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TRAIL OF TEARS
1831-2 Trail of Tears. In two key cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Cherokee to stay on their lands. President Andrew Jackson ignored the court's opinion and sent federal troops to forcibly remove the Cherokee and other Civilized Tribes. The Cherokee were removed in 1838 during harsh winter conditions resulting in significant hardship and loss of life; the Cherokee remember this time as the "Trail of Tears."
1832 Black Hawk's War Black Hawk (1767-1838), also called Makataimeshekiakiak, was the leader of the Thunder clan of the Sauk Indians in Illinois. In an effort to halt the settlers' westward expansion, he sided with the British against the Americans in the War of 1812. When he led his tribe back to settle their disputed homeland in Illinois, two Sauks were shot by a body of Illinois volunteers. This led Black Hawk's War in 1832, a guerrilla conflict waged against the Americans. The war ended the same year in the The Battle of Bad Axe, with Sauk warriors trapped by land and water. Finally, left with only a few warriors, Black Hawk, dressed in white deerskin, turned himself in. Though a prisoner, he was immensely popular, and in 1833 was presented to President Andrew Jackson. Jackson allegedly felt so threatened by Black Hawk's popularity that he released the chief and sent back to the West.
1835-42 The Second Seminole War When Jackson became President, he set about moving the Seminoles out of Florida, leading to the second War between Seminoles and United States. When Seminoles refused to cede their land and were giving refuge to runaway slaves, slave owners and plantation farmers demanded immediate retribution. The American army committed several atrocities, including hunting Indians with bloodhounds, and the capture of the Seminole warrior Osceola while under a flag of truce. It was the most fierce and costly war in America's history up to that time.
1841 The Oregon Trail was a vital passage to the Pacific Northwest Territory. The first wagon train set out on the long trail across the plains and through the Rocky Mountains in 1841; by 1845 more than five thousand pioneers had made the journey.
1848 Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill, California. The subsequent "Gold Rush" and Euro-American settlement in California results in a drop in California Indian population from about 120,000 in 1850 to fewer than 20,000 by 1880. Gold miners changed the environment so much that Indians could no longer pursue their traditional means of procuring food. Indians raided mining camps for food and miners retaliated. Indians caused such problems for miners, that by 1851 the governor of California condoned a policy of extermination against California Indians.
1848 Purchases the territory which become the states of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado from Mexico for $5,000,000.
1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie: The U.S. and several Plains tribes including the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho enter into the Treaty. The purpose of the Treaty was to force the Indians to agree to allow Euro-Americans to pass through their territory on their way to the far west, i.e., California, Washington, and Oregon. In exchange, the U.S. government agreed to respect tribal boundaries.
1851 The Navajo considered the site of Fort Defiance to be sacred and thus the fort as an invasion of their territory. A pattern of violent confrontations between the U.S. and the Navajo begins.
1851 The Minnesota Santee Sioux had their lives uprooted when they ceded their land to the U.S. government in 1851. For eleven years, they were entirely dependent on white merchants and government annuities. When the annual payment failed to arrive in 1862, the Santee rioted that August.
1854 The Brule Sioux were especially hostile to the whites who came to Wyoming, and their attacks on white settlers led to war against the U.S. Army, led by General William S. Harney. The conflict started in 1854, after a band of Brules killed an emigrant's cow.
1855 In 1855, Governor Issac Ingalls Stephens, accompanied by translator and artist Gustavus Sohon, convened a meeting with all the tribes of the Upper Columbia River in order to sign land treaties with them.
1860-1864 Tensions between the Navajo Indians and American military forces in the New Mexico Territory resulted in the Navajo War. During a final standoff at Canyon de Chelly, fears of starvation and harsh winter conditions forced the Navajo to surrender to Kit Carson and his troops in January 1864. Carson ordered the destruction of their property and organized the Long Walk of the Navajo to the Bosque Redondo, a reservation already occupied by Mescalero Apaches on the Pecos River.
1861 Civil War Begins. Many tribes including the Five Civilized Tribes (now living in Oklahoma Territory) side with the Confederacy which promises in return for Indian support to respect Indian sovereignty. After the end of the War, the U.S. government punishes the Five Civilized Tribes by forcing the Tribes to cede land.
1864 Sand Creek Massacre. Cheyenne and Arapaho were awaiting surrender terms when attacked; more than 120 people killed--mostly women and children.
