History of the American Indian
Wars
The American Indian Wars
is the name generally used in the United States to describe a series of
conflicts between the United States and American Indians (or
"Native Americans"). Also generally included in this term are
those Colonial American wars with American Indians that preceded the
creation of the United States.
Contents
The wars, which ranged from colonial times to
the Wounded Knee massacre and "closing" of the American frontier in
1890, generally resulted in the conquest of American Indians and their
assimilation or forced relocation to Indian reservations. Citing figures from
an 1894 estimate by the United States Census Bureau, one scholar has
calculated that the more than 40 wars from 1775 to 1890 reportedly claimed the
lives of some 45,000 Indians and 19,000 whites. This rough estimate includes
women and children on both sides, since noncombatants were often killed in
frontier "massacres".
The Indian Wars comprised a series of smaller
wars. American Indians were (and remain) diverse peoples with their own
histories; throughout the wars, they were not a single people any more than
Europeans were.
Living in societies organized in a
variety of ways, American Indians usually made decisions about war
and peace at the local level, though they sometimes fought as part
of formal alliances, such as the Iroquois Confederation, or in
temporary confederacies inspired by leaders such as Tecumseh.
These are wars fought by American
Indians in the United States with colonizing powers in the future
territory of the United States before the Declaration of
Independence
- Powhatan War (162244), also
known as the AngloPowhatan Wars
- First Anglo-Powhatan War
(1609-1613)
- Second Anglo-Powhatan War
(1644-1646)
- Pequot War (1637)
- Beaver Wars (1642-1698)
- Kieft's War (1643-45), also
known as the Wappinger War or Governor Kieft's War, in which
Anne Hutchinson was killed.
- Dutch-Indian War (1643)
- Esopus Wars (1659-1663)
- King Philip's War (1675-1676)
- Pueblo Revolt (1680)
- French and Indian Wars
- King William's War
(1689-1697)
- Queen Anne's War
(1702-1713)
- King George's War (1748)
- French and Indian War
(1754-1763)
- Tuscarora War (1711-1715)
- Yamasee War (17151716)
- Natchez Wars (1716-1729)
- Dummer's War (1724-1725)
- Anglo-Cherokee War (1759-1761)
- Pontiac's Rebellion
(1763-1766)
- Lord Dunmore's War (1774)
These are wars fought by American
Indians primarily against the newly established United States
until shortly before the Mexican-American War.
Indian Wars
East of the Mississippi
- American Revolution (17751783)
- Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794)
- Northwest Indian War (17851795)
- Nickajack Expedition (1794)
- Sabine Expedition (1806)
- War of 1812 (18111815),
including:
- Tecumseh's War (18111813)
- Creek War (18131814)
- Peoria War (1813)
- First Seminole War (18171818)
- Winnebago War (1827)
- Black Hawk War (1832)
- Pawnee Indian Territory
Campaign (1834)
- Creek Alabama Uprising
(1835-1837)
- Florida-Georgia Border War
(1836)
- Second Seminole War (18351842)
- Missouri-Iowa Border War
(1836)
- Southwestern Frontier (Sabine)
disturbances (no fighting) (18361837)
- Osage Indian War (1837)
The American Revolutionary War
was essentially two parallel wars: while the war in the East was a
struggle against British rule, the war in the West was an
"Indian War". The newly proclaimed United States
competed with the British for the allegiance of American Indian
nations east of the Mississippi River. The colonial interest in
westward settlement, as opposed to the British policy of
maintaining peace, was one of the minor causes of the war. Most
American Indians who joined the struggle sided with the British,
hoping to use the war to halt colonial expansion onto American
Indian land. The Revolutionary War was "the most extensive
and destructive" Indian war in United States history.
Many native communities were
divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois
Confederacy, the American Revolution resulted in civil war.
Cherokees split into a neutral (or pro-U.S.) faction and the anti-U.S.
faction that the Americans referred to as the Chickamaugas, led by
Dragging Canoe. Many other communities were similarly divided.
Frontier warfare was particularly
brutal, and numerous atrocities were committed on both sides.
Noncombatants of both races suffered greatly during the war, and
villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during
military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the
Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed more than 40 Iroquois
villages in order to neutralize Iroquois raids in upstate New
York. The expedition failed to have the desired effect: American
Indian activity became even more determined.
American Indians were stunned to
learn that, when the British made peace with the Americans in the
Treaty of Paris (1783), they had ceded a vast amount of American
Indian territory to the United States without informing their
Indian allies. The United States initially treated the American
Indians who had fought with the British as a conquered people who
had lost their land. When this proved impossible to enforce (the
Indians had lost the war on paper, not on the battlefield), the
policy was abandoned. The United States was eager to expand, and
the national government initially sought to do so only by
purchasing Native American land in treaties. The states and
settlers were frequently at odds with this policy, and more
warfare followed.
These were an almost continuous
series of frontier conflicts that began with Cherokee involvement
in the American Revolutionary War and continued until late 1794.
The so-called Chickamauga were those Cherokee, at first from the
Overhill Towns and later from the Lower Towns, Valley Towns, and
Middle Towns, who followed the war leader Dragging Canoe
southwest, first to the Chickamauga (Chattanooga, Tennessee} area,
then to the Five Lower Towns. There they were joined by groups of
Muskogee, white Tories, runaway slaves, and renegade Chickasaw, as
well as well over one hundred Shawnee, in exchange for whom a
hundred Chickamauga-Cherokee warriors went north, along with
another seventy a few years later. The primary objects of attack
were the colonies along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky
rivers and in Carter's Valley in upper East Tennessee, as well as
the settlements along the Cumberland River beginning with Fort
Nashborough in 1780, even into Kentucky, plus against the
colonies, later states, of Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia. The scope of attacks by the
"Chickamauga" and their allies ranged from quick raids
by small war parties of a handfull of warriors to large campaigns
by four or five hundred, and once over a thousand, warriors. The
Upper Muskogee under Dragging's Canoe's close ally Alexander
McGillivray frequently joined their campaigns as well as operating
separately, and the settlements on the Cumberland came under
attack from the Chickasaw, Shawnee from the north, and Delaware as
well. Campaigns by Dragging Canoe and his successor, John Watts,
were frequently conducted in conjunction campaigns in the
Northwest. The response by the colonists were usually attacks in
which Cherokee towns in peaceful areas were completely destroyed,
though usually without great loss of life on either side. The wars
continued unti the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in November 1794.
In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance
officially organized the Northwest Territory for white settlement.
American settlers began pouring into the region. Violence erupted
as Indians resisted this encroachment, and so the administration
of President George Washington sent armed expeditions into the
area to put down native resistance. However, in the Northwest
Indian War, a pan-tribal confederacy led by Blue Jacket (Shawnee),
Little Turtle (Miami), Buckongahelas (Lenape), and Egushawa
(Ottawa) crushed armies led by Generals Josiah Harmar and Arthur
St. Clair. General St. Clair's defeat was the severest loss that
would ever be inflicted upon an American army by Native Americans.
The Americans attempted to negotiate a settlement, but Blue Jacket
and the Shawnee-led confederacy insisted on a boundary line the
Americans found unacceptable, and so a new expedition led by
General Anthony Wayne was dispatched. Wayne's army defeated the
Indian confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The
Indians had hoped for British assistance; when that was not
forthcoming, the Indians were compelled to sign the Treaty of
Greenville in 1795, which ceded modern-day Ohio and part of
Indiana to the United States.
The United States continued to
gain title to Native American land after the Treaty of Greenville,
at a rate that created alarm in Indian communities. In 1800,
William Henry Harrison became governor of the Indiana Territory
and, under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, pursued an
aggressive policy of obtaining titles to Indian lands. Two Shawnee
brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, organized another pan-tribal
resistance to American expansion. Tecumseh's goal was to get
Native American leaders to stop selling land to the United States.
While Tecumseh was in the south
attempting to recruit allies among the Creeks, Cherokees, and
Choctaws, Harrison marched against the Indian confederacy,
defeating Tenskwatawa and his followers at the Battle of
Tippecanoe in 1811. The Americans hoped that the victory would end
the militant resistance, but Tecumseh instead chose to openly ally
with the British, who were soon at war with the Americans in the
War of 1812.
Like the Revolutionary War, the
War of 1812 was also a massive Indian war on the western front.
Encouraged by Tecumseh, the Creek War (1813-1814), which began as
a civil war within the Creek (Muscogee) nation, became part of the
larger struggle against American expansion. Although the war with
the British was a stalemate, the United States was more successful
on the western front. Tecumseh was killed by Harrison's army at
the Battle of the Thames, ending the resistance in the Old
Northwest. The Creeks who fought against the United States were
defeated. The First Seminole War, in 1818, was in some ways a
continuation of the Creek War, and resulted in the transfer of
Florida to the United States in 1819.
As in the Revolution and the
Northwest Indian War, after the War of 1812, the British abandoned
their Indian allies to the Americans. This proved to be a major
turning point in the Indian Wars, marking the last time that
Native Americans would turn to a foreign power for assistance
against the United States.
One of the results of these wars
was passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which President
Andrew Jackson signed into law in 1830. The Removal Act did not
order the removal of any American Indians, but it authorized the
president to negotiate treaties that would exchange tribal land in
the east for western lands that had been acquired in the Louisiana
Purchase. According to historian Robert V. Remini, Jackson
promoted this policy primarily for reasons of national security,
seeing that Great Britain and Spain had recruited and armed Native
Americans within U.S. borders in wars with the United States.
Numerous Indian Removal treaties
were signed. Most American Indians reluctantly but peacefully
complied with the terms of the removal treaties, often with bitter
resignation. Some groups, however, went to war to resist the
implementation of these treaties. This resulted in two short wars
(the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Creek War of 1836), as well as
the long and costly Second Seminole War (18351842).
As in the East, expansion into
the plains and mountains by miners, ranchers and settlers led to
increasing conflicts with the indigenous population of the West.
Many tribes from the Utes of the Great Basin to the Nez Perces
of Idaho fought the whites at one time or another. But the
Sioux of the Northern Plains and the Apache of the Southwest
provided the most significant opposition to encroachment on tribal
lands. Led by resolute, militant leaders, such as Red Cloud and
Crazy Horse, the Sioux were skilled at high-speed mounted warfare.
The Sioux were new arrivals on the Plains--previously they had
been sedate farmers in the Great Lakes region. Once they learned
to capture and ride horses, they moved west, destroyed other
Indian tribes in their way, and became feared warriors.
Historically the Apaches bands supplimented their economy by
raiding others and practiced warfare to avenge a death of a
kinsman. The Apache bands were equally adept at fighting and
highly elusive in the environs of desert and canyons.
White conflict with the Plains
Indians continued through the Civil War.
In 1864, one of the more infamous
battles took place, the Sand Creek Massacre. A locally raised
militia attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians in
southeast Colorado and killed and mutilated an estimated 150 men,
women, and children.
The Indians at Sand Creek had
been assured, by the U.S. Government, that they would be safe in
the territory they were occupying, but anti-Indian sentiments by
white settlers were running high. Later congressional
investigations resulted in short-lived U.S. public outcry against
the slaughter of the native Americans.
In 1876, the last serious Sioux
war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills.
The US Army did not keep miners off Sioux (Lakota) hunting
grounds; yet, when ordered to take action against bands of Sioux
hunting on the range, according to their treaty rights, the Army
moved vigorously. See the Black Hills War.
In 1876, after several indecisive
encounters, General George Custer found the main encampment of the
Lakota and their allies at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Custer
and his men who were separated from their main body of troops
were all killed by the far more numerous and heavily armed
Indians, led by Sitting Bull.
Later, in 1890, a Ghost Dance
ritual on the Northern Lakota reservation at Wounded Knee, South
Dakota, led to the Army's attempt to disarm the Lakota. During
this attempt, gunfire erupted and soldiers, who were armed with
deadly and powerful ammunition, killed approximately 100 Indians.
The approximately 25 soldiers who died may have been killed by
friendly fire during the battle.
Long before this, the means of
subsistence and the societies of the indigenous population of the
Great Plains had been destroyed by the slaughter of the buffalo,
driven almost to extinction in the decade after 1870 by
indiscriminate hunting.
The conflicts in this large
geographical area span from 1846 - 1895. They involved every
non-pueblo tribe in this region and often were a continuation of
Mexican-Spanish conflicts. The Navajo and Apaches conflicts are
perhaps the best known, but they were not the only ones. The last
major campaign of the US military in the Southwest involved 5,000
troops in the field. This caused the Apache Geronimo and his band
of 24 warriors, women and children to surrender in 1886.
The tribes or bands in the
southwest (including the Pueblos), had been engaged in cycles of
trading and fighting each other and foreign settlers for centuries
prior to the United States annexing their region from Mexico in
1846.
- Cayuse War
(18481855) Oregon Territory-Washington
Territory
- Rogue River Wars
(1855-1856) Oregon Territory
- Yakima War
(18551858) Washington Territory
- Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Paloos
War (1858)
Washington Territory
- Fraser Canyon War
(1858) British Columbia
(US irregulars on British territory)
- California Indian Wars
(1860-65) War against Hupa, Wiyot, Yurok, Tolowa, Nomlaki,
Chimariko, Tsnungwe, Whilkut, Karuk and others.
- Lamalcha War
(1863) British Columbia
- Chilcotin War
(1864) British Columbia
- Navajo Wars
(18611864) Ends with Long Walk
of the Navajo Arizona and New Mexico
Territories.
- Hualapai
or Walapais War (18641869) Arizona Territory
- Apache Campaigns or Apache
Wars (18641886) Careleton put Mescelero on
reservation with Navajos at Sumner and continues until 1886,
when Geronimo surrenders.
- Sioux Uprising
(1862) Skirmishes in the southwestern quadrant of Minnesota
result in hundreds of dead. In the largest mass execution in
U.S. history, 38 Dakota
who were involved are hanged. About 1,600 others are soon sent
to a reservation in present-day South Dakota.
- Red Cloud's War
(18661868) Lakota
chief Makhpyia luta (Red
Cloud) conducts the most successful attacks against the U.S.
army during the Indian Wars. By the Treaty
of Fort Laramie (1868), the U.S. granted a large
reservation to the Lakota, without military presence or
oversight, no settlements, and no reserved road building
rights. The reservation included the entire Black
Hills.
- Colorado War
(18641865) Clashes centered on the Colorado
Eastern Plains between the U.S. Army and an
alliance consisting largely of the Cheyenne
and Arapaho.
- Sand Creek Massacre
(1864) John Chivington
kills more than 450 surrendered Cheyenne and Arapaho.
- Comanche Campaign
(18671875) Maj. Gen. Philip
Sheridan, in command of the Department
of the Missouri, institutes winter campaigning in
18681869 as a means of rooting out the elusive Indian
tribes scattered throughout the border regions of Colorado,
Kansas, New Mexico, and Texas.
- {See Also Fifth
Military District {Texas} reports from August
1867 to Sept 1868 of reports of Cavalry expeditions
against Indians.}
- Battle of Beecher Island
(1868) Northern Cheyenne under war leader Roman Nose
fight scouts of the U.S. 9th
Cavalry Regiment in a nine-day battle.
