American Indian History

American Indian History
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MAGILL’S C H O I C E
American Indian
History
Volume 1
Aboriginal Action Plan—

Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
edited by
Carole A. Barrett
University of Mary
Salem Press, Inc.

Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey
Copyright © 2003, by Salem Press, Inc.
All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or any information storage and retrieval system, without written per-
mission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the
publisher, Salem Press, Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115.
∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American Na-

tional Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Essays originally appeared in Ready Reference: American Indians

(1995), Great Events from History: North American Series, Revised Edition
(1997), and Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (2000). New material
has been added.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

American Indian history / edited by Carole A. Barrett.
p. cm. — (Magill’s choice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-58765-067-3 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-58765-068-1 (vol. 1 :
alk. paper) — ISBN 1-58765-069-X (vol. 2 : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—History. I. Barrett, Carole A. II. Series.
E77 .A496 2003
970’.00497—dc21
2002007731
First Printing
printed in the united states of america

CONTENTS — VOLUME 1
Publisher’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Aboriginal Action Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Acoma, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Adobe Walls, Battles of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood . . . . . . . . . 5
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Albany Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Alcatraz Island occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
All-Pueblo Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Allotment system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
American Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
American Indian Defense Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
American Indian Higher Education Consortium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
American Indian Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
American Indian Policy Review Commission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
American Indian Religious Freedom Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Amerind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Apache Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Articles of Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Bacon’s Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Bannock War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Bear River Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Beaver Wars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Bering Strait migrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Bison slaughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Black Hawk War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Boarding and residential schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Bozeman Trail War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Bureau of Indian Affairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Burke Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
California missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Carlisle Indian School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
v
Contents
Cayuse War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Cherokee legal cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Cherokee Phoenix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Cherokee Tobacco case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Cherokee War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Civil War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Code of Handsome Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Code talkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Colliflower v. Garland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Council of Energy Resource Tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Creek War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Declaration of First Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. . . . . . . . 119
Determined Residents United for Mohawk Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . 121
Duro v. Reina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Elk v. Wilkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Employment Division, Department of Human Resources
of the State of Oregon et al. v. Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Epidemics and diseases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Ex parte Crow Dog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Fallen Timbers, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Federally recognized tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Fifteen Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Fish-ins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Fort Atkinson Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Fort Greenville Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Fort Mims, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Fort Stanwix Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Fort Wayne Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Fox Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
French and Indian War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Friends of the Indian organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Fur trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Gadsden Purchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
General Allotment Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Horseshoe Bend Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
vi
Contents
Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Indian Act of 1876 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Indian Act of 1951 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Indian Act of 1989 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Indian Appropriation Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Indian Child Welfare Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Indian Citizenship Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Indian Civil Rights Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Indian Claims Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Indian Education Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Indian Health Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Indian New Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Indian Offenses Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Indian preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Indian Removal Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Indian Reorganization Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Indian Rights Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act . . . . . . . . 219
Indian slave trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Indian trust fund lawsuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Indian-white relations: Canadian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Indian-white relations: English colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Indian-white relations: French colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Indian-white relations: Norse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Indian-white relations: Russian colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
International Indian Treaty Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Irish Potato Famine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Iroquois Confederacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Jay’s Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Keeler Commission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Keetoowah Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Kennedy Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
vii
Contents
Kennewick Man controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

Kickapoo Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Kickapoo uprisings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Lewis and Clark expedition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Little Bighorn, Battle of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Little Turtle’s War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Long Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Longest Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Lord Dunmore’s War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association . . . . . . . . . . 350
Maine Indian Claims Act. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Major Crimes Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Manhattan Island purchase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Meech Lake Accord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Menominee Restoration Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Meriam Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Metacom’s War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Minnesota Uprising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Modoc War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Natchez Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
National Congress of American Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
National Council of American Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
National Indian Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
National Indian Education Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
National Indian Youth Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Native American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act . . . . . . . . 383
Native American Rights Fund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Navajo Rehabilitation Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Navajo War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Nez Perce War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Northwest Ordinance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Nunavut Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Oka crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
viii
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
American Indian History joins two other publications in the Magill’s Choice
series of core teaching tools for public, school, and college libraries: Ameri-
can Indian Biographies (1 volume, 1999), covering 329 Native North Ameri-
cans from the sixteenth century to the present day, and American Indian
Tribes (2 volumes, 2000), with surveys of the ten major culture areas of
North America and nearly 300 tribes and nations. To these 636 essays we
now add 224 more, covering the major events and developments in the his-
tory of Native Americans of North America, from the earliest prehistoric
traditions through the activism and legislation of the present day.
The essays in these two volumes are drawn from three previous Salem
Press publications: Ready Reference: American Indians (3 volumes, 1996),
winner of the American Library Association’s Outstanding Reference
Source Award; Great Events from History: Revised North American Series (4
volumes, 1997); and Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (3 volumes, 1999).
In addition, 16 essays were newly commissioned for this publication and
appear nowhere else.
Arranged alphabetically by keyword, each of the essays addresses a
turning point in the history of the indigenous peoples of present-day Can-
ada and the United States in their struggle to maintain their autonomy and
lifeways after European contact. Essays range in length from 250 to 3,000
words and cover battles, treaties, legislation, court cases, protest move-
ments, organizations, and institutions from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to
tribal courts. Here students will find chronological narratives of not only
the basics—the Powhatan Wars, the Pueblo Revolt, the Riel Rebellions, the
Sand Creek Massacre, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Indian Bill of
Rights—but also trends and developments that reveal more about the Na-
tive American experience, from the Carlisle Indian School to the Trail of
Tears and William Cody’s wild west shows. In addition, each of ten major
prehistoric traditions is surveyed in a series of essays filed under “Prehis-
tory,” from the Arctic through the Northwest Coast to the Southeast. The
set’s 100 illustrations include photographs, engravings, and 29 maps for lo-
cating events, tribes, routes, and the ever-retreating boundaries of “Indian
Territory.”
Each essay is arranged in a ready-reference format that calls out the fol-
lowing elements at the top: name of the event or topic by keyword; date or
ix
Publisher’s Note
dates of its occurrence, founding, or existence; locale where the event took
place (or where it had its effect); tribe or tribes involved; category or catego-
ries, such as nineteenth century history or protest movements, to which it
belongs; and finally a brief synopsis of the topic’s significance. These refer-
ence features are followed by a full narrative of the event or topic. Articles
longer than 1,000 words conclude with bibliographies of sources for fur-
ther study on the topic; bibliographies of articles 2,000 words or longer in-
clude annotations. These bibliographies have been updated for American
Indian History.
Several appendixes and indexes at the end of volume 2 function as re-
search tools for the student: a Gazetteer of Historic Places; a list of more
than 100 Historic Native Americans, with their birth and death dates, alter-
native names, and significance; a directory of Museums, Archives, and Li-
braries; a list of Organizations, Agencies, and Societies; a Time Line of ma-
jor events in the history of Native Americans (including some not covered
in separate essays); a list of Tribes by Culture Area; a general Bibliography
of sources for further study; and a list of Web Resources, with their spon-
soring institutions, Web addresses, and a brief description of their useful-
ness. Topics addressed in the text are fully accessible through five indexes:
a Categorized Index, a Geographical Index, a Personages Index, a Tribes In-
dex, and a full Subject Index. Finally, the front matter to both volumes con-
tains the full list of contents for ready reference.
A few comments must be made on certain editorial decisions. Terms
ranging from “American Indian” to “Native American” to “tribe” are ac-
cepted by some and disapproved of by others. We have used American In-
dians for the title of this set, as it is today the most widely accepted collec-
tive name for the first inhabitants of North America and their descendants.
(It might be noted that some American Indians essentially find all such col-
lective terms equally offensive.) We have allowed authors to use either
“American Indian” or “Native American” in their articles rather than im-
pose a term editorially, recognizing that individual writers have their own
preferences. Similarly, we have used the title “Inuit” for the article on that
Arctic people, but the term “Eskimo” also appears in the set, as it has a long
tradition of scientific usage and encompasses a variety of Arctic peoples to
whom “Inuit” does not adequately apply.
Contributors were also free to use singular or plural designations for
tribal names. Spellings of tribal names, however, have been standardized
throughout the set. We have attempted to use names and spellings that are
both accepted by the tribes themselves and widely recognized. Parentheti-
cal notes are occasionally provided to identify alternative names for tribes;
although such alternative names (“Fox” and “Mesquakie,” for example) do
x
Publisher’s Note
not always signify exactly identical groups, they are intended to help read-
ers recognize the tribe being discussed.
The editors wish to acknowledge the invaluable guidance and assis-
tance of Professor Carole A. Barrett of the University of Mary, who special-
izes in American Indian studies. She selected the essays and recommended
the new essays, all of which were commissioned and are found here. In ad-
dition, we wish to thank the contributing writers, without whose expertise
such breadth of coverage would not be possible.
xi
CONTRIBUTORS
Carole A. Barrett, Editor
University of Mary
McCrea Adams Byron D. Cannon

Independent Scholar University of Utah
Thomas L. Altherr Ward Churchill

Metropolitan State College of Denver University of Colorado at Boulder
Tanya M. Backinger Thomas Clarkin

Jackson Community College San Antonio College
Carl L. Bankston III David Coffey

Tulane University Texas Christian University
S. Carol Berg Richard G. Condon

College of St. Benedict University of Arkansas
Warren M. Billings David A. Crain

Louisiana State University, New South Dakota State University
Orleans
LouAnn Faris Culley
Cynthia A. Bily Kansas State University
Adrian College
S. Matthew Despain
Suzanne Riffle Boyce University of Oklahoma
Independent Scholar
Paul E. Doutrich
John A. Britton York College of Pennsylvania
Francis Marion University
T. W. Dreier
Daniel A. Brown Portland State University
California State University,
John L. Farbo
Fullerton
University of Idaho
Gregory R. Campbell
Anne-Marie E. Ferngren
University of Montana
Oregon State University
xiii
Contributors
John W. Fiero Kay Hively

University of Louisiana at Lafayette Independent Scholar
Michael Shaw Findlay Russell Hively

California State University, Chico Independent Scholar
C. George Fry Carl W. Hoagstrom

University of Findlay Ohio Northern University
Lucy Ganje John Hoopes

University of North Dakota University of Kansas
Lynne M. Getz William E. Huntzicker

Appalachian State University University of Minnesota
Marc Goldstein Andrew C. Isenberg

Independent Scholar University of Puget Sound
Nancy M. Gordon M. A. Jaimes

Independent Scholar University of Colorado at Boulder
Larry Gragg Joseph C. Jastrzembski

University of Missouri, Rolla Minot State University
Kelley Graham Albert C. Jensen

Butler University Central Florida Community College
William H. Green Bruce E. Johansen

University of Missouri, Columbia University of Nebraska at Omaha
Arthur Gribben Jane Anderson Jones

Pierce College Manatee Community College
Eric Henderson Leslie Ellen Jones

University of Northern Iowa Independent Scholar
Howard M. Hensel Charles L. Kammer III

United States Air Force Air War The College of Wooster
College
Richard S. Keating
R. Don Higginbotham United States Air Force Academy
University of North Carolina at
Abraham D. Lavender
Chapel Hill
Florida International University
C. L. Higham
Winona State University
xiv
Contributors
Thomas T. Lewis Bert M. Mutersbaugh

Mount Senario College Eastern Kentucky University
John L. Loos Michael V. Namorato

Louisiana State University University of Mississippi
William C. Lowe Gary A. Olson

Mount St. Clare College San Bernardino Valley College
Richard B. McCaslin Patrick M. O’Neil

High Point University Broome Community College
Paul Madden Martha I. Pallante

Hardin-Simmons University Youngstown State University
Lynn M. Mason William A. Paquette

Lubbock Christian University Tidewater Community College
Thomas D. Matijasic Francis P. Prucha

Prestonsburg Community College Marquette University
Steve J. Mazurana Jon Reyhner

University of Northern Colorado Montana State University, Billings
Maurice Melton William L. Richter

Andrew College Cameron College
Howard Meredith Moises Roizen

University of Science and Arts of West Valley College
Oklahoma
Fred S. Rolater
David N. Mielke Middle Tennessee State University
Appalachian State University
Mary Ellen Rowe
Laurence Miller Central Missouri State University
Western Washington State
Richard Sax
University
Madonna University
Bruce M. Mitchell
Glenn Schiffman
Eastern Washington University
Independent Scholar
Michael J. Mullin
Rose Secrest
Augustana College
Independent Scholar
Molly H. Mullin
Duke University
xv
Contributors
Michael W. Simpson Gale M. Thompson

Chimanade University Delta College
David Curtis Skaggs Leslie V. Tischauser

Bowling Green State University Prairie State College
Glenn Ellen Starr Brian G. Tobin

Appalachian State University Lassen College
David L. Sterling Spencer C. Tucker

University of Cincinnati Virginia Military Institute
Pamela R. Stern Mary E. Virginia

University of Arkansas Independent Scholar
Ruffin Stirling Gregory Walters

Independent Scholar University of Ottawa
Leslie Stricker David E. Wilkins

Park University University of Colorado at Boulder
Glenn L. Swygart Raymond Wilson

Tennessee Temple University Fort Hays State University
Stephen G. Sylvester Sharon K. Wilson

Montana State UniversityùNorthern Fort Hays State University
Robert D. Talbott Susan J. Wurtzburg

University of Northern Iowa Lincoln University
Harold D. Tallant Clifton K. Yearley

Georgetown College State University of New York at
Buffalo
xvi
COMPLETE LIST OF
CONTENTS
Volume 1
Aboriginal Action Plan Black Hawk War

Acoma, Battle of Boarding and residential schools
Adobe Walls, Battles of Bozeman Trail War
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Bureau of Indian Affairs
Alaska Native Sisterhood Burke Act
Alaska Native Claims Settlement California missions
Act Carlisle Indian School
Albany Congress Cayuse War
Alcatraz Island occupation Cherokee legal cases
All-Pueblo Council Cherokee Phoenix
Allotment system Cherokee Tobacco case
American Indian Cherokee War
American Indian Defense Civil War
Association Code of Handsome Lake
American Indian Higher Code talkers
Education Consortium Colliflower v. Garland
American Indian Movement Council of Energy Resource Tribes
American Indian Policy Review Creek War
Commission Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of
American Indian Religious Declaration of First Nations
Freedom Act Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
Amerind Department of Indian Affairs and
Apache Wars Northern Development
Articles of Agreement Determined Residents United for
Bacon’s Rebellion Mohawk Sovereignty
Bannock War Duro v. Reina
Bear River Campaign Elk v. Wilkins
Beaver Wars Employment Division, Department of
Bering Strait migrations Human Resources of the State of
Bison slaughter Oregon et al. v. Smith
xvii
Complete List of Contents
Epidemics and diseases Indian slave trade

Ex parte Crow Dog Indian trust fund lawsuits
Fallen Timbers, Battle of Indian-white relations: Canadian
Federally recognized tribes Indian-white relations: Dutch
Fifteen Principles colonial
Fish-ins Indian-white relations: English
Fort Atkinson Treaty colonial
Fort Greenville Treaty Indian-white relations: French
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 colonial
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 Indian-white relations: Norse
Fort Mims, Battle of Indian-white relations: Russian
Fort Stanwix Treaty colonial
Fort Wayne Treaty Indian-white relations: Spanish
Fox Wars colonial
French and Indian War Indian-white relations: Swedish
Friends of the Indian organizations colonial
Fur trade Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
Gadsden Purchase 1830
General Allotment Act Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of 1870
Horseshoe Bend Treaty Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
Indian 1933
Indian Act of 1876 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
Indian Act of 1951 2002
Indian Act of 1989 International Indian Treaty
Indian Appropriation Act Council
Indian Child Welfare Act Irish Potato Famine
Indian Citizenship Act Iroquois Confederacy
Indian Civil Rights Act Iroquois Confederacy-U.S.
Indian Claims Commission Congress meeting
Indian Education Acts Jay’s Treaty
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act Keeler Commission
Indian Health Service Keetoowah Society
Indian New Deal Kennedy Report
Indian Offenses Act Kennewick Man controversy
Indian preference Kickapoo Resistance
Indian Removal Act Kickapoo uprisings
Indian Reorganization Act Lewis and Clark expedition
Indian Rights Association Little Bighorn, Battle of the
Indian Self-Determination and Little Turtle’s War
Education Assistance Act Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
xviii
Long Walk National Indian Association

Longest Walk National Indian Education
Lord Dunmore’s War Association
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery National Indian Youth Council
Protective Association Native American
Maine Indian Claims Act Native American Church v. Navajo
Major Crimes Act Tribal Council
Manhattan Island purchase Native American Graves
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty Protection and Repatriation Act
Meech Lake Accord Native American Rights Fund
Menominee Restoration Act Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act
Meriam Report Navajo Rehabilitation Act
Metacom’s War Navajo War
Minnesota Uprising Nez Perce War
Modoc War Nisga’a Agreement in Principle
Natchez Revolt Northwest Ordinance
National Congress of American Nunavut Territory
Indians Oka crisis
National Council of American Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act
Indians Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
Volume 2
Pavonia Massacre Prehistory: Southeast

Paxton Boys’ Massacres Prehistory: Southwest
Peach Wars Prehistory: Subarctic
Pequot War Proclamation of 1763
Pima uprisings Prophetstown
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier Public Law 280
killings Pueblo Revolt
Pontiac’s Resistance Red River Raids
Powhatan Confederacy Red River War
Powhatan Wars Reservation system of the United
Prehistory: Arctic States
Prehistory: California Reserve system of Canada
Prehistory: Great Basin Riel Rebellions
Prehistory: Northeast Rosebud Creek, Battle of
Prehistory: Northwest Coast Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Prehistory: Plains Peoples
Prehistory: Plateau Sand Creek Massacre
xix
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez West Indian uprisings

Saybrook, Battle of White Paper of Canada
Seminole Wars Wild west shows
Sioux War Winnebago Uprising
Snake War Winters v. United States
Society of American Indians Wolf Mountains, Battle of
Sports mascot controversies Women of All Red Nations
Standing Bear v. Crook World wars
Taos Rebellion Wounded Knee Massacre
Tecumseh’s Rebellion Wounded Knee occupation
Termination Resolution Yakima War
Thames, Battle of the Yamasee War
Tippecanoe, Battle of Zuñi Rebellion
Trade and Intercourse Acts
Trail of Broken Treaties Gazetteer of Historic Places
Trail of Tears Historic Native Americans
Treaties and agreements in Museums, Archives, and Libraries
Canada Organizations, Agencies, and
Treaties and agreements in the Societies
United States Time Line
Tribal courts Tribes by Culture Area
Tribe Bibliography
Tuscarora War Web Resources
United States v. Kagama
United States v. Washington Categorized Index
Wabash, Battle of the Geographical Index
Walking Purchase Personages Index
Walla Walla Council Tribes Index
Washita River Massacre Subject Index
xx
MAGILL’S C H O I C E
American Indian
History
Volume 2
Pavonia Massacre—Zuñi Rebellion

Appendixes
Indexes
edited by
Carole A. Barrett
University of Mary
Salem Press, Inc.

Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey
Copyright © 2003, by Salem Press, Inc.
All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or any information storage and retrieval system, without written per-
mission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the
publisher, Salem Press, Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115.
∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American Na-

tional Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Essays originally appeared in Ready Reference: American Indians

(1995), Great Events from History: North American Series, Revised Edition
(1997), and Racial and Ethnic Relations in America (2000). New material
has been added.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

American Indian history / edited by Carole A. Barrett.
p. cm. — (Magill’s choice)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-58765-067-3 (set : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-58765-068-1 (vol. 1 :
alk. paper) — ISBN 1-58765-069-X (vol. 2 : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—History. I. Barrett, Carole A. II. Series.
E77 .A496 2003
970’.00497—dc21
2002007731
First Printing
printed in the united states of america

CONTENTS — VOLUME 2
Complete List of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi
Pavonia Massacre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

Paxton Boys’ Massacres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Peach Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Pequot War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
Pima uprisings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
Pontiac’s Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Powhatan Confederacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
Powhatan Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
Prehistory: Arctic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Prehistory: California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Prehistory: Great Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
Prehistory: Northeast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Prehistory: Northwest Coast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
Prehistory: Plains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Prehistory: Plateau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
Prehistory: Southeast. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Prehistory: Southwest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Prehistory: Subarctic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Proclamation of 1763 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Prophetstown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Public Law 280 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Pueblo Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
Red River Raids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Red River War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Reservation system of the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
Reserve system of Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Riel Rebellions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Rosebud Creek, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Sand Creek Massacre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Saybrook, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
xxvii
Contents
Seminole Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506

Sioux War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Snake War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
Society of American Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Sports mascot controversies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
Standing Bear v. Crook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Taos Rebellion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Tecumseh’s Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
Termination Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
Thames, Battle of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Tippecanoe, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
Trade and Intercourse Acts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
Trail of Broken Treaties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Trail of Tears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
Treaties and agreements in Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Treaties and agreements in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Tribal courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
Tuscarora War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
United States v. Kagama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
United States v. Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
Wabash, Battle of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
Walking Purchase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Walla Walla Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
Washita River Massacre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
West Indian uprisings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
White Paper of Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Wild west shows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Winnebago Uprising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Winters v. United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Wolf Mountains, Battle of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Women of All Red Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
World wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Wounded Knee Massacre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
Wounded Knee occupation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Yakima War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Yamasee War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Zuñi Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
Gazetteer of Historic Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615

Historic Native Americans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648
xxviii
Contents
Museums, Archives, and Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654

Organizations, Agencies, and Societies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685
Time Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Tribes by Culture Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713
Web Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765
Categorized Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771

Geographical Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779
Personages Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
Tribes Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807
xxix
COMPLETE LIST OF
CONTENTS
Volume 1
Aboriginal Action Plan Black Hawk War

Acoma, Battle of Boarding and residential schools
Adobe Walls, Battles of Bozeman Trail War
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Bureau of Indian Affairs
Alaska Native Sisterhood Burke Act
Alaska Native Claims Settlement California missions
Act Carlisle Indian School
Albany Congress Cayuse War
Alcatraz Island occupation Cherokee legal cases
All-Pueblo Council Cherokee Phoenix
Allotment system Cherokee Tobacco case
American Indian Cherokee War
American Indian Defense Civil War
Association Code of Handsome Lake
American Indian Higher Code talkers
Education Consortium Colliflower v. Garland
American Indian Movement Council of Energy Resource Tribes
American Indian Policy Review Creek War
Commission Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of
American Indian Religious Declaration of First Nations
Freedom Act Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
Amerind Department of Indian Affairs and
Apache Wars Northern Development
Articles of Agreement Determined Residents United for
Bacon’s Rebellion Mohawk Sovereignty
Bannock War Duro v. Reina
Bear River Campaign Elk v. Wilkins
Beaver Wars Employment Division, Department of
Bering Strait migrations Human Resources of the State of
Bison slaughter Oregon et al. v. Smith
xxxi
Epidemics and diseases Indian slave trade

Ex parte Crow Dog Indian trust fund lawsuits
Fallen Timbers, Battle of Indian-white relations: Canadian
Federally recognized tribes Indian-white relations: Dutch
Fifteen Principles colonial
Fish-ins Indian-white relations: English
Fort Atkinson Treaty colonial
Fort Greenville Treaty Indian-white relations: French
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 colonial
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 Indian-white relations: Norse
Fort Mims, Battle of Indian-white relations: Russian
Fort Stanwix Treaty colonial
Fort Wayne Treaty Indian-white relations: Spanish
Fox Wars colonial
French and Indian War Indian-white relations: Swedish
Friends of the Indian organizations colonial
Fur trade Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
Gadsden Purchase 1830
General Allotment Act Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of 1870
Horseshoe Bend Treaty Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
Indian 1933
Indian Act of 1876 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
Indian Act of 1951 2002
Indian Act of 1989 International Indian Treaty
Indian Appropriation Act Council
Indian Child Welfare Act Irish Potato Famine
Indian Citizenship Act Iroquois Confederacy
Indian Civil Rights Act Iroquois Confederacy-U.S.
Indian Claims Commission Congress meeting
Indian Education Acts Jay’s Treaty
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act Keeler Commission
Indian Health Service Keetoowah Society
Indian New Deal Kennedy Report
Indian Offenses Act Kennewick Man controversy
Indian preference Kickapoo Resistance
Indian Removal Act Kickapoo uprisings
Indian Reorganization Act Lewis and Clark expedition
Indian Rights Association Little Bighorn, Battle of the
Indian Self-Determination and Little Turtle’s War
Education Assistance Act Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
xxxii
Long Walk National Indian Association

Longest Walk National Indian Education
Lord Dunmore’s War Association
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery National Indian Youth Council
Protective Association Native American
Maine Indian Claims Act Native American Church v. Navajo
Major Crimes Act Tribal Council
Manhattan Island purchase Native American Graves
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty Protection and Repatriation Act
Meech Lake Accord Native American Rights Fund
Menominee Restoration Act Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act
Meriam Report Navajo Rehabilitation Act
Metacom’s War Navajo War
Minnesota Uprising Nez Perce War
Modoc War Nisga’a Agreement in Principle
Natchez Revolt Northwest Ordinance
National Congress of American Nunavut Territory
Indians Oka crisis
National Council of American Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act
Indians Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
Volume 2
Pavonia Massacre Prehistory: Southeast

Paxton Boys’ Massacres Prehistory: Southwest
Peach Wars Prehistory: Subarctic
Pequot War Proclamation of 1763
Pima uprisings Prophetstown
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier Public Law 280
killings Pueblo Revolt
Pontiac’s Resistance Red River Raids
Powhatan Confederacy Red River War
Powhatan Wars Reservation system of the United
Prehistory: Arctic States
Prehistory: California Reserve system of Canada
Prehistory: Great Basin Riel Rebellions
Prehistory: Northeast Rosebud Creek, Battle of
Prehistory: Northwest Coast Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Prehistory: Plains Peoples
Prehistory: Plateau Sand Creek Massacre
xxxiii
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez West Indian uprisings

Saybrook, Battle of White Paper of Canada
Seminole Wars Wild west shows
Sioux War Winnebago Uprising
Snake War Winters v. United States
Society of American Indians Wolf Mountains, Battle of
Sports mascot controversies Women of All Red Nations
Standing Bear v. Crook World wars
Taos Rebellion Wounded Knee Massacre
Tecumseh’s Rebellion Wounded Knee occupation
Termination Resolution Yakima War
Thames, Battle of the Yamasee War
Tippecanoe, Battle of Zuñi Rebellion
Trail of Broken Treaties Gazetteer of Historic Places
Trail of Tears Historic Native Americans
Treaties and agreements in Museums, Archives, and Libraries
Canada Organizations, Agencies, and
Treaties and agreements in the Societies
United States Time Line
Tribal courts Tribes by Culture Area
Tribe Bibliography
Tuscarora War Web Resources
United States v. Washington Categorized Index
Wabash, Battle of the Geographical Index
Walking Purchase Personages Index
Walla Walla Council Tribes Index
Washita River Massacre Subject Index
xxxiv
Aboriginal Action Plan / 1
Aboriginal Action Plan
Date: January 7, 1998

Locale: Canada
Tribes involved: Pantribal in Canada
Categories: National government and legislation, Twentieth century
history
Significance: The Aboriginal Action Plan sought to improve living con-
ditions for aboriginal Canadians through an emphasis on partner-
ships, aboriginal self-government, and other recommendations of
the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. They included recog-
nition of, apologies for, and reconciliation over past injustices and
abuses suffered by many aboriginal Canadians, often at the hands of
the federal government.
The Canadian Aboriginal Action Plan, released on January 7, 1998, focused

on aboriginal communities and the tasks of reconciliation and renewal as
recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. The plan
had four main objectives: renewing partnerships, strengthening aboriginal
governance, developing a new fiscal relationship, and supporting strong
communities, people, and economies. The first objective, the renewal of
partnerships, included a statement of reconciliation, community-based
healing of sexual and physical abuse in the residential schools, public edu-
cation to help nonaboriginals better appreciate aboriginal peoples, and a
coordinated approach to addressing the problems of aboriginals living in
urban settings. The second objective was strengthening aboriginal gover-
nance through such steps as affirming treaty relationships, commemora-
tion of the historic treaties, a new independent claims body, cost-shared
Metis enumeration, funding for aboriginal women’s organizations, estab-
lishment of an aboriginal center of excellence to assist groups in promoting
self-government, and professional development strategies in lawmaking,
environmental stewardship, and resource management. The third objec-
tive was developing a new fiscal relationship through a more stable, ac-
countable relationship that promotes greater self-reliance, new financial
standards for governments to comply with generally accepted accounting
procedures, support for development of First Nations sources of revenue
including taxation, statistical training for aboriginal groups to promote
data collection and information exchanges, as well as an aboriginal peoples
survey following the 2001 national census. The fourth objective was sup-
porting strong communities, people, and economies through a five-year
2 / Acoma, Battle of
strategy to develop aboriginal human resources, providing for an increase

in the number of houses on reserves and a remedy for the shortage of water
and sewer facilities. Other specific goals of the strategy included expanded
aboriginal policing services, an aboriginal Head Start program available on
reserves, reduced welfare dependence, increased access of aboriginal busi-
nesses to capital and markets, the creation of urban aboriginal youth cen-
ters, education reform, and greater focus on prevention, treatment, and
care of diabetes.
See also: Declaration of First Nations; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white
relations: Canadian.
Gregory Walters
Acoma, Battle of
Date: December, 1598-February, 1599
Locale: Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
Tribe involved: Acoma (Keres),
Categories: Colonial history, Wars and battles
Significance: After this first major Puebloan uprising against the Span-
ish invaders, defeat and the Spaniards’ cruel punishment of the sur-
vivors kept the Puebloans from attempting another rebellion for
many decades.
In May, 1598, Don Juan de Oñate, appointed by the Spanish authorities as

governor and captain general of all the kingdoms and provinces of New
Mexico, reached the Rio Grande valley with a large contingent of priests,
soldiers, settlers, and servants as well as two nephews, Vincente and Juan
de Zaldivar. Although many Puebloans fled in terror before the invaders,
those who remained received Oñate and his men hospitably. In each pueblo
he entered, Oñate declared that he had come to protect the Indians and
save their souls, and he demanded that they swear allegiance and vassal-
age to their new rulers, the Spanish king and the Catholic church. At the
pueblos of Ohke and Yunque, he drove the Indians from their homes and
moved his own people in, leaving King Phillip’s new subjects to survive as
best they could in the countryside.
By October, Oñate had reached Acoma Pueblo, where, after the usual
ceremony of swearing allegiance to king and church, the inhabitants were
asked to give generously of their food, robes, and blankets. Oñate then con-
Acoma, Battle of / 3
Acoma Pueblo, photographed by Ansel Adams in 1941 or 1942. (National Archives)
tinued on to the Zuñi and Hopi pueblos. In early December, Juan de

Zaldivar and thirty soldiers, following Oñate, arrived at Acoma and de-
manded to be provisioned, ignoring the Indians’ pleas that they had noth-
ing left to spare. The Indians then attacked, killing Zaldivar and twelve of
his men.
Oñate, vowing to avenge this serious blow to Spanish authority, called a
general meeting to plan for the punishment of Acoma. He consulted the fri-
ars, who agreed that this was a “just war” under Spanish law, since the
Puebloans had sworn obedience and vassalage to the Spanish crown and
were therefore royal subjects who were now guilty of treason. On January
21, 1599, Vincente de Zaldivar and his forces reached Acoma, where they
found the Puebloans ready to defend themselves. The Indians, fighting
with arrows and stones, were no match for men armed with guns; after two
days of bitter fighting, Acoma was defeated, with more than eight hundred
of its people dead. The pueblo was destroyed, and some five hundred men,
women, and children were captured. Those who did not immediately sur-
render were dragged from their hiding places and killed.
On February 12, Oñate himself decreed the punishment of the captives:
All men over twenty-five had one foot cut off and served twenty years in
slavery; all men between the ages of twelve and twenty-five and all women
over twelve served twenty years in slavery; the old men and women were
given to the Querechos (Plains Apache) as slaves; the children under
twelve were given to Fray Alonso Martinez (father commissary of the
4 / Adobe Walls, Battles of
Church) and to Vincente de Zaldivar; two Hopi men, at Acoma when the
battle began, had their right hands cut off and were sent back to Hopi as an
object lesson.
See also: Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Pueblo Revolt; Zuñi
Rebellion.
LouAnn Faris Culley
Adobe Walls, Battles of

Date: November 26, 1864, and June 27, 1874
Locale: Texas
Tribes involved: Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Wars and battles
Significance: The confrontations at Adobe Walls reflect a pattern of on-
going conflict between whites and Plains Indians that culminated in
the decisive defeat of the latter in the Red River War.
There were two engagements in present-day Hutchinson County, Texas,

near Adobe Walls, which were the ruins of a trading post built in 1843 by
William Bent and abandoned before 1864.
The first clash occurred when Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson was
told to attack the winter camps of the Kiowa and Comanche, who were
threatening federal posts in New Mexico. Carson moved down the Cana-
dian River into Texas with 14 officers and 321 enlisted men of the First New
Mexico Cavalry, as well as 75 Ute and Apache allies, two howitzers, and a
wagon train. On the morning of November 26, 1864, he attacked a Kiowa
encampment with his mounted troops, leaving the infantry with the wag-
ons. The ensuing alarm brought several thousand Kiowa and Comanche
warriors to confront Carson, who established a defensive position at Adobe
Walls. Sporadic attacks by Kiowa and Comanche were disrupted primarily
by Carson’s howitzers, and at dusk he retreated to reunite his command.
The next day he continued his withdrawal, having lost three killed and
fifteen wounded but having inflicted perhaps a hundred casualties on
his opponents. Carson was praised for extricating his force from their pre-
dicament.
The second engagement occurred nearly ten years later in 1874, after
white buffalo hunters built a trading post near Adobe Walls. Angry clashes
led to an attack by about seven hundred Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne,
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood / 5
led by Quanah Parker and Lone

Wolf, on the post, which was oc-
cupied by about two dozen men
and one woman. The warriors
were told by a shaman that they
could not be harmed, but heavy
casualties led to the failure of
their assault on June 27, 1874. Af-
ter five days of siege, the hunters
had lost four men, while the num-
ber of defenders had increased to
about a hundred. The attackers,
who had lost several dozen, with-
drew. This escalating pattern of
violence led to the Red River War,
during which Adobe Walls was
abandoned for good in August,
1874.
Quanah Parker, the Comanche Chief who See also: Apache Wars; Kick-
led the second Battle of Adobe Walls in apoo uprisings; Long Walk; Na-
1874 as white buffalo hunters devasted
vajo War; Red River War.
the bison herds at the base of his peo-
ple’s economy. (National Archives) Richard B. MacCaslin
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska

Native Sisterhood
Date: Beginning 1912
Locale: Alaska
Tribes involved: Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, other southeast Alaskan
tribes Sisterhood
Categories: Civil rights, Organizations, Religion and missionary activi-
ties, Twentieth century history
Significance: Founded to fight social and political discrimination against
Alaska Natives, the Alaska Native Brotherhood is the oldest modern
Alaska Native or American Indian organization in the United States.
With the stated goal of winning citizenship for Alaska Natives, twelve men
and one woman formed the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) in Sitka in
6 / Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
1912. One member was Tsimshian; the rest were Tlingit. A companion orga-
nization, the Alaska Native Sisterhood, is variously reported to have been
established in 1915 or 1923. Within a decade there were chapters, called
camps, throughout southeastern Alaska.
The founders of the Alaska Native Brotherhood were heavily influ-
enced by Presbyterian missionaries, and in addition to promoting native
civil rights, the organization urged the abandonment of traditional na-
tive languages and customs. In the 1960’s, it reversed itself on this latter
issue and was instrumental in the revival of many Haida and Tlingit tradi-
tions.
In the area of civil rights the ANB was active in the pursuit of voting
rights and citizenship for Alaska Natives. In 1922, an ANB leader and attor-
ney, William Paul, successfully defended his great-uncle Chief Shakes
against the felony charge of voting illegally. Thus, Alaska Natives won the
right to vote two years before Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act
in 1924.
The brotherhood led a series of boycotts against businesses that discrim-
inated against natives and in 1945 lobbied successfully for the passage of
the Antidiscrimination Act by the territorial legislature. It also successfully
lobbied Congress to extend the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act to include
Alaska. This contributed significantly to economic development in south-
eastern Alaska by enabling several native villages to apply for federal
loans to purchase fishing boats and canneries.
The brotherhood mounted the first organized efforts to secure land
rights for Alaska Natives. Its efforts were a precursor to the Alaska Native
Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
See also: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; Fish-ins.
Richard G. Condon
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

Date: December 18, 1971
Locale: United States
Tribes involved: Aleut, Eskimo, Inuit
history
Significance: Native Alaskans receive compensation in return for relin-
quishing their claims to lands they historically occupied.
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act / 7
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law
by President Richard M. Nixon on December 18, 1971. It represented the
culmination of a long struggle over native land claims that was com-
pounded by the immediate need to construct a pipeline to carry oil from
Prudhoe Bay to Valdez through lands claimed by Native Alaskans. The
ANCSA granted forty-four million acres of land and $962.5 million to
Native Alaskans in exchange for the relinquishment of their claims to
the remaining nine-tenths of the land in Alaska. The law provided for an
equitable distribution of funds among the three primary native groups
(the Aleuts, Inuits, and Eskimos) and allowed first village corporations
and then the regional native corporations, formed by the ANCSA, to select
their lands. The Alaska Federation of Natives, speaking for the Alaskan
native groups, accepted the settlement by a vote of 511 to 56, despite con-
cerns about how it would affect traditional native patterns of hunting and
fishing.
Land claims had long been a disputed issue between Native Alaskans
and the U.S. government. A Supreme Court ruling in 1955 declared that the
Fifth Amendment to the Constitution did not protect native land rights.
When Alaska became the forty-ninth state of the Union in 1959, it was
granted the right to select 103.3 million acres of land over the next twenty-
five years without any acknowledgment of claims by Native Alaskans. Be-
tween 1959 and 1969, the state claimed nineteen million acres. By compari-
son, Native Alaskans owned only five hundred acres and had restricted ti-
tle to another fifteen thousand acres. Since the state claimed nearly 28
percent of Alaskan territory, fears arose that there would be little valuable
land remaining to satisfy native claims, and native opposition to state land
claims intensified.
Competing Parties. Some Native Alaskans believed that proposed use of

their lands by the state or federal government would violate traditional
rights enjoyed by the native inhabitants. The Atomic Energy Commission,
for example, sought to use Cape Thompson as a nuclear testing site; it was
situated near an Eskimo village, with a population of three hundred, at
Point Hope and the ancestral lands the villagers used for hunting. Another
issue under dispute was the proposed Rampart Dam, a hydroelectric pro-
ject that was to be built on the Yukon River in the north-central region of
the state. Opponents of the dam argued that it would damage wildlife
breeding grounds, displace twelve hundred natives from seven small vil-
lages, and endanger the livelihood of five thousand to six thousand others
who depended on salmon in that area. Finally, the state was beginning to
legislate hunting restrictions on state-owned land, which natives believed
would threaten their traditional way of life. In the early 1960’s, native
groups began to take action to protect their interests. Between 1961 and
1968, Alaskan natives filed claims protesting the state’s use of 337 million
acres of Alaskan territory.
In 1960, Native Alaskans constituted roughly 20 percent of the Alaskan
population. For those living in native communities or villages, life con-
sisted of subsistence hunting and fishing, which necessitated access to
large amounts of land. Many were seasonally employed and lived in pov-
erty. Seventy percent had less than an elementary education, and only
ten percent had received a secondary education. Owing to disease, alcohol-
ism, and impoverished conditions, the life span of Native Alaskans was
about thirty-five years of age, half the national average. Many Native Alas-
kans believed that existing laws, rather than protecting them, stripped
them of rights to lands that they claimed. They generally did not consider
either the state or the federal government to be supportive of their con-
cerns.
Two other groups who entered the contest over land claims were devel-
opers and environmentalists. Developers desired the construction of more
fisheries and canneries, as well as highways and industries that would en-
able Alaska’s natural resources to be fully developed. Environmentalists
sought protection of certain lands as parks, natural wilderness areas, and
wildlife refuges. By 1966, land disputes had become so hotly contested that
Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall ordered a freeze on all transfers of
land claimed by the natives until a mutually acceptable agreement could be
reached.
Following the discovery at Prudhoe Bay, on the North Slope of Alaska,
of one of the largest oil fields ever found, the federal government proposed
that a pipeline be constructed across the state to transport the oil to Valdez,
a city easily accessible for loading petroleum because of its position as
a year-round ice-free port on Prince William Sound. The proposed route
of the eight-hundred-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline included twenty miles of
land that was claimed by Native Alaskans, who feared that construction
of the pipeline would likely lead to other infringements of their land
claims. By this time, however, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the
Alaska Federation of Natives, among other native groups, were well orga-
nized to press for their interests. It became evident that the land issue
would have to be resolved before the pipeline was built.
Government Intervention. Walter Hickel, Udall’s successor as secretary

of the interior, extended the land-freeze in 1970. A federal restraining or-
der halted the project until a settlement could be reached. Because develop-
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act / 9
ers and oil companies were anxious to get the project under way, pressure
was applied to settle the issue quickly. Other interested parties anticipated
benefits from the construction of the pipeline, which promised lower pe-
troleum prices to the federal government, revenue to the state, land preser-
vation to environmentalists, and previously denied rights to natives, par-
ticularly title to land that they believed was theirs. British Petroleum, one
of the interested parties, agreed to lobby for a bill that would protect native
land interests. A joint Senate-House conference committee drew up the fi-
nal bill, which gained widespread support. It passed Congress and was
signed into law by Nixon on December 18, 1971.
The ANCSA resolved the long-standing dispute regarding native rights
to land in Alaska. Native land claims were extinguished in return for title
to forty-four million acres that included mineral rights, as well as $962.5
million in additional compensation. Twelve regional corporations were
established between 1972 and 1974 (to which a thirteenth was added for
natives not living in Alaska) in order to manage the funds and organize
land selection. Every Alaskan native became a member of a regional corpo-
ration, in which he or she was given one hundred shares of stock. In addi-
tion, about 220 village corporations were formed to oversee the distribu-
tion of land at the local level. Native reservations were abolished, and
sixteen million acres of land were set aside for selection by the village cor-
porations.
The village corporations were allowed to select their land over a three-
year period and the regional corporations over four years. Beneficiaries of
the land claims were required to be one-quarter native Alaskan (either
Inuit, Aleut, or Eskimo) and had to be born on or before December 18, 1971.
While the land selection involved a lengthy process, native corporations
eventually selected 102 million acres instead of the allotted 44 million. For
twenty years after the passage of the act, Native Alaskans were not permit-
ted to sell their stock to non-natives, and their undeveloped land was not to
be taxed. In 1987, Congress passed the “1991 amendments,” which pre-
served the tax-exemption benefits on undeveloped lands indefinitely and
allowed new stock to be issued to Native Alaskans born after December 18,
1971.
The ANCSA was, in many respects, a watershed in the history of Native
Alaskans that promised to change their way of life permanently. The act be-
gan the transformation of Alaskan native cultures from a subsistence econ-
omy based on traditional hunting and fishing patterns to one based on
ownership of modern business-for-profit ventures. Many Native Alaskans
embarked on a difficult transition from life on reservations to membership
in native corporations that undertook a variety of commercial enterprises.
These corporations invested in banking, hotels, fisheries, real estate, and

mineral exploration. Some were successful and some were not. Neverthe-
less, the acquisition of land and income gave Native Alaskans a position of
influence in state politics that they had never had before.
See also: Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood;
Fish-ins.
Anne-Marie E. Ferngren
Sources for Further Study

Anders, Gary C. “Social and Economic Consequences of Federal Indian
Policy.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 37, no. 2 (January,
1989): 285-303. Includes discussion of the effects of the ANCSA on the
Alaskan Natives.
Arnold, Robert D., et al. Alaska Native Land Claims. Anchorage: Alaska Na-
tive Foundation, 1978. A comprehensive discussion of the act and its sig-
nificance.
Berger, Thomas R. Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review
Commission. New York: Hill & Wang, 1985. A critical account of the ef-
fects of the ANCSA on Native Alaskans.
Berry, Mary Clay. The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land
Claims. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975. Describes the
influence of the construction of the pipeline on the passage of the
ANCSA.
Case, David S. Alaska Natives and American Laws. Fairbanks: University of
Alaska Press, 1984. A detailed description of the historical interaction of
Native Alaskans and U.S. law.
Flanders, Nicholas E. “The ANCSA Amendments of 1987 and Land Man-
agement in Alaska.” The Polar Record 25, no. 155 (October, 1989): 315-
322. Discusses the modifications of the ANCSA by the 1991 Amend-
ments.
Mitchell, Donald Craig. Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress’s
Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971. Fairbanks:
University of Alaska Press, 2000. Discusses the legal and regulatory his-
tory of ANCSA.
Strohmeyer, John. Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of
Alaska. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Illustrates the impact of the
petroleum industry and law on native peoples.
Albany Congress / 11
Albany Congress
Date: June 19-July 10, 1754
Locale: Albany, New York
Tribes involved: Iroquois Confederacy
Categories: Colonial history, National government and legislation, Trea-
ties
Significance: To resolve Iroquois land and trade complaints, colonial
delegates draft the Plan of Union.
In June, 1753, the Mohawk leader Hendrick declared the Covenant Chain—
a term used to symbolize the Iroquois Confederacy’s alliance with New
York and the other colonies—to be broken. Hendrick’s action shocked colo-
nial and imperial officials. From their perspective, Hendrick’s timing could
not have been worse. Tensions between the French and English were in-
creasing, and British officials had based their military strategy for North
America on an Anglo-Iroquois alliance. Just when the Iroquois alliance was
most needed, the Mohawks had voided the centerpiece of Britain’s military
strategy for North America. Something had to be done, and that something
was the Albany Congress of 1754.
Hendrick’s declaration represented a culmination of events dating back
a decade. In 1744, the Onondaga, believing they were ceding the Shenan-
doah Valley to Virginia, agreed to the Treaty of Lancaster. Virginians, how-
ever, used this treaty to claim the entire Ohio region. Over the next decade,
Virginian officials opened nearly three hundred thousand acres of land to
settlement through land companies such as the Ohio Company of Virginia.
King George’s War (1739-1748) temporarily delayed settlement. Once the
war ended, however, the Ohio Company renewed its efforts at settling the
region. French officials responded by sending Captain de Céleron into the
Ohio Valley in 1750. French soldiers also began building forts in the region.
One such outpost, Presque Isle, was in the heart of Iroquoia. When the Iro-
quois asked for assistance in removing the French from Presque Isle, Vir-
ginian officials refused to help. By the early 1750’s, the Mohawks and other
Indian groups felt themselves trapped between the English and French.
Need for Negotiation. Following Virginia’s response to the Iroquois, mem-

bers of the Board of Trade recommended that King George II call a congress
to address Indian complaints about colonial behavior. In September, 1753,
the Board of Trade notified colonial governors that King George II wanted
all colonies having a relationship with the Iroquois to attend a conference
12 / Albany Congress
that was to resolve existing Iroquois complaints about land and trade with
the colonists. The resulting Albany Congress was unlike any other Anglo-
Iroquois conference. It was the first intercolonial-Indian conference called
by London officials.
The proposed conference met with the approval of Massachusetts gov-
ernor William Shirley and the Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin. However,
the lieutenant governors of New York and Virginia were less enthralled
with the board’s directive. New
York lieutenant governor James
De Lancey could not escape the
conference. Robert Dinwiddie
of Virginia, however, failed to
send a representative to Albany.
Still, when the conference be-
gan in June, 1754, representa-
tives from nine colonies at-
tended.
The delegates met at Albany
for specific reasons. It was the
historic meeting place for Iro-
quois-European conferences.
Albany was the site of one of
the two council fires the En-
glish and Iroquois maintained.
As one of the anchors of the
Covenant Chain, official busi-
ness could be conducted and
ratified there. It was also the
Hendrick, chief of the Mohawks, who in 1753 closest city to the frontier that
declared the Covenant Chain—the Iroquois delegates could reach by boat.
Confederacy’s alliance with New York and
other British colonies—to be broken as a Agenda. When representatives
result of Iroquois attacks against westward-
met at Albany, they needed not
expanding settlers. The Albany Congress
was designed to allow the British to make only to address Iroquois com-
peace with their long-standing Iroquois allies plaints but also to prepare for
in the face of mounting French-British ten- war. Delegates saw the two is-
sions. Mohawk leaders such as Hendrick sues as interrelated. On June
hoped that the congress’ proposed Plan of
19, 1754, they created a seven-
Union would allow all British colonists to speak
with a single voice, thus alleviating Iroquois- person committee to prepare
settler tensions, but the plan was rejected. James De Lancey’s opening
(Library of Congress) speech to the American Indi-
Albany Congress / 13
ans. Five days later, the representatives created a second committee to con-
sider “some Method of affecting the Union between the Colonies.” This lat-
ter delegation produced the Plan of Union associated with the Albany
Congress. It did so, however, “as a Branch of Indian Affairs.” Mohawk
leaders such as Hendrick hoped confederation would allow the colonists to
speak with a single voice. Some delegates agreed. They thought colonial
confederation would alleviate the problems of which the Iroquois com-
plained. Therefore, the Albany Plan of Union was designed primarily as a
mechanism for conducting Indian affairs.
Besides improving colonial policy toward the natives, representatives
thought colonial confederation would improve their military prepared-
ness and help them defeat New France. There were mutual security rea-
sons for confederation. Politicians did not prepare their plan to tamper
with each colony’s internal autonomy.
Common wisdom maintains that Benjamin Franklin is the father of the
colonial confederation. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that
Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts wrote the plan. If Hutchinson was
the author, then American Indian affairs were probably an important influ-
ence on the Plan of Union, because Hutchinson was a member of the origi-
nal subcommittee appointed to study American Indian affairs. Franklin
was not.
Proposals. Whoever the author was, the Plan of Union contained specific
proposals. It created a unicameral legislature, to be called the Grand Coun-
cil. This council would consist of forty-eight representatives chosen from
the lower houses of the colonies. Representation in the Grand Council was
limited to members of the lower houses of assembly in the colonies because
it was assumed that only directly elected representatives had the right to
tax the colonists. Initially, representation in the Grand Council would be
based on the population of each colony. After three years, representation
would be based on the revenue a colony generated for the confederation, so
as to reward participation. In both its name and the number of delegates,
the Plan of Union paid homage to the Iroquois League.
The new government also would have a president general. This execu-
tive would receive his salary directly from England, so the president gen-
eral would be independent of the colonial legislatures. This proposal rec-
ognized the problems confronting the relationship between governor and
lower house in colonial America.
The proposed confederation government had eight functions. One of
the most important was the right to direct all Indian treaties for the colonies.
The government also would make declarations of war and peace toward
14 / Albany Congress
the natives, make all land purchases from the natives in the name of the king,
and regulate trade with the natives. Purchased land would reside outside
the existing boundaries of established colonies. The government would di-
rect the creation of settlements in the territory, would rule them in the name
of the king, and would be responsible for the defense of the frontier.
The Plan of Union also gave the proposed government the ability to tax.
The Grand Council could enforce an excise tax on luxury goods. The gov-
ernment would secure additional money by regulating the Indian trade.
Traders would be required to carry licenses and post bonds of good behav-
ior before being allowed to trade with the natives. Traders were to purchase
these licenses and bonds from the confederation government. Trade would
be restricted to specific forts, built just for that purpose. It was hoped that
by regulating trade with the Indians, many of the problems associated with
the traders would be curtailed. Finally, the government would receive
quitrent from colonists as they settled lands newly purchased from the In-
dians. Politicians thus pursued colonial confederation as a method of ad-
dressing Indian affairs.
Rejection. The Albany delegates approved the Plan of Union on July 10

and adjourned to take the proposals back to their respective colonies. Not
one colonial legislature accepted the plan. Legislators in seven colonies
voted the Plan of Union down. The other six legislatures let the issue die
away during the Seven Years’ (French and Indian) War. Each colonial legis-
lature had specific reasons for rejecting the Albany Plan. Some politicians
feared that the plan gave too much power to the governor. Others feared
the creation of a president general. Still others believed that the confedera-
tion government threatened the western lands included in their original
charters.
Colonial legislators were not the only ones to repudiate the Plan of
Union. The Board of Trade rejected it too, believing the idea of a Grand
Council to be cumbersome. They wanted a smaller council, with delegates
chosen by the royal governors. They also thought that the Albany Plan
gave too much power to colonial assemblies. From the Board of Trade’s
perspective, the Albany Congress was a failure.
If the Albany Congress was a failure, it was an important one. The con-
gress showed how different England and America had grown since the
Glorious Revolution in the 1680’s. The Seven Years’ War would strain the
imperial-colonial relationship even more. The failure of delegates to the Al-
bany Congress to address Iroquois complaints directly forced the home
government to become an active participant in colonial-Indian relations.
The result was the creation of an Indian superintendent system. This new
Alcatraz Island occupation / 15
system, begun in 1755, made imperial policies, not colonial desires, the pri-
mary focus of Anglo-Iroquois dialogue in the years to come.
See also: French and Indian War; Indian-white relations: English colo-
nial; Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting;
Paxton Boys’ Massacres; Proclamation of 1763.
Michael J. Mullin

Alden, John R. “The Albany Congress and the Creation of the Indian
Superintendencies.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27, no. 2 (Sep-
tember, 1940): 193-210. Describes how the Albany Congress led British
officials to create the Indian superintendent system.
Gipson, Lawrence Henry. “The Drafting of the Albany Plan of Union: The
Problem of Semantics.” Pennsylvania History 26, no. 4 (October, 1959):
291-316. Argues that Thomas Hutchinson was responsible for writing
the Albany Plan of Union.
Hopkins, Stephen. A True Representation of the Plan Formed at Albany. Provi-
dence, R.I.: Sidney S. Rider, 1880. Hopkins, who represented Rhode Is-
land at the Albany Congress, details the issues that delegates discussed
concerning Indian affairs.
Mullin, Michael J. “The Albany Congress and Colonial Confederation.”
Mid-America 72, no. 2 (April-July, 1990): 93-105. Discusses the role of In-
dian affairs at the Congress.
Newbold, Robert C. The Albany Congress and Plan of Union of 1754. New
York: Vantage Press, 1955. A summation of the scholarship on Albany at
the time.
Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The
Albany Congress of 1754. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Argues that the Albany Congress was actually the moment of shifting
European-Indian relationships from independent commerce to an im-
perialist model, based on hierarchy and governed by a distant authority
rather than face-to-face.
Alcatraz Island occupation

Date: 1969-1971
Locale: Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay
Tribes involved: Pantribal in the United States
16 / Alcatraz Island occupation
Categories: Protest movements, Twentieth century history

Significance: The takeover of Alcatraz Island symbolized the awaken-
ing of American Indian peoples to cultural and political concerns,
even though its stated goal, the establishment of a Center for Native
American Studies, was not realized.
The occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by an organization

calling itself Indians of All Tribes was a high-profile act of self-empower-
ment by native American people. In 1962, the United States government
closed operations of the federal penitentiary situated on the island. There
were actually two subsequent occupations of the island by young Ameri-
can Indian people. First came a short-lived effort in 1964, then the highly
publicized takeover of 1969 which lasted until June of 1971, when federal
marshals and other law enforcement officials removed all American Indi-
ans left on the island.
The occupying Indians wanted the island to be transformed into a center
for Native American studies. This would involve the practice of traditional
tribal spirituality; people would be trained in song, dance, and healing cer-
emonies. It would also be a place of training in scientific research and ecol-
ogy. Also, it was to become an Indian training school whose purpose would
be to teach the use of modern economics to end hunger and unemployment.
The Indians of All Tribes organization desired transfer of Alcatraz as sur-
plus federal property, in the same manner that facilities such as Roswell Air
Force Base in New Mexico, the Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, the Madera
Radar Station, and Camp Parks were transferred to such profit-making or-
ganizations as Philco-Ford, Radio Corporation of American (RCA), and
Litton.
Negotiations were carried out with Robert Robinson of the National
Council on Indian Opportunity representing the United States. In March of
1970, the government’s counterproposal included these ideas: a new name
for the island, possibly from the Ohlone language; monuments commemo-
rating noted American Indian people placed on the island park; a cultural
center and museum built as an integral part of the park plan; and a number
of Indians professionally trained as park rangers by the National Park Ser-
vice. The federal government balked at the idea of locating an institution of
higher learning on the island, noting that the first tribally controlled col-
lege was already being established at Many Farms on the Navajo Reserva-
tion and that a number of Native American studies courses were being of-
fered at universities across the nation. This proposal was rejected by the
Indians of All Tribes, and the negotiations broke down. On June 11, 1971,
federal marshals arrested everyone on Alcatraz Island.
All-Pueblo Council / 17
The takeover of Alcatraz Island served as a symbol in re-awakening

American Indian people, as self-determination continued to replace fed-
eral policies of relocation and termination.
See also: American Indian Movement; Indian Civil Rights Act; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1934-2002.
Howard Meredith
All-Pueblo Council
Date: Established 1922
Locale: New Mexico
Tribes involved: Pueblo
Categories: Native government, Organizations, Twentieth century his-
tory
Significance: The All-Pueblo Council defended the integrity of Pueblo
lands, communal life, and tribal traditions in the face of federal legis-
lation threatening Pueblo reservation lands.
The All-Pueblo Council was established in response to the proposed Bur-

sum bill of 1922. This legislation resulted from decades of controversy over
land that had been purchased since 1848 by Hispanic and white settlers
from the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. In 1913, the United States Su-
preme Court ruled in the Sandoval case that the Pueblo Indians came un-
der federal jurisdiction as wards of the government and therefore did not
have the authority to sell their lands. Occasional violence broke out as
Pueblos challenged the right of white settlers to be on former Pueblo lands.
In 1922, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, a former New Mexico sena-
tor, asked New Mexico senator Holm O. Bursum to introduce legislation to
confirm the land titles of all non-Pueblo claimants and place Pueblo water
rights under the jurisdiction of the state courts. The intention of Fall and
Bursum was to settle the controversy over Pueblo lands in favor of His-
panic and white settlers and to prevent further violence.
Sympathetic whites, including the General Federation of Women’s Clubs,
artists from Santa Fe and Taos, and sociologist John Collier, organized a
movement to stop the Bursum bill. After Collier alerted the Pueblos to the
danger of the bill, they responded by calling an All-Pueblo Council, which
met on November 5, 1922, at Santo Domingo. The 121 delegates drafted
“An Appeal by the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico to the People of the
18 / Allotment system
United States.” They claimed that the Bursum bill would destroy their
communal life, land, customs, and traditions. A delegation from the All-
Pueblo Council went with Collier to Washington, D.C., to testify before the
Senate Committee on Public Lands. The Bursum bill was defeated in Con-
gress as a result of the public outcry against it. In 1923, a compromise bill,
the Public Lands Act, was passed; it empowered a board to determine the
status and boundaries of Pueblo lands.
See also: Gadsden Purchase; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933;
Pueblo Revolt; Zuñi Rebellion.
Lynne M. Getz
Allotment system
Date: 1887-1934
Categories: National government and legislation, Nineteenth century
history, Reservations and relocation, Twentieth century history
Significance: Intended to assimilate Indians by making them small
farmers, the allotment system instead led to a massive loss of Indian
land.
Allotment—the division of tribal lands among individual Indians—became

the dominant theme in federal Indian policy in the years between 1887 and
1934. During the 1880’s many whites who regarded themselves as “friends
of the Indians” came to believe that Indians could be saved from extinction
only by assimilation into American society. Tribal loyalties and cultures
were seen as barriers to this end. Reformers hoped that by carving up reser-
vations and making small farmers of the Indians, they could effectively
detribalize and assimilate the Indians into American culture. This policy
also attracted support from those who wanted to open up tribal lands for
settlement or exploitation. There were precedents for this policy. In the first
half of the nineteenth century, several eastern states had broken up state-
recognized reservations by dividing land among tribal members, and a
number of the removal treaties of the 1830’s made provision for allotments
to individual Indians who wished to remain east of the Mississippi.
In 1887 Congress enacted the General Allotment Act, also known as the
Dawes Severalty Act (for Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, one of its
Allotment system / 19
proponents). The act gave the

president authority to allot res-
ervation lands in “severalty” (to
individual Indians). As a general
rule, heads of families would re-
ceive 160 acres, single Indians
less. Title to the allotments would
be held in trust by the govern-
ment for twenty-five years to en-
able allottees to acquire the nec-
essary skills, and the land could
not be sold during the trust pe-
riod. Once an Indian took up an
allotment, he became an Ameri-
can citizen. Land not required for
distribution could be sold off or
opened to white settlement, with
the proceeds intended to support
assimilationist policies. It was
suggested that the Indians, freed
from tribal domination, would
develop as small farmers and so
be capable of taking their place
in American society. The Five
Civilized Tribes of Indian Terri-
tory, along with a few others,
were originally exempted from
the act, but in the 1890’s Con-
gress established a commission
headed by Senator Dawes to ne-
gotiate allotment and thus the
abolition of their tribal govern-
ments.
The actual process of allot-
ment was complex and went on
for more than forty years. Along An 1879 advertisement for white settlement
the way Congress made several on land bought by the U.S. government
from the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and
modifications: In 1900, the leas-
Seminole in 1866 (the government’s origi-
ing of allotments before the end nal intent was that the land be settled by
of the trust period was allowed; other Indians and former slaves). (Library
in 1902, heirs of allottees were of Congress)
20 / Allotment system
permitted to sell their lands with the permission of the secretary of the
interior; and in 1906, the Burke Act delayed citizenship until the end
of the trust period (also permitting the secretary of the interior to cut short
the trust period for Indians deemed competent to manage their own af-
fairs).
The system did not work as intended. Many Indians came from nonagri-
cultural tribal backgrounds and were reluctant to become farmers. Others
found their allotments too small to support a family or of little agricultural
value. Whites often encouraged Indians to lease or sell their lands, some-
times resorting to intimidation or outright fraud. It often proved easy to
separate Indians from allotments.
The foremost result of the allotment policy was a drastic reduction in the
amount of land controlled by Native Americans, from 138 million acres in
1887 to 52 million acres when the policy ceased in 1934. Of the amount lost,
60 million acres had been declared “excess land” and disposed of by the
government to non-Indians. By 1934, two-thirds of Native Americans were
either landless or without enough land to provide subsistence. The policy
weakened tribal cultures and fostered the growth of a large bureaucracy in
the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
By the late 1920’s, doubts about the allotment system were growing. An
investigation led by Lewis Meriam shocked many when its findings were
published in 1928 as The Problem of Indian Administration (better known as
the Meriam Report). The report detailed dismal conditions and poverty
among American Indians and identified the allotment system as the major
source of Indian problems. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act stopped
the process of allotment and allowed the reorganization of tribal govern-
ments.
See also: Burke Act; Friends of the Indian organizations; General Allot-
ment Act; Indian Reorganization Act; Meriam Report.
William C. Lowe

Greenwald, Emily. Reconfiguring the Reservation: The Nez Perces, the Jicarilla
Apache, and the Dawes Act. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2002.
Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians,
1880-1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Kinney, J. P. A Continent Lost, a Civilization Won: Indian Land Tenure in Amer-
ica. 1937. Reprint. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
McDonnell, Janet A. The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
American Indian / 21
Otis, Delos S. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands. Edited by
Francis Paul Prucha. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment
Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975.
American Indian
Date: Colonial times-present
Locale: Americas and West Indies
Tribes involved: Pantribal
Categories: Terminology
Significance: An “American Indian” is broadly defined as a member of
any of the aboriginal peoples of North, Central, or South America
and the West Indies. Peoples covered under this definition are also
generally considered part of a group once widely referred to by an-
thropologists as “Mongoloid” in reference to certain physical charac-
teristics and facial features.
The term “American Indian” is an obvious misnomer on two counts: First,

the word “American” refers to explorer Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the
Americas were named by European explorers. Second, the word “Indian”
refers to inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), which ex-
plorer Christopher Columbus mistakenly thought he had reached when he
arrived in the Americas in the late 1400’s.
As colonization of the Americas by Europeans progressed, the term con-
tinued to be used by the European immigrants, regardless of its inappro-
priateness. The early European explorers and colonists were not interested
in exploring differences among native cultures; they simplistically per-
ceived the hundreds of distinct indigenous cultures of North America as a
singular primitive, barbaric, and uncivilized entity. “American Indian,” or
“Indian,” became the standard term used by Europeans and European
Americans simply through common usage. Many indigenous peoples, in
their own languages, call themselves “the people” or “human beings,” em-
phasizing their distinctive qualities among all living creatures, to which
they believe themselves related.
In the mid-twentieth century, “Native American” became a widely used
alternative collective name. By the 1990’s, however, the popularity of this
term had also waned, and many native people found American Indian to
22 / American Indian Defense Association
be relatively acceptable, even preferable. Some American Indians find all

terms such as American Indian, Native American, and Amerind to be
equally objectionable, as all owe a debt to European views and, at worst, to
the racism of dominant American society. The most accurate—and most
widely accepted—way to identify a person or tradition is simply to refer to
the specific tribe or group to which the person or tradition belongs. When
referring to the many indigenous cultures collectively, “American Indians”
is still widely used, essentially because no consensus has been reached on a
preferable term.
See also: Amerind; Federally recognized tribes; Indian; Native Ameri-
can; Tribe.
Michael W. Simpson
American Indian Defense Association

Categories: Organizations, Twentieth century history
Significance: Organized by social reformer and later Bureau of Indian
Affairs commissioner John Collier, the American Indian Defense As-
sociation (AIDA) was the primary advocate for tribal revitalization.
The American Indian Defense Association (AIDA) was organized in New

York City in May, 1923, by white reformers sympathetic to Indian causes.
Under the leadership of John Collier, the AIDA’s founder and first execu-
tive secretary, the organization consisted primarily of wealthy, liberal Cali-
fornians who joined hands in opposition to a proposed bill addressing land
disputes in the Northwest that might have resulted in the loss of Pueblo
lands. Led by Collier, members of the AIDA were critical of the General Al-
lotment Act of 1887, pleading for the maintenance of Indian tribal integrity.
In 1922, Collier explicitly stated the AIDA’s goals. The association was
to aid in the preservation of Indian culture, including a revitalization pro-
gram of Indian arts and crafts. It sought to entitle Indians to social and reli-
gious freedoms and to rejuvenate tribal governments. Provisions were also
made for safeguarding Indian civil liberties. Furthermore, Indians were to
be entitled to federal aid in the form of Farm Loan Bank credits, public
health services, and other federal assistance programs. To break its monop-
American Indian Higher Education Consortium / 23
oly over Indian programs, Collier suggested reform of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. Through congressional lobbying, publication of pamphlets, and
advice to Indian tribes, Collier and the AIDA labored to influence federal
Indian policy and to improve conditions on Indian reservations.
In its first decade, the AIDA grew to more than 1,700 members. Head-
quartered in Washington, D.C., the organization maintained branches in cit-
ies throughout the country. During the 1920’s, executive secretary Collier be-
came the nation’s leading advocate of Indian rights. With the election of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Indian reform organizations fur-
nished candidates for appointment as commissioner in the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, Collier foremost among them. Although Collier was considered con-
troversial because of his communist sympathies and his confrontational na-
ture, Roosevelt nevertheless appointed him commissioner in 1933. Under
Roosevelt, Collier initiated his own Indian New Deal, whereby governmen-
tal Indian policy shifted away from assimilation and toward tribal revitaliza-
tion. Collier’s culminating triumph was passage in 1934 of the Indian Reor-
ganization Act, the heart of the Indian New Deal. The American Indian
Defense Association consistently supported Collier and the Indian New
Deal, although the association was frequently critical of its application.
In 1936, the American Indian Defense Association merged with the Na-
tional Association on Indian Affairs, becoming the Association on Ameri-
can Indian Affairs (AAIA). By the 1990’s, the AAIA was headquartered in
New York City. There it maintained a staff of employees and had thousands
of members nationwide with an annual operating budget of more than $1
million. The AAIA provided legal and technical assistance in health, edu-
cation, economic development, the administration of justice, and resource
utilization to United States tribes. In addition, the AAIA maintained the
American Indian Fund, published the newsletter Indian Affairs, and occa-
sionally published books.
See also: Indian New Deal; Indian Reorganization Act.
Mary E. Virginia
American Indian Higher Education

Consortium
Locale: United States and Canada
24 / American Indian Higher Education Consortium
Categories: Education, Organizations, Twentieth century history

Significance: The American Indian Higher Education Consortium pro-
motes tribally controlled colleges and monitors state and federal leg-
islation affecting Indian higher education.
The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) was formed

by six tribal college leaders in 1972 to protect the interests of tribally con-
trolled colleges in the United States and Canada. The overall goal of the or-
ganization is to ensure survival of tribal colleges, maintain Indian control
of the colleges, and secure an adequate funding base. The consortium pro-
motes culturally meaningful training for college administrators and teach-
ers working in the tribal colleges; it promotes and encourages the preserva-
tion and teaching of American Indian, Inuit, and Alaska Native languages,
cultures, and traditions; and it encourages programs that are consistent
with the inherent rights of tribal sovereignty and self-determination.
AIHEC came about at a time when Indian people were identifying com-
mon goals and establishing issue-oriented organizations that promoted
sovereignty and represented both tribal and pantribal needs. Because of
the complex issues connected with the implementation of the Tribally Con-
trolled Community College Act of 1978, AIHEC has become a vital force in
monitoring political and legislative issues connected with American In-
dian higher education at the state and federal levels. AIHEC also functions
as a national forum to promote Indian higher education and recognition of
the tribal college movement.
AIHEC provides considerable support to the tribal college infrastruc-
ture and sponsors annual conferences at which administrators, faculty, and
students from the various colleges meet to participate in training work-
shops, seminars, and a variety of intercollegiate activities. AIHEC also
publishes Tribal College: Journal of the American Indian Higher Education Con-
sortium, which focuses on issues of Indian higher education and provides a
forum to address Indian research issues. In an effort to raise money and es-
tablish endowments, AIHEC created and oversees the American Indian
College Fund, intended to promote personal, corporate, and foundation
gift-giving to support the tribal college movement. Through the various ac-
tivities of AIHEC, the Indian tribal colleges are connected by a national or-
ganization that promotes their well-being while respecting their inherent
sovereignty.
See also: Carlisle Indian School; Indian Education Acts; Indian Self-
Determination and Education Assistance Act; Kennedy Report; National
Congress of American Indians.
Carole A. Barrett
American Indian Movement / 25
American Indian Movement

Categories: Organizations, Protest movements, National government
and legislation, Native government, Twentieth century history
Significance: Creates public awareness of injustices to Indians; strug-
gles for American Indian treaty rights; encourages self-determination
among native peoples.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded by Chippewas Dennis

Banks and George Mitchell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during July, 1968.
Taking its initial ideas from the Black Panther Party, AIM sought to protect
urban Indians from police abuse and to create programs promoting com-
munity self-sufficiency. Inspired by the 1969 takeover of Alcatraz Island,
however, the movement adopted an agenda centered on indigenous spiri-
tual traditions, land recovery, and treaty rights.
AIM’s credibility in “Indian country” was truly established in early
1972, when Russell Means led a large caravan to tiny Gordon, Nebraska,
protesting the fact that two local whites who had brutally murdered an
Oglala Lakota from the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation were charged only
with manslaughter. As a result, the culprits became the first white men in
Nebraska history to be imprisoned for killing an Indian.
In November, 1972, AIM played a key role in a spectacular seizure of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. This was
followed, in January, 1973, by a major confrontation between AIM and po-
lice in the streets of Custer, South Dakota, which left the county courthouse
in flames (the issue again concerned official inaction after the murder of an
Oglala). In February, 1973, while supporting Lakota treaty rights, AIM un-
dertook a lengthy armed standoff with federal authorities at Wounded
Knee. Afterward, the Federal Bureau of Investigation mounted a grim cam-
paign of repression against “insurgents” on Pine Ridge.
Over the next three years, AIM’s leadership was largely tied up in what
one federal official admitted was “an effort to destroy these radicals via the
judicial process.” Meanwhile, more than sixty AIM members and support-
ers were murdered on the reservation, many of them by a federally spon-
sored entity calling itself “the Goon Squad,” and more than three hundred
others suffered serious physical assault.
On June 26, 1975, AIM’s efforts to defend itself led to a massive firefight
that left an Indian and two FBI agents dead. Three AIM members—Bob
26 / American Indian Movement
Robideau, Dino Butler, and Leon-

ard Peltier—were charged with
murdering the agents. Butler and
Robideau were acquitted by an
all-white jury after a U.S. Civil
Rights Commission representa-
tive testified that they had merely
responded to a government-in-
duced “reign of terror” on Pine
Ridge. Peltier, however, was con-
victed and sentenced to a double
life term in a controversial pro-
cess that a federal appellate court
later described as “fraught with
FBI misconduct.”
By 1977, AIM had entered an
extended period of relative dor-
mancy, although it did go on to
organize or participate in such
events as the 1978 Longest Walk,
the 1980 Black Hills Survival
Poster urging support for the American In- Gathering, the Yellow Thunder
dian Movement in New York City. (Library of Camp occupation of 1981-1985,
Congress)
and the anti-Columbus demon-
strations of the early 1990’s.
Although it may never reconstitute itself in a form exhibiting the power
it once displayed, some analysts believe that the movement had achieved
its major objectives by 1975. “AIM instilled a deep sense of pride and resis-
tance to oppression among Indians which was greatly lacking at the time,”
Vine Deloria, Jr., observed, “and for that we owe it a real debt.” Lakota tra-
ditionalist Birgil Kills Straight concurs: “Whatever else may be said,” he
maintains, “AIM acted as the shock troops of Indian sovereignty at a time
when we needed them most.”
See also: Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings.
Ward Churchill

Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret
Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.
Boston: South End Press, 1988.
American Indian Policy Review Commission / 27
Deloria, Vine, Jr. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of
Independence. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
Johansen, Bruce, and Roberto Maestas. Wasi’chu: The Continuing Indian
Wars. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
Matthiessen, Peter. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. 2d ed. New York: Viking
Press, 1991.
Smith, Paul Chaat, and Robert Allen Warrior. Like a Hurricane: The American
Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. New York: New Press,
1997.
Weyler, Rex. Blood of the Land: The U.S. Government and Corporate War Against
the First Nations. 2d ed. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992.
American Indian Policy Review

Commission
history
Significance: This federal commission, after two years of study, pub-
lished an extensive report calling for major reforms of U.S. Indian
policy.
The American Indian Policy Review Commission (AIPRC) was established

in 1975 as a follow-up to the Indian Self-Determination and Education As-
sistance Act, passed in the same year. The commission was chaired by Sen-
ator James Abourezk of South Dakota (it is sometimes referred to as the
Abourezk Commission). The commission’s findings were published in
1977 in its multivolume report. The report opposed assimilationist policies
and recommended continuing the 1968 initiative for the establishment of
permanent government units in the federal system to protect and strengthen
tribal governments.
Among the factors that led to the establishment of the commission was
the activism and unrest sweeping American Indian communities in the early
1970’s. According to Vine Deloria, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle, the 1973 occu-
pation of Wounded Knee in particular was a catalytic event in the decision
to create a new commission to reexamine the government’s Indian policy.
28 / American Indian Policy Review Commission
The AIPRC included Indian representatives in various positions; they

were selected according to partisan tribal politics of the time. Indians
dominated the staff; a significant number of contracted consultants were
also native individuals. In addition to there being five Indian commis-
sioners and thirty-one (out of a total of thirty-three) Indian task force
members, the commission included six members of Congress. Inevita-
bly, complicated political dynamics plagued the commission behind the
scenes.
The final report of the AIPRC generally followed the line of Indian
militants who had previously been excluded from positions on commis-
sions and task forces. The extensive document listed more than two hun-
dred recommendations. It claimed that the relationship between American
Indian tribes and the United States was political and was established via
treaties, according to international law. The commission recommended
that two fundamental concepts should guide all future federal policy: First,
Indian tribes are sovereign political bodies having the power to enact laws
and enforce them within reservation boundaries; second, the relationship
between the tribes and the United States “is premised on a special trust that
must govern the conduct of the stronger toward the weaker.” The AIPRC
report also stated that the right to choose a form of government is an inher-
ent right of any Indian tribe.
No actual social reform directed toward improving the lot of American
Indians took place following publication of the AIPRC report. Moreover,
Congress soon afterward abolished the standing Indian Affairs Subcom-
mittees that operated under the Department of the Interior. Eventually a
Senate Select Subcommittee on Indian Affairs was authorized by Congress
to sort out the many AIPRC recommendations.
The commission was not without criticism from both ends of the politi-
cal spectrum. Some (including the commission’s vice chair, Representative
Lloyd Meems) criticized it for going too far. Others have argued that,
although the commission had good intentions in its promotion of self-
determination, its recommendations in reality represented a continuation
of the paternalistic relationship between the U.S. government and the
tribes.
See also: Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act;
Wounded Knee occupation.
M. A. Jaimes

American Indian Policy Review Commission Task Force. Report. Washing-
ton, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977.
American Indian Religious Freedom Act / 29
Clarkin, Thomas. Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Adminis-
trations, 1961-1969. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., ed. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.
____________. The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian
Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Robbins, Rebecca L. “Self-Determination and Subordination: The Past,
Present, and Future of American Indian Governance.” In The State of Na-
tive America, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston: South End Press, 1992.
American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Date: August 11, 1978
Categories: Civil rights, National government and legislation, Religion
and missionary activities, Twentieth century history
Significance: The U.S. Congress recognizes its obligation “to protect
and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to
believe, express, and exercise traditional religions.”
Throughout most of U.S. history, the federal government has discouraged

and abridged the free exercise of traditional American Indian religions.
The federal government provided direct and indirect support to a vari-
ety of Christian denominations who sought to Christianize and “civilize”
American Indians. In 1883, bowing to pressure from Christian churches,
the federal government forbade “the savage and barbarous practices that
are calculated to continue [American Indians] in savagery, no matter what
exterior influences are brought to bear on them.” The Sun Dance, rites
of purification, other religious ceremonies, and the practices of medicine
men were forbidden. Violators could be prosecuted and receive ten days
in jail if they continued their “heathenish practices.” Such a law restrict-
ing freedom of religion was possible because tribes were regarded as
distinct political units separate and apart from the United States, and
so were not covered by the protections of the Constitution or the Bill of
Rights.
30 / American Indian Religious Freedom Act
In the 1920’s, there was a crusade for reform in federal American Indian
policy, and there were outspoken concerns for the support of freedom of reli-
gion for American Indian peoples. In 1933, John Collier was appointed Com-
missioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt. On January 31, 1934,
he circulated a pamphlet entitled Indian Religious Freedom and Indian Culture
among employees of the Indian Service. This pamphlet, which stressed that
“the fullest constitutional liberty, in all matters affecting religion, conscience,
and culture” should be extended to all American Indians, established poli-
cies for Indian Service employees to follow. Collier directed unequivocally,
“No interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression will
hereafter be tolerated. The cultural liberty of Indians in all respects is to be
considered equal to that of any non-Indian group.” Two weeks later, Collier
issued a second order, which dealt with religious services at government-
operated schools. It had been common practice to require students in gov-
ernment schools to attend church services. This new policy statement,
“Regulations for Religious Worship and Instruction,” prohibited compul-
sory attendance at services, although it did allow religious denominations
to use school facilities for services. Religious instruction was permitted one
hour per week in the day schools; however, parents had to give written per-
mission for their children to attend. This policy was especially controver-
sial, because these regulations extended to representatives of native reli-
gions as well as to Christian missionaries.
These policy statements were not well received by missionaries who
had been active on various reservations, and many regarded Collier’s
move to protect American Indian religious freedoms as a direct attack on
the churches and Christianity. Collier was accused of being an atheist and
of being antireligious. Criticism of Collier was especially strong among
Protestant missionary societies and included attacks from Christian Indi-
ans who decried this return to the old ways as subverting American Indian
progress. Nevertheless, Collier insisted that American Indians be granted
complete constitutional liberty in all matters affecting religion, conscience,
and culture, and he asserted that religious liberty extended to all people,
not just Christians.
Native Religious Freedom. Most tribal governments endorsed Collier’s

policy of religious freedom, and, on many reservations, there was a revival
of the older spiritual traditions. However, federal and state laws have not
endorsed or permitted freedom of religion for American Indians consis-
tently. Certain state and federal laws and policies prevented the free exer-
cise of religion for many American Indian people. A large area of concern
was that many areas that were considered to be sacred lands by the tribes
American Indian Religious Freedom Act / 31
had passed from Indian control to state or federal jurisdiction. Access to

such sacred sites often was limited or not permitted. The use of peyote in
Native American Church ceremonies was a contentious issue because pey-
ote is a restricted substance due to its hallucinogenic properties. The use of
eagle feathers in a variety of rituals was another source of friction with fed-
eral officials, because eagles were protected under endangered species
laws. There also have been occasions of interference in religious ceremo-
nies by government agents and curious onlookers. American Indian peo-
ple had little recourse to remedy these situations, and tribal governments
had no powers of prosecution or enforcement.
As a result of continuing problems with the free exercise of traditional
American Indian religions, Congress passed a broad policy statement, Sen-
ate Joint Resolution 102, commonly known as the American Indian Reli-
gious Freedom Act (AIRFA), on August 11, 1978. After noting the U.S. right
to freedom of religion and the inconsistent extension of that right to Ameri-
can Indian people, Congress acknowledged its obligation to “protect and
preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe,
express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Es-
kimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian, including but not limited to access to
sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship
through ceremonial and traditional rites.” AIRFA also required all federal
agencies to examine their regulations and practices for any inherent con-
flict with the practice of American Indian religions. These agencies were re-
quired to report back to Congress and recommend areas in which changes
in policies and procedures were needed to ensure that American Indian re-
ligious freedoms were protected.
The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is a key element in self-
determination and cultural freedom in the United States. However, even
with passage of this act, Native Americans have continued to experience
problems in access to sacred sites and the use of peyote. The right of Native
Americans to use peyote is an unsettled issue in both federal and state
courts. Although peyote is subject to control under the Federal Compre-
hensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, a number of states ex-
empt its use in Native American Church ceremonies. Some courts uphold
the right of Native Americans who are church members to possess and use
peyote; other courts do not. Likewise, American Indians are not guaran-
teed access to sacred sites that are located outside the bounds of Indian
lands, even when these lands are under federal control.
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that AIRFA is a policy state-
ment only, and it does now allow American Indians to sue when federal
agencies disregard native religious practices or when agencies pursue plans
32 / American Indian Religious Freedom Act
that will have an adverse impact on Native American religion or beliefs. In

1987, in Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, the United
States was granted the right to build a logging road through federal lands
that were central to the traditional religions of the Yurok, Karuk, and
Talowac tribes. In 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Employ-
ment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon et al. v. Smith, that the
state of Oregon could prohibit a member of the Native American Church
from using peyote, because that state regarded peyote as an illegal sub-
stance. These Supreme Court decisions make clear that if federal or state
agencies fail to comply with the policies established in AIRFA, American In-
dian people have no legal recourse to sue or claim adverse impact on their
religion. The extension of full religious freedom to Native American people
is an evolving concept in U.S. jurisprudence, and the American Indian Reli-
gious Freedom Act constitutes an important philosophical foundation to-
ward ensuring the free exercise of religion and access to sacred areas.
See also: Carlisle Indian School; Employment Division, Dept. of Human
Resources of the State of Oregon et al. v. Smith; Lyng v. Northwest Indian Ceme-
tery Protective Association; National Council of American Indians; Native
American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council; Society of American Indians.
Carole A. Barrett

man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. These essays interpret Ameri-
can Indian policy through important legal decisions. One essay explores
AIRFA and its ineffectiveness in protecting access to sacred sites.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford Lytle. The Nations Within: The Past and Future
of American Indian Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. A thor-
ough examination of the Collier years and their impact on later Ameri-
can Indian poetry.
Echo-Hawk, Walter E. “Loopholes in Religious Liberty. The Need for a Fed-
eral Law to Protect Freedom of Worship for Native American People.”
NARF Legal Review 14 (Summer, 1991): 7-14. An important analysis of
what AIRFA should provide in the way of legal protection of religious
freedoms for American Indian peoples.
Josephy, Alvin M. Now That the Buffalo’s Gone: A Study of Today’s American
Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984. Contains a chap-
ter on American Indian efforts to retain their spirituality and provides
American Indian perspective on this issue.
Long, Carolyn N. Religious Freedom and Indian Rights: The Case of Oregon v.
Smith. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Part of the Land-
Amerind / 33
mark Law Cases and American Society series, this is the first book-
length study of Oregon v. Smith, focusing on the case’s sharp differences
from previous opinions on First Amendment freedom of religion rights.
Amerind
Date: 1970’s-present
Significance: The term “Amerind” is a neologism combining the words
“American” and “Indian.” It came into common usage during the
1970’s. A result of tribal activism meant to counter racism toward na-
tive peoples, this term was chosen as an alternative to “American In-
dian” and “Native American.”
The people to whom this term refers include members of any of the aborigi-
nal peoples of North America, Central America, South America, and the
West Indies. Europeans and European Americans have continually sought
to lump all the original inhabitants of the Americas into a convenient single
group. “Amerind” represents an attempt to refer to native groups collec-
tively with a term that could be considered (to use a post-1970’s term) polit-
ically correct. Yet although the term may be descriptive and less inaccurate
than others, it falls short of the redefinition needed when referring to the
multitude of distinct original cultures of North America.
There are more than five hundred groups of indigenous peoples in the
United States alone, each with its own name for itself, and each with a
unique tribal specific cultural heritage and political legacy. Who a people
are can be defined only in terms of specific environment, language, cus-
toms, traditions, taboos, and so on. Until modern Americans recognize the
distinctive elements inherent in each indigenous community, any new
terms such as “Amerind” will be viewed by scholars as empty generaliza-
tions. Such terms, although convenient, are more a reflection of American
cultural bias than they are descriptive of the nature, quality, or diversity of
the original inhabitants of the Americas.
See also: American Indian; Federally recognized tribes; Indian; Native
American; Tribe.
Byron D. Cannon
34 / Apache Wars
Apache Wars
Date: February 6, 1861-September 4, 1886

Locale: Southwest
Tribes involved: Apache
Significance: The incursion of white settlers into the Southwest leads to
armed conflicts with indigenous Chiricahua Apaches.
After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, large por-
tions of northern Mexico were ceded to the United States. As a result of the
acquisition of these new lands, numerous white settlers began moving into
the newly formed Arizona and New Mexico territories. Much of this region
was the traditional range of various Apache groups, particularly numer-
ous bands of Chiricahua, Coyotero, and Mimbreño Apache. Many of these
groups practiced raiding, taking goods from others as an extension of their
traditional methods of subsistence. Raiding increased in frequency as more
white settlers moved into Apache territory.
In 1861, an Apache raiding party (thought to have been Coyotero Apache,
not Chiricahua) kidnaped a boy who had been a member of a group of
white settlers. The U.S. military reacted quickly by ordering Lieutenant
George Bascom to investigate the incident and, if necessary, to take action
against the “hostiles” that were thought to have committed the raid. On
February 6, 1861, Bascom, possibly as a result of an invitation to the Chi-
ricahua, persuaded Cochise, the principal chief of the eastern Chiricahua,
and some of his family and followers, to come in for a peace parley. During
the early stages of what has been termed the Bascom affair, Cochise, speak-
ing on behalf of the eastern Chiricahua, tried to convince Bascom that it
was not Chiricahua Apache who had conducted the raid. Bascom had
Cochise and several of the chief’s relatives arrested. Cochise later escaped.
Bascom, as an act of reprisal for the kidnaping and Cochise’s escape, or-
dered the execution of the chief’s relatives.
Although conflicts between white settlers and Apache groups had oc-
curred before 1861, this incident is generally viewed by historians as the
starting point of what has come to be called the Apache Wars. Numerous
armed conflicts involving various Apache groups occurred from 1861 to
1886 on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. For example, in retaliation
for the execution of his relatives, Cochise organized a surprise attack on the
Gidding party at Stein’s Peak near Doubtful Canyon. Cochise killed nine of
the settlers but lost sixty of his warriors in the attack. Numerous battles en-
Apache Wars / 35
sued in the years that followed. In July, 1862, Cochise and his father-in-law
Mangas Coloradus and other Chiricahuas were attacked by infantry under
the command of “Star Chief Carleton.” During the battle, Mangas Colo-
radus was wounded. Mangas Coloradus survived the wound, but in Janu-
ary, 1863, he was covertly executed and beheaded after he had attempted to
surrender and sue for peace with captain Edmond Shirland of the Califor-
nia Volunteers. This sentence was delivered without any official record of a
fair trial.
Post-Civil War Hostilities. In the year 1865, the Apache Wars reached
a pinnacle. With the end of the American Civil War the attention of
the United States military, along with the bulk of its forces, shifted west to
land traditionally occupied by Native American tribal groups. Action
taken against the Apache by
the Mexican military was also
increasing. In late winter of
1865, for example, Mexican
Federales from Sonora attacked
and killed thirty-nine Apaches.
Mexican forces, combined with
pressure exerted by U.S. mili-
tary forces in the American
Southwest, caused Cochise and
other Apache leaders to remain
constantly on the run. In 1866,
Cochise was driven by U.S.
forces into hiding in Mexico,
where he continued to harass
white settlers by periodically
crossing the border to conduct
surprise attacks. These skir-
mishes continued until Octo-
ber 10, 1872, when Cochise fi-
nally signed a truce with the
Americans at Cochise’s camp
in the Dragoon mountains in
For a decade, Geronimo, a Bedonkohe/Chiri- southern Arizona. Cochise died
cahua shaman from northern Mexico, fought
two years later.
white incursion into his people’s land until he
was finally captured and removed to Florida, Other Apache leaders, how-
shortly before this picture was taken. (National ever, refused to abide by the
Archives) truce of 1872 and continued
36 / Apache Wars
Apache leaders Geronimo and Nana meeting with General George Crook and his
men toward the end of the Apache Wars, probably in 1886. (Library of Congress)
their attacks on settler groups. Farther west, Geronimo, a Bedonkohe/

Chiricahua shaman from northern Mexico, was fighting his own wars
against both Mexican and U.S. forces. By 1861, the U.S. Army was firmly es-
tablished in southern Arizona. Forts Bowie and Apache had been built to
assist the army in protecting the increasing numbers of settlers who contin-
ued to enter the Arizona territory. In 1871, the Camp Grant Massacre de-
stroyed an entire Apache camp.
General Cook and Geronimo. In 1872, General George Cook, who had a
reputation among Washington politicians for decisiveness in his dealings
with Indian groups, took command of the Southwest operation. From 1872
until 1886 and his dismissal, Cook’s career was dominated by attempts to
keep Geronimo in check. In 1877, Geronimo, along with family members
and other Chiricahuas, was arrested by Cook’s men. Geronimo and his
people were subsequently resettled on the reservation at San Carlos. Some-
times referred to as “Hell’s Forty Acres,” San Carlos proved to be an inhos-
pitable environment lacking sufficient water and game for Apache sur-
vival. The army, in an attempt to conciliate the Apache, introduced corn
agriculture to the reservation. The Chiricahua were traditional hunters and
gatherers and attempts at agriculture, especially on arid reservation land,
Apache Wars / 37
soon failed. Four years later, many Apache—including Geronimo—fled

the reservation. From 1881 until his surrender at Skeleton Canyon in 1886,
Geronimo fought numerous battles with both U.S. and Mexican forces.
He also continued raiding white settlements. During this period of time
Geronimo surrendered several times to the U.S. military. Late in the year
1881, for example, Geronimo was recaptured by General Cook and taken to
Fort Apache. Geronimo and his followers were again taken to the reserva-
tion. Nothing had changed; the Apache could not make a sufficient living
on the reservation, so they eventually fled to Mexico.
In April, 1882, Geronimo returned to San Carlos and conducted a raid.
There he killed the chief of police and captured several Mimbreño Apache
(former followers of the Apache leader Victorio), whom Geronimo forced
to go back to Mexico with him. In May, 1883, Cook decided to pursue
Geronimo by taking several units of infantry and cavalry into Mexico.
On May 15, after several days of strenuous marching through Mexico’s
Sierra Madre, Cook attacked the camp of a group of Mimbreño Apache
headed by Apache Chief, Chato. Although the battle itself was indecisive,
it had become evident that the military was not going to give up its pur-
suit of Geronimo. In the days that followed the battle several chiefs of the
Mimbreño Apache, including Chato, Loco, and Nana, surrendered to Cook.
In March, 1884, Geronimo, by now a revered Apache leader, surrendered to
Cook. This surrender and the subsequent confinement on the reservation,
like the others, did not last. Geronimo fled and surrendered two more times.
Historians generally agree that Cook’s goal was to secure a lasting peace
with Geronimo and other Apaches. Cook’s inability to keep Geronimo un-
der the purview of the U.S. government, however, forced military and po-
litical leaders in Washington, D.C., to remove Cook from his command.
General Nelson Miles was sent to replace Cook. General Miles was not as
sympathetic to the plight of the Apache as had been General Cook. General
Miles immediately sent out a force of approximately five thousand soldiers
to seek out and capture Geronimo and his small band (estimated to be
about twenty-four in number). On September 4, 1886, Geronimo, along
with twenty-three members of his band of Chiricahuas (mostly women and
children), surrendered for the final time at Skeleton Canyon—about sixty-
five miles from Apache Pass, where the first skirmish of the Apache Wars
had been fought. After Geronimo’s surrender General Miles had all Chiri-
cahuas in the immediate vicinity arrested, including the scouts that had
been used by the army to track down Geronimo. Geronimo, his followers,
and the former Apache scouts were placed in rail cars and transported east
to a reservation in St. Augustine, Florida. With Geronimo’s surrender and
his removal to Florida, the Apache Wars ended.
38 / Articles of Agreement
See also: Adobe Walls, Battles of; Fort Atkinson Treaty; Gadsden Pur-
chase; Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Indian-white relations:
U.S., 1871-1933; Kickapoo uprisings; Long Walk; Medicine Lodge Creek
Treaty; Taos Rebellion.
Michael Shaw Findlay

Cole, D. C. The Chiricahua Apache, 1846-1876: From War to Reservation. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. A general history of Chi-
ricahua with special attention to cultural conflicts with Euro-Americans.
Griffen, William B. Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Details the emer-
gence of the Mexican presidio system and the subsequent relocation and
resettlement of various Apache groups in southern New Mexico, Ari-
zona, and northern Mexico.
____________. Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in
Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821-1848. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1989. Summarizes historical accounts of hostilities
between the Chiricahua Apache and Mexican military forces in North-
ern Mexico.
Kraft, Louis. Gatewood and Geronimo. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2000. Focuses on the events leading up to Geronimo’s sur-
render.
Skimin, Robert. Apache Autumn. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. A his-
torical novel that describes the Apache Wars.
Stockel, Henrietta H. Survival of the Spirit: Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity.
Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press. Describes the history of Chiri-
cahua captivity.
Articles of Agreement
Date: 1730
Locale: North America
Tribes involved: Cherokee
Categories: Colonial history, Treaties
Significance: Although not a major treaty between Indians and the En-
glish, the Articles of Agreement were unique in that they were engi-
neered by one man and that the Cherokees went to England to sign it.
Articles of Agreement / 39
During the late 1720’s, it became evident that stronger ties were needed be-
tween the English colonists and the Cherokee Nation. The increasing con-
flict between France and England over interests in North America necessi-
tated that each country have the loyalty of Indian tribes.
Colonel George Chicken, English commissioner of Indian Affairs, ob-
tained Cherokee loyalty. In 1728, when he left the Cherokee, several French
emissaries began working within the tribe. The French influence among
the Cherokees had become so great by 1730 that an alarmed English gov-
ernment dispatched Sir Alexander Cumming for the purpose of bringing
the tribe into sure alliance. Upon Cumming’s arrival in the province, a
council of the entire Cherokee Nation was called to meet at Keowee, and al-
legiance was sealed with the English. The Cherokees’ Nequasse crown, a
construction of opossum fur and feathers, and some scalps and feathers
were laid at Cumming’s feet along with a request that they be delivered
to the king of England. Six Cherokee chiefs were selected to accompany
Cumming to England. A seventh chief, plus Indian trader Eleazer “Old
Rabbit” Wiggins and an interpreter, joined them at the Port of Charleston
on May 13, 1730. They set sail, landing in Dover in June. The seven Indians
remained in England for three months, visiting all the important places
and inciting curiosity among the English. They were presented to King
George II on September 7 and gave him the crown and artifacts; each
signed the Articles of Agreement, a treaty of friendship and commerce.
The treaty consisted of a preamble of friendship and devotion along
with the following six provisions:
(1) The English and Cherokee shall live in peace and trade with each
other. The Indians and English may live wherever they please, but the En-
glish are forbidden to live near the Cherokee towns. (For that pledge the
Cherokees were given two pieces of white cloth, dyed red.)
(2) The Cherokee pledge to fight against any enemy of the English,
white or red. (For that pledge the Cherokees were given twenty guns.)
(3) The Cherokee pledge not to interfere with other Indians trading with
the English. (For that pledge the Cherokees were given four hundred
pounds of gunpowder.)
(4) The Cherokee will not be permitted to trade with any other white na-
tion nor allow any other nation to build forts or cabins, or even plant corn
near them. (For that pledge the Cherokees were given five hundred pounds
of shot and five hundred pounds of bullets.)
(5) The Cherokee will return any runaway “Negro slaves” to the En-
glish. For each returned slave, a reward of a gun and coat will be paid. (For
that pledge the Cherokees were given ten thousand gun flints and six
hatchets.)
40 / Bacon’s Rebellion
(6) The English government, through English law, is responsible for the
trial and punishment of an Englishman should he kill a Cherokee and a
Cherokee if he should kill an Englishman. (For that pledge, the Cherokees
were given twelve dozen spring knives, four brass kettles, and ten dozen
belts.)
The 1730 Articles of Agreement had little influence on the entire Chero-
kee tribe. It was signed by only seven of their chiefs; to be binding on the
entire tribe it needed the signatures of all chiefs. The seven chiefs returned
to their people and told of the greatness and splendor of England, contrast-
ing it to the primitiveness and struggles of the Cherokee people. As a result
of this visit and treaty, the English acquired five years of allegiance from
the Cherokee people.
See also: Cherokee legal cases; Cherokee Phoenix; Cherokee Tobacco case;
Cherokee War; Indian Removal Act; Indian-white relations: English colo-
nial; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian Removal Act; Trail of
Tears; Yamasee War.
David N. Mielke
Bacon’s Rebellion
Date: May 10-October 18, 1676
Locale: Eastern Virginia
Tribes involved: Doeg, Pamunkey, Susquehannock
Significance: Colonial planters rise up against both Virginia’s governor
and Native Americans, causing destruction and death.
Instability was inherent in the rapid growth of the English population in

Virginia after 1640. Competition for political power and social position in-
creased after 1660, as the earlier settlers entrenched themselves in local po-
litical offices. Land hunger was also a problem: Since the end of the second
Powhatan War in 1646, the Powhatans had held the land north of the York
River, which had the effect of hemming in English expansion. Landowner-
ship was a requirement for the vote as well as the key to personal fortune.
Later settlers, many of whom had come to Virginia as indentured servants,
found high land prices and limited opportunities, and they began to view
the land held by the Powhatans as the answer to their problem. At the same
time, the return of the Susquehannocks to the northern Chesapeake area
Bacon’s Rebellion / 41
meant the extension of their war with the Iroquois into that area. That Euro-
pean settlers would be caught in the crossfire of this war was inevitable,
and also helped fuel frustrations.
A prosperous economy might have counteracted unstable political and
social conditions, but Virginia’s economy stagnated after 1660. Chronic
overproduction of an inferior quality of tobacco, aggravated by restrictive
features of the Navigation Acts, drove the price of tobacco down. Expen-
sive experimentation with methods of diversifying the economy and the
need for defense measures against the Dutch and the natives resulted in
high taxes. In 1674, the colonists were further taxed to send agents to Lon-
don to lobby against proprietary land grants. Circumstances conspired to
exacerbate the planters’ miseries, and Governor Sir William Berkeley’s in-
effectual leadership led to a general disaffection toward the government.
Berkeley’s own comfortable circumstances, derived in part from a profit-
able monopoly in the fur trade with local tribes, seemed to prove his indif-
ference to the planters’ troubles.
The events immediately leading to the rebellion grew out of a dispute
between a planter and members of the Doeg tribe in June, 1675. After forces
of Virginians pursuing the Doegs murdered numbers of friendly Susque-
hannocks on two separate occasions, the natives increased the intensity
of their raids throughout the fall and winter. Governor Berkeley angered
the planters in the frontier settlements when he countermanded the order
for a force to proceed against the marauding warriors. In keeping with
Berkeley’s overall American Indian policy, the Assembly committed the
colony to a defensive war, and the governor ordered the erection of a chain
of forts on the frontier. Berkeley’s solution was no solution in the planters’
view, as the forts would add to the burden of taxation and hemmed in fur-
ther settlement. The settlers’ worst fears about Berkeley had been con-
firmed.
The Planters’ Uprising. In April, an impatient group of upcountry planters

persuaded one of their number, Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., to lead a band of vol-
unteers against the natives. What followed on May 10 was a war of exter-
mination, in which Native Americans of all tribes, friendly or hostile, were
killed. Bacon, the son of an English gentleman and related to Berkeley
through marriage, had not arrived in Virginia until 1674, but he had al-
ready been appointed to the Council of State. Governor Berkeley refused
Bacon’s request for a commission to raise volunteers and sent several let-
ters warning him against becoming a mutineer. Unable to head off Bacon
with his force of three hundred men, Berkeley, on May 26, 1676, declared
him a rebel. On the same day, the governor dissolved the Long Assembly
42 / Bacon’s Rebellion
and called for the first general elections in fifteen years, promising that the
new Assembly would deal with the American Indian threat and any other
grievances.
Bacon’s success in killing some natives prompted the residents of Hen-
rico County to send him to Jamestown as one of their new burgesses, but
the governor ordered his capture before he could take his seat. Bacon con-
fessed his error and received a pardon from the governor. Several days
later, he slipped off to Henrico.
The June Assembly met for twenty days and passed a series of acts deal-
ing with the prosecution of the war with the natives and with various local
problems, especially concerning the misuse of political power. Although
Bacon has often been credited with pushing through reform legislation, he
did not return to Jamestown until June 23, when the session was nearly
over. Arriving with five hundred armed men, he terrorized the governor
and the burgesses into granting him a commission to fight the natives.
As soon as Bacon marched toward the falls of the James River, Berkeley
again proclaimed him a rebel and tried to raise a force against him. Failing
in his attempt, Berkeley fled to the eastern shore, leaving Bacon in control
of the western shore. Upon arriving in Middle Plantation, Bacon issued a
manifesto, the Declaration of the People, that accused the governor of nu-
merous offenses against the colonists and called for his surrender. While
Bacon then proceeded to seek out and fall upon the friendly Pamunkey In-
dians, Berkeley returned to Jamestown and, having reached agreement
with Bacon’s garrison, took possession of the capital. Several days later, Ba-
con arrived with six hundred troops and besieged the town. The faintheart-
edness of Berkeley’s men forced the governor to concede the town. Bacon
burned it on September 19. A little more than a month later, the rebellion
fell apart at the news of Bacon’s sudden death of the “bloody flux” and
“lousey disease,” possibly dysentery.
On January 29, the royal commissioners John Berry, Francis Moryson,
and Herbert Jeffreys arrived from England, along with a thousand British
soldiers, to investigate the uprising and restore order. Berkeley nullified
the royal pardons that they brought for the rebels and ordered the execu-
tion of twenty-three men. His extreme cruelty was criticized by the com-
missioners, and Sir Herbert Jeffreys formally took over the government in
April upon Berkeley’s recall by the Crown. Although Bacon was dead, the
disorder and protest would not end until 1683, with the reconfiguring of
imperial government in Virginia.
See also: Indian slave trade; Metacom’s War; Powhatan Confederacy;
Powhatan Wars.
Warren M. Billings, updated by Kelley Graham
Bannock War / 43

Fausz, J. Frederick. “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest
Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake.”
In Colonial Chesapeake Society, edited by Lois Green Carr et al. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Details the changing En-
glish view of the Native Americans in the Chesapeake from “noble sav-
ages” to important trading partners.
Horn, James. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-
Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1994. A scholarly but lively study of the extent to which English colo-
nists in the Chesapeake were influenced by their homeland in their atti-
tudes about race, authority, and other matters.
Middlekauff, Robert. Bacon’s Rebellion. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964. A
good collection of the primary documents associated with the uprising,
beginning with Berkeley’s American Indian policy and concluding with
the official report submitted to London.
Tate, Thad W., and David L. Ammerman. The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth
Century: Essays on the Anglo-American Society. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1979. An essential collection of articles addressing
race relations, class structure, and the demographics of the seventeenth
century Chesapeake. Includes a historiographic discussion of Bacon’s
Rebellion.
Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Governor and the Rebel. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1957. A classic study of the small details of the
uprising; generous in its forgiveness of Governor Berkeley.
Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Places the rebellion in a
larger context, as a prerevolutionary condition, while providing a de-
tailed study of the events of 1676-1677.
Bannock War
Date: 1878
Locale: Idaho and Oregon
Tribes involved: Bannock, Paiute, Sheepeater, Umatilla
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Reservations and relocation,
Wars and battles
44 / Bannock War
Significance: The Bannock War ended a series of resistance efforts by

the northern mountain tribes of the Idaho/Oregon/Wyoming area
and resulted in permanent relocation to reservations.
The Bannocks, a northern mountain branch of the Paiute language group,

originally occupied the mountain areas of southern Idaho and north-
western Wyoming. In the 1850’s they had accepted treaties that limited
their area to southern Idaho. During the 1850’s, raids by Bannock, Sho-
shone, Paiute, and others occurred often along the trails to Oregon and
California. By the 1860 Pyramid Lake and 1863 Bear Paw campaigns and
the victories of George Crook in the Snake War of 1866-1868, European
Americans were in control of the area and the Bannock had peacefully be-
gun drawing meager rations that amounted to two and a half cents per per-
son per day. They supplemented this with their traditional hunting and
gathering.
The 1877 escape attempt by their northern neighbors, the Nez Perce,
caused considerable upset among the Bannock, but they did not join the
resistance that year. The immediate cause of the Bannock War of 1878 was
the issue of digging camas roots on the Camas Prairie, located about 90
miles southeast of Fort Boise. The right to dig camas roots had been guaran-
teed by earlier treaties, but hogs owned by white settlers were now eating
many of the roots. In May, a Bannock wounded two whites, an event that
led to the creation of a two-hundred-man war party under Buffalo Horn.
This unit was defeated by Idaho volunteers, and Buffalo Horn was killed
in June. The warriors moved to southeastern Oregon and joined Paiute
from the Malheur Agency under the leadership of Chief Egan and medi-
cine man Oyte. The regular army units from Fort Boise were mobilized
under General Oliver O. Howard. A chase through southern Idaho and
eastern Oregon ended with the defeat of the Indians at Birch Creek, Ore-
gon, on July 8, 1878. Some of the Indians escaped to the Umatilla Agency
near Pendleton, Oregon, where Chief Egan was killed by the Umatillas,
and the rebels were betrayed and captured. Another smaller group of Ban-
nock had escaped and were captured east of Yellowstone Park in Septem-
ber, 1878.
A subsidiary war developed with the smaller Sheepeater group in the
extremely rugged Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho. The fifty war-
riors eluded the cavalry under Captain Reuben Bernard and defeated an-
other unit under Lieutenant Henry Catley, but persistent tracking forced
their surrender in October, 1878.
The Paiute reservation at Malheur in southeastern Oregon was ter-
minated and the Paiute prisoners were placed on the Yakima reservation
Bear River Campaign / 45
in central Washington. The Bannock were held at various military posts for
a time and then returned to their reservation on the Snake River in south-
ern Idaho, where the Sheepeaters soon joined them. Except for some out-
breaks by the Ute to the south, this ended the northern mountain Indian
wars.
See also: Bear River Campaign; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933;
National Indian Association; Nez Perce War; Snake War.
Fred S. Rolater
Bear River Campaign

Date: 1863
Locale: Idaho
Tribes involved: Bannock, Shoshone
Significance: Like the Sand Creek Massacre, the Bear River Campaign
exemplified the antagonistic nature of military leadership when state
militias replaced federal troops in the West during the Civil War.
At the beginning of the Civil War (1861-1865), some 2,500 federal troops
under General Albert Sydney Johnston left Utah to fight in the East. Utah
Territory, like the West in general at the time, was placed militarily under a
volunteer state militia. The regarrisoning of Utah fell to the volatile Califor-
nia businessman and former Mexican-American War veteran Colonel Pat-
rick Edward Connor. Connor organized his California volunteers, number-
ing about a thousand, and marched them to Salt Lake City in 1862 to
assume the task of policing the Overland Mail Route across Utah. Connor
held even more contempt for American Indians than he did for the Mor-
mons, and both experienced his fiery temper and decisive, vicious action.
At one time Connor had a number of Indians hanged or shot, leaving their
bodies exposed as an example.
At the time, the Shoshone and Bannock held a somewhat amicable rela-
tionship with the Mormon settlers, but occasionally they committed depre-
dations on the Oregon and California trails as well as on the mail and tele-
graph routes—enough to cause Connor to muster his energies against them.
Connor dispersed his forces throughout the region in an attempt to control
the Indians, yet reports of belligerent activity continued. Incensed, Connor
determined to deliver a decisive blow to the Shoshone and Bannock.
46 / Beaver Wars
In the dead of winter, he marched a detachment of three hundred men,

mostly cavalry, northward from Salt Lake City to attack the village of Sho-
shone leader Bear Hunter on the Bear River near Preston, Idaho. At day-
break on January 27, 1863, the Shoshone were in wait as Connor pressed his
attack. About two-thirds of Connor’s men forded the ice-choked Bear
River and commenced a frontal assault on the village, but they met heavy
resistance. Connor sent detachments to flank the village, thus trapping the
Indians in the large ravine where they were wintering. As troops sealed off
any escape routes, others swept over the rims of the ravine, pouring a mur-
derous volley into the encampment. The Shoshone fought back desper-
ately, having no alternative. Most were slain defending their positions.
Others, who attempted to escape, were shot trying to swim the icy river. By
mid-morning the fight was over.
Connor’s troops counted 224 bodies, including that of Bear Hunter,
though the death toll was higher. The troopers destroyed the village (sev-
enty lodges), seized 175 ponies, and captured more than 150 women and
children, who were then left in the razed village with a small store of food.
Connor’s losses were only 14 dead, 53 wounded, and 75 with frostbite.
Connor’s attack upon the village gained him the War Department’s praise
as well as quick promotion to brigadier general. Today the Bear River Cam-
paign is perceived in much the same light as the Sand Creek Massacre: as
an act of pointless, excessive bloodshed.
See also: Bannock War; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Na-
tional Indian Association; Nez Perce War; Snake War.
S. Matthew Despain
Beaver Wars
Date: 1642-1685
Locale: Northeastern woodlands, from the Hudson River west to the
Great Lakes and from the Ohio River north to Ontario
Tribes involved: Huron, Iroquois Confederacy
Significance: The Iroquois Five Nations challenge the French-Huron
trade monopoly, leading to large-scale intertribal warfare.
During the seventeenth century, the principal mode of subsistence for the
Iroquois changed from farming to trapping. After the Iroquois had traded
Beaver Wars / 47
successfully with the Dutch for several decades, a seemingly insatiable de-
mand for furs to make fashionable top hats for European gentlemen had
depleted the Iroquois’ source of beaver pelts. Meanwhile, the French had
become allies with the Algonquians and Hurons to the north, establishing a
lucrative monopoly on the fur trade in the upper Great Lakes. Acting as
middlemen, the Hurons bought huge quantities of furs from the Ottawa,
then sold them to the French. Seeking an expedient solution to the problem
of a diminishing supply of furs, the Iroquois began attacking Huron vil-
lages and intercepting and confiscating fur shipments along trade routes,
provoking a series of conflicts known as the Beaver Wars.
The name “Iroquois” refers both to the members of the Iroquois Confed-
eracy, or League of Five Nations (Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas,
and Mohawks), and to their language. Consolidation of the league in 1570
(although it had existed informally for several decades before that) helped
end centuries of warring among these neighboring tribes and protected
them from attacks by surrounding tribes. Although known throughout the
woodlands as fierce warriors, the Iroquois had met European advances
into their territory peacefully and created profitable alliances, such as their
trade agreement with the Dutch at Albany.
In 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain established Quebec at a
deserted Iroquois site on the St. Lawrence River. In the area, the Huron
Confederacy of four tribes and their Algonquian allies began a trade agree-
ment with the French that was coveted by the Iroquois. This rivalry in-
creased long-existing hostility between Hurons and Iroquois.
In July, 1609, Champlain, two soldiers, and sixty Algonquians and Hu-
rons followed a war party of two hundred Mohawks along what is now
called Lake Champlain. In the traditional manner, both sides agreed to en-
gage in battle in the morning. Iroquois warriors preferred close-in fighting
with wooden clubs and leather shields, and were accustomed to using
bows and arrows only for ambushes. As the battle began, both sides ad-
vanced, but the French remained hidden among the Hurons. Advancing
closely, the French fired their guns, killing two Mohawk chiefs instantly
and mortally wounding the third. Many Mohawks died and a dozen cap-
tives were taken, one of whom was tortured during the victory celebration.
This dramatic battle was the Iroquois’ first encounter with Europeans and
their dreadful weapons. Their humiliation left the Iroquois with a fierce ha-
tred of the French. A few weeks later, Henry Hudson arrived at Albany to
initiate the Dutch fur trade, which eventually brought guns to the Iroquois.
Wars of Attrition. In the next three decades, the Hurons and Iroquois lost
many warriors in battle. The Jesuit priests who brought Christianity to
48 / Beaver Wars
Quebec also brought European diseases. By 1640, through warfare and

epidemics, only ten thousand Hurons remained, less than half of their
previous number. However, they retained their alliance with the French.
Iroquois offers of peace with the Hurons were dissuaded by the French.
In 1640, five hundred Iroquois approached a French village to negotiate
for peace and trade a French captive for guns. When French offers were
not acceptable, the council disbanded and the Iroquois began planning
for war.
Early Iroquois warfare was guerrilla-style fighting by small bands, so
the beginning date of the Beaver Wars is difficult to determine, but an at-
tack by a Seneca war party on the Huron village of Arendaronon in 1642 is
marked as the first event. Iroquois also raided the Algonquian village of
Chief Iroquet on the Ottawa River, capturing and later releasing Father
Isaac Jogues.
In 1645, the French bargained for peace, using Iroquois captives. The Ir-
oquois wanted to share the middleman role with the Hurons and continue
trading with the Dutch. At the council, the great Mohawk orator Kiotsae-
ton appealed to the French, Hurons, and Algonquians, presenting fifteen
wampum belts. He translated the symbolic messages coded in the shell
beads. After the council, Father Jogues and Father Paul Le Junne continued
to support the peace effort.
Months later, some Mohawks reported to Huron chief Tandihetsi about
secrecy and intrigue involving the possible exclusion of the Algonquians.
The chief had a wife and many relatives among the Algonquians. Finally, a
trade-related treaty was made, honored for a time, then broken when a
huge shipment of furs passed down the Ottawa River and the Iroquois
were given no share. In retaliation, the popular Father Jogues was killed
when he returned to visit a Mohawk village.
European presence in North America affected Iroquois social and cul-
tural systems that had provided earlier stability. Ecological balance was
upset by the high demand for beaver pelts; economic balance, by the shift
from farming to trapping; and political balance, by rivalries among tribes.
The Iroquois had become dependent upon the Dutch for food, metal tools,
weapons, and ammunition. Since the primary commodity was beaver pelts
and the agreement had been broken, the Iroquois began attacking Huron
villages and intercepting travel along their trade routes, confiscating whole
shipments of pelts. In times of warfare, one gun was well worth the price of
twenty beaver pelts.
Huron Defeat. By March, 1649, the Iroquois had declared open warfare,
and a thousand Iroquois set out for the Huron homeland. The starving Hu-
Beaver Wars / 49
rons, fearing annihilation, burned their villages and escaped into the woods,
some to a Jesuit encampment, others divided into clan groups. Eventually,
several thousand Hurons were adopted into the five Iroquois tribes. By late
1649, the Iroquois had defeated the Tobaccos; from 1650 to 1656, they
warred against the Neutrals on the Niagara peninsula and the Eries on
southern Lake Erie, devastating them and taking over their hunting territo-
ries. They successfully maintained trade with the Dutch under Governor
Peter Stuyvesant.
By 1654, the Ottawas had taken over the Hurons’ position as middlemen
for the French. When the Iroquois attempted to displace them, the Ottawas
moved westward to the Straits of Mackinac. For the next thirty years, they
supplied two-thirds of the furs sent to France. By 1670, the Iroquois con-
trolled the woodland territory surrounding the eastern Great Lakes, while
the French claimed Lakes Huron and Superior.
In 1680, several hundred Iroquois invaded the territory of the Illinois
and Miami tribes. In 1684, an unsuccessful attempt to take Fort St. Louis
from Illinois marked the end of the nearly century-long Iroquois campaign
to overturn the French-Huron trade monopoly.
During the Beaver Wars, the Iroquois had established a political agree-
ment with the English through Governor Edmond Andros. This Cove-
nant Chain was forged for two purposes: safe access to Albany for Iroquois
traders and easy entry into the natives’ affairs for the English. By 1685,
the League of Five Nations had been consolidated to deal with external af-
fairs.
Leagues, alliances, treaties, covenants, and confederacies all worked
against the Europeans’ establishing a niche in the New World. The powers
of France and England had been balanced almost equally for many years,
but long-held Iroquois hostility turned the scale against the French, and
their magnificent schemes of colonization in the northern part of America
were lost. Had it not been for the determination of the Iroquois, the official
language throughout North America might have been French.
See also: Fur trade; Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-
white relations: French colonial; Iroquois Confederacy.
Gale M. Thompson

Brandao, Jose. Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Policy Toward New
France and its Allies to 1701. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Offers a revisionist stance toward the Beaver Wars, arguing that the Iro-
quois were more interested in taking captives to replenish their disease-
ravaged populations than in obtaining beaver skins for trade.
50 / Bering Strait migrations
Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michi-

gan’s Native Americans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.
A multiethnic, regional approach to the history of the Ojibwa, Ot-
tawa, and Potawatomi, from precontact to the late twentieth century.
Maps, photographs, biographical sketches, chapter notes, bibliography,
index.
Grinde, Donald A., Jr. The Iroquois and the Founding of the American Nation.
San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1977. Provides cultural and his-
torical background; discusses Iroquois relationships with colonists be-
fore and after the American Revolution. Photographs, maps, illustra-
tions, references, sources. Constitution of the Five Nations and Albany
Plan of Union are included as appendices.
Harvey, Karen D., and Lisa D. Harjo. Indian Country: A History of Native Peo-
ple in America. Golden, Colo.: North American Press, 1994. Written and
illustrated by American Indians. Presents ten culture areas, historical
perspectives, contemporary issues, major ceremonies, and time lines
from 50,000 b.c.e. to the twentieth century. Summaries, lesson plans, re-
sources, and index; appendices include “Threats to Religious Freedom,”
the text of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and a list of Indian activist or-
ganizations and events.
Steele, Ian K. Warpaths: Invasions of North America. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1994. Discusses American Indian-European warfare in
eastern North America, from the defeat of Juan Ponce de León (1513) to
negotiated peace with the British (1765); combines social and military
history for a balanced perspective. Maps, illustrations, extensive chap-
ter notes, index.
Bering Strait migrations

Date: Beginning c. 10,000 b.c.e.
Locale: Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indians
Categories: Pre-Columbian history
Significance: The first humans arrive in the Western Hemisphere.
About two million years ago, for reasons not entirely understood, Earth’s
temperature began to fall. In the north, more snow fell in winter than
Bering Strait migrations / 51
melted in summer, and great sheets of ice formed on the landmasses. These
glaciers went through a series of advances and retreats—sliding forward
under the influence of gravity and melting back under warmer climatic
conditions.
At the same time, a group of primates (monkeys, apes, and their rela-
tives) was evolving in Africa. The group of interest had already developed
the ability to walk on their hind limbs rather than on four feet, thus freeing
the forelimbs for functions other than locomotion. Climatic change had
initiated a drying trend in Africa, replacing rain forests with grasslands
and savannas. Several species of the two-legged primate group had suc-
cessfully invaded the grassland environment and spread throughout Af-
rica. Well into the ice age, late-developing species migrated north into
Europe and Asia, using tools, animal skins, and especially fire to cope
with the cold. Some members of one species, today called Homo sapiens (lit-
erally, “wise human”), eventually moved into frigid Siberian environ-
ments.
Eastern Siberia and western Alaska were not covered by glaciers,
even at the height of glacial advance. Although the climate in these
unglaciated regions was cold, a number of large mammal species (mam-
moths, mastodons, giant bison, and others) had invaded the northern en-
vironment ahead of the humans. The newcomers probably used many
food sources, but they became especially skilled at hunting the large ani-
mals.
Tremendous amounts of water were required to build the continental
glaciers. That water came primarily from the most abundant source of
water on the planet, the oceans. As a result, each advance and retreat of the
glaciers was accompanied by dramatic changes in sea level—the sea rose as
glaciers melted, and fell with each glacial advance. Today, only about fifty
miles of water separate Siberia from Alaska across the Bering Strait. The
Bering Strait is less than two hundred feet deep, and the adjacent parts of
the Chukchi and Bering seas are not much deeper. Because of this, a strip of
Bering Strait and adjacent sea floor one thousand miles wide became dry
land whenever extensive glaciation occurred. Along with adjacent parts of
Siberia and Alaska, this region is called Beringia. When the glaciers were in
full retreat, the Bering Strait reformed, splitting Beringia and placing a bar-
rier between the two continents.
The sea level rose and fell throughout glacial times, and the connection
between Alaska and Siberia was established and broken repeatedly. Vari-
ous land organisms crossed the bridge when it was available, but exchange
between the continents was blocked when it was inundated. Mammoths,
mastodons, camels, horses, and many other species of animals and plants
Bering Strait Migrations
SIBERIA
Bering Strait
Land Bridge
As early as 15,000 B.C.E., during a period when the huge ice sheet covering the top
half of North America had retreated, indigenous peoples from Siberia began to
make their way across a land bridge that today is the Bering Strait. Eventually,
traveling between glaciers, they reached eastern, central, and southern North
America and Mesoamerica.
Bering Strait migrations / 53
crossed throughout the ice age, but humans probably did not reach north-
eastern Siberia until the most recent glacial advance.
In North America, the last glacier (the Wisconsin) advanced until ap-
proximately sixty thousand years ago, at which time it began a retreat
called the “mid-Wisconsin interglacial.” Fewer than thirty thousand years
ago, it began its final advance (the late Wisconsin glaciation) followed by
its most recent retreat, which began eighteen thousand years ago. It was
during or after the mid-Wisconsin interglacial that humans from Siberia
made their way across Beringia into North America.
The Post-Glacial Period. This migration was not a directed, purposeful

movement to a new continent. It is unlikely that the first Americans had
any sense of their role in history or the nature of continents. The migration
probably was the simple result of growing populations expanding into
new regions, perhaps drawn by the presence of herds of the large mammals
they were so adept at hunting.
The populations continued to expand throughout Alaska and adjacent
Canada but were restricted from much of Canada by two major glacial
masses. The Laurentide ice sheet covered most of Canada and much of the
northern United States, from the east coast to the Rocky Mountains. The
second mass of ice resulted from the coalescence of a number of mountain
glaciers into a single glacial complex, the Cordilleran glacier, located be-
tween the Rockies and the coastal mountain ranges.
During glacial advance, the two ice masses probably met and blocked
the migrants’ route south. However, when the glaciers melted, a corridor
opened between them. The migrants moved south through Mexico and
Central America, and on to the tip of South America. As the most recent
glacial retreat continued, the first Americans expanded their range into all
parts of Canada as well.
Paleo-Indians. Anthropologists and archaeologists call these first Ameri-

cans (or their immediate descendants) Paleo-Indians. Many details of rela-
tionship and pathways of descent are not known, but the Paleo-Indian cul-
ture gave rise to another widespread culture, called the Archaic, around
7000 b.c.e. Approximately two thousand years ago, the Archaic culture be-
gan to give way to the mound-building culture of eastern North America
(the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian), the agricultural groups of the
southwestern deserts (the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Anasazi), and other
cultures. Some time before 1500 c.e., these prehistoric cultures gave rise to
the Native American tribes that were later displaced by European settle-
ment. A similar sequence of cultural replacement took place in Mexico and
54 / Bering Strait migrations
Central and South America, culminating in the Inca, Aztec, and Mayan civ-
ilizations that were later decimated by the Spanish conquistadores in the
1500’s.
One of the most vituperative arguments in the history of science centers
on the question of when the first Americans arrived. A few students of the
question argue for dates earlier than the mid-Wisconsin interglacial, many
argue for entry times more than thirty thousand years ago (during the mid-
Wisconsin interglacial), but most favor a time somewhat more than twelve
thousand years ago (during the Wisconsin glacier’s retreat).
The basis for the most popular position is the absence of strong evidence
for earlier human occupation of the continent. The widespread occurrence
of a particular type of spear point found at archaeological sites all over
North America, sites determined to be between 11,500 and 10,500 years
old, is the first irrefutable and extensive evidence of such occupation.
These sites constitute the first recognized North American Paleo-Indian
culture, now called the Clovis culture because it was established on the ba-
sis of finds in Blackwater Draw near Clovis, New Mexico. Because the cul-
ture was so widespread, archaeologists assume that Native Americans
must have been on the continent some time before the Clovis dates. Some
believe that a thousand years is enough time for the first immigrants to
have spread from Beringia to Tierra del Fuego and throughout both conti-
nents; others think a longer time was required.
Evidence based on Native American languages, tooth anatomy, and ge-
netics suggests that there were at least three migrations of different Sibe-
rian peoples into North America. The first group of migrants gave rise to
most Native American groups. One of the later migrant groups was ances-
tral to the Navajo, Apache, and some western Canadian tribes; the Eskimo
(Inuit) and Aleut peoples derived from the other group. Each migration
probably involved movement of many subgroups through an extended
time period. Some archaeologists believe that marine travelers, along the
coast or across open seas, may have contributed to the colonization as well.
The timing and details of the colonization of North America are unset-
tled, but most archaeologists agree on its basic character. Northern Asiatic
people crossed Beringia into North America some time before twelve thou-
sand years ago and spread fairly rapidly throughout North and South
America. These people, with possible contributions from later (and earlier)
immigrants, developed into the multitude of Native American groups
present when Europeans “discovered” the continents. Ancestors of the Na-
tive Americans who met the European explorers and colonists some five
hundred years ago had occupied the Americas for more than twelve thou-
sand years.
Bison slaughter / 55
See also: Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: California; Prehistory: Great Ba-

sin; Prehistory: Northeast; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Plains;
Prehistory: Plateau; Prehistory: Southeast; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehis-
tory: Subarctic.
Carl W. Hoagstrom

Dillehay, Thomas D. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New
York: Basic Books, 2001. Offers the archaeological and anthropological
evidence for population of the Americas prior to the glaciation twenty
thousand years ago.
Dillehay, Tom D., and David J. Meltzer. The First Americans: Search and Re-
search. Boca Raton, Fla.: Chemical Rubber Company Press, 1991. A set of
papers written to explore and encourage exploration of the total context
of migrations into North America. Illustrations, reference lists.
Dixon, E. James. Quest for the Origins of the First Americans. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1993. An archaeologist discusses the
first Americans in the context of his own research. Illustrations, index,
bibliography.
Fagan, Brian M. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. Rev.
ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995. A consideration of the first
Americans in the context of North American archaeology. Illustrations,
index, bibliography.
Fladmark, Knut R. “Getting One’s Berings.” Natural History 95, no. 11 (No-
vember, 1986): 8-19. The first of thirteen articles on the peopling of
North America published in Natural History between November, 1986,
and January, 1988. Illustrations.
Thomas, David Hurst. Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological
Guide. New York: Macmillan, 1994. An outline of Native American pre-
history and a guide to accessible sites. Illustrations, index, appendix of
sites to visit, bibliography.
Bison slaughter
Date: Peaked 1872-1874
Locale: Great Plains
Tribes involved: Cheyenne, Crow, Lakota Sioux
Categories: Nineteenth century history
56 / Bison slaughter
Significance: Mass killings of buffalo lead to the near-extinction of the

species and destroy the lifeblood of the Plains Indians.
In 1853, the American bison population was estimated at between sixty

and seventy million animals. It was reduced to a few thousand in thirty
years. The bison’s decline was the result of human greed, uncontrolled ex-
ploitation, and United States government policy. Also called the American
buffalo, the bison ranged throughout North America from the Rocky
Mountains to the Atlantic shoreline and from northern Mexico to southern
Canada. Its greatest concentration was on the grasslands of the Great
Plains. It was the basis for a total way of life for the Native Americans. The
animals provided food, clothing, and shelter. An important part of the no-
madic plains tribes’ culture was the buffalo-hide tipi, which could be col-
lapsed quickly when the tribe was ready to move on. On the treeless plains,
the herds’ dried droppings were fuel for the cooking fires.
On the northern Great Plains, where the terrain was rugged, a herd feed-
ing near a cliff would be driven over the precipice by Indian men and boys
waving buffalo robes and shouting, an event known as a buffalo jump. The
The bison, which formed the basis for the economy of many Native Americans,
once roved the Great Plains in large herds, but during the 1870’s the incursion of
the railroads hastened their demise as thousands were helplessly slaughtered by
white “buffalo hunters,” engaging in the activity for sport as well as profit. (Library of
Congress)
waiting tribe rushed in to butcher as many of the animals as they could.

Frequently, many more animals were left dead or dying than could be han-
dled. Contemporaneous writers described the slaughter of from two hun-
dred to two thousand bison in such hunts. However, because of the rela-
tively small population of Native Americans in North America and their
primitive weapons, the impact on the bison was slight.
With the end of the Civil War, in April, 1865, army troops traveled west
to battle the Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, and Crow. The army contracted with
local settlers to supply the troops with “buffalo beef.” Workers construct-
ing the new transcontinental railroad also had to be fed. Contractors in-
cluded William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, probably the best-
recognized of all the bison killers. Hunters frequently skinned the bison,
cut out the tongue, and took only some of the meat, leaving the remainder
to rot on the prairie.
Bison Products. Dressed hides were shipped east as lap robes for winter
sleigh and buggy rides or were turned into overcoats. Highly romanticized
stories by eastern writers about the exploits of Buffalo Bill and other bison
hunters quickly made buffalo robes a status symbol. Demand increased
and more bison were slaughtered. Often only the skin was taken, the car-
cass left to scavengers. Hundreds of thousands of bison were killed each
year for food and hides.
Bison also were killed for sport, as it became popular for groups of peo-
ple to travel to the Great Plains simply to shoot bison. The railroads that
linked the East and West cut across the ancient north-south routes of the bi-
son. The seemingly endless herds were an annoyance to the train crews and
a temptation to the passengers. When trains were delayed, passengers
fired into the massed animals, killing some and wounding many more. The
railroads encouraged this, with advertising to induce people to ride their
trains.
Extent of Slaughter. It is difficult to obtain accurate data on the number of

bison slaughtered. Few records were kept and the killing took place over a
wide area. In 1872, in western Kansas, approximately two thousand hide
hunters were each bringing down about fifteen bison a day. At that rate,
hunters were killing thirty thousand bison per day. As soon as the herds in
one area were reduced beyond the point of diminishing returns, the hunters
moved elsewhere, seeking larger herds. An 1869 report notes that in a good
year, about two hundred fifty thousand hides were shipped to the New
York market alone. Railroad shipments between 1872 and 1874 totaled
1,378,359 hides.
58 / Bison slaughter
A peculiarity in the behavior of the bison made them easy targets for
hunters. Although bison could be stampeded, hunters in ambush could
pick off the animals one by one, because they simply stood as others were
shot and dropped in place. Hide hunters called it “a stand.” Some of the herd
nosed at their fallen comrades and then calmly joined the rest of the animals
in grazing. A good hunter could kill seventy-five to one hundred bison per
day. One especially skillful hunter, in a bet with his fellows and shooting at
a stand from ambush, killed one hundred twenty bison in forty minutes.
The slaughter of the bison was far from a managed or controlled affair.
Hunters indiscriminately shot the adults and subadults. Calves were ig-
nored except, possibly, for camp meat. Unweaned, orphaned calves, not
yet able to graze the abundant grasses, were left to starve to death. After
one particularly large herd was killed, five hundred to one thousand calves
wandered off to starve.
The United States government took the position that the still-warring
Native Americans could be subdued if the bison were denied to them. The
U.S. Army began a program of interdiction of the herds. General Philip
Sheridan spoke out strongly in favor of continuing the slaughter of the buf-
falo “to settle the Indian question.” Sheridan’s Civil War comrade, General
William Sherman, echoed these sentiments. He stated that the only way to
force the Native Americans to reservations and turn them into farmers was
to clear the prairies of the bison. The government further supported the bi-
son slaughter by providing free ammunition to any buffalo hunter on re-
quest.
As early as 1873, fewer and fewer bison were encountered in western
Kansas. Hide hunters moved to the northern Great Plains territories and
continued the slaughter. The decline spread throughout the range of the bi-
son, and it soon became obvious to most observers that the great herds
were gone.
Aftereffects. The intensive slaughter for hides was brief, occurring mostly
from 1872 to 1874, but the activity extended from 1871 through 1883. Most
herds were shot out in about four years, and the hunters then moved on to
other areas. Although a few bison survived, undoubtedly the species’
numbers had slipped below that level ecologists call the minimum viable
population size. For many animals, more than one male and one female are
required to begin a breeding population. The great slaughter left the prai-
ries littered with bison skeletons. For years, farmers could gather a cartload
or two of bones and sell them to processors for fertilizer. One bone buyer
estimated that from 1884 to 1891, he bought the bones of approximately six
million bison skeletons.
Neither the settlers nor the Buffalo Depletion from 1850 to 1895
Native Americans could be-
20,000,000 20,000,000
lieve that the bison was no
more. The settlers thought that
the herds had migrated to Can-
18,000,000
ada and would soon return.
The Native Americans, draw-
ing on their mythology, be- 16,000,000
lieved the animals had re-
turned to a great cavern in 15,000,000
the ground to reappear if the 14,000,000 14,000,000
right prayers were said and
the right supplications were
made. The great herds were, 12,000,000
however, gone. The impact
of the hide hunters’ indis-
criminate slaughter and the 10,000,000
U.S. government’s interdic-
tion policy eliminated not
only the bison but also the 8,000,000
Native American’s traditional
nomadic way of life. Reluc-
6,000,000
tantly, but with resignation,
they became farmers on res-
ervations as the U.S. govern-
4,000,000
ment had sought. Perhaps the
worst blow to the plains In-
395,000
dians was their loss of the

2,000,000
religious and cultural rela-
20,000
1,091
tionship with the bison. Their 1,000,000

800
entire civilization and lifeways 0

had been destroyed along with
1850
1855
1860
1865
1870
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
the animals on which they de-

pended. Note: In the twentieth century the buffalo population
Only a few scattered bison began to rebound from its 1895 low of about 800;
in 1983 it was estimated at 50,000.
and some in private herds es-
Source: Data are from Thornton, Russell, American
caped the slaughter. Today, Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population His-
brought together in national tory Since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma
parks, preserves, and other Press, 1987); Thornton, Russell, We Shall Live
Again: The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Move-
protected areas, they have sur- ments as Demographic Revitalization (New York:
vived and multiplied. Cambridge University Press, 1986).
60 / Black Hawk War
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Sioux War.

Albert C. Jensen

Dary, David A. The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal. Chi-
cago: Swallow Press, 1974. Detailed account of bison in North America.
Black-and-white photos, index, bibliography.
Foster, John, ed. Buffalo. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press,
1992. A short collection of papers by specialists in ecology and sociology
detailing the relationship between the plains Indians and the American
bison. Illustrations.
Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental His-
tory, 1750-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A study
of the human and ecological factors leading to the near-extinction of the
bison.
McHugh, Tom. The Time of the Buffalo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. A
factual, readable revision of a professional wildlife biologist’s disserta-
tion. Illustrations, index, and detailed bibliography.
Matthews, Anne. Where the Buffalo Roam. New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
1992. Describes a plan to restore the Great Plains to their natural condi-
tion and the bison to their former numbers. Illustrations and index.
Russell, Don. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1960. A detailed examination of the Army scout and bi-
son hunter. Footnotes, extensive bibliography, index, illustrations.
Black Hawk War

Date: 1832
Locale: Illinois and Wisconsin
Tribes involved: Fox, Sauk, Winnebago
Significance: Defeated by U.S. troops, the Sauks, Fox, and Winnebagos
lost most of their land in futile resistance to white settlement.
Into the early nineteenth century, the Sauks, Fox, and Winnebagos were rel-
atively free of white pressure, most warfare being against such enemies as
the Sioux or Osage. Their traditional world remained strong until the post-
Black Hawk War / 61
An engraving of the Battle of Bad Axe, the fight that ended the Black Hawk War on
August 2, 1832. (Library of Congress)
revolutionary decades. Yet soon American settlers, migrating west in steady

streams, threatened to destroy the old ways.
Historical Background. Fleeing powerful eastern rivals, the Sauks (Black

Hawk’s people) and their main allies, the Fox (Mesquakies), had migrated
into parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa by the late 1600’s.
They became farmers and trappers, trading regularly with the French,
whose hunger for furs and competition with the British would embroil the
tribes in warfare.
By the time of Black Hawk’s birth in 1776, the Sauks were settled near
present-day Rock Island, Illinois, and in eastern Iowa. His childhood and
youth were years of seasonal moves dictated by farming, fishing, and trap-
ping. Frequent warfare gave warriors a high status within the tribe, and
Black Hawk joined a war party at fifteen, seeking family and tribal respect.
By his thirties, he was a premier war leader and a committed traditionalist
who, at a terrible cost to his people, would resist change.
62 / Black Hawk War
Before 1800, neither the Sauks nor the Mesquakies had signed a peace
treaty with the United States, resenting bitterly the seeming American fa-
voritism toward the hated Osages. In 1804, however, the United States,
Sauk, and Mesquakie leaders signed a treaty wherein the chiefs ceded fifty
million acres of land. Disregarding any Indian rights, white settlers poured
into the territory. They burned Indian homes and cornfields while the Indi-
ans received neither adequate compensation nor protection from the fed-
eral government. Black Hawk protested, claiming that the chiefs had not
understood the full implications of the 1804 treaty and that his people were
being cheated.
Tribal cohesion was splintering among the Sauks and the Mesquakies.
Traditionalists—with Black Hawk as their main spokesman—wanted to re-
tain the old ways and therefore sought to resist the Americans. Nontradi-
tionalists—led by a young Sauk warrior named Keokuk—called for accom-
modation with the Americans. Keokuk had visited Washington and feared
the strength of the government, but Black Hawk and his followers, rela-
tively isolated, refused to compromise.
The rivalry between Black Hawk and Keokuk broke the Sauks into
factions; gradually Keokuk’s influence grew stronger. In a council held
at Prairie du Chien in 1825, Keokuk was a major spokesman for the
Sauks and the Mesquakies. Black Hawk refused to attend and brushed
aside the council’s decisions for peace. He was further enraged when, in
1827, the government began plans to remove all Indians from Illinois as of
1829.
The 1832 War. White squatters moved into Saukenuk, Black Hawk’s home
and the major Sauk village. In July, 1829, the United States General Land
Office announced that the land around Saukenuk would go on sale in Octo-
ber. Black Hawk and his people—some three hundred warriors and their
families—vowed to reoccupy their land. General Edmund P. Gaines, com-
mander of the army’s Western Department in St. Louis, led troops to the
area.
Gaines and Black Hawk confronted each other, the latter insisting that
the treaty of 1804 was invalid and that he would not leave Saukenuk.
Gaines, in turn, warned that he was there to enforce the treaty, either peace-
fully or by force. Keokuk persuaded some Indian families to join his peace
faction, but Black Hawk resisted removal, counting on aid from nearby
Winnebagos and Potawatomis.
On June 25, 1831, soldiers attacked Saukenuk at dawn. Black Hawk and
his followers had left during the night, crossing to the west side of the Mis-
sissippi. His village in ruins, Black Hawk signed a peace treaty with Gaines
Black Hawk War / 63
on June 30. Gaines then ordered white settlers at Rock River to provide the
Indians with corn. Only token amounts were sent, however, and Black
Hawk’s band faced starvation.
Convinced by his chief lieutenant, Napope, that the British would assist
him and that the Potawatomis and Chippewas were also ready to enlist,
Black Hawk chose to go to war. By early 1832 he commanded some six hun-
dred warriors and prepared to retake Saukenuk. Hoping to defuse the situ-
ation, General Henry Atkinson called on friendly Sauk and Mesquakie
chiefs to negotiate and warned that if Black Hawk crossed to the east side of
the Mississippi his troops would attack. Neither the Potawatomis nor the
Winnebagos gave Black Hawk the help he expected.
General Atkinson had mustered more than 1,700 Illinois militia into fed-
eral service in early May, 1832, combining them with his regular army
troops, numbering three hundred. By late May he led these forces toward
Rock River. The militia was in advance, and, fearing treachery, they killed
several of Black Hawk’s scouts carrying a flag of truce. The Sauks fought
back, defeating the militia in what is called the Battle of Stillman’s Run. The
Sauks kept on the move, eluding Atkinson and his men.
During the summer, Black Hawk’s band raided frontier settlements for
food and livestock. Atkinson sent Colonel Henry Dodge to lead a militia
against the band. Weakened by malnutrition, Black Hawk and his band
were overtaken by the militia in late July, 1832. As the band began crossing
the Wisconsin River, the militia attacked. Although most of the band es-
caped, many lives were lost. The remainder pressed on toward the Missis-
sippi, reaching it on August 1.
The Battles of August 1 and 2. While the Sauks were crossing the river, the
steamboat Warrior appeared with troops aboard. They opened fire, and a
fierce battle ensued. The Warrior broke off the fight when it ran low on fuel.
The main battle between the Sauks and the army began on the morning of
August 2. Atkinson’s and Dodge’s men, supported by the Warrior, trapped
the Sauks and began a systematic slaughter. The Battle of Bad Axe, result-
ing in some 150 to 300 Sauk deaths, ended the Black Hawk War. Black
Hawk and perhaps fifty others escaped, heading for LaCrosse, Wisconsin,
site of a Winnebago village. There they decided to surrender, traveling to
Prairie du Chien, headquarters of the Indian agency. Black Hawk, two of
his sons, and eight other ringleaders were imprisoned, but all were re-
leased within a year.
A treaty, signed on September 21, 1832, formally ended the war. The
Sauks, Mesquakies, and Winnebagos lost approximately six million acres
of land—most of eastern Iowa—receiving in return a promise of an annuity
64 / Boarding and residential schools
of $20,000 for thirty years. Broken in spirit and poverty-stricken, the Sauks
and their allies never again attempted armed resistance against the United
States.
See also: Fox Wars; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Kickapoo
Resistance.
S. Carol Berg

Gurko, Miriam. Indian America: The Black Hawk War. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1970.
Jackson, Donald, ed. Black Hawk. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resis-
tance. New York: Viking Press, 1961. Reprint. New York: Penguin Books,
1976.
Nichols, Roger L. Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path. Arlington Heights, Ill.:
Harlan Davidson, 1992.
Utley, Robert M., and Wilcomb E. Washburn. The Indian Wars. Rev. ed. New
York: American Heritage, 1985.
Waters, Frank. Brave Are My People: Indian Heroes Not Forgotten. Santa Fe,
N.Mex.: Clear Light Publishers, 1992.
Boarding and residential schools

Date: 1568-present
Locale: Canada, United States
Categories: Colonial history, Education, Eighteenth century history, Na-
tional government and legislation, Nineteenth century history, Reli-
gion and missionary activities
Significance: Boarding and residential schools, established for Indian
youth by both Canada and the United States, intended to accelerate
the assimilation of Indian children into mainstream society.
Treaties concluded with Indians beginning in the colonial era contained

provisions for education. Indians sought schools and envisioned them as a
means to prepare their children for dealing with the new way of life that lay
ahead. Native people expected to retain their own languages and tradi-
tions as well as to learn European-American ways. However, from the ear-
Boarding and residential schools / 65
liest days, the European (later Ca-

nadian and American) goal was
to use the schools as instruments
of European civilization. Churches
and religious institutions took on
the task of educating Indian youth.
Boarding schools were viewed as
the optimum means to accom-
plish these ends, because they
separated Indian children from
their families, extinguished tribal
knowledge and languages, and
imprinted children with Chris-
tian teachings. As early as 1568,
Indian children from Georgia
and Florida were placed in Jesuit
schools in Cuba. Commitments to
educating Indian children during Girls study shorthand in a classroom c.
colonial times were inconsistent 1910 at the Haskell Institute, a boarding
school established in 1884 in Lawrence,
due to political rivalries among
Kansas. In the 1990’s it was renamed
the various powers. Haskell Indian Nations University, offering
degrees in disciplines such as Ameri-
Government-Sponsored Schools. can Indian studies, environmental science,
Prior to 1870, Indian education in and business administration. (National Ar-
chives)
the United States was almost ex-
clusively in the hands of religious
organizations. Beginning in 1802, Congress appropriated funds to reli-
gious groups to establish schools, and in 1819, Congress increased the ap-
propriation with passage of the Indian Civilization Fund Act. Numerous
schools, both boarding and day schools, were established for the education
of Indian youth. Churches that sponsored schools received access to treaty
monies and assumed the federal obligation to educate Indian people. These
schools became known as “contract schools.” Since Indian children gener-
ally were prohibited from attending public schools until the turn of the
twentieth century, religious contract schools became primary education in-
stitutions until the 1880’s.
In Canada, the government also was obliged, through treaty provisions,
to develop facilities for the education of Indian youth. The government
deemed it more economical to develop and fund existing missionary schools
rather than develop its own infrastructure. The government contracted
for educational services with the Anglican and Catholic churches. The
government financed construction and maintenance of the schools, while

the churches provided teachers and staff for day-to-day operations. In
Canada there were two types of residential schools: boarding schools
were located on reservations and served students between eight and four-
teen years old; and industrial schools were located off reservations, close
to non-Indian towns, and admitted students up to fourteen years old.
The industrial schools sought to prepare students for life off the reserves
and vocational education was a mainstay of the curriculum. Boarding
schools were favored in the United States and Canada because it was
believed they would be the most efficient means to accomplish assimila-
tion.
Squabbling among Protestants and Catholics in the United States led to
repeal of the Civilization Fund in 1873, and this marked a transition period
when the federal government began to assume a more direct role in operat-
ing Indian schools. Religious schools continued to operate, but federal offi-
cials were convinced they could run schools more efficiently and accom-
plish assimilation with greater success. The federal government endorsed
education as the quickest way to civilize Indians and stated that the sound-
est education policies would entail removal of children from their homes.
Carlisle Indian School, the first federally operated boarding school, opened
in 1879 with the goal of transforming the Indian into a patriotic American
citizen. Indian education, whether sponsored by the United States govern-
ment, sponsored by religious organizations, or in partnership, was in-
tended to strip Indian children of their language and culture and change
them into mainstream Americans.
Schools in both Canada and the United States mandated that English be
the only language spoken both in and out of the classroom and emphasized
the acquisition of basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, along
with industrial training. Many of these schools were supported by the
manual labor of their students. Girls worked in the laundry, kitchen, dining
hall, and sewing rooms; boys worked in fields, dairy barns, carpentry
shops, and blacksmith and tinsmith shops. At many schools, students
spent more time working than in learning basic skills, and this became an
issue in both Canada and the United States. After unfavorable publicity,
both governments insisted on greater balance between basic skills and in-
dustrial education. Nonetheless, the goal of this education remained the
provision of a trade, so the young people would no longer return to the res-
ervation once they completed their education.
Poor health was a continuous problem in boarding schools. Students
contracted communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, trachoma, mea-
sles, and whooping cough, and some youth died while at school. Be-
Boarding and residential schools / 67
cause parents were fearful their children would die in the schools, they
began to hide the young people from agency officials at the start of
the school year. In both Canada and the United States, agents of the fed-
eral governments would sweep through Indian camps and literally take
children. In the United States, this was known as “kid catching.” Disci-
pline was harsh and punitive in the schools and was in stark contrast to
the positive reinforcement Indian children were familiar with in their fami-
lies.
Reforms to Hasten Assimilation. Canadian residential schools came un-

der increasing attack in the early 1900’s because they were expensive, in-
efficient, and rife with health and physical and sexual abuse problems.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs assumed greater responsibility for managing
the finances of the schools, while the churches continued to provide per-
sonnel. In 1927, compulsory attendance was strengthened, and on author-
ity of the Indian agent, children could be committed to boarding schools
and kept until age eighteen. Once done with their education, Indian youth
were generally told they were not to return to their reserves or reserva-
tions.
In the United States, a scathing critique of federal Indian programs,
the Meriam Report, was published in 1928. It condemned almost every
aspect of Indian education, particularly boarding schools. School re-
forms were instituted, many boarding schools closed, and children were
sent to day schools located on their reservations. Progressive educators
stepped forward and stressed the importance of family to children, pro-
vided training to teachers, and began to include tribal cultures in school
curriculum.
However, school reforms ended with the Great Depression of the 1930’s
and World War II. After World War II, federal policies in Canada and
the United States once again sought to dissolve the trust relationship
with tribes. In the 1950’s, as a way to accomplish assimilation once and
for all, the United States government again reopened many off-reservation
boarding schools. Similarly, in Canada, concerns surfaced about how to
best accomplish assimilation, and the government’s solution was to re-
vise the Indian Act in 1951 and integrate Indian children into public
schools.
Indian-Controlled Schools. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, tribes began to insist

on the trust relationship with their governments, and they asserted their
rights to set their own direction and especially to manage the education
of their children. American and Canadian Indians pressed for self-deter-
mination and lobbied intensely to close boarding schools and put educa-
tion in the hands of Native people. In both Canada and the United States,
a series of education acts permitted tribes to have a more active role in
directing education, and to enfold tribal languages and cultures into the
curriculum.
The last federal residential school closed in Canada in 1988. Many
boarding schools in the United States closed during the 1970’s and 1980’s,
and those that remain open provide specialized services such as foster care
and developmental education to small numbers of youth. The goal is no
longer to assimilate but to educate and instill a sense of pride and self-
worth in the students. Boarding schools, once considered by both countries
the optimal way to educate Indian children, have given way to innovative
tribal-controlled schools that underscore self-determination and sover-
eignty. Tribal languages, cultures, and histories are vital parts of the curric-
ulum in these schools. In both Canada and the United States, Indian educa-
tion is a federal responsibility, but budgets are inadequate.
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Bureau of
Indian Affairs; California missions; Carlisle Indian School; Indian Ed-
ucation Acts; Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act;
Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830;
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
1933; Kennedy Report; Meriam Report; National Indian Education Associ-
ation.
Carole A. Barrett

Child, Brenda. Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. The author uses letters
from students at Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota and Haskell
Institute in Kansas to chronicle the emotional and cultural impact of
boarding schools on students, families, and communities.
Ellis, Clyde. To Change Them Forever: Indian Education at the Rainy Mountain
Boarding School, 1893-1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1996. A
case study of one school, illustrating the forced assimilation policies of
the federal government through students’ oral accounts and govern-
ment documents.
Johnston, Basil. Indian School Days. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1988. This first-person narrative explores experiences and contains anal-
ysis of student life in a Jesuit boarding school in Ontario, Canada.
Lomawaima, K. Tsianina. They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chiloco
Indian School. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Through
Bozeman Trail War / 69
oral histories of former students and archival materials, the author

examines the effect the boarding school had on its students and pro-
vides insight into why the school’s assimilation policies never suc-
ceeded.
Standing Bear, Luther. Land of the Spotted Eagle. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1978. In this autobiography a young Lakota boy compares
and contrasts traditional tribal education with education at Carlisle In-
dian School.
Bozeman Trail War

Date: June 13, 1866-November 6, 1868
Locale: Powder River country, Dakota Territory, east of the Bighorn
Mountains
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Cheyenne, Sioux,
Wars and battles
Significance: The end of Red Cloud’s war opens the door to the U.S. res-
ervation system.
In 1862, John M. Bozeman sought a more direct route connecting the newly
discovered gold fields around Virginia City, Montana, to the east. Leaving
Virginia City, he located a pass that led him to the headwaters of the Yel-
lowstone River, then southeastward along the eastern flank of the Bighorn
Mountains, where he traversed the headwaters of the Bighorn, Tongue,
and Powder Rivers. Continuing southeast, he intersected the Oregon Trail
along the North Platte River seventy miles west of Fort Laramie. This new
Bozeman Trail cut directly through the best hunting grounds of the Teton
Dakota Sioux—Red Cloud’s people.
The Powder River country was a hunter’s paradise, home to the great
northern bison herd. It had been guaranteed to the Sioux by the Fort
Laramie Treaty of 1851, it was the locus of their free-ranging lifestyle, and
they meant to keep it. Responding to growing pressure from miners and
settlers, however, the government was keenly interested in securing the
Bozeman Trail but was uncertain of the best method. Using force to subju-
gate or exterminate native peoples was a popular idea in the West. Alterna-
tively, an approach based on peace through justice gained support, espe-
cially in the East after the Civil War (1861-1865), when humanitarians who
70 / Bozeman Trail War
previously had been devoted to emancipation and the abolition of slavery

turned their attention to the “Indian problem.” This East-West rift led to a
schizophrenic policy toward American Indians, in which both approaches
were tried, often at the same time.
Forts and Treaties. Pursuing force, a string of three forts was built along the
Bozeman Trail. Fort Reno was the first, built seventy miles up the Bozeman
Trail in late summer of 1865 by General Patrick E. Connor. Best known for
slaughtering 273 Paiutes at Bear Creek in 1863, Connor issued the directive
to “accept no peace offers and kill any male over twelve.” Red Cloud, with
Cheyenne and Arapaho allies, mauled Connor’s columns; they withdrew,
but the fort remained. On July 10 of the following year, Colonel Henry B.
Carrington established Fort Phil Kearny forty miles north of Fort Reno at
the fork of the Piney Creeks, and in early August, Fort C. F. Smith ninety
miles beyond that.
The peace process was tried
also. On October 28, 1865, a com-
mission under Governor Newton
Edmunds of Dakota Territory an-
nounced peace with the Sioux,
producing a treaty signed by
chiefs already friendly to the set-
tlers. None of the Powder River
chiefs signed, as they were all
fighting Connor. Red Cloud did
go to Fort Laramie the next spring
to discuss peace, trade, and Fort
Reno. In the middle of peace ne-
gotiations, Colonel Carrington ar-
rived at Fort Laramie on June 13,
1866, in a masterpiece of bad tim-
ing. He had seven hundred troops,
more than two hundred wagons,
and orders to build his Bozeman
forts. Red Cloud excoriated the
Red Cloud, leader of the Teton Dakota commissioner, E. B. Edwards, for
Sioux, not only led his people to a victori- already stealing what they were
ous conclusion of the Bozeman Trail War
negotiating, and his entire camp
but also became famous nationwide as a
diplomat and negotiator, deeply respected was gone the next morning.
by both his people and white reformers. Edwards collected some signa-
(National Archives) tures and blithely informed Wash-
Bozeman Trail War / 71
ington that a satisfactory treaty had been concluded with the Sioux. While
Colonel Carrington went on to build his forts, Red Cloud was galvanizing
opposition with stunning oratory:
Hear Ye, Dakotas! . . . before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great Fa-
ther is building his forts among us. You have heard the sound of the white sol-
dier’s axe upon the Little Piney. His presence here is an insult and a threat. It is
an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred
graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war!
Recruiting a coalition of three thousand warriors, Red Cloud’s war against

the Thieves’ Road began in earnest.
Guerrilla Warfare. Within days of their completion, Carrington’s forts

were under unrelenting guerrilla warfare. In the first five weeks, the colo-
nel reported thirty-three whites killed. By December, ninety-six soldiers
and fifty-eight civilians had been killed, many were wounded, and nearly
one thousand oxen, cows, mules, and horses had been lost. There were
fifty-one separate attacks on Fort Kearny alone.
The worst loss came on December 21, 1866, when the command of Cap-
tain William Fetterman was completely annihilated. Having once boasted
that he could ride through the whole Sioux nation with eighty good men,
Fetterman led exactly eighty soldiers out of Fort Kearny to relieve an embat-
tled party of woodcutters. Disobeying Carrington’s orders not to ride out
of view of the fort, Fetterman could not resist chasing Crazy Horse, who,
acting as a decoy, lured Fetterman into an ambush by two thousand Sioux,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho. In the Battle of One Hundred Slain, Fetterman’s
arrogance had handed the U.S. Army its worst defeat in the Plains Wars.
On August 1, 1867, the Cheyenne attacked hay cutters at Fort Smith, and
the next day at Fort Kearny, Red Cloud’s Sioux attacked a woodcutters’
camp. Although these Hayfield and Wagon Box fights were standoffs, the
government began to realize the speciousness of Edmunds’s and Taylor’s
treaties. John Bozeman himself had been caught in 1867 by Blackfoot war-
riors and killed on his own road.
Major peace initiatives in 1867 were rebuffed by Red Cloud, who persis-
tently refused to sign anything until the forts were gone. Concerned about
the cost of a full military campaign and the safety of the new railroads inch-
ing westward, Congress decided to concede the Bozeman overland route.
Soldiers left Fort Smith on July 29, 1868, Fort Kearny a month later, and Fort
Reno a few days after that. Jubilant warriors burned the three forts to the
ground, and the Bozeman Trail was closed. On November 6, 1868, Red
72 / Bozeman Trail War
Cloud signed the Sioux Treaty of 1868 at Fort Laramie. Red Cloud had won
his war.
Red Cloud Goes to Washington. In 1870, Red Cloud and other Sioux were
invited to Washington, D.C., to discuss the treaty. Here Red Cloud heard
for the first time of provisions calling for permanent settlements on a reser-
vation. Although deeply upset, he was persuaded to make an address at
the Cooper Institute in New York City before an audience of social reform-
ers. At noon on June 16, he began with a prayer to the Almighty Spirit, then
recited wrongs done to his people, and asked for justice. Praised for its pi-
ety, charisma, and sincerity, the speech was an immense success.
His growing influence with the Eastern peace and reform circles al-
lowed Red Cloud to extract future concessions for his people from the gov-
ernment. The treaty articles that had not been explained to him, however,
hastened the pace of the Sioux toward becoming “reservation Indians.”
Still, the success of his implacable opposition to the Bozeman Trail makes
his name an appropriate eponym for “Red Cloud’s War.”
See also: Bear River Campaign; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851; Fort Lara-
mie Treaty of 1868; Wolf Mountains, Battle of; Wounded Knee Massacre.
Gary A. Olson

Armstrong, Virginia Irving, comp. I Have Spoken: American History Through
the Voices of the Indians. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1971. Includes three
orations by Red Cloud, including the Powder River exhortation (1866)
and the complete Cooper Institute speech (1870).
Brown, Dee. “Red Cloud’s War.” In Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. A good overview of the nine-
teenth century wars from the Native American point of view.
Hyde, George E. “Red Cloud’s War.” In Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala
Sioux Indians. Rev. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976. Or-
iginally published in 1937 and revised in 1957, this is considered to be a
definitive history of the Oglala Sioux. Includes extensive background
for the events on the Bozeman Trail. Thirteen illustrations, two maps.
Keenan, Jerry. The Wagon Box Fight: An Episode of Red Cloud’s War. Consho-
hocken, Pa.: Savas, 2000. A thorough account of this encounter, with de-
tailed appendices of the official army reports and results of recent ar-
chaeological excavation at the site.
Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the
United States, 1775 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. In-
cludes the full text of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Bureau of Indian Affairs / 73
McDermott, John D. “Price of Arrogance: The Short and Controversial Life

of William Judd Fetterman.” Annals of Wyoming 63, no. 2 (Spring, 1991):
42-53. A look at Fetterman’s character and its fatal consequences.
____________, ed. “Wyoming Scrapbook: Documents Relating to the Fet-
terman Fight.” Annals of Wyoming 63, no. 2 (Spring, 1991): 68-72. Gives
details of the most significant Army loss in the war.
Bureau of Indian Affairs

Date: Established March 11, 1824
history, Reservations and relocation, Twentieth century history
Significance: The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the central U.S. fed-
eral agency for the management of Indian affairs.
Attempting to centralize Indian administration, previously controlled by

a bewildering array of government and military officials, Secretary of War
John C. Calhoun in 1824 created the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Al-
though authority over Indians initially resided in the Secretary of War,
the fledgling bureau controlled all annuities and expenditures, managed
funds for the civilization of Indians, mediated disputes between Indians
under the trade and intercourse laws, and handled all correspondence. In
1832 the president was empowered to appoint a commissioner of Indian af-
fairs.
In 1849, the BIA was transferred to the newly created Department of the
Interior. Thereafter authority descended from the president of the United
States to the secretary of the interior to the commissioner of Indian affairs.
The coordination of field superintendents, agents, missionaries, traders,
and local Indians was entrusted to a field superintendent who corre-
sponded directly with the commissioner. The BIA grew rapidly, from its
original three members to six thousand employees in 1911. By the late
twentieth century it had thirteen thousand employees and controlled a
budget of nearly $900 million.
Designed to implement federal policy, the BIA has historically reflected
prevailing government attitudes toward Indians. Initially it oversaw fund-
ing under the 1819 civilization plan designed to aid assimilation through
education. Similarly, under the General Allotment Act, passed in 1887, the
74 / Bureau of Indian Affairs
BIA was charged with the mammoth task of preparing a list of members of
tribes as well as classifying and appraising Indian lands.
After World War I, responding to government economizing mandates,
the BIA decentralized its operations. Regional offices were superimposed
over the existing administrative structure, and further reorganization in
1946 provided for separate geographical divisions with regional headquar-
ters.
Surveys and studies during the 1920’s, including the scathing Meriam
Report, revealed the appalling conditions of Indian life under the allot-
ment plan, thereby giving impetus to fresh reforms. Between 1933 and
1945, during Commissioner John Collier’s tenure, the BIA for the first time
turned from its assimilationist policy. Because of Collier’s influence, the In-
dian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 provided for a revitalization of
tribal government and social customs. The IRA also granted Indians prior-
ity hiring within the BIA. Indeed, by 1982, Indians accounted for 78 percent
of BIA personnel.
Since the 1960’s, the BIA’s influence over Indian affairs has eroded,
thereby favoring a shift of responsibility to Indians themselves. In 1975,
for example, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act
encouraged Indians to assume control over pertinent government pro-
grams. In the 1990’s, dispersion of BIA activities to states, to other agen-
cies, and to Indians continued, yet the bureau remained a vast organiza-
tion supporting twelve regional offices and eighty-two agencies headed
by a commissioner. The BIA still oversaw several features of Indian life, in-
cluding education, law enforcement, and the mobilization of public and
private funds for economic development and natural resource manage-
ment.
See also: Allotment system; American Indian Defense Association; In-
dian Citizenship Act; Indian New Deal; Indian Offenses Act; Indian prefer-
ence; Indian Reorganization Act; Indian Self-Determination and Education
Assistance Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1934-2002; Keeler Commission; Meriam Report; Navajo-Hopi
Land Settlement Act; Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act; Pine Ridge shootout
and Peltier killings; Reservation system of the United States; Termination
Resolution; Trail of Broken Treaties; Wounded Knee occupation.
Mary E. Virginia
Burke Act / 75
Burke Act
Date: May 8, 1906

Categories: National government and legislation, Reservations and re-
location, Twentieth century history
Significance: Passed to improve the process of allotting tribal lands to
individual American Indians, the Burke Act contributed to the large-
scale loss of Indian land between 1887 and 1934.
In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act). This
act sought to make small farmers out of American Indians by dividing
tribal lands into individual allotments. Indians taking allotments received
United States citizenship; the government held the title for the lands in
trust for twenty-five years, during which time they could not be sold. At
the end of the period, the Indian would receive a fee patent giving him full
ownership of the land.
The administration of the General Allotment Act prompted consider-
able criticism. Many of those sympathetic to the Indians were concerned at
the distinction between citizenship, which was taken up at the outset, and
ownership, which came at the end of the trust period. The discrepancy be-
came a source of worry in 1905 when the Supreme Court ruled that citizen-
ship exempted an Indian from direct federal supervision, thus invalidating
federal restrictions on liquor on allotments. Other people simply thought
that the trust period postponed too long the time when an Indian might sell
his allotment.
In 1906, Congress passed the Burke Act, named for South Dakota Con-
gressman Charles Henry Burke. The act provided that the trust period
could be extended indefinitely on presidential authority, though it also
permitted the secretary of the interior to cut the period short if requested,
provided an individual Indian could prove that he was competent to man-
age his own affairs. In either case, there would be no citizenship until the
end of the trust period, during which the Indian would remain subject to
federal control.
The Burke Act had a major effect on the awarding of allotments, though
not the one that some of its supporters had hoped. Though certificates of
competency (and fee patents) were awarded cautiously at first, there were
clear signs that many allotments quickly passed out of Indian possession
once they could be sold or mortgaged. During the act’s first decade of oper-
76 / California missions
ation, roughly ten thousand fee patents were issued, the vast majority of al-
lotments passing out of Indian ownership. When the ardent assimilationist
Fred K. Lane became secretary of the interior in 1917, the process speeded
up. Competency certificates and fee patents were often given without the
requisite individual investigation, sometimes to Indians who had not asked
for them. In four years twenty thousand fee patents were issued, again
with much of the land quickly alienated.
During the 1920’s, when Burke himself was commissioner of Indian af-
fairs, the process slowed, but the overall trend of allotment lands passing
into the hands of non-Indians continued. By 1934, when the Indian Reorga-
nization Act finally stopped the allotment process, Indians had lost 86 mil-
lion of the 138 million acres they had controlled in 1887. In the meantime
the citizenship available under the Burke Act had been made redundant by
Congress’s grant of citizenship to all Indians in 1924.
See also: Allotment system; General Allotment Act; Indian Reorganiza-
tion Act.
William C. Lowe
California missions
Date: July 17, 1769-1824
Locale: Coastal regions of California, from San Diego to Sonoma
Tribes involved: Achumawi, Atsugewi, Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Chu-
mash, Costano, Cupeño, Diegueño, Esselen, Fernandeño, Gabrielino,
Hupa, Juaneño, Kamia, Karok, Kato, Luiseño, Maidu, Mattole, Mi-
wok, Patwin, Pomo, Quechan, Salinan, Serrano, Shasta, Tolowa, Tu-
batulabal, Wailaki, Wappo, Wintun, Wiyot, Yahi, Yana, Yokuts, Yuki,
Yurok
Categories: Colonial history, Nineteenth century history, Religion and
missionary activities
Significance: Twenty-one Catholic missions, four military installations,
and several towns established Spain’s claim to Alta California and al-
tered the lives of thousands of Native Americans.
The worldwide Spanish Empire had gradually developed a mission system

that suited imperial policy in places as distant as the Philippines, Para-
guay, and Baja California. With a relatively modest investment, the Crown
could extend its frontiers and establish opportunities for further expansion
California missions / 77
later. Two or three missionaries per location could attract indigenous peo-
ples to a different way of life. The native peoples would learn manual
trades, farming, cattle-raising, smithing, tanning, weaving, and other rudi-
mentary skills, so that they could manage the institution on their own.
A few soldiers at each mission—never more than ten—would enforce dis-
cipline. On occasions of serious trouble, appeal could be made to strate-
gically placed presidios that housed sizable, highly mobile military forces
capable of putting down any rebellions. When the missions developed
enough, a pueblo might be established nearby, able to make use of the
growing mission economy without having to follow the often austere mis-
sion routine.
The Spanish missionaries, usually members of religious orders (the reg-
ular clergy), expected to complete their work in ten years, after which the
establishments were to be secularized: The administration of church affairs
would be in the hands of the secular clergy, and all the mission’s properties
and possessions would be dispersed. Church authorities would receive the
church buildings and some surrounding land. Indigenous peoples would
receive at least half of all the possessions and land.
For 160 years, missionaries in New Spain sought to evangelize the peo-
ples of the Upper California territories, claimed for Spain by Juan Rodrí-
guez Cabrillo in 1524 and Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1611. Without royal ap-
proval, however, ecclesiastical initiatives were not implemented in the
Spanish Empire. Even many popes, as well as lowly missionaries, discov-
ered this policy.
In 1741, Captain Vitus Bering had reached Alaska and claimed much of
North America’s west coast. Carlos Francisco de Croix became the Viceroy
of New Spain in 1766. Along with Don José de Gálvez, visitador general of
King Charles III, Croix laid plans for a series of missions in Alta California
to blunt Russian expansionist plans. Galvez’s plans called for a mission
and fort at Monterey Bay in the north. They chose San Diego in the south as
the site of the first mission, because it was about half the distance from the
base in Loreto, Baja California. Gálvez selected Don Gaspar de Portolá to
be governor of California and Fray Junípero Serra as president of the mis-
sions.
The Mission Trail. Four foundation parties, two by land and two by sea,
set out from Baja for the arduous journey. Most of the sailors died, as did
many of those taking part in the overland trek. On July 17, 1769, Serra dedi-
cated the mission of San Diego de Alcalá on a site five miles west of the
present mission. Portola pushed on to Monterey with a small party, but left
no permanent settlement. That came about the following year, under Serra.
78 / California missions
Between Serra and his immediate successor, Fray Fermín de Lausen, eigh-
teen of the twenty-one missions were built by 1798.
Economics determined the sequence of building the missions. Largely
dependent on shipping for supplies in the earliest years, the missions were
first clustered in three coastal areas: south (San Diego), central (Santa
Barbara Channel), and north (Monterey). Gradually, the gaps between the
missions were closed to lessen their reliance on the vagaries of eighteenth
century shipping. In 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza led an arduous overland
expedition to San Francisco through the southern deserts, demonstrating
that New Spain no longer need rely on the sea to supply California. In all,
Spain founded twenty of the missions. After independence, Mexican au-
thorities founded the last of the missions at Sonoma, San Francisco Solano,
dedicated in 1824.
In late eighteenth century California, there were about 130,000 Native
Americans living in many small bands. The land supported them well in a
life that was not much different from the one they had lived five thousand
years before. Abundant potable water, fish, and game were within easy
reach. Of all the indigenous peoples of what would become the United
States, they made the swiftest, most seaworthy boats, without knowing
metal trades. Their loosely structured societies lacked a central organiza-
tion. They had no writing system for their six languages and several dia-
lects. There were no organized wars, although occasional raids to steal
goods were not unknown. Shelter was modest, at most.
It quickly became clear to the missionaries that they needed more work-
ers if the missions were to become self-sufficient. They stepped up recruit-
ment of the indigenous people as laborers, often luring them with trinkets.
The Franciscan missionary plan initially included teaching the native pop-
ulations in their own languages, but the diversity was so extensive that that
plan was abandoned, and Spanish was chosen instead to be the common
language of California.
Cultural Effects. The missions attracted people from surrounding areas

with the promise of better living conditions and some amenities unavail-
able to those on the outside. If the natives converted to Christianity—a con-
dition for remaining within the economic ambit of the mission—they were
no longer at liberty to return to their previous way of life, although many
did, in fact, escape. Native Americans living in the mission were permitted,
even encouraged, to visit their families for weeks at a time. This policy
proved to be the best recruiting tool the missionaries possessed.
The workers did learn trades and some even learned to read and write.
Daily work usually finished by mid-morning, and numerous feast days
California missions / 79
provided diversion from the normal regimen. By the time of secularization

in 1834, approximately thirty thousand natives resided at the missions,
with only sixty friars and three hundred soldiers along the 650 miles from
San Diego to Sonoma. The missions held 230,000 cattle, 34,000 horses, and
268,000 hogs, sheep, and goats.
The life was far removed from that visited upon the natives’ ancestors
by the savage conquistadores of the sixteenth century. The process of colo-
nization was relatively peaceful, and on balance the native population
fared better under the Spanish friars than people in other colonies and re-
ceived better treatment than they received subsequently in Mexico or in the
United States. However, because the mission system destroyed their previ-
ous tranquil existence and failed to prepare them for the promised secular-
ization, it cannot escape historical criticism. The Indians were introduced
into an alien culture as little more than slaves; they suffered tragically from
European diseases and, in the end, were ill-equipped for any other exis-
tence, either that of their own rapidly declining culture or that of the new
California.
When Mexico gained independence from Spain, the new government
resolved to secularize the missions. When secularization began, Native
Americans were either tricked into giving up their rights or their rights
simply were ignored in the land grab of what had been the missions.
Stranded after secularization, many of the natives at the missions had no-
where else to go, so they stayed on, continuing menial work under new
masters. Only in the twentieth century were there some modest advances
in their status. The U.S. government gave most of the mission buildings
back to the Catholic church after California entered the Union. Many of the
missions have been restored to a romantic, tranquil, even charming condi-
tion that belies their troubled history.
See also: Boarding and residential schools; Indian-white relations; Span-
ish colonial.
Daniel A. Brown

Cook, Sherburne Friend. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White
Civilization. 4 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943. A
scholarly collection that chronicles the troubled history of Native Amer-
icans during and after the mission period. Rich bibliographies.
Costo, Rupert, and Jeannette Henry Costo, eds. The Missions of California: A
Legacy of Genocide. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987. A collec-
tion that vigorously indicts the evils of the mission system.
Englehardt, Zephyrin. The Missions and Missionaries of California. 4 vols.
80 / Carlisle Indian School
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Mission Santa Barbara, 1929. The monumental

standard reference work on the missions, giving an overall positive
evaluation of the system.
Font Obrador, Bartolome. Fr. Junipero Serra: Mallorca, Mexico, Sierra Gorda,
Californias. Palma, Mallorca, Spain: Comissio de Cultura, 1992. A biogra-
phy of Serra that depends on, but summarizes well, the work of many
earlier authors.
Geiger, Maynard J. The Life and Times of Fray Junipero Serra, OFM. 2 vols.
Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959. A
large, sympathetic biography that relies heavily on original sources.
Jackson, Robert H., and Edward Castillo. Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish
Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. An ethnohistory of In-
dian life under the mission system.
Johnson, Paul C., et al., eds. The California Missions: A Pictorial History.
Menlo Park, Calif.: Lane, 1985. A colorful, popular, accessible, and reli-
able work.
Kroeber, Alfred Louis. Handbook of the Indians of California. New York: Do-
ver, 1976. A large anthropological tome.
Carlisle Indian School
Date: 1879-1918
Locale: Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Categories: Education, Nineteenth century history, Organizations, Reli-
gion and missionary activities, Twentieth century history
Significance: The Carlisle Indian School sought to assimilate Indian
children into white society; it served as a model for many other In-
dian boarding schools.
In 1879, a U.S. military officer, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, opened a

school for Indians in a military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt be-
longed to a generation of policy-makers working for what many believed
to be a more humane, progressive approach to Indian policy. Unlike many
of his predecessors, Pratt believed that Indian people were capable of being
transformed into the European American model of the law-abiding, Chris-
Carlisle Indian School / 81
tian, wage-earning citizen. According to Pratt, this was the only way for In-
dian people to survive—by leaving behind everything that distinguished
Indian people as “Indian,” including language and spirituality.
Pratt first experimented with Indian education by training Plains Indian
prisoners being held at Fort Marion in Florida. After persuading the fed-
eral government to allow eighteen male prisoners to attend Hampton Nor-
mal Institute, an all-black school in Virginia, Pratt recruited both male and
female students from Indian communities across the country for enroll-
ment in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. At Carlisle, students were re-
quired to speak only English and to adopt middle-class European Ameri-
can ways of living. Students did not, however, follow a middle-class
curriculum: In addition to being taught very basic academic skills, girls
were trained in domestic skills such as ironing and cooking, while boys
learned industrial skills. Such a curriculum did little to prepare students
for life in Indian communities.
Students, however, proved much more able to maintain strong Indian
identities than Captain Pratt had expected. Pratt was disappointed that
so many students left Carlisle
to return to their tribal home-
lands. The Carlisle experience
also fostered new forms of
Indian identity. Bringing to-
gether students from many
different Indian communities,
Carlisle tended to encourage
students to form new bonds
with members of other tribes
and to work together, not just
as members of specific tribes
and local communities, but
as American Indians with cer-
tain interests in common. Al-
though Carlisle required a
traumatic isolation from fam-
ily and community, some stu-
dents did, nevertheless, emerge
from the experience with new
skills and a determination to
improve political and social
conditions for other native A group of Sioux boys being “civilized” at the
people. Carlisle Indian School. (Library of Congress)
82 / Cayuse War
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Indian Edu-

cation Acts; Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act; Ken-
nedy Report; National Congress of American Indians.
Molly H. Mullin
Cayuse War
Date: 1847-1850
Locale: Southeastern Washington State
Tribes involved: Cayuse, Tenino
Significance: The Cayuse War began when the Cayuse attacked a mis-
sion because they were angry about the disruption and disease that
had come with the whites; the war gained the Cayuse a reputation as
a fierce and warlike tribe.
The Waiilatpu Mission was established near Fort Walla Walla in southeast-
ern Washington by a medical doctor, Marcus Whitman. The mission was lo-
cated on Pasha Creek (called Mill Creek by most European Americans).
The land on which the mission was built was actually part of the ancient
Cayuse lands, a situation which would later lead to friction between the
missionaries and the Cayuse. The Cayuse land was in the center of an area
through which many Europeans passed on their way to a number of desti-
nations in the Pacific Northwest, another cause of friction between the two
groups.
Whitman’s preachings in the mission were designed to persuade the
Cayuse to forsake their traditional ways and adopt his version of Christian
values. Gradually, the Cayuse became convinced that Whitman was an evil
man. To make matters worse, many Cayuse tribal members contracted
measles, and some of them blamed Whitman. He returned to his mission
during the fall of 1847 after ministering to the sick at Umatilla. His mission
complex was attacked by the Cayuse, and the Whitmans and twelve others
were killed.
A retaliatory effort was mounted against the small group of Cayuse and
the dissidents, but it was repulsed. On January 28, 1848, a group of Cayuse
warriors and some recruited Teninos defeated a volunteer party under the
command of Major Henry Lee; although the Cayuse tried to persuade other
area tribes to join them in the battle, only a few did.
Cherokee legal cases / 83
The Cayuse later suffered a defeat during the Sand Hollow battle
of 1848, in which Cayuse chief Gray Eagle was killed. A number of
other skirmishes ensued during the remainder of 1848 and in 1849. The re-
fusal of other tribes to join the Cayuse would ultimately lead to their down-
fall.
In a message to the territorial legislature in 1850, Joseph Lane, the new
governor of Oregon Territory, declared that the entire Cayuse tribe would
be considered responsible for the deaths of the European Americans in the
Whitman mission attack until the guilty parties were turned over to the
government for trial. An increasing number of Cayuse and other bands at-
tempted to capture the members of the Cayuse tribe who had attacked the
missionaries. Finally, five of the attackers were captured after being pur-
sued by members of their own tribe. They were turned over to the Oregon
territorial government for trial. It has been speculated that the accused
Cayuse had little understanding of the American legal system which would
judge their case. They were provided defense council by the Oregon terri-
torial government. On May 24, 1850, the jury pronounced them guilty as
charged, and they were hanged on Monday, June 3, 1850.
See also: Walla Walla Council.
Bruce M. Mitchell
Cherokee legal cases

Date: March 18, 1831, and March 3, 1832
Locale: Georgia
Categories: Court cases, Native government, Nineteenth century his-
tory, Religion and missionary activities
Significance: Two decisions rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court limit
the sovereignty of Native American tribes by placing them under
federal protection.
In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court, with John Marshall as chief justice,
made the first serious judicial effort to define the relationship between
the federal government and Native Americans. The case, concerning dis-
puted land titles, was Johnson v. McIntosh. The decision was that the fed-
eral government was, in effect, the Native Americans’ ultimate landlord
and they were the government’s tenants. Marshall and the Court major-
84 / Cherokee legal cases
ity thus judged the federal government to be responsible for Native Ameri-
can affairs, including the protection of Native American peoples against
state actions, which materially affected Native American lives and prop-
erty.
During a period in which the federal government and the states were
locked in disputes about where the Constitution intended ultimate sov-
ereignty to reside and federal authority seemed unsure, Georgia con-
templated removing Cherokee and Creek peoples from northern and west-
ern portions of the state. To legitimate its plans, Georgia charged that
when it had agreed, in 1802, to cede its western land claims to the federal
government, the latter had agreed to extinguish Native American titles
to those lands and then to return them to the state. The federal govern-
ment had not done so, and Georgia had been obliged to live since with
a Native American state within a state. Land-hungry as a result of ex-
pansive pressures from the cotton culture, Georgians themselves initi-
ated steps to remove Native Americans, primarily Cherokees. They de-
nied the relevance of federal treaties with the Cherokees and threatened
to use force against federal troops if they were dispatched to protect
the tribe. Andrew Jackson’s election as president in 1828 accelerated
Georgia’s actions to begin removal, because Jackson, a veteran Indian
fighter who deemed Native Americans “savages,” was a proponent of re-
moval.
In December, 1828, the Georgia legislature added Cherokee lands to
a number of Georgia counties. Far from being savages, the Cherokees
who protested this action had become a successful farming people. Thanks
to a syllabary produced by their own Sequoyah, they were literate and
produced their own newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. They instantly as-
sembled a distinguished delegation to appeal to Congress for assistance.
This course was applauded by a host of congressmen and public officials—
including Daniel Webster and William Wirt—who proclaimed Georgia’s
legislation unjust, on moral as well as legal grounds. Nevertheless, in
December, 1829, Georgia’s legislature enacted a comprehensive law that
essentially nullified all Cherokee laws. Aggravating the Cherokees’ plight,
gold was discovered in the following year in western Georgia, and a
gold rush flooded their lands with gold seekers, in violation of Cher-
okee treaties. Under great pressure, Governor George Gilmer claimed
the gold as state property and threatened to oust the Cherokees forc-
ibly. Having failed in Georgia’s courts, the Cherokees, as a last peaceful
resort and encouraged by missionaries such as Jeremiah Evarts and pub-
lic officials such as Webster and Wirt, appealed to the U.S. Supreme
Court under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which gave the
Cherokee legal cases / 85
Court original jurisdiction in cases brought under treaties or by foreign na-

tions.
Georgia Land Disputes. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Chief Justice Mar-

shall, who had been sympathetic to Cherokee claims but also was aware of
Jackson’s hostility toward both Native Americans and Marshall’s court,
dismissed the case. Marshall asserted that the Court lacked the jurisdiction
to halt Georgia’s sequestration of Cherokee lands. In doing so, he defined
the relationship of Cherokees (and, by inference, other Native American
tribes) to the federal government as that of a “domestic, dependent nation”
rather than a sovereign one.
Marshall modified his decision in 1832, however, when deciding Worces-
ter v. Georgia. Worcester resulted from a Georgia law enacted in 1831. The
law forbade whites from residing on Cherokee lands without a state li-
cense; it was aimed primarily at white missionaries who were encouraging
Cherokee resistance to removal. Georgia arrested, convicted, and sen-
tenced two unlicensed missionaries, Samuel Worcester and Elizur But-
ler, whom the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
promptly defended, hiring William Wirt as their counsel. Wirt then was
running as a vice presidential candidate for the National Republican Party
and as a presidential candidate for the Anti-Masonic Party. Therefore, he
hoped for a decision that would embarrass Jackson.
Because the plaintiff in Worcester was a white missionary and the defen-
dant the State of Georgia, the Court had clear jurisdiction. Without overrul-
ing his Cherokee Nation decision, Marshall ruled that the Georgia law was
unconstitutional and therefore void, because it violated treaties, as well as
the commerce and contract clauses of the Constitution. Furthermore, Mar-
shall declared, Georgia’s laws violated the sovereignty of the Cherokee na-
tion, and, in this case, the Court was constrained to define relationships be-
tween Native Americans and a state.
Competing Concepts of Sovereignty. As historians and legal scholars

have observed, the Cherokee cases advanced two contradictory descrip-
tions of Native American sovereignty. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Mar-
shall delineated the dependent relationship of Native American tribes
to the federal government. In Worcester, sympathetically stressing historic
aspects of Native American independence, nationhood, and foreignness
rather than their domestic dependency, he defined the relationship of Na-
tive American tribes to the states. Together, these decisions suggested that
although Native American tribes lacked sufficient sovereignty to claim po-
litical independence and were therefore wards of the federal government,
86 / Cherokee legal cases
they nevertheless possessed sufficient sovereignty to guard themselves

against intrusions by the states, and that it was a federal responsibility to
preserve this sovereignty. In subsequent years, these conflicting interpreta-
tions were exploited by both the federal government and Native Ameri-
cans to serve their own purposes.
Marshall’s pronouncements were one thing; making them effective
was yet another thing. President Jackson, who as chief executive was the
only party capable of enforcing the Court’s decision, chose to ignore it.
Instead, Jackson threw federal troops into the removal of Cherokees and
others of the Five Civilized Tribes to designated Indian Territory be-
yond the Mississippi. The resulting tragedy became known as the Trail of
Tears.
See also: Cherokee Phoenix; Cherokee Tobacco case; Cherokee War; Indian
Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Trail of Tears.
Mary E. Virginia

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. A clearly written study focusing
on the development of the Native American judicial system as it existed
in the early 1980’s. Explains the complexities of Native American legal
and political rights as they are understood by the tribes and by the fed-
eral government.
____________. The Nations Within. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Traces
the past and weighs the future of Native American sovereignty, from the
Doctrine of Discovery through the shift from tribal and federal notions
of self-government to self-determination.
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1994. Unravels the political anomaly of the treaty system, a
system devised according to white perspectives that made the relation-
ships between Native Americans and the federal government unlike the
legal and political relationships of any other two peoples.
____________. The Great Father. Vol. 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1984. A masterful, detailed analysis of historical relationships—
political, economic, and social—between the federal government and
Native Americans through cultural changes affecting both groups, from
the Revolutionary War to 1980. Chapter 2 discusses the Cherokee cases
and American Indian removal.
Satz, Ronald N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. Lincoln: Uni-
versity of Nebraska Press, 1974. Excellent coverage of the Cherokee
cases; also clarifies the complex political climate in which the cases de-
Cherokee Phoenix / 87
veloped around conflicts between the Jackson administration, Georgia,

and the Cherokees.
Wilkins, David E. American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court:
The Masking of Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Close
analysis of legal cases that Wilkins argues “mask questionable federal
and administrative activities against tribes and individual Indians.”
Williams, Robert A. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Starting with the thirteenth cen-
tury notion that the West had a mandate to conquer the earth, this in-
triguing study explores the laws that evolved to legitimate this man-
date, specifically as the mandate was interpreted by Spanish, English,
and U.S. laws regarding relations with Native Americans.
Cherokee Phoenix
Date: 1828-1839
Locale: New Echota, Cherokee Nation, Georgia
Categories: Education, Nineteenth century history, Religion and mis-
sionary activities
Significance: The Cherokee Phoenix was the first Native American news-
paper and the first published in a Native American language.
The Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, began on Feb-
ruary 21, 1828, as the Cherokee nation created institutions and built its new
capital at New Echota in Georgia. Cherokees, who had ceded land in sev-
eral Southeastern states, remained on a reservation in northwestern Geor-
gia. There they created their own governing institutions following the Eu-
ropean model: They wrote a constitution, established a legislature, and
built schools and churches.
While Georgia passed laws stripping Cherokees of their rights, the
Cherokees used every peaceful means of protest, including the print-
ing press. When the Cherokee Phoenix wrote editorials against the laws,
Georgians stole the printing press and jailed the staff. Cherokees fought
against their removal from Georgia through the press, the courts, and Con-
gress.
Editor Elias Boudinot, a college-educated missionary and clerk of the
Cherokee National Council, wrote in both Cherokee and English, hoping
88 / Cherokee Phoenix
the newspaper would help Native Americans to improve both their liv-
ing conditions and their image in the larger white society. In this era, news-
paper editors were often advocates, and political parties or other special
interests often subsidized their publications. The Cherokee Phoenix re-
ceived its support from the National Council, white Christian missionar-
ies, and the fund-raising efforts of Boudinot and other Cherokee leaders.
Improving a people’s image through newspapers was another premise of
contemporary journalism, especially among political parties and town
boosters. As the First Amendment protected the U.S. press, the Native
American press was to be free from restraint, despite its subsidy from the
National Council.
The Cherokee Phoenix also depended upon the Cherokee language, a writ-
ing system that had been invented by a young Cherokee genius, Sequoyah,
a few years earlier. Sequoyah was born around 1770 of a Cherokee mother
and a white drifter. He saw that his people were at a disadvantage com-
pared to the whites, who had a printed and written language. With no
formal education, this half-breed child grew up to be the only person in
history known to have created a written language single-handedly. His
eighty-six-character syllabary, using syllables or sounds instead of letters
as a basic form, allowed the easy translation of the traditionally oral Chero-
kee language into written form. Assembling words from these sounds proved
easier than doing it from twenty-six letters. White observers were aston-
ished at the speed with which young people learned the language. Chero-
kee children learned as much language in a few days as English children
learned of their language in one or two years. Most of the nation became lit-
erate in a matter of months.
In its prospectus, the Cherokee Phoenix said the biweekly newspaper
would provide laws and public documents of the Cherokee nation; ac-
counts of manners, customs, and the progress of the nation in education,
religion, and “the arts of civilized life”; the interesting news of the day; and
miscellaneous articles to promote learning among the Cherokees.
The Reverend Samuel Worcester, a Protestant missionary to the Chero-
kees, provided essential support for the newspaper. Two white printers
also accompanied the press, which had to await the manufacture of special
type in New England to accommodate Sequoyah’s syllabary. The printers
set type on the hand press by taking detailed instructions from Worcester
instead of learning the language. The printing office also published transla-
tions of the Bible into Cherokee. Trying to build an independent state
within Georgia, the Cherokees received support from missionaries, Whig
Party leaders, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia
(1832).
Worcester had refused to sign the loyalty oath that Georgia required
of whites working among Native Americans. President Jackson refused
to enforce the Court’s decision, and Congress had passed the Indian Re-
moval Act of 1830, setting up the process of forcing the Cherokees to
move to Indian Territory, now parts of Oklahoma and Kansas. Reflecting
his missionary-school background, Boudinot editorialized that Chero-
kees could become civilized and showed a condescending attitude to-
ward Native Americans and other ethnic groups that did not accept
Christian assumptions of progress. At first, Boudinot strongly editorial-
ized against removal, despite the growth of individual acts of violence
against Cherokees. As a relative of the Ridge family that eventually con-
cluded that getting the best terms for removal was better than resistance,
Boudinot signed the removal treaty without approval of the National
Council.
Boudinot resisted pressure from Georgians, whose legislature in 1829
stripped Cherokees of their civil rights. Under the new laws, whites could
commit crimes against Cherokees without punishment, because Chero-
kees were not allowed to testify against whites in court. Despite a Supreme
Court decision supporting them, Jackson refused to intervene. “Full li-
cense to our oppressors, and every avenue of justice closed against us,” the
Cherokee Phoenix said. “Yes, this is the bitter cup prepared for us by a repub-
lican and religious government—we shall drink it to the very dregs.” A
year later, the newspaper reported harassment, arrest, and threats of physi-
cal harm to its staff members. After the newspaper protested the postmas-
ter’s sale of liquor to American Indians to encourage violent incidents, the
postmaster retaliated by cutting off the mail.
The move left the Cherokee Phoenix without its source of supplies and ex-
change papers. “This new era,” Boudinot wrote, “has not only wrested
from us our rights and privileges as a people, but it has closed the channel
through which we could formerly obtain our news. By this means the re-
sources of the Phoenix are cut off.” The newspaper said Native Americans
had become more dependent upon sympathetic whites.
The Cherokee Phoenix debated basic issues within the Cherokee nation,
including acculturation and Christianity. In the paper, national leaders
debated how the new government should be organized and how elections
should be conducted. While political candidates argued election issues,
the newspaper proclaimed the need for national unity. Leaders debated
the division of the legislature into two houses and the political system
into two parties. The newspaper said all Cherokees must keep “the pres-
ervation of ourselves as a free and sovereign people” as their primary goal.
The National Council approved a punishment of one hundred lashes
90 / Cherokee Phoenix
against people who formed organizations to foster disunity among the

Cherokees.
Violent conflicts between whites and natives became so common that
many feared for the safety of Native Americans who remained in the
Southeast. Friends seeking to protect Native Americans and enemies seek-
ing to eliminate them came together to remove the Five Civilized Tribes
to land west of the Mississippi. Because early voluntary removals had
proved so disastrous to the Cherokees and the Choctaws, those remain-
ing in Georgia vowed to remain on their native land. The elected princi-
pal chief, John Ross, ordered Boudinot to suppress news of dissention
within the National Council over the removal issue; instead, the editor was
to present a united front of Cherokee resistance against white encroach-
ment.
The editor resigned in 1832, revealing that he could not manage the pa-
per without a free discussion of such important issues. “I should think it
my duty to tell them the whole truth. I cannot tell them that we shall be re-
instated in our rights when I have no such hope.” Ross appointed his
brother-in-law, Elijah Hicks, but Hicks lacked Boudinot’s journalistic expe-
rience and rhetorical power.
Outside pressure continued. In 1833, the postmaster sent letters to the
Cherokee Phoenix’s exchanges, stating that the newspaper had been discon-
tinued. The paper’s publication became erratic, and in 1834, Hicks sus-
pended publication. His parting editorial asked readers not to give up the
fight. “Although our enemies are numerous we are still in the land of the
living and the JUDGE of all the earth will impart the means for the salva-
tion of our suffering Nation.”
In the fall of 1838, Cherokee men, women, and children were rounded
up and forced by the U.S. Cavalry to march from their Georgia home to In-
dian Territory. Thousands of people suffered and died on the walk that be-
came known as the Trail of Tears. One morning in June, 1839, a band
awaited Boudinot in trees near his new home, under construction. Two
men approached him and asked him, as keeper of public medicine, for
help. While they walked together, two others joined them. The group then
stabbed Boudinot and smashed the former editor’s head with a tomahawk
six or seven times. They were part of a vigilante organization that held
Boudinot and two other members of the Ridge faction responsible for sell-
ing Cherokee land, and in revenge carried out their capital punishment.
Worcester, with whom Boudinot and his family had been staying, said the
killers had cut off his right hand. Boudinot left a wife and six children.
Worcester and printer John F. Wheeler, both of whom served prison time in
Georgia for their work on the Cherokee Phoenix, helped the Cherokees start
the Cherokee Advocate in 1844 with William P. Ross, the chief’s nephew, as
editor. It continued free distribution and publication in both Cherokee and
English.
See also: Cherokee legal cases; Cherokee Tobacco case; Cherokee War;
Indian Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Trail of Tears.
William E. Huntzicker

Boudinet, Elias. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinet. Edited by
Theda Perdue. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. Collects nearly
all of Boudinet’s writings, with a biographical introduction and thor-
ough annotations.
Danky, James P., ed. Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. Overview of the history of Na-
tive American newspapers.
Luebke, Barbara P. “Elias Boudinot, Indian Editor: Editorial Columns from
the Cherokee Phoenix.” Journalism History 6 (1979): 48-51. Discusses Bou-
dinot’s conflicts as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix.
McLoughlin, William G. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984. Discusses missionary support for the
Cherokees.
Mooney, James. Historical Sketch of the Cherokee. Chicago: Aldine, 1975.
Valuable study by a contemporary who interviewed people involved.
Murphy, James E., and Sharon M. Murphy. Let My People Know: American
Indian Journalism, 1828-1978. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1981. A history of Native American journalism, with some discussion of
the Cherokee Phoenix.
Perdue, Theda, ed. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1983. Brief biographical introduction to
Boudinot, with reproductions of important documents in the history of
the Cherokee Phoenix and Boudinot’s fund-raising.
Riley, Sam G. “The Cherokee Phoenix: The Short, Unhappy Life of the First
American Indian Newspaper.” Journalism Quarterly 53, no. 4 (Winter,
1976): 666-671. Discusses Boudinot’s editorial dilemmas and political
pressure.
92 / Cherokee Tobacco case
Cherokee Tobacco case
Date: Argued April 11, 1871; decided May 1, 1871

Tribes involved: Cherokee, pantribal
Categories: Court cases, Nineteenth century history
Significance: This case, also known as Boudinot v. United States, estab-
lished the “last-in-time” precedent—the concept that later statutes
overrode earlier treaties—and the rule that tribes are “included” in
congressional acts unless they are specifically “excluded.”
In the Cherokee Tobacco suit, two Cherokee nationals, Elias Cornelius Bou-
dinot and Stand Watie, challenged the imposition of an 1868 federal tax law
on their tobacco factory, which had been established in the Cherokee Na-
tion under provisions of the Cherokee/U.S. Treaty of 1866. (Although the
year 1870 is often given for this case, it was actually argued in 1871; it was
received by the Court in 1870.)
Article 10 of the 1866 treaty stated that Cherokee citizens had the right to
sell any product or merchandise without having to pay “any tax thereon
which is now or may be levied by the U.S.” Two years later, Congress en-
acted a general revenue law which imposed taxes on liquor and tobacco
products “produced anywhere within the exterior boundaries of the U.S.”
Justice Noah Swayne, speaking for a deeply fractured court (three jus-
tices concurred with Swayne, two dissented, and three did not participate),
said that the case boiled down to which of the two laws—treaty or general
domestic—was superior. (Swayne created this scenario even though there
was no evidence that Congress in enacting the 1868 revenue law intended
to abrogate Article 10 of the treaty.)
“Undoubtedly,” said Swayne, “one or the other must yield. The repug-
nancy is clear and they cannot stand together.” Swayne then developed
what has been termed the “last-in-time” rule. In effect, whichever is latest
in time, be it treaty or statute, stands.
This was a catastrophic precedent for tribes, since the treaty termina-
tion law, which had been attached as a rider to the March 3, 1871, Indian
Appropriation Act, had closed the door on Indian treaties, although pre-
existing ratified treaties were still to be honored by the U.S. This law
effectively froze tribes in political limbo: They were no longer recog-
nized as nations capable of treating with the federal government, yet they
remained separate sovereignties outside the pale of the federal Constitu-
tion.
Cherokee Tobacco case / 93
Tribes, as a result of this decision, were virtually bereft of legal or politi-

cal protection. The federal government could hereafter explicitly or implic-
itly abrogate treaty provisions and tribes had little recourse, save returning
to the corridors of the very Congress that had enacted the abrogating legis-
lation. The Supreme Court generally deferred to the political branches on
Indian matters, going so far as to say that “the act of Congress must prevail
as if the treaty were not an element to be considered.”
This opinion ignored the historical and political reality that the Chero-
kee Nation was a separate and autonomous political entity not subject to
general domestic laws unless they had given their express consent; it de-
nied the fact that Congress itself had not explicitly stated in the 1868 law
that the revenue act applied to Indian Territory. Moreover, it disavowed the
general principle that specific laws, such as treaties, which create special
rights are not to be held “repealed by implication by any subsequent law
couched in general terms.”
Notwithstanding earlier U.S. guarantees of the sanctity of treaty rights,
Cherokee Tobacco announced that those hard-fought-for rights, often se-
cured at the cost of great amounts of tribal land and the loss of other rights,
could be destroyed by mere implication.
This cartoon in Puck magazine satirizes the confused and inconsistent nature of
U.S. Indian policy in the late nineteenth century; among the problems here are the
“Boston sentimentalist,” the weapons trader, and the government Indian agent. (Li-
brary of Congress)
94 / Cherokee War
See also: Cherokee legal cases; Cherokee Phoenix; Cherokee War; Indian
Appropriation Act; Indian Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
1870; Trail of Tears.
David E. Wilkins
Cherokee War
Date: October 5, 1759-November 19, 1761
Locale: Charles Town, South Carolina, and several Cherokee territories
Significance: Total destruction of several Cherokee communities pres-
ages the Cherokee alliance with the British in the Revolutionary War.
The Cherokees, a Native American people inhabiting the southern Appala-

chian highlands, first encountered visitors from the Old World on May 30,
1540, during the wanderings of the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. For
more than a century after this first meeting, the Cherokees had little direct
contact with European colonists. During the late seventeenth century and
early eighteenth century, trade began to develop between the Cherokees
and the English colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
This relationship was strengthened during the Yamasee War (1715-1728),
when the Cherokees were allied with the colonists against other Native
American peoples. The relationship was enhanced in 1730, when Scottish
aristocrat Alexander Cumming visited the Cherokees and took seven of
them to England, where they met King George II and signed a trade agree-
ment. One of the seven was the young Attakullakulla, who would turn out
to be the strongest advocate for peace with the English colonists.
The 1750’s saw increasing rivalry between France and England, which
evolved into the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), a conflict that had already
begun to manifest itself in North America as the French and Indian War
(1754-1763). Because of the threat of the French and their Native American
allies, the South Carolinians built Fort Prince George near the Cherokee
town of Keowee in 1753 and Fort Loudoun near the town of Chota in 1756.
These forts were designed to offer protection to the Cherokees in exchange
for their aid to the English in the war with the French.
From 1756 to 1759, even as the forts were being built, several violent in-
cidents between Cherokees and colonists led the way to war. The most crit-
Cherokee War / 95
ical of these occurred when a group of Cherokees making their way home
from an abortive battle with the French-allied Shawnee through the back-
country of Virginia were attacked by settlers, who killed twenty-four of
them. The settlers defended their action by accusing the Cherokees of steal-
ing their horses and food. The governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, of-
fered gifts and apologies to the relatives of the victims, but many Chero-
kees demanded retribution. Cherokee warriors killed twenty-four settlers
in South Carolina in revenge.
Lyttleton Plans an Invasion. The Cherokee War can be thought of as offi-

cially beginning on October 5, 1759, when William Henry Lyttelton, gover-
nor of South Carolina, announced his intention to lead an army into Chero-
kee territory. On October 20, a peace delegation led by Oconostota, the
head warrior of the Cherokees, arrived in Charles Town in an attempt to
prevent further hostilities. They were placed under arrest and forced to
march with the troops. When Lyttelton arrived at Fort Prince George on
December 10, the prisoners were held captive inside the fort. Attakulla-
kulla, the most important negotiator for the Cherokees, arrived on Decem-
ber 17 and managed to secure the release of Oconostota and several other
prisoners, but twenty-two remained hostages. Lyttelton refused to release
them until twenty-four Cherokees were executed for the killing of the set-
tlers. He was forced to retreat on December 28, when symptoms of small-
pox, which had been raging in the town of Keowee, began to appear among
his troops.
Cherokee warriors led by Oconostota surrounded the fort as soon as
Lyttelton left. On February 16, 1760, the commander of the fort was lured
out with the promise of negotiation and shot by concealed warriors. In re-
taliation, the soldiers at the fort killed the hostages. This ended any possi-
bility of preventing a full-scale war and led to attacks on settlers.
William Bull, lieutenant governor and Lyttleton’s successor, appealed to
General Jeffrey Amherst, supreme commander of British forces in North
America, for help. On April 1, twelve hundred soldiers commanded by
Colonel Archibald Montgomery arrived in Charles Town. On June 1, they
reached Keowee, which they burned to the ground. Other towns in the
area, known to the colonists as the Lower Towns, were also destroyed,
along with all the crops being grown there.
During these attacks, Montgomery’s troops killed sixty Cherokees and
took forty prisoners, while facing little opposition. Montgomery relieved
the garrison at Fort Prince George and marched toward the area known as
the Middle Towns. On June 27, near the town of Echoe, Cherokee warriors
launched a surprise attack on the British troops, killing twenty of them and
96 / Cherokee War
wounding seventy. Although the Cherokees withdrew, the British were

forced to retreat. A month later, they left South Carolina to rejoin the war
against the French in Canada.
Meanwhile, Oconostota’s warriors had surrounded Fort Loudoun. De-
prived of the relief given to Fort Prince George, Captain Paul Demere, com-
mander of the fort, surrendered on August 8 rather than face starvation.
The surrendering garrison was to turn over all its munitions and be es-
corted safely out of Cherokee territory. Because Demere attempted to con-
ceal some of the fort’s munitions, he and thirty-two of his soldiers were
killed and the rest taken prisoner.
Amherst sent two thousand troops under the command of Colonel
James Grant to avenge the loss of the fort. On March 20, 1761, Grant left
Charles Town, arriving at Fort Prince George on May 27. There he met with
Attakullakulla, but Grant refused the Cherokee’s offer to intercede with
the warriors. On June 7, Grant left the fort and headed for the Middle
Towns. On June 10, within two miles of the place where Montgomery’s
troops were attacked, Grant fought a battle with the Cherokees, leaving ten
British soldiers killed and fifty wounded. The Cherokees withdrew be-
cause of a lack of ammunition. Grant spent the next month destroying fif-
teen Middle Towns and fifteen hundred acres of crops. Approximately five
thousand Cherokees were forced to flee into the forest to survive on what-
ever food they could find in the wild.
Peace Negotiations. After this devastating attack, Attakullakulla and sev-

eral other Cherokee leaders met with Grant at Fort Prince George to ask for
peace. A treaty was prepared demanding the execution of four Cherokee
leaders, the elimination of all relations between the Cherokees and the
French, the sovereignty of the British courts over all offenders within Cher-
okee territory, and the establishment of a line twenty-six miles east of
Keowee as the border of South Carolina. The Cherokees could not accept
the demand for executions. Attakullakulla asked to speak to Bull directly.
He was allowed to travel to Charles Town and was welcomed by the gover-
nor as a loyal friend of the English. The demand for executions was dropped,
and the treaty was signed on September 23. A separate treaty was signed
with Virginia on November 19, officially ending the Cherokee War.
Conflicts between the Cherokees and the colonists continued until well
after the end of the American Revolution (1783), during which the Chero-
kees were allied with the British. A series of land cessions to the newly in-
dependent United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries left the Cherokees with only a small portion of their land. In a fi-
nal attempt to survive as an independent people, the Cherokees adopted
Civil War / 97
the ways of the Americans, even going so far as to set up a government

modeled after that of the United States. Despite this effort, the Cherokees
were finally forced to leave their native land for Oklahoma during the infa-
mous Trail of Tears removals in the 1830’s.
Indian Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Trail of Tears;
Yamasee War.
Rose Secrest

Corkran, David H. The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival 1740-1762.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. A detailed account of the
complex relations between the Cherokees and English colonists during
the mid-1700’s.
Hatley, Tom. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians Through the
Era of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Focuses on
the multicultural aspects of the Cherokee War, including a discussion of
the roles of women and African slaves.
Mails, Thomas E. “Transformation of a Culture.” In The Cherokee People: The
Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times. Tulsa,
Okla.: Council Oak Books, 1992. Describes the history of relations be-
tween Cherokees and Europeans up to the Trail of Tears.
Milling, Chapman J. “The Cherokee War.” In Red Carolinians. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1940. A detailed, carefully docu-
mented account of the war. An important reference despite its age.
Oliphant, John. Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1976-1763.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Focuses on the
clashes of individual personalities that fomented the war.
Woodward, Grace Steele. “’The King, Our Father.’” In The Cherokees. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. A history of the Cherokee
people from the start of the Yamasee War until the end of the Cherokee
War.
Civil War
Date: 1861-1865
Locale: Indian Territory, southwest Missouri, western Arkansas
Tribes involved: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole
98 / Civil War

Significance: A great Native American leads an Indian regiment for the
Confederacy and is the last to surrender.
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, both the Union and the Confed-
eracy looked toward the Indian Territory for support. American Indians
there, mostly members of the famed Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee,
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole), had connections with the fed-
eral government through various agencies, but most also had Southern
roots in the Carolinas, Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee. In
March, 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis commissioned Al-
bert Pike to visit Indian Territory to seek treaties with the Five Civilized
Tribes. It was hoped that a strong Confederate force in Indian Territory
would prevent Union sympathizers in Kansas from raiding Texas. Pike’s
visit with all the tribes in Indian Territory was largely successful. Shortly
afterward, General Ben McCul-
loch raised two American In-
dian regiments: one led by Colo-
nel John Drew and the other by
Colonel Stand Watie. Drew and
Watie were bitter enemies, and
during much of the war com-
manders on the western front
kept the two Cherokee regiments
separated as much as possible.
Watie, a mixed-blood Cherokee,
had been born in Georgia and
was one of the signers of the
New Echota Treaty, which sold
Cherokee lands in Georgia to
the United States government.
He was also a prosperous Cher-
okee landowner and business-
man, a brilliant warrior, and a
member of an opposition fac-
tion within the Cherokee tribe.
His signature on the new Echota
Treaty put him at odds with the
Stand Watie was one of the Cherokee sign-
more dominant faction of the ers of the Treaty of New Echota; he later
Cherokee Nation, led by John raised a Cherokee regiment for the Confed-
Ross. eracy. (Library of Congress)
Civil War / 99
Watie Joins the Confederacy. Watie was a great leader, and even in the face
of extreme hardships, especially during the winter months, he kept his
regiment together and participated in numerous battles. Although the trea-
ties that had been signed with the Confederacy promised that Indian
regiments would not be required to fight outside Indian Territory, Watie’s
troops also were called to duty in Missouri and Arkansas. Over a four-year
span, the old Cherokee warrior and his forces fought at Wilson’s Creek,
Newtonia, Bird Creek, Pea Ridge, Spavinaw, Fort Wayne, Fort Gibson,
Honey Springs, Webber’s Falls, Poison Spring, Massard Prairie, and Cabin
Creek. Watie’s abilities on the battlefield were widely recognized and
greatly heralded by both his contemporaries and historians. His greatest
skills were gaining and keeping the confidence of his troops and his wily
guerrilla tactics. Watie’s regiment, without his presence on the field, also
fought the Second Battle at Newtonia in Southwest Missouri in 1864. The
first Newtonia battle, fought in 1862, is of major historic significance, be-
cause it was the only Civil War battle in which American Indians fought on
both sides. In most battles, Watie’s Confederate Cherokees fought admira-
bly. In a losing cause at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, however, they
and Colonel Drew’s troops were accused of bad conduct because they were
too easily routed during the battle and because they allegedly scalped
some of the federal casualties. This act, when reported to the upper com-
mand of the Confederate Army, created a great embarrassment among offi-
cers, most of whom had been trained at such prestigious military acade-
mies as West Point, where cadets were taught to be gentlemen as well as
warriors. The loss at Pea Ridge was made even greater by the death of Gen-
eral McCulloch, who had organized and fought with the Cherokees from
the beginning.
Despite the overwhelming support given the Confederacy in 1861, when
the tide of war turned in favor of the Union and the Confederacy be-
came unable to supply its forces on the frontier, disenchantment took
hold of the leaders of the various tribes. In February, 1863, the Cherokee
Council met on Cowskin Prairie in Indian Territory and voted to end its
alliance with the Confederacy. Colonel Watie refused to accept the vote
and vowed to continue his fight. This created an even deeper split in the
Cherokee tribe. Watie’s forces and Cherokee civilians with attachments
in the South remained loyal to Watie, even establishing a government
that they claimed was the legitimate government of the Cherokee Nation.
These Southern sympathizers elected Watie as the principal chief. Those
now aligned with Union forces recognized John Ross as their chief, al-
though he left Indian Territory and returned to his wife’s family in Penn-
sylvania. At the time of this deepening split, there were about ten thou-
100 / Civil War
sand Cherokees with Union sympathies and seven thousand supporters

of the Confederacy. This situation actually created a civil war within a
civil war.
On May 10, 1864, Watie was promoted to the rank of brigadier general,
the only American Indian to attain this rank in the Civil War. In the remain-
ing months of the conflict, General Watie fought without reservations for
his beloved Confederacy. One of his most spectacular successes was the
sinking of the steam-driven ferry J. R. Williams on the Arkansas River at
Pleasant Bluff and making off with food and clothing for his Cherokee and
Creek troopers, breaking a major supply route for Union forces at Fort Gib-
son. Successful raids on Union supplies kept Watie’s forces busy, supplied,
and inspired to stay in the fight.
The Battle of Cabin Creek. Because the battlefield situation for the Con-
federacy was growing worse, Watie called all the Cherokee units to his
camp on June 24, 1864. At that meeting, the Cherokee Troops, Confederate
States of America, resolved to “unanimously re-enlist as soldiers for the
war, be it long or short.” In September of 1864, Watie masterminded a plan
to attack and steal a Union supply-wagon train worth one million dollars.
This battle was fought at Cabin Creek in Indian Territory and is said to have
been Watie’s greatest success. His brilliance and bravery were not enough,
however, as the Confederacy was losing battle after battle. On April 9,
1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered for the Confederacy at Appomat-
tox Courthouse in Virginia. General Watie fought on, hoping to win the bat-
tle for the West, but it was not to be. On June 23, 1865, Brigadier General
Stand Watie surrendered at Doakesville in Indian Territory, the last Con-
federate general to lay down his sword.
The contribution made by American Indians in the Civil War was enor-
mous. An estimated 3,500 fought for the Union and 1,018, or more than
28 percent, died while in service to their country. Census figures in the
Cherokee Nation showed a population of 21,000 in 1860. By 1867, that num-
ber had dropped to 13,566. Approximately one-third of the nation had been
lost, either in battle or to hunger and exposure, which were suffered by sol-
diers and civilians alike. After the war, General Watie became more in-
volved in the political activities of the Cherokee Nation and in resettling
his people in the aftermath of the conflict. On September 7, 1871, the great
general became ill and was taken to his old home at Honey Creek, where he
died on September 9.
See also: Cherokee Tobacco case; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870.
Kay Hively
Code of Handsome Lake / 101

Cunningham, Frank. General Stand Watie’s Confederate Indians. 1959. Re-
print. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. A full account of
Stand Watie’s efforts during the Civil War and his political life within
the Cherokee Nation. Many photographs of that era.
Dale, Edward Everett, and Morris L. Wardell. History of Oklahoma. New
York: Prentice-Hall, 1948. Contains a thorough chapter on the Civil War
in Oklahoma by two outstanding Oklahoma historians.
Gaines, W. Craig. The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted
Rifles. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Concen-
trates on Colonel John Drew’s regiment and contrasts it with Stand
Watie’s more successful regiment.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. Civil War in the American West. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1991. Discusses the Civil War battles that were fought west of the
Mississippi River.
Woodworth, S. E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate
Command in the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990. Dis-
cusses Jefferson’s top military men and their leadership on the Western
front during the Civil War.
Code of Handsome Lake

Date: 1799
Locale: Western New York State
Categories: Eighteenth century history, Nineteenth century history, Re-
ligion and missionary activities
Significance: Native American and Christian traditions merge to create
the Longhouse religion, aimed at reviving indigenous cultures.
The Code of Handsome Lake was one of several Native American religions
that evolved in reaction to European colonization. These religions often
combined traditional Native American beliefs and rituals with the intro-
duction of a Christian-style savior who was said to be able to recapture for
Native Americans the better days they had known before colonization.
One well-known example of this fusion was the Ghost Dance religion,
which was begun by the prophet Wovoka, who had been raised with both
Native American and Christian influences. Tenskwatawa (also known as
102 / Code of Handsome Lake
the Delaware Prophet) also formulated a religion that combined both tradi-
tions during the eighteenth century.
Handsome Lake. Handsome Lake was born at Conawagus, a Seneca vil-

lage near contemporary Avon, New York, on the Genesee River. He was a
member of the Seneca nation, one of the five nations that had joined to-
gether as the Iroquois Confederacy. His personal name was Ganeodiyo;
Handsome Lake, a reference to Lake Ontario, is one of the fifty chieftain-
ship lines of the Iroquois Confederacy, a title bestowed on him by clan
mothers. He was a half brother of the Seneca chief Cornplanter and an
uncle of Red Jacket. Handsome Lake and many other Senecas sided with
the British in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
George Washington and his subcommanders, principally General John
Sullivan, were merciless with Native Americans who supported the Brit-
ish. During the late stages of the revolution, many Seneca communities
were laid waste by scorched-earth marches that destroyed crops, livestock,
and homes.
After that war, many Iroquois and other Native Americans who had
supported the British were forced into Canada, principally to lands se-
cured by Joseph Brant at Grand River. Others fled westward to join other
Native Americans who were still free. Those who remained in their home-
lands were forced onto small, impoverished reservations, and repeated
attempts were made to force them out. It is estimated that by 1794, the Iro-
quois population had shrunk to approximately four thousand people.
Handsome Lake’s revival occurred in an atmosphere of dissension within
a fractured Iroquois Confederacy. The course of his life reflected the devas-
tation of his people. Born into a prominent family of the Turtle clan, Hand-
some Lake distinguished himself as a leader as a young man, before the
American Revolution, when Iroquois society was still largely intact. Hand-
some Lake’s decline began after his birthplace was taken by whites, and he
was forced to move to the Allegheny Seneca reservation. The Seneca eth-
nologist Arthur Parker characterized Handsome Lake as a middle-sized
man, unhealthy looking, dissolute, and an alcoholic. After four years lying
ill in a small cabin under the care of a daughter, Handsome Lake began hav-
ing a series of visions. Later, he used these visions to rally the Iroquois at a
time when some of them were selling their entire winter harvest of furs for
hard liquor, turning traditional ceremonies into drunken brawls, and in
winter, often dying of exposure in drunken stupors.
Visions and Spiritual Rebirth. Handsome Lake experienced considerable

remorse over his alcoholism, but he did not stop drinking until he was
Code of Handsome Lake / 103
nearly dead. In 1799, Handsome Lake experienced a number of visions

in which he was taken on a great journey to the sky. During this journey,
he was shown a number of personages and events from the past, present,
and future. In one of his visions, Handsome Lake met George Washington,
who had died that year, and heard him confirm the sovereignty of the Iro-
quois.
After this series of visions, Handsome Lake stopped his heavy drinking
and later committed his code to writing. He persuaded many other Iro-
quois to stop drinking and to reconstruct their lives. During his own life-
time, Handsome Lake achieved some political influence among the Sene-
cas, but his popularity was limited because of his ideological rigidity. In
1801 and 1802, he traveled to Washington, D.C., with a delegation of Sene-
cas to meet with President Thomas Jefferson and resist the reduction of Iro-
quois landholdings.
The Code of Handsome Lake combines European religious influences
(especially those practiced by the Quakers, which Handsome Lake had
studied) with a traditional Iroquois emphasis on family, community, and
the centrality of the land to the maintenance of culture. Handsome Lake’s
largest following came after his death. Adherents to his code rejected alco-
hol and accepted his concepts of social relationships, good, and evil, which
closely resemble Quakerism. The Quaker creed appealed to many Iroquois
because the Quakers had been persecuted before coming to America, they
had no ornate temples, and they lived frugally and communally, doing
their best to respect their Native American neighbors.
Syncretistic Religion. A nationalistic figure in a religious context, Hand-

some Lake also borrowed heavily from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace,
popularizing concepts such as looking into the future for seven gener-
ations and regarding the earth as mother, ideas that became part of pan-
Indian thought across North America and were incorporated into late
twentieth century popular environmental symbolism. With its combina-
tion of Old and New World theologies, the Code of Handsome Lake sought
to reconcile the gods of Europe and America. It was to be so successful that
it both subsumed the ancient religion and halted the spread of Christianity
among the Iroquois. The Code of Handsome Lake has continued to be
widely followed in Iroquois country as the Longhouse religion. In the late
twentieth century, roughly a third of the thirty thousand Iroquois in New
York State attended Longhouse rites.
Although his code remained popular among many Iroquois, others ac-
cused Handsome Lake of having sold out to the Quakers and white reli-
gious interests in general. Louis Hall, ideological founder of the Warrior
104 / Code of Handsome Lake
Society in Iroquois country, regarded the religion of Handsome Lake as a

bastardized form of Christianity grafted onto native traditions. Hall called
Handsome Lake’s visions “the hallucinations of a drunk.” Opposition to
these teachings is one plank in an intellectual platform that allows the War-
riors to brand both the Mohawk Nation Council at Akwesasne and the Iro-
quois Confederacy Council as enemies of the people, and to claim that the
Warriors are the true protectors of “Mohawk sovereignty.” Hall, who died
in 1993, regarded Handsome Lake’s followers as traitors or “Tontos.”
Hall’s Warriors split bitterly with followers of Handsome Lake over gam-
bling and other issues, leading to violence at Akwesasne, which peaked in
1990 with the deaths of two Mohawks.
See also: Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
meeting.
Bruce E. Johansen

Deardorff, Merle H. The Religion of Handsome Lake: Its Origins and Develop-
ment. American Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 149. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1951. Presents a detailed analysis of the
Handsome Lake religion from an ethnographic perspective.
Handsome Lake. The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet. New York
State Museum Bulletin 163. Albany: University of the State of New York,
1913. Outlines the Handsome Lake religion and discusses the historical
circumstances of its creation.
Johansen, Bruce E. Life and Death in Mohawk Country. Golden, Colo.: North
American Press, 1993. Details conflicts involving followers of Hand-
some Lake’s code and Louis Hall’s Warriors at Akwesasne in the late
twentieth century.
Parker, Arthur. Parker on the Iroquois. Edited by William Fenton. Syracuse,
N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1968. A detailed description of the
Handsome Lake religion by a noted Seneca ethnologist.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1970. A classic work on the history of the Seneca at the time of
Handsome Lake.
Wright, Ronald. Stolen Continents. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. A wide-
ranging study of North America since the voyages of Columbus. Con-
tains extensive treatment of the Iroquois Confederacy; describes Hand-
some Lake and his religion in the general context of the subjugation of
the confederacy after the Revolutionary War.
Code talkers / 105
Code talkers
Date: 1942-1945
Locale: United States, Pacific theater of World War II
Tribes involved: Navajo
Categories: Twentieth century history
Significance: Navajo code talkers provided a secure communications
system that helped significantly in the United States’ defeat of Japan
in World War II.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industrialization had

progressed to such a point that every area of American life was impacted.
Communications particularly was affected by the invention and wide-
spread adoption of the telephone, telegraph, and radio. When applied to
military operations and strategy, the impact of such devices was readily ap-
parent. As military operations reached large-scale operations, as field com-
manders’ need to keep in touch with ground and air forces intensified, and
as the avoidance of “friendly fire” casualties became a serious concern, the
armed services searched for ways to communicate with each sector of their
organizations without having the enemy eavesdrop or decipher what was
being said. Early examples of these efforts to secure an effective encrypted
communications network included the British reliance on Latin in the Boer
War; the United States’ reliance on the Choctaw language in October, 1918,
against the German army in field operations; and American army efforts,
through the Bureau of Indian Affairs early in World War II, to use the Co-
manche language. Although each of these attempts had limited success, it
was the Navajo code talkers who would be the most important of all.
Given the lack of knowledge of Native American languages by Amer-
ica’s enemies in World War II, as well as the reliance of these languages on
oral, not written, tradition, the American military command, especially
Major General Clayton Vogel (Army) and General Thomas Holcomb (Ma-
rines), investigated the possibilities of using these languages. What made
the Navajo language so attractive was that fact that it is primarily verbal,
relies heavily on intonation, and includes words with multiple meanings
and highly complex verbs. Once the logistical problems were resolved, the
Navajo language would prove to be an almost perfectly encrypted tool for
military communications in the Pacific theater of the American war.
Adoption and Recruitment of Code Talkers. The individual most respon-

sible for the Marines’ use of the Navajo language in World War II was
106 / Code talkers
Philip Johnston. The son of missionaries, he was familiar with the Navajo’s
culture and language. He contacted the Marine Corps’ Signal Corps and
explained his ideas to the officers in charge. Arguing that the Navajo lan-
guage was not well known and relied heavily on verbal intonations, John-
ston persuaded the Marines to give it a test. On February 28, 1942, the test
was conducted at Camp Elliot in California. In every test situation, the
Navajos successfully sent and received messages. Within three months of
the successful test, twenty-nine Navajos (the First 29) were recruited and
sent to San Diego, California, for training. Recruit Platoon 382 was in
boot camp for eight weeks and then shipped out. This original group of the
First 29 developed the code that would be used throughout the war.
Working together, First 29 established a code of 211 words and phrases. Af-
ter field experience and experimentation, the code increased to 619 words
and phrases by the end of 1945. Given the fact that the Navajo language
did not contain words for military names or operations, the code talkers
devised their own code for identifying what was lacking in the language
itself. For instance, Adolf Hitler was Daghailchiih (Mustard Smeller), “bat-
Navajo communications men known as “code talkers” with the U.S. Marines on
Saipan c. June, 1944. (National Archives)
Code talkers / 107
tleship” was lotso (whale), and “torpedo plane” became taschizzie (swal-
low). Many other name changes, vowel inversions, and specific intona-
tions were incorporated into the code, making it even more difficult to
unravel—so much so that even native Navajos had a difficult time in un-
derstanding everything that was being said unless they had been trained in
the code itself.
World War II. Given the government’s policy of assimilation and all it en-
tailed for Native Americans, it is surprising that the Navajo were interested
in helping the American war effort. If nothing else, the Meriam Report
(1928) demonstrated just how terrible conditions were on the reserva-
tions throughout the country. Fortunately, enough attention was drawn to
these problems that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the
Wheeler-Howard Act (the Indian New Deal) in 1934. Under the guidance
of John Collier at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the dismemberment of gen-
eral allotment took place and Native Americans were at least accorded
their rights to communal land ownership and tribal identity. What made
the Navajos join in the war effort depended on each individual. Essentially,
however, it seems that the New Deal effort had its effect, because those Na-
vajos who did sign up did so for patriotic reasons, to defend their country.
Some Navajos also openly admitted that the Marines were very attractive
to them because of their dress uniforms.
Due to the efforts of John Benally and John Manuelito, two hundred Na-
vajos were recruited for the code talking sector of the Corps. Recruiting
was a difficult task, in that the Navajos recruited had to speak both Navajo
and English proficiently. Also, the problems associated with the code and
its importance had to be overcome. For example, since the code was so im-
portant to military operations, the Marines literally kept it secret, thereby
preventing the Navajos from keeping in touch with relatives and friends.
Even in field operations, not all officers and men were informed of the pur-
pose of the Navajos. To make matters worse, the Navajos, who in many
ways physically looked like the enemy, were sometimes mistaken for Japa-
nese. The Marines overcame these problems quickly by assigning body-
guards to each code talker, as well as allowing the tribal members to con-
tinue cultural practices whenever feasible. Despite the fact that they were
often referred to as “Chief” or “Geronimo,” the Navajos got along well
with their compatriots in the Corps.
Thirty-six hundred Navajos served in World War II, but only 420 were
code talkers. The list of battles in which the code talkers participated was
impressive: Saipan, Tinian, Bougainville, Okinawa, Tarawa, Guadalcanal,
Iwo Jima, the Solomon Islands (on loan to the American Navy). The code
108 / Code talkers
talkers were also used to report on the effects of the atomic bombs at Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki.
Despite all their efforts, the Japanese could never successfully break the
Navajo code. At one point, the Japanese captured a code talker and tor-
tured him to get the secrets of encryption. However, what the Japanese did
not realize was that even the captured Navajo could not completely un-
ravel the language and codes developed by the First 29.
Postwar Recognition. The Marines were so concerned with protecting the

secrecy of the code talkers that anyone who gave the information out was
dealt with immediately. One good example was Philip Johnston himself,
who had approached the Army with the possibility of using the code talk-
ers. The Marines actually reprimanded Johnston for doing so. Such secrecy
also meant that the code talkers could not tell their relatives and friends
what they had done during the war. This often led to psychological prob-
lems for the code talkers themselves. It was not until much later that official
recognition was finally accorded to the Navajo code talkers.
The Navajo code talkers had their first reunion in 1969, thereby drawing
national attention to what they had done. In 1982, President Ronald Rea-
gan pronounced August 14 as “National Navajo Code Talkers Day.” Ten
years later, the Pentagon officially recognized the code talkers in ceremo-
nies performed there when an historical exhibit was opened to the public.
Today, the remaining code talkers still maintain contact through their orga-
nization, the Navajo Code Talkers Association (formed in July, 1971). For-
tunately for posterity, the significant contributions of the Navajo code talk-
ers in World War II will not be forgotten.
Michael V. Namorato
See also: World wars.

Adkins, Adam. “The Navajo Code Talkers in World War II.” New Mexico
Historical Review (October, 1997): 319-347. Good overview of the litera-
ture, founding, and problems of the code talkers in World War II.
McClain, Sally. Navajo Weapon. Boulder, Colo.: Books Beyond Borders,
1994. Provides an overview of the code talkers.
Paul, Doris. The Navajo Code Talkers. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Dorrance, 1973. Gives a
good overview of the Navajo code talkers and their contributions dur-
ing World War II.
Watson, Bruce. “Navajo Code Talkers: A Few Good Men.” Smithsonian (Au-
gust, 1993): 34-43. A personal account of some of the code talkers them-
selves.
Council of Energy Resource Tribes / 109
Colliflower v. Garland
Date: 1964
Locale: Fort Belknap, Montana
Categories: Civil rights, Court cases, Twentieth century history
Significance: The U.S. Court of Appeals decision that federal courts do
have the right to determine the legality of tribal court orders of deten-
tion influenced the U.S. Congress to pass the Indian Civil Rights Act
in 1968.
In 1964, Madeline Colliflower was arrested and held in jail over a mi-
nor dispute with the Fort Belknap (Montana) tribal council and tribal court
about renewal of a land lease. She was an enrolled member of the tribe.
She objected to being jailed and sued the tribe in federal court on a writ
of habeas corpus, claiming she was illegally imprisoned, was denied the
right to counsel, was denied a trial, and was never confronted with wit-
nesses against her. She charged that her constitutional rights had been vio-
lated.
The federal district court denied Colliflower’s petition, stating that
tribal governments were not bound to protect constitutional rights of en-
rolled members living on the reservation. The U.S. Court of Appeals over-
turned that decision and ruled in Colliflower’s favor. It ruled that federal
courts do have the right to determine the validity and legality of tribal
court orders of detention. This decision was a blow to tribal sovereignty
and brought forth issues of civil rights in Indian country. Among others,
this case influenced the U.S. Congress to pass the Indian Civil Rights Act
(1968), which extends certain protections to individuals living under tribal
government.
See also: Indian Civil Rights Act;
Carole A. Barrett
Council of Energy Resource Tribes

110 / Creek War

Significance: The Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), founded
by a group of tribal leaders, provides tribes with advice on develop-
ing and marketing the mineral and energy resources on their lands in
ways that will maximize profit for, and control by, the tribes them-
selves.
The Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT), with offices in Denver, Col-
orado, was organized in 1975 to gain an understanding of the natural re-
sources controlled by the Native American tribes within the United States.
Peter MacDonald, then chairperson of the Navajo Nation, was the first
elected chair of the organization. It initially set out to inventory the natural
resources of the various tribes in the western United States. It found that
the tribes controlled one-third of the energy sources in coal and uranium as
well as large supplies of petroleum, natural gas, and other essential re-
sources. The next step was to integrate all aspects of reservation develop-
ment.
The Council of Energy Resource Tribes undertook a series of studies that
indicated that the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) had based its devel-
opment efforts on irrelevant and inaccurate assumptions. CERT indicated
that it was imperative that American Indian tribes work harder to provide
employment. Tribes and CERT had to leverage funds and services to obtain
the financial resources necessary for balanced development. CERT recog-
nized the desire to advance on the part of the tribes, whereas the BIA could
not recognize this in tribal actions. CERT also saw that prosperity and the
Indian ways of doing things were not mutually exclusive.
See also: Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood; Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs.
Howard Meredith
Creek War
Date: July 27, 1813-August 9, 1814
Locale: Alabama
Tribes involved: Muscogee (Creek)
Significance: The destruction of the Creek nation opens Alabama to set-
tlement and positions Andrew Jackson to win the War of 1812.
Creek War / 111
Of all American Indian cultures, the Muscogee (called “Creeks” by the white
populace) seemed the most likely to assimilate into the advancing white cul-
ture of the 1700’s and early 1800’s. Colonial deerskin traders from Charles-
ton, South Carolina, married into this matrilineal native culture, estab-
lishing kinship ties with their wives’ families throughout the nation of
Muscogee and siring mixed-blood children who became the nation’s cul-
tural and political elite. Alexander McGillivray—of Scottish, French, and
Muscogee background—was educated in Charleston and became one of
the most powerful and influential micos (chiefs) in the culture’s history. Wil-
liam Weatherford, William McIntosh, and others born to both cultures re-
mained influential in the tribe through and beyond the coming Creek War.
President George Washington appointed Revolutionary War veteran
Benjamin Hawkins as Indian Agent to the Muscogee, and Hawkins at-
tempted to teach the Muscogee modern, European-derived farming tech-
niques. With well-established agricultural traditions of their own, the
Muscogee took easily to the teachings of both Hawkins and their own
mixed-blood people. The Muscogees established within their nation a sub-
culture that featured frame houses, fenced fields, domesticated animals,
the adoption of Anglo clothing and technology, and all the other vestments
of the traditional frontier South, including cotton production with African
American slave labor for the wealthy.
The transition was not smooth, however. One problem was the contin-
ued encroachment of white civilization. So relentless were the demands of
state governments for cessions of Muscogee lands that the natives named
one Tennessee governor the Dirt King and gave a Georgia governor the
name Always Asking for Land.
Land Hunger and Genocide. As buckskin breeches went out of fashion

in Europe, the market for American deerskins evaporated. The Musco-
gee now found themselves with nothing to trade for the white man’s cloth-
ing, weapons, household utensils, and other goods to which they had be-
come accustomed. Continuing to buy these goods on credit, they fell
deeply into debt to U.S. and British trading houses. The Jefferson adminis-
tration, through Hawkins, encouraged the paying off of these debts
through cessions of land. The Muscogee strenuously objected to this plan,
even when the U.S. government offered perpetual annuities to the tribe
and bonuses to local micos who signed land treaties. The pressure on
Muscogee hunting grounds intensified, and those micos who ceded land
became enemies in the eyes of many of their kinsmen.
More sinister than the United States’ insatiable land hunger was its
innate distrust of American Indians and its general desire to eliminate
112 / Creek War
rather than assimilate them.

Some segments of the native
population—Iroquois, Shaw-
nee, Cherokee, Muscogee—
seemed to be constantly at
war with the frontiersmen. For
whites, these violent clashes
supported their belief that
American Indians were dan-
gerous savages in need of ex-
termination. Another prob-
lem was the strength and
depth of the Muscogees’ own
native culture. Their relation-
ship to their environment
and their tribal traditions had
been deeply satisfying. Al-
though white culture made
life more comfortable, it did Choctaw leader Pushmataha was made a bri-
not resolve any life-threaten- gadier general in the U.S. Army for his service
in the Creek War and the War of 1812. (Library
ing problem for the Musco-
of Congress)
gee. Thus, it was a luxury, not
a necessity.
The pressure of encroaching white settlement continued to increase all
along the U.S. frontier in the early 1800’s, prompting the Shawnee chief
Tecumseh to attempt an alliance of all Native American tribes so that, to-
gether, they might resist further white advances and save American Indian
lands and culture. When Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, known
as the Prophet, visited the Muscogee tribal council to urge an alliance with
the Shawnee, head mico Big Warrior rejected the idea and called for contin-
ued peace with white Americans. A movement—part spiritual, part politi-
cal—was already growing among the Muscogee, however, calling for a re-
turn to the roots of Muscogee tradition and a rejection of the values and
artifacts of white society.
The traditionalists were primarily young. Among their leaders were
men who had successfully assimilated white culture—half-white cotton
planters such as Peter McQueen, and such white traders’ sons as William
Weatherford and Josiah Francis. The leaders of the progressive, assimila-
tionist wing were often older. Some, like William McIntosh, lived like
white men. Others, like Big Warrior, maintained a traditional Muscogee
lifestyle yet accepted the reality of progress.
Creek War / 113
Indian Civil War. On July 27, 1813, this cultural and political dispute broke
into open warfare, a civil war within the nation over the direction the cul-
ture should take: toward the white man’s style of life or back to the purity
and spirituality of Muscogee life. The reactionary wing, led by a reluctant
Weatherford, a vengeful Francis, and McQueen, became known, from the
red color symbolic of war, as Red Sticks.
The war spilled over into white society with the killing of isolated set-
tlers in southern Tennessee and the massacre of two large populations of
whites, blacks, and Creeks at Forts Sinquefield and Mims in lower Ala-
bama. These killings brought Major General Andrew Jackson into the con-
flict with an army of Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee militia, joined by
progressive Muscogee, Choctaw, and Cherokee allies.
The early campaign was tedious and unsuccessful. With winter ap-
proaching, pay in arrears, little to eat, and enlistments expiring, many mili-
tiamen prepared to go home. Jackson branded them all mutineers and ar-
rested and executed six leaders, cowing the frontiersmen into remaining to
continue the fight. Through hard marching and sporadic fighting, the al-
lied force of frontiersmen and progressive Native Americans chased and
battled the Red Sticks across Alabama, finally cornering a large contingent
at Tohopeka (Horseshoe Bend) on the Tallapoosa River. In this battle, more
than five hundred Red Sticks were killed, destroying Red Stick resistance.
In the ensuing Treaty of Horseshoe Bend (August 9, 1814), Jackson took
approximately twenty-five million acres of land from both Red Stick insur-
gents and his Muscogee, Choctaw, and Cherokee allies. The cession opened
the land to immediate white and African American settlement and created
the heart of the cotton South. The Creek Indian War left Andrew Jackson
with a veteran and victorious army well-positioned to block the British in-
vasion of New Orleans, giving the United States its most impressive land
victory in the War of 1812 and opening the path to the White House for An-
drew Jackson.
For the Muscogee, the defeat spelled the beginning of the end of their ex-
istence in their homeland. Within two decades, they and most other surviv-
ing members of the South’s Five Civilized Tribes were banished to the In-
dian Territory, Oklahoma.
See also: Horseshoe Bend Treaty; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
1830.
Maurice Melton

Braund, Kathryn E. Holland. Deerskins and Duffels: The Creek Indian Trade
with Anglo-America, 1685-1815. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
114 / Creek War
1993. Describes the competitors, pricing, credit policies, markets, and

distribution of the Muscogee deerskin trade; provides a detailed look at
Muscogee life.
George, Noah Jackson. A Memorandum of the Creek Indian War. Meredith,
N.H.: R. Lothrop, 1815. 2d ed. Edited by W. Stanley Hoole. University,
Ala: Confederate Publishing Company, 1986. Based on General Jack-
son’s reports and correspondence, this pamphlet gives a battle-by-battle
account of the campaign from the U.S. perspective. Written amid the
passions of the War of 1812, it asserts that the Red Sticks were tools of the
British.
Griffith, Benjamin W., Jr. McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988. A highly readable ac-
count of the war. Argues that Weatherford was a most reluctant Red
Stick, knowing from the outset that the movement was doomed.
Halbert, Henry Sale, and T. H. Ball. The Creek War of 1813 and 1814. Chicago:
Donohue and Henneberry, 1895. Reprint with introduction and annota-
tion by Frank L. Owsley, Jr. University: University of Alabama Press,
1969. Provides a lengthy discussion of the causes of the war, presenting
it as an intertribal difference that would have been resolved had whites
not interfered.
Hudson, Charles M. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Ten-
nessee Press, 1976. Places the Muscogee within the larger framework of
the native population of the area. One of several excellent volumes on
Southeastern American Indians by ethnologist Hudson.
Martin, Joel. Sacred Revolt: The Muscogees’ Struggle for a New World. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1991. Emphasizes the importance of spirituality in Musco-
gee life, in the evolution of the Red Sticks’ back-to-our-culture cam-
paign, and in their war making.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence, Jr. Struggle for the Borderlands: The Creek War and
the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2000. Considers the Creek War in the larger context of the War of
1812.
Woodward, Thomas S. Woodward’s Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee
Indians, Contained in Letters to Friends in Georgia and Alabama. Tuscaloosa:
Alabama Book Store, 1859. Reprint. Mobile, Ala.: Southern University
Press, 1965. A veteran of the war, Woodward knew many Muscogee
leaders and their culture. Although written with the wisdom and com-
mon sense of later years, this entertaining little volume has its errors and
must be read with a critical eye.
Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of / 115
Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of
Date: September 27, 1830

Locale: Mississippi
Tribes involved: Choctaw
Treaties
Significance: In the first treaty signed after passage of the Indian Re-
moval Act of 1830, the experience of the Choctaws foreshadowed that
of many tribes as they sold their lands in Mississippi and agreed to
move west.
The Choctaws originally occupied much of present-day Mississippi. The

tribe prided itself on good relations with the United States and the fact that
it had never fought against the United States. Instead Choctaws had fought
as American allies in the Creek War (1813-1814) and War of 1812.
Nevertheless the Choctaws came under increasing pressure from Amer-
ican settlers as the area filled rapidly after the War of 1812. In treaties going
back to 1801, the Choctaws had ceded land to facilitate settlement. Pressed
by General Andrew Jackson, in 1820 the tribe agreed to the Treaty of Doak’s
Stand. Five million acres of land in western and west-central Mississippi
were sold to the United States; in return, the Choctaws acquired thirteen
million acres west of the Mississippi. The acquisition of western land
clearly raised the prospect of removal, though few Choctaws chose to emi-
grate.
American pressure mounted, however, especially after Jackson’s elec-
tion to the presidency in 1828. Encouraged by his administration’s stated
goal of removing the tribes east of the Mississippi, in January, 1830, the
Mississippi legislature voted to extend state jurisdiction over Choctaw
lands, effectively ignoring tribal claims to the land. Feeling pressured
and believing that American power was irresistible, Choctaw leaders
agreed to negotiate. Terms proposed by Greenwood LeFlore, recently
elected principal chief of the tribe, were rejected as too expensive. The
Choctaws then agreed to a new round of negotiations at Dancing Rabbit
Creek.
There in September, 1813, chiefs LeFlore, Mushulatubbee, and Nitekechi
and six thousand Choctaws met American commissioners John Eaton and
John Coffee. The Americans had made elaborate preparations to feed and
entertain the Choctaws and to create a festive air for the negotiations. Re-
luctantly, the chiefs agreed to the terms requested: In return for a $20,000,
116 / Declaration of First Nations
twenty-year annuity and other financial considerations, the Choctaws

would give up the remaining ten million acres of their land in Missis-
sippi and move to their lands in present-day southeastern Oklahoma.
Choctaws who wished to stay in Mississippi would receive one-square-
mile allotments and U.S. citizenship, provided they registered within six
months of the treaty’s ratification and lived on their lands for five years.
(Federal officials saw to it that relatively few Choctaws remained under
this provision.)
Though a few hundred Choctaws had departed for Indian Territory in
1830 in hopes of locating the best land, removal of the bulk of the tribe
began in 1831 and extended over a three-year period. Much hardship ac-
companied the Choctaw Trail of Tears, especially in 1831, and about 15 per-
cent of the tribe died during removal. The Choctaws were the first major
tribe to be moved under the Indian Removal Act, and their experience es-
tablished an important precedent that would be followed with other east-
ern tribes.
See also: Creek War; Indian Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1831-1870; Trail of Tears.
William C. Lowe
Declaration of First Nations

Date: 1981
Locale: Canada
Categories: National government and legislation, Native government,
Twentieth century history
Significance: Increased activism beginning in the 1960’s resulted in a
statement of principles that has guided subsequent native political
activities and land-claims negotiations in Canada.
Though not without strains, Canadians generally regard their country’s

multiethnic heritage with pride. Diversity is applauded in a variety of
ways, but special recognition is accorded to the “founding nations” of Can-
ada. Unfortunately for Native Canadians, the term “founding nation” is
usually reserved for only two groups—the French and the English.
Public and government recognition that Canadian Indians as a group
had suffered economically, socially, and educationally became widespread
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia / 117
in the 1960’s. In order to engage natives in a dialogue regarding the issues

that most affected them, the federal government encouraged the develop-
ment of both regional and national native political organizations. The Na-
tional Indian Council, which was formed in 1961, represented treaty Indi-
ans, nontreaty Indians, nonstatus Indians, and Metis. In 1968 this group
divided into the Canadian Metis Society, representing Metis and nonstatus
Indians, and the National Indian Brotherhood as the organization of status
Indians (both treaty and nontreaty).
Politicization grew, particularly following introduction by the govern-
ment of its White Paper on Indian Affairs in 1969. In 1975, the various
Dene bands sought Canadian recognition of the Subarctic Athapaskans as
a distinct nation. The National Indian Brotherhood became highly in-
volved in Canadian constitutional reform. The Declaration of First Na-
tions, issued in 1981, was a concise statement of native sovereignty meant
to influence the constitutional reform process. Following the Declara-
tion of First Nations, the National Indian Brotherhood was dissolved
and reconstituted as the Assembly of First Nations. They were ultimately
successful in inserting language that affirmed “existing aboriginal and
treaty rights,” though not explicitly defined, into the Constitution Act of
1982.
Natives continued to pursue the recognition of their cultures as distinct
societies and as “founding nations” of Canada by defeating the Meech
Lake Accord and by working for a form of native self-government apart
from the provinces and the federal government.
See also: Fifteen Principles; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white relations:
Canadian; Meech Lake Accord.
Pamela R. Stern
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia

Date: December, 1997
Locale: British Columbia and Canada
Categories: Court cases, Twentieth century history
Significance: A landmark Canadian Supreme Court decision on land
claims proclaimed the acceptability of oral tradition as legal evidence
and outlined eight core components and a threefold test of aboriginal
title to land.
118 / Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
This landmark case involving the Supreme Court of Canada, decided in

December, 1997, conceivably revolutionized aboriginal affairs in Canada—
particularly land claims—as well as jurisprudence in some fundamental
ways. The high court overturned the decision of the British Columbia
Court of Appeal in the matter of land claims by the House of Delgamuukw.
The House, speaking on behalf of fifty-one hereditary chiefs, claimed own-
ership and jurisdiction over fifty-eight thousand square kilometers of land
in northwestern British Columbia as native lands whose title dated back
before confederation. The group further argued that aboriginal title had
not been extinguished when British Columbia entered the confederation.
The group attempted to use oral tradition to argue the first claim and sec-
tion 35 of the 1982 Constitution Act to argue the latter point. Justice Alan
McEachern of the British Columbia Supreme Court threw out the aborigi-
nal case after one of the longest trials in Canadian history, rejecting the use
of oral evidence and agreeing with the British Columbia government’s po-
sition that title had been extinguished with entrance into the confedera-
tion.
The case then went to the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which, by a
three-to-two decision, overruled Judge McEachern on the question of ex-
tinguishment. The court did, however, agree with him on rejecting claims
of ownership although it did not entertain questions of the fiduciary duties
of the Crown in relation to lands claimed. The case then went before the Su-
preme Court of Canada, which issued a unanimous landmark decision in
December, 1997. The Court ordered a new trial, largely for two reasons.
First, it ruled that Judge McEachern had erred in rejecting oral tradition as
evidence. Noting that the laws of evidence typically work against the
rights and customs of aboriginal people, the Court argued that, notwith-
standing the challenges created by the use of oral histories as proof of his-
torical facts, the laws of evidence must be adapted in order that this type of
evidence can be accommodated and placed on an equal footing with the
type of historical evidence that courts are familiar with, which largely con-
sists of documentary evidence.
Second, it ruled that the question of aboriginal title had to be dealt with
more closely and clearly. The court therefore spelled out eight core compo-
nents of aboriginal title. Title is a collective right, it is inalienable, it is a le-
gal right to the land itself, it arises from aboriginal occupation of the land
before colonial assertion, it is an exclusive right to use the land for a variety
of purposes, it includes mineral rights, it is to protect aboriginal relation-
ship to the land, and lastly it is a right but not an absolute right.
To prove aboriginal title, the Supreme Court set out a threefold test.
First, the land must have been occupied by aboriginal peoples before
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development / 119
Crown assertion of sovereignty (for British Columbia, that means be-

fore 1846); second, there must be continuity between present occupancy of
the land extending back prior to 1846 (that is, occupancy must not have
been interrupted or given up); and third, at the date of Crown assertion of
sovereignty, the occupation of the land by aboriginals must have been ex-
clusive.
The case presented many issues unaddressed by the Canadian Supreme
Court, issues largely outside its competency, so it ordered a new trial in
which the foregoing principles were to have been taken into account. The
high court thus urged all parties to serious negotiations in “good faith,”
which it hoped would result in compromises but ultimately a settlement
because, as the majority decision concluded, “let us face it, we are all here
to stay.”
See also: Fifteen Principles; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white relations:
Canadian; Meech Lake Accord; Nisga’a Agreement in Principle; Nunavut
Territory; Reserve system of Canada; Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Peoples.
Gregory Walters
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern

Development
Locale: Canada
history
Significance: Since the Indian Act of 1868, Indian affairs have been han-
dled by various Canadian government departments; DIAND offi-
cially took over this function in 1967.
The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in its pres-

ent form was created as a separate entity within the Canadian govern-
ment in 1967 by an act of Parliament. Before that time, Indian affairs and
policy were overseen by a Department of Indian Affairs that was often
part of a larger governmental unit with other responsibilities. The Indian
Act of 1868 gave responsibility for Indian affairs to the secretary of state.
In 1880, a revision of the 1876 Indian Act created a separate Department of
120 / Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Indian Affairs. The department was given the power to “depose” western
Indian leaders in 1894; in 1895 it was given the power to rent out reserve
lands to individual Indians regardless of whether the band approved. In
1936, Indian affairs became the responsibility of a branch of the Depart-
ment of Mines and Resources. In 1959 the Indian Affairs branch was trans-
ferred to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. In 1965 the Depart-
ment of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources took charge of Indian
affairs.
As its name implies, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern De-
velopment was established with a twofold purpose: to administer the In-
dian Act, including the provision of funds and services to the eligible In-
dian and Inuit populations, and to promote and manage development of
the northern territories. DIAND is involved in providing or assisting with
Indian education, housing, medical care, and economic assistance. DIAND
generally is concerned with those
bands recognized under the In-
dian Act; therefore, many thou-
sands of Indian, Inuit, and Metis
people—perhaps 75 percent of
the population of these groups—
receive no services from DIAND.
The Indian and Inuit services sec-
tion of DIAND is composed of a
number of branches that report
to a deputy minister and to the
minister, who is a member of Par-
liament. There are also a number
of regional and district offices;
since 1988, the structure has been
changing (many district offices
have been closed) as First Na-
tions themselves have assumed
responsibility for delivering pro-
Under Canada’s Department of Indian Af- grams, with DIAND acting in an
fairs and Northern Development, eligible advisory capacity and providing
indigenous Indian and Inuit populations re- technical support.
ceive education, housing, medical care, and Historically, the Department
economic assistance, but because DIAND of Indian Affairs long continued
generally is concerned with those bands
the paternalistic attitude estab-
recognized under the Indian Act thousands
of Indian, Inuit, and Metis receive no ser- lished by the British; this began
vices. (National Archives) to change significantly only in
Determined Residents United for Mohawk Sovereignty / 121
the late 1960’s. One controversy involved the Canadian government’s pro-
posed “White Paper,” released in 1969, intended to provide a new frame-
work for Indian-government relations. Many bands strongly opposed the
White Paper’s proposals, and the government withdrew it two years later.
In 1973, the Office of Native Claims was established as a branch of DIAND
to consider and negotiate native land claims. Since the 1970’s, DIAND has
been dealing with Indian concerns about environmental damage to their
land base. DIAND has also been involved in negotiations concerning the
establishment of a new native territory in the north, to be known as
Nunavut. Nunavut will comprise most of the eastern Northwest Terri-
tories.
See also: Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; Indian-white relations:
Canadian; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
Gregory Walters
Determined Residents United for Mohawk

Sovereignty
Locale: U.S.-Canadian border of New York State and Ontario
Tribes involved: Mohawk
Categories: Organizations, Protest movements, Reservations and relo-
cation, Twentieth century history
Significance: DRUMS opposed speakeasies and casinos on Mohawk
reservations.
Determined Residents United for Mohawk Sovereignty (DRUMS) was es-

tablished at the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation in 1974. The Akwesasne
Mohawk reservation (also called the Saint Regis Mohawk reserve) strad-
dles the United States-Canadian border near Massena, New York, and
Cornwall, Ontario. Beginning in the early 1970’s, Akwesasne residents es-
tablished DRUMS to combat increasing smuggling across the border. In
the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, DRUMS’s main focus turned to “speak-
easies”—small, illegal drinking establishments that were contributing to
an increasing number of traffic accidents on the reservation.
By June, 1989, DRUMS members were beginning to talk of blockading
Route 37, the reservation’s main highway, to keep away the clientele of sev-
eral illegal casinos that had been constructed with smuggling profits.
122 / Duro v. Reina
Many people believed that, if the New York state police refused to close the
gaming houses, civil disobedience was their only option. DRUMS planned
a blockade for June 9 but abandoned it in favor of a peaceful march. On July
20, two hundred Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and New
York state troopers raided seven casinos on the reservation, arresting thir-
teen people and seizing cash and financial records. DRUMS continued to
oppose the casinos until May 1, 1990, when two Mohawk men, Mathew
Pyke and “Junior” Edwards, were shot to death in firefights. After that,
New York, Ontario, and Quebec police occupied the reservation, and the
gaming houses were closed.
See also: Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
Bruce E. Johansen
Duro v. Reina
Date: 1984-1990
Locale: Arizona
Tribes involved: Pima-Maricopa
Categories: Court cases, Native government, Twentieth century history
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision on tribal sovereignty lim-
ited the legal jurisdiction of a tribe to its members only.
In 1984, while living on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservation in

Arizona, Albert Duro, an enrolled member of another tribe, shot and
killed an Indian youth within reservation boundaries. Under the Major
Crimes Act (1885 and amended), Duro was charged with murder, but even-
tually federal charges were dismissed. Duro then was placed in the cus-
tody of the Pima-Maricopa police and was charged in tribal court with il-
legally firing a weapon on the reservation. Tribal courts’ powers are
regulated by a federal statute that limits tribal criminal penalties to misde-
meanors.
After the tribal court denied Duro’s motion to dismiss his case for lack
of jurisdiction, he brought a petition before the federal court to dis-
miss. Duro’s case was accepted on the basis that the Pima-Maricopa tribe’s
attempt to assert jurisdiction over a nonmember Indian would consti-
tute discrimination based on race, a violation of equal protection guar-
antees of the Indian Civil Rights Act (1968). Ultimately, in 1990, the U.S.
Supreme Court determined that Indian tribes lack jurisdiction over per-
Elk v. Wilkins / 123
sons who are not tribal members. Therefore, the Pima-Maricopa tribe had
no criminal jurisdiction over Duro, a nonmember. The Court’s decision
set boundaries on the concept of tribal sovereignty in criminal cases and
limited tribes to controlling internal relations among their own tribal
members.
See also: Indian Civil Rights Act; Major Crimes Act.
Carole A. Barrett
Elk v. Wilkins
Date: 1884
Locale: Nebraska
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision found that Native Ameri-
cans are not citizens of the United States and therefore not entitled to
vote in U.S. elections.
In 1884, John Elk, an American Indian, was refused permission to register

to vote in a local election in Omaha, Nebraska. When he later appeared at
the polls, he was again refused the right to vote. Elk lived apart from his
tribe and met all residence and other requirements of the city of Omaha and
the state of Nebraska but was turned away on the basis that he was an In-
dian and, therefore, not a United States citizen. Elk filed a lawsuit charging
the state of Nebraska with violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights
by denying his right to vote.
As an Indian born in the United States, Elk argued he was a United
States citizen as well as a state citizen. Nebraska courts ruled Elk ineligible
to vote, and on November 3, 1884, the U.S. Supreme Court found Nebraska
correct in denying Elk’s right to vote. The majority of the Court determined
that an Indian who was born a member of a tribe was not a United States
citizen but a member of a distinct nation that was separate and apart from
the United States. Therefore, the Court determined, a specific act of Con-
gress would be required to make Indian people citizens of the United
States.
See also: Indian Citizenship Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
1933.
Carole A. Barrett
124 / Employment Division, State of Oregon et al. v. Smith
Employment Division, Department of

Human Resources of the State of Oregon
et al. v. Smith
Date: 1990
Locale: Oregon
Categories: Court cases, Religion and missionary activities, Twentieth
century history
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision allows states to apply
drug laws to Native American employees who use peyote as a reli-
gious sacrament.
In this April 17, 1990, decision, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted a nar-
row interpretation of the free exercise clause, allowing Oregon to apply
its drug laws to prohibit Native Americans from using peyote in religious
ceremonies. Alfred Smith and Galen Black, two members of the Native
American Church, were fired from their jobs in a drug rehabilitation clinic
after their employer discovered that they used the hallucinogenic drug
peyote during religious rituals. They applied for unemployment com-
pensation, but Oregon’s Department of Human Resources denied their
claims based on a state law that disqualified employees who were dis-
charged for work-related “misconduct.” A state appellate court and the
Oregon Supreme Court ruled that the denial of benefits was a violation
of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Oregon appealed to
the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that Smith’s free exercise of religion
had to be balanced by the state’s interest in preventing the use of harm-
ful drugs. The Supreme Court’s first judgment was to remand the case to
the Oregon Supreme Court to decide whether state law made an exception
for the religious use of peyote. Oregon’s court responded that state law
provided no exception and that the only issue was the religious freedom
of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court accepted the case for a second
time.
The Supreme Court’s major precedent, Sherbert v. Verner (1963), sug-
gested that Oregon could prevail only if it could defend its policy with the
“compelling state interest” test combined with the “least restrictive alter-
native” test. From this perspective, it appeared difficult for Oregon to jus-
tify the refusal of unemployment benefits to Smith and Black. The Court
had upheld the Sherbert tests in at least seven cases since 1963.
Epidemics and diseases / 125
In the Smith case, however, the Court voted six to three that Oregon had
no constitutional obligation to make a religious exception for illegal drugs,
provided that the law was reasonable, neutral, and generally applicable to
all persons. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that in
enforcing valid criminal laws not specifically directed at religious acts,
government had no obligation to make a religious exemption. Such matters
were generally left to the legislature’s discretion, even if an “unfortunate
consequence” was an incidental burden on unpopular religious practices.
The three dissenting justices maintained that Oregon had not shown a com-
pelling state interest to refuse to allow peyote for religious usage.
The Smith decision appeared to limit the extent to which religious mi-
norities might claim constitutional protection for unpopular practices. Re-
ligious leaders and civil libertarians were outraged at the ruling, and Con-
gress responded to the anti-Smith movement by passing the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993, which was designed to restore
both the compelling state interest test and the least restrictive means test
against any incidental burden on religious practice.
See also: American Indian Religious Freedom Act; Lyng v. Northwest In-
dian Cemetery Protective Association; National Council of American Indians;
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council; Society of American In-
dians.
Thomas T. Lewis
Epidemics and diseases

Date: Colonial times-present
Categories: Colonial history, Eighteenth century history, Nineteenth
century history, Twentieth century history
Significance: Within decades after contact with Europeans, Native
American societies experienced rapid population declines; although
the reasons for the demographic collapse of native North America
are complex, a prominent factor in that decline was Old World infec-
tious diseases, introduced by European explorers and settlers.
After the arrival of Europeans, the estimated aboriginal population of na-

tive North America began to decline. The Spanish intrusion into the South-
126 / Epidemics and diseases
west and Southeast (c. 1520) launched a series of lethal epidemics that in-
fected various Native American people. The epidemiological conquest of
native North America accelerated after the early seventeenth century with
English and French colonization along the Atlantic seaboard. The dramatic
population decline of indigenous people continued until the early twenti-
eth century. By 1920, only 270,995 Native Americans remained after the ep-
idemiological onslaught of European colonization. They were the survi-
vors of perhaps 1.2 million to 18 million Native Americans who inhabited
North America at the time of the arrival of Europeans.
Increased mortality among Native Americans as a result of introduced
European diseases is not attributable to a lack of sufficient immunological
response to infections in general but to the fact that Native Americans had
no prior exposure to these pathogens. The “new” pathogens therefore not
only created a high degree of physiological stress but also engendered cul-
tural stress. Epidemic episodes often resulted in a breakdown in the social
system, elevating mortality levels.
Although it is recognized that European infectious diseases devastated
many Native American societies, it also must be acknowledged that pre-
contact native North America was not a disease-free paradise. Biological
and archaeological evidence documents the fact that pre-contact Native
American populations suffered from a number of afflictions. Malnutrition,
anemia, and a variety of tuberculoid, trepanematoid, and other degenera-
tive, chronic, and congenital conditions plagued indigenous populations.
The general state of health, in combination with ecological and cultural fac-
tors, therefore, greatly affected the post-contact disease experience of Na-
tive American societies.
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. No Old World pathogen was more

lethal than smallpox, which was unleashed in the Americas during the
Spanish conquest. For four years, 1520-1524, the disease diffused across
Central and North America. Whether smallpox reached pandemic propor-
tions is debatable, but in populations with no prior exposure, mortality
could be as high as 60 percent. The infected native populations experienced
high death rates. Florida’s Timucua population may have once had 772,000
people, but by 1524 the group was reduced to 361,000. Today the timucua
are no longer a distinct ethnic group.
Throughout the 1500’s and into the next century, twenty-three European
infectious diseases appeared in native North America. In these various re-
gions, Native American populations contracted diseases on the average of
every 7.3 years. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and the bubonic plague af-
fected Native American populations largely east of the Mississippi and in
North American Epidemics and Regions Affected, 1520-1696

Date of
Onset Epidemic Regions Affected
1520 Smallpox All regions
1531 Measles Southwest
1545 Bubonic plague Southwest
1559 Influenza South Atlantic states, Gulf area, Southwest
1586 Typhus South Atlantic states, Gulf area
1592 Smallpox North Atlantic states, South Atlantic states, Old
Northwest, Great Lakes states, Midwest east of
Mississippi River, Southwest
1602 Smallpox Southwest
1612 Bubonic plague North Atlantic states, South Atlantic states,
Gulf area, Southwest
1633 Measles North Atlantic states
1637 Scarlet fever North Atlantic states
1639 Smallpox North Atlantic states, South Atlantic states, Old
Northwest, Great Lakes states, Midwest east of
Mississippi River
1646 Smallpox Gulf area, Southwest
1647 Influenza North Atlantic states
1649 Smallpox North Atlantic states, South Atlantic states,
Gulf area
1655 Smallpox Gulf area
1658 Measles, North Atlantic states, Gulf area, Old Northwest,
diphtheria Great Lakes states, Midwest east of Mississippi
River, Southwest
1662 Smallpox North Atlantic states, Old Northwest, Great
Lakes states, Midwest east of Mississippi River
1665 Smallpox South Atlantic states, Old Northwest, Great
1669 Smallpox North Atlantic states
1674 Smallpox Gulf area, southern Plains
1675 Influenza North Atlantic states
1692 Measles North Atlantic states, Old Northwest, Great
1696 Smallpox, Influenza South Atlantic states, Gulf area
Sources: Data are from Dobyns, Henry, F., Their Number Became Thinned (Knoxville, Univer-
sity of Tennessee Press, 1983); Thornton, Russell, American Indian Holocaust and Sur-
vival: A Population History Since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).
128 / Epidemics and diseases
the Southwest. The Huron tribe, which possibly numbered up to thirty-five

thousand people in the early 1600’s, was reduced by 1640 to an estimated
ten thousand people.
Seventeenth century Europeans generally viewed the decline of sur-
rounding Native American populations as evidence of divine intervention.
God would destroy “Godless savages,” they thought, so that Christian civ-
ilization could prosper. Demographically, European populations grew and
expanded geographically as declining indigenous populations relinquished
their lands and resources. Those Native Americans that resisted white en-
croachment were vanquished through genocidal warfare or reduced to
mission life.
Eighteenth Century. By the eighteenth century, the European population

had reached an estimated 223,000 people. Although Europeans were not
the demographic majority, epidemics continued to pave the way for fur-
ther colonization. Throughout the Atlantic coastal region and into the in-
terior westward, native populations were decimated through genocidal
warfare and diseases. In the southeastern region of North America, for ex-
ample, the estimated Native American population in 1685 was 199,400. By
1970, the population was reduced to approximately 55,900—a decline of
71.9 percent. By contrast, Europeans and African Americans in the region
increased their population to 1,630,100 or 31.4 percent.
In sum, European expansion during the three first centuries of coloniza-
tion produced a demographic collapse of Native American populations.
Introduced European infectious diseases, combined with periodic geno-
cidal warfare and the destruction of indigenous lifeways, reduced Native
Americans to approximately 600,000. By contrast, the European popula-
tion grew to 5,308,483.
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The nineteenth century represents

the final century of Native American population decline as a result of epi-
demics. During this century, twenty-four epidemics affected Native Amer-
ican populations. Smallpox continued to appear every 7.9 years among
some segment of the Native American population. Between the smallpox
episodes, Native Americans contracted measles and cholera every 22.5
years. According to Henry Dobyns, an anthropologist and authority on
Native American historical demography, more epidemics occurred during
this century, with more frequency, than during any other.
One of the most devastating epidemics during this century was the
1837-1838 smallpox epidemic. The disease diffused across most of native
North America, but the Northern Plans region was hit especially hard. It is
estimated that seventeen thousand Native Americans on the northern

Plains died before the epidemic subsided. Such acute infectious diseases
continued to plague Native American communities into the early reserva-
tion period. Only then did these infections give way to the twentieth cen-
tury epidemics of influenza, tuberculosis, and trachoma—chronic condi-
tions that would infect Native Americans until the 1950’s.
The post-contact epidemic history of Native North America can be de-
scribed as one of continual population decline coupled with the destruc-
tion of numerous unique lifeways. Native Americans, however, during
these tragic times, did not remain passive actors. Native American societ-
ies employed a number of cultural adaptations to respond to the onslaught
of infectious diseases. Some societies modified their kin systems, fused
with other tribal nations, or created new nations from various remnant
tribes. Diseases were powerful agents of cultural and biological change.
The placement of Native Americans on reservations or in rural commu-
nities did not mark the end of epidemics. Acute infectious diseases have
been replaced by “diseases of poverty.” Many of these afflictions reach epi-
demic proportions in some Native American communities. Deaths from tu-
berculosis, type II diabetes mellitus, violence, suicide, accidents, and alco-
holism exceed the national average. In addition, Native Americans now
have to contend with another epidemic—the threat of human immunodefi-
ciency virus (HIV) infection—a disease that has made its presence felt in
some Native American communities.
See also: Beaver Wars; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white
relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-
white relations: French colonial; Indian-white relations: Norse; Indian-
white relations: Russian colonial; Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial;
Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial.
Gregory R. Campbell

American Indian Culture and Research Journal 13 (1989). Special issue on con-
temporary issues in Native American health, edited by Gregory R.
Campbell. A collection of articles that focus on issues revolving around
American Indians’ health in the later 1980’s.
Campbell, Gregory R. “The Politics of Counting: Critical Reflections About
the Depopulation Question of Native North America.” In Native Voices
on the Columbian Quincentenary, edited by Donald A. Grinde. Los An-
geles: American Indian Studies Center, University of California, 1994.
An examination of the European manipulation of Native American pop-
ulation counts as justification for continued colonial expansion.
130 / Ex parte Crow Dog
Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sweeping yet detailed
look at the effect of disease in the European colonization of the Ameri-
cas.
Cook, Noble David, and W. George Lovell, eds. Secret Judgments of God: Old
World Disease in Colonial Spanish America. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 2001. A collection of symposium papers, presented from a
wide range of disciplines, assessing the impact of European diseases
and epidemics on the Native American population.
Dobyns, Henry F. Their Number Became Thinned. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1983. A comprehensive volume addressing the popula-
tion dynamics of eastern North America.
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust. New York: Oxford University Press,
1992. A discussion of Native American population decline in relation to
European conquest and colonization.
Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population His-
tory Since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Provides
an overview of Native American population and recovery from Euro-
pean contact to 1980.
Verano, John W., and Douglas H. Ubelaker, eds. Disease and Demography in
the Americas. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
A collection of articles assessing the health and demography of pre-
contact and post-contact Native American populations.
Ex parte Crow Dog

Date: 1883
Locale: Dakota Territory
Tribes involved: Lakota
Categories: Court cases, Native government, Nineteenth century history
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision found that the United
States had no jurisdiction in cases between two Indians concerning
events on Indian land.
Crow Dog, a well-known Lakotan, killed Spotted Tail, another popular

tribal leader, at the Rosebud Agency in Dakota Territory in 1883. Crow Dog
was arrested, removed from the reservation, and tried in the territorial
court of Dakota, where he was convicted and sentenced to death. In killing
Fallen Timbers, Battle of / 131
Spotted Tail, Crow Dog admit-

ted he had broken Lakota law,
but he maintained he should
be punished according to La-
kota customs, not by United
States law. Under tribal law,
Crow Dog would be shunned
by his own family and would
become responsible for care
and protection of Spotted Tail’s
family.
The U.S. Supreme Court
sided with Crow Dog and de-
clared the United States had
no jurisdiction over the crime
of one Indian against another
on Indian land. Because Con-
gress provided no federal ju-
risdiction over Indian crimes
on reservations, even a mur-
Brule Sioux war chief Crow Dog, pictured circa derer could not be punished.
1900. (Library of Congress) Therefore, Crow Dog returned
to his people.
This decision proved to be a major step in relations between Native
Americans and the U.S. government, in that it encouraged Congress to en-
act legislation to give federal jurisdiction over Indians in certain legal mat-
ters. One key piece of legislation, the Major Crimes Act (1885), directed fed-
eral courts to assume jurisdiction over seven crimes committed on Indian
land: murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, bur-
glary, and larceny.
See also: Major Crimes Act.
Carole A. Barrett
Fallen Timbers, Battle of

Locale: South of present-day Toledo, Ohio
Tribes involved: Chickasaw, Choctaw, Miami, Shawnee
132 / Fallen Timbers, Battle of

Significance: The resulting Treaty of Greenville secures U.S. control
over much of Ohio and ousts its resident Native Americans.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, the British
acknowledged the United States’ claims to territory west of the Appala-
chians and made no effort to protect American Indian lands in the Ohio
Valley. Incursions by settlers there led to serious problems, because Ameri-
can Indian leaders refused to acknowledge U.S. authority north of the Ohio
River. Between 1784 and 1789, U.S. government officials persuaded some
chiefs to relinquish lands in southern and eastern Ohio, but most American
Indians refused to acknowledge the validity of these treaties.
Encouraged by the British, the Miami and Shawnee tribes insisted that
the Americans fall back to the Ohio River. When the settlers refused, the
Miami attacked them. In 1790 and again in 1791, U.S. troops and militia
were sent against American Indians along the Maumee River.
The 1790 expedition, the first for the U.S. Army, ended in disaster. In Oc-
tober, Brigadier General Josiah Harmar set out with a poorly trained force
of some 1,200 men. Harmar divided his troops into three separate columns,
enabling the Miami and Shawnee, led by Miami chief Little Turtle, to win
the battle, inflicting three hundred casualties on U.S. troops.
In November, 1791, Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Terri-
tory and a commissioned major general, led a second expedition, which in-
cluded the entire six-hundred-man regular army and fifteen hundred mili-
tiamen. At present-day Fort Recovery, Ohio, Little Turtle and his warriors
administered the most overwhelming defeat ever by American Indians on
the British or Americans. Some 650 U.S. troops and 250 civilians died; an-
other 300 were wounded. American Indian losses were reported as twenty-
one killed and forty wounded.
Mad Anthony Wayne. In December, 1792, Congress authorized establish-

ment of a five-hundred-man Legion of the United States. Despite misgiv-
ings, Washington recalled General “Mad” Anthony Wayne from retirement
to command the legion. Wayne found his first training camp, near Pitts-
burgh, too distracting and marched his men twenty-five miles downriver
to a site he named Legionville. Utilizing Baron Friedrich von Steuben’s
Revolutionary War drill manual, Wayne carried out rigorous training. In
May, Wayne moved the legion to Cincinnati and then a few miles north to a
new camp, Hobson’s Choice.
Wayne issued a call for Kentucky mounted militia and in early Octo-
ber, moved north to Fort Jefferson with two thousand regulars. When Ken-
tucky militiamen arrived, Wayne moved a few miles farther north and
began a camp to accommodate his larger force. He named it Fort Green-
ville (now Greenville, Ohio) in memory of his Revolutionary War com-
mander, Nathaniel Greene. In December, 1793, Wayne ordered a de-
tachment to the site of the previous massacre. On Christmas Day, 1793,
U.S. troops reoccupied the battlefield. After burying human remains still
in evidence, they constructed a fort on high ground overlooking the
Wabash.
Wayne’s timetable for the campaign was delayed because of unreliable
civilian contractors, attacks on his supply trains, the loss of some of his men
to other campaigns, and a cease-fire that led him to believe peace might be
at hand. Little Turtle, Blue Jacket, and other tribal chiefs rejected peace ne-
gotiations, however.
In February, the British commander ordered construction of Fort Mi-
amis, a post on the Maumee River, to mount cannons larger than those that
Wayne might be able to bring against it. By mid-April, work on the fort was
well along. This further delayed Wayne’s advance, then rescheduled for
June.
Little Turtle Strikes. On June 29, Little Turtle struck first, at Fort Recovery,
Wayne’s staging point for the invasion. A supply train had just arrived and
was bivouacked outside the walls when two thousand warriors attacked.
They hoped to take both the supplies and fort in one bold stroke, but Fort
Recovery’s commander, Captain Alexander Gibson, was ready. Although
many soldiers were killed outside the walls, the attackers were beaten back
with heavy casualties. After two days with no success, the tribal warriors
withdrew. The attack was the high-water mark of their cause; never again
would they be able to assemble that many warriors. Defeat at Fort Recov-
ery led some of the smaller tribes to quit the coalition and also caused the
eclipse of Little Turtle, who was replaced as principal war leader by the less
effective Blue Jacket.
Wayne now had two thousand men. In mid-July, the Kentucky militia,
ultimately sixteen hundred men, began to arrive. Wayne also had a hun-
dred American Indians, mostly Choctaws and Chickasaws. On July 28, the
men left Fort Greenville for Fort Recovery. Much was at stake, and Wash-
ington had warned that a third straight defeat would be ruinous to the rep-
utation of the government.
The two principal American Indian concentrations were Miami Town,
the objective of previous offensives, and the rapids of the Maumee River
around Fort Miamis. The two were connected by a hundred-mile Maumee
River Valley road. Wayne vowed to cut it at midpoint, forcing his enemy to
134 / Fallen Timbers, Battle of
split his forces and defend both possible objectives. By August 3, he had es-
tablished both Fort Adams and Fort Defiance. Wayne then sent the chiefs a
final offer for peace. Little Turtle urged its acceptance, pointing out the
great numbers of the enemy and expressing doubts about British support.
Blue Jacket and British agents urged war, however, which a majority of the
chiefs approved.
Wayne Strikes Back. Having learned that the American Indians were
congregating near Fort Miamis, Wayne decided to move there first. On Au-
gust 15, Wayne’s men still were ten miles from the British fort. Sensing an
impending fight, Wayne detached unnecessary elements from his column
at a hastily constructed position, Fort Deposit. Manned by Captain Zebu-
lon Pike and two hundred men, it would serve as a refuge in case things did
not go well.
On August 20, Wayne again put his column in motion. More than a
thousand American Indian warriors, along with some sixty Canadian mili-
tiamen, were lying in wait. They hoped to ambush the U.S. troops from
the natural defenses of what had been a forest before it had been up-
rooted by a tornado. The attack plan was sound but based on the as-
sumption that their enemy would either remain in place or run away.
Not expecting the daylong delay to build Fort Deposit, Blue Jacket had
thought that Wayne would arrive on August 19. The natives had begun a
strict fast on August 18 and continued it the next day. When the Americans
did not arrive, many of the natives, tired and half-starved, left for Fort
Miamis.
Wayne marched his men so as to be ready to meet an attack from
any quarter. His infantry were in two wings; well out in front was a
select battalion, led by Major William Price, to trigger the enemy at-
tack and allow Wayne time to deploy the main body. When the Ameri-
can Indians opened fire, Price’s men fell back into Wilkinson’s line.
Wayne’s troops shattered the ambush with an infantry frontal attack
driven home with the bayonet, while cavalry closed in on the flanks. The
killing went on to the very gates of the fort, while the British looked on. Of
Wayne’s troops, only thirty-three were killed and one hundred wounded
(eleven of whom later died of their wounds); tribal losses were in the hun-
dreds.
Wayne disregarded Fort Miamis but destroyed American Indian com-
munities and British storehouses in its vicinity. His troops then marched to
Miami Town, occupied it without opposition on September 17, and razed
it. They then built a fort on the site of Harmar’s 1790 defeat, naming it Fort
Wayne.
Treaty of Fort Greenville. On August 3, 1795, after six weeks of discus-

sions, chiefs representing twelve tribes signed the Treaty of Fort Green-
ville. The treaty set a definite boundary in the Northwest Territory, forcing
the American Indians to give up most of the present state of Ohio and part
of Indiana. All hostilities were to cease, prisoners were to be exchanged,
and the United States agreed to pay an eight-thousand-dollar-per-year an-
nuity for the loss of hunting lands and twenty thousand dollars in com-
modities.
The brief Battle of Fallen Timbers broke forever the power of the Ameri-
can Indians in the eastern region of the Northwest Territory. It also led the
British to evacuate their garrisons below the Great Lakes. The victory did
much to restore the prestige of the U.S. Army; Wayne, justifiably, is known
as its father.
See also: Fort Greenville Treaty; Little Turtle’s War.
Spencer C. Tucker

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance. The North American Indian
Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1991. A useful short survey of American Indian affairs.
Nelson, Paul D. Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1985. The best biography of Wayne to date.
____________. “Anthony Wayne’s Indian War in the Old Northwest, 1792-
1795.” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 56 (1984): 115-140. An excellent short ac-
count of this war.
Palmer, Dave R. 1794: America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Nation. Novato,
Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994. A helpful study of early U.S. military policy.
Smith, Dwight L. “Wayne and the Treaty of Green Ville.” Ohio State Archaeo-
logical and Historical Quarterly 63 (January, 1954): 1-7. Careful analysis of
the treaty.
Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1997. A biography of one of the main Indian leaders in the
conflict.
Sword, Wiley. President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old
Northwest, 1790-1795. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985.
Discusses the struggle for the northwest frontier.
Tebbel, John W. The Battle of Fallen Timbers, August 20, 1794. New York:
Franklin Watts, 1972. Useful history of the battle.
Wilson, Frazer. The Treaty of Greenville. Pigua, Ohio: Correspondent Press,
1894. The only work specifically devoted to the treaty ending the cam-
paign.
136 / Federally recognized tribes
Federally recognized tribes

Categories: National government and legislation, Terminology, Twenti-
eth century history
Significance: Federal recognition of tribes is an issue with both political
and economic ramifications.
The term “federally recognized tribe” is a U.S. government designation for

an American Indian tribe that has official relations with the United States.
These relations have been established in various ways through the years—
through treaties (treaty making ended in the late nineteenth century), exec-
utive orders, court decrees, and acts of Congress, and through meeting the
requirements set forth by the Federal Acknowledgment Program. Federal
recognition is both a political and an economic issue, as recognized tribes
are eligible for federal services that unrecognized tribes cannot receive,
such as education, housing, and health benefits.
The Federal Acknowledgment Program (a Bureau of Indian Affairs
program) was created in 1978. The Federal Acknowledgment Program
established criteria and procedures through which unrecognized tribes
could attempt to attain recognized status. The creation of a federal recogni-
tion process was hailed a victory by some American Indians, but others
countered that the requirements are unnecessarily complex, even un-
fulfillable. Among the criteria is proof of continuous existence as a tribe;
the tribe also must have a governing body, be governed by a constitution or
similar document, and have membership criteria and a roll of current
members.
In the 1950’s a government policy known as termination successfully
urged many tribes to disband; subsequently, some terminated tribes have
attempted to regain recognized tribal status; the regaining of tribal status
by the Menominees was the first major success. (Terminated tribes are not
eligible for recognition through the Federal Acknowledgment Program.) In
1991 there were 510 federally recognized tribes; in mid-1994 the number
had grown to 543. Some of these groups are very small; for example, there
are some two hundred Alaskan village groups.
See also: American Indian; Amerind; Indian; Native American; Termi-
nation Resolution; Tribe.
McCrea Adams
Fifteen Principles / 137
Fifteen Principles
Date: 1983; reaffirmed in 1985
Locale: Quebec
Tribes involved: Abenaki, Algonquian, Cree, Huron, Inuit, Micmac,
Mohawk, Montagnais, Naskapi
Significance: Efforts toward Canadian federal constitutional reform
prompted the Quebec provincial government to formulate an admin-
istrative and legal policy regarding the Indian and Inuit residents of
the province.
In the midst of federal constitutional negotiations, the province of Quebec

established a legal framework to guide its relationships with the Inuit and
Indian residents of Quebec. Known as the Fifteen Principles, the policy
statement affirmed that the province of Quebec accepted native claims to
self-determination with respect to culture, education, language, and eco-
nomic development. It further acknowledged that natives are entitled to
certain aboriginal rights and land claims (left to be determined by future
negotiations). Finally, the Fifteen Principles recognized that those aborigi-
nal rights applied equally to men and women.
The Fifteen Principles were adopted, in large part, to bolster the claim
by the ruling Parti Québécois that Quebec is a distinct and sovereign na-
tion either within or apart from Canada. If this was to be the case, Quebec
could not argue, as it had previously, that the federal government bore
sole responsibility for natives living within the borders of Quebec. In fact, it
was Quebec’s earlier insistence that the federal government must absorb
all the costs of native administration that led to the 1939 Supreme Court de-
cision that for legal purposes Inuit were to be regarded as Indians as speci-
fied in the British North America Act. By adopting the Fifteen Principles,
Quebec attempted to place itself on equal footing with the Canadian gov-
ernment.
See also: Declaration of First Nations; Meech Lake Accord.
Pamela R. Stern
138 / Fish-ins
Fish-ins
Date: 1960’s
Locale: Pacific Northwest
Tribes involved: Alsea, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Chehalis, Chinook,
Coast Salish, Coos, Eyak, Gitksan, Haida, Klamath, Klikitat, Kwaki-
utl, Nootka (Nuu-Chah-Nulth), Quileute, Quinault, Siuslaw, Takelma,
Tillamook, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Umpqua
Significance: Native tribes protest the restriction of their fishing rights
in an attempt to regain economic self-sufficiency.
During the 1960’s, American Indians in the Pacific Northwest began to

stage fish-ins to protest restrictions on their fishing rights, especially within
the states of Washington, Or-
egon, and Idaho. In turn,
sports fishers’ groups, com-
mercial fishing operations,
and canneries pressured the
state governments to get
American Indians off the
rivers. Controversies over
fishing rights stemmed from
treaties negotiated with vari-
ous Pacific Northwest tribes
in 1854 and 1855. In those trea-
ties, tribes gave up claim to
vast areas of land but specif-
ically preserved fishing rights
along waterways ceded to the
federal government. Those
treaties guaranteed to Indians
“the right of taking fish, at
all usual and accustomed
grounds and stations . . . in
common with all citizens of
Johnnie Saux, of the Quinaielts, displays a dog
the Territory.”
salmon in Taholah, Washington, 1936. Fishing
Almost from the start, the has always been a major part of the Native
states ignored the treaty pro- American way of life in the Northwest. (Na-
visions, and by the 1930’s, the tional Archives)
Fish-ins / 139
states openly restricted Indian subsistence and commercial fishing. Some

tribes challenged the states; however, they had no legal success. During the
next two decades, state restrictions increased, particularly in the state of
Washington, and although some cases went to court, restrictions on Indian
fishing were upheld.
Finally, in the 1960’s, Indian nations began to push for economic devel-
opment, and tribes began to demand their treaty rights. In the Pacific
Northwest, the tribes openly challenged the states’ ability to exert regula-
tory authority over matters negotiated in treaties between the federal gov-
ernment and tribal nations. The state of Washington responded by issuing
a series of orders forbidding Indian fishing, and in 1964, Washington set
aside the treaty guarantees.
Indians from various affected tribes attempted to channel their ener-
gies in a unified front and formed the Survival of American Indians Associ-
ation in 1964. This organization began a series of actions designed to assert
their rights. One important strategy was to engage in night fishing in re-
stricted areas. Washington aggressively policed night fishing, and it confis-
cated boats, nets, and motors, rammed fishing boats, and prosecuted law-
breakers.
The most dramatic and effective protests sponsored by the Indian asso-
ciation were fish-ins. These were highly publicized events, well attended
by media, in which Indian people, including many women and children,
would assert their treaty rights and fish, despite state restrictions. The state
response was aggressive: Often large numbers of game wardens and police
swarmed over the protesters and made many arrests. The media docu-
mented these incidents, and the fish-ins attracted national attention and
even celebrity participants, including actors and entertainers such as
Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Dick Gregory. As more Indians were ar-
rested, various church organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union,
and prominent lawyers began to provide legal assistance, and this, in turn,
increased media coverage.
In 1970, the federal government brought suit to ensure that the states
honored the treaties and allowed American Indians a fair harvest of fish.
U.S. District Court judge George Boldt sent shockwaves through the Pacific
Northwest when he ruled in favor of Indian fishing rights in United States v.
Washington (1974) and determined that the treaties entitled the Indians to
half the fish passing through the waters.
This decision was challenged but remained in force and ultimately al-
lowed many tribes to develop successful economic ventures such as can-
neries, fish hatcheries, and aquaculture programs. The fish-ins also pro-
duced a number of Indian activists who went on to participate in the early
140 / Fort Atkinson Treaty
years of the American Indian Movement, including Dino Butler, Sid Mills,
Janet McCloud, Joseph Stuntz Killsright, and Leonard Peltier.
See also: American Indian Movement; United States v. Washington.
Carole A. Barrett
Fort Atkinson Treaty

Date: 1853
Locale: Southwestern Kansas
Tribes involved: Apache, Comanche, Kiowa
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Treaties
Significance: This treaty was an attempt to establish peace among south-
ern Plains tribes in order to ease white passage westward and facili-
tate the building of a transcontinental railroad through Indian lands.
Personally negotiated by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a white trader and Indian

agent of the Upper Platte Agency, the Treaty of Fort Atkinson was one of a
series of U.S.-Indian treaties signed during the 1850’s to open passage to
America’s Far West while promoting the Christianization and civilization
of the Plains Indians. Fitzpatrick previously had helped to bring the Sioux
and seven other Plains tribes together to sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie
with the United States in 1851. The signatories to the Fort Atkinson Treaty
agreed to establish peace among the affected Indian tribes, as well as be-
tween Indians and whites. It sanctioned the passage of whites through In-
dian lands, and acknowledged U.S. rights to establish military roads and
posts thereon. It also provided for annuities to be paid by the United States
(for a ten-year term) to the affected Indians.
See also: Apache Wars; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.
Clifton K. Yearley
Fort Greenville Treaty

Date: 1795
Locale: Between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River
Tribes involved: Chippewa, Iroquois, Lenni Lenape, Miami, Ottawa,
Potawatomi, Shawnee, Wyandot (Huron)
Fort Greenville Treaty / 141
Categories: Colonial history, Treaties

Significance: The Treaty of Fort Greenville, combined with Jay’s Treaty,
served as an important benchmark in the tripartite Anglo-American-
Indian struggle for control of the region between the Great Lakes and
the Ohio River.
During the twenty years following the end of the American Revolution in
1783, the question of which power—American Indians, the United States,
or England—would control the region between the Ohio River and the
Great Lakes constituted one of the greatest challenges confronting the new
government of the United States.
Historical Background. According to the terms of the Treaty of Paris

(signed on September 3, 1783), Great Britain agreed to remove its commer-
cial and military presence from the region between the Great Lakes and the
Ohio River, a region then called the Old Northwest. Notwithstanding this
commitment, however, the British delayed in implementing this treaty pro-
vision. Several factors accounted for this delay, but one of the most signifi-
cant was the conviction of many influential Britons that the region north of
the Ohio was too strategic to surrender to the Americans. Instead, they be-
lieved that Britain should attempt to maintain at least an indirect presence
in the area, thereby placing Great Britain in an advantageous position
should the loosely confederated United States politically disintegrate. It
was in this context that the British considered the possibility of sponsoring
the creation of a British satellite or buffer state spanning the territory be-
tween the Ohio River and the Great Lakes and consisting of a confederation
of Indian tribes. Thus, in the hope of promoting such an entity (there were
also other reasons), London opted to maintain its commercial and military
presence south of the Great Lakes. Indeed, not only did the British continue
their presence at Michilimackinac, Detroit, Fort Niagara, Oswego, and
other locations on American soil, but also, in 1786, British authorities is-
sued a directive to hold or, if necessary, recapture these sites should the
United States attempt to seize them.
Simultaneously, beginning in 1785, British agents actively attempted to
promote the establishment of a pro-British confederation among the tribes.
For their part, the Indians were extremely dissatisfied with Congress’s pol-
icy toward the tribes and the northwest region generally. The Indians
thought that the treaties of Forts Stanwix, McIntosh, and Finney, which had
been concluded between several of the tribes and the United States govern-
ment, were unfair to Indian interests. Indeed, many of the original signa-
tory tribes had subsequently repudiated these treaties. Those tribes that
142 / Fort Greenville Treaty
had not been parties to these treaties naturally refused to abide by their
terms. The treaties, however, provided the context for an infusion of Amer-
ican frontiersmen into the lands north of the Ohio River. The small military
force that Congress had raised from the states was clearly insufficient ei-
ther to prevent the frontiersmen from intruding into Indian territory or to
overawe the tribes into abiding by the treaties—to say nothing about con-
vincing them to make additional territorial concessions. Consequently, the
British agents sent to promote the establishment of the Indian confedera-
tion north of the Ohio under British protection met with a receptive audi-
ence.
Finally, in 1788, the Chippewa, Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Iroquois, Mi-
ami, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and Wyandot (Huron) tribes formed a
confederation and repudiated the treaties of Forts Stanwix, McIntosh, and
Finney, agreed not to cede any additional land to the United States without
the consent of the entire confederation, and demanded U.S. recognition of
an Indian state between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. This develop-
ment, combined with the continued British military and commercial pres-
ence on U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes, provided London with a
strong bargaining position as the United States and Great Britain opened
regular diplomatic relations. Great Britain’s new ambassador to the United
States arrived in Philadelphia in October, 1791, with instructions from his
government to agree to the evacuation of the British presence south of the
Great Lakes only if the United States agreed to abide by the British interpre-
tation of the terms of the Treaty of Paris and accepted the establishment of
the Indian state, de facto under British protection, between the Ohio River
and the Great Lakes.
The Washington administration totally rejected the British stance as a vi-
olation of U.S. territorial integrity and sovereignty. With only a small mili-
tary force, the administration attempted to negotiate a new treaty with the
Indians. In the negotiations, held at Fort Harmar in January, 1789, the terri-
torial governor, Arthur St. Clair, capitalized on dissension among the tribes
and succeeded in concluding a treaty that, while providing some compen-
sation to the Indians, reaffirmed the boundaries established under the
terms of the treaties of Forts McIntosh and Finney. By the autumn of 1789,
however, war had erupted along the frontier as a result of continued Indian
resentment of U.S. policy generally and the Treaty of Fort Harmar specifi-
cally, as well as the continued provocations from the American frontiers-
men in Indian country.
Military Operations, 1790-1794. Yielding to pressure from the westerners,

the Washington administration dispatched a series of military expeditions
Fort Greenville Treaty / 143
into the wilderness north of the Ohio River. The first two of these expedi-
tions, in October, 1790, and August-November, 1791, under the successive
leadership of Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Clair, designed to overawe the
Indians and assert U.S. control over the region, yielded disastrous results.
Harmar’s October, 1790, expedition resulted only in the destruction of a
few Miami villages along the Maumee River and the death of a small num-
ber of Indians at the cost of 75 regulars and 108 militiamen killed and an-
other 31 wounded. Similarly, St. Clair’s late summer and autumn 1791 ex-
pedition resulted in a second disastrous defeat with 623 soldiers killed and
258 wounded. Indeed, St. Clair’s defeat was considered an especially sig-
nificant setback in asserting U.S. sovereignty over the region north of the
Ohio. Conversely, the Indians were euphoric with success and, encouraged
by British expression of support for the Indian Confederation, intensified
warfare against the American frontiersmen while demanding U.S. recogni-
tion of their confederation.
In the autumn of 1793, the new U.S. military commander in the Ohio
Valley, Major General Anthony Wayne, initiated a new offensive against
the Indians. Throughout the winter and spring of 1794, Wayne carefully
launched a limited operation into Indian country. He methodically con-
structed a series of forts to serve both as a line of defense and as a base for a
new offensive against the tribes. Moreover, his emphasis on training and
his focus on troop discipline, combined with his perseverance during the
harsh winter, impressed the Indians.
Meanwhile, throughout the winter, as Wayne consolidated his position,
the British reinforced their policy in the Northwest. In February, 1794, the
British governor in Canada told the Indians that when war between the
United States and the tribes came, Britain would support the Indian at-
tempt to regain full control over their lands. Simultaneously, the British be-
gan construction of a new post, Fort Miami, on U.S. soil along the Maumee
River. The new fort was intended to further solidify the British position in
Indian country as well as to provide an advance defense for the British
presence at Detroit. These developments convinced the Indians that Lon-
don would support them against General Wayne’s army. Hence, confident
of future success, the tribes assembled approximately two thousand war-
riors outside Fort Miami.
On June 30 and July 1, 1794, the Indians attacked Wayne’s forces but
were repulsed and withdrew into the wilderness along the Maumee River.
On July 28, Wayne, now reinforced (bringing his total force to about thirty-
five hundred men), advanced into Indian country. Although he reached the
Maumee River on August 8, he delayed in assaulting the Indians until he
had secured his lines of communications and established a forward base
144 / Fort Greenville Treaty
(Fort Defiance). Finally, on August 20, after a series of deceptive initiatives,

Wayne surprised and defeated the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
Following the battle, the defeated Indians retreated to Fort Miami, where-
upon the British refused to provide any refuge or assistance. Realizing that
they had been betrayed by the British, the disillusioned Indians retired to
the forest.
The Treaties. The dramatic change in the British policy toward the Indians
reflected a larger transformation in British policy toward the United States.
During the spring of 1794, the British government moved toward a rap-
prochement with the Americans; during the summer of 1794, negotiations
were opened in Britain between the U.S. representative, John Jay, and Brit-
ish officials. It was in the context of this change in the complexion of Anglo-
American relations that the British decided to abandon the Indians rather
then precipitate a crisis on the Maumee River that could, in turn, lead to the
collapse of Anglo-American negotiations before they had begun and possi-
bly provoke a war between the two powers. Eventually, on November 19,
1794, the negotiators concluded a new treaty, Jay’s Treaty, which resolved
the outstanding Anglo-American disputes stemming from the 1783 Treaty
of Paris. Under the terms of Jay’s Treaty, London, among other things,
agreed finally to evacuate the British posts on U.S. soil.
Deprived of British support, the demoralized Indians entered into new
negotiations with General Wayne from a position of weakness. On August 3,
1795, Wayne and chiefs representing the Delaware, Miami, Shawnee, and
Wyandot Indians and the United States delineated a demarcation separat-
ing Indian lands from those open to settlement. The line ran along the
Cuyahoga River, across the portage to the Tuscarawas River, westward to
Fort Recovery, and finally southward to the Ohio River across from its con-
fluence with the Kentucky River. Hence, the U.S. government opened for
settlement all of the future state of Ohio, except the north-central and
northwest portions of the state, as well as opening the extreme southeast-
ern corner of the present-day state of Indiana. In addition, the U.S. govern-
ment reserved a series of specific sites within Indian country primarily for
commercial and/or military purposes. Thus, as a result of the Treaty of Fort
Greenville and Jay’s Treaty, a new balance between the Americans and the
Indians was struck along the northwestern frontier. Almost immediately,
however, pressure began to mount which soon challenged the supposed
permanence of the Fort Greenville Treaty line, and the stage was set for the
next phase in American westward expansion at the expense of the Indians.
See also: Fallen Timbers, Battle of; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Jay’s Treaty.
Howard M. Hensel
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 / 145

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. Jay’s Treaty. Rev. ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1962.
Billington, Ray Allen. Westward Expansion. New York: Macmillan, 1949.
Kohn, Richard H. Eagle and Sword. New York: Free Press, 1975.
Philbrick, Francis S. The Rise of the West, 1754-1830. New York: Harper &
Row, 1965.
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Sword of the Republic. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851

Date: September 1-20, 1851
Locale: Fort Laramie, Wyoming
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, Sioux
Significance: In an unprecedented effort to promote peace during early
western expansion, a treaty council was convened at Fort Laramie
whereby ten thousand Indians of various nations gathered at one
time to sign a peace treaty with representatives of the U.S. govern-
ment.
During the mid-nineteenth century the continuing rush of covered wagon

immigrants across the Plains of the United States began to have an unset-
tling effect on American Indian tribes living there. Wild game was driven
out and grasslands were being cropped close by the immigrants’ cattle and
horses. U.S. government policy provided some reimbursement to Indians
for losses of game, grass, and land caused by the continuing influx of white
settlers. In 1847, Thomas Fitzpatrick was appointed the first U.S. govern-
ment representative to the various nomad tribes of the High Plains. Aware
of the mounting losses and the potential for Indian uprisings against the
settlers, Fitzpatrick campaigned long and hard for congressional funding
to help alleviate growing tensions.
In February, 1851, Congress appropriated $100,000 for the purpose of
holding a treaty council with the tribes of the High Plains. D. D. Mitchell,
superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, and Fitzpatrick were desig-
nated commissioners for the government. They selected Fort Laramie as
the meeting location and September 1, 1851, as the meeting date. Word was
sent throughout the Plains of the impending treaty council. By Septem-
146 / Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851
ber 1, the first arrivals included the Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos. Later
arriving participants included the Snakes (Shoshones), and Crows.
Because of the vast number of participants—more than ten thousand In-
dians and 270 soldiers—it became apparent that the forage available for In-
dian and soldier ponies and horses was insufficient. The council grounds
were therefore moved about thirty-six miles south, to Horse Creek.
On September 8, the treaty council officially began. The assembly was
unprecedented. Each Indian nation approached the council with its own
unique song or demonstration, dress, equipment, and mannerisms. Super-
intendent Mitchell proclaimed that all nations would smoke the pipe of
peace together. The proposed treaty asked for unmolested passage for set-
tlers over the roads leading to the West. It included rights for the govern-
ment to build military posts for immigrants’ protection. The treaty also de-
fined the limits of territory for each tribe and asked for a lasting peace
between the various nations. Each nation was to select a representative, a
chief who would have control over and be responsible for his nation. In re-
turn, the government would provide each Indian nation an annuity of
$50,000 for fifty years, the sum to be expended for goods, merchandise, and
provisions.
After much discussion and conferencing, the treaty was signed on Sep-
tember 17 by the U.S. commissioners and all the attending chiefs. Adding
to the festivities, on September 20, a delayed caravan of wagons arrived at
the treaty council with $50,000 worth of goods and merchandise. These
goods were summarily distributed to all the nations represented, and feel-
ings of good will permeated the gathering. To further the sense of lasting
peace, Fitzpatrick later took a delegation of eleven chiefs with him to Wash-
ington, D.C., where they visited with President Millard Fillmore in the
White House.
See also: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
John L. Farbo

Ellis, Richard N. The Western American Indian. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1972.
Hafen, LeRoy, and Francis Young. Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West,
1834-1890. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1938.
Hedren, Paul L. Fort Laramie in 1876. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1988.
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 / 147
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868

Date: April 29-November 5, 1868
Locale: Laramie fork of the North Platte River in modern Wyoming
Tribes involved: Sioux
Significance: This treaty was meant to provide a lasting peace through
mutual concessions involving territorial rights and peaceful behav-
ior; the treaty ultimately failed.
By the mid-1800’s, the vast area of land claimed by the Sioux Nation was
subjected to inexorable pressures from America’s westward expansion,
which accelerated after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Pioneers, settlers,
farmers, gold prospectors, railroads, and the army all encroached on Sioux
territory. Inevitably, armed conflict between whites and Indians occurred.
Attempts to arrive at a peaceful solution and compromise, such as the trea-
ties of 1851, 1865, and 1866, provided only short-lived respites.
On July 20, 1867, after vigorous debate over whether to subdue the Indi-
ans militarily and punish them or reach a peaceful accord with them, both
houses of Congress approved a bill which authorized a government com-
mission to make peace with the Plains tribes. The commission was directed
by Congress to establish peace, remove if possible the causes of war, safe-
guard frontier settlements and the rights-of-way for the transcontinental
railroads, and establish reservations for the Plains Indians with adequate
arable land so they could become self-sufficient farmers.
Terms of the Treaty. The peace commission, headed by Commissioner of

Indian Affairs Nathaniel Taylor, worked its way west, meeting various
tribes of Sioux and listening to their demands. In April, 1868, the commis-
sion convened at Fort Laramie with a draft treaty that met many of these
demands. Article 2 established the Great Sioux Reservation, which gave to
the Sioux all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River, in-
cluding the sacred Black Hills, “for the absolute and undisturbed use and
occupancy of the Sioux.” Article 16 established the Powder River Country
to the north and west of the Great Sioux Reservation as “unceded Indian
territory,” where whites were not permitted to go unless given permission
by the Sioux. Article 11 gave the Sioux hunting rights along the Republican
River and above the Platte River in Nebraska and Wyoming for “so long as
the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase.”
Other articles promised that all Sioux who resided within the Great Sioux
148 / Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868
Signing of the Treaty of 1868 by General William Tecumseh Sherman and the Indian
delegation at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. (National Archives)
Reservation would be provided with food for the next four years (until
they learned to become farmers). The reservation was promised schools,
mills, blacksmiths, doctors, and teachers and an agent to administer the
various programs and maintain order. Additionally, no chief could unilat-
erally sign away treaty rights, as any sale of land had to be approved by
three-fourths of all adult Sioux males.
In return, the United States asked for peace and asked that the Sioux
make their permanent residence within the boundaries of the reservation.
The Sioux relinquished the right to occupy any lands outside the reserva-
tion permanently, including the unceded territory. The Sioux were not to
oppose the building of railroads on the plains and were not to attack set-
tlers and their wagon trains or take white prisoners. Additionally, provi-
sions would be distributed by the government not at the western end of the
reservation, near traditional hunting grounds and where the Sioux custom-
arily traded with whites, but at agencies established along the Missouri
River in the eastern part of the reservation, in order to reorient Sioux life to
these agencies.
Failure of the Treaty. Red Cloud was the final Sioux chief to sign the treaty,
on November 5, 1868, only after the government abandoned its forts along
the Bozeman Trail in Sioux territory. The treaty was rejected, however, by
Fort Mims, Battle of / 149
the influential and powerful Sioux chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull,
who remained in the unceded territory and refused to live on the reserva-
tion.
In the end, this treaty proved no more effective in maintaining the peace
and Sioux way of life than previous ones had been. Violations of Sioux ter-
ritory by white emigrants and the army, the discovery of gold in the Black
Hills (and the taking of the Black Hills by the government in 1877 without
compensation), problems administering the reservation, and the refusal of
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to live on the reservation despite government
threats of war undermined any hope that the treaty’s terms would be hon-
ored and observed. By 1880 the Sioux had been either killed or defeated
and were confined to the reservation.
See also: Bozeman Trail War; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.
Laurence Miller
Fort Mims, Battle of

Locale: Alabama
Tribes involved: Creek
Significance: Though William Weatherford’s Creeks won a major vic-
tory at Fort Mims, reports of a massacre there led to a rapid mobiliza-
tion of state and federal forces that eventually overwhelmed the
Creeks.
Tensions within the Creek (Muskogee) Nation and between some Creeks
and European Americans reached the boiling point in 1813. Fighting was
already raging between the Creek Red Sticks, who favored maintaining the
traditional Creek values and lifestyle and who opposed further encroach-
ments on Creek land, and friendly Creeks, who were more receptive to the
assimilationist policies being pushed by the United States government and
whose leaders had adopted many aspects of American life, including plan-
tation slavery.
On July 27, 1813, a force of territorial militia unsuccessfully attacked a
band of Red Sticks at Burnt Corn Creek, a tributary of the Alabama River.
The Creek War now began, though it was only the Red Stick faction of
Creeks that waged war with the United States. Encouraged by their initial
150 / Fort Mims, Battle of
success, the Red Sticks determined to attack Fort Mims. William Weather-
ford (Red Eagle), a mixed-blood traditionalist of considerable ability, gath-
ered a force of about 750 warriors and moved toward the fort.
Fort Mims was located near the Alabama River about forty miles north
of Mobile and was defended by a garrison of about 120 militia commanded
by Major Daniel Beasley. The fort also became a haven for approximately
275 to 300 whites and friendly Creeks plus about a hundred slaves.
Doubting that the Red Sticks would attack a fort, Beasley was lax in
maintaining security. On August 29, two slaves reported a large number of
hostile Indians nearby. When scouts failed to find any, Beasley ordered the
slaves whipped for giving a false alarm. The fort’s defenses were un-
manned the next day when Weatherford launched his attack at noon, catch-
ing the fort’s garrison and inhabitants at lunch. Red Sticks rushed into the
fort’s open entrance. Others began firing into the fort through rifle ports in
the walls. The battle raged for several hours before the buildings inside the
walls were set on fire. A few militiamen and others managed to escape into
the surrounding woods. Most of the whites and friendly Creeks who sur-
The 1813 victory of Creek Red Sticks at Fort Mims, reported by whites as a massa-
cre, soon brought white revenge against the Creeks. (Library of Congress)
Fort Stanwix Treaty / 151
vived the battle were killed, some by torture. Most of the slaves who sur-
vived the battle were taken away as prisoners.
Whites regarded the Fort Mims fight as a massacre, and the numbers
reported to have been killed rapidly swelled. No fort of its size had ever
been taken by Indians, and something akin to panic seized the southern
frontier.
Fort Mims proved to be a costly victory for the Creeks, however; around
a hundred Red Sticks were killed, and the reports of a massacre roused
neighboring white settlers to seek revenge. Georgia and Tennessee mobi-
lized their militias for service against the Creeks, and the federal govern-
ment diverted some of its scarce military resources from the war it was
fighting against England for service against the Creeks. The tide soon
turned against the Red Sticks, and all Creeks suffered as a result of their
eventual defeat.
See also: Creek War; Horseshoe Bend Treaty.
William C. Lowe
Fort Stanwix Treaty

Date: October 22, 1784
Locale: Fort Stanwix, New York
Categories: Eighteenth century history, Reservations and relocation,
Treaties
Significance: Iroquois tribes cede lands to the United States and are
forced to move westward.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix, signed in 1784, was a product of the Ameri-
can Revolution that involved colonists and the Iroquois nations. Be-
cause several Iroquois tribes had fought alongside the British during
the war, victorious Americans maintained that they had won lands oc-
cupied by “defeated” Iroquois. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix marked the
beginning of negotiations with Native Americans that dealt with them
as a conquered people rather than as equals. The Revolutionary War
and resulting treaty negotiations irreparably split the Iroquois Confed-
eracy.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution, the Six Nations of the pow-
erful Iroquois Confederacy were divided over whether to support the En-
152 / Fort Stanwix Treaty
glish, to side with the American rebels, or to remain neutral. The confeder-
ation had traded and fought alongside the English for many years and
considered the English and colonists as the same. Both British and Ameri-
can Indian agents encouraged Native Americans throughout the colonies
to remain neutral. Initially, the Iroquois remained nonpartisan. This al-
lowed the Iroquois to deal with both the British in Canada and the Ameri-
cans in the colonies, playing one against another as they had the French
and British prior to the French and Indian War.
As the Revolutionary War progressed, however, both the British and the
Americans saw the advantages of including American Indians in their
ranks and urged Native Americans to ally themselves. The pressure to
choose sides exerted by British and American agents split the six-nation Ir-
oquois Confederacy into two groups. Unable to agree on which side to sup-
port, the confederation decided to allow each nation to choose which side,
if either, to endorse. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras fought for the rebels.
American attacks on Mohawk settlements encouraged the Mohawks to
support the British; they were joined by the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Sen-
ecas. These tribes were effective in British attacks on frontier locations, es-
pecially in the Mohawk Valley around Fort Stanwix.
Competing Promises. During the war, British officers had made prom-
ises of land to Native Americans who fought with them, but during the
peace negotiations in Paris, the defeated British ignored the interests of
their Native American allies. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris surrendered all
the land east of the Mississippi River to the former colonists. Some of this
land belonged to various Native American tribes and was not England’s to
grant.
New York State granted Iroquois lands to Revolutionary War soldiers
as compensation for services during the war. New York tried to negoti-
ate land sales with the Iroquois that would directly benefit the state.
The United States Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, admon-
ished New York officials and appointed Indian commissioners Oliver
Wolcott, Richard Butler, and Arthur Lee to negotiate peace and land ces-
sions for the United States with the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and
Senecas. A peace conference was called and held in New York at Fort
Stanwix near Oneida Lake. A number of Iroquois could not attend be-
cause of illness and other factors, and only a quickly formed irregular
group of Iroquois representatives was present. The commissioners ar-
rived at Fort Stanwix with an intimidating military escort. Rather than
negotiating with the Iroquois as equals, as the English had done pre-
viously, American commissioners asserted political sovereignty over all
Fort Stanwix Treaty / 153
tribal natives on American soil. Iroquois speeches were cut short and cre-
dentials challenged.
The commissioners insisted that the Iroquois tribes that fought on the
side of the British were a conquered people. All lands held by those tribes,
therefore, were forfeit to the United States as spoils of war. The U.S. gov-
ernment would allow them to retain some of their lands but demanded
land cessions in reparation for injuries inflicted on Americans during the
war. The Iroquois contended (1) that England had had no right to cede
tribal lands to the United States (2) that if the Iroquois were to surrender
their lands to Americans, they expected something in return, and (3) that
they had not, in any event, been defeated in battle and therefore were not
party to peace negotiations.
Mutual Concessions. As part of the resulting Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the at-
tending Iroquois ceded a strip of land that began at the mouth of Oyonwaye
Creek on Lake Ontario four miles south of the Niagara portage path. The
boundary line ran south to the mouth of the Tehosaroro, or Buffalo Creek,
to the Pennsylvania line, and along its north-south boundary to the Ohio
River. In effect, the treaty took all Iroquois lands west of New York and
Pennsylvania and all of Ohio.
The United States released any claim it may have had by right of
conquest to tribal lands west of that boundary. Iroquois property in the
western region of New York State east of the Oyonwaye remained un-
affected. The treaty assured the Oneida and Tuscarora who had fought
on the side of the Americans continued peaceful possession of their lands.
The United States agreed to protect the remaining Iroquois territories
against encroachments, seizures, and other possible violations, and guar-
anteed the right of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy to indepen-
dence.
Representatives for the Iroquois Confederacy agreed to peaceful rela-
tions with the United States. The tribes who had fought against the colonies
promised to deliver up all prisoners, black and white, whom they had
taken during the war. As guarantee of that promise, six Iroquois would be
taken as hostages to Fort Harmar by General Arthur St. Clair, governor of
the Northwest Territory.
Immediately after the congressional commissioners concluded their ne-
gotiations, commissioners from Pennsylvania negotiated for large land
grants in their state. In return, the Iroquois received five thousand dollars
in goods and supplies. Soon after, New York State, in defiance of Congress,
negotiated land sales with the Oneida and Tuscarora. Additional land trea-
ties quickly ensued. Congress’s inability to prevent New York State from
154 / Fort Stanwix Treaty
negotiating separate land sales and to uphold other aspects of the Treaty of
Fort Stanwix highlighted the weaknesses in central government under the
Articles of Confederation and served as a reminder that each state consid-
ered itself a sovereign nation.
In 1786, the Iroquois Confederacy held a council meeting at Buffalo
Creek, New York. Disappointed and upset with their delegates, they re-
fused to ratify the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and offered to return gifts pre-
sented to the delegates at the negotiations. Congress, however, considered
the terms of the treaty to be valid and acted on them accordingly.
British Interference. After the American Revolution, British officials did

little to discourage continued relations with northern Native American
tribes. The English traded with and provided goods to local tribes and al-
lowed large councils to convene at British-held forts. After the council of
Buffalo Creek, the Iroquois sought support from the British in their effort to
denounce the treaty and continue their war against the United States. The
Iroquois Confederacy soon discovered that the British had no intention of
militarily supporting their former allies in defense of their land rights.
Lacking the desire to go to war against the Americans alone, the Iroquois
let the treaty stand.
On January 9, 1789, St. Clair negotiated the Treaty of Fort Harmar with a
group of Senecas. The treaty reaffirmed the terms and boundaries set forth
in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Iroquois were given permission to hunt
on their old lands “as long as they were peaceful about it.”
The treaties of Fort Stanwix and Fort Harmar further fractionalized the
confederation’s six tribes, a process that had begun in 1777, when the Six
Nations had split in choosing sides during the Revolutionary War. Joseph
Brant led a group of Mohawk, Cayuga, and other tribe members out of the
country and into Ontario, Canada, thereby splitting the confederacy in
half. Those who remained in the United States were divided over other is-
sues between the American Indians and the settlers. There was no single
chief or council that could speak for the entire Iroquois Confederacy, and
the Iroquois Confederacy was never again united.
See also: Fort Greenville Treaty; Iroquois Confederacy.
Leslie Stricker

Downes, Randolph C. Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian
Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley Until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1940. Discusses the relations between settlers and various
tribes in the Ohio Valley, including those at Fort Stanwix.
Fort Wayne Treaty / 155
Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.:

Syracuse University Press, 1972. Chapters 6 and 7 describe Iroquois
warfare, diplomacy, decline, and removal.
Jennings, Francis, ed. The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Inter-
disciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. Syra-
cuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985. Extensive discussion of
treaty negotiations, terms, and results.
Trigger, Bruce G., ed. Northeast. Vol. 15 in Handbook of North American In-
dians, edited by William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1978. Discusses Native Americans from the Northeast in
considerable detail, including language, history, customs, culture, and
religion.
Washburn, Wilcomb E., ed. History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Hand-
book of North American Indians, edited by William C. Sturtevant. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. Extensive coverage
of relations between American Indians and whites across the United
States, from first contact to 1987.
Fort Wayne Treaty

Locale: Indiana
Tribes involved: Lenni Lenape, Miami, Potawatomi
Significance: Negotiated by William Henry Harrison and repudiated by
Tecumseh, the leader of a pan-Indian movement, this treaty precipi-
tated a chain of events that culminated in the Battle of Tippecanoe.
On September 30, 1809, the governor of the Indiana Territory, William

Henry Harrison, met with leaders of the Delaware (Lenni Lenape), Miami,
and Potawatomi tribes in the fort built by General “Mad” Anthony Wayne.
They signed the Treaty of Fort Wayne, which exchanged 2.5 million acres of
Indian land southeast of the Wabash River for goods worth about $7,000
and an annuity of $1,750. Later that year, a separate treaty with the Kickapoo
and Wea added a half million acres. While the exchange rate of two cents
per acre was higher than usual for such treaties, it was still an unfair ex-
change. The treaty culminated a process begun in 1795 with the Treaty of
Fort Greenville, which had ceded a meager six square miles of Miami land
156 / Fox Wars
to the United States government. In the ensuing period, more than fifteen
treaties had been signed, most of them negotiated by Harrison, relinquish-
ing control of Indian lands. While Harrison was able to maintain friendly
relations with the major tribal leaders, the loss of native lands had started a
countermovement.
Led by the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa, a pan-Indian movement de-
veloped based on opposition to the cession of Indian lands and to the tribal
leaders who had negotiated the treaties. Tenskwatawa, his brother Tecum-
seh, and their followers refused to recognize the validity of the treaties on
the ground that the land belonged to all Indian peoples so the chiefs had
no authority to sign the lands away. To show defiance of the treaties,
Tenskwatawa established new Indian towns at Greenville from 1806 to
1808 in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville. From 1808 to 1811, he estab-
lished Prophetstown at Tippecanoe to show that his movement did not
honor the Treaty of Fort Wayne.
As Harrison continued his plans to open the recently acquired lands,
Tecumseh assumed the role of war chief and took command of the nativist
movement. He warned Harrison to keep surveyors and settlers out of the
territory. So threatening was his presence that, for two years, virtually no
settlement occurred. In order to break the stalemate, Harrison led troops in
an attack on Prophetstown in 1811 while Tecumseh was farther south try-
ing to gain allies among the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee. The ensuing
Battle of Tippecanoe efficiently removed Tecumseh’s followers from the
immediate area. It was also, however, the opening action of a war that
would last until 1815 and would see Tecumseh ally his forces with the Brit-
ish in the War of 1812.
See also: Fort Greenville Treaty; Tippecanoe, Battle of.
Charles L. Kammer III
Fox Wars
Date: Summer, 1714-1741
Locale: West and southwest of Lake Michigan
Tribes involved: Chippewa, Fox, Huron, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Meno-
minee, Potawatomi, Sac, Seneca, Sioux, Winnebago
Significance: Generations of intertribal warfare and French attempts to
obtain peace.
Fox Wars / 157
Although the Fox people trace their own origins to the northeastern
seaboard, they clearly emerged in Native American history in the late
seventeenth century in the western Great Lakes region. First known un-
der their Algonquian name, Mesquakies (People of the Red Earth), they
were later referred to in early French explorers’ journals as renards, or
Foxes, a name that persists in the literature. Most of what is known
about the Fox tribe and their often hostile relations with a number of their
neighboring tribes comes from the eighteenth century Québécois (New
France colonial) archives. Hardly a year passed between 1699 and 1742
without some reference to relations between the Foxes and representatives
of Onontia, the natives’ name for the French governor general of New
France.
In 1699, Governor General Louis-Hector de Callières tried to obtain a
peace treaty, not only between France and the tribes of the western Great
Lakes region but also among the tribes themselves. His goal was to increase
profitable trade in a vast region that remained unpredictable because of re-
curring intertribal strife. The natives invited to Montreal were well-known
tribes associated with the Iroquois Five Nations (including the Senecas)
and less well-known tribes along the western shore of Lake Michigan, in-
cluding the Sacs, Winnebagos, Kickapoos, Menominees, and Foxes. In Sep-
tember, 1700, peace was signed by several important tribes, but many, in-
cluding the Foxes, held back. Although the Foxes and Chippewas agreed to
cease fighting each other in the Wisconsin area, Fox hostilities with neigh-
boring Sioux still raged, disrupting fur trading as far as Sioux territory in
Minnesota. In their attempt to stop these conflicts, the French invited Fox
chieftains Noro and Miskousouath to Montreal. There the chiefs were as-
sured that, if they remained peaceful in their newly fortified villages at the
portage point between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, they would have
their share of French fur trade in Sioux territory.
The shortcomings of these agreements were particularly evident to
Antoine de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, commander of the strategic post at
Michilimackinac on the straits between Lakes Michigan and Huron. Cadil-
lac’s goal was to develop another, eventually much better known, post at
Detroit into a major trading center for various tribes. In 1710, he invited a
number of Algonquian tribes located in the area from the Green Bay to the
Wisconsin River, including Sacs, Foxes, Mascoutens, and Kickapoos, to
move to eastern Michigan.
First Stage. Some Foxes, together with other Wisconsin tribes, did go to
the Detroit area, but the venture soon was reversed by Montreal’s gover-
nor general, the marquis de Vaudreuil. Not only did the Foxes expect that
158 / Fox Wars
their cooperation with the resettlement scheme should be rewarded, but

they also became entangled in skirmishes with other tribes, especially
Hurons and members of the Illinois Confederacy. They even raided French
colonial farms, stealing food and livestock. Instead of heeding French
orders in 1711 to return to Wisconsin, the Foxes became even more belliger-
ent, proceeding to build a fort near Fort Pontchartrain on the Detroit
River. It took more than a year for the French, taking advantage of alli-
ances with Huron and Illinois Confederacy tribes, to expel the Foxes
by force. Most of the besieged Foxes were massacred brutally by French-
allied American Indians, despite the French commander’s assurance of
safe passage upon surrender. Those who escaped sought refuge among the
Seneca Iroquois. These violent events on the Detroit River were bound to
have repercussions among the Fox tribes that had stayed behind in Wiscon-
sin alongside their allies, the Sacs and Winnebagos. When the defeated
Foxes returned to Wisconsin, new alliances were built; by the summer of
1714, they had begun attacks on French traders passing from Detroit to
Michilimackinac.
In this first stage of the Fox Wars, some Wisconsin natives hoped that the
French would seek an accommodation with the Foxes. As the situation de-
teriorated and trade became paralyzed, many American Indians began to
call for a strong French military campaign against the Foxes. Before long, it
appeared that the Foxes had long-distance ties with other allies in British
territory, especially the Senecas. This complicated the French strategy con-
siderably, forcing the French to try diplomatic intervention far to the east of
Wisconsin. Vaudreuil was unable to report any progress for at least three
years.
Although Fox chieftains Okimaoussen and Ouchala agreed to de-escalate
the conflict, warfare against the Foxes by their inveterate enemies, the
Chippewas and Potawatomis, caused strife to spread into Illinois tribal ar-
eas in 1719. By 1721, the Foxes had even sealed peace with their former ene-
mies, the Sioux, to have an ally against the Illinois tribes. In 1725, the
French reported that their own hopes to tap the Sioux fur market were seri-
ously hampered by the Sioux-Fox alliance.
By the time of Vaudreuil’s death in October, 1725, King Louis XV him-
self sent orders to replace the French commander at Green Bay, François
Amariton, who was suspected of encouraging Fox raids into Illinois terri-
tory, and to step up activities against the Foxes. This task, which would lead
to disastrous consequences for the Fox tribe, fell to Charles de Beauharnais,
governor general of New France from 1726 to 1747.
A major campaign was set for 1728. French forces of four hundred
soldiers were joined by coureurs de bois (freelance French fur trappers
Fox Wars / 159
and traders) and hundreds of western natives. The French claimed suc-
cess, but in reality the Foxes had withdrawn into Iowa rather than risk a
battle.
Kickapoo Involvement. The next stage of conflict came when Fox chief
Kansekoe tried to force his Kickapoo allies to hand over a dozen French
traders who were being held as hostages. Kickapoo refusals incited youn-
ger Fox warriors to break away from Kansekoe and attack both Kickapoo
and Mascouten hunters. Both tribes soon asked for French alliance status.
Then, some Winnebagos and Menominees also joined attacks against the
Foxes. Declining chances for a victory again divided the Foxes. Some fac-
tions favored a peace, while more hostile tribesmen decided to leave Wis-
consin and seek asylum, preferably among the Senecas. The attempted mi-
gration left them open to reprisal attacks, especially by members of the
Illinois Confederacy, supported by the Foxes’ former neighbors, the Pota-
watomis, Kickapoos, and Mascoutens. A major siege of Fox fortifications
on the Illinois prairie in 1730 involved French relief forces, who joined in a
general massacre of more than five hundred Foxes, including women and
children.
Governor General Beauharnais reported that the remaining Foxes no
longer could consider resistance. Continuing reprisals caused Foxes under
Chief Kiala to try to resettle peacefully on the north bank of the Wisconsin
River and to send emissaries to Montreal. Kiala’s apparent failure to meet
French terms tempted Beauharnais to allow the Iroquois “volunteers” to
pursue the refugee Foxes spread out in areas of Iowa and Illinois. Inter-
tribal fighting continued until 1735, when two refugee groups separated,
one to the Rock River in Illinois and the other to the mouth of the Wiscon-
sin. In 1736, White Cat, a friendly Sac chief, asked Beauharnais to grant a
pardon. Beauharnais tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Sacs to gain
peace by allowing the French to disperse the Foxes among other American
Indian nations.
Finally, unable to hold out in the Rock River Valley against other Indi-
ans’ attacks, and fearful of massive French reprisals for Fox assistance to
Sioux warriors near Lake Peoria who had killed French travelers in the
area, Fox chief Mekaga agreed to accept French terms of forced relocation.
By the fall of 1741, the Foxes and Sacs were trekking to new settlements: ten
lodges to the Chicago River, three to Milwaukee, and the rest to their old
homeland village on the Fox River in Wisconsin. Although the formal Fox
War was over in 1741, these settlements still suffered from attacks by their
Chippewa, Menominee, and Ottawa neighbors. In 1743, Beauharnais him-
self had to intercede to gain another joint pledge of peace.
160 / French and Indian War
See also: Fur trade; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Iroquois

Confederacy.
Byron D. Cannon

Edmunds, R. David, and Joseph L. Peyser. The Fox Wars: The Mesquaki Chal-
lenge to New France. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. The
most complete study to date of the specific events of the Fox Wars.
Hagen, William T. The Sac and Fox Indians. 2d ed. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1980. A general history, including cultural and reli-
gious topics.
Parkman, Francis. Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV. 1877.
Reprint. New York: Library of America, 1983. A pioneering work pro-
viding background on French interests in the Great Lakes area just be-
fore dealings with the Foxes became a focal point.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991. Places the Fox Wars in a wider chronological and geo-
graphical context of French, British, and American Indian relations.
French and Indian War

Date: May 28, 1754-February 10, 1763
Tribes involved: Algonquian, Huron, Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora)
Significance: Defeat of French and Native American forces establishes
British dominance in North America but increases the mother coun-
try’s dependence on colonial resources.
The French and Indian War was the North American part of a larger con-
flict called the Seven Years’ War, fought between France and Great Britain
for control of colonies in North America and India and for hegemony in Eu-
rope. Both Great Britain and France claimed large territories in North
America. In addition to the thirteen colonies spread out along the Atlantic
coast, the British claimed what is now northern Canada. The French claimed
a huge section of the inner continent, stretching from New Orleans in the
French and Indian War / 161
The taking of Quebec, September 13, 1759, during the Battle of the Plains of Abra-
ham proved to be the decisive battle in the French and Indian War. Effectively, the
French stronghold east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British in the 1763
treaty that ended the war. The rights of the indigenous nations that had prior claim
to all of this land were not considered. (Library of Congress)
south to what is now Montana in the northwest and Quebec in the north-
east. The French built a series of forts along the Mississippi River and its
tributaries to defend their claims. One of these tributaries, the Ohio River,
flows southwest along the western frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Both French and British claimed this land. British colonists worried about a
French invasion and resented the French presence, which limited western
expansion.
In 1754, 150 soldiers from Virginia, led by the twenty-two-year-old offi-
cer George Washington, headed west to secure British claims by building a
fort at the fork where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form
the Ohio River. When they arrived, they discovered that the French had
built a fort there already, Fort Duquesne. Washington’s troops lost the en-
suing battle (May 28), which marked the beginning of the war.
As they struggled to expand their North American empires, the British
and French did not consider the rights or needs of the people who had been
living on the land for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The
only time Europeans took serious notice of the First Americans was when
they needed allies in wartime. Both the French and the British sought and
received support from some native peoples. For their part, Native Ameri-
cans, by siding with one party or the other, could get access to European
weapons and perhaps succeed in driving at least one group of invading Eu-
ropeans from the land. Algonquians and Hurons allied themselves with
the French, whom they had known mainly as fur traders over the past cen-
tury and a half. The French seemed less intrusive and permanent than the
British, who cleared the land for farming. The Algonquians were, more-
over, traditional rivals of those tribes allied with the Iroquois Confederacy.
By selling goods at low prices and exploiting traditional enmities, the Brit-
ish also were able to find native allies, including the Mohawks, one of the
most powerful Iroquois nations, who agreed to help the British against the
French and Algonquians.
The Tide Turns for the British. The war went poorly for the British at first.
With thirteen separate colonial governments involved, decisions were dif-
ficult to make. Nor were British soldiers accustomed to the American land-
scape. In 1755, the British general Edward Braddock was badly defeated
when he attacked the French at Fort Duquesne. The French and their Native
American allies easily scouted out and ambushed Braddock’s troops, shoot-
ing from behind trees at the British soldiers, whose red coats made good
targets. The French won a series of battles until 1757, when the tide changed.
The British had had some advantages from the beginning. There were
twenty times as many British in North America as French, and the British
had the most powerful navy in the world. Then, in 1757, a dynamic new
leader, William Pitt, took over the British government. Pitt sent Britain’s
best generals to lead the war against the French and motivated British colo-
nists to support the war effort by offering high prices for supplies pur-
chased in America.
A year later, the Lenni Lenape (Delawares), an Algonquian people liv-
ing in Pennsylvania, withdrew their support from the French, leaving Fort
Duquesne vulnerable to attack. The British attacked successfully and re-
named the fort to honor their new leader. The city that grew on the site of
the fort, Pittsburgh, still contains William Pitt’s name.
Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The decisive battle came in 1759, when
Pitt sent General James Wolfe to attack the city of Quebec, the French
capital. If the British could take this city, they would win the war. Quebec,
located at the top of a high cliff that rose steeply from the banks of the
St. Lawrence River, was easier to defend than to attack. The French general
in charge, the marquis de Montcalm, was an experienced leader, but even
he was taken by surprise when Wolfe moved four thousand troops across
French and Indian War / 163
the St. Lawrence River in small boats, found ways to scale the cliffs, and at-
tacked in the early hours of the morning. Both generals were killed in the
battle, but news of the British victory reached Wolfe before he died. This
Battle of the Plains of Abraham was the turning point for the French, effec-
tively ending their stronghold in North America.
When the British took Montreal in 1760, fighting ended in North Amer-
ica. There was no formal peace treaty until the war between France and
Prussia, Great Britain’s ally in central Europe, finally ground to a halt three
years later.
Then, in the Treaty of Paris (February 10, 1763), the French ceded Can-
ada and all French lands east of the Mississippi to Great Britain. France re-
tained the land it claimed west of the Mississippi, including the key port of
New Orleans. Spain, which had allied itself with France against Great Brit-
ain, was forced to give up Florida. The rights of the indigenous nations that
had prior claim to all of this land were not considered.
Consequences. The French and Indian War had important consequences

for the early development of American history. It increased Great Britain’s
needs for its North American colonies but had the opposite effect on the
colonists’ needs for Great Britain. With the French gone, the need for the
protection of the British military began to disappear as well. To some colo-
nists, it seemed that the redcoats were starting to get in the way. The British
Proclamation of 1763 forbade colonists from settling land west of a line
drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. Welcomed by the followers of
the Ottawa chief Pontiac, who earlier that year had brought many Ameri-
can Indian nations together to defend their lands against European inva-
sion, the proclamation disappointed those colonists who had expected to
benefit from land opened up by the French defeat. In effect, the Proclama-
tion of 1763 had little effect in preserving western lands for their Indian in-
habitants as colonists began to push west anyway.
The war brought the colonies closer together. There had been a first
effort, called the Albany Plan of Union, to unite the colonies under one
government. Although the Albany Plan, discussed by representatives of
several colonies in Albany, New York, in 1754, was unsuccessful—the indi-
vidual colonial governments being hesitant to give up any power—the fact
that some sort of union was even discussed reflected a growing tendency to
see the colonies as a unified entity distinct from the mother country, En-
gland.
Seven years of fighting on three continents and all the world’s oceans
had exhausted British resources as well. War debts forced the British gov-
ernment to increase tax rates drastically. These rates, however, only ap-
plied to British citizens in Great Britain. British citizens in North America

continued to pay relatively low taxes. To many British, it seemed only fair
that the British in the colonies pay their share for the war that had made
their homes safe from invasion.
The self-confidence of the colonists had grown as they helped fight a
successful war. They believed they had the same rights to representative
government as British citizens in Great Britain. One of these was the right
to send representatives to the body of government that levies taxes. Colo-
nists accepted taxes levied by colonial governments, where they were rep-
resented, but rejected taxes levied by the British parliament, to which they
were not allowed to send representatives. British efforts to tax the colonies,
despite colonial protest, thus became one of the causes for the outbreak of
the American Revolution.
See also: Albany Congress; Indian-white relations: English colonial;
Indian-white relations: French colonial; Proclamation of 1763.
T. W. Dreier

Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in
British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Pre-
sents the French and Indian War as a conflict in and of itself, rather than
merely as a prelude to the Revolutionary War.
____________. A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the
Seven Years’ War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.
This illustrated regional study reveals how average colonists experi-
enced and affected the war.
Auth, Stephen F. The Ten Years War: Indian-White Relations in Pennsylvania,
1755-1765. New York: Garland, 1989. Includes Native American per-
spectives missing in many studies. Final chapter shows the war’s impli-
cations for later treatment of Native Americans.
Hamilton, Edward P. The French and Indian Wars: The Story of Battles and
Forts in the Wilderness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. The first
chapters of this narrative history discuss the role played by George
Washington.
Jennings, Francis. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven
Years War in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. A comprehensive
study by a major scholar; offers easily accessible information on all as-
pects of the war. Illustrations, maps, and indices.
Schwartz, Seymour. The French and Indian War, 1754-1763: The Imperial
Struggle for North America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. A concise,
well-illustrated study that provides a thoughtful, readable overview.
Friends of the Indian organizations / 165
Friends of the Indian organizations
Date: 1879-1900’s
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Organizations, Religion and
missionary activities, Twentieth century history
Significance: A variety of humanitarian Christian associations sought
to reform federal Indian policy by supporting legislation aimed at
abolishing “Indianness” and substituting American ideals of indi-
vidualism, ownership, and Christianity.
Friends of the Indian organizations were formed in the last two decades
of the nineteenth century by mainly eastern Christian humanitarians
who were determined to influence federal Indian policy. Members of
these organizations were convinced of the superiority of Christian civili-
zation and were determined to do away with Indianness and tribal tradi-
tions; their goal was to turn individual Indians into patriotic American citi-
zens.
The friends of the Indian groups supported allotment in order to break
up tribal land ownership and force individual ownership; they sought
to end tribal jurisdiction and bring Indians as individual citizens before
the law. They supported vocational education for Indian children, par-
ticularly boarding schools, and they were generally intolerant of Indian
culture or spiritual expression and worked to outlaw Sun Dances, vision
questing, giveaways, plural marriages, and so on. These well-intentioned
Christian men and women sought to influence and direct Indian policy
by engaging in intense lobbying efforts with federal officials and by edu-
cating the general public through newsletters, pamphlets, and speakers.
These reformers and their supporters were convinced of the righteousness
of their cause and greatly affected federal Indian policy well into the twen-
tieth century.
Beginning in 1883, these groups came together annually for the Lake
Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian in New Paltz, New York,
to coordinate their efforts. General harmony and a good working relation-
ship existed among the various groups because they shared a common reli-
gious outlook that they were doing God’s will by guiding Indians from
savagery to civilization. The most significant and far-reaching areas af-
fected by these organizations were the federal Indian education system
and the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) of 1887. One of the most promi-
166 / Fur trade
nent groups, the Indian Rights Association, continues to exist; however, it

now supports tribalism and tribal self-determination.
See also: Carlisle Indian School; General Allotment Act; Indian Rights
Association.
Carole A. Barrett
Fur trade
Date: Early to mid-seventeenth century
Locale: St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes region
Tribes involved: Algonquian peoples, Huron, Iroquois Confederacy
Categories: Colonial history
Significance: The fur trade involved not only material, but also major
social and policy exchanges between Indians and whites.
During the early years of fur trading, Europeans and Native Americans
met on very widely extended ground. The most concentrated contacts
came between the Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes area, down to the Hud-
son River Valley and westward to Lake Winnipeg. Although forms of inter-
action varied between regions, two general patterns characterized the im-
pact of the fur trade on Native Americans. One was essentially political
(and military) in nature; the other combined commercial considerations
with cultural questions.
The earliest reports of plentiful furs came from Stephan Gomez, sailing
along the northeastern coast of America on a Spanish expedition in 1524.
Ten years later, the attraction of luxury furs such as marten and sable, plus
the wider commercial possibilities of beaver furs, brought the French ex-
plorer Jacques Cartier to the Atlantic coastal lands of the Micmacs. These
tribes had already seen European iron implements and eagerly traded furs
for axes and knives. Cartier proceeded to explore inland via the St. Law-
rence River. It was during the active years of Samuel de Champlain, after
he began to serve in 1608 as an explorer for the French fur trade monopo-
lists Francis Pontgravé and Pierre de Guast Sieur de Monts in New France,
that prototypic forms of the fur trade emerged. Extension of the fur trade
took many generations. It was Champlain who urged establishment of a
trading outpost at the Lachine rapids (near the future site of Montreal) to
make it easier for Hurons and Algonquians to reach French traders without
risking clashes with their enemies, the Iroquois. The latter controlled zones
Fur trade / 167
south of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario. Although the territory of the
Hurons, along the Ottawa River (which drains into the St. Lawrence near
Montreal), was not very rich in furs, they brought goods obtained from
tribes farther inland to the Ottawa River. To do this, the Hurons needed
quite crude European trade items to exchange for valuable furs; they used
the furs to obtain for themselves higher quality goods, mainly French tools
and firearms.
In contrast to early and eager French interest in exporting American
furs, the British at first lagged behind in taking major trading initiatives. In
fact, until fur prices in England began to rise in the early eighteenth cen-
tury, Atlantic colonists were much more interested in the export of medici-
nal roots such as sassafras than in beaver or more exquisite pelts. However,
this did not keep them from supporting the Iroquois’ hostile challenges to
French fur trading practices.
Much of the real work in extending fur trading in the early years
was done by what the French called coureurs de bois, or “woods runners.”
These were individuals who were able to undergo the rigors of trekking
inland, meeting personally with tribal representatives (many learned In-
dian dialects), and sealing agreements for delivery of furs. The woods
runners became the most knowledgeable European intermediaries in deal-
ings with Indians, and they often retained deep respect for Indian cultural
traditions.
Various Indian groupings competed for favored positions in dealing
with European fur traders. Open competition between tribes led to serious
conflicts. The most important of these involved the Hurons and Algon-
quians. For many years until their 1648 defeat by the Iroquois, the Hurons
struggled against Algonquian insistence that Huron canoes could not pro-
ceed directly to Quebec with furs, but would have to use Algonquian inter-
mediaries. As the easternmost Algonquian lands bordered on Quebec, they
were able to extract trade advantages in dealing with both the Hurons and
the French. It was this target that attracted attacks by the Iroquois, sup-
ported by the British. In the end, both Algonquians and Hurons would
be displaced from their traditional homelands by their former European
sponsors.
Cultural Impacts. The fur trade had many impacts on the material and so-
cial culture of Indians. Ecological effects (such as blocking waterways,
eventual depletion of select fauna and, as a result of the latter, abnormal
distribution of plant species previously controlled by omnivorous animals)
are harder to reconstruct than patterns that were immediately observable
by the traders themselves. For example, stereotypes concerning “simple”
168 / Fur trade
Indian acceptance of exploitative terms in the fur trade do not always

hold up. It is inaccurate to suggest that, when major trading sites such
as those of the Hudson Bay Company or the French One Hundred Associ-
ates existed, Native Americans became hopelessly dependent on foreign
goods offered for their furs. In some cases, attraction to what Europeans
thought would be easy sales just did not develop, because local cultures
preferred to hold fast to traditional items of value, many of which had cere-
monial significance unknown to outsiders. In other widely documented
cases, because of independent Indian preference for certain goods, espe-
cially quality French metal tools and weapons, frustrated traders with in-
ferior quality or different style goods were unable to convince consumers
to make deals.
This does not alter the regrettable fact that many traders took advantage
of Indian unfamiliarity with either the real value of trade items, sometimes
just worthless trinkets, or the dangers they ran by exchanging furs for alco-
hol. Omens of the troubles that afflicted later stages and different regions of
the fur trade surfaced in 1642, when a number of Indian tribes, supported
by Jesuit missionaries, petitioned the governor of New France to return to
the higher moral standards of Champlain’s days, when trade involving al-
cohol had been banned.
See also: Beaver Wars; Fox Wars; French and Indian War; Indian-white
relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-white
relations: English colonial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Indian-
white relations: Russian colonial; Iroquois Confederacy; Lewis and Clark
expedition; Manhattan Island purchase; Pontiac’s Resistance; Proclama-
tion of 1763; Red River Raids; Trade and Intercourse Acts.
Byron D. Cannon

Brown, Jennifer, et al., eds. The Fur Trade Revisited. East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1994. Selected papers on different aspects of the
fur trade from the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference.
Francis, Daniel, and Toby Morantz. Partners in Furs. Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1983. A study of the Hudson Bay Company’s
impact on Algonquians in the Eastern James Bay.
Phillips, Paul. The Fur Trade. 2 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1961. Although somewhat dated, this general history is extremely
complete for all regions and periods.
General Allotment Act / 169
Gadsden Purchase
Date: December 30, 1853; ratified June 29, 1854
Locale: Southern Arizona, New Mexico
Tribes involved: Chiricahua Apache, Tohono O’odham
history, Treaties
Significance: The Gadsden Purchase resolved boundary disputes be-
tween the United States and Mexico resulting from the Mexican War
but ignored consultation with affected Indians.
James Gadsden was a South Carolina railroad promoter turned diplomat.

On behalf of President James Buchanan, he negotiated America’s purchase
of 45,535 square miles of territory from Mexico for the payment of fifteen
million dollars (reduced later to ten million). A block of land nearly the size
of New York State, the Gadsden Purchase lies south of the Gila River, form-
ing part of present-day Arizona and New Mexico. The treaty embodying
the purchase was signed on December 30, 1853, and ratified on June 29,
1854, settling boundary questions between the United States and Mexico
left unresolved by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexi-
can War in 1848.
The purchase was prompted by American politicians eager to build a
transcontinental railroad through the Southwest. Neither the Mexican nor
American governments consulted with the Tohono O’odhams (Papagos)
and Chiricahua Apaches who lived in the area, and these Indians subse-
quently ignored boundaries that were not theirs.
See also: Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of.
Clifton K. Yearley
General Allotment Act

Date: February 8, 1887
Nineteenth century history
Significance: A policy of allotting land to individual Native Americans
in severalty begins to dissolve the tribal nations.
170 / General Allotment Act
When the General Allotment, or Dawes, Act became law on February 8,

1887, proponents hailed it as the Indian Emancipation Act and Secretary of
the Interior L. Q. C. Lamar called it “the most important measure of legisla-
tion ever enacted in this country affecting our Indian affairs.”
The law dealt primarily with Native American ownership of land. It au-
thorized the president of the United States, through the Office of Indian Af-
fairs in the Department of the Interior, to allot the lands on reservations to
individual Native Americans, so that they would hold the land in severalty
instead of the tribe’s owning the land communally. Each head of a house-
hold would receive a quarter-section of land (160 acres); single persons
over eighteen years of age and orphans would receive 80 acres; and other
persons, 40 acres. (In 1891, an amendment to the law equalized the allot-
ments to provide 80 acres for each individual, regardless of age or family
status.) The United States government would hold the allotments in trust
for twenty-five years, during which time the Native American could not
sell or otherwise dispose of his or her land. At the end of that period, he or
she would receive full title to it. After the process of dividing up the reser-
vation land for allotments, the federal government could sell the surplus
land (often a considerable portion of the reservation) to willing purchasers
(most of whom would be European Americans). The money from such
sales would go to a fund to benefit Native American education.
Effect of Allotment on Land Ownership, 1890-1970

Indian-Owned
Government-
Year Trust Allotted Tribal Owned Total
1890 — 104,314,000 — 104,314,000

1900 6,737,000 77,865,000 — 84,602,000
1910 31,094,000 41,052,000 — 72,146,000
1920 37,159,000 35,502,000 — 72,661,000
1930 — 32,097,000 — 32,097,000
1940 17,574,000 36,047,000 1,786,000 55,407,000
1949 16,534,000 38,608,000 863,000 56,005,000
1960 12,235,000 41,226,000 4,618,000 58,079,000
1970 10,698,000 39,642,000 5,068,000 55,408,000
Note: Figures represent acres, rounded off to thousands, under Bureau of Indian Affairs juris-
diction. Dash (—) indicates unavailable data.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the
United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1975.
The Dawes Act also provided for Native American citizenship. Native
Americans who received allotments in severalty or who took up residence
apart from their tribe and adopted what European Americans considered
civilized ways became citizens of the United States and subject to the laws
of the state or territory in which they lived. In 1924, Congress passed the In-
dian Citizenship Act, granting full citizenship to nearly all Native Ameri-
cans who were not already citizens, and measures in the late 1940’s ex-
tended such status to Arizona and New Mexico Native Americans that the
1924 law had missed.
Proponents of the Act. Two groups of European Americans especially wel-

comed the Dawes Act. Land-hungry settlers who had long cast covetous
eyes on the reservation lands—which, to European American thinking,
were going to waste because of the lack of productive agricultural practices
by Native Americans, whom they considered to be hunters and gather-
ers—were now able to acquire the lands left over from the allotment pro-
cess. No doubt, the less scrupulous among the settlers also looked forward
to the day when individual Native Americans would receive full title to
their land and be able to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of it. Then pres-
sure, legitimate or not, would likely induce the new owner to part with the
acreage.
A second group of European Americans, however, was more influential
in securing passage of the Dawes Act. These were the humanitarian re-
formers of the day, who considered private ownership of land in severalty,
U.S. citizenship, education, and consistent codification of laws to be indis-
pensable means for the acculturation of the Native Americans and their
eventual assimilation into the mainstream of U.S. society. As ministers
from the several Christian denominations, educators, civil servants, politi-
cians, and even a few military personnel, these philanthropists exerted a
clout beyond their numbers. Calling themselves the Friends of the Indian,
these reformers had been meeting annually since at the Catskills resort of
Lake Mohonk to discuss ways to bring the tribal peoples to what the con-
veners deemed to be civilization.
Federal politicians had long considered private ownership of land es-
sential to the civilizing process. Thomas Jefferson and the like-minded
policymakers of his time had strongly advocated it, and in 1838 the Com-
missioner of Indian Affairs gave voice to a widespread view when he
said, “Unless some system is marked out by which there shall be a separate
allotment of land to each individual . . . you will look in vain for any gen-
eral casting off of savagism. Common property and civilization cannot co-
exist.”
172 / General Allotment Act
It was not until the post-Civil War years, when increasing European
American pressures on the Native Americans created crisis after crisis, that
humanitarians and philanthropists began a concerted drive for “Indian re-
form.” Land in severalty would be the most important factor in breaking
up tribalism. The reform groups that were organized—the Board of Indian
Commissioners (1869), the Women’s National Indian Association (1879),
the Indian Rights Association (1882), the Lake Mohonk Conference of
Friends of the Indian (1883), and the National Indian Defense Association
(1885), to name the most important—all strongly espoused allotment in
severalty. Nor were they satisfied with the piecemeal legislation that af-
fected one tribe at a time; the panacea they sought was a general allotment
law. Although supporters argued over the speed of implementing allot-
ment, such proponents as Carl Schurz, Herbert Welsh, and the Reverend
Lyman Abbott fought energetically for such legislation. They finally won
to their cause Senator Henry L. Dawes, chairman of the Senate Committee
on Indian Affairs, who successfully shepherded through Congress the
measure that bears his name.
Voices Against Allotment. Only a few European American voices cried

out against the proposal. Congressman Russell Errett of Pennsylvania and
a few others protested that the bill was a thinly disguised means of getting
at the valuable tribal lands. Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado argued
that the Native Americans did not want to own land in severalty and were
not prepared to assume the responsibilities that went with private prop-
erty and citizenship. He denied the contention of the reformers that private
ownership of land would lead to civilization. Albert Meacham, editor of
The Council Fire, maintained that there was little enthusiasm for severalty
among traditionalist Native Americans, and anthropologist Lewis Henry
Morgan thought that allotment would result in massive poverty. Presbyte-
rian missionaries apparently were disunited on the subject of allotment,
and their views fell by the wayside as the juggernaut of reform plunged
ahead.
Native American response to allotment has largely gone unrecorded. The
Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Sac, Fox, and a few other
tribes in Indian Territory, as well as the Seneca in New York, contended that
they already mostly owned land individually and won exclusion from the
act’s operation. By 1906, however, Congress extended allotment to them as
well. Most of the complaints came after the act’s passage, when Native
Americans lost land and found farming difficult under its provisions.
“February 8, 1887,” one optimistic spokesman of the Board of Indian
Commissioners commented, “may be called the Indian emancipation day.”
Although much sincere Christian goodwill motivated passage of the Dawes

Act, it turned out to be a disaster for Native Americans. The sponsors of the
Dawes Act had assumed an unrealistically romantic view of the Native
American. People who had had firsthand experience with tribal peoples at-
tempted to prove to the reformers that the “noble savage” had never ex-
isted. In 1891, Congress allowed Native Americans to lease their allotments
if they were not able to farm for themselves.
The allotments and the leasing moved faster and with less careful dis-
crimination than Dawes and other promoters had intended. Instead of
being a measure that turned Native Americans into self-supporting farm-
ers, the act, through the rapid alienation of the Native Americans’ lands,
meant the loss of the land base on which the tribal people’s hope for fu-
ture prosperity depended. Tribal peoples held claim to about 150 million
acres of land in 1887. The Dawes Act eventually diverted two-thirds of that
acreage out of Native American ownership, down to about 48 million acres
by 1934. Not until that year, with the passage of the Indian Reorganiza-
tion Act (the Wheeler-Howard Act, also known as the “Indian New Deal”),
did the federal government repeal the Dawes Act and encourage commu-
nal forms of ownership again, but by that time much of the former reserva-
tion land was gone as surplus sales, leases, or sales by the individual
allottees.
See also: Allotment system; Friends of the Indian organizations; Indian
Citizenship Act; Indian Reorganization Act.
Francis P. Prucha, updated by Thomas L. Altherr

Coleman, Michael C. “Problematic Panacea: Presbyterian Missionaries and
the Allotment of Indian Lands in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Pacific
Historical Review 54, no. 2 (1985): 143-159. Shows that the Presbyterians
were not united about allotment of tribal lands.
Gibson, Arrell Morgan. “The Centennial Legacy of the General Allotment
Act.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 65, no. 3 (1987): 228-251. Examines the long-
range effects of the Dawes Act on Native Americans.
Press, 2002. Examines the effect of the General Allotment Act on two
groups of Native Americans.
1880-1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Interweaves the
story of the Dawes Act with the larger assimilationist programs toward
Native Americans.
174 / Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of
Mintz, Steven, ed. Native American Voices. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine
Press, 1995. Contains part of the Dawes Act and a complaint by a Chero-
kee farmer in 1906.
Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Americanizing the American Indians: Writings of the
“Friends of the Indian” 1880-1900. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1973. Section 2 provides a representative sampling of primary source
writings about the Dawes Act.
Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975. A concise
summary of the attitudes that produced the act and its repercussions for
Native Americans; contains the full text of the original law.
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of

Locale: Southwest
Tribes involved: Pantribal in California and the Southwest
Significance: This treaty ended the Mexican-American War; in it, Mex-
ico ceded to the United States about half its national territory, and the
ramifications for native peoples in the ceded territory were pro-
found.
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and the treaty that ended it were
largely the result of a belief that came to be called manifest destiny, the
theory that white European settlers of the United States were predes-
tined to settle and dominate the land from coast to coast. This attitude
was used to justify U.S. acquisition of both Indian and Mexican territory.
President James K. Polk, a leading advocate of manifest destiny, was
the most important figure in the Mexican-American War and the peace
negotiations that followed. In Mexico chronic instability caused by the
struggle between the various political parties and leaders made waging
war and negotiating peace difficult and made preserving the peace impos-
sible.
Tension between the United States and Mexico had been increasing in
the years preceding the war. Mexico was aware of, and feared, the Polk
administration’s desire to annex New Mexico and California. The United
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of / 175
Before the Treaty of Guadalupe States was pressing claims

Hidalgo, c. 1835 against Mexico, and the Texas
boundary dispute was becom-
ing more critical. After fight-
Alta U N I T E D S TAT E S ing broke out in the disputed
California
area along the Rio Grande, the
United States declared war. At-
tempts to negotiate peace be-
fore and during the war were
Sonora
Nueva unsuccessful. Mexico saw no
Mexico
advantage in it, and the United
States hoped to occupy more
MEXICO territory.
Chihuahua
As a result of its military
success, the United States was
able to make acquisition of
New Mexico and California a
condition of peace. Polk chose
Nicholas P. Trist as peace commissioner in April, 1847, and gave him a draft
of a treaty which called for the cession of Alta and Baja California and New
Mexico, the right of transit across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Rio
Grande as the Texas border, and a payment to Mexico of $15 million plus
the assumption of claims of United States citizens against Mexico.
Opposition quickly devel-
oped in both Mexico and the After the Treaty of Guadalupe
United States to the proposed Hidalgo, 1848
treaty. Mexico did not want an
imposed peace, and the United
States envisioned better terms.
When Trist negotiated a peace
unacceptable to Polk, the pres-
ident recalled Trist. Trist re- U N I T E D S TAT E S
mained in Mexico, however,
and finally negotiated a modi-
fied treaty that Mexico ac-
cepted because of financial
Gadsden
problems and fear of additional Purchase
(1853)
losses if war continued. The
possibility of a successful rev-
olution in Mexico added ur- MEXICO
gency to the peace process.
176 / Horseshoe Bend Treaty
The United States dropped its demand for transit across the isthmus and
agreed to stop Indian raids across the border. The treaty was signed on Feb-
ruary 2, 1848, in Guadalupe Hidalgo, and ratification was exchanged on
May 30, 1848, in Mexico City.
Although Articles IX and X guaranteed the political and property rights
of Mexican citizens and Indians in the territory transferred to the United
States, the Indians of California did not receive citizenship, nor were
their property rights protected. As a result of violence and other factors
such as disease, the Indian population declined by 100,000 within two de-
cades. In New Mexico Territory the Indians were placed under federal
protection and denied citizenship, but they did not lose their lands. Citi-
zenship was granted to the Indians in 1869, and reservations were later cre-
ated.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Gadsden Purchase.
Robert D. Talbott
Horseshoe Bend Treaty

Locale: Alabama
Tribes involved: Creek
Significance: This agreement eliminated any possibility of an effective
Creek alliance against U.S. expansion and thus facilitated the re-
moval of the Creek people to the trans-Mississippi region during An-
drew Jackson’s presidency.
After his defeat of the Red Stick faction of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend,
General Andrew Jackson took full advantage of his authorization to secure
a peace agreement. His purpose was twofold: to secure large tracts of land
as compensation for the cost of his campaign and to eliminate Creek politi-
cal power by isolating them. In the Treaty of Horseshoe Bend, also known
as the Treaty of Fort Jackson, signed on August 9, 1814, Jackson received,
on behalf of the United States, 22 million acres in south Georgia and central
Alabama, or half of the Creek domain.
Cessions in the west isolated the Creeks from the Choctaws and Chicka-
saws, while those in the south created a buffer against the Seminoles and
Indian / 177
the Spanish. Ironically, only one Red Stick signed the treaty; the remaining
signatories were Creek allies of Jackson, who lost much of their own land.
Each Creek ally was allowed to keep a square mile of land as long as they or
their family used it, but the United States reserved the right to build forts,
trading posts, and roads on Creek lands.
See also: Creek War; Fort Mims, Battle of; Indian Removal Act; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Trail of Tears.
Richard B. McCaslin
Indian
Date: Fifteenth century-present
Significance: In its use to refer to the native peoples of the Americas, the
term “Indian” is based on historical error.
In the late fifteenth century, there was some disagreement over the size of
the earth, although it had been accurately determined by the ancient
Greeks many centuries earlier. Christopher Columbus and explorers who
followed him believed the earth’s circumference to be roughly half what it
is known to be today.
The purpose of the early explorations of the Americas was to find a
pathway to India by sailing west instead of east from Europe, primarily to
avoid trouble with the Muslim nations that controlled the territory be-
tween Europe and India. Apparently, Columbus thought he had reached
India when he landed on the island of Hispaniola (today occupied by Haiti
and the Dominican Republic), named the area the West Indies, and referred
to the natives as indios (Spanish for Indians).
While the later British and French explorers who landed in North Amer-
ica did not believe that Massachusetts and Quebec were India, the term
was still used, translated into the appropriate languages. The term is still
in wide use essentially because no better collective term has been widely
accepted. Some native people find the term “Indian” deeply offensive,
whereas others find it and “American Indian” acceptable and even prefera-
ble to such well-intentioned revisions as “Native American” or the less
widely used “Amerind.” The most accurate—and most widely accepted—
178 / Indian Act of 1876
way to identify a person or tradition is simply to refer to the specific tribe or

group to which the person or tradition belongs.
See also: American Indian; Amerind; Federally recognized tribes; Na-
tive American; Tribe.
Marc Goldstein
Indian Act of 1876

Date: 1876
Locale: Canada
history
Significance: The Indian Act of 1876 was the first comprehensive post-
Confederation law to establish Canadian policy toward Native Ameri-
cans.
The British North America Act of 1867, which created the Dominion of
Canada, gave the federal government sole jurisdiction in all issues related
to Canadian Indians. This long-held British colonial policy had been estab-
lished initially in recognition that natives treated in an inconsistent and of-
ten unscrupulous manner posed a military threat to British colonies. Even
after Indians ceased to be an obstacle to British settlement, the policy was
continued with the twin goals of protection and the eventual assimilation
of the natives.
With the passage of the Act to Amend and Consolidate the Laws Re-
specting Indians, better known as the Indian Act of 1876, the government
of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald continued the policies established
during British colonial rule. As Canada’s first prime minister, Macdonald’s
primary aim was nation-building—to which Canadian Indians, particu-
larly those in the newly acquired prairies, presented an obstacle. With re-
gard to the Indian Act, Macdonald was later quoted as saying, “the great
aim of our legislation has been to do away with the tribal system and assim-
ilate the Indian people in all respects with the other inhabitants of the Do-
minion.” Consequently, Canadian Indian policy under Macdonald placed
less emphasis on protection and more on assimilation. Ironically, the goals
worked at cross purposes. Paternalistic efforts to protect natives empha-
sized the distinctions between them and the European Canadians, there-
Indian Act of 1876 / 179
fore discouraging assimilation. The Indian Act was amended nine times
between 1914 and 1930. Nearly every change in the act placed greater re-
strictions on the activities of Native Canadians.
Reserve System. The Indian Act set out a series of reserved lands that were
to be laboratories for training Canadian Indians in the ways of the Euro-
pean settlers. The first reserves were established away from areas of white
settlement in an effort to protect Indians from the unsavory elements of
European Canadian society. When it became clear that this policy hin-
dered assimilation, new reserves were created near towns populated by
whites, in the hope that natives would learn from their European Cana-
dian neighbors. Another element of the Indian Act provided for the es-
tablishment of elected band councils. While these had little power, they
were meant to supplant traditional native leadership. The act permitted
the superintendent general for Indian Affairs or his agent to remove any
elected councilor deemed unfit to serve for reasons of “dishonesty, intem-
perance, or immorality.” The natives of British Columbia were forbidden
from engaging in potlatches or any other giveaway feasts, in part because
such ceremonies helped to perpetuate traditional leadership roles. This
ban on ceremonies was quickly extended beyond the tribes of British
Columbia and the Northwest Coast to nearly all expressions of traditional
religion and culture. Canadian Indians also were prohibited from consum-
ing alcohol.
In order to protect tribal lands from sale to nonnatives, title to those
lands was held by the Crown rather than by the tribes. Reserve lands were
exempt from property and estate taxes, and income earned on reserves was
exempted from taxation. While these provisions have protected Canadian
Indian property from seizure, they also have hindered economic develop-
ment on the reserves. Because Canadian Indians have been unable to mort-
gage their lands, it often has been difficult for them to raise capital for de-
velopment projects. Indian agents, who retained power to make nearly all
economic decisions with respect to tribal lands, often resorted to harsh
measures (such as withholding relief rations) in efforts to force adoption of
European Canadian beliefs and practices.
While many of the provisions of the Indian Act were intended to ease
Native Canadians into a European Canadian lifestyle, others were purely
racist. In British Columbia, for example, natives had been denied the treaty
rights and land tenure provisions afforded natives in much of the rest of
Canada. In order to prevent court action to secure those rights, the Indian
Act was amended to prohibit fund-raising for the purposes of pursuing
land claims.
Revision of 1951. The Indian Act was significantly revised in 1951 to elimi-
nate much of the blatant discrimination resulting from amendments to the
1876 act. Some discrimination remained, however. One onerous aspect of the
Indian Act that was retained codified the category “Indian” as a legal rather
than a racial or cultural designation and gave the government the legal
power to determine who qualified as an Indian. It also provided that a man
could surrender Indian status for himself, his wife, and his children in ex-
change for Canadian citizenship and a plot of land. Very few natives chose to
relinquish their Indian status voluntarily, however. An Indian woman who
married a non-Indian or a nonstatus Indian involuntarily surrendered her
own Indian status and benefits, and her children were precluded from claim-
ing Indian status. Non-Indian women who married status Indians, however,
became status Indians themselves. This provision of the Indian Act was chal-
lenged in 1973 by Jeannette Lavelle, an Ojibwa from Manitoulin Island who
had lost her Indian status through marriage. Lavelle based her case on Can-
ada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Although Lavelle did not prevail in
court, her case and others exposed Canada to condemnation by several in-
ternational human rights organizations and led to the 1985 passage of Bill
C-31, which restored to thousands of Native Canadian women (and their
children) the Indian status they had lost through marriage to non-Indians.
The issue of Indian status divides native people as well. While many ac-
knowledge that maintaining a legal status distinct from that of other Cana-
dians creates opportunities for discrimination, others believe that they
have inherent aboriginal rights that must be recognized. Despite the flaws
and failures of the Indian Act, there has been only one serious attempt to
discard it. In 1969, Jean Chrétien, minister of the Department of Indian Af-
fairs and Northern Development, proposed a repeal of the Indian Act. This
initiative, which became known as the White Paper, proposed eliminating
many of the legal distinctions between natives and nonnatives and requir-
ing the provinces to provide the same services to Canadian Indians that
they provide to other citizens. Fearing that the provinces would be even
more likely to discriminate against natives and that the federal govern-
ment would abandon its responsibilities for native welfare, many native
groups fought the White Paper proposals. They were withdrawn in 1971.
See also: Indian Act of 1951; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Reserve
system of Canada.
Pamela R. Stern

Dickason, Olive Patricia. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peo-
ples from Earliest Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Contains several lengthy discussions of the policies generated by the In-

dian Act.
McMillan, Alan D. Native Peoples and Cultures of Canada: An Anthropological
Overview. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988. Chapter 12 discusses
both the Indian Act and issues related to the status of Canadian Indians.
Satzewich, Vic, and Terry Wotherspoon. First Nations: Race, Class, and
Gender Relations. Scarborough, Ont.: Nelson Canada, 1993. Contains a
thoughtful discussion of the impact of the Indian Act on native women
in Canada.
Tennant, Paul. Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in
British Columbia, 1849-1989. Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 1990. A thorough discussion of the history of Canadian Indian
policy and relations between Canadian Indians and whites in the prov-
ince of British Columbia. Several sections deal specifically with the In-
dian Act.
Tobias, John L. “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History
of Canada’s Indian Policy.” In Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White
Relations in Canada, edited by J. R. Miller. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991. This article, reprinted from the Western Canadian Journal of
Anthropology, provides a critical overview of legislation and policy mak-
ing with regard to Canadian Indians.
Indian Act of 1951

Date: 1951
Locale: Canada
Tribes involved: Pantribal in Canada, including status and nonstatus
Indians, Metis, Inuit
history
Significance: The first major revision of the Indian Act in seventy-five
years softened, but did not eliminate, the blatant discrimination
against native peoples institutionalized by earlier legislation.
Although the Indian Act of 1951 was the first comprehensive revision
of Canada’s 1876 Indian Act, it did little to undo the paternalism of its
predecessor. Like the previous law, it gave nearly absolute control of In-
dian activities to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Devel-
opment (DIAND). This included the development of Indian lands and

resources as well as oversight of band councils. The new act also retained
the enfranchisement provisions of the earlier legislation, including those
that denied Indian status to women who married non-Indians. In a well-
known sex discrimination suit brought by Jeannette Lavelle, an Ojibwa
who was denied Indian status as a result of her marriage, the Supreme
Court in 1973 upheld those provisions of the act. A Maliceet woman,
Sandra Lovelace, took a similar case before the United Nations in 1981. Al-
though Canada was found to have violated international human rights
covenants, the enfranchisement provisions of the Indian Act were not
repealed until 1985.
The new act did, however, repeal the most blatant discrimination inher-
ent in the Indian Act of 1876. It no longer prohibited Indian religious cere-
monies, political fund-raising, or consumption of alcohol off reserve lands.
Later amendments permitted the consumption of alcohol on reserves and
gave Indians the right to vote in Canadian elections.
The 1951 act continued a number of benefits of the earlier legislation in-
cluding the exemption of Indian lands from property and estate taxes and
exemption of income earned on reserves from taxation. Although these
provisions have protected Indian property from seizure, they have also
hindered economic development on the reserves. Because Indians have
been unable to mortgage their lands, it has often been difficult for them to
raise capital for development projects.
Despite the restrictions imposed by the 1951 Indian Act, natives have
fought efforts to discard it altogether. Fearing that the federal government
would abandon its responsibilities to native welfare, many natives fought
the 1969 White Paper proposal to repeal the Indian Act. The Indian Act was
rewritten in 1985, but other than the repeal of enfranchisement provisions,
it remained virtually unchanged.
See also: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; In-
dian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Re-
serve system of Canada.
Richard G. Condon
Indian Act of 1989

Date: 1989
Locale: Canada
Tribes involved: Pantribal in Canada, including status and nonstatus

Indians, Metis, Inuit
history
Significance: The Indian Act of 1989 updated and standardized Indian
and government rights and responsibilities in Canada.
Because of the confusion created by a diversity of local laws in different

provinces under the federal government in Canada, legislators have cre-
ated certain acts that cannot vary according to locality. Such is the case of
the Indian Act of 1989. In effect a compendium of earlier acts (of 1927 and
1951), it also added new laws more in keeping with contemporary condi-
tions.
The main divisions of the act provide for the designation of reserves
(land vested in Her Majesty’s Crown, but “reserved for Indian use”), estab-
lishment of band councils and election of band leaders, and a comprehen-
sive Indian Register. By the act, the sole authority of the band council to as-
sign possession of specific reserve lands to individuals is recognized for
the first time. This right of possession must be recognized by the Superin-
tendent General of Indian Affairs, who issues a Certificate of Possession.
Possessors may transfer their land rights, but only to other members
within their band, or back to the band council itself.
Provisions respecting the security of reserves against government ex-
propriation ended misunderstandings that had developed over many years.
With the right of security went defined areas of band responsibility (to
maintain roads, bridges, and so on) which, if unfulfilled, could lead to gov-
ernment charges against band councils. Common responsibility between
councils and government for revenues accruing to bands (through royal-
ties or sale of Indian produced goods) is spelled out, including the govern-
ment right to use such funds to assure proper sanitary facilities and disease
control.
One use of government funds on reserves reflects benevolent subsi-
dies under the 1989 act. Schools are to be provided to all bands on an
equal basis, and attendance up to a minimum age is required of all Indian
children. Provisions for tax-exempt status (lands, personal property, or
salaries earned in reserve areas) and taxable income earned from contacts
beyond the reserves are meant to protect both Indian and government in-
terests.
The act contains brief mention of individual rights. There is a right of
testamentary wills for family security. Otherwise, where individual Indian
rights might be jeopardized owing to band council inaction, government
184 / Indian Appropriation Act
intervention is allowed (mainly to aid orphans or the mentally handi-

capped).
See also: Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; Indian-white relations:
Canadian; Reserve system of Canada.
Byron D. Cannon
Indian Appropriation Act

Date: March 3, 1871
Nineteenth century history, Treaties
Significance: Congress unilaterally determines that Native Americans
no longer belong to their own sovereign nations, ending treaty mak-
ing between U.S. and tribal governments.
In 1871, Congress voted to end treaty making with Native American peo-
ples. Since the origins of the republic, the U.S. government had dealt with
tribes by recognizing each one as an independent nation living within the
United States. Hence, ambassadors were sent out from Washington, D.C.,
to negotiate treaties, and each agreement had to be ratified by two-thirds of
the Senate, as provided in the Constitution. Chief Justice John Marshall, in
Worcester v. Georgia (1832), had determined that this process had to be fol-
lowed because each tribe was self-governing and sovereign in its own terri-
tory.
The change took place because many people in the United States came to
believe that the Native American nations no longer acted like sovereign
states. They were too weak, post-Civil War whites believed, and many had
become dependent on the federal government for their existence. Members
of Congress expressed that view in a series of discussions on American In-
dian policy in 1870-1871. In the House of Representatives, the feeling also
grew that the House was being ignored in the development of Indian policy.
The only way the House could influence Native American relations would
be by renouncing the treaty concept. The attack on treaty making gained
strength during the debate over the money to be appropriated for the
United States Board of Indian Commissioners. This agency had been cre-
ated in 1869 to oversee money authorized to be spent on Indian programs.
Indian Appropriation Act / 185
Policy Changes. The commissioners’ first report suggested major changes

in Indian policy. It called for ending the treaty system and dealing with
“uncivilized” native peoples as “wards of the government.” Board chair
Felix R. Brunot echoed the views of many U.S. citizens when he declared
that it was absurd to treat “a few thousand savages” as if they were equal
with the people and government of the United States. President Ulysses S.
Grant supported that view, as did his commissioner of Indian affairs, Ely S.
Parker, a member of the Seneca nation. Parker believed that it was a cruel
farce to deal with the tribes as equals; in his view, most were “helpless and
ignorant wards” of the federal government.
The resentment of members of the House of Representatives at their ex-
clusion from Indian policy making became apparent during debates over
treaties negotiated in 1868 and 1869. A May, 1868, an agreement with the
Osage Nation in Kansas had ceded eight million acres of land to the gov-
ernment. The land then would be sold to a railroad company for twenty
cents per acre. The House voted unanimously to recommend that the Sen-
ate not ratify the treaty because the land transfer had taken place outside
the traditional methods of selling public property. The Senate responded to
the House plea by rejecting the treaty. Later, however, the land was sold to
the railroad company with the approval of the House.
The House took up the issue of treaty making again in 1869 during a vio-
lent debate over the Indian appropriation for 1870. It provided money for
food, clothes, and education for tribe members living on reservations. The
House refused to accept an increase in funds voted by the Senate. Repre-
sentatives also began to question whether native peoples were capable of
signing official treaties with the United States. Most members attacked the
traditional system, although three congressmen spoke in favor of the treaty
process. Representative William Windom of Minnesota argued that chang-
ing the process would be a breach of faith with the tribes. Revoking the pro-
cess would create great confusion among Native Americans and add to
their distrust of the U.S. government.
Representative John J. Logan, Republican of Illinois, responded for the
majority, however, by declaring that “the idea of this Government making
treaties with bands of wild and roving Indians is simply preposterous and ri-
diculous.” Amid loud cheers and laughter, Logan attacked the character of
native peoples and suggested that they were an inferior race that should not
be treated as equal in status to the people of the United States. The House
refused to approve the appropriation, and the Senate refused to compro-
mise; therefore, no Indian appropriation bill passed Congress in 1869.
In the debate over the 1871 appropriation, both sides raised the same ar-
guments. In the Senate, supporters of the treaty system argued that any
186 / Indian Appropriation Act
change would severely injure any goodwill native peoples still held to-
ward the U.S. government system. Senator Richard Yates reiterated the
antitreaty sentiment, declaring that the tribes were not civilized and that
making treaties with them had been a mistake. The Senate, however,
passed an appropriation bill and sent it to the House. While the debate took
place, many tribes were waiting for the money due to them under treaties
negotiated in 1868 and 1869. Unless Congress agreed to an appropriation
bill, they would receive nothing. In a compromise arranged between the
two legislative branches, a sum of two million dollars was appropriated to
pay off prior obligations. Debate over the appropriation for the next year
bogged down in the House, however.
Agitation Against Treaties. The Board of Indian Commissioners helped

the House position by calling for an end to treaty making and for abrogat-
ing all existing agreements. Only Representative Eugene M. Wilson of Min-
nesota spoke in favor of continuing the historic policy. If Native Americans
were not protected by treaties, they would be cheated out of their lands by
white speculators and end up with nothing, he argued. Debate in the Sen-
ate and the House seemed far more concerned with constitutional techni-
calities than with the welfare of native peoples. Once more, no bill seemed
possible. On the last day of the session, President Grant urged a compro-
mise, or, he warned, a war with the tribes was sure to break out. Under this
threat, Congress agreed to put aside its differences temporarily and passed
a bill.
When the new Congress opened on January 4, 1871, Representative
Henry Dawes of Massachusetts led the call for change. Dawes, who in
1887 would author a major bill in the Senate drastically changing policy
toward native peoples, called for a quick program of assimilation in this
earlier debate. If natives were to become Americanized—a policy he
supported—they should be treated as individuals rather than as mem-
bers of foreign nations. Native peoples were not and never had been equal
to the United States. The House passed a bill denouncing “so-called trea-
ties.”
In the Senate, an amendment to delete the words “so-called” before
“treaties” led to a vigorous debate. Senator William Stewart of Nevada ob-
jected to the amendment. “The whole Indian policy of feeding drunken,
worthless, vagabond Indians, giving them money to squander . . . has been
a growing disgrace to our country for years.” Treaties with “irresponsible
tribes” were no treaties at all. Only a few senators agreed with this amend-
ment, however, and “so-called” was eliminated. This angered the House,
which refused to accept the Senate version.
Indian Appropriation Act / 187
Many congressmen and senators were tired of the endless debate and
seemed willing to compromise. A conference committee of senators and
representatives agreed that past treaties would be accepted or the integrity
of the United States would be compromised. It agreed that no more treaties
should be negotiated with Native Americans, however. Most conferees
agreed that the tribes remaining hardly seemed like legitimate nations,
as they were too small, weak, and miserable. The final compromise as-
serted the validity of prior agreements but provided that in the future, “no
Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be ac-
knowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with
whom the United States may contract by treaty.” Both the Senate and the
House accepted the compromise, and President Grant signed it into law on
March 3, 1871. Treaties would no longer be negotiated with Native Ameri-
can peoples. Native Americans would, instead, become “wards of the
state.”
See also: Allotment system; General Allotment Act; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1871-1933; Treaties and agreements in the United States.
Leslie V. Tischauser

Cohen, Fay G. Treaties on Trial: The Continuing Controversy Over Northwest
Indian Fishing Rights. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986.
Shows the continuing importance of treaties and the bitterness still
evoked by pre-1871 agreements.
Heizer, Robert F. “Treaties.” In California. Vol. 8 in Handbook of North Ameri-
can Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978. A
brief description of treaty making before 1871.
Jones, Dorothy V. License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Discusses abuses of the sys-
tem and how native peoples failed to understand the process.
Kvasnicka, Robert M. “United States Indian Treaties and Agreements.” In
History of Indian-White Relations, edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4
in Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1988. A short discussion of the debate over treaties and
how the process was ended.
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Politi-
cal Anomaly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. The full
story of treaty making and how it was ended in 1871. Index and list of
treaties.
188 / Indian Child Welfare Act
Indian Child Welfare Act

