American Indians Timeline
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Seminole Timeline: http://www.semtribe.com/History/TimelineText.aspx
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)
8024BC In 1976 scientists in southern California
scientists unearthed skeletal remains dating to about this time and
among the oldest ever found in the Western Hemisphere.
(AP, 1/15/12)
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 Jun, Roger Williams
founded Providence, Rhode Island, on land purchased from the
Narragansett Indians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence,_Rhode_Island)
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)
1722 The original Iroquois
League, often known as the Five Nations (the Mohawk, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations) became the Six Nations after
the Tuscarora nation joined the League.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois)
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 May, John Tanner (9) was
kidnapped from his home in northern Kentucky by Shawnee Indians. He
was taken to an area near what later became Saginaw, Michigan, where
he learned the Ojibway language. After about 2 years he was sold to
a woman named Net-no-kwa, who took him up to northern Michigan and
later to Manitoba, Canada.
(ON, 4/10,
p.4)(http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/ky.boone.tanner.j.kidnapd.html)
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)
1804 Aug 31, Louis and Clark
held a council with local Sioux Indian chiefs in what is now eastern
North Dakota.
(ON, 4/12, p.9)
1804 Oct 26, Lewis and Clark
accepted an invitation to camp for the winter near a cluster of
villages inhabited by the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians.
(ON, 4/12, p.10)
1804 Nov, Lewis and Clark hired
French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau as an interpreter,
with the understanding that Sacagawea, who was only about 16 and
pregnant, would come along to interpret the Shoshone language. She
and another woman had been purchased by Charbonneau, who lived among
the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians, to be his wives.
(HN, 2/11/99)(HNQ, 12/1/99)
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 Apr 7, The Lewis and Clark
Corps of Discovery resumed their journey to the headwaters of the
Missouri River.
(ON, 4/12, p.10)
1805 Aug 17, Sacagawea, while
traveling with the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, reunited with
her brother Cameahwait, a Shoshoni Indian chief on the Lemhi River
(Idaho).
(ON, 4/12,
p.12)(http://sacajaweahome.com/august.htm)
1805 Aug 30, The Lewis and
Clark Corps of Discovery resumed their westward journey with 29
horses and 6 guides provided by Shoshoni Chief Cameahwait. They
spent the next 4 weeks crossing the Bitterroot Mountains (Idaho).
(ON, 4/12, p.12)
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)
1819 Mar 3, The Civilization
Fund Act was created by the United States legislature to encourage
activities of benevolent societies in providing education for Native
Americans and also authorized an annuity to stimulate the
"civilization process."
(http://wapedia.mobi/en/The_Civilization_Fund_Act_of_1819)
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)
1836 May 19, Comanche warriors
in Texas attacked Fort Parker and kidnapped Cynthia Ann Parker (9)
and several others. She was recaptured by whites in 1860 and was
forced to live among whites until her death in 1871. Her son Quanah
(d.1911) escaped capture and grew up to become leader of the
Quahadi, the most feared subset of the Comanche. In 2010 S.C. Gwynne
authored “Empire of the Southern Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise of
the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.”
(Econ, 6/19/10,
p.85)(www.lone-star.net/mall/texasinfo/CynthiaAnnParker.htm)
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 Nov 29, A small group of
Cayuse Indians assaulted the Whitman Mission, Walla Walla,
Washington, at the time sheltering 74 people, most of them
emigrants. The attackers killed 13 people, including Marcus and
Narcissa Whitman. It temporarily ended Protestant missionary efforts
in the Oregon country. The Whitman Creek massacre set off the Cayuse
War (1848).
(www.legendsofamerica.com/wa-whitmanmassacre.html)
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 Sep 27, The US Donation
land Act was enacted. It allowed Americans to stake claims that
would become valid after treaties were negotiated with Indian tribes
and ratified by Congress.
(SSFC, 2/27/11,
p.G2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_Land_Claim_Act)
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, The Mountain
Meadows Massacre of the Fancher emigrant wagon train in Utah
Territory was carried out by Mormons fearful of an impending
invasion by the US Army. Church patriarch and adopted son of Brigham
Young, John Doyle Lee, offered safe passage to the nearly 150 men,
women and children on the Fancher train from Arkansas crossing
Mormon Utah bound for California, if they left their weapons,
livestock and wagons behind-ostensibly to appease hostile Indians.
All but the youngest children were slaughtered. Lee, who first
blamed the massacre on Paiute Indians, was excommunicated in 1870
and tried, convicted and executed in 1877 for his role in the
killings. 120 settlers were killed; 17 children, all under 7, were
spared. In 2002 Will Bagley authored “Blood of the Prophets: Brigham
Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.” In 2011 the site was
dedicated as a national historic landmark.
(SFC, 10/23/02, p.H4)(AP, 9/11/07)(SFC, 9/12/11,
p.A4)
1858 Feb 19, Leschi, a
Nisqually American Indian leader from the Puget Sound region, was
hanged a mile east of Fort Steilacoom. On June 10, 1857, he had been
convicted of the murder of Abrams Moses, and was sentenced to hang.
Appeals to the Supreme Court delayed the initial hanging. In 2004
seven judges at a Historical Court of Inquiry and Justice
unanimously decided that regardless of who shot Moses, “The killing
was a legitimate act of war, immune from prosecution.” Consequently,
Leschi was declared “exonerated” of Abrams Moses’ murder. In
2011 Richard Kluger authored “The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A
Tragic Clash Between White and Native America.”
(http://forejustice.org/wc/chief_leschi/chief_leschi.htm)(SSFC,
2/27/11, p.G1)
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)
1875 The Quahadi Comanches, led
by Quanah Parker (c.1852-1911), gave up their fight and settled on
Indian Territory in Oklahoma after hunters slaughtered the great
buffalo herds of the Texas panhandle.
(Econ, 6/19/10,
p.85)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanah_Parker)
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, 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. Up to 300 Indians possessed Henry and Winchester repeating
rifles.
(WSJ, 11/1/94, p.1)(SFC, 6/28/96, p.A5)(AP,
6/25/97)(HNPD, 6/25/99)(Econ, 5/8/10, p.82)
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 Fr. James Chrysostom
Bouchard, SJ, (b.1823), died. His French mother was adopted by the
Delaware Lenni-Lenappi tribe after her parents were killed by
members of the Comanche tribe. His father was Kistalwa, the Delaware
tribe’s chief. After he moved to California his sermons attracted
great crowds to the local Jesuit church. He traveled to many Western
states, preaching in cities, towns, and mining camps. When he died,
a New York newspaper called him "the Father Damen of the West." In
1949 John Bernard McGloin authored “Eloquent Indian.”
(GenIV, Winter
04/05)(www.companymagazine.org/v154/preachers.html)
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 Sep 18, Reverend Sherman
Coolidge (1862-1932), an Arapaho minister and one of the founders of
the Society of American Indians (SAI), issued a proclamation
declaring the second Saturday of each May as “American Indian Day”
and appealing for US citizenship for American Indians.
(http://www.bia.gov/DocumentLibrary/HeritageMonth/index.htm)
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)
1917 The Iroquois Confederacy
declared war on Germany.
(www.history.army.mil/html/topics/natam/natam-wwii.html)
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)
1923 Special Indian
Commissioner H.J. Hagerman organized the first Navajo Tribal Council
which gave him power to act for them in auctioning oil leases. The
tribal government was established following the discovery of oil on
its reservation.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, Z1 p.4)(SFC, 11/14/11, p.D4)
1924 Mar 20, The Virginia
Legislature passed two closely related eugenics laws: SB 219,
entitled "The Racial Integrity Act" 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)
1934 The US Congress allowed US
created tribal governments to replace traditional Indian governing
bodies. A US act of Congress, nicknamed the Indian New Deal,
endorsed a degree of self rule for Indian tribes.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, z1 p.4)(Econ, 4/7/12, p.35)
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)
1941 The Iroquois, the Sioux
and the Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribes declared war on Germany. The
Iroquois Confederacy, having declared war on Germany in 1917, had
never made peace and so automatically became party to World War II.
(Econ, 4/7/12,
p.35)(www.history.army.mil/html/topics/natam/natam-wwii.html)
1942 Jun 13, Delegates from the
Six Nations Confederacy (Iraquois League) assembled in conference to
draft a formal declaration of war. The following day, on the steps
of the United States Capitol, a spokesman of the Confederacy said it
has entered World War II on its own consent and terms.
(www.combat.ws/S3/BAKISSUE/CMBT04N4/IROQUOIS.HTM)
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 Jan 4, Pres. Ford signed
into law the US Indian Self-Determination Act. It began the transfer
of administration from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the tribal
governments.
(http://tinyurl.com/6rh5v3y)(Econ, 4/7/12, p.35)
1975 Dec 12, 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. In 2011 Graham was sentenced to serve life in
prison.
(SFC, 2/7/04, p.A3)(Reuters,
6/26/07)(www.dickshovel.com/time.html#1976)(SFC, 1/25/11, p.A6)
1976 Scientists in southern
California scientists unearthed what were among the oldest skeletal
remains ever found in the Western Hemisphere. They dated back nearly
10,000 years. A local tribal group called the Kumeyaay Nation later
claimed that the bones, representing at least two people, were their
ancestors and demanded them back. In December, 2011, the Univ. of
San Diego said it would turn the remains over to the Kumeyaay,
although it gave other tribal groups until Jan. 4 to come forward
and dispute the claim.
(AP, 1/15/12)
1976 Vermont Gov. Tom Salmon
granted the Abenaki Indians recognition. The following year a new
governor rescinded recognition.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.J7)
1977 The Iroquois Indians of
North America, or Haudenosaunee as they call themselves, began
issuing their own passports.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.34)
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/)
1978 Aug 11, The American
Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) put an end to the persecution
of Native American religions.
(Econ, 4/7/12,
p.35)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Religious_Freedom_Act)
1979 Dec 14, The Seminole Tribe
opened a high-stakes bingo hall on their reservation at Hollywood,
Florida, and the state tried immediately to shut it down. This was
followed by a series of court battles leading to a final decision by
the United States Supreme Court in 1981 “Seminole Tribe vs.
Butterworth.” The court ruled in favor of the Seminoles
affirming their right to operate their bingo hall.
(http://500nations.com/news/Indian_Casinos/history.asp)
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 Dr. Edgar S. Cahn (46),
author of "Our Brother’s Keeper: The Indian in White America"
(1969), and co-founder of the Antioch School of Law (1972), suffered
a massive heart attack. While recovering he dreamed up the idea of
Time Dollars as a new currency to provide a solution to massive cuts
in government spending on social welfare. His idea was that one hour
of work equals one service credit. In 1987, while at the London
School of Economics, Edgar developed his theoretical explanation for
why such a currency should work. He came back to the US and started
putting service credits (not yet called Time Dollars) into
operation. In 1997 a Time Dollar convention helped new and surviving
groups identify “what works.” Time Dollars became the backbone of a
successful cross-age peer tutoring program in Chicago, a Maine Time
Banks Network, and a Time Dollar Youth Court in Washington, DC.
(www.timebanks.org/history-structure.htm)(www.law.udc.edu/?page=ECahn)
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. Since the
invention of the internet, however, bingo online has become the
preferred method of play.
(Econ, 5/17/08,
p.40)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_bingo)
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 Elouise Cobell, a
Blackfeet woman from Browning, Montana, filed a lawsuit alleging
that the US Interior Department mismanaged billions of dollars held
in trust by the government. In 2010 the US House of Representatives
approved a $3.4 billion government settlement.
(SFC, 7/3/10, p.A4)
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)
2010 Apr 6, Wilma Mankiller
(64), the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, died.
(Econ, 4/24/10, p.84)
2010 Apr 21, In Arizona the
Havasupai Indian tribe ended a 7-year legal fight with Arizona State
Univ. over blood samples members gave to university researchers for
diabetes research that were also used to study schizophrenia,
inbreeding and ancient population migration. Tribal members called
it a case of genetic piracy.
(SFC, 4/22/10, p.A6)
2010 Nov 24, In California Rep.
steve Cooley conceded defeat to Dem. Kamala Harris for the office of
attorney general. Harris became the state’s first woman, the first
African American and the first Indian American in California history
to be elected as state attorney general.
(SFC, 11/25/10, p.A1)
2010 Dec 8, Pres. Obama signed
legislation to pay American Indians and black farmers some $4.6
billion for government mistreatment over many decades. The
legislation settled 4 long-standing Native American water rights in
Arizona, New Mexico and Montana.
(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A18)
2011 Jun 20, A US federal judge
agreed to a $3.4 billion settlement over mismanaged Indian
royalties. The 15-year suit represents the largest ever approved
against the US government.
(SFC, 6/21/11, p.A4)
2011 Jun 26, In Oklahoma the
Cherokee Nation election officials declared Bill John Baker as its
new leader. He unseated 3-term incumbent Chad Smith by 11 of 15,000
votes.
(SFC, 6/27/11, p.A4)
2011 Aug 22, The Cherokee
nation, the USA’s second-largest Indian tribe, formally booted from
membership thousands of descendants of black slaves who were brought
to Oklahoma more than 170 years ago by Native American owners.
(Reuters, 8/23/11)
2011 Sep 13, A federal order
for one of the nation's largest American Indian tribes to restore
voting rights and benefits to about 2,800 descendants of members'
former slaves threw plans for a special election for a new Cherokee
Nation chief into turmoil. The tribe said that it would not be
dictated to by the US government over its move to banish African
Americans from its citizenship rolls.
(AP, 9/13/11)(Reuters, 9/13/11)
2011 Oct 16, Elouise Cobell
(b.1945), treasurer of the Black Feet tribe, died in Montana. She
had tenaciously pursued a lawsuit that accused the federal
government of cheating American Indians out of more than a century’s
worth of royalties.
(SFC, 10/18/11, p.A6)
2011 Nov 14, It was reported
that the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian tribe, plans to
issue its first bonds in a $120 million offering to finance some 50
projects on its 27,000-square-mile reservation in Arizona, New
Mexico and Utah.
(SFC, 11/14/11, p.D4)
2011 Nov, The 685-member Fort
Sill Apache won the right to establish a reservation on homelands in
southern New Mexico. The US Interior Department approved a
proclamation that awards the Fort Sill Apache 30 acres to establish
a reservation near Deming.
(AP, 11/24/11)
2011 Dec 13, Pope Benedict XVI
approved seven new saints for the Catholic Church, including
Hawaii's Mother Marianne and a 17th-century Native American,
Caterina Tekakwitha. Marianne cared for leprosy patients on Hawaii's
Molokai peninsula in the late 1880s, soon after the death of Father
Damien, who was canonized in 2009. Tekakwitha, who lived from
1656-1680 in the US and Canada, became the first Native American to
be beatified in 1980.
(AP, 12/19/11)
2012 Feb 9, The Oglala Sioux
Tribe of South Dakota sued some of the world’s largest beer makers
for $500 million claiming they knowingly contributed to
alcohol-related problems on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
(SFC, 2/10/12, p.A14)
2012 Mar 29, In California the
SF-based Save the Redwood League donated Four Corners, a 164-acre
property in Mendocino County, to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness
Council, made up of local native Indian groups.
(SFC, 4/28/12, p.A6)
2012 David Treuer authored “Rez
Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life.” The book
centers on the Leech Lake Reservation of Minnesota.
(SSFC, 2/5/12, p.F1)
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End of file.