The Native American Wars

Treaties did not end the threats to the Indian way of life, nor did they succeed in preventing violence for long. The destruction of game by Americans intensified competition among tribes for bison and other remaining animals. The U.S. Army engaged in several battles with the Lakota Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos in the mid-1850s. In the two years following the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858, thousands of gold seekers flooded into Arapaho territory, violating the 1851 treaty. Some Arapahos reacted by moving north of the Platte. For the southern bands that remained, relations with the intruders deteriorated, and on November 29, 1864, white militiamen massacred Black Kettle and White Antelope’s Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek, Colorado. In response, members of these tribes, along with some Sioux, Comanches, and Kiowas, resorted to war. They launched a series of attacks against posts located along immigration trails. Relative peace was restored when the Southern Arapahos, some Cheyenne bands, the Comanches, and the Kiowas accepted treaties in 1865 and 1867 that confined them to reservations. In exchange, federal officials guaranteed that the Indians would be protected from attacks by settlers and soldiers and that they would receive goods to compensate for the destruction of the bison and other game. When the Comanches and Kiowas resumed raids because the government had failed to provide sufficient rations, the Army destroyed the Indians’ winter camps and forced them to return to their reservation along the Red River.

In the Central and Northern Plains, bands of Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Lakota Sioux also waged war to protect themselves. The discovery of gold in Montana in 1862 brought a large number of non-Indians into and through the region. When the federal government built forts to protect settlers and the road leading to the gold fields, the Bozeman Trail, the Native American tribes besieged the forts and forced the United States to negotiate a settlement. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, federal negotiators agreed to evacuate the forts, establish a vast reservation (the “Great Sioux Reservation”) in South Dakota and North Dakota, and guarantee the hunting rights of the Indians.

Nevertheless, the Sioux and their allies ultimately suffered the same fate as the Comanches and the Kiowas. When Americans discovered gold in the Black Hills region of the Great Sioux Reservation in 1874, the federal government tried in vain to convince the Sioux to sell or lease the land. War broke out between the Army and the Northern Sioux and Cheyennes in 1876. The Indians, led by Gall and Sitting Bull (both Hunkpapa Sioux), defeated the troops under the command of General George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but the winter campaign of 1876-77 forced most of the Sioux and Cheyennes to return to their reservations or flee to Canada. Among the latter, those led by Sitting Bull returned to the reservation in 1881, while others settled permanently in Canada. Upon Sitting Bull’s return, all Plains peoples had been settled on reservations.

The Army’s successes against certain Plains tribes stemmed largely from the help of other Plains Indians serving as scouts and auxiliaries. Pawnees, Arikaras, and Crows helped the U.S. Army fight the Lakotas, while Pawnees, Caddos, and Wichitas allied with the United States against the Comanches. Military service represented a way for some Indians to adapt to changing conditions. By serving as a scout or auxiliary, an Indian could secure material benefits for himself and his family, including extra rations, food, money, and horses captured in battle. Some Plains natives viewed the United States as less of a threat than tribes like the Sioux. Service in the Army also provided an avenue of escape, albeit temporary, from reservation life and an opportunity to gain honor and status through combat. Similar motivations would later prompt Plains Indians to serve in the U.S. armed forces in subsequent conflicts, such as World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam.

1
Treaties, dispossession, and war in Canada


2
Reservations, allotments, and assimilation


3
World War II and the end of the war

Treaties, dispossession, and war in Canada

In the Canadian Prairies, the fur trade remained the primary means of interaction between Indians and whites until the late 1860s. A “middle ground” was established between the Blackfoot, Gros Ventres, Assiniboines, and Plains Crees on one side, and fur traders on the other. The exchange of ideas reduced racial prejudice, gifts created fictive kinship ties, and marriages between company men and tribal bands, along with sexual interaction, produced a large Métis population (people of mixed Métis, French, and British descent). This cultural accommodation ended with the decline of the fur trade in the 1860s. In 1870, after years of resource depletion and diminishing profits, the Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land to the Dominion of Canada.

Like their counterparts in the United States, Canadian officials wanted to clear Plains Indians and Métis from the path of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was settling in greater numbers in the Prairie provinces. Hoping to learn from the United States and avoid a series of financially costly wars, Ottawa officials negotiated a series of seven numbered treaties with the Plains peoples between 1871 and 1877. The indigenous peoples accepted the treaties after a movement led by the Métis Louis Riel to establish an independent Métis government in 1869 was crushed, and because they wanted government assistance to compensate for the loss of the bison. The Red River Anishinaabes (Chippewas), Plains Crees, Plains Anishinaabes, Siksikas (Northern Blackfoot), Bloods, Northern Piegans, Sarcees, and some Assiniboines were among the Plains groups with whom the government signed treaties. Generally, the treaties stipulated that the indigenous peoples would accept reservations and individual land plots in exchange for government aid and assistance in agriculture.

