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Indian Removal Act
institutionalized the practice of forcing Native Americans off of their ancestral lands in order to make way for European settlement. -
Trail of Tears
The U.S. army removed 60,000 Indians Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and others—from the East in exchange for new territory west of the Mississippi. Thousands died along the way. -
Indian Appropriations Act
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 -
Sand Creek Massacre
750 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho led by Chief Black Kettle were forced to abandon their winter campsite near Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado. When they set up camp at Sand Creek, volunteer Colorado soldiers attacked, scattering them while slaughtering 148 men, women and children. -
Sioux Treaty of 1868
In the spring of 1868, a conference was held at Fort Laramie, in present day Wyoming, that resulted in a treaty with the Sioux. This treaty was to bring peace between the whites and the Sioux who agreed to settle within the Black Hills reservation in the Dakota Territory. -
Battle of the Little Bighorn
General George Armstrong Custer led 600 men into the Little Bighorn Valley, where they were overwhelmed by approximately 3,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse. -
Assimilation
The U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Native American children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools in the late 19th century. -
Dawes Act of 1887
authorized the federal government to break up tribal lands by partitioning them into individual plots. Only those Native Americans who accepted the individual allotments were allowed to become US citizens. -
The Ghost Dance
a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the millenarian teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilson), proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American Westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by United States Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota.