Introduction
This webpage will give you a overview over some of the natives biggest battles. I will talk shortly about their history and cultural difficulties they had to deal with during the 1900-century. I hope you'll enjoy, learn and visit a piece of american history.
Events to remember: - Little big horn - Wounded knee - Sand creek massacre - Geronimo's Florida prison - The sioux war of 1852 - Fort Laramie - The ghost dance |
Little big horn
Little Big born is a battle that were fought on June 25, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. There was federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-76) against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. The two groups of people had started to go on eachother nerves since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. When a number of tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army was dispatched to confront them. Custer was suprised when he saw how many indiand that were fighting under the command of Sitting Bull at Little Bighorn, and his forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in what became known as Custer’s Last Stand.
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse was leaders of the Sioux on the Great Plains. They were against the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. They told Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. More than 10,000 Native americans had gathered in a camp along the Little big horn River by late spring of 1876. At mid-day on June 25, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. It didn’t take long before all of the Native Americans knew about the attack. Sitting Bull was the one that brought the women and children in safety, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead. The Battle of the Little Bighorn marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War. The demise of Custer and his men outraged many white Americans and confirmed their image of the Indians as wild and bloodthirsty. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increased its efforts to subdue the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations. |
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
756 Battlefield Tour Road Crow Agency, MT 59022 |
Wounded knee
600 Main St, Wall, SD 57790
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Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between North American Indians and representatives of the U.S. government.
Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge. On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. At the same time a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, but we don’t know by who. A brutal massacre followed, 150 Indians were killed, nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men. A lot of history profesores look at Wounded Knee as a battle, but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America’s deadly war against the Plains Indians. |
Nearly half of the Sioux killed at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre were women and children.
Sand creek massacre
In 1864, peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians was massacred by a band of Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers at Sand Creek, Colorado.
The Sand Creek massacre started because for a long time there had been a conflict for the control of the Great Plains of eastern Colorado. By 1861, tensions between new settlers and Native Americans were rising. On February 8 of that year, a Cheyenne delegation, headed by Chief Black Kettle, along with some Arapahoe leaders, accepted a new settlement with the Federal government. The Native Americans ceded most of their land but secured a 600-square mile reservation and annuity payments. The delegation reasoned that continued hostilities would jeopardize their bargaining power. In the decentralized political world of the tribes, Black Kettle and his fellow delegates represented only part of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes. Many did not accept this new agreement, called the Treaty of Fort Wise. The new reservation and Federal payments proved unable to sustain the tribes. During the Civil War, tensions again rose and sporadic violence broke out between Anglos and Native Americans. In June 1864, John Evans, governor of the territory of Colorado, attempted to isolate recalcitrant Native Americans by inviting "friendly Indians" to camp near military forts and receive provisions and protection. He also called for volunteers to fill the military void left when most of the regular army troops in Colorado were sent to other areas during the Civil War. In August 1864, Evans met with Black Kettle and several other chiefs to forge a new peace, and all parties left satisfied. Black Kettle moved his band to Fort Lyon, Colorado, where the commanding officer encouraged him to hunt near Sand Creek. In what can only be considered an act of treachery, Chivington moved his troops to the plains, and on November 29, they attacked the unsuspecting Native Americans, scattering men, women, and children and hunting them down. The casualties reflect the one-sided nature of the fight. Nine of Chivington's men were killed; 148 of Black Kettle's followers were slaughtered, more than half of them women and children. The Colorado volunteers returned and killed the wounded, mutilated the bodies, and set fire to the village. The atrocities committed by the soldiers were initially praised, but then condemned as the circumstances of the massacre emerged. Chivington resigned from the military and aborted his budding political career. Black Kettle survived and continued his peace efforts. In 1865, his followers accepted a new reservation in Indian Territory. |
Kiowa County Colorado.
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Geronimo's Florida prison
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The Apache Indians have always been characterized as fierce warriors with an indomitable will. As the Civil War ended the U. S. Government brought its military to bear against the natives out west. They continued a policy of containment and restriction to reservations. In 1875, the restrictive reservation policy had limited the Apaches to 7200 square miles and by the 1880's the Apache had been limited to 2600 square miles. This policy of restriction made many of Native Americans mad and led to confrontation between the military and bands of Apache.
