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Bureau of Indian Affairs
Government agency charged with caring for Indians -
Indian Removal Act
The U.S. government decreed that the Indian tribes could could freely inhabit the Great Plains. A permanent Indian frontier was established on the eastern edge of the Great Plains. -
Cattle drives
A cattle drive is the process of moving a herd of cattle from one place to another, usually moved and herded by cowboys on horses. -
Billy the Kid
William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid and also known as William Antrim, was a 19th-century gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War and became a frontier outlaw in the American Old West. -
Turner Thesis
This is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act opened up settlement in the western United States, allowing any American, including freed slaves, to put in a claim for up to 160 free acres of federal land. -
Little Crow's War
The Santee Sioux had moved onto a reservation that had poor land and their crops failed. Compensation payments that had been promised by the government had not been delivered and the tribe faced starvation. In August of 1862 the Santee Sioux attacked the government agency. They continued to attack white settlers and the army for three monthsbefore being defeated by the army. -
Dakota War of 1862
The Dakota War of 1862 was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux. It began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota. -
Cheyenne Uprising
The Cheyenne had agreed by the terms of the Fort Wise treaty 1861 to move onto the Sand Creek Reservation. However, the land was very poor and survival for the Indians was vertually impossible. In 1863 faced with starvation, they began to attack wagon trains and steal food -
Sand Creek Massacre
An armed force, led by Colonel Chivington, attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne camp at Sand Creek. The motive for the attack was punishment for the raids on the wagon trains. -
Red Cloud's War
The Sioux chief, Red Cloud, was furious when white settlers began using the Bozeman Trail which passed through the Sioux hunting frounds and began attacking travellers. Red Cloud was further angered when a line of forts was contructed to protect the travellers and increased the attacks. By spring of 1868 the goverment were forced to withdraw the ary and abandon the forts. -
Fetterman Massacre
A battle during Red Cloud's war between the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians and the soldiers of the United States army. -
Fort Laramie Treaty
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. -
Completion of Trans- Cont R.R.
Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah. It was here on May 10, 1869, that Leland Stanford drove The Last Spike that joined the rails of the transcontinental railroad. -
Indian Appropiations Act
The Indian Appropriations Act is the name of several acts passed by the United States Congress. A considerable number of acts were passed under the same name throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the most notable landmark acts consist of the 1851 Indian Appropriations Act and the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act. -
Camp Grant, AZ Apache massacre
The Camp Grant massacre, on April 30, 1871, was an attack on Pinal and Aravaipa Apaches who surrendered to the United States Army at Camp Grant, Arizona, along the San Pedro River. -
The Lakota War
This was a series of battles and negotiations which occurred between 1876 and 1877 involving the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States. -
Battle of Little Bighorn
The army decided to attack the Indians camped in the valley of the Little Bighorn. The attack was to be made from three sides. General George Armstrong Custer who led one of the attacking forces decided to attack without waiting for the other two forces to arrive. Custer split his force into three and advanced on the Indians. At some point Custer's group was attacked, Custer and all his men were killed. -
Dead man's hand
What is considered the dead man's hand card combination of today gets its notoriety from a legend that it was the five-card draw hand held by James Butler Hickok (better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok) when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall on August 2, 1876, in Nuttal & Mann's Saloon at Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Reportedly, Hickok's final hand included the aces and eights of both black suits. -
Desert Land Act
This act allowed farmers to buy 640 acre of land at a cheap price in areas where there was little rainfall and irrigation schemes were needed to farm the land. -
Capture of Nez Perce
On October 5, 1877, Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph formally surrendered his forces to General Nelson A. Miles and General Oliver Otis Howard at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana Territory. This effectively ended the Nez Perce War of 1877. -
Battle of Lincoln
The Battle of Lincoln, New Mexico was a five-day-long firefight between civilians that took place from July 15–19, 1878 in the named city. It was the largest armed battle of the Lincoln County War and the climax of that civilian conflict in the New Mexico Territory. The firefight was interrupted and suppressed by United States Cavalry led by Lt. Col. N.A.M. Dudley from Fort Stanton. -
Pratt Boarding School
Richard Henry Pratt is best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the influential Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. -
A Century Of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson
A Century of Dishonor is a non-fiction book by Helen Hunt Jackson first published in 1881 that chronicled the experiences of Native Americans in the United States, focusing on injustices. -
Bill Cody's "Wild West Show"
A show based on William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody who was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. -
Capture of Geronimo
Geronimo and his followers had little or no time to rest or stay in one place. Completely worn out, the little band of Apaches returned to the U.S. with Lawton and officially surrendered to General Miles on September 4, 1886 at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. -
Dawes Act
This was an act that provided for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States and the Territories over the Indians. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
A group of soldiers opened fire on a group od Sioux at the Pine Ridge reservation in Wounded Knee Creek killing 153 Indian men, women and children. -
Forest Reserve Act
This is the law that allowed the President of the United States to set aside forest reserves from the land in the public domain. -
End of Buffalo population
Hunters began killing buffalo by the hundreds of thousands in the winter months. One hunter, Orlando Brown brought down nearly 6,000 buffalo by himself and lost hearing in one ear from the constant firing of his .50 caliber rifle. The Texas legislature, sensing the buffalo were in danger of being wiped out, proposed a bill to protect the species.By the end of the 19th century, only 300 buffalo were left in the wild.
