American Indians Timeline
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21000BC-18000BC In 2008 researchers
reported that DNA evidence indicated that 95% of native Americans had
descended from 6 women of this period. It was believed that the women
had lived in Beringia, a land bridge that stretched from Asia to North
America during this time.
(SFC, 3/14/08, p.A12)
12300BC In 2008 scientists reported that fossilized
human feces found in 8 caves near Paisley, Ore., dated to about this
time. The coprolites contained DNA with characteristics matching those
of living Amerindians.
(SFC, 4/4/08, p.A4)(Econ, 4/5/08, p.84)
6000BC The Wappo Indians settle in the area northern
California around Mt. Konocti 8,000 years ago. The eruption of Mt.
Konocti millions of years earlier left a fissure in the earth through
which ground water reaches the hot magma at 4,000 feet, and resurfaces
as Indian Springs’ three thermal geysers at 212 degrees. The water
rises through old sea beds adding rich mineral and salt traces.
(Flyer on Indian Springs, 7/95)
c6000BC The Hokan Indians preceded the Miwoks in
Northern California.
(SFEC, 10/4/98, p.B5)
200-1215 The Fremont people lived in Utah and etched
into rock designs of animals and people.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.T8,9)
c300-1300 The Anasazis inhabited the Canyon de Chelly
and the Canyon del Muerto in northeast Arizona over this period.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, p.T8)
500 The northern California
Emeryville Shellmound, CA-Ala 309, dates to about this
time.
(Buckeye, Winter 04/05)
500-700 Evidence in 2005 suggested that Polynesians
visited California during this period and transferred their canoe
building technology to the local Chumash and Gabrielino Indians.
(SFC, 6/20/05, p.A5)
c600-1300 Pueblo Indians built their Cliff Palace at
Mesa Verde (Colorado).
(SFC, 7/25/00, p.A3)
750 Native peoples in southwest
Colorado started building stone houses above ground, first one-story,
then two. Ruins of these are scattered over the landscape and have the
look of ones the Pueblo Indians-Hopi, Zuni and others of the Southwest
live in today. They added beans, an important source of protein, to
their diets, and began making simple grayware pots. They had bows and
arrows.
(HN, 2/11/97)
c1000 The Cahokia settlement in
Southern Illinois numbered about 30,000.
(SFC, 3/20/99, p.B4)
c1000 In Montana polychromatic
rock drawings were made at Weatherman Draw, also known as the Valley of
the Chiefs.
(SFC, 6/22/01, p.A7)
1000-1400 Indians inhabited an area at the junction
of 2 creeks between Walnut Creek and Lafayette, Ca. A burial site was
found there in 1904. In 2004 some 80 sets of human remains was found
during the construction of the Hidden Oaks housing development.
(SFC, 6/22/04, p.A1)
1050 An Anasazi trade center in
New Mexico offered pottery, turquoise and buffalo meat.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
c1150 A group of Anasazi villages
in southwest Colorado were suddenly abandoned during a period of severe
drought. In 2000 evidence showed that a raiding party had swept through
the area, killed the inhabitants and ate their flesh.
(SFC, 9/6/00, p.A3)
1170 Madoc, a Welsh prince, is
reputed to have discovered America. Many believe that he and his
followers initially settled in the Georgia/Tennessee/ Kentucky area,
eventually moving to the Upper Missouri, where they were assimilated
into a tribe of the Mandans. New evidence is also emerging about a
small band of Madoc's followers who remained in the Ohio area and are
called “White Madoc.”
(www.madoc1170.com/home.htm)
1200 The Anasazi in southwest
Colorado began building their cliff dwellings. Population was thriving.
They were making corrugated pottery and handsomely decorated black and
white pottery.
(HN, 2/11/97)
1250 The Anasazi in southwest
Colorado fought a battle against unknown enemies. Number of kivas built
greatly increased. Quality of workmanship in building decreased. People
began to leave.
(HN, 2/11/97)
c1275 Indian settlers built a town
called Atsina on top of El Morro (New Mexico).
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F9)
c1300 The Anasazi Indian culture
of the American southwest disappeared about this time. All the Anasazi
were gone from Mesa Verde. They probably moved south and broke up into
present-day Pueblo tribes.
(SFC, 5/19/96, T-1)(HN, 2/11/97)
c1300 The Mississippian people,
the largest pre-Columbian culture north of Mexico, built the earthen
city of Cahokia about this time. The site, discovered in southwestern
Illinois, probably served as a religious center and may have had a
population of up to 80,000. The Mississippians arose around 800 AD and
remained a powerful influence until about the time of the first
European explorers. The loose-knit theocracy held sway over much of
present-day Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Missouri, Ohio and, not surprisingly, Mississippi. They also had
settlements extending sporadically into the upper Midwest and across
the western plains. The largest of the earthen mounds at Cahokia,
called Monks Mound, is 700 feet wide, 100 feet tall and 1000 feet
long--representing a colossal public works program and a government
stable enough to order the construction.
(HNQ, 1/29/01)
1300 The Arapaho and Cheyenne
Indian Nations settled the Colorado area.
(Time, 1990s Almanac CD)
1350 The Fremont Indians, who had
lived in Utah’s Range Creek Canyon since about 200, disappeared from
the archeological record.
(WSJ, 1/31/06, p.B6)(Sm, 3/06, p.74)
1494 Feb 2, Columbus began the
practice using Indians as slaves.
(HN, 2/2/01)
1520 Jul 14, Hernando Cortes
fought the Aztecs at the Battle of Otumba, Mexico.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1541 May 8, Spanish explorer
Hernando de Soto discovered and crossed the Mississippi River, which he
called Rio de Espiritu Santo. He encountered the Cherokee Indians, who
numbered about 25,000 and inhabited the area from the Ohio River to the
north to the Chattahoochee in present day Georgia, and from the valley
of the Tennessee east across the Great Smoky Mountains to the Piedmont
of the Carolinas.
(NG, 5/95, p.78)(AP, 5/8/97)(HN, 5/8/99)
1542 Nov 22, New laws were passed
in Spain giving protection against the enslavement of Indians in
America.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1565 Sep 20, A Spanish fleet under
Pedro Menendez de Aviles wiped out some 350 Frenchmen at Fort Caroline,
in Florida. Spanish forces under Pedro Menendez massacred a band of
French Huguenots that posed a potential threat to Spanish hegemony in
the area. They also took advantage of the local Timucuan Indian tribe.
Artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues managed to escape and return to
France, where he painted watercolors depicting the local botany. His
alleged paintings of Indians living nearby were later thrown into
question.
(WSJ, 8/3/95, p.A-8)(Arch, 1/05, p.47)(WSJ, 7/18/08,
p.W8)(Arch, 5/05, p.31)(Arch, 1/06, p.25)
1571 Feb 2, All eight members of a
Jesuit mission in Virginia were murdered by Indians who pretended to be
their friends.
(HN, 2/2/99)
1571 Feb 9, Algonquin Indians
attacked the Jesuit mission on the Virginia peninsula killing Fr. Juan
Bautista de Segura and 4 other remaining priests.
(AH, 2/06, p.15)
1604 Jun 26, French explorer
Samuel de Champlain, Pierre Dugua and 77 others landed on the island of
St. Croix and made friends with the native Passamaquoddy Indians. It
later became part of Maine on the US-Canadian border.
(PacDis, Spring/'94, p. 43)(SSFC, 6/20/04, p.D10)
1607 May 24, Captain Christopher
Newport and 105 followers founded the colony of Jamestown on the mouth
of the James River in Virginia. They had left England with 144 members,
39 died on the way over. The colony was near the large Indian village
of Werowocomoco, home of Pocahontas, the daughter Powhatan, an
Algonquin chief. In 2003 archeologists believed that they had found the
site of the village. [see May 13-14]
(HN, 5/24/99)(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A2)
1607 May 26, Some 200 Indian
warriors stormed the unfinished stockade at Jamestown, Va. 2 settlers
were killed and 10 seriously wounded before they were repulsed by
cannon fire from the colonists’ 3 moored ships.
(ON, 2/07, p.7)
1607 Jun 15, Colonists in North
America completed James Fort in Jamestown. Hostilities with the Indians
ended as ambassadors said their emperor, Powhatan, had commanded local
chiefs to live in peace with the English.
(HN, 6/15/98)(ON, 2/07, p.7)
1608 Jan, John Smith met with the
Indian emperor Powhatan at Werocomoco on the Pamunkey River. He studied
the Powhattan language and culture. The Powhattans were an aggressive
tribe and under Chief Powhatan’s leadership, they had conquered and
subjugated more than 20 other tribes. Pocahontas was a Powhattan Indian
girl of 10-11 years when she new Smith in Virginia. Records of the
colony were kept by William Strachey, its official historian. The
Powhattans were an aggressive tribe and under Chief Powhattan’s
leadership, they conquered and subjugated more than 20 other tribes.
Before coming to Virginia, John Smith had served as a mercenary in
Hungary and was wounded, captured and sold into slavery by his Turkish
adversaries; he escaped by killing his owner.
(WSJ, 6/13/95, p.A-18)(ON, 2/07, p.8)
1613 The colonists at Jamestown
kidnapped Pocahontas and held for ransom to force her father to free
some English hostages and to return some stolen tools.
(ON, 2/07, p.9)
1614 Apr 5, American Indian
princess Pocahontas (d.1617) married English Jamestown colonist John
Rolfe in Virginia. Having converted to Christianity, she went by the
name Lady Rebecca. Their marriage brought a temporary peace between the
English settlers and the Algonquians.
(HN, 5/5/97)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T12)(AP, 4/5/08)
1616 In a letter to Queen Anne,
Capt. John Smith recalled that Pocahontas had saved the colony at
Jamestown from "death, famine, and utter confusion."
(WSJ, 6/13/95, p.A-18)
1616 American Indian princess
Pocahontas and her husband, Jamestown colonist John Rolfe, sailed to
England with their infant son.
(ON, 2/07, p.9)
1617 Jan 6, Pocahontas, American
Indian princess, attended a court masque with King James I and Queen
Anne.
(ON, 2/07, p.9)
1616 Jan 20, The French explorer
Samuel de Champlain arrived to winter in a Huron Indian village after
being wounded in a battle with Iroquois in New France.
(HN, 1/20/99)
1616-1619 An epidemic, possibly viral hepatitis from
contact with Europeans, ravaged the Wampanoag confederacy in
Massachusetts. This helped to make possible the Pilgrim settlement in
1620.
(Econ, 8/11/07, p.49)
1617 Mar 21, Pocahontas (Rebecca
Rolfe) was buried at the parish church of St. George in Gravesend,
England. As Pocahontas and John Rolfe prepared to sail back to
Virginia, she died reportedly of either small pox or pneumonia. In 2003
Paula Gunn Allen authored "Pocahontas "Medicine Woman, Spy,
entrepreneur, Diplomat."
(AP, 4/5/97)(HN, 5/5/97)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T12)(HN,
3/21/01)(SSFC, 10/19/03, p.M5)
1621 Oct, The first American
Thanksgiving was held in Massachusetts' Plymouth colony in 1621 to give
thanks for a bountiful harvest. 51 Pilgrims served codfish, sea bass
and turkeys while their 90 Wampanoag guests contributed venison to the
feast. After the survival of their first colony through a bitter winter
and the subsequent gathering of the harvest in the autumn, Plymouth
Colony Governor William Bradford issued a thanksgiving proclamation.
During the three-day October thanksgiving the Pilgrims feasted on wild
turkey and venison with their Native American guests. American Indians
introduced cranberries to the white settlers. In 2006 Godfrey Hodgson,
British historian, authored “A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims
and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving.” Hodgson said that there were
no turkeys in the region.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C11)(Econ, 12/18/04, p.122)(SSFC,
11/12/06, p.M1)
1622 Mar 22, The Powhattan
Confederacy massacred 350 colonists in Virginia, a quarter of the
population. On Good Friday more than 300 colonists in and around
Jamestown, Virginia, were massacred by the Powhattan Indians. The
massacre was led by the Powhattan chief Opechancanough and began a
costly 22-year war against the English. Opechancanough hoped that
killing one quarter of Virginia’s colonists would put an end to the
European threat. The result of the massacre was just the opposite,
however, as English survivors regrouped and pushed the Powhattans far
into the interior. Opechancanough launched his final campaign in 1644,
when he was nearly 100 years old and almost totally blind. He was then
captured and executed.
(WSJ, 10/19/98, p.A24)(HNPD, 10/23/98)
1628 May 1, A May festival in
Quincy, Mass., degenerated into an orgy with Indian women.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1630 Feb 22, Indians introduced
pilgrims to popcorn at Thanksgiving.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1630 Jul 12, New Amsterdam's
governor bought Gull Island from Indians for cargo and renamed it
Oyster Island. It later became Ellis Island.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1632 The French explorer Etienne
Brule was killed by the Huron Indians for unknown reasons.
(HNQ, 6/29/98)
1636 Jul 20, John Oldham, trader
in Mass., was murdered by Indians.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1637 May 26, The Connecticut
English militia and their Mohegan allies killed over 600 Pequot Indians
at their village at Mystic. The survivors were parceled out to other
tribes. Those given to the Mohegans eventually became the Mashantucket
Pequots.
(AH, 6/07,
p.18)(www.dowdgen.com/dowd/document/pequots.html)
1642 Feb 25, Dutch settlers
slaughtered lower Hudson Valley Indians in New Netherland, North
America, who sought refuge from Mohawk attackers.
(HN, 2/25/99)
1643 Roger Williams of Providence,
Rhode Island, published “A Key into the Language of America,” a
dictionary of the Narragansett Indian language and a commentary on the
culture and customs of the southern New England Indians. The work was
printed in England by Gregory Dexter.
(AH, 4/07, p.27)
1645 Aug 9, Settlers in New
Amsterdam gained peace with the Indians after conducting talks with the
Mohawks.
(HN, 8/9/98)
1646 Oct 28, The 1st Protestant
church assembly for Indians took place in Massachusetts.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1646 A treaty with Virginia
Indians required the state to protect the Mattaponi from "enemies," but
only on the reservation in King William County. The peace treaty
unraveled the powerful confederation of local Indian tribes and large
amounts of land were ceded to English settlers.
(SFC, 6/4/97, p.A7)(AH, 6/07, p.27)
1649 Iroquois attacks and
starvation decimated the Huron nation from some 12,000 to a few hundred.
(AH, 4/01, p.33)
1653 Nov 5, The Iroquois League
signed a peace treaty with the French, vowing not to wage war with
other tribes under French protection.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1656 Oct 25, A party of Oneida
Indians killed 3 Frenchmen near Montreal. In response Gov. Gen. Louis
d’Ailleboust arrested a hunting party of 12 Mohawks and Onondagas and
ordered the arrest of all Iroquois in the French colonies.
(AH, 4/01, p.34)
1659 Cornelius Meylin, patroon of
Staten Island, wrote in his recollections that Staten Island was
acquired in 1630 in exchange for "kittles, axes, Hoos, wampum, drilling
awles, Jews Harps and diverse small wares." Wampum was also referred to
as peag or seawan by Native Americans and consisted of strung
cylindrical beads made from polished shells. It was formerly used by
some North American Indians as currency and jewelry. It was also used
to record events, as a medium of communication and sometimes for
ceremonial and spiritual purposes.
(WSJ, 11/19/99, p.W10)(HNQ, 3/23/02)
1675 Jun 20, King Philip’s War
began when Indians--retaliating for the execution of three of their
people who had been charged with murder by the English--massacred
colonists at Swansea, Plymouth colony. Abenaki, Massachusetts, Mohegan
& Wampanoag Indians formed an anti English front. Wampanoag
warriors attacked livestock and looted farms.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip%27s_War)(AH, 6/02, p.46)
1675 Jun 23, An English youth shot
a Marauding Wampanoag warrior.
(AH, 6/02, p.46)
1675 Sep 9, Colonial authorities
officially declared war on the Wampanoag Indians. The war soon spread
to include the Abenaki, Norwottock, Pocumtuck and Agawam warriors.
(MC, 9/9/01)(AH, 6/02, p.47)
1676 Feb 10, In King Philip’s War
Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians raided Lancaster, Mass. Over 35
villagers were killed and 24 were taken captive including Mary
Rowlandson (1637-1711) and her 3 children. Rowlandson was freed after
11 weeks and an account of her captivity was published posthumously in
1682.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)(Econ, 2/21/09,
p.83)(http://tinyurl.com/cvrhcv)
1676 Apr 18, Sudbury,
Massachusetts, was attacked by Indians.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1676 Aug 28, Indian chief King
Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by English soldiers, ending
the war between Indians and colonists.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1680 Aug 13, War started when the
Spanish were expelled from Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Indians under Chief
Pope.
(HN, 8/13/98)
1680 Aug 21, Pueblo Indians took
possession of Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish. They
destroyed almost all of the Spanish churches in Taos and Santa Fe.
(AP, 8/21/97)(SFEC, 6/21/98, Z1 p.8)
1683 Jun 23, William Penn signed a
friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania. It became
the only treaty "not sworn to, nor broken."
(HN, 6/23/98)(MC, 6/23/02)
1683 Secatogue Indians deeded land
on the South Shore of Long Island to William Nicoll.
(WSJ, 10/9/07, p.D6)
1686 The Lenape Indians allegedly
sold land along the Lehigh River to William Penn.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1686 Two Mohican Indians signed a
mortgage for their land in Schaghticoke, New York, with simple
markings. It was notarized by Robert Livingston, whose family became
one of the greatest agricultural landlords and int'l. merchants in the
colony of New York.
(WSJ, 11/19/99, p.W10)
1689 Aug 25, The Iroquois took
Montreal.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1690 Feb 8, Some 200 French and
Indian troops burned Schenectady, NY, and massacred about 60 people to
avenge Iraquois raids on Canada.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1700s Several dozen members of the
Calusa Indian tribe, nicknamed "The Fierce Ones," escaped from Florida
to Cuba in the early 1700s after Spanish soldiers and other tribes
overran their region.
(AP, 3/14/04)
1704 English forces attacked
Apalachee Indians in Florida driving them into slavery and exile. Some
800 Apalachee fled west to French-held Mobile.
(WSJ, 3/9/05, p.A1)
1708 Aug 29, French Canadian and
Indian forces attacked the village of Haverhill, Mass., killing 16
settlers.
(AP, 8/29/08)
1711 Sep 22, The Tuscarora Indian
War began with a massacre of settlers in North Carolina, following
white encroachment that included the enslaving of Indian children.
(HN, 9/22/98)
1715 Apr 15, Uprising of Yamasse
Indians in South Carolina.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1725 Feb 20, New Hampshire
militiamen partook in the first recorded scalping of Indians by whites
in North America. 10 sleeping Indians were scalped by whites for scalp
bounty.
(HN, 2/20/99)(MC, 2/20/02)
1725 May 8, John Lovewell, US
Indian fighter, died in battle.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1729 Nov 28, Natchez Indians
massacred most of the 300 French settlers and soldiers at Fort Rosalie,
Louisiana.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1730 The French arrived in
Swanton, Vermont, and the plague followed. The local Abenaki Indians
faded into the woods.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.J7)
1736 May 26, In northwestern
Mississippi, British and Chickasaw Indians defeated a combined force of
French soldiers and Choctaw Indians at the Battle of Ackia, thus
opening the region to English settlement.
(AHD, 1971, p.11)(HN, 5/26/98)
1736 Aug 8, Mahomet Weyonomon, a
Mohegan sachem or leader, died of smallpox while waiting to see King
George II to complain directly about British settlers encroaching on
tribal lands in the Connecticut colony. The tribal chief was buried in
an unmarked grave in a south London churchyard.
(AP, 11/22/06)(http://tinyurl.com/ymbn3c)
1750 Teedyuscung, a Lenape Indian,
joined the Christian mission of Gnadenhutten, founded by Swiss Moravian
settlers in the Lehigh Valley town of Bethlehem.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1750 The Ais Indians of Florida
were wiped out. In 2004 a site on Hutchinson Island, inhabited by the
Ais, revealed 2 thousand year old burials.
(Arch, 1/05, p.13)
1754 Apr, Teedyuscung, a Lenape
Indian, joined the Iroquois Indians in the Wyoming Valley along the
banks of the Susquehanna River.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1754 May 28, Col. George
Washington helped defeat French and Indians at Ft. Duquesne, Pitts.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1754 Jul 3, George Washington
surrendered the small, circular Fort Necessity (later Pittsburgh) in
southwestern Pennsylvania to the French, leaving them in control of the
Ohio Valley. This marked the beginning of the French and Indian War
also called the 7 Years' War. In 2005 Fred Anderson authored “The War
That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War.”
(HN, 7/13/98)(Arch, 1/05, p.46)(WSJ, 12/14/05, p.D15)
1754 Nov 29, The Gnadenhutten
mission, Pa., was attacked by renegade Lenape Indians and 11 white
people were killed.
(ON, 1/03, p.7)
1755 Sep 8, British forces under
William Johnson defeated the French and the Indians at the Battle of
Lake George, N.Y.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1755 Dec 31, Teedyuscung, a Lenape
Indian, led 30 Lenape Indians on a raid against English plantations
along the Delaware River. Over the next few days his band killed 7 men
and took 5 prisoners.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1756 Apr 14, Gov. Glen of South
Carolina protested against 900 Acadia Indians.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1756 May 15, French and Indian War
broke out between France and England, with final defeat of the French
coming in 1763 with the British victory at the Battle of Quebec on the
Plains of Abraham. [see May 17]
(MC, 5/15/02)
1756 May 17, Britain declared war
on France, beginning the French and Indian War. England hoped to
conquer Canada. [see May 15]
(HN, 5/17/98)(HNPD, 9/13/98)
1756 Nov 12, Teedyuscung, a Lenape
Indian, spoke with Gov. Denny at Easton, Pa., to discuss grievances.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1758 Jul 8, During the French and
Indian War a British attack on Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, New York,
was foiled by the French. Some 3,500 Frenchmen defeated the British
army of 15,000, which lost 2,000 men.
(HN, 7/8/98)(AH, 10/02, p.27)
1758 Aug 29, New Jersey
Legislature formed the 1st Indian reservation.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1758 Sep 18, James Abercromby was
replaced as supreme commander of British forces after his defeat by
French commander, the Marquis of Montcalm, at Fort Ticonderoga during
the French and Indian War.
(HN, 9/18/98)
1760 Feb 16, Cherokee Indians held
hostage at Fort St. George, SC, were killed in revenge for Indian
attacks on frontier settlements.
(HN, 2/16/99)(MC, 2/16/02)
1760 Aug 7, Ft. Loudon, Tennessee,
surrendered to Cherokee Indians.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1761 French and Indians forces in
the Ohio Valley were defeated.
(ON, 1/03, p.7)
1761 In western North Carolina
British soldiers razed Kituwha, the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
Punitive raids here were repeated in 1776.
(Arch, 9/02, p.70)
1763 Feb 10, Britain, Spain and
France signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years’ War, aka the
French-Indian War. France ceded Canada to England and gave up all her
territories in the New World except New Orleans and a few scattered
islands including St. Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of
Newfoundland.
(HN, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/97)(AP, 2/10/08)(AH, 2/06,
p.55)
1763 Apr 19, Teedyuscung, a Lenape
Indian leader, burned to death while sleeping in his cabin in the
Wyoming Valley, Pa. The fire destroyed the whole Indian village. A few
days later settlers from Connecticut arrived to resume their
construction of a town.
(ON, 1/03, p.6)
1763 May 7, Indian chief Pontiac
began his attack on a British fort in present-day Detroit, Michigan.
(HN, 5/7/99)
1763 Jul 24, Ottawa Chief Pontiac
led an uprising in the wild, distant lands that would one day become
Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1763 Oct 7, George III of Great
Britain issued a royal proclamation reserving for the crown the right
to acquire land from western tribes. This closed lands in North America
north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement and ended the
acquisition efforts of colonial land syndicates. The Royal Proclamation
of 1763 guaranteed Indian rights to land and self-government.
(www.bloorstreet.com/200block/rp1763.htm)(SSFC,
8/29/04, p.M5)(Econ, 9/16/06, p.46)
1763 British forces, under orders
from Sir Jeffrey Amherst, distributed smallpox-infected blankets among
American Indians in the 1st known case of its use as a biological
weapon.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(NW, 10/14/02, p.50)
1764 Nov 16, Indians surrendered
to British in Indian War of Chief Pontiac.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1766 Jul 24, At Fort Ontario,
Canada, Ottawa chief Pontiac and William Johnson signed a peace
agreement.
(HN, 7/24/98)
1766 Jonathan Carver, an
American-born British army officer, set out to cross the American
continent, but was stopped in Minnesota by a war between the Sioux and
Chippewa.
(SFC, 1/31/04, p.D12)
1767 Oct 9, The survey party of
Mason and Dixon came to a halt after 233 miles when Indians of the Six
Nations said they had reached the end of their commission. [see Oct 18]
(ON, 2/04, p.10)
1768 Nov 5, William Johnson, the
northern Indian Commissioner, signed a treaty with the Iroquois Indians
to acquire much of the land between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers for
future settlement.
(HN, 11/5/98)
1769 Apr 20, Ottawa Chief Pontiac
(b~1720) was murdered by an Indian in Cahokia.
(WUD, 1994, p.1117)(HN, 4/20/98)
1775 Mar 17, Richard Henderson, a
North Carolina judge, representing the Transylvania Company, met with
three Cherokee Chiefs (Oconistoto, chief warrior and first
representative of the Cherokee Nation or tribe of Indians, and
Attacuttuillah and Sewanooko) to purchase (for the equivalent of
$50,000) all the land lying between the Ohio, Kentucky and Cumberland
rivers; some 17 to 20 million acres. It was known as the Treaty of
Sycamore Shoals or The Henderson Purchase. The purchase was later
declared invalid but land cession was not reversed.
(www.tngenweb.org/cessions/17750317.html)
1775 James Adair (~65) authored
“The History of the American Indians,” based on his experiences living
in their midst. In 2005 Kathryn E. Holland Braund edited a new edition.
(WSJ, 2/11/05, p.W6)
1776 Spanish explorers encountered
the native Havasupai Indians in Arizona.
(SSFC, 2/19/06, p.F4)
1777 Nov 15, The Continental
Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, precursor to the U.S.
Constitution. The structure of the Constitution was inspired by the
Iroquois Confederacy of six major northeastern tribes. The matrilineal
society of the Iroquois later inspired the suffragist movement.
(AP, 11/15/97)(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.2)
1778 Aug 31, British killed 17
Stockbridge Indians in Bronx during Revolution.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1778 Sep 7, Shawnee Indians
attacked and laid siege to Boonesborough, Kentucky.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1778 Sep 17, The 1st treaty
between the US and Indian tribes was signed at Fort Pitt.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1778 Nov
11, British redcoats, Tory rangers and Seneca Indians in central New
York state killed more than 40 people in the Cherry Valley Massacre. A
regiment of 800 Tory rangers under Butler (1752-1781) and 500 Native
forces under the Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant (1742-1807), fell upon
the settlement, killing 47, including 32 noncombatants, mostly by
tomahawk.
(www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Cherry-Valley-Massacre)(AP, 11/11/07)
1781-1782 Smallpox, reduced the Mandans, a Missouri
River tribe of 40,000 people, down to 2,000 survivors. They partially
recovered, increasing their numbers to some 12,000 by 1837.
(www.madoc1170.com/madoc.htm)
1782 Mar 8, The Gnadenhutten
massacre took place as some 90 Christian Delaware Indians were slain by
militiamen in Ohio in retaliation for raids carried out by other
Indians.
(AP, 3/8/98)(AH, 4/07, p.14)
1784 The British gave their Indian
allies from New York a large parcel of land southwest of Toronto after
they fled to Canada following the American war of independence. In 2006
the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy claimed that part of this land had
been sold without their proper consent for a new housing development in
Caledonia.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.46)
1785 Jan 21, Chippewa, Delaware,
Ottawa and Wyandot Indians signed a treaty of Fort McIntosh, ceding
present-day Ohio to the United States.
(HN, 1/21/99)
1790 Oct 3, John Ross, Chief of
the United Cherokee Nation from 1839 to 1866, was born near Lookout
Mountain, Tennessee. Although his father was Scottish and his mother
only part Cherokee, Ross was named Tsan-Usdi (Little John) and raised
in the Cherokee tradition. A settled people with successful farms,
strong schools, and a representative government, the Cherokee resided
on 43,000 square miles of land they had held for centuries.
(LCTH, 10/3/99)
1790 The US Trade and Intercourse
Act prohibited states from acquiring land from Indians without federal
approval.
(SFC, 1/13/99, p.A9)(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)
1791 Nov
3, Gen. St. Clair moved his force of approximately 1,400 men to some
high ground on the upper Wabash River. St. Clair was looking for the
forces of Michikinikwa (Chief Little Turtle 1752-1812), who had
recently defeated Gen. Josiah Harmar’s (1753-1813) army. St. Clair
deployed only minimal sentry positions. [see Nov 4]
(DoW, 1999, p.168)
1791 Nov 4, General Arthur St.
Clair, governor of Northwest Territory, was badly defeated by a large
Indian army near Fort Wayne. Miami Indian Chief Little Turtle
(1752-1812) led the powerful force of Miami, Wyandot, Iroquois,
Shawnee, Delaware, Ojibwa and Potawatomi that inflicted the greatest
defeat ever suffered by the U.S. Army at the hands of North American
Indians. Some 623 regulars led by General Arthur St. Clair were killed
and 258 wounded on the banks of the Wabash River near present day Fort
Wayne, Indiana. The staggering defeat moved Congress to authorize a
larger army in 1792.
(HNQ, 8/10/98)(HN, 11/4/98)
1794 Aug 20, American General "Mad
Anthony" Wayne defeated the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen
Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the
area.
(HN, 8/20/98)
1794 Nov 11, The Treaty of
Canandaigua was signed at Canandaigua, New York, by fifty sachems and
war chiefs representing the Grand Council of the Six Nations of the
Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy (including the Cayuga, Mohawk,
Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes), and by Timothy
Pickering, official agent of President George Washington. The
Canandaigua Treaty, a Treaty Between the United States of America and
the Tribes of Indians Called the Six Nations, was signed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Canandaigua)
1795 Spring, Some 300 Indians fled
Mission Dolores in San Francisco following a year of food shortages and
disease that killed over 200. They sought refuge in the East Bay hills
and Napa.
(SFC, 9/26/03, p.D15)
1795-1840 New York state and local governments
entered into 26 treaties and several purchase agreements with the
Oneida Indians to acquire all but 32 of 270,000 acres. Almost none of
the transactions were approved by Congress as required by a 1790 law.
(SFC, 1/13/99, p.A9)
1804 Mar 26, Congress ordered the
removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to Louisiana.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1805 Feb 11, At Fort Mandan ND
Sacajawea (16), the Shoshoni guide for Lewis & Clark, gave birth to
a son, with Meriwether Lewis serving as midwife. Sacagawea, the young
Native American girl who aided the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was of
the Lemhi Shoshones, who made their home in what is now southeastern
Idaho and southwestern Montana. About 1800 Sacagawea was captured by a
Hidatsa raiding party at the Three Forks of the Missouri River.
Sometime in 1804, she and another woman were purchased by
French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, who lived among the
Hidatsa and Mandan Indians, to be his wives.
(HN, 2/11/99)(HNQ, 12/1/99)(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1805 Sep 23, Lieutenant Zebulon
Pike paid $2,000 to buy from the Sioux a 9-square-mile tract at the
mouth of the Minnesota River that would be used to establish a military
post, Fort Snelling.
(HN, 9/23/98)
1811 Nov 7, Gen. William Henry
Harrison won a battle against the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of
Tippecanoe in the Indiana territory. Tenskwatawa, the brother of
Shawnee leader Tecumseh, was engaged in the Battle of the Wabash, aka
Battle of Tippecanoe, in spite of his brother’s strict admonition to
avoid it. The battle near the Tippecanoe River with the regular and
militia forces of Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison,
took place while Tecumseh was out of the area seeking support for a
united Indian movement. The battle, which was a nominal victory for
Harrison’s forces, effectively put an end to Tecumseh’s dream of a
pan-Indian confederation. Harrison’s leadership in the battle also
provided a useful campaign slogan for his presidential bid in 1840.
(HFA, ‘96, p.46)(HNQ, 5/28/98)(HN, 11/7/98)
1813 Aug 30, Creek Indians
massacred over 500 whites at Fort Mims Alabama.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1813 Oct 5, The Battle of
Moraviantown was decisive in the War of 1812. Known as the Battle of
the Thames in the United States, the US victory over British and Indian
forces near Ontario at the village of Moraviantown on the Thames River
is know in Canada as the Battle of Moraviantown. Some 600 British
regulars and 1,000 Indian allies under English General and Shawnee
leader Tecumseh were greatly outnumbered and quickly defeated by US
forces under the command of Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison. Tecumseh
(45) was killed in this battle.
(HN, 10/5/98)(PC, 1992 ed, p.378)
1813 Oct 15, During the land
defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief
Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812),
was killed. [see Oct 5]
(HN, 10/15/98)
1813 Nov 3, American troops
destroy the Indian village of Tallushatchee in the Mississippi Valley.
US troops under Gen Coffee destroyed an Indian village at Talladega,
Ala.
(HN, 11/3/99)(MC, 11/3/01)
1814 Mar 27, General Jackson led
U.S. soldiers who killed 700 Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend, La. [in
Northern Alabama] Jackson lost 49 men.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.4)(HN, 3/27/99)
1814 Mar 29, In the Battle at
Horseshoe Bend, Alabama, Andrew Jackson beat the Creek Indians. [see
Mar 27]
(MC, 3/29/02)
1814 Jul 22, Five Indian tribes in
Ohio made peace with the United States and declared war on Britain.
(HN, 7/22/98)
1814 Aug 9, Andrew Jackson and the
Creek Indians signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23
million acres of Mississippi Creek territory. This ended Indian
resistance in the region and opened the doors to pioneers after the
conclusion of the War of 1812.
(HN, 8/9/98)(HNQ, 8/13/99)
1816 Jul 27, US troops destroyed
the Seminole Fort Apalachicola, to punish the Indians for harboring
runaway slaves.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1817 Nov 20, 1st Seminole War
began in Florida. [see Nov 27]
(MC, 11/20/01)
1817 Nov 27, US soldiers attacked
a Florida Indian village and began the Seminole War. [see Nov 20]
(MC, 11/27/01)
1818 Apr 7, Gen. Andrew Jackson
captured St. Marks, Fla., from the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1818 Apr 18, A regiment of Indians
and blacks was defeated at the Battle of Suwann, in Florida, ending the
first Seminole War.
(HN, 4/18/99)
1818 Oct 19, US and Chickasaw
Indians signed a treaty.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1822 Feb 9, The American Indian
Society organized.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1824 Mar 11, The U.S. War
Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A lifelong friend and
trusted aide of Ulysses S. Grant, Ely Parker rose to the top in two
worlds, that of his native Seneca Indian tribe and the white man's
world at large. He went on to become the first Indian to lead the
Bureau.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1825 Jan 27, Congress approved
Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), clearing the way for forced
relocation of the Eastern Indians on the "Trail of Tears."
(HN, 1/27/99)
1825 Feb 12, Creek Indian treaty
signed. Tribal chiefs agreed to turn over all their land in Georgia to
the government and migrate west by Sept 1, 1826.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1825 The Bureau of Indian Affairs
began as an office of the War Department that dealt with what white
Americans saw as the "Indian problem."
(SFC, 9/9/00, p.A3)
1827 Nov 15, Creek Indians lost
all their property in US.
(MC, 11/15/01)
1828 Feb 21, The first issue of
the Cherokee Phoenix, the 1st American Indian newspaper in US, was
printed, both in English and in the newly invented Cherokee alphabet.
(HN, 2/21/98)(MC, 2/21/02)
1828 May 6, The Cherokee Indians
were forced to sign a treaty giving up their Arkansas Reservation for a
new home in what later became Oklahoma. This led to a split in the
tribe as one group moved to Oklahoma and others stayed behind and
became known as the Lost Cherokees.
(Econ, 3/11/06,
p.28)(http://digital.library.okstate.edu/KAPPLER/Vol2/treaties/che0288.htm)
1829-1837 Andrew Jackson was President of the US. In
2001 Robert V. Remini authored "Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars."
(A&IP, ESM, p.96b, photo)(SSFC, 7/15/01, DB p.63)
1830 May 28, Congress authorized
Indian removal from all states to western prairie.
(HN, 5/28/98)
1830 Jul 15, Three Indian tribes,
Sioux, Sauk & Fox, signed a treaty giving the US most of Minnesota,
Iowa & Missouri.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1830 Pres. Andrew Jackson
forced Thomas L. McKenney from his job as the 1st US superintendent of
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Jackson disagreed with McKenney’s opinion
that “the Indian was, in his intellectual and moral structure, our
equal.”
(WSJ, 3/15/06, p.D16)
1832 Apr 8, Some 300 American
troops of the 6th Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to
confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk
War.
(HN, 4/8/99)
1832 Aug 2, Troops under General
Henry Atkinson massacred Sauk Indian men, women and children who were
followers of Black Hawk at the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin. Black Hawk
himself finally surrendered three weeks later, bringing the Black Hawk
War to an end.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1832 Aug 27, Black Hawk, leader of
Sauk-Indians, gave himself up.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1832 Oct 14, Blackfeet Indians
attacked American Fur Company trappers near Montana’s Jefferson River,
killing one.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1834 Jun 30, Congress passed the
final Indian Intercourse Act. In addition to regulating relations
between Indians living on Indian land and non-Indians, this final act
identified an area known as "Indian country". This land was described
as being "…all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi
and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory
of Arkansas…" This is the land that became known as Indian Territory.
Oklahoma was declared Indian Territory.
(SFCM, 3/9/08,
p.20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Intercourse_Act)
1834 Mexico granted Don Salvio
Pacheco 18,000 acres in northern California known as Monte del Diablo,
which included what would later became Concord and Walnut Creek. The
family later donated land to the government for roads and public
buildings. The area was originally inhabited by the Bolbones Indians.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.A22)(SFC, 5/26/01, p.A13)(SFC,
7/17/06, p.B5)
1835 Aug 18, The last Pottawatomie
Indians left Chicago.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1835 Dec 30, Cherokees were forced
to move across the Mississippi River after gold was discovered in
Georgia. A minority faction of Cherokee agreed to the emigration of the
whole tribe from their lands by signing the Treaty of New Echota. The
Treaty of New Echota resulted in the cession of all Cherokee land to
the U.S. and provided for the transportation of the Cherokee Indians to
land beyond the Mississippi. The removal of the Cherokee was completed
by 1838.
(NG, 5/95, p.86)(HNQ, 6/21/98)(MC, 12/30/01)
1837 Oct 1, A treaty was made with
the Winnebago Indians.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1837 Oct 21, During the
Second Seminole War (1835-1842), under a flag of truce during peace
talks, U.S. troops under Gen. Thomas S. Jesup (1788-1860) sieged the
Indian Seminole Chief Osceola in Florida and sent to a jail in North
Carolina, where he later died. Jesup's trickery outraged the American
public.
(HN, 10/21/98)(DoW, 1999, p.435)
1837 Dec 25, In the Battle of
Okeechobee US forces defeated the Seminole Indians.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1837 A treaty with the Chippewa
Indians in Minnesota guaranteed their right to hunt and fish and gather
wild rice on territory relinquished to the federal government.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A8)
1837 In California Jose Maria
Amador led a "recapturing expedition." They found and murdered 200
Indians.
(SFC, 12/31/00, BR p.12)
1837-1844 Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall published
their 3-volume work: “The Indian Tribes of North American.”
(WSJ, 3/15/06, p.D16)
1838 Aug, Some 12,000 Cherokee
Indians in 13 ragtag parties followed the Trail of Tears on a 116-day
journey west 800 miles to eastern Oklahoma. Estimates have placed the
death toll in camps and in transit as high as 4,000. They followed the
trail already set by the Choctaw out of Mississippi, the Creek from
Alabama, the Chickasaw from Arkansas and Mississippi, and the Seminole
from Florida.
(NG, 5/95, p.82)(www.crystalinks.com/cherokee2.html)
1838 A smallpox epidemic north of
San Francisco killed over 60,000 Indians.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1842 Aug 14, Seminole War ended
and the Indians were moved from Florida to Oklahoma.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1846 US Army forces under the
command of John C. Fremont conducted a murderous attack on Sacramento
River Maidu Indian villages.
(www.nativeamericancaucus.com/history.shtml)
1847 Jan 24, 1,500 New Mexican
Indians and Mexicans were defeated by US Col. Price.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1847 Miners of Don Miguel Peralta
discovered gold about this time in the Superstition Mountains of
Arizona. His family abandoned the claim after their mining party was
massacred by Apache Indians.
(AHHT, 10/02, p.16)(AH, 10/02,
p.16)(www.ghostradiox.com/qfg/legend_peralta.asp)
1850 Laws in California were
passed that allowed the enslavement of Indians.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1851 Jul 23, Sioux Indians and US
signed the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1851 The Fort Laramie Treaty was
signed between the US government and the Sioux Indians. The Sioux
pledged not to harass the wagon trains traveling the Oregon Trail in
exchange for a $50,000 annuity. The treaty did not last long. Some
12,000 American Indians gathered at Fort Laramie for a peace council
with the US. The government agreed that 12 million acres of the Mandan,
Hidatsa and Arikara Indians would remain free of settlement (eastern
Montana, northeastern Wyoming and western North Dakota). In 1949
Congress authorized a forced relocation to build the Garrison Dam in
North Dakota. In 1986 Martin Cross won a settlement of $149.2 million
for the unjust taking of reservation land. In 2004 Paul VanDevelder
authored “Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial that
Forged a Nation.”
(HT, 3/97, p.43)(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)
1851 California Governor Peter
Burnett said that unless the Indians were sent east of the Sierras, "a
war of extermination would continue to be waged until the Indian race
should become extinct."
(HN, 4/29/00)(WW, 6/99)
1851 Fewer than 100,000 Indians
remained in California.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1852 The Hopi people of northern
Arizona arranged for a diplomatic packet to reach Pres. Fillmore via a
delegation of 5 prominent men from the Tewas of Tesuque Pueblo in New
Mexico, who sought legal protection from Anglo and Hispanic settlers.
(NH, 11/1/04, p.26)
1854 In Keshena Falls, Wisconsin,
the Menomonee (people of the wild rice) Chiefs Oshkosh and Keshena met
with federal Indian agents and agreed to retain only 275,000 acres from
their original 9 ½ million acres. As part of the settlement the
chiefs and their followers were promised eternal government protection.
In 1954 Congress voted to withdraw that support.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.235)
1854 White settlers in Del Norte
County, Ca., ambushed and killed 30 Tolowa Indians at the Etculet
village on Lake Earl.
(SFEC, 7/16/00, p.B1)
1855 The US government signed a
treaty with some American Indians that gave them permanent rights to
their existing lands. The Makah tribe of Washington secured a right to
hunt whales in exchange for ceding title to their land. In 1972 the
Marine Mammals Protection Act prohibited the slaughter of whales
without a permit.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par. p.5)(SFC,10/24/97, p.A9)(SSFC,
7/13/08, p.E4)
1855 Nez Perce elders agreed to
sell most of their land to the US government. They retained some 10
thousand square miles as a reservation in the area where Washington,
Oregon and Idaho meet. Gold was soon discovered in the area and in 1863
the US government called for a new deal.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1856 Aug 11, A band of rampaging
settlers in California killed four Yokut Indians. The settlers had
heard unproven rumors of Yokut atrocities.
(HN, 8/11/99)
1856 Apr 28, Yokut Indians
repelled an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in
California.
(HN, 4/28/00)
1856 Apr 29, During the Tule River
War Yokut Indians repelled a second attack by the 'Petticoat Rangers,'
a band of civilian Indian fighters-some wearing body armor-at Four
Creeks, California. The Yokuts lived along the shores of Tulare Lake in
the Central Valley, which disappeared by 1900 due to water diversion
and farming.
(HN, 4/29/00)(WW, 6/99)
1857 Sep 11, Indians incited by
Mormon John D. Lee killed 120 California-bound settlers in the Mountain
Meadows Massacre.
(HN, 9/11/98)
1860 Feb 26, White settlers
massacred a band of Wiyot Indians at the village of Tuluwat on Indian
Island near Eureka, Ca. At least 60 women, children and elders were
killed. Bret Harte, newspaper reporter in Arcata, fed the news to
newspapers in San Francisco.
(SFC, 2/28/04, p.D1)
1860 Apr 30, Navaho Indians
attacked Fort Defiance (Canby).
(MC, 4/30/02)
1860 Jun
9, The first dime novel: "Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White
Hunter," written by Ann Sophia Stephens (1813-1886), was published by
Beadle and Adams in NYC.
(AP, 6/9/02)(www.niulib.niu.edu/badndp/dn01.html)
1860 More laws in California were
passed that allowed the enslavement of Indians.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1860-1940 Silver Horn, artist, was a Kiowa Indian
born in what later became Oklahoma. His work included ledger-book
drawings and hide paintings that recorded Kiowa history and culture.
(SFC, 4/19/00, p.A28)
1861 Feb 7, The general council of
the Choctaw Indian nation adopted a resolution declaring allegiance
with the South "in the event a permanent dissolution of the American
Union takes place."
(AP, 2/7/07)
1861 Feb 18, At Fort Wise, Kansas,
Indian tribes ceded possessions, enough to constitute two great States
of the Union, retaining only a small district for themselves on both
sides of the Arkansas river, which included the country around Fort
Lyon.
(http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm)
1861 Apr 30, President Lincoln
ordered Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1861 Aug 12, Texas rebels were
attacked by Apaches.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1862 Aug 8, Minnesota’s 5th
Infantry fought the Sioux Indians in Redwood, Minn., and 24 soldiers
were killed.
(SFC, 2/7/03, p.A23)
1862 Aug 18, A Sioux Uprising
began uprising in Minnesota. It resulted in more than 800 white
settlers dead and 38 Sioux Indians condemned and hanged. The Minnesota
Uprising began when four young Sioux murdered five white settlers at
Acton. The Santee Sioux, who lived on a long, narrow reservation on the
south side of the Minnesota River, were reacting to broken government
promises and corrupt Indian agents. a military court sentenced 303
Sioux to die, but President Abraham Lincoln reduced the list. The 38
hangings took place on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minn.
(MC, 8/18/02)(HNQ, 1/4/00)
1862 Sep 21, 300 Indians were
sentenced to hang in Mankato, Minnesota.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1862 Aug 22, Santee Sioux
attacked Fort Ridgely.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1862 Dec 6, President Lincoln
ordered the hanging of 39 of the 303 convicted Indians who participated
in the Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. They were to be hanged on Dec. 26.
The Dakota Indians were going hungry when food and money from the
federal government was not distributed as promised. They led a massacre
that left over 400 white people dead. The uprising was put down and 300
Indians were sentenced to death. Pres. Lincoln reduced the number to
39, who were hanged. The government then nullified the 1851 treaty.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A6)(HN, 12/6/98)
1862 Dec 26, 38 Santee Sioux were
hanged in Mankato, Minn., for their part in the Sioux Uprising.
(HN, 12/26/98)
1863 The US government paid a
group of Nez Perce Indians $265,000 for some 6 million acres in the
area of Lewiston, Oregon.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1863 The Treaty of Ruby Valley
with the Western Shoshone Indians assured their ownership of property
that later became a US nuclear test site. The treaty stated that the
presence of US settlements will not negate Indian sovereignty.
(SFC, 7/12/97, p.E4)(SFEC, 8/29/99, Z1 p.7)
1864 May 15, In mid-May about
daylight Major Downing succeeded in surprising the Cheyenne village of
Cedar Bluffs, in a small canon about 60 miles north of the South Platte
river. “We commenced shooting. I ordered the men to commence killing
them. They lost, as I am informed, some 26 killed and 30 wounded. My
own loss was one killed and one wounded. I burnt up their lodges and
everything I could get hold of. I took no prisoners. We got out of
ammunition and could not pursue them."
(http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm)
1864 Nov 29, In retaliation for an
Indian attack on a party of immigrants near Denver, 750 members of a
Colorado militia unit, led by Colonel John M. Chivington, attacked an
unsuspecting village of Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians camped on Sand
Creek in present-day Kiowa County. Some 300 [163] Indians were killed
in the attack, including women and children, many of whose bodies were
mutilated. Ten soldiers died in the attack. The Sand Creek Massacre, as
this incident came to be called, provoked a savage struggle between
Indians and the white settlers. It also generated two Congressional
investigations into the actions of Chivington and his men. The House
Committee on the Conduct of the War concluded that Chivington had
"deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which
would have disgraced the varied and savage among those who were the
victims of his cruelty."
(HNPD, 11/29/98)(HN, 11/29/98)(SFC, 9/15/00,
p.A9)(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.C13)
1864-1865 Army Col. Kit Carson, directed by Brig.
Gen. James Carleton, forced the move of some 9,000 Dineh Navajo from
Canyon de Chelly in Arizona to the Bosque Redondo reservation near Fort
Sumner, New Mexico. About half the people survived in what came to be
known as the Long Walk. In 2006 Hampton sides authored “Blood and
Thunder: An epic of the American West,” an account of the Navaho move.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.A26)(SFEC, 5/4/97, z1 p.4)(SSFC,
1/7/01, p.T9)(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1865 Jan 7, Cheyenne and Sioux
warriors attacked Julesburg, Colo., in retaliation for the Sand Creek
Massacre.
(HN, 1/7/99)
1865 In California a surprise
attack by settlers wiped out nearly all the Indians of the Yahi tribe,
south of Mt. Lassen. Remnants hid in the mountains for 40 years until
there was but one survivor, Ishi, who emerged in 1911.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.A1)
1865-1890 Wars against the native American Indians
were fought during this period in the Pacific Northwest. In 2003 Peter
Cozzens edited: “Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars, 1865-1890: The Wars
for the Pacific Northwest.”
(AH, 6/03, p.62)
1866 Jul, The Sioux war on the
Powder river commenced. When it commenced General St. George Cook, in
command at Omaha, forbade within the limits of his command the sale of
arms and ammunition to Indians.
(http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm)
1866 Sep 1, Manuelito, the last
Navaho chief, turned himself in at Fort Wingate, New Mexico.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1866 Dec 21, Indians led by Red
Cloud and Crazy Horse killed Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other
men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood. U.S. Army
Captain William J. Fetterman once boasted, "Give me 80 men and I'll
march through the whole Sioux nation!" When Lakota warriors under the
overall leadership of Chief Red Cloud gathered around Fort Phil Kearny
(in what is now Wyoming), Fetterman got command of his 80 men.
Disobeying the orders of his commander, Colonel Henry B Carrington, not
to proceed beyond the Lodge Trail Ridge, Fetterman pursued a band of
retreating Indians--and rode right into a waiting trap, allegedly laid
by the Ogallala warrior Crazy Horse. Fetterman, his executive officer
and 78 troopers were wiped out.
(HNPD, 12/21/98)(HN, 12/21/98)
1866 Dec 26, Native American’s
handed the U.S. Army their worst defeat prior to Little Big Horn at the
Fetterman Fight in Powder River County in the Dakota territory. [see
Dec 21]
(HN, 12/26/98)
1866 In California the Chico
Courant newspaper called for the extermination of Indians.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.4)
1866 Pres. Andrew Johnson signed
an executive order that removed the Shoalwater Bay Indians in
Washington state from their villages and onto a 1-sq. mile reservation.
By 2000 erosion took away over half the tribal land and miscarriages
stood at 4 times the expected rate.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.A8)
1866 Freed Cherokee slaves were
adopted into the tribe under a treaty with the US government. In 2007
the Cherokee Nation voted to revoke citizenship to descendants of the
slaves.
(SFC, 3/5/07, p.A2)
1867 Oct 21, Many leaders of the
Kiowa, Comanche and Kiowa-Apache signed a peace treaty at Medicine
Lodge, Kan. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker refused to accept the treaty
terms.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1868 Jan 7, A US Indian Peace
Commission filed a report to the Pres. Johnson.
(http://facweb.furman.edu/~benson/docs/peace.htm)
1868 Apr 29, The US government and
the Sioux Indians signed another treaty that ended Red Cloud’s War, but
it did not last long. The treaty at Fort Laramie (Wyoming) made the
Black Hills part of the Great Sioux Reservation.
(www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/17638/1146/8)(Econ,
8/2/08, p.37)(AH, 6/03, p.36)
1868 Sep 17, The Battle of
Beecher's Island began, in which Major George "Sandy" Forsyth and 50
volunteers held off 500 Sioux and Cheyenne in eastern Colorado.
(HN, 9/17/98)
1868 Nov 27, Lieutenant Colonel
George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry killed Chief Black Kettle (b.1801) and
about 100 Cheyenne (mostly women and children) on the Washita River
near present day Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
(www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/blackkettle.htm)
1868 Navaho Indians living under
confinement near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, were allowed to return to
their homelands in Arizona following a visit by Gen. William Tecumseh
Sherman. Some 7,100 survivors of the 1864 Long Walk had been released
onto a New Mexico reservation of 5,500 acres. The Navajo returned to
Hopi land where 3.5 million acres, 1/6th of their former homeland, was
returned.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.A26)(SFEC, 5/4/97, z1 p.4)(WSJ,
10/7/06, p.P12)
1870 Jan 1, In Texas Comanche
Indians stole Adolph Korn (10) near the settlement of Castell on the
Llano River. The boy spent 3 years with the Indians and upon his return
spoke only Comanche, ate raw meat and refused to sleep indoors.
(AH, 6/07, p.60)
1870 Jan 23, American army forces,
looking for Mountain Chief's band of hostile Blackfoot Indians, fell
instead upon Heavy Runner's peaceable Piegan band in Montana and killed
173, many of them women and children.
(www.legendsofamerica.com/NA-Blackfoot.html)(SSFC,
12/25/05, p.M2)
1870 Jun 9, Washington: Pres Grant
met with Sioux chief Red Cloud.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1871 Mar 3, Congress passed the
Indian Appropriation Act, which revoked the sovereignty of Indian
nations and made Native Americans wards of the American government. The
act eliminated the necessity of treaty negotiating and established the
policy that tribal affairs could be managed by the U.S. government
without tribal consent.
(HNQ, 5/15/98)
1871 Apr 30, Anglo and Mexican
vigilantes killed 118 Apaches at Camp Grant, Arizona, and kidnapped 28
children.
(www.desertusa.com/mag98/april/stories/campgrant1.html)
1871 May 17, Gen. Sherman, Indian
fighter, escaped in ambulance from the Comanche.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1871 Aug, Joseph became chief of
Nez Perce Indians in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1871 Brit Johnson, a black Texas
ranch foreman, was killed by Kiowa raiders. His home life had been
shattered in 1864 when an Indian raiding party killed his son and
captured his wife along with 2 of their other children. He reportedly
ransomed back his family in 1865 and continued searching for other
stolen children before he was killed. Author Alan Le May (1899-1964)
later used his story as a model in his novel “The Searchers” (1954).
(AH, 6/07,
p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Searchers_%28film%29)
1872 Aug 14, Chief Joseph met in
council with some 40 settlers in the Wallowa Valley and ordered them to
leave the Nez Perce Indian land.
(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1872 Oct 12, Chiricahua Apache
leader Cochise (d.1874) signed a peace treaty with Special Indian
Commissioner, General Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909), in the Arizona
Territory.
(HN, 10/12/98)(ON, 4/07, p.8)
1872 Dec 28, A U.S. Army force
defeated a group of Apache warriors at Salt River Canyon, Arizona
Territory, with 57 Indians killed but only one soldier.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1872 The Osage Indians purchased
close to 2,300 square miles in the Oklahoma Territory from the Cherokee
and created the Osage Reservation.
(SFCM, 3/9/08, p.20)
1868 Navaho Indians in New Mexico
were allowed to return to their homelands in Arizona.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T9)
1872 Nov 28, The Modoc War of
1872-73 began in Siskiyou County, northern California when fighting
broke out between Modoc Chief Captain Jack and a cavalry detail led by
Captain James Jackson. At Lava Beds National Monument in northern
California 52 [60] Modoc warriors held off over 1,000 US Army troops
for five months. The 4 year conflict was described in the 1997 book
"Hell with the Fire Out" by Arthur Quinn, a re-creation of the war from
eye-witness accounts.
(SFC,10/16/96,zz1p.1)(SFEC, 4/6/97, BR p.5)(SFEC,
10/25/98, p.T9)(HN, 11/28/98)
1873 Jun 16, Pres. Grant signed an
executive order that permitted Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce to live
in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon, to perpetuity.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par. p.5)(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1873 Oct 3, Captain Jack and three
other Modoc Indians were hanged in Oregon for the murder of General
Edward Canby.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1873 Nov 19, James Reed and two
accomplices robbed the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw
Nation.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1874 Jun
8, Cochise (b.~1810), Chiricahua Apache war chief (his name meant “his
nose”) and leader of the Chokonen band, died on a reservation in the
Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona.
(http://tinyurl.com/aqhkr)
1874 Jul 2, Colonel Custer
departed from Fort Abraham Lincoln with some 1,000 soldiers and 70
Indian scouts on a 1200 mile expedition to chart the Black Hills of
eastern Wyoming western South Dakota, land which belonged to the Sioux.
The expedition returned on August 30.
(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 Aug 2, Gold was discovered in
the Black Hills of western South Dakota during an expedition led by
Colonel Custer. The land belonged to the Sioux but was invaded by
prospectors. Sioux leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull retaliated.
(HT, 3/97, p.43)(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 Sep 28, Colonel Ranald
Mackenzie (d.1889) raided a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the
Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.
(HN, 9/28/98)(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.53)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta,
known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrenders in Darlington, Texas.
He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide
October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1874 Capt. James Cass of Bristol,
England, built a wharf and pier named Cass Landing on the north end of
Morro Bay, Ca., to facilitate the loading of ships carrying lumber,
staples and dairy products between the Central Coast and San
Francisco. It became the town of Cayucos, carved from the Morro y
Cayucos Rancho. The name was after a unique plank canoe (cayuco)
invented by the local Chumash Indians.
(SSFC, 1/4/09, p.E6)
1874-1875 The Gatling gun was first used against the
Comanche Indians at the Battle of Red River in the Texas Panhandle.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.B4)
1875 Jun, Nez Perce Chief Joseph
learned that had rescinded the executive order of 1873 and reopened the
Wallowa Valley to white settlement.
(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1876 Mar 17, Gen. Crook destroyed
Cheyenne and Ogallala-Sioux Indian camps.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1876 Jun 17, General George
Crook’s command was attacked and bested on the Rosebud River by 1,500
Sioux and Cheyenne under the leadership of Crazy Horse.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1876 Jun 25, To crush the Plains
Indians and drive them onto reservations, Lt. Col. George Armstrong
Custer and more than 600 7th Cavalrymen and Indian scouts advanced on
an Indian encampment in the Little Bighorn Valley of Montana. Custer's
main concern was to keep the Indians from escaping, but on this day, he
faced the biggest alliance of hostile Plains Indians--mostly Sioux and
Cheyenne--ever gathered in one place. Custer and his entire personal
command, about 210 soldiers, were wiped out. Many reasons for the
military disaster have been promulgated, including the divided command,
the difficult terrain, internal regimental jealousies, the weapons used
and the quality of the troops. However, exactly what took place during
the Battle of the Little Bighorn, particularly during what has become
known as Custer's Last Stand, may never be known.
(HNPD, 6/25/98)
1876 Jun 25, In the Battle of the
Little Bighorn in Montana, Gen. George A. Custer and some 250 men in
his 7th Cavalry were massacred by the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. To
crush the Plains Indians and drive them onto reservations, Lt. Col.
George Armstrong Custer and more than 600 7th Cavalrymen and Indian
scouts advanced on an Indian encampment in the Little Bighorn Valley of
Montana. Custer's main concern was to keep the Indians from escaping,
but on this day, he faced the biggest alliance of hostile Plains
Indians--mostly Sioux and Cheyenne--ever gathered in one place. Custer
and his entire personal command, about 210 soldiers, were wiped out.
The site is near a region where paleontologist Prof. Edward Drinker
Cope dug for dinosaur fossils just a few days after the massacre.
Custer and his cavalrymen had attacked an encampment of 2,000 to 4,000
Lakota, Cheyenne and other Indians.
(WSJ, 11/1/94, p.1)(SFC, 6/28/96, p.A5)(AP,
6/25/97)(HN, 6/25/98)(HNPD, 6/25/99)
1876 Jul 17, At Warbonnet Creek,
Nebraska, Buffalo Bill Cody took the scalp of Cheyenne Chief Yellow
Hair (Yellow Hand) following a duel.
(http://tinyurl.com/a4ja2)(WSJ, 12/13/05, p.D8)
1876 Aug 15, US law removed
Indians from Black Hills after gold find. Sioux leaders Crazy Horse and
Sitting Bull led their warriors to protect their lands from invasion by
prospectors following the discovery of gold. This led to the Great
Sioux Campaign staged from Fort Laramie. Gold was discovered in
Deadwood in the Dakota territory by Quebec brothers Fred and Moses
Manuel. The mine was incorporated in California on Nov 5, 1877, as the
Homestake Mining Company.
(HT, 3/97, p.43)(WSJ, 1/5/00, p.CA1)(MC, 8/15/02)
1876 Sep, Sitting Bull, a
legendary Hunkpapa Sioux chief and medicine man, led an escape to
Canada in the vengeful aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Even though he had not fought in the June 25 massacre, the medicine man
was considered a threat by white authorities because his visions of
victory had encouraged the uprising. In 1881 famine forced Sitting
Bull's band back to a reservation in the United States. Throughout the
mid-1880s, Sitting Bull won international fame as the prototype of the
American Indian when he joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show on
tour. Sitting Bull returned to the reservation at Wounded Knee, South
Dakota, where he was killed in 1890 during a struggle with Indian
police.
(HNPD, 9/27/98)
1876 Nov 25, Colonel Ronald
MacKenzie destroyed Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife’s village, in the Bighorn
Mountains near the Red Fork of the Powder River, during the so-called
Great Sioux War.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1876 In Canada the Indian Act was
enacted by the Parliament under the provisions of Section 91(24) of the
Constitution Act, 1867, which provides Canada's federal government
exclusive authority to legislate in relation to "Indians and Lands
Reserved for Indians." The statute concerns registered Indians (that
is, First Nations peoples of Canada), their bands, and the system of
Indian reserves.
(Econ, 3/28/09,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Act)
1877 May 6, Chief Crazy Horse
surrendered to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Crazy Horse brought General
Custer to his end.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1877 May 7, Indian chief Sitting
Bull entered Canada with a trail of Indians after the Battle of Little
Big Horn.
(HN, 5/7/99)
1877 May 14, General Howard gave
Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces 30 days to leave the Wallowa Valley and
settle at Lapwai on the upper Clearwater River.
(ON, 3/04, p.5)
1877 Jun 14, Two Nez Perce Indians
killed 3 white men.
(ON, 3/04, p.5)
1877 Jun 15, The US Army under
Gen’l. Oliver Otis Howard began to pursue some 800 Nez Perce. The Nez
Perce had been ordered to leave the Valley of the Winding Waters
(Wallowa Valley) in Oregon.
(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A13)(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par p.1)(SSFC,
7/9/06, p.G4)
1877 Jun 16, The Nez Perce War
began in the northwestern US. The First Squadron of the First Regiment,
the oldest cavalry unit in the US, fought the Apaches and the Nez
Perces.
(WUD, 1994, p.964)(WSJ, 12/27/95, p. A-1)(ON, 3/04,
p.5)
1877 Aug 10, Col. John Gibbon
slaughtered Nez-Perce Indians at Big Hole River.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1877 Aug 22, Nez Perce fled into
Yellowstone National Park.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1877 Sep 5, The great Sioux
warrior Crazy Horse, a cousin of Kicking Bear, was fatally bayoneted at
age 36 by a soldier at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. In 1975 Stephen Ambrose
authored "Crazy Horse and Custer." In 2002 Ambrose was accused of
plagiarizing from the 1955 book "Custer" by Jay Monaghan (d.1980). In
1999 Larry McMurtry authored the biography "Crazy Horse" for the
Penguin Lives series. In 2004 Joseph M. Marshall III authored “The
Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History.” In 2006 Kingsley M. Bray
authored “Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life.”
(SFEC, 2/7/99, Par p.14)(HN, 12/24/99)(SFC, 1/9/02,
p.A2)(SSFC, 12/5/04, p.E5)(AH, 10/07, p.62)
1877 Oct 5, Nez Perce Chief Joseph
and 418 survivors were captured in the Bear Paw mountains and forced
into reservations in Kansas. They surrendered in Montana Territory,
after a 1,700-mile trek to reach Canada fell 40 miles short. Nez Perce
Chief Joseph surrendered to General O.O. Howard and Colonel Nelson
Miles at the Bear Paw ravine in Montana Territory, saying, "Hear me, my
chiefs, my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will
fight no more, forever." The retreat had lasted three months and left
120 Nez Perces dead. Miles had found and surrounded the Nez Perce camp
with the help of Sioux and Cheyenne scouts. Many whites, including
Howard, admired the Nez Perces' fighting ability and Chief Joseph
himself, who was considered humane and eloquent. He died in 1904.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A13)(HNPD,
10/5/98)(HN, 10/5/98)
1877 Oct 17, Brigadier General
Alfred Terry met with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians'
return to the United States.
(HN, 10/17/99)
1877 Sep 5, The great Sioux
warrior Crazy Horse, [Tashunka Witko], was fatally bayoneted at age 36
[27] by a soldier in a (US) Army jail at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. In
1999 Larry McMurtry authored the biography "Crazy Horse" for the
Penguin Lives series.
(HN, 9/5/98)(SFEC, 2/7/99, Par p.14)(MC, 9/5/01)
1878 Cheyenne Indians fled to the
Powder River home in Wyoming. The Howard Fast novel "Freedom Road"
(1941) told their story.
(SFC, 3/13/03, p.A21)
1879 Sep 29, Dissatisfied Ute
Indians killed Agent Nathan Meeker and nine others in the "Meeker
Massacre."
(HN, 9/29/98)
1879 Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt
persuaded Washington to hand over the mothballed Carlisle military
barracks in Pennsylvania for use as a school for American Indians. In
the early 20th century the school became a football powerhouse, beating
Army in 1912. In 1918 the school was turned into a hospital to receive
soldiers wounded in WW I.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.P9)
1880 Oct 14, Apache leader
Victorio was slain in Mexico. [see Oct 15]
(HN, 10/14/98)
1880 Oct 15, Victorio, feared
leader of the Minbreno Apache, was killed by Mexican troops in
northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. [see Oct 14]
(HN, 10/15/98)
1880 Pueblo Chochiti men led
anthropologist Adolph F.A. Bandolier to Frijoles Canyon in New Mexico.
Bandolier later authored the novel on Pueblo life called “The
Delightmakers.” Cliff dwelling in the area were preserved (1916) in a
national park named after Bandelier.
(SSFC, 8/1/04, p.D7)
1881 Jul 20, Sioux Indian leader
Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn,
surrendered to federal troops.
(AP, 7/20/97)(HN, 7/20/98)
1881 The only recorded
19th-century incident in which Indian scouts turned against the U.S.
Army occurred at Cibicue Creek in Arizona Territory. At Cibicue Creek,
White Mountain Apache scouts were asked to campaign against their own
kin, resulting in a mutiny against the army soldiers. Three of the
mutinous scouts were later court-martialed and executed.
(HNQ, 2/27/99)
1882 The US government confined
the Havasupai Indians to a 518-acre reservation in Havasu Canyon,
Arizona.
(SSFC, 2/19/06, p.F4)
1883 Nov 3, U.S. Supreme Court
declared American Indians to be "dependent aliens."
(HN, 11/3/98)
1883 The US Supreme Court ruled
that the Dakota Territory court had no jurisdiction in a case in which
a member of the Lakota nation killed a fellow member on tribal land.
The decision overturned a death sentence and effectively gave exclusive
jurisdiction for crimes to tribes. In 1885 US Congress passed the Major
Crimes Act taking away the tribes’ authority to prosecute serious
crimes such as murder, manslaughter and rape.
(WSJ, 8/13/07, p.A12)
1884 Nov, The novel "Ramona" by
Helen Hunt Jackson was published. It was about a love affair between a
half-Indian girl and a Luisea Indian in southern California. It also
served a covert tract on Indian oppression in America. In 1990 Valerie
Sherer Mathes published "Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform
Legacy." In 1998 Mathes edited: "The Indian Reform Letters of Helen
Hunt Jackson."
(SFEC, 12/20/98, BR p.5)
1884 Some 500 Blackfeet Indians in
Montana died during the winter from starvation. Reservation agent John
Young kept rations on hand for the white people.
(SSFC, 9/9/01, Par p.7)
1885 Mar 3, The United States
Congress passed the Major Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 1153). It placed seven
major crimes under federal jurisdiction if they are committed by a
Native American in Native territory regardless of whether the victim of
the crime was Native.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/437/634/)
1885 Chief Joseph and his band of
Nez Perce were allowed to take up residence on the Colville reservation
in northern Washington.
(ON, 3/04, p.5)
1886 Apr 11, General Nelson A.
Miles arrived at Fort Bowie, Ariz., to begin his assignment to
subjugate or destroy a band of Apaches led by Geronimo.
(ON, 10/06, p.1)
1886 Apr 27, A band of Apaches led
by Geronimo attacked a ranch west of Fort Huachuca and killed 3
American citizens.
(ON, 10/06, p.1)
1886 Sep 4, Elusive Apache leader
Geronimo (1829-1909) surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles (1839-1925)
at Skeleton Canyon, Ariz. This ended the last major US-Indian war.
(HN, 9/4/98)(ON, 10/06, p.4)
1887 Feb 8, US Senator Henry
Dawes sponsored the Dawes Severalty Act that authorized the survey of
Indian territories in the West, in order that the commonly held tribal
lands might be broken up into property allotments of 40 to 160 acres.
The Dawes Act gave citizenship to Indians living apart from their
tribe. Section Six stated that upon completion of a Land Patent
process, the allotment holder will become a United States citizen and
"be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such
citizens." Native Americans in general did not become citizens until
the Snyder Act of 1924.
(NG, 5/95, p.91)(HN, 2/7/97)(AP, 6/2/97)
1887 Feb 8, The Allotment Act
(Dawes Act) tried to break up tribal land ownership and awarded
individual allotments. Trust accounts were established for both Indian
tribes and individual American Indians. The lands were then held in
trust, managed by the government and leased out to gas, oil and timber
companies. The status of the accounts brought to question in 1996 when
the Bureau of Indian Affairs could not account for about 15% of an
estimated $450 million held for some 300,000 Indians. In 1999 a federal
judge cited Sec. Bruce Babbitt and Robert Rubin in contempt for
official deceit in accounting for the trusts that involved some 500,000
Indians.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A12)(SFC, 2/23/99, p.A1)(WSJ,
5/3/99, p.A24)
1889 Mar 2, Congress passed the
Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public
domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1889 Apr 22, The US federal
government opened up the Unassigned Lands of Indian Territory to the
country's first land run. The Oklahoma land rush officially started at
noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims.
(WSJ, 1/4/96, p.A-8)(AP, 4/22/97)(HN, 4/22/98)
1889 The Great Sioux Reservation
of the Dakotas was dismembered into 6 parts.
(Econ, 10/15/05, p.34)
1889 The North Pacific Coast
Railroad established a train station in Marin County called Manzanita
atop a shell mound site previously settled by coastal Miwok Indians. In
1906 a liquor license was granted for an establishment there called
Manzanita Villa and in 1916 a building was erected for a hotel and
dance hall by Thomas, James and George Moore, SF liquor and cigar
dealers. In 1947 new owners built a motel behind the building and
renamed it “The Fireside.” In 1957 2 skeletons of American Indians were
found during renovation. In 2008 the site was re-developed as a new
affordable housing complex.
(SFC, 4/21/08, p.B2)
1889-1890 In South Dakota, Sioux warrior Kicking Bear
became the leading spokesman for the new Indian religion, the "Ghost
Dance," which promised a return to ancient ways for a people
disheartened by reservation life. Kicking Bear continued to resist the
U.S. Army for several weeks after many of his fellow Sioux were killed
in the Massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Kicking Bird was
a Kiowa Chief. Bear’s Head was a Crow chief.
(HNQ, 12/24/99)
1890 Feb 10, Around 11 million
acres, ceded to US by Sioux Indians, opened for settlement.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1890 Dec 15, Sioux Indian Chief
Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River,
S.D., during a fracas with Indian police [US troops]. In an attempt to
arrest Sitting Bull at his Standing Rock, South Dakota, cabin, shooting
broke out and Lt. Bullhead shot the great Sioux leader. The killing of
Indian leader Sitting Bull was one factor that led to the Wounded Knee
Massacre on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The reservation
was left in disarray when Sioux leader Sitting Bull was killed by
Indian police.
(WUD, 1994, p.1680)(AP, 12/15/97)(HN, 12/15/98)(HNQ,
1/5/99)
1890 Dec 28, As Big Foot, another
Sioux leader, led his tribe away from the reservation they were
surrounded by 7th Cavalry troops at Wounded Knee Creek. The next
morning, when the cavalry tried to disarm the Sioux, shots rang out and
during the next 6 hours, 146 Sioux men, women and children, including
Big Foot, were killed. The 7th Cavalry lost 30 killed.
(HNQ, 1/5/99)
1890 Dec 29, The last major
conflict of the Indian wars took place at Wounded Knee Creek in South
Dakota after Colonel James W. Forsyth of the 7th Cavalry tried to
disarm Chief Big Foot and his followers. Seventy-year-old Sioux chief
Big Foot was killed by the 7th U.S. Cavalry during the massacre at
Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. Three days later his body was found
frozen where he had been killed. The South Dakota reservation had been
left in disarray when Sioux leader Sitting Bull was killed by Indian
police on December 15, and as Big Foot led his tribe away from the
reservation on December 28, they were surrounded by 7th Cavalry troops.
The next morning, when the cavalry tried to disarm the Sioux, shots
broke out and during the next 6 hours, 146 Sioux men, women and
children were killed. The 7th Cavalry lost 30 killed. The Wounded Knee
massacre took place in South Dakota as some 300 Sioux Indians were
killed by U.S. troops sent to disarm them.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(AP, 12/29/97)(HN, 12/29/98)(HNPD,
12/29/98)
1891-1899 During this period the Hopi of Arizona
began to produce silver jewelry. A man named Sikyatala learned
silversmithing from a Zuni man.
(NH, 11/1/04, p.30)
1891 Sep 18, Harriet Maxwell
Converse was 1st white woman to become an Indian chief (her Indian name
was Ga-is-wa-noh: the Watcher). She devoted herself to the study and
preservation of Native American culture, was a staunch defender of
Indian property rights during the 1880s.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1891 The San Manuel Band of
Mission Indians had their homeland established in the foothills of the
California San Bernardino Mountains by presidential executive order.
(SFEC, 2/13/00, p.D12)
1892 Oct 15, US government
convinced the Crow Indians to give up 1.8 million acres of their
reservation (in the mountainous area of western Montana) for 50 cents
per acre. Presidential proclamation opened this land to settlers.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1892 In New York state the Seneca
Indians set up a treaty whereby non-Indian residents of Salamanca, a
town built on the Seneca Nation of Indians' Allegany Reservation, paid
rent to the Seneca.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.C14)
1893 Sep 16, Some 50,000 "Sooners"
claimed land in the Cherokee Strip during the first day of the Oklahoma
land rush.
(AP, 9/16/97)(HN, 9/16/98)
1894 Aug 16, Indian chiefs from
the Sioux & Onondaga tribes met to urge their people to renounce
Christianity and return to their old Indian faith.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1894 In Alaska the Cape Fox
Tlingit Indians moved to Saxman after smallpox reduced their population
from some 1000 to 200.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1899 Edward H. Harriman, chairman
of the Union Pacific RR, led a survey expedition along the Alaska coast
with 126 passengers aboard a luxury steamer. The 2-month, 9,000 mile
journey from Seattle to Siberia included a stop at Cape Fox where the
visitors gathered up a items from what looked like an abandoned Tlingit
Indian settlement. Much of the plunder was returned in 2001.
(WSJ, 8/31/01, p.W13)
1901 E.P. Valentine, antiquarian,
removed hundreds of Monacan remains from a burial site in Virginia
later known as the Hayes Creek Mound. The remains were reburied in 1998.
(Arch, 9/00, p.56)
1902 A massacre by Mexican federal
troops, "the Battle of the Sierra Mazatan," killed about 150 Yaqui men,
women and children. US anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka came upon some of
the bodies while they were still decaying, hacked off the heads with a
machete and boiled them to remove the flesh for his study of Mexico's
"races." He sent the resulting collection to the New York museum. In
2009 Yaqui Indians buried their lost warriors after a two-year effort
to rescue the remains from New York's American Museum of Natural
History.
(AP, 11/17/09)
1904 Sep 21, Exiled Nez Perce
leader Chief Joseph died in Washington state reportedly of a "broken
heart." In 1984 “Chief Joseph’s Own Story” was published.
(HN, 9/21/98)(SFC, 6/13/97, p.A13)
1907 Nov 16, Oklahoma became the
46th US state of the union. Black settlers founded some 30 towns before
statehood was achieved. Oklahoma’s Osage Indian Reservation became
Osage County, one of the largest in the US.
(WSJ, 11/10/97, p.A1)(NG, 5/95, p.92)(SFCM, 3/9/08,
p.20)t
1909 Feb 17, Apache chief Geronimo
died of pneumonia at age 80, while still in captivity at Fort Sill,
Okla.
(HN, 2/17/99)
1909 Dec 10, Red Cloud, Sioux
Indian chief, died.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1911 Sep, Ishi (d.1916), a native
California Indian, walked out of the forest near Oroville, Ca. He
underwent examination at UC medical center in San Francisco and liked
to practice "drawing bow" on Parnassus Heights.
(SFC, 7/14/96, Z1 p.2)(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W4)(SSFC,
2/8/04, p.M1)
1912 May 26, Jay Silverheels
(d.1980) was born as Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations Indian
Reservation, Brantford, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of a Mohawk
Indian chief and became an actor who portrayed Tonto on "The Lone
Ranger."
(www.imdb.com)
1912 Nov 9, The football team of
Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian School, with running back Jim Thorpe,
defeated the Army team, with Dwight D. Eisenhower as linebacker, 27-6.
In 2007 Sally Jenkins authored “The Real Americans: The Team That
Changed a Game, a People, a Nation.”
(WSJ, 1/7/07,
p.P9)(www.footballfoundation.com/news.php?id=242)
1913 Mary McAboy began hand-making
Skookum Indian dolls. Skookum was a Siwash Indian word that roughly
means bully good.
(SFC, 6/17/98, Z1 p.3)
1915-1929 Alfred V. Kidder, archeologist, excavated
numerous bones of Indians buried in the upper Pecos Valley of New
Mexico. In 1999 the bones of nearly 2,000 Indians were returned by
Harvard Univ. to New Mexico for burial.
(SFC, 5/19/99, p.A3)
1916 May 13, The 1st US
observance of American Indian Day. American Indian and Alaska Native
Heritage Month originated in 1915 when the president of the Congress of
American Indian Associations issued a proclamation declaring the second
Saturday in May each year as American Indian Day. The first American
Indian Day was celebrated in May 1916, in New York. In 1990, President
George H.W. Bush signed a joint congressional resolution designating
November 1990 as National American Indian Heritage Month. Similar
proclamations have been issued each year since 1994.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(www.aifisf.com/news.htm)
1916 In Utah the US government
took land from the Ute Indians for the rights to oil shale reserves. In
2000 84,000 acres were given back.
(SFC, 1/14/00, p.A12)
1919 May 26, Jay Silverheels,
actor, was born. He played Tonto in The Lone Ranger TV series
(HN, 5/26/01)
1921 Nov 14, The Cherokee Indians
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres
of land in Texas.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1923 Jan 5, The Senate debated the
benefits of Peyote for the American Indian.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1924 Mar 20, The Virginia
Legislature passed two closely related eugenics laws: SB 219, entitled
"The Racial Integrity Act[1]" and SB 281, "An ACT to provide for the
sexual sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain
cases", henceforth referred to as "The Sterilization Act". The Racial
Integrity Act required that a racial description of every person be
recorded at birth, and felonized marriage between "white persons" and
non-white persons. The law was the most famous ban on miscegenation in
the US, and was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1967, in Loving
v. Virginia. Virginia repealed the sterilization in 1979. In 2001 the
House of Delegates voted to express regret for the state’s selecting
breeding policies that had forced sterilizations on some 8,000 people.
The Senate soon followed suit.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924)(SSFC,
2/4/01, p.A3)(SFC, 2/15/01, p.C16)
1924 Jun 2, Congress granted U.S.
citizenship to all American Indians. The Snyder Act Granted full
citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S.
(AP, 6/2/97)(HN, 6/2/98)(HNQ, 3/1/99)
1927 Oct 19, Marjorie Tallchief,
US ballerina (Harkness Ballet), was born.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1937-1955 Gov. McCarran of Nevada entered legislation
on behalf of Italian American squatters on reservation lands of the
Pyramid Paiutes.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)
1941 Frances Macgregor (d.2002 at
95), sociologist and photographer, published ""Twentieth Century
Indians." The collection of photos helped prompt Congress to devote
more money to Indian reservations.
(SFC, 2/8/02, p.A25)
1944 Jun 6, Cherokee tribal
members communicated via radios in their native language on the
Normandy beaches.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A6)
1944 California Indians were
awarded $17 million that was promised in treaties nearly a century
earlier. $12 million was deducted for goods and services already given.
(SFEC, 9/20/98, Z1 p.5)
1945 Feb 18, U.S. Marines stormed
ashore at Iwo Jima. Navajo code talkers used their native language to
communicate by radio on Japanese troop movements.
(HN, 2/18/98)(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A6)
1946 Nov 25, Supreme Court granted
Oregon Indians land payment rights from the U.S. government.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1948 Sec. of the Interior J.A.
Krug signed a contract relinquishing Indian reservation land for the
Garrison Dam.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, BR p.7)
1949 A.J. Liebling, New York
reported, arrived in Nevada for Reno divorce, which required a 6-week
residency. He began a series of articles for the New Yorker on the
Pyramid Paiutes and their struggle with Italian American squatters over
water rights. In 1999 the collected stories were edited by Elmer Rusco
and published under the title "A Reporter At Large: Dateline: Pyramid
Lake, Nevada."
(SFEC, 1/2/00, BR p.12)
c1950s Cherokee Admiral Joseph J.
"Jocko" Clark rose to command the U.S. Seventh Fleet during the Korean
War, making him the most powerful war chief in American Indian history.
(HNQ, 3/26/00)
1954 US Congress voted to withdraw
support to Wisconsin Indians guaranteed in 1854. The Menomonee (people
of the wild rice) Chiefs Oshkosh and Keshena met with federal Indian
agents in Keshena Falls, Wisconsin, in 1854 and agreed to retain only
275,000 acres from their original 9 1/2 million acres. As part of the
settlement the chiefs and their followers were promised eternal
government protection.
(NG, Aug., 1974, p.235)
1954 The 600-square-mile Garrison
Dam in North Dakota, authorized by Congress in 1949, was completed. It
covered the ancestral lands of Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Indians.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.M5)
1957 George Gustav Heye (b.1876),
collector of Indian artifacts, died. He and a few rich friends set up a
foundation in 1922 that established the Museum of the American Indian.
The museum closed in 1994 and the Smithsonian acquired the collection.
(WSJ, 9/21/04, p.D8)
1958 Jul 11, Monument Valley,
straddling the Arizona-Utah border, became the 1st Navajo Tribal Park.
(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.C15)
1958 Jul, Mildred Loving
(1940-2008), a woman of American Indian and black heritage, and her
white husband, Richard (d.1975), were arrested in Virginia within weeks
of arriving from Washington DC and convicted on charges of "cohabiting
as man and wife. In 1967 the US Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia,
struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.105)
1960 Edmund Wilson and Joseph
Mitchell authored “Apologies to the Iroquois.” It memorialized the
seizure by Robert Moses, the unelected head of the New York Power
Authority, of 600 acres by eminent domain for a power reservoir near
Niagara Falls.
(www.nyslittree.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/DB.PersonDetail/PersonPK/500.cfm)
1961 William E. Brandon (d.2002)
authored "The American Heritage Book of Indians."
(SFC, 5/31/02, p.A27)
1962 The Miccosukee Indian tribe
gained federal recognition after its leaders made a state visit to
Fidel Castro.
(SFC, 12/29/98, p.A4)
1962 The Lake Oahe reservoir in
South Dakota, created by the US Army Corps of Engineers, reduced the
Cheyenne River reservation of the Sioux Indians by 100,000 acres.
(Econ, 10/15/05, p.34)
1964 Mar 9, A group of 5 Lakota
(Sioux) Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island in a peaceful
protest. They declared that it should be a Native American cultural
center and university.
(SFC, 5/19/96,City Guide, p.7)(G, Summer ‘97, p.4)
1964 The Economic Opportunity Act
opened the gates for Indian management of their own affairs.
(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR p.5)
1965 In western New York the
Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River opened. Construction of the dam
forced the departure of Pennsylvania's last Native Americans, the
Senecas, who now live near Salamanca, New York, on the northern shores
of land flooded by the dam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Dam)
1968 Apr 11, President Johnson
signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This included a Fair Housing
Act and the Indian Civil Rights Act, which limited sentences that
tribes could hand down on any charge to six months. In 1968 Congress
increased the maximum to one year. The Federal National Mortgage
Association (Fannie Mae - FNMA), established by the government in 1938,
became a private, shareholder-owned company as part of the Fair Housing
Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/2o3p2q)(AP, 4/11/98)(SFC,
2/20/98, p.A23)(http://tinyurl.com/ldx765)
1968 Dennis Banks (b.1937), an
Anishinabe Indian from Minnesota, co-founded the American Indian
Movement (AIM). Vernon Bellecourt (1932-2007), an Ojibwe Indian from
Minnesota, also helped found the movement.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Banks)(SFC,
10/15/07, p.B6)
1969 May 5, N. Scott Momaday
(b.1934) received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for “House Made of
Dawn.” The Kiowa author was the first American Indian to win the prize.
Norman Mailer won the general non-fiction Pulitzer Prize for “Armies of
the Night” (1968).
(http://tinyurl.com/5naupa)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Pulitzer_Prize)
1969 Nov 20, A group of 80 Native
Americans, all college students, seized Alcatraz Island in the name of
"Indians of All Tribes." The occupation lasted 19 months. They offered
$24 in beads and cloth to buy the island, demanded an American Indian
Univ., museum and cultural center, and listed reasons why the island
was a suitable Indian reservation.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W38)
1969 The 62-foot-tall Skowhegan
Indian statue was built in Skowhegan, Maine.
(NW, 8/26/02, p.51)
1969 A government clerk in the
Bureau of Indian Affairs dropped the Samish Indian nation from the list
of recognized tribes. In 2002 the tribe, native to the San Juan Islands
and western Skagit County of Washington state, sued for recognition and
damages.
(SFC, 10/18/02, p.J8)
1970 May, The US government shut
off power and stopped fresh water supplies from the Native American
Indians on Alcatraz Island. A fire broke out and each side blamed the
other.
(G, Summer ‘97,
p.5)(www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm)
1970 Dec 2, The US Senate voted to
give 48,000 acres of New Mexico back to the Taos Indians.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1970 Dee Brown (1908-2002),
American writer, published "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a
history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth
century and their displacement and slaughter by the United States
federal government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee)
1970 Tony Hillerman (1925-2008),
American writer, introduced Lt. Joe Leaphorn in his first detective
novel "The Blessing Way," as an experienced police officer who
understood, but did not share his people's traditional belief in a rich
spirit world. Officer Jim Chee, introduced in "People of Darkness"
(1978), was a younger officer studying to become a "hathaali" — Navajo
for "shaman."
(AP, 10/27/08)
1971 Jun 10, Federal marshals, FBI
agents and special forces swarmed Alcatraz Island and removed the
Native American occupiers: 5 women, 4 children and 6 unarmed men.
(www.nps.gov/alca/historyculture/we-hold-the-rock.htm)
1971 William E. Brandon (d.2002)
published "The Magic World," an anthology of American Indian poetry.
(SFC, 5/31/02, p.A27)
1971 The Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) was approved by Congress. It gave large portions
of prime bear habitat to the Alutiiq people, who had hunted and fished
on the island for 7,000 years. 10% of the state, 44 million acres of
land, was ceded to native tribes.
(NG, Jan. 94, p.141)(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A7)(AH, 10/04,
p.42)
1972 Sep 7, The Commissioner of
Indian Affairs in a memorandum extended federal recognition to the
Chippewa tribe of Sault Ste. Marie in Northern Michigan. The meaning of
this federal recognition was further clarified in a memorandum by the
Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs on February 27, 1974.
(http://tinyurl.com/5c8cfu)
1972 Nov 9, The "Trail of Broken
Treaties" caravan, an Indian protest, ended in vandalism and chaos at
the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. The story is told in
the 1996 book "Like A Hurricane, The Indian Movement From Alcatraz to
Wounded Knee" by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR
p.8)(http://siouxme.com/lodge/treaties.html)
1973 Feb 27, Members of the
American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee in South
Dakota, the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children.
They protested illegal and discriminatory acts on the part of the Pine
Ridge Sioux Tribal Council. The FBI was called in and a siege lasted
for 69 days with 2 AIM leaders killed. The story is told in the 1996
book "Like A Hurricane, The Indian Movement From Alcatraz to Wounded
Knee" by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior.
(SFC, 6/14/96, p.A19)(AP, 2/27/98)(SFC, 12/30/98,
p.A17)(SFEC, 1/5/97, BR p.8)
1973 Mar 2, Federal forces
surrounded Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which was occupied by members of
the militant American Indian Movement who were holding at least 10
hostages.
(HN, 3/2/99)
1975 Jan 3, President Ford signed
Public Law 93-620. This Act, written to enlarge the Grand Canyon
National Park, also provided in Section 10 for the enlargement of the
adjacent Havasupai Indian Reservation by 185,000 acres and designated a
contiguous 95,300 acres of the enlarged National Park as a permanent
traditional use area of the Havasupai Indians of Havasu Canyon, Arizona.
(SSFC, 2/19/06,
p.F4)(www.tribal-institute.org/envirotext/89.htm)
1975 Dec, In South Dakota Anna Mae
Pictou Aquash (b.1945) was shot to death. American Indian Movement
(AIM) members suspected her of being an FBI informant. Her body was
found on Feb 24, 1976, on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 2003 Arlo
Looking Cloud (50) was convicted in the murder. John Graham, a
Canadian, and Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, a US citizen, were indicted in
2003 in the United States for Aquash's murder. In 2007 a Canadian court
ruled that Graham should be extradited to the United States to face
trial.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)(Reuters,
6/26/07)(www.dickshovel.com/time3.html)
1976 Vermont Gov. Tom Salmon
granted the Abenaki Indians recognition. The following year a new
governor rescinded recognition.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.J7)
1978 Mar 6, The US Supreme Court
in its Oliphant decision ruled that tribes could not try non-Indian
defendants in tribal courts. It centered on the arrest of Mark
Oliphant, a non-Indian, by tribal police. He argued that the tribal
court does not have criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliphant_v._Suquamish_Indian_Tribe)
1978 May 15, The US Supreme
Court’s Santa Clara Pueblo vs. Martinez decision held that tribal
enrollment issues are an Indian-only matter immune from outside
interference.
(SSFC, 4/20/08,
p.A11)(http://supreme.justia.com/us/436/49/)
1980 Mar 5, Jay Silverheels
(b.1912), son of a Mohawk Indian chief and actor who portrayed Tonto on
"The Lone Ranger", died in Woodland Hills, Ca., from a stroke.
(www.imdb.com)
1980 Little Big Horn College in
Crow Agency, Mont., was established.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, Par. p.6)
1981 Jul 1, Tim Giago, an Oglala
Sioux writer from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota,
launched The Lakota Times, the first independently owned Indian
newspaper in the US.
(SSFC, 12/23/07, p.F1)
1981 Sep 23, Chief Dan George,
actor (Harry & Tonto, Little Big Man), died at 82.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1981 The northwest Chinook Indians
filed a petition for recognition with the Interior Dept.
(SFC, 12/31/00, p.A11)
1982 Oct 13, The IOC restored 2
gold medals post mortem from the 1912 Olympics to Jim Thorpe
(1888-1953).
(http://nomas-nyc.com/2006/10/solid-gold.html)
1982 Iron Eyes Cody (d.1998 at
94), American Indian actor, published his autobiography: "Iron Eyes: My
Life as a Hollywood Indian." In 1970 he played an Indian paddling
through a polluted stream in a public service ad.
(SFC, 1/5/99, p.A20)
1982 Maine Indian tribes laid
claim to 60% of the state lands and settled for $81.5 million.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.J7)
1983 The Pequot Indians of
Connecticut won federal recognition.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A16)
1983 Lulie Nall, a Penobscot
Indian, died. She had designed a tepee-emblazoned flag for the 19-month
American Indian occupation of Alcatraz, that began in 1969. In 2008 the
flag was put up for auction and sold for $60,000.
(SFC, 1/24/08, p.A1)(SFC, 1/25/08, p.B2)
1986 William Loren Katz authored
"Black Indians," an account of the relations between Black and Native
Americans.
(WSJ, 12/20/99, p.A1)
1986 The Mashantucket Pequot
Tribal Nation opened its first bingo hall in Connecticut.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.40)
1987 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court
ruled that California cannot bar gambling on Indian tribal land. This
win by the Cabazon tribe opened the door to Indian gambling nationwide.
(SFC, 5/11/04, p.B8)(WSJ, 9/27/05,
p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/7ub24)
1988 The US Congress passed the
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A10)
1989 Apr 1, In Canada the Oka
conflict began when some 200 Mohawks from the Kanesatake reserve
marched though the town of Oka protesting plans to expand the village's
nine-hole golf course to 18 holes, saying expansion encroaches on their
burial ground. A 78-day standoff began on July 11, 1990 and ended Sep
26, 1990. The Oka Crisis cost the Quebec government an estimated $180
million not including the cost of the army.
(http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-99-500/conflict_war/oka/clip1)
1989 In Connecticut the
Mashantucket Pequot Indians began the Pequot Pharmaceutical Network, a
small health service for their members and employees. In 10 years it
grew to a $15 million business based on drug prices acquired at
government rates.
(SFC, 6/19/99, p.A3)
1990 The US government enacted the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
(SFC, 6/1/98, p.A6)(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A10)
1990 In Arizona Gila River
Telecommunications Inc. (GRTI) was founded as a nonprofit telephone
company. It serviced the 620-square-mile Gila River reservation of the
Pima Indians, who had inhabited the area for over 2,000 years.
(WSJ, 7/7/00, p.B1)
1991 In Montana the name of Custer
Battlefield National Monument was changed to Little Bighorn Battlefield
Monument. A $2 million memorial was dedicated Jun 25,2003.
(WSJ, 6/25/03, p.A1)
1992 The Mdewakanton Dakota
Indians opened their Mystic Lake casino complex on their 248 acres of
tribal land in Minnesota.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A1,6)
1992 The Foxwoods Casino, the
biggest gaming complex in the Western Hemisphere, opened on the Pequot
Reservation at Mashantucket, Conn. The number of Pequot numbered about
550.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A16)
1993 Southern Ute Indians launched
Red Willow, a natural gas production operation. By 2003 the tribe had
acquired $1.3 billion in assets.
(WSJ, 6/13/03, p.A1)
1994 Sep 13, Bob Blackbull,
Blackfoot Indian, received his first shipment of mustangs in Browning,
Montana, and revived a piece of their culture.
(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)
1994 The Winnebago nation gave
Lance Morgan $9.7 million from its Iowa casino to start a new venture.
Morgan formed Nebraska-based Ho-Chunk Inc.
(Econ, 4/5/08, p.71)
1994 In Canada a majority of the
Mohawk Council of Kahnawake passed a bylaw stipulating that a person
must have at least 4 Mohawk great grandparents to live or own property
on its 13,000 acre reservation just south of Montreal.
(Econ, 2/27/10, p.44)
1996 John Annerino wrote "People
of Legend: Native Americans of the Southwest."
(SFEC, 12/8/96, BR p.4)
1996 Brian Bibby wrote "The Fine
Art of California Indian Basketry."
(SFEC, 12/8/96, BR p.4)
1996 John Blom and Allen Hayes
wrote "Southwestern Pottery: Anasazi to Zuni."
(SFEC, 12/8/96, BR p.4)
1996 In western North Carolina the
Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation acquired a few hundred acres of
ancestral pasture bordering the Tuckasegee River that contained the
Kituwha Mound. Legend held that this was the site where God had given
the Cherokee their laws and their first fire.
(Arch, 9/02, p.70)
1997 Apr 15, The US military said
it would allow American Indian soldiers to use peyote in their
religious services.
(SFC, 4/16/97, p.A3)
1997 A concept called "circle
sentencing" began on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation. It involved
community-imposed sentences for nonviolent misdemeanors. The program
was fashioned after practices by the First Nation Indians in the Yukon
Territory.
(SFC, 2/15/99, p.A3)
1998 Jan 20, The Idaho Coeur
d’Alene Indian tribe planned to begin a national online lottery called
US Lottery. US residents will be restricted by their local state laws.
(SFC, 1/16/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 6, It was reported that
Panama hired a Canadian Indian tribe, the Tsuu T’ina, to clean out
unexploded bombs and shells from an area of Empire Range, which US
military forces abandoned.
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.A12)
1998 Aug 11, The 308,000 sq.-foot
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center opened in Mashantucket,
Conn.
(WSJ, 8/11/98, p.A16)
1998 Sep 2, The Univ. of Nebraska
promised to return the bones of 1,702 Indians to tribes for reburial.
It also agreed to build a memorial on a campus field where bones were
burned over 30 years ago in an incinerator used to dispose diseased
animal parts.
(SFC, 9/3/98, p.A10)
1998 Paula Mitchell Marks
published "In a Barren Land: American Indian Dispossession and
Survival."
(SFEC, 4/12/98, BR p.7)
1998 The Nez Pierce tribe returned
to its ancient homeland in Oregon after 121 years of exile.
(SFEC, 2/13/00, BR p.5)
1998 US government officials,
charged with mismanaging trust funds for American Indians, shredded 162
boxes of records. This was disclosed by a federal judge in 1999.
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.A6)
1999 Mar 24, The US Supreme Court
ruled to uphold an 1837 treaty with the Chippewa Indians for hunting
and fishing on 13 million acres of public land in Minnesota.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.A8)
1999 May 17, In Neah Bay,
Washington state, Makah Indian hunters legally killed their first gray
whale in 75 years.
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A3)
1999 Jun 2, American Indians filed
a class action law suit against the major tobacco companies charging
that they were excluded from the $206 billion settlement reached with
46 states last November.
(SFC, 6/4/99, p.A18)
1999 Jun, In Florida the
Miccosukee Indians celebrated the opening of their $50 million,
300-room resort and convention center on their 680 acres in Everglades
National Park. Meanwhile the price tag for restoring the everglades
ecosystem was put at $7.8 billion.
(SFC, 6/5/99, p.A6)
1999 Jun 16, In Santa Fe 34 tribes
filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the nation's largest
tobacco companies.
(SFC, 6/17/99, p.a3)
1999 Jun 18, The Native American
Church of North America made an agreement with US Defense Dept.
officials at its 50th annual convention to allow Native Americans to
use peyote in religious services.
(SFC, 6/30/99, p.A7)
1999 Sep 28, Groundbreaking was
scheduled for the US National Museum of the American Indian in
Washington DC.
(SFC, 7/22/99, p.A5)
1999 Nov 24, American Indian
farmers filed a $19 billion class-action lawsuit against the
Agriculture Department for an alleged 20-year history of loan-granting
discrimination.
(SFC, 11/25/99, p.A4)
1999 The show "Spirit: A Journey
in Dance, Drums and Song" was composed by Peter Buffett. It was largely
based on American Indian dance tradition.
(WSJ, 11/26/99, p.W9)
2000 Jan 14, The federal
government announced the return of 84,000 acres in northern Utah to the
Ute Indians. The land was taken in 1916 for the rights to oil shale
reserves.
(SFC, 1/14/00, p.A12)
2000 Apr 29, Clarence Basil Cuts
The Rope, artist and member of the Gros Ventre Tribe, died at age 64 in
Montana.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.B2)
2000 Sep 8, The Bureau of Indian
Affairs marked its 175th birthday and Kevin Grover, head of the bureau,
offered a formal apology to American Indians for the misdeeds of the
agency.
(SFC, 9/9/00, p.A3)
2000 Nov, In Detroit a casino, 90%
owned by the Sault St. Marie Chippewa Indians, opened in Greektown.
(SSFC, 5/27/01, p.A19)
2000 Dec, The Timbisha Shoshone
Indians were granted 7,600 acres around Death Valley that included 314
acres within the national park.
(SFC, 1/3/01, p.A2)
2000 Philip Burnham authored
"Indian Country, God’s Country: Native Americans and the national
Parks."
(SFC, 1/3/01, p.A2)
2000 Dolan H. Eargle Jr. authored
"Native California Guide: Weaving the Past and Present." It surveyed
143 present-day California Indian communities.
(SFC, 12/31/00, BR p.12)
2000 Ian Frazier authored "On the
Rez," a focus on the Ogallala Sioux Reservation in Pine Ridge, S.D.
(WSJ, 1/14/00, p.W10)
2000 Alvin M. Josephy Jr.,
historian authored "A Walk Toward Oregon: A Memoir."
(SFEC, 2/13/00, p.5)
2000 The Seminole Nation voted to
cast freedmen descendants out of its tribe. The US government in
response cut off most federal programs and refused to authorize gaming.
The Seminole freedman were later allowed back into the tribe.
(SFC, 3/5/07, p.A2)
2001 Jan 1, The Agua Caliente Band
of Cahuilla Indians opened up Tahquitz Canyon near Palm Springs for
visitors.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.T5)
2001 Feb 23, A US federal appeals
court upheld that the US government mismanaged and neglected Native
American trust funds.
(SFC, 2/24/01, p.A5)
2001 Mar 10, In Canada the
Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council of British Columbia signed a treaty with
the federal government.
(SSFC, 3/11/01, p.D2)
2001 Jun 10, It was reported that
Jamake Highwater, author and TV host, had recently died at age ~59. His
over 30 books included "Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey" and "The
Sun, He Dies."
(SSFC, 6/10/01, p.A27)
2002 Feb 7, The Cree tribe of
northern Quebec under Ted Moses ratified an October deal that ensured
15,000 Cree of receiving no less than $3.5 billion over the next 50
years and a share in benefits derived from their lands.
(SFC, 2/9/02, p.A9)
2002 Feb 8, In Texas a $60 million
casino run by the Tigua Indians was shut down following lobbying
efforts by religious activist Ralph Reed and Washington lobbyists Jack
Abramoff and Michael Scanlon. Abramoff and Scanlon then persuaded the
tribe to pay $4.2 million to lobby Congress to reopen it. Senate
hearings on the process opened in 2004.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.A10)
2003 "The New World," a history of
American Indians and their influence on the modern Western World by
William E. Brandon (d.2002) was to be published.
(SFC, 5/31/02, p.A27)
2003 Elizabeth Seay authored
"Searching For Lost City," a look at Native Indian languages in
Oklahoma.
(WSJ, 11/28/03, p.W4)
2004 Jun 21, Five of 61 California
Indian tribes signed gaming compacts setting standards for future
negotiations. They agreed to higher payments in exchange for removing a
cap of 2,000 slot machines per tribe.
(SFC, 6/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Dec, Cecilia Fire Thunder
(58) took office as chairwoman of the 46,000 member Ogallala Sioux on
the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
(Econ, 1/29/05, p.32)
2005 Jan, Suzan Shown Harjo, a
Cheyenne and Muscogee Indian, exhausted with yet another one of her
relatives dying of diabetes, zoned in on fry bread as a culprit and
whipped out a column for Indian Country Today declaring it junk food
that leads to fat Indians.
(AP, 8/20/05)
2005 Apr 29, In Canada oil
companies stopped all engineering work on a natural gas pipeline from
the Arctic ocean to the oil sands of Alberta, due to high compensation
demands by the Deh Cho First Nation native Indian tribe in Fort
Simpson, Northwest Territories. The Deh Cho also sought a new
autonomous government and complete ownership of subsurface rights
within their 81,000 square mile claim, an area about the size of
Nebraska.
(SFC, 5/23/05, p.A1)
2005 Apr, In Arizona the Hualapai
Indian tribe began construction of the Skywalk, a glass overhang over
the Grand Canyon, to be completed in March, 2007. The $30 million
project was initiated by David Jin, a Las Vegas businessman from
Shanghai, who planned to collect half of the $25 ticket sales.
(SFC, 12/15/06, p.A33)
2006 Jan 12, In Palm Springs, Ca.,
Richard Milanovich, chairman of the Agua Caliente Ban of Cahuilla
Indians, apologized to other tribal leaders for the scandal tied to
Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He addressed tribal leaders on the
2nd day of a 3-day conference for casino-operating tribes. Abramoff and
associates had collected some $66 million from 6 American Indian tribes
seeking influence in Washington.
(SFC, 1/13/06, p.B14)
2006 Dec 7, The 3,300-member
Seminole Tribe of Florida said it was buying the Hard Rock business in
a $965 million deal with Rank Group PLC, a British casino and hotel
company.
(SFC, 12/8/06, p.D2)
2006 Viking published “Where the
Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places,” by
Peter Nabokov.
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.M2)
2007 Jul 16, The Canadian
government agreed to disburse C$1.4 billion ($1.3 billion) in aid over
20 years to Quebec's 15,000 Cree to improve health, security and other
services for the native Indians.
(Reuters, 7/16/07)
2007 Nov 26, A new study by the
University of Michigan bolstered claims that Native Americans are
descended from one migrant group that crossed a lost land link from
modern Siberia to Alaska. The study examined genes of indigenous people
from North to South America and from two Siberian groups.
(AFP, 11/27/07)
2008 Jun 11, Canada, addressing
one of the darkest chapters in its history, formally apologized for
forcing 150,000 aboriginal children into grim residential schools,
where many said they were sexually and physically abused.
(Reuters, 6/12/08)
2008 Aug 7, A US federal judge
ruled that American Indian plaintiffs were entitled to $455 million, a
fraction of the $47 billion they sought in a year trial for alleged
losses on royalties overseen by the Interior Department since 1887.
(SFC, 8/8/08, p.A6)
2008 Nov 28, This day was marked
as Native American Heritage Day. US federal legislation set aside the
day after Thanksgiving — for this year only — to honor the
contributions American Indians have made to the US. Congress passed
legislation this year designating the day as Native American Heritage
Day, and President George W. Bush signed it last month.
(AP, 11/28/08)
2009 Aug 31, Florida’s Gov. Crist
signed a 20-year gambling pact with the Seminole Indian tribe, which
agreed to pay Florida $12.5 million a month for 30 months for running,
currently illegal, slot machines and blackjack games.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.40)
2009 Dec 3, The IRS auctioned
7,100 acres of Crow creek Sioux tribal land near Pierre, South Dakota
to help pay off over $3 million in back taxes. The land sold for $2.6
million.
(SFC, 12/4/09, p.A15)
2009 Dec 8, The US government
announced that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it
has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds. The
tentative settlement would resolve a 13-year-old lawsuit over hundreds
of thousands of land trust accounts that date to the 19th century.
(SFC, 12/9/09, p.A6)
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Subject = AmerIndian
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