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Massacre at Sand Creek
General S. R. Curtis, U.S. Army commander in the West, sent a telegram to militia colonel John Chivington that read, “I want no peace till the Indians suffer more.” In response, Chivington and his troops descended on the Cheyenne and Arapaho—about 200 warriors and 500 women and children—camped at Sand Creek. The attack at dawn on November 29, 1864 killed over 150 inhabitants, mostly women and children. -
Fetterman's Massacre
Soldiers rode straight into an ambush and were wiped out in a massive attack during which some 40,000 arrows rained down on the hapless troopers. None of them survived. With 81 men dead, the Fetterman Massacre was the army’s worst defeat in the West until the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. -
Battle of Little Bighorn/"Custer's Last Stand"
The Sioux and the Cheyenne held a sun dance, during which Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers and some Native Americans falling from their horses. When Colonel Custer and his troops reached the Little Bighorn River, the Native Americans were ready for them. Led by Crazy Horse, Gall, and Sitting Bull, the warriors— with raised spears and rifles—outflanked and crushed Custer’s troops. Within an hour, Custer and all of the men of the Seventh Cavalry were dead. -
A Century of Dishonor
A Century of Dishonor is a non-fiction book by Helen Hunt Jackson first published in 1881 that chronicled the experiences of Natives in the United States, focusing on injustices. -
The Dawes Act
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act aiming to “Americanize” the Native Americans. The act broke up the reservations and gave some of the reservation land to individual Native Americans—160 acres to each head of household and 80 acres to each unmarried adult. -
Battle of Wounded Knee
The Seventh Cavalry—Custer’s old regiment—rounded up about 350 starving and freezing Sioux and took them to a camp at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The next day, the soldiers demanded that the Native Americans give up all their weapons. A shot was fired; from which side, it was not clear. Within minutes, the Seventh Cavalry slaughtered as many as 300 mostly unarmed Native Americans, including several children. The soldiers left the corpses to freeze on the ground.