Native American TimeLine

  • Navajo and Apache Wars

    Navajo and Apache Wars
    Before being used more extensively during the American Civil War in New Mexico and Arizona. Gregrory Michno, an American Indian Wars historian, says that there were more conflicts in the Southwest between the United States and native Americans than elsewhere in the country. This was mostly due to the various Apache warrior culture. The Navajo Wars also encompass the widespread raiding that took place throughout the period; the Navajo raided other tribes and nearby settlements.
  • Sand Creek Massacre

    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, killing and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians, about two-thirds of whom were women and children.
  • Red Cloud's War

    Red Cloud's War
    The war was fought over control of the Powder River Country in north-central Wyoming.Red Cloud's War consisted mostly of constant small-scale Indian raids and attacks on the soldiers and civilians at the three forts in the Powder River country, wearing down those garrisons. The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight (with 81 men killed on the U.S. side), was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.
  • Red River War

    Red River War
    During the winter, a spiritual leader named Isa-tai (White Eagle) emerged among the Quahadi Band of Comanches. Isa-tai claimed to have the power to render himself and others invulnerable to their enemies, including to bullets, and was able to rally an enormous number of Indians for large raids.
  • Battle Of Little BigHorn

    Battle Of Little BigHorn
    The tepees in that area were occupied by the Hunkpapa Sioux. Neither Custer nor Reno had much idea of the length, depth and size of the encampment they were attacking, as the village was hidden by the trees. When Reno came into the open in front of the south end of the village, he sent his Arikara/Ree and Crow Indian scouts forward on his exposed left flank.Realizing the full extent of the village's width.
  • Dawes Severalty Act

    Dawes Severalty Act
    The stated objective of the Dawes Act was to stimulate assimilation of Indians into American society. Individual ownership of land was seen as an essential step. The act also provided that the government would purchase Indian land "excess" to that needed for allotment and open it up for settlement by non-Indians.
  • "A Century of Dishonor"--Helen Hunt Jackson

    "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 attended a meeting in Boston in 1879 at which Standing Bear, a Ponca, told how the federal government forcibly removed his tribe from its ancestral homeland in the wake of the creation of the Great Sioux Reservation
  • Battle of Wounded Knee

    Battle of Wounded Knee
    A scuffle over Black Coyote's rifle escalated and a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry's opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers. Those few Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking troopers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire.