Indian Wars
Armed conflicts fought between native inhabitants, or Indians, of North America and white Europeans, often represented by government forces, during the period of exploration and settlement. For historical and cultural background, see , particularly the section European Contact and Impact.
The wars were episodic and localized. In virtually every Indian war some tribes fought against their traditional Indian enemies.
The Indians proved vulnerable to diseases previously unknown in the Americas, particularly smallpox, which decimated their population. They were also hindered by superior European military technology. Their own traditional weapons were no match for European firearms, and they had difficulty obtaining effective weapons. The Plains tribes used horses skillfully in battle; these they captured--either from other tribes or from the wild herds that roamed the region after the introduction of the horse into the western hemisphere by the Spanish conquistadors.
The earliest contacts between the European settlers and the Indians were, for the most part, peaceful. Trade was the principal interaction. Tension and disputes sometimes were resolved by force but more often by negotiation or treaties, such as that made between Massasoit, chief of the , and England's Plymouth Colony in 1621. War with the Indians of New England was avoided until 1637, when the Pequot War resulted in the virtual extermination of that tribe (
see ). The causes of this war, and of the English-Narragansett conflict of 1643-45 (
see ) and King Philip's War of 1675-76 (
see ), were complicated and disputed, with both sides alleging violations of understandings with the other. New England Indian tribes never regained the power they possessed in the 17th century, but they played significant roles in (1689-97), (1702-13), and the (1754-63).
While Spain and France maintained a presence in North America, individual tribes could ally themselves with one of these European nations against British incursions into their territory. With the defeat of the French, however, the tribes allied with them were more exposed to British power. In 1763 Pontiac, chief of the , led a confederation of tribes of the Ohio-Great Lakes region in an effort to drive the British out of the area. Pontiac's strategy failed after a peace treaty was signed between France and Britain, making French aid unavailable to the Indians.
In the south, when the early settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Va., the local tribes, loosely confederated under the Indian chief Powhatan, were initially cooperative; however, the Europeans quickly made it clear that they planned to extend their settlements into the Indians' lands. On March 22, 1622, the Indians, under Opechancanough (d. 1646), Powhatan's successor, attacked the English settlements, and 350 colonists (of about 2000) died. The colony survived, however, and retaliated in force. The following decade saw continued warfare, followed by a tenuous peace. On April 18, 1644, another attack by Opechancanough almost destroyed the growing colony. Nearly 500 settlers were killed. The war ended in 1646 when the governor, Sir William Berkeley, captured Opechancanough.
English expansion up Virginia's rivers continued until 1675-76, when the Indian war that is associated with erupted. This war was caused by a series of misunderstandings and acts of local aggression. In the end, the Indians were defeated. The Tidewater tribes never regained their earlier power, but in the interior and farther south periodic wars broke out, for instance, between British settlers and the in North Carolina (1711-13).
The French in Canada and in the Mississippi Valley also engaged in wars with their Indian neighbors. The Natchez tribe (see ) in the Mississippi delta was among their victims. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland (now the states of New York and New Jersey) the policy of Gov. Willem Kieft (1597-1647) led to the death of nearly 1000 Indians in sporadic warfare between 1640 and 1645, when Kieft was recalled. In 1655, Indians attacked New Amsterdam (renamed New York in 1664) on the present-day island of Manhattan, beginning a conflict that lasted until 1664. During that time the Dutch gained control over most of the bands of the lower Hudson Valley.
When the American Revolution began, the British government and the revolutionaries sought to keep the Indian population neutral. Each side, however, soon began to recruit allies from among the Indian nations. Even the confederacy was split, with four of the six tribes siding with the British, who emphasized that a British defeat would put the Indians at the mercy of the settlers. In the south, , , and support of the British was overcome by the Americans and their new allies, the Spanish. The ports of Mobile (now in Alabama) and Pensacola (now in Florida), which had been under British control from 1763, were seized by a Spanish fleet in 1780 and 1781 after British and Indian resistance. When the British evacuated Saint Augustine in 1783, many Indian allies sought to join them in exile.
The Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolution made no mention of the Indians, who complained bitterly that the British had sold out their interests. When the U.S. attempted to treat Indian tribes in the new territories west of the Appalachian Mountains as conquered enemies, the Indians resisted. In 1791 the army of Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair (1737-1818) was decisively defeated by the Indians near Fort Wayne (in what is now Indiana). Gen. Anthony Wayne's forces finally overcame the of the Old Northwest (today called the Midwest) at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near what is now Toledo, Ohio) in August 1794, resulting in the Treaty of Greenville (1795) and the opening of the Ohio Valley to American settlement.
In the immediate post-Revolutionary War period the Creek and other southeastern Indian nations sought, by both negotiation and war, to maintain their autonomy, sometimes asking Spain for assistance against the encroaching frontier settlers. Spain, however, was reluctant to support the Indians against the growing power of the U.S., and the Spanish-American Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795) took no account of Indian interests.
Indians in the north and south were involved in the War of 1812 between Britain and the U.S. In the Old Northwest, Tecumseh, a Shawnee (
see ) leader, and his brother Tenskwatawa (c. 1768-1837), known as the Prophet, urged the Indians to return to past traditions and to repudiate the white-imposed concept that individual factions or tribes could sell the land that was a common heritage of all Indians. William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, who had been warned by Tecumseh in 1810 not to allow white settlement to proceed further, moved in 1811 to break up the Indian settlement at Prophet's Town, Tecumseh's headquarters. In the Battle of Tippecanoe (
see ), Harrison suffered heavy casualties but forced the Indians to abandon the village. This conflict became part of the larger British-American war, and the Indians soon gravitated to the British side. Tecumseh was killed when Harrison's men crushed a British and Indian force at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813; his goal of unity died with him. After his death the Delaware (
see ), , (or Chippewa), and tribes made peace with the Americans.
In its southern phase, the war began with a Creek Indian uprising at Fort Mims in Alabama. The Indians killed almost all the settlers within the fort (see ); however, the Creeks were hopelessly divided into war and peace factions. Andrew Jackson, commanding the Tennessee militia, took advantage of this and drove boldly into the heart of Creek territory. On March 27, 1814, his forces won an overwhelming victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814) signaled the breakup of Indian power in the lower Mississippi.
The second major period of Indian warfare took place in the quarter century following the War of 1812; this was a transitional period dominated by the imposition and consequences of a new policy: Indian removal, under which eastern tribes were moved to lands west of the Mississippi. Although removal had been going on to some degree since the early 1800s, it was given new impetus by the Indian Removal Act of 1830, largely implemented during Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829-37), and resulted in the uprooting of entire tribes from their homelands and their forced resettlement on reservations beyond the Mississippi.
Several wars stemmed from the refusal of some Indians to accept resettlement. The effort of the Sac (or Sauk) and Fox (see ) tribes to return to their homeland in early 1832 resulted in the Black Hawk War in Illinois and Wisconsin, which ended in the Bad Axe Massacre (Aug. 3, 1832), in which most of the remaining Indians were killed as they tried to cross the Mississippi into Iowa. Concurrently, the Cherokee were removed from Georgia, and in Mississippi and Alabama the remaining Creek were also expelled. The Second Seminole War (see ) in Florida (1835-42) was distinguished by the evasive tactics of the , who for a long time escaped attempts of the U.S. Army to round them up. By the 1850s, as this period came to an end, only scattered groups of Indians remained in the eastern half of the U.S.
From the 1840s to the 1880s, U.S. forces fought many battles (usually skirmishes) to clear routes west for American emigrants and to establish government control over the vast territory. Ultimately the federal government organized a reservation system to separate the Indians from white settlers.
The gold rush of 1849 brought devastation to the Indians of the Far West. The Bannock and tribes of Oregon and Idaho, the of Nevada and Utah, and the and Navajo (see ) tribes of the southwest mounted a more organized resistance against white encroachment, but were ultimately defeated and confined to reservations.
The central conflict took place on the Great Plains, where the Indians had been promised sanctuary. Into this land were crowded remnants of many tribes displaced from the east. They had great difficulty in adapting their ways of life to a very different environment, and the tribes from the region resented the presence of the newcomers. White settlers were also moving into the territory, causing further hostilities.
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Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (reproduction number LC-USZ62-12279)
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Sitting Bull in 1882
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The , , and tribes battled against the settlers' encroachment on their territory in the 1860s and '70s; the fighting was of a special ferocity on both sides. Among all the battles, only the Battle of the Little Bighorn (
see ) gained mythic status: On June 25, 1876, much of the 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lt. Col. George A. Custer was wiped out by a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne under Sioux chiefs, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Within a year, however, most of the Sioux and Cheyenne surrendered, and some were relocated to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Other Indians fought on--Chief Joseph and the in the late 1870s, Geronimo and the Apaches as late as the 1880s. The Indian wars reached an end with the massacre at Wounded Knee, S.Dak., on Dec. 29, 1890, when Sioux warriors, women, and children were slaughtered by the U.S. cavalry. ; rev. by
For additional information on historical figures, see separate articles on those whose names are not followed by dates.
For further information on this topic, see the Bibliography, section .