The Indian Wars: Struggle for the American West

1. Lesson 19.2: The Indian Wars Today we will discuss the struggle between Native Americans and the United States for control of the American West.

2. Vocabulary • assimilation – giving up one’s own culture and taking on the culture of the majority • prospector – someone looking for deposits of precious metal (e.g., gold) • massacre – one-sided victory in which the losing side is wiped out • reservation – land set aside by the U.S. government as the only place where Indians were allowed to live

3. Check for Understanding • What are we going to do today? • What is another way of referring to a prospector? • What reservations are near here? • Why would a football game between the Heritage High Patriots and the New England Patriots be a massacre? • Why do many people feel that new immigrants should try to assimilate?

4. What We Already Know Since Europeans first arrived in North America in the early 1500s, whites and Indians have been in conflict over land.

5. What We Already Know The hope of striking it rich rapidly drew thousands of people into any area where precious metal was discovered, no matter how remote or dangerous.

6. What We Already Know Beginning with Jackson’s Indian Removal Act in 1830, the U.S. government had forced Native American to choose between assimilation and loss of their traditional tribal lands.

7. Native American Life on the Plains Before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s, most Plains tribes lived in villages along rivers and streams.

8. Native American Life on the Plains • The women tended crops of beans, corn, and squash. • The men hunted deer and elk and in the summer stalked the vast buffalo herds that inhabited the Plains.

9. Native American Life on the Plains • When the Spanish brought the first horses to the Great Plains, it changed the way of life of the Plains people. • By the late 1700s, many Plains tribes followed a nomadic way of life tied to buffalo hunting.

10. Native American Life on the Plains • The buffalo was central to the life of Plains tribes. • Its meat became the chief food in their diet, while its skins served as portable shelters called tepees.

11. Native American Life on the Plains • Plains women turned buffalo hides into clothing, shoes, and blankets and used buffalo chips (dried manure) as cooking fuel. • Bones and horns became tools and bowls.

12. A Clash of Cultures • In the 1830s, the federal government began moving Indians into a huge area that included almost all of the land between the Missouri River and Oregon Territory. • Most treaties made by the government with Native Americans promised that this land would remain theirs “as long as grass grows or water runs.”

13. A Clash of Cultures • But these treaty promises were based on the belief that white settlers were not interested in the Plains because the land was considered too dry for farming. • However, as wagon trains bound for Oregon and California crossed the Great Plains in the 1850s, some pioneers saw possibilities for farming and ranching on its grasslands.

14. A Clash of Cultures • Soon white settlers moved onto the prairies and prospectors swarmed into the hills looking for gold. • Spurred by the ranching and mining booms, settlers pressured the federal government for more land and for protection from Native Americans in the area.

15. A Clash of Cultures • In 1851, the government responded by calling several Plains tribes together near Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming. • Government officials tried to buy back some Native American land and also set boundaries for tribal lands. • Beginning with the First Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), the United States entered 52 different treaties with various Native American nations.

16. Get your whiteboards and markers ready!

17. How did the First Treaty of Fort Laramie affect Native Americans living on the Great Plains? • Government officials bought back some Native American land. • Plains Indians agreed to limit their wanderings to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). • Boundaries for tribal lands were established. • Limits were placed on buffalo hunting by white hunters. • Prospectors were given permission to mine in the Black Hills. Choose all that are true!

18. How did federal government policy toward Native Americans change as more white settlers moved to the West? • It took away land that had been given to Native Americans by treaty. • It recognized Native Americans as citizens, according to the Fourteenth Amendment. • It forced Native Americans onto reservations. • It systematically hunted down Native Americans and killed them. Choose all that are true!

19. A Clash of Cultures • But some Cheyenne and Sioux resisted, preferring conflict with settlers and soldiers to the restrictions of reservation life. • In southeastern Colorado, bands of Cheyenne warriors attacked miners and soldiers.

20. A Clash of Cultures In response, about 1,200 Colorado militia led by Colonel John Chivington opened fire on a peaceful Cheyenne village along Sand Creek in 1864.

21. More than 150 Cheyenne men, women, and children were killed in what came to be known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

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23. What happened at Sand Creek? • Custer’s entire force of 7th Cavalry troopers were wiped out. • Colorado militia destroyed a peaceful Indian village and killed its inhabitants. • Over 300 Sioux Ghost Dancers were killed in the last battle of the Indian Wars. • Captain W. J. Fetterman and 80 troopers were killed in a Sioux ambush. • Cheyenne warriors attacked a mining camp in the Black Hills and killed almost 100 prospectors.

24. A Clash of Cultures The Plains tribes reacted to such attacks by raiding white settlements and homesteads.

25. A Clash of Cultures • In Montana, U.S. Army construction workers building a road across Sioux hunting grounds stumbled into a deadly ambush set by Sioux warriors. • Led by Captain W. J. Fetterman, all 80 troopers were killed.

26. A Clash of Cultures • Incidents such as the Fetterman massacre finally forced the government to try to find a way to end the fighting. • In 1868, U.S. officials signed the Second Treaty of Fort Laramiewith the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho. • The treaty gave these tribes a large reservation in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

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28. Why did the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie fail? • Corrupt Indian agents cheated the Native Americans, who were forced to fight back or starve. • Wovoka’s Ghost Dance visions stirred the Apache into a warlike frenzy, and Geronimo led them into an uprising. • White prospectors ignored the treaty and rushed onto Sioux land after gold was discovered in the Black Hills. • A group of Sioux led by Red Cloud and Sitting Bull left the reservation and attacked a Mormon settlement.

