2.3: Settling the West: Major dates with Native Americans

Question 1

Dakota War

Answer 1

1862– The Dakotah were paid annuities; though it wasn’t directly paid to them, it went to white people who supplied the tribe with food. The Indians were irritated- they had unproductive plots to farm. It was the Dakota tribe vs federal troops and militia in Minnesota; over 800 whites were dead, 303 Dakota were dead, 38 death sentences.

Question 2

Sand Creek Massacre

Answer 2

1864 – In Colorado territory, U.S army colonel John M. Chivington led a surprise attack on a peaceful Cheyenne settlement along Sand Creek River. The Cheyenne under Chief Black kettle tried to surrender. First, he waved the America Flag and the White flag of surrender. Chivington ignored the gestures. The U.S army killed about 200 Cheyenne during the conflict.

Question 3

Fetterman Fight

Answer 3

1866– a tribe of Oglala Sioux under Chief Red Cloud, provoked by the building of the Bozeman Trail through their hunting ground in southern Montana, wiped out the 81 soldiers of a U.S. army unit commanded by Captain W. J. Fetterman.

Question 4

Indian Peace Commission

Answer 4

1867 – Established to end the Indian wars in the West, the commission’s solution was to contain the Indians in a system of reservations: one in Oklahoma, another in the Dakotas. Did not succeed.

Question 5

Battle of Little Bighorn

Answer 5

1876– Lakotah leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated Custer’s troops who tried to force them back on to the reservation after they had left it to hunt. Custer and all his men died

Question 6

Flight of the Nez Perce

Answer 6

1877– American government wanted to move Perce tribe to reservation, Joseph leads the tribe 1,300 miles to escape but is captured at the border. Chief Joseph finally agrees to surrender and give the “I will fight no more forever speech.”

Question 7

Dawes Act

Answer 7

1887– Law which gave all Native American males 160 acres to farm and also set up schools to make Native American children more like other Americans.

Question 8

Wounded Knee Massacre

Answer 8

1890– In December, a group of Ghost Dancers fled the reservation after the killing of Sitting Bull. The government tried to force them back. 300 Lakota men, women, and children were killed on what is now the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Question 9

Citizenship Act

Answer 9

1924– Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans

Question 10

Indian Reorganization Act

Answer 10

1934 - Restored tribal ownership of lands, recognized tribal constitutions and government, and provided loans for economic development.

Question 11

Ghost Dance Movement

Answer 11

Religion of the late 1880s and early 1890s that combined elements of Christianity and traditional Native American religion. It fostered Plains Indians’ hope that they could, through sacred dances, resurrect the great bison herds and call up a storm to drive whites back across the Atlantic.