- Battle of Washita River
(1868) George Armstrong
Custers 7th U.S.
Cavalry attacks Black
Kettles Cheyenne
village on the Washita River
(near present day Cheyenne,
Oklahoma). 250 men, women and children were
killed.
- Battle of Summit Springs
(1869) Cheyenne Dog Soldiers led by Tall
Bull defeated by elements of U.S. Army under
command of Colonel Eugene A. Carr. Tall Bull died,
reportedly killed by Buffalo Bill Cody.
- Battle of Palo Duro
Canyon
(1874) Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa warriors engage
elements of the U.S. 4th Cavalry
Regiment led by Colonel Ranald
S. Mackenzie.
- Modoc War,
or Modoc Campaign (18721873) 53 Modoc
warriors under Captain Jack
hold off 1,000 men of the U.S. Army for 7 months. Major
General Edward Canby was
killed during a peace conference, becoming the only general
to be killed during the Indian Wars.
- Red River War
(18741875) between Comanche and U.S. forces under the
command of William Sherman
and Lt. General Phillip Sheridan.
- Black Hills War,
or Little Big Horn Campaign (18761877) Lakota under Sitting
Bull and Crazy Horse
fight the U.S. after repeated violations of the Treaty
of Fort Laramie (1868).
- Battle of the Rosebud
(1876) Lakota under Tasunka witko clash with U.S. Army
column moving to reinforce Custer's 7th Cavalry.
- Battle of the Little
Bighorn
(1876) Sioux and Cheyenne
under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
defeat the 7th Cavalry under George
Armstrong Custer.
- Nez Perce Campaign or Nez
Perce War (1877) Nez
Perce under Chief Joseph
retreat from the 1st U.S. Cavalry
through Idaho, Yellowstone
Park, and Montana
after a group of Nez Perce attacked and killed a group of
Anglo settlers in early 1877.
- Bannock Campaign or Bannock
War (1878 elements of the 21st
U.S. Infantry, 4th U.S.
Artillery, and 1st U.S.
Cavalry engaged the natives of southern Idaho
including the Bannock and Paiute
when the tribes threatened rebellion in 1878, in part due to
dissatisfaction with their land allotments.
- Cheyenne Campaign or Cheyenne
War (18781879) a conflict between the United
States' armed forces and a small group of Cheyenne
families.
- Sheepeater Campaign or Sheepeater
War (May 1879August 1879) on May 1, 1879
three detachments of soldiers pursued the Idaho
Western Shoshone throughout central Idaho
during the last campaign in the Pacific
Northwest.
- Ute Campaign or Ute
War (September, 1879November, 1880) on
September 29, 1879 some 200 men, elements of the 4th
U.S. Infantry and 5th U.S.
Cavalry under the command of Maj. T.
T. Thornburgh, were attacked and besieged in Red
Canyon by 300 to 400 Ute
warriors. Thornburgh's group was rescued by forces of the 5th
and U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment
in early October, but not before significant loss of life had
occurred. The Utes were finally pacified in November, 1880.
- Pine Ridge Campaign
(November, 1890January, 1891) a number of unresolved
grievances led to the last major conflict with the Sioux.
A lopsided engagement that involved almost half the infantry
and cavalry of the Regular Army caused the surviving warriors
to lay down their arms and retreat to their reservations in
January, 1891.
- Wounded Knee Massacre
(December 29, 1890)
Sitting Bull's
half-brother, Big Foot,
and some 200 Sioux are killed by the U.S. 7th
Cavalry (only fourteen days before, Sitting
Bull had been killed with his son Crow
Foot at Standing Rock
Agency in a gun battle with a group of Indian
police that had been sent by the American government to
arrest him). This incident constitutes the final conquest
of Native Americans as it effectively put an end to the
Indian Wars.
October 5, 1898,
Leech
Lake, Minnesota Battle of Sugar Point.