1866 "The Battle of One Hundred Slain" In retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre and other atrocities, Plains tribes banded together and declared war on the United States.
1866-68 Red Cloud leads the successful fight to close off the Bozeman Trail, a pass leading to the gold mines of Montana. The trail crosses over the traditional hunting grounds of the Teton.
1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge. The largest treaty-making gathering in U.S. history, between U.S. and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations; results in the removal of the two tribes to a reservation in Indian Territory. Their reservation is created out of lands taken from the Five Civilized Tribes who had been forced to give them up because of their support for the South during the Civil War. Crow, Comanche, Kiowa, Sioux, Apache and dozens of other tribes were represented.
1868 Sioux Indians sign a treaty guaranteeing their rights to the Black Hills of Dakota. Later that year, the U.S. Army led by George Armstrong Custer slaughters an unarmed gathering of Cheyenne encamped at the Washita River--again killing mostly women and children.
The agreement offered the Union Pacific Railroad the right of way through the Green River Valley in exchange for Indian reservation land
1868 Lieutenant-Colonel George Custer fought the so-called Battle of the Washita in November 1868. This raid on Cheyenne Chief Black kettle's camp on Oklahoma was in retaliation for Cheyenne raids on Kansas settlements the previous month. It was part of a massive military campaign to contain all Indians who refused to stay within their newly assigned reservations.
1873-74 The "Buffalo War" A last desperate attempt by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche and Kiowa to save the few remaining buffalo herds from destruction by Euro-American hunters in Oklahoma and Texas.
1874 expedition led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer discovers gold in the Black Hills, sending a rush of prospectors to the area. The Sioux revolt.
1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn On June 25, Custer attacks a large hunting camp of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Little Big Horn River in Montana. Sitting Bull, Gall, Crazy Horse, and several Cheyenne leaders defeat Custer and the 7th Cavalry. General Custer and 250 soldiers are killed.
1877 After an impressive flight of more than 1,000 miles from their homeland in Oregon, the Nez Perce led by Chief Joseph finally surrender. The U.S. relocates the Nez Perce to Indian Territory, breaking its promise to allow them to return to their homeland.
1881 Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor published, detailing the plight of Native Americans and criticizing U.S. treatment of Indians.
1886 After more than two decades of armed conflict with the U.S. government, Geronimo and his band (including women and children) are sent by train to Florida and imprisoned at St. Augustine.
1887 During the 1880s, Euro-American reformers grew concerned that Indians were not improving themselves and becoming self-sufficient but were sinking into poverty and despair. The purpose of the Act was to force individual Indians to live on small family farms. Every Indian would receive 160 acres of land. Any land left over was sold. One goal of allotment was to destroy Indian "communalism," i.e., the practice of many families living together and sharing property. Tribes affected by allotment were those located in states where land was most sought after for farming by Euro-American settlers: North and South Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota and Wyoming. Within the first ten years of allotment, more than 80 million acres of Indian land were opened for Euro-American settlement.
1889 An act by the U.S. Congress in March 1889 splits the Great Sioux Reservation into six smaller reservations. Some of the tribes begin performing the Ghost Dance, a religious ceremony thoughtto extinguish the whites, return the buffalo, and the former way of life. South Dakota is admitted to the union in November.
1890 Wovoka, a Paiute prophet, defined a new religion combining Christian and Native elements. This religion was dubbed the "Ghost Dance" religion because its followers believed that practicing ritual dance would bring back dead loved ones (both human and animal) and restore the land to Native peoples. The Ghost Dance religion swept through the Great Plains quickly gaining a huge following from peoples devastated by disease, warfare, and Euro-American encroachment. Ghost dancers believed that clothing worn in the dance would make them invulnerable to bullets or other forms of attack. The U.S. government became increasingly anxious about the spread of the Ghost Dance religion because of the large number of Indians who came together to participate in the ceremony.
1890, December 29
Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek The Lakota Sioux held a ghost dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation. When an Indian Agent learned of the dance he requested that federal troops be sent to stop it. Armed troops opened fire on a band of Big Foot's band of Lakota people killing 200-250 men, women and children. The event is often described as the last major conflict between the U.S. Army and the Great Sioux Nation.
1894 U.S. Army imprisons hostile Hopi leaders on Alcatraz Island.
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