Date: November 8, 1978
history
Significance: This act established minimum standards for placement of
Indian children in foster or adoptive homes to prevent the breakup of
Indian families.
The Indian Child Welfare Act, passed into law in 1978, establishes mini-
mum federal standards for the removal of Indian children from their fami-
lies and the placement of these children in foster or adoptive homes. In es-
sence, the act restricts the placement of Indian children in non-Indian
homes and gives jurisdiction to tribal courts in deciding matters of child
welfare involving adoptive or foster placement. The law removes state ju-
risdiction in most Indian child welfare cases, even when problems occur off
the reservation.
Native American children praying beside their beds at Phoenix Indian School,
c. 1900. (National Archives)
Indian Citizenship Act / 189
The law affirms the continued existence and the integrity of Indian
tribes and was specifically designed to end discriminatory practices of state
and county welfare agencies which disregarded Indian extended family
arrangements and placed large numbers of Indian children in non-Indian
homes. Senate hearings conducted in 1974 documented evidence that as
many as 25 percent of Indian children were being systematically removed
from their natural families. This in turn was causing the breakup of the
Indian family and a high degree of social disruption in Indian commu-
nities.
The law provides that when foster care or adoption is necessary, the
child’s extended family has first priority to assume custody. If no extended
family member is available, a member of the child’s tribe or an Indian from
another tribe has priority over non-Indians.
See also: Carlisle Indian School; Tribal courts; Women of All Red Na-
tions.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian Citizenship Act

Date: June 2, 1924
Significance: Confers citizenship on all American Indians born within
territorial limits of the United States, thus encouraging the dissolu-
tion of tribal nations.
American Indians hold a unique position in U.S. society and law, so the
question of their citizenship was complicated. By the time of the Revolu-
tionary War (1775-1783), it was established practice for European colonial
powers to negotiate treaties with American Indian tribes, as they were con-
sidered to be independent nations, and this policy was continued by the
United States. The Constitution regards tribes as distinct political units
separate and apart from the United States, although not foreign nations, so
as long as American Indians were members of tribes or nations that negoti-
ated treaties with the United States government as semi-independent polit-
ical units, they could not be considered U.S. citizens. Two significant rul-
190 / Indian Citizenship Act
ings made it clear that an act of Congress would be required in order to

grant citizenship to American Indians.
The issue of whether American Indians were citizens came into question
when the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1868.
The amendment stated that “All persons born or naturalized within the
United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the State
wherein they reside.” This amendment was intended to grant citizenship
to newly emancipated slaves; however, there was a question as to whether
it covered American Indians as well. In 1868, Senator James Doolittle of
Wisconsin led the opposition to the extension of citizenship to American
Indians under the Fourteenth Amendment. Many tribes were not yet set-
tled on reservations, there were ongoing tribal wars in the Great Plains, and
Doolittle felt strongly that the natives were not yet prepared for citizen-
ship. There was considerable confusion in the Senate as to whether Indians
living with tribal connections were subject to the jurisdiction of the United
States. It was decided that Fourteenth Amendment rights did not extend to
American Indians, when the Senate Committee on the Judiciary ruled, in
1870, that tribal Indians were not granted citizenship under the Fourteenth
Amendment because they were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United
States in the sense meant by the amendment.
Once this matter was settled, issues arose over the status of American
Indians who voluntarily severed relationships with their tribe. John Elk, an
American Indian who terminated relations with his tribe and lived and
worked in Omaha, Nebraska, sought to register to vote in a local election.
Elk met all the requirements to vote in the state of Nebraska, but he was re-
fused the right to vote because election officials, and later the courts, ruled
that as an American Indian, he was not a United States citizen. In 1884, the
United States Supreme Court upheld the lower court decisions; it ruled, in
Elk v. Wilkins, that an Indian born as a member of a tribe, although he disas-
sociated himself from that tribe and lived among whites, was not a citizen
and therefore was ineligible to vote. This ruling indicated it would take a
specific act of Congress to naturalize American Indians.
Ending Tribal Sovereignty. By the 1880’s, many persons in the United

States sought to end tribal sovereignty, individualize Indians (end their
status as tribal members), and grant citizenship to them so they eventually
would be amalgamated into the general population. As a means toward
this end, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, a leader in reform leg-
islation for American Indian issues, sponsored the General Allotment Act,
which became law in 1887. This act carried provisions for citizenship as a
reward for leaving the tribe and adopting “the habits of civilized life.” In
Indian Citizenship Act / 191
part, this meant that American Indians had to accept small plots of land,
successfully farm their lands, and learn the English language. Provisions in
the General Allotment Act meant that eventually every American Indian
could become a citizen, except members of tribes specifically excluded in
legislation. Indians in Oklahoma were originally excluded from these pro-
visions, but in 1901, a congressional act granted Indians in Oklahoma Terri-
tory citizenship. By 1917, through a variety of federal statutes, as many as
two-thirds of all Native Americans were United States citizens. However, it
was World War I that reopened the debate about citizenship for American
Indians as a whole.
American Indians actively supported the war effort through increased
food production, purchase of war bonds, contributions to the Red Cross,
and most dramatically, enlistment: Between six and ten thousand Indi-
ans, many of whom were not citizens, enlisted for military service. In re-
turn for their service to the country, Representative Homer P. Snyder
of New York authored the Veterans Citizenship bill, which became law
on November 6, 1919. This law granted any American Indian who had
received an honorable discharge from military service during World War I
the right to apply for citizenship with no restriction on the right to tribal
property. Still, by 1920, some 125,000 American Indians were not citi-
zens. Many people in the United States believed that all Indians should
be rewarded for their patriotism in World War I. Therefore, Snyder intro-
duced a bill in Congress proposing to declare all remaining noncitizen In-
dians born in the United States as citizens. Political maneuverings began at
once.
Citizenship with Sovereignty. Many people favored citizenship as a way

to sever the legal relationship between the tribes and the federal govern-
ment, and many American Indians were aware that citizenship could alter
their tribal governments and possibly dissolve the reservation land base. In
particular, full-bloods in many tribes were fearful that citizenship would
end tribal sovereignty, bring them under state jurisdiction, and ultimately
destroy tribal life and values. Compromise was required to resolve these
conflicting views. In January, 1924, Congressman Snyder introduced House
Resolution 6355, authorizing the secretary of the interior to grant citizen-
ship to all American Indians, but ensuring that “the granting of such citi-
zenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any
Indian to tribal or other property.” The bill was approved by Congress, and
the American Indian Citizenship Act, signed into law on June 2, 1924, by
President Calvin Coolidge, made Native Americans both citizens of the
United States and persons with tribal relations.
192 / Indian Citizenship Act
Ultimately, citizenship had little impact on American Indian life. The

Bureau of Indian Affairs continued its policy of treating tribal members
as wards of the government and administering affairs for American In-
dian citizens. The right to vote was denied to many American Indians until
the 1960’s, because the states had the power to determine voter eligibility
and did not consider tribal members living on reservations to reside in
the state. With federal protections in place, American Indians have been
granted the right to vote in federal, state, and local elections, and as mem-
bers of tribes, they also can vote in tribal elections.
See also: Elk v. Wilkins; Indian Civil Rights Act; Indian-white relations:
U.S., 1871-1933; World wars.
Carole A. Barrett

Cohen, Felix. Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Washington, D.C.: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1942. The most complete sourcebook for American
Indian legal issues.
Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians in the United States. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1989. A comprehensive, in-depth historical sur-
vey of Indians of the United States, emphasizing tribal relations with the
U.S. government.
Olson, James S., and Raymond Wilson. Native Americans in the Twentieth
Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. A good text for inter-
preting major trends, events, and attitudes affecting American Indian
peoples, including the myriad issues involved in the citizenship debate.
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Great Father: The United States Government and the
American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. A seminal
work for understanding federal-tribal relationships and the develop-
ment of American Indian policy. Traces the controversies surrounding
citizenship for Indians.
Smith, Michael T. “The History of Indian Citizenship.” In The American In-
dian Past and Present. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981. Traces
the major factors that made it difficult for American Indians to obtain
citizenship.
Washburn, Wilcomb, ed. Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North
American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.
Discusses the American Indian in the complex federal-tribal context and
contains information on citizenship.
Indian Civil Rights Act / 193
Indian Civil Rights Act
Date: April 11, 1968

Categories: Civil rights, National government and legislation, Native
government, Twentieth century history
Significance: A controversial but important measure is designed to
guarantee Indians living under tribal governments the same rights as
those of other U.S. citizens.
A significant but controversial piece of legislation designed to guarantee

the rights of individual American Indians came about in special Indian ti-
tles of the Civil Rights Act signed into law on April 11, 1968. The existence
of tribal governments and tribal courts had raised the issue of protection of
the individual rights of American Indians living in a tribal context. Tribal
governments have been considered to be inherently sovereign, because
they predate the Constitution and do not derive their power to exist or to
govern from either federal or state governments. Federal recognition or
regulation of tribes does not make them part of the United States govern-
ment or guarantee constitutional protection for tribal members. An 1896
Supreme Court case, Talton v. Mayes, determined that the Bill of Rights of
the Constitution does not apply to tribes, because tribes derive and retain
their sovereignty from their aboriginal self-governing status. The Indian
Citizenship Act of 1924, which gave American Indians dual citizenship in
their tribes and the United States, did not make the Bill of Rights applicable
to situations involving tribal government.
There was little interest in the lack of individual rights for American In-
dians living a tribal existence until the 1960’s, when national attention
turned to civil rights. When the United States Senate began to investigate
civil rights abuses throughout the nation, some attention was directed at
tribal governments. In 1961, the Senate held hearings on civil rights issues
on reservations, and investigators heard many examples of infringement
on individual liberties and the lack of any way to redress grievances. Con-
tributing to the problem was the fact that tribal societies emphasized the
good of the group and were inclined to consider the good of the people as a
whole more important than the preservation of individual rights.
An 1886 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Kagama determined
that Congress has authority to govern the internal affairs of tribes and
to make laws that directly affect American Indians. Therefore, Congress
194 / Indian Civil Rights Act
could impose restrictions on tribal governments and move toward granting

greater individual protections to American Indians living on reservations.
The Civil Rights Movement. In 1968, when civil rights legislation was pro-
posed to remedy the unequal protection of some groups in the United
States, Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina proposed bringing tribal gov-
ernments under the constitutional framework of the United States. After a
good deal of political maneuvering, Congressman Ben Reifel of South Da-
kota, a member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe, rallied support for the bill, and
Public Law 90-284, the Indian Civil Rights Act, became law. This act was a
set of special titles within the Civil Rights Act. It was intended to protect
the rights of individual American Indians; however, it was controversial
for its emphasis on individuals rather than the tribal group. The act was in-
tended to preserve tribal autonomy while protecting the rights of individ-
ual tribal members. Largely as a result of tribal protests that the full Bill of
Rights would severely upset traditional governing practices, a blanket im-
position of the Bill of Rights on tribal governments was replaced by a more
selective and specific list of individual rights that were to be protected.
Those parts of the Bill of Rights that seemed to infringe on the special char-
acter of tribal government were omitted.
The Indian Civil Rights Act prohibits tribal governments from interfer-
ing with freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for re-
dress of grievances. It specifically authorizes a writ of habeas corpus for any-
one detained by the tribe, and it grants due process. This bill also protects
the right of privacy against search and seizure, using language identical to
that of the Bill of Rights. The Indian Civil Rights Act does not guarantee
persons free counsel in criminal proceedings nor the right of indictment by
grand jury.
In addition to protecting individual freedoms, the Indian Civil Rights
Act contains some provisions that impact tribal governments directly. The
Indian Civil Rights Act permits tribal governments to establish an official
tribal religion in order to allow the continuation of the quasi theocracies
that form the basis of government in some American Indian communities.
However, the act does require that individual freedom of religion be pro-
tected. The secretary of the interior is charged with the responsibility of
drawing up codes of justice to be used in courts trying American Indian
offenders. Assault resulting in serious bodily injury was added to the of-
fenses on reservations that are subject to federal jurisdiction under the Ma-
jor Crimes Act. In an important victory for tribal autonomy, Section 7 of
Public Law 83-280 was repealed. Public Law 83-280, passed by Congress in
1953 in an attempt to abridge the rights of tribal courts, had given states the
Indian Civil Rights Act / 195
authority to extend civil and criminal jurisdiction over reservations. The

passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act authorized the retrocession of juris-
diction already assumed by a state. A provision in the bill guaranteed the
automatic approval of tribal contracts if the secretary of the interior did not
act on a tribal request within ninety days.
Controversies and Challenges. The Indian Civil Rights Act was controver-
sial when it was proposed and has remained so. Many American Indians
view it as an attempt to impose non-Indian values on tribal societies and re-
gard it as a violation of tribal sovereignty, because Congress unilaterally
imposed the bill on tribal governments and people. This raised many ques-
tions regarding the meaning of “consent.” Tribes do not seek to be pro-
tected from misuse of power, but there are questions about both the legality
and cultural implications of the Indian Civil Rights Act. The fact that Con-
gress intended to bring tribal governments more within the constitutional
framework of the United States caused a good deal of controversy. Tribes
have questioned the legality of permitting Congress, which basically repre-
sents states, to have a direct role in the formulation and passage of a law for
tribes. No mechanism was afforded for tribes to accept or reject this legisla-
tion, although tribal cultures and customs are directly impacted by this law
because it emphasizes individualism. Many tribal leaders feel the Indian
Civil Rights Act restricts tribes in the exercise of their inherent sovereignty.
Since passage of the bill, numerous individual challenges to tribal au-
thority have been litigated in federal courts, and many court decisions
have favored the individual and weakened the concept of tribal sover-
eignty. More recent court decisions have tended to use tribal customs and
traditions in interpreting the act. A landmark 1978 decision, Santa Clara
Pueblo v. Martinez, supported a tribe’s right to extend membership only to
the children of male tribal members, as this was in keeping with tribal cus-
tom. The court ruled that it did not violate laws against sexual discrimina-
tion, because the Indian Civil Rights Act had a dual purpose of protecting
individual rights as well as tribal autonomy.
See also: American Indian Movement; Indian Citizenship Act; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Major Crimes Act; Native American Rights
Fund; Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez; Tribal courts; United States v. Kagama.
Carole A. Barrett

trations, 1961-1969. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.
A groundbreaking study of federal Indian policy in the 1960’s.
196 / Indian Claims Commission
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Several essays deal with the
impact of the Indian Civil Rights Act on American Indian tribal govern-
ments. Also explores larger constitutional issues and tribal govern-
ments.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. The Nations Within: The Past and Fu-
ture of American Indian Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. An
important discussion of the impact of legal and legislative measures on
tribal autonomy and self-rule.
Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Examines the Indian
Civil Rights Act and its assault on tribal sovereignty. Discusses numer-
ous contemporary issues in a historical context.
American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Examines
the relationship of the federal government and tribal governments from
the formation of the United States to the 1980’s. Explores the Indian
Civil Rights Act in this context.
Wunder, John R. “Retained by the People”: A History of American Indians and the
Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Chronicles the
history of the relationship between American Indians and the Bill of
Rights. Presents a detailed assessment of the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act.
Indian Claims Commission

Date: Established 1946; expired 1978
Categories: National government and legislation, Organizations, Twen-
tieth century history
Significance: The Indian Claims Commission (ICC) purported to re-
solve all pending Indian land claims in the United States.
The Indian Claims Commission (ICC) was established by an act of Con-

gress in 1946. Its mandate was to review all pending territorial claims by
native peoples within the forty-eight contiguous states and, where these
were found to be valid, to retire them through payment of appropriate
compensation.
Indian Claims Commission / 197
American Indian leaders with President Harry Truman at the signing of the Indian
Claims Commission bill in 1946. (Library of Congress)
Although the life of the commission was originally expected to be ten

years, the sheer volume of the cases it encountered caused its duration to
be repeatedly extended. When it was finally suspended on September 30,
1978, the ICC still had a docket of sixty-eight cases remaining to be heard
(these were reassigned to the U.S. Court of Claims). In the interim, it had
considered several hundred separate claims which, in aggregate, led it to
reach some rather striking conclusions in its final report.
As Russel Barsh summarized the ICC’s general findings,
about half a country was purchased by treaty or agreement at an average

price of less than a dollar an acre; another third of a [billion] acres were
claimed by the United States without presence of a unilateral action extin-
guishing title.
Because the ICC was specifically precluded under its authorizing legis-
lation from effecting transfers of land title where none had previously oc-
curred, the clear implication of the last finding was that legal ownership of
the land in question remained vested in American Indians. In effect, then,
the United States was engaged in the illegal occupation of approximately
one-third of its claimed “domestic” territoriality. There was, however, little
198 / Indian Education Acts
the ICC could do to rectify the situation, even if it had been so inclined, be-
cause its authorizing legislation also prevented it from actually restoring
property to its rightful owners.
For this reason Lakota scholar Vine Deloria, Jr., observed:
[T]he Claims Commission ultimately resolved nothing. Rather, it served the

useful purpose of clearing away the underbrush of confusion about who really
owns what in the United States and thereby paved the way for the resolution
of property rights issues at some future point. In the meantime, it assigned
some degree of compensation to Indians for the historic loss of use of land to
which they never relinquished title.

tion Act.
Ward Churchill

Barsh, Russel. “Indian Land Claims Policy in the United States.” North Da-
kota Law Review 58 (1982): 1-82.
Clarkin, Thomas. Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Admin-
istrations, 1961-1969. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2001.
Ross, Norman A., ed. Index to the Expert Testimony Before the Indian Claims
Commission: The Written Reports. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Infor-
mation Service, 2001.
U.S. Indian Claims Commission. Indian Claims Commission, August 13,
1946-September 30, 1978: Final Report. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1978.
Vance, John T. “The Congressional Mandate and the Indian Claims Com-
mission.” North Dakota Law Review 45 (1969): 325-336.
Indian Education Acts

Date: 1972, 1978
Categories: Education, National government and legislation, Twentieth
century history
Indian Education Acts / 199
Significance: These acts represent the first legislative victories for Na-
tive American peoples under the policy of Indian self-determination,
announced by President Richard Nixon in 1970.
The Indian Education Act of 1972, Public Law 92-318, was an attempt
to remedy some of the problems in Indian education identified in the
National Study of American Indian Education (carried out from 1967 to
1971) and in the hearings of the Special Senate Subcommittee on Indian
Education that summarized its findings in 1969 under the title Indian
Education: A National Tragedy, a National Challenge (also known as the Ken-
nedy Report). Both studies found that Indian people wanted a better
education for their children, wanted schools to pay more attention to In-
dian heritage, and wanted more say in how their children’s schools were
run.
The 1972 act pertained to public schools on and off reservations and
provided supplemental funding for schools with ten or more Indian stu-
dents in order to meet their special needs. All public schools with In-
dian students could get this quasi-entitlement funding and were required
to involve Indian parents and communities in designing the supplemen-
tal programs. Grant money was also provided.
Part A of the act required parental and community participation in im-
pact-aid programs (programs that provided federal money to local school
districts to make up for tax-exempt federal lands such as Indian reserva-
tions). Part B authorized a series of grant programs to stress culturally rele-
vant and bilingual curriculum materials. Part C provided money for adult-
education projects. Part D established an Office of Indian Education within
the U.S. Office of Education (now the Department of Education). Part E
provided funds for training teachers for Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
schools, with preference to be given to Indians. The act also established the
National Advisory Council on Indian Education.
The Indian Education Amendments of 1978 (P.L. 95-561) established
standards for BIA schools, institutionalized BIA school boards, required
formula funding of BIA schools, and provided for increased Indian in-
volvement in the spending of impact-aid funds.
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Bureau of In-
dian Affairs; Carlisle Indian School; Indian New Deal; Indian Self-Determi-
nation and Education Assistance Act; Kennedy Report; National Congress
of American Indians; National Indian Youth Council; Reservation system
of the United States.
Jon Reyhner
200 / Indian Gaming Regulatory Act
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

Categories: National government and legislation; Native government;
Reservations and relocation; Twentieth century history
Significance: Congress regulates gaming on Indian lands by dividing
it into three classes and authorizing compacts between tribes and
states.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), Public Law 100-497, signed
into law on October 17, 1988, by President George Bush, represents an
amalgamation of ideas presented in various bills introduced in Congress
from 1983 through 1987 and provides a system to permit and regulate gam-
ing on American Indian lands.
The IGRA divides gaming into three classes. Class I gaming includes so-
cial games of minimal value, as well as traditional games played as a part of
tribal ceremonies or celebrations. Class I gaming is exclusively regulated
by the tribes. Class II gaming includes bingo, and if played within the same
location, pull tabs, lotto, tip jars, instant bingo, games similar to bingo, and
certain card games. A tribe may engage in Class II games if the state in
which the tribe is located permits such gaming for any purpose by any per-
son, organization, or entity. Class III gaming includes all forms of gaming
other than Class I or II, for example, banking card games like blackjack,
baccarat and chemin de fer, slot machines, craps, parimutuel horse racing,
and dog racing. Class III gaming is prohibited unless authorized by a
tribal-state compact.
In addition to classifying games, the IGRA established a three-member
National Indian Gaming Commission within the Department of the Inte-
rior. The commission chairman is appointed by the president of the United
States with Senate approval; the other two members are appointed by the
secretary of the interior. At least two members must be enrolled members
of an American Indian tribe. The commission has the power to approve all
tribal gaming ordinances and resolutions, shut down gaming activities,
levy and collect fines, and approve gaming management contracts for
Class II and III gaming. The commission has broad power to monitor Class II
gaming by inspecting gaming permits, conducting background investiga-
tions of personnel, and inspecting and auditing books and records. Regula-
tion and jurisdiction of Class III gaming is more complicated. Class III gam-
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act / 201
ing is lawful when it is authorized by a tribal ordinance, approved by the

chairman of the commission, located in a state that permits such gaming
(whether for charitable, commercial, or government purposes), and con-
ducted in compliance with a tribal-state compact that is approved by the
secretary of the interior.
A tribe seeking to conduct Class III gaming must request that the state
in which its lands are located negotiate a tribal-state compact governing
the conduct of gaming activities. The compact may include provisions
concerning the application of tribal or state criminal and civil laws directly
related to gaming, the allocation of jurisdiction between the state and
tribe, state assessments to defray the costs of regulation, standards for op-
eration and maintenance of the gaming facility, and other subjects related
to the gaming activity. The state is not authorized to impose a tax or assess-
ment upon a tribe unless the tribe agrees. The state cannot refuse to negoti-
ate a compact based on its inability to impose a tax, fee, or other assess-
ment.
Sovereignty and Economy. The question of gaming on American Indian

reservations is one that involves both sovereignty and economic issues for
tribes and states alike. The IGRA grants United States district courts juris-
diction over actions by tribes. Reasons for such action include failure of a
state to negotiate with a tribe seeking to enter a compact; failure of the state
to negotiate in good faith; or any violation of the tribal-state compact. The
IGRA provides that a federal district court may order a tribe and state to
reach a compact if the state fails to meet its burden of proving that it negoti-
ated in good faith. If no compact is forthcoming, a court may appoint a me-
diator to recommend a compact. In March, 1996, the United States Supreme
Court ruled in Seminole Tribe of Indians v. Florida that Congress cannot force
states into federal court to settle disputes over gambling on reservations.
Federal law, through the IGRA, still permits tribes to seek help from the
secretary of the interior when state officials balk at tribal plans for gaming
operations.
The IGRA requires that all gaming facilities be tribally owned and that
revenue from gaming operations be directed for specific tribal programs,
such as education, elderly programs, or housing. Restriction of gaming to
tribal governments ensures that American Indian gaming remains a gov-
ernment function rather than a personal endeavor.
The most controversial aspect of the IGRA involves the tribal-state com-
pacting required for Class III gaming. Tribal sovereignty is diminished by
the IGRA, because it forces states and tribes into an agreement. Most laws
recognize that tribes have a government-to-government relationship with
202 / Indian Gaming Regulatory Act
the federal government and are not under state jurisdiction unless there is
prior agreement (as in Public Law 280 states). The IGRA specifically re-
quires negotiations between tribes and states, a relationship they do not
normally have.
States objected to the tribal-state compacting on the grounds that it
violated their sovereignty under the Eleventh Amendment of the Con-
stitution, which protects states from being sued in federal court against
their will. In a 1996 Supreme Court decision, it was ruled that Con-
gress cannot attempt to resolve stalled negotiations between states and
tribes over on-reservation gambling by making states and their officials
targets of federal lawsuits. The Eleventh Amendment rights of states were
upheld.
The IGRA has been embraced by many tribes in the United States as a
way to bolster reservation economies. Some of the most poverty-stricken
areas in the United States are American Indian reservations, and gaming
revenues give tribes income to reinvest in other business ventures. The need
to generate widespread support for ballot initiatives such as California’s
Propositions 5 (1998) and 1A (2000), the California Indian Self-Reliance Ini-
tiative, helped Native American tribes develop more powerful political
lobbies, with influence beyond issues of gambling. However, the compact-
ing process can result in conflict of interest for some states that rely heavily
on gaming revenues. In addition, the issue of untaxed revenues resulting
from American Indian gaming operations is a factor in establishing com-
pacts, and states in need of such revenue cannot act dispassionately with
tribes when they negotiate those compacts. Gaming on American Indian
reservations is fraught with issues of competing interests for both tribes
and states.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002.
Carole A. Barrett

Canby, William C. American Indian Law in a Nutshell. Minneapolis: West,
1981. Provides simple explanations of complex legal issues that inhere
in dealings between the federal government, states, and tribal nations.
Eisler, Kim Isaac. The Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American
Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 2002. A journalistic account of the effect of IGRA on one
tribe.
MacFarlan, Allan A. Book of American Indian Games. New York: Associated
Press, 1958. Discusses and describes various games, including gambling
games, played by a variety of North American tribes.
Indian Health Service / 203
Pommersheim, Frank. “Economic Development in Indian Country: What

Are the Questions?” American Indian Law Review 12 (1987): 195-217. Ex-
plains the need for revenue in American Indian country and the possi-
bilities gaming provides tribes.
Santoni, Roland J. “The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act: How Did We Get
Here? Where Are We Going?” Creighton Law Review 26 (1993): 387-447.
Provides a comprehensive chronology of the legislation, pertinent legal
cases, suggested amendments, and a table of tribal-state compacts.
Turner, Allen C. “Evolution, Assimilation, and State Control of Gambling
in Indian Country: Is Cabazon v. California an Assimilationist Wolf in Pre-
emptive Clothing?” Idaho Law Review 24, no. 2 (1987-1988): 317-338. Ex-
plores the seminal case that influenced involvement of states in the com-
pacting process.
Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in
a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1987. Discusses tribal sovereignty as a preconstitutional right and
how this inherent right can be diminished.
Wunder, John R. “Retained by the People”: A History of American Indians and
the Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A chronicle
and comprehensive history of the relationship between American Indi-
ans and the federal government. Gives detailed analysis of the tribal-
federal relationship.
Indian Health Service

Significance: Indian Health Service (IHS) provides a broad array of
health-related care to American Indian populations in fulfillment of
federal trust responsibilities.
Many treaties negotiated between Indian tribes and the United States
government contained provisions for health care in return for land. In
part, these requests for health care during treaty negotiations came about
because many tribal people had little resistance to European-American
diseases. Indian populations were in decline after the earliest days of con-
204 / Indian New Deal
tact with non-Indians. Health care delivery to Indians by the United States
was inadequate and inconsistent through all of the nineteenth and much
of the twentieth century, as evidenced by high disease rates and low life
expectancy of tribal people. In order to carry out its trust obligation to
provide health care for American Indians, the U.S. Congress created the
Indian Health Service in 1954 and placed it in the jurisdiction of the Bureau
of Indian Affairs. In that same year, management of Indian Health Ser-
vice was transferred to what is now the Department of Health and Human
Services.
The mandate of Indian Health Service is to provide comprehensive
health care, develop preventive medicine, and manage sanitation pro-
grams. Indian Health Service has clinics and hospitals located on some res-
ervations and in urban areas where there is a significant Indian population.
Poverty on reservations, coupled with inadequate Indian Health Service
funding, contribute to major health care problems that persist in Indian
country: lower life expectancy, substance abuse, high suicide rates, and dis-
ease.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Epidemics and diseases; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Reservation system of the United States.
Indian New Deal

Date: 1933-1945
history
Significance: Sweeping reforms of the Bureau of Indian Affairs insti-
tuted under the directorship of John Collier.
The Indian New Deal refers to John Collier’s innovative years as director of
the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (1933-1945). Collier was an energetic and
humane visionary who sought to revolutionize federal Indian policy. The
keystone of New Deal Indian reform was the Indian Reorganization Act,
which ended allotment, organized tribal self-government, established re-
volving loan programs for tribes, and provided a mechanism for tribes to
buy back lost lands. Collier also targeted Indian education and health for
Indian Offenses Act / 205
improvement. Day schools began to replace boarding schools, and preven-

tive health programs reduced the incidence of certain diseases. Religious
freedoms also were extended to Indian people during this time, and bans
on the practice of traditional ceremonies were lifted.
Possibly the most lasting achievements in the New Deal era lay in the
area of economic development. Tribes were aided in developing resources,
preserving the reservation land base, and participating in a variety of
public programs available to other Americans. Increasingly, Collier’s rev-
olutionary ideas were attacked, in part, because they encouraged In-
dian traditions and respect for Indian culture rather than assimilation of
Indian people into mainstream American life. Collier resigned in 1945
amid increasing criticism, but he left a definite mark on federal Indian
policy.
tion Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Meriam Report.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian Offenses Act

Date: 1883
Nineteenth century history
Significance: The federal government creates courts, located on reser-
vations, run by Native Americans who were responsible for policing
native cultural practices deemed offensive by European American
society.
Courts of Indian Offenses were created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in

1883. The judges of these courts were Indian men appointed by the federal
agent on each reservation, and they heard only cases involving certain cul-
tural practices, termed “Indian offenses,” which were banned on the reser-
vations. All decisions of the court were subject to the approval of the Indian
agent.
Essentially, the Indian offenses were a list of common traditional prac-
tices that the government determined were “demoralizing and barbarous”
and therefore should be discontinued so that Indians could become more
206 / Indian preference
assimilated into mainstream American culture and values. The list of In-
dian offenses included prohibitions against dancing, plural marriages,
feasts, giveaways, and destroying the property of the dead (a funerary cus-
tom among some tribes). Additionally, and most devastating to many In-
dian people, traditional religious practices including sun dances, sweat-
lodge ceremonies, vision questing, and shamanism were strictly prohib-
ited in the hope that Indian people would be more likely to convert to
Christianity. In short, Indian offenses were an extensive body of religious
and cultural practices that the federal government banned because they
were deemed disruptive to the smooth functioning of reservations. When
living within the reservation context, Indian people were not granted con-
stitutional protections.
See also: Major Crimes Act; Tribal courts; Reservation system of the
United States.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian preference
Date: Established 1933-1945
Categories: Civil rights, National government and legislation, Native
government, Terminology, Twentieth century history
Significance: Preference in hiring Native Americans in the Bureau of In-
dian Affairs and other federal agencies, as well as in Indian organiza-
tions, skirts the provisions of the United States Civil Rights Act of
1964.
Title VII of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employ-
ment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, color, or reli-
gion. However, this provision does not apply to Indians uniformly. Dur-
ing the period of reforms in the John Collier era, often referred to as the
Indian New Deal (1933-1945), Indian preference in employment was insti-
tuted first in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and eventually in other federal
agencies, such as the Public Health Service, which work closely with In-
dian people. Later, tribal governments, tribal colleges, and other Indian
organizations were able to invoke Indian preference in making hiring deci-
sions.
Indian Removal Act / 207
Commonly tribes develop criteria that give first preference to members

of their own tribe, next preference to an American Indian from any tribe,
and last preference to a non-Indian. When Title VII provisions are dropped,
there is no uniform protection against employment discrimination. Indian
preference was permitted as a way to increase the numbers of Indian peo-
ple working within agencies and organizations that deal primarily with
American Indian populations. It was also viewed as a way to increase the
number of Indian people in the workforce significantly and so address the
chronic issue of Indian unemployment.
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Indian New Deal.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian Removal Act

Date: May 28, 1830
Locale: Georgia and other Southeastern states
Tribes involved: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole
history, Reservations and relocation
Significance: The Indian Removal Act marked the beginning of forced
resettlement of sixty thousand eastern Native Americans to lands
west of the Mississippi River.
Cherokees and other members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—

Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole, and Creek—established inde-
pendent republics with successful governments. Adapting to their white
neighbors, they became farmers, miners, and cattle ranchers. Some had
plantations, even owning slaves. They built schools and churches, wrote
constitutions, and established independent governments. They learned a
bitter lesson: Whites wanted their land, not their assimilation into Euro-
American society.
As a local militia leader and politician, Andrew Jackson negotiated the
acquisition of fifty million acres of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mis-
sissippi even before he became president of the United States in 1828. By
then, the Cherokees had lost their land outside Georgia, and neighbors had
grown increasingly jealous of Cherokee success. For generations, Chero-
kees had provided a textbook picture of Jefferson’s ideal nation of farmers.
Sequoyah, a young man of Cherokee and white blood, invented a phonetic
208 / Indian Removal Act
An 1836 map of Indian Territory (today, primarily the region of Oklahoma), to which
the peoples of many Indian nations, named on the map, were removed after the
passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act. The tables on the right record numbers of
acres assigned to tribes, numbers of Indians removed, and numbers of tribes resi-
dent east and west of the Mississippi River. (Library of Congress)
alphabet, or syllabary, that enabled almost every member of his nation to

become literate within a few months. To hold their remaining land, Chero-
kees made the sale of any additional land to whites a capital offense.
Yet violent conflicts between whites and natives became so common
that many friends and enemies alike advocated removal to protect Chero-
kees from white citizens who routinely attacked them. In 1817, some Cher-
okees exchanged land in North Carolina for space in Arkansas. Within two
years, six thousand had moved voluntarily, but the move only worsened
Cherokee problems. By 1821, the Cherokees were at war with the Osages
who had been in Arkansas Territory already, and both groups fought
whites who continued to move onto their land.
These early voluntary removals proved so disastrous that the Cherokees
and Choctaws remaining in Georgia vowed to stay on their native land. Al-
though President James Monroe proposed removal again in 1825, neither
Monroe nor his successor, John Quincy Adams, could get the measure
through Congress. Only the enthusiasm of President Jackson got removal
approved on a close vote in 1830. In 1829, President Jackson admitted that
the five republics had made “progress in the arts of civilized life,” but he
said American Indians occupied land that whites could use. Beyond the
Mississippi River lay enough land for Native Americans and their descen-
dants to inhabit without interference “as long as grass grows or water runs
in peace and plenty.”
Meanwhile, the Georgia legislature extended its power over the Chero-
kee nation and stripped Native Americans of civil rights. These laws for-
bade anyone with American Indian blood to testify in court against a white
man, annulled contracts between Native Americans and whites, and re-
quired an oath of allegiance to Georgia by white people living among
American Indians. The laws also prevented Native Americans from hold-
ing meetings or digging for gold on their own land.
Legal Challenges. Instead of going to war, the Cherokees hired two promi-
nent Washington lawyers and went to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost
their first case, challenging Georgia for hanging a Cherokee man convicted
under Cherokee law. The second case (Worcester v. Georgia) challenged the
loyalty oath designed to remove teachers, missionaries, and other whites
from the reservation. The Reverend Samuel Worcester and other mission-
aries among Cherokees refused to sign the loyalty oath, despite public hu-
miliation, abuse, and imprisonment.
Chief Justice John Marshall declared repressive Georgia laws unconsti-
tutional. American Indian nations, Marshall said, were “domestic depen-
dent nations” that could have independent political communities without
state restrictions. President Jackson, who had fought American Indians in
the South, suggested that Georgia could ignore the Court’s decision. The
president, not the Court, controlled the army.
Congress also took up Georgia’s cause. The Indian Removal Act of 1830
began a process of exchanging Indian lands in the twenty-four existing
states for new lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1834, Congress estab-
lished Indian Territory, now much of Oklahoma, as a permanent reserva-
tion. Major Ridge and his family had been among the strongest opponents
of removal, and Cherokee lobbyists, including John Ridge, celebrated their
Supreme Court victory in Worcester. However, they had thought Whigs in
Congress would prevail against Jackson’s removal policy.
The federal removal law did not say that Native Americans could be
forced to move, but the Ridge family and Cherokee newspaper editor Elias
Boudinot began to see the move as necessary to protect Cherokees from in-
creasing violence. Principal Chief John Ross, however, still resisted re-
moval. Believing it in their nation’s best interests, the Ridge family signed a
removal treaty without approval of the tribal council.
Resistance. Many natives resisted removal from their ancient homelands.

The Alabama Creeks were forcibly removed, some of them in chains. Choc-
taws were forced out of Mississippi in winter, with no chance to bring pro-
visions against the cold. Some were tricked into getting drunk and signing
away their possessions. Others signed away their lands, believing the
promises of government officials. Forced marches of Creeks, Choctaws,
and Cherokees brought sickness, starvation, and death to thousands of
people throughout the 1830’s.
The Cherokees faced a special horror. Georgia’s repressive laws had cre-
ated a climate of lawlessness. Whites could steal land, and Cherokees could
not testify in court against them. In one notorious case, two white men en-
joyed dinner in the home of a family whose father was part Cherokee. In
the evening, the parents left temporarily and the guests forced the children
and their nurse from the home and set it on fire, destroying the house and
all of its contents. The men were arrested, but the judge dismissed the case
because all the witnesses were part Cherokee. Only pure-blooded whites
were allowed to testify in court.
Finally, Jackson’s successor, President Martin Van Buren, ordered Gen-
eral Winfield Scott, with about seven thousand U.S. soldiers and state mili-
tia, to begin the forced removal on May 26, 1838. Soldiers quietly sur-
rounded each house to surprise its occupants, according to James Mooney,
a researcher who interviewed the participants years later. Under Scott’s or-
ders, the troops built stockades to hold people while being prepared for the
removal. “From these,” Mooney wrote,
squads of troops were sent to search out with rifle and bayonet every small
cabin hidden away in the coves or by the sides of mountain streams, to seize
and bring in as prisoners all the occupants, however or wherever they might
be found. Families at dinner were startled by the sudden gleam of bayonets in
the doorway and rose up to be driven with blows and oaths along the weary
miles of trail that led to the stockade.
Men were taken from their fields, children from their play. “In many cases,
on turning for one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their homes
in flames.” Some scavengers stole livestock and other valuables, even be-
fore the owners were out of sight of their homes. “Systematic hunts were
made by the same men for Indian graves, to rob them of the silver pendants
and other valuables deposited with the dead.” Some sympathetic soldiers
Indian Territory, c. 1875

Quapaw
Peoria
KANSAS Modoc
Shawnee
MISSOURI
Kansa
PUBLIC
LANDS Cheyenne, Osage Ottawa
Wyandot
Arapaho Seneca
Pawnee
Cherokee
Sauk, Fox
Cheyenne,
Arapaho Unassigned
Lands Creek
ARKANSAS
Potawatomi
Wichita
Seminole
Shawnee
Comanche
Greer
County Kiowa Choctaw
Apache of Chickasaw
Oklahoma
TEXAS
By 1875, Indian nations that had once ranged over large regions of the continent
were largely confined to Indian Territory (later, Oklahoma).
allowed one family to feed their chickens one last time, and another to pray
quietly in their own language before leaving their home.
Within a week, the troops had rounded up more than seventeen thou-
sand Cherokees and herded them into concentration camps. In June, the
first group of about a thousand began the eight-hundred-mile journey.
Steamboats took them on the first leg down the Tennessee River. The op-
pressive heat and cramped conditions fostered disease and caused many
deaths. Then the Cherokees walked the last leg of the trip to beyond the
western border of Arkansas. Because of the oppressive heat, Cherokee
leader John Ross persuaded General Scott to permit them to delay the larg-
est removal until fall. Thus, the largest procession—about thirteen thou-
sand people—started on the long overland march in October, 1838. Most
walked or rode horses; they drove 645 wagons.
Trail of Tears. Dozens of people died of disease, starvation, or exposure on

each day of the journey. More than four thousand Cherokees died on the
journey that the survivors named the Trail of Tears. The procession reached
the Mississippi River opposite Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in the middle of

winter. Most had only a single blanket to protect themselves from the win-
ter winds as they waited for the river ice to clear. In March, 1839, they
reached their destination in Indian Territory. Many were buried along the
road, including Chief John Ross’s wife, Quatie Ross, who died after giving
up her blanket to a sick child in a sleet- and snowstorm. Her death left Ross
to grieve both his wife and his nation.
In his last message to Congress, President Jackson said he had settled
the Native American problem to everyone’s satisfaction and saved the race
from extinction by placing them “beyond the reach of injury or oppres-
sion.” Native Americans would now share in “the blessings of civilization”
and “the General Government will hereafter watch over them and protect
them.” Between 1778 and 1871, 370 treaties stipulated land cessions to
whites. Jackson ridiculed the idea of making treaties with Native Ameri-
cans and called the idea of treating American Indians as separate nations
an absurd farce.
By the end of June, 1838, Georgians could boast that no Cherokees re-
mained on their soil, except in the stockade. Sixty thousand members of the
five republics had been removed beyond the Mississippi River. As many as
fifteen thousand men, women, and children died of starvation and disease.
The Choctaw had moved in 1832; the Chickasaw in 1832-1834, the Semi-
nole in 1836, and the Creek in 1836-1840. In June, 1839, members of the Ross
faction, in revenge for the law that John Ridge signed into effect, murdered
John Ridge, Major Ridge, and Elias Boudinot for their signing of a removal
treaty selling Cherokee land.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Trail of Tears.
William E. Huntzicker

Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of
Indians. 2d ed., 1953. Reprint. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1985. The classic and most comprehensive history of removal.
Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government in Crisis.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Well-researched history of
removal as it affected the Creek nation.
Guttmann, Allen. States’ Rights and Indian Removal: “The Cherokee Nation v.
the State of Georgia.” Boston: D. C. Heath, 1965. Brief documentary his-
tory of the Cherokees’ legal struggle to keep their land.
Hoig, Stanley. Night of the Cruel Moon: Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears.
New York: Facts on File, 1996. An account of Cherokee removal relying
on first-person accounts.
Indian Reorganization Act / 213
McLoughlin, William G. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. Princeton,

N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Cherokee history up through the
removal crisis.
____________. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1984. Thorough, well-documented history of mis-
sionary involvement among the Cherokees in the period leading up to
their removal.
Mooney, James. Historical Sketch of the Cherokee. Chicago: Aldine, 1975. A
valuable study by a contemporary who interviewed people involved.
Moulton, Gary E. John Ross, Cherokee Chief. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1978. Biography of the Cherokee leader at the time of removal.
Remini, Robert V. The Legacy of Andrew Jackson: Essays on Democracy, Indian
Removal, and Slavery. Reprint. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1990. The leading biographer of Andrew Jackson reflects on his
significance to these issues.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians.
New York: Hill & Wang, 1993. Brief overview of the removal policies, the
Trail of Tears, and the implications of both for U.S. history.
Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a
People. Rev. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Discusses
the prominent family of Cherokee leaders.
Indian Reorganization Act

Date: June 18, 1934
Significance: One of the most important pieces of legislation affecting
Native Americans reverses policies of forced assimilation and pro-
motes tribal self-government.
The New Deal policy toward American Indians in the 1930’s and early
1940’s and its centerpiece, the Indian Reorganization Act, were a reaction
to the controversies generated by past federal policies toward American In-
dians. From the 1870’s through the 1920’s, tribal peoples were confined to
government-controlled reservations and subjected to a policy aimed at
214 / Indian Reorganization Act
bringing them into the dominant society’s mainstream through forced as-
similation. Government and church-run schools attempted to eradicate na-
tive languages and religion, customs and dress, tribalism and group loy-
alty, and replace them with Christian values, traditions, and institutions.
To foster individualism and undermine tribalism, congressional legislation
allotted the tribal communal domain to small individual holdings and
opened surplus land for public sale.
This ambitious social experiment did not work as its original reform-
minded advocates had intended. Under allotment, American Indians lost
most of their lands to whites, while the educational experience undermined
or destroyed indigenous people’s heritage and culture without providing a
viable substitute. The common results were demoralization, loss of iden-
tity, abject poverty, poor health, and defective education. These conditions,
documented by independent studies, sparked a high-level, decade-long
debate in the 1920’s about American Indian policy. Congress, the Depart-
ment of the Interior, and the authoritarian management style of the depart-
ment’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) came under sharp criticism.
John Collier and the BIA. The political upheaval wrought by the Great De-
pression and the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 provided reform-
ers with an opportunity to reshape American Indian policy. In 1933, John
Collier, a persistent critic of the BIA, became commissioner of Indian Af-
fairs and directed the bureau until 1945.
Collier, a former social worker in New York City, had been introduced to
the Pueblo cultures of the Southwest in 1920. Collier had experienced a na-
tive society that had maintained its communal and group traditions. Col-
lier believed that he had discovered a “Red Atlantis,” whose communal life
and harmonious relationship with the natural world contained lessons and
hope for the regeneration of Western society through a cooperative com-
monwealth.
After taking office, Collier began to reverse past government policy by
initiating the Indian New Deal through executive orders and lobbying ac-
tivities. In January, 1934, he forbade interference with traditional Native
Americans’ religious practices, declared their culture equal to all others,
and encouraged the revival of native languages. Next, Collier ended forced
attendance at Christian religious exercises by American Indian children at
boarding schools. The commissioner persuaded Congress to repeal espio-
nage and gag rules that restricted free speech and other civil liberties on
reservations. Collier also decreased BIA controls and interference with
tribal courts and tribal law. Finally, he placed a moratorium on the further
sale of tribal lands.
Collier then sought to implement his goals of American Indian cultural

freedom and political self-determination through legislation. He and his
associates drew up a forty-eight-page document containing four sections
aimed at replacing the agency’s authoritarian approach with a new bilat-
eral relationship between the tribes and the federal government. Title I
dealt with the restoration of tribal self-government and economic revital-
ization to make tribal society viable. Tribes would petition for home-rule
elections, adopt constitutions, and charter a tax-exempt corporation to set
up businesses, manage property, and borrow from a federal revolving loan
program. Title II, which focused on education, promoted the study of
American Indian civilization and traditional arts and crafts, provided
scholarships, and appropriated funds for primary and secondary educa-
tion. Title III, which concerned Indian lands, ended allotments, returned
previously allotted lands to tribal ownership, and restored unsold surplus
reservation lands to tribal control. The federal government also was autho-
rized to provide tribes with funds to rebuild their lost land base. Title IV
proposed setting up a federal Court of Indian Affairs that would have orig-
inal jurisdiction in cases involving Native Americans. In Congress, Repre-
sentative Edgar Howard of Nebraska and Senator Burton K. Wheeler of
Montana agreed to sponsor this initial version of what was to become the
Indian Reorganization Act (IRA).
The proposed legislation immediately encountered opposition from
both Indian and non-Indian sources. Few American Indians were con-
sulted when the proposal was drawn up, which gave rise to suspicion
and concern about some provisions. Those Native Americans who were
most affected by assimilation policies over the last half century saw the
act’s provisions as taking a step backward. Some who held private al-
lotments were concerned about losing them. Tribal leaders who viewed
their sovereignty as inherent and some groups that already had consti-
tutions or intact traditional political structures argued that the proposed
BIA constitutional guidelines provided no new rights and, in fact, re-
stricted tribal sovereignty. BIA constitutions resembled U.S. governmen-
tal bodies rather than traditional forms of tribal government. Some clergy
and missionaries denounced the promotion of traditional culture as anti-
Christian and pagan. A growing conservative coalition in Congress did
not share Collier’s radically progressive views on the restoration of tradi-
tional tribal cultures and the establishment of politically independent
tribal nations.
Compromise. In the end, Collier had to compromise. Getting the legisla-

tion out of the congressional committee in which it was stalled required
216 / Indian Reorganization Act
the strong support of both President Roosevelt and Secretary of the Inte-
rior Harold Ickes. In the bill’s final version, which passed on June 18, 1934,
Title II, concerning Native American culture, and Title IV, which provided
for an American Indian court, were deleted. The amount of funding to as-
sist the establishment of tribal governments was cut back significantly.
Other modifications greatly reduced the number of tribal peoples to be
covered under the act. Senator Wheeler insisted on subjecting tribal self-
government to the approval of the secretary of the interior and excluded
from the act American Indians who were not members of tribes, as well
as those tribes located in Oklahoma and Alaska. Another amendment
by Howard required that each tribe hold a referendum to accept or reject
the IRA.
In referenda held between 1933 and 1945, 174 tribes accepted the act
while 73 voted against ratification, including the largest American Indian
nation, the Navajo. However, only 92 of the tribes that voted in favor
adopted IRA constitutions, and 71 took the next step of incorporating for
the purpose of obtaining federal economic development loans. American
Indians living in Oklahoma and Alaska were placed under the IRA by leg-
islation passed in 1936.
Collier reluctantly accepted these changes, emphasizing the break-
through represented by those parts of his original proposal that were re-
tained. The commissioner also attempted to implement many of his goals
through administrative actions and orders. The failure of Congress to ap-
propriate the full amounts authorized in the IRA, continuing opposition to
some of Collier’s goals, and the commissioner’s own misjudgments and
administrative shortcomings were some of the factors that prevented his
dream of a Red Atlantis from becoming reality. In the decade following the
New Deal era, federal American Indian policy temporarily adopted an
assimilationist and antitribal orientation.
Nevertheless, the IRA was a landmark in federal American Indian pol-
icy, with some noteworthy results. Many scholars consider it the single
most important piece of federal American Indian legislation. Accomplish-
ments of the IRA and the Indian New Deal included halting the disappear-
ance of the tribal land base and restoring several million acres to various
reservations. The act permitted many tribes to assume a degree of eco-
nomic and political control over their affairs. The restoration of religious
freedom and traditional ceremonies were also important measures. With
few exceptions, those tribes that received government loans used them to
improve economic conditions on reservations and made repayment.
American Indians were given preference for positions in the BIA. Many
tribes have taken advantage of IRA provisions to defend sovereignty and
survive. Most important, the reversal of past policies awakened hope and
pride in being American Indian.
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Carlisle Indian School; Indian New
Deal; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1934-2002; Meriam Report; Reservation system of the United States.
David A. Crain

Deloria, Vine, ed. The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and Bills. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. A collection of primary source
documents assembled by the noted Native American legal scholar.
Fey, Harold E., and D’Arcy McNickle. Indians and Other Americans: Two
Ways of Life Meet. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Good account
of the Collier years from a pro-IRA perspective. McNickle, a Montana
Blackfoot, was a BIA employee during this era.
Kelly, Lawrence C. “The Indian Reorganization Act: The Dream and the Re-
ality.” Pacific Historical Review 44 (August, 1975): 291-312. Balanced look
at what the IRA failed to achieve in contrast to the claims of some propo-
nents. Discusses Collier’s strong points and shortcomings as American
Indian commissioner during the New Deal era.
Kelly, William H., ed. Indian Affairs and the Indian Reorganization Act: The
Twenty Year Record. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1954. A collec-
tion of scholarly essays on this subject.
Parman, Donald L. The Navajos and the New Deal. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1976. A study of the troubled relations between the
American Indian policy reformers in the Roosevelt administration and
the nation’s largest tribe.
Philp, Kenneth R. John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954. Tuc-
son: University of Arizona Press, 1977. A detailed, objective account of
Collier’s achievements and shortcomings as a policy critic, activist, re-
former, and administrator.
Taylor, Graham D. The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism: The Adminis-
tration of the Indian Reorganization Act, 1934-1945. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1980. Argues that the IRA, although enlightened com-
pared to previous policies, was weakened by its emphasis on tribal reor-
ganization and its mistaken assumptions about contemporary Ameri-
can Indian societies.
218 / Indian Rights Association
Indian Rights Association

Categories: Native government, Nineteenth century history, Organi-
zations, Religion and missionary activities, Twentieth century his-
tory
Significance: An important and influential European American organi-
zation dedicated to assimilating Native Americans into mainstream
American society is established.
The Indian Rights Association was founded in Philadelphia in 1882 by

Henry Panacoast and Herbert Welsh, and it became the most important of
the humanitarian groups which formed in the last two decades of the nine-
teenth century to seek the assimilation of Indians into mainstream Ameri-
can society. Welsh and Panacoast viewed the federal reservation system as
a cultural and economic failure and asserted that reservations were obsta-
cles to the civilization of Indians.
The Indian Rights Association diligently pursued its agenda to break
up tribalism and bring Christian civilization to Indians by pressing for
abolition of the reservation system through allotment of tribal lands, by
supporting industrial education for Indians in order to encourage self-
sufficiency, and by pressing for immediate citizenship for Indians so they
would come under constitutional and state laws. The organization’s politi-
cal goals were inextricably bound to a belief in the superiority of Christian
civilization. In 1886, Welsh asserted that the organization was doing God’s
will by guiding Indians “from the night of barbarism into the dawn of civi-
lization.”
The Indian Rights Association was successful because it was well orga-
nized and had dedicated members who pushed its agenda. The association
hired a lobbyist in order to exert constant pressure on congressional com-
mittees, legislators, and Indian affairs officials. The organization also influ-
enced public opinion by publishing pamphlets, news articles, and speeches
that advanced its views. The association got much public and congressio-
nal support for its programs because it regularly sent representatives into
Indian country to gather facts that gave such programs credibility. Addi-
tionally, the organization mirrored American society of the day by com-
bining religious sentiment with patriotism in its proposals for reforming
Indian policy. The association’s goal was to acculturate and assimilate Indi-
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act / 219
ans fully into American society, and it viewed Indian culture and traditions
as being un-American and pagan.
The Indian Rights Association declined in power and influence after
Welsh resigned as secretary in 1902 and as federal Indian policy gradually
began to support tribalism in the 1920’s. The association continues to exist,
although it now supports Indian self-determination and Indian groups
seeking federal recognition.
See also: Allotment system; Carlisle Indian School; Friends of the In-
dian organizations; General Allotment Act; Indian Citizenship Act; Na-
tional Congress of American Indians; National Indian Association.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian Self-Determination and Education

Assistance Act
Date: 1975
Categories: Education, National government and legislation, Native
government, Twentieth century history
Significance: This act marked a significant swing away from the overt
assimilationist policies of the federal government and supported the
basic concepts of tribalism and Native American sovereignty.
The 1970’s were marked by support of federal officials for broadening In-
dian participation in programs that affected them and lessening the pater-
nalism that had guided federal Indian policy for so long. The Indian Self-
Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 marked a radical
change in federal policy—the assimilationist philosophy of the federal
government was replaced by policies favoring tribalism and Native Amer-
ican sovereignty. This law enabled and encouraged tribes to take over and
run their own programs.
The act clearly endorsed Indian decision making, and the preamble de-
clared that the United States recognized its obligation “to respond to the
strong expression of the Indian people for self-determination by assuring
maximum participation in the direction of educational as well as other fed-
eral services to Indian communities so as to render such services more re-
sponsive to the needs and desires of those communities.” It also stated that
220 / Indian slave trade
Congress confirms its commitment to maintain “the Federal Government’s

unique and continuing relationship with and responsibility to the Indian
people through the establishment of a meaningful Indian self-determina-
tion policy.”
The Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act consists of three
major sections. In the first part, Congress outlines the basic federal policy
toward native people, denounces federal paternalism, and affirms tribal
rights to control their own affairs. Second, Congress asserts it will work for
Indian self-determination particularly in education, while maintaining
and preserving the trust relationship. Third, Indians will receive hiring
preference in all federal government contracts affecting Indian tribes.
The most significant drawback to the act is that, even though decision
making and administrative authority seemed to pass to tribal councils, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs maintained the power to decide which tribal con-
tracts it would accept. This reserved power included determining budget
allocations provided to tribes who seek to run their own programs. Yet de-
spite limitations placed on tribal authority, many tribes throughout the
United States contract and run many programs that were formerly run by
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The most dramatic impact of the act has been
in the area of education. A majority of former Bureau of Indian Affairs
schools are now run by tribes, and many higher education scholarship pro-
grams are tribally run. The act is important in that it supports the basic con-
cept of tribal self-determination.
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Carlisle In-
dian School; Indian Education Acts; Kennedy Report; National Congress of
American Indians.
Carole A. Barrett
Indian slave trade

Date: 1671-1730
Locale: South Carolina
Tribes involved: Tuscarora, Yamasee
Significance: British colonists use intertribal rivalries and natives’ de-
sire for European goods to gain slaves and establish dominance over
Spanish claims.
Indian slave trade / 221
The earliest known record of Carolina natives being captured and enslaved
was in 1520, when Spanish explorers took them to provide slaves for sugar
plantations in Santo Domingo. In 1663, William Hilton, an Englishman,
also captured natives from the Carolina coast for Caribbean slave owners.
In 1670, Charleston was settled by the English. In 1671, after the defeat of
Kusso warriors and the taking of numerous captives, English colonists ini-
tiated the Indian slave trade when Henry Woodward was commissioned to
open trade in Indian slaves with Indians of rival tribes.
Carolina included what is now South Carolina and North Carolina until
1713, but between the 1670’s and 1730, almost all of Carolina’s American
Indian trading was out of Charles Town, or Charleston, which was the hub
of the area that became South Carolina. Agriculture and forest industries
also were part of Carolina’s economy, but trading with the natives became
the most lucrative aspect of the Carolina economy. Deerskins, leathers, and
furs were the most important exports from this trading, but slavery also be-
came an important part of the trade. Although American Indian slaves ex-
isted in other areas (Virginia, for example), only South Carolina developed
Indian slavery as a major part of its commerce. As a result, South Carolina
enslaved more natives than any other English colony.
The Carolina traders had an advantage in developing a thriving trade
with natives all the way to the Mississippi River for several reasons: The
Carolina colony got an early start in the trade; there were no mountains
blocking the westward expansion of Carolina trading; and Carolina traders
could trade directly with American Indians rather than going through
other natives as middlemen (in the northeastern United States, the Iro-
quois acted as middlemen between other American Indians and the Euro-
peans).
Opposition to Slavery. The enslavement of natives by Carolina traders did

have some opposition. From 1680 until 1730, South Carolina was under the
active or nominal leadership of eight Lord Proprietors (headquartered in
London) who recognized the crucial financial importance of developing
trade with the natives. The Lord Proprietors knew that the enslavement of
natives ultimately would hurt their general trade with Indians by leading
to uprisings. A few proprietors also owned stock in the Royal African Com-
pany (begun in 1672), which was bringing slaves from Africa, and did not
want competition from American Indians. Some prominent local leaders
also spoke against American Indian slavery. For example, Francis Le Jau, a
French Huguenot minister, publicly criticized the slave trade. In 1720, six-
teen prominent businessmen issued a statement against the enslavement of
American Indians. As a group, Charleston’s Huguenot merchants were
222 / Indian slave trade
more opposed to native slavery, although a few did own Indian slaves. The
proprietors were not opposed to slavery in principle, however, and they
wavered in their opposition.
Despite some opposition, major factors encouraged slavery. The selling
of captives into slavery in order to pay volunteer soldiers was an old cus-
tom in Europe, with military commanders and pirates routinely enslaving
people on ships they captured. For example, some Jews escaping the Span-
ish Inquisition in the 1490’s were captured by pirates and sold into slavery.
The idea that slavery was better than death, and that the natives would
murder their captives if they did not have the option of selling them, was
used as a moral justification for slavery. Although this rationale was accu-
rate in some cases, it did not take into account the great increase in natives
capturing other natives because a market existed for slaves—a market
made by the Europeans. Prior to European contact, slavery had been prac-
ticed by some American Indians, who frequently sold captives as slaves,
but not on a large scale and generally without the harsh treatment common
to European slavery. In addition, the enslavement of both American Indi-
ans and Africans got strong support in Charleston because a large number
of Charleston’s political and economic establishment were from the Carib-
bean and brought a strong tradition of slavery with them to South Carolina.
Indian Interest in European Conflict. The trade in American Indian slaves

became an important part of the national conflicts involving Great Britain,
Spain, and France for control of the Americas. Indians were drawn into
these conflicts, often allying with a European power against other natives
allied with another European power. In 1680, for example, Indians allied
with the British in Carolina began raids against Indians allied with the
Spanish Catholic missions in Georgia and northern Florida. The British and
Spanish had attempted attacks on each other, and the English feared that
the natives in Georgia and Florida would ally with the Spanish to attack
Carolina. At the same time, the availability of a large number of Indians
who were easy to capture because of their sedentary village life was tempt-
ing to slave traders for nondefense reasons. In 1704 under James Moore, for
example, fifty British soldiers and a thousand Indians from Carolina took
large numbers of Indian slaves from the Spanish areas. The French settled
on the Gulf coast in 1699, putting them in proximity with natives in the
lower Mississippi River area who were being threatened by attack and en-
slavement from Carolinian slave traders or (more likely) their Indian allies.
This opposition from the French increased the risk and cost of capturing
lower Mississippi River natives and, by 1720, largely ended the English
slave trading.
Indian slave trade / 223
Although the Europeans actually kidnapped or captured American In-

dians in the early years of the slave trade, mostly from coastal areas, they
soon began to rely on other Indians to do the capturing as the slave trade
increased and moved farther away from the coast. Encouraging native al-
lies to capture other natives for slavery became a major part of the strategy
of the slave dealers. In 1712, for example, the Tuscaroras of North Carolina
killed some English and German settlers who had taken their land. The
governor of North Carolina announced the availability of Indian slaves to
induce South Carolina officials to send him military help. South Carolina
expeditions—comprising mostly American Indians—killed more than a
thousand Tuscaroras, mostly men, and more than seven hundred, mostly
women and children, were sold into slavery. Peaceful natives along the
route back to South Carolina also were captured and enslaved.
Yamasees Revolt. In 1715, the Yamasees in South Carolina revolted against

the Carolina traders because of the traders’ dishonest practices, such as
cheating when weighing deerskins and furs. The Yamasees were defeated
only because the Cherokees allied with the Carolina traders to capture
Yamasees to sell as slaves, the proceeds from which they used to buy am-
munition and clothing from the Carolinians. After that time, Carolina de-
liberately played off one tribe against another. The exposure of natives to
European clothing, ammunition, rum, and other goods led to a rising de-
sire for more European products, which further encouraged Indians to cap-
ture other Indians for exchange.
Indians comprised one-fourth of the slaves in Carolina in 1708, number-
ing fourteen hundred out of fifty-five hundred slaves, but the percentage
generally decreased after that, for several reasons. Natives were more
likely than Africans to try to escape. Although Indians had to beware of
other hostile Indians, they frequently were successful in their attempts be-
cause they were in the same country as their original homes. For this rea-
son, and because of the heavy demand for slave labor on the Caribbean
sugar plantations, native slaves usually were sold to Caribbean traders.
Some were also sold to New England. In addition, native slaves were more
susceptible to European diseases and hence had a greater death rate than
African slaves. Early writers also described American Indian slaves as be-
ing more docile than African slaves, ascribing this alleged trait to the Indi-
ans’ sense of independence. For these reasons, native slaves usually were
less desirable than, and cost much less than, African slaves. Because large
numbers of native men were killed, a high percentage of American Indian
slaves were women, partly explaining a significant mixture of African and
Indian genealogies.
224 / Indian trust fund lawsuits
Although some American Indian slavery continued for several more de-
cades, the practice basically had ended by 1730 in Carolina, with the Caro-
lina traders turning to other trades and the English turning their American
Indian slavery concerns to central America.
See also: Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Natchez Revolt;
Pueblo Revolt; Seminole Wars; Tuscarora War; Yamasee War.
Abraham D. Lavender

Crane, Verner. The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1929. A classic work on relations between European set-
tlers and American Indians in the South.
Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the Ameri-
can South, 1670-1717. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. The
first book to focus specifically on the Indian slave trade and its effects on
the development of the plantation system in the American South.
Rozema, Vicki. Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of
the Cherokee Nations. Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, 1995. Devotes
several pages to American Indian slavery, helping to correct the previ-
ously small amount of attention given to this topic.
Waddell, Gene. Indians of the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1562-1751. Spartan-
burg, S.C.: Reprint Company, 1980. Describes how enslavement was one
of several major factors in the extinction of South Carolina’s lowcountry
tribes.
Weatherford, Jack. Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America. New
York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991. One chapter is devoted to American In-
dian slaves, with a section describing the important part played by
Charleston merchants in Indian slavery.
Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. “Brands and Slave Cords.” In The Only Land They Knew:
The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the Old South. New York: Free
Press, 1981. Gives details on the Carolina slave trade in American Indi-
ans, with emphasis on historical details.
Indian trust fund lawsuits

Date: Beginning 1996
Indian trust fund lawsuits / 225
Categories: Court cases, National government and legislation, Nine-

teenth century history, Reservations and relocation, Twentieth cen-
tury history
Significance: Beginning in 1996, class-action lawsuits by Native Ameri-
cans against the Department of the Interior over land-use royalties
held in trust for individual Indians attempted to hold the U.S. gov-
ernment accountable for more than a century of financial exploita-
tion.
As a result of the 1887 General Allotment Act, many Indian reservations

were broken up into individual holdings, usually of about 160 acres. Indi-
ans were not allowed to sell their allotments, although the allotments could
be inherited by their children, and the mineral, forestry, and other natural
resource rights could be leased out. Since the individual holdings were rel-
atively small, lessors would negotiate with the Bureau of Indian Affairs for
the rights to large swaths of land, and the royalties were paid into trust
funds that the government held for the individual landowners. The gov-
ernment, in turn, was supposed to forward the payments to the landown-
ers yearly.
Problems in the system developed early; in fact, serious flaws in the pro-
cess of making trust fund payments to Indian tribes, rather than individu-
als, had been noted as early as 1828, nearly sixty years before the individual
trust fund system was established. More complications arose as the origi-
nal allotment owners died and their trust fund monies had to be divided
among their heirs. The fact that many Indians did not leave wills meant
that probate court hearings had to be held to determine the legal heirs. Fur-
thermore, accounting for the trust fund monies was a low governmental
priority, and record keeping was exceptionally lax.
In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced that the accounting
problem had become unfixable. A series of reports urging reform were is-
sued over the next decade, culminating in the establishment of the Branch
of Trust Fund Accounting in 1985 and the Office of Trust Fund Manage-
ment in 1991 to oversee investment and accounting of trust funds. The
American Indian Trust Reform Management Act of 1994 established a spe-
cial trustee within the Department of the Interior to develop a management
plan for the funds. Nonetheless, no real action took place.
In 1996, Elouise Cobell, the treasurer of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana
and a founder of the Blackfeet National Bank, filed a class-action lawsuit
against the Department of the Interior and then-secretary Bruce Babbitt de-
manding an accounting for all Indian trust funds dating back to 1887. Cobell
v. Babbitt (which became Cobell v. Norton with the change of administration
226 / Indian-white relations: Canadian
in 2001 and the appointment of Gale Norton as secretary of the interior) re-
vealed not only the disgraceful state of government record keeping over
the previous century but also that the government was destroying what
records it had and making misrepresentations in court. In 1999, U.S. district
judge Royce Lamberth found both Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and
Treasury Secretary Richard Rubin in contempt of court for failing to pro-
duce trust-related documents as ordered by the court. In 2002, Interior Sec-
retary Gale Norton was also tried for contempt of court as the government
continued to drag its feet on producing documents and setting up a system
to account for the mismanaged funds.
On December 21, 1999, Judge Lamberth ruled that the secretaries of the
interior and treasury had breached their trust obligations to Native Ameri-
cans, in phase one of the trial on reform of the trust fund system. As of
spring, 2002, the trial for phase two, on accounting for the money paid into
the trust funds since 1887, had not been scheduled. Some estimates placed
the amount of royalties owed to over 500,000 Native Americans as in the
range of $100 billion. In the meantime, the court would retain judicial over-
sight of the trust fund system through 2004.
Leslie Ellen Jones
See also: General Allotment Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
2002; Treaties and agreements in the United States.
Indian-white relations: Canadian

Date: 1500’s-present
Locale: Canada
Categories: Colonial history, National government and legislation, Na-
tive government, Nineteenth century history, Twentieth century his-
tory
Significance: Canadian Indian-white relations, while less confronta-
tional than relations in the United States, have focused on the same
issues of land and self-determination.
Whereas American Indian-white relations frequently focused on confron-

tation and hostility, Canadian relations focused predominantly on trade
and legal cession of land. Though both countries followed policies of as-
similation and cultural extermination at different points, Canada pro-
Indian-white relations: Canadian / 227
gressed further in its attempts to treat its native population as participants

in the political process.
1500’s-1700’s. When French and English explorers first arrived in lands

now occupied by Canada, they remarked upon the settled natives they
encountered. The tribes along the Hudson River lived in large villages
around which they farmed and fished. When French sailors were depos-
ited on the shores of Hudson Bay to start a colony in 1542, they found the
Indians to be quite helpful. English sailors and explorers felt equally wel-
comed by the Indians.
By the early 1600’s, as the French began to develop permanent outposts,
a trading relationship had been established between the Indians and the
French. The French placed their forts in places unwanted by the Indians
and relied on the Indians for agricultural support as well as trade. They
built their trading posts at traditional Indian trading spots. The French
generally respected traditional trading patterns. They used tribes that had
always been intermediaries for trade and did not attempt to replace them
with Frenchmen. This inspired trust and confidence in the French; the En-
glish in the American colonies and the Spanish refused to honor such tradi-
tional patterns. In short, the French recognized the importance of the Indi-
ans within the region.
The fur trade represented the most important aspect of European rela-
tions with the Indians. Originally based on beaver, the fur trade tied the
French and English traders to the Indians, who not only trapped and killed
the beaver but also treated it to be pelted. The French and English traded
goods such as hatchets, cloth, and liquor for these treated pelts, while the
Dutch traded muskets. These goods dramatically altered Indian life, chang-
ing everything from hunting and warfare to cooking.
The Indians also introduced new technology to the English and French.
The canoe helped the French and English establish themselves in Canada.
The canoe provided them with the means to transport goods through the
river and lake systems. Indians also taught white traders how to survive in
the wilds of Canada, which increased the interaction and interdependence
between the groups.
Additionally, relations between Canadian Indians and the French re-
mained friendly despite the arrival of Catholic missionaries in 1625. Though
the French traders transported missionaries, the state did not support
priests. Unlike the Spanish Catholic missionaries, they had no support
from the military. While the acceptance of priests into an Indian commu-
nity might be a condition for trade, the acceptance of Christianity was not a
requirement for trade with the French.
Hudson’s Voyage of 1610-1611

GR
EE
B a f f i n B a y N
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is
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Inuit B a s i n
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James
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.
ert R
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In 1610-1611, Henry Hudson searched in vain for the Northwest Passage in regions
bordering the territories of Inuit, Chipewyan, Cree, and Naskapi peoples that later
became part of present-day Canada.
The French, unlike their English and Spanish counterparts, tended to al-
low intermarriage. Many traders discovered that intermarriage strength-
ened the trading ties between the French and an Indian tribe, increasing
profit. Many early French trappers married Indian women, creating a Me-
tis population.
The French also encouraged alliances and peace between different tribes.
They acted as intermediaries for settling disputes, which worked to their
advantage. If the Iroquois refused to trade with the French because the
Abenaki did, the French arranged for some sort of settlement so that both
would trade with them.
When the English began to establish a foothold in Canada in the early
1700’s, the calm relations between the French and the Indians forced the
English to adopt similar methods. Unlike the American colonies, where

traders were almost forbidden to marry Indian women, the Hudson’s
Bay Company, founded in 1670, encouraged such relationships in the name
of trade. An Indian or Metis wife offered a certain cachet to the rising
trader.
The Hudson’s Bay Company became an important definer of Indian-
white relations in Canada. Built on the fur trade, it relied heavily on cordial
relations with the Indians. Until the French were forced out in 1760, it was
necessary to encourage friendly relations with the Indians lest they switch
trade to the French. The Hudson’s Bay Company also established forts at
traditional trading points.
Contact between the whites and the Indians during this period was
not always peaceful. Whites in Canada spread disease just as they had in
Mexico and the United States. Some groups, such as the Micmacs and the
Hurons, suffered greatly from epidemics which destroyed their cultures.
Additionally, international tensions spilled over into Canada. The Anglo-
French War (French and Indian War) and the American Revolution brought
European wars onto Indian soil. Indians had to choose sides, sometimes
between enemies and sometimes between trading partners. Often Indian
women and children from one tribe were mistaken for those from another
by the Europeans and killed for wrongly assumed alliances.
Period of Transition: 1800’s. The nineteenth century radically changed the

path of Indian-white relations in Canada. The British now controlled Can-
ada and ruled it as a colony. The Hudson’s Bay Company controlled the
western regions of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Calgary, and British Colum-
bia as well as the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Protestant and
Catholic missionaries began to spread across the country to previously
“undiscovered” groups of Indians. Within a hundred short years, the mis-
sionaries would alter daily life for most Indians, the Hudson’s Bay Com-
pany would be gone, Canada would become an independent nation, trea-
ties would cede much Indian land, and settlers would take much of the
rest.
In the early 1800’s, much remained the same in Canada as it had been
for the previous three hundred years. The fur trade remained the main rela-
tion between Indians and whites. The Hudson’s Bay Company controlled
Indian-white relations in the west as well as trade. Intermarriage and inter-
dependence between the whites and Indians still remained.
The nineteenth century, however, soon brought many changes to Indian-
white relations. The first big alteration came with an influx of Catholic and
Protestant missionaries at the beginning of the century. By the 1830’s, mis-
sionaries had worked their way into western Ontario and into contact with
Plains groups in Manitoba. These missionaries sought to change the Indi-
ans into white people through assimilation, agrarianism, and cultural
extermination. They built churches and schools. They translated Indian
languages and produced Bibles in these languages. The Protestants tried to
re-create English villages, while the Catholics absorbed parts of Indian reli-
gions into Catholicism to make it more acceptable. Both Protestants and
Catholics were disappointed by the conversion rates. Canadian Indian so-
cieties tended to remain closed to Christianity; many Indian groups found
it interesting but not inspiring. Tensions rose between Indians and white
missionaries as missionaries pushed for total acceptance of Christianity
and white “civilization.”
In 1837, a report presented to the British Parliament stated that frontier
development was harmful to the Indians. Parliament reacted by passing
the Crown Lands Protection Acts, which placed Indian lands in Crown
trust. This accomplished two things. It prevented whites from squatting
on Crown lands. It also, however, denied Indians any political rights based
on land ownership. This set the pattern for policy after confederation in
1867.
In 1842, the Bagot Commission began to review the Indian Affairs office.
It produced three recommendations for British policy regarding the Indi-
ans: First, the Indian Affairs office should develop an agricultural program
for the Indians; second, schools should be created to assimilate Indian
youths into Canadian society; and, finally, the state should help support re-
ligious instruction to the Indians to aid in assimilation. In 1850, the British
government continued to encourage assimilation by offering citizenship
to any Indians who abandoned their Indian status. Additional legisla-
tion blurred the lines between Indians and Canadian citizens. The gov-
ernment offered enfranchisement to any male Indian who was literate
(meaning he possessed an understanding of the English language), over
twenty-one, free of debt, and possessing a “good character.” Though the
British/Canadian government did not actually remove Indians from their
land in this period, they did attempt to remove land, status, and culture
from the Indians.
By the mid-1800’s, the railroads had expanded into western Ontario,
bringing more whites to the area. The Hudson’s Bay Company remained
firm in disallowing settlers within its territories. In 1867, confederation
came to Canada. The Hudson’s Bay Company released the western territo-
ries to Canada, changing Indian-white relations. Indians were no longer
protected by their trading relationship, and white settlers and developers
wanted Indian land for farms and gold. The white Canadian-born popula-
tion grew from three million to almost five million between confederation
and the end of the century, placing new demands on land and natural re-
sources. During the same period, the number of acres under production
rose from eighteen million to thirty million, representing the treaties that
removed promising farmland from the Indians.
The newly formed Canadian government followed many of the same
policies as the American government, emphasizing assimilation, agrar-
ianism, and cultural extermination. With confederation, the government
pushed for land settlements with the Indians, the creation of schools to
teach them English and make them Canadian, and the introduction of
farming as a means of survival. The reserve system demanded that Indians
abandon traditional methods of survival and adopt “peasant” farming.
Farming tied native groups to one area of land, making them available for
conversion, assimilation, and government control while freeing the land
for white farmers. The Canadian government did not seek to create large or
profitable farms for the Indians. Instead, they sought to provide them with
minimal survival with rudimentary tools and small plots.
The new Canadian government also sought to remove Indian status
from the Indians. In 1868 and 1869, the government passed the Indian Act
and the Enfranchisement Acts, which created a legal division between
“uncivilized Indians” and “civilized whites.” The Canadian government
promised the same legal and political rights that whites had to any Indian
who relinquished his status as an Indian. The Canadian government sim-
ply adopted the policies of the British government in erasing the Indian
population, politically and legally.
Most Indian groups were not happy with the transfer of power from the
Hudson’s Bay Company to the Canadian government. Many did not want
to surrender their land and adopt farming. One group in particular felt
slighted by the arrangements made by the government: the Metis. In 1870,
alarmed by government surveyors, a group of Cree Indians and Metis
banded together to fight the encroachment on their land. While defending
their land, they executed a man from Ontario, which hardened white Cana-
dians against them. The government ended this first rebellion, with leader
Louis Riel escaping to the United States. He returned in 1884 to begin the
Northwest Rebellion, which stalled the Canadian government for several
months. Riel demanded that Metis also receive land settlements. Though
they eventually received these rights through the Manitoba Act, Riel was
executed for treason and murder in 1885, making him a hero of the Metis
and many Indians.
Between confederation and the end of the century, whites infiltrated
the rest of Canada. Miners arrived in the Yukon Territory, bringing mis-
sionaries and government officials as well as disease with them. Canadi-

ans began to “settle” British Columbia from the Pacific Coast inward. The
railroad began to crisscross the country, dividing traditional lands and
limiting movement. By 1885, all the major land treaties had been signed.
The Plains Indians, who had resisted the longest, relinquished their land as
the buffalo disappeared. Only the Indians of British Columbia avoided
signing treaties, though whites usurped much of their land without the
treaties.
The nineteenth century ended with two notable incidents. First, the Ca-
nadian government outlawed the potlatch among the Northwest Pacific
coast tribes. This law represented the last act in a war of attrition against In-
dian cultures. It became a battle cry in the first part of the twentieth century
as Indian groups battled for political and legal rights. Second, a smallpox
epidemic among the same tribes decimated them. Hundreds of lives were
lost, breeding anger, distrust, and discontent among the survivors.
Twentieth Century. The twentieth century did not begin auspiciously for
the Indians of Canada. Most resided on reserves, their children sent to
boarding schools run by missionaries, their cultures stripped from them,
and their movement restricted by laws and pass systems. Many struggled
to survive on farming plots that were too small to support families, with
outdated tools and equipment. Change, however, eventually came.
Beginning with World War II, Indians began to take back control of their
lives. Many Canadian Indians served in World War II, gaining citizenship
and political rights without losing their Indian status. This allowed them to
challenge certain laws and stereotypes. Though many reserves remained
mired in poverty, Indian leaders began to fight for the right to a proper edu-
cation, for medical reform and access, and for representation. Indians also
took control of their natural resources, including timber, oil, and other re-
sources. Inspired by the actions of the American Indian Movement in the
United States, several groups formed in Canada in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The most powerful of these today is the Assembly of First Nations, a coali-
tion of recognized and unrecognized tribal groups.
The Assembly of First Nations has focused on several things since the
1970’s. First, it provides political action and a political voice to various
groups. Instead of every group fighting the same political and legal battles
separately, the assembly helps unify and streamline these battles. Second,
it supplies social support in health, business, and education. It organizes
arts cooperatives, learning cooperatives and centers, and business cooper-
atives, centralizing these activities and making them more powerful than
small individual groups could be. Finally, its leaders have sought to put In-
dian concerns firmly on the agenda of the Canadian government. Some of

the issues they have focused on in the past are the Great Whale Project on
Cree land in Northern Quebec, the lack of treaties in British Columbia, the
development of Indian land as tourist attractions, and access to education
for Indian men and women.
The Assembly of First Nations has been instrumental in helping make
Indian rights an issue for the Canadian government. Indians today repre-
sent 5 percent of the Canadian population and are the fastest-growing
segment of the population. Yet, until the 1990’s, they were not represented
in the government. As Canada struggled to maintain its unity and keep
Quebec in the Confederation, the Assembly of First Nations and Indian
leaders sought to have their concerns included. In 1989, the Canadian
government sought ratification of the Meech Lake Accord, which would
have allowed Quebec to remain a “distinct society.” It made no mention
of Indian rights as “distinct societies” or of self-determination. When the
accord reached Manitoba for ratification, Elijah Harper, a Cree, stalled the
vote in a traditional manner by raising one white feather and refusing com-
ment. He effectively ended the Meech Lake Accord. By 1992, the Canadian
government included the Assembly of First Nations in negotiations be-
tween provincial governors, finally allowing Indians a voice in their own
destiny.
Ironically, 1992 became the unofficial “year of the Indian” in Canada. As
well as the assembly being included in the council of governors, the Cana-
dian government returned a large land mass to the Indians of Northern
Quebec. An area called Nunavut became available for Indian control, al-
lowing them to regulate hunting, fishing, and development of the land.
The area represents almost a complete province in Canada.
Indian-white relations into the twenty-first century remained tense.
Many contemporary Canadians see Indians as freeloaders on the govern-
ment. Stereotypes of drunken Indians, Indians wealthy from annuities,
and freeloading Indians abound still in Canada. Despite the more peaceful
Canadian policy toward Indians, Canada and its Indian population still
suffer from the same tensions as those in U.S. society.
See also: Aboriginal Action Plan; American Indian Higher Education
Consortium; Beaver Wars; Declaration of First Nations; Delgamuukw v. Brit-
ish Columbia; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development;
Fifteen Principles; Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; Indian Act
of 1989; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-white relations:
French colonial; Indian-white relations: Norse; International Indian Treaty
Council; Meech Lake Accord; Nisga’a Agreement in Principle; Nunavut
Territory; Oka crisis; Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: Plateau; Prehistory:
234 / Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial
Northeast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Subarctic; Proclamation of 1763;

Red River Raids; Reserve system of Canada; Riel Rebellions; Royal Com-
mission on Aboriginal Peoples; Thames, Battle of the; Treaties and agree-
ments in Canada; Tribe (term); White Paper of Canada.
C. L. Higham

Carter, Sarah. Lost Harvest: Prairies Indian Reserve Farmers and Government
Policy. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990. Critically ex-
poses the agricultural policies of the Canadian government.
Dickason, Olive. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from
Earliest Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. An unpar-
alleled legal, political, and social history of Canadian Indians.
Getty, Ian, and Antoine Lussier, eds. As Long as the Sun Shines and Water
Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies. Vancouver: University of Brit-
ish Columbia Press, 1983. Includes essays on issues of self-determina-
tion, treaty negotiation, and use of natural resources.
Grant, John Webster. Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Can-
ada in Encounter Since 1543. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Examines Indian-white contact through the eyes of missionaries and
through their cultural legacy.
Miller, J. R. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations
in Canada. 3d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. An excel-
lent study of Indians as politicians and cultural survivors.
St. Germain, Jill. Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada,
1867-1877. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Explores and
contrasts the “civilizing” efforts of the United States and Canada through
their Indian treaty policies.
Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. Examines relations be-
tween white traders and Indian/Metis women.
Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial

Date: 1600’s
Locale: Hudson Valley
Tribes involved: Lenni Lenape, Mahican, Mohawk
Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial / 235

Significance: Dutch control of the Hudson Valley (1609-1664) paved the
way for the takeover of the southern half of New York by European
colonists.
The creation of a Dutch colonial claim to the Hudson Valley through the ex-
ploration of the river by Henry Hudson, sailing under Dutch charter
in 1609, laid the foundations for the creation of a Dutch colony, New
Netherland, in the Hudson Valley. The arrival of the Dutch, first as traders
and then as settlers, had a disastrous effect on the Indians of the area.
The Fur Trade. Initially, the Dutch perceived the Hudson River Valley as
the ideal approach to the rich fur trade of the interior. In this view, they
were seeing things exactly as their rivals to the north, the French, did. In-
deed, with the exception of the Pilgrims and others escaping hardship, op-
pression, or authorities in their homelands, the Europeans of the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth centuries viewed the New World as primarily
a source of wealth, to be gained by acquiring its resources and selling these
on the European market. For the Spaniards to the south, the resource was
gold bullion; for the French and the Dutch to the north (and even for some
English traders) the resource was furs. These furs were gained by trading
European goods—in the contemporary phrase, “trade goods”—to the Indi-
ans in return for their fur harvest.
After the news of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river named for
him, the earliest Dutch visitors were all seeking furs. In 1614 the New
Netherland Company was chartered to exploit the fur trade; it was super-
seded in 1621 by the West India Company, which dominated affairs in New
Netherland until the English conquest in 1664. Throughout the Dutch pe-
riod, the hope of those who were interested in the area was that it would be
a major source of wealth, because its location offered ready access to the In-
dians of the interior, principally the Mohawks, the easternmost tribe of the
Iroquois Confederacy.
Some of what the Dutch brought to trade with the Indians was of benefit
to the Indians. From the Europeans the Indians acquired axes, hoes, and
iron cooking pots, all of which enabled them more readily to secure their
needs from nature. The Indians soon acquired a taste for coarse woven
cloaks of a material known as “duffel.” These things were positive. At the
same time, however, the Dutch readily supplied the Indians with two items
that had negative effects on their culture: guns and liquor. Moreover, with
the passage of time the Indian taste for trade goods grew to the point where
they were essentially dependent on them.
236 / Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial
The focal point of the fur trade was Fort Orange, built near the present
site of Albany in 1624. There the West India Company established its trad-
ing post, buying furs brought in by the Indians to the west. These Indians
were the Mohawks; because of their access to large quantities of furs and
their warlike reputation, the Dutch were always careful to maintain good
relations with them. The guns furnished to them by the Dutch enabled the
Mohawks to carry on vigorous warfare with the Hurons to the north and
west. The Dutch were agreeable to that outcome, for it diverted to the Hud-
son River some of the furs that would otherwise have been sold to the
French along the St. Lawrence River.
At home in the United Provinces, however, there were others who had
different objectives. A group of wealthy merchants, most notably Kiliaen
van Rensselaer, succeeded in breaking the monopoly of the West India
Company and opening up New Netherland both to other traders in fur
and to settlers. As the English settlements to the north and to the south be-
gan to fill with colonists, the Dutch saw their position threatened if New
Netherland consisted solely of a few trading posts. Under the leadership of
van Rensselaer, a policy of encouraging settlement began in the 1630’s.
Settlement and Impact. The earliest settlements were at New Amsterdam,

on Manhattan Island, purchased from the local Indians by Peter Minuit in
1626. As the number of settlers grew, frictions with the Indians grew too;
many settlers allowed their livestock to roam free (fencing their cultivated
fields); as the Indians did not fence theirs, the free-roaming livestock often
destroyed Indian crops. As more settlers arrived, more land was needed;
although the Dutch were always careful to purchase land from the Indians
(sometimes the same land more than once), the Indians began to resent the
Dutch presence. The Dutch authorities were also not able to control the ac-
tions of free traders, who often sought to defraud the Indians of their pelts.
Conflict peaked in the 1650’s (in the Peach Wars), during which time the
Dutch, through military action, effectively dispossessed the various tribal
groups living around the lower Hudson. They continued to maintain good
relations with the Mohawks, for they would have been unable to match the
Mohawks militarily, especially after the latter were armed with European
muskets. By the time the Dutch were forced to cede New Netherland to an
invading British fleet in 1664, the local Algonquian tribes had been essen-
tially wiped out.
See also: Bacon’s Rebellion; Beaver Wars; Fur trade; Iroquois Confeder-
acy; Manhattan Island purchase; Pavonia Massacre; Peach Wars; Pequot
War.
Nancy M. Gordon
Indian-white relations: English colonial / 237

Bachman, Van Cleaf. Peltries or Plantations: The Economic Policies of the Dutch
West India Company in New Netherland, 1623-1639. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1969.
Donck, Adriaen van der. A Description of the New Netherlands. Translated by
Jeremiah Johnson. 1841. Reprint. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University
Press, 1968.
Merwick, Donna. Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Expe-
riences. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Rink, Oliver A. Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of
Dutch New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Trelease, Allen W. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Cen-
tury. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960.
Indian-white relations: English colonial

Date: 1600’s-1700’s
Locale: Eastern seaboard
Tribes involved: Northeast and Southeast polities
Significance: Indian-English relations developed over the span of two
centuries and were dominated by issues of trade, land, and religion;
both sides borrowed from their adversary’s culture throughout the
colonial period.
Indian-English relations predate English attempts to colonize the Ameri-

can continent. In the Chesapeake Bay region, for example, groups such as
the Powhatans had contact with Europeans in the 1580’s. The experience of
Don Luis (a mamanatowick, or paramount chief, of the Algonquian confed-
eracy) with the Spanish provided a model for his successor, Powhatan, to
draw upon when the English established their Jamestown colony in 1607.
The English encountered the confederacy further when they began colo-
nizing the Chesapeake Bay region. In New England, Squanto’s ability to
communicate with the Pilgrims illustrates that there was a familiarity with
the English before actual colonization began.
Policies and Preconceptions. When English colonists began establishing

colonies on the North American continent, they hoped to coexist with
238 / Indian-white relations: English colonial
their Indian neighbors. The English assumed that their indigenous neigh-
bors would recognize the superiority of English civilization and would try
to emulate the colonists. Unfortunately for the colonists, the Indians were
unwilling to accommodate these hopes. Equally distressing to the colonists,
more than a few of their own found Indian culture preferable to English
society. This phenomenon frightened colonial leaders, and all colonies
worked to prevent their citizens from adopting Indian lifestyles. Even
when introduced to Indian culture unwillingly, as prisoners of war or other
captives, English colonists often preferred to stay with their Indian captors.
The treaty minutes between Native Americans and English delegates il-
lustrate this problem. In these documents, colonial officials demand the re-
turn of English captives from the Indians. Inevitably, some of the captured
colonists refused to return to colonial society. Their unwillingness to return
challenged colonial attitudes of superiority throughout the colonial pe-
riod. Complicating the relationship was Indian custom. Within the eastern
woodlands, when two adversaries agreed to peace, they often exchanged
community members, who served as visible reminders of goodwill. Once
the colonists realized this, they demanded that Indian hostages remain
Contemporary depiction of a meeting between Ottawa leader Pontiac (right) and a

British major named Rogers during the 1760’s. (Library of Congress)
with them until the articles of peace were implemented. Some colonial offi-
cials proposed placing English orphans among the Indians. Archibald Ken-
nedy, a member of New York’s Governor’s Council, argued that placing or-
phans among the Indians would help bind Anglo-Indian alliances.
Indian-English relations went through various phases in the colonial
period. Native Americans initially worked to establish peaceful and bene-
ficial relations with the English colonists. Only when Native Americans
had reasons to fear the colonists did relations become inhospitable. Each
Indian polity welcomed English colonists for different reasons. Over the
course of time, each side grew more familiar with the other; familiarity did
not produce harmony. Cultural biases on both sides prevented satisfactory
resolutions to problems with Anglo-Indian relations. Benjamin Franklin, in
his Remarks Concerning the Savages, reports how Iroquois leaders rejected an
English request to send Iroquoian youths to colonial schools. The Iroquois
spokesman declined, stating that schooling made Indian youths unfit for
any future work among the Indians.
The second phase of the Anglo-Indian relationship was one of distrust
and conflict. The English made it clear that they were not willing to play by
traditional tribal rules. The timing of this second period of Anglo-Indian
relations depended on local circumstance. In the Chesapeake and New En-
gland regions, hostilities broke out within a decade of colonial settlement.
Both sides fought these wars within their traditional understandings of
war. Colonists saw women and children as legitimate targets and often
fought in formations better suited to European plains than American for-
ests. Native Americans ambushed, fought skirmishes, raided, and cap-
tured women and children. As both sides learned about the other they
adopted various strategies from their opponents. (From this cultural bor-
rowing has emerged the polemical debate about which culture “invented”
scalping.)
Many architects of England’s early relationships with the Indians based
their policy on their experiences in Ireland. Two of the first colonizers,
Gilbert Humphreys and Walter Ralegh, fit this generalization. They and
their families, like other Devon families, had gained their position in En-
glish society through their participation in the Irish wars. Later colonizers,
such as John Winthrop and Roger Williams, brought with them the legacy
of the struggles of the English Reformation. These sixteenth and seven-
teenth century settlers held certain convictions that contact with North
America’s indigenous inhabitants could not alter. English settlers viewed
Algonquian society from a European perspective. Algonquian males were
“lazy and indolent.” Females were immodest and lived a life of drudgery.
English settlers believed the Indians “uncivilized.” They were convinced
that the Algonquian religion was an alliance with Satan. These attitudes
provided the theoretical underpinnings of Anglo-Indian relations.
Anglo-Indian relations had two specific spheres. The first sphere con-
cerned official relations. This realm includes treaties, policy decisions, and
trade negotiations. The second domain involved informal relations. This
area included marriages, cultural borrowing, and cultural critiques. In ad-
dition to these spheres, four specific rubrics shaped Indian-English rela-
tions. These four areas were disease, trade, land, and religion. Although
these areas are interrelated, each requires a separate examination.
Disease. The role of disease in Anglo-Indian relations has, until recently,

been a little understood aspect of interaction. Scholars now think that dis-
ease was the greatest killer of Native Americans in the colonial period. A
series of epidemics known as “virgin soil epidemics” were particularly
devastating to Indian communities because these epidemics killed people
aged fifteen to forty. This age group was most responsible for the societal
tasks of food gathering, making military decisions, and procreation. Na-
tive American social practices exacerbated the disease problem, since com-
munities did not isolate the sick originally. Disease often predated signifi-
cant Anglo-Indian contact and set the parameters for the Anglo-Indian
relations that followed. On at least one occasion Englishmen used disease
as a weapon of war: Sir Jeffery Amherst, commander of British forces in
North America, ordered that blankets infected with smallpox be given to
some Delaware Indians during Pontiac’s Rebellion.
Disease transformed the Anglo-Indian relationship. For Native Ameri-
cans, disease meant a declining population base from which to meet Euro-
pean aggression. The most lethal disease that Native Americans encoun-
tered was smallpox. Other diseases that swept eastern North America in
the colonial period were measles, influenza, diphtheria, typhus, and per-
haps bubonic plague. The presence of a devastating disease often called for
a reassessment of traditional assumptions about the world. Sometimes this
reassessment provided European missionaries with the opportunity neces-
sary to gain a foothold in native communities. Most of the time the mission-
aries followed the trade routes west.
Trade. From the beginning of contact, Indians and Englishmen traded. Ar-
thur Barlow wrote of trading when he met with the Algonquians around
Roanoke in 1584, and European fishermen exchanged items with Native
Americans during the seasonal voyages to fishing banks off Newfound-
land. From the Indians’ perspective, this trade reinforced a traditional
manner of integrating foreigners into an existing worldview. While the En-
glish saw trade as a simple economic exchange, it was something more

complex for the Indians. They based trade on their notion of reciprocity,
and reciprocity implied obligation. Both Powhatan and Squanto based
their initial relationships with the colonists on the notion of reciprocity.
Very quickly this reciprocal relationship became an interdependent one.
Initially it was the colonists who depended on Indian trade items for sur-
vival. By the end of the colonial period, however, the Native Americans
were dependent on the trade for survival.
Trade flourished partly because it initially required little adjustment for
either side. English and Indian traders tapped existing trade networks. In
the early colonial period Indian expectations shaped the trade; they de-
termined which goods were traded and at what price. English traders dis-
covered the importance of adhering to Indian cultural expectations when
doing business. Some traders found marriage with a native woman a bene-
ficial custom. It opened doors previously closed within the native commu-
nity. For many native polities, a trader’s marriage transformed the trader
from a stranger to a family member. The trader now had special obligations
to fulfill. As the colonial period progressed, English traders tried to trans-
form such relationships to fit English expectations. They were never truly
successful.
One reason that trade predated colonization is that the items both sides
exchanged required little change within each cultural tradition. Algon-
quian males traditionally hunted for beaver in the winter, and winter pelts
were what Europeans wanted when they began trading. Native peoples
had processed deerskins for internal consumption before the arrival of Eu-
ropeans. For their part, the Englishmen who did the trading did so at first
in conjunction with their fishing expeditions. The furs were tangential to
the primary purpose. Nevertheless, the trade in pelts and goods produced
change.
For some Native American groups, trade with the English stimulated
the process of political centralization. Even if trade did not produce politi-
cal changes for Native Americans, it forced fundamental changes in labor.
For the Cherokees, the processing of such large numbers of skins produced
a cottage industry. This industry required more labor from the women of
the community, which placed strains on Cherokee communities. Other
groups experienced increased conflict as neighboring Indian polities at-
tempted to obtain access to the English market. Interior polities sought
their own relationships with the English. Various groups tried to force their
way onto rivals’ territories in the quest for more pelts and skins; the Beaver
Wars are perhaps the most famous example of this. Other polities posi-
tioned themselves as intermediaries within the growing trade. Whatever
the reason, the fur trade produced an increasing level of violence, which
made peaceful Anglo-Indian relations even more difficult. For the Indians,
the increasing violence made any attempt to unite against the English diffi-
cult. As a result, most Indian polities stood alone against the English when
colonists sought Indian land for their own occupation.
Land. Perhaps the greatest strain on Native American-English relations

concerned land. English colonists had an insatiable appetite for Indian
lands. To justify their taking of Indian land, English officials and colonists
relied on three specific arguments. First, they claimed land by right of dis-
covery. Second, they claimed land by right of conquest. Third, they as-
serted their right to the land because they could better utilize the land than
the Indians. Land was probably the single most important irritant to Anglo-
Indian relations in the colonial period.
In some areas, however, disputes over land were not a major factor. A
smallpox epidemic had wiped out large numbers of Massachusetts Indians
on the eve of Boston’s founding by the English, for example; it was only
when the colonists sought more than the original land ceded them by the
Indians that land became an issue. Within two decades of colonization,
land was the source of Anglo-Indian conflict. The Pequot War (1636-1637),
Metacom’s (King Philip’s) War (1675-1676), Bacon’s Rebellion (1675-1676),
Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1764), and Lord Dunmore’s War (1774) were
some of the wars that involved, at least tangentially, English-Indian dis-
agreements about land. So important were land issues to Indian-English
relations that various attempts to restrict colonial encroachments on Indian
land were tried; none of them worked. Nevertheless, the Albany Congress
(1754), the creation of the Indian superintendent system, the Proclamation
of 1763, and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) illustrate attempts to alleviate
the problems that land created in Anglo-Indian relations.
Religion. English missionaries found their greatest success among Native

American polities that had reached the nadir of their cultural existence.
In New England, those Indian polities decimated by disease often turned
to Christianity because traditional religion no longer explained what was
happening to them. Other groups turned to Christianity after they could
no longer defend themselves culturally because of lost territory. The “pray-
ing Indians” of New England processed the missionaries’ message within
an Algonquian framework. The songs and rituals associated with Chris-
tianity, not the message, were what primarily drew the Algonquians’ atten-
tion. By the end of the colonial period, Christian Indians acted as mission-
aries to other Indian groups. Samson Occom, for example, a Mohegan
Indian, became a missionary to the Brothertown Indians living among the

Iroquois.
The missionaries and their message often divided Indian communities.
The result was an increasing level of factionalism within native politics.
This factionalism further hindered the Indians’ ability to withstand En-
glish pressures. The Iroquois Confederacy offers an example of how this
factionalism influenced Indian-English relations. Initial Christian factions
emerged in Iroquoia with the arrival of French Jesuit missionaries. They ar-
rived at a time when the Iroquois were on the defensive in their struggles
against the French and their western Indian allies. In the following years,
pro-Christian Iroquois came to dominate confederacy councils. When the
Iroquois turned the tables on the French, new traditionalist leaders emerged
to lead the confederacy until new troubles appeared and the tide turned
once again. This factional ebb and flow continued until the end of the colo-
nial period, when Samuel Kirkland and his Oneida followers challenged
the leadership position of Sir William Johnson and the Mohawks. Kirkland
had converted a number of Oneida warriors to his New Light Congrega-
tionalism. Johnson was a supporter of Anglican attempts to Christianize
the Indians. This religious struggle had political overtones because it be-
came part of the colonial-imperial struggles of the 1760’s and 1770’s. When
the American Revolution broke out, the league extinguished its council fire
at Onondaga and let each nation determine which side to support: Chris-
tianity had helped splinter the Six Nations Confederacy.
Gift-Giving. One area of English-Indian interaction that has received ex-

tensive coverage is gift-giving. The use of gifts in Indian society was well
established before English colonization. When the English arrived, they
found they had to adapt to Indian protocol if they hoped to establish peace-
ful relations with their Indian neighbors. Indian gifts involved large ex-
penditures on the part of colonial governments. New governors to New
York were often presented an allowance of six hundred pounds for the
purchase of gifts. Officials in South Carolina spent more than twenty-six
thousand pounds on Indian affairs between 1732 and 1755, when the
Crown officially took control of Indian relations. A significant portion of
South Carolina’s Indian expenses went to Indian gifts. These expenditures
suggest that colonial and imperial officials understood the importance of
gifts to Anglo-Indian relations.
Intermarriage. One area often overlooked in discussions of Indian-English

relations is gender. While all European nations were concerned with blood
purity, the English were perhaps the most prudish on the matter. Neverthe-
less, there were many cross-cultural relationships. In 1615 John Rolfe mar-
ried Pocahontas. In Algonquian terms this marriage served to cement the
peace. In the eighteenth century the British Indian superintendent for the
northern colonies, Sir William Johnson, married an Iroquoian woman,
Molly Brant. Johnson’s marriage to Brant gave him an opportunity to oper-
ate within Iroquoia that he would not have had otherwise. In the southern
colonies the trader Lachland McGillivray married a Creek woman, and his
son Alexander became a leading figure in the Anglo-Indian dialogue. John-
son’s and McGillivray’s marriages provided each man with entry into his
wife’s community in a manner no outsider could hope to achieve. Equally
important, these men were now obligated to meet certain familial and kin-
ship expectations on the part of their wives’ families.
In examining Indian-English relations it is important to remember that
neither side spoke with a single voice. While scholars have repeatedly
mentioned the problems Native Americans had in uniting to oppose En-
glish objectives, there has been a tendency to downplay the difficulties the
colonists also had in presenting a united front to the Indians. The ramifica-
tions of the lack of unity on both sides give the study of Indian-English rela-
tions its unique character. The diversity of opinion and actions among Brit-
ish colonial and Indian leaders made that relationship a complex one.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations: Dutch
colonial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Indian-white relations:
Norse; Indian-white relations: Russian colonial; Indian-white relations:
Spanish colonial; Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002.
Michael J. Mullin

Axtell, James. The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colo-
nial North America. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Many of the essays in this book were previously published; together
they provide a good introduction to the study of ethnohistory and Anglo-
Indian relations in the colonial period.
Crosby, Alfred W. “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal De-
population in America.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 33 (1976):
289-299. This essay is considered a classic examination of the effect of
disease on Indian populations in North America.
Jacobs, Wilbur R. “British Indian Policies to 1783.” In History of Indian-
White Relations, edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4 in Handbook of
North American Indians, edited by William C. Sturtevant. Washington,
Indian-white relations: French colonial / 245
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. As the title indicates, this es-
say details British policy toward the Indians. It covers the formal rela-
tions between Indians and colonists and is particularly good at examin-
ing the role of land in the Indian-English experience.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. A highly readable account
of the evolutions of Indian-English relations along the East Coast of
North America.
Oberg, Michael Leroy. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native
America, 1585-1685. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. Focuses
on English interactions with Algonquian groups in the Chesapeake Bay
area.
Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early
America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Presents
early American history from an Indian perspective, focusing on the fig-
ures of Pocohontas, Blessed Catherine Tekawitha, and Metacom, a.k.a.
King Philip.
____________. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League
in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
olina Press, 1992. Published for the Institute of Early American History
and Culture, this study of the Iroquois League demonstrates the influ-
ence of factionalism on an Indian people as they dealt with the Europe-
ans. It synthesizes much scholarship on the Six Nations and their rela-
tionship with the French, Dutch, and English. It is particularly strong on
seventeenth century relations.
Rountree, Helen C., ed. Powhatan Foreign Relations, 1500-1722. Charlottes-
ville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. A series of articles written by
leading scholars. The book details Powhatan relations not only with the
English but also with other Indian groups in the region. The articles em-
phasize the complexity and difficulty of thinking about Native Ameri-
cans as single-culture polities.
Indian-white relations: French colonial

Date: 1400’s-1700’s
Locale: Northern and eastern North America
Tribes involved: Huron, Iroquois Confederacy, Lenni Lenape, Ojibwa,
Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee
246 / Indian-white relations: French colonial
Categories: Colonial history, Religion and missionary activities

Significance: French colonial relations with Indian tribes displayed mu-
tual interest in trading, useful political and military alliances, mis-
sionary schooling, and protection.
France’s colonial claim on major portions of North America dates from the
reign of the Valois king François I. It was François who protested the as-
sumptions of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which claimed to divide the
newly discovered Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal solely.
Soon France would be engaged, well before the Pilgrims landed at Plym-
outh Rock in 1620, in exploring North American lands that were inhabited
only by Indian tribes. The French labeled this new territory Gallia Nova, or
New France.
Early Contacts. Historians date the earliest trading contact between French
explorers and American Indians to Jacques Cartier’s entry into the Gulf of
St. Lawrence in 1534. The French exchanged knives and trinkets for furs of-
fered by Micmac tribesmen. The next year Cartier sailed farther up the St.
Lawrence River, first encountering Iroquois at the point where Quebec
would later be established and then penetrating as far as the Indian village
of Hochelaga (later Montreal).
The sequel to these earliest encounters in the area that would become
known as New France was not promising for future relations. After Cartier
captured Indians and transported them to France (where they died from
exposure to European diseases), returning French parties were not wel-
come in the St. Lawrence area. Attempts by Cartier’s successor, Sieur de
Roberval, to found a colony failed after only three years.
The contributions made by Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebec
City in 1608, were more lasting. Champlain was very curious to know more
about the origins of the St. Lawrence River, questioning Hurons who came
to trade at Quebec concerning their homelands. The Hurons spoke of great
interlocking expanses of water—those yet to be discovered by the Europe-
ans and named Great Lakes. Champlain tried in vain in 1613 to journey to
the Great Lakes by ascending the Ottawa River, the most direct path being
blocked by hostile Iroquois tribesmen.
It was only several years later, after Champlain became a direct lieuten-
ant of the French Viceroy and founder of what was known as Champlain’s
Company (composed of traders from Normandie), that a real French col-
ony would develop. Champlain’s Company was granted a monopoly of
trade with the Indians of the St. Lawrence as far westward as they could
succeed. Built into the organization of the chartered trading company was
Champlain and French Explorations, 1603-1616

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The greatest French explorer of North America, Samuel de Champlain, spent half
his lifetime making numerous voyages to the regions surrounding the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River. He founded the city of Quebec, traversed the
rapids near Montreal that had barred the way to the Great Lakes, and spent months
with Algonquian and Huron Indians during his explorations of the lands near Lakes
Huron and Ontario.
a mandate to support the work of French missionary friars called the Recol-
lects, who represented a reformed branch of the Franciscan Order. The Rec-
ollects claimed that they were the first to hold a formal ceremony of the
Mass in Canada in June, 1615. It was a Recollect missionary, not the ex-
plorer Champlain himself, who was the first European to set foot on the
easternmost shores of the Great Lakes.
Not much success was registered by the French in the Great Lakes area
in this early period, partially because a decision was made to choose Huron
peace and trade offers rather than to struggle to win over Iroquois friend-
ship. This meant that the Champlain Company based in Quebec carried on
more trade in the rather bleak areas to the north, rather than penetrating
the more fertile regions of what would become New York and Pennsyl-
vania, eventually areas where British colonial claims, together with com-
plex relations with the Iroquois, would expand.
During the second half of the sixteenth century a few other French expe-
ditions came into contact with Indian groupings, but in general they de-
cided not to insist on fixed colonization, which inevitably involved a need
for military defense and possibly sustained warfare. French expeditions

preferred to develop mobile trading networks instead. The lucrative attrac-
tions of the fur trade would leave a characteristic stamp on the actions of
the coureurs de bois (“woods runners,” or trappers), who would cover vast
inland areas and develop particular relations with several tribes. The na-
ture of traders’ alliances with Indians would change significantly in the
eighteenth century colonial period, when military considerations in deal-
ing with British enemies in colonial North America came to the forefront.
From Exploration to Conquest. One of the most famous coureurs was Nich-
olas Perrot, who, after beginning but then abandoning training to enter the
Jesuit Order and work among tribes as a missionary, began his career at
twenty-six as the interpreter for the 1670 Daumont de St. Lusson (copper
exploration) expedition into the Miami tribal area around Green Bay (now
Wisconsin). Eventually Perrot mastered not only Algonquian but also a
dozen other Indian dialects. The most far-seeing governors-general in
Quebec, notably Louis de Baude, count of Frontenac, tended to place great
confidence in the judgment of coureurs such as Perrot and sometimes even
countered instructions from Paris in favor of “commonsense” counsel of-
fered to them by those who knew the Indians best.
When French colonial policy toward the Indians came under the influ-
ence of aggressive governors-general such as the marquis de Denonville,
however, relations could worsen overnight. By the mid-1680’s de Denon-
ville was convinced that his British colonial neighbors in New York (then
under the governorate of Thomas Dongan) were stirring up Iroquois hos-
tility against the French. When clumsy efforts to deal with the problem
through hostage-taking and physical duress failed, de Denonville resorted
to massive armed action in 1687, mainly against the Senecas near the pres-
ent site of Rochester, New York. His force of French soldiers, accompanied
by Indian Christian converts and tribesmen who had more interest in fight-
ing Seneca enemies than in Christianity, numbered almost three thou-
sand—nearly ten times the size of any previous military expedition.
Although de Denonville’s battle tactics were not strikingly successful,
his remarks revealed the psychological distance already growing between
official colonizers of his ilk and the commonsense “forest runner” emissar-
ies of New France who knew the manners and customs of the Indians and
how to use them to obtain desired ends without violence. When his Indian
allies fell ill from overeating (booty and animals taken from the Senecas),
de Denonville observed with disgust that “it is a miserable business to
command savages who, as soon as they have knocked the enemy on the
head, ask for nothing but to go home and carry . . . scalps they have taken
off like a skullcap” (quoted in Joseph Rutledge, Century of Conflict, New

York, 1956, p. 58).
Contributions by French Christian Missionaries. The second main thrust

of French influence into American Indian homelands before 1700 was reli-
giously motivated. Among the earliest French Jesuit missions to establish
relations with the broad tribal area they called Huronia was Father Bressani.
The so-called Black Robes took on special status in dealing with the Hurons
not with guns (and not even by formal conversion to Christianity) but by
taking on the honorific function of tribal medicine men. Tensions mounted
among various factions of Indians, however, when “converts” only, not
those who rejected missionary overtures, received firearms from French
suppliers (not from the missionaries themselves). By 1649, deteriorating
conditions between Hurons and the Five Nations of the Iroquois led to de-
feat of the former by Seneca and Mohawk nations of the latter. Within five
years of their Huron ally’s loss, however, the French Jesuits received a re-
quest from the Onondaga middle tribe of the Iroquois for the establishment
of a trading and missionary post to teach converts in their midst. This new
French-Indian alliance was accompanied by arms supplies to aid the Onon-
dagas not only in their war with the Eries but also in defending themselves
against hostile attacks from their fellow Iroquois, the Mohawks. The policy
would prove a failure when Mohawks destroyed the Onondaga mission in
1658. This act brought a special military force from France under the mar-
quis de Tracy, who, after burning many villages, forced the Mohawks to ac-
cept the presence of missionaries in their midst.
Thereafter, Black Robe policy toward Indian converts in the region
changed. To avoid intertribal warfare, the French sent individual converts
away from their tribal homelands to mission reservations near the emer-
gent French colonial center at Montreal. Descendants of these mixed Indian
Christian communities, who came to form the most reliable allies of French
colonists, were called Caughnawaga Mohawks (still identifiable in late
twentieth century Canada as “Kahnawake” people, who live on a reserva-
tion bearing the same name).
Missionary-Explorers. Some seventeenth century French missionaries com-

bined two callings—that of explorer and that of bearer of Christianity for
people who were often considered outright savages—when they entered
Indian territories beyond established colonies. One of the best-known
French missionaries was Gabriel Sagard, a lay brother (not an ordained
priest) in the Recollect Order. Sagard’s famous 1632 account of his journey
into Huronia contained numerous suggestions that the “savage” life of the
Indians contained many positive elements that could benefit European so-
ciety, including simplicity of relations and rejection of selfish hoarding of
material goods.
Sagard’s 1632 account of the minute details of Indian habits, including
their modes of preparing various foods, their dress, and their recreations,
became the first widely read popular treatise on Gallia Nova. It would be
greatly expanded in a second printing only four years after it first ap-
peared. A second widely read account of French and Indian missionary en-
counters would appear exactly fifty years after Sagard’s famous volume.
The later work, by another Recollect, Louis Hennepin, was called “Descrip-
tion of Louisiana,” a title that suggests how far westward and southward
the French had explored since Sagard’s experience among the Hurons.
Much credit for this wider exploration went to the Recollects’ mission-
ary “rivals,” the French Jesuits. Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, for exam-
ple, together with Louis Jolliet, a former seminarian turned fur trader, were
among the first white people to explore the Mississippi River Valley in the
1670’s. It was they who opened the way for the extension of New France
into the vast area that would be known as Louisiana (named for King Louis
XIV). Jolliet’s initial interest in proceeding farther west and south of the ter-
ritory under Quebec’s administrative control was to establish a settlement
on the Illinois River. Unsuccessful in getting support for this, Jolliet took
on the commissioned task of discovering the upper Mississippi itself. A
wealth of information tracing Jolliet’s progress is preserved in Father
Marquette’s journals, which begin when the party received aid from the
Mascouten Indian people, whose territory in the Fox River Valley and the
Meskousing (later “Wisconsin”) River zone held the key to rapid canoe
transit toward confluents of the Mississippi. One of these, then called the
Pekitonoui River, passed through the territory of the Illinois tribes. There
Marquette would later found, on his return north after their long journey
down the Mississippi to the point where it is joined by the Arkansas River,
the Mission of the Conception in the tiny Indian village of Kaskaskia. He
died there in 1675, only to be succeeded by generations of French mission-
aries and fur traders who would open the Mississippi to extensive explora-
tion and settlement far beyond the new “capital” of St. Louis. By 1700,
when Father Jacques Gravier had taken charge of Marquette’s Indian mis-
sion program among the Kaskaskia of Illinois, he decided to establish a net-
work of communications to link the Illinois mission to new French settle-
ments as far south as Biloxi (the future state of Mississippi, settled from the
New Orleans delta northward). Gravier’s 1700 contacts with the Akansa
(Quapaw) Indians (who had seen Marquette in 1674) were already tinged
with hints of possible hostile reactions by Mississippi Valley Indians to
what they feared would be increased takeover of their lands by French set-
tlements.
By 1711 and 1712, all the way back north in the Fox River Valley, where
Marquette had begun among friends in the 1670’s, the hostilities later
known as the Fox Wars began, and the safety of the French in a great num-
ber of previously peaceful areas would be placed in jeopardy.
The French fur traders, called voyageurs (“travelers”) as well as coureurs
de bois, in order to survive in relative isolation among the Indians far from
colonial military forts or missionary zones, consciously chose to develop
close personal ties with the tribes. They often established networks of what
amounted to political as well as trading relationships with different groups
by marrying Indian women and adopting many aspects of the Indian way
of life. Fur trader knowledge of Indian customs, as well as the configura-
tions of tribal alliances, would serve the needs of more official political pol-
Mississippi Valley:
The Marquette/Jolliet and La Salle Expeditions, 1673-1682
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New Orleans
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Among the many French explorations of the Mississippi River Valley, that of
Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet is famous as the first major expedition into the
region. That of René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, was the first to reach the
mouth of the Mississippi River, confirming that the great midcontinental waterway
emptied into the Gulf of Mexico.
icies of administrative authorities of New France when the latter faced mil-
itary challenges from their main colonial rivals, the British.
Relations During the Seven Years’ War. Historians often refer to the French
and Indian War (1754-1763) between France and England as the North
American manifestation of the Seven Years’ War (the war between Frederick
the Great of Prussia, aided by England, and France, aided by Austria and
Russia) because of the importance of English and French alliances with In-
dian tribes in Canada and several of the thirteen American colonies. For the
French, many of these alliances predated the formal period of war by more
than half a century. One of France’s long-established goals in what would be-
come the United States was to hold the limit of British colonization to east of
the Appalachian Mountains. Because so few actual French fighting units
were present in the vast territories it wished to defend against British occu-
pation, French emissaries in essence “recruited” Indian groups to fight
for them against the British. The appointment in 1752 of Marquis Ange
Duquesne de Menneville as France’s governor-general in Quebec came
with instructions to block all British attempts to penetrate the Ohio Territory,
a move that could cut off north-south contact between France’s Canadian
and “Louisianan” colonies. As the much more serious declaration of war in
Europe approached, Duquesne soon followed the example of one of his
agents, Charles Langlade, who had led Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwa
Indian allies in attacks against other Indians who had joined the Iroquois
Covenant Chain (including the Delawares, or Lenni Lenape) and were be-
ing courted as potential allies of the British cause. When it came to strug-
gles over control of the famous Fort Duquesne, the French attempted to
rely on support from so-called Three Fires Indians, who came from points
far to the west, where Indian sensitivity to threats of seizure of their lands
was not yet as highly developed as it was in the Ohio Territory.
As the terms of war became even more serious, the French strategy of al-
lying with Indians who thought they might regain lands lost to British col-
onizers seemed to be succeeding. Not only the Lenni Lenapes but also the
Shawnees and even some Iroquois broke away from British support to help
the French in their attempts to expel English colonizers from Iroquoia
(New York). British General John Forbes and a Quaker colonist leader
named Israel Pemberton finally succeeded in turning the tide of French
and Indian superiority in 1758, when a treaty with the Delawares signed at
Easton, Pennsylvania, promised to establish a firm boundary between Brit-
ish and Indian territory after the war. When the struggle finally ended in
1763, the French essentially lost their entire Canadian and Northeast North
American colonial empire. For many of their former Indian allies, this de-
feat meant an unclear future. At Fort Niagara, for example, Seneca Indians
were expelled from a stronghold they had held for the French. British con-
trol, although it would last only another twenty years in the thirteen colo-
nies, rapidly brought quite different conditions for the Indian people of
North America.
See also: French and Indian War; Indian-white relations: Canadian;
Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colo-
nial; Indian-white relations: Norse; Indian-white relations: Russian colonial;
Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Indian-white relations: Swedish
colonial; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white relations:
U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1934-2002.
Byron D. Cannon

Douville, Raymond, and Jacques Casanova. Daily Life in Early Canada. New
York: Macmillan, 1967. Although this carefully documented study con-
centrates on various conditions affecting French colonial life in Gallia
Nova (transportation, religious life, trapping, and trading), each chap-
ter includes useful information on relations with Indian populations.
Hamilton, Raphael N. Marquette’s Explorations: The Narratives Reexamined.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. This scholarly mono-
graph not only describes the experiences of Father Marquette before and
during his famous exploration of the 1670’s but also provides a critical
analysis of the authenticity of manuscript sources ascribed to Mar-
quette.
Jennings, Francis. The Founders of America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
An excellent general history of the Indian population of all regions of
North America from precolonial to contemporary times. The colonial
section contains essential facts of French and Indian relations.
Rutledge, Joseph Lister. Century of Conflict. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1956. A comprehensive account of American Indian relations with both
French and British colonial regimes from the early to the late eighteenth
century, including the key Seven Years’ War period.
Sagard, Gabriel. The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons. Translated by
Hugh H. Langton. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1939. This is a transla-
tion of the French explorer’s original travel logs, published in 1632.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural
Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. Amherst: University of Massachu-
setts Press, 2001. Considers the effect of Indian women married to
French men upon the early colonial fur trade.
254 / Indian-white relations: Norse
Indian-white relations: Norse

Date: 1000’s-1500’s
Locale: Greenland, eastern Canada, eastern seaboard
Tribes involved: Algonquian, Inugsuk, Iroquois, possibly Mandan, Thule
Significance: For five hundred years before Christopher Columbus’s
voyage to the Caribbean islands in 1492, people from Scandinavia
interacted with the indigenous population of North America; the
Norse traded with, influenced, and were influenced by American In-
dians.
Until relatively recently, most historians considered the enduring folktales

concerning pre-Columbian Norse colonization of North America and con-
tacts with its aboriginal population to be nothing more than romantic fic-
tion. The few scholars who did take seriously the Icelandic sagas, on which
the folktales were based, assumed that the alleged Norse-Indian contacts
had little or no historical significance.
Despite the disinterest of the academic community, many amateur his-
torians and archaeologists pursued the story of the pre-Columbian Norse
in North America with an enthusiasm often bordering on fanaticism. Since
at least the seventeenth century, sincere but often ignorant proponents of
the Norse presence in North America before Columbus have put forth evi-
dence for their claims in the form of maps, runestones, and purportedly
Norse-made artifacts. Some of this supposed evidence proved to be the
product of hoaxes, which cast doubt on the entire thesis of an early Norse
presence in North America.
Archaeological discoveries during the last third of the twentieth cen-
tury, however, showed conclusively that the Norse established permanent
colonies on the North American continent. At L’Anse aux Meadows in
Newfoundland, archaeologists have excavated an entire Norse village,
dated by radiocarbon methods to around 1000 c.e. or a little earlier. Other
archaeologists have recovered indisputably Norse artifacts from dozens of
Eskimos (Inuit) sites throughout northern Canada. These discoveries have
caused historians to begin reexamining the original Icelandic sources that
told of the Norse movement into the area west of Greenland and other evi-
dence of Norse-Indian interaction.
Background. Three Icelandic sagas, probably composed in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries (Eirik’s Saga, Karlsefni Saga, and the Graenlendinga Saga),
Indian-white relations: Norse / 255
constitute the primary historical source material for a pre-Columbian Norse

presence in North America. Other sagas contain numerous references to
the subject but give little detail. The Icelandic sagas began as oral history—
stories about people and events passed along orally from generation to
generation. Icelandic scribes probably wrote down the stories dealing with
what the Greenland Norse called “Vinland the Good” (which many schol-
ars today believe was the coast of New England) in the late fourteenth cen-
tury.
These sagas tell first of the Norse colonization of Greenland in 985-
986 c.e. by Eric the Red. Shortly afterward, according to the sagas, Bjarni
Herjolfsson accidentally sighted what must have been the coast of North
America when a storm blew his ship off course. After hearing Herjolfsson’s
story, Leif Eriksson, known as Leif the Lucky, Eric’s son, bought Herjolfs-
son’s ship some years later (around the year 1000) and sailed west from
Greenland searching for the land his predecessor had seen. He found sev-
eral islands or promontories and gave them names during this voyage:
Helluland (which many historians now believe was Baffin Island), Mark-
land (often identified with Labrador), and finally Vinland. The sagas relate
that Vinland abounded with wild grape vines (thus the name), game of all
types, and fertile soil; the rivers teemed with fish. Leif and the thirty-five
men who sailed with him built permanent dwellings and explored the sur-
rounding area for almost a year. The next spring, Leif sailed back to Green-
land with a cargo of timber, grapes, and grape vines.
The Norse and the Indians. Eric the Red died during the winter following
Leif’s return from Vinland. Leif became too engrossed in his duties as chief-
tain of the Greenland colony to follow up his voyage of discovery. The sa-
gas record three more expeditions from the Greenland colony to Vinland
during subsequent years. According to the sagas, the Norse encountered
aborigines they called Skraelings (literally “wretches”) in Vinland and in-
teracted with them on several occasions. If the sagas are correct, the Norse
both exploited the Skraelings in trade and killed them in battle and by
treachery.
The sagas give no details about any subsequent Norse exploits in
Vinland. Despite the anecdotal and undoubtedly embellished nature of the
sagas, they have a ring of truth about them. After the archaeological dis-
coveries at L’Anse aux Meadows, many historians have come to regard the
sagas as valuable sources (although ones to be used with caution) about the
first European contacts with American Indians. From the accounts in the
sagas it must be concluded that the Norse exploited the Indians in trade as
callously as did the Spanish, Dutch, English, and French after Columbus.
256 / Indian-white relations: Norse
The Norse of the sagas had no more compunction about killing the Indians
than did the later European explorers.
Other evidence, however, suggests that contacts between the Norse and
the Indians were not always as hostile, or trade so one-sided, as portrayed
in the sagas. Since 1960, archaeologists have discovered numerous artifacts
in Eskimo sites throughout northern and central Canada of undoubted
Norse manufacture. These objects include wrought-iron axes, iron spear-
heads, and carved figurines. Such finds suggest extensive trade between
the Norse and American Indians. The game of lacrosse, taught by the
Algonquian Indians to French and British colonists, resembles an ancient
Norse game so closely that several historians are convinced it is the same
game. The Norse introduced it in Vinland, they argue, and from there it
spread throughout the pre-Columbian American northeast. If this theory is
correct, it suggests amiable relations between the Norse and Indians over a
considerable period of time.
One linguist has compiled a large collection of Northeast Indian (espe-
cially Iroquois) words that are pronounced similarly and have meanings
similar to those of words in the old Norse language. The language similar-
ity again suggests long and continued contact between the two peoples.
Many anthropologists also believe that the Norse left their genes among
American Indians, especially several groups of Eskimos and tribes of the
interior such as the Mandans. These groups display or displayed a number
of European characteristics when first encountered by post-Columbian col-
onists, including fair hair, light-colored eyes, exceptionally tall stature, and
luxuriant beards. If this assessment is accurate, the Norse did not launch a
war of extermination against the Indians, as did later waves of colonists,
but rather merged their culture with those of the aborigines.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations:
Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-white rela-
tions: French colonial; Indian-white relations: Russian colonial; Indian-
white relations: Spanish colonial; Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial;
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
1870; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1934-2002.
Paul Madden

Enterline, James Robert. Viking America: The Norse Crossings and Their Leg-
acy. Epilogue by Thor Heyerdahl. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
Magnusson, Magnus, and Hermann Palsson, eds. and trans. The Vinland
Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.
Indian-white relations: Russian colonial / 257
Mowat, Farley. Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North Amer-
ica. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965.
Reman, Edward. The Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1949.
Wahlgren, Erik. The Vikings and America. London: Thames & Hudson, 1986.
Indian-white relations: Russian colonial

Date: 1741-1867
Locale: Alaska
Tribes involved: Aleut, Inuit, Yupik, other western Subarctic and North-
west Coast tribes
Significance: Russia first encountered New World indigenous people
while trading furs and missionizing in the area of present-day Alaska.
Russian traders made contact with many Indian tribes along the western
Canadian and northwestern American coasts, from Alaska south to north-
ern California. Their strongest influence, however, was felt in the Arctic
and Subarctic areas by the Eskimos and Aleuts. There were very few early
contacts between Eskimos and Europeans because of the remoteness of the
Arctic region. Soon after the first encounters, which began with the Rus-
sians, the fur trade drew most European powers into the area. This led to a
radical change in the nature of indigenous Arctic culture.
Historical Background. Cossacks first heard of the Aleuts when they ar-
rived in Siberia in 1650. The Russians were continuing a policy of eastward
expansion and exploration in search of pelts. The indigenous people in Si-
beria told of their trading with groups in the Aleutian Islands. The desire
for sea otter furs, a maritime product, pushed the Russian traders farther to
the east into the “Great Land.” Knowledge of Europeans and their culture,
therefore, reached the Aleuts more than a century before actual European
contact.
Alaskan Eskimos first came into contact with Europeans in 1741, at the
time of Vitus Bering’s expedition on behalf of Russia. Bering was a Danish
explorer whose task was to extend the fur trade that had started in Siberia.
Sea otter fur obtained on the second Bering expedition precipitated the ar-
rival of many traders in the Aleutian Islands, as they left Siberia for this lu-
258 / Indian-white relations: Russian colonial
Voyages to Alaska, 1728-1769

Bering
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Avacha Shumagin
Islands
Bay
Bering’s voyages, 1728 (north), 1741 (south)
Gvozdev, 1732
Chirikov, 1741
Sindt, 1767-1768
Levashov and Krenitsyn, 1768-1769
P A C I F I C O C E A N
Between 1728 and 1769, the Russian government sponsored several important
expeditions to explore the waters and lands across what came to be known as the
Bering Strait, named after the most important of these explorers, Vitus Bering.
crative fur trade. Eskimos were hospitable to the Russian explorers, pro-
viding their guests with music, dancing, and feasting. They were also,
however, skillful traders who drove hard bargains for pelts in order to ob-
tain metal and enamel buttons, Siberian sabers, blue glass beads, and
knives. In exchange, the Russians received skins of river otter, red fox, mar-
ten, and wolverine.
Traders moving from island to island through the Aleutian chain had
reached the Alaska peninsula by 1762. The Aleuts were often brutalized in
the process. Aleut laborers were required to pay a tax (yasak). In an effort to
help stem the cruel treatment by traders, the Russian government made the
Aleuts Russian subjects in 1766. The yasak payment was revoked in 1788.
Between 1743 and 1797, dozens of Russian companies made numerous
voyages along the Aleutians. These companies obtained almost 200,000
pelts worth almost eight million rubles.
Colonization. In Southern Alaska, Grigory Shelekhov and Ivan Golikov

founded the first colony at Three Saints Bay, Kodiak Island. Shelekhov was
granted a charter in 1799 to form the Russian-American Company as a
twenty-year monopoly, although the Imperial Navy undertook an inde-
pendent expedition in search of a northern path to the Atlantic. More
charters were made in 1821 and 1844. The first company chief decreed that
the natives must labor for the company. Natives hunted sea otter under
Indian-white relations: Russian colonial / 259
dangerous conditions including the possibility of attack by the Tlingit Indi-

ans and the threat of bad weather. Official government policy sought to
treat the Eskimos and Aleuts fairly, but local exploitation of laborers by
traders was common. Each year, sea otter pelts and seal skins were shipped
through Siberia to Moscow and then on to China.
There was much intermarriage between Russian hunters and native
women. The children of these unions were recognized by a charter of 1821
as Russian subjects. Neither they nor their mothers could leave the colony.
Intermarriage was a key factor in the radical cultural changes that took
place among the natives of the Arctic region.
With the establishment of St. Michael in 1833, commercial trade became
of major importance. A few years later, however, the first of a series of dev-
astating epidemics attacked the area of Norton Sound and southern Alaska.
In some parts of the south, up to 50 percent of the population perished. The
Aleut population dropped from about seven thousand in 1836 to about
four thousand in 1840, the year the epidemic ended. The Russians were
able to contain the epidemic through a rigorous vaccination program
which began in 1838.
Russian Orthodox Church. The missionaries of the Russian Orthodox

church altered Aleut culture as much as the commercialization process.
Virtually all Aleuts were converted to Christianity, but the more numer-
ous Tlingits resisted missionization and commercialization. The Russian-
American Company and the Russian Orthodox Church were often at odds
with each other over the control of the region. Father Ivan Veniaminov was
the first priest concerned with indigenous people in the northern areas; he
arrived in 1829. From a mission on the Yukon River, established in 1844,
priests visited the surrounding villages. After the U.S. purchase of Alaska
in 1867, most clergy personnel were withdrawn, but a school in St. Michael
remained active.
Much of the Aleut culture underwent radical transformation. The new
form of religion was markedly different from the former traditional prac-
tice. Both the new modes of labor and the amount of intermarriage with
Russians had profound effects on social organization. Disease, resettle-
ment, and other effects of contact followed the well-known destructive pat-
tern experienced by the indigenous peoples of the New World.
See also: Bering Strait migrations; Indian-white relations: Canadian;
Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colo-
nial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Indian-white relations: Norse;
Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Indian-white relations: Swedish
colonial; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white relations:
260 / Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial
U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Indian-white rela-

tions: U.S., 1934-2002; Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: Subarctic.
William H. Green

Chevigny, Hector. Russian America: The Great Alaskan Venture, 1741-1867.
New York: Viking Press, 1965.
Gibson, James R. Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geogra-
phy of Supply of Russian America, 1784-1867. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1976.
Kan, Sergei. Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christian-
ity Through Two Centuries. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.
Mangusso, Mary Childers, and Stephen W. Haycox, eds. Interpreting Alaska’s
History: An Anthology. Anchorage: Alaska Pacific University Press, 1989.
Oswalt, Wendell H. Mission of Change in Alaska. San Marino, Calif.: Hun-
tington Library, 1963.
Ray, Dorothy Jean. The Eskimos of Bering Strait, 1650-1898. Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1975.
Sherwood, Morgan B., ed. Alaska and Its History. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1967.
____________. Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1965.
Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial

Date: 1492-1820’s
Locale: Southern, western, and southwestern North America
Tribes involved: Apache, Apalachee, Chumash, Pueblo, Timucua, Yuma
Significance: The Spanish Empire imposed a heavy cost on the Indian
peoples of North America from the 1570’s until its collapse in the
1820’s, in spite of Native Americans’ valiant efforts to deal with its
demands peacefully.
The Indians of North America escaped the violence and disruption of the
early Spanish conquest only to encounter later imperial thrusts that con-
tained the seeds of conflict. From the arrival of Christopher Columbus in
1492 to Hernán Cortés’s victory over the Aztecs in 1521, the Spanish estab-
Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial / 261
lished their control of the Caribbean area. The riches of the Aztecs inspired
expeditions southward to conquer the Inca Empire, but probings into
North America failed to locate concentrations of gold or large urban cen-
ters. Yet the 3,000-mile stretch of territory from Florida to California be-
came a vital but vulnerable frontier for the Spanish. They wanted to defend
the lifeline of their New World empire, which stretched from Mexico to
Hispaniola and on to Spain, by the establishment of settlements along the
southern fringe of what is now the United States. Relations between the In-
dians of North America and the colonists and institutions of the empire
were characterized by periods of tentative harmony under Spanish domi-
nation followed by the growth of tension and distrust among the natives,
which often resulted in alienation, rejection, and, in a few cases, open rebel-
lion.
Before the arrival of the Spanish, the Native American peoples along the
southern rim of North America had evolved a large variety of languages
and cultures that, while lacking the urbanization and centralization of the
Aztecs, had internal strengths of their own. From the Apalachees of what is
now northern Florida to the Chumash along the California coast, life usu-
ally centered on the extended family and villages with various combina-
tions of hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture to supply material
needs. All was not harmony in pre-conquest North America, however, as
the strained relationship between the Pueblos and Apaches revealed. The
Pueblos of the upper Rio Grande Valley lived a sedentary existence in their
multistory stone and adobe houses. Their agricultural practices gave them
a fairly stable source of food in contrast to their neighbors, the Apaches,
who were wandering hunter-gatherers. When the Apaches’ supplies ran
short, they would sometimes raid the villages of the more prosperous
Pueblos.
Spanish Institutions. These Apache-Pueblo conflicts were of limited du-

ration, but the arrival of the Spanish brought major disruptions that
would permanently change the lives of the Indians. The Spanish trans-
planted institutions previously established in Mexico, Peru, and other im-
perial centers. The encomienda, a type of land grant, was for many years
their chief method of commanding Indian labor. The encomendero (holder of
the encomienda) controlled Indian workers in exchange for a commitment
to protect and to provide for them. A second system of labor supervision
was the repartimiento, in which colonial officials assigned native workers to
a particular settler for a certain amount of time. Although in theory these
situations were regulated by colonial officials, in practice encomenderos
and settlers took advantage of their Indian charges by requiring them to
work beyond the original agreements. In addition to the encomienda and

repartimiento, the Spanish enslaved natives as personal servants or as labor-
ers in their agricultural or trading enterprises.
These labor practices, often harsh and exploitative, drew the protests of
Catholic missionaries. The priests assigned to frontier areas from Florida to
California brought with them an awareness of the ideals of Bartolomé de
Las Casas, who, from the 1520’s until his death in 1566, campaigned against
the mistreatment of Native Americans. These missionaries, usually mem-
bers of the Franciscan order along the North American frontier, attempted
to convert the Indians to Christianity. Their missions often served the na-
tives as havens from the demands of encomenderos, settlers, and even gov-
ernment officials.
The presidio, a small fort manned by a detachment of soldiers, generally
accompanied the mission. The original purpose of these frontier forts was
to protect the missionaries, settlers, and friendly natives from attacks by
European rivals such as the British and the French and their Indian allies.
As internal institutional and political disputes arose, however, these sol-
diers were sometimes deployed against the mission Indians to serve the
demands of settlers and officials for additional land or native laborers.
Historical records of the interaction of the Indians and the Spanish tend
to emphasize institutions such as the mission and the presidio, but the na-
tive response to the arrival of the Spanish was much more subtle than early
studies limited to archives reveal. Spanish friars reported massive conver-
sions of Indians to Christianity in remarkably short periods of time, but
these apparent conversions may have been simply the natives’ way of at-
tempting to develop good relations with the Europeans rather than the pro-
foundly religious experiences often described in the reports. The Indians
did not passively accept Spanish dominance but rather found ways to ac-
commodate demands for conversion and for labor while, at the same time,
preserving much of their own autonomy and tradition.
Florida. The Franciscans began their work in Florida in 1573 and within
eighty years had erected more than thirty missions extending northward
and westward in two chains from their base in St. Augustine. The Francis-
cans used music, paintings, and colorful ceremonies to attract the natives’
attention. They claimed that twenty-six thousand converts had accepted
Christianity by 1655 (this claim is disputed by many historians). The
Apalachees, Timucuas, and other nearby tribes were receptive to the mis-
sionaries in the early years in part as a response to the Franciscan appeals;
however, the Indians also saw strategic advantages in an alliance with the
missionaries for protection against Spanish settlers and soldiers. The na-
Nineteenth century painter Frederic Remington’s fanciful depiction of Francisco

Vásquez de Coronado’s march through Colorado in 1541 in search of a kingdom
known to him as Gran Quivira. Much of what drove the early Spanish explorers was
a search for gold and other riches. (Library of Congress)
tives’ selective acceptance of Catholicism was indicated by their placement

of Christian images among their traditional religious symbols.
The tensions in the Indian-Spanish relationships exploded in the early
1700’s under additional pressures from British settlements to the north.
The British founded Charleston in 1670 and began to push to the interior,
thereby posing a threat to the mission-presidio system stretching out from
St. Augustine. The Charlestonians recruited nonmission Indians and wel-
comed the alienated natives who left the Spanish. The Indians, caught in
the struggle between the two European powers, found it necessary to take
sides or abandon the area. One Apalachee chief, Patricio de Hinachuba,
urged Spanish officials to end their abusive policies in order to hold the
support of his people and other nearby tribes. Patricio, a perceptive leader,
attempted to represent the interests of the Apalachee while remaining
within the Spanish orbit. Through personal diplomacy with the British in
1706, he managed to spare his village from attack and then led his followers
toward St. Augustine for sanctuary. His hopes were dashed, however,
when a group of pro-British Indians attacked his band just outside the large
stone fortifications of St. Augustine. Patricio de Hinachuba perished along
with his Apalachee community.
The defeat of the Spanish in the early 1700’s was a symptom of the de-
cline of the missions. The British military attacks were important factors in
the Spanish loss, but the defection of many of the mission Indians in this
time of crisis was also important. As Patricio de Hinachuba attempted to
explain to the Spanish, the onerous burdens of repartimiento and slavery
weighed heavily on many Native American communities. Apparently
many Indians joined the British as an act of rebellion against the Spanish.
Only a few Indians remained with the missions at the stronghold of St. Au-
gustine and a handful of sites scattered across the northern part of Florida.
These defections, however, brought few if any improvements for the Indi-
ans: The British also resorted to enslavement of the able-bodied natives
and proved as aggressive as the Spanish in usurping land.
New Mexico. While different in many details, the Spanish colonial effort
along the upper Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico and western Texas
bore a resemblance to the rise and fall of the mission-presidio system in
Florida. Although the New Mexico project may appear to have been a logi-
cal extension of Spanish settlements in northern Mexico, the expedition of
explorer of Juan de Oñate in 1598 marked a significant leap for the Spanish
across rugged deserts and through hostile Indian territory. New Mexico,
like Florida, was isolated from the core areas of the empire and constituted
not only an effort to bring Christianity and European civilization to the Na-
tive Americans but also a barrier to the occupation of the region by Euro-
pean rivals.
Oñate’s settlements took hold, and by the 1620’s New Mexico seemed
to be a healthy and prosperous colony; particularly impressive was the
work of the Franciscan missionaries. By 1629 they had established fifty
missions that on a map formed the pattern of a cross running northward up
the Rio Grande to the settlement in Taos; the arms of the cross extended
westward to the Zuñi and Hopi pueblos and eastward to Pecos. Father
Alonso de Benavides’ report that the Franciscans had baptized eighty-six
thousand Indians circulated not only in Mexico City but also in Madrid and
Rome.
The actual relationship between the Pueblo Indians and the Franciscans
was less dramatic than these early reports indicated. The Pueblos probably
turned to the missionaries and the accompanying Spanish soldiers for se-
curity against their long-time neighbors and periodic adversaries, the
Apaches. The Pueblos were impressed by the church’s religious ceremo-
nies, the support that the clerics received from military and government of-
ficials, and the Franciscans’ presentation of Christian doctrine. The Pueblos,
however, much like the Apalachees and Timucuas of Florida, accepted por-
tions of the missionaries’ messages while retaining significant components

of their own beliefs and customs.
Inevitably, the arrival of the Spanish took a toll on the natives. The initial
excitement gave way to the more practical problems of work, food, and
clothing. Oñate secured imperial approval for encomiendas for himself and
a few of the prominent early settlers. These grants placed certain Indian vil-
lages under a legal obligation to pay tribute (a tax) to the encomenderos.
Soon colonial officials established the repartimiento as a means of supplying
young Indians to work for settlers. Colonial governors of New Mexico of-
ten used the repartimiento—and even illegal slave labor—in agricultural
and commercial enterprises to augment their salaries. Pueblo communi-
ties, with this loss of the labor of many of their vigorous males and females,
experienced not only an indignity but also a growing difficulty in feeding
themselves.
The natives’ frustrations with these conditions erupted in small rebel-
lions as early as 1632 at Zuñi and 1639-1640 at Taos, but the Spanish seemed
to ignore these ominous signs. Crop losses from bad weather in the 1660’s
and 1670’s and intensified Apache raids added to the Pueblos’ difficulties.
A leader capable of unifying Indian resistance appeared in the person of
Popé, a Pueblo religious mystic punished by the Spanish for alleged sor-
cery. In August and September of 1680, Popé led a large portion of the sev-
enteen thousand Pueblos in an uprising that killed more than four hundred
of New Mexico’s twenty-five hundred Spanish settlers and sent the survi-
vors fleeing down the Rio Grande to El Paso. After the expulsion of the
Spanish, the native leadership openly rejected Christianity and discour-
aged the use of the Spanish language. Although the Spanish returned to
New Mexico in the early 1690’s, the growth of the colony was slow, and its
reputation as a center for peaceful conversion was discredited.
Frontier Struggles of the Eighteenth Century. The Indians’ defections and

rebellions in Florida and New Mexico did not force the Spanish to abandon
the northern edge of their American empire, but these events dramatized
the need for new approaches in their relations with American Indians.
Also, the 1763 acquisition of the vast territory of Louisiana placed new
pressures on Indian-Spanish relations. Imperial defense policy called for
control of the Apaches and other mobile tribes of Texas because they threat-
ened access to Louisiana by land from northern Mexico.
The Apaches roamed the large area between New Mexico and the small
group of missions precariously planted around San Antonio in eastern
Texas. The basic unit of Apache social organization was the extended fam-
ily, and for their material existence, they relied on hunting and gathering,
limited agriculture, and, when shortages developed, raids on nearby sed-

entary Pueblos. In their small, migratory groups, the Apaches confused
the confounded Spanish officials, who, in spite of the efforts of mission-
aries and soldiers, found it impossible to bring them into the colonial
system.
The most intensive effort to deal with the Apaches came in the initia-
tives of José de Gálvez, a powerful colonial official in the 1770’s and 1780’s.
Gálvez continued military actions against the Apaches but also incorpo-
rated the French and British strategies of stimulating trade with the na-
tives along the northern frontier to undermine tribal autonomy. Gálvez
authorized the sale of alcohol and poorly made firearms to the Apaches.
The alcohol was intended to create a dependency among the natives on
their merchant-suppliers, and the firearms would require frequent repair
and replacement. Historian David J. Weber summarized the new policies
as the adoption of “tried and true English and French practices to destroy
the basis of native culture” in order to achieve with “the iron fist and the
velvet glove what missionaries had been unable to do through less violent
and cynical means.” Gálvez’s changes came too late for the Spanish Em-
pire, however; within a generation, the expansion of the United States and
the independence of Mexico would remove Spanish control from the bor-
derlands area.
California. Gálvez also pushed Spanish settlements into Alta California

(the present state of California) in response to the rumored encroachments
of the Russians moving down the Pacific coast from Alaska. Gálvez did not
like the flawed mission-presidio system, but financial problems forced him
to implant a variation of this approach in California in 1769. Franciscans
led by Junípero Serra recaptured some of the enthusiasm of the first gener-
ations of missionaries in Florida and New Mexico. Within five years they
had nearly five thousand Indians living on their missions. Mission life for
the Chumash and other tribes, while pleasant at first, became another di-
sastrous encounter with Europeans. Epidemic diseases and crowded living
quarters brought high infant mortality rates and a rapid decline in the In-
dian population of California, from about 300,000 in 1769 to perhaps
200,000 in 1821. Many natives eventually fled the missions, but except for
the Yumas’ attack on the settlements along the California side of the lower
Colorado River in 1781, Indian violence against the Spanish was rare. Al-
though these desertions and the decline of the native population strained
the Indian-Spanish relationship, the missions enjoyed some prosperity and
were among Spain’s most viable settlements in California in 1821 when
Mexican independence brought an end to the empire in the borderlands.
While Indian-Spanish relations were generally dominated by the Euro-

peans, the natives were resourceful in many of their earlier efforts to limit
foreign influences. They had their greatest successes with subtle, diplo-
matic adjustments to the peaceful methods of the missionaries. The influ-
ence of these missionaries, however, survived for only a few decades.
Eventually the trauma of epidemic diseases and the burdens of forced la-
bor, tribute payment, and cultural-religious impositions kindled hostile
reactions among many native groups. In the borderlands areas, the Span-
ish were often motivated by strategic factors in response to the expansive
actions of their European rivals. These strategic concerns frequently placed
military policies at the forefront in Indian-Spanish relations, especially in
response to native unrest and rebellion. The ultimate outcome of the
clash between Native Americans and the Spanish favored the latter; Na-
tive Americans paid an immense price in terms of life, culture, and prop-
erty.
See also: Acoma, Battle of; California missions; Epidemics and diseases;
Gadsden Purchase; Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of; Indian-white relations:
English colonial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Indian-white re-
lations: Russian colonial; Pima uprisings; Prehistory: California; Prehis-
tory: Southwest; Pueblo Revolt; Taos Rebellion; Zuñi Rebellion.
John A. Britton

Hanke, Lewis. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, 1965. Historical study of the Spanish debate concern-
ing the treatment of Indians, with emphasis on the work of Bartolomé de
Las Casas.
Hann, John. Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: Univer-
sity Presses of Florida, 1988. An in-depth synthesis of a crucial area in
Indian-Spanish relations based on thorough research and thoughtful
analysis.
John, Elizabeth A. H. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation
of the Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795. College Sta-
tion: Texas A&M University Press, 1975. Readable overview of the con-
frontations involving the Indians, Spanish, and French in the American
Southwest from 1540 to 1795. Heavy emphasis on the Native Ameri-
cans’ responses.
268 / Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial
McAlister, Lyle. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Includes a clearly written ac-
count of Spain’s general imperial policies such as the encomienda and the
repartimiento.
Sandos, James. “Junípero Serra’s Canonization and the Historical Record.”
American Historical Review 93 (December, 1988): 1253-1269. An impor-
tant article on the controversies surrounding the early California mis-
sions.
Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the
United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1553-1960. Tucson: Univer-
sity of Arizona Press, 1962. Broad study of the impact of several genera-
tions of outside cultural, economic, and military invasions on the Indian
peoples. Somewhat dated by more recent research but contains much
useful material.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Trans-
lated by Richard Howard. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1999. Investigates the cultural clash between Spanish and Native Amer-
ican mentalities and explores the European conquest of North America
as a semiotic process.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1992. Excellent detailed synthesis of Spanish
imperial efforts from Florida to California based on a comprehensive
survey of the research in the field. Includes historical, ethnographic, and
archaeological sources to provide a balance of European and Native
American points of view. Extensive footnotes and lengthy bibliography
provide the reader with valuable citations for further research.
Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial

Date: 1600’s
Locale: Delaware River Valley
Tribes involved: Asseteque, Lenni Lenape, Mingo, Nanticoke
Significance: Swedish colonial ventures to the Delaware River Valley
during the seventeenth century had a lasting impact on the American
Indians who inhabited the region, particularly the Lenni Lenape and
the Mingo; Swedish occupation, although relatively peaceful, caused
the Indians’ removal from the area.
Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial / 269
Contact between American Indians and Europeans in North America dur-

ing the seventeenth century embodied a wide range of experiences. One
component often overlooked is the Swedish venture into the Middle At-
lantic region. Although their official occupation was relatively brief—1638
to 1655—they had a lasting impact on the area and the Indians that they
encountered. Their officials set the stage for later English negotiations
with the Indians of the area, and their colonists contributed to the ethnic
diversity of the region. The Swedes and their Dutch allies concentrated
their colonial ventures in the region south of the Susquehanna River and
north of the Potomac. These endeavors stretched from 1638 through the
middle of the century and established the pattern of colonial contact in
the area.
Prehistoric Background. Prior to European contact in the late 1630’s, the

Indians of the Delaware Valley represented two major linguistic and ethno-
graphic groups. The first, the Lenni Lenape, were Algonquian speakers
and were closely related to the Asseteque and the Nanticoke that sur-
rounded them. This group, whom the English later referred to as the Dela-
ware, were subdivided into three contingents: the Munsi, the Unami, and
the Unalachtigo. According to the oral tradition of the Lenni Lenape, the
Walam Olum, this tribe migrated into the region from the northwest to cross
the Mississippi River and then east over the Appalachian Mountains. The
other component consisted of Iroquoian speakers, the Mingo (or Minqua),
who were loosely affiliated with the Iroquois Confederacy. The Mingo
were later arrivals to the region and were an invasive force aligned with
the powerful Iroquois tribes to the north and the west. Both groups were
fairly typical of the Northeast Woodlands culture zone which they inhab-
ited. They tended toward political decentralization, with the greatest em-
phasis placed on tribal integrity. Leadership generally resided with a chief
or sachem. Economically these peoples depended on agriculture, supple-
mented by hunting and gathering. They also engaged in extensive trade
networking.
Colonial Contact. Swedish colonial enterprise resulted from the monar-

chy’s interest and trade in the Netherlands during the early seventeenth
century. Swedish settlement in the Delaware Valley during the 1630’s oc-
curred as an extension of the already established Dutch interests in the
New Netherlands to the north. In March, 1638, with the aid of the Dutch en-
voy, Peter Minuit, the Swedish negotiated with local natives for the land
that became the Swedish settlement Christina (present-day Wilmington).
These settlements then expanded to Passayung (Philadelphia) in the north
270 / Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial
Nineteenth century depiction of Peter Minuit helping Swedish colonists buy Indian
land for New Sweden in 1638. (Library of Congress)
and to Fort Casmir (New Castle). The Swedes, some three to four hundred
strong, concentrated their settlement on the west side of the Delaware
River and lived on individual farms in log houses of the sort they inhabited
in Sweden. This association focused primarily on the trade of European
manufactured goods for animal pelts obtained by Indians and was con-
ducted by representatives of the Swedish government. In the 1640’s the
Swedish power and influence in the region reached its peak, and the rela-
tionships between the settlers and their native counterparts remained rela-
tively peaceful. Officials suggested that the colonists learned from the Indi-
ans methods of adapting to their “primitive existences” in New Sweden.
By 1650, when the Dutch had attempted to reassert their control over the re-
gion, approximately one thousand Swedes and ethnic Finns resided under
the protection of the Swedish crown in the Delaware Valley. During that de-
cade, the interests of the Swedish monarchy and the Dutch traders in the re-
gion faded, and support for the venture declined. The colonists found
themselves in increasingly marginal situations; their abilities to trade and
to defend themselves waned.
Indian Relations. When the Swedes entered the region in 1638 they ap-
proached peoples, the Lenni Lenape and the Mingo, already at odds with
Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial / 271
each other. The Swedish presence exaggerated each group’s concerns

about the access to land and the local balance of power. Initial negotiations
treated the various tribes generically. Later Swedish discussions, however,
resulted in a trade alliance that favored the Mingo, whom the Swedes de-
scribed as “special friends.” According to Johan Rising, Swedish governor,
by 1655 the situation in the colony had grown ominous, with the “Renappi
[sic] threatening not only to kill our people in the land . . . but also to de-
stroy even trade with the Minques [sic] and the other savage nations.” The
trade with the Mingo persisted until Swedish trade goods ran out and the
beaver trapped by the Indians disappeared. By the end of the 1660’s the of-
ficial Dutch and Swedish presences in the region disappeared, and the En-
glish replaced them. The Lenni Lenape had begun a forced retreat to the
west. The combination of encroachment on the land by the Swedes, the im-
pact of European disease, and the predations of the hostile Mingo forced
them from the valley. The Mingo survived the Swedish occupation but not
that of the English who succeeded them.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations:
Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-white rela-
tions: French colonial; Indian-white relations: Norse; Prehistory: North-
east.
Martha I. Pallante

Acrelius, Israel. A History of New Sweden, 1759. Reprint. Translated by Wil-
liam M. Reynolds. Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
1874.
Cochran, Thomas C. Pennsylvania: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978.
Munroe, John A. History of Delaware. 2d ed. Newark: University of Dela-
ware Press, 1984.
Sachese, Julius F. History of the German Role in the Discovery, Exploration, and
Settlement of the New World. Reprint. Germany and America, 1450-1700.
Edited by Don H. Tolzman. New York: Heritage Books, 1991.
Weslager, C. A. Delaware’s Buried Past: A Study of Archaeological Adventure.
Rev. ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1968.
Wuorinen, John H. The Finns on the Delaware, 1638-1655: An Essay in Colonial
American History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1938.
272 / Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830

Date: 1775-1830
Categories: Eighteenth century history, National government and legis-
lation, Native government, Nineteenth century history, Treaties, Wars
and battles
Significance: Following the Declaration of Independence, the fledgling
United States was confronted with designing an Indian policy that
combined two contradictory objectives: protecting Indians while aid-
ing westward movement of white settlers.
During the two centuries of colonization prior to American independence,

Indians had been ineffectual in halting the encroachment of white set-
tlers on tribal lands. Disease, demoralization, alcohol addiction, and wars
had tragically diminished native populations. Moreover, Indians lost their
principal ally as the French suffered defeat in the French and Indian War
(1754-1763), thereafter subjecting Indians to their British enemies as well as
to the virtually unchecked and seemingly relentless land hunger of English
settlers.
American Revolution. Both the Americans and the British initially sought
to ensure Indian neutrality during the American Revolution, for both sides
claimed to fear Indian “savagery” in battle. Their policies of neutrality
were quickly abandoned, however, as both the Americans and the British
sought aid from the powerful Indians still remaining on their eastern tribal
lands. The turning point occurred in 1776 as the Cherokees, angered by in-
cessant American intrusions, launched a series of raids on American settle-
ments. Believing them to have been armed by the British, Congress accord-
ingly authorized General Griffith Rutherford to undertake a retaliatory
strike against the Cherokees. Rutherford and his troops subsequently ram-
paged through Cherokee land, razing thirty-six Indian villages, including
their crops and stores. The Cherokee War served as a deterrent against fur-
ther southern Indian involvement in the revolution, as other tribes feared
similar retribution would be visited upon them should they elect to partici-
pate.
A similar fate befell the powerful Iroquois of New York, whose alliance
was courted by both the Americans and the British. A majority of the Iro-
quois Confederacy joined the British, who sponsored a series of Iroquois
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830 / 273
attacks intending to sever American supply lines through New York’s Mo-
hawk Valley. In response, American commander-in-chief George Washing-
ton authorized General John Sullivan to lead a sizable punitive expedition
against the Iroquois in 1779. Sullivan’s troops mercilessly burned and pil-
laged, destroying twenty-eight Iroquois villages, along with their stores
and crops. Economically the Iroquois never recovered from the Sullivan
campaign. In addition, the centuries-old Iroquois Confederacy was de-
stroyed when some Tuscaroras and Oneidas, encouraged by the influential
missionaries Eleazar Wheelock and Samuel Kirkland, joined the Patriot
cause against the British.
During the revolution most Indians ultimately allied themselves with
the British, and at war’s end they were once again at the mercy of their ene-
mies; this time, however, their enemies were the Americans.
Indian Rebellions. From the initial Powhatan rebellion in Virginia in 1622

through the pantribal alliance of Pontiac in 1763, Indian tribes had endeav-
ored to safeguard their land rights as the white population advanced at an
alarming rate. After the American Revolution, aided by government policy
which treated Indian lands as forfeit because of the Indian and British alli-
ance, European Americans viewed their victory as license for uninhibited
westward expansion. In the north, Americans made no distinction between
An illustration from Lewis and Clark’s journal (published in 1812) provides insight
into the attitudes of at least some Euro-American settlers who were encroaching
upon Native American lands in the trans-Mississippi West. (Library of Congress)
Patriot and Loyalist Indians; all Indian land was subject to confiscation.
Thus, during the Confederation period (in which the U.S. government was
operating under the Articles of Confederation), Indians were forced to sign
treaties which forfeited their land titles. The Confederation government
proved incapable of enforcing treaties that failed when challenged by In-
dian resistance. In the south, federal treaties were negotiated for Indian
protection. Those treaties were not upheld either. One problem was that
some southern states, notably Georgia, repudiated Confederation author-
ity. As American settlers vigorously resumed their unremitting westward
drive, Indians responded with rebellions.
With British defeat in 1783, steadily increasing numbers of settlers
moved into the Old Northwest territory (around the Great Lakes). United
by a war chief, Little Turtle, Indians of that region participated in nu-
merous raids on white settlers between 1783 and 1790. Although Presi-
dent George Washington in 1790 ordered armed resistance, Indian raids
continued nearly unimpeded. In 1794, a force of three thousand rigor-
ously drilled and highly disciplined troops under the command of General
“Mad” Anthony Wayne earned a decisive victory against Little Turtle at
the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The following year, Indians signed the Treaty
of Fort Greenville, ceding virtually all of their lands in the Northwest Ter-
ritory.
The spirit of rebellion persisted, however; in the early 1800’s, the vision-
ary Shawnee leader Tecumseh organized a pan-Indian alliance and sought
to create a united Indian confederation. He traveled from north to south
(from New York to Florida) and westward to present-day Iowa seeking al-
lies among Indian tribes. His resistance was aborted, however, when his
brother, spiritual leader Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet), led a prema-
ture, ill-fated attack on November 11, 1811, against the forces of William
Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe. His warriors were defeated, resulting in
disillusionment and then defections from the alliance. Many tribes pur-
sued rebellions in their own territories, but Tecumseh was thereafter un-
able to organize a united Indian front. During the War of 1812, he joined
forces with the British, proving himself a capable ally. Several other tribes
that Tecumseh had courted, however, chose to ally with the Americans.
In the south, Indians invoked Spanish aid against American encroach-
ments. With General Andrew Jackson’s victory against the Creeks at the
Battle of Horseshoe Bend, March 27, 1814, however, expectations of an ulti-
mate Indian victory were extinguished.
Trade. In the aftermath of Little Turtle’s War, President Washington and his
secretary of war, Henry Knox, both principled men, sought a policy to en-
sure peace between Indians and the federal government. To that end, on
April 18, 1796, Congress established the “factory system” for the regulation
of Indian trade. It was designed to make peace rather than to generate
profit. Government trading posts, known as factories, were designated
across the frontier as centers for Indian trade. At the government-regulated
factories, Indians were assured equitable trade. The factory system per-
sisted until 1822 but failed to withstand the machinations of independent
and frequently dishonest American and British Canadian traders.
After the War of 1812, additional measures known as the Trade and In-
tercourse Acts were enacted to regulate trade and establish a licensing sys-
tem. These laws were designed to safeguard Indian lands and to provide
for the extradition of criminals and the punishment of crimes committed
by whites on Indian land. They formed the basis for the Trade and Inter-
course Act of 1834.
Civilization. By 1819, through the efforts of the humanitarian reformer

Thomas L. McKenney, aided by missionaries’ lobbying of the federal gov-
ernment, a new federal Indian policy was initiated. The goal, which was
to be accomplished through education, was the assimilation of Indians
through Christianization and introduction to white agricultural techniques.
Under the Civilization Fund Act, passed in 1819, which allocated ten thou-
sand dollars for establishing schools on Indian tribal lands, Indians were to
be taught American culture. Theoretically, civilization would result in the
assimilation of Indians into white America, thereby eliminating threats of
violence as well as freeing Indian land for white usage. Most Indians, how-
ever, continued to resist white culture, preferring to retain their tribal tradi-
tions. The minority who were indoctrinated as youths faced racial preju-
dice if they attempted to live as members of white society.
In the 1820’s American encroachment on Indian lands was virtually un-
inhibited, and regulation of Indian trade, despite the best intentions em-
bodied in the factory system and the Trade and Intercourse Acts, was
largely ineffectual. Furthermore, many, including state officials, found as-
similation through acculturation intolerably slow. Consequently, federal
Indian policy evolved toward a final resolution to the “Indian problem” in
the form of relocation of Indians to the newly created Indian Territory
(present-day Oklahoma).
Removal. Indian removal, or the exchange by treaty of eastern land for

lands west of the Mississippi, had several proponents, including human-
itarian reformers concerned with safeguarding Indian culture through
resettlement beyond the pale of white America, thereby relieving pressures
on Indian tribal lands. Others were motivated by the base expectation

of settlement on rich Indian lands. Georgia, coveting the sizable territory
of the Cherokee Nation, eventually forced the issue to resolution. Ironi-
cally, the Cherokee Nation had become the most “civilized” of the Indian
tribes, having adopted sedentary agriculture, a Cherokee syllabary, a writ-
ten constitution, and a legal system patterned after that of the United
States.
The spread of cotton agriculture and the discovery of gold on Cherokee
lands, as well as the specter of a foreign nation within the state’s bound-
aries, lent impetus to Georgia’s eagerness to annex Indian lands. After the
passage of Georgia’s statutes extending the state’s laws to the Cherokee
Nation and disallowing Cherokee land claims, the Cherokee Nation ap-
pealed to the United States Congress. Meantime, President Andrew Jack-
son, elected in 1828, proved unsympathetic to Indian protests. He initiated,
and saw to fruition, plans for Indian removal.
On May 28, 1830, Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, by
which all eastern Indians were to exchange their ancestral lands for land in
the new trans-Mississippi Indian territory. Land exchanges were intended
to be peaceably negotiated with Indian tribes. In practice, however, re-
moval was frequently enforced against protesting Indians through both le-
gal and illegal methods. Although 90 percent of the Cherokees resisted re-
moval, for example, the intractable Jackson negotiated a removal treaty
with a friendly minority faction. The Cherokee Nation, although disavow-
ing this patently spurious document, was nevertheless bound to it and
forced to move westward.
Indian removal eliminated the last obstacles to white expansion east of
the Mississippi River. While the benefits to the states were obvious, re-
moval for the eastern Indians was disastrous. Their new lands, often mar-
ginal and geographically dissimilar to their homelands, rendered their
hunting and agricultural practices obsolete. A number of tribes were
moved several times before their final settlement; others were located on
land already inhabited by hostile tribes. Moreover, relentless white pres-
sures for Indian lands continued as American settlers pushed their settle-
ments ever farther westward. The process of dispossession begun early in
the seventeenth century continued unabated until the end of the nine-
teenth century.
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Cherokee Phoenix; Creek War; Dancing
Rabbit Creek, Treaty of; Epidemics and diseases; Fallen Timbers, Battle of;
Fort Greenville Treaty; Fort Mims, Battle of; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Fort
Wayne Treaty; Horseshoe Bend Treaty; Indian Removal Act; Indian-white
relations: Dutch colonial; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-
white relations: French colonial; Indian-white relations: Swedish colonial;

Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Con-
gress meeting; Kickapoo Resistance; Lewis and Clark expedition; Little
Turtle’s War; Lord Dunmore’s War; Northwest Ordinance; Seminole Wars;
Tecumseh’s Rebellion; Thames, Battle of the; Tippecanoe, Battle of; Trail
of Tears; Treaties and agreements in the United States; Tuscarora War;
Wabash, Battle of the; Winnebago Uprising.
Mary E. Virginia

Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.:
Syracuse University Press, 1972. An excellent, highly detailed account
of the Iroquois during the American Revolution.
O’Donnell, James H. Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1973. Focusing on the Cherokees, Chicka-
saws, Creeks, and Choctaws, O’Donnell describes the attitudes of both
the British and the Americans toward their Indian allies and Indian ene-
mies. Indexed, annotated, with bibliography.
Prucha, Francis Paul. “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment.”
Journal of American History 56, no. 3 (1969): 527-539. A discussion of Jack-
son’s Indian policy from a sympathetic viewpoint, describing the pres-
sures leading to Indian removal.
____________. The Great Father: The United States Government and the Ameri-
can Indians. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. An ex-
tensive, fully annotated, indexed, and illustrated history of Indian-
white relations from the founding of the United States to the 1980’s by
one of the premier authorities on Indian-white relations.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars. New York: Viking,
2001. An acclaimed biography of Jackson in the context of his ideas
about and policies toward Indians. Attempts to show the underlying
motives for Indian removal.
versity of Nebraska Press, 1975. A thorough treatment of Andrew Jack-
son and Indian removal. Annotated, indexed, with bibliography.
Tyler, S. Lyman. A History of Indian Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1973. A brief chronological guide to Indian policy. Illus-
trated, containing maps, time lines, and bibliography.
Utley, Robert Marshall, and Wilcomb E. Washburn. Indian Wars. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2002. A comprehensive survey of the wars, battles,
and conflicts between European Americans and Indians, written by two
well-respected historians.
Viola, Herman J. Thomas L. McKenney: Architect of America’s Early Indian Pol-

icy, 1816-1830. Chicago: Sage Books, 1974. Informative biography of
McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade and the first director of the Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs, and description of his Indian policy under the ad-
ministrations of presidents James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy
Adams, and Andrew Jackson. Illustrated and indexed. Bibliography.
book of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu-
tion Press, 1988. An invaluable reference source containing articles on
all aspects of Indian-white relations. Includes biographical dictionary.
Fully annotated. Bibliography and illustrations.

Date: 1831-1870
Nineteenth century history, Treaties, Wars and battles
Significance: In the 1830’s, U.S. policy toward Native Americans changed
from treating tribes as “separate nations” to forcing integration into
white society.
The nineteenth century represents a pivotal point in Indian-white rela-

tions. Indian tribes went from being independent nations to being treated
as wards of the United States. The U.S. government reduced Indian rights
and freedoms until they almost disappeared.
1830’s. During the 1830’s, the U.S. government and its citizens generally
viewed Indians as a disposable nuisance. Despite the acculturation of the
Five Civilized Tribes, many whites viewed them as dispensable “savages”
who failed to utilize “properly” the land under their control. Many Indian
groups suffered from white misconceptions. Where whites once searched for
the “noble savage” or the Indian with whom they could discuss politics and
religion, now whites viewed Indians as “wretched” and as an annoyance.
U.S. policy reflected these changes in attitudes. In 1830 Congress passed
the Indian Removal Act, and soon thereafter the U.S. government forcibly
removed the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeast (Cherokee, Chickasaw,
Western Indian-White Conflicts, 1831-1870
Four Lakes
(1858)
Kildeer Mountain
(1864) Big Mound (1863)
Hayfield (1867) Whitestone Hill Birch Coulee (1862)

(1863)
Wood Lake New Ulm (1862)
Bear River Fetterman Defeat (1866)
(1862) Fort Ridgely (1862)
(1863)
Pyramid
Platte Bridge (1865) Bluewater (1855)
Lake
(1860) Beecher’s Island
(1868)
Sand Creek
(1864)
Canyon de Chelly (1864) Washita (1868)

Adobe Soldier Spring
Walls (1868)
(1864)
Apache Pass (1862)
Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole). The government no longer treated tribes

as independent foreign nations; they became “domestic, dependent na-
tions.” This meant that treaties could be made with them but that the gov-
ernment treated the land as being held in escrow for the Indians. The Five
Civilized Tribes were moved to Oklahoma (then known as Indian Terri-
tory) and made to live in a different climate from the one they knew. Forced
to leave behind their farms, tools, and buildings, they faced death and dis-
ease in their new homes.
The U.S. government considered removal the best policy for settling dis-
putes between whites and Indians. During the 1830’s, the U.S. government
removed the Winnebagos from Wisconsin, the Potawatomi from Indiana,
and the Sauk and Fox from Wisconsin, as well as removing the Five Civi-
lized Tribes from the Southeast. Removed Indians lost their land, their
ways of life, and their political freedoms. Tribal factions erupted over
whether to accept removal. Tensions arose again after removal over how to
cope with the change. Removal attacked Indian autonomy.
Removal also increased intertribal tensions. Tribes from the east were
moved into lands already occupied by western tribes. This meant that more
tribes vied for the same resources. Removal upset the tribal balance of
power that had existed in the Plains. Eventually, whites joined the fray over
the land in the west.
Americans aggressively pursued the policy of manifest destiny, taking
the Oregon Territory from the British in the 1830’s. Missionary Marcus Whit-
man, his wife Narcissa, and the H. H. Spauldings accomplished this by lead-
ing settlers into Oregon Territory with congressional approval. Though
originally sent to Christianize the Cayuse Indians, they focused instead on
populating the region so that it could be claimed by the United States. The
Cayuse and other groups in the area resented this intrusion by settlers. The
British had simply traded with the Indians; they had not brought settlers.
Clashes over land and animals erupted constantly as the two groups tried
to live together. Tensions rose steadily throughout the 1830’s.
1840’s and 1850’s. Attitudes toward the Indians changed dramatically dur-
ing the 1840’s. Indians were considered a threat and an impediment to
American development of the west. Two incidents particularly influenced
this change in attitude: the Whitman Massacre and the Mexican-American
War.
The Arapaho Ghost Dance as depicted by artist Mary Irvin c. 1910, based on pho-
tographs by James Mooney. The Ghost Dance religion was begun by the prophet
Wovoka, who preached a vision of Indian resurgence and resurrection. Such move-
ments were a response to white oppression. (National Archives)
By 1845, five thousand settlers a year were moving into the Oregon Ter-
ritory. The Indians in this region watched as whites subdivided the land
with fences and houses. In 1847, frustrated with the tide of white settlers
and disease, the Cayuse rose up and massacred the Whitmans and several
other whites. Spaulding, who missed the attack, became an opponent of
the Indians. The massacre shocked and horrified Americans in the East. It
brought back colonial period images of the Indians as bloodthirsty sav-
ages. All Indians west of the Mississippi suffered from this characteriza-
tion.
After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), according to the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, the western border of the United States jumped from
the Mississippi to the Pacific coast. It destroyed what the government con-
sidered the “Indian barrier” of the Mississippi, opening the western half of
the U.S. to white “civilization” and settlement. This altered Indian-white
relations on the Plains, in the Southwest, and on the Pacific coast. Until the
end of the Mexican-American War, most of the Indian groups west of the
Mississippi had avoided subjugation to the Spanish and had traded with
the French. They did not expect to be subjugated by the Americans. The in-
troduction of whites interested in settlement into western territory in-
creased tensions between Indians and whites.
During the 1840’s and 1850’s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) shared
the responsibility of defining policy with the military. The BIA represented
one of the most mismanaged of government offices. It was a favorite spot
for placing beneficiaries of the spoils system—newly elected senators and
congressmen placed their political allies in the BIA as a reward for service.
Graft and corruption existed at every level, from the agents in the field to the
commissioners in Washington. Additionally, these administrators turned
over with every new election. Yet the U.S. government placed the BIA in
charge of defining long-term Indian policy.
To aid westward expansion, the BIA sought to extinguish Indian land ti-
tles during this period. As whites took over more and more western land, it
became apparent that removing Indians to unoccupied land would no lon-
ger be feasible. The BIA considered treaties and annuity payments to be the
fastest and most efficient way to end titles. Often BIA negotiators lied to In-
dian representatives to get them to sign the treaties. They withheld annu-
ities from previous treaties to force Indian leaders to sign new treaties. In
addition, Congress changed the treaties before ratifying them. Such decep-
tions led to poor relations between whites and Indians.
The paying of annuities for relinquished land created more tension.
Many agents embezzled parts of the annuity payments. Moreover, there
was often confusion about who was to receive the payments, a specific
chief or each individual Indian in that tribe. Agents also sometimes acted
as traders, overcharging for goods so that the goods always equaled the an-
nuity payments. These policies increased the tension between Indians and
whites.
As more whites moved west, the “taming of the Indian” became an inte-
gral part of manifest destiny. To enforce this concept, the military became
the second executor of Indian policy. Military protection had to be pro-
vided for white citizens moving west. Despite friendly or indifferent recep-
tions by Indians on most parts of the trail, the few incidents of Indian attack
appeared in newspapers and books everywhere. Many westward settlers
considered the trail to be full of “bloodthirsty savages” looking for scalps
and white women. The settlers demanded protection. The U.S. govern-
ment established forts across the frontier to be able to control and eliminate
the perceived Indian menace.
Civil War. The Civil War (1861-1865) changed Indian-white relations. First,
the U.S. government withdrew the army regulars from the frontier and re-
placed them with volunteers who resented serving on the “Indian fron-
tier.” President Lincoln kept these troops in the West to protect the gold
routes and the whites moving westward. Many tribes saw the Civil War as
a sign of weakness in the American government. The Sioux, the Five Civi-
lized Tribes, and others chased missionaries and Indian agents from their
territory.
Two incidents during this period damaged Indian-white relations for
the next several years: the decision by the Five Civilized Tribes to join the
Confederacy and the Sioux Uprising of 1862. The Five Civilized Tribes
sided with the Confederacy after being convinced that it would treat them
as equals after the war. Some leaders, such as John Ross of the Cherokee,
feared Northern reprisals if the South lost. Unfortunately, the Indian units
were accused of committing savage atrocities during battles such as that at
Pea Ridge, which reinforced negative attitudes toward them. The Sioux
Uprising of 1862 frightened western settlers, as newspapers portrayed it as
an unprovoked massacre of innocent women and children. (In reality, BIA
politics and poor management ignited the conflict.) The aftermath influ-
enced generations of western settlers who remembered only the women
and children murdered by Indians.
Tensions between whites and Indians increased during the Civil War.
White settlers distrusted the volunteers who had replaced the army regu-
lars and expected the Indians to take advantage of the lack of men and mus-
cle on the frontier to chase the settlers out. Indians also distrusted the vol-
unteers, who were unprepared for conflict on the Plains. They were unused
to guerrilla warfare. Between the lack of trust of the army and the rein-
forced fear of the “savage Indians,” tensions increased on the frontier.
Post-Civil War. After the Civil War, the War Department and the military
fought to gain control of the BIA in order to exterminate the Indians, but the
cost of a military solution deterred Congress from this policy. Reformers,
including missionaries, moved in to try to take control of the policy and to
pacify the Indians.
In 1867, a Senate report changed policy for one year. The report stated
that the Indian population was declining rapidly because of disease, war,
and malnutrition. Additionally, it accused the military of starting most
conflicts with the Indians, thereby reinforcing the idea that military officers
were inadequate as agents of peace. The report suggested that the reserva-
tion system was the only humane policy. It would allow the Indians to be-
come integrated into American society by teaching them farming and the
rules of white society. It would also protect them from the military and
from each other.
As punishment for siding with the Confederacy, the U.S. government
forced the Five Civilized Tribes to surrender their westernmost lands,
abolish slavery, grant the railroads rights-of-way through their territory
(which would inevitably bring whites into the territory), establish U.S. mil-
itary posts, and allow the creation of U.S. territorial governments within
their territory. Exhausted after the war, the tribes accepted the terms of
surrender.
In 1868, as new battles between Indians and the military raged in the
West, the Indian Commission announced that it was no longer necessary to
recognize tribes as “domestic dependent nations.” This effectively meant
the end of treaty negotiations. Additionally, the BIA was transferred back
to the War Department, temporarily giving the military more control of
policy. These policy changes resulted from the violence that existed on the
Plains both during and after the Civil War. The government now consid-
ered all tribes untrustworthy and limited their rights accordingly. As the
1870’s approached, Indian policy and Indian-white relations entered a new
and dangerous phase: war and open extermination.
See also: Adobe Walls, Battles of; Apache Wars; Bear River Campaign;
Black Hawk War; Bozeman Trail War; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Cayuse
War; Cherokee legal cases; Cherokee Phoenix; Fort Atkinson Treaty; Fort
Laramie Treaty of 1851; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868; Gadsden Purchase;
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of; Indian Removal Act; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Keetoowah
Society; Kickapoo Resistance; Kickapoo uprisings; Long Walk; Medicine
Lodge Creek Treaty; Minnesota Uprising; Navajo War; Reservation system

of the United States; Sand Creek Massacre; Seminole Wars; Sioux War;
Snake War; Taos Rebellion; Trade and Intercourse Acts; Trail of Tears;
Treaties and agreements in the United States; Walla Walla Council; Washita
River Massacre; Yakima War.
C. L. Higham

Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. Salvation and the Savage. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1965. This work focuses on how missionaries por-
trayed white culture to the Indians and on the policy behind these pre-
sentations.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Henry Holt, 1970.
This work represents the Indian perception of Indian-white relations in
the nineteenth century.
Dippie, Brian. The Vanishing American. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Uni-
versity Press, 1982. Dippie examines the concept of the extinction of the
Indian in the nineteenth century.
Hoxie, Frederick E., James Merrell, and Peter C. Mancall, eds. American Na-
tions: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850-Present. New York: Routledge,
2001. A series of essays on aspects of Indian-U.S. relations and cultural
encounters.
Kelley, Robert. American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Discusses how Protestant re-
formers influenced Indian policy and Indian-white relations.
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mex-
ico Press, 1984. Examines, through vignettes and traditional narrative,
Indian-white relations on the military and political frontiers.

Date: 1871-1933

Nineteenth century history, Treaties, Twentieth century history, Wars
and battles
Significance: This period saw the last of the Indian wars, significant
changes in white attitudes toward Native Americans, and important
attempts to regularize the legal status of American Indians by new
acts of law.
In the period between 1871 and 1933, the last of the tragic Indian wars were
fought, and several attempts were made by the federal government to re-
form Indian policy. The attempts at reform were often wrongheaded, and
they ultimately had to be reversed, but they demonstrate the popular per-
ception that the existing policy could not be sustained indefinitely.
Indian Wars. A series of serious Indian wars characterized the period be-
tween 1871 and 1890. Some of these were precipitated by the desire of whites
for Indian lands or by the desire of white settlers to eliminate the Indians be-
Western Indian-White Conflicts, 1871-1890
Clearwater Bear Paw (1877)

(1877)
Big Hole (1877) Little Bighorn (1876)
Powder River (1878)
Rosebud
Whitebird Wolf Mountain (1877)
(1876)
Creek
(1877)
Lost River (1872) Dull Knife (1876) Wounded Knee (1890)
Lava Beds (1873) War Bonnet Creek

(1876)
Milk Creek (1879)
Big Dry Wash (1882)

Adobe Walls
Skull Cave (1874)
Cibicu Creek (1881)
(1872)
Camp Grant (1871) Palo Duro
Canyon (1874)
cause of prejudice or fears of attack. Others seem primarily to have been

the result of the inability of many tribes and tribal leaders to accept confine-
ment on reservations, which were often composed of extremely poor land.
Confinement also flew in the face of traditional patterns of Indian life.
In 1871, the Kiowas rose up in Texas under Satanta, Satank, Big Tree, Ea-
gle Heart, and Big Bow, engaging in a campaign that included the ambush
of a wagon train on Salt Creek Prairie. In the period 1872-1873, the Modoc
War erupted as the Modocs, a Northern California tribe, resisted resettle-
ment in Indian Territory. The war ended with the trial and execution of
Captain Jack, the Modoc leader. The years 1874-1875 saw the outbreak of
the so-called Red River War, with the U.S. Cavalry under General Philip
Sheridan and Nelson A. Miles and the Texas Rangers battling an alliance of
Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa warriors under Big Tree, Lone Wolf, and
Satanta. The war ended with the surrender of Quanah Parker, the feared
Comanche chief.
The famous campaign known as the pursuit of the Nez Perce occurred in
1877. It began when young braves resisting a forced march to reservation
land led a substantial group of the tribe in flight, with General Oliver O.
Howard in pursuit. Led by Chiefs Joseph the Younger and Looking Glass,
the Nez Perce evaded army pursuit across Idaho and Wyoming, fighting
battles at White Bird Canyon, Clearwater, Big Hole River, Camas Meadows,
Billings, and Bear Paw Mountain. They reached a point only 100 miles from
their goal of Canadian sanctuary before surrendering.
In 1878-1879, the campaign of the pursuit of the Northern Cheyenne fol-
lowed the pattern of the Nez Perce campaign, but in less spectacular form.
Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf led three hundred braves off the reserva-
tion, pursued by regular army troops and civilian volunteers. Dull Knife’s
faction surrendered at Camp Robinson but then refused to proceed to the
reservation. In a fight with the troops, half of Dull Knife’s followers were
killed. Little Wolf’s band surrendered later.
The Bannock War commenced in 1878. Bannocks, under Chief Buffalo
Horn, began raiding in southern Idaho and Oregon. Paiutes under Chief
Egan and the medicine man Oytes broke out from the Malheur Reservation
and joined the Bannocks, pursued by General Howard. The Indian confed-
erates were defeated at the Battle of Birch Creek, and during their subse-
quent flight Chief Egan was killed by Umatilla warriors through a trick in-
volving a war council with the Umatillas to discuss an alliance.
The year 1879 contained two complete Indian wars. The Sheepeaters
War involved a band of renegade Shoshones and Bannocks who raided
throughout Idaho and neighboring areas. The Ute War occurred in Colo-
rado when Indian agent Nathan Meeker telegraphed for aid against restive
Utes. Relieving forces were put under siege after the Battle of Milk Creek,
and additional forces were required to subdue the Utes.
Less confined in time were the Sioux and Apache wars, which stretched
out over many years. In 1872, a band of Yavapais Apaches died at the Bat-
tle of Skull Cave in Salt River
Canyon; after the subsequent
Battle of Turret Peak, many
Apaches returned to the res-
ervation. When the Apaches
were ordered to the hated San
Carlos Reservation in Arizona
in 1876, however, the war reig-
nited. There followed several
years when Geronimo and Vic-
torio broke from their reserva-
tions, raided, and crisscrossed
the Mexican border at will. For
a decade, until 1886, Geronimo
would be a constant problem
for the army and for the gov-
ernment.
Finally, in 1876, the Sioux
reacted against orders to move
from the Black Hills to the San
Carlos Reservation in Arizona.
Battles included Sitting Bull’s
attack on General Crook’s col-
umn at Rosebud Creek, the de-
feat of Colonel George Arm-
strong Custer and the Seventh
Cavalry at the Battle of the
Little Bighorn, the Battle of
Slim Buttes, the Battle of Wolf
Mountains, and the Battle of
Sitting Bull in 1885, nine years after Rosebud Muddy Creek. Sitting Bull fled
Creek, probably about the time he partici- into Canada with his warriors
pated in William Cody’s wild west shows. His
but returned to surrender to
death at the hands of reservation police dur-
ing the Wounded Knee Massacre and the U.S. forces in 1881.
subsequent surrender of the Sioux signaled In the latter days of 1890, a
the end of the Indian Wars. (Library of Con- sad sequel to the Sioux wars
gress) was enacted. The Ghost Dance
Uprising and the Battle of Wounded Knee (the Wounded Knee Massacre)
ended the era of the Indian wars. The prophet Wovoka preached a vision
of Indian resurgence and resurrection based on the use of the magical
Ghost Dance. Sitting Bull was killed by reservation police at the Stand-
ing Rock Reservation. At the camp of Chief Big Foot at Wounded Knee,
three hundred Indians were slaughtered in what has become known as
the Wounded Knee Massacre. The surrender of the Sioux the next year at
White Clay Creek ended the era of direct warfare between the whites and
Indians.
Legal Status and Governmental Policy. When Ulysses S. Grant became

president in 1869, a new “peace policy” was adopted in U.S. relations with
the Indian tribes. Under the new policy, new appointments of Indian
agents would be made from among the religious groups who sent mission-
aries among the tribes, and extraordinary efforts would be made to get the
Indians to adopt white ways—living in houses, practicing agriculture, and
so on.
Many other developments in Indian affairs filled the Grant years. In
1871, in the Cherokee Tobacco case, the Supreme Court upheld the principle
that new acts of Congress supersede prior treaties, including those with the
Indian nations, when they contradict. The next year saw the complete
abandonment of treaty making in regard to the tribes, with all future agree-
ments replaced by statutes and executive orders. Partly this represented
the desire of the House of Representatives to have a say in such agree-
ments, and partly it represented a reaction to the fact that treaties, after the
Cherokee Tobacco case, offered no enhancement of protection over simple
statute. Some reservations were established by treaty, others by statute, but
beginning in the 1870’s, executive orders were also employed.
In 1874, the Report of the Indian Commissioner proposed major changes
in the status of the Indians and their way of life. Citizenship was proposed
for any Indian who desired it. It was also proposed that the protection and
obligations of white law be extended to Indian Territory and that reserva-
tion land be held in individual plots—called “allotments in severalty”—
rather than communally by tribes. This would promote agriculture and the
improvement of land.
In 1879, the case Standing Bear v. Crook, decided by Judge Elmer S.
Dundy of the U.S. Circuit Court, District of Nebraska, declared Indians to
be “persons” under the Constitution and extended the writ of habeas corpus
to them to protect their liberty.
In 1883, Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller instigated “courts of In-
dian affairs” (after the Indian Offenses Act was passed in 1883) on reserva-
tions to create a rule of law on tribal lands. The drive to bring Indians under
white law suffered a major setback in the 1883 Supreme Court case Ex parte
Crow Dog, wherein the Brule Sioux Chief Crow Dog’s conviction and death
sentence for the murder of Spotted Tail was overturned on the grounds that
there was no federal jurisdiction over the crime of an Indian against an-
other Indian on Indian land. Further separating Indians from white gover-
nance was the 1884 Supreme Court case Elk v. Wilkins, whereby the Court
refused to enforce a franchise right for the plaintiff, who had severed his
ties to his tribe and lived among whites.
These moves away from white law began to be reversed in 1885 with
Congress’s passage of the Major Crimes Act, which placed seven serious
felonies under federal law if committed on reservations or other Indian ter-
ritory in order to avoid situations such as that in the Crow Dog decision. In
1886 in United States v. Kagama, the high Court upheld the constitutionality
of the act.
Assimilation of the Indians into white society became the stated solu-
tion to all problems in white-Indian relations, and indeed, to all problems
of Indian society. Politicians rushed to embrace this solution, as did many
of those who regarded themselves as friends and defenders of the “red
man.” In 1884, the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian issued
a program which called for assimilation by bringing the Indians under ter-
ritorial law, private individual ownership of land, and other forms of white
civilization. Groups such as this were torn between their recognition of the
potential loss of Indian culture and the need to prevent further depreda-
tions by white society.
In 1887, the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) provided for allotments
in severalty for reservation Indians, providing citizenship for Indians on
such allotments. In that year as well, Commissioner J. D. C. Atkins ordered
that, in all schools on reservations, all instruction was to be in the English
language to aid in assimilation. Two years later, the government moved to
establish a system of government-run Indian schools. By 1889, Commis-
sioner Thomas J. Morgan was calling for the conscious destruction of the
tribes as the ultimate means of assimilation of the Indians into the domi-
nant culture.
In 1892, Indian courts were authorized to punish as offenses such In-
dian practices as traditional dances, polygamy, and the practices of med-
icine men as well as standard criminal offenses such as destruction of
property, fornication, and drunkenness. Truancy of children enrolled in
government schools was also an offense. The inclusion of several Indian
cultural and religious practices as “offenses” struck sharply at the Indian
way of life.
In 1898, upon the failure of the Dawes Commission to achieve agree-

ment with the Five Civilized Tribes and the other tribes of the Indian Ter-
ritory, Congress imposed the Curtis Act, which essentially applied the
provisions of the Dawes Act to that territory, destroying tribal govern-
ment. The Supreme Court upheld the act in Stephens v. Cherokee Nation
(1899).
Twentieth Century. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court up-
held the plenary power of Congress over Indian affairs and established the
right of Congress to abrogate treaties. By 1905, however, the government
was having second thoughts about its wholesale reforms. Commissioner
Francis E. Leupp issued a report to Congress which endorsed attempts to
institute Indian self-sufficiency and called for presentation of aspects of In-
dian culture.
In 1906, the Burke Act provided for discretion in the length of trust peri-
ods for allotments and provided that citizenship should come at the end
rather than at the beginning of such periods. The Lacey Act (1907) further
struck at the tribal system by providing for allotment of tribal funds to indi-
viduals under specified conditions.
In 1919, as an acknowledgment of its gratitude for war service, Con-
gress passed an act providing U.S. citizenship to Indian veterans of World
War I upon request. In 1928, the Institute for Government Research issued
the Meriam Report, which dealt systematically with the general prob-
lems facing Indians in the nation and was critical of U.S. government poli-
cies. It would lead to milestone legislation in 1934, the Indian Reorganiza-
tion Act.
See also: Adobe Walls, Battles of; Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska
Native Sisterhood; All-Pueblo Council; Allotment system; American In-
dian Defense Association; Apache Wars; Bannock War; Bison slaughter;
Burke Act; Carlisle Indian School; Cherokee Tobacco case; Elk v. Wilkins; Ex
parte Crow Dog; Friends of the Indian organizations; General Allotment
Act; Indian Appropriation Act; Indian Citizenship Act; Indian Offenses
Act; Indian Rights Association; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; In-
dian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Kickapoo uprisings; Little Bighorn,
Battle of the; Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock; Major Crimes Act; Meriam Report;
Modoc War; National Indian Association; Nez Perce War; Red River War;
Reservation system of the United States; Rosebud Creek, Battle of; Society
of American Indians; Standing Bear v. Crook; Treaties and agreements in the
United States; Tribal courts; United States v. Kagama; Wild west shows; Wolf
Mountains, Battle of; World wars; Wounded Knee Massacre.
Patrick M. O’Neil

Axelrod, Alan. Chronicle of the Indian Wars: From Colonial Times to Wounded
Knee. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1993. This work pro-
vides a useful and detailed overview of the armed struggles of the Indi-
ans and the whites.
Faulk, Odie B. Crimson Desert: Indian Wars of the American Southwest. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Faulk presents a fine and detailed
description of the campaigns of this region.
encounters.
Jackson, Helen. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Govern-
ment’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. 1880. Reprint. New York:
Barnes & Noble, 1993. This volume is a reprint of an 1880 history of
Indian-white relations from earliest colonial times through 1871, with
many excellent quotations from official documents.
Marshall, Samuel L. A. Crimsoned Prairie. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1972. Details the Indian campaigns of the West. The author is an
excellent military historian, although slightly biased in the direction of
preserving the honor of the military.
Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3d ed.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Reprints major documents
in the history of U.S. policy toward native peoples.
Shattuck, Petra T., and Jill Norgren. Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a
Liberal Constitutional System. New York: Berg, 1991. This study carefully
analyzes the relationship of U.S. Indian law and policy to the U.S. con-
stitutional order and governmental administrative policy.
Tyler, Lyman S. A History of Indian Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1973. This work sets out accurately and in great detail
the development of the Indian policy of the United States.
Press, 1987. This treatise traces Indian law and rights through court
cases, primarily U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Williams, Robert A., Jr. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The
Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. This
book deals with earlier times in white-Indian relations but is vital read-
ing for anyone who wishes to understand the philosophical and tradi-
tional bases of American Indian law.

Date: 1934-2002
Categories: National government and legislation; Native government;
Significance: During the period since 1934, three stages led from open
displacement of Indian rights to self-determination policies.
The landmark Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which remained the leg-
islative model for relations between the U.S. government and Indian tribes
until the mid-1950’s, was based on a massive 1928 report entitled The Prob-
lem of Indian Administration, commonly called the Meriam Report. This re-
port had been requested by Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. It was in-
tended to reexamine the effects of the General Allotment Act of 1887.
Briefly stated, the 1887 act had provided for allotment to each Indian fam-
ily a specific plot of land within their tribe’s “traditional” holdings. Under
this law, after titles had been held for twenty-five years, families would
gain full property rights, including the right to sell their land. Any tribal
land that was left after plot allotment to families was to be sold to the gov-
ernment for homesteading. It is estimated that, when the Indian Reorgani-
zation Act came into effect in 1934, Indians held legal rights to only one-
third of the land they had had before the General Allotment Act. This fact,
coupled with a number of other critical factors pointed out in the Meriam
Report (including inferior conditions in the areas of health care and educa-
tion), led to the policy changes embodied in 1934’s Indian Reorganization
Act. Most of the responsibility for implementing these changes rested with
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appointee to the post of commissioner of
Indian affairs, John Collier.
Indian Reorganization Act. In addition to slowing the loss of Indian lands,

the 1934 act brought a new philosophy to the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA). It proclaimed a need to reverse a long-standing policy of forced
assimilation of Indians into “mainstream” America and to build stron-
ger bases for the retention of local Indian cultures. In Collier’s words, it
aimed at “both the economic and spiritual rehabilitation of the Indian
race.”
In the first domain, plans were laid to appropriate funds to buy back
for the tribes Indian land that had been lost since 1887. The BIA also initi-
ated a program to spread knowledge of land and timber conservation tech-
nology to receptive tribes and began steps to provide local development
loans. Although the deepening of the Great Depression soon made spe-
cial appropriations impossible, much surplus government land that had
not gone to homesteading was returned. In its bid to encourage a greater
sense of local tribal identity, the 1934 act also offered aid for drawing up
and implementing tribal constitutions as the basis for their own local gov-
ernment.
World War II. In the period between 1934 and the next major redefinition of
BIA policy in 1953, many domestic policy factors intervened to affect what
Roosevelt’s policymakers had seen as the long-term goals of the BIA. The
greatest single factor affecting tens of thousands of Indian lives during the
decade of the 1940’s, however, was initially set in play by forces far beyond
the reservations: This factor was military service in the U.S. forces during
World War II. More than twenty-five thousand Native Americans served
between 1941 and 1945. Many thousands more left reservations to work in
war-related industrial factories. Indian women were also welcomed as vol-
unteers in the army nurses’ corps and the Red Cross.
Whatever their experiences in the ranks of the armed forces, still strictly
segregated along racial lines, clear problems confronted thousands of re-
turning Indian veterans at the end of the war. Part of the dilemma stemmed
from continuing economic underdevelopment on the reservations they
left. Equally debilitating, thousands of returning American Indian veter-
ans felt alienated from their own people after experiencing life off the reser-
vation.
Problems such as these impelled U.S. lawmakers to consider once again
whether assimilation, rather than “protected separation,” was the best pol-
icy to pursue in Indian affairs. Parties supporting the former, including
outspoken conservative Republican senator Arthur Watkins from Utah, in-
troduced what became, in House Concurrent Resolution 108, the policy of
“termination and relocation.”
Native American relocatees standing in front of their low-cost home in Winner,

South Dakota. (National Archives)
Termination Act of 1953. When HCR 108 became law in mid-1953, it

pledged
to make Indians . . . subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges
and responsibilities as . . . other citizens . . . and to end their status as wards of
the United States.
Even as HCR 108 was about to become law, a number of Indian spokes-
persons for the first tribes scheduled for termination (which meant stop-
ping various forms of federal government “protective” intervention in
their affairs) openly questioned Senator Watkins’s claims that, since there
were multiple sources to develop potential wealth on their reservations,
the tribes should be able to “go it better alone.”
Menominee leader Gordon Keshena was not alone in expressing wor-
ries that, if BIA supervision over local Indian affairs ended, the tribes’ lack
of experience would produce deterioration of many Indian material inter-
ests. Some congressional supporters of the general principles behind HCR

108 also admitted that the government might find itself spending large
amounts of money trying to prepare the weakest and poorest Indian groups
to know what forms of local autonomy might suit them best.
In fact, just as local termination bills began to appear in 1954, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower seemed prepared to increase budgetary allocations
to encourage the establishment of new industries in or near tribal areas. For
example, by 1956, $300,000 of tribal funds formerly held in trust were ear-
marked to induce industrial plant owners to locate on the fringes of Na-
vaho territory. Two companies constructed factories, one manufacturing
baby furniture, the other making electronic equipment, near Flagstaff, Ari-
zona.
In 1957 the Indian Vocational Training Act was intended to provide job
skills needed for Indian applicants to be attractive to potential employers,
even if such jobs meant relocating off reservations. More than a hundred dif-
ferent occupations were included in the curriculum of free schools located
in twenty-six states. This ambitious program continued to expand even
as economic recession worsened in 1956 and 1957. Indian policymakers
seemed convinced that the overall objectives of the 1953 termination laws
would be best served if Indians who could not expect to gain employment
on economically backward reservations relocated in off-reservation towns.
Ideally, such a movement of families would also ease pressures on the lim-
ited economic means of their respective homelands.
Relocation. A separate budget for relocation came by the mid-1950’s, to

avoid negative consequences for Indians who left the reservations without
adequate security. Statistics showed that, of the nearly 100,000 Indians who
left reservations between 1945 to 1958, some 75,000 had relocated without
federal assistance, sometimes causing familial disasters. Thus, job training
and relocation funds expended in 1957 doubled in one year, reaching $3.5
million. In the same year, seven thousand Indians moved from their reser-
vations. Controversy soon developed over shortcomings in the relocation
program.
Realistic prospects for employment fell short of demands; moreover, job
layoffs left many Indians “stranded” and unemployed in unsympathetic
white-dominated environments. At the same time, there were very high
dropout rates in BIA-sponsored vocational schools. Nurse’s aide programs
for women registered the lowest percentage of dropouts (21 percent), while
rates for less challenging factory-type programs for men were very high (a
50 percent dropout rate for sawmill workers and a rate as high as 62 percent
among furniture factory trainees).
As the 1960’s approached, critics of the effects of termination and reloca-

tion, including Sophie Aberle, formerly responsible for the United Pueblos
Agency, warned Indian Commissioner Glenn Emmons of trouble ahead.
Emmons tried to defend his office by reiterating a philosophy that was not
accepted by all—that whatever successes were occurring usually stemmed
from individual initiative, whereas groups that fell back on the security of
“communal lifestyle” tended to accept status quo conditions. Emmons
cited gains that were not so easily measured in paychecks, such as ad-
vances in tribal health programs and in education. The number of Indians
going beyond high school by this date (the 1958-1959 school year) showed
an increase of more than 65 percent in only three years.
Toward Self-Determination: 1960’s and 1970’s. Despite the fact that the Ei-
senhower administration’s last BIA budget (for fiscal year 1960) was the
largest ever ($115,467,000), it was during the 1960 presidential campaign
that controversy over Indian policy began to come to public attention.
Party platform committees actually heard testimony from tribal leaders
such as Frank George, a Nez Perce who asked not for abandonment of ter-
mination but for improvement in its procedures for aiding needy tribes.
Other claims, such as the Miccosukee Seminole demand for all of Florida to
reconstitute their sovereignty, received less sympathy. The new tide that
was coming was best expressed by La Verne Madigan of the Association on
American Indian Affairs, who stated that Indians should have the right to
choose freely between assimilation and “life in cultural communities of
their own people.”
In general, the Kennedy-Johnson Democratic years (1960-1968) wit-
nessed a continuation of termination actions despite the views of Lyndon
Johnson’s interior secretary, Stewart Udall. It was Udall’s insistence that
the BIA should do more to secure better conditions of relocation that led to
the replacement of Commissioner Philleo Nash by Wisconsin Oneida In-
dian Robert Bennett in 1966. Under Bennett’s influence, the president be-
gan, in the troubled political climate of 1967, to declare the nation’s need to
end the termination policy. Soon thereafter, Johnson urged passage of the
Indian Civil Rights Act (1968).
The 1970’s, under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy
Carter, brought what has been described as the “self-determination” pol-
icy, emphasizing the development of tribal resources on restored reserva-
tions. Perhaps the most dramatic example of reversal of what many per-
ceived to be the harmful effects of termination occurred in 1973, when the
Menominee tribe was told that (as the tribe had requested) its twenty-year
experience of termination was over and that its entire reservation was to be
restored to it as “unencumbered Menominee property.” Yet despite pro-

nouncements of “better intentions” coming from Washington and the BIA,
the cumulative effects of decades of misunderstanding were not to be dis-
pelled easily. In the same year that the Menominees regained tribal control
over their own destiny, a breakdown in relations between federal troops
and Lakota Sioux during a seventy-one-day siege on the Pine Ridge Reser-
vation ended in an assault that the Lakotas call “Wounded Knee II.” Similar
confrontations with threats of violence came in different regions, pressing
government authorities to review its Indian policy yet again.
In May, 1977, the congressional American Indian Policy Review Com-
mission, which included five Indian members for the first time, made more
than two hundred recommendations, most of which aimed at confirming
all tribes’ power to enact laws within the confines of their own reserva-
tions. On the heels of this symbol of intended reform, the U.S. Congress
passed the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which guaran-
teed freedom for tribes to practice their own traditional religions. This act
ended the mixed legacy of several centuries of insistence that missionary
conversion and education following Christian principles were vital aspects
of Indian-white relations in the United States.
1980’s Through 2001. During the Ronald Reagan and George Bush (Sr.) Re-
publican presidencies (1980-1992), budgetary cuts seriously affected the
continuity of existing programs of assistance to Indian tribes. In 1981 alone,
one-half of the prior budget for health services was cut, while funding for
Indian higher education was reduced from 282 million to 200 million dol-
lars. By the mid-1980’s, the education budget had been cut further, to 169
million dollars.
Despite alarming cutbacks in BIA funding and looming questions of In-
dian demands for restoration of their sovereignty, the Republican adminis-
tration of George Herbert Walker Bush made one major contribution by en-
acting the Native American Languages Act, which allowed tribal use of
(formerly banned) traditional languages in BIA schools.
The issue of Indian land claims was prominent throughout the 1980’s
and early 1990’s. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court (in United States v. Sioux
Nation) upheld a $122 million judgment against the United States for hav-
ing taken the Black Hills from the Sioux illegally. In 1986, a federal court
awarded each member of the White Earth Chippewa group compensation
for land lost under the 1887 General Allotment Act. A significant piece of
legislation regarding land claims was the 1982 Indian Claims Limitation
Act, which limited the time period during which land claims could be filed
against the U.S. government.
The issue of Indian sovereignty and the related issue of gambling on

Indian lands created considerable controversy among Indians and non-
Indians in the early 1990’s. The 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act legal-
ized certain types of gambling on reservations, and the vast amounts of
income that could be generated appealed to many tribes struggling with
widespread poverty. Gambling engendered protests by some non-Indians,
however, and created tribal divisions that occasionally turned violent; in
1990, violence between gambling and antigambling contingents on the
St. Regis Mohawk Reservation caused state and federal authorities to inter-
vene. In California, Indian efforts in 1999 to pass Proposition 5, the Califor-
nia Indian Self Reliance Initiative (which promoted casinos as a source of
independent income) had the side effect of creating an increasingly power-
ful political interest group—powerful enough to be accused of having un-
due influence on President Bill Clinton in the series of scandals attending
his last months in office. An important court decision involving another as-
pect of sovereignty was handed down in 1990: The U.S. Supreme Court de-
cided in Duro v. Reina that tribes do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-
Indians living on reservation lands.
In 1992, a number of American Indian groups protested the celebrations
planned for the five hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s ar-
rival in the Americas. Two events in 1994 symbolized both an increasing re-
spect for, and the continuing problems of, American Indians. The first facil-
ity of the National Museum of the American Indian, a new part of the
Smithsonian Institution, opened in New York (funding had been approved
by Congress in 1989). On the other hand, the National Congress of Ameri-
can Indians and the National Black Caucus announced an alliance, stating
that American Indians and African Americans continued to face similar
forces of political and economic oppression.
Over a century of mismanagement of Indian trust funds was brought to
public attention with the filing of a class-action lawsuit against the Depart-
ment of the Interior by Elouise Cobell, treasurer of the Blackfeet in Mon-
tana, Cobell v. Babbitt, in 1996. (The lawsuit changed to Cobell v. Norton with
the appointment of Gale Norton as interior secretary in 2001.) The suit
charged that $100 billion of trust funds for land-use royalties, administered
by the Department of the Interior since the break-up of reservations under
the Dawes Act of 1887, was missing and the paperwork that would track
the funds was in shambles. By 2002, three cabinet members from two ad-
ministrations had been found in contempt of court for blocking or delaying
the turning over of records.
See also: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; Alcatraz Island occupa-
tion; American Indian Higher Education Consortium; American Indian
Movement; American Indian Policy Review Commission; American In-

dian Religious Freedom Act; Colliflower v. Garland; Council of Energy Re-
source Tribes; Determined Residents United for Mohawk Sovereignty;
Duro v. Reina; Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of the State of
Oregon et al. v. Smith; Federally recognized tribes; Fish-ins; Indian Child
Welfare Act; Indian Citizenship Act; Indian Civil Rights Act; Indian Claims
Commission; Indian Education Acts; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; In-
dian Health Service; Indian New Deal; Indian preference; Indian Reorga-
nization Act; Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act;
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; International Indian Treaty Coun-
cil; Keeler Commission; Kennedy Report; Longest Walk; Lyng v. Northwest
Indian Cemetery Protective Association; Maine Indian Claims Act; Menominee
Restoration Act; National Congress of American Indians; National Indian
Education Association; National Indian Youth Council; Native American
Church v. Navajo Tribal Council; Native American Graves Protection and Re-
patriation Act; Native American Rights Fund; Navajo-Hopi Land Settle-
ment Act; Navajo Rehabilitation Act; Nisga’a Agreement in Principle;
Nunavut Territory; Oka crisis; Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act; Oliphant v.
Suquamish Indian Tribe; Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings; Public
Law 280; Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez; Termination Resolution; Trail of
Broken Treaties; Treaties and agreements in the United States; United States
v. Washington; Winters v. United States; Women of All Red Nations; World
wars; Wounded Knee occupation.
Byron D. Cannon

Chamberlain, Kathleen P. Under Sacred Ground: A History of Navajo Oil,
1922-1982. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. An eth-
nography and history of the effect of oil production on the formation
and expansion of Navajo tribal government.
trations, 1961-1969. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2001. A groundbreaking study of federal Indian policy in the 1960’s.
Falkowski, James E. Indian Law/Race Law: A Five-Hundred-Year History. New
York: Praeger, 1922. Places the subject of U.S. government policy toward
Indians in a wider context both of historical and contemporary interna-
tional legal models.
Fixico, Donald L. Termination and Relocation: Federal Policy, 1945-1966. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. This is a study of the
phase of BIA policy that existed from 1953 to 1960, involving presumed
“self-help,” including working away from home reservations.
300 / International Indian Treaty Council
____________. The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: Uni-

versity of New Mexico Press, 2000. An ethnography of the urban Indian
experience, especially in third- and fourth-generation urban dwellers
who are increasingly distanced from the reservation experience.
encounters.
Peroff, Nicholas C. Menominee Drums. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1982. A case study of one of the most important examples of tribal
termination actions.
Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3d ed.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. General policy and issues
for specific tribes.
International Indian Treaty Council

Locale: United States and Canada
Categories: Native government, Organizations, Treaties, Twentieth cen-
tury history
Significance: Promoted international rights of indigenous peoples; es-
tablished indigenous presence at the United Nations.
The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) was founded during a con-
ference convened on the Standing Rock Reservation (North Dakota) dur-
ing July, 1974. Its initial mandate, conveyed by the Lakota elders, was to
“take the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and place it before the community of na-
tions.” AIM leader Russell Means, asked to assume responsibility for IITC,
accepted by agreeing to serve as “Permanent Trustee.” Jimmie Durham, a
Cherokee AIM member, became IITC’s founding director.
By 1975, Means and Durham had established an office in New York and
expanded the mission of the “international diplomatic arm of AIM” to in-
clude advocacy of the rights of all indigenous peoples, worldwide. Dur-
ham then set about organizing the first major forum on indigenous rights
in the history of the United Nations.
International Indian Treaty Council / 301
This resulted in the “Indian Summer in Geneva,” an assembly of dele-

gates from ninety-eight indigenous nations throughout the Western Hemi-
sphere at the Palace of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, during July, 1977.
As the coordinating entity, IITC became the first indigenous Non-Governing
Organization (NGO; Type-II, Consultative) ever recognized by the United
Nations.
The assembly stimulated the U.N. to establish a formal body, the Working
Group on Indigenous Populations, under its Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) for purposes of receiving annual reports on the grievances of
the world’s native peoples. The Working Group’s broader charge was to
make the studies necessary to prepare a Draft Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples for ratification by the U.N. General Assembly as inter-
national law.
With this established, Durham resigned in 1981 to pursue a career as an
artist. He was replaced by Russell Means’s younger brother, Bill, who
proved a far less appropriate director. Almost immediately, the younger
Means initiated a policy of aligning IITC with a range of leftist govern-
ments, many of them oppressing indigenous peoples within their borders.
The result was a steady erosion of native support for IITC.
By 1986, disputes over IITC’s support of Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime
in its drive to subordinate the Miskito, Sumu, and Rama peoples of the
country’s Atlantic coast led to a purge. “Indigenists,” such as Harvard-
trained Shawnee attorney Glenn Morris, were summarily expelled from
IITC. The Lakota elders’ original mandate was negated, Russell Means was
displaced from his permanent trusteeship, and IITC was structurally sepa-
rated from AIM by its incorporation under U.S. law.
Thereafter, although Bill Means continued to speak of “representing
more than a hundred indigenous nations,” IITC’s isolation and decline ac-
celerated. By the early 1990’s, it was increasingly encumbered by the fund-
raising requirements of supporting its staff. Fortunately, many of the peo-
ples whose rights it had once championed had by then learned to represent
themselves internationally.
See also: American Indian Movement; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Ward Churchill

Independence. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
Morris, Glenn T., and Ward Churchill. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place:
Left-Wing Revolution, Right-Wing Reaction, and the Destruction of In-
digenous People.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 11, no. 3 (1987): 17-24.
302 / Irish Potato Famine
Weyler, Rex. Blood of the Land: The U.S. Government and Corporate War
Against the First Nations. 2d ed. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers,
1992.
Irish Potato Famine

Date: 1847
Locale: Oklahoma, Ireland
Tribes involved: Choctaw
Significance: The Irish people commemorate the Choctaw people of
Oklahoma for raising funds for Irish famine relief in 1847, only a few
years after the Choctaw Trail of Tears.
The Choctaw Indian nation originated and lived in Mississippi and Ala-
bama. In 1819, the United States government, following up on Thomas Jef-
ferson’s policy of the Americanization of native peoples, began seeking the
removal of the Choctaw from their rich Mississippi territory to the largely
inhospitable lands of Oklahoma. On September 15, 1830, the Treaty of
Dancing Rabbit Creek dictated that the move become a reality. Between
1830 and 1834, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Choctaw
made the five-hundred-mile journey from Mississippi to Oklahoma. The
trek was made by three successive groups in three successive years, each in
the middle of winter. The Choctaw were ordered to leave their possessions
and livestock behind and were not provided with tents, supplies, or medi-
cal assistance on the journey.
Army guides unfamiliar with the terrain became lost. Temperatures
dropped below freezing, and many of the people died of disease and star-
vation. Since the cold winter precluded digging graves, the dead were
burned by the roadside. Some fourteen thousand Choctaws perished along
what has come to be known in Choctaw lore as the Trail of Tears.
Halfway around the world the Irish people would likewise experience
starvation and removal only a dozen or so years later, in the tragedy now
known as the Irish Potato Famine.
Famine in Ireland. Ireland of the mid-nineteenth century was a bleak place.

The famine, caused by the fungus Phytophthora infestans, ravaged the Irish
Irish Potato Famine / 303
potato crop for five years. The fungus that caused the blight had found its
way into Ireland from North America. The blight was a particular disaster
for laborers in Ireland, who dependended on the potato for daily suste-
nance. It was also a catastrophe for the British government, which was ill-
prepared to cope with the challenge of administering relief to a population
of approximately eight million people. At its first appearance in September
of 1845, local newspapers mentioned the blight, but public reaction was di-
vided by political difference or allegiance, and the looming disaster was
denied proper attention. While politicians and others bickered over which
group—medical, commercial, or administrative—was most competent or
obliged to deal with it, famine swept across Ireland and devastated its peo-
ple. In the long run, between 1.1 and 1.5 million persons died of starvation;
at least 500,000 had been evicted from their homes by landlords; some 3 mil-
lion people (about 40 percent of the population) were on some form of offi-
cial relief; more than 1 million were crammed into poorhouses; and be-
tween 1845 and 1855, more than 2.1 million Irish (about 25 percent of the
population prior to the famine) emigrated overseas, nearly 1.9 million of
them to North America. Naturally, the immigrants shared their story with
their neighbors in the new country. Some of these were the Choctaw.
The Choctaw-Ireland Connection. Following up on Irish appeals for inter-

national relief from famine and starvation, a great meeting of the Choctaw
nation was held near Skullyville, Oklahoma, in 1847 to consider the merits
of the cause. In the long run, the Choctaw, in conjunction with traders, mis-
sionaries, and Indian agency officials, contributed $170 (some sources indi-
cate $710) to buy food for Irish famine relief. The lesser sum is estimated at
around the equivalent of $10,000 in 2002 dollars. Among the distributors of
relief would have been the Belfast Ladies’ Association, the Society of
Friends (Quakers), and the British Relief Association. The Irish never for-
got the Choctaw gift, and in May, 1995, Mary Robinson, then president of
Ireland, formally thanked the Choctaw nation from the steps of the Tribal
Complex building for its act of generosity some 150 years prior. In Choc-
taw, President Robinson said: Chohta i yakne ala li kut na sa yukpa. (“I am glad
to have come to Choctaw country.”) Chief Hollis E. Roberts thanked her for
recognizing the Choctaw Nation for what was done in the past and looked
forward to what could be done in the future.
The Ties That Bind. Like the Irish diaspora in America, the modern Choc-
taw have grown strong in numbers and resolve. Today, the Oklahoma and
Mississippi tribal networks offer community, social, medical, and educa-
tional assistance to members. They sponsor an annual walk along the Trail
304 / Iroquois Confederacy
of Tears to honor the memory of the ancestors. Likewise, a group of Irish ac-
tivists from the Dublin-based Action From Ireland completed a commemo-
rative five-hundred-mile walk from Oklahoma to Mississippi, the Trail of
Tears in reverse, to raise famine funds for Somalia. In September, 1997, an
intertribal group from North America landed in Ireland to do its Irish leg of
a “sacred run,” with 58,000 miles completed since 1978. Once again, as in
1847, hands and hearts have reached across the ocean in solidarity.
Arthur Gribben

Angie, Debo. The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic. 2d ed. Reprint. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. The history and cultural de-
velopment of the Choctaw from earliest times.
Carson, James T., ed. Searching for the Bright Path. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1999. Mississippi Choctaws from prehistory to removal.
Fitzpatrick, Marie-Louise. The Long March. Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1999.
For younger audiences, tells the story of Choona, a young Choctaw who
must make his own decision about answering the Irish people’s plea for
help.
Gribben, Arthur, ed. The Great Famine and the Irish Diaspora in America. Bos-
ton: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Interdisciplinary collec-
tion of essays on the consequences of the famine from perspectives of
anthropology, ethnomusicology, political science, and more.
See also: Trail of Tears.
Iroquois Confederacy
Date: c. 1500-1777
Locale: Hudson River west to Lake Michigan and St. Lawrence River
south to the Cumberland Gap and the Ohio River
Tribes involved: Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga,
Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora)
Categories: Colonial history, Native government
Significance: The Haudenosaunee, or People of the Longhouse, con-
trolled northeastern North America for three centuries.
The Iroquois are the prime example of the level of cultural evolution that
American Indian tribes attained when they stayed in one place for a long
Iroquois Confederacy / 305
time. Archaeologic evidence places the predecessors of the Iroquois in

New York State for one thousand to fifteen hundred years prior to the
emergence of the Iroquois Confederacy. A subsistence culture called Owasco
preceded the Iroquois, which in turn was preceded by the Hopewell cul-
ture. Both cultures left traceable influences in Iroquois culture. By 1400,
contemporary-style Iroquoian villages existed; by 1600, all the units of the
confederacy were calling the larger group Haudenosaunee, the People of
the Longhouse.
The Haudenosaunee lived in fortified, stockade villages, were agrarian
and matrilineal (that is, passed property from mother to daughters), and
banded together through a strong political and religious system, in which
ultimate power was vested in the hands of the oldest “sensible” woman of
each clan. The foundation of the culture was called the fireplace, or hearth.
Each hearth—a mother and her children—was part of a larger extended
family, or owachira. Two or more owachiras made a clan; eight clans made a
tribe.
The purposes of the Iroquois Confederacy, League of the Iroquois, or
League of Five Nations, which was established as early as 1500, were to
unite and pacify the infighting Iroquois and to gain strength in numbers in
order to resist the opposition of Huron- and Algonquian-speaking neigh-
bors. (The word iroquois, as spelled by the French, is probably from the
Algonquian enemy name iriokiu or “spitting snake.”) The confederacy, if
later dates of its inception are accepted, may have formed as a response to
the fur trade. Before the consolidation of the confederacy, wars, primarily
revenge feuds, were constant among the Iroquois, who had no mechanism
to bring the strife to an end. The consolidation of the confederacy was pri-
marily a result of the efforts of the Mohawk chief Hiawatha and the Onon-
daga chief Atotarho, historical figures who based the religious and politi-
cal principles of the confederacy on the teachings of Deganawida (the
Peacemaker), whose historical authenticity is contested. The political rules
and regulations, the cultural model, and the spiritual teachings and reli-
gious model all attributed to Deganawida were later qualified and codified
by Handsome Lake, a Seneca visionary prophet responding to the pres-
sures of Christianity after the Revolutionary War.
Social Organization. The League of the Iroquois included the Mohawk,

Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca (the Five Nations), and, after 1722, the
Tuscarora (the Six Nations). The league was based on a carefully crafted
constitution. The “faithkeeper,” or central religious leader, called a yearly
council to recite the constitution and its laws and resolve differences. The
council retained the roles of the leaders, which were defined from ancient
Native Peoples of Eastern North America c. 1600

Cree
Montagnais
Chippewa
Passamaquoddy
Algonquin
Ottawa Penobscot
Menominee IROQUOIS
CONFEDERACY
Abnaki
Sauk Mohawk
Oneida
Onondaga Massachusett
Fox Cayuga
Seneca Narragansett
Winnebago Huron
Mohican
Pottawatomi Pequot Wampanoag
Kickapoo Erie Montauk
Miami Susquehannock
Illinois Honiason
Delaware
Monacan
Moneton
Pamunkey
Shawnee Powhatan
Tutelo
Tuscarora
Cherokee Pamlico
Yuchi
Chickasaw Catawba
CREEK Santee
CONFEDERACY
Choctaw
Alabama
Yamasee
Biloxi
Natchez Apalachee
Timucua
Seminole
times by clan system relationships. Fifty chiefs made up the council and
served for life but could be removed from office by the clan mothers if they
violated moral or ethical codes.
Religious life was organized according to the teaching of the Peace-
maker. Three men and three women supervised the keeping of the ceremo-
Iroquois Confederacy / 307
nies. The cosmology was well defined, and the origin stories are detailed
and sophisticated. Curing illnesses was a central part of daily religious life.
The Iroquois had a profound sense of the psychology of the soul and un-
derstood dreams and divinations to be communications between one’s
personality and one’s soul.
At the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the coastal regions of the
Northeast were occupied by Algonquian-speaking peoples and the inland
waterways were occupied by Iroquoian-speaking people. The entire area
was crisscrossed by the trails of a vast trading network that reached to the
Subarctic. Storable foods were traded for furs, nuts, obsidian, shells, flints,
and other items. Wampum belts of shells and, later, beads described sym-
bolically and mnemonically almost all dealings politically among and
within tribes.
Impact of the Fur Trade. The fur trade and European economics changed
the lives of the Iroquois drastically. Acquisition, exploitation, and competi-
tion became normal for Northeastern tribes. The confederacy created a
combined military force of more than a thousand men that, in the mid-
seventeenth century, effectively destroyed the Huron, Erie, Petun, and Illi-
nois tribes as players in the fur trade.
The ever-increasing encroachment of the French and the British pre-
sented the Iroquois with three options: compromise; adoption of the ways
of the Europeans, including their economics and religion; or use of violence
to reject the wave of invaders. The Iroquois drew from all three options:
They compromised whenever necessary to keep their neutrality and the
peace; adopted the religions and much of the trade economy (thus becom-
ing dependent upon metal items), but not the political and societal struc-
tures, of the Europeans; and chose to fight violently against the French and
the tribal allies of the French.
The nations of the confederacy had a crucial role in U.S. history. After
1609, when a war party of Mohawks met a group of French and Huron
soldiers under Samuel de Champlain and lost six Mohawk warriors to the
muskets of the French, the Mohawks carried a dogged hatred of the French
forward into alliances—first with the Dutch, from whom they obtained
their firearms, and then with the British, from whom they obtained all
forms of trade items and by whom they were converted to the Anglican
version of Christianity. Thus the Hudson and Mohawk River Valleys were
opened to the British, and the French were locked out. The subsequent
British dominance of the New World was made much easier by Iroquois
control of the waterways from the east coast into the interior of the conti-
nent.
The Iroquois Constitution. In 1677, the Five Nations of the Confederacy

met in Albany and wrote into history their memorized, mnemonically cued
Great Law, best described as a constitution. At the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, the Iroquois had mastered the artful politics of their pivotal position.
They played the various European traders one against the other, kept their
neutrality with level-headed diplomacy, and maintained their control of the
riverine system and the Great Lakes with intimidating success. Their hegem-
ony included the territory from Maine to the Mississippi River, and from
the Ottawa River in Canada to Kentucky and the Chesapeake Bay region.
In the eighteenth century, the Iroquois had more power than any other
native nation in North America. Colonial delegates from all the states of
the Americas traveled to Albany to learn about governing from the Iro-
quois. The longhouse sachems urged the colonists to form assemblies and
to meet and discuss common interests. In 1754, the first intercolonial con-
ference was held at Albany, and Iroquois delegates were in attendance.
The Iroquois maintained their power in spite of the assault of European
culture and religion during the eighteenth century. Until about the end of
the French and Indian War, the Iroquois were united in their resolve to stay
neutral and not be drawn into the imperial wars between the French and
the English. By the time of the American Revolution, however, the league’s
ability to stay neutral and to influence its members had lessened. During
the Revolutionary War, the Seneca, Cayuga, and Mohawk fought with the
British; the Onondaga tried to remain aloof; the Oneida and Tuscarora
sided with the Americans.
The American Revolution ended the power of the Iroquois. By 1800,
only two thousand survived on tiny reservations in western New York. An-
other six thousand had fled to Canada. Despite the conflicts and contacts
with European cultures, the Iroquois have retained their society and many
of their cultural practices, including kinship and ceremonial ties.
See also: Albany Congress; Beaver Wars; Code of Handsome Lake; Fort
Greenville Treaty; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Indian-white relations: French colo-
nial; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting; Northwest Ordinance;
Paxton Boys’ Massacres; Prehistory: Northeast; Prophetstown; Tecumseh’s
Rebellion; Walking Purchase.
Glenn Schiffman

Fenton, William Nelson. The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History
of the Iroquois Confederacy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
A massive work—over eight hundred pages—on the history and culture
of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting / 309
Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois. New York: Chelsea House Press, 1988.
Graymont is an expert on the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois; this precise,
concise text is essential for scholars of the Longhouse culture.
Henry, Thomas R. Wilderness Messiah: The Story of Hiawatha and the Iroquois.
New York: W. Sloane, 1955. Defines the line between legend and history
in the founding of the Iroquois league, and in the stories of Hiawatha,
Deganawida, and Atotarho.
An accurate history of special value to high school teachers.
Lyons, Oren, et al. Exiled in the Land of the Free. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Clear Light
Publishers, 1992. Lyons, faithkeeper of the Six Nations Confederacy, is
distinctive in his understanding of the role of the American Indian in
U.S. history.
Taylor, Colin F., ed. The Native Americans: The Indigenous People of North
America. New York: Smithmark, 1991. Companion book to a 1990’s tele-
vised series on Native Americans.
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress

meeting
Date: May 24 and June 11, 1776
Locale: Finger Lakes Region, Mohawk River Valley, Albany, Boston,
Philadelphia
Tribes involved: Iroquois Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga,
Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora)
lation, Native government
Significance: The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy attempt to
secure neutrality during the Revolutionary War but ultimately dis-
solve, losing control of the Northeast riverine trade.
The withdrawal of the French in 1763 from the New World was a watershed
event for the Six Nations (the Iroquois Confederacy). Between 1640, when
the Iroquois established their hegemony over the fur trade, and the end of
the French and Indian War in 1763, the Iroquois were profoundly involved
in the imperial rivalries between the English and the French and were piv-
otal in the balance of power in the New World. When the French left, the Ir-
oquois lost the fulcrum on which they kept the balance.
310 / Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting
The British government’s Proclamation of 1763 provided that all terri-

tory between the crest of the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River and
from Florida to 50° north latitude were closed to settlers and land specula-
tors and reserved “for the present” to American Indians. This proclama-
tion, however, served the British agenda, not the needs of either natives or
settlers. Britain wished to protect the valuable furbearing animals’ habitat
from encroaching colonists. Guaranteeing boundaries, moreover, did not
guarantee sovereignty.
In fact, the British were less accommodating of the Indians than the
French had been. Native resistance flared with Pontiac’s Resistance (1763-
1766), in which the Six Nation Senecas fought on the side of Pontiac, while
the Mohawks supported the British. When that rebellion failed, the Senecas
were punished by William Johnson and were forced to cede some of their
land to the British. In 1775, the Senecas successfully negotiated with the
Americans at Pittsburgh to remain neutral in the frontier battles and the
impending Revolutionary War, as long as the Americans stayed out of Iro-
quois territory. This negotiation was approved by the full governing coun-
cil of the Six Nations. It was the last significant action that exhibited that
the council still had control of its warriors.
In that Pittsburgh agreement, American settlers who encroached on Mo-
hawk territory were supposed to be punished by Americans. However, en-
croachment of the farmers and frontiersmen called the Albany Group near
the Mohawk River Valley never abated; thus the Mohawks, led by Joseph
Brant, grew more dependent on the British to help defend against Ameri-
can encroachment.
English Agreements During the Revolution. During 1775 and into the
spring of 1776, the British expended considerable effort to create military
allegiances with all the tribes of the Six Nations. So great was their influ-
ence among the Mohawks that Joseph Brant and several other warrior
chiefs sailed to England in November, 1775, professedly to secure Iroquois
sovereignty in exchange for allegiance to the British during the war. By
1776, the American Congress wanted desperately for the Iroquois to join
the fight on the side of the colonies, but they did not have the financial abil-
ity to dispense the gifts of food, ammunition, clothing, and other necessi-
ties that the Iroquois expected when asked to fight as mercenaries. The
American alternative was a proclamation of friendship and the stated de-
sire that the Six Nations remain neutral.
In England, King George III guaranteed Joseph Brant the boundaries of
the Iroquois homelands, but this was no concession to the key word, “sov-
ereignty.” It is believed that Joseph Brant misunderstood the British atti-
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting / 311
tude toward territorial sovereignty and territorial occupancy. It is known that

Brant believed the Americans’ goal was to overrun the continent at the ex-
pense of all American Indians. Brant decided the Iroquois’ future lay with
the British. In England, Joseph Brant was commissioned a colonel in the
British colonial militia.
Up to this time, the Americans had done no violence to the Iroquois and,
with the exception of the Albany Group, were careful to avoid trespassing
on Iroquois territory. After acting Indian Commissioner John Johnson at-
tempted to arrest the patriot missionary Samuel Kirkland at Oriskany, the
Oneida stronghold, the Albany Group entered Mohawk territory to arrest
Johnson. Both actions failed in their objectives, although Kirkland was mo-
mentarily muzzled and Johnson had to flee to Canada with a significant
force of Mohawk warriors.
The Americans Court the Iroquois. With this backdrop, an Iroquois dele-
gation of twenty-one members representing four of the Six Nations trav-
eled to Philadelphia to be presented to Congress on May 24 and again on
June 11. Brant was still in England. The delegates were presented to “the
great warrior chief” George Washington on May 24 and to the full Con-
gress on June 11. While in Philadelphia, they boarded in a room directly
above the meeting room of the Congress. Washington had spent the previ-
ous two weeks persuading the Continental Congress to break the Pitts-
burgh agreement and allow him to recruit an Indian militia. On May 25, the
Congress resolved that it would be expedient to engage American Indians
in the service of the colonies. The significance of this was twofold: Con-
gress was ignoring or nullifying the sovereignty of the Council of the
Confederacy that had approved the Pittsburgh agreement, and Congress
was ignoring the purpose of the Iroquois delegation, which was to assure
the sincere and serious effort by the Iroquois to hold fast to the neutrality
agreement.
George Washington knew the path to either a British or American vic-
tory led through Iroquois land. The strategic importance of that land could
not be ignored. Congress did not tell the Iroquois delegates that Washing-
ton was about to recruit Iroquois as soldiers; as the minutes of June 11
show,
We shall order our warriors not to hurt any of your kindred, and we hope you
will not allow any of your young brothers to join with the enemy . . . we desire
you accept these few necessaries as tokens of our good-will . . . we hope the
friendship between us will be firm as long as the sun shall shine and the waters
run, that we be as one people.
312 / Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting
While saying these words, Congress did not understand the disastrous im-
plications of their efforts to recruit American Indians.
The word to recruit was passed through patriot channels to the Rever-
end Kirkland and the Oneida and Tuscarora, and also to General Philip
Schuyler of the Albany Group. Schuyler was asked to recruit two thousand
Iroquois to be paid a reward of one hundred dollars for every British officer
killed or taken prisoner and thirty dollars for every enlisted man. Schuyler
was dubious not only of the policy but also of the numbers—there were not
two thousand Iroquois men available, much less warriors, who were not al-
ready aiding the British. The Oneida, however, decided to send five hun-
dred warriors to help protect the American Fort Stanwix near Utica, New
York. This action would breach the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Revolutionary War brought what was thought to be impossible to
the Iroquois nations: Their Covenant Chain broke. In 1777, the league
chiefs “covered their fire.” For the first time within living memory, Iroquois
fought and killed Iroquois, and their league shattered. The Treaty of Paris
in 1783 said nothing about the American Indians. Those who allied with
Britain were abandoned to the care of the Americans. Joseph Brant’s pledge
to the king in exchange for Brant’s understanding of a pledge of sover-
eignty was particularly bitter when he discovered that the British had
ceded all Mohawk land to the Americans. That the Mohawks were given a
reserve in Canada was little consolation.
See also: Albany Congress; Beaver Wars; Code of Handsome Lake; Fort
Greenville Treaty; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Indian-white relations: French colo-
nial; Iroquois Confederacy; Northwest Ordinance; Paxton Boys’ Massa-
cres; Prehistory: Northeast; Prophetstown; Tecumseh’s Rebellion; Walking
Purchase.
Glenn Schiffman

Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois. New York: Chelsea House Publishers,
1988. A useful book by a recognized expert on the subject.
____________. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syra-
cuse University Press, 1972. The author is considered to be the foremost
authority on the subject matter of this work.
This exceptional history of the events around the American Revolution
is accessible to both casual readers and scholars.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. Five Hundred Nations: An Illustrated History of North
American Indians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Companion book to
the CBS television series Five Hundred Nations, written by one of Amer-
Jay’s Treaty / 313
ica’s foremost authorities on American Indian culture.

Stone, William L. Life of Joseph Brant. Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1864. A
source for quotations of early colonial documents. Contains some his-
torical inaccuracies; for example, this is the source of the erroneous in-
formation that Brant was in North America at the time of the Philadel-
phia meeting.
Wise, Jennings C. The Red Man in the New World Drama, edited by Vine
Deloria, Jr. New York: Macmillan, 1971. The key words “new world
drama” provide a clue to the American Indian perspective of this author
and editor.
Jay’s Treaty
Categories: Colonial history, Eighteenth century history, National gov-
ernment and legislation, Treaties
Significance: Jay’s Treaty, signed between Great Britain and the United
States, was concerned with trade and issues of peace; among other
provisions, it permitted Native American people to travel freely
across the border between Canada and the United States.
The Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War
and made peace between Britain and the United States, contained no men-
tion of Indians and totally ignored questions about the status of their lands.
Many eastern tribal groups were fragmented during the revolution. Some
pledged loyalty to the British, who, in return for that loyalty, promised to
support the tribe’s land claims and continue generous trading provisions.
Other tribes favored the colonists. In the end, all tribal groups were disre-
garded in the peace negotiations. Prior to the American Revolution, many
tribes had negotiated treaties with Great Britain and these contained provi-
sions for reserved land bases. The Americans generally disregarded those
treaties because they were made with Britain, and further, the Americans
rejected a proposal to establish an aboriginal state.
Serious problems arose in the Old Northwest as American settlers
pushed farther west. Hostilities escalated to the point that the newly
formed American government realized it was necessary to begin negotiat-
314 / Keeler Commission
ing treaties with Indians as well as to protect their lands. Nonetheless,

fierce attacks between frontiersmen and Indians persisted. Compounding
problems in the Northwest was the fact that the British refused to evacuate
western military forts as provided in the Treaty of Paris. Indians continued
to seek refuge with the British, who, in turn, encouraged Indian attacks on
American settlers. Pressure on the U.S. government to address these issues
was increased when Indians won a stunning victory on November 4, 1791,
over General Arthur St. Clair’s troops near the headwaters of the Wabash
River.
Quelling Hostilities. Hostilities with the British escalated on all fronts and
the United States requested American statesman John Jay to negotiate an
agreement between the United States and Great Britain. Once ratified, this
agreement became known as Jay’s Treaty. Among other provisions which
related to shipping and trade, the British agreed to evacuate Northwestern
posts by June 1, 1796, and to grant free trade between Canada and the
United States. The provisions of the treaty meant that Indians faced in-
creasing American settlement in their lands. Controversy swirled around
the provision that permitted traders from Canada to operate unrestricted
in American territory, because there was fear these traders, who always en-
joyed a close relationship with the Indians, would encourage the Indians to
continue hostilities against the American frontiersmen. To add to these
fears, the treaty permitted Indians to travel freely between Canada and the
United States. This guarantee is still in effect, and though no longer a threat
to American security, restrictions imposed by both Canada and the United
States have caused Indians to protest them as a breach of the treaty.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Fallen Timbers, Battle of; Fort Wayne Treaty; Indian-white re-
lations: Canadian; Indian-white relations: English colonial; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Little Turtle’s War; Northwest Ordinance; Proc-
lamation of 1763; Treaties and agreements in Canada; Treaties and agree-
ments in the United States.
Keeler Commission
Keeler Commission / 315

history
Significance: This commission’s report helped end the termination pol-
icy that began in 1953.
The intent of federal Indian policy from 1953 to 1962, as set forth in the Ter-
mination Resolution of 1953, was to dissolve government obligations and
responsibilities toward Native Americans in order to bring about assimila-
tion. This disastrous program was called “termination.” It undermined
tribal governments and resources, eroded ethnic identities, and impover-
ished groups such as the Klamath of Oregon and Menominee of Wisconsin.
By the end of the decade, so much criticism had been generated by these
developments that a new political consciousness concerning Indian prob-
lems began to emerge.
John F. Kennedy, elected president in 1960, affirmed that Indian land
would be protected, that self-determination would be promoted, and that
steps would be taken to avoid undermining the cultural heritage of any
group. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed a special task force
on Indian affairs in February of 1961 with an eye toward reorganizing the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in order to carry out this mandate.
William Wayne Keeler, a top-level executive with Phillips Petroleum
Company and principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was appointed
chairman of the task force. Other members included Philleo Nash, an an-
thropologist and former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin who had partici-
pated in the Menominee termination plans; James Officer, a University of
Arizona anthropologist; William Zimmerman, Jr., assistant commissioner
of the BIA from 1933 to 1950; and consultant John Crow. After hearings and
field trips to western reservations, the commission filed its seventy-seven-
page report on July 10, 1961. Nash also included a summary of the report in
the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1961.
The commission’s main finding was that future BIA policy should em-
phasize development rather than termination. Recommendations included
the attraction of industries to reservations, along with job training and
placement services. Loan programs were encouraged, rapid settlement of
Indian Claims Commission cases was urged, and increased efforts to edu-
cate the general public about Indian culture were promoted. The commis-
sion report also stressed the need for Indian participation in government
programs.
In the 1960’s, Congress granted authorization for Indian loans, tribal re-
sources increased, and development of reservation resources replaced the
focus on assimilating Indians through relocation to the cities. The Keeler
316 / Keetoowah Society
Commission played a small but noticeable role in the shift away from the
termination policy.
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Termination Resolution.
Gary A. Olson
Keetoowah Society
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Organizations
Significance: The Keetoowah Society was founded in an effort to ad-
vance the interests of full-blooded Cherokees.
The Keetoowah Society was founded by two white clergymen in 1859. The
men were abolitionists, and their goal, ostensibly, was to organize Chero-
kee opposition to slavery. Members of the order were full-bloods, and some
called themselves “Pin Indians,” wearing crossed pins on their left lapels.
The Keetoowah Society evolved from simple support of abolition to a
group whose purpose was the protection of Cherokee interests. Society
goals were taken from the ancient Anti-Kutani, designed to oppose adop-
tion of European American ways. “Pin Indians” were Christians who
wished to syncretize their religion with ancient tribal rites.
The Keetoowah Society was popular and at one time had a membership
of more than two thousand men. It was fiercely loyal to the Union during
the Civil War (1861-1865). That fact threatened the Confederacy, which im-
pressed society members into military service. Stories abound of men who
were forced to serve the South and deserted at the first opportunity.
Following the Civil War, the Keetoowah Society remained active in
Cherokee political and social life. It opposed the Dawes Commission in the
1890’s, insisting on the observance of treaty obligations, a guarantee of self-
government, and freedom from territorial organization. When the Chero-
kee delegation reached agreement with the Dawes Commission in 1900,
the full-blood Keetoowah Society urged its members to boycott the agree-
ment. In 1906, the Dawes Commission agreement prevailed. The society
then functioned as a political party (the Union Party) and fraternal lodge.
The Keetoowah Society is viable to this day and is the only fraternal lodge
in the United States whose principal emblem is the United States flag.
Kennedy Report / 317
Cherokee War.
David N. Mielke
Kennedy Report
Date: 1967
century history
Significance: The result of a Senate Subcommittee investigation into
Native American education, which led to the Indian Education Act of
1972.
In 1967, the United States Senate created the Special Subcommittee on In-
dian Education. Senator Robert F. Kennedy chaired the committee, which
held hearings and authorized studies of educational programs for Native
Americans. His brother Edward “Ted” Kennedy was the chair when the
subcommittee released its final report in November, 1969. Entitled Indian
Education: A National Tragedy, a National Challenge, but more commonly
called the Kennedy Report, the study concluded that “national policies
for educating American Indians are a failure of major proportions.” The
report blamed efforts to force Indian children to accept cultural values
other than their own as one of the major flaws in Indian education and as
a leading cause of high dropout rates. The subcommittee offered sixty rec-
ommendations for improving Indian education, which included empha-
sizing Indian culture and history and increasing funding for existing pro-
grams. Although government officials responsible for Indian education
rushed to defend their programs, the Kennedy Report raised serious ques-
tions in the minds of many Americans concerning the government’s man-
agement of Indian affairs. The report’s findings helped promote passage of
the Indian Education Act of 1972, which implemented some of its recom-
mendations.
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Carlisle In-
dian School; Indian Education Acts; Indian Self-Determination and Educa-
tion Assistance Act; National Congress of American Indians.
Thomas Clarkin
318 / Kennewick Man controversy
Kennewick Man controversy

Date: Beginning July 28, 1996
Locale: Washington State
Tribes involved: Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Wanapum, Yakima
Categories: Court cases, National government and legislation, Pre-
Columbian history, Twentieth century history
Significance: The debate over the ancient skeletal remains known as
Kennewick Man raised a number of historical and contemporary
questions about Native American identity and about conflicts be-
tween tribal traditions and modern scientific activities.
The people who lived in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans in
the fifteenth century are commonly identified as Native Americans or
American Indians. Most scientists maintain that Native Americans are
descended from groups of people who crossed the Bering Strait from
Siberia. Some Native Americans believe that their first ancestors came
into existence on the American continents. Claims that Kennewick Man
resembled Europeans more than contemporary Native Americans there-
fore challenged both standard scientific views and Native American tradi-
tions.
In addition, the discovery revived long-standing disagreements be-
tween Native Americans and parts of the American scientific establish-
ment. For most of American history, the remains of the Native American
dead were frequently deposited in museums and laboratories. This was re-
sented by living Native Americans, whose traditions taught that their dead
should be treated with respect. In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed the Na-
tive American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which
recognized the rights of Native American groups to the remains of their an-
cestors. When some anthropologists and archaeologists attempted to claim
the right to keep and study the Kennewick bones, Native Americans saw
this as disrespect for their dead and as another attack on Native American
culture. Those who were against handing the remains over to contempo-
rary Native Americans argued that scientific values required studying the
remains and that it was not clear which tribe or nation, if any, could claim
Kennewick Man as an ancestor.
The Discovery. The Kennewick Man controversy began when two young
men attending annual hydroplane races found a skull in the Columbia
River near Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. The discoverers
Kennewick Man controversy / 319
turned the skull over to local police authorities, who investigated and
found more skeletal remains. The county coroner recognized that the re-
mains were too old to be the result of a recent crime and he asked an an-
thropologist, James C. Chatters, to examine them. On July 29, Dr. Chatters
had the bones X-rayed and CAT-scanned. Chatters came to two conclu-
sions that would create both publicity and controversy. First, he decided
that some of the features of the skull were not those of contemporary
Native Americans. He maintained that the skull had “Caucasoid” char-
acteristics, or characteristics usually associated with people whose ances-
tors were from the area of Europe. Second, with further investigation, he
came to the conclusion that the bones were more than eight thousand
years old.
After the initial discovery, the area of the find was carefully examined,
and investigators found more bones during August, 1996. Since the re-
mains had been found on land owned by the federal government, Chatters
informed the Army Corps of Engineers of the discovery. One of the bone
fragments was sent to the University of California, Riverside, where a test
that involved destroying part of the bone indicated that the remains were
about 8,400 years old.
Publicity and Controversy. On July 30, 1996, The Tri-City Herald, an east-
ern Washington newspaper, reported that the newly discovered skull ap-
parently belonged to someone of European descent, possibly an early
pioneer settler. A month later, on August 28, the Tri-City Herald gave a
more detailed and more intriguing account, based on a more complete ex-
amination of the fragments, on scientific tests, and on speculation. The
newspaper reported that the skeleton was taller and thinner than the skele-
tons of most Native Americans and that the skull was not flattened by
boards in infancy, as was commonly the practice among ancient American
Indians in the region. In the right hip of the skeleton, found after the skull,
there was a spear point of the type used between five thousand and nine
thousand years earlier. The newspaper observed that the University of Cal-
ifornia test supported the view that Kennewick Man lived in very early
times.
These newspaper reports drew widespread attention. Representatives
of Native American groups became concerned with the treatment of the
pre-Columbian skeleton. In the August 28 article of the Tri-City Herald,
Jerry Meninick, the vice chairman of the Yakima Nation’s tribal council,
said that Native Americans would regard Kennewick Man’s remains as sa-
cred and as deserving burial. Other Native American leaders and activists
also began to object to Chatters’s possession of Native American remains.
Jeff Van Pelt and other representatives of the Umatilla Reservation, Alan
Slickpoo of the Nez Perce, and Bobby Tomanowash of the Wanapum op-
posed Chatters’s work with the remains and voiced their concerns to the
Army Corps of Engineers.
On September 2, 1996, the Army Corps of Engineers took control of the
bones. Soon afterward, the five Native American tribal groups in the area
claimed the bones under NAGPRA. In response, the Corps recognized the
claims of the these groups and, on September 17, published the “Notice of
Intent to Repatriate” required by the act. The publicity surrounding the
discovery and scientific interest in it made it impossible for the Army
Corps of Engineers to quietly hand over the remains to representatives of
any tribe or set of tribes. A Portland, Oregon, attorney named Alan Schnei-
der wrote the Corps at the end of September, offering his view that since
Kennewick Man was apparently not an ancestor of any existing tribe, the
remains were not covered by NAGPRA. On October 16, Robson Bonnich-
sen and seven other anthropologists represented by attorney Schneider
filed suit in the U.S. Magistrate Court in Portland. In their suit, the anthro-
pologists maintained that they would be deprived of their rights to study
the remains if these were given to the Native American groups.
The controversy drew other interested parties. Not long after the an-
thropologists filed their suit, another Portland attorney filed a suit asking
that the remains be turned over to his clients, the Asatru Folk Assembly.
The group consisted of Americans of European descent who had revived
the worship of the old Norse gods Odin and Thor. According to the Asatru
Folk Assembly, if the skeleton could be shown to be more similar to Euro-
peans than to Native Americans, then the remains should legally belong to
the worshipers of the Norse gods.
The members of the Asatru Folk Assembly dropped their claim to
Kennewick Man in January, 2000, asserting that the legal system was bi-
ased against them. Still, the ancient man continued to find others claiming
descent from him. In July, 2001, a man of Samoan ancestry, Joseph P. Siofele,
filed suit for custody of the remains, claiming that Kennewick Man was a
relative of the ancient Polynesians.
Movements and Status of the Remains. The status of Kennewick Man un-
der NAGPRA was unclear in the eyes of many people. In 1997, Doc Hastings,
a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington, drafted a
bill intended to clarify NAGPRA and to permit scientists to continue with
their studies of the bones. However, the administration of President Bill
Clinton joined with Native American groups in opposing the bill. The U.S.
government told the court that the remains would have been automatically
Kennewick Man controversy / 321
handed over to a Native American tribe if the discovery had occurred in

territory that was recognized as American Indian land by the Indian Claims
Commission. Since the place of discovery was not recognized as tribal
land, though, right of possession was open to question. At the end of Octo-
ber, 1998, the bones of Kennewick Man were moved to the Thomas Burke
Memorial Washington State Museum at the University of Washington in
Seattle. At the Burke Museum, scientists would be allowed to continue
some studies until the court reached a final legal decision, but the remains
would have to be treated in a respectful manner.
The case took on a new twist in late 1998, when an anthropologist from
the Smithsonian Institution who examined the remains reported that sev-
eral major pieces of the bones had disappeared. The mystery of these
missing bone fragments was never solved. To complicate matters, in late
1999 scientists appointed by the U.S. Department of the Interior to study
the remains concluded that Kennewick Man was not similar to either
modern Native Americans or modern European Americans. Instead, the
Interior Department scientists reported, the remains showed resemblances
to natives of southeastern Asia, such as the Ainu of Japan and the Polyne-
sians.
On July 13, 2000, Frank McManamon, consulting archaeologist of the
U.S. Department of the Interior and chief archaeologist of the National
Park Service, announced that Kennewick Man was between 9,320 and 9,510
years old. McManamon indicated that this age, along with some skele-
tal evidence, meant that the remains should be regarded as Native Ameri-
can and should be dealt with according to NAGPRA. If researchers had
been able to obtain deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from the remains, this
would have enabled them to establish any relationship with possible mod-
ern descendants. However, laboratories failed at obtaining DNA. In Sep-
tember, 2000, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt announced that
the location of the discovery and the oral traditions of Native Americans
were enough to establish a link between Kennewick Man and contem-
porary Native Americans. Therefore, Secretary Babbitt stated, the bones
should be handed over to the Native American groups that were claiming
them.
The announcement by the Interior Department did not resolve the
controversy. Dr. Bonnichsen and his associates vowed to fight on in court.
Representative Hastings said that he hoped the Department of the Inte-
rior’s announcement would lead to reconsideration of his bill to make
NAGPRA friendlier to science. Many concerned Native Americans contin-
ued to feel that their dead and their traditions had been treated with a lack
of respect.
See also: Bering Strait migrations; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-

2002; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; Prehistory:
Northwest Coast.
Carl L. Bankston III

Bonnichsen, Robson, and Alan L. Schneider. “Battle of the Bones.” The Sci-
ences 40, no. 4 (July/August, 2000): 40-46. An article by one of the an-
thropologists involved in the Kennewick Man litigation and by a lawyer
who presents the controversy as a conflict between tradition and sci-
ence.
Chatters, James C. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Ameri-
cans. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. The anthropologist who was
one of the central actors in the controversy tells the story of the discov-
ery of the remains, the legal quarrels over them, and the evidence and
theories regarding prehistoric North Americans.
Downey, Roger. Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race and the Story of
Kennewick Man. New York: Copernicus, 2000. A history of the Kenne-
wick discovery and controversy that is critical of Dr. Chatters and other
anthropologists.
Garrett, Kenneth. “Hunt for the First Americans.” National Geographic 198,
no. 6 (December, 2000). A description of how recent discoveries, includ-
ing that of Kennewick Man, have changed scientific theories about the
earliest Americans.
Owsley, Douglas W., and Richard L. Jantz. “Archaeological Politics and
Public Interest in Paleoamerican Studies: Lessons from Gordon Creek
Woman and Kennewick Man.” American Antiquity 66, no. 4 (2001): 565-
575. Discusses legal and social issues surrounding Kennewick Man and
other remains and argues that discussions of biological connections to
present-day populations are relevant to the treatment of archaeological
remains.
Thomas, David Hurst. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Bat-
tle for Native American Identity. New York: Basic Books, 2000. A history of
American archaeology that looks at the changing relationship between
Native Americans and archaeology and places the Kennewick Man con-
troversy in the context of this changing relationship.
Kickapoo Resistance / 323
Kickapoo Resistance
Date: 1819-1834
Locale: Illinois
Tribes involved: Kickapoo
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Treaties, Wars and battles
Significance: Two separate bands of Kickapoo repudiated treaties of
1819 calling for all Kickapoo to move west; not until 1834 did the last
band finally do so.
The 1819 Treaties of Edwardsville and Fort Harrison required the Kickapoo
to vacate their lands in Illinois and move west. Two renegade bands of
about 250 Indians each repudiated the treaties and remained, but by very
different means.
The band led by Chief Mecina resisted by looting, rustling, shooting
livestock, and terrorizing settlers. William Clark, area superintendent of
Indian affairs, used persuasion rather than force, and in 1829 Mecina and
about 150 tribal members left. About a hundred members joined Black
Hawk’s band of Sauk and Fox Indians in their ultimately unsuccessful
efforts to recover tribal lands
by force. Black Hawk was de-
feated in 1832, after which his
supporters also moved west.
The band led by the warrior
Kennekuk enjoyed friendly
and peaceful relations with
whites. Consequently, Kenne-
kuk was able to resist pas-
sively and delay leaving. In
1833, however, Clark lost pa-
tience and gave Kennekuk an
ultimatum to leave or be con-
sidered an enemy. In spring
of 1834 Kennekuk finally left,
leaving the Kickapoo wholly
removed from their original
lands.
See also: Black Hawk War;
Kickapoo uprisings. A Kickapoo warrior thought to be Babeshikit in
Laurence Miller 1894. (National Archives)
324 / Kickapoo uprisings
Kickapoo uprisings
Date: 1865-1873
Locale: Southern Texas
Tribes involved: Kickapoo
Wars and battles
Significance: This war of retribution against southern Texans wreaked
havoc, caused bitter controversy with Mexico over the sanctity of
borders, and marked the beginning of reservation life for some South-
ern Kickapoos.
During a migration of seven hundred Southern Kickapoos from Kansas to

Mexico, the Indians were attacked by four hundred soldiers of the Texas
Confederate Army on January 1, 1865. The Kickapoos won a decisive vic-
tory at the Battle of Dove Creek, but they lost fifteen dead and numerous
supplies.
Enraged by this unwarranted attack and considering it an act of war, the
Kickapoos unleashed a relentless, merciless, and highly effective campaign
of terror, vengeance, and destruction against Texans and their property
along the Rio Grande over the next decade.
Unable to persuade the Southern Kickapoos to cease hostilities and re-
turn to the United States, the government resorted to force and crossed the
border into Mexico without permission in 1873. On May 18, the U.S. Fourth
Cavalry killed and captured many women and children at Nacimiento. De-
siring to be reunited with their families, 317 Kickapoos agreed to return to
Indian Territory in the United States in 1873, with the rest (about 280) re-
maining in Mexico.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Kickapoo resistance.
Laurence Miller
Lewis and Clark expedition

Date: May 14, 1804-September 23, 1806
Locale: Trans-Mississippi West
Tribes involved: Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Chinook, Crow, Flathead, Klat-
sop, Mandan, Minnataree, Nez Perce, Osage, Pawnee, Shoshone,
Sioux, Spokane, Tillamook, Yakima
Lewis and Clark expedition / 325
Categories: Nineteenth century history

Significance: The westward expedition of Lewis and Clark not only ex-
panded European American knowledge of the North American con-
tinent, but also was the first contact many Native American groups
had with Europeans and had long-lasting reverberations for their tra-
ditional ways of life.
Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their companions were the first Eu-
ropeans to cross the western half of North America within the present lim-
its of the United States. During their journeys, they traveled through the fu-
ture states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota,
Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Their exploration was the con-
cluding act in the long and fruitless search for a water route through the
continent—a Northwest Passage—that had begun soon after Christopher
Columbus discovered the New World.
The instigator of the exploration was Thomas Jefferson, the third presi-
dent of the United States. He had first thought of such an undertaking
about the time the United States achieved independence in 1783, and dur-
ing the succeeding decade he twice tried unsuccessfully to launch a trans-
continental exploring party. Not until he assumed the presidency in 1801,
however, was Jefferson in a position to have his plan implemented.
On January 18, 1803, the president asked Congress for authorization
and for an appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars to send a military
expedition to explore along the Missouri River to its source in the Rocky
Mountains, and then down the nearest westward-flowing streams to the
Pacific Ocean. Jefferson gave two reasons for the proposed mission: to pre-
pare the way for the extension of the American fur trade to the tribes
throughout the area to be explored, and to advance geographical knowl-
edge of the continent.
When he sent his message to Congress, none of the territory Jefferson
wanted to be explored lay within the United States. The area between the
Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, called Louisiana, belonged to
France, while the Pacific Northwest was claimed by Great Britain, Spain,
and Russia, as well as by the United States. While he was developing his
plans for the transcontinental exploring expedition, however, the presi-
dent also was conducting negotiations with the French government of Na-
poleon Bonaparte, which resulted in the purchase of the Louisiana terri-
tory from France—not the region of the modern state of Louisiana but
rather a huge area that spanned nearly half of the trans-Mississippi West
and effectively doubled the size of the United States. A treaty was signed
on May 2, although antedated to April 30, 1803. Thus, in ascending the Mis-
326 / Lewis and Clark expedition
souri River, the expedition would be exploring new U.S. territory, while by
completing the journey to the Pacific Ocean, it would be strengthening the
United States’ claim to the region beyond the mountains.
To command the expedition, Jefferson chose his private secretary, Cap-
tain Meriwether Lewis. With the president’s concurrence, Lewis then in-
vited his longtime friend William Clark to be his co-leader. After making
initial preparations in the East, Lewis traveled to Wood River, Illinois, op-
posite the mouth of the Missouri River. Clark and several recruits joined
him on the way down the Ohio River. Lewis and Clark spent the winter of
1803-1804 at Camp Wood River recruiting and training their men, gathering
additional supplies and equipment
(including fourteen bales of trade
goods), and collecting information
about the Missouri River from
traders and boatmen. The perma-
nent party that was organized in-
cluded twenty-seven young, un-
married soldiers; a mixed-blood
hunter and interpreter named
George Drouillard; Clark’s black
slave, York; and Lewis’s big New-
foundland dog, Scammon. In ad-
dition, a corporal, five privates,
and several French boatmen were
to accompany the expedition dur-
ing the first season and then re-
turn downriver with its records,
sketches, and scientific specimens.
The Expedition Sets Forth. The

Corps of Discovery began its his-
toric journey on May 14, 1804. It
started up the Missouri River in
a fifty-five-foot keelboat and two
pirogues, or dugout canoes. Aver-
aging about fifteen miles a day, A statue of Sacagawea in Portland, Ore-
by the end of October, the corps gon, commemorates the Shoshone who
carried her two-month-old son with her as
had reached the villages of the
she guided the Lewis and Clark expedi-
Mandans and Minnatarees near tion. For her services, she received less
the mouth of the Knife River in than 0.01 percent of the total cost of the
the future state of North Dakota. expedition. (Library of Congress)
Lewis and Clark expedition / 327
After ending their sixteen-hundred-mile trek, the explorers built a log

stronghold called Fort Mandan and went into winter quarters. During the
long, frigid winter, Lewis and Clark made copious notes in their journals,
drew maps of their route, and counseled with numerous Native American
visitors. From the Minnatarees, especially, they obtained invaluable infor-
mation about the course of the Missouri River and the country through
which it ran. The contributions of these and other Native Americans to the
success of the exploration cannot be exaggerated.
On April 7, 1805, the expedition resumed its journey. The party now
numbered only thirty-three persons. It included, besides the permanent
detachment, interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, his young Shoshone
wife Sacagawea, and her two-month-old son Jean Baptiste, nicknamed
Pompey. On August 17, after passing through country never before visited
by Europeans, the expedition reached the navigable limits of the Missouri
River.
With Sacagawea’s help, Lewis and Clark purchased horses from her
brother Cameahwai of the Shoshone tribe and began their journey through
the Rocky Mountains. Sacagawea had been captured three years before by
a Minnataree raiding party and carried back east to the prairies, where
Charbonneau had purchased her for his wife. The chance meeting of
Sacagawea and her brother, who had become the chief of their clan, was a
convenient opportunity for the expedition. Along with the horses, Lewis
and Clark were given travel instructions and lent a guide, called Toby, to
assist them through the mountains. After crossing the mountains, the ex-
plorers descended the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia Rivers to the Pa-
cific, where they arrived in mid-November.
The Road Home. After a dreary winter at Fort Clatsop (named for a neigh-
boring tribe) south of the Columbia River, the explorers started for home
on March 23, 1806. Other than fighting to keep warm and searching for
food, the highlight of their stay was a visit to the remains of a dead beached
whale, from which they obtained three hundred pounds of blubber and oil.
They were anxious to start back east, as they had seen the sun only six days
during their stay at Fort Clatsop. En route, they divided temporarily; Lewis
and a small party explored the Marias River, while Clark and the rest of the
men descended the Yellowstone River. Reuniting below the mouth of the
Yellowstone, they hurried on down the Missouri and arrived in St. Louis on
September 23, 1806.
The Lewis and Clark expedition had accomplished its mission with re-
markable success. In only twenty-eight months, it had covered more than
eight thousand miles. On the entire journey, only one member of the expe-
328 / Lewis and Clark expedition
Western Expeditions of Lewis and Clark (1804-1806)

and Pike (1806-1807)
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Non-U.S. territory
A new era in westward exploration and expansion of the United States followed the
Louisiana Purchase of 1803. President Thomas Jefferson charged his private sec-
retary, Meriwether Lewis, to undertake a northwestern reconnaissance expedition
to explore the new lands. At about the same time, Zebulon Pike of the Western Army
of the United States conducted several expeditions that led him deep into Spanish
territory in the Southwest. Such expeditions opened the door to white settlers and
devastating incursions into Native American homelands.
dition, Sergeant Charles Floyd, lost his life, probably because of a ruptured
appendix. Although they met thousands of Native Americans, the explor-
ers had only one violent encounter with them. This violence occurred while
Lewis was high up the Marias River, and it resulted in the death of two
Piegans, members of the Blackfoot Confederacy. The total expense of the
undertaking, including the special congressional appropriation of $2,500,
was $38,722.25. Charbonneau collected $500.33 for his and Sacagawea’s
Little Bighorn, Battle of the / 329
services. At this small cost Lewis and Clark and their companions took the
first giant step in opening the West to the American people.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Prehistory: Northwest
Coast; Prehistory: Plateau.
John L. Loos, updated by Russell Hively

Bakeless, John. Lewis and Clark: Partners in Discovery. New York: William
Morrow, 1947. One of the most reliable sources on Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark. Based on both of their journals.
Biddle, Nicholas, and Paul Allen, eds. History of the Expedition Under the
Command of Captains Lewis and Clark. 2 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott, 1961. Prepared by Biddle, a young Philadelphia lawyer, between
1810 and 1814, this work is based on both Lewis’s and Clark’s journals.
De Voto, Bernard. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1953. A one-volume condensation of the Original Journals of Lewis and
Clark Expedition. Includes maps.
Dillon, Richard. Meriwether Lewis: A Biography. New York: Coward-McCann,
1965. A full-length study of Meriwether Lewis’s life.
McGrath, Patrick. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Morristown, N.J.: Silver
Burdett, 1985. A simple but complete telling of the Lewis and Clark ad-
venture for younger readers.
Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark Among the Indians. Bicentennial edition.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. A detailed look at the In-
dian cultures encountered by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Salisbury, Albert, and Jane Salisbury. Two Captains West. Seattle: Superior
Publishing, 1950. Descriptions of the Lewis and Clark trail, with maps
and photographs. Designed for the lay reader.
Tourtelott, Jonathan B., ed. “Meriwether Lewis/William Clark.” In Into the
Unknown: The Story of Exploration. Washington, D.C.: National Geo-
graphic Society, 1987. A thirty-four-page chapter devoted to the Lewis
and Clark expedition.
Little Bighorn, Battle of the

Date: June 25-26, 1876
Locale: Little Bighorn River, Montana
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Arikara, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Sioux
330 / Little Bighorn, Battle of the

Significance: The stunning defeat of the Seventh Cavalry unleashed re-
lentless pursuit of the victorious Indians, culminating in their surren-
der, their exile to reservation life, and the end of traditional Plains
culture.
The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) guaranteed the Sioux a permanent reser-
vation that encompassed all of present South Dakota west of the Missouri
River and from which encroaching white settlers were forbidden. The
Sioux were also guaranteed the right to hunt in a larger unceded territory,
also closed to whites. About three thousand free-roaming Sioux lived on
these lands and despised the thought of reservation life. Crazy Horse and
Sitting Bull were the most famous of these Sioux.
Background to the Battle. The terms of the treaty, however, were blatantly
violated. From 1871 to 1874, surveying parties with army escort trespassed
on both the reservation and unceded territory, charting routes and finding
gold in the sacred Black Hills. By mid-1875 hordes of white prospectors
and adventurers were poised to invade Sioux territory, held back only by
the army.
The government tried through persuasion and threats to induce the
Sioux to sell the Black Hills but were unequivocally rebuffed. This led Pres-
ident Ulysses S. Grant to devise a plan to justify a war against the Sioux.
Their defeat would remove the free-roaming Sioux from the unceded terri-
tory and place them on the reservation. The Black Hills and unceded terri-
tory would be opened for settlement and prospecting. The plan began with
a decision not to enforce the ban on prospectors entering the Black Hills.
Lies about Sioux misdeeds and crimes were publicly circulated. Then in
December, 1875, the government gave an ultimatum to the free-roaming
Northern Cheyenne and Sioux to surrender at their agencies by January 31,
1876, or be forced there by military action.
The Indians bitterly resented this ultimatum. It violated the 1868 treaty,
and the free-roaming groups were determined to maintain their traditional
way of life and not go to reservations. Resentment was further fueled by a
famine on the reservation caused largely by negligence and graft in the dis-
tribution of guaranteed rations. In addition, the sale of firearms to hunt
needed food was prohibited. The Platte Sioux had been arbitrarily re-
moved from their reservation to save on freight charges for their rations.
Annihilation of Custer’s Forces. The Indians ignored the ultimatum, and

the army was ordered to capture or disperse them. On June 24 the Sev-
Little Bighorn, Battle of the / 331
enth Cavalry, under the com-

mand of General George Arm-
strong Custer, found an Indian
camp (predominantly Sioux
but including some Northern
Cheyenne and Arapaho) on
the south bank of the Little
Bighorn River. In the afternoon
of June 25, 1876, the Battle of
the Little Bighorn commenced.
Major Marcus Reno and his
three companies of 175 soldiers
and Indian scouts attacked the
southern end of the camp. Reno
aborted the attack, however,
when he realized the number
of Indians he would engage.
He took cover in timber along
the river but was forced to with-
draw to a more defensible hill-
Rain in the Face, one of the Sioux leaders at top on the bluffs across the
Little Bighorn, is believed to have dealt the river when set upon by an over-
deathblow to General Custer in the Battle of
whelming force of Indians. The
Little Bighorn. (National Archives)
withdrawal turned into a panic
and a rout. Seven officers and
84 men made it to the hill. Forty were killed, 13 were wounded, and several
were missing.
Custer observed Reno’s charge from Weir Point, a high bluff. He
searched for an opening that would permit him and his 210 troops to join
the battle as soon as possible. Custer made contact with the Indians at
around 3:45 p.m., near the river. What then happened is not exactly clear,
but Custer moved away from the river and ended up on Custer Hill, about
four miles from Reno’s hill. Almost two thousand Indians attacked Custer’s
force and completely surrounded it. Within about an hour Custer and all
his men were annihilated.
The third unit of Custer’s force, 5 officers and 110 soldiers, was com-
manded by Captain Frederick Benteen. Benteen was under orders to search
for hostiles to the left of Custer’s force and then hurry back and join Custer.
Benteen, however, contrary to orders, dawdled behind, probably in the be-
lief that there were no Indian warriors in the area. Benteen did not get to the
battlefield in time to help Custer. The fourth unit of Custer’s force, the pack
332 / Little Bighorn, Battle of the
train carrying supplies, was manned by 2 officers and 134 soldiers. It lan-
guished in the rear and could not be of assistance when Custer was at-
tacked.
When Benteen and the pack train arrived at the Little Bighorn, they
joined Reno on Reno Hill. This total force of 367 was able to withstand In-
dian attacks on the morning of June 26, with a loss of 7 killed and 40 men
wounded. The Indians were gone by June 27, and the battle was over. Total
army casualties numbered 263 killed and 59 wounded.
The army’s defeat was the result of several factors. Inadequate intelli-
gence led Custer to underestimate the strength and temper of his foe: Two
thousand battle-tested warriors resolved to defend their way of life against
597 cavalry. Custer’s troops were divided into four units, only two of
which fought, and then at different times and places and against over-
whelming odds. Another factor was the strength of the Indians’ leadership;
Crazy Horse, Gall, and Rain in the Face were all actively involved in the
fighting.
The Indians’ victory was short-lived. An angry American public, Con-
gress, and military demanded revenge. The Indians were relentlessly pur-
sued in 1877, and by the end of the 1870’s nearly all Plains Indians had been
killed or confined to reservations; the traditional Plains culture passed into
history.
See also: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
1933; National Indian Association; Rosebud Creek, Battle of; Sioux War;
Washita River Massacre.
Laurence Miller

Dillon, Richard H. North American Indian Wars. New York: Facts on File,
1983.
Gray, John S. Centennial Campaign. Ft. Collins, Colo.: Old Army Press, 1976.
Green, Jerome A., ed. Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux
War, 1876-1877. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
Rosenberg, Bruce A. Custer and the Epic of Defeat. University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 1974.
Russell, Don. Custer’s Last. Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of
Western Art, 1968.
Vaughn, Jesse W. Indian Fights. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1966.
Little Turtle’s War / 333
Little Turtle’s War
Date: October 18, 1790-July, 1794

Locale: Ohio Valley
Tribes involved: Chippewa, Lenni Lenape, Miami, Ottawa, Potawatomi,
Shawnee, Wyandot
Categories: Eighteenth century history, Wars and battles
Significance: Native Americans inflict the worst battlefield defeat on
U.S. Army troops during the Indian wars.
On November 4, 1791, Little Turtle was one of the principal chiefs among a
coalition of Shawnees, Miamis, Lenni Lenapes (Delawares), Potawatomis,
Ottawas, Chippewas, and Wyandots in the Old Northwest (Ohio Country)
that defeated an army of 1,400 soldiers under General Arthur St. Clair.
About 1,200 warriors rallied by Little Turtle, aided by the element of sur-
prise, killed or wounded nearly 950 of St. Clair’s force, the largest single
battlefield victory by an American Indian force in U.S. history. The victory
was short-lived, however; in 1794, “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s forces de-
feated Little Turtle and his allies at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. On August
3, 1795, the American Indians gave up most of their hunting grounds west
of the Ohio River, by signing the Treaty of Greenville.
Little Turtle was known as a master of battlefield strategy. Born to a Mi-
ami chief and a Mahican (or Mohican) mother, Little Turtle became a war
chief of the Miamis because of his extraordinary personal abilities; under
ordinary circumstances, the matriarchal nature of the culture would have
prohibited a leadership role for him. In 1787, the hunting grounds of the
Miamis and their allies had been guaranteed in perpetuity by the U.S. Con-
gress. The act did not stop an invasion of settlers, and by the early 1790’s,
Little Turtle had cemented an alliance that foreshadowed later efforts by
Tecumseh, who assembled an alliance of several native nations a genera-
tion later.
Little Turtle’s principal allies in this effort were the Shawnee Blue Jacket
and the Lenni Lenape Buckongahelas. This alliance first defeated a force
of a thousand troops under Josiah Harmar during October, 1790. Harmar
dispatched an advance force of 180 men, who were drawn into a trap and
annihilated on October 18. On October 19, Harmar dispatched 360 more
troops to punish the natives, but the Americans were drawn into a simi-
lar trap, in which about 100 of them were killed. The remainder of Har-
mar’s force then retreated to Fort Washington, on the present-day site of
Cincinnati.
334 / Little Turtle’s War
Indian Successes. Harmar’s defeat stunned the Army, whose commanders

knew that the Old Northwest would remain closed to settlement as long as
Little Turtle’s alliance held. General Arthur St. Clair, who had served as
president of the Continental Congress in the mid-1780’s, gathered an army
of two thousand troops during the summer of 1791 and marched into the
Ohio Country. About a quarter of the troops deserted en route; to keep the
others happy, St. Clair permitted about two hundred soldiers’ wives to
travel with the army.
On November 4, 1791, Little Turtle and his allies lured St. Clair’s forces
into the same sort of trap that had defeated Harmar’s smaller army near
St. Mary’s Creek, a tributary of the Wabash River. Thirty-eight officers and
598 enlisted men died in the battle; 242 others were wounded, many of
whom later died. Fifty-six wives also lost their lives, bringing casualties
close to 950—nearly four times the number killed at Little Bighorn in 1876
and the largest defeat of a U.S. Army force in all of the Indian wars. After
the battle, St. Clair resigned his commission in disgrace. Dealing from
strength, Little Turtle’s alliance refused to cede land to the United States.
In 1794, General “Mad” Anthony Wayne was dispatched with a fresh
army, which visited the scene of St. Clair’s debacle. According to Wayne,
Five hundred skull bones lay in the space of 350 yards. From thence, five miles
on, the woods were strewn with skeletons, knapsacks, and other debris.
Little Turtle had more respect for Wayne than he had had for Harmar or
St. Clair, calling Wayne “the chief who never sleeps.” Aware that Wayne
was unlikely to be defeated by his surprise tactics, Little Turtle proposed
that the Indian alliance talk peace. A majority of the warriors rebuffed Lit-
tle Turtle, so in late June or early July he relinquished his command to a
Shawnee, Blue Jacket (although some scholars say it was Turkey Foot). In
April, 1790, Blue Jacket had refused to attend treaty councils that he feared
would cost his people their lands. His forces were defeated by Wayne at
the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Afterward, Blue Jacket signed the Treaty of
Greenville (1795) and the Treaty of Fort Industry (1805), ceding millions of
acres of native land.
Aftermath. Stripped of their lands, many of Little Turtle’s people sank into
alcoholic despair. The aging chief continued to lead them as best he could.
In 1802, Little Turtle addressed the legislatures of Ohio and Kentucky, urg-
ing members to pass laws forbidding traders to supply natives with whis-
key. He said that whiskey traders had “stripped the poor Indian of skins,
guns, blankets, everything—while his squaw and the children dependent
Little Turtle’s War / 335
on him lay starving and shivering in his wigwam.” Neither state did any-
thing to stop the flow of whiskey, some of which was adulterated with
other substances, such as chili peppers and arsenic.
Little Turtle died July 14, 1812, at his lodge near the junction of the St. Jo-
seph River and St. Mary Creek. He was buried with full military honors by
Army officers who knew his genius. William Henry Harrison, who had
been an aide to Wayne and who later defeated Tecumseh in the same gen-
eral area, paid Little Turtle this tribute:
“A safe leader is better than a bold one.” This maxim was a great favorite of
[the Roman] Caesar Augustus . . . who . . . was, I believe, inferior to the warrior
Little Turtle.
For almost two centuries, local historians placed the site of the Battle of
Fallen Timbers along the Maumee River floodplain near U.S. Highway 24,
near present-day Toledo, Ohio. A monument was erected at the site, even
as Native Americans contended that the battle had really occurred a mile
away, in what had become a soybean field. In 1995, to settle the issue, G. Mi-
chael Pratt, an anthropology professor in Ohio, organized an archaeologi-
cal dig in the soybean field. Teams of as many as 150 people excavated the
site, which yielded large numbers of battlefield artifacts, indicating conclu-
sively that the Native American account of the site was correct.
See also: Fallen Timbers, Battle of; Fort Greenville Treaty; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1775-1830.
Bruce E. Johansen

Carter, Harvey Lewis. The Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the
Wabash. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Includes a detailed
description of the battle with St. Clair’s troops from Little Turtle’s per-
spective.
Hamilton, Charles, ed. Cry of the Thunderbird. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1972. Extensive quotations from some of Little Turtle’s
speeches.
Porter, C. Fayne. Our Indian Heritage: Profiles of Twelve Great Leaders. Phila-
delphia: Chilton Books, 1964. Little Turtle is one of the twelve leaders
discussed.
Discusses the battles that the U.S. Army fought with Little Turtle’s alli-
ance, in the context of United States politics of the time.
336 / Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
Winger, Otho. Last of the Miamis: Little Turtle. North Manchester, Ind.:
O. Winger, 1935. Concise sketch of Little Turtle’s life and his attempts to
forge a Native American confederation in the Ohio Valley.
Young, Calvin M. Little Turtle. 1917. Reprint. Fort Wayne, Ind.: Public Li-
brary of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1956. A sketch of Little Turtle’s
life, including the St. Clair battle.
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock

Categories: Court cases, Twentieth century history
Significance: The U.S. Supreme Court decides that Congress has ple-
nary power over Native American property and may dispose of it at
its discretion.
In 1887, after years of agitation and controversy, Congress passed the Gen-
eral Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act or Dawes Severalty Act).
Under the terms of the legislation, the president was authorized to allot all
tribal land in the United States to individual Native Americans. The stan-
dard share was 160 acres to each head of a family, with smaller amounts to
unmarried men and children. Negotiations were to be carried on with Na-
tive American tribes for the sale to the federal government of the land re-
maining after the allotments were made and for its opening to European
American settlement.
The allotment policy, dominating United States-Native American re-
lations for more than fifty years, proved to be disastrous for Native Amer-
icans. It transformed Native American landownership from collective
to individual holdings, thus severing the Indians’ connection with com-
munal tribal organizations, exposed them to wholesale exploitation by
land speculators, pushed them onto land that was often arid and unpro-
ductive, and led ultimately to a loss of control over two-thirds of their
lands. Deceit, duplicity, and coercion undermined the honest, but naïve,
objectives of the U.S. reformers who espoused allotment prior to its enact-
ment.
Tribal sovereignty, the allotment policy, and Native American treaty
rights came before the United States Supreme Court in Lone Wolf v. Hitch-
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock / 337
cock in 1902. In 1867, the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty had been signed
with the Kiowas and Comanches, whereby the two tribes relinquished
claims to 90 million acres in exchange for 2.9-million-acre reservations in
Western Oklahoma. A separate treaty placed the plains Apaches on the
same reservation. Article XII of the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty pro-
vided that no further cession of any part of the new reservation could be
made without the written consent of three-quarters of the adult male mem-
bers of the three tribes. The commitment to Article XII of the Medicine
Lodge treaty lasted twenty-five years. In 1892, the Jerome Commission,
composed of a former governor of Michigan and two judges, was able—
through fraud and counterfeit signatures—to secure the necessary three-
quarters consent to an agreement for the allotment of land to individual
tribesmen and for the purchase of 2.15 million acres of what was denomi-
nated as surplus land at a price of approximately ninety-three cents per
acre.
Almost immediately after the signing of the new agreement, representa-
tives of the Kiowas, Comanches, and Plains Apaches claimed that assent
had been obtained by fraudulent misrepresentation of its terms by the in-
terpreters, and that three-quarters of the adult males had not consented to
the cession. Their argument was ignored by the United States House of
Representatives, which voted to execute the agreement, but was more sym-
pathetically received by the Senate, which defeated the bill in January,
1899.
In July, 1900, however, Congress passed an act that allowed the United
States to take title to 2,991,933 acres of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains
Apache reservation. After 480,000 acres were set aside as common grazing
lands, 445,000 acres allotted to individual members of the three tribes, and
10,000 acres committed to agency, schools, and religious purposes, 2 mil-
lion acres were left to be purchased by the federal government and opened
to white settlement.
The Kiowa Challenge. Although some Native Americans approved of the

act, Lone Wolf, a Kiowa chief, and others were intent upon challenging the
act’s constitutionality. They retained William McKendree Springer, for-
merly chief justice of the Court of Appeals for the Indian Territory, to liti-
gate their case before the federal courts.
Springer argued that the congressional act violated the property rights
of the three tribes and was, therefore, repugnant to the due process clause
of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. After losing in the Supreme
Court of the District of Columbia and in the Court of Appeals for the dis-
trict, Springer appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
338 / Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock was argued in the Supreme Court in October, 1901,
and reargued the following year. The decision was handed down in Janu-
ary, 1903. In the Court, Springer was joined by Hampton L. Carson, a prom-
inent member of the Indian Rights Association; the Department of the
Interior was represented by Willis Van Devanter of Wyoming, who later
became a Supreme Court justice.
The unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, written by Associate
Justice Edward White of Louisiana, was characterized by a later commen-
tator as the “Indian’s Dred Scott decision,” and January 5, 1903, as “one of
the blackest days in the history of the American Indians.” Justice White
spoke in condescending terms. He called Native Americans an “ignorant
and dependent race,” “weak and diminishing in number,” and “wards of
the nation.” These contemptuous phrases were not original to White; they
were epithets that had long been used in the opinions of Supreme Court
justices in relation to Native Americans. More important, White ruled that
Congress possessed a paramount authority over Native American prop-
erty “by reason of its exercise of guardianship over their interests.” In exer-
cising such power, Congress could abrogate provisions of a treaty with a
Native American tribe.
Justice White then went on to argue that the congressional act of 1900
represented only “a mere change in the form of investment of Indian tribal
property from land to money” even though the price paid was below the
market value. White held that Congress had made a good-faith effort to
compensate the Kiowas for their lands; therefore, there was no violation of
the Fifth Amendment. “If injury was occasioned,” White concluded,
“which we do not wish to be understood to imply by the use made by Con-
gress of its power, relief must be sought by an appeal to that body for re-
dress and not to the courts.”
Even before the Supreme Court had ruled in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, Presi-
dent William McKinley issued a proclamation opening the Kiowa lands to
white settlement on August 6, 1901. Lone Wolf watched with chagrin as
thousands of potential settlers camped on Kiowa lands near Fort Sill, wait-
ing to register for a lottery; during a two-month period, 11,638 homestead
entries were made at the land office.
Legitimating Broken Promises. The importance of the Supreme Court de-

cision in Lone Wolf should not be underestimated. Justice White’s opinion
legitimized the long history of broken promises, of treaties made and trea-
ties ignored, and of Congress’s assertion of plenary authority over Indian
lands. The opinion justified the alienation, between 1887 and 1934, of
eighty-six million acres of Native American property; it also denied to Na-
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock / 339
tive Americans recourse to the courts to seek redress for the coerced sepa-
ration from their lands and its purchase at bargain prices.
In Lone Wolf, Justice White told the Kiowas and associated tribes that
they would have to seek relief for their alleged injuries in Congress, and the
Kiowas had no alternative but to go to the federal legislature to secure re-
dress. It was not until 1955 that the Indian Claims Commission awarded
the Kiowas, Comanches, and plains Apaches $2,067,166 in compensation
for the lands taken under the congressional act of 1900. It was not until
1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation, that Justice Harry Blackmun, in a ma-
jority opinion, held that the Lone Wolf doctrine was “discredited” and “had
little to commend it as an enduring principle.”
See also: Allotment system; General Allotment Act; Indian Rights Asso-
ciation; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Treaties and agreements in
the United States.
David L. Sterling

Clark, Blue. “Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock”: Treaty Rights and Indian Law at the
End of the Nineteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1994. A short but comprehensive study of the background and implica-
tions of the most significant turn-of-the-century Native American court
case.
Hagan, William T. The Indian Rights Association: The Herbert Welsh Years,
1882-1904. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985. An account of the
organization that participated in the litigation of the Lone Wolf case.
Highsaw, Robert B. Edward Douglass White: Defender of the Conservative
Faith. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. An analysis
of the judicial record of the writer of the Supreme Court opinion in Lone
Wolf v. Hitchcock.
Legters, Lyman, and Fremont J. Lyden, eds. American Indian Policy: Self-
Governance and Economic Development. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1994. A series of articles detailing current trends in Native Ameri-
can life and law.
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political
Anomaly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. An exhaustive
examination of the legal relationship between Native American tribes
and the United States, from the American Revolution to the present.
340 / Long Walk
Long Walk
Date: August, 1863-September, 1866

Locale: Arizona and New Mexico
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Reservations and relocation
Significance: Forced to walk from their ancestral lands to an arid reser-
vation three hundred miles away, the Navajo lose their home and
many of their people.
Perhaps the most significant event in Navajo history occurred during and
immediately after the U.S. Civil War, when U.S. Army troops, under the au-
thority of Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson, methodically raided and sub-
dued the various bands of Navajos who lived between the three rivers (the
Colorado, Rio Grande, and San Juan) that encircled the Dinetah, Navajo
ancestral lands in present-day Arizona and New Mexico. This event is sig-
nificant in U.S. history, because it is one of the last major episodes in Car-
son’s public life, one of the earliest federal attempts to pilot an American
Indian reservation policy, and the final military conflict between the Na-
vajo people and the U.S. Army.
After Civil War hostilities began in April, 1861, the West was drained of
most of its U.S. Army regulars. During the same month, Kit Carson, serv-
ing as the Ute Indian agent in Taos, raised the Stars and Stripes in the town
plaza, signifying his allegiance to the Union. Carson was commissioned as
a colonel in the First New Mexican Volunteers, and there is every indication
that he intended to fight against the Confederate Army. However, Colo-
rado volunteers, in the Battle of Valverde on February 21, 1862, drove Con-
federate forces back from the Rio Grande, and there were no further Con-
federate incursions in the New Mexico Territory for the balance of the war.
Meanwhile, Brigadier General James H. Carleton, who had assumed the
position of commander of the Department of New Mexico in 1861, was ob-
sessed with the idea of resettling the natives of the New Mexico Territory.
As U.S. settlers had entered the region in greater numbers after 1846, rela-
tions deteriorated as a result of thievery and cultural misunderstanding.
Among the Navajo, the ladrones (poor in sheep and possessions) usually
perpetrated the raids on the settlers, while the ricos (comparatively
wealthy) suffered the reprisals. Initially, most ladrones were of the war
party, while the ricos were peace-seeking. However, years of suffering from
counter-raids and reprisals drew even the rico Navajos into accepting the
inevitability of armed conflict with New Mexican settlers.
Long Walk / 341
As late as December, 1862, eighteen Navajo ricos traveled to Santa Fe to

seek peace with General Carleton. Carleton rebuffed them, preoccupied at
the time with exiling the Mescalero Apache to a barren stretch of the Pecos
River Valley in eastern New Mexico known as Bosque Redondo (“round
grove of trees”). This strategy was the beginning of Carleton’s dream of a
“Fair Carletonia,” peopled with American Indians who would forgo their
pagan habits and accept Christianity and a European American lifestyle.
Carleton’s Ultimatum. Once the Apaches were resettled, Carleton, in

April, 1863, was willing to talk peace with Navajo chiefs Barboncito and
Delgadito, but only on his terms: removal to Bosque Redondo or a fight
to the death. The Navajo chiefs apparently tried to explain to Carleton
that voluntarily leaving their land would violate their deepest religious be-
liefs, but Carleton would not relent. In June, 1863, Carleton set July 20,
1863, as a deadline: All Navajos should present themselves at Fort Canby
or Fort Wingate; those Navajos remaining at large would be considered as
hostiles.
Only a handful of Navajos complied with this ultimatum, and Carleton
responded by authorizing Colonel Carson to begin scouting expeditions in
August, 1863, to capture or kill Navajos, plunder their crops, and seize
their livestock. Carson led a number of scouting expeditions and autho-
rized a number of his officers to do the same. Carson also employed Utes as
both guides and warriors in hunting the Navajo.
Actual military skirmishes between the First New Mexican Volunteers
and the Navajo were rare throughout the remainder of 1863. By the end of
the year, Carson reported seventy-eight Navajos killed and forty wounded.
Perhaps more significant was that more than five thousand sheep, goats,
and mules belonging to the Navajo had been confiscated, and more than
seventy-five thousand pounds of wheat were destroyed or seized. The Na-
vajo could hide from the scouting expeditions of volunteers, but they left
behind their hogans and rancheros for the troops to plunder and seize.
While the Navajo tribe was not decimated by war, Carson’s scorched-earth
policy laid the foundation for the threat of mass starvation and, therefore,
the likelihood of ultimate surrender.
In January, 1864, two scouting parties, one led by Carson and the other
by Captain Albert Pfeiffer, left Fort Canby, taking parallel routes through
the Canyon de Chelly area north of the fort. Each party exchanged gun-
shots for the Navajo arrows that rained down on them from the upper
reaches of the sheer red sandstone walls and ancient Anasazi ruins where
the Navajo ensconced themselves. The entire joint expedition resulted in
only twenty-three Navajos being killed, but two hundred Navajos surren-
342 / Long Walk
Long Walk of the Navajos
UTAH COLORADO
Canyon de Chelly Fort Union
de
Fort Defiance
Gran
NEW MEXICO Santa Fe
Rio
Las Vegas
ARIZONA Fort Wingate

Albuquerque
Tijeras Anton
Laguna Chico
Los Pinos Puerto
de Luna
Fort
Sumner
(Bosque
Redondo)
Peco s R iv er
dered, and at least two hundred head of livestock were seized. The peach
orchards along the canyon floor were also destroyed. Once the troops re-
turned to Fort Canby, great numbers of surrendering Navajos followed.
They were starving, freezing, and dying from exposure. Carson’s march
along the length of the floor of Canyon de Chelly seems to have proven that
the Navajo could remain in relative safety along its ledges, but that the
troops could destroy their crops and orchards and seize their livestock,
thereby leaving them to starve or surrender.
The Long Walk Commences. By March, 1864, there were six thousand
Navajos at Forts Canby and Wingate, several thousand more than even
Carleton had expected. The first of a series of Long Walks commenced at
this time. Although the U.S. Army provided a limited number of carts and
horses, those conveyances generally carried blankets and provisions rather
than people. Most of the Navajo walked the entire three hundred miles, a
journey that took anywhere from eighteen to forty days, while Carleton’s
plans provided for only eight days of government rations for the journey.
There was actually a series of Long Walks from Fort Canby to Fort Sumner
(Bosque Redondo), although the first, in March, 1864, was the largest. Al-
Long Walk / 343
though there is no Army record of such deeds, many stories in Navajo oral
tradition recount atrocities whereby the old or infirm or pregnant who
could not keep up were summarily shot by soldiers.
The Navajo never received the full promise of ample food, clothing, and
shelter at Bosque Redondo. Carleton planned to make farmers of the
hunter-gatherer Navajo, but there was not enough tillable land in arid east-
ern New Mexico to support more than eight thousand Navajos and the
Mescalero Apaches who were already at Fort Sumner. There was not
enough grass for the herds of sheep and goats, leading to frequent raids of
the government stock by Kiowas and Comanches. The few crops that were
raised were attacked by insects and suffered from flood, drought, and hail.
Government rations were meager and of poor quality—the flour the Navajo
received often was full of bugs—and the food was foreign to the Navajo,
who did not consider bacon a satisfactory substitute for beef. In addition,
the Navajo had to live in close quarters with the Mescalero Apaches, their
old enemies, and there was a bureaucratic war between the War Depart-
ment and the Department of the Interior. Indian Agent Lorenzo Labadie
was ordered not to take charge of the Navajo under the aegis of the Depart-
ment of the Interior, since technically, they were prisoners of war and
should be quartered by the War Department. The Navajo suffered from
hunger and cold, while bureaucrats bickered.
Carleton sent Carson to Bosque Redondo later in 1864 to serve as super-
visor there, but Carson left in disgust after three months, disappointed and
embarrassed at the failure of the federal government to provide the stipu-
lated terms of surrender. Carson resigned his commission and returned to
Taos, where he died in 1868.
Individual bands of the Navajo remained in the Dinetah, most notably
one led by Manuelito, withstanding famine, military attack, bad weather,
and Navajo treachery. Finally, after repeated attacks by Utes and Hopis
deputized by the U.S. Army, Manuelito and twenty-three followers surren-
dered at Fort Wingate on September 1, 1866.
It soon became evident that Carleton’s dream of a “Fair Carletonia” was
an abject failure. Carleton was relieved of his command in April, 1867, al-
though it was not until April, 1868, that Manuelito, Barboncito, and other
Navajo headmen traveled to Washington, D.C., to ask President Andrew
Johnson for permission to return to their ancestral lands. Johnson agreed
only to establish a peace commission.
The Taylor Peace Commission arrived at Bosque Redondo in May, 1868,
with the expectation of offering the Navajo land in Indian territory (now
Oklahoma) to the east. Ironically, General William T. Sherman, the architect
of his own scorched-earth policy in Georgia several years earlier, was the
344 / Long Walk
Taylor Commission member who first became convinced that the Navajo
should be allowed instead to return home.
On June 1, 1868, the Treaty Between the United States of America and
the Navajo Tribe of Indians was signed, and the westward Long Walk be-
gan by the middle of the month. The initial treaty stipulated only 3.5 mil-
lion acres for the Navajo (the present-day size of the reservation is 15 mil-
lion acres) but consecrated Canyon de Chelly as sacred ground to be
administered solely by the Navajo tribe. Thus, the Navajo returned to their
once and future home, after four years in exile. They never again engaged
in military conflict with the U.S. Army.
See also: Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council; Navajo-Hopi
Land Settlement Act; Navajo Rehabilitation Act; Navajo War; Pueblo Re-
volt; Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez.
Richard Sax

Amsden, Charles. “The Navajo Exile at Bosque Redondo.” New Mexico His-
torical Review 8 (1933): 31-50. A dated but still significant article concern-
ing the Navajo on the Bosque Redondo reservation.
Frink, Maurice. Fort Defiance and the Navajos. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1968.
This text is directed toward a middle school or high school audience.
Chapter 7, “Lost Cause, Long Walk,” covers the relocations.
Kelly, Lawrence C. Navajo Roundup: Selected Correspondence of Kit Carson’s
Expedition Against the Navajo, 1863-1865. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1970. A
collection of personal letters and U.S. Army general orders, especially
those of General E. R. S. Canby, Brigadier General James Carleton, and
Colonel Kit Carson.
McPherson, Robert S. The Northern Navajo Frontier, 1860-1900: Expansion
Through Adversity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
A well-documented study of the clash of cultures in the Four Corners
area.
Trafzer, Clifford. The Kit Carson Campaign: The Last Great Navajo War. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. The definitive text on the
Long Walk of the Navajos. Well researched and thoroughly annotated,
although with some turgid language, especially when describing land-
scape. Three maps and sixty-eight illustrations.
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. Chapter 3 includes a
good partial discussion of the events leading to the Long Walk.
Longest Walk / 345
Longest Walk
Date: February 11-July 15, 1978
Locale: From San Francisco, California, to Washington, D.C.
Categories: Native government, Protest movements, Twentieth century
history
Significance: The Longest Walk, one of the several major Indian protest
movements of the 1970’s, was an attempt to persuade the U.S. gov-
ernment to recognize and protect Indian treaty rights and Indian sov-
ereignty.
The Longest Walk was a five-month cross-country demonstration by In-

dian people to protest federal bills in Congress that were seen as destruc-
tive of the Indians’ very existence. About two hundred Native Americans
began the walk from the once Indian-occupied Alcatraz Island, in San
Francisco Bay. Thousands of Indians participated along the way, ultimately
arriving in the nation’s capital on July 15, 1978. One of the demonstrators
was Russell Means of the American Indian Movement. The protesters set
A modern manifestation of pantribal solidarity was the Longest Walk—a protest

march that began in San Francisco in 1978 and ended in Washington, D.C., where
Indian leaders lobbied the federal government to recognize its existing treaty obli-
gations. (Library of Congress)
346 / Lord Dunmore’s War
up a camp at the National Mall, hoping to convince lawmakers not to pass

the bills.
The pending legislation would have weakened Indian rights to land, re-
sources, and self-government. For example, one bill proposed to limit In-
dian water rights, while others threatened to cancel Indian hunting and
fishing rights and terminate all treaties between the United States and In-
dian tribes.
Congressional supporters and others assured the Indians that the anti-
Indian bills would not pass. Nevertheless, they agreed with the Indian
demonstrators that Congress and the American public should be aware
that such legislation had been proposed. The Longest Walk was a symbolic
victory for Indian people. It also demonstrated a solidarity among Indians.
See also: American Indian Movement; Trail of Broken Treaties.
Raymond Wilson
Lord Dunmore’s War

Date: April 27-October 10, 1774
Locale: Ohio River region
Tribes involved: Shawnee
Categories: Colonial history, Eighteenth century history, Wars and battles
Significance: Frontier Virginians and Marylanders battle Shawnees, re-
sulting in relocation of the latter as settlers moved into Kentucky.
Lord Dunmore’s War (named for John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore,
governor of Virginia) was a struggle between the Shawnees and Virginians
in the spring and summer of 1774. It represents the culmination of events
dating back to Pontiac’s Resistance (1763-1766). For both the American In-
dians and the colonists, the war carried important ramifications. The victor
would control what is now Kentucky. In order to understand how the con-
flict arose, one must understand the unsettled state of Anglo-Indian rela-
tions after 1763.
Following Pontiac’s Resistance, British officials had tried to create an al-
liance with the natives of the Ohio and Illinois region. Using the French
model, Britain’s Indian superintendent for the northern colonies, Sir Wil-
liam Johnson, tried to create a mutually intelligible world that would allow
colonists and American Indians to conduct diplomatic and economic activ-
ities. Two problems undermined the superintendent’s efforts. The first
Lord Dunmore’s War / 347
problem confronting the relationship was the emergence of colonial com-

munities west of the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists had settled the
region in direct violation of the Proclamation of 1763. Although British sol-
diers often drove them back across the mountains, the settlers often re-
turned. Outside the range of governmental control, these settlers caused
tensions with the native communities of the region. The second problem
was the British government’s desire to curtail expenditures relating to In-
dian affairs. The Crown first tried to reduce its commitment by passing
some of the costs off on the colonies, but these attempts did not work. As a
result, Johnson’s office was unable to meet even the basic necessities for
conducting Indian affairs after 1770. Taken together, colonial settlement
along the frontier and reduced expenditures meant a worsening of Anglo-
Indian relations in the years preceding Lord Dunmore’s War.
The Shawnees’ relationship with the British reached its nadir with the
completion of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. As a result of this treaty,
the Six Nations of the Iroquois ceded much of the territory south and east of
the Ohio River to land speculators. The ceded land had belonged to the
Shawnees, Lenni Lenapes (Delawares), Cherokees, and Mingos, not the Six
Nations. The treaty resulted in a series of confrontations between the
Shawnees, who rejected the treaty, and the British. Beginning in 1769, skir-
mishes between the tribes and the frontier colonists became commonplace.
These skirmishes continued not only because of reduced expenditures on
American Indian affairs but also because of the withdrawal of British sol-
diers from the colonial frontier. By 1774, British soldiers were stationed at
only Kaskaskia, Detroit, and Michilimackinac. Without British soldiers or
Indian agents, the Ohio region became a battleground.
As tensions between the two sides escalated, Sir William Johnson worked
to isolate the Shawnees from their allies. By the spring of 1774, he had iso-
lated the Shawnees from their previous confederates, the Hurons, Miamis,
and Potawatomis. His activities broke the Shawnee league. Colonists ap-
preciated the importance of Johnson’s actions when war broke out in April,
1774. For his part, British commander Thomas Gage expressed no surprise
when Dunmore’s War began. He had long suspected Virginia’s colonial
elites of supporting the frontiersmen in their move west.
The Yellow Creek Massacre. The war began on April 27, 1774. On this
date, Daniel Greathouse and his followers lured an Iroquois hunting party
into a trap at the mouth of the Yellow Creek. Greathouse and his men killed
nine people. Those killed at Yellow Creek were followers of the Mingo war
chief Tachnechdorus, also called John Logan, the Great Mingo. Logan re-
cruited supporters and retaliated. By July, he and his followers had claimed
348 / Lord Dunmore’s War
thirteen scalps and the Great Mingo proclaimed himself avenged. Because
Virginians were settling on Shawnee lands, Logan focused his reprisals on
Virginians in particular rather than colonists (such as Pennsylvanians) in
general.
If Logan’s actions had been only an isolated response to a massacre, it is
doubtful that war would have erupted. However, Logan’s actions were not
unique. Further down the Ohio River, Michael Cresap and his associates—
who were trying to develop land for future settlers—received a message
from John Connolly, Virginia’s resident administrator for the Monongahela
region. Connolly’s message implied that a colonial war with the Indians
had begun. Situated hundreds of miles beyond colonial settlements, Cresap
and his men acted as if war were a reality. They attacked a canoe carrying
Lenni Lenape and Shawnee traders. After scalping the Indians, Cresap and
his men sought protection in the community of Wheeling.
Following the Yellow Creek Massacre, and while Cresap and his men
were seeking the shelter of Wheeling, Connolly participated in a condo-
lence ceremony for the victims of Greathouse’s attack. Held at Pittsburgh,
the ceremony mollified the Indians’ civil leadership. It did not, however,
appease the warriors on either side of the cultural divide. Logan continued
his attacks against squatters, and Cresap tried to raise a volunteer unit for
military service against the natives. Their actions illustrated how young
men on both sides of the cultural divide often dictated the actions of their
elders.
Attacks Against the Shawnees. As late as June, 1774, it was still possible to
avert full-scale war. In July, however, Virginia’s militia moved westward.
Their aims were to destroy the Shawnees and open Kentucky for Virginian
settlement. Virginian major Angus McDonald led four hundred Virginians
across the Ohio River and destroyed five Shawnee villages, including
Wakatomica, in early August. Later that month, Dunmore arrived at Pitts-
burgh. When Shawnee warriors refused his request to meet with him, Dun-
more decided to lead an expedition against the Shawnees located along the
Scioto River.
While marching to its new base of operations at Camp Charlotte, a mili-
tia detachment burned the Mingo town at the Salt Licks. In order to prevent
the Virginians from invading the Scioto region, nine hundred Shawnees
and their allies attacked twelve hundred Virginians at their fortifications at
the mouth of the Kanawha River on October 10, 1774. This attack—the Bat-
tle of Point Pleasant—resulted in the Shawnees’ defeat.
Before the battle at Point Pleasant took place, the traditional leaders of
the Shawnee and Lenni Lenape had sought a negotiated settlement with
Lord Dunmore’s War / 349
Governor Dunmore. He refused to deal with the Shawnee representative,

Cornstalk. Dunmore did meet with Cornstalk’s Lenni Lenape counter-
parts, Captain Pipe and George WhiteEyes, who tried to mediate the prob-
lem. Their efforts resulted only in limiting the war, not preventing it. After
the Battle of Point Pleasant, however, Cornstalk again tried to negotiate a
settlement with Dunmore. The result was the Camp Charlotte Agreement
of 1774.
The Camp Charlotte Agreement. Governor Dunmore dictated the terms of

this agreement. He required the Shawnees to accept Virginia’s interpreta-
tion of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. He also required that the Shawnees and
Mingos give him hostages as a promise of future good behavior. He de-
manded that the natives give up their right to hunt on the south side of the
Ohio River. In exchange for their promise, Dunmore promised to prohibit
Virginians from intruding on Indian lands north of the Ohio River.
While Dunmore and Cornstalk discussed peace terms, Logan refused to
attend the council. He did, however, send a statement to the council
through the trader John Gibson. “Logan’s Lament,” as it came to be known
after Thomas Jefferson included it years later in his Notes on the State of Vir-
ginia, justified Logan’s actions in the preceding months:
Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the
relations of Logan. . . . There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any liv-
ing creature. . . . Who is there to mourn for Logan?—Not one.
In response to Logan’s speech, Dunmore ordered a detachment of troops to

attack the Mingos at Salt Lick Town. The attack resulted in the death of five
Indians and the capture of fourteen prisoners.
Following the Virginians’ attack, Lord Dunmore’s War became fused
with the American Revolution. American patriots believed Dunmore re-
ally was not interested in claiming Kentucky for settlement; they con-
cluded that Dunmore’s real intent was the formation of an army for use
against them. By 1775, colonists had turned against Governor Dunmore.
As a result, the final treaty ending Lord Dunmore’s War, the Treaty of Pitts-
burgh, was delayed until October, 1775. Following Lord Dunmore’s War,
Shawnee population centers in the Ohio Valley began to change. Most
Shawnees left the Muskingum region and moved southwest toward the
Scioto and Mad River areas.
See also: Indian-white relations: English colonial; Pontiac’s Resistance;
Proclamation of 1763.
Michael J. Mullin
350 / Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association

Jacob, John J. A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Captain Michael
Cresap. Cincinnati: J. F. Uhlhorn, 1866. John Jacob worked for Michael
Cresap and later married Cresap’s widow. His book challenges the no-
tion that Cresap was responsible for the Yellow Creek Massacre.
McConnell, Michael N. A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peo-
ples, 1724-1774. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Discusses
colonial expansion from the eighteenth century Native American per-
spective. McConnell sees the Treaty of Fort Stanwix as a deciding factor
in the coming of Lord Dunmore’s War.
Mayer, Brantz. Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap, an Historical Essay. Al-
bany: Munsell, 1867. The most famous study of the Cresap-Logan con-
troversy written in the nineteenth century.
Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. This monograph traces Shawnee
history through cartographic evidence. Contains a discussion of Lord
Dunmore’s War.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1991. Discusses how both Europeans and American Indians sought ac-
commodation and common meaning. Places Lord Dunmore’s War
within this context in his analysis of the event.
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery

Protective Association
Date: 1987
Locale: California
Tribes involved: Karok, Tolowa, Yurok
Categories: Court cases, Twentieth century history, Religion and mis-
sionary activities
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision raises questions about the
enforceability of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
In 1982, the United States Forest Service prepared an environmental impact

report for construction of a paved road through federal lands in the Six
Rivers National Forest in California. The study reported a section of this
land was historically used for religious purposes by Yurok, Karok, and
Maine Indian Claims Act / 351
Tolowa Indians, and because the site was integral to the religious practices
of these people, it recommended the road not be completed. That same
year, despite its own report, the Forest Service decided to build the road.
After exhausting administrative remedies, a coalition of Indian organiza-
tions filed suit in federal court, challenging the decision based on the right
to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and on similar guar-
antees in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978).
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Indian coalition even
though the Court admitted the road would severely affect tribal religious
practices. The Court declared that although the free exercise clause affords
individual protections, it does not afford an individual right “to dictate the
conduct of the government’s internal procedures.” Additionally, it ruled
that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act has no enforcement
mechanisms that could compel the government to halt construction on the
road. This case severely reduced both the intent of the American Indian Re-
ligious Freedom Act and the protections it afforded Indian people, and it
raised questions about basic protections afforded American Indian citizens
of the United States.
See also: American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Carole A. Barrett
Maine Indian Claims Act

Locale: Maine
Tribes involved: Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot
Categories: National government and legislation, Reservations and re-
location, Treaties, Twentieth century history
Significance: Beginning in the 1960’s, tribes in the eastern United States
alleged that state governments had illegally taken their lands; the
Maine Indian Claims Act prompted a number of eastern tribes to set-
tle similar claims rather than go through the courts.
In 1964, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, recognized by the state of Maine but

not the federal government, sought protection from what it determined
were illegal incursions on their lands. Both state and federal governments
refused to assist the tribe. The Passamaquoddy, joined by the Penobscots,
initiated a lawsuit in which they asserted protection under the Trade
352 / Major Crimes Act
and Intercourse Act of 1790, which prevented tribes from selling lands un-
less approved by Congress. The basis of the lawsuit was that their land
transfers never received such approval. The tribes won a series of lower
court cases, and so the United States was obliged to bring suit against
Maine for illegal purchase of Indian land. The court decisions left 1.25 mil-
lion acres, two-thirds of Maine, under clouded land titles. The Maliseet
Tribe also joined the lawsuit. Maine agreed to settle out of court rather
than face complicated, expensive legal negotiations. The settlement extin-
guished all Indian claims to land. In return, the United States provided
$27 million in a trust fund for the tribes, and another $54.5 million was set
aside for the tribes to purchase land. The tribes also received federal recog-
nition.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Indian Claims Commission; Reservation system of the United
States; Trade and Intercourse Acts; Treaties and agreements in the United
States.
Major Crimes Act

Date: 1885
Categories: Court cases, National government and legislation, Native
government, Nineteenth century history, Reservations and reloca-
tion
Significance: The Major Crimes Act gave the U.S. government, rather
than tribal courts, criminal jurisdiction to prosecute fourteen major
crimes committed by one reservation Indian against another.
The Major Crimes Act gave the U.S. government jurisdiction over serious
crimes committed by Indians on tribal lands. Congress reacted strongly to
the Ex parte Crow Dog (1883) decision, in which an Indian who killed an-
other Indian was released by the federal government because it lacked fed-
eral jurisdiction in Indian country. Two years after the Crow Dog incident,
Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, which gave the United States the
right to prosecute Indians for seven crimes: murder, manslaughter, rape,
assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and larceny. This law applied to
any Indian who committed a crime against another Indian on a reservation.
Manhattan Island purchase / 353
Over the years, the list of criminal offenses expanded to include kidnap-
ping, maiming, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting in
bodily injury, incest, theft, and sexual abuse. Indians accused of lesser
crimes are tried in tribal court. However, federal court decisions narrowed
the act so it covers only enrolled Indians who commit crimes on their own
reservations. This act transformed the relationship between tribes and the
federal government by limiting tribal sovereignty and the power of tribal
courts and making it nearly impossible for tribes to deal with serious
crimes committed on their reservations.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Duro v. Reina; Ex parte Crow Dog; Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian
Tribe; Public Law 280; Tribal courts; United States v. Kagama.
Manhattan Island purchase

Date: May 6, 1626
Locale: Manhattan Island, New Netherland
Tribes involved: Algonquian
Significance: The Dutch gain a stronghold in North America that they
will relinquish to the British four decades later.
In the early seventeenth century, the Netherlands, like other nations of

northern Europe, sent out explorers to search for a sea route around North
America to the riches of eastern Asia. The principal explorer for the Dutch
was Henry Hudson, an Englishman, who, in 1609, explored the river that
bears his name. When Hudson and other navigators failed to find the
Northwest Passage, the Dutch, like other Europeans, decided to claim the
lands that they had found in the Americas and exploit their resources.
While hoping to discover gold and silver, as the Spanish had done to the
south, the Dutch soon found that furs were the most readily exploitable re-
source of the middle Atlantic coastal region that they claimed. The Dutch
could obtain these furs by trading with the Native Americans, who would
do most of the trapping in exchange for European goods. The demand for
pelts was so great in Europe that one shipload could make its investors
wealthy.
In the interests of further discovery and to stimulate trade, the Dutch
legislative body, the States-General, granted to its traders and explorers the
354 / Manhattan Island purchase
exclusive right to make four voyages to any new lands that they might ex-
plore. Under this grant, in 1614, five ships visited the Hudson River, which
the Dutch then called Mauritius. Later that same year, these traders com-
bined as the United New Netherland Company and received a monopoly
on the trade of the Hudson Valley from the States-General. Ignoring Man-
hattan Island, these early traders sailed up the Hudson River to the site of
present-day Albany, where they erected Fort Nassau on Castle Island as a
base of operations. There they exchanged their goods for furs with the
Mohican tribal peoples. Following the expiration of the charter of the
United New Netherland Company in 1618, a succession of different com-
panies plied the Hudson River fur trade.
Dutch Colonization Begins. In 1621, a number of influential merchants ob-

tained from the States-General a charter for the Dutch West India Company
with the sole right to trade on the Atlantic coasts of Africa and North and
South America for twenty-four years. Although the new company orga-
nized primarily to challenge Spanish control of Latin America, it also was
interested in the Hudson River area. In 1624, the company dispatched Cap-
tain Cornelius May with a shipload of thirty families to settle in North
America. Opposite Castle Island, the group founded a trading post they
named Fort Orange; to the south, they formed a settlement on the Delaware
“New Amsterdam” at the southern end of Manhattan Island, in an erroneously re-

versed engraving from a Dutch book of 1651. (Library of Congress)
Manhattan Island purchase / 355
River. They also may have established a trading house on Governor’s Is-
land, in what would become New York City’s harbor. Coastal Algonquian
tribes probably were in the process of forming a coalition when the Dutch
arrived and disrupted that maneuver.
The first two governors of New Netherland, Cornelius May and Willem
Verhulst, lived at the Delaware River site and administered the colony from
there. Peter Minuit, the third governor and first director-general of New
Netherland, shifted his center of operations to Manhattan Island. A native
of Wesel, then in the Duchy of Cleves, he was probably of French or Wal-
loon descent. He impressed many as a shrewd and somewhat unscrupu-
lous man.
One of his first acts after arriving on Manhattan Island early in 1626
was to buy the rights to the island from an Algonquian tribe, the Canarsee,
for trinkets worth about sixty guilders, or about twenty-four dollars. There
is some debate whether Minuit actually arranged the purchase himself or
if his predecessor, Verhulst, did, but a May, 1626, letter revealed Minuit’s
intentions to buy it. Controversy also surrounds the morality of the pur-
chase. Tradition commonly calls the sale an unconscionable steal or a tre-
mendous bargain. However, some historians suggest that the conversion
to twenty-four dollars is too low and that, refiguring the payment in
1986 dollars, the Dutch paid $31 billion. Moreover, the Canarsee certainly
placed a different value on the beads, other trade goods, and land than did
the Europeans; the concept of land “ownership” did not exist among most
indigenous people or, at least, it had a meaning completely different from
that of Europeans. Because the Manhattan tribe, whose name the island
reflected, had a better claim to it than did the Canarsee, Minuit later appar-
ently also bought the island from them. Through this, their first major land
purchase from the Native Americans, the Dutch secured a semblance of
a legal title to Manhattan. At the time of the purchase, it was a beautiful
island, covered with a great forest and abounding with wildlife and wild
fruits.
Minuit made New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan, the nu-
cleus of Dutch activity in the area. A large fort, pentagonal in shape, sur-
rounded on three sides by a great moat and fronting on the bay, was one of
the first structures built. When it was complete, Minuit brought several
families from Fort Orange to settle in the town. He also ordered the evacua-
tion of Fort Nassau on the South River, near present-day Gloucester, New
Jersey, and transferred the garrison to New Amsterdam. Despite his vigor-
ous administration of the colony, the parent country recalled him for exam-
ination in 1632 and dismissed him from the Dutch West India Company’s
service.
356 / Manhattan Island purchase
Land Grants and Native Relations. In the meantime, in 1629, the director-
ate of the company, with the approval of the States-General, had issued a
Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions that provided for the grant of large
estates, called patroonships, to those members of the company who would
recruit at least fifty settlers more than fifteen years of age to settle their
lands within four years. These grants ostensibly were to promote farming
in New Netherland, but their primary intention was to encourage settlers
to go up the Hudson River to settle and make additional contacts with the
Native Americans and thereby extend the fur trade. Traders presumably
would ship the furs down the river to New Amsterdam, from where the
Dutch West India Company had the sole right to export them. With one ex-
ception, Rensselaerwyck, these patroonships never measured up to Dutch
expectations.
Relations with the Native Americans remained mostly harmonious and
the fur trade continued to prosper until 1641, when hostilities broke out. The
fighting, called Kieft’s War after Governor Willem Kieft, resulted from his
attempt to collect taxes from the Algonquian tribes for Dutch “protection.”
The conflict ended with a treaty on August 29, 1645, but it had already dis-
rupted the fur trade and forced Kieft to relinquish some of his arbitrary
power to advisory bodies to obtain popular support for the prosecution of
the war. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant succeeded Kieft and became the last
Dutch governor or director-general of New Netherland. It was he who sur-
rendered the colony to the British in 1664. The brightness of the early prom-
ise of New Netherland, lustrous with the purchase of Manhattan in 1626,
faded within the half century. Although the Dutch would retain significant
economic and cultural influence in the renamed New York, the English
would benefit even more from one of the world’s best harbors.
See also: Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial.
William L. Richter, updated by Thomas L. Altherr

Brasser, Ted J. “The Coastal New York Indians in the Early Contact Period.”
In Neighbors and Intruders: An Ethnohistorical Exploration of the Indians of
Hudson’s River, edited by Laurence M. Hauptman and Jack Campisi.
Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1978. Argues that the coastal
Algonquians were probably in the process of forming a coalition when
the Dutch purchased Manhattan.
Condon, Thomas J. New York Beginnings: The Commercial Origins of New
Netherland. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Monograph
examining the Dutch purchase decision as part of a wider commercial
policy.
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty / 357
Francis, Peter, Jr. “The Beads That Did Not Buy Manhattan Island.” New
York History 67, no. 1 (January, 1986): 4-22. Asserts that the trinkets the
Dutch paid for the island were much more valuable than common as-
sumptions hold.
Gehring, Charles. “Peter Minuit’s Purchase of Manhattan Island: New Evi-
dence.” De Halve Maen 54 (Spring, 1980): 6ff. Discusses a letter from
Minuit suggesting his intention to buy Manhattan Island.
Dutch New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. Argues
strongly for Minuit’s mastery in establishing New Amsterdam.
tury. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960. Places the Dutch pur-
chase in the context of other relations with Native Americans around
New Netherland. Argues that the money paid was worth more to the
Canarsee tribal people than usually is presumed.
Weslager, C. A. “Did Minuit Buy Manhattan Island from the Indians?” De
Halve Maen 43 (October, 1968): 5-6. Questions whether Minuit actually
purchased the island and suggests that Verhulst did instead.
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty

Locale: Southwestern Kansas, Texas
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, South-
ern Cheyenne
Treaties
Significance: Tribes of the Great Plains enter an agreement that ulti-
mately results in total submission to the U.S. government.
For many years, five Native American tribes—the Comanche, the Kiowa,
the Kiowa-Apache, the Southern Cheyenne, and the Arapaho—roamed the
vast area of the southern Great Plains, following huge buffalo herds. This
area became parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kan-
sas. Northern Cheyenne, Sioux, and other tribes lived a similar life on the
northern Great Plains. Warfare was a part of the daily life of these tribes,
generally as a result of intertribal rivalries and disputes concerning control
of certain sections of the plains. This traditional life began to change when
358 / Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty
the first Europeans began to arrive on the Great Plains in the sixteenth cen-
tury. Until the early nineteenth century, however, the changes were limited
to the acquisition of steel knives, guns, and other products from European
traders. The tribes soon became dependent on these items, but their day-
by-day life changed very little.
The dominant leaders of the region were the Comanches, called the
Lords of the Southern Plains. Joined by the Kiowas, with whom they estab-
lished friendly relations about 1790, they controlled the smaller Kiowa-
Apache tribe and all land south of the Arkansas River. Their chief rivals
north of the Arkansas River were the southern Cheyenne. In 1840, the Co-
manches and Cheyennes established a fragile peace that also included the
Arapaho, the less numerous allies of the Cheyenne. This peace came at the
beginning of a decade that would change forever the face of the southern
Great Plains. In 1846, the United States annexed Texas. The end of the Mexi-
can War in 1848 added New Mexico, Arizona, and other areas of the South-
west to the United States. For the next half century, the fragile Native
American peace of 1840 became a strong bond of brotherhood for the
southern plains tribes as they fought to defend themselves and their land
against European American settlers, railroads, buffalo hunters, soldiers,
and other intruders.
With the acquisition of Texas, the United States inherited a long and
bloody conflict between Texans and Comanches, who were described by
some as the best light cavalry in the world. The Comanches had long
hunted from the Arkansas River to the Rio Grande. In 1821, the govern-
ment of Mexico began giving land grants in west Texas to settlers from the
United States. These settlers immediately challenged the Comanches for
control of the area.
Comanche Reservations. The first attempt to confine the Comanches to

reservations was a May, 1846, treaty that created two small reservations on
the Brazos River. The few Comanches who settled on them soon yearned
for the free-spirited life on the vast plains. By 1850, discoveries of precious
metals from the southern Rocky Mountains to California were drawing nu-
merous wagon and pack trains through the southern plains. These were
soon followed by stagecoach lines and, later, railroads. The increase in traf-
fic was paralleled by increased confrontation with the tribes, who were ac-
customed to unhindered pursuit of the buffalo.
Between 1846 and 1865, several treaties were signed between the Native
Americans of the southern plains and the government of the United States.
Lack of confidence, sarcasm, and open contempt on both sides doomed
these treaties to failure. The frustration felt by the Native Americans in-
Arapaho and Comanche council at Medicine Lodge Creek in 1867, where the
tribes’ leaders signed a treaty with the U.S. government designed to end wars on
the southern Plains. (Library of Congress)
creased when cholera and other diseases carried by Europeans began rap-
idly decreasing the native populations.
In March of 1863, a party of Native American chiefs from the southern
plains went to Washington, D.C., and met with President Abraham Lin-
coln. Returning home loaded with gifts, these leaders were convinced that
coexistence with European Americans was possible. This confidence was
hard to maintain after the bloody and unprovoked massacre of Cheyennes
at Sand Creek, in Colorado, the following year. Nevertheless, Ten Bears of
the Comanche, who had met President Lincoln, Black Kettle of the Chey-
enne, who had escaped from Sand Creek, and other chiefs still felt that
peace was their best protection and was possible to achieve.
Treaties and Peace Commissions. The next effort toward peace was the
Little Arkansas Treaty in October, 1865. Representatives of the five south-
ern plains tribes met with U.S. commissioners at the mouth of the Little Ar-
kansas River near Wichita, Kansas. The government wanted to end native
American hindrances to movements in and through the plains. The treaty,
little more than a stopgap measure, committed the tribes to reservations—
the Cheyenne and Arapaho in northern Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and
360 / Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty
the Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache in western Texas and south-

western Indian Territory. These boundaries were impossible to enforce and
did not end the violence, but the treaty set the stage for a more important
meeting two years later.
In July, 1867, Congress created a peace commission to establish perma-
nent settlements of grievances between Native Americans and European
Americans on the Great Plains. The commission was led by Commissioner
of Indian Affairs Nathaniel Taylor and included a senator and three gener-
als. The group chose to meet representatives of the southern plains tribes
on the banks of Medicine Lodge Creek in southwestern Kansas. Joining
them there were more than four thousand Native Americans representing
all five tribes, but not all bands of the tribes. Noticeably absent was the
Quahadi, a Comanche band that wanted no peace with the United States
government.
The council opened on October 19, 1867, with Senator John B. Hender-
son giving the opening remarks. Under a large brush arbor, he referred to
reservation homes, rich farmland, livestock, churches, and schools for all
Native Americans. Although most tribal leaders accepted the promises as
positive, the idea of being restricted to reservations covering only a frac-
tion of their beloved Great Plains was sickening. The Kiowa chief Satanta,
or White Bear, lamented, “I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free
and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die.” The Yam-
parika Comanche chief Ten Bears gave one of the most eloquent state-
ments, declaring,
I was born where there were no inclosures and where everything drew a free
breath. I want to die there and not within walls. . . . when I see [soldiers cutting
trees and killing buffalo] my heart feels like bursting with sorrow.
In spite of such emotional appeals, Ten Bears and other Comanche chiefs
signed the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek on October 21, 1867, thereby
committing their people to life on the reservation. Black Kettle, with the
horrors of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre fresh in his mind, represented the
Cheyenne at the council. He would not sign the treaty until other Cheyenne
chiefs arrived on October 26. Although less happy with the treaty than the
Comanche and Kiowa leaders, the Cheyenne chiefs signed, primarily to get
ammunition for their fall buffalo hunt. The Arapaho chiefs soon did like-
wise. At the end of the council meeting, Satank rode alone to bid farewell to
the Peace Commission. He expressed his desire for peace and declared that
the Comanche and the Kiowa no longer wanted to shed the blood of the
white man.
The Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek restricted the five southern Plains
tribes to reservations in the western half of Indian Territory. However,
vague terminology and unwritten promises made the treaty impossible to
understand or to enforce. Violence soon erupted on the southern plains.
One year after Medicine Lodge Creek, Black Kettle was killed in a confron-
tation similar to the Sand Creek Massacre, this time on the Washita River in
Indian Territory. The violence escalated for several years, then dwindled to
isolated incidents before ending at Wounded Knee in 1890.
A poignant illustration of the ultimate effect of the treaty occurred on
June 8, 1871, when the seventy-year-old Satank—who along with Satanta
and a young war chief named Big Tree had been arrested for attacking a
mule train carrying food that the ration-deprived Indians sorely needed—
was being transported to Texas to stand trial for murder. Chewing his own
wrists in order to slip out of his manacles, Satank then attacked a guard and
was shot dead, fulfilling a prophecy that he had uttered only minutes be-
fore to fellow prisoners: “Tell them I am dead. . . . I shall never go beyond
that tree.”
See also: Sand Creek Massacre; Washita River Massacre; Wounded Knee
Massacre.
Glenn L. Swygart

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1970. Places the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek in the context
of Native American history in the western United States.
Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. 1915. Reprint. Norman: Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press, 1956. An author who observed the Cheyenne
at first hand presents their history up to 1890.
Hagan, William T. United States-Comanche Relations. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1976. The most complete coverage of the council
and treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. Five Hundred Nations: An Illustrated History of North
American Indians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. A well-illustrated
history of North America from its original inhabitants’ viewpoint; pages
371-374 cover the treaty, including direct quotations from Indian leaders.
Mooney, James. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898. Reprint. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. Provides a chronology
of the tribe.
Rollings, Willard H. The Comanche. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. De-
scribes the change in Comanche life after the Medicine Lodge Creek
Treaty.
362 / Meech Lake Accord
Meech Lake Accord
Date: Proposed 1987; defeated June, 1990

Locale: Quebec
Treaties, Twentieth century history
Significance: A coalition of native organizations rallied support around
an Indian politician and successfully prevented the passage of a con-
stitutional provision that failed to recognize aboriginal rights.
Fears that Quebec might break away from the rest of Canada led Canadian
prime minister Brian Mulroney and the ten provincial premiers in 1987 to
propose a set of amendments to the 1982 Constitution Act. The proposal,
known as the Meech Lake Accord after the site of the meeting, recognized
French-speaking Quebec as one of the founding nations of Canada and as a
distinct society with its own language and culture. The accord, however,
granted no such courtesy to the aboriginal peoples of Canada. In order for
the accord to become law, it required ratification by all ten provinces before
June 23, 1990.
An additional provision of the Meech Lake Accord dealt with admission
of a new province to the Confederation. That provision required the unani-
mous consent of the ten existing provinces in order to establish a new prov-
ince. Since many of the provinces have territorial desires to extend their
borders north, this virtually ensured that the Yukon and Northwest territo-
ries, as well as the proposed Nunavut Territory, would be precluded from
ever achieving provincial status. Unlike the rest of Canada, the two regions
have overwhelmingly native populations.
Native organizations fought bitterly against ratification of the accord.
Their leaders insisted that native cultures were no less distinct than Que-
bec’s and that aboriginal rights also deserved formal recognition in the
body of the Constitution. Since the courts had held that despite the addi-
tion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the Constitution, aboriginal
rights were not assured, the natives’ concerns were well justified. The lead-
ers further demanded guarantees that they would be given a role in all fu-
ture First Ministers’ conferences affecting natives. George Erasmus, na-
tional chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was especially vocal.
Thinking that a looming deadline would help assure passage, Prime
Minister Mulroney delayed pushing for ratification of the accord until the
very end of the ratification period. That delay proved fatal to the proposal.
Menominee Restoration Act / 363
It allowed Elijah Harper, Manitoba’s only native legislator, to prevent con-

sideration of the Meech Lake Accord by the Manitoba Legislative Assem-
bly. Supported by native organizations, Harper exploited a procedural
error made by Manitoba premier Gary Filmon. Manitoba law required
unanimous consent of the legislators to begin public hearings on any issue
with less than a forty-eight-hour notice. Harper withheld his consent, and
the deadline for ratification passed without the Meech Lake Accord ever
being considered by the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Nunavut Territory.
Richard G. Condon
Menominee Restoration Act

Locale: Wisconsin
Tribes involved: Menominee
Categories: National government and legislation, Protest movements,
Reservations and relocation, Twentieth century history
Significance: The federal policy of termination, which sought to dis-
solve the government’s special legal relationship with tribes, was ef-
fectively destroyed when the Menominee tribe was restored to full
federal status.
In June, 1954, the United States terminated its relationship with the Meno-
minee tribe of Wisconsin, in part because the tribe was so successful in
managing its resources. The Menominee owned their own sawmill and
operated a hospital and utility company on their reservation. The govern-
ment decided the Menominee could be self-sufficient. Termination caused
an abrupt change of fortune for the tribe. The reservation became Meno-
minee County. Property taxes were high, unemployment rose, and the
hospital and utility companies closed. Most devastating, while the tribal
lands, assets, and sawmill were formed into a corporation composed of
all former tribal members, non-Indian shareholders, who managed the
shares of minors and incompetents, dominated the corporation.The corpo-
ration began to sell valuable Menominee lakefront property and misman-
aged the sawmill operation, and soon Menominee County became the
poorest county in Wisconsin. In 1969, Menominee activists organized
DRUMS, Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders,
364 / Meriam Report
to prevent further land sales and to seek restoration of federal recogni-

tion. Both the State of Wisconsin and Congress supported restoration. In
1973, Congress passed Public Law 93-197, which repealed termination,
granted federal status to the Menominee, and returned their lands to full
trust status.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Federally recognized tribes; Public Law 280; Termination Res-
olution; Trail of Broken Treaties; Tribe.
Meriam Report
Date: 1928
century history
Significance: This report documented the failures of the Bureau of In-
dian Affairs to help Indian people and thus helped lead to the 1930’s
reforms of John Collier’s Indian New Deal.
In 1926, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work asked the Institute for Gov-
ernment Research (Brookings Institution) at The Johns Hopkins University
to conduct a nonpolitical investigation of Indian affairs. Work’s goal was to
counter the harsh criticisms of John Collier and other Indian Office critics.
The results of the Brookings study were published in 1928 as The Problem of
Indian Administration, popularly known as the Meriam Report after Lewis
Meriam, who headed the investigation. The report condemned the allot-
ment policy that had been instituted with the passage of the General Allot-
ment Act of 1887, as well as the poor quality of services provided Indian
people by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). It urged protection for Indian
property and recommended that Indians be allowed more freedom to man-
age their own affairs.
The Meriam Report emphasized the BIA’s educational role and called
for higher academic standards in BIA schools. W. Carson Ryan, Jr., a promi-
nent figure in the progressive education movement, wrote most of the edu-
cation section of the Meriam Report, with help from Henry Roe Cloud (a
Winnebago). The education section was influenced by the teachings of
John Dewey and other progressive educators.
Metacom’s War / 365
In 1921, all Indian schools had their appropriations for food and clothing
cut 25 percent. These cuts were a result of government debts from World
War I. This underfunding of BIA schools continued through the 1920’s. In
one extreme case, a Red Cross investigator found students to be subsisting
on a diet of bread, black coffee, and syrup for breakfast; bread and boiled
potatoes for dinner and supper; and a quarter cup of milk with each meal.
In general, the Meriam Report found the food in boarding schools to be
“deficient in quantity, quality and variety.” The poor food made Indian stu-
dents more susceptible to tuberculosis and trachoma, which were endemic
in Indian communities. Half-day student labor allowed the government to
save even more money educating Indians, and the Meriam Report noted
that some of the work required of students violated state child labor laws.
Among other activities, students raised crops, worked in dairies, made and
mended their own clothes, and cleaned their schools.
Flogging and other severe forms of punishment existed at some schools.
The Meriam Report found that most BIA schools had locked rooms or iso-
lated buildings used as “jails”; in some schools, children were forced to
“maintain a pathetic degree of quietness.”
To quell the growing criticism of the government’s Indian policy, Presi-
dent Herbert Hoover in 1929 appointed a fellow Quaker and president of
the Indian Rights Association, Charles J. Rhoads, to be commissioner of In-
dian affairs. Rhoads got Ryan to become director of Indian education.
Rhoads and Ryan began to implement the recommendations of the Meriam
Report, including an end to a uniform BIA curriculum that stressed only
white cultural values.
See also: Allotment system; American Indian Higher Education Con-
sortium; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Carlisle Indian School; General Allot-
ment Act; Indian Education Acts; Indian Self-Determination and Educa-
tion Assistance Act; Kennedy Report; National Congress of American
Indians.
Jon Reyhner
Metacom’s War
Date: June 20, 1675
Locale: New England colonies
Tribes involved: Narragansett, Nipmuck, Pocasset, Sakonnet, Wam-
panoag
366 / Metacom’s War

Significance: The first large-scale conflict between New England colo-
nists and Native Americans.
Metacom’s War, also known as King Philip’s War, began on June 20, 1675,
when Wampanoag, or Pokanoket, warriors began looting English houses
in southern Plymouth Colony (now Massachusetts) on the edge of Wam-
panoag country. Serious fighting began at Swansea on June 24.
The causes of the conflict were both economic and cultural. Through a
series of treaties, much native land had passed into the hands of English
settlers, and the remaining Wampanoag homeland, Mount Hope Penin-
sula on Narragansett Bay, was in danger of being completely surrounded
by English settlements. This expansion of English-controlled territory had
brought many Indians under English political control, with the imposition
of alien social mores. English courts, for example, sometimes sentenced
tribesmen to fines or whippings for violating the Sabbath by such activities
as firing a gun on Sunday. There also was growing pressure on Native
Americans to convert to Christianity. Tribal chiefs (called sachems in New
An engraver’s depiction of Wampanoag chief Massasoit meeting settlers of Plym-

outh Colony in 1621. Increasing numbers of colonists caused goodwill between En-
glish and Wampanoags to deteriorate to the point of war in 1675, led by Massasoit’s
son Metacom. (Library of Congress)
England) and religious leaders (powwows) strongly opposed conversion,

because it tended to weaken their traditional influence.
Massasoit (renamed Ousamequin late in life), the paramount sachem of
the Wampanoags and an ally and friend of the English since 1621, had died
about 1661, and after his death, tensions rapidly mounted. Massasoit’s el-
dest son, Wamsutta, called Alexander by the English, became sachem on
his father’s death. Wamsutta died in 1661, shortly after being required by
English authorities to explain rumors that he was considering an uprising.
Then another son, Metacom or Metacomet, known to the English as King
Philip, became sachem, and the next few years witnessed a series of dis-
putes. By 1671, friendly Native Americans were warning Puritan authori-
ties that Philip was organizing an alliance of tribes to join with the Wam-
panoags in a war of extermination against the English.
War Breaks Out. While the evidence for such a conspiracy is strong, war,
sparked by the trial and execution at Plymouth of three Wampanoags for
murder, seems to have broken out before Metacom’s alliance was per-
fected. In January, 1675, a Christian Wampanoag named John Sassamon,
who had just warned Plymouth of Metacom’s plans, was found murdered.
On the testimony of an Indian who claimed to have witnessed the deed,
three Wampanoags, including an important counselor of Metacom, were
convicted and hanged on June 8. Metacom apparently was unable to re-
strain the rage of his warriors, and violence broke out before he was ready.
The war quickly spread to Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay colonies,
and later to Rhode Island, as other tribal groups, drawn in by Metacom’s
diplomacy or angered by threats from colonial authorities, went on the at-
tack. The Wampanoags were joined by the related Sakonnet and Pocasset
bands to the east of Narragansett Bay, by Nipmucks from the interior of
Massachusetts, by the Narragansetts of present-day Rhode Island, and by
smaller groups such as the river tribes of the Connecticut Valley.
The English colonists were supported by American Indians who often
were the traditional enemies of tribes in Metacom’s alliance, so Indian New
England was not united in Metacom’s War. The Mohegans and Pequots of
southern Connecticut served with the English, as did hundreds of Chris-
tian Indians from the “praying towns” of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The
Niantics of southern Rhode Island remained neutral. Metacom sought the
assistance of the Mohawks of New York Colony to the west, but the Mo-
hawks aided the English by attacking their old Wampanoag enemies.
Ambush Warfare. In the early months, the Wampanoags and their allies,
well armed with trade muskets, were too skillful and aggressive for the En-
368 / Metacom’s War
glish. They repeatedly ambushed parties of colonial militiamen and as-

saulted and burned outlying English towns. Unskilled in forest warfare
and distrustful of friendly tribesmen, the colonists were unable to pin
down the enemy. The English usually had no inkling of the town chosen for
attack, so hostile chiefs concentrated their forces and often greatly outnum-
bered the defending garrison. By using Indian allies as scouts, English mili-
tia officers learned to avoid ambush and to operate more effectively in the
forest. Eventually, special colonial units that could remain in the field for
weeks were used to pursue American Indian bands; disease, cold, and star-
vation aided the colonists in wearing down the tribes. The most effective
such unit was a small, mixed force of English militia and Indian allies com-
manded by Captain Benjamin Church of Plymouth Colony. It was Church’s
company that eventually ran down Metacom and the handful of Wam-
panoags still with him, directed by a surrendered Wampanoag to a swamp
where they had taken refuge. Metacom was killed, shot by an Indian while
trying to slip away once more, on August 12, 1676. By this time, as starving
groups of Indians straggled in to surrender, the war was dragging to a
close. The much larger population and economic resources of the English
had won out. In spite of the warriors’ initial successes, it had become clear
that there was no real prospect of driving the English into the sea. To the
northeast in New Hampshire and Maine, where the Abenaki peoples had
risen against the English, the war continued into 1678.
Both sides used ruthless methods, often killing women, children, and
the elderly. Indian attackers regularly attempted to burn colonists’ houses
with the inhabitants inside them, and sometimes tortured prisoners. Per-
haps the most strikingly ruthless act committed by the English took place
in the Great Swamp Fight, December 19, 1676. A force of a thousand mi-
litiamen marched into a frozen swamp deep in the Rhode Island forest,
led there by a Narragansett turncoat, and attacked perhaps a thousand
Narragansetts sheltered in a log-walled fort. Forcing their way inside, the
English set the fort afire. As many as six hundred Narragansetts, many of
them women and children, perished in the blaze. Some eighty Englishmen
were killed or died of wounds.
Metacom’s War has been called the bloodiest war, proportionally, in the
nation’s history, with some nine thousand of the eighty thousand people in
New England killed. Of these, one-third were English and two-thirds Indi-
ans. Of New England’s ninety towns, fifty-two were attacked and seven-
teen completely burned. The frontier of settlement was pushed back many
miles. The military power and the independence of the tribal people of
southern New England had been crushed forever. Hundreds of Native
American captives, including Metacom’s wife and small son, were sold
into slavery by the colonial governments to help defray the war’s cost.
Other captives, considered to be important war chiefs or those responsible
for particular atrocities, were tried and publicly executed.
See also: Bacon’s Rebellion; Indian-white relations: English colonial;
Pequot War; Pontiac’s Resistance; Powhatan Wars; Prehistory: Northeast.
Bert M. Mutersbaugh

Bourne, Russell. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England,
1675-1678. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. A detailed treat-
ment of the war that is especially critical of the motives and acts of the
colonists. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Leach, Douglas Edward. Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King
Philip’s War. New York: Norton Library Edition, 1966. This elegantly
written study, long considered the standard modern account of the war,
indicts English land hunger as a cause of the war. Maps, illustrations,
and index.
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American
Identity. New York: Random House, 1999. A very well-received history
of Metacom’s war, arguing that the conflict between Europeans and In-
dians served to crystallize a sense of American self-identity on the part
of the colonists.
Lincoln, Charles A., ed. Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699. New York:
Scribner’s, 1913. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1941. Con-
tains a number of contemporaneous accounts of the war, including The
Soveraignty & Goodness of God . . . the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs Mary
Rowlandson, Rowlandson’s account of her capture in the attack on Lan-
caster, Massachusetts, in 1676. Her often reprinted classic is the earliest
American captivity narrative. Rowlandson reports firsthand exchanges
with Metacom, who at times traveled with the mixed band that held her
prisoner.
Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among
the New England Indians. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1991. Study of Native American military tactics and their evolution
under the influence of European weapons and methods. Argues that
New England’s natives adopted the more ruthless methods of total
war through English influence and example. Map, illustrations, and
index.
Schulz, Eric, and Michael Tougias. King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy
of America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, Vt.: Countryman, 1999. A de-
tailed history of Metacom’s war, as well as a guide to the sites of conflict.
370 / Minnesota Uprising
Slotkin, Richard, and James K. Folsom, eds. So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan

Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676-1677. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1978. Six contemporaneous accounts, including Row-
landson’s narrative and the liveliest, best contemporary description of
the fighting, Thomas Church’s Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s
War (1716), based on the recollections of his father, Captain Benjamin
Church.
Minnesota Uprising
Date: August-December, 1862
Locale: Minnesota Valley, Minnesota
Tribes involved: Eastern (Santee) Sioux
Wars and battles
Significance: The Minnesota Uprising was a result of the reservation
policies forced upon the Eastern Sioux by the U.S. government.
Deprived of their annual distribution of annuities during the summer of

1862, the Eastern (Santee) Sioux—Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Wahpeton,
and Sisseton—grew angry and indignant. Warehouses were full of food
and other supplies, but Thomas Galbraith, the Indian agent, refused to give
it to the Indians until the cash annuities arrived. The agent feared he would
not receive his customary monetary kickback.
Once an independent, self-sufficient group, the Eastern Sioux had be-
come dependent on annuities for their survival. When Minnesota became a
territory, a census indicated that Eastern Sioux outnumbered the six thou-
sand white settlers by more than two to one. When Minnesota became a
state in 1858 and the number of white settlers increased, Indians ceded
much of their land. The treaties of 1851 and 1858 saw the Sioux cede 28 mil-
lion acres to the whites in exchange for annuities and reservation life.
Faced with the starvation of his people, Little Crow—an unusually artic-
ulate leader—tried to persuade Galbraith to distribute the food to his hun-
gry people. His arguments fell on deaf ears. The attitude of the white trader
Andrew Myrick typifies the lack of concern toward the Indians’ condition:
If the Indians were hungry, let them eat grass or dung.
The Indians’ anger over Galbraith’s decision, years of mistreatment by
white officials, and the threat of starvation came to a head when four young
Minnesota Uprising / 371
warriors murdered five white settlers on August 17, 1862. As a result of

these actions, militant Mdewakanton and Wahpekute chiefs persuaded
Little Crow to lead an assault on the whites. On August 18, 1862, they at-
tacked the Redwood Agency, killing twenty men and taking twelve women
captive. Among the dead was Myrick, his body mutilated and his mouth
stuffed with grass as an answer to his callous remark. After this attack, the
Indians swept throughout the countryside plundering, looting, killing,
and raping. The white settlement at New Ulm, for one, suffered staggering
losses but repelled the attackers.
The Indians were decisively defeated by General Henry Sibley’s troops
at the Battle of Wood Lake on September 23. This battle virtually ended
Sioux resistance. On December 26 of 1862, 38 out of 303 Sioux were tried
and convicted of rape and murder. They were sentenced to death by mass
hanging. Little Crow, who fled west, was killed during the summer of 1863
by a Minnesota farmer.
As a result of the uprising, between four hundred and eight hundred
whites were killed. In addition, the Eastern Sioux were forced to relocate to
reservations in present-day South Dakota.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Sioux War.
Raymond Wilson and Sharon K. Wilson
An 1863 engraving of the mass execution at Monkato of participants in the Minne-

sota Sioux uprising of 1862. (Library of Congress)
372 / Modoc War
Modoc War
Date: November 29, 1872-June 1, 1873

Locale: Boundary of Northern California and southern Oregon
Tribes involved: Klamath, Modoc
Wars and battles
Significance: The Modoc War was another example of attempted Indian
resistance to the loss of their homelands.
In 1864, the Modocs signed a treaty in which they agreed to leave the Lost
River Valley, in Northern California and southern Oregon, and live on a
reservation with the Klamaths. By 1872, Kintpuash, called Captain Jack by
the whites, and other Modocs found reservation life and policies unaccept-
able. They missed their homeland and could no longer endure sharing a
reservation with the Klamaths, who outnumbered them and made life ex-
tremely difficult for them.
Kintpuash and a group of Modocs decided to return south to the
ceded lands at Lost River. White settlers, whose numbers had continued
to increase, refused to accept them and demanded that the Modocs re-
turn to the reservation. Government officials tried in vain to persuade
the Modocs to do so. On November 29, 1872, troops attacked Kintpuash’s
camp at Lost River. The Indians fled, crossed Tule Lake, and strategi-
cally entrenched themselves in the Lava Beds, a natural fortress on the
lake’s southern shore. For four months, Kintpuash skillfully defended
the area with about sixty men against forces that numbered nearly a thou-
sand.
The government again tried negotiation, creating a peace commission
headed by General Edward R. S. Canby, a Civil War hero. Kintpuash fa-
vored negotiating for a settlement, but other Modoc leaders such as Hooker
Jim and Curley-Headed Doctor forced Kintpuash to accept a plan to kill the
peace commissioners at a meeting that was to take place on Good Friday,
April 11, 1873. At this meeting, Kintpuash and other Modocs drew their
hidden weapons and attacked. Two of the four commissioners were killed,
including General Canby, who thus became the only regular army general
killed in the Indian wars.
This rash action provoked a national outcry for revenge. More troops
and officers were sent. Meanwhile, factionalism intensified among the
Modocs. In May of 1873 the army defeated a Modoc band, and some of the
defeated Modocs agreed to help the army catch Kintpuash. He was finally
Modoc War / 373
Late nineteenth century sketch of an 1873 skirmish in the Modoc War. (Library of
Congress)
captured on June 1. All the Modoc prisoners were taken to Fort Klamath,
Oregon.
Kintpuash and several other Modocs were tried and found guilty of the
murders of the two peace commissioners. Kintpuash and three others were
hanged on October 3, 1873, with two other Modocs receiving life sentences
at Alcatraz. The executed Modocs’ heads were severed and sent to the
Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. The other Modocs were re-
moved to the Quapaw Agency in Oklahoma; in 1909, they were allowed to
return to the Klamath Reservation.
The Modoc War lasted seven months and cost more than $500,000. The
war seriously weakened the Indian Peace Policy, a program under the
Grant administration that attempted to use reservations as a panacea for
the “Indian Problem.”
Raymond Wilson
374 / Natchez Revolt
Natchez Revolt
Date: 1729
Locale: Natchez, Mississippi
Tribes involved: Natchez
Significance: The Natchez Revolt gave rise to the French policy of en-
couraging enmity among the different Indian groups in order to fore-
stall future uprisings.
The Natchez Revolt occurred on November 28, 1729. The main factor un-
derlying this event was the ineptness of French colonial rule, which con-
trolled this region from the late seventeenth century. The Natchez were
first encountered by the French on the eastern shore of the Mississippi
River, at the location of the modern town of Natchez, Mississippi. In 1713,
the French built a trading post there, evidence of their desire to control the
region. Skirmishes between the Natchez and the French resulted in the
1716 construction of Fort Rosalie and in colonial settlement in its vicinity.
After the fort was built, there were two additional small Natchez uprisings,
although each was swiftly quelled.
Commandant de Chepart, placed in control of Fort Rosalie in 1728,
marred his command with drunkenness and other abuses as well as with
his insensitivity toward the Natchez. Within a year, de Chepart antago-
nized the Indian community with his proposal to establish his own planta-
tion on fertile lands of the Natchez White Apple village. He proposed the
use of force to assist in the relocation of the aboriginal inhabitants. In re-
sponse, the Natchez planned war; their ceremonial preparations lasted for
several months, culminating in a November attack on the French. They
killed more than two hundred settlers, and they captured approximately
fifty colonists and three hundred slaves.
On January 27, 1730, Sieur Jean-Paul Le Seur led a five-hundred-strong
Choctaw force against the Natchez in retaliation. They managed to rescue
most of the surviving women and children, plus approximately a hun-
dred slaves; in the process they killed about the same number of Natchez.
A week later, the French force received reinforcements from New Or-
leans, and they laid siege to the Natchez, who agreed to surrender on Feb-
ruary 25.
In punishment, approximately four hundred Natchez were enslaved by
the French and shipped to the West Indies. An indeterminate number es-
caped and sought refuge with the Chickasaw. This ensured Chickasaw ani-
National Congress of American Indians / 375
mosity toward both the French and their powerful Choctaw allies. The
Natchez never recovered, and their culture was soon lost.
See also: Indian-white relations: French colonial.
Susan J. Wurtzburg
National Congress of American Indians

Categories: Civil rights, Education, Organizations, Twentieth century
history
Significance: The National Congress of American Indians was formed
to fight for the rights of Native Americans, including education and
preservation of traditional values.
The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is a coalition of sover-

eign nations recognized by the United States through treaty and executive
agreement. Its purpose is to protect the rights of American Indians as citi-
zens of nations and tribes within the boundaries of the United States. It is
supported through annual membership dues and special fundraising en-
deavors. It is organized as a congress, with American Indian governments
voting to participate and selecting delegates and alternates to represent
them in the NCAI convention and executive council, where they have
blocks of votes.
The NCAI was organized in 1944. American Indian delegates repre-
senting fifty tribes with homes in twenty-seven western states met in
Denver, Colorado. Its initial stated goals included pursuit of American
Indian rights within the United States, expansion and improvement of
Indian education, preservation of Indian values, and equitable settle-
ment of Indian claims. During the 1950’s, it aided in the struggle against
termination and relocation. It has been in the forefront of the struggle
for Native American cultural rights legislation, which has brought on
more reasonable approaches to repatriation of Indian remains and arti-
facts.
See also: American Indian Defense Association; American Indian
Higher Education Consortium; American Indian Movement; Indian Civil
Rights Act; Indian Rights Association; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
376 / National Council of American Indians
2002; National Council of American Indians; National Indian Association;

National Indian Education Association; National Indian Youth Council;
Society of American Indians; Termination Resolution.
Howard Meredith
National Council of American Indians

Significance: The National Council of American Indians was important
in the 1920’s and 1930’s as a Red Progressive movement and in devel-
oping Indian voting and supporting John Collier’s “Indian New
Deal” reforms.
In the early part of the twentieth century, a movement known as the Red
Progressive movement called for American Indians to assimilate to the
general American lifestyle. It was led by Indians who were well-educated
and had achieved success in mainstream American society. Among its
leaders were Henry Roe Cloud, Thomas L. Sloan, Arthur C. Parker, physi-
cians Charles Eastman and Carlos Montezuma, and Gertrude Simmons
Bonnin, a Sioux writer and musician.
The Red Progressives united at first under the Society of American Indi-
ans (SAI), but by the early 1920’s that organization had split into several
rancorous factions. A number of new organizations appeared, including
the National Council of American Indians, founded in 1926 by Gertrude
Bonnin and her husband. The organization was closely aligned with the
General Federation of Women’s Clubs, a mostly white and black organiza-
tion of successful women. Bonnin had served as secretary of the Society of
American Indians and in 1924 had coauthored Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians:
An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes—Legalized Rob-
bery, a muckraking expose of graft and greed involving Oklahoma lawyers,
judges, and politicians.
The slogan of the National Council of American Indians was “Help the
Indians help themselves in protecting their rights and properties.” Its ma-
jor early emphasis was promoting voting and participation in politics after
the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924. It was most successful in
National Council of American Indians / 377
these efforts in Oklahoma and

South Dakota. The organiza-
tion also advocated banning
peyote use and the Native
American Church; it took a
moderate stance toward the
Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In January, 1934, represen-
tatives of several organizations
were called together in Wash-
ington, D.C., to confer with
Franklin Roosevelt’s commis-
sioner of Indian affairs, John
Collier, on reforms needed to
ameliorate the living condi-
tions of Indians. The Bonnins
represented both the National
Council of American Indians
and the General Federation of
Women’s Clubs. They strongly
supported the Indian Reorgani-
zation Act, which was adopted
by Congress the same year. The
council successfully pushed
for a requirement for major-
ity rule elections for tribal of-
fices.
The National Council of
American Indians, like its pre-
decessors, was torn by faction-
alism; the Bonnins were its
major support. With the com-
ing of World War II, the coun-
An 1899 photograph of Gertrude Bonnin, cil faded from existence, but it
founder of the National Council of American left behind a strong heritage of
Indians, in traditional Sioux attire. (National
Archives)
Indian political participation.
See also: Bureau of Indian
Affairs; Indian Citizenship Act;
Indian New Deal; Indian Reorganization Act; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1934-2002; Society of American Indians.
Fred S. Rolater
378 / National Indian Association
National Indian Association

Categories: Nineteenth century history, Organizations
Significance: The National Indian Association was one of several orga-
nizations that composed the Friends of the Indian lobbying group,
seeking to ameliorate Indian living conditions and help Indians as-
similate into American society.
After the Civil War (1861-1865), a series of groups devoted to Indian “re-
form” arose in the eastern United States. Events leading up to and dur-
ing the culminating period of 1876-1878, including the defeat of General
George Armstrong Custer in 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the
Nez Perce escape attempt of 1877, and the Bannock War and the tragic
Cheyenne escape attempt in 1878, led to the establishment of several in-
fluential organizations. Five of these became the core of the Friends of
the Indian movement. One was the U.S. government’s Board of Indian
Commissioners, founded in 1869 and consisting of private citizens who
served without pay. Two others, established in 1879, were the Boston In-
dian Citizenship Commission and the National Indian Association (also
known as the Women’s National Indian Association), established by a
group of Protestant churchwomen in Philadelphia. The Indian Rights As-
sociation and the National Indian Defense Association followed in the
early 1880’s.
Between 1879 and 1886, the National Indian Association established
eighty-three branches in cities across the nation. It published a monthly pe-
riodical, The Indian’s Friend, often presented petitions to Congress and the
president protesting the mistreatment of Indians, stridently pushed for re-
form of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and—more than any other group—
demanded that the U.S. government follow the provisions of its treaties
with the Indians with “scrupulous fidelity.” Its other major issues included
improving delivery of education for Indians (with regard to the number
and quality of schools), extending citizenship to all Indians, and dividing
Indian lands into private homesteads for each family.
The association participated yearly in the Lake Mohonk Conference of
the Friends of the Indian and the annual meeting of the Board of Indian
Commissioners. These agencies shared responsibility for helping persuade
the government to pass the General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act),
National Indian Education Association / 379
enacted in 1887, which subdivided the majority of Indian reservations into

individual allotments. This act was ultimately disastrous for Indians, as the
National Indian Defense Association had feared. The National Indian As-
sociation failed to influence the government’s honoring of treaties. The as-
sociation’s other major success was increasing the number of schools avail-
able to Indians.
See also: Allotment system; Bannock War; Friends of the Indian organi-
zations; General Allotment Act; Indian Rights Association; Little Bighorn,
Battle of the; Nez Perce War; Rosebud Creed, Battle of; Treaties and agree-
Fred S. Rolater
National Indian Education Association

Date: Established November, 1969
Locale: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Categories: Education, National government and legislation, Organiza-
tions, Religion and missionary activities, Twentieth century history
Significance: The National Indian Education Association (NIEA) was
organized in Minnesota with the broad goal of improving Indian ed-
ucation to enable Native learners to become contributing members of
their communities.
During the 1960’s, United States federal Indian policy increasingly focused
on correcting the poor quality of education and low student achievement
that existed in most reservation schools. As federal controls on the schools
loosened, Indian parents and educators sought ways to participate more
fully in the development of new initiatives in Indian education and to de-
velop curriculum that reflected tribal languages and histories. In order to
promote and achieve these goals, Indian educators formed the National In-
dian Education Association in Minneapolis in 1969. The organization sup-
ports traditional Native cultures and values, advocates for Native control
of educational institutions, and provides technical assistance to educators
in the field. NIEA actively monitors legislation affecting Indian education
and, in order to advocate more effectively, now has its offices to the Wash-
ington, D.C., metropolitan area. The organization sponsors an annual na-
tional conference to showcase effective educational programs, honor tribal
380 / National Indian Youth Council
traditions, and encourage innovative teaching and improved resources for

American Indian students. Native Hawaiians, who also seek preservation
and education about their indigenous culture, began participating as board
members in the 1990’s.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: American Indian Higher Education Consortium; Boarding
and residential schools; Carlisle Indian School; Indian Education Acts; In-
dian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act; Kennedy Report;
Meriam Report.
National Indian Youth Council

Significance: Provides Native American youth with knowledge about
tribal communities and traditions; develops leadership, employ-
ment, and civil liberties.
Ten Native American college students gathered to form the National In-
dian Youth Council (NIYC) in August, 1961, at Gallup, New Mexico. Two
months earlier, these students had met at the National Congress of Ameri-
can Indians (NCAI) conference at the University of Chicago. After hearing
the discussions encouraging self-determination and denouncing termina-
tion, the students decided to start their own group.
The foundation for the NIYC had been laid in 1953 when Herbert
Blatchford (Navajo) initiated the first intertribal student group, the Kiva
Club, at the University of New Mexico. In expanding his visions for native
youth, Blatchford was the founding director of the NIYC. At the August
meeting, Mel Thom (Paiute) was elected the chairperson; Clyde Warrior
(Ponca), president; Shirley Witt (Mohawk), vice president. The NIYC’s
founding group came from different tribes and interests, but they had a
common bond: a spirit to recover native rights and respect. Differing from
the NCAI, the NIYC focused on the voices of the youth and employed strat-
egies that were more aggressive and activist.
During its first decade, NIYC targeted problems with Native American
education and discrimination. Members editorialized their opinions
Native American / 381
through NIYC’s first publication, American Aborigine, edited by Blatchford.