Last Medal of Honor given
for Indian Wars Campaigns Was awarded to Pvt Oscar
Burkard of 3rd U.S.
Infantry Regiment
- U.S. 1st Cavalry Regiment
1834; 1836 to 1892
- U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry
Regiment
1867 & 1870
- U.S. 3d
Armored Cavalry Regiment 1869
- U.S. 4th Cavalry Regiment
1865 to 1886
- U.S. 5th Cavalry Regiment
1876
- U.S. 6th Cavalry Regiment
1867 to 1885 & 1890
- U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment
1871 to 1890
- U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment
1867-1869; 1877
- U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment
1868; 1875-1881 aka Buffalo
Soldiers
- U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment-
1867-1868; 1875; 1879-1880; 1885; 1917; aka Buffalo
Soldiers
- U.S. 113th Cavalry Regiment
- U.S. 1st Infantry Regiment
1791; 1832; 1839-1842; 1870s-1890s.
- U.S. 2d Infantry Regiment
- 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment
1792; 1856-1858; 1860; 1887; 1898
- U.S. 4th Infantry Regiment
1808; 1816-1836; 1869-1879
- U.S. 5th Infantry Regiment
1877
- U.S. 6th Infantry Regiment
1823-1879
- U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment
1876
- U.S. 10th Infantry Regiment
- U.S. 11th Infantry Regiment
1874
- U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment
1872-1873; 1878; 1890-1891
- U.S. 13th Infantry Regiment
1867-1871
- U.S. 14th Infantry Regiment
1876
- 15th Infantry Regiment
(United States)
- U.S. 16th Infantry Regiment
- U.S. 18th Infantry Regiment
1866-1890
- U.S. 21st Infantry Regiment
- U.S. 22d Infantry Regiment
1869; 1872; 1876-1877
- U.S. 23rd Infantry Regiment
1866, 1868, 1876.
- 24th Infantry Regiment
(United States)
- U.S. 25th Infantry Regiment
-see Buffalo Soldiers
1866-1890s
- Company F, U.S. 4th Artillery
Regiment
In American history books, the
Indian Wars have often been treated as a relatively minor part of
the military history of the United States. Only in last few
decades of the 20th century did a significant number of historians
begin to include the American Indian point of view in their
writings about the wars, emphasizing the impact of the wars on
native peoples and their cultures.
A well-known and influential book
in popular history was Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee (1970). In academic history, Francis Jennings's The
Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of
Conquest (New York: Norton, 1975) was notable for its reversal
of the traditional portrayal of Indian-European relations.
Some historians now emphasize
that to see the Indian wars as a racial war between Indians and
White Americans simplifies the complex historical reality of the
struggle. Indians and whites often fought alongside each other;
Indians often fought against Indians. For example, although the
Battle of Horseshoe Bend is often described as an "American
victory" over the Creek Indians, the victors were a combined
force of Cherokees, Creeks, and Tennessee militia led by Andrew
Jackson. From a broad perspective, the Indian wars were about the
conquest of American Indian peoples by the United States; up close
it was rarely quite as simple as that.
- Named Campaigns Indian
Wars. United
States Army Center for Military History. Retrieved on December
13, 2005.
- Raphael, Ray. A People's
History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped
the Fight for Independence. New York: The New Press, 2001.
ISBN 0-06-000440-1.
- Remini, Robert V.
Andrew Jackson and his Indian Wars. New York: Viking,
2001. ISBN 0-670-91025-2.
- Richter, Daniel K. Facing
East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN
0-674-00638-0.
- Thornton, Russell. American
Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since
1492. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. ISBN
0-8061-2220-X.
- Utley, Robert M., and Wilcomb
E. Washburn. 'Indian Wars. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977,
revised 1987. ISBN 0-8281-0202-3.
- Yenne, Bill. Indian Wars:
The Campaign for the American West. Yardley, PA: Westholme,
2005. ISBN 1-59416-016-3.
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