Geronimo was born in 1829, and lived in western New Mexico when this region was still a part of Mexico. Geronimo was a Bedonkohe Apache that married into the Chiricahuas. The murder of his mother, wife, and children by soldiers from Mexico in 1858 forever changed his life and the settlers of the southwest. He vowed at this point to kill as many white men as possible and spent the next thirty years making good on that promise. Geronimo was a medicine man and not a chief of the Apache. His visions made him indispensable to the Apache chiefs and gave him a position of prominence with the Apache. In the mid 1870's the government moved Native Americans onto reservations, and Geronimo took exception to this forced removal and fled with a band of followers. He spent the next 10 years on reservations and raiding with his band. They raided across New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico. His exploits became highly chronicled by the press, and he became the most feared Apache. Geronimo and his band were eventually captured at Skeleton Canyon in 1886. The Chiricahua Apache were then shipped by rail to Florida. All of Geronimo's band was to be sent to Fort Marion in St. Augustine. A few business leaders in Pensacola, Florida petitioned the government to have Geronimo himself sent to Fort Pickens. They claimed that Geronimo and his men would be better guarded at Fort Pickens than at the overcrowded Fort Marion. On October 25, 1886, 15 Apache warriors arrived at Fort Pickens. Geronimo and his warriors spent many days working hard labor at the fort in direct violation of the agreements made at Skeleton Canyon. After a while the families of Geronimo's band were returned to them at Fort Pickens, and then they all moved on to other places of incarceration. The city of Pensacola was sad to see Geronimo the tourist attraction leave. In one day he had over 459 visitors with an average of 20 a day during the duration of his captivity at Fort Pickens. Unfortunately, the proud Geronimo had been reduced to a sideshow spectacle. He lived the rest of his days as a prisoner. He visited the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and according to his own accounts made a great deal of money signing autographs and pictures. He died in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. |
The sioux War of 1852
The Sioux War of 1852 was one of the biggest recent Indian wars, but the one that which was least published. It occurred during the civil war, and since there were so much fighting going on between white men the campaign against the Sioux in Northwest was only a slide show. It had origin in a comparatively insignificant matter. A contractor for furnishing Indian supplies sent to the Sioux agencies what was supposed to be the pirmemess work. The indian went back on such rations and took the warpath instead of the souse.
Generals Sibley and Sully conducted the campaign: they had 15,000 troops under them. It was in this Sioux war that the "Galvanized Yankees" as they were in good service against the Sioux. Not being hampered by the humanitarians the philanthropist, General Sibley adopted a very vigorous Indian policy. As he made the prisoners he selected the worst and hung them. As many as thirty braves were made "good indians" by the rope route in one day. There is "a record of engagements with hostile Indians within the military division of the Missouri from 1868 to 1882." In the recapitulation of this record it is stated that "more than 1,000 officers and soldiers were killed and founded" in the Indian fighting of that period. Four hundred battles and skirmishes were fought with Indians in the fourteen years. In 1886 the Senate sent a resolution to the Secretary of War, asking: "What has been the cost to the Government during the last then years of so much of the army as has been engaged in the observation or control of Indians, or whose presences has been rendered necessary as a protection from danger of Indian hostilities?" The Secretary replied that the total cost of the troops in the Indian country had been $223,891,264,50. |
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Fort Laramie
965 Gray Rocks Rd, Fort Laramie, WY 82212
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Rather than addressing the issue of trespass in Sioux country, the government responded with talk of yet another treaty with the Sioux. Historically the federal government has had a poor record of honoring treaties negotiated with Indian tribes. As the need for land or resources developed, the federal government simply moved to change the provisions of previous treaties. Treaties are legal documents the United States government, as a sovereign nation, negotiates with another sovereign nation. Initially, treaties with tribal nations sought to define the relationship that existed between the U.S. and a tribe, but as time went on, the U.S. used treaties as a way to extinguish Indian rights to ancestral homelands. And so when Sioux treaty lands were overrun with goldseekers, the U.S. simply sought to modify rather than honor the existing treaty. Tensions along the Bozeman Trail continued to escalate.
Then, in June of 1866, the U.S. held a talk at Fort Laramie with various Lakota bands. The government promised many gifts and benefits to the Sioux and glossed over the object of the government’s interest—to negotiate a new treaty which would close off the Powder River area and the Bozeman Trail to the Indians in order to insure continued gold supplies and emigration into Montana. In the middle of the treaty talks, a military man informed some of the Indian negotiators he had orders to build forts along the Bozeman Trail to protect settlers moving into Montana. The Sioux were outraged at this news, as it was in direct violation of the 1851 Treaty and had not been mentioned in the council meetings. Thus the treaty talks ended abruptly. Red Cloud delivered a speech about white betrayal and treachery and led the Sioux delegation north vowing to fight all who invaded their territory as set down in the 1851 Treaty. The troubles in 1866–1868 in the Powder River region, often called “Red Cloud’s War,” resulted in a clear victory for the Lakota. The Lakota had denied the Bozeman Trail to virtually all immigrant travel. Army supply trains had to fight their way through, and soldiers were bottled up in their forts. The Indians had little need to negotiate a treaty and so ignored all government overtures to do so. Finally in 1868 the soldiers abandoned their forts along the Bozeman Trail as a way to restart treaty negotiations. By this time the U.S. government was set on confining the Sioux to proscribed territory but first it needed a treaty. |
The ghost dance
The ghost dance are dancing and singing that have been important for the Native Americans throughout the history. It’s a important part of their cuture.