In 1963 the NIYC began publishing its long-running newspaper, ABC:
Americans Before Columbus. The following year, the NIYC took its first step
of direct action by going to Washington State to hold a series of “fish-ins.”
Members defied state law by fishing in rivers that had been closed to native
fishing even though treaty language had reserved for the tribes permanent
fishing rights. During this time of national unrest, other activist groups
banded together to assist NIYC’s “Washington Project.”
With national support, NIYC members stepped into the political arena.
Mel Thom encouraged a 1964 Washington, D.C., audience to stand up for
self-determination. At a Memphis, Tennessee, poverty conference in 1967,
Clyde Warrior delivered his passionate speech, “We Are Not Free.” When
Warrior died the following year, the NIYC initiated the education-based
Clyde Warrior Institute in American Indian Studies. Another educational
project was a 1967 Carnegie Foundation program that researched educa-
tional methodology and addressed acculturation. With this growth, the
NIYC in 1970 had opened chapters on several college campuses and reser-
vations to serve more than two thousand members.
In expanding its political involvement, the NIYC then undertook law-
suits against irresponsible mining companies on reservation lands and in-
stituted native employment and training programs. Other NIYC projects
range from conducting voting surveys to creating an all-native film com-
pany, Circle Film. To help preserve native sacred lands and to protect na-
tive rituals, the group appealed to the United Nations and was granted rec-
ognition as an “official and non-governmental organization.” From its
headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the NIYC hosts international
native conferences that create strong networks of indigenous views.
See also: Fish-ins; National Congress of American Indians.
Tanya M. Backinger
Native American
Date: Twentieth century
Significance: One of many terms used to refer to the peoples of North
America whose cultures predate European colonization.
382 / Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council
The term “Native American” is commonly used to refer to the many peo-
ples of North America whose cultures existed on the continent when Euro-
peans first arrived. It does not eliminate the possibility of foreign origin in
an earlier era. It was coined as a collective name for the native peoples of
the Americas (primarily North America) that would not carry the obvious
falseness and the historically racist overtones of such terms as “American
Indian” and “Indian.” Yet, as is the case with virtually any collective term
suggested, there are problems inherent in the term; for example, literally
speaking, anyone of any ethnicity born in the Americas could be consid-
ered a “native American.”
Beginning in the 1970’s, the term Native American lost favor among ac-
tivist groups and many others concerned with American Indian politics.
Nevertheless, the term is still widely used, and some still prefer it to Ameri-
can Indian (although by the 1990’s, the latter had become more common or
at least more widely accepted). Some American Indians find the offensive-
ness of all such collective terms to be about the same. All are generaliza-
tions that deny the unique, tribal-specific cultural heritage and political
legacy of the many original inhabitants of the Americas. At the same time,
the names of many pantribal organizations—such as the American Indian
Movement or the National Congress of American Indians—attest to the
convenience of such collective terms.
See also: American Indian; Amerind; Federally recognized tribes; In-
dian; Tribe.
M. W. Simpson
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal

Council
Date: 1959
Categories: Civil rights, Court cases, Religion and missionary activities,
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision finds that since Native
American tribal governments predate the U.S. Constitution, they are
not bound to uphold its guarantees.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act / 383
In 1958, the Navajo Tribal Council, in an effort to limit activities of the

Native American Church on its reservation, enacted an ordinance mak-
ing it illegal to bring peyote onto the Navajo Reservation. Navajo members
of the Native American Church filed a suit against the tribe in federal
court charging the ordinance violated their First and Fourteenth Amend-
ment rights. They claimed their rights to freedom of religion and to pro-
tection against arbitrary and oppressive ordinances were totally disre-
garded.
In 1959, the United States Court of Appeals heard the case and sided
with the Navajo tribe, ruling that tribal councils existed prior to the estab-
lishment of the United States and so were not bound to uphold the United
States Constitution unless “they have expressly been required to surrender
[their sovereign powers] by the superior sovereign, the United States.” The
decision upheld tribal sovereignty and the right of tribes to manage their
own internal affairs without interference. However, the decision also
caused many in Congress to perceive a need to lessen tribal authority and
extend certain basic constitutional protections to individuals living under
tribal governments. Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council influ-
enced passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act (1968) by Congress, which, in
part, requires tribes to guarantee an individual’s freedom of religion when
living under tribal governance.
See also: American Indian Religious Freedom Act; Employment Division,
Dept. of Human Resources of the State of Oregon et al. v. Smith; Indian Civil
Rights Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; National Council of
American Indians.
Carole A. Barrett
Native American Graves Protection and

Repatriation Act

history
Significance: This act changed the relationship between American Indi-
ans and mainstream museums and academic institutions by insisting
384 / Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
that rights of scientific inquiry do not supersede basic human rights

with respect for the dead.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans were fascinated with

the science of phrenology, a process of measuring skulls to determine intel-
ligence. The so-called science operated on the premise that racial minority
groups, including American Indians, were inferior to Europeans, and that
this inferiority was detectable in their physical appearance. Indian graves
were looted to provide skulls for study. Later in the nineteenth century, the
U.S. surgeon general allowed Indian remains to be collected from battle-
fields and other areas, and these were shipped to the Army Medical Mu-
seum in Washington, D.C., for study. Eventually, the remains were trans-
ferred to the Smithsonian Institution for exhibit and study. By the 1880’s,
Indians were considered a vanishing race and there was a rush to collect
Indian remains and artifacts. Many graves were looted to build museum
collections. In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which made it il-
legal to excavate Indian grave sites on public lands without a permit. How-
ever, Indian remains and funeral objects were categorized as “natural re-
sources,” and universities and museums readily obtained permits. In the
1930’s, Indian artifacts became popular art collectibles and looting became
a major way of supplying the market.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Indian activists began to seek return of remains
and artifacts, but their requests were ignored. In the mid-1980’s, Indian
people sought congressional support to draft legislation for return of skele-
tal remains and funeral objects. In Indian belief, the remains of the dead
should be returned to Mother Earth to complete their journey into the spirit
world. However, the museum and scientific communities opposed return
of any remains or grave items, stating these were necessary objects for
study. Indians countered that all other Americans were protected against
grave robbing and human remains were not property to be taken and stud-
ied at will.
In 1990, Indian groups and the scientific and museum communities
worked to craft compromise legislation known as the Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This law states that all
agencies who receive federal funds must notify tribes of all human re-
mains, funeral artifacts, and sacred objects in their collections, including
objects of cultural patrimony, or objects that have ongoing importance to
the tribe. Indian graves on federal lands are protected, and the sale of hu-
man remains and funeral objects is forbidden. NAGPRA permits tribes to
negotiate for return of artifacts. Human remains are to be returned to the
proper tribe for burial. A review committee appointed by the secretary of
Native American Rights Fund / 385
the interior mediates disputes; however, dissatisfied parties can go to

court. The Smithsonian Institution is exempt from NAGPRA regulations,
but the national museum does work closely with tribes on return of human
remains. NAGPRA, though it has some loopholes, is an important piece of
legislation, because it recognizes the sanctity of tribal religious teachings
and honors the rights of American Indians to oversee and maintain cul-
tural continuity from generation to generation.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Kennewick Man controversy.
Native American Rights Fund

Categories: Native government, Organizations, Twentieth century his-
tory
Significance: NARF, established to represent Native American legal in-
terests, has become a well-known and respected, if sometimes criti-
cized, organization in the arena of American Indian rights and poli-
tics.
The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is a nonprofit, public-interest

legal organization that was founded in 1970. It was established to represent
tribal clients in litigation in state and federal courts and to strengthen tribal
governments. Operations are supported by federal funds as well as by
private and corporate contributions. Its attorneys are mostly Native Amer-
icans; the group’s headquarters are in Boulder, Colorado, with satellite of-
fices in Washington, D.C., and Anchorage, Alaska. One of the organiza-
tion’s primary activities is to handle cases involving “federally recognized
tribes” that cannot afford the full financial burden of litigation in U.S.
courts. A staff of sixteen attorneys (in the early 1990’s) handles about fifty
cases at any given time. NARF also acts as a consultant in the drafting of
federal Indian policy.
NARF’s objectives include preservation of tribal existence and indepen-
dence, protection of tribal resources, promotion of human rights such as
education and the equitable treatment of Indian prisoners, and develop-
ment of Indian law to improve tribal legal resources. The Indian Law Sup-
386 / Native American Rights Fund
port Center and the Carnegie-sponsored National Indian Law Library are
components of NARF, working in conjunction with its Legal Services Cor-
poration. The law library houses a collection of more than six hundred
tribal codes.
NARF has taken on a number of well-known cases involving tribal land
and water interests. The group gained national notice and respect for its
handling of the 1982 land rights case brought by the Penobscot and Passa-
maquoddy against the state of Maine. The tribes were awarded $27,000
plus the money to purchase 300,000 acres of land. (An important footnote
is that, although the case was regarded as a success story, the money did
not go very far for some recipients. In addition, many such cases, even
when legally successful, become bogged down by governmental bureau-
cracy.) NARF has been involved in litigation to strengthen aspects of the
1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act dealing with the repatriation
of ancestral bones and archaeological artifacts. NARF also assists non-
federally recognized tribes in attempts to gain official tribal recognition,
which may involve the restoration of at least some tribal homelands. It has
litigated successfully for the Menominee of Wisconsin and the Siletz of Or-
egon.
NARF has not been without its critics. Some have argued that, because
the organization is not self-sufficient and must rely on federal funding, it
cannot truly be an effective advocacy group. From this perspective it may
appear to be an extension of the federal system. Another criticism leveled
against the group is that it has never attempted to challenge the European
American legal paradigm by insisting on complete internal sovereignty for
a client; rather, its negotiations seek negotiation, consensus, and settle-
ment.
See also: American Indian Religious Freedom Act; Federally recognized
tribes.
M. A. Jaimes

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983.
Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
Native American Rights Fund. Annual Report. Boulder, Colo.: Author, 1993.
____________. Legal Review 19, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 1994).
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act / 387
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act

Locale: Arizona
Tribes involved: Hopi, Navajo, San Juan Southern Paiute
Reservations and relocation, Twentieth century history
Significance: This act was designed to settle land disputes between the
Hopi and Navajo; it triggered tremendous controversy surrounding
the removal and relocation of several thousand Navajos.
The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act was enacted by Congress in 1974

primarily to clarify rights of the Navajo and Hopi tribes in the 1882 “Execu-
tive Order Reservation” established by President Chester A. Arthur. This
executive order set aside 2,472,095 acres “for the use and occupancy of the
Moqui [Hopi] and such other Indians as the Secretary of the Interior may
see fit to settle thereon.” At the time, both Hopis and Navajos were living in
the set-aside area. Disputes increased as the Navajo population in the area
expanded.
In 1934 Congress consolidated the boundaries of the Navajo Reserva-
tion without altering the 1882 Executive Order Reservation. The Bureau of
Indian Affairs then established grazing districts on both reservations. Dis-
trict 6, exclusively for Hopi use, consisted of about 25 percent of the 1882
reservation. The remainder was occupied largely by Navajo stock raisers.
Disputes between members of the two tribes continued.
In 1958 Congress authorized a lawsuit to settle conflicting claims to the
1882 reservation. In 1962 a federal court, in Healing v. Jones, held that for the
area outside District 6, the Hopi and Navajo had “joint, undivided and
equal interests.” Because the Navajos occupied most of the area, however,
they controlled the most surface resources in the Joint Use Area (JUA).
Negotiations between the two tribes concerning management of the
JUA were unsuccessful. In the early 1970’s the Hopis sought and obtained a
court order for livestock reduction in the area. The continuing controversy
stimulated congressional interest, and the Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement
Act was enacted in 1974.
The act was comprehensive. It directed that a mediator make recom-
mendations to the district court, which would then partition the surface
rights of the JUA. In 1977 each tribe received half of the JUA. Money
was appropriated for livestock reduction and boundary fencing. The act,
and a 1980 amendment, allowed for the transfer of some federal lands
388 / Navajo Rehabilitation Act
to the Navajos to help offset lost JUA land. In 1983 about 370,000 acres of
“new lands” along the southern edge of the Navajo Reservation were se-
lected.
The act required the removal of members of one tribe living on lands
transferred to the other tribe. This involved a relatively small number of
Hopis but thousands of Navajos. An independent commission was created
to administer the relocation program, but it was inept, contributing to the
hardships of relocatees. The $52,000,000 initial appropriation was inade-
quate. Congress belatedly responded in the 1980’s, amending the act to re-
structure the commission and authorizing hundreds of millions of addi-
tional dollars for relocation.
As a final touch of irony, one section of this legislation, designed to re-
solve controversy over the 1882 reservation, allowed the tribes the right to
sue to settle rights in lands within the 1934 Navajo Reservation. In 1992 a
federal district court decided that the Hopis and San Juan Southern Paiutes
(who had intervened in the lawsuit) had rights in portions of the Navajo
Reservation long used by tribal members.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Navajo Rehabilitation
Act.
Eric Henderson
Navajo Rehabilitation Act

Date: April 19, 1950
Locale: Arizona and New Mexico
Tribes involved: Hopi, Navajo
history
Significance: In an attempt to improve conditions in one of the most im-
poverished areas of the United States, this act funded the construc-
tion of roads, schools, and other developments on the Navajo and
Hopi reservations.
The Navajo-Hopi Long Range Rehabilitation Act of 1950 (Public Law 81-
474) was passed by Congress to construct basic facilities on the Navajo and
Hopi reservations. Passed in response to more than twenty years of deteri-
orating economic conditions on the Navajo Reservation, the act authorized
funding for school construction, roads, and other projects.
Navajo Rehabilitation Act / 389
In the 1930’s the federal government had initiated a range-management

program on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Central to the program was
reducing the amount of livestock on the range. This devastated the Navajo
sheep-based pastoral economy. The full effects of stock reduction were
partially obscured during World War II, when thousands of Navajos joined
the service or worked in war-related industries. When these people returned
home, however, livestock regulations and insufficient resources prevented
a renewal of the pastoral economy. Unusually harsh winters added to the
distress and drew national attention to the impoverished conditions among
the more than sixty thousand Navajos residing in Navajo country.
Reservation schools could accommodate only about 25 percent of the
student-age population. All-weather roads were practically nonexistent on
the reservations. Inadequate roads contributed to health, education, and
economic problems. Infant mortality was high and school enrollments low.
After passing minor emergency relief measures, Congress considered a
more comprehensive approach.
A 1949 bill to fund improvements on the Navajo and Hopi reservations,
reflecting a resurgent congressional interest in limiting tribal sovereignty,
also included a provision that extended the jurisdiction of state law over
the two reservations. Citing this provision, President Harry Truman vetoed
the bill.
In 1950 the president signed the Navajo Rehabilitation Act, which
emerged from Congress without the offending jurisdictional provision.
This version also provided expanded opportunities for Hopi participation
in projects. The act appropriated $88,570,000. The largest portion, $25 mil-
lion, was for school construction, followed by $20 million for roads and $19
million for rangelands and irrigation projects. Lesser amounts were appro-
priated for health and water facilities, industrial development, and other
projects. More than $9 million was allocated for relocating and resettling
individuals away from the two reservations. There were also provisions for
loans and leases. Finally, one provision (ignored for more than thirty years)
authorized the Navajo tribe to adopt a tribal constitution.
In 1958, Public Law 85-740 provided an additional $20 million to com-
plete road construction. By 1962, more than 80 percent of the total appro-
priation had been expended, including nearly all the dollars targeted for
roads and schools.
The major benefit of the act was the substantial improvement in roads
and schools on the reservation. All-weather roads have provided greater
access to job locations and markets. School attendance increased dramati-
cally through the 1950’s and 1960’s, as did the overall educational attain-
ment of the population.
390 / Navajo War
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Navajo-Hopi Land

Settlement Act.
Eric Henderson
Navajo War
Date: September, 1863-November, 1866

Locale: New Mexico
Significance: Disputed grazing lands helped lead to this conflict, which
resulted in Navajo relocation to the barren Bosque Redondo.
Disputed grazing lands near Fort Defiance were a major factor leading to
the 1863-1866 war. The site was favored for rendezvous by Navajo medi-
cine men who collected herbs there. For generations, these lands were also
used as pasture for Navajo live-
stock. Shortly after the establish-
ment of Fort Defiance on Sep-
tember 18, 1851, soldiers who
wanted to pasture their horses
on these lands shot the Navajo-
owned horses. Revenge was
swift: Navajos raided army herds
to replace their losses.
Through the decade, the raids
continued and the army retali-
ated until, in 1859, army troops
attacked and destroyed the home,
crops, and livestock of the Na-
vajo clan leader, Manuelito. In
1860, Manuelito—aided by lead-
ers of other clans—assaulted Fort
Defiance and nearly captured it,
but was driven back. The army
pursued the attackers into the Manuelito, leader of his people in the Na-
Chuska mountains but was de- vajo War, as depicted by artist E. A. Burbank.
moralized by the hit-and-run (National Archives)
Nez Perce War / 391
tactics of the Navajos. In January of 1861, the Navajos met with army repre-
sentatives and agreed to work for peace. The uneasy truce was broken
when, in September of 1861, a riot broke out over a horse race. Artillery was
used to quell the disturbance, killing ten Navajos.
Raids for plunder and revenge increased, and the army responded. On
September 6, 1863, Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson was chosen to lead a
campaign of “pacification.” In the following months, Carson’s scorched-
earth offensive burned Navajo corn fields, orchards, and hogans; livestock
was confiscated and destroyed. Tribes unfriendly to the Navajos were en-
couraged to attack and harass them. Navajo tribe members surrendered or
were rounded up and relocated to Bosque Redondo (Round Forest) in the
barren plains of eastern New Mexico. Some clan leaders and their follow-
ers held out as long as possible, but by the end of 1864 about 8,000 half-
starving Navajos surrendered and were marched to Bosque Redondo.
Some two hundred people died on the grueling three-hundred-mile march
known as the Long Walk. Manuelito and twenty-six followers surrendered
in September of 1866. When another clan leader, Barboncito, surrendered
in November of 1866 with twenty-one followers, the Navajo War of 1863-
1866 was over.
See also: Long Walk; Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council;
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act; Navajo Rehabilitation Act; Pueblo Re-
volt; Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez.
Moises Roizen
Nez Perce War

Date: June 15-October 5, 1877
Locale: Oregon, Idaho, and Montana
Tribes involved: Nez Perce
Wars and battles
Significance: Chief Joseph, leader of the Wallamwatkins (Nez Perce
tribe), led his people in retreat through Oregon, Idaho, and Montana
almost 1,500 miles on one of the most remarkable and respected In-
dian war campaigns in U.S. history.
During the nineteenth century the Nez Perce occupied various areas of the
Northwest, including Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. There were five
392 / Nez Perce War
separate groups, each under the leadership of an autonomous chief. One

group occupied Oregon Territory in the Imnaha and Wallowa Valleys and
was under the leadership Old Chief Joseph. In 1855, Governor Isaac Stevens
of the Oregon Territory signed a celebrated treaty with Old Chief Joseph
and numerous other Nez Perce leaders, allowing the Indians ownership of
all the land in the Imnaha and Wallowa Valleys. The treaty was ratified by
the United States Senate.
The treaty of 1855 proved short-lived, however, as the Civil War and dis-
covery of gold at Orofino, Idaho, in 1860 led to an ever-increasing surge of
immigration of white settlers into the valleys and territories claimed by the
Nez Perce. Because of increasing tensions between the whites and Indians,
in 1863 a new treaty was negotiated. The new terms excluded the Imnaha
and Wallowa Valleys as well as other vast areas of land that had been dedi-
Frederic Remington’s depiction of Nez Perce chief Joseph surrendering in northern

Montana in 1877. After fighting U.S. cavalry troops for months and leading his peo-
ple in a retreat across and Continental Divide from their relentless pursuit, Joseph
vowed, “I will fight no more forever.” (Library of Congress)
Nez Perce War / 393
cated to the Indians in 1855. The revised treaty was signed by James Reu-
ben and Chief Lawyer, but chiefs Old Joseph, White Bird, and Looking
Glass refused to ratify it. Thus the Nez Perce became recognized as having
“treaty Indians” and “non-treaty Indians.”
In 1871, Old Chief Joseph died, leaving the leadership of his band (the
Wallamwatkins) to Young Joseph (Chief Joseph). The continuing influx of
white immigrants into the Nez Perce lands caused increasing problems be-
tween Indians and whites. In 1876, a commission was appointed to investi-
gate complaints, and it was decided that the non-treaty Nez Perces had no
standing and that all groups should go to designated reservations. In 1877,
the U.S. Department of the Interior issued instructions to carry out the rec-
ommendations of the assigned commission. Preparing for the transition, a
council was arranged to meet with Indian leaders and U.S. government of-
ficials on May 3, 1877. Chief Joseph and his brother, Alokut, represented
the Nez Perce, while General Oliver O. Howard represented the U.S. gov-
ernment. The final understanding was that the non-treaty Indians would
be on the designated reservations by June 14, 1877.
The Wallamwatkins Attack. On June 15, 1877, word was received at Fort
Lapwai, Idaho, that the Wallamwatkins had attacked and killed several set-
tlers around Mount Idaho, Idaho. U.S. Army troops were sent from Fort
Lapwai under the command of Captain David Perry to counterattack. The
Wallamwatkins, aware of the soldiers coming, moved their camp approxi-
mately 8 miles to Whitebird Creek. The next day, troops began pursuit into
Whitebird Canyon and engaged in a terrifying encounter with the Wallam-
watkins. The U.S. Army suffered resounding losses, losing thirty-four
troops and numerous horses. The Nez Perce, numbering only seventy war-
riors, suffered only four wounded in the battle.
General Howard assembled troops at Fort Lapwai and hurried to rein-
force the remaining troops at Mount Idaho. The battle was joined—Chief
Joseph and his entire tribe (including women and children), totaling ap-
proximately four hundred, against the U.S. Army. By July 13, after numer-
ous skirmishes with Captain Perry’s and General Howard’s troops, Chief
Joseph led his people eastward toward the Lolo Trail in the Bitterroot
Mountains and began a remarkable retreat march into Montana. Chief Jo-
seph kept track of Howard’s position and was able to stall and frustrate
Howard’s advancement. As a result, Chief Joseph led the Wallamwatkins
through Lolo Trail and into the Missoula area. General Howard subse-
quently contacted Colonel John Gibbon at Fort Shaw, Montana, and in-
structed him to take up the pursuit. Gibbon was able to muster 146 men of
the Seventh Infantry and 34 civilians.
394 / Nez Perce War
Route of the Nez Perce, June 15-October 5, 1877
CANADA
Bear Paw Mountains
Colon
el M
MONTANA
Cow Island
NORTH
i le
Fort Shaw
s
WASHINGTON Fort DAKOTA
Fort Missoula Keogh
Nez Perce
Stevensville
Reservation
gi s
S tur
Clearwater Big Hole Canyon Creek ne l
C o lo
Wallowa Whitebird Bozeman
Valley Creek
SOUTH
Camas Creek DAKOTA
IDAHO
OREGON WYOMING
Retreat and Surrender. Chief Joseph crossed the Continental Divide and
camped his weary followers in the Big Hole Valley, unaware of Colonel
Gibbon’s pursuit and position. On August 9, Gibbon’s troops made a sur-
prise attack on Chief Joseph’s camp and engaged in a long and difficult bat-
tle. Losses on both sides were substantial, but Chief Joseph was able to
gather his warriors, recover lost ground, recapture his large herd of ponies,
and make good his retreat.
By August 27, Chief Joseph had led the Wallamwatkins into Yellowstone
Park, with General Howard and his troops in continuing pursuit. By Sep-
tember 6, Chief Joseph made his retreat through the northeast corner of Yel-
lowstone Park. Continuing north, Chief Joseph led his people up through
the Snowy Mountains and finally into the northern foothills of the Bear
Paw Mountains, an easy day’s ride to the Canadian border. Unknown to
Chief Joseph, however, Colonel Nelson A. Miles, having been notified by
General Howard, was in pursuit from Fort Keogh and was paralleling
Chief Joseph’s trail. On September 30, Colonel Miles’s troops made a sur-
prise attack on the Wallamwatkins’ camp. The fighting was intense, the
army losing fifty-three men and the Indians eighteen warriors. On the
night of October 4, General Howard rode into Miles’s camp and provided
the reinforcements that would ensure a final surrender from Chief Joseph.
On October 5, at 2:20 p.m., all firing ceased. At 4:00 p.m., Chief Joseph of-
fered one of the most famous surrendering speeches ever documented.
Turning to the interpreter, Chief Joseph said:
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle / 395
Tell General Howard I know what is in his heart. What he told me before, I
have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking-Glass is
dead. Tulhulhutsut is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who
say yes or no. He [Alokut] who led on the young men is dead. My people, some
of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food; no one
knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look
for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them
among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From
where the sun now stands I will fight no more, forever.
Thus ended the Nez Perce War, one of the most remarkable and respected
Indian war campaigns of U.S. history.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Prehistory: Plateau;
Walla Walla Council.
John L. Farbo

Adkison, Norman B. Indian Braves and Battles with More Nez Perce Lore.
Grangeville: Idaho County Free Press, 1967.
____________. Nez Perce Indian War and Original Stories. Grangeville: Idaho
County Free Press, 1966.
Beal, Merrill D. I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce
War. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963.
Chalmers, Harvey, II. The Last Stand of the Nez Perce. New York: Twayne,
1962.
Fisher, Don C. The Nez Perce War. Thesis. Moscow: University of Idaho, De-
partment of History, 1925.
Thompson, Scott. I Will Tell My Story: A Pictorial Account of the Nez Perce
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle

Date: 1996
Locale: Canadian Pacific Northwest
Tribes involved: Nisga’a
Significance: This agreement, dealing with an aboriginal group from
the Pacific coast of Canada, covered many areas, including land and
396 / Nisga’a Agreement in Principle
reserves, access to the land, fisheries, wildlife, environmental assess-

ment and protection, Nisga’a government, fiscal matters including
taxation, and cultural heritage protection.
The Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, published in February, 1996, at-

tempted to lead to the “full and final settlement of Nisga’a aboriginal title,
rights, and interests.” Under the agreement, the Nisga’a were defined as an
aboriginal people under the constitution with all the charter rights, bene-
fits, and obligations of other Canadians; they did not by this agreement ac-
quire any special rights or privileges. The criminal code of Canada contin-
ued to govern them, and they continued to pay taxes. In time, the tax-
exempt status for Nisga’a citizens was to be eliminated as the Nisga’a be-
gan to assume more power for taxation.
The agreement stipulated that the Nisga’a govern themselves in a dem-
ocratic manner with four village governments and an overall Nisga’a gov-
ernment with its own constitution. This government was empowered to
make laws governing cultural, linguistic, social, educational, vocational,
environmental, and related matters. In addition, this government, with
provincial approval, administered justice through provision of police ser-
vices and a Nisga’a court with jurisdiction over its own lands. The agree-
ment made the Nisga’a the owners of about nineteen hundred square kilo-
meters of land in the area of the lower Nass River, including the four
villages of New Aiyansh, Canyon City, Greenville, and Kincolith. These
lands, however, were to remain accessible to the general public for recre-
ation, hunting, and fishing. All existing legal interests on the lands were to
be maintained, and the roads in them were to be governed and maintained
by the province.
The agreement stipulated that a financial transfer of $190 million, in ad-
dition to $11.5 million for the purchase of commercial fishing vessels and li-
censes, was to be paid over a period of years. The Nisga’a would receive an
annual quota of salmon and other fish to be caught and were expected to
conserve the stocks. Overall management was shared between the Nisga’a
and the federal and provincial governments. The Nisga’a received permis-
sion to hunt wildlife subject to existing restrictions and laws of conserva-
tion. The Nisga’a were made responsible for overall environmental protec-
tion and were required to meet or exceed existing federal and provincial
requirements.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Nunavut Territory; Treaties
and agreements in Canada.
Gregory Walters
Northwest Ordinance / 397
Northwest Ordinance
Date: July 13, 1787

Locale: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin
Tribes involved: Chippewa, Fox, Iroquois, Lenni Lenape, Miami, Ot-
tawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Shawnee, Winnebago, Wyandot (Huron)
lation
Significance: Although it was considered the greatest achievement of
the Confederation Congress because it provided terms for the cre-
ation of new states in the Old Northwest, the ordinance set a tragic
precedent by denying Indian rights.
By the Peace of Paris with Britain (1783), the United States acquired a vast
inland empire bounded by the Appalachians, the Mississippi River, the
Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. The task of disposing of this territory
fell to the government as it was organized under the Articles of Confedera-
tion (1781-1789). Conflicting claims of states, settlers, land companies, and
American Indians confused the issue. Lands south of the Ohio River were
settled separately from those north of it. The Old Northwest, including the
present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was
claimed by Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson
chaired a committee that, in 1784, proposed to Congress the creation of a
temporary government for the Northwest and the area’s eventual division
into sovereign states eligible to join the Confederation on terms equal to the
original members. Though the plan was not enacted, it did provide a model
for the Northwest Ordinance and facilitated the cession of western lands
by Virginia (in 1784), Massachusetts (1784-1785), and Connecticut (1784-
1786) to the national government.
If state claims were resolved, those of Native Americans were refused.
Under British rule, by the Proclamation of 1763, the entire West had been
set aside as Indian Country, starting at the Appalachian Divide. The pres-
sure for white settlement of the region had been a contributing cause of the
American Revolution, a lesson the Confederation had learned. As settlers
from New England, Pennsylvania, and the South pressed toward the Ohio
Country, Indian claims were extinguished. By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix
(1784) the Iroquois, exhausted by war, surrendered their claims to western
New York and Pennsylvania. The next year, major Ohio tribes relinquished
their claims to most of the future state, with the exception of the southwest
shores of Lake Erie. Formal concession came within a decade in the Treaty
398 / Nunavut Territory
of Fort Greenville (1795), when, for a ten-thousand-dollar annuity, twelve

tribes relinquished the southwest portion of the Old Northwest (Ohio and
Indiana).
Utilizing Jefferson’s plan, the Congress of the Confederation (1787),
even as the Constitutional Convention was meeting, established the North-
west Ordinance, by which those lands would be organized as a territory,
with a nationally appointed governor, secretary, and judges. It stated that
when five thousand free white males resided there, a bicameral legislature
was to be created. Eventually three to five states were to be formed (with a
minimum of sixty thousand free white inhabitants needed for statehood),
each to be admitted to the United States and to be equal in standing to the
original states. Freedom of religion, the right to jury trial, public support of
education, and the prohibition of slavery were to prevail. While this legis-
lation is traditionally regarded as the greatest achievement of the Confed-
eration Congress, it set a tragic precedent by riding roughshod over the
rights of Native Americans.
See also: Fort Greenville Treaty; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1775-1830; Proclamation of 1763.
C. George Fry
Nunavut Territory
Date: 1993
Locale: Canadian Northwest
Tribes involved: Inuit
Categories: National government and legislation, Treaties, Twentieth
century history
Significance: The Canadian government gives control over half of the
former Northwest Territories to the native Inuit.
In 1993, the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement was signed with Canada’s
federal government. It stated that, on April 1, 1999, the Northwest Terri-
tories would be divided and the eastern region would become Nunavut Ter-
ritory. “Nunavut” comes from the Inuit language Inuktitut and means “our
land.” The Inuit have inhabited these lands for thousands of years, and
they made up 80 percent of the population in the late 1990’s. The Inuit have
long desired a territory of their own, and the agreement gave the Inuit con-
trol over more than 350,000 square kilometers of land, mineral rights, and
Oka crisis / 399
financial aid. This agreement is designed to give the Inuit people control
over their own education, health, social services, and many other provincial-
type responsibilities.
The government of the territory is to be democratically elected to repre-
sent all residents of the territory: about twenty-two thousand people, sev-
enteen thousand of whom are Inuit. The agreement placed the seat of gov-
ernment in Iqualuit and described the territory as containing twenty-eight
villages or communities, including Iqualuit, which is located on Baffin Is-
land.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian; Nisga’a Agreement in Prin-
ciple; Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: Subarctic; Treaties and agreements in
Canada.
Gregory Walters
Oka crisis
Date: 1990
Locale: Quebec
Tribes involved: Mohawk
Protest movements, Reservations and relocation, Twentieth century
history
Significance: A conflict over Mohawk land claims leads to an armed
confrontation between Indians and the Surreté du Québec.
The conflict that erupted in early July, 1990, at Oka in Quebec was the result
of long-standing problems both within the Mohawk community in Canada
and between that community and various other, mainly governmental,
bodies. It was brought on in large measure by disputes regarding the own-
ership of the relevant lands at Oka that dated back to the early eighteenth
century.
The lands at Oka do not fit the usual pattern of disputed territory, and
for this reason, a 1975 land claim presented to the federal government was
rejected outright. The Mohawk community nonetheless continued to make
a claim based on territorial sovereignty, treaty rights, the Royal Proclama-
tion of 1763, unextinguished aboriginal title under common law, and land
rights from obligations imposed by order of the King of France in the eigh-
teenth century.
400 / Oka crisis
More recent origins of the conflict date back to 1987 and pertain both to
internal conflicts in the Mohawk community over issues of governance and
legitimacy of leadership in the community and to external conflicts with
various governments, chiefly local, about disputed land known as “the
Pines.” By the late 1980’s, the Municipality of Oka had proposed to allow
expansion of a local golf course onto the disputed lands and followed the
lead of the federal government in refusing to consider a Mohawk land
claim against the “the Pines.” Mohawk protest ensued in the form of barri-
cades, which the Municipality asked the Surreté du Québec to dispense
with in restoring law and order. It was the move on July 11, 1990, by the
Surreté that brought about the armed conflict and resulted in the death of a
Surreté officer. As the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Aboriginal Affairs stated,
Eventually the controversy over land use in the Pines became symbolic of Mo-
hawk land rights in general. This pattern of escalating conflict continued until
the shaky state of peace that managed to hold from 1987 was completely shat-
tered by the events of July 11, 1990.
Those events would unite the previously fractured Mohawk commu-

nity and would galvanize public opinion in general in favor of a solution to
the land claim problem provided violence was not again used. This public
support prompted the standing committee, in its fifth report, The Summer of
1990, to set forth several recommendations. The committee did not explore
all the historical and other details of the conflict but concluded its report
with a series of recommendations to resolve aboriginal issues in general
and the Mohawk-Oka conflict in particular. Those recommendations in-
cluded the formation of a royal commission; a review of the National De-
fense Act, under which Quebec was able to ask and receive from the federal
government the use and support of the army in resisting the Mohawk
standoff; and a better process for federal land claims and dispute resolu-
tion. More specifically, they proposed that there be an independent inquiry
into Quebec’s handling of native issues and of the Surreté in responding at
Oka; the appointment of a mediator to resolve the conflict around land
claims; and a process of healing and compensation begun in order to build
a better future for all concerned.
See also: Indian-white relations: Canadian.
Gregory Walters
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act / 401
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act
Date: June 26, 1936

Locale: Oklahoma
Tribes involved: All in Oklahoma except those in Osage County
Significance: This act made provision for all Indian tribes, bands, or
groups in Oklahoma to adopt a constitution allowing for self-
government, allowed the secretary of the interior to purchase land
to be held in trust for all Oklahoma Indians, and allowed small
groups of Indians to form a local cooperative association and receive
interest-free loans from the Revolving Loan Fund for Indians.
A major reform of U.S. policy toward American Indians resulted in the In-
dian Reorganization Act (IRA, or Wheeler-Howard Act), enacted by Con-
gress on June 18, 1934. With this act, further allotment of tribal lands to in-
dividual Indians was prohibited, purchase of additional lands for Indians
by the secretary of the interior was authorized, and a fund (the Revolving
Loan Fund for Indians) was established that could be used for tribal enter-
prises. The IRA allowed and encouraged the tribes or groups to adopt writ-
ten constitutions allowing for self-government, gave Indians applying for
positions in the Bureau of Indian Affairs preference over other applicants,
and called for very strict conservation practices on Indian lands. Okla-
homa, however, was excluded from the IRA because the IRA was essen-
tially a system of reservation government, and it was deemed inappropri-
ate for Oklahoma because, at the time of statehood, the Five Civilized
Tribes had given up their autonomy.
In 1936, the benefits of the IRA were extended to Oklahoma by way of a
separate statute, the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. This act authorized the
secretary of the interior to purchase, at his discretion, good agricultural
and grazing land, from within or without reservations, to hold in trust for
the tribe, band, group, or individual Indian for whose benefit the land was
acquired. Title to all lands was to be taken in the name of the United States
and held by the United States. All land was exempt from any and all federal
taxes, but the state of Oklahoma could levy and collect a gross production
tax upon all oil and gas produced from the land. The secretary of the inte-
rior was responsible for overseeing the payment of these taxes to Okla-
homa. Any tribe or band in the state of Oklahoma was given the right to or-
ganize for its common welfare and could adopt a constitution and bylaws;
402 / Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
these had to follow the rules and regulations set forth by the secretary of
the interior. Any ten or more Indians, as determined by the official tribe
rolls, or Indian descendants of such enrolled members, in convenient prox-
imity to each other, could be chartered as a local cooperative association for
the following purposes: credit administration, production, marketing, con-
sumers’ protection, or land management. Funds from the Revolving Loan
Fund for Indians could be used to provide interest-free loans to these
groups.
See also: Indian Reorganization Act.
Lynn M. Mason
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe

Date: 1978
Tribes involved: Suquamish
Categories: Court cases, Native government, Twentieth century history
Significance: On March 6, 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe decided that tribes do not have ju-
risdiction over non-Indians who commit crimes on reservations.
In 1978, during a tribal celebration, two non-Indian residents of the Port

Madison Reservation of the Suquamish Tribe (Washington) violated tribal
laws. Mark Oliphant was arrested for assaulting tribal police officers and re-
sisting arrest, and Dan Belgarde was arrested for hitting a tribal police car
in a high-speed chase. The two argued the Suquamish tribe had no criminal
jurisdiction over non-Indians, and they took their case to federal court.
The Supreme Court agreed with them and determined that non-Indians,
even those residing on a reservation and charged with a crime, are not sub-
ject to the jurisdiction of tribal courts. This ruling dealt a major blow to
tribal sovereignty and the authority of tribal courts because it determined
that tribes lack the power to enforce laws against all who come within its
borders. This ruling created serious and important law-and-order prob-
lems on reservations. Some tribes have approached the problem by cross-
deputization with local and county police or by arranging for non-Indians
on the reservation to submit voluntarily to tribal authority.
See also: Tribal courts.
Carole A. Barrett
Paxton Boys’ Massacres / 403
Pavonia Massacre
Locale: Pavonia, New Amsterdam (modern New Jersey)
Tribes involved: Hackensack, Wecquaesgeek
Significance: This massacre, perpetrated by European settlers on peace-
ful Indian tribes, led to brutal retaliation by the Indians and the even-
tual destruction of Pavonia.
Pavonia, a Dutch settlement located in the current Staten Island and

Bayonne-Jersey City region, was the terminus of a trail used by Indians to
move trading goods. A use tax imposed in 1639 and other incidents so out-
raged the Hackensack that in 1642 they killed two settlers. In 1643, a num-
ber of Wecquaesgeek Indians fled in terror from Mohawk raids—some to
Pavonia, near the Hackensack, seeking Dutch protection.
Following a carefully laid-out plot, eighty soldiers launched a brutal
surprise attack on the Indian camp shortly after midnight on February 26 to
revenge the killing of the settlers. Between 80 and 120 Indians were killed
and about thirty prisoners taken. In retaliation for this massacre, regional
tribes intermittently terrorized the Dutch over the next decade.
See also: Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial.
Laurence Miller
Paxton Boys’ Massacres

Date: December 14-27, 1763
Locale: A Conestoga village near Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Tribes involved: Iroquois Confederacy (Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, On-
ondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora), Lenni Lenape, Shawnee, Susquehannock
Significance: Growing tensions between Pennsylvania backcountry
settlers and Native Americans reflect western resentment of inequi-
table representation.
The French and Indian War (1754-1763) was a particularly difficult time for
settlers in the Pennsylvania backcountry. By the early 1750’s, the harmony
that had characterized the relationship between Native Americans and the
404 / Paxton Boys’ Massacres
colony since the time of William Penn had ended. Led by the Six Nations of
the Iroquois Confederacy, various Pennsylvania tribes, encompassing nu-
merous Native American villages throughout the region, fought to limit fu-
ture European expansion onto ancestral lands. The struggle engendered
much bloodshed and carnage on both sides.
During the war, the Pennsylvania Assembly, influenced by pacific
Quakers, pursued a policy of negotiations rather than resorting to armed
confrontation. Despite pleas from embattled backcountry residents for mil-
itary assistance, provincial leaders steadfastly refused to organize or outfit
an official militia. As a result, western residents were left to fend for them-
selves. By the 1760’s, the Quaker policy had produced some minimal re-
sults. Pennsylvania authorities were able to reestablish peaceful relations
with a few villages. Cooperative tribes were promised land rights, com-
mercial opportunities, and protection from their enemies. However, many
villages questioned the sincerity of the offers and remained at war. This put
backcountry residents in a particularly difficult situation. It was virtually
impossible for them to differentiate between peaceful and hostile natives, a
distinction that could become a matter of life or death. Therefore, many
homesteaders chose simply to label all of the indigenous population as
hostile until all had agreed to a peace.
The Massacres. On the morning of December 14, 1763, the tensions gener-
ated the first of two massacres. A band of approximately four dozen angry
Pennsylvania backwoodsmen attacked an unsuspecting Conestoga vil-
lage situated approximately fifty miles northwest of Lancaster. The village
was inhabited by fewer than two dozen Susquehannocks. A month earlier,
in a petition to Governor John Penn, these same Susquehannocks had
promised to maintain the peace that they claimed they had always hon-
ored. Nevertheless, the Pennsylvanians, who called themselves the Paxton
Boys, complained that villagers were assisting and sheltering Native Ameri-
can warriors. Several of the warriors were believed to have murdered
nearby settlers. In the assault, the Paxton Boys struck quickly, burning the
village’s huts and killing three Susquehannock men, two women, and a
child.
Panicked by the raid, fourteen Susquehannock survivors fled to the
safety of provincial authorities in Lancaster. Upon their arrival, the refu-
gees were placed under protective custody and held in the town jail. It was
there that the Paxton Boys found them on December 27, and it was there
that the backwoodsmen committed a second massacre. Enraged that local
officials would shelter the natives, a force of about one hundred well-
armed Paxton Boys rode up to the jailhouse. They burst into the build-
Two days after Christmas, 1763, about one hundred backwoodsmen who called
themselves the Paxton Boys shot and tomahawked defenseless Susquehannocks
who had been jailed after the backwoodsmen’s earlier attacks. (Library of Congress)
ing, seized the keeper, and then shot and tomahawked the defenseless
Susquehannocks. A few minutes later, with their task accomplished, the
backwoods raiders rode off to their homes, satisfied that they had taken an
important step toward easing the Native American threat within the re-
gion.
News of the two attacks created a flurry of activity in Philadelphia. Gov-
ernor Penn immediately issued a proclamation instructing western magis-
trates to apprehend those involved in the massacres. Colonial officials,
fearing additional assaults, rounded up 125 friendly Native Americans,
many of whom had converted to Moravianism, and brought them to Phila-
delphia. Meanwhile, the colonial Assembly asked New York authorities to
provide a sanctuary for the refugees. However, the New York governor de-
nied the request. Instead, a regiment of British regulars was assigned to es-
cort the “Moravian Indians” to a military barracks on a Delaware River is-
land and to defend them against all potential assailants. The Assembly’s
precautions were not popular in the backcountry. John Elder, a Presbyte-
rian minister and militia colonel who was alleged to be the Paxton Boys’ or-
ganizer, warned that “the minds of the inhabitants are so exasperated
406 / Paxton Boys’ Massacres
against the Quakers” that western residents were ready to confront the As-
sembly and take matters into their own hands.
The Paxton Boys Head for Philadelphia. By late January, 1764, reports
about an impending attack by the Paxton Boys swirled through Philadel-
phia. One letter to Governor Penn claimed that fifteen hundred well-armed
backwoodsmen, a force three times larger than the British regiment guard-
ing the Native Americans, were planning to march on the city and go door
to door until they had found all the Native Americans in Philadelphia. The
westerners intended to burn down the houses of those who resisted. The
letter ended with a prediction that the backwoodsmen would fight to the
death, if necessary.
The rumored march became a reality in early February. Although con-
siderably smaller than most reports had forecast, a force of two hundred
backwoods residents, comprising primarily Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from
the lower Susquehanna River region, began a hike toward the provincial
capital. Armed with muskets, tomahawks, and pistols, they announced
that they were coming to Philadelphia to rectify the various abuses di-
rected at them by the Assembly.
Intercepting the westerners at Germantown, five miles northwest of the
city, Benjamin Franklin led a delegation appointed by the governor. Mat-
thew Smith and James Gibson, two militia officers, presented Franklin with
a petition that identified nine specific grievances. Surprisingly, the primary
complaint had nothing to do with the colony’s Native American policy. In-
stead, the Paxton Boys protested that the four western counties had signifi-
cantly less representation in the Assembly than did the three eastern coun-
ties. If this inequity were rectified, the backwoodsmen claimed that the
other eight complaints, all of which dealt with policies concerning Native
Americans, would be remedied.
While Franklin conferred, other Philadelphians prepared for an attack.
Some local residents insisted that the force in Germantown was simply an
advance unit of Paxton Boys and that hundreds more would soon arrive.
To defend the city against the “Lawless Party of Rioters,” the Assembly
swiftly enacted emergency legislation. Six companies, each with one hun-
dred volunteers, were hastily organized. Cannons were pulled into defen-
sive positions around the courthouse. Shops were closed. The roads and
ferries leading into the city were blockaded. The British regiment guarding
the Native American refugees was placed on alert.
Franklin Negotiates. Aided by the city’s impressive mobilization, Frank-

lin’s deliberations proved fruitful. The westerners agreed that if their peti-
tion were promptly delivered to the governor and Assembly, they would
return home. In a gesture aimed at compromise, the Philadelphia delega-
tion announced that the Paxton Boys had been misunderstood and were, in
fact, “a set of worthy men who laboured under great distress.” The delega-
tion then accompanied about thirty backwoodsmen into the city. The fol-
lowing day, one of the visitors was permitted to inspect several Native
Americans to determine whether they had been involved in recent attacks
upon settlers. They had not. Several days later, the westerners’ petition was
presented to the legislature.
In July, the Assembly responded legislatively to the Paxton Boys’ de-
mands. Pennsylvania formally declared war against the Lenni Lenape and
Shawnee tribes. A bounty for Native American scalps, another of the west-
erners’ demands, was enacted. Money also was appropriated for the cre-
ation of an official provincial militia, something the Quaker government
had steadfastly refused to do, even during the French and Indian War. The
colony’s search for the Paxton Boys involved in the two massacres had
ended months earlier, with no arrests made.
Pennsylvania felt the impact of the Paxton Boys’ activities for years to
come. Most important, the crisis initiated an ongoing dispute about fair
and equitable representation for western counties. It was a contest in which
political power eventually shifted away from Philadelphia Quakers and to-
ward a diverse and democratic coalition of political leadership. Ultimately,
the crisis surrounding the Paxton Boys’ Massacres served as an initial step
toward the political divisions that generated an independence movement
within the colony.
nial; Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress meeting;
Paxton Boys’ Massacres; Proclamation of 1763.
Paul E. Doutrich

Franz, George W. Paxton: A Study of Community Structure and Mobility in
the Colonial Pennsylvania Backcountry. New York: Garland, 1989. Fo-
cuses on political and socioeconomic development of the Paxton com-
munity.
Hindle, Brooke. “The March of the Paxton Boys.” William and Mary Quar-
terly, 3d ser., 3 (October, 1946): 461-486. Still one of the best narrative ac-
counts of the massacres.
Jacobs, Wilbur R. The Paxton Riots and the Frontier Theory. Chicago: Rand
McNally, 1967. A brief booklet that includes many primary documents
produced during the episode.
408 / Peach Wars
Kelley, Joseph J., Jr. Pennsylvania: The Colonial Years. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1980. Includes a general description of the Paxton Boys epi-
sode.
Schwartz, Sally. “A Mixed Multitude”: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial
Pennsylvania. New York: New York University Press. 1987. A general
history that describes the various tensions within colonial Pennsylvania
and how the colony dealt with them.
Peach Wars
Date: 1655-1664
Locale: Hudson River Valley, New York
Tribes involved: Esophus, Lenni Lenape
Significance: This conflict is regarded as the most significant confronta-
tion between the Dutch and the Indians; the end of the conflict also
marked the end of Dutch rule.
Dutch traders depended upon the Indian tribes of the Hudson and Niagara
regions for their livelihood. With the development of frontier trading posts
in 1620, the Dutch established a permanent presence in the wilderness.
Governor-general Willem Kieft began an extensive campaign to intimidate
and subjugate Indian tribes after he took office in 1639. In 1655, a Dutch
farmer killed a Delaware woman for picking peaches in his orchard. Her
tribe quickly retaliated, and ambushes occurred throughout the Hudson
Valley, even at New Amsterdam.
Fighting was particularly fierce on the northern reaches of the Hudson,
at the settlement of Wiltwyck. The new governor-general, Peter Stuyvesant,
arrived with a militia that forced the attacking Esophus tribe into negotia-
tion. The Dutch, however, murdered the Indian delegation. Retaliatory
raids resulted in eight Dutch casualties, and warfare continued for five
years.
In 1660, Stuyvesant embarked on a new policy: taking Indians as hos-
tages to ensure peace. The Esophus, however, refused all Dutch peace
offers until Stuyvesant ordered the hostages sold into slavery. In 1664, af-
ter the Mohawks agreed to help the Dutch defeat the Esophus, the En-
glish captured New Netherland, ending both the Peach Wars and Dutch
rule.
Pequot War / 409
See also: Bacon’s Rebellion; Beaver Wars; Fur trade; Iroquois Confeder-
acy; Indian-white relations: Dutch colonial; Manhattan Island purchase;
Pavonia Massacre; Peach Wars; Pequot War.
Richard S. Keating
Pequot War
Date: July 20, 1636-July 28, 1637
Locale: Connecticut
Tribes involved: Pequot, Narragansett
Significance: The first major conflict between Native Americans and
New England settlers.
As suggested by their name (from pekawatawog, “the destroyers”), the

Pequots were once the most formidable tribe in New England. Part of the
Eastern Algonquian language family, the Pequots, by the dawn of the sev-
enteenth century, were well established in what is now Connecticut. Their
powerful sachem (principal chief) was the venerable Sassacus, who was
born near what is now Groton. In spite of many years of experience, Sas-
sacus faced, in his seventies, the biggest crisis in his people’s history. Al-
though the Pequots had a virtual hegemony over their adjacent nations—
as the leader of the Mohegans, Uncas was married to the daughter of the
Pequot chief—the Pequots had trouble coping with the impact of the Euro-
pean powers in the Connecticut Valley. The Pequots found themselves
caught between the Dutch moving eastward from New Netherlands and
the English moving westward from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and
Connecticut. European competition for control over trade on the Connecti-
cut River proved to be a destabilizing factor in intertribal relationships.
The political climate was ripe for violence. It began when two English
traders were killed in Connecticut—John Stone in 1633 and John Oldham
on July 20, 1636. It has never been firmly established that the Pequots were
responsible for their deaths. When John Gallup, an English merchant,
found natives in control of Oldham’s ship, anchored off Block Island, he
fought with them in July, 1636, for control of it. Captain John Endecott, the
first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with ninety soldiers, con-
ducted a punitive raid on Block Island, killing every male native there. Al-
though most of the casualties were Narragansetts, not Pequots, Endecott
410 / Pequot War
Contemporary engraving of the 1637 defeat of the Pequots at Fort Mystic, their forti-
fied village, from Captain John Underhill’s account in Newes from America (1638).
(Library of Congress)
pushed eastward along the Connecticut coast, demanding reparations

from the Pequots, who refused, resisted, and suffered at least one death, as
well as the destruction of several villages.
Siege of Fort Saybrook. Sassacus, outraged, invited the Narragansetts to

join him in war on the English. Their chief, Miantonomo, was favorably
disposed toward the colonists, probably due to the influence of Roger Wil-
liams, the founder of Rhode Island. Even without Narragansett support,
Sassacus acted, laying siege to Fort Saybrook, situated on the Connecticut
River, during the winter of 1636-1637 and concurrently attacking several
outlying English settlements, including Wethersfield, where at least nine
settlers were killed.
Puritan retaliation was not long in coming. Captains John Mason and
John Underhill shared command. Born in England, Mason had served as an
army officer in the Netherlands before his arrival in Massachusetts in 1632.
From Hartford, he set forth with a band of eighty, supported by the
Pequot War / 411
Mohegans and Narragansetts. Like Mason, Underhill had been born in En-
gland and then was reared in the Netherlands, where his father had fought
the Spanish. Since 1630, he had lived in Massachusetts. Mason and Under-
hill initially went eastward, by ship, along the Connecticut coast, making
landfall at Narragansett Bay. Then, with their native allies, they moved
westward by land. After crossing the Pawcatuck and Mystic Rivers, they
were poised to attack the main Pequot village at sunrise on May 25, 1637.
The Puritan forces divided, each half attacking one of the two main gates,
located at opposite ends of the stockaded native settlement. The English
did not profit as much as expected by their surprise attack; their opening
forays were repulsed. Then the colonials set fire to the wigwams, and as
the village burned, the Pequots faced horrible alternatives. Some, mostly
women and children, remained inside the fort, perishing in the flames.
Those who fled, mostly the warriors, were cut down by the English and
their Narragansett, Mohegan, and Niantic allies. Between six hundred and
one thousand Pequots perished in this massacre. Only two colonials were
lost, a mere twenty wounded. Underhill rejoiced in the “mighty victory,”
comparing his annihilation of the Pequots to David’s destruction of his foes
in biblical times.
A large group of Pequot refugees sought sanctuary in a swamp near
New Haven, only to be discovered and destroyed on July 28, 1637. In the
subsequent confusion, Sassacus and a handful of followers fled, seeking
asylum in Mohawk territory. Desiring to prove their loyalty to the English,
the Mohawks beheaded Sassacus.
Uncas Rises to Power. As a consequence of the Pequot War, Uncas, the son-
in-law of Sassacus, seized control of the Mohegan tribe. With English sup-
port, Uncas began a career of conquest that made him the most powerful
sachem in New England. Miantonomo, sachem of the Narragansetts, was
killed by command of Uncas in 1643, perhaps as a political act asked by
his English allies. Although Uncas initially prospered as a prominent war-
rior and ruler, he discovered his English allies to be unpredictable. When
he attacked Massasoit in 1661, the Puritans forced him to give up prisoners
and plunder; during Metacom’s War (1675-1676), Uncas surrendered his
sons as hostages to the colonists, who, defeating Metacom (or King Philip)
of the Wampanoags, effectively ended Indian resistance to European settle-
ment.
The Pequot War also marked the advent of almost constant conflict be-
tween the Puritan settlers and the natives, and its results were ultimately
tragic for all the Native Americans. The Pequots, who (together with the
Mohegans) had counted perhaps four thousand men when the English ar-
412 / Pequot War
rived at Plymouth Rock in 1620, steadily declined in numbers. An estimate

made in 1643 suggested that there were twenty-five hundred men in their
group. Following their defeat, many of the Pequots were massacred or en-
slaved; those enslaved were shared between the Europeans and other na-
tives, some being deported as far from home as Boston or the island of Ber-
muda. Others were assimilated into other tribes, by being resettled among
their former enemies. In 1655, the Pequots were moved to two reservations
on the Mystic River. By 1674, there were only three hundred men in this
once-proud nation. Pequot place names disappeared: The Pequot River, for
example, became the Thomas. Their power had been forfeited, their iden-
tity nearly eradicated. In 1990, there were between nine hundred and six-
teen hundred Pequots.
See also: Metacom’s War; Saybrook, Battle of.
C. George Fry

Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1996. The first in-depth study of the Pequot War, emphasizing the
motives behind the hostilities through archaeological, linguistic, and
anthropological analysis.
De Forest, John W. History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest
Known Period to 1850. Hartford, Conn.: W. J. Hammersley, 1851. Reprint.
Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1988. A classic study of the native
peoples of Connecticut.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. Five Hundred Nations: An Illustrated History of the
North American Indians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. This gener-
ously illustrated volume is sympathetic to the point of view of the Na-
tive Americans. References to the situation in New England are correc-
tive to earlier writings.
Orr, Charles, ed. History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Ma-
son, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardener. Cleveland, Ohio: Helman-Taylor,
1897. A valuable anthology of eyewitness reporting on the Pequot War
from the Puritan perspective, drawing on the recollections of major En-
glish participants.
Peale, Arthur L. Memorials and Pilgrimages in the Mohegan Country. Nor-
wich, Conn.: Bulletin Company, 1930. Peale, author of a groundbreaking
study of Uncas, was celebrated for his knowledge of the Mohegans and
the Pequots. Remarkably readable reflections.
Salisbury, Neal E. Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making
of New England, 1500-1643. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. A
thorough, objective study of the contrasting attitudes and values of the
Pima uprisings / 413
Native Americans and the Europeans during a century and a half of con-
tact and conflict.
Stoutenburgh, John L., Jr. Dictionary of the American Indian. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1960. A concise resource with excellent brief biog-
raphies and summary descriptions of key events in Native American
history.
Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. This helpful study of a half-century of rela-
tionships between Native Americans and European settlers is a fine
starting point for research.
Pima uprisings
Date: 1695, 1751
Locale: Southern Arizona, northwestern Mexico
Tribes involved: Pima
Significance: These uprisings, instigated by Spanish mistreatment and
possibly by personal ambition, caused significant death and destruc-
tion and undermined the formerly cordial relations between the
Spanish and Indians.
By the late 1600’s the Spanish Jesuits had established a successful system
of missions and maintained cordial relations with the Upper Pimas. In
Tubutama, however, in 1694 the Spanish unjustly and summarily executed
three Pimas for alleged horse stealing and forcibly silenced Pima leaders
who were openly critical of the Spaniards and their methods. Christian-
ized Opata Indians who oversaw running the mission herds and lands at
Tubutama alienated the Pimas with attitudes of condescension and superi-
ority.
In 1695 an uprising occurred by a disaffected faction of Pimas at Tubu-
tama. Three Opata were killed. Moving southwest and enlisting some al-
lies, they destroyed the presidio at Altar and killed the missionary at
Caborca.
The Spanish retaliated immediately. They killed a few women and chil-
dren and destroyed fields at Caborca as a lesson but were not able to find
the instigators of the uprising. The aid of peaceful Pima leaders who were
not part of the uprising was enlisted to identify the instigators. The first
414 / Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings
one identified was instantly beheaded. This set off a frenzy among the
Spanish, who killed nearly fifty Pimas, including several peaceful ones.
As soon as the Spanish left, enraged Pimas organized and destroyed
Tubutama, Caborca, and churches at Imuris and San Ignacio. Again, Span-
ish forces, this time aided by friendly Pimas, retaliated by killing a few
Pimas and burning their crops, but they were again unable to engage the
instigators. A number of Pima headmen who realized they could not op-
pose the Spanish arranged to surrender the instigators to the Spanish sol-
diers, who then left. The damage was done, however; much of Pima terri-
tory was destroyed. The Pimas were divided into pro- and anti-Spanish
factions. Anger and distrust of the Spaniards smoldered among many
Pimas.
A second Pima uprising occurred in 1751. The uprising was instigated
by Luis Oacpicagigua, who had formerly served the Spanish so well that he
was made captain-general of the Pimas. Oacpicagigua claimed that he re-
volted against the cruelty and oppression of Spanish military and mission-
ary rule and was trying to end their domination over his people. The Span-
ish claimed that he desired to be chief of all the Pimas. This uprising was
isolated rather than general. It began at Saric, near Tubuand. Oacpicagigua
and some Western Pimas killed eighteen Spaniards invited to his house, at-
tacked Tubutama, and killed two missionaries at Caborca and Senoita. Af-
ter the deaths of more than a hundred Spaniards and more than forty Pimas
and a loss of support, Oacpicagigua ceased hostilities and was imprisoned.
The Jesuit missions never recovered from this uprising by the time of
their expulsion in 1767. Several missions remained in operation but with
successively declining success and influence. By the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, the Pimas had pretty much returned to their former way of
life.
See also: Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial; Pueblo Revolt; Zuñi
Rebellion.
Laurence Miller
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings

Date: June 25-26, 1975
Locale: Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota
Tribes involved: Oglala Sioux
Categories: Protest movements; Twentieth century history
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier killings / 415
Significance: The Pine Ridge shootout was a turning point for the
American Indian Movement (AIM) in their relations with the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA).
In 1973, members and supporters of the American Indian Movement (AIM)

occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Res-
ervation. The activists were demonstrating against what they considered
to be autocratic and sometimes corrupt practices of the Oglala Sioux tribal
political leaders, especially Richard Wilson, the tribal chairman. Wilson, an
aggressive opponent of AIM, along with local Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) officials, requested federal support in removing the activists. The oc-
cupation evolved into a state of siege lasting seventy-one days and leaving
two native people dead. AIM leaders were indicted, but the case was dis-
missed after a federal judge accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) of gross misconduct.
Discontent and strong opposition to the Pine Ridge Reservation tribal
government and the chairman continued. On June 25, 1975, violence
erupted again when a BIA policeman killed a young Oglala man. The fol-
lowing day, in an exchange of gunfire, two FBI agents were slain outside a
house about fifteen miles from the town of Pine Ridge. Although the occu-
pants of the house fled, two Oglala men were ultimately apprehended and
charged with the murders; they were acquitted. Leonard Peltier, another
suspect, was arrested in Canada, extradited to the United States, and sent
to prison after a controversial trial in which he was sentenced to two con-
secutive life terms.
Peltier declared himself innocent of the killings and appealed his con-
viction many times. During the appeals, the court found that the govern-
ment had acted improperly in arresting and trying him. Federal authorities
admitted to falsifying affidavits used to extradite Peltier from Canada. Wit-
nesses in the original trial had been coerced, and evidence supporting
Peltier’s claims was suppressed. In spite of these irregularities, the courts
refused to overturn Peltier’s conviction. Peltier’s case became known
throughout the world. Many people believed that, even if he were guilty,
he had not been granted a fair trial. Amnesty International declared him a
political prisoner, and important religious leaders spoke out on his behalf.
A book and three films were made about the case. In 1992, a “Mr. X” con-
fessed to the killings. Peltier’s supporters continued to hope that they
could win him a new trial.
Other victims of the 1975 violence included Leonard Crow Dog, an
Oglala medicine man and spiritual leader of the movement who was ar-
rested at his home on the neighboring Rosebud Reservation, and AIM sup-
416 / Pontiac’s Resistance
porter Anna Mae Aquash, a Micmac Indian woman, believed by the FBI to
be a witness to the killing of the two agents. Aquash was found murdered
in 1976.
There was a determined effort to get Peltier pardoned by President Bill
Clinton at the end of his term in 2000, but pressure and protests from the
FBI persuaded Clinton to refuse the pardon. In April, 2002, Peltier’s law-
yers filed a lawsuit against former FBI director Louis Freeh, the FBI Agents
Association, and numerous past and present FBI officials for spreading lies
about Peltier in their attempts to derail a pardon.
See also: American Indian Movement; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Trail of Broken Treaties; Wounded Knee
occupation.
Lucy Ganje and Cynthia A. Bily
Pontiac’s Resistance
Date: May 8, 1763-July 24, 1766
Locale: Great Lakes region
Tribes involved: Chippewa, Lenni Lenape, Huron, Illinois, Kickapoo,
Miami, Mingo, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Seneca, Shawnee
Significance: A pan-Indian uprising presents the greatest threat to Brit-
ish expansion before the American Revolution.
Having signed the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, Great Britain and
France concluded the French and Indian War, nearly a decade of battle for
empire in North America. Victorious, Great Britain then had to decide how
to organize its vast new territories, embracing Canada and the area lying
between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. At issue in these trans-
Appalachian lands were the rights, vital interests, profits, and responsibili-
ties of the remaining Frenchmen, fur traders and trappers, British gover-
nors and colonials with claims to these territories, land speculators, the
British army, and, not least, Native Americans. A plan to separate trans-
Appalachia from eastern British colonies and keep out settlers had been
recommended by William Petty, earl of Shelburne, then president of Brit-
ain’s Board of Trade. Shelburne had hoped that his plan would be imple-
mented by 1767, but despite mounting political pressure for Parliament to
act on imperial reorganization, nothing was done until Shelburne had left
Pontiac’s Resistance / 417
office. What determined his successor’s action and his issuance of the Proc-
lamation of 1763 was a native uprising and the siege of the British fort at
Detroit by a little-known Ottawa war chief, Pontiac.
A large, imposing figure, Pontiac was born in present-day northern
Ohio, the son of an Ottawa father and a Chippewa (Ojibwa) mother. Al-
though he married several times (as was customary), only one of his wives
and two sons have been identified. Esteemed for his strategic skills and his
intelligence, he had become a war chief by 1755, when he was in his mid-
thirties. The Ottawa, like most of their neighbors, were traders who had
profited from close relationships with the French and who, therefore,
fought with French forces in America during the French and Indian War.
Pontiac had fought with the French when they defeated British troops com-
manded by General Braddock at Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania.
Indian Grievances. France’s defeat, sealed by the Treaty of Paris, proved di-
sastrous to frontier natives, who were constrained thereafter to deal with
the British. Contrary to the intent of the Proclamation of 1763, colonial set-
tlers poured across the Appa-
lachians into American Indian
territories. In addition, Lord
Jeffrey Amherst, commander
in chief of British forces, dis-
continued bestowing on the
tribes gifts and supplies, the
most import of which was
gunpowder. During the war,
Amherst had also provided al-
cohol to the natives, but he re-
fused to dispense it at war’s
end. Thus, genuine hardship
from a lack of gunpowder,
which curtailed their hunting
and disrupted their fur trade,
an unslaked addiction to drink,
discomfort due the diminution
of other supplies, and increas-
ing white encroachments on
their lands furnished many
Great Lakes tribes with seri- The Ottawa chief Pontiac, who organized a
ous grievances against the pan-Indian resistance to English colonists in
British. the 1760’s. (Library of Congress)
418 / Pontiac’s Resistance
On April 27, 1763, Pontiac convened a general war council in order to fi-
nalize war plans that envisaged a wholesale assault on British forts along
the frontier. His call to arms solicited support from Chippewas, Lenni
Lenapes (Delawares), Hurons, Illinois, Kickapoos, Miamis, Mingos, Pota-
watomis, Senecas, and Shawnees. On May 8, 1763, he and three hundred
warriors—mostly his own tribesmen, along with Chippewas and Potawa-
tomis—entered Fort Detroit, weapons concealed and ready to strike. Pre-
viously alerted to Pontiac’s intentions, however, Major Henry Gladwin
foiled Pontiac’s attack from within and the natives put Gladwin’s fort un-
der what became a six-month siege. Within weeks, every British fort west
of Niagara was destroyed: Forts Sandusky, St. Joseph, Miami, Quiatenon,
Venango, Le Boeuf, Michilimackinac, Edward Augustus, and Presque Isle.
Forts in the Monongahela Valley, such as Fort Ligonier, were attacked.
Only Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit survived. Before the winter of 1763, the Brit-
ish had suffered costly ambushes such as one outside Detroit at Blood
Ridge and counted two thousand casualties overall.
Fearful that their entire frontier would collapse, the British counterat-
tacked. By late fall, tribal resistance had weakened, as the natives were un-
used to protracted warfare and lacked the measure of aid they had ex-
pected from the French. At Fort Pitt, blankets distributed by the fort
commander, Captain Simon Ecuyer, infected besieging natives and pro-
duced a devastating smallpox epidemic, while another of Amherst’s com-
manders tracked them with English hunting dogs. In late autumn, Pontiac
lifted the siege of Detroit, although elsewhere some Indian forces contin-
ued fighting throughout 1764. Other tribes, however, had concluded peace
treaties with Colonel John Bradstreet at Presque Isle as early as August,
1763. By July, 1765, Pontiac had entered peace negotiations that resulted in
a treaty signed with the British at Oswego on July 24, 1766, a treaty under
which he was pardoned.
Following his pardon, Pontiac was received with hostility by neighbors
in his Maumee River village and he, his family, and a handful of supporters
were driven out by tribe members who wanted resistance to continue.
While at a trading post in Cahokia (Illinois), Pontiac was murdered in
April, 1769, by Black Dog, a Peoria Indian whom the British may have paid
in hopes of forestalling future rebellions.
Alteration of British Policy. In the aftermath of Pontiac’s resistance, the

British, apprehensive about a renewal of Native American resistance, al-
tered their Indian policy. They abandoned their Indian posts everywhere in
the West, except at Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Niagara, and cross-
mountain trade was placed again in colonial hands. British authorities,
Pontiac’s Resistance / 419
seeking to remove yet another cause of native grievances, renewed the

practice of favoring tribes with sumptuous gifts. Unable to stem the tide of
European settlers into trans-Appalachian tribal lands, as the Proclamation
Line of 1763 was intended to do, British representative William Johnson ne-
gotiated a new boundary with Iroquois leaders at Fort Stanwix in Septem-
ber, 1768. This line was drawn farther west, in hopes of lessening chances of
friction between the natives and the settlers. Britain’s concerns over Native
American affairs soon gave way to coping with rising resistance among its
own colonials.
In retrospect, Pontiac’s pan-Indian alliance represented the greatest
threat mounted by Native Americans against Great Britain’s New World
expansion prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution. It dramati-
cally launched Native American resistance to white civilization, resistance
that subsequently included uprisings by Little Turtle (1790-1794) and by
Tecumseh (1809-1811) and, during the last three decades of the nineteenth
century, drew the U.S. military into the lengthiest and most numerous suc-
cession of campaigns in its history, ending with the Battle of Wounded
Knee in 1890.
nial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Proclamation of 1763.
Mary E. Virginia

Hawke, David. The Colonial Experience. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.
Chapter 13 brilliantly places Pontiac’s resistance in the context of Great
Britain’s halting steps toward imperial reorganization.
Leach, Douglas E. Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies
in North America, 1607-1763. New York: Macmillan, 1973. A formidable
study that details the increasingly impossible task Great Britain faced in
trying to devise an effective military defense for a vast colonial empire
against France and Spain, British colonists, and Native Americans. The
latter chapters provide excellent background on Pontiac’s resistance.
____________. “Colonial Indian Wars.” In History of Indian-White Relations,
edited by Wilcomb B. Washburn. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North American In-
dians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. More spe-
cific in its focus than the Leach study, this article combines British and
American Indian politics and perspectives in the context of colonial
wars.
Nester, William R. Haughty Conquerors: Amherst and the Great Indian Upris-
ing of 1763. Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. An up-to-date history of
Pontiac’s resistance.
420 / Powhatan Confederacy
Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Con-
quest of Canada. 1874. Reprint. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1994. Despite minor inaccuracies, this remains the classic study of
the subject. Based on original documents and written by one of the
greatest of American historians.
Peckham, Howard. Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1947. Corrects Parkman’s inaccuracies, updates
the subject, and provides fresh insights into American Indian attitudes.
Sosin, Jack M. Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colo-
nial Policy, 1760-1775. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Con-
centrates on the evolution of British policy in trans-Appalachia between
1760 and 1765, including British adjustments to Pontiac’s resistance.
Powhatan Confederacy
Date: 1570’s-1644
Locale: Eastern Virginia
Tribes involved: Arrohattoc, Appomattoc, Mattapanient, Pamunkey,
Youghtanund, Powhatan, Accohannock, Accomac, Chesapeake,
Chickahominy, Chiskiack, Cuttatawomen, Kecoughtan, Moraught-
acund (Morattico), Nandtaughtacund, Nansemond, Onawmanient,
Opiscopank, Paspahegh, Piankatank, Pissaseck, Patawomeck, Qui-
youghcohannock, Rappahannock, Sekakawon, Warraskoyack, Weanoc,
Werowocomoco, Wiccocomico
Categories: Colonial history, Native government
Significance: Wahunsonacock makes political alliance with native tribes
in the Virginia region against encroaching European settlers.
The term “Powhatan” is used in several ways. It was the name given to a
group of tribes of Virginia Indians; the name of an Indian village; the
“throne name” of a chief; and the name of the man who created the
Powhatan Confederacy in eastern Virginia. Geographically, the Powhatan
Confederacy extended north to Alexandria along the Potomac River, south
to the Neuse River in North Carolina, west along Virginia’s fall line, and
east to the Atlantic Ocean. Although historians have consistently referred
to the chief of the Powhatan Indians and the ruler of the Powhatan Confed-
eracy as Powhatan, his birth name was Wahunsonacock. This discrepancy
was caused by the English, who either did not know his birth name or
Powhatan Confederacy / 421
found it more convenient to

call him Powhatan because he
had so many names.
It has been suggested that
Powhatan or his father came
from the south. This conten-
tion is supported by the fact
that Powhatan succeeded his
father as chieftain, a practice
in opposition to the matri-
archal system of succession
practiced by the Algonquians
of eastern Virginia. Upon his
father’s death, Powhatan in-
herited control over six tribes
in eastern Virginia: the Arro-
hattoc (Arrohateck), Appomat- Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, married
toc (Appomattox), Mattapa- one of the original settlers of Jamestown, John
Rolfe, and was instrumental in improving rela-
nient (Mattaponi), Pamunkey,
tions between the settlers and the Powhatan
Youghtanund, and Powhatan. Confederacy. After a visit to England, where
By the time of Jamestown’s she was warmly received by the British court,
founding in 1607, Chief Pow- she contracted smallpox and died there in
hatan’s control extended to 1617. (Library of Congress)
more than twenty additional
tribes: the Accohannock, Accomac, Chesapeake, Chickahominy, Chiskiack,
Cuttatawomen, Kecoughtan, Moraughtacund (Morattico), Nandtaughta-
cund, Nansemond, Onawmanient, Opiscopank (Piscataway), Paspahegh,
Piankatank, Pissaseck, Patawomeck (Potomac), Quiyoughcohannock, Rap-
pahannock (Tappahannock), Sekakawon (Secacawoni), Warraskoyack,
Weanoc (Weyanock), Werowocomoco, and Wiccocomico (Wiccomico).
Most historians agree that the Powhatan Confederacy was forged by
Powhatan’s treachery, fear, and force. Powhatan allegedly attacked the
Piankatank tribe at night and then slaughtered all the captives. When
Powhatan invaded the Kecoughtan, he slaughtered all resisters and dis-
tributed the captives throughout his domain. He was reputed to have
slaughtered the entire Chesapeake tribe because an oracle had divined that
Powhatan would be overthrown by a force from the east. He then trans-
planted his own people to the area formerly occupied by the Chesapeake.
Powhatan consolidated his power by conferring chiefdoms on his rela-
tives, by his own multiple marriages with the daughters of chieftains, and
by the intermarriage of his family with the sons and daughters of locally
422 / Powhatan Confederacy
powerful chiefs. The four known brothers of Powhatan all became chiefs:
Opitchapam, Powhatan’s successor; Opechancanough, the chief of the
Pamunkey Indians and a Powhatan successor; Kekataugh, the ruler of the
village of Pamunkey; and Japasus (Iopassus), the king of the Potomacs.
William Strachey, an English writer who lived in Virginia in the early
1600’s, suggested that Powhatan’s twelve marriages increased his author-
ity among Virginia’s native tribes. A thirteenth wife has been attributed to
Powhatan: Oholasc, the regent of the Tappahannocks.
There is no accurate listing of the number of children fathered by
Powhatan. At the time of the English arrival in 1607, it was estimated that
Powhatan had twenty living sons and twelve living daughters. The better-
known Powhatan offspring included Taux-Powhatan, the eldest son and
ruler of the Powhatans; Na-mon-tack, who was presented to James I;
Pocahontas; Cleopatre; Tohahcoope, chief of the Tappahannocks; Nan-
taquaus, described by John Smith as the manliest, comeliest, and boldest
spirit in a “savage”; Matachanna; and Pochins, chief of the Kecoughtan.
Powhatan’s original capital, Werowocomoco, was about ten miles from
Jamestown. In 1608, Werowocomoco was abandoned for Orapax on the
Chickahominy River to keep Powhatan geographically distant from the
English. Powhatan used his retreat to the interior and the threat of the En-
glish presence to increase his control over the tribes of the confederacy.
Political and Cultural Organization. The domain over which Powhatan

ruled was a collection of villages. There is dispute about the exact number.
William Strachey counted thirty-four villages; historians have estimated
from thirty to more than one hundred villages. Often a tribe would people
more than one village. Regardless of the number, Powhatan ruled about
thirty tribes in eastern Virginia with an estimated population of at least
14,300, although this figure is also in dispute. Each village was expected to
pay eight-tenths of its rude wealth in tribute to Powhatan. The village was
the administrative unit of the Powhatan Confederacy, with power invested
in a cockarouse, the weroance or war-leader, the tribal council, and the
priest.
The cockarouse was the first person in dignity in the village, a member of
the tribal council, and the highest elected civil magistrate, chosen for experi-
ence and wisdom. The cockarouse exercised authority only during times of
peace, received the first fruits of the harvest, and was in charge of all public
and private concerns of the village. The cockarouse presided at tribal coun-
cils, was a delegate to Powhatan’s council, and held the office for life on con-
dition of good behavior. Although elective, the position of cockarouse might
be hereditary in the female line. Women could be cockarouses.
Powhatan Confederacy / 423
Powhatan appointed the weroance. The weroance was a member of

Powhatan’s council, the leader in hunting and fishing expeditions, and in
charge of all military affairs. The weroance exercised the power of life and
death over the members of his tribe, collected the tribute due Powhatan,
declared war, maintained a crude ceremonial state, and presided over the
village council in the absence of the cockarouse.
The tribal council regulated matters of concern to the whole confeder-
acy. It governed by a sense of right and wrong, by custom, by fashion, by
public opinion, and by a sense of honor. It is difficult to determine whether
the tribe or the village was the basic political unit of the Powhatan Confed-
eracy, because they were frequently one and the same. Historians gener-
ally agree that a king or queen ruled over a tribe. Usually, the king was
a weroance. Strachey mentions one queen, Opossunoquonuske of the Mus-
sasran, who was also a weroance. This is probably an exception, because
Oholasc was a queen but her son was the weroance.
The highest political authority resided with Powhatan and his council
(Matchacomoco). The council was composed of cockarouses, weroances,
and the priests of all the subject and allied tribes. The council shared the su-
preme authority over the Powhatan Confederacy with Powhatan, was con-
vened by the people, and held open meetings. Powhatan presided over this
advisory body to declare war or peace, conduct foreign relations, and man-
age domestic affairs. A unanimous vote of the council was required to im-
plement council decisions, but the personal authority of Powhatan greatly
affected council policy.
Powhatan’s increasing association with the English may have led to his
coronation ceremony, which elevated him both in his own eyes and among
his subjects. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England has an object
called “Powhatan’s Mantle.” It measures approximately 233 by 150 centi-
meters and is made of four pieces of tanned buckskin bearing a design
in shell depicting a standing human figure flanked by two quadrupeds and
a series of large rosettes. It is unlikely that this particular mantle was
Powhatan’s coronation cloak, but it is judged to be authentically seven-
teenth century Virginia Indian.
During Powhatan’s lifetime and because of the religious conversion of
Pocahontas, his daughter, and her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe, rela-
tions between the Powhatan Confederacy and the Jamestown settlement
steadily improved. After the deaths of Pocahontas (1617) and Powhatan
(1618), Powhatan’s successors, particularly his brother Opechancanough,
viewed the English as intruders and sought to remove the English from the
ancestral native lands. From 1622 until 1676, Native American rebellions
occurred intermittently until the eastern Virginia tribes were either de-
424 / Powhatan Wars
feated or fled westward, leaving the English in firm control of the lands of
the Powhatan Confederacy.
See also: Indian-white relations: English colonial; Powhatan Wars.
William A. Paquette

Barbour, Philip L. Pocahontas and Her World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1970. A good synthesis of seventeenth century accounts of Jamestown’s
founding, including much information on Powhatan.
Beverly, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1971. A study of Indian life and customs in the seven-
teenth century, first published in 1705.
McCary, Ben C. Indians in Seventeenth Century Virginia. Williamsburg: Vir-
ginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957. Reviews the
history of seventeenth century Native Americans in Virginia.
Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia
Through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Written by an ethnohistorian and anthropologist, this is one of the best
studies of Jamestown and the settlement’s relationship to the Powhatan
Confederacy.
____________. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture.
Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1989. A comprehensive study of all
aspects of life among the Powhatan Confederacy tribes.
Smith, John. The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer
Isles. Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad, 1812. An account of life in Vir-
ginia by the first Englishman to meet Chief Powhatan.
Strachey, William. The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612). Edited
by Louis Wright and Virginia Freund. 1953. Reprint. Nendeln, Liechten-
stein: Kraus Reprint, 1967. A contemporaneous account of Virginia’s
Native Americans.
Powhatan Wars
Date: 1622-1646
Locale: Virginia
Tribes involved: Powhatan Confederacy: Arrohattoc, Appomattoc,
Mattapanient, Pamunkey, Youghtanund, Powhatan, Accohannock,
Accomac, Chesapeake, Chickahominy, Chiskiack, Cuttatawomen,
Powhatan Wars / 425
Kecoughtan, Moraughtacund (Morattico), Nandtaughtacund, Nan-

semond, Onawmanient, Opiscopank, Paspahegh, Piankatank, Pissa-
seck, Patawomeck, Quiyoughcohannock, Rappahannock, Sekakawon,
Warraskoyack, Weanoc, Werowocomoco, Wiccocomico
Significance: Led by Opechancanough, the Powhatan Confederacy un-
successfully attempted to drive English settlers from Virginia.
The Powhatan tribes of the Chesapeake Bay region of Virginia had been at
peace with the English settlers during the eight years prior to the outbreak
of the Powhatan Wars. Powhatan, the chief of this confederacy of about
nine thousand, had engaged the English in intermittent warfare from the
time of their settlement of Jamestown in 1607. The combination of serious
losses of warriors in those conflicts and the 1614 marriage of his daughter
Pocahontas to English planter John Rolfe persuaded Powhatan to avoid
further hostilities.
Upon Powhatan’s death in
1618, his brother Opechanca-
nough continued his policy of
accommodation. Yet Opechan-
canough was alarmed at the
continued expansion of En-
glish settlement on Powhatan
land, and he resented the En-
glish efforts to assimilate his
people into their culture. Con-
sequently, he patiently planned
a colony-wide uprising in the
hope of driving the English
from Virginia.
While often professing to
the English his hopes for con-
tinued peace, Opechancanough
negotiated with the almost
thirty tribes in the Powhatan
Confederacy to join in his pro-
posed campaign. When the En-
glish murdered a highly re-
A depiction of Powhatan in a longhouse meet- garded warrior and prophet
ing from a German engraving. (Library of Con- named Nemattanow in early
gress) March, 1622, on suspicion of
426 / Powhatan Wars
killing a white trader, Opechancanough realized that his enemies had pre-
sented him with an incident to rally his forces. In two weeks of visits with
confederacy tribes, Opechancanough persuaded them to attack simulta-
neously on March 22.
The devastating strike claimed 347 lives, almost a third of the English
population in Virginia. More would have died had not a Pamunkey servant
informed his master, who, in turn, warned the main settlements in and
around Jamestown, allowing them to prepare for the attack. In response,
the English launched a vigorous counterattack, including military expedi-
tions, the destruction of crops, and the burning of villages. This struggle,
which took more native lives than English, continued for a decade and
ended with a truce in 1632.
Opechancanough ended the truce a dozen years later. Feeble and nearly
blind—according to the English sources he was one hundred years old—
the Powhatan leader once again persuaded confederation tribes to partici-
pate in a coordinated attack on English settlements. Beginning on April 18,
1644, the attack claimed nearly five hundred lives but proved less devastat-
ing to the English than the 1622 foray because there were now about eight
thousand settlers in Virginia.
The fighting, which lasted for two years, effectively concluded with the
English capture of Opechancanough. He was taken to Jamestown, where a
guard killed him two weeks later. In October, 1646, the colonial assembly
made peace with Opechancanough’s successor, Necotowance. The treaty
provided for a clear boundary between the two peoples, roughly along the
York River. Neither side was to enter the other’s territory without the colo-
nial governor’s permission.
The English victories in the Powhatan Wars virtually ended native op-
position to English expansion in Virginia. The combination of two decades
of warfare and disease took a heavy toll not only on the Powhatan Confed-
eracy but also on all Virginia tribes. By 1670, there were only about seven
hundred warriors in a total population of barely three thousand. Since the
English population had grown to more than forty thousand, further resis-
tance was futile.
See also: Indian-white relations: English colonial; Powhatan Confed-
eracy.
Larry Gragg
Prehistory: Arctic / 427
Prehistory: Arctic
Date: c. 10,000 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.
Locale: Bering Strait land bridge (Beringia), northern Alaska, northern
Canada, the Canadian Archipelago, northern Greenland
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Aleut, Eskimo, Inuit
Significance: The Arctic is the area of North America that has been lon-
gest inhabited by Indians.
The Arctic ordinarily is defined as the circumpolar region lying north of the
treeline where the warmest temperature is below 10 degrees centigrade; it
only roughly approximates the Arctic Circle. In the Western Hemisphere,
the prehistoric Arctic culture area included the Bering Strait land bridge
(Beringia), northern Alaska and northern Canada, the Canadian Archipel-
ago, and most of Greenland. Next to the Antarctic, it was the last of the
global niches in which humans made those adaptations essential to their
survival, a process that had begun by 10,000 b.c.e.
Serious archaeological research into the Western Hemisphere Arctic be-
gan in the 1920’s with the work of Knud Rasmussen, Kaj Birket-Smith, and
Terkel Mathiassen. It bared the outlines of a whale-hunting Eskimo culture
named Thule, the origins of which lay in Alaska, where a Paleo-Arctic tra-
Arctic Culture Area

Siberian
Eskimo
Saint Lawrence
Island Eskimo
North
Alaskan
Eskimo
West Alaskan Polar
Eskimo Eskimo
East Greenland
Yupik Eskimo
Aleut
Mackenzie
South Alaskan Eskimo
Eskimo Iglulik West Greenland
Netsilik Eskimo
Copper
Eskimo Baffin Island
Eskimo
Caribou
Eskimo Sallirinuit
Quebec Labrador
Inuit Coast
Eskimo
428 / Prehistory: California
dition dated to 10,000 b.c.e. In 1925, archaeologist Diamond Jenness un-

earthed evidence of a hitherto unknown Arctic culture, since called Dorset,
that predated the Thule tradition. A rapid extension of Arctic research after
1945 by Helge Larsen, Jorgen Meldgaard, J. Louis Giddings, William Tay-
lor, and Elmer Harp, Jr., among others, broadened knowledge of Thule and
Dorset cultures. They and other researchers also provided evidence of a
pre-Dorset culture that spread across the northern, central, and eastern
Arctic during postglacial warming periods and discovered an Arctic Small
Tool tradition as well. By the 1990’s, the Arctic prehistoric cultural se-
quence—as defined by archaeological findings—proceeded from Paleo-
Arctic (10,000 b.c.e.-6000 b.c.e.), to the Arctic Small Tool tradition (4200
b.c.e.-3100 b.c.e.), to pre-Dorset (4500 b.c.e.-c.1300 b.c.e.) to Dorset (700
b.c.e.-1000 c.e.), to Thule (100-c.1800). Note that there are gaps as well as
periods during which traditions overlap. These historically related tradi-
tions underlay more recent Aleut and Eskimo cultures and undoubtedly
had still more ancient origins in Asia.
See also: Prehistory: California; Prehistory: Great Basin; Prehistory:
Northeast; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Pla-
teau; Prehistory: Southeast; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehistory: Subarctic.
Clifton K. Yearley
Prehistory: California
Date: c. 8000 b.c.e.-c. 1600 c.e.
Locale: California and northernmost Baja California
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian precedessors to Achumawi, Atsugewi,
Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Chumash, Costanoan, Cupeño, Diegueño,
Esselen, Fernandeño, Gabrielino, Hupa, Juaneño, Kamia, Karok,
Luiseño, Maidu, Mattole, Miwok, Patwin, Pomo, Quechan, Salinan,
Serrano, Shasta, Tolowa, Tubatulabal, Wailaki, Wappo, Wintun,
Wiyot, Yahi, Yokuts, Yuki, Yurok
Significance: The prehistory and ethnology of California’s Indian soci-
eties significantly contribute to understanding the hunting-gather-
ing cultures in rich and varied environments.
Although archaeological findings that are conjectural (and controversial)

have placed Paleo-Indian cultures in California as early as 50,000 b.c.e.,
California Culture Area
Tolowa
Karok Shasta
Yurok
Hupa Achumawi
Wiyot
Wintun Atsugewi
Mattole
Sinkyone
Yana
Wailaki
Yahi
Yuki
Maidu
Pomo
Patwin
Wappo
Coast
Miwok
Miwok
Costanoan
Monache
Esselen Yokuts
Salinan Tubatulabal
Chumash
Fernandeño
Chemehuevi
Serrano
Gabrielino
Luiseño
Juaneño Cahuilla
Cupeño
Diegueño
Quechan
Kamia
430 / Prehistory: Great Basin
hard evidence confirms their existence there by 8000 b.c.e. Such evi-
dence consists of Clovis points—fluted stone projectile points used in big-
game hunting—discovered throughout present-day California in at least
eleven archaeological sites, among them Borax Lake, Lake Mojave, Tulare
Lake, China Lake, Pinto Basin, Tiefort Basin, and Ebbetts Pass. In addi-
tion to Clovis points, other artifacts have been found at many of these
digs, including hammer stones; cutting, scraping, chopping, and engrav-
ing tools; other projectile points; awls; charms; shell beads; and atlatl
(throwing) hooks. At sites in central and Northern California, such arti-
facts have been located amid the remains of mammoths, giant bison,
camels, horses, deer, elk, seal, small land animals, fish, and birds. Cem-
eteries with human remains in the Sacramento Valley attest the seden-
tary occupations and lengthy settlements that characterized a number of
diverse and complex prehistory communities. Overall, these California
communities have been grouped by archaeologists and ethnographers
into four broad cultural provinces that roughly coincide with Califor-
nia’s major environmental features: Northwest Pacific, Central-trans-
Sierran, Southern Coastal, and Southern Desert. Archaeologists estimate
the population of prehistoric California at between 300,000 and 350,000
people, comprising nearly five hundred distinct communities and ethnic
groups.
See also: Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: Great Basin; Prehistory: North-
east; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Plateau;
Prehistory: Southeast; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehistory: Subarctic.
Clifton K. Yearley
Prehistory: Great Basin

Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.
Locale: Central and southern Oregon, eastern California, Nevada, Utah
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Bannock, Gosiute, Ka-
waiisu, Mono, Paiute, Shoshone, Ute, Walapai, Washoe
Significance: The harsh environment of the Great Basin forced the tribes
living there to make significant cultural adaptation for survival.
In the Great Basin, which included portions of present-day central and

southern Oregon, eastern California, Nevada, and much of Utah, prehis-
Prehistory: Great Basin / 431
toric Native Americans confronted the most rigorous environment they

encountered anywhere. The region’s prehistorical importance, therefore,
stems from archaeological evidence that indicates the adaptations made
by the ancestors of more than a dozen major tribes to this difficult en-
vironment. Archaeological discoveries at Tule Springs, Nevada, suggest
that parts of the Great Basin may have been occupied by Pleistocene peo-
ples by 26,000 b.c.e., while other findings in south-central Oregon sug-
Great Basin Culture Area
Northern
Paiute
(Paviotso)
Northern
Shoshone
Bannock Eastern
Shoshone
Washoe Western
Shoshone
Mono
Gosiute
Ute
Southern
Panamint Paiute
Kawaiisu
432 / Prehistory: Northeast
gest human occupancy by 11,200 b.c.e. These dates are highly controver-
sial, however; uncontroverted evidence places earliest human occupancy
of the region at between 9500 b.c.e. and 9000 b.c.e., particularly evidence
of the presence of Clovis people, whom archaeologists now believe to have
been widespread in the Great Basin as well as the rest of the West by those
dates.
Major archaeological discoveries, among a number confirming this, are
located at the C. W. Harris site in San Diego, California; Gypsum Cave and
Fallon, Nevada; Fort Rock Cave, Oregon; Death Valley, Owens Lake, and
Tulare Lake, California; and Danger Cave, Deadman, Promontory, and
Black Rock caves in Utah. Throughout most of the Great Basin, early peo-
ples formed small nomadic groups that foraged for lake plants and ani-
mals. In environmentally favored sections of the Basin, village life devel-
oped and lasted for several millennia. Contacts among regional groups
appear to have been frequent, and trade was sophisticated. Artifacts from
throughout the Great Basin include a rich variety of projectile points,
knives, scrapers, milling stones, coiled basketry, cloths, moccasins, jars,
and appliqued pottery.
See also: Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: California; Prehistory: North-
east; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Plateau;
Clifton K. Yearley
Prehistory: Northeast
Date: c. 9000 b.c.e.-c. 1600 c.e.
Locale: Northeastern North America
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Abenaki, Adena, Al-
gonquian, Erie, Fox, Hopewell, Huron, Illinois, Iroquois, Kickapoo,
Lenni Lenape, Mahican, Maliseet, Massachusett, Menominee, Mi-
ami, Micmac, Mohawk, Nanticoke, Narragansett, Neutral, Old Cop-
per, Ottawa, Owasca, Passamaquoddy, Pequot, Petun, Potawatomi,
Sauk, Shawnee, Susquehannock, Tuscarora, Wampanoag, Winnebago,
Woodland
Significance: The Northeast Woodlands region was the heartland of the
forebears of the Algonquian linguistic family. Evidence suggests that
Iroquoian speakers have also lived there for thousands of years.
Prehistory: Northeast / 433
Northeast Culture Area
Micmac
Maliseet
Passamaquoddy
Nipissing Algonquin Penobscot

Abenaki
Ojibwa Pennacook
Ottawa
Mahican
Mohawk
Menominee Huron
Oneida
Potawatomi Nipmuck
Petun
Pequot Massachusett
Onondaga
Sauk
Cayuga
Winnebago Neutral
Seneca
Wampanoag
Erie Narragansett
Fox
Wappinger
Miami Kickapoo Lenni Lenape

Susquehannock
Kaskaskia
Piankashaw Nanticoke
Illinois Shawnee
Moneton Powhatan
Nottaway
Secotan
Tuscarora
Pamlico
Paleo-Eastern Woodlanders used stone tools and foraged for small game
and seasonal plants. Grit-tempered, cord-marked pottery dates from 2500
b.c.e., and fiber-tempered pottery appeared at about 500 b.c.e. Evidence
suggests the Adena cultural influence from about 1000 b.c.e. and then
Hopewell mound cultural influences from the beginning of the millen-
nium entered the Northeast. After 500 c.e., the region was the recipient of
migrations from Caddoan-speaking or Siouan-speaking people of the Mis-
sissippian mound cultures. The most important influence on the area two
thousand years ago was the agricultural culture associated with Iroquoian-
speaking people, who emerged from an archaeological complex called
Owasco. It was the Owasco who began to create tribal units and to cultivate
crops, returning to agricultural sites year after year simply because certain
crops grew well in certain soils and zones.
Native seeds such as squash and bottle gourds have been gathered and
planted by paleo-Indians of the Northeast Woodlands for four thousand
years. Local economies based on the slash-and-burn agriculture of many
native crops had evolved by about 100 c.e. It was only around 800 c.e. that
maize (corn) was introduced, probably from the Southwest. It may have
been the introduction of corn throughout the continent that lessened the re-
434 / Prehistory: Northeast
ligious influence of the mound-building culture called Hopewell. The cul-

tivation of corn and corn’s concomitant mythologies loosened the religious
hold Hopewell thought had on the Northeast.
The Northeast Woodlands have long had cultural interchanges with
other areas, and this area was the focus of migratory movement from
Mound-Building Cultures and Mound Sites
Aztalan
Norton
Newark Grave Creek

Mounds State Park
Miamisburg Adena
Fort Ancient Seip
Cahokia
Serpent Mound
Angel
Kincaid
Mound Bottom
Hiwassee Island
Spiro Chucalissa
Etowah
Winterville Hollywood
Moundville Ocmulgee
Belcher
Emerald Mound Kolomoki
Adena culture
Mount Royal Hopewell culture
Mississippian core area
Mississippian culture
The earliest of the Ohio River Mound Builders, the Adena Indians, are thought to
have lived between 700 B.C.E. and 200 C.E. The Adena gave rise to the Hopewell In-
dian culture, also centered in the valleys of the Ohio River and its tributaries, which
is recognized from around 100 B.C.E. until about 400 or 500 C.E. The Hopewell devel-
oped vast, nearly continentwide, trading networks. Some researchers posit that
Hopewellians were ancestral to the Iroquois. The last North American mound-build-
ing culture, the Mississippian, was centered along the Mississippi River, at
Cahokia, where East St. Louis, Illinois, now stands. It developed around 700 C.E.
and flourished until after 1500. Many scholars believe that the Mississippians were
direct ancestors to the Cherokee, Sioux, and other American Indian tribes.
Prehistory: Northwest Coast / 435
the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and the Eastern shore routes for
thousands of years, setting the stage for the arrival of Europeans in the
1600’s.
sin; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Plateau;
Glenn Schiffman

Jennings, Jesse D. Prehistory of North America. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1968.
Newcomb, William. North American Indians: An Anthropological Perspective.
Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear, 1974.
Prehistory: Northwest Coast

Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.
Locale: From Yakutat Bay in southern Alaska to Cape Mendocino in
Northern California
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Bella Coola, Chehalis,
Chinook, Coast Salish, Coos, Haida, Hupa, Karok, Klamath, Klikitat,
Kwakiutl, Nootka, Quinault, Takelma, Tillamook, Tlingit, Tsimshian,
Wiyot, Yurok
Significance: The rugged coastal area of the Northwest provided an en-
vironment suited to the development of maritime tribal cultures.
The Northwest Coast culture area extends from the modern regions of
Yakutat Bay in southern Alaska south to Cape Mendocino in Northern Cal-
ifornia. It has a rugged coastline with many deep inlets. In the northern
half, mountains rise several thousand feet directly from the edge of salt
water. There are numerous small islands offshore, but there are few beaches
or low-level areas convenient for village sites.
Natural History. Climatic conditions along this coastal strip are character-
ized by even temperatures and heavy rainfall (up to one hundred inches a
year in many places). The abundant rainfall and moderate temperature of
the region produce a distinctive and dense vegetation. Forests extend from
Northwest Coast Culture Area
Eyak
Tlingit
Nishga
Gitksan
Tsimshian
Haida
Haisla
Bella Bella
Bella Coola
Kwakiutl
Nootka
Squamish
Semiahmoo
Cowichan
Makah Nooksack
Quileute
Quinault Clallam
Chehalis Skokomish
Twana Chemakum
Duwamish
Chinook Snoqualmie
Puyallup
Klikitat
Clatskanie Nisqually
Cowlitz
Tillamook
Siletz
Yaquina
Kalapuya
Alsea
Siuslaw
Coos Umpqua
Tututni Takelma
Chasta Costa
Klamath
Prehistory: Northwest Coast / 437
the Pacific shoreline to near the highest ridges of the major river drainage
systems, such as the Columbia, Fraser, and Skeena Rivers.
As one goes southward, the terrain changes from towering mountains
of raw, naked rock cut by deep canyons gouged out by glacial flow and wa-
tercourse turbulence to, around upper Puget Sound and along the Oregon
and northwestern California coasts, steep but rounded coastal hills and es-
tuaries resulting from the buildup of sand bars formed at the river mouths.
In prehuman times, wildlife and game of all sorts were unimaginably
plentiful. In fact, the extreme abundance of natural resources in this culture
area later gave rise to a high degree of civilization without the emergence
of agriculture. Maritime, estuarine, and riverine resources were the main-
stays that provided an ample foundation for the building of prehistoric hu-
man cultures.
The sea and the forests, even today, are the most important providers of
sustenance. Fishing and sea mammal hunting required an intricate extrac-
tion technology that allowed the first human hunter-gatherers, after their
arrival thousands of years ago, to harvest and use the available natural
resources to the fullest extent. This required each community to develop
the complex tools and skills necessary to ensure their individual success
among the many diverse communities that eventually developed in, and
occupied, the region.
Archaeological History. Archaeological research has been undertaken in

this culture area since the late 1800’s. Sites such as those discovered at Port
Hammond, Marpole, Vancouver, Yakutat, Graham Island, and the more re-
cent Montague Harbor have revealed numerous peoples, languages, and
communities of great biological and cultural diversity.
This culture area is thought to have been inhabited initially by mari-
time peoples, with highly developed Stone Age technology, and mobile
cultures, who could have come from many directions. Athapaskan, Salish,
and Penutian speakers were subdivided into more than a hundred com-
munities and dialects, spread from one end of the area to the other, which
have provided modern researchers with a wealth of artifacts and informa-
tion.
Northwest Coast studies entered a new phase with the 1970 discovery of
water-saturated “wet” sites, where immersion of material remains below
the water table and the lack of oxygen prevents vegetal decay. Sites at
Ozette and Prince Rupert are particularly notable for the sophisticated
methods of study used in both field and laboratory work.
Radiocarbon dating and other scientific techniques indicate constant
occupation of this culture area since at least ten thousand years ago. Local-
438 / Prehistory: Northwest Coast
ized tribal creation stories suggest that peoples have always existed in
their lands. If prehistoric peoples did indeed migrate into the area, linguis-
tic and genetic distribution suggests that they could have come from such
diverse places as Siberia (traveling across the Bering Strait land bridge),
northeastern China (traversing the exposed continental shelf), or even
from Polynesia (boating across the South Pacific) to Mexico or Central
America, then as far northward along the coastline as the Columbia River
basin.
Various basal cultures have been defined by their remains through a
wide variety of descriptive means. Early boreal and protowestern cul-
tures, microblade and pebble tool traditions, and stemmed point and
fluted point traditions are all names commonly used to describe these early
prehistoric cultures. It is generally thought that the diversity of peoples can
best be explained through a combination of migration, diffusion, and adap-
tation.
sin; Prehistory: Northeast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Plateau; Prehis-
tory: Southeast; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehistory: Subarctic.
Michael W. Simpson

Borden, Charles E. Origins and Development of Early Northwest Coast Culture
to About 3000 B.C. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1975.
Cressman, Luther S. The Sandal and the Cave: The Indians of Oregon. Cor-
vallis: Oregon State University Press, 1981.
Drucker, Phillip. Indians of the Northwest Coast. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural
History Press, 1963.
____________. “Sources of Northwest Coast Culture,” In New Interpreta-
tions of Aboriginal American Culture History. Seventy-fifth anniversary
volume of the Anthropological Society of Washington. Seattle: Anthro-
pological Society of Washington, 1955.
Fladmark, Knut R. “The Feasibility of the Northwest as a Migration Route
for Early Man.” In Early Man from a Circum-Pacific Perspective, edited by
Alan Bryan. University of Alberta Department of Anthropology Occa-
sional Papers 1. Edmonton, Alberta: Archaeological Researchers Inter-
national, 1978.
____________. “The Patterns of the Culture.” In Indians of the North Pacific
Coast, edited by Tom McFeat. Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1966.
Prehistory: Plains / 439
Prehistory: Plains
Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.

Locale: Western Canada and United States
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Apache of Oklahoma,
Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboine, Atsina, Blackfoot, Caddo, Cheyenne,
Comanche, Crow, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kansa (Kaw), Kiowa, Mandan, Mis-
souri, Omaha, Osage, Oto, Pawnee, Ponca, Quapaw, Sarsi, Sioux,
Tonkawa, Waco, Wichita
Significance: Large herds of mammals in the Great Plains contributed
to the development of tribal cultures based on nomadic hunting.
The prehistory of the Great Plains begins with evidence of nomadic Paleo-
Indian bands at around 9500 b.c.e. to 9000 b.c.e. These groups arrived be-
fore the end of the Pleistocene epoch and took advantage of herds of large
mammals, such as mammoth, giant bison, camels, and horses, that have
since become extinct (the horse was not reintroduced until the sixteenth
century). It ends with the proto-historic period, when Spanish and other
European explorers contacted agricultural village peoples and mobile bi-
son hunting groups in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.
The earliest Paleo-Indian populations utilized large, bifacial, fluted
Clovis points for hunting mammoth. They captured the animals by chasing
them into natural traps, such as stream heads or lakes, where females and
immature animals were the most likely to be killed. Artifacts such as
bifacial scrapers, choppers, worked flakes, and a variety of bone tools were
used for butchering and processing hides. Sites of this period, known
mainly from the southern and western Plains, include both kill sites and
quarries for stone. Examples include Miami (Texas), Blackwater Draw
Number 1 (New Mexico), Dent (Colorado), Domebo (Oklahoma), and
Colby (Wyoming). No campsites, burials, or remains of dwellings have
been discovered for this period.
Around 9000 b.c.e. Clovis points were replaced by unfluted points
known as Plainview, shorter fluted points known as Folsom, and other suc-
cessive styles such as Firstview, Midland, Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Albert,
and Cody. The Hell Gap (Wyoming) site provides a long record for bison
hunters in the form of a series of temporary campsites that are chronologi-
cally transitional between Clovis and Folsom. The hunting of large herds of
bison was a Plains tradition for thousands of years, and Folsom culture was
based on the nomadic hunting of the giant precursors to modern buffalo,
440 / Prehistory: Plains
such as Bison antiquus and Bison occidentalis. These animals were stalked in
small groups or killed in large numbers by stampeding herds off cliffs, into
ditches, or into traps. Large hunts, which provided abundant supplies of
meat, may have required the cooperative efforts of several bands work-
ing together. At Olsen-Chubbuck, a site in eastern Colorado, almost two
hundred bison were killed and slaughtered. Bones indicate systematic
butchering and selective use of choice animal parts. Several sites, such as
Lindenmeier (Texas), suggest regular use by nomadic groups from year to
year.
The Paleo-Indian way of life, based on large-game hunting, was trans-
formed around 6000 b.c.e. by the end of the Pleistocene and the extinction
of species such as Bison antiquus. Projectile point styles such as Agate Basin
were followed by styles of the Plano tradition, such as Scottsbluff,
Milnesand, Portales, and Eden. These were utilized by the last of the big-
game hunters until around 5000 b.c.e.
Archaic Period. Between around 5000 b.c.e. and 2500 b.c.e., both human
and animal populations in the Plains regions were affected by a period of
warmer and drier climates known as the Altithermal period. During this
period, reduction of grasslands and water sources resulted in smaller, more
highly dispersed human groups. The archaeological evidence of this peri-
od is scarce compared with that for earlier and later periods. Sites of this
period consist mostly of temporary campsites. When bison were hunted,
they belonged to the smaller, modern species Bison bison. There is evidence
for local experimentation with fiber-tempered pottery in the central Plains
around 3000 b.c.e., but this technology does not become important until a
much later time.
Among the sites that have provided an understanding of this tradition is
Mummy Cave (Wyoming), where thirty-eight distinct cultural levels bore
evidence of a hunting-and-gathering lifestyle oriented toward mountain
resources between 7300 b.c.e. and 1580 c.e. By 2500 b.c.e., people living in
the cave used milling stones, tubular bone pipes, coiled basketry, and fiber
cordage. Sites from between 2500 b.c.e. and about 100 c.e. suggest a contin-
uation of the pattern of small groups of nomadic foragers. These groups
moved across the landscape in conjunction with the seasonal availability of
plant and animal resources, collecting seeds, roots, nuts, and berries when
they were in season and doing occasional hunting of bison.
Woodland Period. The Woodland tradition in the Plains begins with the
widespread use of pottery. During the Early Woodland period, the eastern
Plains were inhabited by semisedentary villages of incipient agricultural-
Plains Culture Area
Sarsi
Plains Cree
Blood
Blackfoot
Piegan
Atsina Assiniboine
Crow Hidatsa
Mandan Yanktonai
Sioux
Arikara
Teton Sioux
Santee Sioux
Cheyenne
Ponca
Yankton Sioux
Omaha
Pawnee
Iowa
Oto
Arapaho
Kansa Missouri
Osage
Kiowa
Quapaw
Apache of
Comanche Oklahoma Caddo
Wichita
Kichai
Tonkawa
Lipan Apache
442 / Prehistory: Plains
ists. The year-round occupation of settlements resulted from a combination

of increasing sedentism by earlier peoples and the colonization of portions
of the central Plains by village cultures from farther east via fertile river
valleys.
Although there is no evidence for maize farming until around 500 c.e.,
by 250 b.c.e. Plains peoples were experimenting with sunflower, cheno-
podium, squash, and marsh elder. Ceramic styles of eastern Kansas and
western Missouri suggest participation in the larger “Hopewell Interaction
Sphere,” through which maize (corn) may have been introduced during
the latter part of this period.
In the vicinity of Kansas City, Hopewellian villages approached 4 hect-
ares (10 acres) in area. Among the new features associated with them
were earth-covered burial mounds with stone chambers, usually built on
the tops of bluffs. Houses were more substantial, sometimes marked with
oblong patterns of postholes. The pottery of this period includes cord-
marked and rocker-stamped wares with shapes and decorations similar to
Early Woodland styles of the eastern United States. Other Hopewell mark-
ers include platform pipes. Maize and beans were cultivated, and large-
stemmed or corner-notched projectile points were used for hunting deer
and bison.
Burial mounds of the late Plains Woodland and early Plains Village peri-
ods are found throughout the eastern Dakotas and in southern Manitoba.
Frequently grouped, these were usually situated on bluffs overlooking
lakes and valleys. Their forms consisted of low, circular and oblong shapes
as well as long, linear embankments. Burials with pottery vessels were
placed in timber-covered pits below or within mounds.
In the northwestern and southern Plains, there was a persistence of mo-
bile Archaic patterns. A number of sites indicate the continued practice of
communal bison hunts. It is likely that bison hunters were in contact with
village farmers, exchanging meat, hides, and other products for cultivated
foods.
Plains Village Period. The Late Woodland, beginning around 900 c.e., is
marked by an increased reliance on the cultivation of maize in alluvial
river valleys. In eastern Kansas there is evidence that suggests contact
with Mississippian cultures (probably via canoe along the Missouri River)
and the possible existence of trading colonies. Plains Village cultures may
have been trading buffalo meat and hides with their neighbors to the
east. Among the most characteristic bone artifacts of Plains Village culture
is the bison scapula hoe. Ceramics of this period were typically cord-
roughened. Some pottery from sites of this period in the vicinity of Kan-
Prehistory: Plains / 443
sas City display “sunburst” motifs and other designs reminiscent of the
Mississippian culture at the large temple mound village at Cahokia, Illi-
nois.
There was a wide variability in cultures of the Plains at this time. In the
central Plains, the best-documented cultures are the Upper Republican,
Nebraska, Smoky Hill, and Pomona. Characteristic house types included
rectangular earth lodges with four central posts supporting timber roofs
covered with soil. Earth lodge villages ranged in size from about fifty to
one hundred people. Along the middle Missouri River in the Dakotas, vil-
lages of as many as three hundred people were surrounded by ditches and
palisades.
Maize was one of the principal cultigens of the Plains Village tradition.
A characteristic agricultural implement of this period was the bison scap-
ula hoe. Hunting of bison, deer, and antelope was undertaken with bows
and arrows tipped with small, triangular, side-notched points. Fishing in
rivers was done with bone hooks and harpoons. Animal products such as
hides and bones were intensively utilized by Plains Village peoples. Sites
have yielded a wide variety of bone implements, including needles, pins,
punches, and flaking tools. Shell ornaments were common. In the Upper
Republican and Nebraska phases, fine stone and ceramic pipes, occasion-
ally decorated with human or animal effigies, were among the most impor-
tant ceremonial items.
Large villages in the east were clearly affected by the contact with com-
plex societies of the eastern Missouri and central Mississippi valleys. In the
northwestern and southern Plains, however, ancient patterns of mobile
foraging and bison hunting still continued. Nomadic bison hunters traded
with both the Plains Village peoples to the east and the Pueblo peoples of
northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
Between 1400 and 1500 c.e., a culture known as the Lower Loup phase
appeared along the banks of the Loup and Platte Rivers in eastern Ne-
braska. Their earthlodge villages were substantially larger than earlier set-
tlements, sometimes covering an area of 100 acres, and often were fortified.
In central Kansas, the contemporaneous Great Bend culture was character-
ized by large agricultural villages that were occupied at the time of the first
European incursions, as evidenced by fragments of Spanish armor. In the
Middle Missouri region, the proto-historic period is represented by vil-
lages with circular house foundations that were probably occupied by the
agricultural ancestors of the historic Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peo-
ples. In the far western and northwestern Plains, the mobile bison hunting
pattern that had begun at least ten thousand years earlier persisted into the
nineteenth century, but it was aided by the introduction of the horse. The
444 / Prehistory: Plateau
historic heirs to this tradition, whose ancestors may never have partici-
pated in agricultural Plains Village patterns, are tribes such as the Black-
foot, Arapaho, and Assiniboine.
The first Spanish to arrive in the Great Plains included Francisco Vás-
quez de Coronado, who in 1541 traveled north in search of a kingdom
known to him as Gran Quivira. Reaching central Kansas, he was disap-
pointed to discover settled Great Bend villages with little gold. Neverthe-
less, it is clear that the indigenous peoples of the Plains share a rich and an-
cient cultural history.
sin; Prehistory: Northeast; Prehistory: Northwest Coast; Prehistory: Pla-
teau; Prehistory: Southeast; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehistory: Subarctic.
John Hoopes

Adair, Mary J. Prehistoric Agriculture in the Central Plains. University of
Kansas Publications in Anthropology 16. Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1988.
Bamforth, Douglas B. Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains.
New York: Plenum Press, 1988.
Frison, George C. Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. 2d ed. San Diego:
Academic Press, 1991.
Wedel, Waldo C. Central Plains Prehistory: Holocene Environments and Cul-
ture Change in the Republican River Basin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1986.
____________. “The Prehistoric Plains.” In Ancient North Americans, edited
by Jesse D. Jennings. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983.
Prehistory: Plateau
Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.
Locale: Eastern British Columbia, Oregon, Idaho, Washington
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Coeur d’Alene, Flathead,
Nez Perce, Spokane, Yakima
Significance: The native cultures of the Plateau area were among the
last to make contact with Europeans and thus maintained their own
traditions the longest.
Prehistory: Plateau / 445
Plateau Culture Area
Lillooet
Shuswap
Nicola
Lake
Kutenai
Methow Okanagan
Wenatchi
Sanpoil Colville
Chelan
Columbia Kalispel
Wanapam
Klikitat Spokane
Yakima Coeur
d’Alene
Wishram Palouse
Walla Walla
Flathead
Tenino
Nez Perce
Molala Umatilla
Cayuse
Klamath
Modoc
The Plateau culture area is enclosed between the Cascade mountain range
to the west and the even higher northern Rockies to the east. The area is
very dry; it is closely related to the Great Basin, but its dryness is tempered
somewhat by its more northerly location (and therefore cooler tempera-
tures) and the presence of two major river systems, the Columbia and the
Fraser.
Alone among all the major regions of the United States, the Plateau does
not show any evidence of the fluted Clovis points. Instead, at Lind Coulee
446 / Prehistory: Plateau
in southeastern Washington, non-fluted spear points dated to 9500 b.c.e.

have been found. This possibly indicates the hunting of a variety of Ice Age
and modern large animals.
Around 9000 b.c.e., life changed at The Dalles in Oregon (a Columbia
River site) with the advent of salmon fishing, which would continue to be a
major part of the Plateau diet until modern times. Salmon may have sup-
plied as much as half of the food, because it could be dried and stored for
long periods. Other items used included birds, mussels, rabbits, beaver,
and numerous types of roots and bulbs. This would indicate that the west-
ern Archaic form of life, known as the Desert culture farther south, could
have begun in this region. Scholars disagree about the similarity of the cul-
tures of the Plateau and the Great Basin. Some have seen very little differ-
ence, based on similar tools, moccasins, and folklore. Others feel that the
availability of salmon created a much more sedentary lifestyle for the Pla-
teau tribes.
By 5000 b.c.e., Plateau peoples were making grinding stones and living in
pit houses, and by 4000 b.c.e., pit house villages existed in the Snake River
Valley of Idaho. Well-made, leaf-shaped points were being used to hunt
deer, elk, and pronghorn antelope to supplement the river’s resources.
Contact with the outside led to changes. Algonquian-speaking peoples
appeared about 1000 b.c.e., and with them came the use of ground-stone
tools including mauls, pestles, atlatl weights, fish gorges, and tubular
pipes, as well as animal sculptures. Contact with the northwestern coastal
cultures along the Columbia and Fraser River Valleys led to the final cul-
ture phase, called Piqunin. After 1300 c.e., Plateau peoples lived in villages
of five to ten earthlodges in the sheltered canyons of the rivers, which often
were ten degrees warmer than the surrounding winter countryside. Here
they hunted deer and fished for salmon, which they preserved by drying.
In the spring and fall, they set up temporary camps in the smaller canyons
and uplands to collect canas and kous roots, along with berries, and to hunt
larger game.
Plateau peoples were some of the last to come into direct contact with
Europeans, with first known encounters being with the Alexander Mac-
kenzie expedition of 1793, along the Fraser River, and the Lewis and Clark
expedition, when it reached the Columbia River and its tributaries in 1805.
Fred S. Rolater
Prehistory: Southeast / 447
Prehistory: Southeast
Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1600 c.e.

Locale: Southeastern North America
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Alabama, Atakapa, Biloxi,
Caddo, Calusa, Catawba, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chitimacha, Choc-
taw, Coushatta, Creek, Hasinai, Hitchiti, Mobile, Natchez, Pensacola,
Seminole, Timucua, Tuskegee, Yamasee
Significance: The native inhabitants of the Southeast had a long and
complex evolution into a number of different types of culture.
The prehistory of the Southeast may be divided into five basic periods:
Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Early and Middle Woodland, Mississippian, and
Later Woodland Tribal.
The first known inhabitants of the Southeastern region were Clovis cul-
ture Paleo-Indians who arrived about 9500 b.c.e. following the herd of
mammoths. They were efficient hunters, and by 9000 b.c.e., aided by a
warming climate, they had killed all the mammoths. They were replaced
by the bighorn bison specialists known as Folsom. Adopting the atlatl (or
spearthrower), they moved in smaller bands but still in a nomadic manner.
Local variations of nomadic big-game hunters, including the Cumberland,
harvested a variety of large animals until approximately 8000 b.c.e. One of
the oldest Indian skeletons was found at Little Salt Spring in southern
Florida, dated at 9000 b.c.e.
At approximately 8000 b.c.e., a transition was made to the Archaic cul-
ture. For 6,500 years, or more than half of the entire period of human oc-
cupation, the Archaic peoples dominated the Southeast. Spread over eons
of time and a large region, there were many variations of the culture. All
showed a mastery of hunting and gathering and effective adaptation to
life in the river and stream bottoms of a wet area. They hunted white-tailed
deer, buffalo, rabbit, squirrel, and ducks and other birds. They became
the first fishers of the area, specializing in catfish in many areas. They
also gathered the abundant wild plant matter. From the first, they wan-
dered less, and by 4500 b.c.e. they had settled down to centralized move-
ment based on two homes: one on the stream and one nearby in the
hill country. This brought about a population explosion. By 2500 b.c.e., pot-
tery had reached the Savannah River area, from where it slowly spread
throughout the Southeast. In 1700 b.c.e., the Poverty Point culture ap-
peared in northern Louisiana; it probably consisted of migrants from
448 / Prehistory: Southeast
Southeast Culture Area
Manahoac
Saponi
Monacan
Tutelo
Yuchi
Chickasaw Cherokee Cheraw
Coushatta Catawba
Waccamaw
Tuskegee
Caddo Creek
Tunica Alabama Hitchiti
Ofo
Hasinai Yazoo Chiaha Yamasee
Natchez Choctaw Tohome Guale
Houma
Mobile
Biloxi Apalachee
Atakapa
Chitimacha
Timucua
Ais
Seminole
Calusa
Mexico. They brought elaborate villages, small-scale agriculture, and jade-

working.
Combined with influences from the north, Poverty Point led to the Early
Woodland phase. The most noticeable factor in Early Woodland is the ap-
pearance of a cult of the dead, with its burial mounds filled with grave
goods. By 1 c.e., improved agriculture had led to the much more elabo-
rate Middle Woodland period, with hundreds of oval and circular burial
mounds. Their grave goods included copper from Lake Superior, obsidian
from the Rockies, and soapstone from Minnesota, indicating both a long-
range trading system and excellent craftsmanship. After 400 c.e., Middle
Woodland declined from overpopulation, too much violence, local goods
competing with the imported, and perhaps other causes.
About 800 c.e., the climactic Mississippian culture emerged to dominate
most of the Southeast, except Virginia and Florida, until 1600. Based on an
elaborate maize, beans, and squash agriculture (with fields often running
for miles along river bottoms), they developed city-states such as Mound-
Prehistory: Southwest / 449
ville, Alabama; Mound Bottom, Tennessee; Etowah and Okmulgee, Geor-

gia; and Natchez, Mississippi, all of which were centered on mound towns.
Mound towns were temple mounds on which were built religious and gov-
ernmental centers and possibly homes for the prominent. They were a
highly stratified society led by priest-rulers and a nobility. After 1200,
the Southern Death Cult imported from Mexico dominated religion. Art
reached its pre-white climax in pottery, statuary, and shell-work.
The Mississippians dominated the Southeast when Hernando de Soto
traveled the region from 1539 to 1543, but they had disappeared from ev-
erywhere but Natchez by the early 1600’s. European diseases are often
blamed for their downfall, but it is also known that Moundville split up
from overpopulation. The Mississipians were replaced by the Cherokee,
Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw, as well as many other tribes, by the time
of white entry in the early 1600’s.
Prehistory: Plateau; Prehistory: Southwest; Prehistory: Subarctic.
Fred S. Rolater
Prehistory: Southwest
Date: c. 10,000 b.c.e.-c. 1540 c.e.
Locale: Southwestern North America
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indians and Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon
Significance: The tribes of the early Southwest developed sophisticated
dwellings and agricultural systems.
Archaeologists have determined that the first people in the Southwest

were nomadic hunting and gathering peoples who drifted into the region
in small groups in the late Pleistocene period. These people, known in ar-
chaeological literature as the Cochise, had minimal tools and equipment,
although some of their stone implements were expertly flaked into beauti-
ful spear points and knives. There are several different groups of these
“early man points,” which are identified by the localities where they were
first discovered: Folsom, Sandia, and Clovis.
Near the pueblo of Santa Ana, evidence has been found of a semi-
permanent camping ground dating back to the Cochise. Apparently, game
450 / Prehistory: Southwest
was abundant in this area and water was available from several springs.
Artifacts found here include a number of stone tools such as knives, scrap-
ers, drills, choppers, points, and grinding implements. These grinding
tools, which indicate that the Cochise supplemented their meat diet with
seeds and wild grains, consisted of a large, irregular stone with a shallow,
concave area in which seeds or grains were placed and a smaller, rounded
stone with which the grinding was done. These crude grinding stones ulti-
mately developed into the metate-mano combination which allowed the
later agriculturists in the region to prepare corn.
Development of Agriculture. Over a period of centuries, the Cochise

evolved from a nomadic society into several different cultures that were
Southwest Culture Area
Havasupai
Walapai Hopi Navajo
Jicarilla
Mojave Tiwa Apache
Zuni Tewa
Yavapai Jemez Pecos
Maricopa Laguna
Quechan Acoma South
Coyotero Tiwa
Cocopa Apache
Tohono Mimbreño
O’odham Apache
Chiricahua Mescalero
Pima Apache Apache
Suma
Opata
Seri Jumano
Lipan Apache
Tarahumara
Yaqui
Karankawa
Coahuiltec
Tobosco
Comarito
Lagunero
Zacatec
Prehistory: Southwest / 451
Prehistoric pictographs on rocks at Adamana, Arizona, 1903. (National Archives)
primarily agricultural and sedentary. The major stimulus for this change
was the introduction of corn into the region. Corn had been grown in Mex-
ico since about 7000 b.c.e., and over time new genetic strains more resistant
to cold and drought were developed, which made it a viable crop for the
Southwest. By about 300 b.c.e., the Cochise had settled down to farming
and village life, and by circa 300 c.e., three major agricultural groups had
materialized: Hohokam, Mogollon, and Anasazi. All three of these cultures
depended on the “sacred triad” of corn, beans, and squash for their subsis-
tence. They practiced simple farming methods, with the digging and plant-
ing stick as their principal tool. Agriculture and an accompanying interest
in the weather eventually led the three cultures to the development of reli-
gious and ceremonial practices by which they hoped to influence nature in
their favor.
With the possible exception of the Hohokam, who appeared in southern
Arizona along the Gila River in the third century b.c.e., the agriculturalists
of the Southwest were indigenous. It was a situation of a people adopting
new ideas and developing a new way of life rather than of migrants coming
into the area with a new, ready-made culture. Many scholars believe that
the Hohokam came from Mexico, although no geographical area of origin
has been identified. If, on the other hand, the Hohokam evolved from the
Cochise, as did the Mogollon and Anasazi, it is certain that they were an
452 / Prehistory: Southwest
important conduit for influences from the cultures in Mexico to come into
the Southwest.
Of the three prehistoric groups, the Mogollon in the mountains of south-
ern New Mexico were the first to cultivate corn and the first to have the
bow and arrow, probably having acquired both from cultures in Mexico.
The Mogollon were never a cohesive society, perhaps because of the rug-
ged terrain along the Little Colorado River where they lived. Their culture
consisted of scattered groups of small villages which, while sharing certain
basic traits, were characterized nevertheless by many regional differences.
The Hohokam are generally divided into two main groups: the Desert
and the Riverine. The Desert Hohokam, the smaller group, did not settle
near streams and so were less successful agriculturally. The Riverine Hoho-
kam built villages along rivers and developed an extensive irrigation sys-
tem consisting of many miles of canals constructed with rudimentary hand
tools. The building of these canals, each of which served several villages,
required a high degree of social and political organization as well as effec-
tive intercommunity cooperation.
The Anasazi, who lived in the high plateau country of the Four Corners
area, apparently acquired corn from the Mogollon. Their first farming
methods were extremely crude compared to the other two cultures, but
they were such a vigorous, dynamic, and creative people that they soon
surpassed their neighbors to the south and were farming the mesa tops as
well as the valleys, using irrigation systems of their own design.
Housing. Early in their development, all three prehistoric cultures con-

structed permanent dwellings known as pit houses. Generally, this was
simply a shallow pit dug into the ground, lined with rocks or logs to pre-
vent the sides from collapsing inward, and then covered with a roof made
of slim branches and twigs with several inches of mud on top.
The Mogollon pit house was circular, with a single center post to sup-
port a conical roof and a short, sloping ramp on one side which served as an
entryway. A hole in the center of the roof provided a vent for the fire pit.
The Hohokam pit house was a rectangular hole about 30 feet long with
an entire structure built inside it, using the “wattle-and-daub” method,
which consisted of small posts set into the ground a few inches apart, inter-
laced with brush and packed with mud. It was topped by a double-pitched
roof and entered by a sloping ramp on one side.
Although the earliest Anasazi lived in caves, by about 500 c.e. they had
developed a circular pit house, approximately 5 feet deep and up to 25 feet
in diameter. The structure had a flat roof, with entry by ladder through the
smoke hole. By about 700, the Anasazi had developed stone architecture
Prehistory: Subarctic / 453
and were building aboveground pueblos. As their culture spread through

the Southwest, they gradually absorbed most of the other two groups.
Crafts. One of the benefits that results from social organization and special-
ization is leisure time that can be devoted to the development of arts and
crafts. As the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi began to make utilitarian
objects such as pottery, baskets, sandals, robes, and mats, they decorated
them according to their own rapidly developing aesthetic tastes. From the
beginning, all three groups made jewelry from shells, bone, and minerals
such as turquoise. A careful study of all these things reveals the emergence
of a rich artistic tradition which was related to other aspects of these prehis-
toric cultures and which constitutes the artistic heritage of the modern
Puebloan artist.
Prehistory: Plateau; Prehistory: Southeast; Prehistory: Subarctic.
LouAnn Faris Culley

Amsden, Charles A. Prehistoric Southwesterners from Basketmaker to Pueblo.
Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1949.
Cordell, Linda S. Prehistory of the Southwest. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press,
1984.
Cummings, Byron. The First Inhabitants of Arizona and the Southwest. Tuc-
son, Ariz.: Cummings Publication Council, 1953.
Gummerman, George J., ed. Exploring the Hohokam: Prehistoric Desert Peoples
of the American Southwest. Dragoon, Ariz.: Amerind Foundation, 1991.
Muench, David. Anasazi, Ancient People of the Rock. Palo Alto, Calif.: Ameri-
can West, 1975.
Noble, David G., ed. The Hohokam: Ancient People of the Desert. Santa Fe,
N.Mex.: School of American Research Press, 1991.
Prehistory: Subarctic
Date: c. 25,000 b.c.e.-c. 1700 c.e.
Locale: Alaska, Canada, Greenland
Tribes involved: Paleo-Indian predecessors to Aleut, Athapaskan, Es-
kimo (Inuit), Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian
454 / Prehistory: Subarctic

Significance: Linguistic evidence suggests that the native tribes of the
Subarctic region are closely related to those of Siberia.
Determination of the lifeways and approximate dates of prehistoric cul-

tures can be accomplished only through examination of archaeological
sites and artifacts. Precisely dating the prehistory of the Subarctic is im-
possible. Considering the fact that many of the languages spoken in this
area are related to those spoken in Siberia, however, it is generally be-
lieved that early Subarctic dwellers entered North America over the land
bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska, where the Bering Strait is now
located, during the last Ice Age. There were at least two separate mi-
grations, and probably three, during a period between 25,000 and 10,000
years ago.
The earliest migration probably involved the Athapaskans, as their lan-
guage group is by far the most widespread and has apparently changed the
most over time. The Athapaskan languages spoken in Alaska and Subarctic
Canada are related to the Navajo and Apache languages of the American
Southwest. Eskimo groups, on the other hand, have languages so similar
that a native of Alaska can easily communicate with one of Greenland. A
Subarctic Culture Area
Koyukon
Ingalik
Tanaina Tanana
Kutchin
Han Hare
Ahtna
Mountain
Tutchone
Tagish
Yellowknife
Dogrib
Tahltan
Tsetsaut Kaska
Sekani Slave Chipewyan
Carrier Beaver
Western Swampy Naskapi
Chilcotin Woods Cree
Cree
West Main East Cree
Cree
Montagnais
Saulteaux
Proclamation of 1763 / 455
third group, completely unrelated to the other two, is the Northwest Coast
Indians.
In a real sense, the prehistory of the Subarctic extends as late as the late
nineteenth century, when whites were first attracted into Alaska and Yukon
by the gold rush. Unfortunately, the cultures in the region were changed by
the impact of white culture before they were thoroughly studied. Some of
the more remote regions were never seen by white people until the mid-
twentieth century, when air travel made it easier to visit any place on earth.
Before this time, transport was primarily by boat in the summer and dog
sled in the winter.
Prehistoric Eskimos and Aleuts lived in igloos, made of packed snow.
The Athapaskans lived in log cabins quite similar to those built by others
much farther south. There were a great number of tribal rituals, some of
which are still practiced, but details are difficult to determine, because in
most instances outsiders are barred from these rituals; moreover, they are
held in native languages that few outsiders understand.
See also: Bering Strait migrations; Prehistory: Arctic; Prehistory: Cali-
fornia; Prehistory: Great Basin; Prehistory: Northeast; Prehistory: North-
west Coast; Prehistory: Plains; Prehistory: Plateau; Prehistory: Southeast;
Prehistory: Southwest.
Marc Goldstein
Proclamation of 1763
Categories: Colonial history, National government and legislation
Significance: The British draw a frontier line between Native Ameri-
cans and colonists, hoping to avoid more costly conflicts.
How would Great Britain, victorious in the French and Indian War against
France and its allies, control the vast domain between the Appalachian
Mountains and the Mississippi River after 1763? The answer to that ques-
tion interested not only Native Americans, French Canadians, and British
colonial administrators but also American fur traders, merchants, and land
speculators. The trans-Appalachian West had increasingly occupied the at-
tention of British and colonial officials since the Albany Congress of 1754.
456 / Proclamation of 1763
During the ensuing war, the Crown appointed superintendents to coordi-

nate Native American affairs—Sir William Johnson for the Northern Depart-
ment and Edmund Atkin (replaced by John Stuart in 1762) for the Southern
Department—but exigencies of the moment made the new arrangement in-
adequate. In the eyes of Whitehall officials, the old policy of leaving control
of the frontier to the individual colonies had been chaotic and ruinous. The
line of European American agricultural settlement had steadily edged
westward, with scant regard for Native American land claims or indigenous
culture. Royal governors, superintendents for Native American affairs,
and British military men repeatedly had complained that the colonists dis-
regarded Native American treaties and made fraudulent land purchases,
and that European American traders mistreated the tribal peoples.
Pontiac’s Resistance. The necessity of reaching an accord with the Native

Americans seemed even more urgent with Pontiac’s Resistance, which had
begun in the spring of 1763. The indigenous population, already uneasy
over the defeat of their French allies, encountered repeated insults from the
British commander in chief, General Jeffrey Amherst, who refused to pre-
sent them with guns, ammunition, and other gifts, as had been the French
custom. Striking first in the remoter sections of the West, such as at Fort
Michilimackinac, and later on the Pennsylvania frontier, roving parties of
Ottawas, Chippewas, Lenni Lenapes (Delawares), and Senecas overran
one British-occupied post after another; by the end of June, only Forts De-
troit, Pitt, and Niagara still held out against the warriors. Amherst, near
recall from the home government, dispatched relief expeditions to his re-
maining garrisons, and several colonies raised troops to repel the indige-
nous combatants. The prospect of fire and sword, the diplomatic skills of
William Johnson, Pontiac’s calling off the sieges, and the breakup of the co-
alition of tribes—which never was united on ultimate objectives—explain
the demise of the rebellion and restoration of peace in 1764. Anxious to
bring an end to hostilities and avoid another outbreak, the British exacted
little retribution from the western tribes.
During the uprising, the government announced its new policy for the
West, one that had evolved from British experience in the French and In-
dian War. It was the work of no single minister or subminister, although
Charles Wyndham (the earl of Egremont and secretary of state for the
Southern Department, 1761-1763), William Petty (the earl of Shelburne,
president of the Board of Trade in 1763 and later secretary of state for the
Southern Department), and Wills Hill (the earl of Hillsborough, president
of the Board of Trade from 1763 to 1765 and later secretary of state for the
colonies) were keenly interested in the matter.
Proclamation Line of 1763
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G U L F O F Proclamation line
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M E X I C O
On October 7, 1763, King George III signed the edict now known as the
Proclamation of 1763. By its terms, the recently acquired territories of Can-
ada and East and West Florida became Crown colonies, and their inhabit-
ants became entitled to the same rights as the English at home. The procla-
mation nullified all colonial claims to territories west of the crest of the
458 / Proclamation of 1763
Appalachians and set those lands aside for Native Americans “for the pres-
ent, and until our further Pleasure be known.” Wishing to monopolize the
substantial and lucrative fur trade of the area, Whitehall hardly wanted co-
lonial farmers crowding out the furbearers’ habitat and local traders com-
peting for the business. The trade with the tribal peoples would be “free
and open,” although traders would have to obtain a license and obey any
pertinent regulations. As the Proclamation of 1763 contained no provision
for law enforcement in the area beyond provincial boundaries, an ad hoc
system of confining trade to a few forts under superintendent and military
supervision developed. The Crown expected that the colonials would obey
the edict out of allegiance to England. Moreover, the royal government
hoped that restless colonists would move northward into the thinly settled
districts of Maine, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick to offset the Catholic
French Canadian population there and in Quebec, or relocate southward
into Georgia to bolster that buffer province against the Spaniards.
Indian Reaction. Native Americans in the region heard about the Procla-
mation Line and watched some of the actual surveying with distrust and
bemusement. The document promised that
the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and
who live under Our Protection should not be molested or disturbed in the Pos-
session of such Parts of our Dominions and Territories as, not having been
ceded to, or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their
Hunting Grounds.
British general Thomas Gage rushed copies westward, because he imagined

that “these Arrangements must be very satisfactory to the Indians.” The
tribes, however, had witnessed earlier attempts at boundary treaties, such
as at Easton and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1758 and 1760 respectively,
and in South Carolina in 1761, crumble as squatters leapfrogged the line.
In the long run, Great Britain’s “western policy” failed. Land-hungry
settlers spilled over into the trans-Appalachia area in defiance of the Proc-
lamation of 1763. British troops could not guard every mountain gap, nor
could they and royal superintendents force traders to patronize specific
posts. Several ambitious Virginia speculators, some of whom later joined
the patriot cause in the revolution, had claims across the divide. Faced with
the prospect of worthless holdings, they pressed for repeal of the order. The
maintenance of western garrisons was expensive, especially when Ameri-
can revenues for the army’s upkeep failed to materialize, and when the
troops did not accomplish their mission. In 1768, the British government,
beset with these problems and colonial rebelliousness in the eastern re-
gions, adopted a policy of retrenchment in the West. Control of the trade
with Native Americans reverted to the individual colonies, and British
troops received orders to abandon all the interior posts except Niagara, De-
troit, and Michilimackinac. Almost simultaneously, the government bowed
to pressure to push the Native American boundary westward. The Treaty
of Fort Stanwix (1768) with the Iroquois Confederacy and the Treaties of
Hard Labor (1768) and Lochaber (1770) with the Cherokee signified this
change. No longer did the trans-Appalachian West loom uppermost in
British imperial policy.
See also: Albany Congress; French and Indian War; Fur trade; Indian-
white relations: English colonial; Indian-white relations: French colonial;
Iroquois Confederacy; Northwest Ordinance; Pontiac’s Resistance.
R. Don Higginbotham, updated by Thomas L. Altherr

Jennings, Francis. Empires of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven
Years War in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Contains a short
discussion of the Proclamation of 1763 and the Native American re-
sponse.
Martin, James Kirby. In the Course of Human Events: An Interpretive Explora-
tion of the American Revolution. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson,
1979. Links the Proclamation of 1763 with other British decisions to con-
trol the colonies, such as stationing ships in American waters.
“Proclamation of 1763: Governor Henry Ellis’ Plan May 5, 1763.” In The
American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Bicentennial Collection, edited by Rich-
ard B. Morris. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970. Dem-
onstrates the thinking by one colonial official that prompted the Procla-
mation of 1763.
Sosin, Jack M. Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colo-
nial Policy, 1760-1775. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. De-
tailed examination of royal decisions leading to the Proclamation of
1763.
Stagg, Jack. Anglo-Indian Relations in North America to 1763 and an Analysis of
the Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763. Ottawa: Research Branch, Indian
and Northern Affairs Canada, 1981. Provides a detailed interpretation
of the text of the Proclamation of 1763 and the Crown’s motives.
versity Press, 1994. Places the decisions for the Proclamation of 1763
within the context of the military actions of the recent war and earlier
treaties.
460 / Prophetstown
Prophetstown
Date: Established April, 1808

Locale: Northwestern Indiana
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Organizations, Protest move-
ments, Religion and missionary activities
Significance: A Shawnee spiritual leader establishes the headquarters
of Native Americans’ renewed resistance to Anglo-American expan-
sion.
At least since the 1730’s, some native leaders west of the Appalachian
Mountains advocated an alliance of tribes to resist the expanding British
settlements and the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. Prophets preached a
radical idea, beginning a new movement: All native peoples, despite their
diverse languages and cultures and ancient tribal rivalries, were really one
people, separate and distinct from the Europeans, and never meant to live
with the Europeans or to adopt their ways.
By 1795, disagreements over strategy, factional strife within tribes, fail-
ing support from European allies, and military defeats disrupted the nativist
movement. Tribal leaders willing to accept compromise signed treaties
with the new United States government, surrendering millions of acres of
land. In return, the U.S. government supported these so-called government
chiefs, hoping that through them it could control the tribes and prevent or-
ganized resistance east of the Mississippi. Native people now faced a des-
perate struggle for survival.
Frontiersmen settling old grudges freely hunted and raided on tribal
lands. Indians could not testify in U.S. courts and had no protection under
U.S. law. Native people took their own form of revenge, escalating the
violence. Anglo-American squatters crowded onto tribal lands, openly vio-
lating treaties. Displaced refugees fled to the remaining tribal lands, ex-
hausting the already depleted game supply and farmlands. Most tribes-
men had become dependent on the fur trade for the necessities of life.
Cheap liquor was another basic fur trade commodity. By 1800, alcoholism
had reached epidemic proportions among the northwestern tribes. Euro-
pean diseases, against which the native peoples had neither biological im-
munity nor medical remedies, ravaged tribes. For native peoples through-
out the trans-Appalachian West, it was a time of despair, starvation, and
social chaos.
Prophetstown / 461
Lalawethika Returns from the Dead. In a Shawnee village, in April, 1805,

an aging alcoholic called Lalawethika (“Rattle” or “Noisemaker” for his
bragging and belligerent behavior) collapsed, apparently dead. Although
of no use as a hunter or warrior, Lalawethika had studied with the noted
doctor Penagashea. His teacher had died in 1804, however, and working
alone, Lalawethika had failed to stop an epidemic that struck his village in
early 1805. Now he too, it seemed, was dead.
Before Lalawethika’s funeral could take place, he suddenly returned to
life. He told his amazed neighbors that he was sent back from the spirit
world with a mission. The alcoholic braggart was dead; he had been born
again as Tenskwatawa, the “Open Door,” to lead his people in a spiritual re-
newal. The use of alcohol and other vices must stop. Violence between
neighbors and the greedy accumulation of material wealth must stop. The
people must restore traditional communal values, living in peace with all
other tribes. Native people were children of the Master of Life, but Europe-
ans came from the Great Serpent, the Destroyer, and corrupted all they
touched. The people must have nothing more to do with them or their
goods. If the people purified themselves and faithfully performed the new
rituals given in Tenkswatawa’s visions, they would restore the spiritual
power of the tribes, the earth would be renewed, and the white invaders
would disappear forever.
News of the Shawnee prophet spread among the tribes of the region. His
message was believable, not only because Tenskwatawa seemed infused
with magnetism and power but also because three generations of prophets
among the tribes had reported similar visions. Followers gathered around
Tenskwatawa in 1805, hoping that he might be able to make the promise of
spiritual renewal finally a reality. In the summer of 1805, he established a
new village at Greenville, Ohio, on the United States’ side of a boundary
line set by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. The new site was not associated
with any specific tribe; therefore, it would be easier to establish his great
village of all tribes there. This new, independent village would not be con-
trolled by any of the government chiefs, and its location openly defied the
hated treaty.
Through the fall and winter of 1805, Tenskwatawa met delegations from
many tribes and cultivated alliances with Native American leaders
throughout the region. Seven treaties signed by the government chiefs be-
tween 1804 and 1807 ceded millions of acres of tribal land to the United
States and sent many angry, disillusioned tribesmen into Tenskwatawa’s
camp. Disciples and allied prophets carried his message throughout the
Great Lakes region and to the tribes of the South. The powerful Pota-
watomi shaman and war chief Main Poc, probably the most influential na-
462 / Prophetstown
tive leader in the region, journeyed to Greenville in the fall of 1807 to confer
with Tenskwatawa. Main Poc was in favor of the movement, although he
planned a regional confederacy rather than a union of all native peoples.
He firmly refused to give up his old blood feud with the Osage or his fond-
ness for alcohol. On other crucial points, however, he and Tenkswatawa
agreed and joined as allies.
Tecumseh. Hundreds of people from a dozen tribes gathered at Greenville.

Tenskwatawa, increasingly occupied with his duties as spiritual leader,
delegated diplomatic missions to his older brother Tecumseh. Tecumseh
was a gifted orator with a wide network of contacts among leaders of both
northern and southern tribes. He was, moreover, a respected war chief and
a confirmed nativist. Of intertribal heritage himself (his mother was Creek,
his father Shawnee), Tecumseh had traveled widely among the tribes and
knew their common problems and the need for a common solution. He op-
posed U.S. expansion; treaty land cessions in which he had no voice had
cost him his home. His father and two brothers died fighting the European
Americans, and he made his reputation as a warrior in battle against that
same enemy.
By 1807, Tecumseh had become his brother’s adviser and representative
abroad, while Tenskwatawa concentrated on the problems at Greenville.
Relations with Shawnee government chief Black Hoof and his followers
deteriorated rapidly, and a violent clash seemed likely. The small corn-
fields and depleted game around Greenville could not feed the village. The
site was far from the northwestern tribes, now Tenskwatawa’s strongest
supporters. U.S. frontiersmen were alarmed by the rapidly growing village
so near their settlements, and ugly incidents between individuals or small
parties of natives and U.S. settlers escalated. Rumors spread of an impend-
ing military campaign against the village.
Main Poc urged Tenskwatawa to move the village to Potawatomi ter-
ritory. The people would find better hunting and more land for their
gardens. They would be farther from enemies and closer to friends. In Jan-
uary, 1808, Tenskwatawa agreed. Through February and March, his fol-
lowers gathered supplies and prepared for the move. In the first week
of April, they burned their old village and started west. Miami govern-
ment chief Little Turtle, who claimed authority over the region to which
Tenskwatawa was moving, attempted to prevent establishment of the new
village. Tenskwatawa informed Little Turtle that the Master of Life had
chosen the place. There, a great union of all native peoples would guard the
boundary between Indian and U.S. lands and prevent further U.S. expan-
sion.
Prophetstown / 463
Prophetstown Is Built. While Tecumseh visited Canada to get supplies of

food and ammunition from the British, Tenskwatawa supervised the con-
struction of the new village. Called Prophetstown by the U.S. settlers, the
village was situated on the northwest bank of the Wabash River, just be-
low the mouth of the Tippecanoe River, in northwestern Indiana. The
site quickly became a focal point for the nativist movement. With a pop-
ulation of more than four hundred in June, and more arriving daily, food
and other supplies remained a pressing problem. While Tecumseh was
persuading the British to help, Tenskwatawa tricked Indiana governor
William Henry Harrison into supplying corn. The overconfident Harri-
son now believed he could control Tenskwatawa and his followers. The
winter of 1808-1809 was unusually hard, and Prophetstown suffered se-
verely from food shortages and a devastating epidemic. Many people
went back to their old villages, bitterly disillusioned with Tenskwatawa.
By summer, Harrison believed that the influence of the Prophet, as Ten-
skwatawa had become known, was broken and thought he could push an-
other land cession on the tribes of the region. At the Treaty of Fort Wayne,
September 30, 1809, government chiefs of the Miami, Potawatomi, and
Lenni Lenape signed away millions of acres of land for about two cents
an acre.
Members of Tenskwatawa’s movement were outraged by the treaty. The
widespread anger revitalized the movement, and people flocked again to
Prophetstown. While Tenskwatawa remained the spiritual leader of the
movement, Tecumseh emerged as the political and military leader. When
Tecumseh traveled south to confer with the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw,
and others, Harrison decided the time to strike had come. He burned
Prophetstown after the Battle of Tippecanoe, November 7-8, 1811.
See also: Creek War; Fort Wayne Treaty; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1775-1830; Little Turtle’s War; Pontiac’s Resistance; Tecumseh’s Rebellion;
Thames, Battle of the; Tippecanoe, Battle of.
Mary Ellen Rowe

Allen, Robert S. His Majesty’s Indian Allies. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992.
Presents material from British sources neglected by U.S. historians.
Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1992. Traces the nativist movement from the 1730’s,
providing the ideological and historical context for Prophetstown.
Drake, Benjamin. Life of Tecumseh. 1858. Reprint. New York: Arno Press,
1969. Biography using primary documents and interviews with individ-
uals who knew Tecumseh.
464 / Public Law 280
Edmunds, R. David. The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 1983. Carefully researched and objective biography of Tenskwa-
tawa.
____________. Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1984. Thorough research separates fact from fiction in this biog-
raphy.
Public Law 280

Significance: This law limited tribal sovereignty by allowing courts in
some states to have jurisdiction over Indian reservations.
During the early 1950’s, federal Indian policy returned to the goal of pro-
moting the assimilation of Indians into American society. Tribes were con-
sidered to be major barriers to this end, and a number of policies were de-
veloped to reduce their influence. One of these measures was Public Law
280, which sought to place tribal Indians under the jurisdiction of the laws
of the states in which they resided. This marked a significant change in the
legal status of Native Americans, for while Indians had long been subject to
federal law, they had usually been considered to be subject to their own
tribal courts when on reservations. Like other measures of the 1950’s, Pub-
lic Law 280 sought to undermine those aspects of Indians’ legal status that
set them apart from other Americans.
Passed by Congress in August, 1953, Public Law 280 authorized state
courts to assume civil and criminal jurisdiction of all Indian lands in the
states of California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin. (Three
reservations were excluded by name in the act.) Furthermore, other states
were allowed to extend jurisdiction over reservations if they desired by
making the necessary changes in their laws or constitutions. A few limits
were placed on state powers: States could not levy property taxes on reser-
vations or exercise jurisdiction with regard to Indian water rights. By 1968
nine additional states had extended jurisdiction over Indian lands within
their borders.
Pueblo Revolt / 465
Public Law 280 was very unpopular with American Indians, who saw it
as a drastic limitation on the tribal right of self-government that had been
enacted without their consent. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower had ob-
jected to the lack of a provision for tribal consent but had signed the act
when Congress refused to amend it.)
Indian resentment of the act helped to persuade Congress to amend its
provisions in the changed atmosphere of later years. The Indian Civil
Rights Act of 1968 included provisions (known collectively as the Indian
Bill of Rights) that were intended to safeguard Native American rights.
One section altered Public Law 280 to require Indian consent before future
extensions of state jurisdiction. States were also allowed to return jurisdic-
tion to tribes. Public Law 280 was further limited in its impact by the Indian
Child Welfare Act (1978), which gave tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction
over child custody cases on reservations.
Though initially regarded as a major threat to tribal self-government,
modification of Public Law 280 lessened its potential for restricting tribal
authority. Some states found that they preferred to avoid the expense in-
volved in extending legal jurisdiction, while some tribes found it useful to
ask the states to provide law and order. By the late twentieth century, the
law was being used in a somewhat more cooperative manner that took In-
dian opinions into account.
See also: Indian Child Welfare Act; Indian Civil Rights Act; Reservation
system of the United States; Termination Resolution; Tribal courts.
William C. Lowe
Pueblo Revolt
Locale: Rio Grande River Valley
Tribes involved: Navajo, Pueblo peoples
Significance: The most successful uprising against European colonial
authority, ensuring the survival of Puebloans as a distinct people.
The first permanent European colony in Pueblo territory was established

by Juan de Oñate in 1598. The jewels and gold of the fabled Seven Cities of
Cíbola had proven to be a myth, but the Spanish still intended to settle the
land. Franciscan friars came to seek converts to Catholicism, the civilian
466 / Pueblo Revolt
authorities and settlers to seek their fortunes in mining, trading, and ranch-
ing. The entire Spanish system was based on the need for American Indian
labor. In order to get it, the Spanish imposed the encomienda system, which
gave large land grants to holders, known as encomanderos. The part of this
program known as repartimiento bestowed upon the encomanderos the right
to the labor of any nearby natives. Annual taxes also were collected from
the natives in the form of produce, textiles, or other resources.
The Spanish were able to impose these measures by access to guns and
horses and frequent displays of force. Harsh physical punishments were
meted out for even slight infractions. The Franciscans—who recognized no
belief system except their own and thus felt justified in exterminating Pueblo
religion—saved the most extreme measures for natives practicing their tra-
ditional beliefs. Father Salvador de Guerra, in 1655, had an “idolator” at
Oraibi whipped, doused with turpentine, and burned to death. Even miss-
ing the daily Mass could bring a public flogging.
Causes of the Revolt. This unrelenting assault on native beliefs and prac-
tices was the single greatest cause of the Pueblo Revolt. The people be-
lieved that harmony within the community and with the environment was
maintained through their relationships with a host of spirit figures called
kachinas. They communicated with the kachinas at public dances and in
ceremonies conducted in their circular churches, called kivas. It seemed no
coincidence to the natives that when priests stopped these practices, things
began to go wrong.
Severe droughts, famine, Apache raids, and epidemics of European dis-
eases reduced a population of fifty thousand in Oñate’s time to seventeen
thousand by the 1670’s. Three thousand were lost to measles in 1640 alone.
At times between 1667 and 1672, people were reduced to boiling hides and
leather cart straps for food. The abuse of women and sale of slaves south to
work the silver mines of Mexico made it seem that the moral as well as the
physical universe was collapsing. Calls were made to return to the old
ways.
Popé Plans Retribution. In 1675, forty-seven Puebloans were arrested for

practicing their religion. All were whipped, three were hanged, and one
committed suicide. One deeply resentful survivor was a Tewa medicine
man for San Juan Pueblo named Popé. Incensed by this oppression, he be-
gan planning retribution, but his task was formidable.
The Spanish label “Pueblo” obscured the fact that these people were not
of one tribe, but members of a collection of autonomous villages that cher-
ished their independence and rarely acted in unison. Although they shared
Pueblo Revolt / 467
many cultural features, three major language families were represented in

the Rio Grande area alone: Zuñi, Keresan, and Tanoan. The latter had three
distinct dialects of its own: Tiwa, Tewa, and Towa. Hopi villages of Uto-
Aztecan speech lay farther west. Previous revolts had been localized affairs
and were suppressed quickly.
In hiding at Taos Pueblo, fifty miles north of the Spanish capital at Santa
Fe, Popé began building a multilingual coalition. He enlisted the great
Picuris leader Luis Tupatú, a Tiwa speaker who was influential in the
northern Rio Grande pueblos; Antonio Malacate, a Keresan spokesman
from pueblos to the south; the Tewa war leader Francisco ElOllita of San
Ildefonso; and many others. His role becoming more messianic, Popé
claimed inspiration from spirit contacts. Gradually, a plan emerged to ex-
pel the Spanish from Pueblo territory entirely.
The time came in August of 1680. Runners were sent out bearing knot-
ted maguey cords, each knot representing one day. The uprising was to
begin the day the last knot was untied. Governor Antonio de Otermín
was told by informants that that day was August 13, but Popé had ad-
vanced it to August 10 and the Spanish were caught completely by sur-
prise. Just nine miles north of Santa Fe, the citizens of Tesuque killed Padre
Juan Pio early that morning as he came to gather them up for Mass, and up-
heaval soon swept the countryside as eighty years of frustration came to a
boil.
Siege of Santa Fe. Lieutenant Governor Don Alonso Garcia led soldiers on
a sweep to the south of the capital and encountered such destruction that
he organized the survivors for evacuation south. They left for El Paso del
Norte (now Juarez) on August 14. The next day, Governor Otermín found
himself besieged in Santa Fe by five hundred Puebloans who demanded
that he free any slaves and leave the territory. He responded by attacking,
but when the opposition increased to more than two thousand warriors
and Otermín’s water supply had been cut, he abandoned the capital. On
August 21, Otermín led more than a thousand settlers south, meeting Gar-
cia’s group on September 13, and the whole bedraggled column reached El
Paso on September 29.
Four hundred civilians and twenty-one of thirty-three priests had been
killed. To undo their conversions, baptized Puebloans had their heads
washed in yucca suds. A new kachina entered the pantheon of Pueblo spirit
figures known among the Hopi as Yo-we, or “Priest-killer.” In the years fol-
lowing the revolt, the coalition began to unravel, as drought, disease, and
Apache raids continued to plague the tribes. Popé, who had become some-
thing of a tyrant himself, died in 1688. In 1692, Spain reconquered the area,
468 / Pueblo Revolt
and the new governor, Don Diego José de Vargas, entered Santa Fe on Sep-
tember 13.
The Pueblo Revolt did much more than dispel the stereotype that
Puebloans were unassertive and peaceful farmers who could not unify. It
also was much more than a twelve-year respite from colonial oppression. It
catalyzed transformations in Native American cultures in many directions.
Large numbers of Spanish sheep came into the hands of the Navajo, form-
ing the core of a new herding lifestyle. Weaving skills, possibly passed
along by Puebloans fleeing Spanish reprisals, soon turned the wool into
some of the world’s finest textiles. Previously forbidden horses, now freed
by the hundreds, became widely traded. Within a century, tribes such as
the Nez Perce, Cayuse, and Palouse to the northwest, Plains Cree to the
north, and Sioux, Cheyenne, and others to the east became mounted. With
the mobility to access the great bison herds of the Plains, the economic com-
plex that became the popular image of the Native American evolved.
The continued importance of the Pueblo Revolt to all Native Americans
was demonstrated during the tricentennial of 1980. Cultural events cele-
brating the “First American Revolution” were held all across the United
States. The revolt was seen as a symbol of independence and religious free-
dom. It was also recognized that some Puebloans who chose to settle with
Otermín at El Paso in 1680 subsequently had lost most of their language,
arts, and customs. After three centuries, the Puebloans see their ancestors’
revolt as a key reason for their survival as a distinct people.
See also: Acoma, Battle of; Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial;
Zuñi Rebellion.
Gary A. Olson

Hackett, Charles W. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s
Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682. Translated by Charmion Shelby. 2 vols.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942. The definitive re-
port on the subject to date.
Hait, Pam. “The Hopi Tricentennial: The Great Pueblo Revolt Revisited.”
Arizona Highways 56, no. 9 (September, 1980): 2-6. The entire issue is a
beautifully illustrated exploration of Hopi culture, the persistence of
which is a tribute to the Pueblo Revolt.
Hill, Joseph. “The Pueblo Revolt.” New Mexico Magazine 58 (June, 1980): 38.
An overview of the subject, with nine illustrations.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resis-
tance. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. Gives an account of the
precursors to the revolt, but presents no consideration of the aftermath.
Red River Raids / 469
Knaut, Andrew L. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Sev-
enteenth Century New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1997. Explores the mutual interaction between Native Americans and
Europeans in the years surrounding the Pueblo Revolt.
Page, James K., Jr. “Rebellious Pueblos Outwitted Spain Three Centuries
Ago.” Smithsonian 11 (October, 1980): 221. Tells the story through Padre
Pio’s last day. Good observations on the revolt’s modern significance.
Preucel, Robert, ed. Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and
Renewal in the Pueblo World. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2002. A collection of essays exploring the light archaeology and
material culture can shed on the historical understanding of the Pueblo
Revolt.
Sando, Joe S. “The Pueblo Revolt.” In Handbook of North American Indians.
Vol. 9, edited by Alfonso Ortiz. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1979. A brief article that gives details on the planning of the re-
volt.
Silverberg, Robert. The Pueblo Revolt. Introduction by Marc Simmons. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. An account based mainly on
Hackett’s earlier work. Introduction considers the revolt’s legacy three
centuries later.
Red River Raids

Date: June, 1815-August, 1817
Locale: Red River Colony, Manitoba, Canada
Tribes involved: Metis
Significance: A series of battles between native peoples and European
settlers for the fur trade.
In 1811, Thomas Douglas, fifth earl of Selkirk, bought a large number of

shares in the Hudson’s Bay Company, England’s largest fur-trading com-
pany. In return, he received 116,000 square miles of land in the Red River
Valley in what is now southern Manitoba, just north of the Dakota Territory
of the United States. In this huge territory, he planned to build a commu-
nity called Assiniboia. Colonists would grow food, mainly potatoes, for
Hudson’s Bay Company trappers but would not be allowed to trap or trade
in furs. Selkirk hoped to recruit farmers suffering from an agricultural de-
470 / Red River Raids
pression in his native Scotland to settle the land. He sent an advance party,
led by Miles Macdonell, a retired army officer from Scotland, to establish
an initial base. Selkirk appointed Macdonell the colony’s first governor.
Macdonell’s party of thirty-six Scottish and Irish farmers arrived on Au-
gust 29, 1812. They settled near the junction of the Red and Assiniboine
Rivers, in what is now Winnipeg. The settlement, called Point Douglas,
was only a few miles from a North West Company post known as Fort
Gibraltor.
Selkirk’s original settlement had great difficulty surviving its first years
on the prairie. Only help from fur traders and métis working for the North
West Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s major rival for furs in the re-
gion, enabled Macdonell’s group to survive. A French word meaning
“mixed,” métis was used to describe people of French-Indian, or English-
Indian descent. (Sometimes these people were called the Bois Brulés.)
Written with a small m, the word refers to all persons of mixed blood, but
with a capital M, it signifies a distinct cultural and ethnic group living in
the region of southern Manitoba. These Metis were descended from mar-
riages between native women and European fishermen on Canada’s Atlan-
tic coast in the early 1600’s. By 1810, the Metis had moved into buffalo (bi-
son) country on the northern Great Plains. Many were employed as buffalo
hunters by the North West Company to supply provisions for its trappers.
The second year, a group of eighty more immigrants arrived, which
greatly increased the colony’s chance for survival. They started growing
wheat, barley, oats, and corn, although potatoes remained the principal
crop. Some of the settlers also had brought sheep with them. Settlement
took place during the War of 1812 with the United States, while another En-
glish army was engaging Napoleon’s forces in Europe.
Macdonell Versus Trappers and Metis. Macdonell proved to be an arro-

gant and unpopular governor, and engaged in major conflicts with North
West Company trappers and Native Americans. With the population of his
colony increasing to more than two hundred Europeans by 1814, he sought
to prevent food shortages by prohibiting the export of pemmican from his
lands. Buffalo hunters made pemmican—a key food source for trappers
and métis—from dried strips of buffalo meat that they pounded into a
powder, mixed with melted fat, and stored in buffalo skin bags. The gover-
nor angered local trappers and métis by prohibiting the export of pemmi-
can from Assiniboia after January 8, 1814. This order made it difficult for
employees of the North West Company to get food, since U.S. troops had
recently recaptured the company’s key trading post of Detroit, from which
food supplies for trappers had been sent west. Now both sources of provi-
Red River Raids / 471
sions, Assiniboia and Detroit, were cut off. The trappers for the North West
Company saw the Pemmican Proclamation as part of a Hudson’s Bay Com-
pany plot to destroy their business.
At a meeting in August, North West Company trappers decided to de-
stroy the Red River colony and take back control of the region. To accom-
plish this goal, the company needed the support of the métis population of
the upper Assiniboine River Valley.
Macdonell angered the Metis by prohibiting them from killing buffalo in
his colony. The North West Company recognized the Metis as a new nation
and accepted their title to lands occupied by Selkirk’s colonists. Thus, the
North West Company and the Metis came together to drive out the As-
siniboia settlers. In 1815, agents of the North West Company arrested Gov-
ernor Macdonell and brought him to Montreal for trial. He was charged
with interfering with Native American rights in what the North West Com-
pany claimed was Indian Territory. While the governor stood trial in the
east, the Metis attacked the colonists along the Red River, drove them from
their homes, and burned their fields.
Only one colonist remained in the community after the attack, but he
managed to save some of the wheat crop. When a few settlers, under the
leadership of Colin Robertson, returned in the fall, they harvested enough
grain to assure survival. A few weeks later, a relief party sent out by Lord
Selkirk made it to the Red River. Led by the newly appointed governor,
Robert Semple, the settlement began to rebuild. When news of this devel-
opment reached the headquarters of the North West Company, orders were
sent out to destroy the village again. Violence spread into the area again in
the spring of 1816. Robertson led a force that took control of the North West
Company’s Fort Gibraltor in May, giving Assiniboians control of the river.
On June 1, Metis set out on the Assiniboine River in three boats filled
with pemmican. When Robertson heard this news, he ordered the aban-
donment of Fort Gibraltor and left the colony for England. The Metis con-
tinued their journey and reached the Red River at Frog Plain, below the
Hudson’s Bay Company settlement. On June 19, Governor Semple set out
with twenty-five colonists to intercept the Metis. At a point in the woods
called Seven Oaks, the Metis confronted Semple’s band. A Metis named
Boucher rode out to talk with Semple, but after they exchanged a few
words, a fight broke out between the two and a shot rang out. Firing began
from all sides, but the colonists quickly were surrounded by a much larger
force and twenty men, including Semple, were killed. The remaining six
men escaped into the woods. Only one Metis was killed. The Seven Oaks
Massacre gave the North West Company control of the Red River territory
once again.
472 / Red River Raids
Selkirk’s Treaty. Lord Selkirk did not give up on his colony, however, but
hired a band of mercenaries to recapture control. Selkirk led the force him-
self and in June of 1817 returned to Assiniboia after destroying a North
West Company outpost. He quickly signed a treaty with local Metis allow-
ing resettlement of the region. Fields were restored, seeds were planted,
and settlers brought in a small crop before winter arrived. New colonists
from the Orkney Islands came in, along with a small group of French Cana-
dians. Selkirk provided money for a school and a church, and Catholic and
Presbyterian missionaries began work among the Cree and Assiniboin In-
dians living along the Red River. The colony seemed to be at peace at last.
The next summer brought further disaster, however. In August, a vast
swarm of locusts attacked Assiniboia. Most of the potato crop was killed,
forcing many farmers to abandon their land. Locusts came again in 1819
and devastated the entire prairie. No food or seed remained in the entire
valley. Settlers had to send a party all the way into the Wisconsin Territory
to buy seeds for a new potato crop. Lord Selkirk’s death in 1820 was an-
other major setback for the community, and it would be several years be-
fore farmers grew enough to feed the local population. Buffalo herds con-
tinued to provide subsistence during hard times. The Metis hunted the
buffalo and sold their hides and meat to the farmers. Gradually, however,
the native peoples and the new settlers learned to live together and end
their hostilities.
While the Red River colony was becoming a permanent part of the land-
scape, the right for control of the fur trade was waged in the courts. Short-
ages of fur-bearing animals east of the Rocky Mountains brought economic
problems to both companies. In 1821, the companies merged and ended
their fighting. The Seven Oaks Massacre was the worst single incident in
the great battle for control of Canada’s fur trade.
See also: Fur trade; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Riel Rebellions.

Brown, Jennifer S. Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Families in Indian Country.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980. Discusses the
development of the Metis people in eastern Canada and the Great Plains
from the 1600’s to the twentieth century. Illustrations and index.
Davidson, Gordon Charles. The North West Company. New York: Russell &
Russell, 1967. A history of the development and expansion of the second
largest fur company in North America. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Morton, W. L. Manitoba: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1967. One chapter is devoted to the importance of the Red River colony.
Red River War / 473
Presents a decidedly old-fashioned view of the métis, referring to them

as “halfbreeds” and “savages.” Maps, illustrations, and index.
Pritchett, John Perry. Red River Valley, 1811-1849: A Regional Study. New Ha-
ven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1942. Contains an almost minute-by-
minute account of the Seven Oaks Massacre.
Red River War

Date: June, 1874-June, 1875
Locale: Texas Panhandle, western Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and
northwestern Kansas
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa
Significance: The U.S. Army defeats three of the West’s most formida-
ble Indian tribes, opening large areas of the Southwest to settlement.
Despite good intentions expressed in the 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek

Treaty, the southern Great Plains remained a hotbed of hostile Indian activ-
ity, lawlessness, and punitive military action. Kiowa and Comanche bands
continued to raid into Texas and Mexico, while southern Cheyenne and
Arapaho braves still threatened parts of Kansas, often returning to the pro-
tection of reservations. The Army, frustrated by restrictions imposed under
President Ulysses S. Grant’s Quaker Peace Policy, labored to control the
volatile situation.
By 1874, the inadequacies of the reservation system and other outside
influences combined to trigger a major tribal uprising. For most members
of plains tribes, reservation life and the imposition of Anglo-American val-
ues threatened the most basic tenets of their existence, depriving them of
freedom, mobility, and dignity. This proved especially problematic for
young men, whose status largely depended on demonstrations of bravery
in war or prowess on the hunt. Reservation Indians suffered poor food; fre-
quently, promised rations were never delivered. Whiskey traders and
horse thieves preyed on reservations with relative impunity. Most grievous
to the American Indians was the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo, or bi-
son, by hide-hunters and sportsmen who were killing the beasts by the
hundreds of thousands, leaving stripped carcasses to litter the prairie.
With the arrival of spring, the South Plains erupted in violence, as Ameri-
can Indians left their reservations in large numbers.
474 / Red River War
Bison meat dries on a line at an Arapaho camp near Fort Dodge, Kansas, 1870. The
bison, which roamed the Plains in large herds, formed the basis for the economy of
many indigenous peoples of the Plains until white settlers, aided by the railroad,
slaughtered most of them during the 1870’s. (National Archives)
On June 27, 1874, several hundred Cheyenne and Comanche warriors

attacked a group of twenty-eight buffalo hunters at an old trading post in
the Texas Panhandle known as Adobe Walls. Prominent among the attack-
ers was Quanah Parker, the son of an influential Comanche chief and his
captured wife, Cynthia Ann Parker. Despite overwhelming odds, the well-
protected buffalo hunters devastated the attackers with high-powered ri-
fles. Although never confirmed, American Indian casualties probably ex-
ceeded seventy.
The attack at Adobe Walls signaled the beginning of the Red River War.
In July, Lone Wolf’s Kiowas assailed a Texas Ranger detachment, Cheyenne
warriors struck travel routes in Kansas, and Comanches menaced Texas
ranches. As hostile action intensified, the Army received permission to
pursue raiders onto previously protected reservations and take offensive
action to end the uprising. On July 20, 1874, Commanding General William
T. Sherman issued orders initiating a state of war, the prosecution of which
fell to Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, whose massive jurisdiction in-
cluded the South Plains. Sheridan, like Sherman an advocate of total war,
quickly devised the most ambitious campaign yet mounted by the Army
against American Indians in the West.
Red River War / 475
Sheridan’s Campaign. Sheridan’s plan called for five independent col-

umns to converge on American Indian camps in the Texas Panhandle, sur-
round them, and punish the Indians to such an extent as to discourage fu-
ture uprisings. Accordingly, Colonel Nelson Miles marched from Fort
Dodge, Kansas, with a large force of cavalry and infantry; Colonel R. S.
Mackenzie, with eight companies of cavalry and five infantry companies,
moved northward from Fort Concho, Texas; Major William R. Price led a
squadron of cavalry eastward from New Mexico; and Lieutenant Colonels
John W. Davidson and George P. Buell prepared their commands, compris-
ing several companies of Buffalo Soldiers (African American troopers from
the Ninth and Tenth Cavalries), to strike westward from Indian Territory.
The total force numbered more than two thousand soldiers and Indian
scouts.
In August, Army units moved onto reservations to separate peaceful
Indians from the hostile. While almost all Arapahos enrolled as friendly,
most Cheyennes refused to submit. Troubles at the Fort Sill agency trig-
gered a confrontation between Davidson’s cavalry and a band of Co-
manches supported by Lone Wolf’s Kiowas. Most of these Indians escaped
to join hostile factions on the Staked Plains. The Army listed almost five
thousand Indians as hostile; of these, roughly twelve hundred were war-
riors.
A severe drought made water scarce, and late August temperatures
reached 110 degrees as Colonel Miles eagerly pushed his men south-
ward. On August 30, near Palo Duro Canyon, the column clashed with
Cheyenne warriors, who were soon joined by Kiowas and Comanches.
The soldiers prevailed, driving the warriors onto the plains. Miles could
not exploit the opportunity, however; supply shortages forced him to re-
tire in search of provisions. The drought gave way to torrential rains and
dropping temperatures as Miles linked with Price’s column on Septem-
ber 7. Two days later, a band of Kiowas and Comanches assailed a supply
train en route to Miles. Following a three-day siege, the American Indians
abandoned the effort unrewarded, but the incident complicated the supply
crisis.
With Miles temporarily out of action, Mackenzie and his crack Fourth
Cavalry Regiment took up the fight. After stockpiling supplies, Mackenzie
moved, in miserable conditions, to the rugged canyons of the Caprock es-
carpment. On September 26, Mackenzie thwarted a Comanche attempt to
stampede his horses. Two days later, the crowning achievement of the cam-
paign came as Mackenzie struck a large encampment in Palo Duro Canyon.
Following a harrowing descent, wave after wave of cavalry swept across
the canyon floor. The soldiers inflicted few casualties but laid waste to the
476 / Red River War
village, burning lodges, badly needed food stocks, and equipment. Mac-
kenzie’s troopers completed the devastation by capturing fifteen hundred
of the tribe’s ponies, a thousand of which the colonel ordered destroyed to
prevent their recapture.
Over the next three months, Army units scoured the Texas Panhandle,
despite freezing temperatures and intense storms. In November, a detach-
ment from Miles’s command destroyed Gray Wolf’s Cheyenne camp, re-
covering Adelaide and Julia German, two of four sisters seized in a Kansas
raid. Catherine and Sophia German were released the following spring.
Indian Resistance Fails. Hungry and demoralized, Indians began to trickle

into the reservation by October, but most remained defiant until harsh
weather and constant military pressure finally broke their resistance. In
late February, 1875, five hundred Kiowas, including Lone Wolf, surren-
dered. On March 6, eight hundred Cheyennes, among them the elusive
Gray Beard, capitulated. In April, sixty Cheyennes bolted from their reser-
vation in an effort to join the Northern Cheyennes; twenty-seven of these,
including women and children, were killed by a cavalry detachment at
Sappa Creek in northwestern Kansas. On June 2, Quanah Parker and four
hundred Comanches—the last organized band—surrendered to Macken-
zie at Fort Sill.
After a dubious selection process, seventy-four Indians, ostensibly the
leading troublemakers, including Gray Beard and Lone Wolf, were shipped
to prison in Florida. Gray Beard was later killed trying to escape, others
perished in captivity, but some accepted the benevolent supervision and
educational efforts of Lieutenant Richard Pratt. Several Red River War vet-
erans remained with Pratt after their release to assist him in establishing
the Carlisle Indian School in 1879.
The Red River War was among the most successful campaigns ever con-
ducted against American Indians. It brought almost complete subjugation
to three of the most powerful and revered tribes in North America. It also
provided a model for future Army campaigns and boldly confirmed the
doctrine of total war. Now less concerned with inflicting casualties, the
Army would focus on destroying the American Indians’ means and will to
resist. Combined with the annihilation of the buffalo, this campaign of
eradication made it impossible for American Indians to exist in large num-
bers outside the reservation. Finally, the campaign’s successful completion
opened vast areas to white settlement and ranching.
See also: Adobe Walls, Battles of; Bison Slaughter; Carlisle Indian School;
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty.
David Coffey
Red River War / 477

Chalfant, William Y. Cheyennes at Dark Water Creek: The Last Fight of the Red
River War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. A thorough
study of the final encounter of the Red River War and the circumstances
leading up to it.
Haley, James L. The Buffalo War: The History of the Red River Indian Uprising
of 1874. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. Provides substantial back-
ground information and military analysis. Maps, illustrations, notes,
bibliography, and index.
Hutton, Paul Andrew. Phil Sheridan and His Army. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1985. An expansive study of Sheridan’s post-Civil War
career, including his role as the Red River War’s chief architect. Maps, il-
lustrations, notes, bibliography, and index.
Leckie, William H. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the
West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Discusses the con-
siderable role played by African Americans in the frontier Army, devot-
ing an entire chapter to the Red River War. Maps, illustrations, notes,
Robinson, Charles M. Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie.
Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1993. A comprehensive study that treats
Mackenzie’s pivotal role in the Red River War in suitable detail. Maps,
illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index.
Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian,
1866-1891. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. An essential
study of the frontier Army and the Indian Wars. Includes a chapter on
the Red River War and a wealth of other pertinent information. Maps, il-
____________. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. This authoritative treat-
ment of cultures in conflict includes a discussion of the causes and ef-
fects of the Red River War. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, and
index.
Wooster, Robert. Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Includes a chapter on the con-
troversial soldier’s extensive Red River War operations.
478 / Reservation system of the United States
Reservation system of the United States

Date: Nineteenth century-present
Nineteenth century history, Twentieth century history
Significance: As the United States expanded and increasing numbers of
white Americans moved westward, the confinement of American In-
dians to reservations was deemed the most efficient way to separate
Indians and whites while allowing whites access to the greatest
amount of land.
In colonial times and the earliest years of the United States, there was little
thought given to the need for a permanent answer to the competition for
land between Europeans and Native Americans. Because there were vast
uncharted areas of wilderness to the west, it was generally thought that the
Indian population could be pushed westward—eventually, across the Mis-
sissippi—whenever problems arose. This was the main policy of the pre-
Civil war era, as eastern tribes were “removed” westward, many to land in
present-day Oklahoma.
The movement to place all Indians on reservations began in earnest after
the Civil War ended (1865) during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. The
policy came about because of the failure of previous programs and the de-
sire of white Americans to open more western land for white settlement.
From the end of the American Revolution to 1830, Indian tribes had been
treated as if they were foreign nations within the United States. The federal
government sent ambassadors to negotiate treaties with the tribes, and
many groups such as the Cherokees in northern Georgia, had established
their own governments and states within the United States. Others had
traded territory in the East for land farther west. Trouble began in Georgia
after the discovery of gold on Indian land. Eventually, Congress passed a
law, supported by Andrew Jackson, offering territory west of the Missis-
sippi River to tribes willing to relinquish their lands in the East. All Indians
would have to accept this trade or face forced removal. Several wars and
the infamous Trail of Tears, which saw the deaths of thousands of Native
Americans, followed the imposition of this removal policy.
Early Reservation Policy. Most of the new Indian lands were in the Plains
region—or the “Great American Desert,” as whites, who at first believed
Reservation system of the United States / 479
that it was too hot and dry for farming, called it. In the 1840’s, thousands of
white settlers began crossing this “desert” on their way to California and
Oregon. Travel through Indian Territory could be dangerous and difficult
because of Indian attacks, so travelers and settlers called for a safe corridor
to be maintained by the army. From this proposal a concentration policy
developed, under which Indians would be driven into southern and north-
ern colonies with a wide, safe passageway to the Pacific in the middle.
These Indian enclaves, it was said, would be safe from white settlement. In
the early 1860’s, these Indian lands were closed to all whites except those
on official business. In 1869 Congress created a Board of Indian Affairs
within the Department of the Interior to control the reservations, and two
years later ended the policy of treating Indians as residents of foreign states
within the United States. On March 3, 1871, the Indian Appropriation Act
declared that tribal affairs would be managed by the U.S. government
without consent of the tribes.
Indians were supposed to have enough land on their reservations so
that they could continue to hunt, but this idea lasted only briefly as land
hunger among white farmers and ranchers after the Civil War led to
demands for greatly reducing the size of Indian Territory. If Indians
learned to farm rather than hunt, Indian affairs commissioners and con-
gressmen (and most whites) believed, more land could be put to produc-
tive use, and the natives would give up their “wild” ways and enjoy the
fruits of civilization. Indians were given a choice: Either they could relo-
cate, or volunteer armies would be recruited to force them to move. On the
reservations, Indians were to get education for their children, rations from
the government until they knew how to grow their own crops, and certain
other benefits. By 1877 more than 100,000 Indians had received rations on
reservations.
Reservation education programs did not work quickly enough to satisfy
many in Congress; additionally, some claimed, they cost too much money.
Maintaining a large army in the West to keep Indians within their bound-
aries also proved expensive. The notion that Indians would become farm-
ers proved false. Congress reacted to these problems by reducing rations,
which caused terrible suffering and malnutrition among Indians, and by
reducing the number of reservations as more tribes were moved into In-
dian Territory (Oklahoma). The federal government mandated that all In-
dian males receiving rations would have to work, but since few jobs existed
on Indian lands this policy proved a miserable failure. To improve educa-
tion and help Indians become more like whites, Congress commanded that
all instruction take place in English and that the teaching of Indian reli-
gions be banned.
General Allotment Act. In 1887 Congress changed Indian policy by pass-

ing the General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act). Designed by Senator
Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, who considered himself a friend of the In-
dians, the new policy provided for an eventual end to the reservation sys-
tem and the abolition of tribal organizations. In the future, Indians would
be treated as individuals, not as members of tribes. Each head of a family
would be allotted 160 acres of reservation land, and each adult single per-
son would get 80 acres. The government would keep this land in trust for
twenty-five years, and at the end of that period Indians would get title to
the land and full citizenship rights. Land on reservations not distributed to
Indians would be declared surplus land and could be sold to the highest
bidder.
When the bill was passed, there were about 138 million acres of land on
reservations. Between 1887 and 1900, Indians had been allotted only
3,285,000 of those acres, while almost 30 million acres were declared sur-
plus and ceded to whites. In addition, of the 32,800 Indian families and in-
dividuals getting allotments, fewer than one-third managed to remain on
their land for the required twenty-five years to attain full ownership. The
program was never applied among the Indians of the Southwest, and these
were the tribes most successful in retaining their traditional cultures. In
1891 Indians received the right to lease their lands for agriculture, grazing
cattle, and mining. The pressure for leases from cattle ranchers and mining
companies was enormous, and hundreds of thousands of acres found their
way to white control through leasing provisions that took advantage of In-
dian poverty. Many reformers and politicians denounced leasing, but only
because it made Indians who lived off their leases idle—not because it took
advantage of them and made them poor.
Between 1900 and 1921 Congress made it easier for Indians to dispose of
their allotments. A 1907 law, for example, gave Indians considered too old,
sick, or “incompetent” to work on their land permission to sell their land to
whomever they wished. White reservation agents decided questions of
competency. Under this program millions more acres were lost as impover-
ished Indians sold their property at very low prices just to survive. This
policy was speeded up in 1917 under the “New Policy” of Indian Commis-
sioner Cato Sells, who declared that all adults one-half or less Indian were
“competent,” as were all graduates of Indian schools once they reached
twenty-one years of age. Under this policy more than twenty-one thousand
Indians gained control of their lands but then quickly lost them because
they could not afford to pay state property taxes or went bankrupt. This
policy was reversed in 1921, but Indians faced new problems as the federal
government in the 1920’s moved to end all responsibility over Indians.
In 1923, John Collier, a white reformer, became executive secretary of the

American Indian Defense Association, the major lobby defending Native
American interests before Congress. Collier believed Indian civilization,
especially Pueblo culture, to be superior in many ways to the materialis-
tic, violent society found in the United States and Europe. For the first
time, under Collier’s leadership, Indians presented a program to Congress
aimed at preserving their traditional values and way of life. Reservations,
it was argued, had to be retained to save these old ways but needed eco-
nomic assistance to survive. Collier’s program called for civil liberties for
Indians, including religious freedom and tribal self-government.
The “Indian New Deal.” In 1928 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issued
an influential report by Lewis Meriam, a student of Indian culture. In The
Problem of Indian Administration, Meriam criticized American policy, con-
demned the General Allotment Act, and concluded that the BIA showed lit-
tle interest in retaining Indian culture. The report advocated spending
more money for economic assistance and suggested that the aid go directly
to local tribal councils. The councils, rather than BIA officials, should de-
cide how to spend the funds. Meriam called for a policy of cultural plural-
ism: Native Americans should be allowed to live by their old customs and
values if they chose.
The Great Depression hit Indian reservations, particularly the poorest in
South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico, very hard. By 1933
thousands of Indians faced starvation, according to reports from the Emer-
gency Relief Administration. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed
John Collier to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs and deal with the crisis.
Collier, with the president’s help, pushed the Indian Reorganization Act
through Congress in 1934. This law radically changed Indian-white relations
and gave Native Americans control of their lands; it was nicknamed the In-
dian New Deal. The law ended the allotment system, gave local councils au-
thority to spend relief money, and allowed Indians to practice traditional re-
ligions and customs. Congress increased appropriations for reservations
from twelve million dollars to an average of forty-eight million dollars while
Collier held his post. The commissioner had his critics, mainly advocates of
assimilation and western senators and congressmen fearful of Indian self-
rule. In 1944 the House Indian Affairs Committee criticized Collier’s policy
and called for a return to the old idea of making Indians into Americans.
The next year Collier resigned, and many of his programs ended.
Policy Since World War II. Creation of the Indian Claims Commission in
1946, which was empowered by Congress to settle all Indian land claims
against the government, resulted in victories for some tribes. Between 1946
and 1960 the commission awarded more than 300 million dollars to Indian
tribes wrongfully deprived of their lands, but Congress saw this as an ex-
cuse to end other assistance to reservations. Some BIA officials foresaw the
abolition of the reservation system. In the 1950’s relocation became a popu-
lar idea. More than sixty thousand Indians were moved to cities such as
Denver, Chicago, and Houston. To save money and hasten the end of sepa-
rate development for Native Americans, Commissioner Dillon S. Meyer
took away powers of tribal councils and returned decisions concerning
spending to BIA headquarters.
In 1953 Congress approved the Termination Resolution, which termi-
nated federal control over Indians living on reservations in California,
Florida, Iowa, New York, and Texas. The states now had criminal and le-
gal jurisdiction over the tribes. Results proved disastrous, especially after
removal of federal liquor control laws. Unemployment and poverty in-
creased under the termination program. The BIA tried to resolve the unem-
ployment problem by expanding the relocation program, hoping that job-
less Indians would find work in cities, but by 1958 more than half of the
relocated workers had returned to the reservations.
In the 1960’s Congress reversed direction yet again and revoked the ter-
mination policy. During the federal government’s War on Poverty, it in-
creased tribal funds for education, health care, and job training. Expanded
federal aid greatly improved living conditions for Indians, and reservation
population increased from 367,000 in 1962 to 452,000 in 1968. Life expec-
tancy improved from a dismal 51 years (1940) to 63.5 (1968), not yet up to
white American levels but a great improvement nevertheless. In 1975 the
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act gave tribes con-
trol over school funds and returned most important economic decision-
making powers to locally elected councils. Three years later Congress
established a community college system on reservations in which native
languages, religions, and cultures were taught.
The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978) protected tradi-
tional practices, and the Supreme Court advanced Indian self-determina-
tion by authorizing tribal courts to try and punish even non-Indians for vi-
olations of the law committed on Indian territory. In a key ruling in 1978 the
Court said that tribes could be governed by traditional laws even if they
conflicted with state and federal laws. In the 1980’s such ideas of separate
development continued to dominate reservation policy, and the Reagan
administration followed a policy of “government-to-government relation-
ships” among the states, the federal government, and the tribes. In many
ways this “new” policy greatly resembled ideas first enunciated by George
Washington in 1794, when Americans also doubted the possibility of assimi-

lation and opted for a policy of pluralism and cultural separation. Although
a few reservations have become quite rich because of the lease or sale of min-
eral rights, and recently because of revenues from gaming concerns, most
remain very poor. When a Bureau of the Census study of poverty in the
United States in the 1980’s listed the ten poorest counties in the union, eight
of them were on reservations. Cultural self-determination, improved edu-
cation, and increased financial assistance had not yet improved economic
conditions for many Native Americans. Reservations in South Dakota and
New Mexico were the poorest; they also had the highest levels of alcohol-
ism, divorce, and drug addiction found anywhere in the United States.
See also: Allotment system; American Indian Defense Association;
American Indian Religious Freedom Act; Bureau of Indian Affairs; General
Allotment Act; Indian Claims Commission; Indian New Deal; Indian Self-
Determination and Education Assistance Act; Meriam Report; Reserve sys-
tem of Canada; Termination Resolution; Trail of Tears; Treaties and agree-

Brandon, William. The Indian in American Culture. New York: Harper &
Row, 1974. A massive volume covering Indian-white relations since the
beginning; includes an interesting discussion of reservation policy. In-
cludes a good index.
Frantz, Klaus. Indian Reservations in the United States: Territory, Sovereignty,
and Socioeconomic Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. A
thorough, detailed cultural-geographic study of life on American In-
dian reservations.
Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. New York: Picador, 2001. A depiction of contempo-
rary Ogalala Sioux life on the Pine Ridge reservation. Written by an An-
glo, somewhat controversial among American Indians.
Fritz, Henry E. The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890. Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. A comprehensive analysis
of government policy in the critical period when assimilation policy was
the order of the day.
Priest, Benson. Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren: The Reformation of United States In-
dian Policy, 1885-1887. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1942. An old but still useful discussion of the origins of the General Al-
lotment Act (Dawes Act).
book of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu-
484 / Reserve system of Canada
tion Press, 1988. Contains several useful essays on past and current res-
ervation policy, including William T. Hagan’s “United States Indian
Policies, 1860-1900" and Lawrence C. Kelly’s ”United States Indian Pol-
icies, 1900-1988." Excellent index, detailed bibliography.
____________. The Indian in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Argu-
ably the best one-volume survey of the Indian experience in North
America, with many useful insights and comments concerning the res-
ervation system. Contains an extensive bibliography and comprehen-
sive index.
Reserve system of Canada

Date: Nineteenth century-present
Locale: Canada
Nineteenth century history, Twentieth century history
Significance: Until well into the twentieth century, Canada’s Indian re-
serve system assumed that lands not specifically defined “surren-
dered” to white settlement were for traditional Indian use; reactions
to abuses in “surrender” arrangements brought more protective self-
government and ownership provisions in the 1990’s.
By the early 1990’s the percentage of land reserved by law for the specific
use of Canadian Indian tribes varied considerably from province to prov-
ince. In eastern provinces such as Newfoundland, reserves were largely
symbolic, amounting to about 0.06 percent of all land. To the west, percent-
ages were somewhat higher (2 percent in Alberta, for example), while in
the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, a full third of what Canada calls
the “traditional lands” remain reserved for the aboriginal tribes, referred to
in Canadian law as “bands.”
The situation of Indian self-government on reserve lands is a relatively
recent development that must be viewed in the light of key legislation
passed between 1930 and 1990. One can say, however, that the Canadian
federal government has tried, since the 1930’s, to ease strains created by
unfortunate reversals of what long appeared to be a relatively enlightened
history of protecting the lands (if not tribal governing autonomy) of Cana-
dian Indians.
Reserve system of Canada / 485
Ideal and Reality of Traditional Reserve Policy. The history of Indian

reserves in Canada began at the end of the French and Indian War (1754-
1763), when French claims on Canada were abandoned to British impe-
rial control. A British royal proclamation in 1763 forbade governors of
both the Canadian and the American colonies from issuing any land
grants to colonists unless it was clear that the land in question was not
“traditionally occupied” by Indians. This act began the so-called policy
of protection, which stipulated that only the Crown held ultimate respon-
sibility for protecting or acquiring traditional Indian lands. Such acqui-
sition, or “surrendering over,” was to be with the consent of tribes; what
was not “surrendered” to the Crown was presumed to remain Indian prop-
erty.
When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the influx of Loyalists
into Canada caused pressures for colonial land grants to rise. In response,
the Crown initiated a series of treaties and purchase agreements, particu-
larly with tribes in Ontario. What was not turned over by sale or treaty
agreement would from that date be called Indian “reserves.” What ap-
peared to be benevolent recognition of the Indians’ traditional lands, how-
ever, was not always that generous. In a few extreme cases, such as the
Chippewa (Ojibwa) agreement to surrender their Chenail Ecarte and St.
Clair lands, only a very small portion was left for exclusive tribal use (in
this case, some 23,000 acres out of a total of 2.7 million acres).
For a number of years there was no specific definition of what responsi-
bilities the British might accept with respect to Indian rights within their
reserves. This changed by the 1830’s, when it became obvious that Indians
even farther west were going to be affected by expanding white settle-
ments and that, as their traditional way of life would no longer be possible
in areas left as reserves, government assistance would have to be part of the
land surrender process. Thus, an agreement concerning the Manitoulin Is-
lands near the north shore of Lake Huron became, in 1836, part of a “new”
attitude toward reserves: Indians there were to receive, free from “the en-
croachments of the whites . . . proper houses . . . and assistance . . . to be-
come civilized and to cultivate land.”
At the same time, it became increasingly apparent that the “traditional”
reserve system would have to involve higher degrees of Indian depen-
dence on Crown authorities to intercede between them and aggressive set-
tler communities anxious to gain access to the natural resources on Indian
land. In 1850, a decade and a half before Canada’s federal/provincial ar-
rangement (the Constitutional Act) placed the authority of the Crown
across the entire width of the Atlantic, troubles broke out over settler access
to minerals in the Lake Superior area. William Robinson was appointed
486 / Reserve system of Canada
treaty commissioner in order to define how Indian hunting and fishing

rights could be preserved while sale and development of mining rights on
the same land passed to outside bidders.
With the coming of Canada’s independent status after 1867, it became
apparent that a specific Indian act would be necessary and somehow
should be binding on all provinces of the federal system. Neither the first
Canadian Indian Act of 1876 nor later acts, however, provided for the
establishment of new reserves. The object of all Canadian Indian acts
(into and through the twentieth century) was supposed to be to improve
the management and developmental prospects of reserves that already
existed. Nevertheless, the traditional but in many ways manipulated con-
cept of what constituted a reserve in Canada continued, for nearly a
century, to allow for “surrender” of lands considered to be in excess of
tribal needs. Thus, in Quebec Province, some 45,000 choice acres consid-
ered Indian reserves in 1851 would be given over to white settlement be-
tween 1867 and 1904. The most spectacular case of additional surrenders
occurred in Saskatchewan, the source for almost half of the nearly 785,000
acres of Indian lands taken in the early twentieth century. In addition
to formal acts of surrender, amendments in 1895 and 1918 to the Indian Act
allowed the superintendent-general of Indian affairs to recognize private
leases of reserve land that was not being exploited economically by the
tribes.
Perhaps the most striking example of consequences that could come
from application of these and other amendments occurred in the 1924
Canada-Ontario Indian Reserve Lands Agreement which would stand,
despite challenges, into the 1990’s. The 1924 agreement essentially ac-
knowledged Indian rights to exploit non-precious minerals on their land,
but provided for separate conditions to govern (external) exploitation of,
and revenues from, precious mineral mines in Ontario (and by extension,
elsewhere in Canada).
Post-1930 Trends Toward Self-Government on Reserves. The year 1930

was a watershed, for after that year, federal, or Dominion, approval for sur-
renders would become the exception rather than the rule. In the same year,
the Dominion transferred public land control rights in the Prairie prov-
inces to the provincial governments of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Mani-
toba, with the express condition that existing Indian reserves would be
maintained unchanged under federal control. The 1930 agreements never-
theless recognized the applicability of the 1924 precious metals “excep-
tion” (the Canada-Ontario Reserve Agreement noted previously) to any In-
dian reserves in the Plains provinces.
Reserve system of Canada / 487
Rising governmental and public attention to Indian affairs came in the

early 1960’s, partially in the wake of the government’s Report on Reserve Al-
lotments (published in 1959) and partly following publication of a major
study by Jean Lagasse on native populations in Manitoba. Lagasse’s find-
ings brought the beginnings of community development programs on In-
dian reserve lands, but they remained limited mainly to Manitoba itself. By
1975, a specific scheme for self-management and community government
was legislated in the James Bay Agreement for northeastern Quebec, but
this again had limited geographical scope.
Substantial change in conditions affecting life on reserve lands across
Canada would not come until the late 1980’s, and then specifically with
passage of the 1989 Indian Act. A good portion of the local legislative pre-
cedents that formed the bases for the Indian Act of 1989 can be seen to have
been drawn from key decisions ranging from the James Bay Agreement
through the Municipal Grants Act of 1980 and the much broader 1986
Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government Act. When legislators extended such
precedents to define the status of the totality of Canada’s Indian popula-
tion, the government in Ottawa granted for the first time several essential
principles of self-government to tribes throughout the country. They now
included the right to hold full title to property formerly considered their
“reserves” (but ultimately controlled by Dominion authorities) and to dis-
pose of that property legally as they might see fit (through sales, leases, or
rentals), through procedures they would determine via the autonomous
channels of their own councils.
See also: Aboriginal Action Plan; Declaration of First Nations; Delga-
muukw v. British Columbia; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development; French and Indian War; Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of
1951; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white relations: Canadian; International
Indian Treaty Council; Meech Lake Accord; Nisga’a Agreement in Princi-
ple; Nunavut Territory; Oka crisis; Riel Rebellions; Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples; Treaties and agreements in Canada; White Paper of
Canada.
Byron D. Cannon

Bartlett, Richard H. Indian Reserves and Aboriginal Lands in Canada. Saska-
toon, Canada: University of Saskatchewan, Native Law Center, 1990.
Frideres, James. Canada’s Indians: Contemporary Conflicts. Scarborough, On-
tario: Prentice Hall of Canada, 1974.
Hawley, Donna L. The Annotated 1990 Indian Act. 3d ed. Toronto: Carswell,
1990.
488 / Riel Rebellions
Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada. Native Rights in Canada. Calgary:

Author, 1970.
Nagler, Mark. Natives Without a Home. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Long-
man, 1975.
Riel Rebellions
Date: 1869-1870, 1885
Locale: Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada
Tribes involved: Assiniboine, Cree, Metis
Significance: Two separate revolts against the government of Canada
led to the dispersal and marginalization of the once thriving Metis.
Canadian policies that threatened both the Metis and Indian ways of life
were at the heart of two separate revolts in Canada’s newly acquired prai-
rie region. (Metis people are of mixed Indian and European descent.) In
1869 the Hudson’s Bay Company relinquished its claim over Rupert’s
Land and the Northwest to the recently confederated nation of Canada.
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald set out to build a great nation joined
from the Atlantic to the Pacific by a rail line. Although the government ne-
gotiated treaties that established Indian reserves, it offered the Metis,
whom it did not regard as legally Indian, no such consideration. This con-
tributed significantly to the erosion of the Metis economic and social life.
Red River Rebellion, 1869-1870. Preparing to take over the new territories
in the fall of 1869, Canada sent survey parties into the Red River region.
The Metis of the region had for many years occupied long, narrow farm-
steads along the riverbank. Contrary to this practice, the surveyors delin-
eated square township lots. Both fearing the imminent arrival of large num-
bers of English-speaking Protestants and fearing that their long-established
land tenure would be ignored once Canada asserted control over the area,
the Metis and a few of the original white settlers declared a provisional
government in early November, 1869. Prairie-born but Montreal-educated
Louis Riel, Jr., was elected secretary and, within a few weeks, president of
the government of Assiniboia.
The Red River Rebellion actually involved very few military skirmishes.
On November 2, 1869, the Metis seized Upper Fort Garry and arrested fifty
Riel Rebellions / 489
Canadians including a militant Orangeman named Thomas Scott. Scott es-

caped from custody twice but was recaptured each time. He was tried, con-
victed of treason against the Metis government, and executed in March,
1870. Scott’s execution became a rallying point in English Canada against
the mainly French Catholic Metis. Riel, who was president of Assiniboia at
the time, was held responsible. He was forced into exile for much of the
next fifteen years.
The Metis of Assiniboia had no intention of remaining independent of
Canada and issued a declaration of their desire to join the Confederation of
Canada as a new province with full representation in Parliament. Accord-
ing to their declaration, the new province would have both English and
French as its official languages, control of public lands would remain with
the local legislature, and the citizens would retain the property rights they
held prior to entering confederation.
In May, 1870, after several months of negotiation between Ottawa and the
Metis, the Canadian Parliament passed the Manitoba Act. While the estab-
lishment of the new province should have met many of the Metis demands,
in practice it did not. The province was limited to 100,000 square miles, Par-
liament rather than the Manitoba Legislature retained control of the public
lands, and the conveyance of the Metis’ land titles was delayed so long that
many Metis sold their rights to land speculators and moved farther west.
The Riel Rebellions, 1869 and 1885
A L B E R T A
S A S K A T C H E W A N
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First Riel Rebellion, 1869 Ft. Buford REBELLION
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Red R.
Incidents in Second Riel Rebellion, 1885

N O R T H
M I N N E S O T A
D A K O T A
490 / Riel Rebellions
Northwest Uprising, 1885. Many of the same economic concerns that

caused the 1869-1870 Red River Rebellion fueled the Northwest Uprising
of 1885. This second revolt, however, included Cree and Assiniboine Indi-
ans as well as the Metis. Ottawa, fearing a general Indian uprising on the
prairies, responded with swift military action rather than negotiation.
Faced with the near extinction of the buffalo and once again with the
fear of being uprooted by new settlers, the Metis around Batoche on the
Saskatchewan River invited Riel to return from exile to argue their claims
with Ottawa. Riel, however, had changed greatly in the intervening decade
and a half. He had spent several years in insane asylums in Montreal before
settling on a farm in Montana. He was obsessed with the idea that it was his
divine mission to establish a French Catholic state in the northwest. He
viewed the arrival of four Metis emissaries on June 4, 1884, as divine inter-
vention and returned to Canada to fulfill his mission.
Riel spent much of his time drafting petitions to Ottawa outlining the
Metis’ grievances. Finally, reminiscent of events in 1869, the Metis, led by
Riel and Gabriel Dumont, seized the parish church at Batoche and declared
a provisional government. The army and the Northwest Mounted Police
responded promptly, and the entire revolt was crushed within two months.
The Metis and the Indians, however, did inflict casualties. The first skir-
mish occurred near Duck Lake when the Mounted Police arrived to assert
Canadian authority. The Metis, joined by a few Indians, killed ten of the po-
lice and forced the remainder to retreat.
The Indians, starving as a result of the loss of the buffalo and then Ot-
tawa’s withholding of treaty rations, were encouraged by the Metis victory
at Duck Lake. The Cree and Assiniboine were easily persuaded to join the
revolt. Several hundred hungry Indians under the leadership of Pound-
maker attacked the fort at Battleford, burning the homes and looting the
stores. Other Cree, led by Big Bear, killed nine people, including the Indian
agent and two priests in what became known as the Frog Lake Massacre.
Three others were spared by Big Bear.
The Canadian military response was swift. Eight thousand well-armed
troops were dispatched to the region, and the revolt was summarily
crushed. Among the leaders of the revolt, Dumont escaped to the United
States, where he performed for a time with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West
Show. Big Bear and Poundmaker each received three years in prison. Riel,
who used his trial as a forum for his cause, was found guilty of treason and
hanged on November 16, 1885. Many of the Metis and Cree fled to
Montana. Others dispersed to the north. Fearing additional Indian upris-
ings, the Canadian government rushed to complete the Canadian Pacific
Railroad and promptly began to settle the West.
Riel Rebellions / 491
See also: Declaration of First Nations; Department of Indian Affairs and

Northern Development; Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; Indian Act
of 1989; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Red River Raids; Treaties and
agreements in Canada.
Richard G. Condon and Pamela R. Stern

Beal, Bob, and Rod Macleod. Prairie Fire: The 1885 North-West Rebellion. Ed-
monton: Hurtig, 1984. Emphasizes the Native Canadian perspective.
Bowsfield, Hartfield. Louis Riel: The Rebel and the Hero. Toronto: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1971. A good introductory book.
Dempsey, Hugh A. Big Bear: The End of Freedom. Vancouver: Douglas &
McIntyre, 1984.
Flanagan, Thomas. Riel and the Rebellion: 1885 Reconsidered. 2d ed. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000. Provides a revisionist perspective.
Giraud, Marcel. The Metis in the Canadian West. Translated by George
Woodcock. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. A pri-
mary source on the Metis, originally published in French in 1945. Vol-
ume 2 deals with the period of the rebellion. Some of the language sug-
gests racial determinism.
McDougall, John. In the Days of the Red River Rebellion. Edmonton: Univer-
sity of Alberta Press, 1983. Memoir of a Methodist missionary during
the time of the rebellion.
in Canada. Rev. ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Chapter 9
deals with the rebellion.
Owram, Doug. Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the
Idea of the West, 1856-1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Chapter 4 discusses the politics of the Canadian response to the rebel-
lion.
Purich, Donald. The Metis. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1988. Highly readable
treatment of the Metis. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 deal with the 1869 and 1885
rebellions and their outcomes.
Riel, Louis. The Collected Writings of Louis Riel. Edited by George F. G. Stan-
ley. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985. Shows that Riel was a
thinker as well as a political leader.
Siggins, Maggie. Riel: A Life of Revolution. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994.
Readable, lively narrative account.
Stanley, George F. G. The Birth of Western Canada: History of the Riel Rebel-
lions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960. Argues that the rebel-
lions were the defining event in western Canadian history.
492 / Rosebud Creek, Battle of
Rosebud Creek, Battle of

Date: June 17, 1876
Locale: Montana
Tribes involved: Arapaho, Cheyenne, Sioux
Significance: This battle was preliminary to the Little Bighorn fight; it
neutralized General George Crook’s northbound column of the 1876
Sioux campaign, bolstered the Indians’ confidence, and opened the
door for the Custer defeat.
On January 31, 1876, the U.S. government issued an ultimatum that all In-
dians must reside on reservations or be deemed “hostiles.” This declara-
tion ultimately led to the army’s 1876 summer campaign against the north-
ern Plains Indians.
The campaign was a three-pronged pincer tactic designed to surround,
push, and engage the “hostile” bands in present northcentral Wyoming
and south-central Montana, with Colonel John Gibbon coming from the
west, General Alfred Terry and Colonel George Armstrong Custer from the
east, and General George Crook from the south. Embarking from Fort
Fetterman, Wyoming, on May 29, Crook marched up the Bozeman Trail with
A depiction of the Battle of Rosebud Creek from the August 12, 1876, issue of Frank
Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. (Library of Congress)
Rosebud Creek, Battle of / 493
more than a thousand troopers and established a base camp at present-day

Sheridan, Wyoming. He was joined by more than two hundred Crow and
Shoshone allies on June 14.
Mid-June was also when the Hunkpapa Sioux held their Sun Dance in
which Sitting Bull experienced his famous vision of many soldiers falling
into camp. The Indians knew of Crook’s forces and were eager to fulfill Sit-
ting Bull’s vision. By June 16, Crook’s troops had moved on to the Rosebud
River. The next morning, while his forces were relaxing, Crazy Horse’s
warriors struck.
After the Sioux’s initial charge the soldiers were able to regroup enough
to take command of the high ground on the valley’s northern bluffs. From
there, Crook orchestrated his troop’s movements. The Rosebud Valley is
long, however, and the terrain broken with hills, ravines, and ridges. These
created a disjointed battle with scattered pockets of fierce action stretching
three miles along the valley. During the fight, Crook mistakenly believed
that Crazy Horse’s village lay northward and ordered Captain Anson
Mills’s detachment to find and seize it. The battle intensified, and Crook’s
Crow and Shoshone allies proved their worth throughout. In one instance
they rescued an officer from the Sioux in a hand-to-hand struggle. Mean-
while, Mills, finding no village, returned to the fight, coming to the rear of
the Sioux and Cheyenne. This eventually caused the Indians to disengage
and abandon the battlefield.
The battle lasted six hours and was filled with intense fighting. Crook
proclaimed victory on the notion that he possessed the battlefield in the
end. In truth, Crook’s troops were bested by Crazy Horse’s warriors, and
had it not been for the valiant efforts of his Crow and Shoshone allies,
Crook would have suffered greater casualties than his twenty-eight dead
and fifty-six wounded. The Sioux and Cheyenne suffered comparable
casualties but in the end forced Crook to retreat south with his dead
and wounded, thus neutralizing his forces at the most critical juncture in
the campaign. In Crook’s defense, he faced (on onerous terrain) an un-
expectedly unified force whose tenacious fighting was unparalleled—
a combination Custer would face a week later with more disastrous re-
sults.
See also: Bozeman Trail War; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Little Bighorn, Battle of the; Wounded Knee Mas-
sacre.
S. Matthew Despain
494 / Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples

Date: 1991-1996
Locale: Canada
history
Significance: In April, 1991, the government of Canada, in response to
aboriginal leaders’ concerns, established the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples to review the role and place of aboriginal people
in contemporary Canada. The final report, published in November,
1996, made 440 recommendations in response to problems that have
long plagued the relationship between aboriginal peoples, the Cana-
dian government, and Canadian society as a whole.
In April, 1991, the government of Canada set forth a sixteen-point mandate

for the seven commissioners (four aboriginal, three nonaboriginal) of the
newly constituted Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Amid much
upheaval, uncertainty, and in some cases violence, the commissioners
held 178 days of public hearings, conducted public hearings in ninety-six
communities, listened to dozens of expert witnesses and testimony, and
engaged in additional research. Acknowledging that the colonial policy
of the federal government for the last 150 years had been wrong, the com-
mission attempted to determine the “foundations of a fair and honorable
relationship between the aboriginal and nonaboriginal people of Can-
ada.” The commissioners sought to examine this relationship as a central
facet of Canada’s heritage, describe how the relationship became distorted,
and examine the terrible consequences for aboriginal people in the loss of
lands, power, and self-respect. The commissioners hoped that the report
would repair the damaged relationship and provide a new footing for
mutual recognition and respect, sharing, and responsibility. Consisting of
five volumes of several thousand pages each, the final report provided a
comprehensive answer to the guiding question and related questions and
problems.
A History of Mistakes. “Aboriginal peoples” refers to organic and cul-

tural entities stemming from the original peoples of North America, not to
collections of individuals united by “racial” characteristics. The commis-
sioners traced the relationship of aboriginal and nonaboriginal peoples
through four stages. The first stage was before 1500, when no contact had
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples / 495
been made between North American aboriginals and Europeans. The sec-
ond stage started in the 1500’s and was marked by initial mutual curiosity
and then increasing trust, trade, exchange of goods, intermarriage, and
military and trade alliances that created bonds between and among na-
tions. This stage was crowned by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which
governed the relations between nations on the question of land rights. The
third stage began in the 1800’s as increasing numbers of Europeans immi-
grated to Canada. Respect gave way to domination. The new policy of “as-
similation” proved, in time, to be a form of cultural genocide. The solution
to the problems left by the assimilation policy, the report stated, is in recog-
nizing that “aboriginal peoples are nations.” This affirmation is not to say
that these peoples are nation-states seeking independence from Canada
but rather collectivities with a long, shared history, a right to govern them-
selves, and a strong desire to do so in partnership with Canada. The fourth
stage, the report concluded, was just beginning. The report hoped to assist
the process of “renewal and renegotiation” well into the twenty-first cen-
tury.
The mistakes that characterize the relationship with aboriginal peo-
ples have been serious, often deadly. On average, the life expectancy of
aboriginals is lower than that of nonaboriginals; illnesses such as alcohol-
ism and diabetes are more prevalent; families are more often broken or
marred by violence, abuse, and criminality, leading to a disproportionately
high number of aboriginals in jail; and educational failure and dropout for
children is common. The commission argued that these problems had
reached the point where aboriginal peoples had become tired of waiting for
handouts from governments. It found that these people wanted control
over their lives instead of the well-meaning but ruinous paternalism of
past Canadian governments. They needed their lands, resources, and self-
chosen governments in order to reconstruct social, economic, and political
order. They needed time, space, and respect from nonaboriginals to heal
their spirits and revitalize their cultures.
Renewing and Restructuring the Relationship. Four principles formed

the basis for renewed relationships between aboriginals and nonaborigi-
nals: recognition by nonaboriginals of the principle that aboriginals were
the original caretakers of the land along with the recognition that non-
aboriginals now share, and have a right to, the land; respect between peo-
ples for their rights and a resistance to any future forms of domination;
sharing of benefits in “fair measure”; and responsibility, the hallmark of a
“mature relationship,” which includes accountability for promises made,
for behaving honorably, and for the effect of one’s actions on the well-being
of others. The needs and problems of all groups in their diversity cannot
be addressed piecemeal. The renewed relationship entails a fundamen-
tal structural component that is centered on reclaiming aboriginal peoples
as “nations.” These nations, however, are not to be formed by every single
aboriginal community in Canada. The commission concluded that the
right of self-government cannot reasonably be exercised by small, separate
communities, whether First Nations, Inuit, or Metis. It should be exer-
cised by groups of a certain size—groups with a claim to the term “nation.”
The commission went on to suggest a process for doing this, beginning
with a royal proclamation, issued by the monarch as Canada’s head of
state and guardian of the rights of aboriginal peoples. Such a move would
dramatically signal a new day for aboriginal people, setting out the princi-
ples, laws, and institutions necessary to turn these into reality. This new
royal proclamation would not supplant, but instead support and modern-
ize the Royal Proclamation of 1763, or so-called Aboriginal Peoples’ Magna
Carta.
The commission recommended that the proclamation contain the fol-
lowing elements: a reaffirmation of Canada’s respect for aboriginal peo-
ples as distinct nations; acknowledgment of harmful actions by past gov-
ernments, which deprived aboriginal peoples of their lands and resources
and interfered with family life, spiritual practices, and governance struc-
tures; a statement placing the relationship on a footing of respect, recogni-
tion, sharing, and mutual responsibility, thus ending the cycle of blame
and guilt and freeing aboriginal and nonaboriginal peoples to embrace a
shared future; affirmation of the right of aboriginal peoples to fashion their
own lives and control their own governments and lands—not as a grant
from other Canadian governments but as a right inherent in their status as
peoples who have occupied these lands from time immemorial; and ac-
knowledgment that justice and fair play are essential for reconciliation be-
tween aboriginal and nonaboriginal peoples and a commitment by Canada
to create institutions and processes to strive for justice.
Such a proclamation would be followed by the enactment of companion
legislation by the Parliament of Canada. The legislation would create the
new laws and institutions needed to implement the “renewed relation-
ship” with a view to providing both the authority and the tools needed for
aboriginal peoples to structure their own political, social, and economic fu-
ture.
Governance and Polity. The most dramatic and sweeping proposal made
by the commission was the creation of a parallel parliament for aboriginal
peoples. The commission suggested that after the royal proclamation, the
Canadian government draft and pass an act that would establish a body to
represent aboriginal peoples within federal governing institutions and ad-
vise Parliament on matters affecting aboriginal peoples. A constitutional
amendment would create a “house of first peoples” that would become
part of Parliament along with the House of Commons and the Senate.
Other recommendations included restructuring the federal government
to allow the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
(DIAND) and the ministerial position that goes with it to be replaced by a
senior cabinet position, the “minister for aboriginal relations,” and a new
“department of aboriginal relations.” In addition, the commission recom-
mended establishing a minister and department of Indian and Inuit ser-
vices to deliver the gradually diminishing services coming from the federal
level.
It recommended three models of self-government: national government,
to be exercised among aboriginal peoples with a strong sense of shared
identity and an exclusive territorial base inside which national govern-
ments would exercise a wide range of powers and authority; public govern-
ment, in which all residents would participate equally in the functions of
government regardless of their heritage; and community of interest govern-
ment, to be exercised primarily in urban centers where aboriginal persons
form a minority of the population but nonetheless want a measure of self-
government in relation to education, health care, economic development,
and protection of culture. The latter would operate effectively within mu-
nicipal boundaries, with voluntary membership and powers delegated
from aboriginal nation governments and/or provincial governments.
Land Rights and Claims. The commission stated that the land claims pro-
cess is “deeply flawed” and recommended that it be replaced by a fairer
and more balanced system in which the federal government does not act as
both defender of the Crown’s interests and judge and jury on claims. The
commission further stated that this process is not open to Metis claims,
thereby leaving Metis people without a land and resource base and with no
mechanisms for settling grievances. It also categorized as unfair the gov-
ernmental demands that aboriginals “extinguish” their general land rights
in favor of specific terms laid down in claim settlements and recommended
a new process that would result in three categories of allocation: lands se-
lected from traditional territories that would belong exclusively to aborigi-
nal nations and be under their sole control; other lands in their traditional
territories that would belong jointly to aboriginal and nonaboriginal gov-
ernments and be the object of shared management arrangements; and land
that would belong to and remain under the control of the Crown but to
which aboriginal peoples would have special rights, such as a right of ac-
cess to sacred and historical sites.
In support, the commission recommended establishing regional treaty
commissions and an aboriginal lands and treaties tribunal that would fa-
cilitate and support treaty negotiations. Also, the commission called on
the federal government to allocate to aboriginal nations “all land promised
to them in existing treaties,” “to return to First Nations all land it has ex-
propriated or bought, then left unused,” and “to establish a fund to help
aboriginal people purchase land on the open market.” The commission rec-
ommended one major piece of companion legislation, namely an aborigi-
nal treaties implementation act that would seek to establish a process for
“recognized aboriginal nations to renew existing treaties or negotiate new
ones.” The act would also “set out processes and principles to guide negoti-
ation, include a commitment to implement existing treaties according to
their spirit and intent, and . . . renegotiate treaty terms on which there was
no meeting of minds when they were originally set down” and would “es-
tablish regional treaty commissions to convene and manage the negotia-
tion process, with advice from the aboriginal lands and treaties tribunal on
certain issues.”
Other Measures Proposed. Other recommendations included measures to

overcome epidemic health problems, child abuse, welfare and economic
dependency, and related socioeconomic problems, including poor housing
and a lack of overall infrastructure in aboriginal communities. In recom-
mending aboriginal control of education, the commission noted that ab-
original peoples are simply asking for no more than what other communi-
ties already have—the chance to say what kind of people their children will
become. Aboriginal peoples want schools to help children, youth, and
adults learn the skills they need to participate fully in the economy, de-
velop as citizens of aboriginal nations, and retain their languages and the
traditions necessary for cultural continuity. The commission also recom-
mended that aboriginal peoples be given control over youth and adult edu-
cation, including not only education in aboriginal culture, customs, and
traditions but also that which will assist in overcoming the massive prob-
lems of unemployment in aboriginal communities.
The report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples challenged
aboriginal and nonaboriginal relationships. It documented the myriad
problems of the past century and offered a considered and considerable
number of recommendations for change. However, these recommenda-
tions, detailed and numerous though they were, are probably not enough
to bring about change. As the commissioners noted, “It will take an act of
national intention—a major, symbolic statement of intent, accompanied by

the laws necessary to turn intentions into action.”
See also: Aboriginal Action Plan; Declaration of First Nations; Del-
gamuukw v. British Columbia; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development; Fifteen Principles; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white rela-
tions: Canadian; Meech Lake Accord; Nisga’a Agreement in Principle;
Nunavut Territory; Reserve system of Canada; Treaties and agreements in
Canada; White Paper of Canada.
Gregory Walters

Looking Forward, Looking Back; Restructuring the Relationship; Gathering
Strength; Perspectives and Realities; and Renewal: A Twenty Year Commit-
ment. 5 vols. Ottawa: Canada Communication Group, 1996. The final re-
port of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.
Long, J. Anthony, and Menno Boldt, eds., in association with Leroy Little
Bear. Governments in Conflict? Provinces and Indian Nations in Canada. To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Addresses aboriginal-provin-
cial relations focusing on self-government, provincial jurisdiction, land
claims, and financial responsibility.
____________. The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Presents a broad cross sec-
tion of tribal, geographic, and organizational perspectives. The authors
discuss constitutional questions such as land rights, concerns of Metis,
nonstatus Indians and Inuit, and historical, legal/constitutional, politi-
cal, regional, and international rights issues.
Miller, J. R. Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada. To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Contains key, previously pub-
lished articles concerned with regional developments from the days of
New France to the present.
Morrison, Andrea P., with Irwin Cotler, eds. Justice for Natives Searching for
Common Ground. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. A
volume that came together around the Oka crisis between aboriginal
people in Quebec and the government. Its thirty-five essays and stories
provide helpful discussions on native women and the struggle for jus-
tice, self-determination, title and land claims, the Oka crisis, and legal
relations and models for change.
Morse, Bradforse W. Aboriginal Peoples and the Law: Indian, Metis and Inuit
Rights in Canada. Rev. ed. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989. Pro-
vides a basic resource for cases and materials on the original inhabitants
of Canada.
500 / Sand Creek Massacre
Sand Creek Massacre

Locale: Sand Creek, southeastern Colorado
Tribes involved: Cheyenne
Significance: The slaughter of Cheyenne women and children by Colo-
rado militia regulars presages the subjugation of Great Plains Indians
for the next three decades.
Against the backdrop of the American Civil War (1861-1865), on August 17,
1862, the beleaguered Santee Sioux in Minnesota began an uprising against
the continuing encroachment of white settlers. This bloody fighting touched
off general warfare the length and breadth of the Great Plains and fright-
ened gold seekers in the new mining settlements of Colorado. Governor
John Evans of the new Colorado Territory tried to get Cheyennes and Arap-
ahos to give up their hunting ranges for reservations, but they did not want
to leave. In the meantime, white settlers’ devastation of the buffalo (bison)
herds was limiting the tribes’ hunting ranges, and regular army troops had
moved out to support the Union as a new influx of settlers swept across the
plains, seeking fortune and avoiding Civil War service.
Sporadic raids by American Indians made travelers along the California
and Santa Fe Trails nervous. White migration and the settlers’ practice of
decimating buffalo herds merely for their tallow and hides caused concern
among the natives, who were further hampered by intertribal warfare, a di-
minishing food supply, and the scourge of smallpox. On November 10,
1863, Robert North, an illiterate white man of dubious credibility who had
lived with the Arapahos, gave a statement to Governor John Evans, saying
that the Comanches, Apaches, Kiowas, Northern Arapahos, Sioux, and all
Cheyennes had pledged to one another to go to war with the settlers in the
spring of 1864.
On December 14, 1863, Evans wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
asking for military aid and authority to call out the state militia. The situa-
tion remained relatively quiet in the early spring. Cheyennes and Arapa-
hos were fighting the Utes, the Arapahos were feuding with the Kiowas,
and the Sioux bided their time. By April, Colonel John M. Chivington’s
command had begun an aggressive military campaign against American
Indians in general and Cheyennes in particular. This campaign provoked
a war that lasted well into 1865 and cost the government thirty million
dollars.
Sand Creek Massacre / 501
Chivington’s Campaign. Chivington, the military commander of Colorado

Territory, had had a minor success against Confederate forces in New Mex-
ico in 1862. He was a former Methodist minister who was dubbed the
Fighting Parson. Zealous and unscrupulous, he harbored political ambi-
tions. Encouraged by Governor Evans, Chivington used scattered incidents
to declare that the Cheyennes were at war, and he sent out soldiers to “burn
villages and kill Cheyennes wherever and whenever found.” Ominously,
he declared that he believed in killing American Indians “little and big.”
The tribes struck back. By the summer of 1864, fighting and atrocities on
both sides plagued western Kansas and eastern Colorado. In June, Evans,
trying to separate peaceful tribes from warlike bands, urged friendly Kio-
was and Comanches to report to Fort Larned on the Arkansas River in Kan-
sas and Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos to report to Fort Lyon, 250
miles up the same stream in southeastern Colorado. He ordered the friendly
tribes to submit to military authority. A skirmish at Fort Larned rendered
this strategy useless, and by August Evans had issued a proclamation call-
ing for indiscriminate killing of American Indians. The natives retaliated
by closing the road to Denver, which stopped the mail and caused prices of
staples to skyrocket. White settlers mobilized for war.
The Cheyenne chief Black Kettle urgently wanted peace. Accordingly,
he and other Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders met with Evans and Chiving-
ton at Camp Weld near Denver on September 28, 1864. The talks were con-
fusing, because Evans made the distinction between surrender to the mili-
tary authorities and securing peace by treaty. The tribal leaders did not
understand, and they received no clear promise of peace. Clearly, the set-
tlers were spoiling for a fight. In fact, Chivington had recruited enlistees for
his Third Colorado Volunteer Regiment from among mining camp toughs
and bums with a promise that they would kill American Indians. The stage
was set for a tragedy.
After submitting themselves to military authorities at Fort Lyon in early
November, Black Kettle’s band of approximately six hundred Indians were
sent to make camp to hunt buffalo in the broad, barren valley of Sand Creek,
a tributary of the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado about forty miles
north of Fort Lyon. Because the younger braves had drifted north to listen
to the war drums at a council on the Smoky Hill River, Black Kettle’s group
mainly consisted of old men, women, and children. They were mostly
Cheyennes, with a few dozen Arapahos. They believed they were safe.
Chivington’s views were unequivocal. He would take no prisoners
and “damn any man that was in sympathy with the Indians.” After a bit-
ter night march over rolling prairie, Chivington deployed approximately
seven hundred men and four howitzers around Black Kettle’s village at
502 / Sand Creek Massacre
daybreak on November 29, 1864. In addition to his Third Colorado Volun-

teer Regiment, Chivington had 175 soldiers of the First Colorado Cavalry
and a small contingent of New Mexico infantry.
Massacre of Cheyennes. Mounted troops and foot soldiers swept across

the dry creekbed into the Cheyenne camp. Black Kettle ran up a U.S. flag
and a white surrender flag over his teepee at the center of the camp. The
flags were ignored. Panic ensued as the natives were butchered where they
stood. One of the first killed was White Antelope, a seventy-five-year-old
man. The Arapaho chief Left Hand fell quickly. Small groups of Cheyennes
fought from sand pits, but most fled in panic. Black Kettle miraculously es-
caped. Atrocities followed the slaughter.
Eyewitness testimony later recalled,
They [the Indians] were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their
knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head
with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of
the word.
A Lieutenant Richmond of the notorious Third Colorado shot and scalped

three women and five children as they screamed for mercy. The final tally
of American Indian dead ranged from 150 to 500. Three-quarters of those
killed were women and children. Chivington’s report said of his troops,
“All did nobly.”
Chivington returned to Denver in triumph, his men brandishing a hun-
dred American Indian scalps. The triumph would be short-lived. A letter
from Indian agent S. G. Colley printed in the Missouri Intelligencer on Janu-
ary 6, 1865, mentioned the atrocities and stirred public opinion in the
states. General Halleck, the Army chief of staff, ordered Chivington inves-
tigated, and the district commander, General Curtis, attempted to have
him court-martialed. Instead, Chivington mustered out of the service.
Indian Retaliation. Following the massacre, Cheyennes, Arapahos, and

Sioux ravaged the South Platte River Valley. They killed approximately
fifty whites, burned stage stations, destroyed telegraph lines, and twice
sacked the town of Julesburg in northeast Colorado. With the Civil War
drawing to a close, on March 3, 1865, a joint resolution of Congress created
a joint committee to study the “Indian problem.” A shifty and temporary
treaty in October, 1865, made peace on the plains but inexplicably contra-
dicted itself and forbade some tribes any legal home. On January 26, 1867,
the final report of the joint committee released testimony about the Sand
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez / 503
Creek Massacre and traced many American Indian wars to “lawless white
men always to be found upon the frontier or boundary lines between sav-
age and civilized life.”
The American Indian wars lasted until the closing of the frontier. The in-
cessant pressure of whites moving westward across North America had
produced constant conflict with the Native Americans. Special circum-
stances surrounding the Civil War, the Colorado gold rush, and the decline
of the buffalo herds led to the tragedy of Sand Creek. The pent-up forces of
expansion released in the aftermath of these events ensured that this trag-
edy would not be an isolated one. Who was “savage” and who “civilized”
remains a large historical question.
See also: Bear River Campaign; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870;
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty; Navajo War; Sioux War; Washita River Mas-
sacre.
Brian G. Tobin

Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, 1915. Drawing heavily on primary documentation and such
venerable authorities as Hubert Howe Bancroft, this detailed account of
the Sand Creek events evokes Cheyenne sympathies.
Hoig, Stan. The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1980. This short work paints the Cheyenne in general, and
Black Kettle in particular, as men of peace. Includes many interesting
photographs.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Indian Heritage of America. Rev. ed. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1991. Examines the clash of cultures in words and illustrations.
Lavender, David. The Great West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Suggests
that Black Kettle may have been more interested in handouts than in peace.
Utley, Robert M., and Wilcomb B. Washburn. The Indian Wars. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Puts the Sand Creek Massacre in the context of
the times.
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez

Date: 1978
Locale: New Mexico
Tribes involved: Santa Clara Pueblo, Navajo
504 / Saybrook, Battle of
Categories: Civil rights, Court cases, Twentieth century history

Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision deepens the concept of
tribal sovereignty and reinforces the sanctity of tribal customs in de-
termining tribal membership.
The Santa Clara Pueblo (New Mexico) passed an ordinance stating that if a
male member of the tribe married a woman who was not a member of the
tribe, their children would be eligible for membership in the tribe. How-
ever, children born of a woman from the tribe who married a nonmember
man were not eligible for enrollment in the tribe.
When the tribe refused to enroll her daughter, Julia Martinez, an en-
rolled member of the Santa Clara Pueblo married to a Navajo, brought suit
against her tribe on behalf of her daughter. Martinez charged that the tribal
law violated her daughter’s rights to equal protection under the Indian
Civil Rights Act (1968), and further, Martinez contended that the law dis-
criminated against her based on her sex. The tribe argued that its rules for
membership were culturally based on a traditional patrilineal system that
predated the United States and its laws. The tribe also asserted its sover-
eign right to determine who is a tribal member without federal govern-
ment involvement.
In deciding the case in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to inter-
fere with the tribe’s conception of membership. The Court also stressed
that the Indian Civil Rights Act did protect the civil rights of individuals
from unjust acts of tribal governments, but its overriding purpose was to
promote tribal self-government and self-determination rather than impose
the dominant society’s standards of equal protection. This case deepened
the concept of tribal sovereignty and reinforced the sanctity of tribal cus-
toms.
See also: American Indian Religious Freedom Act; Federally recognized
tribes; Indian Civil Rights Act; Indian Claims Commission.
Carole A. Barrett
Saybrook, Battle of
Date: September, 1636-May, 1637
Locale: Saybrook, Connecticut
Tribes involved: Pequot
Saybrook, Battle of / 505
Significance: Defeat in this battle, actually a nine-month siege of Fort

Saybrook, led to the destruction of the Pequots as a power in the
Northeast.
The roots of the Battle of Saybrook are found in the 1634 treaty between the
Pequots and Massachusetts Bay. The treaty granted the Pequots trade with
Massachusetts and peace with the Narragansetts. In exchange the Pequots
were required to deliver a specified amount of wampum to Massachusetts.
When the Pequot wampum delivery did not meet expectations, Massachu-
setts officials viewed the wampum delivery as proof of the Pequots’ subor-
dinate status. John Winthrop, Sr., former and future governor of Massachu-
setts, said that the Pequots relinquished their right to Connecticut to
Massachusetts in 1635. This claim provided the justification necessary for
Massachusetts to involve itself in the settlement of the Connecticut Valley,
a region beyond the boundary of the Massachusetts royal charter. Working
in conjunction with the Saybrook Company, Massachusetts officials built
Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River.
In July, 1636, John Winthrop, Jr., nominal governor of Fort Saybrook,
met with the Pequots and issued an ultimatum. Winthrop demanded that
the Pequots meet English expectations regarding wampum demands and
hand over the killers of Captain John Stone. Winthrop knew that Western
Niantics had killed Stone a few years earlier; his demands were not meant
to be accepted. To avoid trouble, the Pequot sachem Sassacus placed the
Pequot territory under Massachusetts’s domain. Shortly thereafter, events
occurred that produced the First Pequot War. Block Island Narragansetts
killed Captain John Oldham in July, 1636. In August, 1636, colonial militia-
men sailed to Block Island and looted and burned empty villages. Colo-
nists then turned their attention to the Pequots. They wanted the Pequots’
land, and they used Oldham’s murder to justify an expedition against the
Pequots. The expedition failed to subdue the Pequots, and the Indians saw
the expedition as an injustice.
In September the Pequots took up arms, and by November, 1636, they
had isolated Fort Saybrook. The Pequots chose not to attack more northerly
communities such as Hartford. The militiamen stationed at Saybrook spent
the next nine months cut off from the rest of the colonies, begging for help;
none was forthcoming. The Pequots could isolate the fort for that long be-
cause the sponsor of the post, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was dis-
tracted by an internal matter concerning the antinomian crisis.
Then in April, 1637, everything changed. In that month colonists drove
the Connecticut Valley sachem Sequin and his followers off their land. This
ran contrary to the agreements Sequin and the colonists had reached con-
506 / Seminole Wars
cerning the land. Sequin then appealed to the Pequots, to whom he paid
tribute, to aid him. The Pequots did and on April 23, 1637, the Pequots at-
tacked Wethersfield. Connecticut then used the Pequot attack on Wethers-
field to justify an offensive war against the Pequots on May 1, 1637. The
Pequots hoped their rivals the Narragansetts would support them in their
war against Connecticut Valley settlers. The Narragansetts almost did, but
Roger Williams secured a Narragansett-Massachusetts alliance that iso-
lated the Pequots. This alliance allowed Connecticut soldiers to attack the
Pequots at Mystic in late May, 1637. The predawn attack killed between
three hundred and seven hundred Pequots and destroyed the remaining
Pequots’ will to continue the war. The peace treaty that followed, the Treaty
of Hartford (1638), declared the Pequot Nation dissolved.
See also: Pequot War.
Michael J. Mullin
Seminole Wars
Date: November 21, 1817-March 27, 1858
Locale: Florida
Tribes involved: Seminole
Significance: A continuation of the U.S. policy of containment and relo-
cation of Native Americans east of the Mississippi.
The conflicts known as the First, Second, and Third Seminole Wars were
never declared wars on the part of the U.S. government. The Seminole
Wars were a continuation of U.S. policy to contain Native American popu-
lations east of the Mississippi and remove them to reservations west of the
Mississippi, a policy that resulted in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. They
also might be seen as early battles fought over the jurisdiction of runaway
slaves that would eventually escalate into the Civil War.
First Seminole War. The First Seminole War was preceded by years of dis-
putes along the Florida-Georgia border, climaxing in the destruction of
Fort Negro on the Apalachicola River. Built by the British in 1815 and
turned over to a band of runaway slaves on the British departure from
Florida, Fort Negro proved an obstacle in the supply route to Fort Scott in
Georgia. When a U.S. vessel was fired upon from the fort, Andrew Jackson
Seminole Wars / 507
ordered General Edmund Gaines to destroy the fort. A hot cannonball,

fired from the expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Clinch, landed
in a powder magazine, blowing up the fort and killing 270 of its 344 oc-
cupants. Neamathla, village chief of Fowltown, reacted by warning Gen-
eral Gaines that if U.S. soldiers tried to cross the border into Florida,
they would be annihilated. A gunfight between U.S. soldiers and Nea-
mathla’s Seminoles on November 21, 1817, is considered the opening salvo
of the First Seminole War. This conflict, ending with Andrew Jackson’s oc-
cupation of the city of Pensacola in May, 1818, led to the Adams-Onís
Treaty of 1819, in which Spain ceded the territory of Florida to the United
States.
The 1823 Moultrie Creek Treaty restricted Seminole settlements to a res-
ervation of four million acres north of Charlotte Harbor and six small reser-
vations for north Florida chiefs. The Seminoles agreed not to make the res-
ervations a haven for escaped slaves. The 1830 enactment of the Indian
Removal Act mandated that all Indians be encouraged to trade their east-
ern land for western land. If they failed to do so, they would lose the protec-
tion of the federal government.
In May, 1832, U.S. commissioner James Gadsden convened a meeting
with the Seminole chiefs at Payne’s Landing. What transpired at the meet-
ing has been the subject of much political and scholarly controversy. All
that is certain is that a treaty was signed on May 9, 1832, in which the chiefs
agreed that a delegation would travel to inspect the lands in Oklahoma,
and, if the lands were satisfactory, the Seminoles would agree to move west
as a part of the Creek allocation. The ambiguity of who “they” were—the
chiefs or their tribal councils—and the peculiar stipulation that the Semi-
noles would be absorbed by their longtime enemies, the Creeks, put the va-
lidity of the treaty into question. There have been allegations that bribery
and coercion were used to get the Seminoles to sign the treaty. All of the
chiefs whose names were on the treaty later repudiated it.
An exploratory party left for Oklahoma in October, 1832, and returned
to Fort Gibson, Arkansas, in March, 1833, where they entered into a series
of negotiations. Again, there have been allegations of coercion and forged
marks on the Fort Gibson Treaty, by which the chiefs agreed that the Semi-
noles would move west within three years.
Second Seminole War. In October, 1834, Indian agent Wiley Thompson

brought the chiefs together to discuss plans for a spring removal. The Semi-
noles gathered in their own council after Thompson’s initial meeting, and
strong opposition to migration emerged, especially from the Seminole war
leader Osceola. Relations deteriorated and skirmishes increased between
508 / Seminole Wars
This engraving, portraying the Second Seminole War from the white perspective of
the time, appeared in 1836. (Library of Congress)
the government and Seminoles throughout 1835, culminating in the out-

break of war in December. The two most notable incidents occurred on De-
cember 28. Ote-emathla, also known as Jumper, and a warrior known as Al-
ligator led 180 warriors in ambushing a relief column under the command
of Major Francis Dade. Only 3 of the 108 soldiers escaped slaughter in the
fierce battle that followed. Meanwhile, Osceola led sixty warriors in an at-
tack on Fort King with the express purpose of killing Wiley Thompson,
who had imprisoned Osceola in chains earlier in the year.
The army was in disarray during most of 1836. General Winfield Scott
immediately began to feud with General Gaines. General Call was put in
charge of the troops until November, when General Thomas S. Jesup ar-
rived in Florida and assumed the command until 1839. Jesup’s command
in Florida was crucial for the outcome of the Seminole Wars. The general
had persuaded a large number of chiefs and their tribes to emigrate on the
condition that they would be accompanied by their African American al-
lies and slaves. When opposition arose among landowners claiming that
the Seminoles harbored runaway slaves, a compromise was reached: Only
those blacks who had lived with the Seminoles before the outbreak of the
war would be permitted to go. More than seven hundred Seminoles had
gathered at Fort Brooke north of Tampa by the end of May, 1837. On the
night of June 2, Osceola and the Mikasuki shaman Arpeika surrounded the
camp with two hundred warriors and spirited away nearly the entire pop-
ulation.
The defection caused a drastic shift in Jesup’s tactics; no longer did he
feel any compunction about using trickery to gain his ends. In September,
General Joseph Hernandez captured King Philip, Yuchi Billy, Coacoochee,
and Blue Snake in the vicinity of St. Augustine and imprisoned them at Fort
Seminole Wars / 509
Marion. When Osceola and Coa Hadjo sent word to Hernandez that they
were willing to negotiate, he set up a conference near Fort Peyton. Jesup or-
dered him to violate the truce and capture the Indians. News of Osceola’s
capture spread through the nation, and when he was transferred to Fort
Moultrie in Georgia, George Catlin visited him and painted his portrait.
His death on January 30, 1838, enshrined him as a martyr to the Indian
cause.
Coacoochee, having escaped from Fort Marion on November 29, 1837,
headed south to join bands led by Jumper, Arpeika, and Alligator. The larg-
est and last pitched battle of the war was fought on the banks of Lake
Okeechobee on December 25. Colonel Zachary Taylor commanded eleven
hundred men against approximately four hundred Indians. The Indians fi-
nally retreated from the two-and-a-half-hour battle, leaving 26 killed and
112 wounded and having sustained 11 killed and 14 wounded.
In February, 1838, further treachery at Fort Jupiter netted more than five
hundred Seminoles. Persuasion and mopping-up operations sent many of
the remaining Seminole leaders, including Micanopy, the chief, on the
westward migration. Jesup’s tenure in Florida, which had resulted in the
capture, migration, or death of more than twenty-four hundred Indians,
ended in May, 1838, when Taylor took over command of the Florida forces.
Taylor remained in Florida for another two years, during which time oper-
ations were carried out against scattered bands of natives throughout the
peninsula.
General Alexander MacComb, commanding general of the army, came
to Florida in April, 1839, and declared the war over when he concluded an
agreement with the Seminoles, who agreed to withdraw south of the Peace
River by July 15, 1839, and remain there until further arrangements were
made. Although a guarded trading post was set up on the Caloosahatchee
River, the Indians learned that they were not to be allowed to stay in
Florida. Chekika, chief of the Spanish Indians, led an attack and destroyed
the post in July. After he led a raid on Indian Key in August, 1840, Chekika
was surprised in the Everglades and executed.
The commands of General Walker K. Armistead and General William J.
Worth saw the final years of the Second Seminole War. Following the suc-
cessful policy of deceiving chiefs who came to negotiate, most notably
Coacoochee, and through continuing guerrilla warfare, the army managed
to remove all but about six hundred of Florida’s Indians, who were restricted
to a temporary reservation south of the Peace River because Congress re-
fused to continue to fund any further campaigns in 1842. The Second Semi-
nole War was more costly than all the other Indian wars combined. Still,
new settlers came to the interior of Florida, which had been made accessi-
510 / Seminole Wars
ble by the mapping, exploration, and road-building required by the wars.

The military had gained skill in guerrilla warfare and an understanding of
the need for interservice cooperation, and the federal government learned
to exercise its power to convert economic power into military strength.
Third Seminole War. Between 1842 and the outbreak of the Third Semi-
nole War in 1855, the Seminoles kept to the reservation and followed the
dictates of regulations imposed upon them. They remained adamant in
their opposition to removal until Secretary of War Jefferson Davis declared
that, if they did not leave voluntarily, the military would remove them by
force.
In December, 1855, a patrol investigating Seminole settlements in the
Big Cypress Swamp was attacked by a band of forty Seminoles led by Billy
Bowlegs and Oscen Tustenuggee, marking the first skirmish of the war that
was dubbed Billy Bowlegs’ War. It was a war of skirmishes, raids, and ha-
rassment against small settlements, both white and Seminole. A treaty
signed on August 7, 1856, that granted the Seminoles more than two mil-
lion acres in Indian Territory separate from the Creek allotment, along with
a generous financial settlement, was the catalyst to the end of the conflict in
Florida. A government offer of money in return for removal was accepted
on March 27, 1858. Bowlegs and his band left Florida in May, and two other
bands left the following February. Only the Muskogee band led by Chipco,
hidden north of Lake Okeechobee, and Arpeika’s Mikasuki band, buried
deep in the Everglades, a remnant of one hundred to three hundred per-
sons, remained in relative peace in Florida, the ancestors of twentieth cen-
tury Seminoles.
See also: Civil War; Indian Removal Act; Prehistory: Southeast; Trail of
Tears.
Jane Anderson Jones

Covington, James W. The Seminoles of Florida. Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1993. The most thorough history of the Seminoles in Florida;
devotes six chapters to the Seminole Wars.
Mahon, John K. History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. Rev. ed.
Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1985. Describes the battles
and leaders, the problems of military organization and ordnance, and
Seminole culture and history in the period of the Second Seminole War.
Tebeau, Charlton W. “The Wars of Indian Removal.” In A History of Florida.
Rev. ed. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1980. This chapter
in a standard Florida history covers the Seminole Wars.
Sioux War / 511
Wickman, Patricia R. Osceola’s Legacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama

Press, 1991. A study of the life and myth of Osceola, based on a survey of
artifacts and documents.
Wright, J. Leitch. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the
Muscogulge People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. An ex-
amination of the culture of the Creeks and Seminoles, and their Spanish,
British, and African connections.
Sioux War
Date: Beginning August 17, 1862
Locale: Southern Minnesota
Significance: Minnesota Sioux lose their tribal lands to encroaching
white settlers in one of the largest mass slaughters in U.S. history.
On August 17, 1862, four Santee Sioux men, returning from a fruitless
search for food beyond the boundaries of their southern Minnesota res-
ervation, attacked and killed five white settlers near Acton, in Meeker
County. Ordinarily, the culprits would have been surrendered to white au-
thorities, but these were no ordinary times. The Sioux of Minnesota were
starving. Long-promised annuities were slow in coming, as usual, and
doubts about the ability of a nation divided by civil war to fulfill its obliga-
tions to an isolated frontier led traders at the Redwood Agency to refuse
to open their warehouses until payment in gold arrived from Washing-
ton, D.C. Trader Andrew Myrick had advised the starving population to
“go home and eat grass, or their own dung.” On August 18, a large war
party attacked and looted the Redwood Agency and wiped out most of
a military expedition from Fort Snelling. Myrick, among the first to fall,
was found with his mouth symbolically stuffed with grass. As politicians
argued over payment of annuities in paper money or in gold, the Great
Sioux War began.
Prelude to War. Although the outbreak of hostilities appeared to be local,

its causes must be viewed in a national context. The Fort Snelling reserve,
established in 1819 near present-day St. Paul, was, until 1851, the only land
in Minnesota Territory that did not belong to Native Americans. Neverthe-
512 / Sioux War
less, thousands of white settlers, in the familiar pattern of national expan-

sion, occupied most of southern Minnesota. In 1851, the Minnesota Sioux
negotiated away most of their best hunting grounds in the treaties of Tra-
verse de Sioux and Mendota, and were tricked into signing away most of
the promised compensation to pay debts, real and imagined, to traders
there. The remaining annuities were slow in coming and insufficient to
support the Sioux, and there was no promise of permanent occupancy of
the Minnesota reservation. Furthermore, there was no consistent policy re-
garding American Indians in the United States during the period. Native
Americans had no legal recourse against white depredations. Appeals for
protection from soldier and civilian alike fell on deaf ears. The quality and
abilities of American Indian agents declined as the nation moved toward
the Civil War. Resentment smoldered, but several hundred of the approxi-
mately seven thousand Sioux in Minnesota cut their hair, donned “white
men’s” clothes, and took up farming following the 1851 treaties. These
“farmer” Sioux received most of the annuities, and a rift developed be-
tween them and the traditional, or “blanket,” Sioux.
Despite the influx of settlers, the Minnesota frontier had been generally
peaceful. The occasional murder of a settler by a native resulted in the mis-
creant being turned over to white authorities for punishment. In 1857, a
group of renegade blanket Sioux slaughtered thirty settlers in northern
Iowa and southern Minnesota, causing momentary panic in the area. Led
by Chief Little Crow, the Sioux denied responsibility for the outlaws and
formed a party to pursue them into Dakota Territory. The effort proved fu-
tile but apparently satisfied white authorities. No punishment for the Spirit
Lake Massacre was forthcoming. Annuities were paid on time, and the
prestige of the United States declined among the image-conscious Sioux.
By 1862, most of Minnesota’s white male settlers had left to fight in the
Civil War, and the Sioux, confined to a narrow strip of land along the Min-
nesota River, were facing starvation.
Little Crow’s Reluctance. Chief Shakopee and his followers knew the
Acton murders would be avenged. Although Chief Little Crow, long a
spokesman for the Sioux, had lost prestige when he cut his hair and began
farming, he remained the person most able to unify the Sioux. He was re-
luctant and argued against war. Accused of cowardice, he replied,
The white men are like the locusts when they fly so thick the sky is like a snow-
storm. Yes, they fight among themselves, but if you strike one of them, they all
will turn upon you and devour your women and little children . . . you will die
like the rabbits when the hungry wolves hunt them in the hard moon.
Sioux War / 513
Sioux leaders of the Red Cloud delegation, c. 1876 (left to right): Red Dog, Little
Wound, interpreter John Bridgeman, Red Cloud, American Horse, and Red Shirt.
(National Archives)
Nevertheless, he led the Sioux, forlornly hoping to regain his prestige.

The Sioux were inefficient attackers. Most of the inhabitants of the Red-
wood Agency escaped to spread the alarm at Fort Ridgely. During the first
week, far more whites were spared than were killed, many taken prisoner by
Little Crow and protected from harm in his camp. Attacks on New Ulm and
settlers in Brown and Renville Counties convinced the Sioux that success
was imminent. Little Crow knew that Fort Ridgley, which protected the Min-
nesota River Valley, would have to fall. Meanwhile, panic spread across the
Midwest, as politicians from Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Dakota Terri-
tory petitioned the federal government for troops and leadership. Minne-
sota governor Alexander Ramsey, who had negotiated the fateful 1851 trea-
ties, appointed his old political rival, former governor Henry H. Sibley, to
lead the Minnesota Militia against the Sioux. General John Pope, in dis-
grace because of his defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, was
assigned to head the new Northwest Department. His policy of pursue and
confine would dominate American Indian policy in the trans-Mississippi
West for years to come. He directed the Minnesota war from St. Paul.
On August 20 and again on August 22, before Sibley reached Fort
Ridgely with a motley crew of raw recruits, Little Crow and Chief Mankato
attacked. The fort’s cannon was used to devastating effect; only three of the
514 / Sioux War
fort’s defenders were killed, and both attacks were repelled. The Sioux at-
tacked New Ulm the second time on August 23, but again failed. Several
other settlements suffered attacks, but the fate of the now demoralized
Sioux was sealed.
Sibley’s Triumph. By the middle of September, Sibley had formed his six-
teen hundred troops into a fighting unit and moved north. On September
23, Sibley defeated several hundred warriors under Chief Mankato, who
was killed. As most of the combatants slipped away, Sibley rounded up 400
Sioux, conducted trials, and sentenced 306 to death. President Abraham
Lincoln reviewed the records and, refusing to “countenance lynching,
within the forms of martial law,” commuted most of the sentences. On De-
cember 28, 1863, thirty-eight Sioux were hanged on a single scaffold at
Mankato, the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
The war was not over. Little Crow was murdered near Hutchinson in
1863; Shakopee was kidnapped in Canada and hanged at Fort Snelling in
1865. The U.S. Army, following General Pope’s orders, pursued the Sioux
west. Such occasional engagements as the Battle of White Hill, Dakota, in
1863, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in Montana Territory in 1876, kept
the Sioux moving.
The Great Sioux War cost the lives of 413 white civilians, 77 soldiers, and
71 American Indians, counting those 38 hanged at Mankato. There was no
treaty, no negotiation to end the war. All Sioux, blanket and farmer, were
condemned to lose all but a minuscule piece of their tribal lands in Minne-
sota, and ultimately, their way of life. The 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee, in
which U.S. troops killed almost two hundred Sioux, was the last battle in
the American Indian wars.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1871-1933; Little Bighorn, Battle of the; Minnesota Uprising;
Wounded Knee Massacre.
Stephen G. Sylvester

Anderson, Gary Clayton. Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux. St. Paul: Min-
nesota Historical Society Press, 1986. A carefully researched and docu-
mented biography of the most important Native American war leader;
sympathetic to both Little Crow and the Santee Sioux. Provides a de-
tailed description of the war.
Anderson, Gary Clayton, and Alan R. Woolworth, eds. Through Dakota
Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862. St. Paul: Min-
nesota Historical Press, 1988. Carefully edited, readable first-person ac-
Snake War / 515
counts of the war, some sympathetic to the blanket Sioux, some to the
farmer Sioux who opposed the war.
Blegen, Theodore C. Minnesota: A History of the State. St. Paul: University of
Minnesota Press, 1975. The standard history of Minnesota. Its chapter
on the Sioux War is solid and balanced.
Ellis, Richard N. General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1970. Ellis’s detailed account provides insight
into the policy of punishment and containment that grew out of the war.
Green, Jerome A., ed. Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux
War, 1876-1877. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Collects
first-hand accounts from Indians at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Hedren, Paul. Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1998. Focuses on the events of 1876 at Fort Laramie.
Lass, William E. Minnesota: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Chap-
ter 5 is a concise but insightful statement of the war’s effect on Minnesota.
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West: 1846-1890. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. Although the descrip-
tion of the war is brief and simplistic, it places the war in the context of
Western policy toward the American Indians.
Snake War
Date: 1866-July, 1868
Locale: Southeastern Oregon, southwestern Idaho
Tribes involved: Northern Paiute (especially the Yahuskin and Walpapi
bands),
Significance: After two years of guerrilla warfare, peace talks between
Brevet Major General George Crook and Snake leader Old Weawea
effectively pacified most Snake bands.
The Snakes (named Gens du Serpent by early French explorers) were ancient
inhabitants of the Great Basin along upper reaches of the Missouri River
southward to the Sweetwater River. From the seventeenth century onward,
they invariably had been described as a very poor, largely itinerant people
whose chief preoccupation was scrounging food from hard country.
After the failure of Oregon and Nevada volunteers to end Snake attacks
on miners during Civil War years, the U.S. Army’s First Cavalry and Four-
516 / Society of American Indians
teenth Infantry under General George Crook assumed responsibility for

operations in 1866. Thereafter, in a remorseless campaign of forty-eight
battles, resulting in five hundred Indian casualties and the death of Chief
Pauline, Crook suppressed the Snakes’ guerrilla war by exhausting them.
Eight hundred Snakes were led to Fort Harney, Oregon, in July, 1868, by
Old Weawea, signaling peace. Most Snake survivors retired to the Klamath
and Malheur River reservations.
See also: Bannock War; Bozeman Trail War; Indian-white relations: U.S.,
1871-1933.
Clifton K. Yearley
Society of American Indians

Date: 1911-1924
Significance: Headed by educated Native American professionals, the
SAI advocated native educational and social advancement, true his-
torical representation, native franchise, and legal assistance.
On October 12, 1911, more than fifty Native American delegates met in Co-
lumbus, Ohio, at the Society of American Indians’ (SAI) founding confer-
ence. The date, Columbus Day, was significant: This gathering marked a re-
claiming of indigenous voices, a rediscovering of native pride.
The “father” of this organization was a non-Native American sociolo-
gist from Ohio State University, Fayette A. McKenzie. Six months prior
to the October conference, McKenzie had met with Dr. Charles A. East-
man (Sioux), Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Apache), attorney Thomas L. Sloan
(Omaha), Laura Cornelius (Oneida), and Henry Standing Bear (Sioux).
Coming from different backgrounds, these educated professionals united
to form a native-run association. Already assimilated into the dominant so-
ciety, they sought to retain their Native American identity. Calling them-
selves the American Indian Association, the group rallied around pan-
Indian reforms, especially in the educational arena.
At the October convention, the historical, legal, and cultural bonds con-
necting all natives were emphasized. The delegates drafted a constitution
that advocated native advancement, true historical presentation, native cit-
Society of American Indians / 517
izenship, and legal assistance. To assert that this was a native movement
and not a “white-run” organization, delegates changed the name to the So-
ciety of American Indians. National meetings were to be held annually, and
Washington, D.C., was designated as the society’s headquarters.
The SAI’s publication, the Quarterly Journal, was first issued on April 15,
1913. The masthead was framed with the society’s emblem, the American
eagle, on one side and a lighted torch on the other. Below this was the SAI’s
motto: “The honor of the race and the good of the country shall be para-
mount.”
The journal’s editor, Arthur C. Parker (Seneca), was the SAI’s most intel-
lectual influence. With his anthropological background, Parker sought to
design the SAI after Tecumseh’s historical visions. Parker ardently fought
for educational reforms, for an American Indian Day, and for visible Native
American role models.
As a peacekeeper, Parker often tempered the rising factionalism in the
SAI. In 1913 the SAI was at its membership height with more than two hun-
dred active (native) members and more than four hundred associate (non-
native) members. Friction in the following years sharply eroded member-
ship numbers, however; lacking resources for assisting tribes with legal aid
and for affecting the structure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), mem-
bers began to air their frustrations internally. Conflicts involved arguments
over the abolition of the BIA, the denouncement of peyote religion, and the
responsibility of individual tribal complaints. The SAI officially rejected
peyote religion, but no consensus was reached on the BIA question, an is-
sue that eventually splintered the SAI.
A change in focus was attempted by renaming the society’s publication
The American Indian Magazine. One of its editors, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude
Bonnin), a Yankton Sioux, became involved in the SAI by opening an edu-
cational center among the Utes. Even with Zitkala-Sa’s strong contribu-
tions, however, the SAI’s status remained precarious.
In the early 1920’s, a sense of despair clouded the SAI’s visions. Pan-
Indian unification attempts had failed, BIA abolition was hopeless, politi-
cal clout was slight (many members were not franchised), and individual
interests were detracting from pantribal ones. On June 2, 1924, the Indian
Citizenship Act was signed, marking the success of one of the SAI’s hardest
fought battles. By this time, however, the group was almost completely de-
funct, and symbolically, this date marks the end of the SAI.
See also: Bureau of Indian Affairs; Indian Citizenship Act; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1934-2002; National Council of American Indians.
Tanya M. Backinger
518 / Sports mascot controversies
Sports mascot controversies
Date: Beginning 1970’s

Categories: Twentieth century history
Significance: Native American objections to the use of “Indian” and
“Indian warrior” mascots for professional, high school, and college
sports teams reflects a growing sensitivity to negative stereotyp-
ing but also set the stage for a backlash against “political correct-
ness.”
The rise in Native American political activism in the 1960’s and 1970’s, cou-
pled with a general interest in the cultural representation of all minorities,
including African Americans, women, and individuals with physical and
mental disabilities, led to increasing discomfort with the widespread prac-
tice of using “Indian” mascots for sports teams. Common team names,
such as “Redskins,” “Braves,” or “the Fighting [tribal name],” were repre-
sented by a person, invariably not of Native American descent, dressed in
stereotypical Indian warrior costume as seen in the standard Hollywood
western: loincloth, a headband and feathers or full war bonnet, “war paint”
streaked on the face, and a bow and arrows or spear in tow. This mascot
would enter the playing field, sometimes on horseback, and perform an
equally Hollywood-inspired “war dance,” using ritually aggressive body
language to indicate that the team was going to “massacre” its opponents
in the upcoming game. The mascot was often given an appropriate local In-
dian name, whether that of a historical figure or a suitable invention—the
University of Florida mascot is “Chief Osceola,” an early nineteenth cen-
tury Seminole leader, while the former San Diego State University mascot
was “Monty Montezuma,” reflecting the city’s proximity to the ancient
Mexican Aztec empire.
The trend toward giving sport teams “Indian” names only began in the
early twentieth century. It is probably no coincidence that this fashion be-
gan with the closing of the American frontier and the end of outright hostil-
ities between Native Americans and the U.S. government. The reduction of
the actual threat posed by Native Americans allowed them to become ro-
mantic figures whose virtues could now be idealized.
Although more than six hundred teams have changed their names since
the first wave of political sensitivity in the 1970’s, the issue of racially
charged sports mascots reached another peak in the 1990’s. In a large
Sports mascot controversies / 519
part, this was due to the resistance of remaining Indian-themed teams

to changing their names, on the grounds that such names were, in fact,
complimentary, referring to Native American bravery, physical prowess,
and overall martial virtues. Furthermore, the backers of Indian team
names and mascots claimed that words such as “redskin” no longer car-
ried the kind of cultural baggage that had made them pejoratives in the
nineteenth century. In twentieth century America, they argued, the pri-
mary association of such words was with sports themselves: “Redskins”
was first and foremost the name of the Washington, D.C., football team,
and the “Braves” play baseball in Atlanta, Georgia. Such arguments were
fueled by the conservative backlash against political correctness, perceived
as the imposition of the will of overly sensitive minorities on the majority
culture.
A Harris poll of 743 sports fans, 217 Native Americans living on reserva-
tions, and 134 Native Americans living off reservations, conducted by
Sports Illustrated magazine in February, 2002, revealed that not only most
white Americans (79 percent) but also most Native Americans (83 percent)
did not believe that sports teams should stop using Indian nicknames, mas-
cots, or symbols. Surprisingly, the gap in opinion was larger between Na-
tive Americans on reservations (67 percent in favor of Indian mascots) and
off reservations (89 percent in favor) than between Native Americans as a
whole and whites. However, the more significant result of the poll was
probably the finding that, while Native Americans might not disapprove
of the simple use of even pejorative words such as “redskin,” they did ob-
ject to derogatory representations of Native Americans through the mas-
cots’ on-field antics.
Anthropologists Charles Springwood and Richard King, who coedited a
collection of essays, Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy
(2001), reported that the negative stereotyping of Native Americans as the
result of Indian names and mascots tends to come, not from the teams
themselves, who regard their names as symbols of strength and power, but
from their opponents, who draw upon the vast cultural repertoire of im-
ages of Indians as savage, primitive, incompetent, and vanquished to pro-
mote their own team spirit. The danger of Indian mascots, Springwood and
King argue, is that they provide a cultural arena for the perpetuation of
these negative stereotypes that is, ironically, completely irrelevant to the
history of actual Native Americans.
Some Native Americans, however, have decided that equal opportunity
stereotyping is the best way to get their message across. In 2002, a Native
American intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colo-
rado named themselves the “Fightin’ Whites.” Their mascot is a 1950’s
520 / Standing Bear v. Crook
style white male, complete with tie, dimples, and tidy hair. His slogan: “Ev-
ery thang’s going to be all white.”
Leslie Ellen Jones
See also: American Indian; Amerind; Native American; Tribe.
Standing Bear v. Crook

Date: 1879
Locale: Nebraska
Tribes involved: Ponca
Significance: A United States district court finds that “an Indian is a
‘person’ within the meaning of the laws of the United States.”
In 1865, the Ponca, a small tribe, were guaranteed a ninety-six-thousand-

acre reservation along the Missouri River in northern Nebraska. Three
years later, the United States gave the entire Ponca Reservation to the Sioux
without consulting the Poncas. The government’s solution was to remove
the Poncas to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Despite Ponca protests, in 1879
federal troops escorted the whole tribe south to Indian Territory.
Hardships caused by the journey and the radical change in climate
caused many deaths among the Ponca. The people longed to return to their
homeland, and in January, 1879, one chief, Standing Bear, set out for home
with a small group of followers. After the people reached Nebraska, fed-
eral troops arrested the runaways in order to return them to Indian Terri-
tory.
The plight of Standing Bear captured national attention, and promi-
nent lawyers in Omaha drew up a writ of habeas corpus to prevent the peo-
ple’s return to Indian Territory. On April 30, 1879, when the matter came
before the United States district court in Omaha, Judge Elmer S. Dundy
ruled “an Indian is a ‘person’ within the meaning of the laws of the United
States” and determined that Standing Bear and his followers had been ille-
gally detained by the federal government. The Ponca affair got national at-
tention and inspired the formation of organizations to fight for Indian
rights.
Carole A. Barrett
Taos Rebellion / 521
Taos Rebellion
Locale: Taos, New Mexico
Tribes involved: Apache, Comanche, Taos
Significance: Resistance by Hispanics and Indians in New Mexico leads
to the first revolt against new U.S. authority.
In the twenty years prior to the outbreak of the Mexican-American War

(1846-1848), the northern borderlands frontier of Mexico had undergone
profound changes. A breakdown in relations with Native Americans, par-
ticularly the Apaches and the Comanches, resulted in such an increase in
Native American raids that whole sections of the frontier were depop-
ulated of settlers. Unable to institute effective pacification measures, the
national government in Mexico City largely abdicated responsibility for
frontier defense to the northern Mexican states and territories, a task few
had the resources to implement or maintain. At the same time, U.S. in-
fluence in the borderlands was growing. In the province of New Mexico,
the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 increasingly drew north-central
Mexico into the economic sphere of the United States; while in Mexican
Texas, large-scale U.S. immigration led that area to declare its indepen-
dence from Mexico in 1835-1836. When the United States annexed Texas in
1845, precipitating the crisis that would lead to war with Mexico, the north-
ern borderlands frontier of Mexico seemed acutely vulnerable to a U.S.
takeover.
Kearney and the Army of the West. In Missouri, Colonel Stephen Watts
Kearny recruited the so-called Army of the West among enthusiastic fron-
tier supporters of manifest destiny and Missouri merchants eager to ex-
pand their Mexican markets. Following the Santa Fe Trail, Kearny and six-
teen hundred troops set out first for Bent’s Fort, a trading establishment
just north of the Arkansas River, then the United States-Mexico border.
Charles and William Bent, with their partner Ceran St. Vrain, had es-
tablished the post in 1833. From it, they had quickly monopolized the fur
and American Indian trades of the southern Rockies and Great Plains.
They also had expanded into the Santa Fe trade, operating a mercantile
outlet in Taos, New Mexico, where Charles Bent had taken up residence af-
ter marrying into a prominent New Mexican family. From Bent’s Fort,
Kearny’s forces left for New Mexico, preceded by James Wiley Magoffin, a
522 / Taos Rebellion
Santa Fe trader acting as President James Polk’s emissary. Arriving in Santa

Fe, Magoffin secretly met with New Mexico governor Manuel Armijo and
persuaded him that resistance was futile. After making a show of defend-
ing the province, Armijo fled southward, allowing U.S. troops to occupy
New Mexico. On August 18, 1846, Kearny’s forces entered Santa Fe, the
capital.
Kearny quickly reassured the sixty thousand inhabitants of New Mex-
ico that U.S. rule would not threaten their persons or possessions. The
Kearny Code, in conjunction with the United States Constitution, codified
these promises and provided a legal framework for the conquered prov-
ince. Kearny established a new civil government, naming Charles Bent
as governor and Donaciano Vigil of Santa Fe as secretary or lieutenant
governor. Soon after, Kearny departed for California to continue the con-
quest of northern Mexico. Colonel Sterling Price, newly arrived from
Missouri with additional troops to garrison the province, took military
command.
Kearny’s governmental appointments had excluded many of the New
Mexico ricos, or upper classes, who had formerly controlled the province.
Several of his appointees, many of whom had traded for years in New Mex-
ico, held land grants or interests in land grants that had been issued earlier
by former governor Armijo. Their new positions of authority gave these
appointees the opportunity to expand their New Mexico holdings at the ex-
A photograph of Taos Pueblo recorded by the Library of Congress in 1878, approxi-

mately three decades after the rebellion. (Library of Congress)
Taos Rebellion / 523
pense of the ricos, or so many ricos believed. Rumors began circulating

throughout the province that the U.S. occupiers wished to register land ti-
tles, in preparation for the seizure of the ricos’ property, and to exact heavy
taxes (as a territory of Mexico, New Mexico was exempt from paying na-
tional taxes). Moreover, Taos Indians believed that Charles Bent also
wished to acquire lands of the Pueblo de Taos. As a result, Tomás Ortiz,
Diego Archuleta (formerly Armijo’s second-in-command), and possibly
Padre Antonio José Martínez of Taos, along with other prominent native
New Mexicans, began to conspire against U.S. rule, planning an uprising.
Lieutenant Governor Vigil, learning of the conspiracy, quickly suppressed
it, but not before news of the planned insurrection had spread to towns and
communities in northern New Mexico.
Bent Is Ambushed. On January 14, 1847, Governor Bent left for Taos (also
called Don Fernando de Taos, to differentiate it from the pueblo of the same
name, only two miles north of the village), ignoring warnings from Vigil
that such a journey might be dangerous in the volatile climate following
the suppression of the conspiracy. Bent felt reasonably secure, not only be-
cause he had long resided in Taos but also because news of U.S. victories
farther south in Chihuahua seemed to preclude the possibility of aid reach-
ing New Mexico from that quarter. On January 19, 1847, however, Taos In-
dians, led by one Tomasito, joined insurrectionists in the village, led by
Pablo Montoya. They destroyed U.S. settlers’ homes and attacked the resi-
dence of Charles Bent. Bent himself was killed and scalped, as were other
Americans and Mexican supporters of the new regime. The insurrection-
ists then burned a nearby distillery at Arroyo Hondo, also operated by a
U.S. citizen. Similar uprisings occurred at other northern communities,
most notably at Mora, where seven more U.S. settlers, many of them Santa
Fe traders, were killed.
When news of these events reached Santa Fe, Colonel Price immedi-
ately set out for Taos with 480 men and four artillery pieces, while Vigil
took over as provisional governor and issued a proclamation denouncing
the rebels. The insurgents, numbering almost two thousand, met Price’s
forces on January 29, 1847, at the village of Cañada, twenty-five miles north
of Santa Fe. The U.S. settlers drove the rebels toward the Pueblo de Taos,
where they made their stand in the fortress-like church. On February 3,
1847, the battle resumed. Turning their artillery on the church, the U.S.
forces breached the walls, forcing the insurgents out. After more fighting,
the Taos Indians and their Hispanic allies eventually surrendered, having
suffered losses of 150 persons. U.S. losses were seven killed and forty-
seven wounded.
524 / Taos Rebellion
Fate of the Conspirators. While in custody awaiting trial, Tomasito, be-

lieved to have been responsible for Bent’s murder, was shot and killed
by a U.S. soldier. Pablo Montoya and fourteen others were tried by court-
martial and sentenced to death. The New Mexico civil court indicted other
conspirators, who were subsequently tried for treason against the United
States and executed. President Polk and Secretary of War William L. Marcy
later pointed out that the conspirators could not actually have been guilty
of treason against the United States, as the United States and Mexico were
still at war. Nevertheless, they supported the measures taken to end the up-
rising and the execution of its principal leaders. Diego Archuleta fled New
Mexico before he could be apprehended but later returned, took the oath of
allegiance to the United States, and became active in territorial politics. Pa-
dre Martínez, against whom nothing was ever proven definitely, also es-
caped indictment and continued his leadership role in northern New Mex-
ico until his death in 1867.
Although peace returned to New Mexico following the uprising, four
years of military rule followed. In 1850, the Territory of New Mexico was fi-
nally established. Although Anglo-Americans tended to dominate feder-
ally appointed positions, the New Mexico ricos established firm control
over the legislative assembly, largely securing their place in the new order.
Other native New Mexicans, however, lost their lands to unscrupulous
Anglo-American lawyers who used their knowledge of U.S. law and their
political connections to undermine land guarantees given in the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War. The Taos Indians lost
much of their former territory during the period of U.S. rule over New
Mexico.
See also: Apache Wars; Gadsden Purchase; Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty
of; Navajo War.
Joseph C. Jastrzembski

Crutchfield, James Andrew. Tragedy at Taos: The Revolt of 1847. Plano, Tex.:
Republic of Texas Press, 1995. First comprehensive narrative of the events
at Taos. Contains valuable appendices concerning the participants, a
chronology of events, casualty figures, and other items of interest.
Keleher, William A. Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846-1868. Santa Fe, N.Mex.:
Rydal Press, 1952. Details the events leading up to the U.S. invasion of
New Mexico and the subsequent occupation of the province.
Simmons, Marc. New Mexico: An Interpretive History. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1988. Chapter 4 covers the events of the occu-
pation of New Mexico and briefly discusses the Taos Rebellion.
Tecumseh’s Rebellion / 525
Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. The History of the Military Occupation of the Terri-
tory of New Mexico from 1846 to 1851 by the Government of the United States.
1909. Reprint. Chicago: Rio Grande Press, 1963. Quotes extensively from
government documents; provides biographical sketches of the principal
participants.
Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest
Under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. A
comprehensive overview of the Mexican borderlands before the Mexi-
can War. Discusses the economic impact of the Santa Fe Trade, American
Indian relations, the church, society, and culture.
Tecumseh’s Rebellion
Date: 1809-1811
Locale: Old Northwest (Great Lakes region)
Significance: Tecumseh, a powerful advocate of united Indian resis-
tance to American encroachments onto Indian lands east of the Mis-
sissippi River, led what many believe was the last great hope for ef-
fective Indian opposition to the advance of the European American
frontier in the eastern portion of the United States.
Soon after the conclusion of the Treaty of Fort Greenville in 1795, frontiers-
men, land speculators, and settlers surged into the newly opened lands
and beyond into Indian country, thereby exacerbating tensions with the
tribes. As pressure mounted for further expansion beyond the line delim-
ited under the terms of the Treaty of Fort Greenville, the governor of the
new Indiana Territory, William Henry Harrison, inaugurated a policy de-
signed to acquire additional territory from the Indians incrementally. Hence,
between 1802 and 1809, Harrison and Governor William Hull of the Michi-
gan Territory concluded a series of treaties under the terms of which a sig-
nificant portion of the area between the Great Lakes, the Ohio River, and
the Mississippi River were opened for settlement. As the white settlers
pressed against the Indians from the south and east, the tribes north of
the Ohio Valley were simultaneously pressed from the west by the expan-
sive Chippewa and Sioux in the upper Mississippi region. Hence, under
526 / Tecumseh’s Rebellion
vicelike pressure from several

directions, the tribes increas-
ingly concluded that they would
have to coordinate their poli-
cies and be prepared to fight or
perish.
Indian Resistance. Tecumseh

and his brother, the Shawnee
Prophet Tenskwatawa, emerged
determined to preserve the iden-
tity and territorial integrity of
the tribes and their lands in the
region between the Great Lakes
and the Ohio River Valley. Te-
cumseh maintained that the
Americans had been success-
ful in depriving the Indians of
A portrait of the most influential pantribal leader their lands because the tribes
of the early eighteenth century, Tecumseh, had consistently failed to stand
painted by Mathias Noheimer. (Library of Con-
unified against external en-
gress)
croachments. Hence, he argued
that the tribes must create a
meaningful confederation and agree not to cede additional lands to the
United States without the concurrence of all the tribes in the union. Only in
this way could the tribes negotiate with the Americans from a position of
strength. Moreover, Tecumseh and his brother called upon the Indians to
purge themselves of corrupting influences, such as alcohol, and return to
traditional ways. Finally, notwithstanding the Indian disillusionment with
the British as a result of Britain’s abandonment of the Indians in 1794,
Tecumseh again looked to Great Britain for political and material support
in his effort to coalesce effective resistance to the Americans. Indeed, be-
cause of escalating Anglo-American tensions as a result of the Chesapeake
Affair of 1807, the British were more willing to extend the support sought
by Tecumseh. Consequently, Tecumseh and his brother made considerable
progress toward the establishment of an Indian Confederation and the re-
newal of Indian society.
In 1808, as momentum gathered behind Tecumseh and his new confed-
eration, he and his brother founded Prophetstown, located near the conflu-
ence of Tippecanoe Creek and the Wabash River. The Indian leaders hoped
that Prophetstown would serve as a center of the confederation movement
Tecumseh’s Rebellion / 527
and that from it Tecumseh and his brother could influence the policies of
the tribes throughout the region bounded by the Great Lakes, the Missis-
sippi River, and the Ohio Valley. In addition, in 1808 Tecumseh visited the
British at Fort Malden, across the U.S.-Canadian border near Detroit. On
this occasion, the British assured Tecumseh of their full support of the
tribes’ combined efforts to form a confederation and to resist further Amer-
ican encroachments upon their lands. The British authorities, however,
urged the Indian leaders not to be the ones to initiate hostilities along the
frontier.
As a result of continued efforts by American authorities to detach addi-
tional Indian lands (culminating in the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809),
American intransigence concerning the implementation of the various
treaties negotiated since the Treaty of Fort Greenville, and, finally, contin-
ued encroachment by American frontiersmen into Indian territory, hostili-
ties again erupted along the frontier in 1810. Both Tecumseh and the British
attempted to ameliorate the crisis, but radical elements among the tribes
pressed for more aggressive military action against the Americans.
During the summer of 1811, Tecumseh traveled south of the Ohio River
in an effort to enlist the support of the Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw
tribes. The Creeks expressed support for Tecumseh, but Cherokee and
Choctaw leaders were reluctant to take actions that might provoke open
warfare with the United States government.
Tippecanoe. With Tecumseh absent from his center of power north of the
Ohio, Harrison decided to avail himself of the opportunity and attack the
geographic heart of the confederation movement—Prophetstown. By No-
vember 6, 1811, Harrison’s force had moved to a position less than a mile
from Prophetstown. The following day, on November 7, as Harrison had
hoped, the Indians, unrestrained because of Tecumseh’s absence, attacked
the American force and were severely defeated amid heavy fighting. Fol-
lowing this costly victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison’s force
destroyed Prophetstown before returning to their base of operations at
Vincennes.
Following the Tippecanoe campaign, the frontier war continued; even-
tually it was submerged in the context of the greater struggle between the
United States and Great Britain in the War of 1812. Tecumseh was killed at
the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813. In many respects, the death of
this great Indian leader marked the end of the last real hope of effective In-
dian resistance to American settlement east of the Mississippi and the ex-
tinction of the traditional Indian culture in the eastern portion of the
United States.
528 / Termination Resolution
See also: Fort Wayne Treaty; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830;

Prophetstown; Thames, Battle of the; Tippecanoe, Battle of.
Howard M. Hensel

Row, 1965.
Prucha, Francis Paul. The Sword of the Republic. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
Tucker, Glenn. Tecumseh: Vision of Glory. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956.
Termination Resolution
Date: Beginning August 1, 1953
history
Significance: Congress ends its policy of special treatment of American
Indians.
Termination was viewed by its advocates as freeing American Indians

from special laws and regulations, making them equal to other citizens,
and by opponents as precipitously withdrawing federal responsibility and
programs. The term used for the federal policy came to be applied to the
people themselves: “terminated” tribes. Termination actions included re-
pealing laws setting American Indians apart, ending Bureau of Indian Af-
fairs (BIA) services by transferring them to other federal agencies or to
the states, and terminating recognition of the sovereign status of specific
tribes.
Termination, many have observed, did not deviate from the norm of fed-
eral policy. Its emphasis on breaking up American Indian land holdings is
often compared to the General Allotment Act of 1887 (the Dawes Act). The
latter required the allocation of a certain number of acres to each person
and, during its forty-seven years in force, reduced tribal lands by nearly
ninety-one million acres.
In public debate, opponents of termination argued that the United
States had a special obligation to American Indians because they had been
Termination Resolution / 529
conquered and deprived of their customary way of life. All people in the
United States, opponents said, have the right to be different and to live
in the groupings they prefer. Any changes in federal supervision of Ameri-
can Indians should be implemented slowly and with the involvement of
the affected tribes; rather than dissolving tribal communities, federal pol-
icy should continue meeting tribes’ special needs until those needs no
longer exist. Opponents also pointed to American Indian culture, tribal
lands, and tribal government—their form of community—as their source
of strength.
Advocates of termination asserted that all U.S. citizens should be simi-
lar, and there should be no communities with special legal rights. Dis-
solving separate American Indian communities would expedite the inte-
gration of these people into the mainstream. American Indians, according
to Senator Arthur V. Wakens, would be freed from wardship or federal re-
strictions and would become self-reliant, with no diminution of their tribal
culture. Wakens saw termination as liberation of American Indians and
compared it to the Emancipation Proclamation. Non-natives objected to
the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, the prior federal policy, and
were swayed toward termination by several arguments: American In-
dian communal property ownership and their form of government resem-
bled communism; the IRA’s promotion of American Indian traditions
amounted to condoning heathenism; developers wanted tribal lands made
available; and Congress perceived that the resignation of Indian Commis-
sioner John Collier (the IRA’s chief advocate) and severe BIA budget cuts
had diminished its effectiveness, necessitating a stepped-up program of
assimilation.
Zimmerman’s Formula. After Collier’s resignation, Senator William Langer

asked Acting Commissioner William Zimmerman for a formula for evalu-
ating tribal readiness for termination. On February 8, 1947, Zimmerman
presented, in a congressional hearing, three categories of tribes—those
who could be terminated immediately, those who could function with lit-
tle federal supervision within ten years, and those who needed more than
ten years to prepare. He discussed the four criteria used in his lists and
presented three specimen termination bills. This testimony was embraced
by termination supporters and, Zimmerman believed, frequently mis-
quoted.
In 1950, Dillon Myer, a staunch advocate of immediate termination, be-
came Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Although he claimed to be stream-
lining the BIA, it seemed to some that he was moving to dissolve both the
bureau and all IRA programs. Myer was asked to write a legislative pro-
530 / Termination Resolution
posal for expeditious termination of federal supervision of American Indi-

ans. The result was House Concurrent Resolution 108 (August 1, 1953),
which passed with little debate. The resolution directed Congress to make
American Indians subject to the same laws, privileges, and responsibilities
as other citizens; to end their wardship status; and to free specific tribes
from federal control as soon as possible. Once the named tribes were termi-
nated, the BIA offices serving them would be abolished.
PL 83-280 (August 15, 1953) also advanced termination. It transferred to
the states, without tribal consent, jurisdiction over civil and criminal of-
fenses on reservations in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and
Wisconsin. It provided that, by legislative action, any other state could as-
sume similar jurisdiction.
Termination Bills of 1954. A rush of termination bills was introduced in

1954. As problems with the termination process became known and the
membership of congressional committees changed (after 1956), legislation
slowed. These acts caused several changes: Tribal lands were either ap-
praised or put under a corporation’s management; the federal government
no longer protected the land for the tribe; state legislative and judicial au-
thority replaced tribal government; tribe members no longer received a
state tax exemption; and tribes lost the benefits of special federal health,
education, and other social programs.
Fifteen termination acts were passed between 1954 and 1962, affecting
110 tribes or bands in eight states: the Menominee, Klamath, Western Ore-
gon (sixty-one tribes and bands), Alabama-Coushatta, Mixed-Blood Ute,
Southern Paiute, Lower Lake Rancheria, Wyandotte, Peoria, Ottawa, Coy-
ote Valley Ranch, California Rancheria (37 rancherias), Catawba, and Ponca.
Termination of the Menominee of Wisconsin received the most atten-
tion. The tribe was specifically targeted in House Concurrent Resolution
108, and their termination act was passed on June 17, 1954. They appeared
to be the healthiest tribe economically, as a result of their lumbering and
forestry operations, but were not as ready for termination as they seemed.
In 1951, the Menominee won a fifteen-year legal battle against the federal
government, awarding them $8.5 million in damages for mismanagement
of their tribal forest. They could not obtain the award, however, until Con-
gress passed an act appropriating it. The tribe asked that part of the money
be released—amounting to fifteen hundred dollars per capita. Senator
Wakens’s Subcommittee on Indian Affairs told the tribe that if they could
manage fifteen hundred dollars per person, they were ready for freedom
from federal wardship. Termination, he suggested, was inevitable, and the
tribe would not receive the money unless they moved to accept a termina-
Termination Resolution / 531
tion amendment to the per-capita payment bill. The election was not a true
tribal referendum, as only 174 members voted; many of these later said that
they had not understood what they were voting for.
Final termination of the Menominee did not go into effect until 1961. The
tribe had to decide how to set up municipalities, establish a tax system,
provide law and order, and sell their tribal assets. There were complica-
tions concerning the payment of estimated taxes on Menominee forests.
Federal officials saw the tribe’s reluctance as procrastination. State agen-
cies could provide only limited assistance, because the tribe was still under
federal control.
As a result of these experiences and others, both American Indians and
non-Indians became critical of termination. BIA expenditures spiraled in
the late 1950’s. Many terminated tribe members felt uncomfortable living
in the mainstream and often were not accepted socially by non-Indians. Re-
located Indians often suffered poverty in the cities and often became de-
pendent on social programs. Some terminated tribes later applied for fed-
eral recognition. During its short span (the last act was passed in 1962),
termination affected 13,263 of a total population of 400,000, or 3 percent of
the federally recognized American Indians. The acts withdrew 1,365,801
acres of trust land, or 3 percent of the approximately 43,000,000 acres held
in 1953. The end of federal endorsement of the termination policy was seen
in 1969, when President Richard Nixon, in a message to Congress, called
for promotion of self-determination and the strengthening of American In-
dian autonomy without threatening community.
See also: Allotment system; Bureau of Indian Affairs; General Allotment
Act; Indian Reorganization Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002.
Glenn Ellen Starr

Fixico, Donald L. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-
1960. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Detailed dis-
cussion, from World War II through 1981. Discusses the Menominee and
Klamath, as well as smaller tribes. Useful analysis of Dillon Myer and PL
83-280.
La Farge, Oliver. “Termination of Federal Supervision: Disintegration and
the American Indians.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and So-
cial Science 311 (May, 1957): 41-46. Summarizes arguments against termi-
nation, except when tribes request it and members are ready to handle
their own affairs.
Philp, Kenneth R. Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-
Determination, 1933-1953. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. A
532 / Thames, Battle of the
history of termination policy, with useful emphasis on the ambivalent

attitudes of Native Americans themselves towards U.S. policy.
American Indian. Vol. 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Por-
tions of chapters 40 and 41 provide a succinct, balanced account of the
aims of termination; its articulation in Congress, the popular press,
and American Indian publications; congressional and federal actions to
bring it about; and its impact.
Stefon, Frederick J. “The Irony of Termination: 1943-1958.” The Indian Histo-
rian 11, no. 3 (Summer, 1978): 3-14. A thorough chronological review that
begins with 1887 and ends in 1968. Copiously documented, with many
quotations from congressional documents and policymakers.
Walch, Michael C. “Terminating the Indian Termination Policy.” Stanford
Law Review 35, no. 6 (July, 1983): 1181-1215. Well-documented survey of
the rise of termination, its effects, and the impact of the fact that Con-
gress did not repeal the termination acts.
Thames, Battle of the

Locale: Ontario, Canada
Tribes involved: Shawnee, Sac, Fox, Ottawa, Ojibwa, Wyandot, Potawa-
tomi, Winnebago, Lenni Lenape, Kickapoo
Significance: U.S. victory in the Northwestern theater of the War of
1812 also sees the death of Tecumseh and the decline of his multi-
tribal alliance.
The Battle of the Thames was an important United States victory in the
Northwestern theater during the War of 1812 with Great Britain. The battle
took place on the northern bank of the Thames River near Moraviantown in
Upper Canada (southern Ontario Province). In the Battle of Put-In Bay
(September 10, 1813), U.S. naval forces won control of Lake Erie. This pre-
vented reinforcement and resupply of the British army at the lake’s west-
ern end, in the vicinity of Detroit and Fort Malden.
When a superior U.S. force under William Henry Harrison crossed the
lake on September 27, the British commander in Upper Canada, Major
General Henry Procter, began withdrawing toward the east along the
Thames, Battle of the / 533
The Shawnee chief Tecumseh, leader of a confederation of Indian tribes and sup-
porter of the British during the Battle of the Thames, lost his life to the Americans in
that confrontation. With his death came the decline of the multitribal allliance that
Tecumseh had fashioned and brilliantly led, dissolution of native support for the
British, and victory for the colonists in the Northwestern theater of the War of 1812.
Thames River. Procter’s native allies, who made up the bulk of his forces,
angrily protested the abandonment of their homelands in Michigan. The
Shawnee chief Tecumseh, leader of an alliance of warriors from many
tribes, was reassured by Procter that a stand soon would be made against
Harrison’s advancing army. Procter’s retreat up the Thames was misman-
aged and slow, and most of his spare ammunition and other supplies were
lost. Harrison’s faster-moving army overtook the British on October 5, forc-
ing Procter to turn and fight before he had reached a defensive position be-
ing prepared at Moraviantown.
Tecumseh’s Alliance. The British force included five hundred warriors of

Tecumseh’s alliance. Besides Tecumseh’s fellow Shawnees (then dwelling
principally in Indiana), there were warriors from the Sac, Fox, Ottawa,
Ojibwa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Lenni Lenape, and Kickapoo
nations, all from the Northwest Territory, and a small band of Creeks from
the South. Their women and children accompanied the still-loyal warriors.
534 / Thames, Battle of the
Approximately a thousand of Tecumseh’s followers, angered by Procter’s

retreat from Michigan, had abandoned the British. Proctor’s forces totaled
more than a thousand, including 450 regulars of the Forty-first Regiment of
Foot and a scattering of Canadian militia.
The U.S. army under Harrison numbered about three thousand troops.
One hundred twenty of these were infantrymen from the regular army; the
rest, Kentucky mounted militia volunteers. A thousand-soldier mounted
militia regiment commanded by Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson played a
decisive part in the battle. There were also 260 American Indians in Harri-
son’s force, including about 40 Shawnees.
Proctor’s British and American Indian force, outnumbered three-to-one
by the U.S. troops, took a position across a road that ran along the north
bank of the Thames River. With the river protecting his left flank and a
wooded swamp his right, Procter placed his British regulars in two parallel
lines a hundred yards apart. On his left, commanding the road, Procter po-
sitioned his one cannon, a six-pounder. Tecumseh’s warriors were placed
in the swamp on the British right flank. The swamp slanted away at an an-
gle that would enable the natives to fire into the left flank of U.S. troops ad-
vancing toward the British infantrymen. Because Procter expected Harri-
son to send his mounted units, as usual, against the Native Americans, he
dispersed the two lines of British soldiers thinly, sheltering behind scat-
tered trees in open order, several feet apart. Only when infantry were posi-
tioned almost shoulder-to-shoulder, however, could they effectively repel
a cavalry charge. When Harrison noticed this inviting disposition, he sent
Colonel Johnson’s mounted regiment to attack the British infantry, while
his other forces, dismounted as infantry, marched against the natives on
the American left. The small force of regular U.S. infantry was assigned to
rush the single British cannon.
Colonel Johnson’s well-drilled mounted regiment, organized in col-
umns, galloped through the two lines of thinly spread British infantry to
their rear. The militiamen then dismounted and began to fire. The British,
demoralized and hungry after not having eaten in more than fifty hours,
surrendered. Each line of British soldiers seems to have fired a single volley
and panicked. The crew of Procter’s one cannon fled without even firing it.
This part of the battle lasted less than five minutes.
The infantry units on the U.S. troops’ left were having much less success
against Tecumseh’s warriors in the swamp. The poorly disciplined militia
infantry, now on foot, were initially repulsed and driven back by the na-
tives. The collapse of the main British position enabled Johnson to swing
part of his regiment leftward to attack the Indians’ flank. At this point,
where his warriors joined the right of the British soldiers, Tecumseh and
Thames, Battle of the / 535
the Shawnees had taken their position. Led by Johnson and a small, select
group that called itself the Forlorn Hope, Johnson’s regiment dismounted
and pushed into the woods. Heavy firing erupted, and most of the twenty
men in the Forlorn Hope were killed or wounded. Colonel Johnson was hit
by five bullets, his horse by seven. Early in this intense action, Tecumseh
fell, killed by a shot near his heart.
With the death of their leader, the warriors in this part of the swamp (the
natives’ left) began to fall back. Demoralization spread, and this, coupled with
the continuing advance of the U.S. forces, brought an end to the fighting. Al-
though Procter, the British commander, had fled after a brief effort to rally
his troops, Tecumseh had stood his ground and died fighting, as he had
sworn to do. The native warriors had fought on for more than thirty minutes
after the British regulars had given up, but now they slipped away through
the woods to find their families. The victory of Harrison’s army was complete.
Aftermath. Because of mismanagement of the retreat and his poor han-

dling of the battle, Major General Procter was court-martialed and publicly
reprimanded. Harrison became a national hero, as did Colonel Johnson,
widely credited with having shot Tecumseh. Of the British troops 12 were
killed, 22 wounded, and 601 captured. Harrison reported a count of thirty-
three warriors’ bodies on the field. Contradictory records suggest that on
the U.S. side, as many as twenty-five were killed or mortally injured, and
thirty to fifty wounded.
The Battle of the Thames enabled the United States to regain control of
territory in the Detroit area that had been lost in earlier defeats, ended any
British threat at the western end of Lake Erie, and greatly reduced the danger
of tribal raids in the Northwest. An important result of the battle was the de-
cline of the multitribal alliance that Tecumseh had fashioned and brilliantly
led. Natives continued to take the field in support of British operations, but
now this support was sporadic and ineffective. Tecumseh’s strategy of pro-
tecting tribal lands through military cooperation with Great Britain had
failed. On the northern shore of Lake Erie, the Canadian right flank, a stale-
mate developed. Harrison’s army disintegrated as the enlistment of his
militiamen expired, and they returned to Kentucky. The weakened U.S.
troops were unable to advance eastward toward Burlington and York, or to
threaten British-held Michilimackinac to the north. However, U.S. naval
control of Lake Erie prevented fresh initiatives in the area by the British.
1775-1830; Little Turtle’s War; Pontiac’s Resistance; Prophetstown; Tecum-
seh’s Rebellion; Tippecanoe, Battle of.
Bert M. Mutersbaugh
536 / Tippecanoe, Battle of

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian
Press, 1992. Explains the Shawnee leaders’ struggles as part of a larger
pattern of cultural revitalization and military resistance. Maps, illustra-
tions, and index.
Press, 1983. An insightful study of the Shawnee society that produced
Tecumseh and his alliance. Argues that Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwa-
tawa, the Prophet, originated the alliance, which Tecumseh took over as
Tenskwatawa’s influence faded. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Brown, 1984. A brief treatment that concentrates on the warrior brother.
Map, illustrations, and index.
Gilpin, Alec R. The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest. East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1958. A scholarly, well-written study that puts
Harrison’s 1813 campaign and the Battle of the Thames into context of
the entire war in the Northwestern theater. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Sugden, John. Tecumseh’s Last Stand. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1985. Detailed analysis of the battle and the campaign that pre-
ceded it. Examines the question of who killed Tecumseh. Maps, illustra-
tions, and index.
Tippecanoe, Battle of
Locale: Indiana
Tribes involved: Kickapoo, Lenni Lenape, Miami, Potawatomi, Shaw-
nee, Winnebago, Wyandot (Huron)
Significance: The destruction of Prophetstown by an American army
broke the religious power of Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet)
but failed to demoralize the Indian movement led by his brother
Tecumseh.
During the early nineteenth century Tenskwatawa began to preach a new

religious message among the tribes of the Old Northwest. At the heart of
his message was a rejection of European American influence. Aided by his
Tippecanoe, Battle of / 537
brother Tecumseh, an intertribal Indian movement took hold which threat-

ened the ability of U.S. Indian agents to force land cessions on the tribes of
the Old Northwest.
In the spring of 1808, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh led their followers
to the banks of the Wabash River and began to construct a capital for
their movement which came to be known as Prophetstown. Working
from this base of operations, the two brothers proselytized among the In-
dian villages of the Great Lakes and the Ohio River Valley. Thousands of
warriors from numerous tribes flocked to Prophetstown, causing alarm
among American settlers in the region. Tensions increased after Indiana
Governor William Henry Harrison concluded the Treaty of Fort Wayne
(1809), which provided for a land cession of three million acres of Indian
land.
Convinced that Tecumseh was plotting to kill him, Harrison raised an
army of a thousand men and prepared a campaign to destroy Prophets-
town. When Tecumseh journeyed to the south to bring his message to the
Choctaw and the Creek, Harrison saw his opportunity. On November 6,
1811, the American army was on the west bank of the Wabash, within a mile
of Prophetstown.
The Battle of Tippecanoe ended Tenskwatawa’s spiritual influence but not his
brother Tecumseh’s resistance efforts. (Library of Congress)
538 / Trade and Intercourse Acts
In the absence of his brother, Tenskwatawa had little control over the
warriors in his village. The Shawnee Prophet sent a delegation to meet with
Harrison on the afternoon of November 6, seeking to assure the governor
that they did not have hostile intentions toward Americans. Unimpressed
by these words, Harrison planned to attack the Indian village the following
day. During the night, Tenskwatawa exhorted his Indian warriors to attack
the enemy before dawn. He assured them that his magic would confuse the
American soldiers. He also instructed them to kill Harrison.
The Indians struck Harrison’s camp two hours before sunrise. Alert sen-
tries fired warning shots in time to wake the Americans. A few warriors
managed to penetrate the interior of the American camp, but Harrison man-
aged to escape and rally his troops. Fierce fighting bent the American line on
several occasions, but Harrison was able to shift troops skillfully in time.
At dawn, the Indian warriors began to retreat, and Harrison ordered his
troops to charge. The American advance forced Tenskwatawa to abandon
Prophetstown. During the fighting, Tenskwatawa prayed to the Master of
Life for victory. Unfortunately, his spiritual powers failed. Tenskwatawa
was discredited by the Battle of Tippecanoe. Many angry warriors con-
fronted the Prophet after the defeat. He blamed the failure of his magic on
his wife’s unclean state.
Harrison’s victory was far from overwhelming. Of the estimated seven
hundred warriors who attacked his camp, about fifty were killed and
eighty were wounded. The larger American force sustained 188 casualties.
Harrison burned Prophetstown, but he failed to end hostilities. The de-
feated warriors returned to their villages and led further attacks against
frontier settlements throughout the Old Northwest.
1775-1830; Little Turtle’s War; Pontiac’s Resistance; Prophetstown; Tecum-
seh’s Rebellion; Thames, Battle of the.
Thomas D. Matijasic

Date: 1790-1834
lation, Nineteenth century history
Trade and Intercourse Acts / 539
Significance: These acts were efforts by the U.S. government to restrain

private settlement and enterprise by European Americans in Indian
territory; the restrictions eroded as a part of the market revolution of
the nineteenth century.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States gov-
ernment feared that rapacious private traders and land-grabbing settlers
were creating resentment among Indians that could lead to war on the fron-
tier of white settlement. Therefore, the government sought to prevent the
wholesale migration of white settlers westward to lands controlled by Indi-
ans, regulate the trade in furs between Indians and European Americans,
and acculturate Indians to Euro-American norms. The government hoped
that these efforts would preserve peace between Indians and European
Americans. The vehicles for these goals were the successive Indian Trade
and Intercourse Acts. The first Trade and Intercourse Act was passed in
1790 and was scheduled to expire at the end of the congressional session of
1793. Before expiration, a new Trade and Intercourse Act was passed in
1793. Further laws were enacted in 1796, 1799, and 1802. The 1802 act was
made permanent; it stood until 1834.
The Trade and Intercourse Acts built upon precedents established by the
Continental Congress in an ordinance of August 7, 1786. The Ordinance of
1786 empowered the federal government to issue licenses to United States
citizens allowing them to reside among or trade with Indians. Like the later
Trade and Intercourse Acts, the ordinance was an assertion of federal over
state power in the regulation of Indian affairs.
The Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 provided for the licensing of pri-
vate traders and outlined the penalties for trading without a license. The
act of 1790 also detailed the punishments for crimes committed by whites
against Indians. The act of 1793 reiterated the provisions of the 1790 act in
stronger terms and further authorized the distribution of goods to Indians
to promote acculturation to Euro-American mores. In response to the con-
tinuing influx of white settlers, the act of 1796 delineated the boundaries of
territories belonging to Indians, the first such delineation by the federal
government. The acts of 1799 and 1802 were substantially similar to the act
of 1796.
In 1834, the federal government for the last time passed an Indian Trade
and Intercourse Act. The 1834 act defined Indian territory as all lands west
of the Mississippi River excluding the states of Missouri and Louisiana and
the territory of Arkansas. The 1834 act banned liquor from the trade and
outlawed white fur trappers from operating in Indian territory. Unlike any
of the previous acts, however, the 1834 law empowered the federal govern-
540 / Trail of Broken Treaties
ment to use force to stop intertribal wars in order to protect the interests of
fur trade companies. Ironically, a series of acts that began in 1790 by reining
in white traders in order to preserve peace ended in 1834 by policing Indi-
ans in order to protect traders.
See also: Albany Congress; Fur trade; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
1830.
Andrew C. Isenberg
Trail of Broken Treaties

Date: October 6-November 8, 1972
Locale: From Seattle to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Oklahoma City
to Washington, D.C.
Significance: Militant American Indians take over the Bureau of Indian
Affairs to protest U.S. government treaty policies.
Against the backdrop of political activism in 1969, the rise of Red Power be-
gan with the occupation of Alcatraz Island, which became a symbol of
American Indian unity. New tribal alliances were formed around a com-
mon purpose: to bring attention to continuing failures in the bureaucratic
administration of American Indian affairs. During the summer gathering
at Rosebud Sioux Reservation, residents and members of the American In-
dian Movement (AIM) began plans for a caravan to Washington, D.C., just
prior to election day.
Eight American Indian organizations planned the event, and four na-
tional groups endorsed its concept. The new alliance, including tribes from
Canada and Latin America, was known as the Trail of Broken Treaties and
Pan American Native Quest for Justice. Planning for the possibility of
150,000 participants, cochairs Reuben Snake, a Winnebago, and Robert
Burnette, a Lakota, organized eleven committees, including media, medi-
cal, congressional contact, emergency legal needs, and participant accredi-
tation.
The spiritual foundation of the caravan was declared in a public state-
ment inviting “all Indians, spiritual leaders of the Western Hemisphere,
and Indian interest groups to participate,” but excluding all persons who
would
Trail of Broken Treaties / 541
cause civil disorder, block traffic, burn flags, destroy property, or shout ob-
scenities in the street. . . . Each trail would be led by spiritual leaders who car-
ried the Sacred Peace Pipe and Drum . . . and every pipe smoked was to remind
America of the manner in which the treaties were signed.
Burnette emphasized the serious purpose of the caravan:
We should be on our finest behavior . . . ban all alcohol and drugs, with expul-
sions guaranteed to violators. The Caravan must be our finest hour.
The Trail to Washington. Departing for Washington, D.C., on October 6,

caravans passed through historic sites, stopping to offer prayer. Requests
had been made for a police escort into Washington, adequate housing, per-
mission to conduct honoring ceremonies at Arlington, and presentation of
the Twenty Points. The Twenty Points to be presented formally to the ad-
ministration covered treaty reform, reform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA), new land policies, improved cultural and economic conditions, and
criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians on reservations.
Even as the caravan traveled, obstructions were being planned in Wash-
ington, D.C. In a memorandum to BIA commissioner Louis Bruce, dated
October 11, Harrison Loesch of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
stated, “This is to give you very specific instructions that the Bureau is not
to provide any assistance or funding, either directly or indirectly” to the
AIM demonstration in early November.
The caravan of the first five hundred participants arrived in Washing-
ton, D.C., at 4:00 a.m. on November 2. Denied the official recognition of a
police escort, they proceeded through downtown blowing horns and stop-
ping traffic. At 6:00 a.m., they paused in front of the White House to drum
and sing a victory song, after which their police escort arrived. The early
caravanners faced more barriers when the Army denied permission for
Arlington ceremonies, and housing arrangements revealed a building full
of rats. They headed for their only home, the BIA, where they were permit-
ted to await accommodations.
Hostilities Escalate. With no solution by afternoon, confusion and hostil-

ity escalated. When the shifts changed at 4:00 p.m., the new guards were un-
aware of the agreement, and in trying to clear the area, began to remove the
American Indians forcibly, attacking several with clubs. The misunder-
standing escalated into panic as the injured Indians alerted others of im-
pending attacks. Riot police surrounded the building, while Indians inside
barricaded doorways with desks and chairs. They broke off table legs for
542 / Trail of Broken Treaties
At the end of the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan, protestors occupied the Bureau of
Indian Affairs building for six days after security guards tried to remove them.
clubs and stacked typewriters upstairs to drop out the windows on intrud-
ers. The Twenty Points and the significant spiritual purpose of the caravans
were disregarded in the conflict over housing and food.
The likelihood of gaining public support for their cause was hindered
by media attention to the unplanned takeover. Still, the presentation of the
Twenty Points was attempted. Appeals for help were telegraphed to the
United Nations and the Vatican, as negotiations with government officials
were delayed or postponed daily. During the six-day occupation, BIA of-
fices were ransacked, American Indian artifacts taken, files seized, and
much damage done to the building.
AIM leaders claimed that federal agents had infiltrated the occupation
and had done much of the damage. Some American Indians who had occu-
pied the building and went on official tours of the site weeks later asserted
that there was extensive damage in rooms where they were certain there
had been no damage before. Slogans, names, and addresses covered walls
where there had been no marks at the time of their departure.
American Indians received unexpected support from several people.
Trail of Broken Treaties / 543
Presidential candidate Dr. Benjamin Spock and African American activist

Stokely Carmichael appeared at the scene. Representative Shirley Chis-
holm telegraphed support, and Judge John Pratt delayed holding a show-
cause hearing demanded by the federal government to determine if Ameri-
can Indians were in contempt of his order to leave the building. LaDonna
Harris, a Comanche and wife of Oklahoma senator Fred Harris, and Louis
Bruce stayed the first night in the BIA; as a result of his support for the
cause, Bruce was suspended from his post as BIA commissioner.
End of the Protest. The protest ended on November 8. After several at-
tempts at getting a response from White House officials and a series of
court actions, demonstrators agreed to leave the BIA building. On behalf of
the White House, Leonard Garment, White House minority affairs adviser,
Frank Carlucci, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and
Bradley Patterson, Garment’s assistant, signed documents granting immu-
nity for protesters, funding their transportation home, and committing to
respond to the Twenty Points within sixty days.
The number of participants was estimated to have been five thousand.
Although Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton asserted that they were
mostly urban activists, more than 80 percent of those who had made the
journey were traditional reservation Indians. Among the elders were Frank
Fools Crow and Charlie Red Cloud, both chiefs at Pine Ridge, and Tusca-
rora medicine man Mad Bear Anderson, also a leader at the Alcatraz occu-
pation. Early estimates of damage ranged from half a million dollars to
more than two million dollars; however, the final estimate was set at a
quarter million dollars, because most artifacts and documents were re-
turned.
The crisis had ended, but nothing had been resolved. Public reaction
showed that much of the previous support for the American Indians’ cause
had been lost. Before winter had passed, echoes of the same demands were
heard amid the gunfire during the occupation of Wounded Knee.
Six years later, in July, 1978, several hundred American Indians marched
again into Washington, D.C., at the end of the Longest Walk from San Fran-
cisco. The event was intended to reveal continuing problems faced by Amer-
ican Indians and expose the backlash movement against treaty rights. Unlike
earlier conflicts, it was a peaceful event. Red Power had come full circle—
from lively Alcatraz days, through times of violent confrontation, to the
spiritual unity celebrated at the end of the Longest Walk.
See also: Alcatraz Island occupation; American Indian Movement; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Longest Walk; Wounded Knee occupation.
Gale M. Thompson
544 / Trail of Tears

DeLoria, Vine, Jr. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of
Independence. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987. Lawyer-
theologian DeLoria discusses the doctrine of discovery, treaty-making,
civil rights, American Indian activism, sovereignty, and the Trail and
Wounded Knee occupations.
ple in America. Discusses ten culture areas, historical perspectives, con-
temporary issues, and ceremonies. Presents timelines (50,000 b.c.e. to
twentieth century), summaries, lesson plans, and resources. Appen-
dices and index.
Trail of Broken Treaties: BIA, I’m Not Your Indian Anymore. Rooseveltown,
N.Y.: Akwesasne Notes, 1973. Contains articles published during and
after the Trail events; text of the Twenty Points; the White House re-
sponse; replies suggested by Trail leadership; and an update on the BIA
one year later.
Waldman, Carl. Atlas of the North American Indian. New York: Facts on File,
1985. Comprehensive coverage of history and culture, land cessions,
wars, and contemporary issues. Maps, illustrations, and appendices.
Trail of Tears
Date: May 28, 1830-1842
Locale: Southeastern United States
Tribes involved: Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Seminole
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Reservations and relocation
Significance: The removal to the western Indian Territory of the Five
Civilized Tribes is one of the most tragic events of U.S. history.
Soon after 1783, when the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution,
demands began for the removal of all Native Americans from the south-
eastern part of the new United States. After a brief renewal of violent resis-
tance, led by warriors like Dragging Canoe of the Cherokees and Alexan-
der McGillivray of the Creeks, most tribes were peaceful but firm in their
efforts to remain in their ancestral lands. The exception was the Seminoles
in Florida.
Many early treaties were negotiated to persuade these tribes to move
west voluntarily. When the desired result was not achieved, Congress
Trail of Tears / 545
Trails of Tears:
Routes of Indian Removal to the West After 1830
INDIAN
TERRITORY
Cherokees
Chickasaws
Mississippi R.
Chocktaws
Creeks
Seminoles
Routes of removal
to Indian Territory
G U L F O F M E
Indian lands ceded X I
C O
passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, paving the way for forced removal.
President Andrew Jackson, an old foe of the southeastern tribes, signed the
bill; it became law on May 28, 1830.
Choctaw Relocation. The first of these tribes to experience forced removal

was the Choctaw of southeastern Mississippi. Preliminary treaties with the
Choctaws, whose population was about twenty-three thousand, began
with the Treaty of Mount Dexter in 1805. Individual Choctaws had been en-
couraged to incur debts at government trading posts that were beyond
their ability to pay. At Mount Dexter, Choctaw leaders were forced to cede
four million acres of their land in return for the cancellation of those debts.
The first exchange of Choctaw land for land in the Indian Territory west
of the Mississippi River was approved by the Treaty of Doak’s Stand in
1820. Pushmataha, the principal chief and able diplomat of the Choctaws,
negotiated this treaty with General Andrew Jackson. However, since white
settlers already occupied much of the new Choctaw land, the treaty had lit-
tle effect.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, signed on September 27, 1830, was
the first negotiated under the Indian Removal Act. It provided for the ex-
change of all Choctaw land for land in the Indian Territory. Choctaw accep-
tance of this treaty was facilitated by intratribal conflicts and by the duplic-
ity of their self-proclaimed spokesperson, Greenwood LeFlore. By the end
of 1832, about two-thirds of the Choctaws had emigrated to their new
homes. Most others migrated over the next twenty years. A few, including
Greenwood LeFlore, remained in Mississippi.
The Choctaw removal became a pattern for the removal of the remain-
ing tribes in the Southeast. The next to experience the process were the
twenty-three thousand Creeks of eastern Alabama. Led by such chiefs as
Menewa, the Creeks bitterly resisted removal. In 1825, Menewa carried out
the execution for treason of William McIntosh, a half-breed chief who fa-
vored removal.
Creek Resistance. By 1831, chiefs such as Eneah Micco, although vigor-

ously protesting the invasion of their land by white squatters, realized that
only removal could save the Creeks from total destruction. The Treaty of
Washington, signed on March 24, 1832, provided for complete removal to
the Indian Territory. Although the generous provisions of this treaty soon
were ignored, conditions in the Creek Nation became intolerable and they
began their sad trek to the west.
Creek migration was interrupted in May, 1836, by reprisal raids against
white settlements. This action brought in the U.S. Army, with orders to
forcibly remove all Creeks from Alabama. By 1838, the removal was com-
plete. An ironic footnote is that during the course of their removal, several
hundred Creek men were impressed into the army for service against their
Seminole cousins in Florida.
Chickasaw Removal. The least controversial of the Trail of Tears removal

was that of the five thousand Chickasaws from the northern parts of Mis-
sissippi and Alabama. For thirty years, the government worked to trans-
form the Chickasaws from a hunting society into an agricultural society
that would require less land. By 1830, the process seemed complete, but the
result had been widespread poverty. It also produced friction between the
full-bloods who resisted the process and the part-bloods who favored it.
The Chickasaw removal process was initiated by the Treaty of Pontotoc
Creek in 1832. It was agreed that the Chickasaws would move west when
suitable land could be obtained. Finding such land was difficult, with the
best possibility being part of the Choctaw domain already established.
Levi Colbert, the most prominent of several Chickasaw chiefs, was ill and
Trail of Tears / 547
not present when the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek was signed. He protested
the use of coercion by General John Coffee, the leading government negoti-
ator, to get the other chiefs to sign. However, he cooperated with the re-
moval process in order to secure the best possible land and to ease the bur-
den on his people.
Chickasaw removal followed the signing of the Treaty of Doaksville in
January, 1837. Land was secured and most of the tribe moved that year. Un-
like other tribes, they were able to take most of their possessions with them,
and very few died along the way. However, after arrival in the Indian Terri-
tory, they faced the typical problems of intertribal conflicts, substandard
food, and a smallpox epidemic.
Cherokee Trail of Tears. By 1830, about sixteen thousand Cherokees re-

mained on their ancestral lands, by then mostly in northern Georgia and
southeastern Tennessee. Their removal, first called the “trail where they
cried,” is the source of the name Trail of Tears.
The movement to remove the Cherokees began with the signing of the
Georgia Compact in 1802, when President Thomas Jefferson agreed to seek
reasonable terms for that removal in a peaceful manner. In 1828, when gold
was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia, the process was facilitated,
but not on the reasonable terms stipulated by Jefferson. The state of Geor-
gia nullified Cherokee laws and incorporated a large portion of the Chero-
kee Nation. The Cherokee defense was led by their democratically elected
principal chief, John Ross, who took their case to federal court. Although a
decision by Chief Justice John Marshall favored the Cherokees, President
Jackson refused to enforce it.
A small group of proremoval Cherokees, led by Major Ridge, signed the
New Echota Treaty in December, 1835. Following ratification by the U.S.
Senate in May, 1836, the entire tribe had two years to move to the Indian
Territory. John Ross and the majority protested the treaty and refused to
move. Forced removal began in June, 1838. When the journey ended in
March, 1839, there were four thousand unmarked graves along the way.
About one thousand Cherokees escaped removal by fleeing into the south-
ern Appalachian Mountains. The final tragedy of Cherokee removal was
the murder in the Indian Territory of the proremoval leaders who had
signed the treaty.
Seminole Removal. The Seminoles of central Florida, descendants of

Creeks who had moved there to escape harassment in the eighteenth cen-
tury, provide the last chapter in the Trail of Tears. Their population of about
six thousand included many African Americans, both freemen and run-
away slaves from the Southern states. The desire to cut off that escape route
for slaves was part of the incentive for Jackson’s invasion and the resulting
acquisition of Florida from Spain in 1819 under the Adams-Onís Treaty.
The demand to move the Seminoles to the Indian Territory soon followed.
In 1832, an unauthorized group of Seminoles signed the Treaty of Payne’s
Landing, declaring that all would give up their land and move west. Oppo-
sition to the treaty was led by Osceola and Coacoochee (Wildcat). The re-
sult was the Second Seminole War, in 1835. Seminoles captured during that
war were immediately deported to the Indian Territory. By 1842, the war
was over and the remaining Seminoles slowly migrated west. By 1856, the
only Seminoles left in Florida were those in the inaccessible swamps of the
Everglades.
The Trail of Tears removals rank among the most tragic episodes in
United States history. The policies of three American leaders reveal the
changing attitudes on how to best accomplish the removals. After Thomas
Jefferson’s peaceful persuasion and reasonable terms failed, John C. Cal-
houn, as secretary of war under President James Monroe, favored educating
Native Americans to accept the need for removal. In the end, it was Andrew
Jackson’s policy of forced removal that completed the distasteful task.
See also: Cherokee legal cases; Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of; Indian
Removal Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-white rela-
tions: U.S., 1831-1870; Seminole Wars; Treaties and agreements in the United
States.
Glenn L. Swygart

DeRosier, Arthur. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1970. Discusses removal circumstances. Includes
maps and portraits.
Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York:
Doubleday, 1988. Covers Cherokee history from 1770 to 1840. Details the
intratribal conflicts relating to removal policy.
Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932. Surveys the trea-
ties and leaders of removal. Maps and illustrations.
Gibson, Arrell. The Chickasaws. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1971. Puts removal in context with Chickasaw history from the eigh-
teenth century to 1907.
Hoig, Stanley. Night of the Cruel Moon: Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears.
Treaties and agreements in Canada / 549
Williams, Jeanne. “The Cherokees.” In Trails of Tears: American Indians

Driven from Their Lands. Dallas: Hendrick-Long, 1992. Puts Cherokee re-
moval in the context of the similar experiences of the Comanche, Chey-
enne, Apache, and Navajo.
Wright, J. Leitch. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of
the Muscogulge People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
Discusses removal and resettlement in the West. Extensive bibliog-
raphy.
Treaties and agreements in Canada

Date: 1760-2001
Locale: Canada
Categories: Colonial history, National government and legislation, Na-
tive government, Nineteenth century history, Treaties, Twentieth cen-
tury history
Significance: The character of treaties between the Canadian govern-
ment and Canada’s Indian peoples has varied as Indians have lost
and partially regained power.
The capture of Quebec from the French in the Seven Years’ War in 1760 al-
lowed Britain to consolidate its holdings in North America. In order to es-
tablish colonial governments in the newly obtained Quebec and Florida,
King George III issued what has become known as the Royal Proclamation
of 1763. A provision of the proclamation reserved for the Indians all lands
to the west of Upper Canada and provided a mechanism for the Crown to
purchase these and other lands from the Indians. Since the French had
never recognized aboriginal title in their colonies, however, Quebec and
those portions of the Maritimes captured from the French were exempted
from this provision of the proclamation.
The early Indian treaties reflected the strong military position of the In-
dians, and the stated purpose of most treaties was simply peace and friend-
ship. The Indians were important in military rivalries, first between the
French and the British and later between the British and the Americans.
There were relatively few Europeans compared with Indians, so land ces-
sions were relatively small and were accomplished with onetime payments
(usually in the form of trade goods).
550 / Treaties and agreements in Canada
After 1812, the Indians were no longer militarily significant, and the
character of treaties changed. In recognition of their weaker position, Indi-
ans began to make greater demands for relinquishing their lands. Euro-
pean needs for agricultural lands increased at the same time as a result of
increased emigration from Europe. In an effort to save money, the Europe-
ans began the practice of issuing annuities rather than onetime payments.
In 1817, a land cession treaty was signed with the Saulteaux and Cree to
permit the establishment of the Red River Colony of Thomas Douglas, earl
of Selkirk. This was the first treaty that entirely ceded native title to lands
west of Upper Canada.
In 1850, Special Commissioner W. B. Robinson concluded two treaties
with the Ojibwa living along the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Supe-
rior. Known as the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior treaties, they
were signed after the Ojibwa requested that the Europeans purchase the
land before mining it. These two treaties set the precedent of permitting In-
dians to continue hunting and fishing on their ceded territory.
The Situation at Confederation. Canada was created as a nation in 1867

with the confederation of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ot-
tawa into the Dominion of Canada. The British North America Act, which
created Canada, charged the Dominion with discharging the Crown’s du-
ties toward the Indians. In 1870, much of the remainder of present-day
Canada was transferred from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the new na-
tion. This transfer illustrates a paradox in the history of relations between
natives and whites in Canada. While the Royal Proclamation of 1763 pre-
served native title to this transferred territory and established the Crown as
the only legitimate purchaser of Indian lands, the sale of Rupert’s Land by
the Hudson’s Bay Company indicated disregard of aboriginal title. Fur-
thermore, in order to facilitate white settlement in the new territory and to
connect, via railroad, the settlements in eastern Canada with the colony of
British Columbia, the Crown moved to extinguish any remaining native ti-
tle to that region. Seven treaties, covering much of present-day Canada,
were concluded between 1871 and 1877. The provisions of the treaties var-
ied only slightly and were similar to the two Robinson treaties.
The Numbered Treaties. Treaties 1 and 2, negotiated in 1871, were virtu-

ally identical and covered lands held by the Swampy Cree and Chippewa
(Ojibwa) in southern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan. In ex-
change for relinquishing title to 52,400 square miles, the Cree and Chip-
pewa were promised 160 acres of reserved land for each family of five, a
school, farm implements, a gift of three dollars for each person, and an an-
nuity of three dollars per person. Chiefs and headmen were awarded addi-
tional payments. The area covered by Treaty 1 included the Red River farm-
steads of the Metis.
With the signing of Treaty 3, known also as the North-West Angle Treaty,
in 1873 by the Saulteaux, the initial payment was raised to twelve dollars
and the annuity was increased to five dollars per person. Larger reserves
(one square mile per family) were also granted, as well as the continued
rights to hunt and fish on unoccupied lands. This provision to allow tradi-
tional subsistence activities on the ceded territories appears in the remain-
der of the numbered treaties. As the prairie provinces were established,
however, most of the Crown’s lands were transferred to the provinces. In-
creasingly, the courts have ruled that native Canadians are subject to pro-
vincial game laws.
Treaty 4, signed in 1874 by the Saulteaux and Cree, encompassed south-
ern Saskatchewan and small portions of Alberta and Manitoba. Treaty 5
was made in 1875 with the Saulteaux and Cree of central Manitoba and ex-
tended to northern Manitoba in 1908. The Blackfeet, Blood, Piegan, Sarcee
(Sarsi), and Assiniboine tribes of southern Alberta agreed to Treaty 7 in
1877.
Treaty 6 was made in 1876 with Poundmaker’s and Crowfoot’s Plains
and Wood Cree bands in central Alberta and Saskatchewan; however, the
bands led by Big Bear refused to sign until 1884 and succeeded in obtaining
somewhat greater concessions. The failure of the government to meet the
obligations to which it agreed in the treaty are among the factors that con-
tributed to the Riel Rebellion of 1885. Treaty 6 is interesting also in that it is
the only one of the numbered treaties that mentions medical care for Indi-
ans. It provides that the Indian agent on each reserve maintain a “medicine
chest” for the benefit of the Indians. It is likely that medical care was ver-
bally promised during negotiation for other treaties but was not written
into the final documents.
Twenty-two years passed between the signing of Treaty 7 and the next
set of treaty negotiations. The last four numbered treaties were made in or-
der to make way for northern resource development rather than to permit
white settlement. Treaty 8, signed in 1899 with the Beaver, Cree, and
Chipewyan, covers portions of Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Northwest Ter-
ritories, and British Columbia. It was the only treaty covering the Indians
of British Columbia. Several small treaties had been negotiated between
coastal tribes of British Columbia and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the
1850’s, but because the Hudson’s Bay Company had no authority to negoti-
ate for the Crown, these treaties were not considered valid. After British
Columbia entered Confederation in 1871, an attempt was made to have
that province negotiate treaties; other than granting several small reserves,
the province refused to acknowledge aboriginal title.
Ontario joined with the federal government in the making of Treaty 9
with the Ojibwa and Cree of north central Ontario in 1905 and 1929. The
Cree and other Indian groups ceded their remaining territory in northern
Saskatchewan with Treaty 10 in 1906.
Treaty 11 was signed in 1922 with the Dene (Slave, Dogrib, Loucheux,
and Hare) Indians who occupy the Mackenzie River region between the
sixtieth parallel and the Arctic coast. The impetus for this treaty was the
discovery of oil a year earlier at Norman Wells.
The numbered treaties presumably settled all land claims based on ab-
original title for Indians living in the prairie and western Subarctic regions,
but several court cases have thrown that issue into question. In one of the
most important of these cases, Re Paulette et al. and the Registrar of Titles
(1974), the court held that the Indians covered by Treaties 8 and 11 had not,
in fact, extinguished their aboriginal titles to the land.
Modern Land Claims Agreements. The court decisions, coupled with the
politicization of Native Canadians, led the federal government to rethink
its position on the issue of aboriginal title. The government’s desire to de-
velop the natural and mineral resources in its northernmost territories cre-
ated the conditions necessary for comprehensive land claims settlements.
Between 1975 and 1992, five major land claims agreements were con-
cluded. Varying levels of progress were made on several others.
The first of these modern land claims agreements, known as the James
Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, was signed in 1975 by Inuit and Cree
of northern and northwestern Quebec, the federal government, and the
Province of Quebec. The agreement cleared the way for Quebec to begin
hydroelectric development in James Bay. The Northeastern Quebec Agree-
ment, concluded in 1978 with the Naskapi, was for the same purpose.
The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement provided $225 million,
divided proportionally between the Inuit and the Cree for the lands (ex-
cluding mineral rights) in the immediate vicinities of their communities.
The natives were allowed to retain exclusive hunting and fishing rights
over a much larger area; however, the flooding caused by the hydroelectric
development has caused major disruptions of wildlife.
The Inuit chose to form public municipal-type village governments
with powers over zoning, taxation, public health, housing, and education.
The Cree made their communities into reserves. Representatives of both
groups serve on environmental and economic development boards meant
to monitor the development of the region.
National native organizations have been highly critical of the James Bay
land claims agreements largely because of the clauses that extinguish ab-
original rights. Because the term “aboriginal rights” was not defined, fu-
ture understandings of its scope have also been negotiated away. In addi-
tion, the vague language of the agreement has allowed both the Quebec
and federal governments to shirk their obligations.
Far more generous than the James Bay Agreements are the two land
claims settlements achieved by the Inuit of the Northwest Territories. The
Inuvialuit Final Agreement, which was signed in June, 1984, settled the
claim of the twenty-five hundred Inuit living between the Yukon border
and central Victoria Island. Under the agreement, the Inuvialuit (or west-
ern Inuit) retained title to 91,000 square kilometers but mineral rights to
only one-seventh of that land. The Inuvialuit surrendered land covering
344,000 square kilometers. In exchange for the land cessions the Inuvialuit
received $152 million to be paid over a thirteen-year period. In an arrange-
ment similar to that established by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement
Act, the money has been paid to the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation,
which was chartered to invest the proceeds and to manage the land re-
tained by the Inuvialuit. In contrast to the provisions of the numbered trea-
ties, all income earned by the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation from either
its lands or investments is subject to taxation.
The Eastern Arctic Claim was negotiated between the federal govern-
ment and the Tungavik Federation of Natives. Signed in 1992, it settled the
claim of seventeen thousand Inuit living in the area of the Northwest Terri-
tories between Coppermine and Baffin Island. The claim established Inuit
title to 352,000 square kilometers (9.9 percent of the total land and offshore
area), making the Eastern Arctic Inuit the single largest landholder in Can-
ada. Unlike other land claims agreements, the Eastern Arctic Agreement
includes offshore areas, which continue to be vital food sources. In ex-
change for relinquishing claim to the remaining territory, the Inuit are to re-
ceive $580 million as well as resource royalties earned from their lands.
Perhaps the most substantial concession made by the federal government
was to allow the Inuit to govern themselves through the formation of a new
territory to be known as Nunavut.
Negotiations between the governments of Newfoundland and Canada
and the thirty-five hundred Inuit of Labrador proceeded slowly. In 1988,
agreements in principle were signed between the federal government and
the Yukon Council of Indians and with the Dene-Metis Association of the
Mackenzie River region. Neither agreement was concluded. At their an-
nual meeting in July, 1990, the Dene Assembly failed to ratify the accord be-
cause of divisions within the organization over the “extinguishment” of
the still undefined aboriginal rights. After the failure of the Dene-Metis
Land Claims Agreement, the federal government agreed to settle the claim
on a region-by-region basis. The communities situated along the lower
Mackenzie River signed the Gwich’in Final Agreement a year later, which
provided resource royalties and $75 million cash in exchange for relin-
quishing aboriginal rights and title to most of the region. The Gwich’in
(Delta area) natives retained title to slightly more than 21,000 square kilo-
meters. They also retained the subsurface mineral rights to about one-
fourth of that land. Like the Eastern Arctic Agreement, the Gwich’in Final
Agreement established a framework for self-government.
See also: Aboriginal Action Plan; Declaration of First Nations; Del-
gamuukw v. British Columbia; Department of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development; Fifteen Principles; Indian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; In-
dian Act of 1989; Indian-white relations: Canadian; Indian-white relations:
English colonial; Indian-white relations: French colonial; Nunavut Terri-
tory; Red River Raids; Reserve system of Canada; Riel Rebellions; Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; White Paper of Canada.
Pamela R. Stern

Dickerson, Mark O. Whose North? Political Change, Political Development, and
Self-Government in the Northwest Territories. Vancouver: University of
British Columbia Press, 1992. Discusses the contemporary political is-
sues facing the Dene, Metis, Inuit, and non-native residents of northern
Canada.
Getty, A. L., and Antoine S. Lussier, eds. As Long as the Sun Shines and the
Water Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies. Vancouver: University
of British Columbia Press, 1983. A collection of articles covering rela-
tions between the Indians and the Canadian government from the time
of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to the constitutional crisis of the
1980’s.
Morris, Alexander. The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the
North-west Territories. Toronto: Belfords, Clark & Co., 1880. Reprint. To-
ronto: Coles, 1971. An account by one of the negotiators of Treaties 3
through 6.
Morse, Bradford W., ed. Aboriginal Peoples and the Law: Indian, Metis, and
Inuit Rights in Canada. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1985. A thor-
ough discussion of all aspects of Canadian law (including treaties) as
they apply to native peoples.
Purich, Donald J. The Inuit and Their Land: The Story of Nunavut. Toronto:
James Lorimer, 1992. Contains a thorough discussion of each of the Inuit
Treaties and agreements in the United States / 555
land claims agreements, paying special attention to the Eastern Arctic

Agreement and the preparations for native self-government in the pro-
posed New Nunavut Territory.
Treaties and agreements in the

United States
Date: 1787-2002
Categories: Eighteenth century history; National government and legis-
lation; Native government; Nineteenth century history; Treaties;
Significance: Native Americans generally look upon their treaties as
permanent and inviolate compacts between two sovereign nations.
European Americans, in contrast, have tended to consider the trea-
ties to be temporary arrangements subject to alteration and renegoti-
ation. This difference in perspective has been a source of much mis-
understanding and bitterness.
Following the American Revolution (1775-1783), the U.S. government con-

tinued the European tradition of treating Indian tribes as independent for-
eign nations, which meant negotiating formal treaties for establishing
peace, exchanging land, and recognizing mutual obligations. The govern-
ment also negotiated agreements or accords, which were less formal and
usually dealt with fewer issues. In 1871, Congress passed the Indian Ap-
propriation Act, stating that the American Indians no longer belonged to
their own sovereign nations, and treaty making ended. The existing trea-
ties remained valid, unless explicitly abrogated or changed by a law of
Congress. Until the twentieth century, the U.S. government often did not
look upon Indian treaties as important commitments. Since World War II,
however, Native Americans have become increasingly effective in using
the federal courts to obtain broad interpretations of treaty rights.
556 / Treaties and agreements in the United States
An 1891 council of Sioux leaders settles the Indian wars at Pine Ridge, South Da-
kota, soon after the Battle of Wounded Knee. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson
Turner would claim that the frontier had been “closed” as an outcome of that battle.
(National Archives)
Nature of the Treaties. The U.S. Constitution authorizes the president to

negotiate treaties with foreign nations, and these treaties become legally
binding after approval by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Because they are
recognized as part of the “supreme law of the land,” treaties have the same
legal standing as laws passed by Congress. The concept of “supreme law”
also means that treaty rights are a matter of federal jurisdiction, and that
state governments must follow legal decisions made in federal courts. This
is significant, because state governments, reflecting local opinion, often op-
pose treaty provisions such as the right to hunt and fish off reservation
lands.
From 1787 until 1871, the U.S. government negotiated about 800 formal
treaties with various Native American tribes and bands, and the Senate
ratified some 367 of these into law. The Secretary of War was responsible
for negotiating treaties until 1849, when the Office of Indian Affairs was
transferred to the Department of the Interior. In 1871, the Indian Appro-
priation Act, which declared that tribes were not independent nations,
ended the practice of contracting by treaty, but the act left the existing
treaties in place unless explicitly modified by Congress. Thereafter, the
U.S. government continued to enter into agreements with the tribes, but
Congress increasingly directed Indian policy by statute. Although Con-
gress passed a statute recognizing all Indians as citizens in 1924, the tribes
retained attributes of sovereignty necessary to negotiate agreements and

assert treaty rights.
Except for the early period, the U.S. government was generally in a posi-
tion of dominance when it negotiated treaties with Native American tribes.
Following armed conflicts, the government tended to be especially harsh
in its demands. Even in the best of conditions, the treaties were written in
English, and the Indians frequently did not clearly understand what was
written. Basic assumptions, such as the very idea of land ownership, were
often foreign to Native American cultures. In addition, the government fre-
quently chose to negotiate with cooperative individuals who were not rec-
ognized as legitimate negotiators by tribal majorities. In some cases, as
with the Cherokee treaty of removal in 1835, the Senate ratified treaties that
had been repudiated by the American Indians.
Indian treaties are especially important for the determination of land
claims. About 230 of the treaties included a delineation of boundaries
based on a cession of land from the tribe to the U.S. government, with re-
served lands (called reservations) for the use of the tribe. Many of the trea-
ties also recognized the retention of hunting and fishing rights in the ceded
territories. The treaties usually stated that the tribe would acknowledge
the authority of the United States, and the U.S. government promised to
provide food and services for the tribe. The treaties generally were silent or
unclear concerning whether various provisions were to be permanent or
temporary.
Interpretations of Treaties. Because treaties are legal documents, the U.S.

Supreme Court has the final authority in determining their meanings.
When the language of a treaty is clear, it is applied as written. Because the
language is often very unclear, however, the Supreme Court has gradually
developed “rules of construction” for resolving disputes. As compensation
for the disadvantages of the tribes during the treaty-making process, ambi-
guities are normally resolved in favor of the Indian perspective, and fed-
eral courts attempt to interpret the language as it would have been reason-
ably understood by the tribal leaders responsible for the negotiations.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, for example, some of the most controversial in-
terpretations involved the meanings of treaties in regard to the rights of
Native Americans to fish and hunt with traditional methods in the lands
ceded to the government. The treaties tended to use vague language such
as “at the pleasure of the president,” but Indian negotiators were fre-
quently led to believe that hunting-fishing rights would continue as long
as the Indians were peaceful. Since 1968, federal courts have ruled again
and again that these rights remain valid unless they have been clearly and
558 / Treaties and agreements in the United States
explicitly abrogated by an act of Congress. In a major case in 1974, a U.S.

District Court of Washington State ruled that Indian tribes had the right to
one-half of the salmon harvest, and in subsequent years, there were similar
rulings in several states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota. Many non-
Indian sports fishers and hunters bitterly resented these decisions, result-
ing in anti-Indian demonstrations and even threats of violence.
Abrogation of Treaties. If there is an inconsistency between the terms of a

treaty and a congressional statute, the more recent of the two is legally
binding. Based on this principle, the Supreme Court in Lone Wolf v. Hitch-
cock (1903) reaffirmed that Congress has the full authority to abrogate or
modify any treaty. The Endangered Species Act of 1973, for instance, over-
ruled those treaties that included the right to hunt eagles on reservations. If
Congress wishes to make changes in a treaty, however, this intent must be
clear and explicit in a statute. If there is any doubt about the meaning of a
statute, the Supreme Court interprets it in ways that uphold relevant trea-
ties.
In contrast to treaties made with foreign countries, treaties with Native
Americans often establish property rights. The Fifth Amendment guaran-
tees that there be “just compensation” for any property that is “taken” for
public use. The power of Congress to abrogate treaties, therefore, does not
release it from the duty of providing fair payment for any taking of land or
other property. Frequently in the past, of course, the federal government
did take property without compensation. In 1946, Congress passed the In-
dian Claims Commission Act to allow tribes to seek indemnities for their
lost property.
During the 1950’s, powerful members of Congress wanted to put an end
to Indian treaties. Their long-term goal was to promote assimilation, which
they argued would produce greater opportunities and equality. As a first
step, they pursued “termination” of the political relationship existing
between the federal government and the tribes. Based on the termination
law of 1954, numerous small tribes lost most of their claims to sovereignty
and many of their treaty privileges. In Menominee Tribe v. United States
(1968), however, the Supreme Court ruled that Indians retained those
treaty rights that were not explicitly mentioned in the termination law, in-
cluding the right to hunt and fish. President Richard M. Nixon repudiated
the termination policy in 1970, and gradually most tribes regained their
pre-termination status.
In 1972, the Trail of Broken Treaties protest called for the recognition of
greater tribal sovereignty and the return of the treaty-making process. Al-
though the protest did not obtain its announced goals, the resulting public-
ity appeared to produce a greater public respect for the treaties. By that
date, the termination policy found relatively few supporters, and a firm
majority of Congress appeared to accept the idea that respect for treaty
rights, as interpreted by the courts, is a question of national honor. The gen-
eral trend of court cases throughout the last quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury recognized these principles.
See also: Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of; Federally recognized tribes;
Fort Atkinson Treaty; Fort Greenville Treaty; Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868;
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851; Fort Stanwix Treaty; Fort Wayne Treaty;
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of; Horseshoe Bend Treaty; Indian Appropria-
tion Act; Indian Citizenship Act; Indian Claims Commission; Indian New
Deal; Indian preference; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-1830; Indian-
white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; In-
dian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002. Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
meeting; Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock; Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty; Reservation
system of the United States; Termination Resolution; Trail of Broken
Treaties; Trail of Tears.
Thomas T. Lewis

Burt, Larry. Tribalism in Crisis: Federal Indian Policy. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1982. Good coverage of termination policy.
Canby, William. American Indian Law. St. Paul: West, 1983. Chapter 6 gives a
concise and useful legal analysis of the treaties.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. One of many interesting books
written and edited from a strong Native American perspective.
Kappler, Charles, ed. Indian Treaties, 1778-1883. New York: Interland, 1972.
Provides the texts of most of the actual treaties.
Prucha. Francis. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly.
San Jose: University of California Press, 1995. Views U.S. policy as one of
failed paternalism.
contrasts the “civilizing” efforts of the United States and Canada
through their Indian treaty policies.
Satz, Ronald. Indian Treaty Rights. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Academy,
1991. Provides a fascinating pro-Indian account of the fishing-rights
controversy in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Washburn, Wilcomb. Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1971. An older but still useful account.
560 / Tribal courts
Wunder, John. “Retained by the People”: A History of the American Indians and
the Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Provides a
broad historical account from the Indian point of view, with an excellent
bibliography.
Tribal courts
Categories: Native government, Nineteenth century history, Twentieth
century history
Significance: U.S. law allows Native American governments to retain
their traditional mechanisms for settling legal disputes.
Prior to European contact, all American Indian tribes and bands had insti-
tutional mechanisms for settling disputes. The mechanisms varied from
Eskimo song duels and Yurok mediation to Cheyenne and Pueblo councils.
Under U.S. law, tribal governments have the right to retain or modify adju-
dication procedures unless Congress limits that right.
For example, in the nineteenth century the Cherokee legal system went
through a series of changes from a clan- and council-based system to a
system based on an Anglo-American model. In the late nineteenth cen-
tury Congress expanded federal court jurisdiction in Cherokee territory
and finally passed the Curtis Act (1898), which abolished Cherokee tribal
courts.
Pueblo adjudicatory systems have been influenced by Spanish and U.S.
institutions and policies but were never abolished by federal edict and con-
tinue to develop. For example, many Keresan pueblos have a council which
decides cases. Many disputes are settled before a partial council or single
official acting as a mediator. Important cases are decided by the full coun-
cil; the presiding officer may act as both prosecutor and a judge. Litigants
may be advised by kinsmen or ceremonial group members. In a modifica-
tion of this system, Laguna Pueblo has a full-time judge while retaining the
council as an appellate court.
In the mid-nineteenth century a number of tribes were confined to reser-
vations, creating new problems of social order. In 1883 the Department of
Tribe / 561
the Interior established Courts of Indian Offenses. The judges, tribal mem-
bers appointed by reservation superintendents, enforced administrative
rules established by the Department of the Interior. The superintendent
had appellate power over the judges’ decisions. In 1888, Congress implic-
itly recognized the legitimacy of these courts by appropriating funds for
judges’ salaries.
By 1900, Courts of Indian Offenses had been established on about two-
thirds of the reservations. These courts were even established in some
pueblos, where they competed with indigenous legal systems. Courts of
Indian Offenses have an enduring legacy as a model for the procedures and
codes of many contemporary tribal judicial systems.
In 1935, substantive law administered by the Courts of Indian Of-
fenses was revised. Moreover, the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) made
it easier for tribes to establish court systems less dominated by the Interior
Department. Insufficient tribal economic growth slowed replacement of
the Courts of Indian Offenses. By the close of the twentieth century, how-
ever, few remained. By contrast, there were more than one hundred tribal
courts.
Tribal courts vary in size, procedure, and other matters. The Navajo na-
tion, for example, now has an independent judicial branch which pro-
cessed more than eighty-five thousand cases in 1992. There are seven judi-
cial districts and fourteen district court judges. The practice of law before
these courts is regulated. Appeals may be taken to the high court. Appel-
late decisions of note are published. In addition, there are local “peace-
maker” courts with 227 peacemakers who act generally as mediators.
See also: Indian Offenses Act; Indian Reorganization Act; Indian-white
relations: U.S., 1871-1933.
Eric Henderson
Tribe
Date: 1492-present
Locale: The Americas and West Indies
Significance: The terminology used to describe American Indian social
organization has implications for the subjective value placed on that
organization by European Americans.
562 / Tribe
The word “tribe” has deep roots in Indo-European languages and cultures.
In Indo-European the word tre refers to trees and the way they branch. This
later became the word tri, meaning one-third, or division into three parts.
The word bus refers to “bush,” or branching plant. In Latin, tribus was used
in reference to the three groups—Latin, Sabine, and Etruscan—who united
to form Rome. The original term comes from the Etruscans. It has come into
modern usage through French and Middle English derivations and was
carried into North America by colonial peoples.
Definitions. This term describes various human social groups who share a
common name, territory, ancestry, and feeling of community. Peoples with
similar customs and cultural, linguistic, and religious homogeneity are
thought by Western Europeans and European Americans to be tribes. In
some areas populated by groups considered tribes, people traveled in no-
madic groups loosely bound by family ties. In others they settled and es-
tablished their tribes on a clan basis; in still other regions the power struc-
ture was based on a village or community system.
Some social scientists consider a tribe to be an organized band or group
of bands who have shared means of resolving disputes and making com-
munal decisions and possess a written language. A tribe is also thought to
be a self-sufficient group of people living and working together but pro-
ducing little or no surplus goods or services.
A tribe is larger than a family or a band yet smaller than a chiefdom,
kingdom, or empire. Some scholars say the term refers to early stages in the
development of human political systems and nation-states. This assumes
that a tribe lacks a state apparatus, civil government, and the complex po-
litical organization commonly associated with the more easily recognized
governmental forms of chiefdoms, kingdoms, and empires.
Unfortunately the word “tribe” is often used to refer to any group of
people considered “primitive” by others—groups who live a “simple” life
of traveling, hunting, migrating, marrying, and meeting for ceremonies
and who share a common dialect, customs, culture, and worldview. Such
peoples are generally lacking in advanced technology and are organized in
ways considered “uncivilized” by citizens of nation-states.
Some of the things that bind any human community together include
family and kinship ties; shared beliefs about self, group, and their origins;
and the best ways to care for and relate to the environment. The variety of
types of social, political, and religious organization regulated through ritu-
alistic, governmental, and other institutional forms are numerous and di-
verse. Any people who share a language, social structure, worldview, and
territory can be assumed to qualify as a tribe.
Tribe / 563
Tribes and the American Experience. Some indigenous American tribes

were so loosely organized that no tribal unit is said to have existed. Their
lives were thought to “border on anarchy.” They were nomadic or migra-
tory. They had no secret societies, tradition of hereditary nobility, complex
clan structures, or settled places of constant habitation. They were small
groups, often called “bands,” who shared a common identity because of
their common presence and activities.
Some assembled into duly constituted independent states when they
gathered all their numbers together, while other groups entered into an
even higher organic state by confederating with neighboring tribes (a level
of organization that could qualify them as nations). Others forced many
smaller tribes to take part in the formation and maintenance of an empire,
as among the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas.
Tribe, in its European denotation, signifies only a political unit, whereas
the actual diversity among American Indian peoples of organizational
forms indicates a wide variety of complex social expressions of the commu-
nal uniting of personal and environmental conceptions. Social relations de-
pended on the self-evident order of nature and a people’s place in it.
American Indian peoples traditionally had no commonly agreed-upon
concept of “tribe.” They were generally animists, meaning that they be-
lieved everything to be alive and related; all things were defined by their
relationship to all other things. They had many varieties of kinship groups,
clans, lineage systems, and social structures. Each group had a name for
itself in its own language, most often a word that meant “the people”
or “human beings.” For example, the Tsalagi (Cherokee) word Junwiya,
the Navajo word Diné, and the Nez Perce word Nimipuu all mean “the
people.”
Colonial Europeans often thought of all peoples unlike themselves as
primitives and therefore as “tribes.” It was their tendency, because of the
categorical and reductionist strains of their thinking and languages, to re-
duce the diversity of indigenous American peoples to a general category of
“primitives” or “tribes.” They did not recognize or understand the commu-
nities and peoples they encountered in their drive to colonize the Americas
and to develop new sources of raw materials, generate income for the Euro-
pean monarchies, and procure converts to Christian churches. They gener-
ally looked upon native peoples in the Americas as savage, barbaric, unciv-
ilized, primitive, and worthy only of extermination or exploitation.
As the United States developed into a nation, these abstract generaliza-
tions were projected onto all indigenous peoples who organized them-
selves in ways not recognizable to Anglo-Europeans. Indigenous tribal
peoples in Hawaii and the Philippines, for example, were viewed as primi-
564 / Tribe
tives who needed to be controlled or exterminated either by force of arms

or by coercive cultural assimilation.
Each tribal community in the Americas is the product of distinctive con-
ditions, circumstances, and experiences from which the community de-
rives the shape of its culture and the form of its identity. There were origi-
nally thousands of unique peoples in the Americas before contact with
Europeans. Only after contact with Europeans did it eventually become a
legal necessity to define oneself in terms of tribal affiliation.
Modern, Legal and Political Considerations. Many indigenous peoples

consider the term “tribe” to be offensive, seeing its use as a typical Euro-
pean attempt to justify “civilizing,” forcibly assimilating, or exterminating
them. Yet they also realize that they must struggle today to receive and
maintain recognition as “federally recognized tribes” in order to receive
protections under the law and fulfillment of treaty rights and benefits.
Alternative terms such as “ethnicity,” “minority group,” and “identity
group” have been suggested, but any such redefinition involves political
(and economic) issues. “Tribe” is a term with distinct political connotations
in the United States. American Indian peoples have a constitutionally man-
dated relationship with the government as defined by treaties and other
agreements between recognized Indian nations and their enrolled citizens.
This is called the federal-Indian trust relationship and is carried out
through various intra- and intergovernmental contacts and institutions.
Tribes’ inherent, although limited, sovereignty and inalienable right to
self-determination is thereby supposed to be assured. At the same time, the
federal government’s duties and obligations to modern tribes are spelled
out.
For these reasons federally recognized Indian tribes traditionally did not
seek civil rights. They believed, and many still believe today, that the U.S.
government and Indian peoples are best served through the fulfillment of
treaties rather than the passage of laws in the interest of immigrant minor-
ity groups. There is considerable money and power at stake; thus, what
tribe a person is enrolled in and what factors determine membership in an
Indian tribal nation become matters of great political and social import. In
the United States one cannot receive benefits as a beneficiary in the federal-
Indian trust relationship unless one is “an enrolled member of a federally
recognized tribe.” In other words, an individual must be a citizen of a le-
gally and politically defined “Indian nation” with rights under federal law.
Exactly what defines membership in a federally recognized tribe varies
from one group to another. Ancestry, blood quantum, and acclamation are
all legally sound bases used to support claims to tribal membership. These
Tribe / 565
bases go against traditional methods of identification such as language,

clan membership, and religion. The process of imposing Western political
and legal standards tends to erode traditional forms of organization.
Legal definitions are of great import today. Tribes are not states but
“dependent” nations with limited sovereignty and an inherent right to self-
determination and self-government, even if the specific governmental
forms are imposed from without. Many tribal groups maintain their tradi-
tional forms of governing themselves, while creating federally recognized
nation-state frameworks that allow them to participate in nation-to-nation
relationships. This is essential to the preservation of cultural integrity on
the one hand and to the fulfillment of treaty obligations on the other.
The concept or term “tribe” is thus ambiguous and represents a super-
imposition of European modes of viewing and defining the cultural, social,
and political organization of indigenous peoples. It is a term of conve-
nience used to designate all North American Indian peoples even though
only about half of them actually had any form of tribal organization. The
indigenous peoples of North America lived in a wide spectrum of identity
groups, including families, clans, bands, villages, tribes, chiefdoms, and
empires. Their social and political systems were diverse and distinctive;
they were expressions of each group’s unique adaptations to the many geo-
graphical and environmental conditions evident in North America from
prehistoric times to the present.
See also: American Indian; Amerind; Federally recognized tribes; In-
dian; Native American.
Michael W. Simpson

Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Clifford M. Lytle. The Nations Within: The Past and Fu-
ture of American Indian Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. An
excellent in-depth study of the development of tribal nationalism and of
the political meaning of being an enrolled citizen of a federally recog-
nized Indian tribe.
Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-
Building. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. The author
explores the intellectual process which defines indigenous tribal groups
as primitive and leads to violence between nations and tribes. Includes
many helpful illustrations and an extensive bibliographic essay.
Fried, Morton H. The Notion of Tribe. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings, 1975.
An exploration of the development and meaning of the concept of tribe.
Gluckman, Max. Politics, Law, and Ritual in Tribal Society. 1966. Reprint.
New York: Blackwell, 1977. This book studies tribal organization and
566 / Tuscarora War
the ways tribal groups develop and maintain their integrity. Though not
focused specifically on American Indian tribes, it provides a compre-
hensive conceptual basis for investigation of the concept. Illustrated in
the original.
Sahlins, Marshall D. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968.
This book has illustrations which represent tribal life in all its diversity.
Tuscarora War
Date: September 22, 1711-March 23, 1713
Locale: Fort Neoheroka on Contentnea Creek in North Carolina
Tribes involved: Tuscarora
Significance: Decimation of the Tuscaroras dispersed their society and
opened the way for westward expansion by European settlers.
When European settlers began arriving in North America, the Tuscarora

tribe controlled nearly all the North Carolina coastal plains. The tribe’s ter-
ritory stretched from today’s Virginia state line, south to the Cape Fear
River, and inland to the Appalachians. Tribal land cut a wedge between the
Algonquian tribes of the coast and the Siouan tribes of the piedmont. The
Tuscaroras held a trade monopoly throughout the area.
Information about the Tuscaroras and their western holdings was lim-
ited, because the tribe denied passage through the area. Contact with set-
tlers was infrequent as a result of the natural protection provided by
swamps, sand reefs, and shallow harbors. Conflict between the tribe and
the settlers began, however, when the two groups started occupying the
same areas and the Indians began raids on settlers’ livestock and crops. The
Indians saw no problem with their actions, because there was no Tuscarora
law or custom that discouraged stealing from an enemy. Settlers were help-
less to prevent these attacks, because the tribe had a vicious policy of re-
venge. In 1705, the Tuscaroras became such a problem for the settlers that
Virginia passed a law forbidding natives to hunt on patented land.
Trade agreements were established between the tribe and the settlers,
but things did not go smoothly. The Tuscaroras felt the settlers were taking
advantage of them and complained about being cheated. Tuscarora tribal
leaders approached the Pennsylvania government in 1710. They presented
eight wampum belts, signifying various grievances concerning the safety
Tuscarora War / 567
of American Indian families. No agreement was reached. Unscrupulous

traders accelerated the Tuscarora discontent by describing the settlers as
easy targets with no government backing or protection. Then the Tuscaro-
ras declared war.
Tuscaroras Attack. On September 22, 1711, approximately five hundred

Tuscaroras and their allies attacked at widely scattered points along the
Neuse, Trent, and Pamlico Rivers. Men, women, and children were butch-
ered and their homes destroyed by fire. The Indians’ frenzy was slowed
only by fatigue and drunkenness. At the end of the two-day rampage more
than 130 whites were dead and nearly 30 women and children had been
captured. The frightened survivors scrambled to reach fortified garrisons.
The situation in North Carolina was desperate. Planters west of the river
could not help protect those under attack without weakening their own de-
fenses. Quaker settlers refused to fight. Governor Edward Hyde appealed
to Virginia and South Carolina for help. Virginia worked to secure the loy-
alty and assistance of the neutral Tuscaroras who had not participated in
the raids, but met with little success. South Carolina responded by sending
Colonel John Barnwell and a force of five hundred native allies and thirty
white men.
Barnwell’s departure was delayed, and his winter march was difficult.
He crossed the Neuse River in late January and marched an entire day and
night to attack the Tuscarora town of Narhontes. Although the natives
knew of his approach, Barnwell’s raid was successful. For the next four
months, Barnwell led several victorious attacks in Tuscarora territory, but
he was displeased by the weak North Carolina support. In April, against
orders from North Carolina, he signed a treaty with the Tuscaroras. During
Barnwell’s return to South Carolina, he broke the treaty by capturing na-
tive women and children to sell as slaves, thereby provoking new raids.
The summer of 1712 brought no relief. Settlers and natives were starv-
ing; no one could plant crops or hunt in safety. Residents along the Neuse
and Pamlico Rivers had their homes burned, their stock stolen, and their
plantations destroyed. The North Carolina Assembly held a special session
in July and passed a law requiring all men between sixteen and sixty years
of age to fight the natives or pay a fine. The law was widely disliked and
few men obeyed it. Then a yellow fever epidemic hit the area. North Caro-
lina’s governor was one of those who died.
Pollock’s Negotiations. Thomas Pollock was chosen as the new governor

until the colony could receive instructions from the Lord Proprietors.
Pollock appealed to South Carolina for aid but suggested that Colonel
568 / Tuscarora War
Barnwell would not be suitable. Barnwell went before the South Carolina
assembly and advised that it was necessary to prosecute the Tuscarora War
to a successful conclusion. South Carolina agreed to help. A force of nine
hundred Indians and approximately thirty-three soldiers was placed un-
der the leadership of Colonel James Moore, who was experienced in fight-
ing the American Indians.
Governor Pollock reopened negotiations with King Tom Blunt, the chief
ruler of the neutral Tuscaroras in the upper towns. In September, Blunt re-
quested peace with North Carolina. Pollock insisted Blunt’s people fight
on the side of the settlers and would not accept neutrality. Pollock de-
manded the capture of King Tom Hancock, the chief who had authorized
the massacre in September, 1711. In mid-November, 1712, Hancock was de-
livered and executed. King Blunt then signed a treaty with North Carolina
on behalf of nine Tuscarora towns.
Colonel Moore and his forces arrived in the Neuse River region in late
December. Although the people were thankful for the protection, they
were angered when the troops consumed all the provisions in the area. It
was nearly a month before Moore’s forces left for Fort Barnwell to prepare
an attack on Fort Neoheroka.
Fort Neoheroka lay within a wide curve of Contentnea Creek and was
protected on three sides by deep water and steep river banks. The fourth
side was enclosed by an angled palisade, a fence created by pointed stakes.
There were bastions, or projections, on the four main corners, and an an-
gled passageway led from the fort to the water. The natives also had access
to a network of tunnels and caves within the fort.
Moore instructed his men to create zigzag trenches to within gun range
of the fort’s east wall. He then built a triangular blockhouse to allow his
troops to provide crossfire while men raised a battery against the fort wall.
Moore also ordered a mine tunneled under the wall near the blockhouse
and lined it with explosives.
Once preparations were completed, Moore placed his forces around the
fort. Two captains, a battery of artillery, and more than three hundred Cher-
okees were assigned to the northwest area of the fort and stream to block
off the most likely escape route. East of the fort and in the trenches, Moore’s
brother, two other captains, ten whites, and fifty Yamasees took their posi-
tions. Colonel Moore placed himself, four other commanders, eighty whites,
and four hundred members of Siouan nations in the southeast. Mulberry
Battery took its place within the southern curve of the creek.
Battle of Fort Neoheroka. The attack began on March 20, 1713, with the
blast of a trumpet. The powder in the mine failed, but the attack on the
Tuscarora War / 569
northeast quickly succeeded. Captain Maule went against the southern

side of the fort instead of the southeast, as he had been ordered. This
caused Maule’s troops to be caught in the crossfire, and only twenty of his
men escaped unhurt. Colonel Moore erected a low wall and managed to set
two of the fort’s blockhouses on fire. By the next morning, the fire had de-
stroyed the structures as well as several houses within the fort. Some of the
Tuscaroras hid in the caves and created problems for the attackers, but by
Sunday, March 23, Moore’s forces controlled the fort. Destruction of Fort
Neoheroka was complete. Moore had lost fewer than sixty men and had
fewer than one hundred wounded. Nearly one thousand Tuscaroras were
killed or captured.
As word of the defeat spread, other members of the Tuscarora tribe fled.
Many of the refugees headed to Virginia, where they endured great hard-
ships and found little food. Several raiding bands continued guerrilla war-
fare in North Carolina, but Moore’s help was no longer needed. He re-
turned to South Carolina in September, 1713.
See also: Fox Wars; Indian slave trade; Indian-white relations: English
colonial; Iroquois Confederacy; Yamasee War.
Suzanne Riffle Boyce

Graymont, Barbara, ed. Fighting Tuscarora: The Autobiography of Chief
Clinton Rickard. Reprint. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press,
1994. Introduction includes information about Tuscarora history. Main
text chronicles the life of Chief Clinton Rickard (1882-1971) and his work
for American Indian rights.
Johnson, F. Roy. The Tuscaroras. Vols. 1 and 2. Murfreesboro: Johnson, 1967.
Discusses history, traditions, culture, mythology, and medicine. Maps,
illustrations, index, and many footnotes. Provides listings of numerous
original resources.
Snow, Dean R. The Iroquois. The Peoples of America series. Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1994. Follows the development of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Extensive bibliography, index.
Waldman, Carl. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts On
File, 1988. One page summarizes events leading to Fort Neoheroka and
gives some details about tribal life.
Wilson, Edmund. Apologies to the Iroquois. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Cudahy, 1959. Contains a chapter on Tuscarora history. Also discusses
land disputes at Niagara Falls in the 1960’s.
570 / United States v. Kagama

Date: 1886
Locale: California
Significance: A U.S. Supreme Court decision reaffirms that Native Amer-
ican tribes are not sovereign in the same ways as nations or states, but
are dependent in many ways upon the U.S. government.
American Indian “Pactah Billy” Kagama was charged with murdering an-
other Indian on the Hoopa Valley Reservation in California in 1885. Indian
tribes were regarded as a separate people within the United States having
the power to regulate their own social relations within reservations.
Kagama challenged the Indian Appropriation Act of March 3, 1871,
which gave jurisdiction to U.S. federal courts for several specific crimes, in-
cluding murder, committed by Native Americans on another Native Amer-
ican within an Indian reservation created by the U.S. government and set
apart for use by an Indian tribe.
On May 10, 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the act constitutional
and reaffirmed that Native American tribes were not to be considered sov-
ereign in the same way as nations or states but to be viewed as largely help-
less communities dependent upon the U.S. government for their food, pro-
tection, and constitutional political rights.
See also: Indian Appropriation Act; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
1933.
Steve J. Mazurana
United States v. Washington

Date: 1974
Tribes involved: Quinault, Queet, Muckleshoot, Squaxin Island, Sauk-
Suiattle, Skokomish, Stillaguamish, Makah, Lummi, Quileute, Yak-
ima, Hoh, Upper Skagit
Categories: Court cases, Treaties, Twentieth century history
Significance: A U.S. district court rules that Indians may fish at sites not
on reservations because this right had been reserved in treaties.
United States v. Washington / 571
Swinomish Indians displaying a skate caught in a tribal fishing trap in Washington

State, 1938. Fishing has always been an important part of tribal economies in the
Northwest. (National Archives)
United States v. Washington is commonly referred to as the Boldt decision af-

ter the judge who decided it in federal district court. In a series of treaties
negotiated between 1854 and 1855, various Washington and Oregon tribes
ceded nearly sixty-four million acres of land but retained the right to con-
tinue to fish in accustomed areas. The states of Washington and Oregon
eventually sought to regulate Indians’ rights to fish in off-reservation ar-
eas. In response, some Indian people staged fish-ins in the 1960’s to assert
their treaty rights. Finally, the state of Washington used its regulatory pow-
ers to limit Indian fishing, and in 1970, thirteen tribes sued the state in fed-
eral court.
After extensive study, Federal District Judge George Boldt ruled in 1974
that Indians had rights to fish at off-reservation sites because this right had
been reserved in the treaties. The court understood the treaties involved a
grant from the tribes to the United States, and in return, the tribes obtained
rights for its members and heirs. The ruling also stated that United States
citizens and tribal people had the right to share equally in the salmon catch,
and both were directed by the court to develop plans to protect and replen-
ish the salmon population.
This decision caused widespread opposition among state officials,
sports fishers, and others, and Indian people complained of harassment
572 / Wabash, Battle of the
and continued problems with exercising their fishing rights. On appeal

from the state of Washington, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the case in
1979 and essentially upheld Boldt’s ruling.
See also: Fish-ins; National Indian Youth Council; Winters v. United
States.
Carole A. Barrett
Wabash, Battle of the

Locale: Mercer County, Ohio
Tribes involved: Miami, Shawnee, Lenni Lenape, Ojibwa, Potawatomi,
Huron (Wyandot), Ottawa, Cherokee, Creek
Categories: Eighteenth century history, Wars and battles
Significance: Usually known as St. Clair’s defeat, this victory of the
Maumee Valley tribes and their confederates from around the Great
Lakes and Ohio Valley constitutes perhaps the most dramatic defeat
of the U.S. Army at the hands of Native Americans in the history of
the Indian wars of 1790-1890.
During the 1780’s and 1790’s, Indian resistance to American encroach-

ment north of the Ohio River rose to new heights. Led primarily by the Mi-
ami, Shawnee, and Lenni Lenape (Delaware), the western Algonquian-
speaking peoples felt betrayed by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which placed
their homelands within the United States. They also assumed that the
Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) was still valid, with its prohibition of white
settlement in what became the Northwest Territory. The British encour-
aged them by stationing soldiers at Fort Detroit and through the blandish-
ments of their Indian Department representatives, who raised Indian ex-
pectations.
Many of the militant Indians settled along the upper Wabash and
Maumee River Valleys. Under the nominal leadership of the Miami war
chief Little Turtle (Michikinikwa), the tribes most associated with him were
the Shawnee (led by Blue Jacket, or Wyeapiersenwah) and the Lenni
Lenape (led by Buckongahelas). Little Turtle’s warriors inflicted a critical
defeat on the first United States military incursion into their territory. Bri-
gadier General Josiah Harmar’s expedition to the Maumee forks (Fort
Wayne, Indiana) was badly mauled in two engagements by a pan-Indian
Wabash, Battle of the / 573
force in October, 1791. This defeat caused President George Washington to

name the Northwest Territory’s governor, Arthur St. Clair, as a major gen-
eral commanding a second expedition into the Maumee Valley.
Harmar’s defeat raised Little Turtle’s reputation and increased Indian
Unity throughout the region. The Maumee Confederacy’s contacts and
support stretched from Lake Superior to the Lower Creek villages in mod-
ern Alabama. The coalitions of Pontiac and Tecumseh were never as broad
or as unified as this one. Miami, Shawnee, and Lenni Lenape warriors
would be joined by Ojibwa, Potawatomi, Huron (Wyandot), and Ottawa
militants and there was some coordination with the Cherokees and Creeks
to the south. With Little Turtle in nominal command, the Indians’ consen-
sual and tribal kinship approach to combat proved effective in this cam-
paign.
St. Clair’s ill-trained and poorly equipped regulars, plus even less effec-
tive and less disciplined militia volunteers, left Cincinnati at the end of
September, 1791. St. Clair’s regulars constituted almost all the combat
troops in the U.S. Army. By November 3 they had advanced only 89 miles,
and discipline was so poor that entrenched encampments were no longer
maintained. The American encampment near the Wabash River’s source
(now Fort Recovery, Ohio) was divided between regular and militia units,
thereby diluting St. Clair’s command authority even more.
The Indians advanced south from the Glaize (modern Defiance County,
Ohio), keeping their presence and size hidden from St. Clair. Little Turtle
struck at dawn on November 4, and his thousand warriors quickly overran
the militia camp, pushing the survivors into an ever smaller killing zone
among the regulars. With his forces encircled, St. Clair’s attempts to rally
his defense failed. Indian marksmanship directed at the officers contrib-
uted to the disorganization. Eventually a breakout to the south was suc-
cessful for about a third of the fourteen hundred American soldiers. The re-
mainder were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Never before or since
has such a high proportion of the total United States military establishment
been defeated. Approximately twenty-one Indians died, and forty were
wounded.
It would be three years before Major General Anthony Wayne would
lead a third expedition toward the Maumee Valley. In the meantime, Indian
unity declined. Wayne’s subsequent victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers
opened the Ohio country for American settlement.
See also: Fallen Timbers, Battle of; Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
1830; Little Turtle’s War.
David Curtiss Skaggs
574 / Walking Purchase

Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1992.
Eid, Leroy V. “American Indian Military Leadership: St. Clair’s 1791 De-
feat.” Journal of Military History 57 (January, 1993): 71-88.
Tanner, Helen Hunt. “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Commu-
nity.” Ethnohistory 25 (Winter, 1978): 15-39.
Walking Purchase
Locale: Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Tribes involved: Lenni Lenape, Iroquois Confederacy
Significance: Pennsylvania’s acquisition of Native American land en-
hances Iroquois dominance over eastern Pennsylvania tribes.
The first half of the eighteenth century was a time of profound population
growth in Pennsylvania. Europeans, especially Scotch-Irish and German
settlers, came into the colony in unprecedented numbers. The steadily ex-
panding population put considerable pressure on the provincial govern-
ment to make additional acreage available for settlement. The demand for
land also created potentially lucrative opportunities for aggressive specu-
lators, particularly speculators who also served as provincial officials.
Such was the case with those who initiated the 1737 Walking Purchase.
The Lenni Lenape, or Delaware as they were also known, were among
the first Native American tribes to negotiate with William Penn. At the
time that Pennsylvania was founded, the Lenni Lenape occupied much of
the land between the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. Penn’s policies
toward the Lenni Lenape were more benevolent than were the tribal poli-
cies of most colonial administrators. Penn generally recognized native land
rights and usually was tolerant of the native lifestyle.
By the 1730’s, Pennsylvania settlers along the Delaware River had
moved well north of Philadelphia. This was Lenni Lenape territory, and the
natives refused to share possession. Some provincial officials, including
William Penn’s son Thomas, disputed the Native American claim. The
younger Penn maintained that the Lenni Lenape had promised his father
Walking Purchase / 575
that they would surrender a portion of the land. The younger Penn no
doubt also had ulterior motives for contesting the Lenni Lenape land.
While serving as the colony’s governor, he was beset with ever-growing
family debts. In an effort to solve his financial woes, he chose to sell some of
his family’s real estate. Among the most desirable and salable parts of his
acreage was the Lenni Lenape land along the Delaware.
Border Disputes. When confronted by Thomas Penn’s claim to their land,

the Lenni Lenape acknowledged that the Penn family had title to a por-
tion of the land along the Delaware. They agreed that Mechkilikishi, one of
their chiefs, had granted to William Penn some acreage north of Philadel-
phia. According to Nutimus, a Lenni Lenape chief who was present when
land was given, the Penn claim ended at the Tohickon Creek, which is
about thirty miles north of Philadelphia. James Logan, an influential mem-
ber of Thomas Penn’s council, led several Pennsylvania officials in chal-
lenging Nutimus’s assessment. He contended that Penn’s land extended
beyond the Forks of the Delaware, which was more than fifty miles to the
north.
To resolve the dispute, Thomas Penn called Nutimus and two other
Lenni Lenape chiefs to his home at Pennsbury Manor. Assisted by Logan,
Penn showed the Native Americans a copy of a deed dated 1686. The agree-
ment transferred to the Penn family a large tract of land west of the Dela-
ware and extending “back into the woods as far as a man can walk in one
day and a half.”
Nutimus argued that the walk had been made and ended at the
Tohickon. The creek, therefore, was the formal border between Penn land
and Lenni Lenape territory. Additionally, since Nutimus’s village had for
several centuries occupied the Forks area, Mechkilikishi, who was chief of
another Lenni Lenape village, had no authority to turn over land at the
Forks to William Penn.
Nutimus’s arguments were greeted with disdain by several influential
Pennsylvania officials who, like Penn, had interests in the Forks area be-
yond providing more land for settlers. One of the most concerned Pennsyl-
vanians was Logan. A few years earlier, he had begun operating an iron
furnace in the region and hoped to expand his facility. Two other interested
parties were Andrew Hamilton and his son-in-law, William Allen. Hamil-
ton was mayor of Philadelphia, and Allen was on his way to becoming one
of the colony’s most successful entrepreneurs and the chief justice of the
provincial court. Allen already had begun negotiating quietly for a large
tract in what is today Allentown. Once he acquired the land, he hoped to
divide it into lots and sell the lots to settlers.
576 / Walking Purchase
Although the Pennsylvanians passionately argued their claim, the 1686

deed upon which they based their arguments was suspicious in several
ways. Among other shortcomings, it lacked signatures and seals. There
were also blank spaces in several crucial places, including the spot where
the final dimensions of the tract should have appeared. In most cases, such
a document would have been voided by the British courts. When ques-
tioned about the flaws, Penn and Logan claimed that it was a copy of an
original that had been lost. Nevertheless, they continued to uphold the
document as valid.
In the months that followed the Pennsbury meeting, Logan quietly ex-
panded his plan of attack. To undermine Nutimus’s authority, he appealed
to Iroquois representatives for support. The powerful Iroquois nation dom-
inated most tribes throughout Pennsylvania; without their support, the
Lenni Lenape had little hope of retaining the disputed land along the Dela-
ware. Assisted by Conrad Weiser, Logan was able to get the Iroquois to con-
firm the Penn claims. With Iroquois approval secured, it was just a matter
of time before the Lenni Lenape conceded to Penn’s claims. On August 25,
1737, Nutimus and three other Lenni Lenape chiefs grudgingly endorsed
Governor Penn’s furtive 1686 treaty. A walk that would determine the ex-
tent of Penn’s holdings along the Delaware was soon scheduled.
The Walk. The walk began at the Wrightstown Quaker Meeting House at
daybreak on September 19. Three local men known for their athletic prow-
ess were hired by provincial authorities to make the hike. Two Native
American representatives accompanied the Pennsylvanians. The Lenni
Lenape expected that the walk would conform to native customs. The
walkers would walk for a while then rest, smoke a peace pipe, and share a
meal before resuming their trek. The Lenni Lenape expected that the jour-
ney would cover about twenty miles. Pennsylvania officials, however, had
much different plans.
It became clear immediately that the walk would not be a leisurely stroll
along the Delaware. Instead it proceeded northwest toward the Kittatiny
Mountains and followed a path that had been cut through the backcountry
to aid the walkers. Additionally, much of the time the walkers did not walk.
They ran. The Pennsylvanians also were accompanied by supply horses
carrying provisions, and boats that were used to ferry the hikers across
streams.
By early afternoon, the unsuspecting Lenni Lenape escorts fell far be-
hind the Pennsylvanians. A few hours later, already well beyond the
Tohickon, one Pennsylvanian dropped from exhaustion. A second walker
gave up the following morning. The final Pennsylvanian persevered until
Walla Walla Council / 577
noon on the second day. In all, he covered sixty-four miles, more than three
times what the Lenni Lenape had expected.
Even after the walk had ended, the Penn land grab continued. Rather
than draw a straight line from start to finish and then a right angle to the
river, surveyors were instructed by Logan to set the borders of the walk in a
zigzag course that followed the flow of the Delaware. As a result, another
750,000 acres were acquired from the Lenni Lenape.
During the months that followed, Nutimus and his tribe complained
bitterly about the devious tactics employed by provincial officials. How-
ever, the Lenni Lenape had few alternatives to accepting the results. With
Walking Purchase completed, the new land was soon opened to Pennsyl-
vania settlers and the Lenni Lenape relegated to diminished status among
Native American tribes living in the colony.
See also: Iroquois Confederacy; Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
meeting.
Paul E. Doutrich

Jennings, Francis. The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire. New York: W. W. Norton,
1984. Offers a detailed explanation of the duplicitous tactics used by
Pennsylvania officials to acquire the Walking Purchase acreage.
Kelley, Joseph J., Jr. Pennsylvania: The Colonial Years, 1681-1776. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. Describes the Walking Purchase and many other
episodes in Pennsylvania’s colonial history.
Thomas, David Hurst, et al. The Native Americans: An Illustrated History. At-
lanta, Ga.: Turner Publishing, 1993. A colorful history that includes a
concise accounting of the purchase.
Tolles, Frederick B. James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1957. Details the life and career of James Logan, including
his role in the Walking Purchase.
Wallace, Paul A. W. Indians in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania His-
torical and Museum Commission, 1981. Survey of Native Americans, in-
cluding a general description of the Walking Purchase.
Walla Walla Council

Date: May 24-June 11, 1855
Locale: Mill Creek, Walla Walla, Washington
578 / Walla Walla Council
Tribes involved: Cayuse, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Yakima

Nineteenth century history, Treaties
Significance: The resulting treaty drastically reduced the area of Indian
lands, marking the end of a centuries-old era and forcing Native
Americans to make a radical adjustment to white civilization.
The westward migration of settlers and immigrants reached the Northwest

by the mid-1800’s. In 1848 about five thousand immigrants and one thou-
sand wagons arrived in Oregon, more than the combined population of the
Nez Perce, Cayuse, and Walla Walla tribes.
In 1855 Isaac Stevens, governor and superintendent of Indian affairs of
the Washington Territory, took steps to implement treaties with the Indians
to acquire their land (to provide room for white settlers) and preclude hos-
tilities with the increasingly anxious and angry Indians. He also sought to
clear the way for a northern route for the Pacific Railroad. The resulting
council was one of the largest tribal gatherings in the United States. Negoti-
ations were carried on in an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, and mistrust of
the white negotiators, acrimony between factions of Indians, and even an
aborted plan by the Cayuse to massacre all the whites. It was not until be-
tween June 9 and 11 that three treaties were finally agreed upon and signed
by the Indians, under considerable duress and pressure as well as recogni-
tion of the inevitable.
Under the treaties the Indians ceded about 30,000 square miles of land in
eastern Oregon and east-central Washington. In return they were given
two reservations and promised up to $200,000 per tribe. Emphasis was
placed on “civilizing” the Indians by having the government supply per-
sonnel and build mills, shops, schools, and hospitals.
The majority of the Nez Perce remained faithful to the treaty. Other
tribes, however, felt coerced and betrayed; moreover, they were convinced
that whites would never live up to the terms of the treaty. They refused to
accept the end of their traditional way of life. Almost immediately turmoil
and war began; strife was to continue for more than twenty years before
some tribes were finally subdued.
See also: Cayuse War; Nez Perce War; Prehistory: Plateau.
Laurence Miller
Washita River Massacre / 579
Washita River Massacre

Locale: Washita River, Indian Territory
Tribes involved: Cheyenne
Significance: A decisive step in opening the Indian Territory to white
settlement.
At dawn on November 27, l868, troops of the Seventh Regiment of the

United States Cavalry, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong
Custer, attacked and massacred a Cheyenne village on the banks of the
Washita River in the Indian Territory. In this village of fifty-one lodges
were some of the survivors of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, including the
great Cheyenne chieftain Black Kettle. Custer, having set out on an Indian-
hunting expedition and following what he thought was the trail of a large
war party, had found the village, located on the south side of the river and
surrounded by thick woods. Custer divided his force of seven hundred
men into four groups; under cover of darkness, on the night of November
26, he positioned them to the north, south, east, and west of the village. All
through the bitterly cold and snowy night, the soldiers waited in absolute
silence, without fires, for Custer’s signal to attack. Troops G, H, and M, un-
der Major Joel Elliott, were deployed to the north, while troops B and F
were south of the village. Troops E and I were down the Washita River, to
the right of Elliott’s command. Custer, with the regimental band, the color
guard, a special sharpshooter company, all the scouts, and troops A, C, D,
and K, waited in the center.
Just before dawn, the soldiers crept closer to the village and, at first
light, swept down upon the sleeping Cheyennes to the accompaniment of
the strains of “Garry Owen,” the theme song of the Seventh Cavalry.
Custer, on his black stallion, charged through the village and onto a knoll
south, from where he watched the fighting. As the Cheyennes ran from
their lodges, they were cut down by gunfire or saber, with no quarter given
and no distinction made between men, women, or children. Chief Black
Kettle and his wife were both shot as they attempted to escape on his pony.
Caught entirely by surprise and with few weapons other than bows and ar-
rows, the Cheyennes’ only hope was flight—but most were killed by the
sharpshooters positioned among the trees. Some did escape by plunging
into the icy waters and making their way down the river channel to the
Arapaho village of Chief Little Raven. Within a short time, the village fell to
580 / Washita River Massacre
the soldiers, who set about killing or capturing those Cheyennes who had
taken up defensive positions in the woods.
About 10:00 a.m., Custer noticed that warriors were beginning to gather
atop the neighboring hills and, looking for an explanation, questioned one
of the female captives. He learned that Black Kettle’s village was not the
only one on the banks of the Washita River, as he had thought, but was one
of many Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa villages in the area. Shortly after,
an officer who had been supervising the roundup of Cheyenne ponies re-
ported that he had seen a very large Arapaho village downriver.
Even so, Custer directed his troops to gather up the spoils of war, which
included saddles, buffalo robes, bows and arrows, hatchets, spears, a few
revolvers and rifles, all the winter supply of food, most of the Cheyennes’
clothing, and all of their lodges. After making an inventory and choosing
some personal souvenirs, including one of the lodges, Custer had all the
rest burned.
Almost nine hundred of the Cheyennes’ horses and mules had now been
rounded up. Custer gave the best horses to his officers and scouts, provided
mounts for the female captives, then ordered four companies of his men to
At dawn on November 27, 1868, U.S. troops led by George Armstrong Custer at-
tacked and massacred a Cheyenne village on the banks of the Washita River in the
Indian Territory. Some felt the Washita action was justified because of raids by
Cheyenne warriors on white settlements; others insisted that an entire tribe should
not be punished for the acts of a few and noted the United States’ failure to meet its
obligations under the 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty. In either case, the mas-
sacre marked an escalation in violence as a method of removing Indians to clear
the way for white settlement of the Great Plains. (Library of Congress)
Washita River Massacre / 581
slaughter the rest of the animals. He had no intention of leaving the horses
behind for the warriors and reasoned that taking them along when he left the
area would surely provoke attempts by the Cheyennes to recapture them.
In the late afternoon, Custer was informed that Major Elliott, with sev-
enteen men, had chased a small band of fleeing Cheyennes down the river
and had not returned. Custer sent out a search party, but no trace of the
missing men was found. Custer then called off the search—a decision that
added to the growing resentment and anti-Custer sentiments among some
of his officers.
As night approached, Custer realized his command was in a precarious
position. Besides being burdened with prisoners and their own wounded,
his troops were cold and hungry, their mounts were exhausted, and war-
riors from the other villages had gathered in the surrounding hills. Thus
unprepared for further battle, Custer knew that he could not simply retreat
toward his supply train, left behind at a safe distance from the fighting,
without alerting the warriors to its location and risking that they would
reach it first. The stratagem he devised was to convince them that he was
advancing downriver to attack again; at the head of his regiment, with
band playing, he traveled east until darkness fell. Seeing this, the warriors
hurried back to protect their villages, leaving only a few scouts behind.
Custer then reversed back to the battlefield and up the Washita Valley, fi-
nally stopping at 2:00 a.m. to camp for the night. The next day, the troops
rejoined the supply train and two days later reached Camp Supply, the fort
from which Custer had started and at which General Philip Sheridan
waited for news of the expedition.
Custer’s Report. In his official report of the Washita action, Custer stated
that 103 Cheyennes had been killed and 53 women and children, some of
them wounded, had been taken prisoner. Among the dead were two Chey-
enne chieftains, Black Kettle and Little Rock. During the fighting in the vil-
lage, one officer and three enlisted men of the Seventh Cavalry had been
killed. Custer also reported the deaths of Major Elliott and his seventeen
men, although at the time he had no actual knowledge of their fate. Their
bodies were discovered in the woods by a later expedition.
Opinions differ as to whether Custer’s attack upon the Cheyenne was
simply another unprovoked massacre such as that at Sand Creek four years
earlier. General William T. Sherman, Sheridan, and Custer, among others,
believed that the Washita action was justified because of Cheyenne raids
on white settlements along the Saline and Solomon Rivers in Kansas in Au-
gust, 1868. During a three-day rampage, two hundred Cheyenne warriors
had committed murder and rape and abducted women and children.
582 / Washita River Massacre
When Black Kettle and two chiefs of the Arapaho had arrived at Fort Cobb
in mid-November, seeking sanctuary and subsistence for their people un-
der the terms of the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, they had been refused
because General Sheridan now considered both tribes to be hostile after the
recent raids. They were told to leave the Indian Territory and warned that
troops were in the field.
On the other hand, Indian agent Edward Wynkoop and others insisted
that an entire tribe should not be punished for the acts of a few. They fur-
ther argued that the promises made at Medicine Lodge had led the Chey-
enne and Arapaho to expect fair treatment at Fort Cobb, which had not
been forthcoming. Furthermore, it has since been established that the trail
Custer followed, which he later claimed was that of a Cheyenne war party,
actually had been made by Kiowas returning from a raid against the Utes in
Colorado.
To place the Washita Massacre in historical perspective, scholars point
out that the United States Army had failed to subdue the plains tribes in
battle on the prairie, and efforts to achieve peace through treaty had been
largely unsuccessful. Thus, the invasion of the Indian Territory, of which
the Washita Massacre was a decisive first step, represented a change of tac-
tics in the United States government’s efforts to achieve its ultimate goal:
the removal of the plains tribes as an obstacle to white settlement of the
Great Plains.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-1870; Little Bighorn, Battle
of the; Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty; Sand Creek Massacre.
LouAnn Faris Culley

Barnitz, Albert Trovillo Siders, and Jennie Barnitz. Life in Custer’s Cavalry,
Diaries and Letters of Albert and Jennie Barnitz, 1867-1868. Edited by Rob-
ert M. Utley. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, l977. An account
of the massacre completed from the writings of one of Custer’s troop
commanders and his wife.
Brady, Cyrus. Indian Fights and Fighters. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, l971. A narrative of the Plains wars, including the Washita Massa-
cre. Includes many eyewitness accounts not available elsewhere.
Brill, Charles. Conquest of the Southern Plains. Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Re-
print, 1975. A fully illustrated account of all events related to the massa-
cre, with the texts of both Sheridan’s and Custer’s reports.
Custer, George Armstrong. My Life on the Plains. London: The Folio Society,
l963. Contains Custer’s account of the events before, during, and after
the Washita Massacre.
West Indian uprisings / 583
Hoig, Stan. The Battle of the Washita. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l976.
A thoroughly documented account of the Sheridan-Custer campaign.
Maps and photographs.
West Indian uprisings

Date: 1495-c. 1510
Locale: Hispaniola, Greater Antilles
Tribes involved: Taino
Significance: Spanish policy of coopting native West Indians ultimately
resulted in rebellion.
The island of Hispaniola (today, the two independent states of Haiti and
the Dominican Republic) was the key site of the Christopher Columbus’s
arrival in the New World in 1492. Historians have not only Columbus’s
own account of contacts with the native inhabitants of the Caribbean is-
lands but also a number of descriptions by other explorers and missionar-
ies who soon came to these early outposts in the Western Hemisphere.
These accounts tended from the outset to distinguish two West Indian sub-
groups: Caribs and Arawaks. This conventional dualistic view gradually
was reworked as ethnohistorians came to reserve the ethnolinguistic term
“Arawak” for mainland populations, using the term “Taino” to refer to is-
land groupings, including the native population of Hispaniola. The wes-
ternmost Tainos on Cuba and Jamaica appear to have been the most peace-
ful, both in their relations with other Taino groupings and in their reaction
to the first Spaniards. Ciguayan and Borinquen Tainos of Hispaniola and
Puerto Rico had a pre-Columbian tradition of warring, mainly against ag-
gressive raids from groupings now known archaeologically as Island Caribs
(from the Lesser Antilles, mainly Guadeloupe). They were, however, rela-
tively receptive in the first ten years after 1492 to trying to adapt to Spanish
colonial presence.
It was among the eastern Tainos on the Virgin Islands that the Span-
iards encountered the first signs of open hostility to their presence. After
clashes with otherwise unidentifiable natives on St. Croix, whom Colum-
bus called Caribs, a number of negative observations began to enter Span-
ish accounts, including presumed acts of cannibalism and enslavement of
women captives (later identified as a ceremonial bride-capture tradition).
584 / West Indian uprisings
These early violent encounters with eastern Tainos stemmed more from
the natives’ fear of strangers than from a considered reaction against
Spanish plans for colonization. However, by the time Columbus became
Hispaniola’s first governor, a policy had been defined that called for di-
rect methods of colonial control, including the encomienda system. The lat-
ter involved forced attachment of native laborers to Spanish colonial eco-
nomic ventures, both in agriculture and in mining. By 1495, when the first
West Indian revolt against the Spaniards broke out, the long-term move-
ment of all of Hispaniola’s Tainos toward extinction had entered its first
stage.
Historians have noted that the native population of Hispaniola de-
clined most dramatically by the first decade of the sixteenth century,
mainly because of a lack of immunological resistance to diseases brought
by the Spaniards. Scores of thousands died from infectious diseases, others
from the overwork and undernourishment associated with the notorious
encomienda system. A surprising number, however, fell victim to violent re-
pression of resistance movements led by their tribal chiefs.
First Uprisings. Between 1495 and 1500, there were at least two armed up-
risings against Spanish control. Each of these (that of Caonabo, in 1495,
and that of Guarionex, in 1498) was headed by a native tribal head, or ca-
cique, who had been able to retain his leadership (in Caonabo’s case, as
head of a chiefdom west and south of the island’s central mountains; in
Guarionex’s case, local leadership in Magua, near the gold fields north
of the mountains) by at first agreeing to cooperate with the main lines of
Spanish colonial policy, including the encomienda. Especially after the ap-
pointment of Governor Nicolás de Ovando in 1502, however, the situation
became worse, and Spanish excesses were bound to cause an escalation of
violence.
A final royal note to Ovando, dated in September, 1501, authorized
Spaniards to take natives into labor service “in order to get gold and do . . .
other labors that we order to have done,” probably presuming that reason-
able wages would be paid for work carried out. In fact, this was the begin-
ning of forced labor that reduced many natives to the status of slaves.
The excessive actions of Ovando against any sign of the caciques‘ discon-
tent with Spanish control set a pattern of violent conflict that took a high
toll, especially among the native leadership. Much of the discontent after
1502 came from the sudden dramatic increase in the numbers of Spaniards
on Hispaniola. Ovando had arrived with a contingent of about twenty-five
hundred persons, including not only soldiers, missionaries (among them
the later famous author of the History of the Indies, Father Bartolomé de Las
West Indian uprisings / 585
Casas), and administrators, but also private settlers, more than tripling the
Spanish population of the previous decade. This increased settler popula-
tion was certain to demand more native forced labor under the encomienda
system.
The village chiefdom of Higüey, on the eastern tip of Hispaniola, was
the first site of what became major clashes between Spanish troops and
what seemed to be rebelling elements of the local population. Governor
Ovando’s decision in 1502 to kill seven hundred Higüey Indians who had
reacted violently to the killing of one of their chiefs by a Spanish dog was
followed a year later by a wholesale massacre, in the western province of
Xaragua (the former territory of Caonabo, the 1495 rebel leader), of some
eighty district chiefs. In the 1503 massacre, Caonabo’s widow, Anacaona,
assembled the chiefs to meet Ovando’s party. While the Spanish murdered
the subchieftains brutally in a mass slaughter, Ovando’s “respect” for
Anacaona compelled him to end her life by hanging. The future conquista-
dor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, at that time Ovando’s deputy commander,
followed up the massacre by systematic conquest of the entire western half
of Hispaniola.
Broken Spanish Promises. From 1503 forward, it became obvious that no

previously offered Spanish promises to recognize the local ruling authority
of caciques in any part of Hispaniola would hold. In 1504, some local chief-
tains, such as Agüeybana in the Higüey region, began trying to organize se-
rious resistance forces before the Spanish dared to carry out added system-
atic removals or massacres of the remaining caciques. Despite the fact that
Agüeybana’s revolt was joined by diverse tribal elements, including
groups the Spanish called Caribs, from the Lesser Antilles (more likely
Eastern Tainos, not the traditional island Carib enemies of Hispaniola’s
shores), it was brutally repressed. Agüeybana’s execution impelled any re-
maining potential leaders to leave Hispaniola, or at least to take refuge in
the more remote eastern Taino region.
Five years after the bloody events in the western region of Xaragua, and
shortly after the failure of Agüeybana’s abortive efforts in the east, Chief
Guarocuya, Anacaona’s nephew, tried in 1509 to go into hiding in the is-
land’s mountain region of Baonuco. When local troops condemned this act
as rebellion, the commanding authorities hunted him down and killed
him. More out of fear than in active resistance, the neighboring provinces
of Guahaba and Hanyguayaba rebelled, and immediately suffered violent
repression by the hand of Diego Velázquez.
With such harsh actions, the short and uneasy period of cooperation be-
tween the Spanish and the native West Indians was over. As the native pop-
586 / White Paper of Canada
ulation died off under the overwhelming odds of disease, the process of
importing African slave laborers began. They became the ancestors of most
of today’s West Indian population—the inevitable consequence of this
breakdown of the encomienda system.
See also: Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial.
Byron D. Cannon

Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-
1797. New York: Methuen, 1986. Covers a longer time period than other
listings here. Focuses on literary and anthropological approaches to un-
derstanding the psychological distances separating the colonial and col-
onized populations of the Caribbean.
Keegan, William F., ed. Earliest Hispanic/Native American Interactions in the
Caribbean. New York: Garland, 1991. A series of specialized studies of
both Spanish and native Indian institutions, including methods of agri-
culture and local administration, before and during the Ovando gover-
norate.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. History of the Indies. Edited and translated by
Andrée Collard. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. A partial translation of
the massive work (three volumes in the Spanish edition) of the Spanish
missionary who, after coming to Hispaniola with Governor Ovando,
turned critical of Ovando’s repressive policies.
Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Colum-
bus. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Contains the most
extensive coverage of the distant past of the native West Indian popula-
tion, with a concluding chapter on their short history of contacts with
Europeans before dying out.
Tyler, S. Lyman. Two Worlds: The Indian Encounter with the European, 1492-
1509. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988. Provides the most
concise history of the circumstances of West Indian revolts and repres-
sion in this period.
White Paper of Canada

Date: Proposed 1969, withdrawn 1970
Locale: Canada
White Paper of Canada / 587

Significance: This proposal by the Canadian government to revamp its
relationships with, and obligations to, Native Canadians met with
the near-unanimous disapproval of native groups.
By the late 1960’s, it had long been recognized that Native Canadians had
failed to share socially and economically in the general prosperity that fol-
lowed World War II. They were frequently the victims of discrimination
and lacked access to the economic, educational, medical, and social bene-
fits available to the majority of Canadians. These issues were frequently
lumped together in the popular media and by government bureaucrats as
the “Indian problem.” The White Paper of 1969 was a policy statement and
plan issued by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to resolve the problem.
Running on the campaign slogan “The Just Society,” Trudeau led the
Liberal Party to victory in the Canadian national elections in June of 1968.
The slogan signified a social consciousness that had been growing among
the Canadian populace throughout the 1960’s. The White Paper was part of
a general attempt by Trudeau and his ministers, following that election, to
review and reorder all Canadian social and economic policy.
Trudeau and his followers firmly believed that the special status granted
to natives by the Indian Act was at least partly to blame for the discrimina-
tion against them. According to the White Paper,
The separate legal status of Indians and the policies which have flowed from it
have kept the Indian people apart from and behind other. . . . The treatment re-
sulting from their different status has been often worse, sometimes equal and
occasionally better than that accorded to their fellow citizens. What matters is
that it has been different.
The White Paper recommended the repeal of the Indian Act, the dissolu-
tion of the Indian Division of the Department of Indian Affairs and North-
ern Development (DIAND), and the transfer to the provinces of all respon-
sibility for the delivery of social services to natives.
In order to gain native approval of its proposals, the government facili-
tated and funded the formation of a variety of native political organiza-
tions. The most prominent of these was the National Indian Brotherhood,
which later became the Assembly of First Nations. Much to the surprise of
the Trudeau government, these native political organizations were nearly
unanimous in their rejection of the White Paper proposal. Their objections
were many but hinged primarily on the failure of the Trudeau government
588 / Wild west shows
to recognize native claims of aboriginal rights and sovereignty. These, they

believed, would require the acceptance of long-ignored treaty obligations
and the settlement of land claims.
Faced with such outspoken and vocal opposition, the Trudeau govern-
ment withdrew the White Paper in 1970 but continued in various other
says to disavow the notion of distinct rights for natives and other cultural
minorities. It was later to acknowledge a measure of “existing aboriginal
and treaty rights” via the 1982 Constitution Act. Subsequent governments,
while implementing some of the White Paper proposals (specifically the
transfer of responsibility for social services to the provinces), have also ne-
gotiated land claims and aboriginal rights agreements with a number of
native political entities.
See also: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development; In-
dian Act of 1876; Indian Act of 1951; Indian Act of 1989; Indian-white rela-
tions: Canadian; Treaties and agreements in Canada.
Pamela R. Stern
Wild west shows

Date: 1883-1914
Locale: United States and Europe
Tribes involved: Sioux, other Plains tribes
Categories: Nineteenth century history, Twentieth century history
Significance: Wild west shows, in re-creating events from the American
frontier days, fixed the image of the American Plains Indian in the
minds of European Americans and the world.
From 1883 until World War I, hundreds of North American Indians—

primarily from the Great Plains—took part in a variety of wild west shows
that traveled throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Buffalo
Bill Cody staged the first one in 1883, and it was immediately joined by
many imitators. “Wild wests,” usually held outdoors in big arenas, were an
entertaining combination of rodeo, circus, and stage play. Their intent was
to present “a living picture of life on the frontier,” as one poster explained.
In addition to trick riders, sharpshooters, and cowboy bands, these shows
featured reenactments of famous events from the recent Plains Indian
wars, even recruiting as performers some of the Indian people who had
Wild west shows / 589
An 1899 poster advertising Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. (Library of Congress)
participated in the battles and events being portrayed. Many famous Indi-
ans of the day who were highly regarded by their own people as warriors,
holy men, and wise men took part in these shows. Notable wild west par-
ticipants included men who not many years before were considered to be
“hostiles”—men such as Bull, Red Cloud, American Horse, Chief Joseph,
Geronimo, and Rain in the Face.
Many of the Indians who took part in the shows had already begun to
gain notoriety as outspoken critics of federal Indian policy and were able to
use the shows for public-relations purposes. Government policy of the
time sought to assimilate Indians into mainstream society, reduce their
land base, and erase many customs and traditions. Humanitarian Christian
reformers and others who believed that Indians should shed their past and
accept the civilization of whites vehemently opposed Indian participation
in these shows, fearing that they glorified the warrior days and would
thereby delay acceptance of the federal government’s assimilationist poli-
cies. Wild west shows, which emphasized Plains Indian lifeways, were
thus attractive to many Indians because they placed a value on the older
way of life and became a natural forum from which to speak out on Indian
issues. Reservation life was difficult in the 1880’s and 1890’s, and the fed-
eral government sought to suppress most traditional cultural and religious
expression. Now, suddenly, newspapers were carrying interviews with the
Indian performers as they met and spoke with politicians, kings, queens,
and presidents. Although Indian policy did not change drastically, an elo-
590 / Winnebago Uprising
quent Indian voice of opposition was heard. The wide popularity of the
wild west shows made them influential in more lasting ways, as well. Be-
cause most shows recruited their Indian performers from the Sioux reser-
vations, particularly Pine Ridge and Rosebud, the image of the Plains
Sioux began to take its place in the popular imagination as the quintessen-
tial American Indian.
Even though government officials voiced opposition to wild west
shows, the secretary of the interior permitted Indians to tour and enforced
a number of regulations to protect the performers, following a number of
mishaps. Promoters were compelled to pay performers a fair wage for their
time and services, usually fifteen to thirty dollars a month for women and
twenty-five to ninety dollars a month for men. Additionally, the shows
were required to provide all meals, transportation, and medical expenses.
At the end of their contracts, all Indians were to be returned to their reser-
vations at the show’s expense. Show owners posted bonds of two to twenty
thousand dollars, based on the numbers of Indians employed.
Wild west shows continued until World War I. After the war, films re-
placed wild wests but for the most part adhered to the image of the Indian
the shows had created. The wild west shows were a fascinating chapter in
white-Indian relations and contributed many potent symbols that are still
prominent in American legend.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-2002; Wounded Knee Mas-
sacre.
Carole A. Barrett
Winnebago Uprising
Date: June 26-September 27, 1827
Locale: Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin
Tribes involved: Winnebago
Significance: This uprising against white settlers resulted in the death
of several whites, imprisonment and death of the warrior leader Red
Bird, and seizure of Winnebago land.
A combination of increasing traffic on the Mississippi River and a lead-

mining rush in 1821 brought thousands of miners and settlers from the east
to Winnebago territory, and hostile incidents and confrontations between
Winters v. United States / 591
whites and Indians began almost immediately. They culminated in June of

1827, when two Winnebagos were arrested for murdering a white family. A
false rumor circulated that the two Indians had been turned over to the
Chippewa, hated enemies of the Winnebago, and beaten to death by them.
Responding to this rumor, Red Bird, a warrior, was asked by tribal leaders
to retaliate against the whites. On June 26, 1827, two men and a child were
killed. Three days later two crewmen on keelboats were killed, and four
wounded.
The government threatened severe reprisals. On September 27, Red
Bird surrendered to save his tribe and the Red Bird War or Winnebago Up-
rising ended. Red Bird died in prison shortly thereafter, and the govern-
ment used the uprising as a pretext to seize the Winnebagos’ lead-mining
lands.
See also: Black Hawk War.
Laurence Miller
Winters v. United States

Date: 1908
Locale: Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana
Tribes involved: Gros Ventre, Assiniboine
Categories: Court cases, Nineteenth century history, Reservations and
relocation, Twentieth century history
Significance: The Supreme Court established the reserved water rights
doctrine through the Winters decision, where it ruled that water bor-
dering and running though reservations belongs to tribes, not states.
In the late nineteenth century, non-Indian farmers in Montana began irri-

gating farms with water from the Milk River. Twenty years later, Gros
Ventre and Assiniboine Indians on the Fort Belknap Reservation began
farming operations on its lands near the Milk River. Non-Indian farmers
claimed prior appropriation—that they used the water first—so they built
dams and reservoirs to prevent tribal use of the water. The tribes appealed
to federal court, saying that when they negotiated for their reservation they
also had negotiated for rights to the water. Ultimately, the Supreme Court
agreed with the tribes and clarified that reservation lands were not given to
tribes by the federal government but were lands reserved by the tribes from
lands ceded to the United States, and further, that the tribes have rights to
592 / Wolf Mountains, Battle of
water on or near their reservations. Other court cases made it clear that as
needs for water change, tribes will continue to have access to adequate
water supplies. This reserved water rights doctrine is controversial be-
cause it affects western states’ access to water and puts tribal needs ahead
of the needs of states.
Carole A. Barrett
See also: Reservation system of the United States; United States v. Wash-
ington.
Wolf Mountains, Battle of

Date: January 1-8, 1877
Locale: Wolf Mountains, Montana
Tribes involved: Cheyenne, Oglala Sioux
Significance: This battle, the last fight between the U.S. Army and the
Cheyenne and Sioux, ended in stalemate but sufficiently weakened
the Indians that they sought peace shortly thereafter.
After the U.S. Army’s resounding defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn
in June, 1876, the United States redoubled its resolve to defeat the Indians.
The Powder River expedition, under the command of General George
Crook and Colonel Nelson A. Miles, soundly defeated the Cheyenne in the
Wolf Mountains on November 6, 1876. The survivors joined the Oglala
Sioux camp under Crazy Horse.
In a series of skirmishes and running battles on January 1, 3, and 7, and a
five-hour battle on January 8, 1877, in the Wolf Mountains, Miles was able
to drive the Indians out. He was then stopped by fatigue and a shortage of
supplies, but the damage to the Indians was already done. Their weakened
condition, lack of food, and increasing desire for peace led to negotiations.
On May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse and his followers surrendered at the Red
Cloud Agency, essentially marking the end of the Plains Indians wars.
See also: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868; Little Bighorn, Battle of the; Rose-
bud Creek, Battle of; Sioux War.
Laurence Miller
World wars / 593
Women of All Red Nations

Significance: WARN works for autonomy among Native American in-
dividuals and communities in areas of health care, legal issues, and
economic matters.
Women of All Red Nations (WARN) exists for the purpose of achieving au-
tonomy for Native Americans, whatever their tribal affiliation. This Rose-
bud, South Dakota, association works to establish local chapters across the
country.
Many issues of importance to Native Americans fall within the focus of
WARN activities. Health care, in particular women’s health matters and
the misuse of sterilization practices on Indian women, is the group’s main
concern. Other problems that WARN addresses include children’s foster
care, adoption, political imprisonment, and juvenile justice. Inequities re-
sulting from abuses of energy resources development on Indian-owned
land is another concern.
Since WARN is a grassroots organization, its efforts also include com-
munity education. Its focus is on self-reliance, whether it be for the individ-
ual or the local group affiliation. WARN also encourages Native American
women to seek positions of leadership, both in and out of governments.
WARN issues publications regarding health problems of Native American
women and conducts an annual conference.
See also: American Indian Movement; American Indian Religious Free-
dom Act; Indian Child Welfare Act; Indian Claims Commission; Longest
Walk.
Ruffin Stirling
World wars
Date: 1914-1918, 1939-1945
Categories: Wars and battles
594 / World wars
Significance: The world wars, especially World War II, caused many
North American Indians to have significant, and generally positive,
contact with mainstream society; however, this contact led to na-
tional policies in Canada and the United states that sought to dis-
solve the Indian land base and force assimilation.
World War I. In both Canada and the United States, World War I brought
changes in the Indian relationship with their respective governments, and
there was pressure in both countries to increase production in agriculture,
stock-raising, and timber resources. In the United States, more Indian
lands were approved for sale or lease to non-Indians, creating a gradual
loss of tribal lands. In Canada, the Indian Act was amended to permit In-
dian lands to be put into production without band approval, and once this
occurred, the band was forced to provide funds to finance the operation.
Despite poverty, native people on both sides of the border raised money for
the Red Cross, purchased war bonds, and knitted bandages and other
items for the war effort. During the war, some Indian people moved to ur-
ban areas to work as shipbuilders or in factories.
Indians in both countries were not citizens, so they were not subject to
conscription into military service. However, large numbers of native men
did join the military. In Canada, Indian men joined at a rate comparable to
the non-Indian population, with about 35 percent of the total male Indian
population serving in the Canadian Expeditionary Services. In the United
States, large numbers enlisted in the military, primarily the Army, and Indi-
ans enlisted in greater proportion than any other population. Many Indians
on reservations located in the northern United States joined the Canadian
military because Canada entered the war against Germany earlier. In both
countries, Indian and white soldiers served together in military units, and
since the national goal for Indians in Canada and the United States was as-
similation, this integration of troops was viewed as an opportunity for Indi-
ans to learn the white man’s ways. While in the military, Canadian Indians
were permitted to vote; however, this right was rescinded at the end of the
war as were other rights and veterans’ benefits. In the United States, in grati-
tude for service, any Indian honorably discharged from the military was
granted citizenship through an Act of Congress on November 6, 1919. Amer-
ican citizenship in no way abridged rights as a tribal member. In 1924, the
United States Congress extended citizenship to all Indians, partially in re-
turn for patriotism demonstrated by all Native people during World War I.
World War II. In World War II, Indians in Canada and the United States
were subject to military service because they had, by now, become citizens.
World wars / 595
Large numbers joined the military voluntarily in any case. Again, some
Indians on northern reservations in the United States entered the Cana-
dian military, because that country declared war before the United States.
In the United States, over twenty-five thousand men joined the military
and over two hundred women joined the WACS or WAVES. Unlike their
Japanese and African American counterparts, Indians served in integrated
units. There were a few all-Navajo training units for Indians who did
not speak English, but once they learned the language, they joined white
units. Tribes with strong warrior traditions volunteered in disproportion-
ate numbers, and in the Northern Plains some Indian men brought their
own rifles to induction stations. On all the reservations there was a great
deal of enthusiasm and pride in the young men and women who volun-
teered for military service. It was common for family members or the
tribal community to honor the new recruits by sponsoring a feast and
having old men talk about the tribal traditions of warfare. On some North-
ern Plains reservations, old men who had participated in battles against
the United States military in their youth recounted their deeds as a way
to inspire this new generation of warriors. When these young men re-
turned from the war, they were
expected to recite their own
exploits in order to carry forth
the tribal warrior traditions.
During the war, the media in
both Canada and the United
States carried many stories
about Indian soldiers in World
War II, and almost universally,
the men were praised for nat-
ural fighting instincts, endur-
ance, and ferocity. Additionally,
many articles praised the In-
dian soldiers for their loyalty
and willingness to sacrifice for
their countries. More than once,
Indians were proclaimed to be
the perfect soldier. Partly as a
result of these stereotypes, In-
Three reservists with the U.S. Marine Corps dians were assigned as scouts,
during World War II (left to right): Minnie
Spotted Wolf (Blackfoot), Celia Mix (Potawa- fought on the front lines, and
tomi), and Viola Eastman (Chippewa). (Na- generally saw a good deal of
tional Archives) combat action. Comanche, Sac
596 / World wars
and Fox, and most notably Na-

vajo men were pressed into duty
as code talkers in the Army and
Marine signal corps. They used
tribal languages to develop codes
and communicate between units,
and the enemy could not pene-
trate their coded messages.
On the reservations, there was
a great deal of support for the war
effort. More tribal lands were put
into production to raise crops for
food. Reservation resources were
made available to the federal gov-
ernment, and some reservation
lands were turned into gunnery
or bombing ranges. Tribal coun-
cils, as well as individual Indians,
purchased war bonds and donated
sums of money to the war effort.
Indian youth in boarding and day
schools contributed money and
time to doing projects for the Red
Cross. Due to the war and result-
ing personnel and monetary short-
ages, the United States government
significantly cut back medical, ed-
ucational, and other services on
reservations. Thousands of Indi-
In 1943 Ira Hayes, a Pima, was a para- ans in Canada and the United
trooper with the U.S. Marine Corps. He States left their reservations for
was one of four Marines who appeared in
wartime jobs in urban areas. For
the famous photograph that shows them
raising the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima. (Na- the first time, large numbers of
tional Archives) Indians came into contact with
white society.
Impact of Wartime. World War II was a significant event in modern Ameri-

can Indian life. Indian servicemen enjoyed respect and freedom of asso-
ciation in the military, a contrast to the discrimination they often faced
at home. Also, those Indians who moved to urban areas to work enjoyed
a higher standard of living, and for the first time, large numbers of In-
World wars / 597
dian children attended public schools. In urban areas, as in the military,

Indian people generally found acceptance. As a result, some Native Ameri-
cans decided to reside permanently in urban areas. Canadian and Ameri-
can federal policies had always sought the assimilation of Indians as
individuals into mainstream society. As a result, after World War II there
was much talk of “freeing” or “emancipating” all Indians from the seg-
regated environment of the reservations through the withdrawal or ter-
mination of federal obligations. In the United States, there were efforts to
settle outstanding land claims through the Indian Claims Commission
(1946) and then to terminate the federal relationship with tribes. A good
deal of public attention was directed at ways to solve the so-called Indian
problems in the United States. Conservatives supported the pullout of
federal services as beneficial because it would mean less government
regulation and interference, while liberals supported pullouts as a way
to promote democratic ideals. Both groups sought to end the reservation
system.
From the Indian perspective, their reservations were homelands, not the
outdoor prisons politicians described them as being. Tribal people on both
sides of the border sought to preserve their aboriginal homelands because
they were absolutely necessary to cultural survival and integrity as a peo-
ple. Nonetheless, assimilationist policies prevailed throughout the 1950’s
and 1960’s, and there was steady erosion of tribal sovereignty, tribal land
bases, and continuous attempts to dissolve the reservation system. How-
ever, as a result of service in World War II and full participation in the war
effort, American Indians increasingly demanded a voice in their own af-
fairs. They began to assert their rights under treaties, organize politically,
and take advantage of greater opportunities for higher education, and in
the end, they were able to guide development of new national policies of
self-determination.
Carole A. Barrett

Bernstein, Alison R. American Indians and World War II: Toward a New Era in
Indian Affairs. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Documents
Indian participation in the war and the ongoing struggle for tribal sover-
eignty and self-determination.
Dempsey, James. “Problems of Western Canadian Indian War Veterans af-
ter World War I.” Native Studies Review 5, no. 2 (1989): 1-18. Canadian In-
dian war veterans did not receive the same benefits as non-Indians, lost
their right to vote, and were even encouraged to pursue hunting and
trapping as a livelihood after the war.
598 / Wounded Knee Massacre
Hauptman, Laurence M. The Iroquois Struggle for Survival: World War II to

Red Power. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Provides a
case study of Iroquois participation in World War II and analyzes the
quest for tribal rights after the war.
Nash, Gerald D. The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second
World War. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1988. American
Indian tribal life, always intimately connected to national trends and
policies, underwent profound changes because American life, espe-
cially in the West, altered after the war.
See also: Code talkers; Indian Act of 1951; Indian Citizenship Act; In-
dian Claims Commission; Indian New Deal; Termination Resolution.
Wounded Knee Massacre

Locale: Wounded Knee Creek, twenty miles east of Pine Ridge, South
Dakota
Significance: The last Indian war heralds the close of the American
frontier and the end of traditional life for Native Americans.
The Battle of Wounded Knee, on December 29, 1890, was preceded on De-
cember 15 by the slaying of Sitting Bull, the last great Sioux warrior chief.
His death resulted from an effort to suppress the Ghost Dance religion,
which had been begun by Wovoka. Wovoka’s admixture of American In-
dian and Christian beliefs inspired hope in an eventual triumph of the
American Indians over the white settlers, who, Wovoka envisioned, would
fall through the earth and disappear forever. Although Wovoka preached
passivity and patience, some of his zealous disciples carried a slightly
more aggressive message, among them a Minneconjou Sioux named Kick-
ing Bear and his brother-in-law, Short Bull. They and other followers of
Wovoka introduced the Ghost Dance to the Dakota reservations, including
Standing Rock and Pine Ridge.
In an effort to suppress Ghost Dancing, James McLaughlin, the govern-
ment agent in charge of the Standing Rock reservation, first arrested
Kicking Bear, then moved against Sitting Bull, an old adversary and, in
McLaughlin’s mind, the cynosure of tribal unrest. McLaughlin was con-
Wounded Knee Massacre / 599
vinced that Ghost Dancing could be suppressed only if Sitting Bull were in
prison. He called Sitting Bull a fomenter of disturbances, prompting Gen-
eral Nelson A. Miles, U.S. Army Commander of the Missouri Division, to
send Buffalo Bill Cody to Standing Rock to persuade the chief to negotiate
with Miles. However, McLaughlin complained to Washington and had
Cody’s mission aborted.
Death of Sitting Bull. What followed was a fiasco. Forty-three American

Indian police, commanded by Lieutenant Bull Head, surrounded Sitting
Bull’s cabin and ordered him outside. Sitting Bull obeyed, but one of the as-
sembled Ghost Dancers, angered at the arrest, wounded Bull Head with a
rifle. Attempting to hit his assailant, Bull Head accidentally shot Sitting
Bull at the same time that another American Indian policeman fired a lethal
shot through the old chief’s head.
When news of Sitting Bull’s death reached Big Foot, chief of the
Minneconjou at Cherry Creek, he decamped his followers and started a
journey toward Pine Ridge, hoping to find protection under Chief Red
Cloud. His band consisted of 120 men and 230 women and children. Big
The gruesome aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre: innocent victims buried
in mass graves. (Library of Congress)
600 / Wounded Knee Massacre
Foot himself was ill with pneumonia and had to make the journey in a
wagon. On December 28, near Porcupine Creek, the natives encountered
troops of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry under the command of Major Samuel
Whitside. Although near death, Big Foot arranged a meeting with Whit-
side, who informed the chief that his orders were to escort the American In-
dians to Wounded Knee Creek. Big Foot agreed to comply with the major’s
directions, because Wounded Knee was on the way to Pine Ridge. Whitside
then had his men move Big Foot to an Army ambulance to make the trip
more comfortable.
The combined trains reached Wounded Knee Creek before nightfall.
Whitside saw to their encampment south of his military bivouac. He pro-
vided them with rations, some tents, and a surgeon to tend to Big Foot. He
also took measures to ensure that none of the American Indians could es-
cape, posting sentinels and setting up rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns in key po-
sitions.
During the night, the remaining troops of the Seventh Cavalry ar-
rived, and command of the operation passed from Major Whitside to
Colonel James W. Forsyth. The colonel told the junior officer that he had
received orders to accompany Big Foot’s bands to the Union Pacific Rail-
road for transport to a military prison in Omaha. The next morning, after
issuing hardtack rations to the Indians, Colonel Forsyth ordered them to
turn over their weapons. Soldiers stacked up the surrendered arms and
ammunition. Not satisfied that all weapons had been turned in, Forsyth
sent details to search the tipis. Then the searchers ordered the natives to re-
move their blankets, which, the soldiers assumed, masked some hidden
weapons.
The situation grew tense. The Indians were both humiliated and angry,
but they were badly outnumbered and almost all of them had been dis-
armed. Only the Minneconjou medicine man, Yellow Bird, openly pro-
tested. He began Ghost Dance steps and chanted lines from the holy songs
that assured the Indians that their Ghost Shirts would not let the soldiers’
bullets strike them.
The soldiers found only two rifles during the last search, but one of them
belonged to a deaf Sioux brave named Black Coyote, who resisted. Soldiers
grabbed him and spun him around, attempting to disarm him, and at that
point Black Coyote fired his Winchester, probably by accident. A debacle
followed.
The soldiers opened fire on the unarmed Minneconjou at once, slaugh-
tering many of them with repeated volleys from their carbines. Most of the
Indians tried to flee, but the Hotchkiss guns opened up on them from their
hillside positions. Firing almost a round a second, the soldiers’ shots tore
Wounded Knee Massacre / 601
into the camp, indiscriminately killing braves, women, and children. The
Hotchkiss guns turned the rout into a massacre.
Slaughter of Indians. When it was over, Big Foot and more than half of his
followers were either dead or seriously wounded. One hundred fifty-three
lay dead on the ground, but many of the fatally wounded had crawled off
to die elsewhere. One estimate claimed that there were barely more than
fifty native survivors, only those transported after the massacre. Only
twenty-five soldiers were killed, most of them having fallen to friendly fire,
not to the Indians.
After the wounded troopers were decamped and sent off toward Pine
Ridge, a detail of soldiers rounded up the surviving Indians: four men and
forty-seven women and children. Placed in wagons, they also set out for
Pine Ridge, leaving their dead to a blizzard that prevented their immediate
burial and froze them into grotesque, hoary reminders of the debacle.
An inquiry followed the events at Wounded Knee, prompted by General
Miles, who brought charges against Forsyth, but the colonel was exoner-
ated and nothing else came of the investigation. The affair traditionally has
been viewed as the last resistance of the Indians to reservation resettle-
ment. It and the death of Sitting Bull, both in 1890, although not singled
out, were certainly factors in the conclusions of Frederick Jackson Turner,
who claimed in his renowned 1893 thesis that the U.S. frontier had closed
in the year of the massacre.
For American Indians, however, the infamous day did not die with the
victims. On February 27, 1973, more than two hundred members of the
American Indian Movement (AIM) took the reservation site at Wounded
Knee by force, proclaiming it the Independent Oglala Sioux Nation and de-
manding that the federal government make amends for past injustices by
reviewing all American Indian treaties and policies. Federal marshals im-
mediately surrounded the group and after two months, coaxed them to
surrender with promises of an airing of grievances. For American Indians,
Wounded Knee has remained an important symbol of the Euro-American
injustice and suppression of their people.
See also: Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-1933; Wounded Knee occu-
pation.
John W. Fiero

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the Ameri-
can West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970. A very readable,
popular account of the displacement and oppression of the American
602 / Wounded Knee occupation
Indian nations by European settlers, from the beginning to 1890. In-

cludes a helpful but dated bibliography.
Gonzalez, Mario, and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. The Politics of Hallowed Ground:
Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1999. An account of the Wounded Knee Survivors’ As-
sociation to obtain formal apology from the U.S. government for the
massacre and to name the site a National American Monument.
Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter. Eyewitness at Wounded
Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Fine collection of
photographs from the Wounded Knee battlefield and related sites, with
essays on the American Indian perspective, the Army’s role, and the dis-
torted media coverage.
Klein, Christina.“‘Everything of Interest in the Late Pine Ridge War Are
Held by Us for Sale’: Popular Culture and Wounded Knee.” Western His-
torical Quarterly 25 (Spring, 1994): 45-68. Argues that commercial exploi-
tation of Wounded Knee in Cody’s Wild West show, photographs, and
the dime novel played as significant a role as the military in defeating
the Ghost Dancers’ dreams of American Indian autonomy. Includes
photographs.
Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the
Oglala Sioux. 1932. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.
This classic work chronicles the spiritual odyssey of Black Elk, a holy
man of the Oglala Sioux. Provides important insight into American In-
dian beliefs and an account of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Utley, Robert M. Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1963. A highly regarded, sensitive, evenhanded study that
documents the events leading up to Wounded Knee. Contains a chapter
on sources, making it invaluable for further study.
Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973. Rooseveltown, N.Y.: Akwesasne Notes,
1974. With edited transcripts of interviews, documents the efforts of the
Oglala Sioux to gain national sympathy for the plight of the American
Indian by their stand at Wounded Knee Creek in 1973. Includes a chroni-
cle of events from 1868 to 1973 and an account of the 1890 massacre.
Wounded Knee occupation

Date: February 27-May 8, 1973
Locale: Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota
Wounded Knee occupation / 603
Tribes involved: Lakota Sioux, Oglala Sioux

Significance: Native Americans highlight their grievances against the
U.S. government by staging an armed occupation at an old battle site.
Internal strife on the Oglala reservation had reached the explosive stage by
February, 1973, when the village of Wounded Knee, site of the last massacre
of the Indian Wars in 1890, became the focal point for another confrontation
between American Indians and U.S. military forces.
Tribal unemployment was at 54 percent, not counting those tribe mem-
bers who lived in cities. Many of those with jobs worked for the govern-
ment. One-third of the people were on welfare or similar pensions. Median
income was around eight hundred dollars per year. Children were mal-
nourished. Poverty, alcoholism, and suicide were widespread, and the av-
erage life span for Oglalas was forty-six years of age.
In February, 1972, an elderly American Indian had died after a public
beating by two white men, who were charged with only second-degree
manslaughter and released without paying bail. The American Indian
Movement (AIM) was called in to support the family, and a full investiga-
tion showed evidence of misdealing in this and other incidents. As AIM’s
popularity increased nationally, the positions of Sioux tribal chairman
Richard Wilson and other government-employed American Indians were
being threatened.
Wilson Stirs Controversy. The trouble at Wounded Knee began with the
controversy over chairman Wilson, who had a heavy drinking habit, had
been identified as a bootlegger, and nearly had been indicted on charges of
misuse of federal funds. After his extravagantly funded campaign, Wilson
awarded positions to more than nine hundred supporters, including his
wife and sons, and had given a twenty-five thousand dollar job to his
brother. He claimed that nothing was said in tribal law about nepotism.
Wilson used federal highway funds to arm his private police force.
Known as the “goon squad” because of their brutality, they called them-
selves Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON) and suppressed with beat-
ings or threats anyone who challenged Wilson. The Bureau of Indian Af-
fairs (BIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Justice
Department gave full support to Wilson when he offered his goon squad’s
services to attack members of AIM.
Several elder Oglala women had spoken out about Wilson’s incompe-
tence. “[He] hasn’t got the backbone to stand up and protect his Indians,”
declared Gladys Bissonnette. Grace Black Elk said, “He hates AIM people
because they are doing what he should have been doing.” Ellen Moves
Camp wondered, “Why is it that the government is backing him up so
much?”
Wilson had fired the tribal vice president for supporting AIM and had
banned AIM leader Russell Means from the reservation, threatening to
“personally cut his braids off.” Returning to his Pine Ridge home, Means
was immediately arrested by BIA tribal police. Dennis Banks, with Means
during the BIA takeover in Washington, D.C., was taken into custody upon
his arrival. Both were released pending later trials. Citing suspicion of cor-
ruption, tribal members and AIM leaders began impeachment proceedings
against Wilson, who illegally terminated the action. Attempts to speak out
against this were quelled by further intimidation and violence.
AIM Protests. In January, 1973, a young American Indian was stabbed to

death by a white man. A riot ensued while AIM leaders were meeting with
officials in the courthouse at
Calico. In late February, tradi-
tional people marched on the
Pine Ridge BIA building to pro-
test Wilson’s actions and the il-
legal presence of U.S. marshals
on their reservation.
AIM again was summoned
by spokesman Chief Fools
Crow, and more than six hun-
dred people were at the meet-
ing led by Means and Banks.
Lakota mothers pleaded for
protection for the children by
asking that the fighting spirit
return. One by one, the chiefs
stood up. The Lakota would
gather at the most symbolic spot
on the reservation, Wounded
Knee, for what was expected
to be a two- or three-day stand.
A public statement, signed by
A poster inviting participation in a demonstra-
eight Oglala chiefs and med-
tion sponsored by the American Indian Move-
icine men, demanded treaty ment to support the struggle of Native Ameri-
hearings and investigation of cans at Wounded Knee in 1973. (Library of
the BIA. Congress)
Wounded Knee occupation / 605
The next day, approximately two hundred Oglalas armed with hunting
rifles were stationed at Wounded Knee. They were surrounded by the FBI,
state police, and U.S. marshals armed with high-powered weapons and
riding in armored personnel carriers. They were surrounded by BIA tribal
police, while planes and helicopters circled the area. The media soon ar-
rived.
Many separate factions were involved at Wounded Knee II: Wilson, his
corrupt government, his GOON, and some older leaders in the tribal coun-
cil who did not condone Wilson’s methods, but were concerned about the
possibility of losing federal support; the FBI, the BIA, U.S. marshals, and
other government forces—all of whom were waging a war against AIM,
the young militants, and the traditional elders who were trying to preserve
the old ways.
On the third day, Fools Crow had just begun talks with traditionalists,
AIM people, and federal authorities, when shots were exchanged. With
military planes flying overhead, there was much confusion and many peo-
ple were injured.
In the days and weeks that followed, much occurred at Wounded Knee:
People hiked in at night to bring supplies and support; two U.S. sena-
tors visited; Wilson threatened to attack with nine hundred men; the In-
dependent Oglala Nation (ION) was created; citizenships were granted;
government agents were caught inside the compound; negotiations con-
tinued; a blizzard inundated the area; firefights continued; food and
fuel ran out; airlifts arrived; medicine men Black Elk and Crow Dog led
a Ghost Dance and pipe ceremonies; a wedding was performed by Black
Elk; an Iroquois Six Nation delegation arrived; a child was born; the trad-
ing post burned; a U.S. marshal was disabled; and two American Indian
men died.
In spite of ongoing firefights, the leaders had helped to maintain the
spiritual bonds of community. Wallace Black Elk or Leonard Crow Dog
held prayer ceremonies with the sacred pipe before every meeting. Al-
though Fools Crow went into Wounded Knee thirteen times, he remained
neutral and continued to pray for peace throughout the long siege. He
guided negotiations and carried in the peace document that finally ended
the standoff.
More than two hundred Lakotas had begun the occupation and others
had joined. Nearly four hundred American Indians were arrested as a re-
sult. According to Peter Matthiessen, author of In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
the U.S. Army was involved directly in behind-the-scenes operations as
“military intelligence, and perhaps weapons and equipment, were pro-
vided to civilian authorities, with unofficial approval reportedly coming
all the way from the White House.” He also cited reports that the FBI re-
quested two thousand soldiers to seize control of the reservation so arrests
could be made, but the request was refused. The eight volunteers who had
airlifted food and medical supplies were later charged with conspiracy and
interfering with the official duties of federal troops.
Means and Banks were arrested later, but charges were dismissed be-
cause of evidence of perjury by government witnesses. In April, 1975, The
New York Times reported that violence resulting from Wounded Knee II had
continued. According to an FBI report, six people had been killed and
sixty-seven assaulted on the Pine Ridge Reservation since January 1.
The fighting spirit of the Lakota had returned. As Black Elk declared,
“Now, this is a turning point. The hoop, the sacred hoop, was broken here
at Wounded Knee, and it will come back again.”
See also: American Indian Movement; Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier
killings; Wounded Knee Massacre.
Gale M. Thompson

Press, 1991. Covers Lakota struggles with the United States, including
Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee I and II, and the 1975 Pine Lodge shoot-
out that resulted in Leonard Peltier’s imprisonment. Personal accounts,
trial records, chapter notes, index.
Sayer, John William. Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. The first book-length
study of the trials looks at the influence of media and legal institutions
on the way the defendants and their cause were constrained in the pre-
sentation of their case.
1997. A history of AIM focusing on its leadership.
Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973: In the Words of the Participants. Roose-
veltown, N.Y.: Akwesasne Notes, 1974. Includes daily events during oc-
cupation; logs kept by U.S. marshals; quotations, interviews, diaries,
and taped radio conversations from a ten-day battle; negotiations; treaty
meetings at Kyle; maps and photographs.
Waldman, Carl. Atlas of the North American Indian. New York: Facts on File,
1985. Comprehensive coverage of history and culture; land cessions and
wars; and contemporary issues. Maps and illustrations; historical chro-
nology; locations of tribes and reservations; place names; museums and
archaeological sites in the United States and Canada.
Yakima War / 607
Zimmerman, Bill. Airlift to Wounded Knee. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1976.

