-
Apache and Navajo Wars
The wars sharply reduced the Native American population in the Southwest and placed those who survived in reservations. They did open up the Southwest for settlement and development by the newcomers. -
Sand Creek Massacre
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,[3] killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. -
Red Cloud's War
The Native army had begun to construct forts along the Bozeman Trail, which ran through the heart of Lakota territory to the Montana gold fields from Colorado's South Platte River. As caravans of miners and settlers began to cross the Lakota's land, So he launched a series of assaults on the forts, most notably the crushing defeat of Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman's column of eighty men jus -
Red River War
During the Red River War of 1874, 20 engagements between the U.S. Army and the Southern Plains Indians have taken place. The American Army kept the Indians on the run until eventually they could not run or fight any longer. The Red River War officially ended in June 1875 when Quanah Parker and his band of Quahadi Comanche entered Fort Sill and surrendered. -
Battle of Little Bighorn
Little Bighorn was the pinnacle of the Indians' power. They had achieved their greatest victory yet, but soon their tenuous union fell apart in the face of the white onslaught. The Black Hills dispute was quickly settled by redrawing the boundary lines, placing the Black Hills outside the reservation and open to white settlement. Within a year, the Sioux nation was deeated in less than a year. -
"A Century of Dishonor"--Helen Hunt Jackson
Jackson wrote "A Century of Dishonor" in an attempt to change government ideas/policy toward Native Americans at a time when effects of the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act had begun to draw the attention of the public. Jackson sent a copy of her book to every member of Congress, at her own expense. She hoped to awaken the conscience of the American people and persuade them "to redeem the name of the United States from the stain of a century of dishonor". -
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 American Indian families. -
Battle of Woounded Knee
The Sioux had turned the Ghost Dance that would, they believed, cause whites to disappear from Indian lands. The federal authorities, fearing an uprising, brought in army units. On December 15, Sitting Bull, was killed in an attempt to arrest him. The U.S. Seventh Cavalry overtook them at Wounded Knee Creek. In the fighting that followed, nearly 300 Sioux, including women and children, were killed; 29 troopers died.