29. Battle of the Little Bighorn • In 1874, white prospectors discovered gold in the Black Hills and thousands of miners rushed onto Sioux land, ignoring the Fort Laramie treaty. • Many Sioux warriors fled the reservation and united under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to push back the intruders.

30. Battle of the Little Bighorn Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, and the Seventh Cavalry set out to return the Sioux to the reservations.

31. Battle of the Little Bighorn On June 25, his forces met several thousand Sioux and Cheyenne near the Little Bighorn River in Montana, and in less than two hours, Custer and his 211 men were wiped out.

32. Battle of the Little Bighorn News of Custer’s defeat shocked the nation, and the government responded by stepping up military action. As a result, Little Bighorn was the last major Native American victory.

33. In 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered and Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada. • In 1881, Sitting Bull’s starving band surrendered to U.S. troops and were returned to the reservation.

34. Get your whiteboards and markers ready!

35. What happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn? • Custer’s entire force of 7th Cavalry troopers were wiped out. • Colorado militia destroyed a peaceful Indian village and killed its inhabitants. • Over 300 Sioux Ghost Dancers were killed in the last battle of the Indian Wars. • Captain W. J. Fetterman and 80 troopers were killed in a Sioux ambush. • Cheyenne warriors attacked a mining camp in the Black Hills and killed almost 100 prospectors.

36. Which two groups of whites were most often responsible for stirring up conflict with Indians on the Great Plains? • Soldiers • Prospectors • Missionaries • Politicians • Buffalo hunters • Farmers Choose TWO answers!

37. What did Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn cause the government to do? • It stepped up its military effort against the Indians. • It backed down and formally recognized the Indians' rights to the Dakota territory. • It temporarily withdrew the army from the Great Plains and the Black Hills. • It passed the Dawes Act.

38. Resistance in the Northwest • The Nez Perce was a Northwest tribe that lived peacefully in eastern Oregon and Idaho on land guaranteed to them by an 1855 treaty. • However, as white settle-ment increased, the government forced them to move to a new reservation in Idaho. • Most reluctantly agreed, but a group of Nez Perce led by Chief Joseph refused fled north to seek refuge in Canada in 1877.

39. Resistance in the Northwest For four months, the Nez Perce traveled across 1,000 miles of rugged terrain with army troops in pursuit until they were about 40 miles from the Canadian border.

40. Greatly outnumbered, exhausted and starving, the Nez Perce surrendered. • Chief Joseph spoke for his people when he said, “I will fight no more, forever.”

41. "Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before -- I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Too-hul-hul-sit is dead. Looking Glass is dead. He-who-led-the-young-men-in-battle is dead. The chiefs are all dead. It is the young men now who say 'yes' or 'no.' My little daughter has run away upon the prairie. I do not know where to find her-perhaps I shall find her too among the dead. It is cold and we have no fire; no blankets. Our little children are crying for food but we have none to give. Hear me, my chiefs. From where the sun now stands, Joseph will fight no more forever."

42. Resistance in the Southwest • In the Southwest, both the Navajos and Apaches fought against being removed to reservations. • U.S. troops ended Navajo resistance in Arizona in 1863 by burning Navajo homes and crops.

43. Resistance in the Southwest • Most Navajos surrendered and nearly 8,000 took what they called the “Long Walk.” • Hundreds died on a brutal journey of 300 miles to a reservation in eastern New Mexico, a parched strip of land near the Pecos River. • After four years, the government allowed the Navajos to return to Arizona, where many live today.

44. Resistance in the Southwest • In the early 1870s, the government forced many Apaches to settle on a barren reservation in eastern Arizona. • But a group led by Geronimo escaped the res–ervation, surviving by raiding settlers’ homes. • Geronimo was captured and escaped many times but in 1886, he finally surrendered and was sent to prison.

45. A Way of Life Ends • As the Native Americans of the Plains battled to remain free, the buffalo herds that they depended upon for survival dwindled. • Thirty million buffalo once roamed the Plains before hired hunters began to kill the animals to feed crews building railroads.

46. A Way of Life Ends • Other hunters shot buffalo as a sport or to supply Eastern factories with leather for robes, shoes, and belts. • From 1872 to 1882, hunters killed more than one million buffalo each year.

47. A Way of Life Ends • By the 1880s, most Plains tribes had been forced onto reservations. • With their hunting grounds fast disappearing, some turned in despair to a Paiute prophet named Wovoka. • He preached a vision of a new age in which whites would be removed, and all the buffalo and Indians killed by the white man would be restored. All would be as it once was before whites came.

48. A Way of Life Ends • Wovoka said this new age would not come until Native Americans performed a ritual he called the Ghost Dance. • Wovoka’s hopeful vision quickly spread among the Plains peoples.

49. A Way of Life Ends • A group of Sioux Ghost Dancers fled the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. • White settlers and government officials began to fear that they were preparing for war. • The army rounded up the Ghost Dancers, and placed them in a temporary camp along Wounded Knee Creek.

50. A Way of Life Ends • On December 29, 1890, as the Sioux were giving up their weapons, someone fired a shot. • The troopers responded to the gunfire, killing about 300 men, women, and children. • The Wounded Knee Massacre, as it was called, was the last act of armed resistance in the West.