PROF.

MICHAEL STAFFORD ADJUNCT/LECTURER MERCY COLLEGE

THE TRAGEDY OF THE PLAINS INDIANS

HORACE GREELEY

In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded Grinnell, Iowa. Before 1830 Iowa was Indian land, occupied by the Sauk, Fox, Missouri, Pottowatomi, and other Indian tribes.

A THIRTY YEARS WAR

TIMELINE
The New Ulm Massacre The Sand Creek Massacre Nov. 29, 1864 Colorado Volunteers surrounded Sand Creek. Colonel Chivington "Kill and scalp all, big and little." The told his troops. the regiment descended upon the village, killing about 400 people, most of whom were women and children. The Black Hawk War The Fetterman Massacre The Battle of the Little Big Horn June 25, 1876 Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and the 7th Cavalry charged into battle against Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians. Quickly encircled by their enemy, Custer and 265 of his soldiers were killed in less than an hour. Nez Perce Tragedy Wounded Knee

August, 1862 The New Ulm Massacre in 1862 was the murder of approximately 800 White farmers along the Minnesota River. A major factor in this huge loss of life, the largest-ever massacre of Americans, was the lack of rifles in the hands of the farmers and townsfolk.

April 9, 186568 The Black Hawk War erupted as a result of the white expansion into the Utah Territory. Whites altered crucial ecosystems and destroyed subsistence patterns which caused starvation. Those who did not starve often succumbed to

Dec. 21, 1866 Determined to challenge the growing American military presence in their territory, Indians in northern Wyoming lure Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman and his soldiers into a deadly ambush on this day in 1866.

Oct. 5, 1877 On October 5, 1877, Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph formally surrendered his forces to General Nelson A. Miles and General Oliver Otis Howard at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana Territory. This effectively ended the Nez Perce War of 1877.

Dec. 29, 1890 Wounded Knee Creek was a convenient place for the Seventh Cavalry to disarm Big Foot's band during the Lakota Ghost Dance "uprising" in 1890. But then a shot rang out, and some 300 Lakota were gunned down.

THE GREAT PLAINS

The Plains Indians lived in the area from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to Mexico. The most important tribes were the Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and

FORT LARAMIE
Fort Laramie was a social and economic center for several tribes of Plains Indians. Early relations between the traders at the Fort and the Indians were amicable. As the tide of emigrants swelled along the Oregon Trial, friction began to emerge. A treaty was signed by representatives of the United States and the Indians near Fort Laramie in 1851. In return for $50,000 per year of annuities, the Indians agreed to stop harassing the

THE OREGON TRAIL

THE TREATY OF 1868

The Bozeman Trail was soon swarming with emigrants who passed through the prime bison hunting lands of the Sioux and the Cheyenne tribes. The Army constructed three Forts along the Trail to provide for the safety of the travelers. The Native Americans resented the intrusions, and the high plains were soon aflame with conflict. The Treaty of 1868 was signed: The Army agreed to withdraw from the Bozeman Trail and evacuate the forts along it.

THE BOZEMAN TRAIL

THE BLACK HILLS

The Treaty of 1868 did not bring a lasting peace to the high plains. In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills and miners soon flocked to the area. Attempts by the U.S. Army to keep prospectors out of the area were unsuccessful. The influx angered the Sioux, because the Black Hills region was a sacred area and it was also part of the reservation lands guaranteed to the Indians by the Treaty of 1868.

A THIRTY YEARS WAR

Beginning in the 1860s, a 30 year conflict arose as the government sought to concentrate the Plains tribes on reservations. Philip Sheridan led many campaigns against the Plains Indians, is famous for saying "the only good Indian is a dead Indian. But even he recognized the injustice that lay behind the late 19th century warfare: We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this that they made

MINNESOTA
The Santee Sioux were confined to a territory 150 miles long and just 10 miles wide. Denied a yearly payment and agricultural aid promised by treaty, these people rose up in August 1862 and killed 500 white settlers at New Ulm. President Lincoln appointed General John Pope to crush the uprising. The general announced that he would deal with the Sioux "as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made. When the Sioux surrendered in September 1862, about 1,800 were taken prisoner and 303 were condemned to death. Lincoln commuted the sentences of most, but he authorized the hanging of 38, the largest mass execution in American

COLORADO
In 1864, warfare spread to Colorado, after the discovery of gold led to an influx of whites. Because the regular army was fighting the Confederacy, the Colorado territorial militia was responsible for maintaining order. On November 29, 1864, a group of Colorado volunteers, under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington, fell on Chief Black Kettle's unsuspecting band of Cheyenes at Sand Creek in eastern Colorado.

SAND CREEK
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado called it "one of the most disgraceful moments in American history." After unleashing cannon fire into the village, the volunteers swept the Creek bed, killing every Indian they could find, often hunting down fleeing children. Lt. Joseph Cranmer described "a squaw ripped open and a child taken from her. Little children shot while begging for their lives." Capt. Silas Soule said, "it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized. A congressional committee concluded that Chivington "deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre. The Cheyenne and Arapaho were promised reparations in an 1865 treaty, but none were paid.