Their history, values and communication with the spiritual world often take place in the form of dance. To them dance is more of an expression that shows their relationship to the world around them than “self expression”. In reaction to the oppression of their way of life and the US government’s dishonest dealings with the Plains’ tribes, Wovoka, a Paiute holy man began what was known as The Ghost Dance. The movement was an attempt to unite all tribes and restore their way of life. They rejected white treaties and culture. It ended after the Massacre of Wounded Knee |
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People to remember
Spotted Elk
Chief Big Foot was born between 1820 and 1825 into the Minneconjou — "Planters by the River" — subgroup of the Teton Lakota (Sioux). One of the seven subdivisions of the Teton Sioux, the Minneconjou lived in northwestern South Dakota with the Hunkpapa, another band of the Teton Lakota led by Chief Sitting Bull. Chief Big foot's Lakota name was Si Tanka, or Spotted Elk. He was the son of Lone Horn, and became the leader of his tribe at his father's death in 1874. Black Elk As a young member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribe in 1876, Black Elk witnessed the Battle of Little Bighorn, in which Sioux forces led by Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse dealt a crushing defeat to a battalion of U.S. soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer. In the 1880s, Black Elk toured with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show before returning to the Pine Ridge Reservation established for the Oglala in South Dakota. After the massacre of more than 200 Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in late 1890 effectively put an end to Native American military resistance in the West, Black Elk remained at Pine Ridge, where he later converted to Christianity. In 1930, he began telling his story to the writer John Neihardt; the result was “Black Elk Speaks” (1932), a vivid and affecting chronicle of Lakota history and spiritual traditions. Little Big Man Little Big Man was a shirt-wearer (war leader) in Crazy Horses's band. Just like the great leader Crazy Horse, Little Big Man was known for his sense of drama. In September 1875, during negotiations at Red Cloud Agency regarding the future ownership of the Black Hills, he led a mock charge at the white commissioners by a large group of warriors. Firing their guns and shouting ritual war chants, they badly scared everyone but did no physical damage. General Crook Born near Dayton, Ohio. In 1861 he was promoted to Captain and gave good service in Western Virginia and in September was promoted to Brigadier General of U.S. Volunteers, taking command of the Kanawha District. He was in command of the Division of Cavalry in the Army of the Cumberland, was at Chickamauga and drove Joseph Wheeler across the Tennessee. He was breveted Major General of Volunteers, July 1864, and was put in command of the Army of West Virginia, and took part in General Philip Henry Sheridan's operations in the Shenandoah Valley. In late February 1865, he was captured by Confederate guerrillas, being exchanged the next month. General Sheridan He was a civil war veteran who were called in by Ulysses S. Grant to subdue final indian tribes from Texas to Montana. These tribes were organized, fierce and used unconventional guerrilla tactics. He used indians vs indians and he attacked the indian villages while warriors were away killing women, elderly and children. He ordered professionals hunters to slaughter the bison and deprived the indians of food. Theodore Judah Theodore Judah (1826-1863) was the father of the Central Pacific Railroad. He had studied civil engineering and worked as a railroad surveyor while still in his teens. After serving as an engineer on the Sacramento Valley Railroad, Judah became preoccupied with the idea of building the first transcontinental line. His single-minded enthusiasm earned him the nickname "Crazy" Judah, but his constant promotion and exhaustive knowledge brought the project the attention and investment it needed to get off the ground. Jim Bridger James Bridger was born on March 17, 1804, at Richmond, Va. In 1812 the family moved west to Missouri, where all but Jim soon died. At 13 he became a black-smith's apprentice and apparently learned how to handle machinery, horses, and guns. In March 1822 Bridger started his frontier life by joining the party of trappers being organized at St. Louis by William H. Ashley. That year the men traveled up the Missouri to trap along its tributaries in the Rocky Mountains. |
"The only good indian I ever saw was a dead Indian." |