not be a permanent peace and the US would take action later on. -
Dawes Act of 1887
The act authorized the president to confiscate and redistribute tribal lands in the American West. It explicitly sought to destroy the social cohesion of Indian tribes and to thereby eliminate the remaining vestiges of Indian culture and society. It took their lands and gave them to whites while they tried to assimilate the remaining population. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
On December 29, 1890, the US 7th Cavalry Regiment surrounded an encampment of Sioux Indians near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. While attempting to disarm the Sioux, a shot was fired and a scuffle ensued. The US army soldiers opened fire on the Sioux, indiscriminately massacring hundreds of men, women, and children. The few Sioux survivors of the battle fled. -
Curtis Act of 1898
The Curtis Act of 1898 amended the Dawes Act to apply to the Five Civilized Tribes as well. Their tribal governments were obliterated, their tribal courts were destroyed, and over ninety million acres of their tribal lands were sold off to white Americans.