UTAH
The Black Hawk War: Between 1865 and 1868, conflict raged in Utah. The traditional date of the war's commencement is 9 April 1865 but tensions had been mounting for years. Dispute over cattle killed by starving Indians. An irritated Mormon lost his temper and violently jerked a young chieftain from his horse. A young Ute named Black Hawk, abruptly left, promising retaliation. In the fall of 1867 Black Hawk made peace with the Mormons. Without his leadership the Indian forces, which never operated as a combined front, fragmented even further. The war's intensity decreased and a treaty of peace was signed in 1868.

WYOMING

In 1866, the Teton Sioux, tried to stop construction of the Bozeman Trail, leading from Fort Laramie, Wyoming to the Virginia City, Wyoming, and its gold fields. It is here we the Whites first encounter a young Crazy Horse. The Indians lured out then attacked and killed Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 soldiers.

GEORGE CUSTER
Custer graduated last in his class at West Point in 1861, but by the age of 25 he had risen to the rank of brevet major general, the Army's youngest. He fought in many Civil War battles including Gettysburg, and became one of the heroes of the Union army. At the end of the Civil War, he reverted to his Army rank of captain and served stints in Louisiana and Texas before being placed in command of the 7th Cavalry on the Great Plains. Writers still debate whether Custer was a racist murderer; a swaggering, egotistical selfpromoter; or a martyred hero betrayed by his subordinates. Historians tend to view him as an officer whose vanity, youth, and desire for victory clouded his tactical judgment.

LITTLE BIGHORN
In 1874, Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills where gold was discovered. This led to a stampede of prospectors and miners into the Black Hills. President Ulysses Grant ordered all Indians to register at reservations. Many Sioux and Cheyenne gathered in southeastern Montana and decided to resist. On June 25, 1876, Custer's scouts had observed what they thought was a retreating Indian village along the Little Big Horn River in what is now Montana. The Indian village contained 8,000 Indians and more than 3,000 warriors and was led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Custer divided his command of 645 soldiers into three columns. Major Reno's detachment approached the Indian camp from the southeast. Major Benteen would attack the center. Custer and his 210 men tried to open an attack on the Indians' flank. 1,500-2,500 warriors attacked Custer's forces. Within an hour, every soldier in Custer's command had died. Many of the dead soldiers were stripped naked and mutilated. Custer's "Last Stand" also marked the Plains Indians' last stand. The shocking news of Custer's defeat encouraged a thirst for revenge. Within a year, nearly all the Plains Indians had been confined on reservations.

SITTING BULL
Sitting Bull was the principal chief and medicine man of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and friendly Indians, refusing to be transported to the Indian territory. In 1881 Sitting Bull returned to the Dakota territory, where he was held prisoner until 1883. In 1885, after befriending Annie Oakley, he joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. In 1889 Native Americans began to take up the Ghost Dance, a ceremony aimed at ridding the land of white people and restore the Native American way of life. Sitting Bull soon joined it. Fearing the powerful chief's influence on the movement, authorities directed a group of Lakota police officers to arrest Sitting Bull. On December 15, 1890, they entered his home. After they dragged Sitting Bull out of his cabin, a gunfight followed and the chief was shot in the head and killed.

CRAZY HORSE
In 1877, during a meeting under a flag of truce in Fort Robinson, Nebraska, an American soldier killed Crazy Horse by stabbing him with a bayonet. His body was buried in an unmarked grave and never found. Black Elk, an Indian medicine man, said that before his murder Crazy Horse had told him: "I will return to you in stone." In 1998, a Connecticut sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, completed an 87 foot tall bust of Crazy Horse in South Dakota's Black Hills Crazy Horse's face rises higher than the Washington Monument and is more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty.

THE NEZ PERCE

The hostilities that had been developing during the 1870s between settlers and the Nez Perce turned into violent conflict during mid-June, 1877 The first engagement between the Army and the Nez Perce warriors was at White Bird Canyon, Idaho Territory, on June 17. For the Nez Perce it was a major victory. At White Bird Canyon they proved to be an effective fighting force. Throughout the summer and early fall of 1877, the fighting skill of the Nez Perce warriors and the military tactics of Nez Perce military leaders, such as Chief Looking Glass and Chief White Bird, enabled the Nez Perce to evade almost certain defeat by superior U.S. Army forces. The Nez Perce and the Army would engage several times as the Nez Perce traveled from their homeland in the Wallowa Valley through the Montana and Idaho Territories towards their goal of Canada. The last engagement between the Nez Perce and the Army was fought at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana Territory. This battle took place between September 30 and October 5, 1877. It was after Bear Paw Mountain, when continuing to fight seemed futile, that Chief Joseph surrendered his remaining forces to Miles and Howard.

Chief Joseph
I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohulhulsote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. 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 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.

WOUNDED KNEE
The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed. Many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. A tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the whites, and restore the prairie. To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance. After the assassination of Sitting Bull Chief Big Foot was next on the list. On the morning of December 28, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek in the Dakota Territory. The next morning the chief, racked with pneumonia and dying, sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. When the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, approximately 300 Sioux were dead, Big Foot among them.

Conclusion
If the Battle of the Little Big Horn had been the beginning of the end, Wounded Knee was the finale for the Sioux Indians. This was the last major engagement in American history between the Plains Indians and the U. S. Army. Gone was the Indian dream, pride and spirit.