Chronicle of eight airlift participants who delivered food and medical
supplies during the occupation and were subsequently indicted for con-
spiracy and interfering with official duties of federal troops. Photos,
notes, comments by author’s attorney.
Yakima War
Date: 1855-1856
Locale: South-central Washington State
Tribes involved: Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, Yakima
Significance: A gold strike in north-central Washington caused a major
influx of European gold seekers to encroach on the isolated territories
of the Yakima tribe, leading to the Yakima War.
The Yakimas lived in an area that was relatively isolated until the mid-nine-
teenth century—the Columbia River Valley in south-central Washington.
Conditions changed suddenly, however, when a gold strike in north-central
Washington created an influx of white gold seekers. In general, relations
between Indians and European-descended residents in the Northwest in
the 1850’s were characterized by mutual suspicion and dislike, and the latest
arrivals made things worse as isolated attacks and retaliations increased.
Isaac Stevens, the newly appointed governor of the new Northwest Ter-
ritory, arrived in Olympia in 1853 to take over his duties. Stevens was de-
termined to persuade all the tribes in the territory to give up their lands
and accept being moved to reservations. He ordered his treaty commis-
sion secretary, James Doty, to organize a grand treaty council in the Walla
Walla area. It was attended by about a thousand Yakimas, including Chief
Kamiakin, and members of other area tribes and bands. There was a dis-
agreement among the tribes as to whether to agree to the treaty, but most
tribes finally did. Kamiakin was among those leaders who refused. A treaty
was signed on June 9, 1855. An Indian agent, Andrew Bolon, was killed by
a band of Indians in Yakima country, however, and Major Granville O.
Haller was sent to Yakima country from The Dalles. The purpose of his 102-
man expedition was to avenge Bolon’s death.
The first major battle of the Yakima War occurred at the foot of Eel Trail
on Toppenish Creek, where Haller and his forces suffered a substantial de-
608 / Yamasee War
feat. Following this skirmish a full-scale war erupted when several tribes
joined with the Yakimas in order to drive the European Americans from
their country. Major Gabriel Rains was ordered to avenge Haller’s defeat in
Yakima country.
Rains’s forces pursued the Native Americans to Union Gap (near present-
day Yakima). After the Yakimas escaped across the Yakima River, the
Union forces proceeded to a nearby Catholic mission and razed it, believ-
ing that the mission’s Father Pandum had aided and abetted the Yakimas.
During the spring of 1856 the fighting resumed with a Yakima attack at a
blockade in the Cascades.
Colonel George Wright was in command of the Northwest forces at the
time. Wright intensified the campaign against the Yakimas, and a truce was
agreed upon in 1856. The volunteers who had participated in the Yakima
campaign were dismissed, and with the construction of Fort Simcoe, the
U.S. military established control of the Yakima Valley.
By September, 1856, Wright’s forces had established control of the area
west of the Cascades. Since the original truce was not completely success-
ful, a second Walla Walla Council was organized by Governor Stevens; he
demanded unconditional surrender by the Native Americans. In spite of
the fact that Chief Kamiakin and other band leaders did not participate, the
1855-1856 Yakima War was essentially terminated at the end of the second
Walla Walla Council.
See also: Walla Walla Council.
Bruce M. Mitchell
Yamasee War
Date: 1715-1728
Locale: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina
Tribes involved: Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Yamasee
Significance: This largest Indian war of the eighteenth century Ameri-
can South destroyed the Yamasee as a tribe and significantly changed
English-Indian relations in the South.
Beginning in the 1680’s, the Yamasee conducted a large amount of trade

with the English in South Carolina, trading deerskins and Indian slaves for
English guns and rum. After the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713, however, the
Zuñi Rebellion / 609
ability of the Yamasee to pay for English goods declined. White settle-
ment on Indian lands had ruined the Yamasee deer hunting grounds. The
English victory in the Tuscarora War removed most of the tribes from
which the Yamasee abducted their slaves. By the 1710’s, the Yamasee were
heavily indebted to Carolina traders. When they could not pay their debts,
Carolina traders started to enslave Yamasee women and children as pay-
ment.
The Yamasee made an alliance with the Creeks and Catawbas, who also
had trade grievances with the English, and began a war against South Car-
olina in April of 1715. The Yamasee and their allies attacked Carolina trad-
ers and settlements, killing four hundred English and driving the English
out of the Port Royal region. The South Carolinians fought back with a
hastily constructed army of colonial militia and African slaves, who made
up half of the Carolina troops. The English won a decisive advantage after
1717, when they made an alliance with the powerful and abundant Chero-
kees. The defeated Creeks signed a peace treaty with the Carolinians in No-
vember, 1717, and moved westward. The defeated Yamasee retreated to
Florida, from which they continued to raid South Carolina for several
years, killing whites and stealing black slaves for sale to the Spanish. South
Carolina conducted a final expedition against the Yamasee in 1728. The
Yamasee were destroyed and subsequently lost their identity as a tribe.
The defeat of the Yamasee and the Creeks opened new lands to white
settlement in Georgia and South Carolina. The war induced the Creeks to
begin a policy of neutrality toward the English, French, and Spanish, play-
ing the European powers against one another for maximum advantage.
The Cherokees realized that the English were dependent upon them for
military success, and began to make greater demands on them.
See also: Cherokee War; Indian slave trade; Tuscarora War.
Harold D. Tallant
Zuñi Rebellion
Date: February 22-27, 1632
Locale: Zuñi pueblos, New Mexico
Tribes involved: Zuñi, Pueblo peoples,
Significance: A century after the first Spanish inroads into New Mexico,
Puebloan peoples resist.
610 / Zuñi Rebellion
Zuñi Indian contact with Spanish explorers began in violence. The Zuñi
lived in six pueblos widely scattered across what is now western New Mex-
ico. They occupied communities of apartment houses built on the sides or
tops of mesas. They had no central government, and each pueblo spoke a
distinct language.
Spaniards first entered this territory in 1539. They came north from
Mexico, hunting for great cities of gold reported to be in the area. The leg-
end of the Seven Cities of Gold, called Cíbola, had spread through Spanish
possessions in the New World three years earlier, when Álvar Núñez
Cabeza de Vaca—a sailor who had spent eight years wandering through
Texas and the Southwest after a shipwreck on the Gulf coast—brought to
Mexico City the story he had been told by native peoples. The governor of
New Spain sent an expedition led by a Franciscan priest, Marcos de Niza,
and a former slave named Estevanico into the region to verify the story.
Estevanico reached a Zuñi pueblo a few days before the priest. By the time
Fray Marcos arrived, the Zuñi had killed Estevanico reportedly for taking
liberties with Zuñi women. The priest returned south and, contrary to all
evidence, told the governor what the latter wanted to hear: that the Seven
Cities of Cíbola did exist and were as magnificent as legend had held.
In the summer of 1540, the Spanish launched an expedition of more than
a hundred men, including several priests, led by Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado, the governor of Nueva Galicia, a state in western Mexico. After
six months of travel, the explorers reached the Zuñi villages previously vis-
ited by Fray Marcos and were greatly disappointed by the poverty they dis-
covered. The Zuñis, fearing that the invaders were looking for slaves, met
the Spaniards in front of their village and warned that trying to enter their
homes meant death. Coronado explained through an interpreter that he
had come on a sacred mission to save souls for Christ. A priest then read the
requerimiento, a statement read by a priest before all battles, warning the
Zuñi that if they did not accept Spain’s king, Philip IV, as their ruler, and if
they did not embrace Christianity, they would be killed or enslaved.
Zuñi Resistance. The Zuñis responded with arrows, killing several Span-
iards, but Spanish muskets and steel swords proved far superior to native
weapons, and Coronado’s forces quickly destroyed much of the village.
The Zuñis fled, leaving behind a large quantity of corn, beans, turkeys, and
salt, but no gold. Coronado, who had traveled much of the way in full ar-
mor, received several wounds during the battle but survived. He con-
cluded that Cíbola must be somewhere else. Before continuing his search,
however, he destroyed the village, called Hawikuh by the Zuñis. Despite
the victory, no Spaniard returned to Zuñi territory until 1629.
Zuñi Pueblo, New Mexico, in 1879 as “Mud Head” dancers prepare for a ceremony.
(National Archives)
By 1629, Franciscan missionaries had more than fifty churches in the

area of New Mexico. Their headquarters in Santa Fe had been built by
Pueblo Indian laborers in 1610. Most of the mission churches had been con-
structed by native labor, with women building the walls and the men doing
the carpentry. The priests decided to reestablish contact with peoples liv-
ing farther to the west. In 1629, eight priests traveled to Acoma, a village
built on top of a four-hundred-foot mesa, where a church was built. The
next year, Fray Esteván de Pereá, sixty-four years of age, was sent to Ha-
wikuh, about sixty miles west of Acoma. He found a village of eight hun-
dred people, who greeted him peacefully. An interpreter told the Zuñis
that the expedition had come to free them from slavery and the “darkness
of idolatry.” This was the same message brought to them a hundred years
before by Coronado, and it had led to bloodshed. This time, however, the
Zuñi allowed the Spanish to remain and build a church. Three years later it
was completed.
Zuñi religious leaders, called sorcerers by the Christian fathers, fought
the new religion from the very beginning. In their religion, there were
many gods, not just one, who lived on the earth in trees, mountains, plants,
and various animals. Zuñis worshiped water gods, according to Coronado,
because water made the corn grow and sustained life in a very harsh cli-
mate. Water seemed almost as valuable to them as gold did to the Span-
612 / Zuñi Rebellion
iards, something the Spaniards could not understand. Zuñi priests taught
that people should live in harmony with the earth and learn to live with na-
ture, not conquer it as Christians seemed to believe. Zuñis sought harmony
in every aspect of their lives, which to them meant compromise and getting
along with everything. They did fight wars, especially with Apache raid-
ers, but violence and aggression were generally to be avoided. The Span-
iards found little of value in these teachings and believed their god had
chosen them to conquer the heathen, bring light to those living in dark-
ness—which meant anyone who was not Christianized—and then grow
rich, as God meant them to do. Compromise meant weakness to them; con-
quest, the highest good. These conflicting values would finally lead to re-
bellion and violence.
Another source of conflict between Zuñis and Spaniards was the system
of labor that developed. Zuñis and other native peoples did most of the
manual labor on construction projects; they also worked in mines and in
the fields. Spanish nobles, government officials, and settlers simply did not
work in these types of jobs; hard labor was beneath their dignity. Native
Americans were forcibly recruited for this backbreaking labor. Wealthy
Spanish landlords supposedly owned the right to the labor of all Indians
living on their land under the encomienda system. They also received trib-
ute from all families on their extensive properties, usually 1.6 bushels of
maize (corn), and a cotton blanket or deer or buffalo hide each year. In
times of drought, these payments were especially harsh and deeply re-
sented.
Native peoples also hated the compulsory labor demanded of them by
Spanish authorities. Thousands of Pueblo Indians, including Zuñis, had
built Santa Fe under this system. They were supposed to be paid for their
work, but many were not. In other places, the native peoples were used
largely as pack animals to carry logs and heavy mining equipment across
the desert. Many mines used slaves captured on frequent slaving expedi-
tions into tribal territory. Slavery and economic exploitation added to Na-
tive American resentment of the Europeans.
Killing of Priests. On February 22, 1632, according to Spanish government

records, Zuñi warriors killed Fray Francisco Letrado, the missionary at
Hawikuh, during a mass he was celebrating to honor the completion of his
church. The Zuñis then abandoned the pueblo and did not return for sev-
eral years. Upon hearing of the killing, Governor Francisco de la Mora
Ceballas sent a party of soldiers after the Zuñis. The soldiers found the
Zuñi’s hiding place and took revenge on the population, killing some and
enslaving others.
Five days after the murder of Fray Letrado, Zuñis killed another priest,
Fray Martín de Arvide, at a pueblo fifty miles west of Hawikuh. Two sol-
diers in Fray Martín’s party were killed also. The governor sent another
military expedition to avenge these deaths. Several Zuñis were killed in
battle, and at least one was later executed for participating in the murders.
The rebellion spread no further at this time, although Christian missionar-
ies did not return to the Zuñi pueblos until 1660. The missionaries re-
mained in the area until the rebellion of 1680, when violence between Span-
iards and Zuñi again broke out and the Zuñi mission churches again were
destroyed.
See also: Acoma, Battle of; Indian-white relations: Spanish colonial;
Pueblo Revolt.

Crampton, C. Gregory. The Zuñis of Cíbola. Provo: University of Utah Press,
1977. A general history of the Zuñi people. Black-and-white photo-
graphs illustrate how the Pueblos have changed over time.
Ganner, Van Hastings. “Seventeenth Century New Mexico.” Journal of Mex-
ican American History 4 (1974): 41-70. Provides a pro-Indian view of
tribal relations with the Spanish. Includes a brief description of the
events leading up to 1632.
Hodge, Frederick Webb. History of Hawikah, New Mexico, One of the So-Called
Cities of Cíbola. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1937. Contains trans-
lations of Spanish mission records and early histories of Spanish-Zuñi
relations. The only detailed history of the revolt.
Scholes, France V. Church and State in New Mexico, 1610-1650. Historical So-
ciety of New Mexico Publications in History 7. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1942. Takes a pro-Spanish point of view, treating
Native Americans in a condescending manner. Based on translations of
Spanish documents.
Weber, David J. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1992. A general overview and detailed history of
the Spanish presence in North America, from the early 1500’s to the
1830’s. A balanced view of relations between Native Americans and the
Spanish, with much useful information on religion, social structure, and
culture.
615
Gazetteer of Historic Places
ACOMA PUEBLO, NEW MEXICO

Location: Forty-five miles southwest of Albuquerque, off U.S. Interstate
40 in northwestern New Mexico
Significance: This Native American village at the top of a mesa known
as the Rock of Acuco is one of the oldest continuously occupied sites
in the continental United States. The first inhabitants probably ar-
rived between 1075 and 1200 c.e.
ALCATRAZ ISLAND, CALIFORNIA

Location: An island one and a half miles from the city of San Francisco
Significance: This was the site of the first U.S. fort on the Pacific Coast.
It was used as a federal maximum-security prison between 1934 and
1963, occupied repeatedly by Native American groups between 1964
and 1971, and absorbed into the Golden Gate National Recreation
Area, a National Park, in 1972.
ALKALI RIDGE, UTAH

Location: Monticello, San Juan County
Significance: This is a series of thirteen habitation sites along Alkali
Mesa. Excavations helped clarify the development of Anasazi culture
in the San Juan drainage, by defining the Pueblo II period (c. 900-
1100 c.e.). Local development from Basketmaker III (400-700) through
Pueblo III (1100-1300) periods was shown to be a continuous growth
influenced by neighboring peoples.
ANGEL MOUNDS, INDIANA

Location: Evansville, Vanderburgh County
Significance: Covering a hundred-acre area, this site is the northeast-
ern-most extension of the Mississippian culture, which flourished in
the period 1000-1600 c.e. The mounds now form a state park.
AWATOVI RUINS, ARIZONA

Location: Keams Canyon, Navajo County
Significance: Located on the Hopi Indian Reservation, Awatovi Ruins is
the site of one of the most important Hopi Indian villages encoun-
tered by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s men in 1540. It contains
the remains of a five-hundred-year-old pueblo and a seventeenth
616 / Gazetteer of Historic Places
century Spanish mission complex. Excavations were conducted at

the site by the Peabody Museum in the 1930s.
AZTALAN, WISCONSIN
Location: Aztalan State Park, near Lake Mills on Wisconsin 89, Jefferson
County
Significance: This large, stockaded temple mound site, first discovered
in 1836, is the northernmost of the major Mississippian culture ar-
chaeological sites. It now forms Aztalan State Park. It represents an
important northern extension of the Cahokia phase of the Middle
Mississippi culture.
AZTEC RUINS, NEW MEXICO

Location: On the Animas River in northwestern New Mexico, just north
of the town of Aztec; fourteen miles northeast of Farmington, New
Mexico, or thirty-five miles southwest of Durango, Colorado, on U.S.
Interstate 550
Significance: This monument, on twenty-seven acres, is devoted to
Anasazi pueblo ruins dating from the twelfth through thirteenth cen-
turies; it includes six major archaeological sites, partially excavated,
and the only fully reconstructed Anasazi kiva (ceremonial chamber).
BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO

Location: Nearly fifty square miles on the Pajarito Plateau west of the
Rio Grande; the main part of the site is about forty-six miles west of
Santa Fe on Route 4, while the separate Tsankawi section of the mon-
ument, a large unexcavated Indian ruin on a high mesa, is eleven
miles north from Bandelier on Route 4
Significance: The Pajarito Plateau is an elevated area of volcanic rock
called tuff (hardened volcanic ash) and basaltic lava thrown out thou-
sands of years ago by a great volcano. The surface of the plateau is
crossed by deep gorges cut by streams running east to the Rio Grande
valley. One of the largest and most accessible of these valleys is Fri-
joles Canyon, the site of numerous ruined structures and cliff dwell-
ings built mostly between 1200 and 1400 c.e. by the Anasazi, ances-
tors of modern-day Pueblo Indians.
BAT CAVE, NEW MEXICO

Location: On the plains of San Agustin in southwestern New Mexico
Significance: The site of Bat Cave has provided some of the most com-
plete evidence for manifestations of the Cochise culture, a regional
Gazetteer of Historic Places / 617
variant of the more widespread Desert culture of the Archaic period

in western North America. Archaeological remains at Bat Cave, exca-
vated by archaeologist Herbert Dick, span a period of almost four
thousand years, from 4000-200 b.c.e. The area in which Bat Cave is lo-
cated was later the homeland of the Mogollon cultural tradition,
which corresponds to the establishment of pottery-producing seden-
tary villages reliant on the rainfall cultivation of maize, squash, and
other crops.
BEAR BUTTE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Sturgis, Meade County
Significance: Sacred to the Cheyenne, Bear Butte is the place where
Maheo imparted to Sweet Medicine (a mythical hero) the knowledge
from which the Cheyenne derive their religious, political, social, and
economic customs. The site is in Bear Butte State Park.
BEAR RIVER MASSACRE SITE, IDAHO

Location: Southeastern Idaho
Significance: On January 29, 1863, California Volunteers under the com-
mand of Colonel Patrick Edward Conner attacked a band of North-
western Shoshone. The bloodiest encounter between Native Ameri-
can and white men to take place in the West in the years between 1848
and 1891, Bear River Massacre resulted in the deaths of almost three
hundred Shoshone and fourteen soldiers.
BIG AND LITTLE PETROGLYPH CANYONS, CALIFORNIA

Location: China Lake, Inyo County
Significance: First reported in 1938, this site deep within the Coso
Mountains is one of the most spectacular petroglyph areas known in
the western United States, exhibiting more than twenty thousand de-
signs. It represents at least two cultural phases.
BIG BEAD MESA, NEW MEXICO

Location: Near Ojo del Padre, Sandoval County
Significance: Occupied from about 1745 to 1812, this is an impressive
fortified Navajo village site. After moving into the Big Bead Mesa re-
gion, the Navajos established a stronghold that menaced the pueblos
of Laguna and Acoma and formed an alliance with the Gila Apaches.
The site is an important representative of patterns of trade and raid-
ing that characterized Navajo relations with Pueblos, Apache, and
Hispanics.
BLOOD RUN SITE, IOWA

Location: Sioux Falls, Lyon County
Significance: Blood Run Site is the only known mound group attribut-
able to the Oneota culture, which is ancestral to many midwestern
Native American groups. The archaeological complex consists of the
remains of a village that once included more than 158 visible conical
burial mounds and an effigy earthwork. Limited archaeological data
indicate Native American occupation of this site in the early 1700’s
extending back perhaps as far as 1300 c.e.
CAHOKIA, ILLINOIS
Location: The Cahokia Mounds State Historic and World Heritage Site is
fifteen miles to the northeast, near Collinsville, extending just north
of Route 40 and bordered on the east by U.S. Interstates 55 and 70, on
the west by U.S. Interstate 255, and on the south by Routes 50 and 64
Significance: The Cahokia Mounds were built between 900 and 1300 by
Mississippian Indians, who used the mounds as ceremonial centers.
The largest and most famous of these structures is Monks Mound,
which rises to a height of one hundred feet and has a base measuring
eight thousand square feet. Sixty-eight of the estimated 120 mounds
can still be viewed. The nearby town of Cahokia was founded in 1699
by French missionaries. It is the oldest permanent European settle-
ment in Illinois and contains many historic French colonial buildings.
CAMAS MEADOWS BATTLE SITES, IDAHO

Location: Kilgore, Clark County
Significance: On August 19, 1877, the military force led by Major Gen-
eral Oliver Otis Howard which had been pursuing the Nez Perce
since their departure from Clearwater was in a position to intercept
them in their flight to Canada. Here, on August 20, a predawn raid by
Nez Perce warriors succeeded in capturing most of Howard’s pack
mules, forcing the army to halt until more mules and supplies could
be secured, which resulted in a time-consuming detour. The army’s
delay made it possible for the Nez Perce to escape into Yellowstone
Park and Montana. Their remarkable journey toward Canada contin-
ued six weeks longer as a result of this raid.
CANYON DE CHELLY, ARIZONA

Location: East of Chinle, on the Navajo reservation, in northeastern Ari-
zona near the New Mexico border; ninety miles north of Interstate 40
on Arizona 191
Significance: This National Monument, currently inhabited by Navajo

farmers, includes well-preserved ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings in
sandstone canyons dating from 350-1300 c.e.
CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL, PENNSYLVANIA

Location: Carlisle, Cumberland County
Significance: Founded in 1879 by Brigadier General Richard H. Pratt
(1840-1924), a Civil War officer and veteran of the Indian campaigns
in the West, the school pioneered federal programs for Indian educa-
tion and was a model for similar schools built elsewhere.
CARRINGTON OSAGE VILLAGE SITES, MISSOURI

Location: Horton vicinity, Vernon County
Significance: Occupied from about 1775 to 1825, this was the last dwell-
ing place of the Big Osage Indians in southwest Missouri, prior to
their removal to a reservation in Kansas. The site was visited in 1806
by Zebulon Pike. Because of the large number of trade goods found
here, the site illustrates the rapid acculturation of the Big Osage.
CASA GRANDE RUINS, ARIZONA

Location: Approximately forty miles south of Phoenix on Highway 87
or U.S. Interstate 10; the monument is on Highway 87 about one
mile north of Coolidge, approximately halfway between Phoenix and
Tucson
Significance: This is the site of a large, unusual multistoried structure,
the Casa Grande, built by the Hohokam people around 1350 c.e. Now
protected by a steel shelter, the thick walls of the Casa Grande are
clearly visible in the distance as visitors approach the monument,
which for centuries has been used by travelers as a landmark and
meeting place. Surrounding the Casa Grande are the ruins of one or
more Hohokam villages that are open to visitors. Park rangers are
available on the site to answer questions about the monument and
the daily lives and culture of the Hohokam.
CASA MALPAIS SITE, ARIZONA

Location: Springerville, Apache County
Significance: Situated on terraces of a fallen basalt cliff along the upper
Little Colorado River, the site dates from late Pueblo III to early
Pueblo IV (1250-1325 c.e.) times. Casa Malpais appears to incorpo-
rate features of both early and late Mogollon culture settlement pat-
terns.
CATALDO MISSION, IDAHO

Location: Cataldo, Kootenai County
Significance: The oldest extant mission church in the Pacific Northwest,
Cataldo was used by Jesuit missionaries (1850 or 1853) in their efforts
to convert the Coeur d’Alene Indians.
CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO

Location: Northwestern New Mexico, about 175 miles northwest of Al-
buquerque; the southern entrance is located sixty-four miles north of
Interstate 40 on Route 57
Significance: This large, prehistoric pueblo community, trading center,
and ceremonial site flourished circa 900-1180 c.e. The thirty-four-
square-mile park contains one of the largest collections of ancient
pueblo ruins in the southwestern United States. Chaco Canyon was
the hub of a four-hundred-mile network of roads connecting it with
numerous outlying communities, usually called outliers. The size
and intricacy of its architecture, the sophistication of its agricul-
tural irrigation system, and evidence of artistic, economic, and astro-
nomical endeavors indicate this was an advanced ancient civiliza-
tion, sometimes called the “Chaco Phenomenon.” Abandoned for
unknown reasons in the twelfth century, its existence first became
known to the outside world in 1849 when it was discovered by a
U.S. Army expedition.
CHIEF JOSEPH BATTLEGROUND OF BEAR’S PAW, MONTANA

Location: Chinook, Blaine County
Significance: This is the site of the battle in which Chief Joseph (c. 1840-
1904) and more than four hundred Nez Perce Indians surrendered to
the United States Army (1877). The Bear’s Paw surrender signaled
the close of the Nez Perces’ existence as an “independent Indian peo-
ple.” Henceforth, they lived as a group of displaced persons—in the
white culture, but certainly not of it.
CHIEF PLENTY COUPS HOME, MONTANA

Location: 0.5 mile west of Pryor, at the intersection of BIA roads #5 and
#8 (Edgar Road), Big Horn County
Significance: This was the homestead of Chief Plenty Coups (c. 1849-
1932), also called Aleekchea’ahoosh, one of the last and most cele-
brated traditional chiefs of the Crow Indians. It includes the house of
Chief Plenty Coups, an adjacent log store operated by the chief, and
the Plenty Coups Spring, a site of historic and cultural significance to
the Crow people. Chief Plenty Coups established the homestead in

1884 and lived there until his death in 1932, making his political ca-
reer of more than a half a century one of the longest of any chief. One
of the most important Native American leaders of the transitional
period and an ambassador and negotiator for the Crow, Chief Plenty
Coups advocated the adoption of those aspects of American culture
necessary to succeed on the reservation while maintaining tradi-
tional Crow religious beliefs and cultural values.
CHUCALISSA SITE, TENNESSEE

Location: Memphis, Shelby County
Significance: Chucalissa is a Walls Phase (1400-1500) prehistoric
mound and plaza complex, and the best known and preserved of
such sites in the Central Mississippi River Valley. The site is known
for its excellent preservation of architectural, floral, faunal, and hu-
man skeletal materials.
CLOVER SITE, WEST VIRGINIA

Location: Lesage, Cabell County
Significance: These are the extraordinarily well preserved remains of
an Indian town dating to about four hundred years ago. The site per-
tains to the Fort Ancient culture, descendants of the cosmopolitan
Hopewell trading societies and related to the other great urbanizing
mound builders of the Mississippian period.
CORONADO NATIONAL MEMORIAL, ARIZONA

Location: Twelve miles south of Sierra Vista
Significance: This memorial commemorates Francisco Vásquez de
Coronado’s exploration of the United States Southwest (1540-1542).
The memorial is located near his point of entry into the United States
in his search for the Seven Cities of Cíbola. It was established four
hundred years later.
COUFAL SITE, NEBRASKA

Location: Cotesfield, Howard County
Significance: Coufal (1130-1350 c.e.) is a major village of the Central
Plains tradition. Earth lodges of the prehistoric Indians of the Itskari
Phase have been excavated here, bridging the gap between late pre-
historic villagers and the origins of the Pawnee.
CREEK NATIONAL CAPITOL, OKLAHOMA

Location: 6th Street and Grand Avenue, Okmulgee, Okmulgee County
Significance: This Victorian-style structure was used by the Creeks
from 1878 to 1907, after their adoption of a representative form of
government modeled on the United States Congress.
DANCING RABBIT CREEK TREATY SITE, MISSISSIPPI

Location: Macon, Noxubee County
Significance: On September 27, 1830, at Dancing Rabbit Creek, a tradi-
tional gathering place of the Choctaw people, an infamous treaty was
signed for the removal of the Choctaw people from their homeland.
This treaty was the most important of the pacts between the United
States and the Choctaw as it resulted in the removal of a large part of
the tribe from their traditional Southeastern homeland in present-day
Mississippi. The Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty served as a model for
treaties of removal with the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Semi-
nole tribes. The treaty led to the extinguishing of all Choctaw title to
land east of the Mississippi River owned by the Choctaw nation. It
also led to the opening of a vast territory to American settlement.
DANGER CAVE, UTAH

Location: Wendover, Tooele County
Significance: Results of excavations at this site formed the basis for def-
inition of a long-lived Desert culture which existed in the Great Basin
area. The earliest cave stratus (c. 9500-9000 b.c.e.) is characterized by
crude chipped stone artifacts; Zone II (c. 8000-7000 b.c.e.) by milling
stones, basketry, and notched projectile points characteristic of the
Desert culture; and Zones III, IV, and V (c. 7000 b.c.e.-500 c.e.) by ma-
terials showing an elaboration of the same culture.
EFFIGY MOUNDS NATIONAL MONUMENT, IOWA

Location: In eastern Iowa, along the Mississippi River; Three miles
north of Marquette, on Highway 76
Significance: The monument was founded to preserve and protect
a representative example of prehistoric American Indian mound-
building culture and the wildlife and scenic wildness around the
area. While mound building was widespread throughout the eastern
half of North America, only in the upper Mississippi Valley was a cul-
ture established that specialized in mounds built in the shape of liv-
ing creatures such as eagles, falcons, bison, deer, turtles, lizards, and
especially bears.
EL CUARTELEJO, KANSAS
Location: Scott City, Scott County
Significance: This pueblo ruin is attributed to a group of Picuria Indians
who left the Southwest because of friction with the Spanish. El Cuar-
telejo is a state park.
EL MORRO, NEW MEXICO

Location: Forty-two miles from the Grants exit of U.S. Interstate 40 to
the site entrance via New Mexico State Road 53; fifty-six miles from
the Gallup exit of U.S. Interstate 40 to the site entrance, also via New
Mexico State Road 53
Significance: This natural outcropping or mesa of sandstone carries in-
scriptions dating from prehistoric times to the early twentieth cen-
tury by people who have lived there and by those who passed by. It is
also called Inscription Rock. One of El Morro’s mysteries is the iden-
tity of the prehistoric people who carved petroglyphs, or rock art, of
mountain sheep, bear claws, and people into the rock some seven
hundred years ago. Another mystery is how they built two fortified
villages atop the rock. The Zuñi have named the larger mesa-top
town A’ts’ina, meaning “writing on the rock.” The ruins suggest that
the pueblos there rose as high as three stories and enclosed five hun-
dred rooms. Some fifteen hundred people were housed there, and by
1990, sixteen rooms and two kivas, or sunken ceremonial chambers,
had been excavated. One of the kivas is unusual because it is square
(most extant kivas are round).
EMERALD MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

Location: Stanton
Significance: The Emerald (Selzertown) Mound site is located on Fair-
child’s Creek in the hardwood-covered löessial hills of southwestern
Mississippi about six miles east of the Mississippi River, one mile
north of Stanton Station, and nine miles northeast of Natchez. It was
the last major ceremonial seat of the prehistoric Natchez Indians
immediately before European contact. Emerald was occupied from
circa 1300 to 1600 c.e., or during the late Anna or early Foster through
the Emerald phases of the Late Mississippian period.
ETOWAH, GEORGIA
Location: Etowah River Valley, near Cartersville and Atlanta
Significance: Etowah Mounds and village site, the largest Indian settle-
ment in the Etowah Valley, occupied between 700 and 1650 c.e., was a
political, religious, and trade center for several thousand people of

the Mississippian or mound builder culture. Influences from the
Adena and Hopewell periods are evident along with possible Meso-
american influence.
FALLEN TIMBERS BATTLEFIELD, OHIO

Location: Maumee, Lucas County
Significance: On August 20, 1794, General “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s
victory here over the Indians at Fallen Timbers asserted American
sovereignty in the Old Northwest and made possible the Treaty of
Greenville. The battle and treaty insured a period of peaceful settle-
ment in the Ohio Country long enough for the new nation to consoli-
date its hold on the Northwest Territory.
FOLSOM SITE, NEW MEXICO

Location: Folsom, Colfax County
Significance: The archaeological discoveries at this site confirmed theo-
ries of the early advent of humans in America.
FORT ANCIENT, OHIO

Location: Lebanon, Warren County
Significance: This hilltop area with large surrounding earthworks was
built and inhabited by people of the Hopewell culture (c. 300 b.c.e.-
250 c.e.). Hundreds of years after the site had been abandoned by the
Hopewell, the Fort Ancient people (1200-1600 c.e.) settled in the area,
establishing villages on the south fort of the earthworks and the An-
derson Village site.
FORT BELKNAP, TEXAS

Location: Newcastle, Young County
Significance: Established in 1851 following the Mexican War when the
Texas frontier was being ravished by Comanche-Kiowa raids, Fort
Belknap was the anchor of a chain of outer border posts stretching
from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Until 1865, it was the key
post in the protection of the exposed frontier; it bore the brunt of
Comanche-Kiowa assault, and during the Civil War it served as a
base for campaigns against these raiders.
FORT GIBSON, OKLAHOMA

Location: Lee and Ash Streets, Fort Gibson, Muskogee County
Significance: Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indians removed from the
Southeast by the government were brought here between 1824 and

1840. The fort was abandoned in 1857 and turned over to the Chero-
kee Nation. During the Civil War, it was reoccupied by federal forces
consisting of three Cherokee Regiments, four companies of Kansas
Cavalry, and Hopkins Battery. After the war, the post was garrisoned
intermittently until it was abandoned as a military post in 1890 and
reverted to the Cherokee Nation.
FORT OSAGE, MISSOURI

Location: Sibley, Jackson County
Significance: Established in 1808 by General William Clark (1770-1838)
for the protection and promotion of trade with the Osage Indians,
Fort Osage was one of the most successful of twenty-eight trading
houses operated from 1795 to 1822 under the U.S. government’s fac-
tory system. The fort served as the point from which distances were
measured by the Federal Survey of 1825.
FORT PHIL KEARNY AND ASSOCIATED SITES, WYOMING

Location: Story, Johnson County
Significance: Established in 1866 to protect travelers along the
Bozeman Trail, the fort was under virtual siege (1866-1868) in the
“Red Cloud War” as Sioux groups fought successfully to prevent
white invasion of their hunting grounds. This was one of the few
times when the Army was forced to abandon a region it had occu-
pied.
FORT RICHARDSON, TEXAS

Location: Jacksboro, Jack County
Significance: Established in 1867 to replace the recently abandoned Fort
Belknap as the northernmost fort in the Texas chain of fortifications,
the fort played an important role in the protection of American lives
and property during the days of the Kiowa-Comanche conflict of the
post-Civil War period, particularly the Red River War of 1874.
FORT ROBINSON AND RED CLOUD AGENCY, NEBRASKA

Location: Crawford, Dawes County
Significance: In 1873, the U.S. government moved Chief Red Cloud and
his large band of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux to the White River
area; nearby Fort Robinson was established in 1874 to protect govern-
ment employees and property. The fort served as a base for Army
campaigns against several groups of Native Americans, including
the 1876 campaign against the Powder River Sioux. After 1919, the
fort became a major quartermaster remount depot.
FORT SHANTOK, CONNECTICUT

Location: Montville, New London County
Significance: From 1636 to 1682, this was the site of the main Mohegan
town and the home of Uncas, the most prominent and influential
Mohegan leader and statesman of his era. Uncas was first noted in
European records as the leader of a small Indian community at
“Munhicke” in 1636; within a few years of this, Uncas had emerged
as the most prominent Indian client of the Connecticut authorities
at New Haven and Hartford. Attracted by his success and influen-
tial connections, substantial numbers of Connecticut Indian people
joined his community.
FORT SILL, OKLAHOMA

Location: Fort Sill, Comanche County
Significance: Troops stationed here were active in campaigns against
Southern Plains tribes in the late 1800’s. Virtually all the original fort
survives; it has expanded and continued to play a significant role for
the Army in modern times.
FORT THOMPSON MOUNDS, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Fort Thompson, Buffalo County
Significance: This large group of low burial mounds dating from Plains-
Woodland times (c. 800 c.e.) contains evidence of the first pottery-
making peoples in the area. It is situated on the Crow Creek Indian
Reservation.
FORT WASHITA, OKLAHOMA

Location: Nida, Bryan County
Significance: This fort was established in 1842 (reportedly by Zachary
Taylor) because of treaty commitments to the Chickasaws and Choc-
taws and to serve as a way station for travelers on the Southern Over-
land Trail.
GATLIN SITE, ARIZONA

Location: Gila Bend, Maricopa County
Significance: Probably first occupied sometime before 900 c.e., the Gat-
lin Site contains one of the few documented Hohokam platform
mounds. Associated with the mound are pit houses, ball courts, mid-
dens, and prehistoric canals. The mound is one of the only excavated
and documented Sedentary Period platform mounds that is still rela-
tively intact.
GILA CLIFF DWELLINGS, NEW MEXICO

Location: On Route 15, forty-two miles north of Silver City
Significance: These five caves were inhabited by the Mogollon people
until the thirteenth century.
GRAHAM CAVE, MISSOURI

Location: Mineola, Montgomery County
Significance: At the time of the 1949 excavations of the site, remains
found here, dating to 8000 b.c.e., were among the earliest known for
the Archaic Period. The remains from Early and Middle Archaic
times give the site its importance and illustrate a merging of Eastern
and Plains influence in Missouri.
GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA

Location: Encompasses 178 miles of the Colorado River in northwestern
Arizona
Significance: There is evidence of human habitation in and around the
Grand Canyon dating back about five thousand years. The early resi-
dents, the Anasazi, hunted large and small animals and gathered na-
tive plant foods in season. About two thousand years ago, they
adopted maize and squash farming. Later Anasazi were known as
Pueblo Indians after the communal structures in which they lived.
The region’s Pueblo Indians made pottery, grew cotton, traded over
large distances, and practiced elaborate ceremonies. More than five
hundred Pueblo ruins have been found in the vicinity of the Grand
Canyon, but none is of the size or complexity of better-known ruins
like those at Mesa Verde. The Pueblo Indians abandoned the Grand
Canyon about 1200. Since then the canyon has been frequented by the
Hopi, who are descended from the Pueblo Indians, and occupied by
the Havasupai and Hualipai south of the river and the Paiute to the
north. The most recent arrivals on the scene were the Navajo. In the
twentieth century, Indian lands in and around the Grand Canyon
were reduced to designated reservations.
GRAVE CREEK MOUND, WEST VIRGINIA

Location: Moundsville, Marshall County
Significance: Dating to c. 500 b.c.e., this is one of the largest and oldest
mounds in the United States representative of the burial mound tra-

dition of the Adena culture, which preceded the Hopewell culture.
GUNTHER ISLAND SITE 67, CALIFORNIA

Location: Eureka, Humboldt County
Significance: One of the largest Wiyot villages, this site (900 c.e.) typi-
fies the late prehistoric period and was instrumental in outlining the
prehistory of the Northern California coast. The site is a shell mound
encompassing approximately six acres and attaining depths of up to
fourteen feet.
HARDAWAY SITE, NORTH CAROLINA

Location: Badin, Stanly County
Significance: During the Paleo-Indian to Early Archaic Periods (12,000-
6,000 b.c.e.), prehistoric Indian populations came here to exploit the
lithic resources of the area to manufacture projectile points and stone
tools; these activities created stratified cultural deposits as much as
four feet in depth. This site has played a significant role in the devel-
opment of archaeological method and theory, by advancing knowl-
edge and understanding of the sequential development of prehis-
toric cultures in the eastern United States, particularly with regard to
the earliest periods of human occupation.
HASKELL INSTITUTE, KANSAS

Location: Lawrence, Douglas County
Significance: Founded in 1884, this was one of the first large off-reser-
vation boarding schools for Indian students established by the fed-
eral government. It served students from the southern Plains and up-
per Midwest; in 1965, it became Haskell Indian Junior College.
HAWIKUH, NEW MEXICO

Location: Zuñi, Valencia County
Significance: Established in the 1200’s and abandoned in 1680, the Zuñi
pueblo of Hawikuh, largest of the “Cities of Cíbola,” was the first
pueblo seen by Spanish explorers. In 1539, the black scout Estevan
(also known as Estevanico) became the first non-Indian to reach this
area; he was killed by the people of Hawikuh as he entered their city.
The next year, when the Coronado Expedition reached the fabled
pueblo, they found not gold but a small, crowded, dusty sandstone
village.
HOLLY BLUFF SITE, MISSISSIPPI

Location: Holly Bluff, Yazoo County
Significance: This is the type of site for the Lake George phase of the
prehistoric Temple Mound period of the area. The site is important in
that it is on the southern margin of the Mississippian cultural ad-
vance down the Mississippi River and on the northern edge of that of
the Cole’s Creek and Plaquemine cultures of the South.
HORNER SITE, WYOMING

Location: Cody, Park County
Significance: This site has yielded evidence that several distinctive
weapons and tools found in the Plains region were all part of a single
prehistoric flint tool industry of Early Hunter origin. Initial age esti-
mates place occupation of this site at approximately 5000 b.c.e.
HUBBELL TRADING POST, ARIZONA

Location: Ganado, Apache County
Significance: This still-active trading post represents the varied interac-
tions of Navajos and the white traders who ran trading posts on the
Navajo Reservation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries.
HUFF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, NORTH DAKOTA

Location: Huff, Morton County
Significance: By 1500 c.e., the Middle Missouri agricultural villages
were the principal focus for social organization of the Mandan peo-
ple, who had developed extensive trading networks over the previ-
ous two hundred years. The Huff Village is one of the best-known
and best-preserved sites of this period. Its bastioned fortification sys-
tem, dense and regular arrangement of houses, and wide variety in
material culture attest to the extraordinary regional impacts of their
way of life. The remains of a large central house facing an open plaza
preserve evidence about the ritual space, which corresponds to the
complex spiritual and ideological world that the Mandan have main-
tained since historic times.
JAKETOWN SITE, MISSISSIPPI

Location: Belzoni, Humphreys County
Significance: Located in northwestern Mississippi, Jaketown Site is the
remains of a complex regional trade center dating from 2000-600 b.c.e.,
an era known as the Poverty Point period within the Late Archaic
prehistory of the United States. Significant as a settlement important

in trade in raw materials and manufacture of finished items distrib-
uted throughout the Eastern United States, it consists as deeply strat-
ified archaeological deposits, well-preserved earthen mounds, and
hidden features which represent extensive and intensive occupation
over a long period.
KATHIO SITE, MINNESOTA

Location: Vineland and vicinity, Mille Lacs County
Significance: Occupied from Archaic to historic times (3000 b.c.e.-
1750 c.e.), this was the ancestral homeland of the Dakota Sioux at the
beginning of the historic period. In 1679, French explorer Sieur Du-
luth noted the existence of forty Sioux villages in the vicinity. In the
mid-eighteenth century, the Chippewa, pressured by the westward
expansion of European settlers, drove the Sioux from this area to the
west and south, where the Sioux later figured prominently in the his-
tory of the Plains and Rocky Mountain states.
KEY MARCO, FLORIDA

Location: West coast of Florida
Significance: Key Marco (also called Marco Island) is the largest of the
group of islands off the southwest coast of Florida called the Ten
Thousand Islands; it lies a few miles south of the mainland city of Na-
ples. Beginning in 1895, a site at the north end of the island—a sort of
courtyard surrounded by shell mounds—was excavated by Frank
Hamilton Cushing and others, and a variety of artifacts were uncov-
ered. The culture reconstructed from the finds at Key Marco was so-
phisticated and technologically advanced. Radiocarbon dating sug-
gests that the Key Marco site was occupied from about 750 until just
before Spanish exploration of the area, about 1500. The Indians of
Key Marco were probably part of the Calusa empire that covered
south Florida.
KNIFE RIVER INDIAN VILLAGES, NORTH DAKOTA

Location: One-half mile north of Stanton
Significance: An important hub of intertribal and later international
trade, the Knife River Indian Villages also played an important role
in Plains Indian agricultural and cultural development. Many ar-
chaeological sites are preserved at the site. A reconstructed earth
lodge re-creates aboriginal life. In addition, the site preserves impor-
tant native prairie and riverine habitats.
KOSTER, ILLINOIS
Location: Lower Illinois Valley
Significance: Koster is one of the most intensively investigated sites in
the midwestern United States. Excavations conducted under the di-
rection of archaeologist Stuart Streuver revealed thirteen sequential
strata dating from the Early Archaic through the Mississippian tradi-
tions, beginning around 6400 b.c.e. The last occupation was a Missis-
sippian village dating from 900 to 1200 c.e.
LANDERGIN MESA, TEXAS

Location: Vega, Oldham County
Significance: A ruin consisting of a series of buildings atop a steep-
sided mesa on the east side of East Alamosa Creek, this is one of the
largest, best-stratified, least-damaged, and most spectacularly lo-
cated ruins of Panhandle culture.
LANGDEAU SITE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Lower Brule, Lyman County
Significance: Possibly the earliest reliably dated village of the Missouri
Trench, Langdeau Site represents the full emergence of the Plains Vil-
lage traditions in the Middle Missouri cultural area. It is also a cul-
tural intrusion of organized village people with highly adaptive
strategies, including horticulture, into an area previously occupied
by hunter-gatherers.
LEARY SITE, NEBRASKA

Location: Rulo, Richardson County
Significance: This large prehistoric village and burial area of the Oneota
Culture was first noted by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1804.
LEHNER, ARIZONA
Location: Southern Arizona
Significance: Lehner is one of the best-documented mammoth kill sites
of the Llano complex in the southwestern United States, with Clovis
projectile points found in direct association with the bones of extinct
animals. Occupied between 10,000-9000 b.c.e., Lehner represents a
kill site and butchering locality. Animals were trapped at a watering
hole by hunters, who took advantage of the steep and slippery sides
of the arroyo to isolate and kill young mammoths. Butchering took
place on the spot, and the location was subsequently used for trap-
ping other animals.
LEMHI PASS, TENDOY, IDAHO

Location: On the Idaho-Montana border, twelve miles east of Tendoy,
Idaho
Significance: Lemhi Pass was the highest point reached by Meriwether
Lewis and William Clark on their epic journey across the Ameri-
can West. At this mountainous site, the Corps of Discovery first
glimpsed the headwaters of the Columbia River and realized that
a water passage across the continent was impossible. For the Sho-
shone and Nez Perce, the route was especially important for seasonal
migrations between hunting areas, and the Blackfoot frequented the
trail and pass so often that it was locally known as the “Blackfoot
Road.”
LITTLE BIGHORN, MONTANA

Location: Within the Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana, one
mile east of Route 1-90 (U.S. 87) and eighteen miles north of Hardin;
connected with the Black Hills and Yellowstone National Park on
U.S. Route 212
Significance: The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in-
cludes the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 25, 1876),
Custer National Cemetery, the Reno-Benteen Battlefield, Medicine
Tail Ford, and the site of an Indian village.
LONG ISLAND OF THE HOLSTON, TENNESSEE

Location: Kingsport, Sullivan County
Significance: Located just east of the junction of the North and South
Forks of the Holston River, Long Island was a sacred council and
treaty ground surrounded by the vast hunting territory of the Chero-
kee Nation. Starting at Long Island in March, 1775, Daniel Boone
(1734-1820) led a team of thirty axmen to open the trail through Cum-
berland Gap that was to gain fame as the Wilderness Road. Between
1775 and 1795, this trail was used by more than two hundred thousand
emigrants.
LOWRY RUIN, COLORADO

Location: Pleasant View, Montezuma County
Significance: This pueblo (c. 1100 c.e.) of fifty rooms is unusual in that it
has a great kiva, a large ceremonial structure more commonly found
in Arizona and New Mexico.
LUBBOCK LAKE SITE, TEXAS

Location: Lubbock, Lubbock County
Significance: Excavations at the site in Yellow House Canyon, discov-
ered in the 1930’s, have revealed a stratified sequence of human habi-
tation spanning eleven thousand to twelve thousand years and pro-
viding evidence for occupation during Clovis, Folsom, Plainview,
Late Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Ceramic, and historic periods.
MARMES ROCKSHELTER, WASHINGTON

Location: Lyons Ferry, Franklin County
Significance: This is one of the most outstanding archaeological sites
yet discovered in the Northwest. Excavations at the site have revealed
the earliest burials in the Pacific Northwest (c. 5500-4500 b.c.e.) and
possibly the oldest human remains yet encountered in the Western
Hemisphere (c. 11,000-9,000 b.c.e.). The eight strata at the site all con-
tain cultural materials.
MASHANTUCKET PEQUOT RESERVATION ARCHAEOLOGICAL

DISTRICT, CONNECTICUT
Location: Ledyard, New London County
Significance: The Mashantucket Pequot Reservation Archaeological
District comprises nearly 1,638 acres of archaeologically sensitive
land in the northern portion of the uplands historically called
Wawarramoreke by the Pequots, and within territory first chronicled
as Pequot land in the earliest known surviving map (1614) of the re-
gion.
MEDICINE LODGE PEACE TREATY SITE, KANSAS

Location: Medicine Lodge, Barber County
Significance: Here, near the confluence of Medicine Lodge and Elm
Creeks, members of a Peace Commission created by Congress met
with about five thousand Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Arap-
aho, and Southern Cheyenne Indians in October, 1867. Under the
terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the first to include provisions
aimed at “civilizing” the Indian, Plains Indians were to give up no-
madic ways and relinquish claims to ancestral lands, in return for
federal economic and educational help.
MEDICINE WHEEL, WYOMING

Location: Kane, Big Horn County
Significance: This represents one of the most interesting and mysteri-
ous remains of late period aboriginal culture. Its builders and func-
tion are unknown. Composed of loose, irregularly shaped, whitish
flat stones placed in a circle, it is apparently little modified since its
construction (c. 1800); twenty-eight linear spokes, seventy to sev-
enty-five feet in length, radiate from the hub.
MENOKEN INDIAN VILLAGE SITE, NORTH DAKOTA

Location: Menoken, Burleigh County
Significance: This site shows certain structural and artifactual similari-
ties to historic and prehistoric earthlodge villages along the upper
Missouri River. Pottery and projectile point styles are indicative of
the prehistoric period, and the cultural/temporal affinity is suggested
to be Initial Middle Missouri Tradition from about 950 to 1300 c.e.
MESA VERDE, COLORADO

Location: In the high plateau or mesa country of southwestern Colo-
rado, in the Four Corners area where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and
New Mexico meet; the park entrance is midway between Cortez on
the west and Mancos on the east on U.S. 160
Significance: The first area in the United States to be declared a national
treasure for the preservation of the works of humanity: the ruins of
an ancient people referred to as Anasazi (from the Navajo, meaning
“ancient ones”). Evidence of a civilization growing in complexity in
its toolmaking, agriculture, and architecture is to be found at numer-
ous sites in Mesa Verde.
MINISINK ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, PENNSYLVANIA

Location: Bushkill, Pike County
Significance: Minisink was the most important Munsee Indian commu-
nity for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Archaeo-
logical resources located here have yielded information on historic
contact between Indian and European people in Munsee Country, a
region stretching from southern New York across northern New Jer-
sey to northeastern Pennsylvania. Today, Minisink remains one of the
most extensive, best-preserved, and most intensively studied archae-
ological locales in the Northeast.
MISSION SAN GABRIEL ARCANGEL, CALIFORNIA

Location: Two miles north of the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10)
on South Mission Drive in the city of San Gabriel
Significance: Heralded as the first European settlement of the Los An-
geles basin, this mission was the most prosperous of the California
missions and served as a way station for the colonization of Alta (Up-
per) California. In addition to its status as one of only two Spanish
colonial-era stone churches of Alta California located south of Mon-
terey, the church is singularly unique for its Moorish-inspired archi-
tectural characteristics and its unique collection of via cruces paint-
ings crafted by an Indian artisan of Mission San Fernando.
MISSION SANTA INES, CALIFORNIA

Location: South of State Highway 246, Solvang, Santa Barbara County
Significance: Mission Santa Ines is one of the best-preserved Spanish
mission complexes in the United States, containing an unrivaled
combination of landscape setting, original buildings, extant collec-
tions of art and interior furnishings, water-related industrial struc-
tures, and archaeological remains. The property is also important as
the location of the start of the Chumash Revolt of 1824, one of the
largest and most successful revolts of Native American neophytes in
the Spanish West, representing indigenous resistance to European
colonization. The intact archaeological remains of the two mission
wings, a portion of the convent, and the Native American village are
rare survivors and have been demonstrated to contain the potential
for exceptional information on the critical period of accommodation
between native peoples and European colonial powers.
MOCCASIN BEND ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISTRICT, TENNESSEE

Location: Chattanooga, Hamilton County
Significance: This is the best-preserved and most important compact,
yet diverse, sample of archaeological remains known in the Tennes-
see River Valley, indicative of Chattanooga’s pivotal status in trade,
communications, economics, and political importance in the interior
Southeast. The site includes evidence of occupation by Native Ameri-
can groups of the Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian periods; be-
cause of sixteenth century Spanish trade and gift items found there,
the site provides significant opportunities to study the early contact
period in the Southeast. Also included are Civil War earthworks as-
sociated with the Battle of Chattanooga.
MOHAWK UPPER CASTLE HISTORIC DISTRICT, NEW YORK

Location: Danube, Herkimer County
Significance: Archaeological and architectural resources located in this
district are associated with Nowadaga, the most westerly part of the
major eighteenth century Mohawk Indian community of Canajoharie.

During the eighteenth century, Mohawk people regarded Canajoharie
as the most important community in the western half of Kanienke,
their name for the Mohawk River Valley heartland. Included in the
district is the still-standing Indian Castle Church, a wooden-framed
Anglican chapel built in 1769.
MOLSTAD VILLAGE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Mobridge, Dewey County
Significance: A tiny fortified prehistoric village site containing five cir-
cular house rings enclosed by a ditch, Molstad appears to represent a
period of transition, when Central Plains and Middle Missouri cul-
tural traits were combining to form the basis for Mandan, Hidatsa,
and Arikara cultures as they existed at the time of the first contact
with Europeans.
MOUNDVILLE SITE, ALABAMA

Location: Moundville, Hale County
Significance: Settled first in the tenth century, Moundville is situated on
a level area overlooking the Black Warrior River and consists of
thirty-four mounds, the largest of which is over fifty-eight feet high.
The site represents a major period of Mississippian culture in the
southern portion of its distribution and acted as the center for a
southerly diffusion of this culture toward the Gulf Coast.
NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI
Location: Southwestern Mississippi, along the banks of the Mississippi
River
Significance: This Southern city is rich in history. It was originally occu-
pied by the Natchez Indians and later colonized by France, England,
and Spain. The Natchez Indians were a tribe of the Mississippians,
who lived all along the river from mouth to source. By 1200 the Mis-
sissippians had developed the most advanced Indian civilization lo-
cated north of Mexico, and by the mid-sixteenth century the Natchez
culture had reached its height. The Natchez, like other Mississippian
peoples, excelled at agriculture, raising maize, pumpkins, melons,
and tobacco. The Natchez also were highly skilled at pottery making.
The Natchez had a socially stratified society, with clear distinctions
between aristocrats and common people. The Natchez constructed
their Grand Village, the ceremonial and religious center of their cul-
ture, along the banks of St. Catherine Creek, within the present-day
city limits of Natchez. The tribe was very much entrenched in the
area when the first Europeans arrived early in the eighteenth cen-
tury.
NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT, ARIZONA

Location: On the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona, about
fifty miles northeast of Tuba City and twenty-two miles southwest of
Kayenta, off U.S. Interstate 160, via Route 564, a nine-mile paved
road that leads to the visitors’ center
Significance: Site of Betatakin, Kiet Seel, and Inscription House, three
Anasazi dwellings built between 1250 and 1280 and abandoned
around 1300. The sites, in what is today Navajo land, were excavated
in the early twentieth century and made a National Monument in
1909. The monument’s visitors’ center is open year round and of-
fers cultural exhibits about Anasazi life; between late May and mid-
September, the staff offers guided tours on foot and horseback (guides
must accompany all visitors to the ruins). Because of its extreme fra-
gility, Inscription House is no longer open to tourists.
NEZ PERCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, IDAHO

Location: Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis, and Nez Perce Counties in north-
central Idaho, as well as southeastern Washington, northeastern Ore-
gon, and western Montana
Significance: This National Historical Park does not focus on one loca-
tion but rather comprises a unique cooperative arrangement of pub-
lic and private lands administered by the National Park Service,
state, tribal, local, or other federal agencies. The complete route of
thirty-eight sites in four states includes locations of important en-
campments, missions, battles, trails, and other areas significant to
Nez Perce and related U.S. history; the Idaho route alone comprises
about four hundred miles of travel. The park sites’ varying topo-
graphic and climatic features exemplify the wide diversity of Nez
Perce country, which is largely still wilderness.
NORTON MOUND GROUP, MICHIGAN

Location: Grand Rapids, Kent County
Significance: This site contains well-preserved Hopewell mounds of
the western Great Lakes region. Norton Mound Group was the center
of Hopewellian culture in that area, c. 400 b.c.e. to 400 c.e.
OBSIDIAN CLIFF, WYOMING

Location: Mammoth, Park County
Significance: Obsidian Cliff occupies a unique position in national pre-
history as a singularly important source of lithic materials for prehis-
toric peoples of interior western North America. It is recognized as an
exceptionally well preserved, heavily utilized lithic source that served
the utilitarian needs and ceremonial requirements or early indigenous
peoples over a large area of North America for twelve thousand years.
OCONTO SITE, WISCONSIN

Location: Oconto, Oconto County
Significance: At this prehistoric burial ground, implements of the Old
Copper Culture people, who occupied the northern Midwest about
2500 b.c.e., have been found in association with human burials. The
site forms the Copper Culture State Park.
OLD ORAIBI, ARIZONA

Location: Oraibi, Navajo County
Significance: Located on the westernmost of the Hopi mesas, this is
probably the oldest continuously inhabited pueblo in the Southwest.
Old Oraibi documents Hopi culture and history from before Euro-
pean contact to the present day. The village is on the present Hopi In-
dian Reservation.
OZETTE, WASHINGTON
Location: Olympic Peninsula
Significance: The Ozette site, located on the westernmost point of the
Olympic Peninsula on the Pacific coast of Washington, represents the
remains of a large, late prehistoric whaling village. Portions of the
site that were buried by catastrophic mudslides have provided a
large number of organic remains, preserved by their rapid burial and
the site’s waterlogged condition. Ozette has provided information
that is invaluable for the reconstruction of ways of life on the North-
west Coast that predate the arrival of Europeans. The village is be-
lieved to have been occupied by ancestors of the Makah Indians,
modern indigenous residents of the region who still occupied parts
of Ozette as recently as the 1920’s.
PEMAQUID ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, MAINE

Location: New Harbor, Lincoln County
Significance: Pemaquid contains the remains of a large English town
occupied throughout the early period of contact on the Maine Coast

along the frontier separating French Acadia from New England. Eu-
ropean settlement of the area dates to around 1628, when New En-
gland colonists erected their first houses at the site; these first English
colonists fished, farmed, and traded food and manufactured goods
for furs with their Indian neighbors. As the first and most important
early center for intercultural relations between Indian people and En-
glish settlers in Maine, the large amounts of artifacts and other mate-
rials preserved in Pemaquid’s fieldstone foundations, cellar-holes,
chimney-bases, hearths, and other features have yielded much valu-
able information associated with this time period.
PICOTTE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, NEBRASKA

Location: Walthill, Thurston County
Significance: This hospital was built by Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte
(1865-1915), the first Native American physician, who pioneered in
providing health care for Native Americans. Picotte was born on the
Omaha Indian Reservation, the youngest child of Chief Joseph La
Flesche (Iron Eye), the last recognized chief of his tribe and a strong
advocate of integration. Picotte was educated at the Hampton Insti-
tute in Virginia and received her medical degree from the Woman’s
Medical College of Pennsylvania. She returned to the Omaha Reser-
vation in 1890 as physician at the government boarding school, ulti-
mately becoming physician for the entire tribe, serving as well as
teacher, social worker, adviser, and interpreter. Picotte was an active
advocate for temperance and Omaha Indian rights.
PICTOGRAPH CAVE, MONTANA

Location: Billings, Yellowstone County
Significance: This is one of the key archaeological sites used in deter-
mining the sequence of prehistoric occupation on the northwest-
ern Plains. The deposits indicate occupation from 2600 b.c.e. to after
1800 c.e.
PIKE PAWNEE VILLAGE SITE, NEBRASKA

Location: Guide Rock, Webster County
Significance: This is generally accepted as the Pawnee village where
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, on his mission to secure the new territory in
the Plains acquired under the Louisiana Purchase, caused the Ameri-
can flag to be raised and the Spanish flag lowered in late September,
1806. Archaeological evidence corroborates the identification.
PIPESTONE QUARRIES, MINNESOTA

Location: Southwest Minnesota
Significance: The quarries, located in southwest Minnesota, were be-
ing worked in the seventeenth century with metal tools acquired
from European traders. From the beginning, the area was consid-
ered a sacred place where peoples from various tribes could quarry
stone in peace.The earliest diggers were the Iowa and Oto. By the
1700’s, the Dakota Sioux had acquired a monopoly, trading pipe-
stone extensively throughout North America. The stone, prized for
its color and softness, was ideal for carving ceremonial pipes, in-
cluding calumets. Today an interpretive center housing displays of
carvings and quarrying techniques is on the site and open to public
view.
POVERTY POINT, LOUISIANA

Location: Delhi, West Carroll County
Significance: The largest and most complex ceremonial earthworks of
its kind yet found in North America, the site is dominated by the
huge Poverty Point Mound, which is 640 feet by 710 feet in base di-
mension and rises to a height of nearly 70 feet.
PUEBLO GRANDE RUIN AND IRRIGATION SITES, ARIZONA

Location: Pueblo Grande City Park, Phoenix, Maricopa County
Significance: The prehistoric platform mound and associated archaeo-
logical remains at Pueblo Grande represent one of the last surviv-
ing urban architectural sites of its kind in the southwestern United
States. There is evidence that between 1100 and 1400 c.e., Pueblo
Grande served as a Hohokam administration center for a major irri-
gation canal system. Due to its prehistoric significance, preeminent
archaeologists have conducted research at Pueblo Grande since the
1880’s.
SALINAS PUEBLO MISSIONS, NEW MEXICO

Location: Mountainair, one block west of the U.S. 60 and New Mexico 55
junction; about eighty miles south of Albuquerque
Significance: Administered by the National Park Service, this was once
a major trading center and is now the site of mission ruins and Indian
pueblo ruins that have survived since the villages were abandoned in
the 1600’s.
SAN ANTONIO MISSIONS, TEXAS

Location: On the Mission Trail in the south central portion of San Anto-
nio, south of Interstate 35, west of Interstate 37, and north of the
south section of Interstate 410
Significance: This site consists of four Spanish missions: Mission Con-
cepción, Mission San José, Mission San Juan, and Mission Espada. All
four are prime examples of Spanish Mission architecture as adapted
for use in the New World. The construction of these historic missions
was a joint effort of skilled craftsmen from Spain and Mexico and the
local Coahuiltecan Indians.
SAN XAVIER DEL BAC MISSION, ARIZONA

Location: Tucson, Pima County
Significance: Founded in 1700 by the Jesuits, Bac then formed the ex-
treme northern thrust of Nueva Espana. The present structure is
the third, perhaps the fourth, church on the site. Consecrated by
Franciscans, it was begun in 1783 and completed in 1797. One of
the finest Spanish Colonial churches in the country, it is a synthesis of
Baroque design and the desert materials from which it was built
by Papago Indian laborers supervised by Spanish-American master
craftsmen.
SEQUOYAH’S CABIN, OKLAHOMA

Location: Akins, Sequoyah County
Significance: This frontier house of logs was occupied (1829-1843) by
Sequoyah (c. 1770-1843), the teacher who in 1821 invented a syllabary
which made it possible to write and read the Cherokee language. The
giant California sequoia trees are named for him.
SERPENT MOUND, OHIO

Location: Locust Grove, Adams County
Significance: This giant, earthen snake effigy, the largest and finest in
America, probably dates from the Adena period (1000 b.c.e.-200 c.e.).
The site is one of the first in the United States to be set aside because
of its archaeological value.
SHAWNEE MISSION, KANSAS

Location: Fairway, Johnson County
Significance: From 1839 to 1862, Indian children of many nearby tribes
were taught English, manual arts, and agriculture at the school estab-
lished in 1830 by the Reverend Thomas Johnson. Also, the first terri-
torial governor of Kansas had his executive offices here in 1854, and
the first territorial legislature met here in 1855.
SHILOH, TENNESSEE
Location: If traveling on Interstate 40, south at Jackson, Tennessee, on
U.S. 45 and then east on Tennessee Route 142; if traveling east from
Memphis, approximately eighty miles on Highway 72 to Corinth,
Mississippi, then northeast twenty-five miles on U.S. Highway 45
Significance: Shiloh is the site of one of the earliest and most decisive
full-scale battles in the western theater of operations during the Civil
War. Within the park also are thirty Indian burial mounds, which
were excavated by the Smithsonian Institution in 1934.
SITKA, ALASKA
Location: The seaward side of Baranof Island, an extinct volcano in
southeast Alaska’s island chain; approximately one hundred miles
from the coast of North America
Significance: Originally an Alaskan Indian village, Sitka was the center
of the northwest international fur trade, the site of the first recorded
contact between Eurasians and Alaskan Indians, and the site of sev-
eral battles between Indians and Russians; the capital of Russian
America, the first capital of Alaska under U.S. rule, and the site of
transfer for Alaska’s sale to the United States by Russia in 1867.
SNAKETOWN, ARIZONA
Location: Near the city of Phoenix in Southern Arizona
Significance: The site of Snaketown, in southern Arizona, was the larg-
est of the early pit house villages. With occupations dating from be-
tween 300 and 1150, it remains the best-known center of Hohokam
culture. It is situated on an upper river terrace in the Phoenix Basin,
near the confluence of the Salt and the Gila rivers. The site was exca-
vated by archaeologist Emil Haury in 1934-1935 and again in 1964-
1965. This research provided detailed information on the South-
west’s first irrigation farmers.
SPIRO, OKLAHOMA
Location: Eastern Oklahoma
Significance: Spiro was the most important western center of Caddoan
culture in the Late Prehistoric period (1200-1350). It is situated within
an area of escarpments along the Arkansas River, in a location that
was strategic for contacts between the southern Plains and the low-
lands of the Mississippi Valley. The site covers an area of 80 acres, al-
though not all of this area was occupied simultaneously. It is best
known for its elaborate burials and thousands of art objects of shell
and copper. The site was first occupied during the Late Archaic peri-
od (circa 2500 to 500 b.c.e.), but its most spectacular features date be-
tween 900 and 1350 c.e.
SUNKEN VILLAGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, OREGON

Location: Portland, Multnomah County
Significance: Sunken Village is the archaeological remains of a Chinook
settlement (1250-1750 c.e.) which is extraordinarily well preserved.
The Chinooks who lived there were a cosmopolitan people and prac-
ticed a successful, complex hunter-gatherer economy that permitted
densely occupied villages and extensive trade relations.
SUNWATCH SITE, OHIO

Location: Dayton, Montgomery County
Significance: Sunwatch, formerly known as the Incinerator Site, is lo-
cated on the west bank of the Great Miami River within the city limits
of Dayton. Ceramics, radiocarbon dates, and other evidence indicate
that this open village site is a discrete Fort Ancient period, Anderson
phase village probably occupied for not more than twenty-five years
during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The site is one
of the best preserved and most completely excavated and analyzed
archaeological village sites associated with the Post Archaic Eastern
Farmers.
SYCAMORE SHOALS, TENNESSEE

Location: Elizabethton, Carter County
Significance: A treaty signed by the Cherokee here in 1775 allowed the
United States to purchase twenty million acres of Cherokee land.
Also, in 1780, the site served as the rendezvous point for the Over-
mountain Men on their way to Kings Mountain, where they contrib-
uted to the defeat of the British army.
TAHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA
Location: Cherokee County in the Ozark plateau area of eastern Okla-
homa, sixty-seven miles southeast of Tulsa
Significance: This is the site where the Eastern and Western branches
of the Cherokees came together to sign the Cherokee Constitution
on September 6, 1839. Tahlequah functioned as the Cherokee na-
tional capital until the Curtis Act of 1898 abolished tribal author-
ity in the Indian Territory. Following Oklahoma’s admission as a
state, Tahlequah became the seat of Cherokee County. The town re-
mains the administrative headquarters for the Cherokee tribal gov-
ernment.
TAOS, NEW MEXICO

Location: Northern New Mexico, at the base of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains; seventy miles northeast of Santa Fe
Significance: This artists’ and ski resort town in New Mexico was in-
habited originally by Native Americans and later by Spanish settlers.
The Taos Pueblo has been home to Taos-Tiwa Indians for one thou-
sand years. By 1200 c.e. the Pit House People had started organizing
their buildings into pueblos to avert the constant attacks by Plains In-
dians for food and slaves, and to serve as a site for trading with other
tribes. The Taos Pueblo serves as a reminder of those early settlers; it is
one of the oldest continually inhabited communities in the United
States, one of New Mexico’s nineteen Native American pueblos still
in existence.
TIPPECANOE BATTLEFIELD, INDIANA

Location: Lafayette, Tippecanoe County
Significance: In response to the efforts of Shawnee chief Tecumseh and
his brother, the Prophet, to unite the Indian nations of the northwest
and southwest territories to resist American expansion, Indiana Ter-
ritory governor William Henry Harrison led a force of about one
thousand men to the Shawnee settlement at the Great Clearing,
where Tippecanoe Creek flows into the Wabash. On November 7,
1811, Harrison’s army defeated the Shawnee led by the Prophet and
sacked their village, in the process destroying all hope that Tecumseh
had for an Indian confederacy. The American victory here was also
an important cause of the second war with Britain (1812-1815).
TOBIAS-THOMPSON COMPLEX, KANSAS

Location: Geneseo, Rice County
Significance: The complex is composed of a cluster of eight village sites
along the Little Arkansas River, all of which relate to the Little River
Focus of the Great Bend Aspect dating from 1500 to 1700. These sites
have been related to a historic culture, the Wichita Tribe, and may
have been among the villages visited by Francisco Vásquez de Coro-
nado in Quivira in 1542.
TOLTEC MOUNDS SITE, ARKANSAS

Location: Scott, Lonoke County
Significance: A large ceremonial complex and village site, Toltec
Mounds represents the northhernmost occupation during the Coles
Creek Period (c. 700-1000 c.e.) and may yield information about the
interaction between Lower and Central Mississippi Valley cultures. It
is part of Toltec Mounds Archaeological State Park.
TOOLESBORO MOUND GROUP, IOWA

Location: Toolesboro, Louisa County
Significance: First excavated in 1875, this is the best-preserved Hope-
well site in Iowa, representing an extension of the “classic” Hope-
wellian mortuary practices of the Illinois River Valley.
UTZ SITE, MISSOURI

Location: Marshall, Saline County
Significance: Located on bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, this site
was occupied from c. 1400 c.e. to the late 1700’s. Probably the princi-
pal village area occupied by the Missouri Indians at the time of
their first contact with Europeans, Utz is noted by French explorers,
beginning with PÍre Jacques Marquette, whose 1673 map placed
“Messourit” Indians here.
VANDERBILT ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Pollock, Campbell County
Significance: Archaeological information about the earliest culture his-
tory of today’s Mandan and Hidatsa peoples is preserved in the
Vanderbilt Village Site. They began to transform their environment
along the Missouri River floodplain near the Cannonball River around
1000 c.e. by expanding their horticultural economy with permanent
villages, substantial houses, and more complex technologies. By 1400,
the Vanderbilt Village was a well-established, dynamic community
within which its people lived comfortably, traded, hunted, fished, and
created a highly developed clan tradition with neighboring villages.
WALLOWA LAKE SITE, OREGON

Location: Joseph, Wallowa County
Significance: This site, commanding an excellent view of a high, glaci-
ated lake and mountain country, preserves a traditional Nez Perce
ancestral campground associated with religious and cultural values
that have persisted for more than the century that has elapsed since
the band of nontreaty Nez Perce led by Young Chief Joseph was
driven out.
WASHITA BATTLEFIELD, OKLAHOMA

Location: Cheyenne, Roger Mills County
Significance: This was the scene of an 1868 attack by George Armstrong
Custer’s troops on the village of Black Kettle, peace chief of the
southern Cheyenne. It demonstrated the effectiveness of winter cam-
paigns against Southern Plains Indian groups.
WEIPPE PRAIRIE, IDAHO

Location: Weippe, Clearwater County
Significance: On the morning of September 20, 1805, an advance party
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition came out of the Bitterroot Moun-
tains onto the southeastern corner of Weippe Prairie, the western ter-
minus of the Lolo Trail and long a favored source of camas root for the
Nez Perce Indians. Here, the expedition first met the Nez Perce, who
had never before seen white men. The Nez Perce gave the explorers
food as well as much-needed help and directions during the two-
and-a-half-week period spent in their territory.
WOUNDED KNEE BATTLEFIELD, SOUTH DAKOTA

Location: Batesland, Shannon County
Significance: On December 29, 1890, this was the scene of the last major
clash between Native Americans and U.S. troops in North America.
In the period following the introduction of the Ghost Dance among
the Lakota and the killing of Sitting Bull, a band of several hundred
led by Big Foot left the Cheyenne River Reservation. Intercepted by
U.S. troops, they had given themselves up and had been escorted to
an army encampment on Pine Ridge Reservation when shooting
suddenly started. The ensuing struggle, short but bloody, resulted in
seventy-five army casualties and the virtual massacre of Big Foot’s
band.
WUPATKI NATIONAL MONUMENT, ARIZONA

Location: Thirty-two miles north of Flagstaff, between Flagstaff and
Cameron, off U.S. Interstate 89 via a thirty-six-mile driving loop that
leads directly to Wupatki as well as to the adjacent Sunset Crater Na-
tional Monument
Significance: The thirty-six-thousand-acre National Monument is the
site of Indian ruins dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The most famous ruins are Wukoki, the Citadel, Lomaki, and Wupatki
Pueblo. The structures were built after a nearby volcanic eruption
blanketed the area with volcanic ash, attracting a variety of Indian
groups—the Sinagua, Cohonino, Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, and
Cíbola—to the newly arable land. The site was abandoned in the thir-
teenth century. In the mid-nineteenth century, the site was inhabited
by Navajo and Hopi Indians. By the turn of the century, archaeologi-
cal excavations had begun there.
YELLOWSTONE, WYOMING
Location: Northwestern Wyoming, extending into Montana and Idaho
Significance: Yellowstone National Park, dedicated by Congress on
March 1, 1872, was the first national park in the United States and the
first step toward the creation of a National Park Service. Cultural
sites show human occupation dating back twelve thousand years.
The park embraces the area traversed by the fleeing Nez Perce Indi-
ans in 1877.
YUMA CROSSING, ARIZONA AND ASSOCIATED SITES

Location: Yuma
Significance: First used by Native Americans, this natural crossing
served as a significant transportation gateway on the Colorado River
during the Spanish Colonial and U.S. westward expansion periods.
The surviving buildings of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot and Ari-
zona Territorial Prison are the key features on the Arizona side of the
border; across the river, in California, stand the surviving buildings
of Fort Yuma, an Army outpost that guarded the crossing from 1850
to 1885.
ZUÑI-CÍBOLA COMPLEX, NEW MEXICO

Location: Zuñi, Valencia County
Significance: A series of sites on the Zuñi Reservation, containing house
ruins, kivas, pictographs, petroglyphs, trash mounds, and a mission
church and convent. They have proven to be an important source of
material for ethnological studies of the early Zuñi, Mogollon, and
Anasazi cultures. They include the Village of the Great Kivas, Yellow
House, Hawikuh, and Kechipbowa.
648
Historic Native Americans
Adams, Hank: Assiniboine-Sioux negotiator during the Trail of Broken

Treaties
Agüeybana: chief in the Higüey region during the West Indian uprisings
Alokut (1842-1877): Joseph the Younger’s brother, a tribal war leader dur-
ing the Nez Perce exile
Anacaona: chieftainess in the western provinces during the West Indian
uprisings
Arpeika, also known as Sam Jones (c. 1760-1860): Mikasuki shaman dur-
ing the Seminole Wars
Atotarho: Onondaga chief of the Iroquois Confederacy
Attakullakulla (1714?-1781?): Cherokee diplomat during the Cherokee
War
Banks, Dennis (born 1935?): co-founder of the American Indian Move-

ment (AIM)
Barboncito (c. 1820-1871): Navajo war chief during the Long Walk of the
Navajos
Bean, Lou: sister of Buddy Lamont at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Big Bear, also known as Mistahimaskwa (1825-1888): Cree chief who
sought peace during the second Riel rebellion
Big Foot (c. 1825-1890): chief of the Minneconjou Sioux at the Battle of
Wounded Knee
Big Warrior (died 1825): mico of the Upper Creeks, leader of the progres-
sive peace party during the Creek War
Bissonnette, Gladys: tribal elder at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Black Elk, Wallace (born 1921): Oglala medicine man at the Wounded
Knee Occupation
Black Kettle (1803?-1868): chief of the Southern Cheyenne during the Sand
Creek massacre, Cheyenne chieftain at the Washita River massacre, and
leading Cheyenne chief at Medicine Lodge Creek
Blue Jacket, also known as Weyapiersenwah (1764?-1810): Shawnee war
chief at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and led the native troops against
General Anthony Wayne during Little Turtle’s War
Blunt, King Tom (died 1739?): leader of hostile Tuscarora towns during the
Tuscarora War
Boudinot, Elias (Buck Watie, c. 1803-1839): nephew of Major Ridge and
editor of the Cherokee Phoenix
Historic Native Americans / 649
Bowlegs, Billy, also known as Holatamico (c. 1810-1864): Seminole war

leader during the Seminole Wars
Brant, Joseph, also known as Thayendanegea (1742-1807): Mohawk
leader who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War
Caonabo: 1495 rebel leader during the West Indian uprisings

Clearwater, Frank (died 1973): Indian casualty of the confrontation at the
Wounded Knee Occupation
Coacoochee, also known as Wildcat (c. 1810-1857): Seminole war leader
during the Seminole Wars
Cochise, also known as Goci, or His Nose (c. 1812-1874): principal chief of
the eastern Chiricahua during the Apache Wars.
Colbert, Levi (1790?-1834): Chickasaw chief who tried to ease the burden
of removal during the Trail of Tears
Cornplanter, also known as John O’Bail (c. 1732-1836): principal Sen-
eca chief during the American Revolution, half brother of Handsome
Lake
Cornstalk (c. 1720-1777): Shawnee leader who tried to negotiate with Dun-
more during Lord Dunmore’s War
Crazy Horse (c. 1842-1877): key Sioux strategist in the Fetterman battle
during the Bozeman Trail War
Crow Dog, Leonard (born 1942): Oglala medicine man on the Rosebud
Reservation at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Deganawida, also known as Peacemaker (c. 1550-c. 1600): Huron or Mo-

hawk prophet or holy man of the Iroquois Confederacy
Drew, John (1796-1865): Confederate Cherokee who led a regiment of full-
blooded Cherokees in the Civil War
Elk, John: American Indian who voluntarily separated from his tribe; he
sued for the right to vote in Elk v. Wilkins
Fools Crow, Frank (born 1890): Teton Sioux ceremonial chief at the
Wounded Knee Occupation
Geronimo (c. 1827-1909): shaman and important leader of the western

Chiricahua during the Apache Wars
Gray Beard (died 1875): Cheyenne war chief during the Red River War
Guarionex: 1495 rebel leader during the West Indian uprisings
Guarocuya (died 1509): nephew of Anacaona in the West Indian upris-
ings
650 / Historic Native Americans
Hall, Louis, also known as Karoniaktajeh (c. 1920-1993): Mohawk leader

of Warrior Society; twentieth century critic of Handsome Lake
Hancock, King Tom (died 1712): leader of hostile Tuscarora towns during
the Tuscarora War
Handsome Lake, also known as Ganeodiyo (c. 1735-1815): Seneca founder
of the Code of Handsome Lake
Hendrick (c. 1680-1755): Mohawk leader at the Albany Congress
Hiawatha (c. 1525-c. 1575): Mohawk chief of the Iroquois Confederacy
Iroquet: Algonquian chief during the Beaver Wars
Japasus or Iopassus: king of the Potomacs in the Powhatan Confederacy

Joseph the Elder (1786-1871): chief of the Wallamwatkins during the Nez
Perce exile
Joseph the Younger (c. 1832-1904): chief of the Wallamwatkins after his fa-
ther during the Nez Perce exile
Kekataugh: the ruler of the village of Pamunkey in the Powhatan Confed-

eracy
Kiala: war chief during the most brutal period of repression of Fox tribes
fleeing French and other tribes’ assaults during the Fox Wars
Kiotsaeton: Mohawk orator who presented wampum belts at peace coun-
cil during the Beaver Wars
Lamont, Buddy (died 1973): Pine Ridge resident who died in the confron-
tation at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Lavelle, Jeannette (born 1942): Ojibwa woman who fought the enfran-
chisement provision of the Indian Act of 1876 (Canada)
Little Crow, also known as Taoyateduta (c. 1820-1863): principal war chief
of the Santee Sioux in the Sioux War
Little Six, also known as Shakopee (died 1865): Santee leader of the “blan-
ket” Sioux, hanged at Fort Snelling in the Sioux War
Little Turtle, also known as Michikinikwa (c. 1752-1812): Miami war chief
at the Battle of Fallen Timbers
Logan, John, also known as Tachnechdorus, the Great Mingo (c. 1723-
1780): Mingo war chief during Lord Dunmore’s War
Lone Wolf (c. 1820-c. 1879): Kiowa chief, leader of the Kiowa war faction
during the Red River War, and the principal complainant in the Su-
preme Court case Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
Looking Glass (c. 1823-1877): Nez Perce tribal chief and warrior during the
Nez Perce exile
McQueen, Peter (died 1818): mixed-blood planter, mico, and a leader of

the Red Stick faction during the Creek War
Main Poc (1760?-1816): Potawatomi shaman and war chief at Prophets-
town
Mangas Coloradus, or Red Sleeves (c. 1791-1863): father-in-law to Cochise
and an important chief of the eastern Chiricahua during the Apache
Wars
Mankato (c. 1830-1862): Santee chief killed at the Battle of Wood Lake in the
Sioux War
Manuelito (c. 1818-1894): Navajo resistance leader and war chief during
the Long Walk of the Navajos
Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin (c. 1580-1661): one of three para-
mount Wampanoag sachem during Metacom’s War
Means, Russell (born 1939): Lakota cofounder of American Indian Move-
ment (AIM)
Mekaga: minor chief who negotiated the 1738 “pardon” of the remaining
tribal groups in the Rock River Valley during the Fox Wars
Menewa (c. 1765-1865): Creek chief who strongly defended his people’s
rights during the Trail of Tears
Metacom, also known as King Philip (c. 1640-1676): one of three para-
mount Wampanoag sachem during Metacom’s War
Miantonomo (c. 1600-1643): chief of the Narragansetts during the Pequot
War
Micanopy (c. 1780-1849): Seminole chief during the Seminole Wars
Moves Camp, Ellen: tribal elder at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Nutimus (c. 1660-c. 1742): chief of the Lenni Lenape in the Walking Pur-
chase
Oconostota (c. 1710-1783): Cherokee military leader during the Cherokee

War
Opechancanough (c. 1544-1644): chief of the Pamunkey Indians and a
Powhatan successor in the Powhatan Confederacy
Opitchapam: Powhatan’s successor in the Powhatan Confederacy
Osceola, also known as Billy Powell (c. 1804-1838): Seminole war leader
during the Seminole Wars
Ote-emathla, also known as Jumper: Seminole war leader during the Sem-
inole Wars
Parker, Ely Samuel (1828-1895): Seneca leader and President Grant’s com-
missioner of Indian affairs
652 / Historic Native Americans
Parker, Quanah (c. 1845-1911): Comanche war chief during the Red River
War
Peltier, Leonard (born 1944): Ojibwa-Sioux security director during the
Trail of Broken Treaties; later accused of murdering two FBI agents in
the Pine Ridge shootings
Pocahontas, or Matoaka (c. 1596-1617): daughter of Powhatan, wife of
John Rolfe
Pontiac, also known as Obwandiag (c. 1720-1769): Ottawa war chief who
organized pan-Indian resistance to the British during the French and In-
dian War
Popé (died 1688): major instigator of the Pueblo Revolt
Poundmaker (1842-1886): Cree chief who joined in the second Riel rebellion
Powhatan, also known as Wahunsonacock (c. 1550-1618): leader of the
Powhatan Confederacy
Pushmataha (1764-1824): principal chief of the Choctaws and an able nego-
tiator during the Trail of Tears
Red Cloud (1822-1909): chief opponent to the Bozeman Trail

Red Jacket, also known as Sagoyewatha (1751?-1830): principal Seneca
chief; nephew of Handsome Lake
Reifel, Benjamin (born 1906): South Dakota congressman and member of
the Rosebud Sioux tribe
Ridge, John (c. 1803-1839): son of Major Ridge and a Cherokee leader and
lobbyist against the Indian Removal Act
Ridge, Major (c. 1770-1839): influential Cherokee leader who signed the re-
moval treaty of the Indian Removal Act after resisting it for years
Riel, Louis-David (1844-1885): leader of the Metis and second president of
the government of Assiniboia in the Riel rebellions
Roman Nose (c. 1830-1868): Cheyenne warrior who opposed the agree-
ments of the Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty
Ross, John (1790-1866): elected principal chief of the Cherokees during the
debate over the Indian Removal Act
Sacagawea (c. 1788-1812): Shoshoni woman whose presence with the expe-
dition facilitated the Rocky Mountain portage of the Lewis and Clark ex-
pedition
Sassacus (c. 1560-1637): sachem of the Pequots during the Pequot War
Satank, also known as Sitting Bear (c. 1801-1871): Kiowa chief and orator
at Medicine Lodge Creek
Satanta, also known as White Bear (c. 1830-1878): Kiowa chief and orator
at Medicine Lodge Creek
Sequoyah (1770-1843): Cherokee author of the syllabary that made the

written language of the Cherokees possible
Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890): last great Sioux warrior chief at the Battle of
Wounded Knee
Spotted Eagle Black Elk, Grace (1919-1987): tribal elder and wife of Wal-
lace Black Elk at the Wounded Knee Occupation
Tandihetsi: Huron chief married to an Algonquian woman during the Bea-

ver Wars
Tecumseh (1768-1813): Shawnee war chief and diplomat, advocate of a Na-
tive American alliance to stop the European advance in the Ohio Valley
and nearby areas during Little Turtle’s War
Ten Bears (1792-1872): Comanche chief and orator who led peace efforts
between the Native Americans and the U.S. government that led to the
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty
Tenskwatawa, also known as the Prophet (1768-1837): religious leader
who reportedly inspired Pontiac’s resistance, founder of Prophetstown
Tomasito: Taos Indian rebel who was believed to have murdered New
Mexico governor Charles Bent
Tupatú, Luis: successor to Popé and a principal aid during the Pueblo Re-
volt
Uncas (c. 1606-c. 1682): relative of Sassacus, who rebelled during the
Pequot War
Wamsutta, also known as Alexander (died 1661): one of three paramount

Wampanoag sachem during Metacom’s War
Ware, Ralph: Kiowa negotiator for the Indians during the Trail of Broken
Treaties
Watie, Stand (1806-1871): Confederate general who led a regiment of
mixed-blood American Indians in the Civil War
Weatherford, William (c. 1780-1822): mixed-blood son of a Scots trader
and a leader of the Red Stick faction during the Creek War
Wilson, Richard: chairman of the Bureau of Indian Affairs tribal council at
the Wounded Knee Occupation
Wovoka, also known as Jack Wilson (c. 1858-1932): Paiute messiah of the
Ghost Dance religion
654
Museums, Archives, and Libraries

Select list of museums, archives, and libraries in four parts: museums in
the United States; museums in Canada; libraries and archives in the United
States; libraries and archives in Canada. Each part is arranged alphabeti-
cally, first by state, territory, or province, then by city.
Museums in the United States

ALABAMA
Alabama Museum of Natural History
Smith Hall, University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, 35487-0340
Resource center of Southeastern Indians; ties with Moundville Ar-
chaeological Park.
ALASKA
Alaska State Museum
395 Whittier Street
Juneau, 99801-1718
Alaskan Native Gallery; Subarctic and Northwest Coast items.
Totem Heritage Center
601 Deermount
(mailing address: 629 Dock Street)
Ketchikan, 99901
Programs and artifacts in Northwest Coast arts; index to all Alaska
totem poles.
ARIZONA
Arizona State Museum
University of Arizona
Tucson, 85721
Extensive collections from the historic and prehistoric peoples of the
area.
Colorado River Indian Tribes Museum
Route 1, Box 23B
Parker, 85344
Artifacts from Mojave, Chemehuevi, Hopi, and Navajo as well as
prehistoric cultures.
Museums, Archives, and Libraries / 655
Gila River Arts and Crafts Center

P.O. Box 457
Sacaton, 85247
Museum and crafts reflect all tribes of the area.
Heard Museum
22 E. Monte Vista Road
Phoenix, 85004-1480
Southwest emphasis; inventory of 8,200 Native American artists. Li-
brary of 40,000 volumes includes Fred Harvey Company documents
and photo archives.
Museum of Northern Arizona
Fort Valley Road
(mailing address: Route 4, P.O. Box 720)
Flagstaff, 86001
Southwest Anglo and Indian art, with Hopi and Navajo emphasis.
Harold S. Colton Memorial Library of 24,000 volumes.
Navajo Tribal Museum
Highway 264
(mailing address: P.O. Box 308)
Window Rock, 86515
Four Corners archaeology and ethnography, including re-creation of
1870-1930 era trading post.
ARKANSAS
Arkansas State Museum
P.O. Box 490
State University, 72467
Emphasizes northeastern Arkansas tribes such as the Osage, Caddo,
Chickasaw, and others.
CALIFORNIA
Bowers Museum of Cultural Art
2002 North Main Street
Santa Ana, 92706
Collection of 85,000 items focuses on the fine arts of indigenous peo-
ples, including pre-Columbian and Native American.
656 / Museums, Archives, and Libraries
Fowler Museum of Cultural History

University of California, Los Angeles
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, 90024-1549
Extensive archaeological and ethnographic collections include Na-
tive American materials.
Maturango Museum
100 E. Las Flores
Ridgecrest, 93556
A small regional museum focusing on one of the richest petroglyph
areas in the United States at China Lake.
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Times-Mirror Hall of Native American Cultures; Hall of Pre-Columbian
Cultures
900 Exposition Boulevard
Los Angeles, 90007
Excellent permanent displays, with changing exhibitions on contem-
porary issues in art and culture. The Pre-Columbian Hall covers cul-
tures from Mexico to Peru.
Southwest Museum
234 Museum Drive
Los Angeles, 90065
Collections range from Alaska to South America, with permanent
displays focusing on the Southwest, Great Plains, California, and North-
west Coast. Braun Research Library contains 50,000 volumes, 100,000
photos, 900 recordings, and archival material.
COLORADO
Denver Art Museum
100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway
Denver, 80204
Art collection includes Indian clothing, Southwest pottery and kachi-
nas, and Northwest Coast carvings. Frederick H. Douglas Library in-
cludes 6,000 volumes.
Denver Museum of Natural History

2001 South Colorado Boulevard
Denver, 80205
Strong on Paleo-Indian culture, including the original Folsom spear
point; a 24,000-volume library.
Southern Ute Cultural Center and Gallery
Highway 172
Ignacio, 81137
Early history; contemporary bead and leather work.
CONNECTICUT
American Indian Archaeological Institute (AIAI)
38 Curtis Road
Washington Green, 06793-0260
Continental coverage, but focus is on Northeast Woodlands. Recon-
structed Indian village, with Indian Habitats Trail; 250,000 artifacts and
a 2,000-volume library.
Peabody Museum
Yale University
170 Whitney
New Haven, 06511-8161
Extensive holdings include both archaeological and ethnographic
materials of the Americas.
DELAWARE
Delaware State Museum
316 South Governors Avenue
Dover, 19901
Eastern prehistory; 1,000-volume library; State Archaeological Col-
lection.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
U.S. National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC 20560
FLORIDA
Ah-Tha-Thi-Ki Museum
3240 North 64th Avenue
Hollywood, 33024
Artifacts and activities document and preserve Seminole traditions;
village, burial site, nature trails.
Florida State Museum
University of Florida
Gainesville, 32601
Pearsall Collection of ethnographic items ranges from Seminole to
Inuit.
GEORGIA
New Echota
Route 3
Calhoun, 30701
Restoration of Cherokee capital of 1825-1838. Trail of Tears material.
IDAHO
Nez Perce National Historic Park
Highway 95
Spalding, 83551
Prehistoric as well as historic regional items. Park notes sites of Indian-
U.S. battles. A 600-volume library and archive of 3,000 photos.
ILLINOIS
Field Museum of Natural History
Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, 60605
Extensive Native American collections, including Pawnee earth
lodge replica. Webber Resource Center houses books and audio-visual
materials on indigenous cultures.
INDIANA
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art
500 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, 46204
Extensive collection that emphasizes Northeast Woodlands, great
Plains, and Southwest culture areas.
IOWA
Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science
1717 West 12th Street
Davenport, 52804
Regional ethnographic collections and important Mississippian ma-
terials.
KANSAS
Indian Center Museum
650 North Seneca
Wichita, 67203
Collection reflects Indian art and religion.
KENTUCKY
J. B. Speed Art Museum
2035 South Third Street
Louisville, 40201-2600
Collection emphasizes regional materials and the Great Plains, com-
plemented by a 14,000-volume art library that includes the Frederick
Weygold Indian Collection.
LOUISIANA
Tunica-Biloxi Regional Indian Center and Museum
Highway 1
Marksville, 71351
Focuses on descendants of the mound builders. The tribal museum is
built in a classic Mississippian style. Collections include colonial Indian-
European materials returned to the tribe under the Indian Graves and
Repatriation Act.
MAINE
Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Studies Center
Hubbard Hall, Bowdoin College
Brunswick, 04011
MacMillan collection of Inuit and Subarctic material culture.
MASSACHUSETTS
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
11 Divinity Avenue
Harvard University
Cambridge, 02138
Worldwide collection of 2,000,000 artifacts has a North and South
American focus; 180,000-volume library.
MICHIGAN
Cranbrook Institute of Science
500 Lone Pine Road
Bloomfield Hills, 48303-0801
Collection reflects all North American culture areas.
MINNESOTA
Mille Lacs Indian Museum
HCR 67
Onamia, 56359
Ojibwa and Dakota artifacts illustrate traditional lifeways.
Minnesota Historical Society’s Grand Mound and Interpretive Center
Route 7
International Falls, 56649
Burial mounds with extensive exhibits of Woodland, Laurel, and
Blackduck cultures.
MISSISSIPPI
Grand Village of the Natchez Indians
400 Jefferson Davis Boulevard
Natchez, 39120
Artifacts explore the culture of the descendants of the Mississippian
mound builders.
MISSOURI
St. Louis Science Center
5050 Oakland Avenue
St. Louis, 63110
MONTANA
Museum of the Plains Indian and Crafts Center
U.S. 89
Browning, 59417
Northern Plains material culture; reconstruction of 1850’s Blackfeet
camp.
NEBRASKA
Fur Trade Museum
East Highway 20, HC 74
Chadron, 69337
Museum of Nebraska History
131 Centennial Mall North
Lincoln, 68508
Anthropology and art of the central Plains tribes.
NEVADA
Lost City Museum
721 South Highway 169
Overton, 89040
Reconstructed pueblo and kiva; archaeological museum; 400-volume
library.
NEW JERSEY
Montclair Art Museum
3 South Mountain Avenue
Montclair, 07042
Rand Collection of Native American art. Art history library of 13,000
volumes.
New Jersey State Museum
205 West State Street
Trenton, 08625
Local material as well as Plains, Arctic, Southwest, and Northeast
collections.
NEW MEXICO
Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
University of New Mexico
Roma and University, N.E.
Albuquerque, 87131-1201
Extensive Southwest collections. Library of 12,500 volumes and photo
archives.
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture
708 Camino Lejo
Santa Fe, 87504
Exhibits focus on Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo cultures. A 20,000-
volume library on the anthropology of the Southwest.
Western New Mexico University Museum
Silver City, 88061
Eisele collection of classic Mimbres pottery.
NEW YORK
American Museum of Natural History
79th Street and Central Park West
New York, 10024-5192
Exhibitions are especially strong on the cultures of the Arctic and Pa-
cific Northwest.
National Museum of the American Indian

George Gustav Heye Center
Alexander Hamilton Custom House
3753 Broadway at 155th Street
New York, 10032
The first of three planned facilities of the National Museum of the
American Indian, part of the Smithsonian Institution, opened in New
York in 1994.
Seneca Iroquois National Museum
Broad Street Extension
Salamanca, 14779
Special wampum belt exhibit; typical nineteenth century elm-bark
longhouse reconstruction; contemporary art.
NORTH CAROLINA
Indian Museum of the Carolinas
607 Turnpike Road
Laurinburg, 28352
Exhibits feature Southeast cultures and lifeways.
Native American Resource Center
Pembroke State University
Pembroke, 28372
Eastern Woodlands materials; North and South America.
NORTH DAKOTA
North Dakota Heritage Center
612 East Boulevard
Bismarck, 58505
Plains cultures. A 100,000-volume library on ethnology and history.
Turtle Mountain Chippewa Heritage Center
Highway 5
Belcourt, 58316
Promotes tribal history and traditions. Contemporary art gallery.
OHIO
Cincinnati Museum of Natural History
1301 Western Avenue
Cincinnati, 45203
Good selection of mound builder artifacts from the Ohio Valley.
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
1 Wade Oval Drive
University Circle
Cleveland, 44106-1767
Research fields include archaeology and physical anthropology. A
50,000-volume natural history library.
OKLAHOMA
Cherokee Heritage Center
Willis Road
Tahlequah, 74465
Reconstructed village; contemporary arts and crafts.
Museum of the Great Plains
601 Ferris Avenue
Lawton, 73502
Artifacts, library, and photo archives relating to Plains tribes.
The Philbrook Museum of Art, Inc.
2727 South Rockford Road
Tulsa, 74114
Clark Field Basket Collection; Lawson Collection of Indian clothing;
Philbrook Collection of American Indian paintings; Lawson Indian li-
brary.
Seminole Nation Museum and Library
6th and Wewoka
Wewoka, 74884
OREGON
High Desert Museum
59800 South Highway 97
Bend, 97702
Museum of Natural History

University of Oregon
1680 East 15th Avenue
Eugene, 97403-1224
Collection includes 13,000-year-old Fort Rock Cave artifacts.
PENNSYLVANIA
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, 15213-4080
Wide coverage, including Arctic and Northwest Coast collections.
RHODE ISLAND
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
Brown University
Bristol, 02809
Arctic and Subarctic materials, including Archaic Period remains of
the Red Paint People of Maine.
SOUTH CAROLINA
McKissick Museum
University of South Carolina
Columbia, 29208
Catawba pottery and baskets. Folk Art Resource Center.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Indian Museum of North America
Avenue of the Chiefs, Black Hills
Crazy Horse, 57730
Sioux Indian Museum and Crafts Center
515 West Boulevard
Rapid City, 57709
W. H. Over State Museum
414 East Clark
Vermillion, 57069-2390
Plains material culture and contemporary painting.
TENNESSEE
Frank H. McClung Museum
University of Tennessee
1327 Circle Park Drive
Knoxville, 37996-3200
Tennessee State Museum
505 Deaderick Street
Nashville, 37243-1120
Strong in prehistoric Mississippian culture.
TEXAS
Alabama-Coushatta Museum
U.S. Highway 190
Route 3
Livingston, 77351
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
2401 Fourth Avenue
Canyon, 79016
Hall of the Southern Plains. South and Southwest Indian focus; 10,000-
volume library.
Texas Memorial Museum
University of Texas
24th and Trinity
Austin, 78705
Broad focus on the anthropology of the American Indian.
Witte Memorial Museum
3801 Broadway
San Antonio, 78209
Samples most North American culture areas.
UTAH
College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum
451 East 400 North
Price, 84501
Focuses on Anasazi and Fremont cultures.
Utah Museum of Natural History

University of Utah
Salt Lake City, 84112
Regional, Great Basin, and Southwestern materials.
VIRGINIA
Jamestown Settlement
(mailing address: P.O. Box JF)
Williamsburg, 23187
Reconstruction of Indian village and Powhatan’s lodge.
Mattaponi Museum
West Point, 23181
Important collection of archaeological materials.
Pamunkey Indian Museum
King William, 23086
Contemporary and prehistoric art and artifacts.
WASHINGTON
The Burke Museum
University of Washington, DB-10
Seattle, 98195
Northwest Coast and Pacific Rim collections.
Makah Cultural and Research Center
Neah Bay, 98257
Features remains from the Ozette site, a Late Period pre-contact
Makah village buried and preserved in a mudslide. Magnificent North-
west Coast Tradition assemblage of 60,000 artifacts.
Seattle Art Museum
100 University Street
Seattle, 98122-9700
Excellent collection of Northwest Coast art.
Yakima Nation Cultural Heritage Center
Toppenish, 98948
WEST VIRGINIA
Grave Creek Mound State Park
Moundsville, 26041
Largest mound produced by the Adena ceremonial complex, which
flourished around 500 b.c.e. to 100 c.e.
WISCONSIN
Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Museum
Lac du Flambeau, 54538
Eighteenth century dugout canoe, artifacts, and seasonal activities
displays.
Logan Museum of Anthropology
700 College Street
Beloit College
Beloit, 53511-5595
Physical and cultural anthropological materials from the Great Lakes,
Plains, and Southwest culture areas.
Milwaukee Public Museum
800 West Wells Street
Milwaukee, 53233
Collections cover North America. A 125,000-volume library.
Neville Public Museum
129 South Jefferson Street
Green Bay, 54301
Archaic Period materials from the Old Copper and Red Ochre cultures.
WYOMING
Anthropology Museum
University of Wyoming
Laramie, 82071
Museums in Canada
ALBERTA
Glenbow Museum
130 Ninth Avenue, S.E.
Calgary, AB T2G 0P3
Provincial Museum of Alberta
12845 102nd Avenue
Edmonton, AB T5N 0M6
Regional materials; Inuit; northern Plains.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Campbell River Museum
1235 Island Highway
Campbell Island, BC V9W 2C7
Arts of the Indian groups of northern Vancouver Island.
’Ksan Indian Village
Hazelton, BC B0J 1Y0
A center for the display, preservation, and promotion of Gitksan arts
and crafts skills. Seven traditional buildings.
Museum of Anthropology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
Major Northwest Coast collections. Center for promotion of tradi-
tional arts and customs.
Museum of Northern British Columbia
Prince Rupert, BC V8J 3S1
Northwest Coast artifacts. Promotes contemporary carving and craft
skills.
Royal British Columbia Museum
675 Belleville Street
Victoria, BC V8V 1X4
Traditional Kwakiutl dance houses; Thunderbird Park totem pole ex-
hibits; art demonstrations.
MANITOBA
Eskimo Museum
La Verendrye Street
Churchill, MB R0B 0E0
Inuit materials include kayaks dating back hundreds of years. Also,
Subarctic materials from Chippewa and Cree cultures.
Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature
190 Rupert Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3B 0N2
NEW BRUNSWICK
New Brunswick Museum
277 Douglas Avenue
Saint John, NB F2K 1E5
Regional and pre-Algonquian artifacts.
NEWFOUNDLAND
Newfoundland Museum
285 Duckworth Street
St. John’s, NF A1C 1G9
Exhibits cover the six major tribal groups of Labrador and New-
foundland.
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Dene Cultural Institute
Yellowknife, NT X1A 2N2
Northern Life Museum
110 King Street
Fort Smith, NT X0E 0P0
Arctic and Subartic tools and artifacts.
NOVA SCOTIA
Nova Scotia Museum
1747 Summer Street
Halifax, NS B3H 3A6
Artifacts of the Micmac.
ONTARIO
Museum of Indian Archaeology and Lawson Prehistoric Village
1600 Attawandaron Road
London, ON N6G 3M6
Exhibits cover five phases of culture dating back to Paleo-Indian
times. On-site excavation.
North American Indian Travel College
The Living Museum
RR 3
Cornwall Island, ON K6H 5R7
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen’s Park Crescent
Toronto, ON M5S 2C6
Ontario prehistory.
Thunder Bay Art Gallery
1080 Keewatin Street
Thunder Bay, ON P7C 4X9
Traditional items as well as contemporary art.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

Micmac Indian Village
Cornwall, PEI C0A 1H0
QUEBEC
Abenakis Museum
Route 226
Odanak, PQ J0G 1H0
Displays reflect tribal traditions and lore.
Canadian Museum of Civilization

100 Laurier Street
Hull, PQ J8X 4H2
Spectacular collection of national cultural materials.
McCord Museum
McGill University
690 Sherbrook Street W.
Montreal, PQ H3A 1E9
SASKATCHEWAN
Regina Plains Museum
1801 Scarth Street
Regina, SK S4P 2G9
Metis history and the Riel Rebellions are covered in addition to Plains
material.
Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History
Wascana Park
Regina, SK S4P 3V7
Native Peoples Gallery focusing on Subarctic tribes.
YUKON TERRITORY
MacBride Museum
Whitehorse, YT Y1A 3S9
Artifacts of the Yukon region.
Libraries and Archives in the United States

ALABAMA
Alabama Department of Archives and History
624 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, 36130
ARIZONA
Navajo Nation Library System
Drawer K
Window Rock, 86515
Collection has 23,000 books, 1,000 manuscripts, and films and tapes.
Files of the Navajo Times. Two libraries in Window Rock and one in Na-
vajo, New Mexico.
Smoki People Library
P.O. Box 123
Prescott, 86302
Library of 600 volumes covers North and South American Indian
ceremonials and dances.
Tohono Chul Park, Inc.
7366 North Paseo del Norte
Tucson, 85704
Nature center, ethnic art exhibitions, and 800-volume library on
Southwest culture and environment.
Western Archaeological and Conservation Center
1415 North Sixth Avenue
(mailing address: P.O. Box 41058, Tucson, 85717)
Tucson, 85705
Focus on Southwest prehistory and ethnography: 17,000-volume li-
brary, 100 periodicals, and 160,000-item photo archive.
ARKANSAS
Southwest Arkansas Regional Archives (SARA)
P.O. Box 134
Washington, 71862
History of Caddo Indians and Southwest Arkansas.
CALIFORNIA
American Indian Resource Center
Public Library of Los Angeles County
6518 Miles Avenue
Huntington Park, 90255
Special collections on Indians of North America; 9,000 volumes.
Malki Museum Archives

11-795 Fields Road
Banning, 92220
Oral history project tapes; field notes of J. P. Harrington and others;
manuscript and photo archives.
Native American Studies Library
University of California at Berkeley
103 Wheeler
Berkeley, 94720
Reports of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; Indian Claims Commission
materials; special California Indian collection; extensive holdings.
Rupert Costo Library
UCR Library Special Collections
University of California at Riverside
Riverside, 92517
The 15,000-volume collection is countrywide in scope with a Cali-
fornia concentration. Houses the American Indian Historical Society Ar-
chives, donated by the Costos. Manuscripts, field notes, and 300 books
cover the customs and medicines of the Chinantec Indians of Oaxaca.
Scientific Library
San Diego Museum of Man
Balboa Park
1350 El Prado
San Diego, 92101
Wide coverage of the Americas, including physical anthropology, ar-
chaeology, and ethnology.
COLORADO
Koshare Indian Museum, Inc.
115 West 18th Street
La Junta, 81050
The 10,000-volume Special Koshare Collection focuses on Native
America and Western United States.
National Indian Law Library
Native American Rights Fund
1522 Broadway
Boulder, 80302-6296
Documents, periodicals, and 7,500 books on U.S.-Indian relations
and law.
Taylor Museum Reference Library

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
30 West Dale Street
Colorado Springs, 80903
Art of the Southwest; Hispanic and colonial folk art. Collection
houses 30,000 volumes; extensive biographies of folk artists.
Ute Mountain Tribal Research Archive and Library
Tribal Compound
(mailing address: P.O. Box CC)
Towaoc, 81334
Includes 2,500 books as well as 30,000 archival items, including tribal
government documents.
CONNECTICUT
Mashantucket Pequot Research Library
Indiantown Road
Ledyard, 06339
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
American Folklife Center
U.S. Library of Congress
Thomas Jefferson Building - G152
Biggest collection of early Indian recordings, including the Frances
Densmore Collection of 3,600 cylinders and the Helen Heffron Roberts
Collection from the Northwest Coast and California.
National Anthropological Archives
Natural History Museum MRC 152
10th and Constitution Avenue
Extensive collections of recordings, photographs, field notes, and
manuscripts of the Bureau of Ethnology.
Natural Resources Library
U.S. Department of the Interior
Mail Stop 1151
18th and C Streets, N.W.
More than 600,000 volumes and extensive periodicals and archival
items, including materials on American Indians.
GEORGIA
Hargrett Rare Books and Manuscript Library
University of Georgia
Athens, 30602
ILLINOIS
Newberry Library
D’Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, 60610
More than 100,000 volumes, including the E. E. Ayer Collection.
INDIANA
Fulton County Historical Society Library
Route 3
Rochester, 46975
Collection houses 4,000 volumes, including coverage of Potawatomi
removal to Kansas in 1838 (the Trail of Death).
Lilly Library
Indiana University
Bloomington, 47405
Collection includes Indian accounts of Custer’s defeat at the Battle of
the Little Bighorn.
KANSAS
Mennonite Library and Archives
Bethel College
300 East 27th Street
North Newton, 67117-9989
Includes 26,000 books. Petter Manuscript Collection on the Chey-
enne; H. R. Voth Manuscript and Photo Collection on the Hopi.
Mid-America All Indian Center Library
650 North Seneca
Wichita, 67203
Includes 3,000 books and 200 bound periodical volumes on Indian
art, history, and culture. Blackbear Bosin Collection of publications and
personal papers.
LOUISIANA
Grindstone Bluff Museum Library
Shreveport, 71107
Contains 6,000 books and 2,000 periodical volumes on regional ar-
chaeology and ethnology; emphasis on Caddo Indians.
MASSACHUSETTS
Fruitlands Museums and Library
102 Prospect Hill Road
Harvard, 01451
Mashpee Archives Building
Mashpee, 02649
MICHIGAN
Custer Collection
Monroe County Library System
Monroe, 48161
Contains 4,000 books and archival materials on Custer and the West.
MINNESOTA
Minnesota Historical Society
Divison of Archives and Manuscripts
345 Kellogg Boulevard West
St. Paul, 55102-1906
Materials relating to the Ojibwa and Dakota.
MISSOURI
Missouri Historical Society Library
Jefferson Memorial Building
Forest Park
St. Louis, 63112
Northern Plains; papers of William Clark from Lewis and Clark expe-
dition.
MONTANA
Dr. John Woodenlegs Memorial Library
Dull Knife Memorial College
P.O. Box 98
Lame Deer, 59043-0098
Cheyenne history; oral history collection. Contains 10,000 volumes.
NEBRASKA
Joslyn Art Museum
Art Reference Library
2200 Dodge Street
Omaha, 68102
Native American art covered in collection of 25,000 volumes, 3,000
bound periodicals, and 20,000 slides.
Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium Library
P.O. Box 83111
Lincoln, 68501
Special Collection of Native American video programs (171 titles).
Audio program “Spirits of the Present.” NAPBC quarterly newsletter.
Materials available by mail.
Nebraska State Historical Society Library
P.O. Box 82554
Lincoln, 68501
Anderson Collection of Brule Sioux photographs. Library has 70,000
volumes.
NEW JERSEY
Firestone Library Collections of Western Americana
Princeton University
Princeton, 08544
NEW MEXICO
Mary Cabot Wheelwright Research Library
704 Camino Lejo
Santa Fe, 87502
Contains 10,000 volumes; archives on Navajo religion and sand-
painting.
Millicent Rogers Museum Library

P.O. Box A
Taos, 87571
Registry of New Mexico Hispanic artists, including a number of In-
dian artists.
Museum of New Mexico Photo Archives
P.O. Box 2087
Santa Fe, 87504
NEW YORK
Akwesasne Library
Route 37-RR 1
(mailing address: P.O. Box 14-C)
Hogansburg, 13655
Iroquois Indian Museum Library
P.O. Box 9
Bowes Cave, 12042-0009
Contains 1,500 volumes; 500 archival items; exhibition catalogs.
Museum of the American Indian Library
9 Westchester Square
Bronx, 10461
Contains 40,000 volumes; archives.
Seneca Nation Library
Allegany Branch
P.O. Box 231
Salamanca, 14779
Cattaraugus Branch
Irving, 14981
NORTH CAROLINA
State Archives
109 East Jones Street
Raleigh, 27601-2807
OHIO
Ohio Historical Society Archives and Library
1982 Velma Avenue
Columbus, 43211
OKLAHOMA
Chickasaw Nation Library
Arlington and Mississippi Streets
Ada, 74830
Gilcrease Library
1400 Gilcrease Museum Road
Tulsa, 74127
John Ross (Cherokee chief) and Peter Pitchlynn (Choctaw chief) pa-
pers; 50,000 volumes.
Oklahoma Historical Society Archives and Manuscript Division
2100 North Lincoln Boulevard
Oklahoma City, 73105
State Indian Agency records; Dawes Commission papers; 125,000
photographs.
OREGON
Siletz Library and Archives
119 East Logsden Road, Building II
Siletz, 97380
PENNSYLVANIA
Free Library of Philadelphia
Logan Square
Philadelphia, 19103
University Museum Library
33rd and Spruce Streets
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, 19104
Brinton Collection on Indian linguistics; Delaware materials.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Center for Western Studies
Augustana College
P.O. Box 727
Sioux Falls, 57197
Great Plains history. Collection has 30,000 volumes, 1,500 linear feet
of manuscripts.
TEXAS
Fikes Hall of Special Collections
DeGolyer Library
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, 75275
National Archives
Southwest Region
501 Felix at Hemphill, Building 1
P.O. Box 6216
Fort Worth, 76115
Bureau of Indian Affairs records for Oklahoma.
UTAH
Ute Tribal Museum, Library, and Audio-Visual Center
Fort Duchesne, 84026
WASHINGTON
Jamestown Klallam Library
Blyn, 98382
Special Collections
University of Washington
Seattle, 98195
WEST VIRGINIA
ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools
(CRESS) Library
1031 Quarrier Street
Charleston, 25325
Microfiche containing 300,000 documents. Indian/Hispanic issues.
WISCONSIN
Fairlawn Historical Museum
Harvard View Parkway
Superior, 54880
George Catlin lithographs; David F. Berry Collection of Indian photo-
graphs and portraits.
Hoard Historical Museum Library

407 Merchant Avenue
Fort Atkinson, 53538
Rare Black Hawk War materials.
WYOMING
McCracken Research Library
Buffalo Bill Historical Center
P.O. Box 1000
Cody, 82414
Libraries and Archives in Canada

ALBERTA
Canadian Circumpolar Library
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2J8
University of Lethbridge Library
Special Collections
4401 University Drive
Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4
Native American studies; English literature; education.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Alert Bay Library and Museum
199 Fir Street
Alert Bay, BC B0N 1A0
Kamloops Museum and Archives
207 Seymour Street
Kamloops, BC V2C 2E7
Interior Salish and Shuswap material.
University of British Columbia Library
1956 Main Hall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
MANITOBA
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Regional
Library
275 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3B 3A3
People’s Library
Manitoba Indian Cultural Education Centre
119 Sutherland Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R2W 3C9
NEW BRUNSWICK
Education Resource Centre
University of New Brunswick
D’Avray Hall
P.O. Box 7500
Fredericton, NB E3B 5H5
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Thebacha Campus Library
Arctic College
Fort Smith, NT X0E 0P0
NOVA SCOTIA
Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Library
P.O. Box 2221
Halifax, NS B3J 3C4
Rights of indigenous peoples, women, and others; 4,000 books.
ONTARIO
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Depart-
mental Library
Ottawa, ON K1A 0H4
University of Sudbury Library and Jesuit Archives
Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6
QUEBEC
Canadian Museum of Civilization Library
100 Laurier Street
Hull, PQ J8X 4H2
SASKATCHEWAN
Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research
Library
121 Broadway
Regina, SK S4N 0Z6
Indian History archives; 30,000 volumes.
Indian Federated College Library
University of Regina
Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Collection has 15,000 volumes. Branch library of 4,000 volumes on
Saskatoon campus.
Saskatchewan Provincial Library
1352 Winnipeg Street
Regina, SK S4P 3V7
Has a 4,000-volume Indian collection. Strong in languages.
685
Organizations, Agencies, and Societies
All Indian Pueblo Council American Indian Horse Registry

Founded: 1958 Founded: 1961
P.O. Box 3256 Route 3, Box 64
Albuquerque, NM 87190 Lockhart, TX 78644
American Indian Council of American Indian Liberation

Architects and Engineers Crusade
P.O. Box 230685 4009 S. Halldale Avenue
Tigard, OR 97223 Los Angeles, CA 90062
American Indian Culture Research American Indian Library

Center Association
Box 98 50 E. Huron Street
Blue Cloud Abbey Chicago, IL 60611
Marvin, SD 57251
American Indian Lore Association
American Indian Graduate Center Founded: 1957
Founded: 1969 960 Walhonding Avenue
4520 Montgomery Boulevard NE Logan, OH 43138
Ste. 1-B
Albuquerque, NM 87109 American Indian Movement
(AIM)
American Indian Health Care Founded: 1968
Association 710 Clayton Street
Founded: 1975 Apartment 1
245 E. 6th Street San Francisco, CA 94117
Ste. 499
St. Paul, MN 55101 American Indian Registry for the
Performing Arts
American Indian Heritage Founded: 1983
Foundation 1717 N. Highland Avenue
Founded: 1973 Ste. 614
6051 Arlington Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90028
Falls Church, VA 22044
American Indian Research and
American Indian Higher Education Development
Consortium Founded: 1982
Founded: 1972 2424 Springer Drive
513 Capitol Court NE Ste. 200
Ste. 100 Norman, OK 73069
686 / Organizations, Agencies, and Societies
American Indian Science and Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions

Engineering Society Founded: 1874
Founded: 1977 2021 H Street NW
1630 30th Street Washington, DC 20006
Ste. 301
Boulder, CO 80301 Cherokee National Historical Society
Founded: 1963
Americans for Indian Opportunity P.O. Box 515
Founded: 1970 Tahlequah, OK 74465
3508 Garfield Street NW
Washington, DC 20007 Coalition for Indian Education
Founded: 1987
Arrow, Incorporated (Americans for 3620 Wyoming Boulevard NE
Restitution and Righting of Old Ste. 206
Wrongs) Albuquerque, NM 87111
Founded: 1949
1000 Connecticut Avenue NW Concerned American Indian Parents
Ste. 1206 Founded: 1987
Washington, DC 20036 CUHCC Clinic
2016 16th Avenue S
Associated Community of Friends on Minneapolis, MN 55404
Indian Affairs
Founded: 1869 Continental Confederation of
Box 1661 Adopted Indians
Richmond, IN 47375 Founded: 1950
960 Walhonding Avenue
Association of American Indian Logan, OH 43138
Physicians
Founded: 1971 Council for Indian Education
Building D Founded: 1970
10015 S. Pennsylvania 517 Rimrock Road
Oklahoma City, OK 73159 Billings, MT 59102
Association of Community Tribal Council for Native American Indians

Schools Founded: 1974
Founded: 1982 280 Broadway
c/o Dr. Roger Bordeaux Ste. 316
616 4th Avenue W New York, NY 10007
Sisseton, SD 57262-1349
Council of Energy Resource Tribes
Association on American Indian (CERT)
Affairs Founded: 1975
Founded: 1923 1999 Broadway
432 Park Ave. S. Ste. 2600
New York, NY 10016 Denver, CO 80202
Organizations, Agencies, and Societies / 687
Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Indian Rights Association

The Black Hills 1801 Market Street
Avenue of the Chiefs Philadelphia, PA 19103-1675
Crazy Horse, SD 57730
Indian Youth of America
Creek Indian Memorial Association Founded: 1978
Founded: 1923 609 Badgerow Building
Creek County House Museum Sioux City, IA 51101
Town Square
Okmulgee, OK 74447 Institute for American Indian
Studies
Dakota Women of All Red Nations Founded: 1971
(DWARN) 38 Curtis Road
Founded: 1978 P.O. Box 1260
c/o Lorelei DeCora Washington, CT 06793-0260
P.O. Box 423
Rosebud, SD 57570 Institute for the Development of
Indian Law
First Nations Development Institute Founded: 1971
Founded: 1980 c/o K. Kirke Kickingbird
69 Kelley Road Oklahoma City University
Falmouth, VA 22405 School of Law
2501 Blackwelder
Gathering of Nations Oklahoma City, OK 73106
Founded: 1984
P.O. Box 75102 Institute for the Study of American
Sta. 14 Cultures
Albuquerque, NM 87120-1269 Founded: 1983
The Rankin
Indian Arts and Crafts Association 1004 Broadway
Founded: 1974 Columbus, GA 31901
122 La Veta Drive NE
Ste. B Institute for the Study of Traditional
Albuquerque, NM 87108 American Indian Arts
Founded: 1982
Indian Heritage Council P.O. Box 66124
Founded: 1988 Portland, OR 97290
Henry Street
Box 2302 Institute of American Indian
Morristown, TN 37816 Arts
Founded: 1962
Indian Law Resource Center P.O. Box 20007
Founded: 1978 Santa Fe, NM 87504
508 Stuart Street
Helena, MT 59601
International Indian Treaty National Congress of American

Council Indians
710 Clayton Street 900 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Number 1 Washington, DC 20003
San Francisco, CA 94117
National Council of BIA Educators
Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial Founded: 1967
Association 6001 Marble NE
Founded: 1921 Ste. 10
Box 1 Albuquerque, NM 87110
Church Rock, NM 87311
National Indian Council on Aging
Lone Indian Fellowship and Lone Founded: 1976
Scout Alumni 6400 Uptown Boulevard NE
Founded: 1926 City Centre
1104 St. Clair Avenue Ste. 510-W
Sheboygan, WI 53081 Albuquerque, NM 87110
National American Indian Court National Indian Counselors

Clerks Association Association
1000 Connecticut Avenue NW Learning Research Center
Ste. 1206 Institute of American Indian Arts
Washington, DC 20036 P.O. Box 20007
Santa Fe, NM 87504
National American Indian Court
Judges Association National Indian Education
Founded: 1968 Association
1000 Connecticut Avenue NW Founded: 1970
Ste. 401 1819 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20036 Ste. 800
National Center for American Indian
Alternative Education National Indian Health Board
941 E. 17th Ave. 1385 S. Colorado Boulevard
Denver, CO 80218 Ste. A-708
Denver, CO 80222
National Center for American Indian
Enterprise Development National Indian Social Workers
953 E. Juanita Avenue Founded: 1970
Mesa, AZ 85204 410 NW 18th Street
Number 101
Portland, OR 97209
Organizations, Agencies, and Societies / 689
National Indian Training and Native American Policy

Research Center Network
2121 S. Mill Avenue Barry University
Ste. 216 11300 2nd Avenue NE
Tempe, AZ 85282 Miami, FL 33161
National Indian Youth Council Native American Rights Fund

Founded: 1961 (NARF)
318 Elm Street SE Founded: 1970
Albuquerque, NM 87102 1506 Broadway
Boulder, CO 80302
National Native American
Cooperative North American Indian
P.O. Box 1030 Founded: 1940
San Carlos, AZ 85550-1000 22720 Plymouth Road
Detroit, MI 48239
National Urban Indian Council
Founded: 1977 North American Indian Chamber of
10068 University Station Commerce
Denver, CO 80210 Founded: 1983
P.O. Box 5000
Native American (Indian) Chamber San Carlos, AZ 85550-1000
of Commerce
Founded: 1990 North American Indian Museums
c/o Native American Cooperative Association
San Carlos, AZ 85550-1000 c/o George Abrams
260 Prospect Street
Native American Community Board Number 669
Founded: 1984 Hackensack, NJ 07601-2608
P.O. Box 572
Lake Andes, SD 57356-0572 North American Indian Women’s
Association
Native American Educational Founded: 1970
Services College 9602 Maestor’s Lane
Founded: 1974 Gaithersburg, MD 20879
2838 West Peterson
Chicago, IL 60659 North American Native American
Indian Information and Trade
Native American Indian Housing Center
Council Founded: 1991
Founded: 1974 P.O. Box 1000
900 2nd Street NE San Carlos, AZ 85550-1000
Ste. 220
Order of the Indian Wars Tekakwitha Conference National

Founded: 1979 Center
Little Rock, AR 72217 P.O. Box 6768
Great Falls, MT 59406-6768
Pan-American Indian
Association Tiyospaya American Indian Student
Founded: 1984 Organization
Nocatee, FL 33864 P.O. Box 1954
St. Petersburg, FL 33731
Seventh Generation Fund for
Indian Development United Indians of All Tribes
Founded: 1977 Foundation
Forestville, CA 95436 Daybreak Star Arts Center
Discovery Park
Smoki People P.O. Box 99100
Founded: 1921 Seattle, WA 98199
P.O. Box 123
Prescott, AZ 86302 United Native Americans
Founded: 1968
Survival of American Indians 2434 Faria Avenue
Association Pinole, CA 94564
Founded: 1964
7803-A Samurai Drive SE United South and Eastern Tribes
Olympia, WA 98503 Founded: 1969
1101 Kermit Drive
Ste. 302
Nashville, TN 37217
691
Time Line
c. 15,000- Possible years of migration to the Americas by the

13,000 b.c.e. ancestors of present-day Native Americans.
c. 12,000 b.c.e. Estimate of when Paleo-Indians begin to migrate
southward through ice-free corridors into the
American interior.
c. 11,000 b.c.e. Clovis Period begins across native North America;
centers on hunting mega-fauna, especially the woolly
mammoth.
c. 9,000 b.c.e. Folsom Period emerges, centering on bison hunting.
c. 8,000 b.c.e. Plano Period replaces Folsom, representing a
transitional cultural period culminating in the
Archaic.
c. 6,000 b.c.e. Archaic Period begins, signaling a reliance on a
variety of flora and fauna. Cultural innovations such
as pottery, the bow and arrow, and the domestication
of plants begin to appear across North America.
c. 1,000 b.c.e. Agriculture appears in the Southwest; it gradually
diffuses across North America.
c. 1,000 b.c.e. Woodland Period emerges in eastern North America.
c. 1-500 c.e. Complex societies flourish across North America.
c. 825-900 Athapaskan people, ancestors of the Navajo and
Apache, invade the Southwest from the north,
altering the cultural landscape of the Puebloan
people.
c. 1007 Norsemen invade native North America along the
eastern seaboard and establish a short-lived colony.
1050-1250 Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, is established as
a great Mississippian trading and ceremonial center.
The city may have contained as many as thirty
thousand people.
1492 Christopher Columbus lands on Guanahani (the
island of San Salvador), launching Europe’s
exploration and colonization of North America.
692 / Time Line
c. 1500 European-introduced diseases, warfare, and slavery

begin to reduce native populations (from an estimated
ten to eighteen million to approximately 250,000 in
1900).
1519-1521 Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire.
1582-1598 Spanish conquistadores invade and settle in the
Southwest.
1585 Roanoke Colony is founded by the British (it lasts
only until approximately 1607).
1599 Massacre at Acoma Pueblo. Vincente de Zaldivar
attacks Acoma on January 21 because of its resistance
to Spanish authority; eight hundred Acomas are
killed.
1607 British Virginia Company establishes colony of
Jamestown, affecting local indigenous populations.
1609 Henry Hudson opens the fur trade in New
Netherlands.
1620 The Pilgrims colonize present-day Massachusetts.
1622-1631 Powhatan Confederacy declares war on the
Jamestown colonists.
1629 The Spanish begin establishing missions among the
Pueblos, leading to a 1633 revolt at Zuni.
1630 The Puritans colonize New England, carrying with
them a religious belief that Native Americans are
“children of the Devil.”
1636-1637 Pequot War. The Pequot and their allies attempt to
defend their homelands against the Puritans.
c. 1640 The Dakota (Sioux), forced in part by hostilities
initiated by the fur trade, begin to migrate westward
onto the Great Plains.
1642-1685 Beaver Wars. As the supply of beaver is exhausted in
the Northeast, the Iroquois Confederacy launches a
war against neighboring Native American nations to
acquire their hunting territories.
Time Line / 693
c. 1650 Period of widespread migrations and relocations.

Prompted by the diffusion of the gun and the horse,
and by the increasing hostility of Europeans, many
Native Americans migrate westward.
1655 Timucua Rebellion. Timucuan mission residents rebel
against Spanish cruelty in Florida.
1655-1664 Peach Wars. The Dutch launch a war of extermination
against the Esophus nation after an Esophus woman
is killed for picking peaches.
1670 Hudson’s Bay Company is chartered, launching a
westward expansion of the fur trade.
1670-1710 South Carolinians in Charleston encourage the
development of a Native American slave trade across
the Southeast.
1675-1676 King Philip’s War. In response to English
maltreatment, Metacomet (King Philip) launches a
war against the English.
1676-1677 Bacon’s Rebellion. Native Americans in Virginia fight
a war of resistance but find themselves subject to
Virginia rule.
1680 Pueblo (Popé’s) Revolt. After decades of Spanish
oppression, a Pueblo confederacy expels the Spanish
from the Rio Grande region.
1682 Assiniboine and Cree begin to trade at York Factory,
initiating European mercantile penetration of the
Canadian west as far as the Rocky Mountains.
1689-1763 French and Indian Wars. King William’s War initiates
conflicts between the French and English that involve
Native Americans and disrupt traditional patterns
and alliances.
1692 Spanish reconquest of the Southwest (Nueva Mexico).
1695 Pima Uprising. Pimas burn missions in response to
Spanish oppression.
c. 1700-1760 The horse diffuses across the Great Plains, prompting
massive migrations and a cultural revolution.
694 / Time Line
1715-1717 Yamasee War. The Yamasee and their allies fight

against the English for trading and other abuses.
1729 Natchez Revolt. Resisting French attempts to exact
tribute, the Natchez go to war; the tribe is essentially
destroyed, and many are sold into slavery.
1730 Articles of Agreement signed between the Cherokee
Nation and King George II.
1740 Russia explores the Alaskan coast and begins trading
operations.
1755 Some Iroquois settle near the Catholic mission of St.
Regis, forming the nucleus of the Akwesasne Reserve.
1763 Proclamation of 1763. The Royal Proclamation of 1763
declares that Native Americans have title to all lands
outside established colonies until the Crown legally
purchases further land cessions.
1763-1764 Pontiac’s War. Ottawa leader Pontiac constructs a
multitribal alliance to resist the British.
1765 Paxton Riots (Paxton Boys Massacre). On December
14, 1765, seventy-five Europeans from Paxton,
Pennsylvania, massacre and scalp six innocent
Conestoga Mission Indians.
1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Iroquois Confederacy
cedes lands south of the Ohio River (a later Fort
Stanwix Treaty, 1784, changes the agreement).
1769 The California mission system is established.
1771 Labrador Inuit show missionaries where to build a
trading post.
1774 Lord Dunmore’s War. Lord Dunmore, the governor of
Virginia, leads a fight against Shawnee led by
Cornstalk.
1774-1775 The first Continental Congress establishes an Indian
Department.
1777-1783 The Iroquois Confederacy is dispersed by the
American Revolution.
Time Line / 695
1787 Northwest Ordinance. The U.S. Congress establishes a

legal mechanism to create states from territories.
1789 The Indian Department becomes part of the U.S.
Department of War.
1790 First of the Trade and Intercourse Acts enacted; they
attempt to regulate trade between Europeans and
Native Americans.
1790-1794 Little Turtle’s War. Shawnee and their allies under
Little Turtle defeat Anthony St. Clair’s troops in 1791
but eventually are defeated at the Battle of Fallen
Timbers, 1794, by General Anthony Wayne.
1795 Treaty of Fort Greenville. Native Americans of the
Old Northwest are forced to treat with the United
States after Britain refuses to assist them in their
resistance efforts.
1796 Trading Houses Act. On April 18, 1796, the United
States establishes government-operated trading
houses.
1799 Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet, founds the
Gaiwiio, “the Good Word,” also known as the
Longhouse religion; it becomes a strong force among
the Iroquois.
1803 Louisiana Purchase. The United States acquires
800,000 square miles of new territory.
1804-1806 Lewis and Clark expedition. President Jefferson
launches an expedition to collect information of
national interest about the Louisiana territory
purchased from the French in 1803.
1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne. The Delaware are forced to
relinquish approximately 3 million acres.
1809-1811 Tecumseh’s Rebellion. Shawnee leader Tecumseh
leads a multitribal force to resist United States
incursions into their lands.
1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. William Henry Harrison and his
forces attack and defeat Tecumseh’s forces in
Tecumseh’s absence.
696 / Time Line
1812 War of 1812. Tribes of the Old Northwest are drawn

into the European conflict.
1812 In August, the Hudson’s Bay Company establishes
the Red River Colony.
1813-1814 Red Stick civil war. Creeks fight a bloody civil war
over disagreements about what their political
relations with the United States should be.
1817-1818 First Seminole War. U.S. forces under General Andrew
Jackson attack and burn Seminole villages.
1821 Sequoyah creates the Cherokee syllabary, the first
system for writing an Indian language.
1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh. On February 28, 1823, the U.S.
Supreme Court rules that Native American tribes
have land rights.
1823 Office of Indian Affairs is created within the War
Department.
1827 Cherokee Nation adopts a constitution.
1830 Indian Removal Act. At the urging of President
Andrew Jackson, Congress orders the removal of all
Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi
River. Removal proceeds from the 1830’s to the 1850’s.
1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Choctaws cede more
than 10 million acres in Alabama and Mississippi.
1830 Upper Canada establishes a system of reserves for
Canadian natives.
1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. U.S. Supreme Court rules
that Native American tribes are “domestic dependent
nations.”
1832 Black Hawk War. Black Hawk, the Sauk and Fox
leader, leads a war to preserve their land rights.
1832 Worcester v. Georgia. U.S. Supreme Court rules that
only the federal government has the right to regulate
Indian affairs.
1834 Department of Indian Affairs is reorganized.
1835 Texas Rangers begin raids against the Comanche.
Time Line / 697
1835-1842 Second Seminole War. The Seminole resist removal to

Indian Territory.
1838-1839 Forced removal of Cherokees to Indian Territory
becomes a “Trail of Tears” marked by thousands of
deaths.
1839 Upper Canadian judge James Buchanan submits a
report suggesting that Canadian natives should be
assimilated into larger Canadian society.
1839 Taos Revolt. Taos Pueblos struggle against U.S.
domination.
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. United States acquires
southwestern lands from Mexico.
1848-1849 California Gold Rush. Emigrants cross Native
American lands, resulting in ecological destruction
and spread of diseases.
1849 Metis Courthouse Rebellion. Metis resist Canadian
domination.
1850 Period of genocide against California Indians begins
and continues for some thirty years; thousands are
killed.
1851 First Treaty of Fort Laramie. Great Plains Native
Americans agree to allow emigrants safe passage
across their territories.
1853 Gadsden Purchase. U.S. government purchases
portions of Arizona, California, and New Mexico
from Mexico.
1854-1864 Teton Dakota Resistance. The Teton Dakota and their
allies resist U.S. intrusions into their lands.
1855 In the Northwest, Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens
holds the Walla Walla Council and negotiates a series
of treaties with Native American tribes.
1855-1856 Yakima War. Led by Kamiakin, who refused to sign
the 1855 treaty, Yakimas fight U.S. forces after the
murder of a government Indian agent initiates
hostilities.
698 / Time Line
1855-1858 Third Seminole War. Seminoles react to the surveying

of their lands.
1858 British Columbia Gold Rush precipitates large-scale
invasion of Indian lands.
1858 Navajo War. Manuelito leads the Navajo against U.S.
forces to fight against whites’ grazing their horses on
Navajo lands.
1860 The British transfer full responsibility for Canadian
Indian affairs to the Province of Canada.
1862 Minnesota Uprising. Little Crow carries out a war of
resistance against federal authority because of ill
treatment.
1863-1868 Long Walk of the Navajo. In a violent campaign, U.S.
forces remove the Navajo from their homeland and
take them to Bosque Redondo.
1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Colorado militiamen under
John Chivington massacre a peaceful group of
Cheyennes at Sand Creek.
1866-1868 Bozeman Trail wars. Teton Dakota and their allies
resist the building of army forts in their lands.
1867 U.S. government purchases Alaska.
1867 Canadian Confederation. The Dominion of Canada is
created.
1867 Commission Act. Legislation calls for the U.S.
president to establish commissions to negotiate peace
treaties with Native American nations.
1868 Second Treaty of Fort Laramie pledges the protection
of Indian lands.
1868 Canadian government adopts an Indian policy aimed
at the assimilation of Indians into Canadian society.
1868 Washita River Massacre. A peaceful Cheyenne camp is
massacred by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry.
1869 First Riel Rebellion. Louis Riel leads the Metis in
resisting Canadian domination; partly triggered by
white surveying of Metis’ lands.
Time Line / 699
1870 Grant’s Peace Policy. President Ulysses S. Grant

assigns various Christian denominations to various
Indian reservation agencies in order to Christianize
and pacify the Indians.
1871 Congress passes an act on March 3 that ends treaty
negotiations with Native American nations.
1871 McKay v. Campbell. U.S. Supreme Court holds that
Indian people born with “tribal allegiance” are not
U.S. citizens.
1871 Canada begins negotiating the first of eleven
“numbered” treaties with Native Canadians.
1871-1890 Wholesale destruction of the bison on the Plains.
1872-1873 Modoc War. The Modoc resist removal to the Klamath
Reservation.
1874 Canadian Northwest Mounted Police move to
establish order in the Canadian West.
1874-1875 Red River War. Forced by starvation and Indian agent
corruption, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Southern
Cheyenne, and Arapaho raid European American
farms and ranches to feed their families.
1876 First Indian Act of Canada. The act consolidated
Canadian policies toward its indigenous people.
1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. General Custer and the
Seventh Cavalry are annihilated by the Sioux,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho camped along the Little
Bighorn River.
1877 The Nez Perce are exiled from their homeland and
pursued by U.S. forces as they unsuccessfully attempt
to escape into Canada.
1877 Battle of Wolf Mountain. The last fight between the
Cheyenne and the U.S. Army.
1877-1883 The Northern Cheyenne are forcibly removed to
Indian Territory but escape north to their homelands.
1878 Bannock War. Because of settler pressures, the
Bannock are forced to raid for food.
700 / Time Line
1879 Carlisle Indian School, a boarding school with the

goal of “civilizing” Indian youth, is founded by
Captain Richard H. Pratt.
1880 Canadian officials modify the 1876 Indian Act,
empowering it to impose elected councils on bands.
1885 Second Riel Rebellion. Louis Riel leads a second
protest, then armed revolt, among the Canadian Metis
and Cree; defeated, Riel is executed after the
rebellion.
1887 General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act).
Provides for the dividing of reservation lands into
individual parcels to expedite assimilation. (By the
early twentieth century, the allotment policy is
viewed as disastrous.)
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The Seventh Cavalry
intercepts a group of Sioux Ghost Dancers being led
by Big Foot to the Pine Ridge Reservation. When a
Sioux warrior, perhaps accidentally, fires his rifle, the
army opens fire; hundreds of Sioux, most unarmed,
are massacred.
1897 Education Appropriation Act mandates funding for
Indian day schools and technical schools.
1897 Indian Liquor Act bans the sale or distribution of
liquor to Native Americans.
1903 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock. U.S. Supreme Court rules that
Congress has the authority to dispose of Native
American lands.
1906 Burke Act. Congress amends the General Allotment
Act to shorten the trust period for individual Native
Americans who are proven “competent.”
1906 Alaskan Allotment Act. Allows Alaska Natives to file
for 160-acre parcels.
1910 Omnibus Act. Establishes procedures to determine
Native American heirship of trust lands and other
resources.
Time Line / 701
1912 Classification and Appraisal of Unallotted Indian

Lands Act. Permits the Secretary of the Interior to
reappraise and reclassify unallotted Indian lands.
1924 General Citizenship Act. As a result of Native
American participation in World War I, Congress
grants some Native Americans citizenship.
1928 Meriam Report outlines the failure of previous Indian
policies and calls for reform.
1932 Alberta Metis Organization is founded by Joseph
Dion.
1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Implements the Meriam
Report recommendations, reversing many previous
policies.
1934 Johnson-O’Malley Act replaces the General Allotment
Act.
1936 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. Extends many of the
rights provided by the Indian Reorganization Act of
1934 to Oklahoma Indian nations.
1944 National Congress of American Indians is founded to
guard Native American rights.
1946 Indian Claims Commission Act. Provides a legal
forum for tribes to sue the federal government for the
loss of lands.
1950 Navajo and Hopi Rehabilitation Act is passed to assist
the tribes in developing their natural resources.
1951 Indian Act of 1951. A new Canadian Indian Act
reduces the powers of the Indian Affairs Department
but retains an assimilationist agenda.
1951 Public Law 280 allows greater state jurisdiction over
criminal cases involving Native Americans from
California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Nebraska
(extended to Alaska Natives in 1959).
1953 Termination Resolution. Congress initiates a policy
(which continues into the early 1960’s) of severing the
federal government’s relationships with Native
American nations.
702 / Time Line
1955 Indian Health Service is transferred from the

Department of the Interior to the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare.
1961 Chicago Indian Conference, organized by
anthropologist Sol Tax, mobilizes Indian leaders to
reassert their rights.
1961 National Indian Youth Council is founded by Clyde
Warrior and others.
1963 State of Washington rules against Native American
fishing rights.
1964 American Indian Historical Society is founded to
research and teach about Native Americans.
1966 Hawthorn Report examines the conditions of
contemporary Canadian natives and recommends that
Indians be considered “citizens plus.”
1968 American Indian Civil Rights Act guarantees
reservation residents many of the civil liberties other
citizens have under the U.S. Constitution.
1968 American Indian Movement (AIM) is founded in
Minneapolis by Dennis Banks and Russell Means.
1969 Canadian government’s White Paper of 1969 rejects
the Hawthorn Report’s recommendations, arguing
that Canadian natives’ special status hinders their
assimilation and urging the abolition of the Indian
Affairs Department and Indian Act.
1969 Occupation of Alcatraz Island by Native American
people begins (continues through 1971).
1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act marks the
beginning of the self-determination period for Alaska
Natives.
1972 Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan proceeds to
Washington, D.C., to protest treaty violations.
1972 Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is founded to
carry Indian issues to court.
Time Line / 703
1972 Indian Education Act enacted; it is intended to

improve the quality of education for Native
Americans (the act is revised in 1978).
1973 Wounded Knee occupation. More than two hundred
Native American activists occupy the historic site to
demonstrate against oppressive Sioux reservation
policies.
1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act facilitates
negotiation between the two nations over the
disputed Joint Use Area.
1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance
Act expands tribal control over tribal governments
and education.
1975 Political violence increases on the Pine Ridge
Reservation; two FBI agents are killed in a shootout
on June 26.
1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement is signed;
Quebec Cree, Inuit, Naskapi, and Montagnais groups
cede tribal lands in exchange for money and specified
hunting and fishing rights.
1977 American Indian Policy Review Commission Report
is released by Congress, recommending that Native
American nations be considered sovereign political
bodies.
1978 American Indian Freedom of Religion Act protects the
rights of Native Americans to follow traditional
religious practices.
1978 Federal Acknowledgment Program is initiated to
provide guidelines for and assist tribes seeking
official recognition by the federal government.
1978 Indian Child Welfare Act proclaims tribal jurisdiction
over child custody decisions.
1978 The Longest Walk, a march from Alcatraz Island to
Washington, D.C., protests government treatment of
Indians.
704 / Time Line
1980 United States v. Sioux Nation. U.S. Supreme Court

upholds a $122 million judgment against the United
States for illegally taking the Black Hills.
1981 Hopi-Navajo Joint Use Area is partitioned between
the Navajo and Hopi nations.
1982 Canada’s Constitution Act (Constitution and Charter
of Rights and Freedoms) is passed despite the protests
of Indian, Metis, and Inuit groups.
1982 Indian Claims Limitation Act limits the time period
during which claims can be filed against the U.S.
government.
1985 Coolican Report declares that little progress is being
made to settle Canadian native land claims.
1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act officially legalizes
certain types of gambling on reservations and
establishes the National Indian Gaming Commission.
1989 U.S. Congress approves construction of the National
Museum of the American Indian, to be part of the
Smithsonian Institution.
1989 Violence erupts on St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in
dispute over whether to allow gambling; under guard
by state and federal law enforcement officers, the tribe
votes to allow gambling on the reservation.
1990 The U.S. Census finds the Native American
population to be 1,959,234.
1990 In Duro v. Reina, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that
tribes cannot have criminal jurisdiction over non-
Indians on reservation lands.
1990 Canada’s proposed Meech Lake Accord (amendments
to the 1982 Constitution Act) is sent to defeat in
Canada by native legislator Elijah Harper; the accord
provided no recognition of native rights.
1991 Tribal Self-Governance Act extends the number of
tribes involved in the self-governance pilot project.
1992 Native Americans protest the Columbian
Quincentenary.
Time Line / 705
1992 In a plebiscite, residents of Canada’s Northwest

Territories approve the future creation of Nunavut, a
territory to be governed by the Inuit.
1993 The International Year of Indigenous People.
1994 National Museum of the American Indian opens its
first facility in New York’s Heye Center (a larger
museum is planned for the National Mall in
Washington, D.C.).
1994 The National Congress of American Indians and the
National Black Caucus of State Legislators ally
themselves, agreeing that they face similar political
and economic forces of oppression.
1998 Canadian minister of Indian Affairs formally
apologizes to Indian and Inuit peoples for past
government attempts to destroy native cultures.
1999 Eastern portion of Canada’s Northwest Territories
becomes new territory of Nunavut.
2000 U.S. secretary of the interior Bruce Babbitt announces
that the remains of Kennewick Man will be turned
over to Washington State Native American tribes
under the provisions of the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act.
2001 Native Americans sue Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton over approximately $10 billion they claim was
bilked from Native American trust funds of Indian
land use royalties, administered by the Department of
the Interior since 1887.
Culture Areas of North America
ARCTIC
SUBARCTIC
NORTHWEST
COAST
AU
E
AT
PL
GREAT
BASIN PLAINS
NORTHEAST
CALIFORNIA
SOUTHEAST
SOUTHWEST
707
Tribes by Culture Area
Major tribal groups are listed below their geographical culture areas;
language groups represented appear after the culture-area heading.
Arctic
Language groups: Eskimo-Aleut (Aleut, Inuit-Iñupiaq, Yupik)
Aleut Yupik
Inuit
California
Language groups: Athapaskan, Chimariko, Chumashan, Esselen, Karok,
Maiduan, Palaihnihan, Pomoan, Salinan, Shastan, Uto-Aztecan, Wintun,
Wiyot, Yanan, Yokutsan, Yukian, Yuman, Yurok
Achumawi Miwok
Atsugewi Patwin
Cahuilla Pomo
Chemehuevi Quechan
Chumash Salinan
Costano Serrano
Cupeño Shasta
Diegueño Tolowa
Esselen Tubatulabal
Fernandeño Wailaki
Gabrielino Wappo
Hupa Wintun
Juaneño Wiyot
Kamia Yahi
Karok Yana
Kato Yokuts
Luiseño Yuki
Maidu Yurok
Mattole
708 / Tribes by Culture Area
Great Basin
Language groups: Hokan, Numic (Shoshonean)
Bannock Panamint
Gosiute Paviotso (Northern Paiute)
Kawaiisu Shoshone
Mono (Monache) Ute
Numaga (Northern Paiute) Washoe
Northeast
Language groups: Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan
Abenaki Oneida
Algonquin Onondaga
Cayuga Ottawa
Erie Pamlico
Fox Passamaquoddy
Huron Pennacook
Illinois Penobscot
Kaskaskia Pequot
Kickapoo Petun
Lenni Lenape Piankashaw
Mahican Potawatomi
Maliseet Sauk
Massachusett Secotan
Menominee Seneca
Miami Shawnee
Micmac Susquehannock
Mohawk Tuscarora
Nanticoke Wampanoag
Narragansett Wappinger
Neutral Winnebago
Nottaway
Tribes by Culture Area / 709
Northwest Coast
Language groups: Athapaskan, Chinook, Penutian, Salish
Alsea Klikitat
Bella Bella Kwakiutl
Bella Coola Nootka (Nuu-Chah-Nulth)
Chehalis Quileute
Chinook Quinault
Coast Salish Siuslaw
Coos Takelma
Eyak Tillamook
Gitksan Tlingit
Haida Tsimshian
Klamath Umpqua
Plains
Language groups: Algonquian, Athapaskan, Caddoan, Kiowa-Tanoan,
Siouan, Uto-Aztecan
Apache of Oklahoma Mandan

Arapaho Missouri
Arikara Omaha
Assiniboine Osage
Atsina Oto
Blackfoot (Blood, Piegan, Siksika) Pawnee
Caddo Ponca
Cheyenne Quapaw
Comanche Sarsi
Crow Sioux (Santee, Teton, Yankton)
Hidatsa Tonkawa
Iowa Waco
Kansa (Kaw) Wichita
Kiowa
Plateau
Language groups: Penutian, Sahaptin, Salishan
Coeur d’Alene Okanagan

Colville Palouse
Flathead Sanpoil
Kalispel Shuswap
Klamath Spokane
Klikitat Tenino
Kutenai Thompson
Lake Tyigh
Lillooet Umatilla
Methow Walla Walla
Mical Wanapam
Modoc Wauyukma
Molala Wenatchi
Nez Perce Yakima
Southeast
Language groups: Algonquian, Atakapa, Caddoan, Chitimacha, Iroquoian,
Muskogean, Natchez, Siouan, Timucuan, Tunican, Yuchi
Ais Chitimacha
Alabama Choctaw
Anadarko (Hasinai Confederacy) Coushatta
Apalachee Creek
Apalachicola Guale
Atakapa Guasco (Hasinai Confederacy)
Bayogoula Hitchiti
Biloxi Houma
Calusa Jeaga
Cape Fear Manahoac (Mahock)
Catawba Mobile
Cheraw Nabedache (Hasinai Confederacy)
Cherokee Natchez
Chiaha Ocaneechi
Chickasaw Ofo
Tribes by Culture Area / 711
Pamlico Tunica
Pawokti Tuscarora
Powhatan Confederacy Tuskegee
Seminole Tutelo
Texas (Hasinai Confederacy) Waccamaw
Timucua Yamasee
Tiou Yazoo
Tohome Yuchi
Southwest
Language groups: Athapaskan, Keres, Kiowa-Tanoan, Uto-Aztecan, Yu-
man, Zuni
Acoma San Felipe

Apache (including Chiricahua, San Ildefonso
Jicarilla, and Mescalero) San Juan
Cochiti Sandia
Havasupai Santa Ana
Hopi Santa Clara
Isleta Santo Domingo
Jemez Taos
Karankawa Tesuque
Laguna Tohono O’odham
Nambe Walapai
Navajo Yaqui
Picuris Yavapai
Pima Zia
Pojoaque Zuñi
Subarctic
Language Groups: Algonquian, Athapaskan, Eskimo-Aleut
Ahtna Cree
Beaver Dogrib
Carrier Haida
Chilcotin Han
Chipewyan Hare
Ingalik Saulteaux
Inland Tlingit Slave
Koyukon Tagish
Kutchin Tanaina
Montagnais Tanana
Mountain Tsetsaut
Naskapi Yellowknife
713
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716 / Bibliography
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718 / Bibliography
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motives behind the hostilities through archaeological, linguistic, and
anthropological analysis.
Chalfant, William Y. Cheyennes at Dark Water Creek: The Last Fight of the Red
River War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. A thorough
study of the final encounter of the Red River War and the circumstances
leading up to it.
Chalmers, Harvey, II. The Last Stand of the Nez Perce. New York: Twayne,
1962.
Chamberlain, Kathleen P. Under Sacred Ground: A History of Navajo Oil,
1922-1982. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. An eth-
nography and history of the effect of oil production on the formation
and expansion of Navajo tribal government.
Chevigny, Hector. Russian America: The Great Alaskan Venture, 1741-1867.
New York: Viking Press, 1965.
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Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret
Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.
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Clark, Blue. “Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock”: Treaty Rights and Indian Law at the End
of the Nineteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. A
short but comprehensive study of the background and implications of
the most significant turn-of-the-century Native American court case.
trations, 1961-1969. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2001.
Cleland, Charles E. Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan’s
Native Americans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. A
multiethnic, regional approach to the history of the Ojibwa, Ottawa, and
Potawatomi, from precontact to the late twentieth century. Maps, photo-
graphs, biographical sketches, chapter notes, bibliography, index.
Cochran, Thomas C. Pennsylvania: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978.
Coe, Joffre L., and Thomas D. Burke. Town Creek Indian Mound: A Native
American Legacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Cohen, Fay G. Treaties on Trial: The Continuing Controversy over Northwest In-
dian Fishing Rights. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986. Shows
the continuing importance of treaties and the bitterness still evoked by
pre-1871 agreements.
Cohen, Felix. Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Washington, D.C.: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1942. The most complete sourcebook for American
Indian legal issues.
Cole, D. C. The Chiricahua Apache, 1846-1876: From War to Reservation. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. A general history of
the Chiricahua Apaches with special attention to cultural conflicts with
Euro-Americans.
Coleman, Michael C. “Problematic Panacea: Presbyterian Missionaries and
the Allotment of Indian Lands in the Late Nineteenth Century.” Pacific
Historical Review 54, no. 2 (1985): 143-159. Shows that the Presbyterians
were not united about allotment of tribal lands.
Condon, Thomas J. New York Beginnings: The Commercial Origins of New
Netherland. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Monograph
examining the Dutch purchase decision as part of a wider commercial
policy.
Cook, Noble David. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650.
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at the effect of disease in the European colonization of the Americas.
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World Disease in Colonial Spanish America. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 2001. A collection of symposium papers, presented from a
wide range of disciplines, assessing the impact of European diseases
and epidemics on the Native American population.
Cook, Sherburne F. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civi-
lization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.
Cordell, Linda S. Prehistory of the Southwest. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press,
1984.
Corkran, David H. The Cherokee Frontier: Conflict and Survival 1740-1762.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. A detailed account of the
complex relations between the Cherokees and English colonists during
the mid-1700’s.
Costo, Rupert, and Jeannette Henry Costo, eds. The Missions of California: A
Legacy of Genocide. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987. A collec-
tion that vigorously indicts the evils of the mission system.
Covington, James W. The Seminoles of Florida. Gainesville: University Press
of Florida, 1993. The most thorough history of the Seminoles in Florida;
devotes six chapters to the Seminole Wars.
Coward, John M. The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press,
1820-90. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Cowger, Thomas W. The National Congress of American Indians: The Founding
Years. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Crampton, C. Gregory. The Zuñis of Cíbola. Provo: University of Utah Press,
1977. A general history of the Zuñi people. Black-and-white photo-
graphs illustrate how the Pueblos have changed over time.
Crane, Verner. The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1929. A classic work on relations between European set-
tlers and American Indians in the South.
Cressman, Luther S. The Sandal and the Cave: The Indians of Oregon.
Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1981.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of
New England. New York: Hill & Wang, 1983.
Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Conse-
quences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972.
____________. “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depop-
ulation in America.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 33 (1976): 289-
299. This essay is considered a classic examination of the effect of dis-
ease on Indian populations in North America.
Crutchfield, James Andrew. Tragedy at Taos: The Revolt of 1847. Plano, Tex.:
Republic of Texas Press, 1995. First comprehensive narrative of the
Bibliography / 721
events at Taos. Contains valuable appendices concerning the partic-

ipants, a chronology of events, casualty figures, and other items of in-
terest.
Cummings, Byron. The First Inhabitants of Arizona and the Southwest. Tuc-
son, Ariz.: Cummings Publication Council, 1953.
Cunningham, Frank. General Stand Watie’s Confederate Indians. 1959. Re-
print. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. A full account of
Stand Watie’s efforts during the Civil War and his political life within
the Cherokee Nation. Many photographs of that era.
Curtis, Edward S. In a Sacred Manner We Live. Barre, Mass.: Barre Pub-
lishers, 1972.
Custer, George Armstrong. My Life on the Plains. London: The Folio Society,
l963. Contains Custer’s account of the events before, during, and after
the Washita Massacre.
Dale, Edward Everett, and Morris L. Wardell. History of Oklahoma. New

York: Prentice-Hall, 1948. Contains a thorough chapter on the Civil War
in Oklahoma by two outstanding Oklahoma historians.
Danky, James P., ed. Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828-1982.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. Overview of the history of Na-
tive American newspapers.
Dary, David A. The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal. Chi-
cago: Swallow Press, 1974. Detailed account of bison in North America.
Black-and-white photos, index, bibliography.
Davidson, Gordon Charles. The North West Company. New York: Russell &
Russell, 1967. A history of the development and expansion of the second
largest fur company in North America. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Deardorff, Merle H. The Religion of Handsome Lake: Its Origins and Develop-
ment. American Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 149. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1951. Presents a detailed analysis of the
Handsome Lake religion from an ethnographic perspective.
Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians in the United States. Norman: Univer-
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1989. A comprehensive, in-depth historical sur-
vey of Indians of the United States, emphasizing tribal relations with the
U.S. government.
____________. The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic. 2d ed. Norman: Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press, 1967.
De Forest, John W. History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest
Known Period to 1850. Hartford, Conn.: W. J. Hammersley, 1851. Reprint.
Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1988. A classic study of the native
peoples of Connecticut.
722 / Bibliography
Independence. 2d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1987. Lawyer-
theologian Deloria discusses the doctrine of discovery, treaty-making,
civil rights, American Indian activism, sovereignty, and the Trail and
Wounded Knee occupations.
____________, ed. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. Several essays deal with the impact
of the Indian Civil Rights Act on American Indian tribal governments.
Also explores larger constitutional issues and tribal governments.
____________, ed. The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and Bills. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. A collection of primary
source documents assembled by the noted Native American legal
scholar.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., and Raymond J. DeMallie. Documents of American Indian
Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775-1979. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983. A clearly written study focusing
on the development of the Native American judicial system as it existed
in the early 1980’s. Explains the complexities of Native American legal
and political rights as they are understood by the tribes and by the fed-
eral government.
Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. An important discussion
of the impact of legal and legislative measures on tribal autonomy and
self-rule.
Dempsey, Hugh A. Big Bear: The End of Freedom. Vancouver: Douglas &
McIntyre, 1984.
DeRosier, Arthur. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1970. Discusses removal circumstances. Includes
maps and portraits.
De Voto, Bernard. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1953. A one-volume condensation of the Original Journals of Lewis and
Clark Expedition. Includes maps.
Dickason, Olive. Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from
Earliest Times. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. An unpar-
alleled legal, political, and social history of Canadian Indians.
____________. The Myth of the Savage and the Beginnings of French Colonialism
in the Americas. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1984.
Dickerson, Mark O. Whose North? Political Change, Political Development, and
Self-Government in the Northwest Territories. Vancouver: University of
Bibliography / 723
British Columbia Press, 1992. Discusses the contemporary political is-

sues facing the Dene, Metis, Inuit, and non-native residents of northern
Canada.
Dillehay, Thomas D. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New
York: Basic Books, 2001. Offers the archaeological and anthropological
evidence for population of the Americas prior to the glaciation 20,000
years ago.
Dillehay, Tom D., and David J. Meltzer. The First Americans: Search and Re-
search. Boca Raton, Fla.: Chemical Rubber Company Press, 1991. A set of
papers written to explore and encourage exploration of the total context
of migrations into North America. Illustrations, reference lists.
Dillon, Richard H. Meriwether Lewis: A Biography. New York: Coward-
McCann, 1965. A full-length study of Meriwether Lewis’s life.
____________. North American Indian Wars. New York: Facts on File, 1983.
Dippie, Brian W. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian
Policy. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982.
Dixon, E. James. Quest for the Origins of the First Americans. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1993. An archaeologist discusses the
first Americans in the context of his own research. Illustrations, index,
bibliography.
Dobyns, Henry F. Their Number Became Thinned. Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1983. A comprehensive volume addressing the popula-
tion dynamics of eastern North America.
Donck, Adriaen van der. A Description of the New Netherlands. Translated by
Jeremiah Johnson. 1841. Reprint. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University
Press, 1968.
Douville, Raymond, and Jacques Casanova. Daily Life in Early Canada. New
York: Macmillan, 1967. Although this carefully documented study con-
centrates on various conditions affecting French colonial life in Gallia
Nova (transportation, religious life, trapping, and trading), each chap-
ter includes useful information on relations with Indian populations.
Press, 1991. A useful short survey of American Indian affairs.
Downes, Randolph C. Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian
Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley Until 1795. Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1940. Discusses the relations between settlers and various
tribes in the Ohio Valley, including those at Fort Stanwix.
Drake, Benjamin. Life of Tecumseh. 1858. Reprint. New York: Arno Press,
1969. Biography using primary documents and interviews with individ-
uals who knew Tecumseh.
724 / Bibliography
Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-

Building. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980. The author
explores the intellectual process which defines indigenous tribal groups
as primitive and leads to violence between nations and tribes. Includes
many helpful illustrations and an extensive bibliographic essay.
Drucker, Phillip. Indians of the Northwest Coast. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural
History Press, 1963.
____________. “Sources of Northwest Coast Culture.” In New Interpreta-
tions of Aboriginal American Culture History. Seventy-fifth anniversary
volume of the Anthropological Society of Washington. Seattle: Anthro-
pological Society of Washington, 1955.
Echo-Hawk, Walter E. “Loopholes in Religious Liberty: The Need for a

Federal Law to Protect Freedom of Worship for Native American Peo-
ple.” NARF Legal Review 14 (Summer, 1991): 7-14. An important analysis
of what AIRFA should provide in the way of legal protection of religious
freedoms for American Indian peoples.
Press, 1983. An insightful study of the Shawnee society that produced
Tecumseh and his alliance. Argues that Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwa-
tawa, the Prophet, originated the alliance, which Tecumseh took over as
Tenskwatawa’s influence faded. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Brown, 1984. A brief treatment that concentrates on the warrior brother.
Map, illustrations, and index.
Edmunds, R. David, and Joseph L. Peyser. The Fox Wars: The Mesquaki Chal-
lenge to New France. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993. The
most complete study to date of the specific events of the Fox Wars.
Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York:
Doubleday, 1988. Covers Cherokee history from 1770 to 1840. Details the
intratribal conflicts relating to removal policy.
Eid, Leroy V. “American Indian Military Leadership: St. Clair’s 1791 De-
feat.” Journal of Military History 57 (January, 1993): 71-88.
Eisler, Kim Isaac. The Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American
Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 2002. A journalistic account of the effect of IGRA on one
tribe.
Ellis, Richard N. General Pope and U.S. Indian Policy. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1970. Ellis’s detailed account provides in-
sight into the policy of punishment and containment that grew out of
the war.
Bibliography / 725
____________. The Western American Indian. Lincoln: University of Ne-

braska Press, 1972.
Englehardt, Zephyrin. The Missions and Missionaries of California. 4 vols.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Mission Santa Barbara, 1929. The monumental
standard reference work on the missions, giving an overall positive
evaluation of the system.
Enterline, James Robert. Viking America: The Norse Crossings and Their Leg-
acy. Epilogue by Thor Heyerdahl. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
Fagan, Brian M. Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. Rev.

ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995. A consideration of the first
Americans in the context of North American archaeology. Illustrations,
index, bibliography.
Falkowski, James E. Indian Law/Race Law: A Five-Hundred-Year History. New
York: Praeger, 1922. Places the subject of U.S. government policy toward
Indians in a wider context both of historical and contemporary interna-
tional legal models.
Faulk, Odie B. Crimson Desert: Indian Wars of the American Southwest. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Faulk presents a fine and detailed
description of the campaigns of this region.
Fausz, J. Frederick. “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest
Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesa-
peake.” In Colonial Chesapeake Society, edited by Lois Green Carr et al.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Details the chang-
ing English view of the Native Americans in the Chesapeake from “no-
ble savages” to important trading partners.
Fenton, William Nelson. The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History
of the Iroquois Confederacy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
A massive work—over eight hundred pages—on the history and culture
of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Fey, Harold E., and D’Arcy McNickle. Indians and Other Americans: Two
Ways of Life Meet. Rev. ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Good account
of the Collier years from a pro-IRA perspective. McNickle, a Montana
Blackfoot, was a BIA employee during this era.
Fisher, Don C. The Nez Perce War. Thesis. Moscow: University of Idaho, De-
partment of History, 1925.
Fixico, Donald L. The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century:
American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources. Niwot: University Press
of Colorado, 1998.
____________. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Detailed discus-
726 / Bibliography
sion, from World War II through 1981. Discusses the Menominee and
Klamath, as well as smaller tribes. Useful analysis of Dillon Myer and
PL 83-280.
____________. The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: Uni-
versity of New Mexico Press, 2000. An ethnography of the urban Indian
experience, especially in third- and fourth-generation urban dwellers
who are increasingly distanced from the reservation experience.
Fladmark, Knut R. “The Feasibility of the Northwest as a Migration Route
for Early Man.” In Early Man from a Circum-Pacific Perspective, edited by
Alan Bryan. University of Alberta Department of Anthropology Occa-
sional Papers 1. Edmonton, Alberta: Archaeological Researchers Inter-
national, 1978.
____________. “Getting One’s Berings.” Natural History 95, no. 11 (Novem-
ber, 1986): 8-19. The first of thirteen articles on the peopling of North
America published in Natural History between November, 1986, and
January, 1988. Illustrations.
____________. “The Patterns of the Culture.” In Indians of the North Pacific
Coast, edited by Tom McFeat. Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1966.
Flanagan, Thomas. Riel and the Rebellion: 1885 Reconsidered. 2d ed. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2000. Provides a revisionist perspective.
Flanders, Nicholas E. “The ANCSA Amendments of 1987 and Land Man-
agement in Alaska.” The Polar Record 25, no. 155 (October, 1989): 315-322.
Discusses the modifications of the ANCSA by the 1991 Amendments.
Font Obrador, Bartolome. Fr. Junipero Serra: Mallorca, Mexico, Sierra Gorda,
Californias. Palma, Mallorca, Spain: Comissio de Cultura, 1992. A biogra-
phy of Serra that depends on, but summarizes well, the work of many
earlier authors.
Indians. 2d ed. 1953. Reprint. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1985. The classic and most comprehensive history of removal.
Foster, John, ed. Buffalo. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press,
1992. A short collection of papers by specialists in ecology and sociology
detailing the relationship between the Plains Indians and the American
bison. Illustrations.
Francis, Lee. A Historical Time Line of Native America. New York: St. Martin’s
Griffin, 1996.
Francis, Peter, Jr. “The Beads That Did Not Buy Manhattan Island.” New
York History 67, no. 1 (January, 1986): 4-22. Asserts that the trinkets the
Dutch paid for the island were much more valuable than common as-
sumptions hold.
Bibliography / 727
Franco, Jere B. Crossing the Pond: The Native American Effort in World War II.
Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1999.
Frantz, Klaus. Indian Reservations in the United States: Territory, Sovereignty,
and Socioeconomic Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. A
thorough, detailed cultural-geographic study of life on American In-
dian reservations.
Franz, George W. Paxton: A Study of Community Structure and Mobility in the
Colonial Pennsylvania Backcountry. New York: Garland, 1989. Focuses on
political and socioeconomic development of the Paxton community.
Frazier, Ian. On the Rez. New York: Picador, 2001. A depiction of contempo-
rary Ogalala Sioux life on the Pine Ridge reservation. Written by an An-
glo, somewhat controversial among American Indians.
Frideres, James. Canada’s Indians: Contemporary Conflicts. Scarborough, On-
tario: Prentice Hall of Canada, 1974.
Fried, Morton H. The Notion of Tribe. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings, 1975.
An exploration of the development and meaning of the concept of
tribe.
Frink, Maurice. Fort Defiance and the Navajos. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1968.
This text is directed toward a middle school or high school audience.
Chapter 7, “Lost Cause, Long Walk,” covers the relocations.
Frison, George C. Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. 2d ed. San Diego:
Academic Press, 1991.
Fritz, Henry E. The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890. Philadel-
phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. A comprehensive analysis
of government policy in the critical period when assimilation policy was
the order of the day.
Gaines, W. Craig. The Confederate Cherokees: John Drew’s Regiment of Mounted

Rifles. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Concen-
trates on Colonel John Drew’s regiment and contrasts it with Stand
Watie’s more successful regiment.
Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the
American South, 1670-1717. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2002. The first book to focus specifically on the Indian slave trade and its
effects on the development of the plantation system in the American
South.
Ganner, Van Hastings. “Seventeenth Century New Mexico.” Journal of Mex-
ican American History 4 (1974): 41-70. Provides a pro-Indian view of
tribal relations with the Spanish. Includes a brief description of the
events leading up to 1632.
Gehring, Charles. “Peter Minuit’s Purchase of Manhattan Island: New Evi-
728 / Bibliography
dence.” De Halve Maen 54 (Spring, 1980): 6ff. Discusses a letter from

Minuit suggesting his intention to buy Manhattan Island.
Geiger, Maynard J. The Life and Times of Fray Junipero Serra, OFM. 2 vols.
Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1959. A
large, sympathetic biography that relies heavily on original sources.
George, Noah Jackson. A Memorandum of the Creek Indian War. Meredith,
N.H.: R. Lothrop, 1815. 2d ed. Edited by W. Stanley Hoole. University,
Ala.: Confederate Publishing Company, 1986. Based on General Jack-
son’s reports and correspondence, this pamphlet gives a battle-by-battle
account of the campaign from the U.S. perspective. Written amid the
passions of the War of 1812, it asserts that the Red Sticks were tools of the
British.
Getty, Ian, and Antoine Lussier, eds. As Long as the Sun Shines and Water
Flows: A Reader in Canadian Native Studies. Vancouver: University of Brit-
ish Columbia Press, 1983. Includes essays on issues of self-determina-
tion, treaty negotiation, and use of natural resources.
Gibson, Arrell Morgan. “The Centennial Legacy of the General Allotment
Act.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 65, no. 3 (1987): 228-251. Examines the long-
range effects of the Dawes Act on Native Americans.
____________. The Chickasaws. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1971. Puts removal in context with Chickasaw history from the eigh-
teenth century to 1907.
Gibson, James R. Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geogra-
phy of Supply of Russian America, 1784-1867. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1976.
Gilpin, Alec R. The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest. East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1958. A scholarly, well-written study that puts
Harrison’s 1813 campaign and the Battle of the Thames into context
of the entire war in the Northwestern theater. Maps, illustrations, and
index.
Gipson, Lawrence Henry. “The Drafting of the Albany Plan of Union: The
Problem of Semantics.” Pennsylvania History 26, no. 4 (October, 1959):
291-316. Argues that Thomas Hutchinson was responsible for writing
the Albany Plan of Union.
Giraud, Marcel. The Metis in the Canadian West. Translated by George
Woodcock. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. A pri-
mary source on the Metis, originally published in French in 1945. Vol-
ume 2 deals with the period of the rebellion. Some of the language sug-
gests racial determinism.
Gleach, Frederic W. Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cul-
tures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
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Gluckman, Max. Politics, Law, and Ritual in Tribal Society. 1966. Reprint.
New York: Blackwell, 1977. This book studies tribal organization and
the ways tribal groups develop and maintain their integrity. Though not
focused specifically on American Indian tribes, it provides a compre-
hensive conceptual basis for investigation of the concept. Illustrated in
the original.
Gonzalez, Mario, and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. The Politics of Hallowed Ground:
Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty. Urbana: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 1999. An account of the Wounded Knee Survivors’
Association attempt to obtain a formal apology from the U.S. gov-
ernment for the massacre and to name the site a National American
Monument.
Grant, John Webster. Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and the Indians of Can-
ada in Encounter Since 1543. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Examines Indian-white contact through the eyes of missionaries and
through their cultural legacy.
Gray, John S. Centennial Campaign. Ft. Collins, Colo.: Old Army Press, 1976.
Graymont, Barbara. The Iroquois. New York: Chelsea House Press, 1988.
Graymont is an expert on the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois; this precise,
concise text is essential for scholars of the Longhouse culture.
____________. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syra-
cuse University Press, 1972. An excellent, highly detailed account of the
Iroquois during the American Revolution.
____________, ed. Fighting Tuscarora: The Autobiography of Chief Clinton
Rickard. Reprint. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1994. Intro-
duction includes information about Tuscarora history. Main text chroni-
cles the life of Chief Clinton Rickard (1882-1971) and his work for Amer-
ican Indian rights.
Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government in Crisis.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982. Well-researched history of
removal as it affected the Creek nation.
Greene, Jerome A. Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War,
1876-1877. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Collects first-
hand accounts from Indians at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
____________, ed. Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877:
The Military View. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Press, 2002.
Griffen, William B. Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988. Details the emer-
730 / Bibliography
gence of the Mexican presidio system and the subsequent relocation and
resettlement of various Apache groups in southern New Mexico, Ari-
zona, and northern Mexico.
____________. Utmost Good Faith: Patterns of Apache-Mexican Hostilities in
Northern Chihuahua Border Warfare, 1821-1848. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1989. Summarizes historical accounts of hostilities
between the Chiricahua Apache and Mexican military forces in North-
ern Mexico.
Griffith, Benjamin W., Jr. McIntosh and Weatherford, Creek Indian Leaders.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988. A highly readable ac-
count of the war. Argues that Weatherford was a most reluctant Red
Stick, knowing from the outset that the movement was doomed.
Grinde, Donald A., Jr. The Iroquois and the Founding of the American Nation.
San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1977. Provides cultural and his-
torical background; discusses Iroquois relationships with colonists be-
fore and after the American Revolution. Photographs, maps, illustra-
tions, references, sources. Constitution of the Five Nations and Albany
Plan of Union are included as appendices.
Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. 1915. Reprint. Norman: Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Press, 1956. An author who observed the Cheyenne
at first hand presents their history up to 1890.
Gummerman, George J., ed. Exploring the Hohokam: Prehistoric Desert Peo-
ples of the American Southwest. Dragoon, Ariz.: Amerind Foundation,
1991.
Gurko, Miriam. Indian America: The Black Hawk War. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1970.
Guttmann, Allen. States’ Rights and Indian Removal: “The Cherokee Nation v.
the State of Georgia.” Boston: D. C. Heath, 1965. Brief documentary his-
tory of the Cherokees’ legal struggle to keep their land.
Hackett, Charles W. Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s
Attempted Reconquest, 1680-1682. Translated by Charmion Shelby. 2 vols.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942. The definitive re-
port on the subject to date.
Hafen, LeRoy, and Francis Young. Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West,
1834-1890. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1938.
Hagan, William T. American Indians. Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1979.
____________. The Indian Rights Association: The Herbert Welsh Years, 1882-
1904. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985. An account of the orga-
nization that participated in the litigation of the Lone Wolf case.
Bibliography / 731
____________. The Sac and Fox Indians. 2d ed. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1980. A general history, including cultural and religious
topics.
____________. United States-Comanche Relations. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1976. The most complete coverage of the council and
treaty at Medicine Lodge Creek.
Hait, Pam. “The Hopi Tricentennial: The Great Pueblo Revolt Revisited.”
Arizona Highways 56, no. 9 (September, 1980): 2-6. The entire issue is a
beautifully illustrated exploration of Hopi culture, the persistence of
which is a tribute to the Pueblo Revolt.
Halbert, Henry Sale, and T. H. Ball. The Creek War of 1813 and 1814. Chicago:
Donohue and Henneberry, 1895. Reprint with introduction and annota-
tion by Frank L. Owsley, Jr. University: University of Alabama Press,
1969. Provides a lengthy discussion of the causes of the war, presenting
it as an intertribal difference that would have been resolved had whites
not interfered.
Haley, James L. The Buffalo War: The History of the Red River Indian Uprising
of 1874. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. Provides substantial back-
ground information and military analysis. Maps, illustrations, notes,
Hamilton, Charles, ed. Cry of the Thunderbird. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1972. Extensive quotations from some of Little Turtle’s
speeches.
Hamilton, Edward P. The French and Indian Wars: The Story of Battles and
Forts in the Wilderness. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962. The first
chapters of this narrative history discuss the role played by George
Washington.
Hamilton, Raphael N. Marquette’s Explorations: The Narratives Reexamined.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. This scholarly mono-
graph not only describes the experiences of Father Marquette before
and during his famous exploration of the 1670’s but also provides a
critical analysis of the authenticity of manuscript sources ascribed to
Marquette.
Handsome Lake. The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet. New York
State Museum Bulletin 163. Albany: University of the State of New York,
1913. Outlines the Handsome Lake religion and discusses the historical
circumstances of its creation.
Hanke, Lewis. Aristotle and the American Indians. Chicago: Henry Regnery,
1959.
____________. The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America. Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, 1965. Historical study of the Spanish debate concern-
732 / Bibliography
ing the treatment of Indians, with emphasis on the work of Bartolomé de

Las Casas.
Hann, John. Apalachee: The Land Between the Rivers. Gainesville: Univer-
sity Presses of Florida, 1988. An in-depth synthesis of a crucial area in
Indian-Spanish relations based on thorough research and thoughtful
analysis.
Hardorff, Richard G. Hokahey! A Good Day to Die! The Indian Casualties of the
Custer Fight. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark, 1993.
ple in America. Golden, Colo.: North American Press, 1994. Written and
illustrated by American Indians. Presents ten culture areas, historical
perspectives, contemporary issues, major ceremonies, and time lines
from 50,000 b.c.e. to the twentieth century. Summaries, lesson plans, re-
sources, and index; appendices include “Threats to Religious Freedom,”
the text of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and a list of Indian activist or-
ganizations and events.
Hatley, Tom. The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians Through the
Era of Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Focuses on
the multicultural aspects of the Cherokee War, including a discussion of
the roles of women and African slaves.
Hawke, David. The Colonial Experience. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.
Chapter 13 brilliantly places Pontiac’s resistance in the context of Great
Britain’s halting steps toward imperial reorganization.
Hawley, Donna L. The Annotated 1990 Indian Act. 3d ed. Toronto: Carswell,
1990.
Hays, Robert G. A Race at Bay: New York Times Editorials on “the Indian Prob-
lem,” 1860-1900. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997.
Hedren, Paul. Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1998. Focuses on the events of 1876 at Fort Laramie.
____________. Fort Laramie in 1876. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1988.
Heizer, Robert F. The Destruction of California Indians. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1993.
____________. “Treaties.” In California. Vol. 8 in Handbook of North American
Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978. A brief
description of treaty making before 1871.
Henry, Thomas R. Wilderness Messiah: The Story of Hiawatha and the Iroquois.
New York: W. Sloane, 1955. Defines the line between legend and history
in the founding of the Iroquois league, and in the stories of Hiawatha,
Deganawida, and Atotarho.
Highsaw, Robert B. Edward Douglass White: Defender of the Conservative
Bibliography / 733
Faith. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. An analysis

of the judicial record of the writer of the Supreme Court opinion in Lone
Wolf v. Hitchcock.
Hilger, M. Inez. Chippewa Families: A Social Study of White Earth Reservation,
1938. St, Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.
Hill, Joseph. “The Pueblo Revolt.” New Mexico Magazine 58 (June, 1980): 38.
An overview of the subject, with nine illustrations.
Hindle, Brooke. “The March of the Paxton Boys.” William and Mary Quar-
terly, 3d ser., 3 (October, 1946): 461-486. Still one of the best narrative ac-
counts of the massacres.
Hodge, Frederick Webb. History of Hawikah, New Mexico, One of the So-Called
Cities of Cíbola. Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1937. Contains trans-
lations of Spanish mission records and early histories of Spanish-Zuñi
relations. The only detailed history of the revolt.
Hoig, Stan. The Battle of the Washita. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, l976.
A thoroughly documented account of the Sheridan-Custer campaign.
Maps and photographs.
____________. Night of the Cruel Moon: Cherokee Removal and the Trail of Tears.
____________. The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes. Norman: University of Ok-
lahoma Press, 1980. This short work paints the Cheyenne in general, and
Black Kettle in particular, as men of peace. Includes many interesting
photographs.
Hopkins, Stephen. A True Representation of the Plan Formed at Albany. Provi-
dence, R.I.: Sidney S. Rider, 1880. Hopkins, who represented Rhode Is-
land at the Albany Congress, details the issues that delegates discussed
concerning Indian affairs.
Horn, James. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-
Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1994. A scholarly but lively study of the extent to which English colo-
nists in the Chesapeake were influenced by their homeland in their atti-
tudes about race, authority, and other matters.
Horsman, Reginald. Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812. East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967.
Hoxie, Frederick E., and Peter Iverson. Indians in American History: An In-
troduction. 2d ed. Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1998.
Hoxie, Frederick E., Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert. Native Americans
and the Early Republic. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.
734 / Bibliography
encounters.
Huddleston, Lee Eldridge. Origins of the American Indians: European Con-
cepts, 1492-1729. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Hudson, Charles M. The Southeastern Indians. Knoxville: University of Ten-
nessee Press, 1976. Places the Muscogee within the larger framework of
the native population of the area. One of several excellent volumes on
Southeastern American Indians by ethnologist Hudson.
Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-
1797. New York: Methuen, 1986. Covers a longer time period than other
listings here. Focuses on literary and anthropological approaches to un-
derstanding the psychological distances separating the colonial and col-
onized populations of the Caribbean.
Hutton, Paul Andrew. Phil Sheridan and His Army. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1985. An expansive study of Sheridan’s post-Civil War
career, including his role as the Red River War’s chief architect. Maps, il-
Hyde, George E. “Red Cloud’s War.” In Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the
Oglala Sioux Indians. Rev. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1976. Originally published in 1937 and revised in 1957, this is consid-
ered to be a definitive history of the Oglala Sioux. Includes extensive
background for the events on the Bozeman Trail. Thirteen illustrations,
two maps.
Indian-Eskimo Association of Canada. Native Rights in Canada. Calgary:

Author, 1970.
Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental His-
tory, 1750-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. A study
of the human and ecological factors leading to the near-extinction of the
bison.
Jackson, Donald, ed. Black Hawk. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964.
Jackson, Helen Hunt. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States
Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. 1880. Reprint. New
York: Barnes & Noble, 1993. This volume is a reprint of an 1880 history of
Indian-white relations from earliest colonial times through 1871, with
many excellent quotations from official documents.
____________. The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879-1885.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
Bibliography / 735
Jacob, John J. A Biographical Sketch of the Life of the Late Captain Michael
Cresap. Cincinnati: J. F. Uhlhorn, 1866. John Jacob worked for Michael
Cresap and later married Cresap’s widow. His book challenges the no-
tion that Cresap was responsible for the Yellow Creek Massacre.
Jacobs, Wilbur R. “British Indian Policies to 1783.” In History of Indian-
White Relations, edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4 in Handbook of
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. As the title indicates, this es-
say details British policy toward the Indians. It covers the formal rela-
tions between Indians and colonists and is particularly good at examin-
ing the role of land in the Indian-English experience.
____________. Dispossessing the American Indian: Indians and Whites on the
Colonial Frontier. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.
____________. The Paxton Riots and the Frontier Theory. Chicago: Rand Mc-
Nally, 1967. A brief booklet that includes many primary documents pro-
duced during the episode.
Jaenen, Cornelius J. Friend and Foe: Aspects of French-Amerindian Cultural
Contact in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Columbia
Jennings, Francis. The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire. New York: W. W. Norton,
1984. Offers a detailed explanation of the duplicitous tactics used by
Pennsylvania officials to acquire the Walking Purchase acreage.
____________. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven
Years War in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. A comprehensive
study by a major scholar; offers easily accessible information on all as-
pects of the war. Illustrations, maps, and indices.
____________. The Founders of America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. An
excellent general history of the Indian population of all regions of North
America from precolonial to contemporary times. The colonial section
contains essential facts of French and Indian relations.
____________. The Invasion of America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975.
____________, ed. The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdis-
ciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. Syracuse,
N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985. Extensive discussion of treaty ne-
gotiations, terms, and results.
Jennings, Jesse D. Prehistory of North America. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1968.
736 / Bibliography
Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter. Eyewitness at Wounded
Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Fine collection of
photographs from the Wounded Knee battlefield and related sites, with
essays on the American Indian perspective, the Army’s role, and the dis-
torted media coverage.
Johansen, Bruce E. Life and Death in Mohawk Country. Golden, Colo.: North
American Press, 1993. Details conflicts involving followers of Hand-
some Lake’s code and Louis Hall’s Warriors at Akwesasne in the late
twentieth century.
Johansen, Bruce, and Roberto Maestas. Wasi’chu: The Continuing Indian
Wars. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979.
John, Elizabeth A. H. Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation
of the Indians, Spanish, and French in the Southwest, 1540-1795. College Sta-
tion: Texas A&M University Press, 1975. Readable overview of the con-
frontations involving the Indians, Spanish, and French in the American
Southwest from 1540 to 1795. Heavy emphasis on the Native Ameri-
cans’ responses.
Johnson, F. Roy. The Tuscaroras. Vols. 1 and 2. Murfreesboro: Johnson, 1967.
Discusses history, traditions, culture, mythology, and medicine. Maps,
illustrations, index, and many footnotes. Provides listings of numerous
original resources.
Johnson, Paul C., et al., eds. The California Missions: A Pictorial History.
Menlo Park, Calif.: Lane, 1985. A colorful, popular, accessible, and reli-
able work.
Jones, Dorothy V. License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Discusses abuses of the sys-
tem and how native peoples failed to understand the process.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. Civil War in the American West. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1991. Discusses the Civil War battles that were fought west of the
Mississippi River.
____________. Five Hundred Nations: An Illustrated History of North American
Indians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. A well-illustrated history of
North America from its original inhabitants’ viewpoint; pages 371-374
cover the treaty, including direct quotations from Indian leaders.
____________. The Indian Heritage of America. Rev. ed. Boston: Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1991. Examines the clash of cultures in words and illustra-
tions.
____________. Now That the Buffalo’s Gone: A Study of Today’s American Indi-
ans. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984. Contains a chapter
on American Indian efforts to retain their spirituality and provides
American Indian perspective on this issue.
Bibliography / 737
____________. The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resistance.

Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. Gives an account of the precur-
sors to the revolt, but presents no consideration of the aftermath.
Kan, Sergei. Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christian-
ity Through Two Centuries. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.
Kappler, Charles, ed. Indian Treaties, 1778-1883. New York: Interland, 1972.
Provides the texts of most of the actual treaties.
Keegan, William F., ed. Earliest Hispanic/Native American Interactions in the
Caribbean. New York: Garland, 1991. A series of specialized studies of
both Spanish and native Indian institutions, including methods of agri-
culture and local administration, before and during the Ovando gover-
norate.
Keenan, Jerry. The Wagon Box Fight: An Episode of Red Cloud’s War. Consho-
hocken, Pa.: Savas, 2000. A thorough account of this encounter, with de-
tailed appendices of the official army reports and results of recent ar-
chaeological excavation at the site.
Keleher, William A. Turmoil in New Mexico, 1846-1868. Santa Fe, N.Mex.:
Rydal Press, 1952. Details the events leading up to the U.S. invasion of
New Mexico and the subsequent occupation of the province.
Keller, Robert H. American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy,
Kelley, Joseph J., Jr. Pennsylvania: The Colonial Years, 1681-1776. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980. Describes the Walking Purchase and many other
episodes in Pennsylvania’s colonial history.
Kelley, Robert. American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Discusses how Protestant re-
formers influenced Indian policy and Indian-white relations.
Kelly, Lawrence C. “The Indian Reorganization Act: The Dream and the Re-
ality.” Pacific Historical Review 44 (August, 1975): 291-312. Balanced look
at what the IRA failed to achieve in contrast to the claims of some propo-
nents. Discusses Collier’s strong points and shortcomings as American
Indian commissioner during the New Deal era.
____________. Navajo Roundup: Selected Correspondence of Kit Carson’s Expe-
dition Against the Navajo, 1863-1865. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett, 1970. A col-
lection of personal letters and U.S. Army general orders, especially
those of General E. R. S. Canby, Brigadier General James Carleton, and
Colonel Kit Carson.
Kelly, William H., ed. Indian Affairs and the Indian Reorganization Act: The
Twenty Year Record. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1954. A collec-
tion of scholarly essays on this subject.
738 / Bibliography
Kennedy, John H. Jesuit and Savage in New France. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Kessler, Donna J. The Making of Sacagawea: A Euro-American Legend. Tusca-
loosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996.
Kinney, J. P. A Continent Lost, a Civilization Won: Indian Land Tenure in Amer-
ica. 1937. Reprint. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Klein, Christina.“‘Everything of Interest in the Late Pine Ridge War Are
Held by Us for Sale’: Popular Culture and Wounded Knee.” Western His-
torical Quarterly 25 (Spring, 1994): 45-68. Argues that commercial exploi-
tation of Wounded Knee in Cody’s Wild West show, photographs, and
the dime novel played as significant a role as the military in defeating
the Ghost Dancers’ dreams of American Indian autonomy. Includes
photographs.
Knaut, Andrew L. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Sev-
enteenth-Century New Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1995.
Kohn, Richard H. Eagle and Sword. New York: Free Press, 1975.
Kraft, Louis. Gatewood and Geronimo. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 2000. Focuses on the events leading up to Geronimo’s sur-
render.
Krech, Shepard, III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1999.
Kroeber, Alfred Louis. Handbook of the Indians of California. New York: Do-
ver, 1976. A large anthropological tome.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. A highly readable account
of the evolutions of Indian-English relations along the East Coast of
North America.
Kvasnicka, Robert M. “United States Indian Treaties and Agreements.” In
History of Indian-White Relations, edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4
in Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1988. A short discussion of the debate over treaties and
how the process was ended.
La Farge, Oliver. “Termination of Federal Supervision: Disintegration and

the American Indians.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and So-
cial Science 311 (May, 1957): 41-46. Summarizes arguments against termi-
nation, except when tribes request it and members are ready to handle
their own affairs.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. History of the Indies. Edited and translated by
Andrée Collard. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. A partial translation of
Bibliography / 739
the massive work (three volumes in the Spanish edition) of the Spanish
missionary who, after coming to Hispaniola with Governor Ovando,
turned critical of Ovando’s repressive policies.
Lass, William E. Minnesota: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Chap-
ter 5 is a concise but insightful statement of the war’s effect on Minnesota.
Lavender, David. The Great West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Suggests
that Black Kettle may have been more interested in handouts than in
peace.
Lazarus, Edward. Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the
United States, 1775 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. In-
cludes the full text of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Leach, Douglas E. Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies
in North America, 1607-1763. New York: Macmillan, 1973. A formidable
study that details the increasingly impossible task Great Britain faced in
trying to devise an effective military defense for a vast colonial empire
against France and Spain, British colonists, and Native Americans. The
latter chapters provide excellent background on Pontiac’s resistance.
____________. “Colonial Indian Wars.” In History of Indian-White Relations,
edited by Wilcomb B. Washburn. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North American In-
dians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. More spe-
cific in its focus than the Leach study, this article combines British and
American Indian politics and perspectives in the context of colonial
wars.
____________. Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War.
New York: Norton Library Edition, 1966. This elegantly written study,
long considered the standard modern account of the war, indicts En-
glish land hunger as a cause of the war. Maps, illustrations, and index.
Leckie, William H. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the
West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Discusses the con-
siderable role played by African Americans in the frontier Army, devot-
ing an entire chapter to the Red River War. Maps, illustrations, notes,
Legters, Lyman, and Fremont J. Lyden, eds. American Indian Policy: Self-
Governance and Economic Development. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1994. A series of articles detailing current trends in Native Ameri-
can life and law.
Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American
Identity. New York: Random House, 1998. A very well-received history
of Metacom’s war, arguing that the conflict between Europeans and In-
dians served to crystallize a sense of American self-identity on the part
of the colonists.
740 / Bibliography
Liebersohn, Harry. Aristocratic Encounters: European Travelers and North

American Indians. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Lincoln, Charles A., ed. Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699. New York:
Scribner’s, 1913. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1941. Con-
tains a number of contemporaneous accounts of the war, including The
Soveraignty & Goodness of God . . . the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs.
Mary Rowlandson, Rowlandson’s account of her capture in the attack on
Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1676. Her often reprinted classic is the ear-
liest American captivity narrative. Rowlandson reports firsthand ex-
changes with Metacom, who at times traveled with the mixed band that
held her prisoner.
Little Bear, Leroy, and Menno Boldt, eds. Pathways to Self-Determination. To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
Long, Carolyn N. Religious Freedom and Indian Rights: The Case of “Oregon v.
Smith.” Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Part of the Land-
mark Law Cases and American Society series, this is the first book-
length study of Oregon v. Smith, focusing on the case’s sharp differences
from previous opinions on First Amendment freedom of religion rights.
Long, J. Anthony, and Menno Boldt, eds., in association with Leroy Little
Bear. Governments in Conflict? Provinces and Indian Nations in Canada. To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988. Addresses aboriginal-provin-
cial relations focusing on self-government, provincial jurisdiction, land
claims, and financial responsibility.
____________. The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Presents a broad cross sec-
tion of tribal, geographic, and organizational perspectives. The authors
discuss constitutional questions such as land rights, concerns of Metis,
nonstatus Indians and Inuit, and historical, legal/constitutional, politi-
cal, regional, and international rights issues.
Longhena, Maria. Ancient Mexico: The History and Culture of the Maya, Az-
tecs, and Other Pre-Columbian Peoples. New York: Tabori & Chang, 1998.
Luebke, Barbara P. “Elias Boudinot, Indian Editor: Editorial Columns from
the Cherokee Phoenix.” Journalism History 6 (1979): 48-51. Discusses
Boudinot’s conflicts as editor of the Cherokee Phoenix.
Lyons, Oren, et al. Exiled in the Land of the Free. Santa Fe, N.Mex.: Clear Light
Publishers, 1992. Lyons, faithkeeper of the Six Nations Confederacy, is
distinctive in his understanding of the role of the American Indian in
U.S. history.
McAlister, Lyle. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Includes a clearly written ac-
Bibliography / 741
count of Spain’s general imperial policies such as the encomienda and the
repartimiento.
McCary, Ben C. Indians in Seventeenth Century Virginia. Williamsburg: Vir-
ginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation, 1957. Reviews the
history of seventeenth century Native Americans in Virginia.
McConnell, Michael N. A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peo-
ples, 1724-1774. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Discusses
colonial expansion from the eighteenth century Native American per-
spective. McConnell sees the Treaty of Fort Stanwix as a deciding factor
in the coming of Lord Dunmore’s War.
McCormick, Anita L. Native Americans and the Reservation in American His-
tory. Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1996.
McCutchen, David, ed. The Red Record: The Wallam Olum, the Oldest Native
North American History. Garden City Park, N.Y.: Avery, 1993.
McDermott, John D. “Price of Arrogance: The Short and Controversial
Life of William Judd Fetterman.” Annals of Wyoming 63, no. 2 (Spring,
1991): 42-53. A look at Fetterman’s character and its fatal conse-
quences.
____________, ed. “Wyoming Scrapbook: Documents Relating to the Fetter-
man Fight.” Annals of Wyoming 63, no. 2 (Spring, 1991): 68-72. Gives de-
tails of the most significant Army loss in the war.
McDonnell, Janet A. The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887-1934.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
McDougall, John. In the Days of the Red River Rebellion. Edmonton: Univer-
sity of Alberta Press, 1983. Memoir of a Methodist missionary during
the time of the rebellion.
MacFarlan, Allan A. Book of American Indian Games. New York: Associated
Press, 1958. Discusses and describes various games, including gambling
games, played by a variety of North American tribes.
McGrath, Patrick. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. Morristown, N.J.: Silver
Burdett, 1985. A simple but complete telling of the Lewis and Clark ad-
venture for younger readers.
McHugh, Tom. The Time of the Buffalo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. A
factual, readable revision of a professional wildlife biologist’s disserta-
tion. Illustrations, index, and detailed bibliography.
McLoughlin, William G. Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Cherokee history up through the
removal crisis.
____________. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789-1839. New Haven, Conn.:
Yale University Press, 1984. Discusses missionary support for the Cher-
okees.
742 / Bibliography
McMillan, Alan D. Native Peoples and Cultures of Canada: An Anthropological

Overview. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988. Chapter 12 discusses
both the Indian Act and issues related to the status of Canadian Indians.
McMurtry, Larry. Crazy Horse. New York: Viking Press, 1999.
McPherson, Robert S. The Northern Navajo Frontier, 1860-1900: Expansion
Through Adversity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
A well-documented study of the clash of cultures in the Four Corners
area.
Magnusson, Magnus, and Hermann Palsson, eds. and trans. The Vinland
Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.
Mahon, John K. History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842. Rev. ed.
Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1985. Describes the battles
and leaders, the problems of military organization and ordnance, and
Seminole culture and history in the period of the Second Seminole War.
Mails, Thomas E. “Transformation of a Culture.” In The Cherokee People: The
Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times. Tulsa,
Okla.: Council Oak Books, 1992. Describes the history of relations be-
tween Cherokees and Europeans up to the Trail of Tears.
Malone, Patrick M. The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among
the New England Indians. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1991. Study of Native American military tactics and their evolu-
tion under the influence of European weapons and methods. Argues
that New England’s natives adopted the more ruthless methods of to-
tal war through English influence and example. Map, illustrations, and
index.
Mancall, Peter C., and James H. Merrell. American Encounters: Natives and
Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal. New York: Rout-
ledge, 1999.
Mangusso, Mary Childers, and Stephen W. Haycox, eds. Interpreting
Alaska’s History: An Anthology. Anchorage: Alaska Pacific University
Press, 1989.
Marshall, Samuel L. A. Crimsoned Prairie. New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1972. Details the Indian campaigns of the West. The author is an
excellent military historian, although slightly biased in the direction of
preserving the honor of the military.
Martin, James Kirby. In the Course of Human Events: An Interpretive Explora-
tion of the American Revolution. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson,
1979. Links the Proclamation of 1763 with other British decisions to con-
trol the colonies, such as stationing ships in American waters.
Martin, Joel. Sacred Revolt: The Muscogees’ Struggle for a New World. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1991. Emphasizes the importance of spirituality in Musco-
Bibliography / 743
gee life, in the evolution of the Red Sticks’ back-to-our-culture cam-

paign, and in their war making.
Matthews, Anne. Where the Buffalo Roam. New York: Grove Weiden-
feld, 1992. Describes a plan to restore the Great Plains to their natu-
ral condition and the bison to their former numbers. Illustrations and
index.
Press, 1991.
Mayer, Brantz. Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap, an Historical Essay. Al-
bany: Munsell, 1867. The most famous study of the Cresap-Logan con-
troversy written in the nineteenth century.
Merwick, Donna. Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Expe-
riences. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Middlekauff, Robert. Bacon’s Rebellion. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964. A
good collection of the primary documents associated with the uprising,
beginning with Berkeley’s American Indian policy and concluding with
the official report submitted to London.
Milanich, Jerald T., and Susan Milbruth, eds. First Encounters: Spanish Ex-
plorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570. Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1989.
in Canada. 3d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. An excel-
lent study of Indians as politicians and cultural survivors.
____________. Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White Relations in Canada.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Contains key, previously
published articles concerned with regional developments from the days
of New France to the present.
Miller, Jay, Colin G. Calloway, and Richard A. Sattler. Writings in Indian His-
tory, 1985-1990. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Milling, Chapman J. “The Cherokee War.” In Red Carolinians. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1940. A detailed, carefully docu-
mented account of the war. An important reference despite its age.
Mintz, Steven, ed. Native American Voices. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine
Press, 1995. Contains part of the Dawes Act and a complaint by a Chero-
kee farmer in 1906.
Mitchell, Donald Craig. Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress’s
Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971. Fairbanks:
University of Alaska Press, 2000. Discusses the legal and regulatory his-
tory of ANCSA.
Moeller, Bill, and Jan Moeller. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces: A Photographic
History. Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1995.
744 / Bibliography
Mooney, James. Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians. 1898. Reprint. Wash-
ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979. Provides a chronology
of the tribe.
____________. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. 1896.
Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
____________. Historical Sketch of the Cherokee. Chicago: Aldine, 1975. Valu-
able study by a contemporary who interviewed people involved.
Morris, Alexander. The Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the
North-west Territories. Toronto: Belfords, Clark & Co., 1880. Reprint. To-
ronto: Coles, 1971. An account by one of the negotiators of Treaties 3
through 6.
Morris, Glenn T., and Ward Churchill. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place:
Left-Wing Revolution, Right-Wing Reaction, and the Destruction of In-
digenous People.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 11, no. 3 (1987): 17-24.
Morrison, Andrea P., with Irwin Cotler, eds. Justice for Natives Searching for
Common Ground. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997. A
volume that came together around the Oka crisis between aboriginal
people in Quebec and the government. Its thirty-five essays and stories
provide helpful discussions on native women and the struggle for jus-
tice, self-determination, title and land claims, the Oka crisis, and legal
relations and models for change.
Morrison, Kenneth M. The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of Alliance
in Abenaki-Euramerican Relations. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1984.
Morse, Bradford W. Aboriginal Peoples and the Law: Indian, Metis, and Inuit
Rights in Canada. Rev. ed. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989. Pro-
vides a basic resource for cases and materials on the original inhabitants
of Canada.
Morton, W. L. Manitoba: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1967. One chapter is devoted to the importance of the Red River colony.
Presents a decidedly old-fashioned view of the métis, referring to them
as “halfbreeds” and “savages.” Maps, illustrations, and index.
Moses, L. G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
Moulton, Gary E. John Ross, Cherokee Chief. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1978. Biography of the Cherokee leader at the time of removal.
Mowat, Farley. Westviking: The Ancient Norse in Greenland and North Amer-
ica. Boston: Little, Brown, 1965.
Muench, David. Anasazi, Ancient People of the Rock. Palo Alto, Calif.: Ameri-
can West, 1975.
Mullin, Michael J. “The Albany Congress and Colonial Confederation.”
Bibliography / 745
Mid-America 72, no. 2 (April-July, 1990): 93-105. Discusses the role of In-
dian affairs at the Congress.
Munroe, John A. History of Delaware. 2d ed. Newark: University of Dela-
ware Press, 1984.
Murphy, James E., and Sharon M. Murphy. Let My People Know: American
Indian Journalism, 1828-1978. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1981. A history of Native American journalism, with some discussion of
the Cherokee Phoenix.
Nagler, Mark. Natives Without a Home. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Long-
man, 1975.
Nash, Gary B. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America. Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Native American Rights Fund. Annual Report. Boulder, Colo.: Author, 1993.
____________. Legal Review 19, no. 1 (Winter/Spring, 1994).
Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the
Oglala Sioux. 1932. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979.
This classic work chronicles the spiritual odyssey of Black Elk, a holy
man of the Oglala Sioux. Provides important insight into American In-
dian beliefs and an account of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Nelson, Paul D. Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic. Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1985. The best biography of Wayne to
date.
____________. “Anthony Wayne’s Indian War in the Old Northwest, 1792-
1795.” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 56 (1984): 115-140. An excellent short ac-
count of this war.
Nester, William R. Haughty Conquerors: Amherst and the Great Indian Upris-
ing of 1763. Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. An up-to-date history of
Pontiac’s resistance.
Newbold, Robert C. The Albany Congress and Plan of Union of 1754. New
York: Vantage Press, 1955. A summation of the scholarship on Albany at
the time.
Newcomb, William. North American Indians: An Anthropological Perspective.
Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear, 1974.
Nichols, Roger L. Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path. Arlington Heights, Ill.:
Harlan Davidson, 1992.
Noble, David G., ed. The Hohokam: Ancient People of the Desert. Santa Fe,
N.Mex.: School of American Research Press, 1991.
Oberg, Michael Leroy. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native
America, 1585-1685. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999. Focuses
746 / Bibliography
on English interactions with Algonquian groups in the Chesapeake Bay

area.
O’Donnell, James H. Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1973. Focusing on the Cherokees, Chicka-
saws, Creeks, and Choctaws, O’Donnell describes the attitudes of both
the British and the Americans toward their Indian allies and Indian ene-
mies. Indexed, annotated, with bibliography.
Oliphant, John. Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1756-1763. Ba-
ton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001. Focuses on the clashes
of individual personalities that fomented the war.
Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. A good text for in-
terpreting major trends, events, and attitudes affecting American In-
dian peoples, including the myriad issues involved in the citizenship
debate.
Orr, Charles, ed. History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Ma-
son, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardener. Cleveland, Ohio: Helman-Taylor,
1897. A valuable anthology of eyewitness reporting on the Pequot War
from the Puritan perspective, drawing on the recollections of major En-
glish participants.
Oswalt, Wendell H. Mission of Change in Alaska. San Marino, Calif.: Hun-
tington Library, 1963.
Otis, Delos S. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands. Edited by
Francis Paul Prucha. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
Owram, Doug. Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the
Idea of the West, 1856-1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Chapter 4 discusses the politics of the Canadian response to the rebel-
lion.
Owsley, Frank Lawrence, Jr. Struggle for the Borderlands: The Creek War and
the Battle of New Orleans, 1812-1815. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 2000. Considers the Creek War in the larger context of the War of
1812.
Page, James K., Jr. “Rebellious Pueblos Outwitted Spain Three Centuries
Ago.” Smithsonian 11 (October, 1980): 221. Tells the story through Padre
Pio’s last day. Good observations on the revolt’s modern significance.
Palmer, Dave R. 1794. America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Nation. Novato,
Calif.: Presidio Press, 1994. A helpful study of early U.S. military policy.
Parker, Arthur. Parker on the Iroquois. Edited by William Fenton. Syracuse,
N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1968. A detailed description of the
Handsome Lake religion by a noted Seneca ethnologist.
Bibliography / 747
Parker, Arthur C. Red Jacket: Seneca Chief. Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 1998.
Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Con-
quest of Canada. 1874. Reprint. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1994. Despite minor inaccuracies, this remains the classic study of
the subject. Based on original documents and written by one of the
greatest of American historians.
____________. Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV. 1877. Re-
print. New York: Library of America, 1983. A pioneering work provid-
ing background on French interests in the Great Lakes area just before
dealings with the Foxes became focal.
Parman, Donald L. The Navajos and the New Deal. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1976. A study of the troubled relations between the
American Indian policy reformers in the Roosevelt administration and
the nation’s largest tribe.
Peale, Arthur L. Memorials and Pilgrimages in the Mohegan Country. Nor-
wich, Conn.: Bulletin Company, 1930. Peale, author of a groundbreaking
study of Uncas, was celebrated for his knowledge of the Mohegans and
the Pequots. Remarkably readable reflections.
Peckham, Howard. Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1947. Corrects Parkman’s inaccuracies, updates
the subject, and provides fresh insights into American Indian attitudes.
Perdue, Theda, ed. Cherokee Editor: The Writings of Elias Boudinot. Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1983. Brief biographical introduction to
Boudinot, with reproductions of important documents in the history of
the Cherokee Phoenix and Boudinot’s fund-raising.
Peroff, Nicholas C. Menominee Drums. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1982. A case study of one of the most important examples of tribal
termination actions.
Row, 1965.
Philp, Kenneth R. John Collier’s Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954. Tuc-
son: University of Arizona Press, 1977. A detailed, objective account of
Collier’s achievements and shortcomings as a policy critic, activist, re-
former, and administrator.
____________. Termination Revisited: American Indians on the Trail to Self-De-
termination, 1933-1953. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. A
history of termination policy, with useful emphasis on the ambivalent
attitudes of Native Americans themselves toward U.S. policy.
Pommersheim, Frank. “Economic Development in Indian Country: What
Are the Questions?” American Indian Law Review 12 (1987): 195-217. Ex-
748 / Bibliography
plains the need for revenue in American Indian country and the possi-
bilities gaming provides tribes.
Porter, C. Fayne. Our Indian Heritage: Profiles of Twelve Great Leaders. Phila-
delphia: Chilton Books, 1964. Little Turtle is one of the twelve leaders
discussed.
Preucel, Robert, ed. Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and
Renewal in the Pueblo World. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 2002. A collection of essays exploring the light archaeology and
material culture can shed on the historical understanding of the Pueblo
Revolt.
Priest, Loring Benson. Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren: The Reformation of United
States Indian Policy, 1865-1887. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1942.
Pritchett, John Perry. Red River Valley, 1811-1849: A Regional Study. New Ha-
ven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1942. Contains an almost minute-by-
minute account of the Seven Oaks Massacre.
“Proclamation of 1763: Governor Henry Ellis’ Plan May 5, 1763.” In The
American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Bicentennial Collection, edited by Rich-
ard B. Morris. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970. Dem-
onstrates the thinking by one colonial official that prompted the Procla-
mation of 1763.
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political
Anomaly. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. The full story of
treaty making and how it was ended in 1871. Index and list of treaties.
____________. “Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy: A Reassessment.” Journal
of American History 56, no. 3 (1969): 527-539. A discussion of Jackson’s In-
dian policy from a sympathetic viewpoint, describing the pressures
leading to Indian removal.
____________. The Great Father: The United States Government and the Ameri-
can Indians. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. An ex-
tensive, fully annotated, indexed, and illustrated history of Indian-
white relations from the founding of the United States to the 1980’s by
one of the premier authorities on Indian-white relations.
____________. The Sword of the Republic. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
____________, ed. Americanizing the American Indians: Writings of the “Friends
of the Indian” 1880-1900. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.
Section 2 provides a representative sampling of primary source writings
about the Dawes Act.
____________, ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3d ed. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2000. General policy and issues for spe-
cific tribes.
Bibliography / 749
Purich, Donald J. The Inuit and Their Land: The Story of Nunavut. Toronto:
James Lorimer, 1992. Contains a thorough discussion of each of the Inuit
land claims agreements, paying special attention to the Eastern Arctic
Agreement and the preparations for native self-government in the pro-
posed New Nunavut Territory.
____________. The Metis. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1988. Highly readable
treatment of the Metis. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 deal with the 1869 and 1885
rebellions and their outcomes.
Rawls, James J. Chief Red Fox Is Dead: A History of Native America Since 1945.
Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996.
Ray, Arthur J. Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and
Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay, 1660-1870. Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1974.
Ray, Dorothy Jean. The Eskimos of Bering Strait, 1650-1898. Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1975.
Redmond, Elsa M., ed. Chiefdoms and Chieftaincy in the Americas. Gaines-
ville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Reman, Edward. The Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1949.
Remini, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars. New York: Viking,
2001. An acclaimed biography of Jackson in the context of his ideas
about and policies toward Indians. Attempts to show the underlying
motives for Indian removal.
____________. The Legacy of Andrew Jackson: Essays on Democracy, Indian Re-
moval, and Slavery. Reprint. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1990. The leading biographer of Andrew Jackson reflects on his
significance to these issues.
Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early
America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Presents
early American history from an Indian perspective, focusing on the fig-
ures of Pocohontas, Blessed Catherine Tekawitha, and Metacom, a.k.a.
King Philip.
____________. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League
in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
olina Press, 1992. Published for the Institute of Early American History
and Culture, this study of the Iroquois League demonstrates the influ-
ence of factionalism on an Indian people as they dealt with the Europe-
ans. It synthesizes much scholarship on the Six Nations and their rela-
tionship with the French, Dutch, and English. It is particularly strong on
seventeenth century relations.
750 / Bibliography
Riel, Louis. The Collected Writings of Louis Riel. Edited by George F. G. Stan-
ley. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985. Shows that Riel was a
thinker as well as a political leader.
Riley, Carroll L. Rio Del Norte: People of the Upper Rio Grande from Earliest
Times to the Pueblo Revolt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995.
Riley, Sam G. “The Cherokee Phoenix: The Short, Unhappy Life of the First
American Indian Newspaper.” Journalism Quarterly 53, no. 4 (Winter,
1976): 666-671. Discusses Boudinot’s editorial dilemmas and political
pressure.
Dutch New York. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Robbins, Rebecca L. “Self-Determination and Subordination: The Past,
Present, and Future of American Indian Governance.” In The State of Na-
tive America, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston: South End Press, 1992.
Robinson, Charles M. Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie.
Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1993. A comprehensive study that treats
Mackenzie’s pivotal role in the Red River War in suitable detail. Maps,
illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index.
Rollings, Willard H. The Comanche. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. De-
scribes the change in Comanche life after the Medicine Lodge Creek
Treaty.
Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark Among the Indians. Bicentennial edition.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. A detailed look at the In-
dian cultures encountered by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Rosenberg, Bruce A. Custer and the Epic of Defeat. University Park: Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 1974.
Ross, Norman A., ed. Index to the Expert Testimony Before the Indian Claims
Commission: The Written Reports. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Infor-
mation Service, 2001.
Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia
Through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Written by an ethnohistorian and anthropologist, this is one of the best
studies of Jamestown and the settlement’s relationship to the Powhatan
Confederacy.
____________. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. A comprehensive study
of all aspects of life among the Powhatan Confederacy tribes.
____________, ed. Powhatan Foreign Relations, 1500-1722. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1993.
Rouse, Irving. The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Colum-
bus. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Contains the most
Bibliography / 751
extensive coverage of the distant past of the native West Indian popula-
tion, with a concluding chapter on their short history of contacts with
Europeans before dying out.
Rozema, Vicki. Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of
the Cherokee Nations. Winston-Salem, N.C.: John F. Blair, 1995. Devotes
several pages to American Indian slavery, helping to correct the previ-
ously small amount of attention given to this topic.
Russell, Don. Custer’s Last. Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of
Western Art, 1968.
____________. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1960. A detailed examination of the Army scout and bi-
son hunter. Footnotes, extensive bibliography, index, illustrations.
Rutledge, Joseph Lister. Century of Conflict. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1956. A comprehensive account of American Indian relations with both
French and British colonial regimes from the early to the late eighteenth
century, including the key Seven Years’ War period.
Sachese, Julius F. History of the German Role in the Discovery, Exploration, and
Settlement of the New World. Reprint. Germany and America, 1450-1700.
Edited by Don H. Tolzman. New York: Heritage Books, 1991.
Sagard, Gabriel. The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons. Translated
by Hugh H. Langton. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1939. This is a
translation of the French explorer’s original travel logs, published in
1632.
Sahlins, Marshall D. Tribesmen. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1968.
This book has illustrations which represent tribal life in all its diversity.
Salisbury, Albert, and Jane Salisbury. Two Captains West. Seattle: Superior
Publishing, 1950. Descriptions of the Lewis and Clark trail, with maps
and photographs. Designed for the lay reader.
Salisbury, Neal. Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making
of New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Sando, Joe S. Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History. Santa
Fe, N.Mex.: Clear Light, 1992.
____________. “The Pueblo Revolt.” In Handbook of North American Indians.
Vol. 9, edited by Alfonso Ortiz. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1979. A brief article that gives details on the planning of the re-
volt.
752 / Bibliography
Sandos, James. “Junípero Serra’s Canonization and the Historical Record.”

American Historical Review 93 (December, 1988): 1253-1269. An impor-
tant article on the controversies surrounding the early California mis-
sions.
Sandos, James A., and Larry E. Burgess. The Hunt for Willie Boy: Indian-Hating
and Popular Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
Santoni, Roland J. “The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act: How Did We Get
Here? Where Are We Going?” Creighton Law Review 26 (1993): 387-447.
Provides a comprehensive chronology of the legislation, pertinent legal
cases, suggested amendments, and a table of tribal-state compacts.
versity of Nebraska Press, 1974. Excellent coverage of the Cherokee
cases; also clarifies the complex political climate in which the cases de-
veloped around conflicts between the Jackson administration, Georgia,
and the Cherokees.
____________. Indian Treaty Rights. Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Academy,
1991. Provides a fascinating pro-Indian account of the fishing-rights
controversy in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Satzewich, Vic, and Terry Wotherspoon. First Nations: Race, Class, and Gen-
der Relations. Scarborough, Ont.: Nelson Canada, 1993. Contains a
thoughtful discussion of the impact of the Indian Act on native women
in Canada.
Sayer, John William. Ghost Dancing the Law: The Wounded Knee Trials. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. The first book-length
study of the trials looks at the influence of media and legal institutions
on the way the defendants and their cause were constrained in the pre-
sentation of their case.
Scholes, France V. Church and State in New Mexico, 1610-1650. Historical So-
ciety of New Mexico Publications in History 7. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press, 1942. Takes a pro-Spanish point of view, treating
Native Americans in a condescending manner. Based on translations of
Spanish documents.
Schulz, Eric, and Michael Tougias. King Philip’s War: The History and Leg-
acy of America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, Vt.: Countryman, 1999. A
detailed history of Metacom’s war, as well as a guide to the sites of con-
flict.
Schwartz, Sally. “A Mixed Multitude”: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial
Pennsylvania. New York: New York University Press, 1987. A general
history that describes the various tensions within colonial Pennsylvania
and how the colony dealt with them.
Schwartz, Seymour. The French and Indian War, 1754-1763: The Imperial
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Struggle for North America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. A concise,
well-illustrated study that provides a thoughtful, readable overview.
Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The
Albany Congress of 1754. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Argues that the Albany congress was actually the moment of shifting
European-Indian relationships from independent commerce to an im-
perialist model, based on hierarchy and governed by a distant authority
rather than face-to-face.
Shattuck, Petra T., and Jill Norgren. Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a
Liberal Constitutional System. New York: Berg, 1991. This study carefully
analyzes the relationship of U.S. Indian law and policy to the U.S. con-
stitutional order and governmental administrative policy.
Sheehan, Bernard W. Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colo-
nial Virginia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
____________. Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American
Indian. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973.
Sherrow, Victoria. “Cherokee Nation v. Georgia”: Native American Rights.
Springfield, N.J.: Enslow, 1997.
Sherwood, Morgan B., ed. Alaska and Its History. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1967.
____________. Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
Siggins, Maggie. Riel: A Life of Revolution. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994.
Readable, lively narrative account.
Silverberg, Robert. The Pueblo Revolt. Introduction by Marc Simmons. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. An account based mainly on
Hackett’s earlier work. Introduction considers the revolt’s legacy three
centuries later.
Simmons, Marc. New Mexico: An Interpretive History. Albuquerque: Univer-
sity of New Mexico Press, 1988. Chapter 4 covers the events of the occu-
pation of New Mexico and briefly discusses the Taos Rebellion.
Skimin, Robert. Apache Autumn. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. A his-
torical novel that describes the Apache Wars.
Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural
Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. Amherst: University of Massachu-
setts Press, 2001. Considers the effect of Indian women married to
French men upon the early colonial fur trade.
Slotkin, Richard, and James K. Folsom, eds. So Dreadful a Judgment: Puritan
Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676-1677. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1978. Six contemporaneous accounts, including Row-
landson’s narrative and the liveliest, best contemporary description of
754 / Bibliography
the fighting, Thomas Church’s Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s

War (1716), based on the recollections of his father, Captain Benjamin
Church.
Smith, Dwight L. “Wayne and the Treaty of Green Ville.” Ohio State Archaeo-
logical and Historical Quarterly 63 (January, 1954): 1-7. Careful analysis of
the treaty.
Smith, John. The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer
Isles. Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad, 1812. An account of life in Vir-
ginia by the first Englishman to meet Chief Powhatan.
Smith, Michael T. “The History of Indian Citizenship.” In The American In-
dian Past and Present. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1981. Traces
the major factors that made it difficult for American Indians to obtain
citizenship.
1997.
Snow, Dean R. The Iroquois. The Peoples of America series. Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1994. Follows the development of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Extensive bibliography, index.
Sosin, Jack M. Whitehall and the Wilderness: The Middle West in British Colonial
Policy, 1760-1775. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Detailed
examination of royal decisions leading to the Proclamation of 1763.
Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the
United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1553-1960. Tucson: Univer-
sity of Arizona Press, 1962. Broad study of the impact of several genera-
tions of outside cultural, economic, and military invasions on the Indian
peoples. Somewhat dated by more recent research but contains much
useful material.
Stagg, Jack. Anglo-Indian Relations in North America to 1763 and an Analysis of
the Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763. Ottawa: Research Branch, Indian
and Northern Affairs Canada, 1981. Provides a detailed interpretation
of the text of the Proclamation of 1763 and the Crown’s motives.
Stanley, George F. G. The Birth of Western Canada: History of the Riel Rebel-
lions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960. Argues that the rebel-
lions were the defining event in western Canadian history.
Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Starkey, Armstrong. European and Native American Warfare, 1675-1815. Nor-
versity Press, 1994. Places the decisions for the Proclamation of 1763
Bibliography / 755
within the context of the military actions of the recent war and earlier
treaties.
Stefon, Frederick J. “The Irony of Termination: 1943-1958.” The Indian Histo-
rian 11, no. 3 (Summer, 1978): 3-14. A thorough chronological review that
begins with 1887 and ends in 1968. Copiously documented, with many
quotations from congressional documents and policymakers.
Stern, Theodore. Chiefs and Change in the Oregon Country: Indian Relations at
Fort Nez Perces, 1818-1855. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1996.
Stockel, Henrietta H. Survival of the Spirit: Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity.
Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, c. 1993. Describes the history of
Chiricahua captivity.
Stone, William L. Life of Joseph Brant. Albany, N.Y.: J. Munsell, 1864. A
source for quotations of early colonial documents. Contains some his-
torical inaccuracies; for example, this is the source of the erroneous in-
formation that Brant was in North America at the time of the Philadel-
phia meeting.
Stoutenburgh, John L., Jr. Dictionary of the American Indian. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1960. A concise resource with excellent brief biog-
raphies and summary descriptions of key events in Native American
history.
Strachey, William. The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612). Edited
by Louis Wright and Virginia Freund. 1953. Reprint. Nendeln, Liechten-
stein: Kraus Reprint, 1967. A contemporaneous account of Virginia’s
Native Americans.
Strohmeyer, John. Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of
Alaska. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Illustrates the impact of the
petroleum industry and law on native peoples.
Sugden, John. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1997. A biography of one of the main Indian leaders in the
conflict.
____________. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
____________. Tecumseh’s Last Stand. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1985. Detailed analysis of the battle and the campaign that pre-
ceded it. Examines the question of who killed Tecumseh. Maps, illustra-
tions, and index.
Discusses the struggle for the northwest frontier.
Szasz, Margaret C. Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-
Determination Since 1928. 3d ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mex-
ico Press, 1999.
756 / Bibliography
____________. Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783. Albu-

querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.
Tanner, Helen Hornbeck, ed. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. This monograph traces Shawnee
history through cartographic evidence. Contains a discussion of Lord
Dunmore’s War.
Tanner, Helen Hunt. “The Glaize in 1792: A Composite Indian Commu-
nity.” Ethnohistory 25 (Winter, 1978): 15-39.
Tate, Thad W., and David L. Ammerman. The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth
Century: Essays on the Anglo-American Society. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1979. An essential collection of articles addressing
race relations, class structure, and the demographics of the seventeenth
century Chesapeake. Includes a historiographic discussion of Bacon’s
Rebellion.
Taylor, Colin F., ed. The Native Americans: The Indigenous People of North
America. New York: Smithmark, 1991. Companion book to a 1990’s tele-
vised series on Native Americans.
Taylor, Graham D. The New Deal and American Indian Tribalism: The Adminis-
tration of the Indian Reorganization Act, 1934-1945. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1980. Argues that the IRA, although enlightened com-
pared to previous policies, was weakened by its emphasis on tribal reor-
ganization and its mistaken assumptions about contemporary Ameri-
can Indian societies.
Tebbel, John W. The Battle of Fallen Timbers, August 20, 1794. New York:
Franklin Watts, 1972. Useful history of the battle.
Tebeau, Charlton W. “The Wars of Indian Removal.” In A History of Florida.
Rev. ed. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1980. This chapter
in a standard Florida history covers the Seminole Wars.
Tennant, Paul. Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in Brit-
ish Columbia, 1849-1989. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,
1990. A thorough discussion of the history of Canadian Indian policy
and relations between Canadian Indians and whites in the province of
British Columbia. Several sections deal specifically with the Indian Act.
Thomas, David Hurst. Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological
Guide. New York: Macmillan, 1994. An outline of Native American pre-
history and a guide to accessible sites. Illustrations, index, appendix of
sites to visit, bibliography.
Thomas, David Hurst, et al. The Native Americans: An Illustrated History. At-
lanta, Ga.: Turner Publishing, 1993. A colorful history that includes a
concise accounting of the purchase.
Bibliography / 757
Thompson, Scott. I Will Tell My Story: A Pictorial Account of the Nez Perce
Thornton, Russell. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population His-
tory Since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Provides
an overview of Native American population and recovery from Euro-
pean contact to 1980.
Tobias, John L. “Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History
of Canada’s Indian Policy.” In Sweet Promises: A Reader on Indian-White
Relations in Canada, edited by J. R. Miller. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991. This article, reprinted from the Western Canadian Journal of
Anthropology, provides a critical overview of legislation and policy mak-
ing with regard to Canadian Indians.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Trans-
lated by Richard Howard. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1999. Investigates the cultural clash between Spanish and Native Amer-
ican mentalities and explores the European conquest of North America
as a semiotic process.
Tolles, Frederick B. James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America. Boston:
Little, Brown, 1957. Details the life and career of James Logan, including
his role in the Walking Purchase.
Tourtelott, Jonathan B., ed. “Meriwether Lewis/William Clark.” In Into the
Unknown: The Story of Exploration. Washington, D.C.: National Geo-
graphic Society, 1987. A thirty-four-page chapter devoted to the Lewis
and Clark expedition.
Trafzer, Clifford. The Kit Carson Campaign: The Last Great Navajo War. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. The definitive text on the
Long Walk of the Navajos. Well researched and thoroughly annotated,
although with some turgid language, especially when describing land-
scape. Three maps and sixty-eight illustrations.
Trail of Broken Treaties: BIA, I’m Not Your Indian Anymore. Rooseveltown,
N.Y.: Akwesasne Notes, 1973. Contains articles published during and
after the Trail events; text of the Twenty Points; the White House re-
sponse; replies suggested by Trail leadership; and an update on the BIA
one year later.
tury. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1960.
Trennert, Robert A., Jr. Alternative to Extinction: Federal Indian Policy and the
Beginnings of the Reservation System, 1846-51. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1975.
Trigger, Bruce G. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Recon-
sidered. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985.
758 / Bibliography
____________, ed. Northeast. Vol. 15 in Handbook of North American In-

dians, edited by William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution, 1978. Discusses Native Americans from the Northeast in
considerable detail, including language, history, customs, culture, and
religion.
Tucker, Glenn. Tecumseh: Vision of Glory. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956.
Turner, Allen C. “Evolution, Assimilation, and State Control of Gambling
in Indian Country: Is Cabazon v. California an Assimilationist Wolf in Pre-
emptive Clothing?” Idaho Law Review 24, no. 2 (1987-1988): 317-338. Ex-
plores the seminal case that influenced involvement of states in the com-
pacting process.
Twitchell, Ralph Emerson. The History of the Military Occupation of the Terri-
tory of New Mexico from 1846 to 1851 by the Government of the United States.
1909. Reprint. Chicago: Rio Grande Press, 1963. Quotes extensively from
government documents; provides biographical sketches of the principal
participants.
Tyler, S. Lyman. A History of Indian Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1973. A brief chronological guide to Indian policy. Illus-
trated, containing maps, time lines, and bibliography.
____________. Two Worlds: The Indian Encounter with the European, 1492-
1509. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988. Provides the most
concise history of the circumstances of West Indian revolts and repres-
sion in this period.
U.S. Indian Claims Commission. Indian Claims Commission, August 13,

1946-September 30, 1978: Final Report. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1978.
Utley, Robert M. Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian,
1866-1891. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. An essential
study of the frontier Army and the Indian Wars. Includes a chapter on
the Red River War and a wealth of other pertinent information. Maps, il-
____________. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. Albu-
querque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. Chapter 3 includes a
good partial discussion of the events leading to the Long Walk.
____________. Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1963. A highly regarded, sensitive, evenhanded study that
documents the events leading up to Wounded Knee. Contains a chapter
on sources, making it invaluable for further study.
Bibliography / 759

Vance, John T. “The Congressional Mandate and the Indian Claims Com-
mission.” North Dakota Law Review 45 (1969): 325-336.
Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. Examines relations be-
tween white traders and Indian/ Metis women.
Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675.
Boston: Little, Brown, 1965. This helpful study of a half-century of rela-
tionships between Native Americans and European settlers is a fine
starting point for research.
Vaughn, Jesse W. Indian Fights. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1966.
Verano, John W., and Douglas H. Ubelaker, eds. Disease and Demography in
the Americas. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. A
collection of articles assessing the health and demography of precontact
and post-contact Native American populations.
Viola, Herman J. Diplomats in Buckskin: A History of the Indian Delegations
in Washington City. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1981.
____________. Thomas L. McKenney: Architect of America’s Early Indian Pol-
icy, 1816-1830. Chicago: Sage Books, 1974. Informative biography of
McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade and the first director of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, and description of his Indian policy under the
administrations of presidents James Madison, James Monroe, John
Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. Illustrated and indexed. Bibliog-
raphy.
Voices from Wounded Knee, 1973: In the Words of the Participants. Roose-
veltown, N.Y.: Akwesasne Notes, 1974. Includes daily events during oc-
cupation; logs kept by U.S. marshals; quotations, interviews, diaries,
and taped radio conversations from a ten-day battle; negotiations;
treaty meetings at Kyle; maps and photographs.
Waddell, Gene. Indians of the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1562-1751. Spartan-

burg, S.C.: Reprint Company, 1980. Describes how enslavement was one
of several major factors in the extinction of South Carolina’s lowcountry
tribes.
Wahlgren, Erik. The Vikings and America. London: Thames & Hudson, 1986.
Walch, Michael C. “Terminating the Indian Termination Policy.” Stanford
Law Review 35, no. 6 (July, 1983): 1181-1215. Well-documented survey of
760 / Bibliography
the rise of termination, its effects, and the impact of the fact that Con-
gress did not repeal the termination acts.
Waldman, Carl. Atlas of the North American Indian. New York: Facts on
File, 1985. Comprehensive coverage of history and culture, land ces-
sions, wars, and contemporary issues. Maps, illustrations, and appen-
dices.
____________. Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes. New York: Facts On
File, 1988. One page summarizes events leading to Fort Neoheroka and
gives some details about tribal life.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1970. A classic work on the history of the Seneca at the time of
Handsome Lake.
____________. Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans.
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999.
____________. The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians. New
York: Hill & Wang, 1993. Brief overview of the removal policies, the Trail
of Tears, and the implications of both for U.S. history.
Wallace, Paul A. W. Indians in Pennsylvania. Harrisburg: Pennsylvania His-
torical and Museum Commission, 1981. Survey of Native Americans, in-
cluding a general description of the Walking Purchase.
Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1975.
____________. The Governor and the Rebel. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1957. A classic study of the small details of the uprising;
generous in its forgiveness of Governor Berkeley.
____________. Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1971. An older but still useful account.
____________, ed. History of Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Handbook of
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. Extensive coverage of rela-
tions between American Indians and whites across the United States,
from first contact to 1987.
____________, ed. The Indian in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Arguably the best one-volume survey of the Indian experience in North
America, with many useful insights and comments concerning the res-
ervation system. Contains an extensive bibliography and comprehen-
sive index.
____________, ed. Indian-White Relations. Vol. 4 in Handbook of North Ameri-
can Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. Dis-
cusses the American Indian in the complex federal-tribal context and
contains information on citizenship.
Bibliography / 761
Waters, Frank. Brave Are My People: Indian Heroes Not Forgotten. Santa Fe,
N.Mex.: Clear Light Publishers, 1992.
Weatherford, Jack. Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America. New
York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991. One chapter is devoted to American In-
dian slaves, with a section describing the important part played by
Charleston merchants in Indian slavery.
Weaver, Sally M. Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda, 1968-
70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. Places the rebellion in a
larger context, as a prerevolutionary condition, while providing a de-
tailed study of the events of 1676-1677.
Weber, David J. The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest
Under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982. A
comprehensive overview of the Mexican borderlands before the Mexi-
can War. Discusses the economic impact of the Santa Fe Trade, American
Indian relations, the church, society, and culture.
____________. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1992. A general overview and detailed history of the
Spanish presence in North America, from the early 1500’s to the 1830’s. A
balanced view of relations between Native Americans and the Spanish,
with much useful information on religion, social structure, and culture.
____________. What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s Press, 1999.
Wedel, Waldo C. Central Plains Prehistory: Holocene Environments and Cul-
ture Change in the Republican River Basin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1986.
____________. “The Prehistoric Plains.” In Ancient North Americans, edited
by Jesse D. Jennings. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983.
Weslager, C. A. Delaware’s Buried Past: A Study of Archaeological Adventure.
Rev. ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1968.
____________. “Did Minuit Buy Manhattan Island from the Indians?” De
Halve Maen 43 (October, 1968): 5-6. Questions whether Minuit actually
purchased the island and suggests that Verhulst did instead.
Weyler, Rex. Blood of the Land: The U.S. Government and Corporate War Against
the First Nations. 2d ed. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992.
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the
Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1991. Discusses how both Europeans and American Indians sought
accommodation and common meaning. Places Lord Dunmore’s War
within this context in his analysis of the event.
762 / Bibliography
____________. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social

Change Among the Choctaws, Paw-nees, and Navajos. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Wickman, Patricia R. Osceola’s Legacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1991. A study of the life and myth of Osceola, based on a survey of
artifacts and documents.
Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy: The Ridge Family and the Decimation of a
People. Rev. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Discusses
the prominent family of Cherokee leaders.
Press, 1987. Discusses tribal sovereignty as a preconstitutional right and
how this inherent right can be diminished.
Williams, Jeanne. “The Cherokees.” In Trails of Tears: American Indians
Driven from Their Lands. Dallas: Hendrick-Long, 1992. Puts Cherokee re-
moval in the context of the similar experiences of the Comanche, Chey-
enne, Apache, and Navajo.
Williams, Robert A. Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions
of Law and Peace, 1600-1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
____________. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses
of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. This book deals
with earlier times in white-Indian relations but is vital reading for any-
one who wishes to understand the philosophical and traditional bases
of American Indian law.
Wilson, Edmund. Apologies to the Iroquois. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Cudahy, 1959. Contains a chapter on Tuscarora history. Also discusses
land disputes at Niagara Falls in the 1960’s.
Wilson, Frazer. The Treaty of Greenville. Pigua, Ohio: Correspondent Press,
1894. The only work specifically devoted to the treaty ending the cam-
paign.
Wilson, James. The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999.
Winger, Otho. Last of the Miamis: Little Turtle. North Manchester, Ind.:
O. Winger, 1935. Concise sketch of Little Turtle’s life and his attempts to
forge a Native American confederation in the Ohio Valley.
Wise, Jennings C. The Red Man in the New World Drama, edited by Vine
Deloria, Jr. New York: Macmillan, 1971. The key words “new world
Bibliography / 763
drama” provide a clue to the American Indian perspective of this author

and editor.
Woodward, Grace Steele. “’The King, Our Father.’” In The Cherokees. Nor-
man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. A history of the Cherokee
people from the start of the Yamasee War until the end of the Cherokee
War.
Woodward, Thomas S. Woodward’s Reminiscences of the Creek, or Muscogee
Indians, Contained in Letters to Friends in Georgia and Alabama. Tuscaloosa:
Alabama Book Store, 1859. Reprint. Mobile, Ala.: Southern University
Press, 1965. A veteran of the war, Woodward knew many Muscogee
leaders and their culture. Although written with the wisdom and com-
mon sense of later years, this entertaining little volume has its errors and
must be read with a critical eye.
Woodworth, S. E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate
Command in the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990. Dis-
cusses Jefferson’s top military men and their leadership on the Western
front during the Civil War.
Wooster, Robert. Nelson A. Miles and the Twilight of the Frontier Army. Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Includes a chapter on the con-
troversial soldier’s extensive Red River War operations.
Wright, J. Leitch, Jr. “Brands and Slave Cords.” In The Only Land They Knew:
The Tragic Story of the American Indians in the Old South. New York: Free
Press, 1981. Gives details on the Carolina slave trade in American Indi-
ans, with emphasis on historical details.
____________. Creeks and Seminoles: The Destruction and Regeneration of the
Muscogulge People. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. An ex-
amination of the culture of the Creeks and Seminoles, and their Spanish,
British, and African connections.
Wright, J. Leitch, Jr., and James H. Merrell. The Only Land They Knew:
American Indians in the Old South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1999.
Wright, Ronald. Stolen Continents. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. A wide-
ranging study of North America since the voyages of Columbus. Con-
tains extensive treatment of the Iroquois Confederacy; describes Hand-
some Lake and his religion in the general context of the subjugation of
the confederacy after the Revolutionary War.
Wunder, John R. “Retained by the People”: A History of American Indians
and the Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Chroni-
cles the history of the relationship between American Indians and the
Bill of Rights. Presents a detailed assessment of the 1968 Indian Civil
Rights Act.
764 / Bibliography
Wuorinen, John H. The Finns on the Delaware, 1638-1655: An Essay in Colo-

nial American History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1938.
Young, Calvin M. Little Turtle. 1917. Reprint. Fort Wayne, Ind.: Public Li-
brary of Fort Wayne and Allen County, 1956. A sketch of Little Turtle’s
life, including the St. Clair battle.
Zimmerman, Bill. Airlift to Wounded Knee. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1976.

Chronicle of eight airlift participants who delivered food and medical
supplies during the occupation and were subsequently indicted for con-
spiracy and interfering with official duties of federal troops. Photos,
notes, comments by author’s attorney.
765
Web Resources
AcademicInfo
http://academicinfo.net/index.html
An invaluable resource for all academic online research. Offers guides to
Internet resources on just about every discipline, from all perspectives.
American Indian History and Related Issues

http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/
A wide-ranging list of links to sites dealing with mostly modern American
Indian history. Contains links to tribal home pages, federal depart-
ments, image banks, cultural resources, and much more.
American Indian History as Told by American Indians

http://www.manataka.org/page10.html
Links to over one hundred U.S. and Canadian Native American sites with
information on American Indian history from a native perspective.
American Indian Resources

http://jupiter.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/~krkvls/naindex.html
A collection of links for academic research in Native American studies. In-
cludes links to oral and written tribal histories, primary source docu-
ments, maps, and bibliographies.
American Indian Tribal Directory

http://www.indians.org/tribes/tribes.html
Site of the American Indian Heritage Foundation, with a useful directory to
all federally recognized tribes and resource library.
Black-Indian History Resources

http://anpa.ualr.edu/f_black_indian.htm
A very interesting site on the intermixing of African Americans and the
Five Civilized Tribes.
CodeTalk
http://www.codetalk.fed.us/
A federal web site that covers subjects of interest to Native American com-
munities, with links to most federal government offices dealing with In-
dian Affairs.
766 / Web Resources
Diversity and Ethnic Studies: Recommended American Indian Web

Sites
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~savega/amer_ind.htm
A list of academically reliable web sites, including links to a number of on-
line journals and newspapers.
First Nation Information Project

http://www.johnco.com/firstnat/index.html
A very thorough resource for information on all aspects of life among the
Canadian First Nations.
First Nations Histories

http://www.tolatsga.org/Compacts.html
Provides short histories of all Canadian First Nations, along with bibliogra-
phies and maps.
Index of Native American Resources on the Internet

http://www.hanksville.org/NAresources/
A comprehensive index to Internet resources, frequently updated.
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties

http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/index.htm
A digitized edition of Charles J. Kappler’s 1904 work on the relations be-
tween the U.S. government and Native American tribes.
Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains

http://libmuse.msu.montana.edu:4000/NAD/nad.home
A searchable photographic database.
Indian Trusts Assets Management

http://www.doi.gov/indiantrust/index.html
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s web site covering issues regarding
Indian Trusts, with updates on the ongoing legal disputes.
Internet Law Library: Indian Nations and Tribes

http://www.nsulaw.nova.edu/library/ushouse/31.htm
Links to numerous sites with information on legal relations between the
U.S. government and Native American tribes. Includes a number of
links dealing with treaties.
Web Resources / 767
Library of Congress: American Indians of the Pacific Northwest

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/wauhtml/aipnhome.html
A virtual museum of photographs and archive of texts relating to the his-
tory of the Plateau and Northwest Coast Native Americans. May be
browsed by keyword, subject, and geographic location.
Native American Documents Project

http://www.csusm.edu/nadp/
Provides primary source documentation of the allotment system, pub-
lished reports of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the 1870’s, and informa-
tion on the Rogue River War and the Silitz reservation.
Native American History and Studies

http://www.tntech.edu/www/acad/hist/nativam.html
A collection of historical links hosted by the history department at Tennes-
see Technological University.
Native American Research Page

http://maple.lemoyne.edu/~bucko/indian.html
A collection of links to resources on all aspects of Native American culture
and life.
Native American Sites

http://www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/indians.html
A web site maintained by a Native American librarian and editor, dedi-
cated to providing academically sounds links to the web sites of Native
American organizations and nations.
NativeWeb History Resources

http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/history/
A page on the larger NativeWeb site offers links to pages on many events in
Native American history, with each link identified for the tribe and geo-
graphic location it covers.
Office of Tribal Justice

http://www.usdoj.gov/otj/
The web site of the division of the U.S. Department of Justice that deals
with Native American issues. Includes a statement of the Department of
Justice’s sovereignty policy.
768 / Web Resources
On This Date in North American Indian History

http://americanindian.net/
A site dedicated to timelines of Native American historical events.
Smithsonian Institution: Native American History and Culture

http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmai/start.htm
Links to Native American resources at the Smithsonian, including a num-
ber of online museum exhibits. The “Native American Portraits from the
National Portrait Gallery” exhibit features many historically important
Native Americans.
Treaty Negotiations Office of the Attorney General of British

Columbia
http://www.gov.bc.ca/tno/
Contains information about treaties between Canada and First Nations,
with updates on current legislation and negotiations.
Tribal Law and Policy Institute

http://www.tribal-institute.org/lists/tlpi.htm
The site of a Native American nonprofit institute dedicated to increasing
resources for tribal judicial systems and operations.
Leslie Ellen Jones

771
Categorized Index
Civil Rights Indian-white relations: Spanish

Alaska Native Brotherhood and colonial, 260
Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5 Indian-white relations: Swedish
American Indian Religious Freedom colonial, 268
Act, 29 Iroquois Confederacy, 304
Colliflower v. Garland, 109 Jay’s Treaty, 313
Indian Civil Rights Act, 193 Lord Dunmore’s War, 346
Indian preference, 206 Manhattan Island purchase, 353
National Congress of American Metacom’s War, 366
Indians, 375 Natchez Revolt, 374
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Pavonia Massacre, 403
Council, 382 Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 504 Peach Wars, 408
Pequot War, 409
Colonial History Pima uprisings, 413
Acoma, Battle of, 2 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Albany Congress, 11 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Articles of Agreement, 38 Powhatan Wars, 425
Bacon’s Rebellion, 40 Proclamation of 1763, 455
Beaver Wars, 46 Pueblo Revolt, 465
Boarding and residential schools, 64 Saybrook, Battle of, 504
California missions, 76 Treaties and agreements in Canada,
Cherokee War, 94 549
Epidemics and diseases, 125 Tuscarora War, 566
Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 132 Walking Purchase, 574
Fort Greenville Treaty, 141 West Indian uprisings, 583
Fox Wars, 156 Yamasee War, 608
French and Indian War, 160 Zuñi Rebellion, 609
Fur trade, 166
Indian slave trade, 220 Court Cases
Indian-white relations: Canadian, Cherokee legal cases, 83
226 Cherokee Tobacco case, 92
Indian-white relations: Dutch Colliflower v. Garland, 109
colonial, 235 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 117
Indian-white relations: English Duro v. Reina, 122
colonial, 237 Elk v. Wilkins, 123
Indian-white relations: French Employment Division, Dept. of Human
colonial, 246 Resources of the State of Oregon et al.
Indian-white relations: Russian v. Smith, 124
colonial, 257 Ex parte Crow Dog, 130
772 / Categorized Index
Indian trust fund lawsuits, 225 National Government and

Kennewick Man controversy, 318 Legislation
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 336 Aboriginal Action Plan, 1
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 6
Protective Association, 350 Albany Congress, 11
Major Crimes Act, 352 Allotment system, 18
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal American Indian Movement, 25
Council, 382 American Indian Policy Review
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402 Commission, 27
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 504 American Indian Religious Freedom
Standing Bear v. Crook, 520 Act, 29
United States v. Kagama, 570 Boarding and residential schools, 64
United States v. Washington, 570 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 73
Winters v. United States, 591 Burke Act, 75
Declaration of First Nations, 116
Education Department of Indian Affairs and
American Indian Higher Education Northern Development, 119
Consortium, 24 Federally recognized tribes, 136
Boarding and residential schools, 64 Fifteen Principles, 137
Carlisle Indian School, 80 Gadsden Purchase, 169
Cherokee Phoenix, 87 General Allotment Act, 169
Indian Education Acts, 198 Indian Act of 1876, 178
Indian Self-Determination and Indian Act of 1951, 181
Education Assistance Act, 219 Indian Act of 1989, 183
Kennedy Report, 317 Indian Appropriation Act, 184
Meriam Report, 364 Indian Child Welfare Act, 188
National Congress of American Indian Citizenship Act, 189
Indians, 375 Indian Civil Rights Act, 193
National Indian Education Indian Claims Commission, 196
Association, 379 Indian Education Acts, 198
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 200
Eighteenth Century History Indian New Deal, 204
Boarding and residential schools, 64 Indian Offenses Act, 205
Code of Handsome Lake, 101 Indian preference, 206
Epidemics and diseases, 125 Indian Removal Act, 207
Fort Stanwix Treaty, 151 Indian Reorganization Act, 213
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775- Indian Self-Determination and
1830, 272 Education Assistance Act, 219
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Indian trust fund lawsuits, 225
meeting, 309 Indian-white relations: Canadian, 226
Jay’s Treaty, 313 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
Little Turtle’s War, 333 1830, 272
Lord Dunmore’s War, 346 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Northwest Ordinance, 397 1870, 278
Trade and Intercourse Acts, 538 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
Treaties and agreements in the United 1933, 285
States, 555 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
Wabash, Battle of the, 572 2002, 292
Categorized Index / 773
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Indian Appropriation Act, 184

meeting, 309 Indian Citizenship Act, 189
Jay’s Treaty, 313 Indian Civil Rights Act, 193
Keeler Commission, 315 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 200
Kennedy Report, 317 Indian Offenses Act, 205
Kennewick Man controversy, 318 Indian preference, 206
Maine Indian Claims Act, 351 Indian Reorganization Act, 213
Major Crimes Act, 352 Indian Rights Association, 218
Meech Lake Accord, 362 Indian Self-Determination and
Menominee Restoration Act, 363 Education Assistance Act, 219
Meriam Report, 364 Indian-white relations: Canadian,
National Indian Education 226
Association, 379 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
Native American Graves Protection 1830, 272
and Repatriation Act, 383 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, 1870, 278
387 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388 1933, 285
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
Northwest Ordinance, 397 2002, 292
Nunavut Territory, 398 International Indian Treaty Council,
Oka crisis, 399 300
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, 401 Iroquois Confederacy, 304
Proclamation of 1763, 455 Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
Public Law 280, 464 meeting, 309
Reservation system of the United Longest Walk, 345
States, 478 Major Crimes Act, 352
Reserve system of Canada, 484 Meech Lake Accord, 362
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Native American Rights Fund, 385
Peoples, 494 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
Termination Resolution, 528 387
Trade and Intercourse Acts, 538 Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395
Treaties and agreements in Canada, Oka crisis, 399
549 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, 401
Treaties and agreements in the United Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe,
States, 555 402
Walla Walla Council, 578 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
White Paper of Canada, 587 Public Law 280, 464
Reservation system of the United
Native Government States, 478
All-Pueblo Council, 17 Reserve system of Canada, 484
American Indian Movement, 25 Treaties and agreements in Canada,
Cherokee legal cases, 83 549
Declaration of First Nations, 116 Treaties and agreements in the United
Duro v. Reina, 122 States, 555
Ex parte Crow Dog, 130 Tribal courts, 560
Fifteen Principles, 137 Walla Walla Council, 578
General Allotment Act, 169 White Paper of Canada, 587
Nineteenth Century History Irish Potato Famine, 302

Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4 Keetoowah Society, 316
Allotment system, 18 Kickapoo Resistance, 323
Apache Wars, 34 Kickapoo uprisings, 324
Bannock War, 43 Lewis and Clark expedition, 325
Bear River Campaign, 45 Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 330
Bison slaughter, 55 Long Walk, 340
Black Hawk War, 60 Major Crimes Act, 352
Boarding and residential schools, 64 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Bozeman Trail War, 69 Minnesota Uprising, 370
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 73 Modoc War, 372
California missions, 76 National Indian Association, 378
Carlisle Indian School, 80 Navajo War, 390
Cayuse War, 82 Nez Perce War, 391
Cherokee legal cases, 83 Prophetstown, 460
Cherokee Phoenix, 87 Red River Raids, 469
Cherokee Tobacco case, 92 Red River War, 473
Civil War, 98 Reservation system of the United
Code of Handsome Lake, 101 States, 478
Creek War, 110 Reserve system of Canada, 484
Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115 Riel Rebellions, 488
Elk v. Wilkins, 123 Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492
Epidemics and diseases, 125 Sand Creek Massacre, 500
Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140 Seminole Wars, 506
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 145 Sioux War, 511
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 147 Snake War, 515
Fort Mims, Battle of, 149 Standing Bear v. Crook, 520
Fort Wayne Treaty, 155 Taos Rebellion, 521
Friends of the Indian organizations, Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
165 Thames, Battle of the, 532
Gadsden Purchase, 169 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
General Allotment Act, 169 Trade and Intercourse Acts, 538
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 174 Trail of Tears, 544
Horseshoe Bend Treaty, 176 Treaties and agreements in Canada,
Indian Act of 1876, 178 549
Indian Appropriation Act, 184 Treaties and agreements in the United
Indian Offenses Act, 205 States, 555
Indian Removal Act, 207 Tribal courts, 560
Indian Rights Association, 218 United States v. Kagama, 570
Indian trust fund lawsuits, 225 Walla Walla Council, 578
Indian-white relations: Canadian, Washita River Massacre, 579
226 Wild west shows, 588
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775- Winnebago Uprising, 590
1830, 272 Winters v. United States, 591
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831- Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592
1870, 278 Wounded Knee Massacre, 598
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871- Yakima War, 607
1933, 285
Organizations Prehistory: Southwest, 449

Alaska Native Brotherhood and Prehistory: Subarctic, 454
Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5
All-Pueblo Council, 17 Protest Movements
American Indian Defense Association, Alcatraz Island occupation, 16
22 American Indian Movement, 25
American Indian Higher Education Determined Residents United for
Consortium, 24 Mohawk Sovereignty, 121
American Indian Movement, 25 Fish-ins, 138
Carlisle Indian School, 80 Longest Walk, 345
Council of Energy Resource Tribes, Menominee Restoration Act, 363
110 Oka crisis, 399
Determined Residents United for Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier
Mohawk Sovereignty, 121 killings, 414
Friends of the Indian organizations, Prophetstown, 460
165 Trail of Broken Treaties, 540
Indian Claims Commission, 196 Wounded Knee occupation, 603
Indian Health Service, 203
Indian Rights Association, 218 Religion and Missionary Activities
International Indian Treaty Council, Alaska Native Brotherhood and
300 Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5
Keetoowah Society, 316 American Indian Religious Freedom
National Congress of American Act, 29
Indians, 375 Boarding and residential schools, 64
National Council of American California missions, 76
Indians, 376 Carlisle Indian School, 80
National Indian Association, 378 Cherokee legal cases, 83
National Indian Education Cherokee Phoenix, 87
Association, 379 Code of Handsome Lake, 101
National Indian Youth Council, 380 Employment Division, Dept. of Human
Native American Rights Fund, 385 Resources of the State of Oregon et al.
Prophetstown, 460 v. Smith, 124
Society of American Indians, 516 Friends of the Indian organizations,
Women of All Red Nations, 593 165
Indian Rights Association, 218
Pre-Columbian History Indian-white relations: French
Bering Strait migrations, 50 colonial, 246
Indian-white relations: Norse, Indian-white relations: Russian
254 colonial, 257
Kennewick Man controversy, 318 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Prehistory: Arctic, 427 colonial, 260
Prehistory: California, 428 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Protective Association, 350
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 National Indian Education
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Association, 379
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Council, 382
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Prophetstown, 460
Reservations and Gadsden Purchase, 169

Relocation Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 174
Allotment system, 18 Horseshoe Bend Treaty, 176
Bannock War, 43 Indian Appropriation Act, 184
Bozeman Trail War, 69 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 73 1830, 272
Burke Act, 75 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115 1870, 278
Determined Residents United for Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
Mohawk Sovereignty, 121 1933, 285
Fort Stanwix Treaty, 151 International Indian Treaty Council,
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 200 300
Indian Removal Act, 207 Jay’s Treaty, 313
Indian trust fund lawsuits, 225 Kickapoo Resistance, 323
Irish Potato Famine, 302 Maine Indian Claims Act, 351
Kickapoo uprisings, 324 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Long Walk, 340 Meech Lake Accord, 362
Maine Indian Claims Act, 351 Nunavut Territory, 398
Major Crimes Act, 352 Treaties and agreements in Canada,
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357 549
Menominee Restoration Act, 363 Treaties and agreements in the United
Minnesota Uprising, 370 States, 555
Modoc War, 372 United States v. Washington, 570
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, Walla Walla Council, 578
387
Nez Perce War, 391 Twentieth Century
Oka crisis, 399 History
Trail of Tears, 544 Aboriginal Action Plan, 1
Winters v. United States, 591 Alaska Native Brotherhood and
Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5
Terminology Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
American Indian, 21 6
Amerind, 33 Alcatraz Island occupation, 16
Federally recognized tribes, 136 All-Pueblo Council, 17
Indian, 177 Allotment system, 18
Indian preference, 206 American Indian Defense Association,
Native American, 381 22
Tribe, 561 American Indian Higher Education
Consortium, 24
Treaties American Indian Movement, 25
Articles of Agreement, 38 American Indian Policy Review
Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115 Commission, 27
Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140 American Indian Religious Freedom
Fort Greenville Treaty, 141 Act, 29
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 145 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 73
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 147 Burke Act, 75
Fort Stanwix Treaty, 151 Carlisle Indian School, 80
Fort Wayne Treaty, 155 Code talkers, 105
Colliflower v. Garland, 109 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery

Council of Energy Resource Tribes, Protective Association, 350
110 Maine Indian Claims Act, 351
Declaration of First Nations, 116 Meech Lake Accord, 362
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 117 Menominee Restoration Act, 363
Department of Indian Affairs and Meriam Report, 364
Northern Development, 119 National Congress of American
Determined Residents United for Indians, 375
Mohawk Sovereignty, 121 National Council of American
Duro v. Reina, 122 Indians, 376
Employment Division, Dept. of Human National Indian Education
Resources of the State of Oregon et al. Association, 379
v. Smith, 124 National Indian Youth Council, 380
Epidemics and diseases, 125 Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal
Federally recognized tribes, 136 Council, 382
Fifteen Principles, 137 Native American Graves Protection
Fish-ins, 138 and Repatriation Act, 383
Friends of the Indian organizations, Native American Rights Fund, 385
165 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
Indian Act of 1951, 181 387
Indian Act of 1989, 183 Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388
Indian Child Welfare Act, 188 Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395
Indian Citizenship Act, 189 Nunavut Territory, 398
Indian Civil Rights Act, 193 Oka crisis, 399
Indian Claims Commission, 196 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, 401
Indian Education Acts, 198 Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 200 Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier
Indian Health Service, 203 killings, 414
Indian New Deal, 204 Public Law 280, 464
Indian preference, 206 Reservation system of the United
Indian Reorganization Act, 213 States, 478
Indian Rights Association, 218 Reserve system of Canada, 484
Indian Self-Determination and Royal Commission on Aboriginal
Education Assistance Act, 219 Peoples, 494
Indian trust fund lawsuits, 225 Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 504
Indian-white relations: Canadian, 226 Society of American Indians, 516
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871- Sports mascot controversies, 518
1933, 285 Termination Resolution, 528
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934- Trail of Broken Treaties, 540
2002, 292 Treaties and agreements in Canada,
International Indian Treaty Council, 549
300 Treaties and agreements in the United
Irish Potato Famine, 302 States, 555
Keeler Commission, 315 Tribal courts, 560
Kennedy Report, 317 United States v. Washington, 570
Kennewick Man controversy, 318 White Paper of Canada, 587
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 336 Wild west shows, 588
Longest Walk, 345 Winters v. United States, 591
Women of All Red Nations, 593 Navajo War, 390

Wounded Knee occupation, 603 Nez Perce War, 391
Pavonia Massacre, 403
Wars and Battles Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Acoma, Battle of, 2 Peach Wars, 408
Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4 Pequot War, 409
Apache Wars, 34 Pima uprisings, 413
Bacon’s Rebellion, 40 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Bannock War, 43 Powhatan Wars, 425
Bear River Campaign, 45 Pueblo Revolt, 465
Beaver Wars, 46 Red River Raids, 469
Black Hawk War, 60 Red River War, 473
Bozeman Trail War, 69 Riel Rebellions, 488
Cayuse War, 82 Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492
Cherokee War, 94 Sand Creek Massacre, 500
Civil War, 98 Saybrook, Battle of, 504
Creek War, 110 Seminole Wars, 506
Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 132 Sioux War, 511
Fort Mims, Battle of, 149 Snake War, 515
Fox Wars, 156 Taos Rebellion, 521
French and Indian War, 160 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775- Thames, Battle of the, 532
1830, 272 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831- Tuscarora War, 566
1870, 278 Wabash, Battle of the, 572
Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871- Washita River Massacre, 579
1933, 285 West Indian uprisings, 583
Kickapoo Resistance, 323 Winnebago Uprising, 590
Kickapoo uprisings, 324 Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592
Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 330 World wars, 593
Little Turtle’s War, 333 Wounded Knee Massacre, 598
Metacom’s War, 366 Yakima War, 607
Minnesota Uprising, 370 Yamasee War, 608
Modoc War, 372 Zuñi Rebellion, 609
Natchez Revolt, 374
779
Geographical Index
Alabama. See also South and California. See also Great Basin;
Southeast Pacific Northwest; West
Creek War, 110 Alcatraz Island occupation, 15
Fort Mims, Battle of, 149 California missions, 76
Horseshoe Bend Treaty, 176 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Indian Removal Act, 207 colonial, 260
Alaska. See also Arctic; Northwest Protective Association, 350
Territories; Subarctic Modoc War, 372
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Prehistory: California, 428
Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5 Prehistory: Great Basin, 430
Bering Strait migrations, 50 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Indian-white relations: Russian United States v. Kagama, 570
colonial, 257
Prehistory: Arctic, 427 Canada. See also specific provinces
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Aboriginal Action Plan, 1
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 American Indian (term), 21
American Indian Higher Education
Arctic. See also Alaska; Greenland; Consortium, 23
Northwest Territories; Subarctic Amerind (term), 33
Prehistory: Arctic, 427 Beaver Wars, 46
Boarding and residential schools, 64
Arizona. See also Southwest Declaration of First Nations, 116
Duro v. Reina, 122 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 117
Gadsden Purchase, 169 Department of Indian Affairs and
Long Walk, 340 Northern Development, 119
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act, Epidemics and diseases, 125
387 Fifteen Principles, 137
Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388 fur trade, 166
Pima uprisings, 413 Indian (term), 177
Indian Act of 1876, 178
Arkansas. See also South and Indian Act of 1951, 181
Southeast Indian Act of 1989, 182
Civil War, 97 Indian-white relations: Canadian, 226
Indian-white relations: French
British Columbia. See also Canada colonial, 245
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 117 Indian-white relations: Norse, 254
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 International Indian Treaty Council,
300
Jay’s Treaty, 313
780 / Geographical Index
Meech Lake Accord, 362 Pavonia Massacre, 403

Native American (term), 381 Powhatan Wars, 424
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395
Nunavut Territory, 398 Florida. See also South and Southeast
Oka crisis, 399 Seminole Wars, 506
Prehistory: Arctic, 427 Yamasee War, 608
Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Georgia. See also South and Southeast
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Cherokee legal cases, 83
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 Cherokee Phoenix, 87
Proclamation of 1763, 455 Cherokee Tobacco case, 92
Red River Raids, 469 Indian Removal Act, 207
Reserve system of Canada, 484 Yamasee War, 608
Riel Rebellions, 488
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Great Basin. See also Arizona;
Peoples, 494 California; Idaho; Nevada; Oregon;
Sports mascot controversies, 518 Utah; Wyoming
Thames, Battle of the, 532 Prehistory: Great Basin, 430
Treaties and agreements in Canada, 549
Tribe (term), 561 Great Plains. See also Colorado;
White Paper of Canada, 586 Dakotas; Kansas; Minnesota;
World wars, 593 Missouri; Montana; New Mexico;
Oklahoma; Texas; West; Wyoming
Colorado. See also Great Plains; Bison slaughter, 55
Southwest Bozeman Trail War, 69
Sand Creek Massacre, 500 Civil War, 97
Colliflower v. Garland, 109
Connecticut. See also Northeast Elk v. Wilkins, 123
Pequot War, 409 Ex parte Crow Dog, 130
Saybrook, Battle of, 504 Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 336
Dakotas. See also Great Plains Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier
Bozeman Trail War, 69 killings, 414
Ex parte Crow Dog, 130s Prehistory: Plains, 439
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier Red River War, 473
killings, 414 Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492
Wounded Knee Massacre, 598 Sand Creek Massacre, 500
Wounded Knee occupation, 602 Standing Bear v. Crook, 520
Washita River Massacre, 579
Eastern Seaboard. See also Wild west shows, 588
Connecticut; Maine; New Jersey; Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592
Northeast; Pennsylvania; Virginia Wounded Knee Massacre, 598
Indian-white relations: English Wounded Knee occupation, 602
colonial, 237
Indian-white relations: Norse, 254 Greenland. See also Arctic; Subarctic
Indian-white relations: Swedish Indian-white relations: Norse, 254
colonial, 268 Prehistory: Arctic, 427
Metacom’s War, 365 Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Geographical Index / 781
Idaho. See also Great Basin; Plateau Iroquois Confederacy, 304

Bannock War, 43 Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
Bear River Campaign, 45 meeting, 309
Nez Perce War, 391 Kickapoo Resistance, 323
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Little Turtle’s War, 333
Snake War, 515 Lord Dunmore’s War, 346
Minnesota Uprising, 370
Illinois. See also Midwest; Northeast Northwest Ordinance, 397
Black Hawk War, 60 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Kickapoo Resistance, 323 Prophetstown, 460
Northwest Ordinance, 397 Sioux War, 511
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Indiana. See also Midwest; Northeast Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Fort Wayne Treaty, 155 Wabash, Battle of the, 572
Northwest Ordinance, 397 Winnebago Uprising, 590
Prophetstown, 460
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525 Minnesota. See also Great Plains;
Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536 Midwest
Minnesota Uprising, 370
Kansas. See also Great Plains National Indian Education
Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140 Association, 379
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357 Sioux War, 511
Red River War, 473
Mississippi. See also South and
Maine. See also Eastern seaboard; Southeast
Northeast Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115
Main Indian Claims Act, 351 Indian Removal Act, 207
Natchez Revolt, 374
Manitoba. See also Canada; Great
Plains; Subarctic Missouri. See also Great Plains
Red River Raids, 469 Civil War, 97
Montana. See also Great Plains;
Michigan. See also Midwest; Northeast Plateau
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140 Colliflower v. Garland, 109
Fox Wars, 156 Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329
Northwest Ordinance, 397 Nez Perce War, 391
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525 Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492
Winters v. United States, 591
Midwest. See also Northeast; specific Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592
states
Black Hawk War, 60 Nebraska. See also Great Plains
Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131 Elk v. Wilkins, 123
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140 Standing Bear v. Crook, 520
Fort Wayne Treaty, 155
Fox Wars, 156 Nevada. See also Great Basin
Indian-white relations: French Prehistory: Great Basin, 430
colonial, 245
New Jersey. See also Eastern seaboard; Northeast. See also specific states and
Northeast provinces
Pavonia Massacre, 403 Beaver Wars, 46
Fur trade, 166
New Mexico. See also Southwest Iroquois Confederacy, 304
Acoma, Battle of, 2 Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
All-Pueblo Council, 17 meeting, 309
Gadsden Purchase, 169 Manhattan Island purchase, 353
Long Walk, 340 Metacom’s War, 365
Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388 Peach Wars, 408
Navajo War, 390 Pequot War, 409
Pueblo Revolt, 465 Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 503 Saybrook, Battle of, 504
Taos Rebellion, 521 Walking Purchase, 574
Zuñi Rebellion, 609
Northwest Territories. See also Arctic;
New York. See also Eastern seaboard; Nunavut Territory; Subarctic
Northeast Nunavut Territory, 398
Albany Congress, 11
Code of Handsome Lake, 101 Nunavut Territory. See also Arctic;
Determined Residents United for Northwest Territories; Subarctic
Mohawk Sovereignty, 121 Nunavut Territory, 398
Fort Stanwix Treaty, 151
Fur trade, 166 Ohio. See also Midwest; Northeast
Indian-white relations: Dutch Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131
colonial, 234 Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Indian-white relations: French Little Turtle’s War, 333
colonial, 245 Lord Dunmore’s War, 346
Manhattan Island purchase, 353 Northwest Ordinance, 397
Peach Wars, 408 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Wabash, Battle of the, 572
North America (colonial). See also
Canada; United States; specific Oklahoma. See also Great Plains
states; provinces; regions Civil War, 97
Articles of Agreement, 38 Irish Potato Famine, 302
French and Indian War, 160 Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act, 401
Indian-white relations: French Red River War, 473
colonial, 245 Washita River Massacre, 579
Indian-white relations: Spanish
colonial, 260 Ontario. See also Canada; Northeast
Manhattan Island purchase, 353 Beaver Wars, 46
Metacom’s War, 365 Determined Residents United for
Pontiac’s Resistance, 416 Mohawk Sovereignty, 121
Proclamation of 1763, 455 Thames, Battle of the, 532
North Carolina Oregon. See also Pacific Great Basin;

Tuscarora War, 566 Northwest; Plateau
Bannock War, 43
Employment Division, Dept. of Human South and Southeast. See also specific
Resources of the State of Oregon et al. states
v. Smith, 124 Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4
Fish-ins, 138 Cherokee legal cases, 83
Modoc War, 372 Cherokee Phoenix, 87
Nez Perce War, 391 Cherokee Tobacco case, 92
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Cherokee War, 94
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Civil War, 97
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Creek War, 110
Snake War, 515 Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115
Fort Mims, Battle of, 149
Pacific Northwest. See also Plateau Horseshoe Bend Treaty, 176
Bannock War, 43 Indian Removal Act, 207
Cayuse War, 82 Indian slave trade, 220
Fish-ins, 138 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 colonial, 260
Modoc War, 372 Kickapoo uprisings, 324
Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395 Natchez Revolt, 374
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402 Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Seminole Wars, 506
United States v. Washington, 570 Trail of Tears, 544
Walla Walla Council, 577 Tuscarora War, 566
Yakima War, 607 Yamasee War, 608
Pennsylvania. See also Eastern South Carolina. See also Eastern

seaboard; Northeast seaboard; South and Southeast
Carlisle Indian School, 80 Cherokee War, 94
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Indian slave trade, 220
Walking Purchase, 574 Yamasee War, 608
Plateau. See also Great Basin; Idaho; Southwest. See also Arizona; New
Montana; Oregon Mexico; Texas
Nez Perce War, 391 Acoma, Battle of, 2
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 All-Pueblo Council, 17
Snake War, 515 Apache Wars, 34
Duro v. Reina, 122
Quebec. See also Canada; Northeast Gadsden Purchase, 169
Beaver Wars, 47 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 174
Fifteen Principles, 137 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Indian-white relations: French colonial, 260
colonial, 245 Kickapoo uprisings, 324
Meech Lake Accord, 362 Long Walk, 340
Oka crisis, 399 Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal
Council, 382
Saskatchewan. See also Canada; Great Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
Plains; Subarctic 387
Riel Rebellions, 488 Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388
Navajo War, 390
Pima uprisings, 413 Elk v. Wilkins, 123

Prehistory: Southwest, 449 Employment Division, Dept. of Human
Pueblo Revolt, 465 Resources of the State of Oregon et al.
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 503 v. Smith, 124
Taos Rebellion, 521 Epidemics and diseases, 125
Zuñi Rebellion, 609 Ex parte Crow Dog, 130
Federally recognized tribes, 136
Subarctic. See also Arctic; Greenland; Friends of the Indian organizations,
Northwest Territories 165
Indian-white relations: Russian General Allotment Act, 169
colonial, 257 Indian (term), 177
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 Indian Appropriation Act, 184
Indian Child Welfare Act, 188
Tennessee. See also South and Indian Citizenship Act, 189
Southeast Indian Civil Rights Act, 193
Indian Removal Act, 207 Indian Claims Commission, 196
Indian Education Acts, 198
Texas. See also South and Southeast; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 200
Southwest Indian Health Service, 203
Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4 Indian New Deal, 204
Kickapoo uprisings, 324 Indian Offenses Act, 205
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357 Indian preference, 206
Red River War, 473 Indian Removal Act, 207
Indian Reorganization Act, 213
United States. See also specific states Indian Rights Association, 218
and regions Indian Self-Determination and
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Education Assistance Act, 219
6 Indian trust fund lawsuits, 224
Allotment system, 18 Indian-white relations: Spanish
American Indian (term), 21 colonial, 260
American Indian Defense Association, Indian-white relations: U.S., 1775-
22 1830, 272
American Indian Higher Education Indian-white relations: U.S., 1831-
Consortium, 23 1870, 278
American Indian Movement, 25 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1871-
American Indian Policy Review 1933, 284
Commission, 27 Indian-white relations: U.S., 1934-
American Indian Religious Freedom 2002, 292
Act, 29 International Indian Treaty Council,
Amerind (term), 33 300
Boarding and residential schools, 64 Jay’s Treaty, 313
Burke Act, 75 Keeler Commission, 314
Cherokee legal cases, 83 Keetoowah Society, 316
Cherokee Tobacco case, 92 Kennedy Report, 317
Code talkers, 105 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 336
Colliflower v. Garland, 109 Longest Walk, 345
Council of Energy Resource Tribes, 109 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery
Duro v. Reina, 122 Protective Association, 350
Major Crimes Act, 352 Washington State. See also Pacific

Meriam Report, 364 Northwest; Plateau
National Congress of American Cayuse War, 82
Indians, 375 Fish-ins, 138
National Council of American Kennewick Man controversy, 318
Indians, 376 Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402
National Indian Association, 378 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
National Indian Youth Council, 380 United States v. Washington, 570
Native American (term), 381 Walla Walla Council, 577
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Yakima War, 607
Council, 382
Native American Graves Protection West. See also Great Basin; Great
and Repatriation Act, 383 Plains; Plateau; Southwest; specific
Native American Rights Fund, 385 states
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402 California missions, 76
Public Law 280, 464 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Reservation system of the United colonial, 260
States, 478 Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 503 Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329
Society of American Indians, 516 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery
Sports mascot controversies, 518 Protective Association, 350
Standing Bear v. Crook, 520 Prehistory: California, 428
Termination Resolution, 528 United States v. Kagama, 570
Trade and Intercourse Acts, 538
Trail of Broken Treaties, 540 West Indies. See also South and
Treaties and agreements in the United Southeast
States, 555 American Indian (term), 21
Tribal courts, 560 Amerind (term), 33
Tribe (term), 561 Epidemics and diseases, 125
United States v. Kagama, 570 Indian (term), 177
United States v. Washington, 570 Indian-white relations: Spanish
Wild west shows, 588 colonial, 260
Women of All Red Nations, 593 Tribe (term), 561
World wars, 593 West Indian uprisings, 583
Utah. See also Great Basin Wisconsin. See also Midwest

Bear River Campaign, 45 Black Hawk War, 60
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Indian-white relations: French
colonial, 245
Virginia. See also Eastern seaboard; Menominee Restoration Act, 363
Northeast Northwest Ordinance, 397
Bacon’s Rebellion, 40 Winnebago Uprising, 590
Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Powhatan Wars, 424 Wyoming. See also Great Basin; Great
Plains
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 145
786
Personages Index
Aberle, Sophie, 296 Bering, Vitus, 257

Adams, Hank, 648 Berkeley, William, 41
Agüeybana, 585, 648 Big Bear, 490, 551, 648
Alexander. See Wamsutta Big Foot, 599, 648
Allen, William, 575 Big Warrior, 112, 648
Alokut, 648 Bissonnette, Gladys, 648
Amariton, François, 158 Black Coyote, 600
American Horse, 589 Black Dog, 418
Amherst, Jeffery, 240 Black Elk, Wallace, 648
Amherst, Jeffrey, 95, 417, 456 Black Hawk, 61
Anacaona, 648 Black Kettle, 359-360, 501, 579, 648
Anderson, Mad Bear, 543 Blackmun, Harry, 339
Aquash, Anna Mae, 416 Blatchford, Herbert, 380
Armijo, Manuel, 522 Blue Jacket, 133, 333, 572, 648
Armistead, Walker K., 509 Blunt, King Tom, 568, 648
Arpeika, 508, 648 Boldt, George, 139, 571
Arthur, Chester A., 387 Bonnichsen, Robson, 320
Arvide, Martín de, 613 Bonnin, Gertrude, 376, 517
Atkins, J. D. C., 289 Boudinot, Elias, 87, 648
Atkinson, Henry, 63 Boudinot, Elias Cornelius, 92
Atotarho, 305, 648 Bowlegs, Billy, 510, 649
Attakullakulla, 94, 648 Bozeman, John M., 69
Braddock, Edward, 162
Bacon, Nathaniel, Jr., 41 Bradstreet, John, 418
Banks, Dennis, 25, 604, 648 Brant, Joseph, 102, 310, 649
Barboncito, 341, 648 Brant, Molly, 244
Barlow, Arthur, 240 Bruce, Louis, 541
Barnwell, John, 567 Brunot, Felix R., 185
Barsh, Russel, 197 Buckongahelas, 333, 572
Bascom, George, 34 Buell, George P., 475
Baude, Louis de, 248 Buffalo Bill. See Cody, William F.
Bean, Lou, 648 Buffalo Horn, 286
Bear Hunter, 46 Bull, William, 95
Beasley, Daniel, 150 Burke, Charles Henry, 75
Beauharnais, Charles de, 158 Bursum, Holm O., 17
Benally, John, 107 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 297
Benavides, Alonso de, 264 Butler, Dino, 26, 140
Bennett, Robert, 296
Bent, Charles, 522 Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez, 610
Benteen, Frederick, 331 Cabrillo, Juan Rodríguez, 77
Personages Index / 787
Calhoun, John C., 73, 548 Cumming, Alexander, 39, 94

Callières, Louis-Hector de, 157 Custer, George Armstrong, 287, 331,
Canby, Edward R. S., 372 492, 579
Caonabo, 584, 649
Carleton, James H., 340 Dade, Francis, 508
Carmichael, Stokely, 543 Davidson, John W., 475
Carrington, Henry B., 70 Davis, Jefferson, 98, 510
Carson, Hampton L., 338 Dawes, Henry L., 172, 186, 190
Carson, Kit, 4, 340, 391 Deganawida, 305, 649
Cartier, Jacques, 166, 246 De Lancey, James, 12
Champlain, Samuel de, 47, 166, 246, 307 Delgadito, 341
Charbonneau, Toussaint, 327 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 26, 198
Chatters, James C., 319 Demere, Paul, 96
Chekika, 509 Denonville, marquis de, 248
Chicken, George, 39 Dinwiddie, Robert, 95
Chisholm, Shirley, 543 Dodge, Henry, 63
Chivington, John M., 500 Don Luis, 237
Chrétien, Jean, 180 Doolittle, James, 190
Church, Benjamin, 368 Drew, John, 98, 649
Clark, William, 323, 325 Drouillard, George, 326
Clearwater, Frank, 649 Dull Knife, 286
Coacoochee, 509, 548, 649 Dumont, Gabriel, 490
Cobell, Elouise, 225 Dundy, Elmer S., 288, 520
Cochise (Chiricahua chief), 34, 649 Dunmore, Lord, 346
Cody, William F. (Buffalo Bill), 57, 588, Durham, Jimmie, 300
599 Duro, Albert, 122
Coffee, John, 547
Colbert, Levi, 649 Ecuyer, Simon, 418
Collier, John, 17, 22, 30, 74, 107, 204, Edwards, “Junior”, 122
214, 292, 364, 377, 481, 529 Egan, Chief, 44, 286
Colliflower, Madeline, 109 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 295, 465
Columbus, Christopher, 177, 583 Elder, John, 405
Connolly, John, 348 Elk, John, 123, 190, 649
Connor, Patrick Edward, 45, 70 El Ollita, Francisco, 467
Cook, George, 36 Emmons, Glenn, 296
Coolidge, Calvin, 191 Endecott, John, 409
Coowescoow. See Ross, John Erasmus, George, 362
Cornplanter, 649 Eric the Red, 255
Cornstalk, 349, 649 Eriksson, Leif. See Leif Eiriksson
Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, 444, Errett, Russell, 172
610 Ervin, Sam, 194
Crazy Horse, 149, 330, 493, 592, 649 Estevanico, 610
Cresap, Michael, 348 Evans, John, 500
Croix, Francisco de, 77
Crook, George, 44, 492, 516, 592 Fall, Albert B., 17
Crow, John, 315 Fetterman, William, 71
Crow Dog, 130, 289 Fillmore, Millard, 146
Crow Dog, Leonard, 415, 649 Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 140, 145
788 / Personages Index
Fools Crow, Frank, 543, 604, 649 Hawkins, Benjamin, 111

Forbes, John, 252 Head, Bull, 599
Forsyth, James W., 600 Henderson, John B., 360
Francis, Josiah, 112 Hendrick, 11, 650
Franklin, Benjamin, 12, 239, 406 Hennepin, Louis, 250
Herjolfsson, Bjarni, 255
Gadsden, James, 169, 507 Hernandez, Joseph, 508
Gage, Thomas, 347, 458 Hiawatha, 305, 650
Gaines, Edmund P., 62, 507 Hickel, Walter, 8
Galbraith, Thomas, 370 Hicks, Elijah, 90
Gall, 332 Hinachuba, Patricio de, 263
Gallup, John, 409 Hinmaton Yalatkit. See Joseph the
Gálvez, José de, 77, 266 Younger
Ganeodiyo. See Handsome Lake His Nose. See Cochise
Garcia, Alonso, 467 Holatamico. See Bowlegs, Billy
George II (king of England), 11 Holcomb, Thomas, 105
George III (king of England), 310, Hoover, Herbert, 365
549 Howard, Oliver O., 44, 286, 393
George, Frank, 296 Hudson, Henry, 353
Geronimo, 36, 287, 589, 649 Hull, William, 525
Gibbon, John, 393, 492 Humphreys, Gilbert, 239
Gibson, Alexander, 133 Hutchinson, Thomas, 13
Gibson, James, 406 Hyde, Edward, 567
Gilmer, George, 84
Gladwin, Henry, 418 Ickes, Harold, 216
Goci. See Cochise Iopassus. See Japasus
Golikov, Ivan, 258 Iroquet, 650
Gomez, Stephan, 166
Grant, James, 96 Jack, Captain, 286, 372
Grant, Ulysses S., 185, 288, 478 Jackson, Andrew, 84, 113, 115, 176,
Gravier, Jacques, 250 274, 276, 506, 548
Gray Beard, 476, 649 Japasus, 650
Gray Eagle, 83 Jay, John, 144, 314
Greathouse, Daniel, 347 Jefferson, Thomas, 325, 397, 547
Guarionex, 584, 649 Jesup, Thomas S., 508
Guarocuya, 649 Jogues, Father, 48
Johnson, Andrew, 343
Hall, Louis, 103, 650 Johnson, John, 311
Haller, Granville O., 607 Johnson, Richard Mentor, 534
Hamilton, Andrew, 575 Johnson, William, 243-244, 310, 346,
Hancock, King Tom, 568, 650 456
Handsome Lake, 102, 305, 650 Johnston, Albert Sydney, 45
Harmar, Josiah, 132, 143, 333, 572 Johnston, Philip, 106, 108
Harper, Elijah, 233, 363 Jolliet, Louis, 250
Harris, LaDonna, 543 Jones, Sam. See Arpeika
Harrison, William Henry, 155, 274, Joseph the Elder, 392, 650
463, 525, 532, 537 Joseph the Younger, 286, 589, 650
Hasanoanda. See Parker, Ely S. Jumper. See Ote-emathla
Kagama, Pactah Billy, 570 Logan, John (Tachnechdorus, the

Kamiakin, 607 Great Mingo), 347, 650
Kansekoe, 159 Logan, John J. (congressman from
Karoniaktajeh. See Hall, Louis Illinois), 185
Kayenhtwanken. See Cornplanter Lone Wolf, 5, 337, 474, 650
Kearny, Stephen Watts, 521 Looking Glass, 286, 393, 650
Keeler, Wayne, 315 Lovelace, Sandra, 182
Kekataugh, 650 Lyttelton, William Henry, 95
Kennedy, Archibald, 239
Kennedy, Edward, 317 McCloud, Janet, 140
Kennedy, John F., 315 MacComb, Alexander, 509
Kennedy, Robert F., 317 McDonald, Angus, 348
Kennekuk, 323 Macdonald, John A., 178, 488
Keshena, Gordon, 294 MacDonald, Peter, 110
Kiala, 159, 650 Macdonell, Miles, 470
Kicking Bear, 598 McGillivray, Alexander, 111, 244
Kieft, Willem, 356, 408 McKenney, Thomas L., 275
Killsright, Joseph Stuntz, 140 McKenzie, Fayette A., 516
Kintpuash, 372 Mackenzie, R. S., 475
Kiotsaeton, 48, 650 McKinley, William, 338
Kirkland, Samuel, 243, 311 McLaughlin, James, 598
Knox, Henry, 274 McQueen, Peter, 112, 651
Madigan, La Verne, 296
Lagasse, Jean, 487 Magoffin, James Wiley, 521
Lalawethika. See Tenskwatawa Main Poc, 461, 651
Lamont, Buddy, 650 Makhpia-sha. See Red Cloud
La Mothe, Antoine de, 157 Malacate, Antonio, 467
Lane, Joseph, 83 Mangas Coloradus, 651
Langlade, Charles, 252 Mankato, 513, 651
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 262, 585 Manuelito (Navajo leader), 107, 343,
Lausen, Fermín de, 78 390, 651
Lavelle, Jeannette, 180, 182, 650 Marquette, Jacques, 250
LeFlore, Greenwood, 115, 546 Marshall, John, 83, 184, 547
Leif Eriksson, 255 Martinez, Antonio Jose, 523
Le Jau, Francis, 221 Mason, John, 410
Le Seur, Jean-Paul, 374 Massasoit, 367, 651
Letrado, Francisco, 612 Matoaka. See Pocahontas
Leupp, Francis E., 290 May, Cornelius, 354
Lewis, Meriwether, 325 Meacham, Albert, 172
Lincoln, Abraham, 359, 514 Means, Bill, 301
Little Crow, 370, 512, 650 Means, Russell, 25, 300, 345, 604, 651
Little Six, 650. See also Shakopee Mechkilikishi, 575
Little Turtle, 132, 274, 333-335, 419, Mecina, Chief, 323
462, 572, 650 Meeker, Nathan, 286
Little Wolf, 286 Mekaga, 159, 651
Loesch, Harrison, 541 Menewa, 651
Logan, James (adviser to Thomas Menneville, Ange Duquesne de, 252
Penn), 575 Meriam, Lewis, 364, 481
Metacom, 367, 651 Panacoast, Henry, 218

Meyer, Dillon S., 482 Parker, Arthur C., 517
Miantonomo, 410, 651 Parker, Ely S., 185, 651
Micanopy, 651 Parker, Quanah, 5, 286, 474, 652
Micco, Eneah, 546 Paul, William, 6
Michikinikwa. See Little Turtle Paxton Boys, 404
Miles, Nelson A., 37, 394, 475, 592, 599 Peacemaker. See Deganawida
Mills, Anson, 493 Peltier, Leonard, 26, 140, 414-415,
Mills, Sid, 140 652
Minuit, Peter, 236, 269, 355 Pemberton, Israel, 252
Mistahimaskwa. See Big Bear Penn, John, 404
Mitchell, D. D., 145 Penn, Thomas, 574
Mitchell, George, 25 Penn, William, 574
Montcalm, marquis de, 162 Perrot, Nicholas, 248
Montgomery, Archibald, 95 Perry, David, 393
Montoya, Pablo, 523 Pfeiffer, Albert, 341
Monts, Sieur de (Pierre de Guast), 166 Philip, King. See Metacom
Moore, James, 568 Pike, Albert, 98
Morgan, Thomas J., 289 Pike, Zebulon, 134
Moves Camp, Ellen, 651 Pipe, Captain, 349
Mulroney, Brian, 362 Pitt, William, 162
Myer, Dillon, 529 Pocahontas, 244, 423, 425, 652
Myrick, Andrew, 370, 511 Polk, James K., 174
Pollock, Thomas, 567
Nash, Philleo, 315 Pontgravé, Francis, 166
Necotowance, 426 Pontiac, 163, 273, 417, 456, 652
Niza, Marcos de, 610 Popé, 265, 466, 652
North, Robert, 500 Pope, John, 513
Nutimus, 575, 651 Portolá, Gaspar de, 77
Poundmaker, 490, 652
Oacpicagigua, Luis, 414 Powell, Billy. See Osceola
O’Bail, John. See Cornplanter Powhatan, 237, 420, 425, 652
Obwandiag. See Pontiac Pratt, Richard Henry, 80, 476
Oconostota, 95, 651 Price, Sterling, 522
Officer, James, 315 Price, William, 134, 475
Okimaoussen, 158 Procter, Henry, 532
Oldham, John, 409, 505 Prophet. See Tenskwatawa
Oñate, Juan de, 2, 264, 465 Pushmataha, 652
Opechancanough, 423, 425, 651 Pyke, Mathew, 122
Opitchapam, 651
Opossunoquonuske, 423 Rain in the Face, 332, 589
Osceola, 508, 548, 651 Rains, Gabriel, 608
Ote-emathla, 508, 651 Ralegh, Walter, 239
Otermín, Antonio de, 467 Ramsey, Alexander, 513
Ouchala, 158 Red Bird, 591
Ousamequin. See Massasoit Red Cloud, 70, 148, 589, 652
Ovando, Nicolás de, 584 Red Cloud, Charlie, 543
Oytes, 286 Red Eagle, 150
Red Jacket, 652 Sherman, William T., 58, 343, 474,

Red Sleeves. See Mangas Coloradus 581
Reifel, Benjamin, 194, 652 Shirley, William, 12
Reno, Marcus, 331 Sibley, Henry, 371, 513
Rhoads, Charles J., 365 Sitting Bear. See Satank
Ridge, John, 652 Sitting Bull, 149, 287, 330, 493, 589,
Ridge, Major, 547, 652 598, 653
Riel, Louis, Jr., 231, 488, 652 Smith, Matthew, 406
Rising, Johan, 271 Snyder, Homer P., 191
Roberts, Hollis E., 303 Soto, Hernando de, 94, 449
Robertson, Colin, 471 Spauldings, H. H., 280
Roberval, Sieur de, 246 Spock, Benjamin, 543
Robideau, Bob, 26 Spotted Eagle Black Elk, Grace, 653
Robinson, Mary, 303 Spotted Tail, 130
Robinson, William B., 485, 550 Springer, William McKendree, 337
Rolfe, John, 244, 423, 425 Squanto, 237
Roman Nose, 652 Standing Bear, 520
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 107, 214, 481 Stevens, Isaac, 392, 578, 607
Ross, John, 90, 99, 282, 547, 652 Stewart, William, 186
Ross, William P., 91 Stone, John, 409, 505
Rutherford, Griffith, 272 Stuyvesant, Peter, 356, 408
Ryan, W. Carson, Jr., 364 Sullivan, John, 102, 273
Swayne, Noah, 92
Sacagawea, 327, 652
Sagard, Gabriel, 249 Tachnechdorus, the Great Mingo. See
Sagoyewatha. See Red Jacket Logan, John
St. Clair, Arthur, 132, 142, 153, 314, Tandihetsi, 48, 653
334, 573 Tashunca-uitko. See Crazy Horse
Sassacus, 409, 505, 652 Taoyateduta. See Little Crow
Sassamon, John, 367 Tatanka Iyotake. See Sitting Bull
Satank, 360, 652 Taylor, Nathaniel, 147, 360
Satanta, 360, 652. See also White Bear Taylor, Zachary, 509
Scalia, Antonin, 125 Tecumseh, 112, 156, 274, 333, 419, 462,
Schuyler, Philip, 312 526, 653
Scott, Thomas, 489 Teller, Henry M., 172, 288
Scott, Winfield, 508 Ten Bears, 359-360, 653
Selkirk, earl of (Thomas Douglas), Tenskwatawa, 101, 112, 156, 274, 526,
469, 550 536, 653
Sells, Cato, 480 Terry, Alfred, 492
Semple, Robert, 471 Thayendanegea. See Brant, Joseph
Sequin, 505 Thom, Mel, 381
Sequoyah, 88, 653 Thompson, Wiley, 507
Serra, Junípero, 77, 266 Tomasito, 523, 653
Shakopee, 512. See also Little Six Tracy, marquis de, 249
Shelburne, earl of (William Petty), Trudeau, Pierre, 587
416, 456 Truman, Harry S., 389
Shelekhov, Grigory, 258 Tupatú, Luis, 467, 653
Sheridan, Philip, 58, 474, 581
Udall, Stewart, 8, 296, 315 White Cat, 159

Uncas, 409, 653 White Eyes, George, 349
Underhill, John, 410 Whitman, Marcus, 82, 280
Whitman, Narcissa, 280
Van Devanter, William, 338 Whitside, Samuel, 600
Van Rensselaer, Kiliaen, 236 Wiggins, Eleazer “Old Rabbit”, 39
Vaudreuil, marquis de, 157 Wildcat. See Coacoochee
Velázquez, Diego, 585 Williams, Roger, 239, 410, 506
Veniaminov, Ivan, 259 Wilson, Eugene M., 186
Verhulst, Willem, 355 Wilson, Jack. See Wovoka
Victorio, 287 Wilson, Richard, 415, 603, 653
Vigil, Donaciano, 522 Windom, William, 185
Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 77 Winthrop, John, Jr., 505
Vogel, Clayton, 105 Winthrop, John, Sr., 239, 505
Wirt, William, 84
Wahunsonacock. See Powhatan Wolfe, James, 162
Wakens, Arthur V., 529 Worcester, Samuel, 88
Wamsutta, 367, 653 Work, Hubert, 292, 364
Ware, Ralph, 653 Worth, William J., 509
Warrior, Clyde, 381 Wovoka, 101, 288, 598, 653
Washington, George, 161, 273, 311, 573 Wright, George, 608
Watie, Stand, 92, 98, 653 Wyeapiersenwah. See Blue Jacket
Watkins, Arthur, 293 Wynkoop, Edward, 582
Wayne, “Mad” Anthony, 132, 143, 155,
274, 333, 573 Yates, Richard, 186
Weatherford, William, 112, 150, 653 Yellow Bird, 600
Webster, Daniel, 84 York (member of Lewis and Clark
Welsh, Herbert, 218 expedition), 326
Weyapiersenwah. See Blue Jacket
Wheeler, John F., 90 Zaldivar, Juan de, 2
White, Edward, 338 Zaldivar, Vicente de, 2
White Bear, 360. See also Satanta Zimmerman, William, 315, 529
White Bird, 393 Zitkala-Sa. See Bonnin, Gertrude
793
Tribes Index
Abenaki French and Indian War, 160

Fifteen Principles, 137 Fur trade, 166
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Indian-white relations: Norse, 254
Manhattan Island purchase, 353
Accohannock Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Powhatan Wars, 424 Alsea
Fish-ins, 138
Accomac
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Anasazi Culture
Powhatan Wars, 424 Prehistory: Southwest, 449
Achumawi Apache
California missions, 76 Apache Wars, 34
Prehistory: California, 428 Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140
Gadsden Purchase, 169
Acoma (Keres) Indian-white relations: Spanish
Acoma, Battle of, 2 colonial, 260
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Adena Prehistory: Plains, 439
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Taos Rebellion, 521
Alabama Apalachee
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Indian-white relations: Spanish
colonial, 260
Aleut People
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Appomattoc
6 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Indian-white relations: Russian Powhatan Wars, 424
colonial, 257
Prehistory: Arctic, 427 Arapaho
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 Bozeman Trail War, 69
Algonquian Peoples. See also Fox; Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329
Kickapoo; Lenni Lenape; Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Mascouten; Miami; Pequot; Prehistory: Plains, 439
Powhatan Confederacy; Sac; Red River War, 473
Shawnee Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492
Beaver Wars, 47
Fifteen Principles, 137
794 / Tribes Index
Arawak Blackfoot
West Indian uprisings, 583 Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Prehistory: Plains, 439
Arikara
Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329 Caddo
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Prehistory: Plains, 439
Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Arrohattoc
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Cahuilla
Powhatan Wars, 424 California missions, 76
Prehistory: California, 428
Asseteque
Indian-white relations: Swedish Calusa
colonial, 268 Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Assiniboine Carib
Prehistory: Plains, 439 West Indian uprisings, 583
Winters v. United States, 591 Catawba
Atakapa
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Cayuga
French and Indian War, 160
Athapaskan Iroquois Confederacy, 304
Declaration of First Nations, 117 Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 meeting, 309
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Atsina
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Cayuse, 280
Cayuse War, 82
Atsugewi Walla Walla Council, 578
California missions, 76 Yakima War, 607
Chehalis
Bannock Fish-ins, 138
Bannock War, 43 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Bear River Campaign, 45
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Chemehuevi
California missions, 76
Bella Bella Prehistory: California, 428
Fish-ins, 138
Cherokee
Bella Coola Articles of Agreement, 38
Fish-ins, 138 Cherokee legal cases, 83
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Cherokee Phoenix, 87
Cherokee Tobacco case, 92
Biloxi Cherokee War, 94
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Civil War, 97
Tribes Index / 795
Indian Removal Act, 207 Prophetstown, 460

Keetoowah Society, 316 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Trail of Tears, 544 Chiricahua Apache
Wabash, Battle of the, 572 Apache Wars, 34
Yamasee War, 608
Chiskiack
Chesapeake Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Powhatan Wars, 424
Powhatan Wars, 424
Chitimacha
Cheyenne Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4
Bison slaughter, 55 Choctaw
Bozeman Trail War, 69 Civil War, 97
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 145 Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 115
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131
Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329 Indian Removal Act, 207
Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357 Irish Potato Famine, 302
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Red River War, 473 Trail of Tears, 544
Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492 Yamasee War, 608
Sand Creek Massacre, 500
Washita River Massacre, 579 Chumash
Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592 California missions, 76
Chickahominy colonial, 260
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Prehistory: California, 428
Powhatan Wars, 424
Coeur d’Alene
Chickasaw Prehistory: Plateau, 444
Civil War, 97
Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131 Colville
Indian Removal Act, 207 Kennewick Man controversy, 318
Trail of Tears, 544 Comanche
Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4
Chinook Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140
Fish-ins, 138 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Prehistory: Plains, 439
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Red River War, 473
Taos Rebellion, 521
Chippewa
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140 Coos
Fox Wars, 156 Fish-ins, 138
Little Turtle’s War, 333 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Northwest Ordinance, 397
Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
796 / Tribes Index
Copper Culture Erie

Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Beaver Wars, 49
Costano
California missions, 76 Eskimo People
Prehistory: California, 428 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
6
Coushatta Prehistory: Arctic, 427
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Cree Esophus
Fifteen Principles, 137 Peach Wars, 408
Esselen
Creek California missions, 76
Civil War, 97 Prehistory: California, 428
Creek War, 110
Fort Mims, Battle of, 149 Eyak
Horseshoe Bend Treaty, 176 Fish-ins, 138
Indian Removal Act, 207
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Fernandeño
Trail of Tears, 544 California missions, 76
Wabash, Battle of the, 572 Prehistory: California, 428
Yamasee War, 608
Five Civilized Tribes. See Cherokee;
Crow Chickasaw; Creek; Choctaw;
Bison slaughter, 55 Seminole
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Five Nations. See Iroquois
Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329 Confederacy
Flathead. See also Salish
Cupeño Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
California missions, 76 Prehistory: Plateau, 444
Fox
Cuttatawomen Black Hawk War, 60
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Fox Wars, 156
Powhatan Wars, 424 Northwest Ordinance, 397
Delaware. See Lenni Lenape Thames, Battle of the, 532
Diegueño Gabrielino
California missions, 76 California missions, 76
Prehistory: California, 428 Prehistory: California, 428
Doeg Gitksan
Bacon’s Rebellion, 40 Fish-ins, 138
Tribes Index / 797
Gosiute Huron. See also Wyandot

Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Beaver Wars, 46
Gros Ventre Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Winters v. United States, 591 Fox Wars, 156
Hackensack Fur trade, 166
Pavonia Massacre, 403 Indian-white relations: French
colonial, 245
Haida Northwest Ordinance, 397
Alaska Native Brotherhood and Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5 Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Fish-ins, 138 Prophetstown, 460
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Hasinai
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Illinois
Haudenosaunee. See Iroquois Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Confederacy
Inugsuk
Hidatsa Indian-white relations: Norse, 254
Inuit People
Hitchiti Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 6
Hoh Indian Act of 1951, 181
United States v. Washington, 570 Indian Act of 1989, 183
Indian-white relations: Russian
Hohokam Culture colonial, 257
Prehistory: Southwest, 449 Nunavut Territory, 398
Prehistory: Arctic, 427
Hopewell Tradition Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Iowa
Hopi People Prehistory: Plains, 439
Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
387 Iroquois Confederacy. See also
Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388 Cayuga; Mohawk; Oneida;
Onondaga; Seneca; Tuscarora
Hupa Albany Congress, 11
California missions, 76 Beaver Wars, 46
Prehistory: California, 428 Code of Handsome Lake, 101
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Fort Stanwix Treaty, 151
Fur trade, 166
798 / Tribes Index
Indian-white relations: French Kiowa

colonial, 245 Adobe Walls, Battles of, 4
Indian-white relations: Norse, 254 Fort Atkinson Treaty, 140
Northwest Ordinance, 397 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty, 357
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Prehistory: Plains, 439
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Red River War, 473
Prophetstown, 460
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525 Klamath
Walking Purchase, 574 Fish-ins, 138
Modoc War, 372
Juaneño Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Prehistory: California, 428 Klatsop
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Kamia
California missions, 76 Klikitat
Prehistory: California, 428 Fish-ins, 138
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Kansa
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Kwakiutl
Fish-ins, 138
Karok Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Lakota Sioux. See also Oglala Sioux;
Protective Association, 350 Santee Sioux; Sioux
Prehistory: California, 428 Bison slaughter, 55
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Ex parte Crow Dog, 130
Wounded Knee occupation, 603
Kato
Lenni Lenape
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Kaw
Fort Wayne Treaty, 155
Indian-white relations: Dutch
Kawaiisu colonial, 234
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Indian-white relations: French
colonial, 245
Kecoughtan Indian-white relations: Swedish
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 colonial, 268
Powhatan Wars, 425 Little Turtle’s War, 333
Kickapoo Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Fox Wars, 156 Peach Wars, 408
Kickapoo Resistance, 323 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Kickapoo uprisings, 324 Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Pontiac’s Resistance, 416 Prophetstown, 460
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Thames, Battle of the, 532 Thames, Battle of the, 532
Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Tribes Index / 799
Wabash, Battle of the, 572 Metis

Walking Purchase, 574 Indian Act of 1951, 181
Indian Act of 1989, 183
Luiseño Indian-white relations: Canadian, 228
California missions, 76 Red River Raids, 469
Prehistory: California, 428 Riel Rebellions, 488
Lummi Miami
United States v. Washington, 570 Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Mahican Fort Wayne Treaty, 155
Indian-white relations: Dutch Little Turtle’s War, 333
colonial, 234 Northwest Ordinance, 397
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Maidu Prophetstown, 460
California missions, 76 Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Prehistory: California, 428 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Makah
United States v. Washington, 570
Micmac
Maliseet
Maine Indian Claims Act, 351
Mingo
Mandan Indian-white relations: Swedish
Indian-white relations: Norse, 254 colonial, 268
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Minnataree
Mascouten Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Fox Wars, 156
Missouri
Massachusett Prehistory: Plains, 439
Miwok
Mattapanient California missions, 76
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Prehistory: California, 428
Powhatan Wars, 424
Mobile
Mattole Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Prehistory: California, 428 Modoc
Modoc War, 372
Menominee
Fox Wars, 156 Mogollon Culture
Menominee Restoration Act, 363 Prehistory: Southwest, 449
800 / Tribes Index
Mohawk Narragansett
Albany Congress, 11 Metacom’s War, 365
Determined Residents United for Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Mohawk Sovereignty, 121
Fifteen Principles, 137 Naskapi
French and Indian War, 160 Fifteen Principles, 137
Indian-white relations: Dutch
colonial, 234 Natchez
Iroquois Confederacy, 304 Natchez Revolt, 374
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Prehistory: Southeast, 447
meeting, 309
Oka crisis, 399 Navajo
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Code talkers, 105
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Long Walk, 340
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal
Mono Council, 382
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
387
Montagnais Navajo Rehabilitation Act, 388
Fifteen Principles, 137 Navajo War, 390
Pueblo Revolt, 465
Morattico Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 503
Powhatan Wars, 425 Neutral
Beaver Wars, 49
Moraughtacund Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Powhatan Wars, 425 Nez Perce
Kennewick Man controversy, 318
Muckleshoot Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
United States v. Washington, 570 Nez Perce War, 391
Prehistory: Plateau, 444
Muscogee. See Creek Walla Walla Council, 578
Nandtaughtacund Nipmuck
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Metacom’s War, 365
Powhatan Wars, 425
Nisga’a
Nansemond Nisga’a Agreement in Principle, 395
Powhatan Wars, 425 Nootka
Fish-ins, 138
Nanticoke Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Indian-white relations: Swedish
colonial, 268 Oglala Sioux. See also Lakota Sioux;
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Santee Sioux; Sioux
Pine Ridge shootout and Peltier
killings, 414
Tribes Index / 801
Wolf Mountains, Battle of, 592 Northwest Ordinance, 397

Wounded Knee occupation, 603 Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Ojibwa Prophetstown, 460
Indian-white relations: French Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
colonial, 245 Thames, Battle of the, 532
Thames, Battle of the, 532 Wabash, Battle of the, 572
Owasca Culture
Omaha Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Paiute
Onawmanient Bannock War, 43
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act,
Powhatan Wars, 425 387
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430
Oneida Snake War, 515
Iroquois Confederacy, 304 Paleo-Indians
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Bering Strait migrations, 50
meeting, 309 Prehistory: Arctic, 427
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Prehistory: California, 428
Onondaga Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Albany Congress, 11 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
French and Indian War, 160 Prehistory: Plains, 439
Iroquois Confederacy, 304 Prehistory: Plateau, 444
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Prehistory: Southeast, 447
meeting, 309 Prehistory: Southwest, 449
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Opiscopank Pamunkey
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Bacon’s Rebellion, 40
Powhatan Wars, 425 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Powhatan Wars, 424
Osage
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Paspahegh
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Powhatan Wars, 425
Oto
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Passamaquoddy
Maine Indian Claims Act, 351
Ottawa Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Beaver Wars, 47
Fort Greenville Treaty, 140 Patawomeck
Indian-white relations: French Powhatan Confederacy, 420
colonial, 245 Powhatan Wars, 425
Little Turtle’s War, 333
802 / Tribes Index
Patwin Potawatomi
California missions, 76 Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Prehistory: California, 428 Fort Wayne Treaty, 155
Fox Wars, 156
Pawnee Indian-white relations: French
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 colonial, 245
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Little Turtle’s War, 333
Penobscot Pontiac’s Resistance, 416
Maine Indian Claims Act, 351 Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Prophetstown, 460
Pensacola Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Thames, Battle of the, 532
Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Pequot Wabash, Battle of the, 572
Pequot War, 409
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Powhatan Confederacy
Saybrook, Battle of, 504 Powhatan Wars, 424
Petun Pueblo peoples

Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Acoma, Battle of, 2
All-Pueblo Council, 17
Piankatank Indian-white relations: Spanish
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 colonial, 260
Powhatan Wars, 425 Pueblo Revolt, 465, 609
Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 503
Pima-Maricopa
Duro v. Reina, 122 Quapaw
Pima
Pima uprisings, 413 Quechan
Pissaseck Prehistory: California, 428
Queet
Powhatan Wars, 425
Pocasset
Quileute
Metacom’s War, 365
Fish-ins, 138
Pokanoket. See Wampanoag
Quinault
Pomo Fish-ins, 138
California missions, 76 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Prehistory: California, 428 United States v. Washington, 570
Ponca Quiyoughcohannock
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Standing Bear v. Crook, 520 Powhatan Wars, 425
Tribes Index / 803
Rappahannock Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress

Powhatan Confederacy, 420 meeting, 309
Powhatan Wars, 425 Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Sac. See also Sauk
Fox Wars, 156 Serrano
Thames, Battle of the, 532 California missions, 76
Sakonnet
Metacom’s War, 365 Shasta
Salinan Prehistory: California, 428
Prehistory: California, 428 Shawnee
Fallen Timbers, Battle of, 131
Salish. See also Flathead Fort Greenville Treaty, 140
Fish-ins, 138 Indian-white relations: French
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 colonial, 245
Little Turtle’s War, 333
Santee Sioux. See also Lakota Sioux; Lord Dunmore’s War, 346
Oglala Sioux; Sioux Northwest Ordinance, 397
Minnesota Uprising, 370 Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Sarsi Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Prophetstown, 460
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525
Sauk. See also Sac Thames, Battle of the, 532
United States v. Washington, 570 Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Black Hawk War, 60 Wabash, Battle of the, 572
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Sheepeater
Bannock War, 43
Sekakawon
Powhatan Confederacy, 420 Shoshone
Powhatan Wars, 425 Bear River Campaign, 45
Seminole Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Civil War, 97 Prehistory: Great Basin, 430
Indian Removal Act, 207
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Sioux. See also Lakota Sioux; Oglala
Seminole Wars, 506 Sioux; Santee Sioux
Trail of Tears, 544 Bozeman Trail War, 69
Seneca Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 147
Code of Handsome Lake, 102 Fox Wars, 156
Fox Wars, 156 Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
French and Indian War, 160 Little Bighorn, Battle of the, 329
Iroquois Confederacy, 304 Prehistory: Plains, 439
804 / Tribes Index
Rosebud Creek, Battle of, 492 Tenino

Sioux War, 511 Cayuse War, 82
Wild west shows, 588
Wounded Knee Massacre, 598 Thule
Indian-white relations: Norse, 254
Siuslaw
Fish-ins, 138 Tillamook
Fish-ins, 138
Six Nations. See Iroquois Confederacy Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Skagit
United States v. Washington, 570 Timucua
Skokomish colonial, 260
United States v. Washington, 570 Prehistory: Southeast, 447
Spokane Tlingit
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324 Alaska Native Brotherhood and
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5
Fish-ins, 138
Squaxin Island Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
United States v. Washington, 570 Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Stillaguamish Tobaccos
United States v. Washington, 570 Beaver Wars, 49
Suiattle Tohono O’odham

United States v. Washington, 570 Gadsden Purchase, 169
Suquamish Tolowa
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 402 California missions, 76
Susquehannock Protective Association, 350
Bacon’s Rebellion, 40 Prehistory: California, 428
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Tonkawa
Taino
West Indian uprisings, 583 Tsimshian
Alaska Native Brotherhood and
Takelma Alaska Native Sisterhood, 5
Fish-ins, 138 Fish-ins, 138
Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435 Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Prehistory: Subarctic, 453
Taos People
Taos Rebellion, 521 Tubatulabal
Tribes Index / 805
Tuscarora Wappo
French and Indian War, 160 California missions, 76
Indian slave trade, 220 Prehistory: California, 428
Iroquois Confederacy, 304
Iroquois Confederacy-U.S. Congress Warraskoyack
meeting, 309 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Paxton Boys’ Massacres, 403 Powhatan Wars, 425
Tuscarora War, 566 Washoe
Tuskegee
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Weanoc
Umatilla Powhatan Wars, 425
Bannock War, 43
Kennewick Man controversy, 318 Wecquaesgeek
Walla Walla Council, 578 Pavonia Massacre, 403
Yakima War, 607
Werowocomoco
Umpqua Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Fish-ins, 138 Powhatan Wars, 425
Ute Wiccocomico
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Powhatan Wars, 425
Waco
Prehistory: Plains, 439 Wichita
Wailaki
California missions, 76 Winnebago
Prehistory: California, 428 Black Hawk War, 60
Fox Wars, 156
Walapai Northwest Ordinance, 397
Prehistory: Great Basin, 430 Prehistory: Northeast, 432
Thames, Battle of the, 532
Walla Walla Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Walla Walla Council, 578 Winnebago Uprising, 590
Yakima War, 607
Wintun
Walpapi California missions, 76
Snake War, 515 Prehistory: California, 428
Wampanoag Wiyot
Metacom’s War, 365 California missions, 76
Prehistory: Northeast, 432 Prehistory: California, 428
Wanapum
Kennewick Man controversy, 318
806 / Tribes Index
Woodland tradition Yana

Prehistory: Northeast, 432 California missions, 76
Wyandot. See also Huron Yokuts

Fort Greenville Treaty, 140 California missions, 76
Little Turtle’s War, 333 Prehistory: California, 428
Prophetstown, 460 Youghtanund
Tecumseh’s Rebellion, 525 Powhatan Confederacy, 420
Thames, Battle of the, 532 Powhatan Wars, 424
Tippecanoe, Battle of, 536
Wabash, Battle of the, 572 Yuki
Yahi Prehistory: California, 428
Prehistory: California, 428 Yuma
Yahuskin colonial, 260
Snake War, 515
Yupik
Yakima Indian-white relations: Russian
Kennewick Man controversy, 318 colonial, 257
Lewis and Clark expedition, 324
Prehistory: Plateau, 444 Yurok
United States v. Washington, 570 California missions, 76
Walla Walla Council, 578 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery
Yakima War, 607 Protective Association, 350
Yamasee Prehistory: Northwest Coast, 435
Indian slave trade, 220
Prehistory: Southeast, 447 Zuñi People
Yamasee War, 608 Zuñi Rebellion, 609
807
Subject Index
Please refer to the Tribes Index, which precedes this Subject Index, for names of bands, na-
tions, and other Native American groups. Names of historical figures will be found in the
Personages Index, which precedes the Tribes Index.
AAIA. See Association on American Alcatraz Island occupation (1969-

Indian Affairs 1971), 15-17, 540
Aboriginal Action Plan (1998), 1 Alcoholism, 460; Handsome Lake, 102
Aboriginal Canadians, 1. See also First Aleutian Islands, 257
Nations Algonquian peoples, 157, 236-237,
Aboriginal peoples (term), 494 269, 305, 307, 409, 421, 446, 566, 572
Abourezk Commission. See American Alkali Ridge, Utah, 615
Indian Policy Review Commission All-Pueblo Council (est. 1922), 17-18
Acoma, Battle of (1598-1599), 2-4 Allotment system (1887-1934), 18-20,
Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, 615 74-75, 288, 292, 364. See also
Adams-Onís Treaty (1819), 507, 548 General Allotment Act
Adena tradition, 433 Altithermal period, 440
Adobe Walls, Battles of (1864, 1874), American Indian (term), 21-22, 177,
4-5, 474 382
Agriculture, 433, 437, 448, 450 American Indian Defense Association
AIDA. See American Indian Defense (est. 1923), 22-23, 481
Association American Indian Higher Education
AIHEC. See American Indian Higher Consortium (est. 1972), 23-24
Education Consortium American Indian Movement (est.
AIM. See American Indian Movement 1968), 25-26, 140, 345, 415, 540, 601,
AIPRC. See American Indian Policy 603
Review Commission American Indian Policy Review
Akansa people, 250 Commission (est. 1975), 27-28
Akwesasne Mohawk reservation, 121 American Indian Religious Freedom
Alabama. See Geographical Index Act (1978), 29-32, 297, 351, 386, 482
Alaska. See Geographical Index American Indian Trust Reform
Alaska Federation of Natives, 7 Management Act (1994), 225
Alaska Native Brotherhood (est. American Revolution (1775-1783), 272;
1912), 5-6, 8 Cherokees in, 96; Iroquois in, 151,
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act 308-312; Senecas in, 102
(1971), 6-10, 553 Amerind (term), 22, 33, 177
Alaska Native Sisterhood (est. 1915), Anasazi culture, 452
5-6 ANB. See Alaska Native Brotherhood
Albany Congress (1754), 11-15, 163, ANCSA. See Alaska Native Claims
308, 455 Settlement Act
Albany Group, 310 Angel Mounds, Indiana, 615
Alcatraz Island, California, 615 Animism, 563
808 / Subject Index
Antiquities Act (1906), 384 British Columbia. See Geographical

Apache Wars (1861-1886), 34-37, 287 Index
Archaic culture, 53 British North America Act (1867), 178,
Archaic tradition, 447 550
Arctic. See Geographical Index Buffalo. See Bison
Arctic Small Tool tradition, 428 Bureau of Indian Affairs (est. 1824),
Arizona. See Geographical Index 20, 25, 73-74, 107, 204-205, 214, 220,
Arkansas. See Geographical Index 281, 293, 315, 364, 387, 415, 481,
Articles of Agreement (1730), 38-40 517, 528
Assembly of First Nations, 232, 362, Burke Act (1906), 20, 75-76, 290
587 Bursum bill (1922), 17
Association on American Indian Bush, George Herbert Walker, 200
Affairs, 23
Athapaskan-speaking people, 437 Cabin Creek, Battle of (1864), 100
Awatovi Ruins, Arizona, 615 Cahokia, Illinois, 443, 618
Aztalan, Wisconsin, 616 California. See Geographical Index
Aztec Ruins, New Mexico, 616 California Indian Self-Reliance
Initiative (2000), 202
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), 40-42 California missions (1769-1824), 76-79
Bad Axe, Battle of (1832), 63 Camas Meadows Battle Sites, Idaho,
Bagot Commission (1842), 230 618
Band (term), 562 Camp Charlotte Agreement (1774),
Bandelier National Monument, New 349
Mexico, 616 Camp Grant Massacre, 36
Bannock War (1878), 43-45, 286 Canada. See Geographical Index
Bat Cave, New Mexico, 616 Canada-Ontario Indian Reserve Lands
Bear Butte, South Dakota, 617 Agreement (1924), 486
Bear River Campaign (1863), 45-46, 70 Canadian Metis Society (est. 1968),
Bear River Massacre Site, Idaho, 617 117
Beaver Wars (1642-1685), 46-49 Canarsee, 355
Bering Strait migrations (c. 10,000), 50- Canoe, role of, 227
54; map, 52 Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 341, 618
BIA. See Bureau of Indian Affairs Carlisle Indian School (est. 1879), 66,
Big and Little Petroglyph Canyons, 80-81, 476, 619
California, 617 Carrington Osage Village Sites,
Big Bead Mesa, New Mexico, 617 Missouri, 619
Bill of Rights, 194 Casa Grande Ruins, Arizona, 619
Billy Bowlegs’ War (1855-1856), 510 Casa Malpais Site, Arizona, 619
Bison; hunting, 439, 470; slaughter, 55- Cataldo Mission, Idaho, 620
59, 473, 500 Caughnawaga Mohawk, 249
Black Hawk War (1832), 60-64, 323 Cayuse War (1847-1850), 82-83
Blood Run Site, Iowa, 618 CERT. See Council of Energy Resource
Boarding schools, 64-68 Tribes
Boldt decision (1974), 571 Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 620
Borinquen, 583 Cherokee, 560
Bosque Redondo, 341, 391 Cherokee Advocate, 91
Boudinot v. United States (1871), 92-93 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), 85
Bozeman Trail War (1866-1868), 69-72 Cherokee Phoenix (1828-1839), 84, 87-91
Subject Index / 809
Cherokee Tobacco case (1871), 92-93, 288 Council of Energy Resource Tribes
Cherokee tribe, trade with, 241 (est. 1975), 109-110
Cherokee War (1761), 94-97 Courts. See Courts of Indian Offenses;
Cherokee War (1776), 272 Tribal courts
Chief Joseph Battleground of Bear’s Courts of Indian Offenses, 205, 561
Paw, Montana, 620 Cree tribe, 550
Chief Plenty Coups Home, Montana, Creek National Capitol, Oklahoma,
620 622
Chiefdom (term), 562 Creek War (1813-1814), 110-114, 149
Chippewa tribe, 550 Crown Lands Protection Acts (1837),
Christianization, 65, 218, 229, 242, 249, 230
262, 611. See also Franciscan Curtis Act (1898), 290, 560
missionaries; Jesuit missionaries;
Missions and missionaries; Dakotas. See Geographical Index
Religion; Religious freedom Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of
Chucalissa Site, Tennessee, 621 (1830), 115-116, 302, 546
Cíbola, Seven Cities of, 465, 610 Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty Site,
Ciguayan, 583 Mississippi, 622
Civil Rights Act (1964), 206 Danger Cave, Utah, 622
Civil Rights movement, 194 Dawes Commission, 316
Civil War (1861-1865), 97-100, 282, Dawes Severalty Act. See General
316, 340, 500 Allotment Act
Civilization Fund Act (1819), 65, 275 Declaration of First Nations (1981),
Clover Site, West Virginia, 621 116-117
Clovis culture, 54 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997),
Clovis points, 430, 439 117-119
Cobell v. Norton, 225 Dene group, 552
Cochise people, 449 Dene-Metis Land Claims Agreement,
Cockarouses, 422 554
Code of Handsome Lake, 101-104 Department of Indian Affairs and
Code talkers, 105-108 Northern Development (est. 1967),
Colleges (tribal), 24 119-121, 182, 497, 587
Colliflower v. Garland (1964), 109 Determination of Rights and Unity for
Colonialism. See Dutch colonialism; Menominee Shareholders, 363
English colonialism; French Determined Residents United for
colonialism; Indian-white Mohawk Sovereignty (est. 1974),
relations; Norse colonialism; 121-122
Russian colonialism; Spanish DIAND. See Department of Indian
colonialism; Swedish colonialism Affairs and Northern Development
Colorado. See Geographical Index Discrimination in favor of Native
Connecticut. See Geographical Index Americans, 206
Constitution Act of 1867. See British Diseases, 125-129, 204, 240; Quebec,
North America Act 48; in schools, 66. See also
Contract schools, 65 Epidemics
Corn, introduction of, 433, 442, 451 Doak’s Stand, Treaty of (1820), 115,
Coronado National Memorial, 545
Arizona, 621 Doaksville, Treaty of (1837), 547
Coufal Site, Nebraska, 621 Dorset tradition, 428
810 / Subject Index
DRUMS. See Determination of Rights Federal Acknowledgment Program,

and Unity for Menominee 136
Shareholders and Determined Federally recognized tribes, 136, 564
Residents United for Mohawk Fifteen Principles (1983), 137
Sovereignty Finn colonists, 270
Duro v. Reina (1984-1990), 122-123, 298 First Nations. See Aboriginal
Dutch colonialism, 234-236, 270; Canadians
Manhattan Island purchase, 353- Fish-ins, 138-140, 381, 571
356 Five Civilized Tribes, 98, 290; during
Civil War, 282
Earth lodges, 443 Florida; Franciscans, 262. See also
Eastern seaboard. See Geographical Geographical Index
Index Folsom points, 439
Economic development, 205 Folsom Site, New Mexico, 624
Education, 482; boarding schools, 64- Folsom tradition, 447
68; early twentieth century, 204; Fort Ancient, Ohio, 624
higher, 23-24, 296; Indian Act of Fort Atkinson Treaty (1853), 140
1989, 183; Iroquois comments, 239; Fort Belknap, Texas, 624
nineteenth century, 80-81, 289 Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, 624
Edwardsville, Treaty of (1819), 323 Fort Greenville Treaty (1795), 135, 140-
Effigy Mounds National Monument, 144, 155, 274, 398, 525
Iowa, 622 Fort Harmar Treaty (1789), 154
El Cuartelejo, Kansas, 623 Fort Harrison, Treaty of (1819), 323
El Morro, New Mexico, 623 Fort Industry, Treaty of (1805), 334
Eleventh Amendment, 202 Fort Jackson, Treaty of. See Horseshoe
Elk v. Wilkins (1884), 123, 190, 289 Bend Treaty
Emerald Mound, Mississippi, 623 Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 69, 140,
Empire (term), 562 145-146
Employment Division, Department of Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 147-149,
Human Resources of Oregon et al. v. 330
Smith (1990), 32, 124-125 Fort Mims, Battle of (1813), 149-151
Encomienda system, 261, 466, 584, 612 Fort Neoheroka, Battle of (1713), 568
Endangered Species Act (1973), 558 Fort Osage, Missouri, 625
Enfranchisement Acts (1869), 231 Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, 625
English colonialism, 237-244; Canada, Fort Richardson, Texas, 625
226-233; vs. Spanish, 263 Fort Robinson and Red Cloud Agency,
Epidemics, 125-129, 240, 418, 466; Nebraska, 625
Aleuts, 259; California, 266; Fort Shantok, Connecticut, 626
Canada, 229. See also Diseases Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 626
Etowah, Georgia, 623 Fort Stanwix Treaty (1768), 347, 419,
Ex parte Crow Dog (1883), 130-131, 289, 459, 572
352 Fort Stanwix Treaty (1784), 141, 151-
154, 397
Factory system of trade regulation Fort Thompson Mounds, South
(1796), 275 Dakota, 626
Fallen Timbers, Battle of (1794), 131- Fort Washita, Oklahoma, 626
135, 144, 274, 333, 573 Fort Wayne Treaty (1809), 155-156,
Fallen Timbers Battlefield, Ohio, 624 463, 527, 537
Subject Index / 811
Fourteenth Amendment, 190 Habeas corpus, 109, 194, 288, 520

Fox Wars (1714-1741), 156-159, 251 Handsome Lake, Code of, 101-104
Franciscan missionaries, 262, 465, 611 Hard Labor, Treaty of (1768), 459
French and Indian War (1754-1763), Hardaway Site, North Carolina, 628
94, 160-164, 252, 272, 403, 416, 455, Haskell Institute, Kansas, 628
485 Haudenosaunee, 305
French colonialism, 243, 245-253; Hawikuh, New Mexico, 628
Canada, 226-233 Healing v. Jones (1962), 387
Friends of the Indian organizations, Health care, 203
18, 165-166, 171 Hell Gap, Wyoming, 439
Frog Lake Massacre (1885), 490 Hohokam culture, 451
Frontier, closing of, 601 Holly Bluff Site, Mississippi, 629
Fur trade, 46-49, 166-168, 227, 458, Hopewell culture, 305
469; Dutch, 235, 356; English, 241; Hopewell tradition, 433, 442
French, 248, 251; impact on Hopi, 3
Iroquois nations, 307; Russian, 257 Horner Site, Wyoming, 629
Horseshoe Bend, Battle of (1814), 274
Gadsden Purchase (1854), 169 Horseshoe Bend Treaty (1814), 113,
Gambling. See Gaming 176-177
Gaming, 200-202, 298 Hubbell Trading Post, Arizona, 629
Gatlin Site, Arizona, 626 Hudson’s Bay Company, 229, 469, 550
General Allotment Act (1887), 18, 73, Huff Archaeological Site, North
75, 165, 169-173, 190, 225, 289, 292, Dakota, 629
336, 364, 378, 480, 528. See also Human immunodeficiency virus, 129
Allotment system
Georgia. See Geographical Index “I will fight no more, forever” speech
Ghost Dance religion, 101, 287, 598, (Chief Joseph), 395
605 ICC. See Indian Claims Commission
Gift-giving, 243 Icelandic sagas, 254
Gila Cliff Dwellings, New Mexico, 627 Idaho. See Geographical Index
GOON. See Guardians of the Oglala Igloos, 455
Nation IGRA. See Indian Gaming Regulatory
Graham Cave, Missouri, 627 Act
Grand Canyon, Arizona, 627 IHS. See Indian Health Service
Grave Creek Mound, West Virginia, IITC. See International Indian Treaty
627 Council
Great Basin. See Geographical Index Illinois. See Geographical Index
Great Bend culture, 443 Independent Oglala Nation, 605
Great Depression (1930’s), 67, 293, 481 Indian (term), 177-178, 382
Great Plains. See Geographical Index Indian Act of 1868, 119, 231
Greenland. See Geographical Index Indian Act of 1876, 119, 178-180, 181,
Greenville, Treaty of (1795), 333, 461 486
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of (1848), Indian Act of 1951, 67, 180, 181-182
34, 169, 174-177, 524; maps, 175 Indian Act of 1989, 182-184, 487
Guardians of the Oglala Nation, 603 Indian Appropriation Act (1871), 92,
Gunther Island Site 67, California, 628 184-187, 555, 570
Gwich’in Final Agreement (1991), 554 Indian Bill of Rights. See Indian Civil
Rights Act
812 / Subject Index
Indian Child Welfare Act (1978), 188- Interior, U.S. Department of the, 73
189, 465 Intermarriage; English, 243; Metis,
Indian Citizenship Act (1924), 171, 228; Russian, 259
189-192, 376, 517, 595 International Indian Treaty Council
Indian Civil Rights Act (1968), 122, (est. 1974), 300-301
193-195, 296, 383, 465 Inuvialuit Final Agreement (1984), 553
Indian Claims Commission (est. 1946), ION. See Independent Oglala Nation
196-198, 339, 481, 558, 597 IRA. See Indian Removal Act; Indian
Indian Claims Limitation Act (1982), Reorganization Act; Indian Rights
297 Association
Indian Education Acts (1972, 1978), Irish Potato Famine (Native American
198-199 aid during), 302-304
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (1988), Iroquoian-speaking people, 433
200-202, 298 Iroquois Confederacy, 243, 304-308;
Indian Health Service (est. 1954), 203- American Revolution, 272; map,
204 306; U.S. Congress meeting (1776),
Indian New Deal (1933-1945), 23, 107, 309-312
204-205, 206, 214, 481
Indian Offenses Act (1883), 205-206, J. R. Williams (steamboat), 100
288, 561 Jaketown Site, Mississippi, 629
Indian preference (est. 1933), 206-207 James Bay and Northern Quebec
Indian Removal Act (1830), 207-212, Agreement (1975), 552
275, 278, 506, 545; map, 211 Jamestown, 421, 425
Indian Reorganization Act (1934), 6, Jay’s Treaty (1794), 144, 313-314
20, 23, 74, 76, 173, 204, 213-217, Jerome Commission (1892), 337
290, 292, 377, 401, 529, 561 Jesuit missionaries, 243, 249, 413
Indian Rights Association (est. 1882), Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), 83
218-219, 338, 365, 378
Indian Self-Determination and Kachinas, 466
Education Assistance Act (1975), Kahnawake people, 249
27, 74, 219-220, 482 Kansas. See Geographical Index
Indian Vocational Training Act (1957), Kathio Site, Minnesota, 630
295 Kearny Code, 522
Indian-white relations; Canadian, 226- Keeler Commission (est. 1961), 314-
234; Dutch colonial, 48, 234-236; 316
English colonial, 237-244; French Keetoowah Society (est. 1859), 316
colonial, 47, 245-253; Norse, 254- Kennedy Report (1967), 317
256; Russian colonial, 257-260; Kennewick Man, 318-322
Spanish colonial, 260-267; Swedish Key Marco, Florida, 630
colonial, 268-271; U.S., 1775-1830, Kickapoo Resistance (1819-1834), 323
272-277; U.S., 1831-1870, 278-284; Kickapoo uprisings (1865-1873), 324
U.S., 1871-1933, 284-291; U.S., Kid catching, 67
1934-2002, 292-299 King George’s War (1739-1748), 11
Indiana. See Geographical Index King Philip’s War. See Metacom’s War
Indian’s Friend, The (National Indian Kingdom (term), 562
Association), 378 Kiowa uprising (1871), 286
Indians of All Tribes, 16 Kiva Clubs, 380
Influenza, 126 Kivas, 466
Subject Index / 813
Knife River Indian Villages, North Manhattan Island purchase (1626),

Dakota, 630 236, 353-356
Koster, Illinois, 631 Manifest destiny, 174, 280, 521
Manitoba. See Geographical Index
Lacey Act (1907), 290 Manitoba Act (1870), 489
Lake Mohonk Conferences, 165, 171, Marmes Rockshelter, Washington, 633
289, 378 Mascouten people, 250
Lancaster Treaty (1744), 11 Mashantucket Pequot Reservation,
Land claims, 242; trust funds, 224-225 Connecticut, 633
Landergin Mesa, Texas, 631 Maumee Confederacy, 573
Langdeau Site, South Dakota, 631 Measles, 126, 466
Language, written (Cherokee), 88 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty (1867),
L’Anse aux Meadows, 254 337, 357-361, 473, 582
Leary Site, Nebraska, 631 Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty Site,
Lehner, Arizona, 632 Kansas, 633
Lemhi Pass, Tendoy, Idaho, 631 Medicine Wheel, Wyoming, 633
Lewis and Clark expedition (1804- Meech Lake Accord (1990), 117, 233,
1806), 324-329; map, 328 362-363
Little Arkansas Treaty (1865), 359 Menoken Indian Village Site, North
Little Bighorn, Battle of the (1876), Dakota, 634
287, 329-332, 514, 592 Menominee, 530
Little Bighorn, Montana, 632 Menominee Restoration Act (1973),
Little Turtle’s War (1790-1794), 274, 363-364
333-335; Fallen Timbers, 131-135; Menominee Tribe v. United States (1968),
Wabash, 572-573 558
Lochaber, Treaty of (1770), 459 Meriam Report (1928), 20, 67, 74, 107,
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), 290, 336- 290, 292, 364-365, 481
339, 558 Mesa Verde, Colorado, 634
Long Island of the Holston, Metacom’s War (1675), 365-369, 411
Tennessee, 632 Metis, 551; origins of, 228
Long Walk (1866), 340-344; map, 342 Mexican-American War (1846-1848),
Longest Walk (1978), 26, 345-346, 543 174, 281
Longhouse religion, 103 Michigan. See Geographical Index
Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), 346-349 Midwest. See Geographical Index
Louisiana Purchase (1803), 325 Militancy, 25-26
Lower Loup phase, 443 Minisink Archaeological Site,
Lowry Ruin, Colorado, 632 Pennsylvania, 634
Lubbock Lake Site, Texas, 633 Minnesota. See Geographical Index
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Minnesota Uprising (1862), 370-371
Protective Association (1987), 32, Mission San Gabriel Arcangel,
350-351 California, 634
Mission Santa Ines, California, 635
Maine. See Geographical Index Missions and missionaries, 229;
Maine Indian Claims Act (1980), 351- California, 76-79, 266; Catholic,
352 227, 262; French, 249; Indian, 242;
Major Crimes Act (1885), 122, 131, Southwest, 413. See also Franciscan
194, 289, 352-353 missionaries; Jesuit missionaries
Mangas Coloradus, 35 Mississippi. See Geographical Index
814 / Subject Index
Mississippian cultures, 442, 448 Native American Graves Protection

Missouri. See Geographical Index and Repatriation Act (1990), 318,
Moccasin Bend Archaeological 383-385
District, Tennessee, 635 Native American Languages Act
Modoc War (1872-1873), 286, 372-373 (1990), 297
Mogollon culture, 452 Native American Rights Fund (est.
Mohawk tribe; and Dutch, 235; 1970), 385-386
sovereignty, 104 Navajo Code Talkers Association (est.
Mohawk Upper Castle Historic 1971), 108
District, New York, 635 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act
Molstad Village, South Dakota, 636 (1974), 387
Montana. See Geographical Index Navajo-Hopi Long Range
Moraughtacund; Powhatan Rehabilitation Act. See Navajo
Confederacy, 420 Rehabilitation Act
Moultrie Creek Treaty (1823), 507 Navajo National Monument, Arizona,
Mound builders cultures, 53, 433, 449 637
Moundville, Alabama, 449, 636 Navajo Rehabilitation Act (1950), 388-
Mount Dexter, Treaty of (1805), 545 389
Muddy Creek, Battle of (1876), 287 Navajo Reservation, 387
Mummy Cave, Wyoming, 440 Navajo Tribe of Indians, Treaty
Between the United States of
NAGPRA. See Native American America and the (1868), 344
Graves Protection and Repatriation Navajo War (1863-1866), 390-391
Act NCAI. See National Congress of
NARF. See Native American Rights American Indians; National
Fund Council of American Indians
Narragansett; Pequot War, 409 Nebraska. See Geographical Index
Natchez, Mississippi, 636 Nevada. See Geographical Index
Natchez Revolt (1729), 374 New Echota Treaty (1835), 547
National Congress of American New Jersey. See Geographical Index
Indians (est. 1944), 375-376 New Mexico. See Geographical Index
National Council of American Indians New Netherland Company (est. 1614),
(est. 1926), 376-377 235
National Indian Association (est. New York. See Geographical Index
1879), 378-379 Newspapers, Native American, 87
National Indian Brotherhood (est. Newtonia battles (1862, 1864), 99
1968), 117 Nez Perce National Historical Park,
National Indian Council (est. 1961), 117 Idaho, 637
National Indian Education Nez Perce War (1877), 286, 391-395;
Association (est. 1969), 379-380 map, 394
National Indian Youth Council (est. NIA. See National Indian Association
1961), 380-381 NIEA. See National Indian Education
Nations, tribes as, 563 Association
Native American (term), 21, 177, 381- Nisga’a Agreement in Principle
382 (1996), 395-396
Native American Church, 31, 383 NIYC. See National Indian Youth
Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council
Council (1959), 382-383 Norse colonialism, 254-256
Subject Index / 815
North America (colonial). See Pea Ridge, Battle of (1862), 99, 282
Geographical Index Peach Wars (1655-1664), 236, 408
North Carolina. See Geographical Pemaquid Archaeological Site, Maine,
Index 638
North-West Angle Treaty (1873), 551 Pemmican, 470
North West Company, 470 Pemmican Proclamation (1814), 471
Northeast. See Geographical Index Pennsylvania. See Geographical Index
Northeastern Quebec Agreement Penutian-speaking people, 437
(1978), 552 Pequot War (1636-1637), 409-412, 505
Northwest Ordinance (1787), 397-398 Peyote, 31
Northwest Territories. See Picotte Memorial Hospital, Nebraska,
Geographical Index 639
Northwest Uprising (second Riel Pictograph Cave, Montana, 639
Rebellion, 1885), 490 Pike Pawnee Village Site, Nebraska,
Norton Mound Group, Michigan, 637 639
Nunavut Territory (1993), 233, 362, Pima uprisings (1695, 1751), 413-414
398-399, 553. See also Geographical Pin Indians, 316
Index Pine Ridge shootout (1975), 26, 414-416
Pipestone Quarries, Minnesota, 640
Obsidian Cliff, Wyoming, 638 Piqunin tradition, 446
Oconto Site, Wisconsin, 638 Pit houses, 452
Ohio. See Geographical Index Pittsburgh, Treaty of (1775), 349
Ojibwa tribe, 550 Plague, 126
Oka crisis (1990), 399-400 Plains of Abraham, Battle of the
Oklahoma. See Geographical Index (1759), 162
Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act (1936), Plainview points, 439
401-402 Plano tradition, 440
Old Oraibi, Arizona, 638 Plateau. See Geographical Index
Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe Plymouth Colony, 366
(1978), 402 Point Pleasant, Battle of (1774), 348
Ontario. See Geographical Index Pontiac’s Resistance (1763-1766), 240,
Opata people, 413 310, 346, 416-419, 456
Oregon. See Geographical Index Pontotoc Creek, Treaty of (1832), 546
Oregon Territory, 280, 392 Port Madison Reservation, 402
Owasco culture, 305 Potlatch, 232
Ozette, Washington, 638 Poverty Point, Louisiana, 448, 640
Powder River expedition, 592
Pacific Northwest. See Geographical Powhatan Confederacy, 420-424
Index Powhatan Wars (1622-1646), 273, 424-
Paleo-Arctic tradition, 428 426
Paleo-Indians, 447 Prehistory; Arctic, 427-428; California,
Paris, Treaty of (1763), 163, 416 428-430; Great Basin, 430-432;
Paris, Treaty of (1783), 132, 141, 152, Northeast, 432-435; Northwest
312-313, 544, 572 Coast, 435-438; Plains, 439-444;
Pavonia Massacre (1643), 403 Plateau, 444-446; Southeast, 447-
Paxton Boys’ Massacres (1763), 403- 449; Southwest, 449-453; Subarctic,
407 453-455
Payne’s Landing, Treaty of (1832), 548 Presidios, 262
816 / Subject Index
Problem of Indian Administration, Reservation system (U.S.), 478-483

The. See Meriam Report Reserve system (Canada), 179, 484-
Proclamation of 1763, 163, 310, 397, 487
417, 455-459; map, 457 Revolutionary War. See American
Property rights, 242 Revolution
Prophetstown (est. 1808), 156, 460-463, Riel Rebellions (1869-1870, 1885), 231,
526, 537 488-491, 551; map, 489
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 8 Robinson-Huron and Robinson-
Public Lands Act (1923), 18 Superior treaties (1850), 550
Public Law 280 (1953), 464-465 Rosebud Creek, Battle of (1876), 287,
Pueblo Grande Ruin and irrigation 492-493
sites, Arizona, 640 Rosebud Reservation, 540
Pueblo peoples, 2-3, 560; Anasazi Royal Commission on Aboriginal
predecessors, 453 Peoples (1991-1996), 494-499
Pueblo Revolt (1680), 265, 465-468 Royal Proclamation of 1763, 495, 549.
Put-In Bay, Battle of (1813), 532 See also Proclamation of 1763
Russian-American Company, 258
Quaker Peace Policy, 473 Russian colonialism, 77, 257-259, 266
Quakers, 103, 404, 567 Russian Orthodox Church, 259
Quapaw tribe, 250
Quebec. See Geographical Index St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, 298
Salinas Pueblo Missions, New Mexico,
Railroad; Canada, 550; impact of, 57, 640
488, 578 Salish-speaking people, 437
Re Paulette et al. and the Registrar of Salt River Pima-Maricopa
Titles (1974), 552 Reservation, 122
Red Progressive movement, 376 San Antonio missions, Texas, 641
Red River Colony, 550 San Carlos Reservation, 36, 287
Red River Raids (1815-1817), 469-472 San Xavier del Bac Mission, Arizona,
Red River Rebellion (first Riel 641
Rebellion, 1869-1870), 488 Sand Creek Massacre (1864), 359, 500-
Red River War (1874-1875), 4, 286, 503
473-476 Sand Hollow, Battle of (1848), 83
Red Sticks, 113, 149, 176 Sandoval case (1913), 17
Religion; Christianization, 218, 229; Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez (1978),
English missionaries, 242; Ghost 195, 503-504
Dance, 101, 287, 598; Handsome Santa Fe Trail, 521
Lake, 101-104; Russian Orthodox, Saskatchewan. See Geographical Index
259; Zuñi, 611. See also Saulteaux, 550
Christianization; Franciscan Saybrook, Battle of (1636-1637), 410,
missionaries; Jesuit missionaries; 504-506
Missions and missionaries; Scandinavian explorers, 254
Religious freedom Sechelt Indian Band Self-Government
Religious freedom, 29-32, 124, 194, Act (1986), 487
205-206, 216, 297, 350, 382, 466 Self-Determination and Education
Remarks Concerning the Savages Assistance Act. See Indian Self-
(Franklin), 239 Determination and Education
Repartimiento system, 261, 466 Assistance Act
Subject Index / 817
Seminole Tribe of Indians v. Florida Swamp Fight, Great (1676), 368

(1996), 201 Swedish colonialism, 268-271
Seminole Wars (1817-1858), 506-510 Sycamore Shoals, Tennessee, 643
Sequoyah’s Cabin, Oklahoma, 641
Serpent Mound, Ohio, 641 Tahlequah, Oklahoma, 643
Seven Oaks Massacre (1816), 471 Talton v. Mayes (1896), 193
Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), 14, 94, Taos, New Mexico, 644
160, 252, 549 Taos Rebellion (1847), 521-524
Severalty. See Allotment system; Taylor Peace Commission (1868), 343
General Allotment Act Tecumseh’s Rebellion (1809-1811),
Shawnee Mission, Kansas, 641 525-527
Sheepeaters War (1879), 286 Tennessee. See Geographical Index
Sherbert v. Verner (1963), 124 Termination Resolution (1953), 136,
Shiloh, Tennessee, 642 294, 315, 482, 528-531
Siouan-speaking people, 433 Texas. See Geographical Index
Sioux War (1862), 282, 511-514 Thames, Battle of the (1813), 527, 532-
Sioux War (1876), 287 535
Sitka, Alaska, 642 Three Fires Indians, 252
Skraelings, 255 Thule tradition, 427
Slave trade in Indians; by other Tippecanoe, Battle of (1811), 274, 463,
Indians, 220-224; by Spanish, 262 527, 536-538
Slim Buttes, Battle of (1876), 287 Tippecanoe Battlefield, Indiana, 644
Smallpox, 126, 240; blankets carrying, Tobias-Thompson Complex, Kansas,
418; Canada, 232 644
Snake War (1866-1868), 44, 515-516 Toltec Mounds Site, Arkansas, 645
Snaketown, Arizona, 642 Toolesboro Mound Group, Iowa, 645
Society of American Indians (1911- Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 246
1924), 376, 516-517 Trachoma, 129
South. See Geographical Index Trade; early U.S. Republic, 274;
South Carolina. See Geographical English colonial, 240. See also Fur
Index trade
Southeast. See Geographical Index Trade and Intercourse Acts (1790-
Southwest. See Geographical Index 1834), 275, 352, 538-540
Spanish colonialism, 260-267 Trail of Broken Treaties (1972), 540-
Spiro, Oklahoma, 642 543, 558
Sports mascots and team names, 518- Trail of Tears (1830-1842), 90, 116, 211,
520 302, 478, 544-548; map, 545
Standing Bear v. Crook (1879), 288, 520 Trans-Alaska Pipeline, 8
Status Indians, 117, 180 Treaties and agreements; Canadian,
Stephens v. Cherokee Nation (1899), 290 549-554; U.S., 555-559
Subarctic. See Geographical Index Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. See
Sunken Village Archaeological Site, Dancing Rabbit Creek, Treaty of
Oregon, 643 Treaty of Doak’s Stand. See Doak’s
Sunwatch Site, Ohio, 643 Stand, Treaty of
Supreme Court (U.S.) and treaties, Treaty of Fort Laramie. See Fort
557 Laramie, Treaty of
Survival of American Indians Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. See
Association (1964), 139 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of
818 / Subject Index
Treaty of New Echota. See New WARN. See Women of All Red
Echota, Treaty of Nations
Treaty of Paris. See Paris, Treaty of Warrior Society, 104
(1898) Washington State. See Geographical
Treaty of Payne’s Landing. See Index
Payne’s Landing, Treaty of Washita Battlefield, Oklahoma, 646
Tribal courts, 289, 402, 560-561 Washita River Massacre (1868), 361,
Tribally Controlled Community 579-582
College Act (1978), 24 Weippe Prairie, Idaho, 646
Tribe (term), 561-565 Weroances, 422
Tribes, federal recognition of, 136 West. See Geographical Index
Trust funds, 224-226 West India Company (est. 1621), 235
Tuberculosis, 129 West Indian uprisings (1495-1510),
Tuscarora War (1711-1713), 566-569, 583-586
608 West Indies. See Geographical Index
Wheeler-Howard Act. See Indian
Umatilla tribe, 286 Reorganization Act
Union Party, 316 White Hill, Battle of (1863), 514
United Nations, 301 White Paper of Canada (1969-1970),
United States. See Geographical Index 586-588
United States v. Kagama (1886), 193, Whitman Massacre (1847), 280
289, 570 Wild west shows (1883-1914), 588-590
United States v. Sioux Nation (1980), Winnebago Uprising (1827), 590-591
297, 339 Winters v. United States (1908), 591-
United States v. Washington (1974), 139, 592
570-572 Wisconsin. See Geographical Index
Utah. See Geographical Index Wolf Mountains, Battle of (1877), 287,
Ute War (1879), 286 592
Utz Site, Missouri, 645 Women of All Red Nations (est. 1978),
593
Valverde, Battle of (1862), 340 Wood Lake, Battle of (1862), 371
Vanderbilt Archaeological Site, South Woodland tradition, 432, 440, 448
Dakota, 645 Worcester v. Georgia (1832), 85, 88, 184
Veterans Citizenship Act (1919), 191 World War I, 191, 594
Vinland, 255 World War II, 232, 293, 595-597
Virginia. See Geographical Index Wounded Knee Battlefield, South
Voting rights, 595 Dakota, 646
Wounded Knee Massacre (1890), 288,
Wabash, Battle of the (1791), 572-573 514, 598-601
Waiilatpu Mission, 82 Wounded Knee occupation (1973), 25,
Walam Olum, 269 27, 297, 415, 602-606
Walking Purchase (1737), 574-577 Wupatki National Monument,
Walla Walla Council (1855), 577-578, Arizona, 646
607 Wyoming. See Geographical Index
Wallamwatkin, 393
Wallowa Lake Site, Oregon, 645 Yakima War (1855-1856), 607-608
War of 1812, 110, 115, 274, 470, 527, Yamasee War (1715-1728), 94, 223, 608-
532 609
Subject Index / 819
Yellow Creek Massacre (1774), 347 Zuñi-Cíbola Complex, New Mexico,

Yellowstone, Wyoming, 647 647
Yuma Crossing, Arizona, 647 Zuñi people, 3
Zuñi Rebellion (1632), 609-613

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Aboriginal Action Plan—

Salem Press, Inc.

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American Na-

Essays originally appeared in Ready Reference: American Indians

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

printed in the united states of america

Aboriginal Action Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Kennewick Man controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318

McCrea Adams Byron D. Cannon

Thomas L. Altherr Ward Churchill

Tanya M. Backinger Thomas Clarkin

Carl L. Bankston III David Coffey

S. Carol Berg Richard G. Condon

Warren M. Billings David A. Crain

John W. Fiero Kay Hively

Michael Shaw Findlay Russell Hively

C. George Fry Carl W. Hoagstrom

Lucy Ganje John Hoopes

Lynne M. Getz William E. Huntzicker

Marc Goldstein Andrew C. Isenberg

Nancy M. Gordon M. A. Jaimes

Larry Gragg Joseph C. Jastrzembski

Kelley Graham Albert C. Jensen

William H. Green Bruce E. Johansen

Arthur Gribben Jane Anderson Jones

Eric Henderson Leslie Ellen Jones

Howard M. Hensel Charles L. Kammer III

Thomas T. Lewis Bert M. Mutersbaugh

John L. Loos Michael V. Namorato

William C. Lowe Gary A. Olson

Richard B. McCaslin Patrick M. O’Neil

Paul Madden Martha I. Pallante

Lynn M. Mason William A. Paquette

Thomas D. Matijasic Francis P. Prucha

Steve J. Mazurana Jon Reyhner

Maurice Melton William L. Richter

Howard Meredith Moises Roizen

Michael W. Simpson Gale M. Thompson

David Curtis Skaggs Leslie V. Tischauser

Glenn Ellen Starr Brian G. Tobin

David L. Sterling Spencer C. Tucker

Pamela R. Stern Mary E. Virginia

Ruffin Stirling Gregory Walters

Leslie Stricker David E. Wilkins

Glenn L. Swygart Raymond Wilson

Stephen G. Sylvester Sharon K. Wilson

Robert D. Talbott Susan J. Wurtzburg

Harold D. Tallant Clifton K. Yearley

Aboriginal Action Plan Black Hawk War

Epidemics and diseases Indian slave trade

Long Walk National Indian Association

Pavonia Massacre Prehistory: Southeast

Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez West Indian uprisings

Pavonia Massacre—Zuñi Rebellion

Salem Press, Inc.

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American Na-

Essays originally appeared in Ready Reference: American Indians

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

printed in the united states of america

Pavonia Massacre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

Seminole Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506

Gazetteer of Historic Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 615