Reservations, allotments, and assimilation

Due to the loss of economic resources and military defeats, Plains peoples found themselves confined to reservations in the United States and Canada. Life on reservations represented a radical change from the Indians’ previous existence. Some groups, like the Cheyennes and Arapahos who had been relocated to Oklahoma, found themselves far from home, where the environment was unfamiliar and adaptation was difficult. Even for those who remained in relatively familiar territory, the mobility that was an integral part of their bison-hunting lifestyle had been lost. Although Indians were permitted to leave the reservation to hunt, their primary prey, the bison, was virtually extinct by the early 1880s. For the Caddos, Wichitas, and other Plains peoples who depended on agriculture, reservation lands often proved insufficient for farming. The Plains peoples, who had once derived their existence from the land and the bison, had become, in many respects, economically dependent on the United States.

However, for all the problems of the reservations, they represented homes for the peoples and contexts for their cultures. In the United States in particular, humanitarian “reformers” worked to remove even this unique saving grace. These reformists and their supporters within the government argued that Americans had an obligation to “civilize” the Indians by breaking tribal ties and absorbing them into white society as individuals.

Several factors helped the reformists gain support for their ideas. In the context of the Plains Wars and the expansion of white settlement, absorbing Indians into white society seemed to be the only way to prevent their extinction. The desire of evangelical Christians to create a “righteous empire” in the United States made the conversion of “red pagans” an important goal. Industrialization and the increasing immigration of Catholics and Jews from Eastern Europe seemed to threaten traditional rural Anglo-Saxon values and fuel a desire to “Americanize” the first Americans. Reformists also believed that assimilation would end the dependence of many Native Americans on government rations and annuities.

The General Allotment Act of 1887 (along with subsequent laws and amendments) eventually became the vehicle through which reformists sought to eradicate Indian cultures and societies. Sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Henry Dawes, the law provided for ending communal tribal ownership and assigning reservation land in individual plots. Dawes and the reformists argued that the law would break the peoples’ ties to their “backward” tribal cultures and societies while forcing them to become industrious farmers. Unassigned reservation lands would then be sold as surplus land to non-Indians. This would further facilitate assimilation by reducing the land Indians could use for hunting and would allow Indians to learn from their white neighbors.

Allotment did not become as important (and damaging) an aspect of Indian policy in Canada. The Indian Act of 1869 granted band councils the right to allot full title of certain reservation lands to individuals who, subsequently, were allowed to sell, lease, or rent their land only to other members of the band. Consequently, non-indigenous people simply did not have the same opportunities to purchase unassigned “surplus” land or ever gain access to allotted lands.

Canadians followed the Americans’ example by using education as a means of assimilation. By the mid-1890s, the governments of the United States and Canada funded a network of Indian boarding schools to foster assimilation. These schools offered academic and vocational education while forbidding students from participating in Indian cultural activities such as speaking indigenous languages and practicing indigenous religions.

Officials in Washington and Ottawa also suppressed Plains Indian cultural practices in other ways. In Canada, the Indian Act of 1876 (with subsequent amendments) banned traditional tribal and band governments and prohibited various religious and cultural practices, such as the Sun Dance and the Thirst Dance. In the United States, federal agents forced Native Americans to attend Christian services, adopt “citizen” clothing and hairstyles, follow only Indian leaders approved by the federal government, and refrain from cultural practices like the Sun Dance and polygamy.

World War II and the end of the war

Like the New Deal, World War II had a huge impact on the Plains Indians. Thousands served in the armed forces of the United States and Canada, and wartime activities fostered economic opportunities. The Sioux, for example, helped build military installations in the Northern Plains. In other cases, Indians migrated to urban areas to work in war industries, a migration that has continued to some extent since. In Canada, many Indians who served during World War II gained citizenship and political rights, which gave them more means to fight for religious rights and for better education, housing, and health programs. Many of these efforts culminated in the Indian Act of 1951, which granted indigenous peoples greater freedom to practice religious and cultural ceremonies and the right to raise political funds and consume alcohol outside of reservations.

In 1946, Congress passed the Indian Claims Commission Act, which created the Indian Claims Commission. Through the commission, Native Americans could obtain compensation from the federal government for past mistreatment, such as treaty violations and land seizures. Many Plains Indian groups filed claims with the commission. The Pawnees, for example, received $7.3 million from the Indian Claims Commission in 1962 in recognition of “unreasonably low” prior payments for their lands.

The Indian Claims Commission, however, was also a mechanism to clear the backlog of Indian claims as a prelude to breaking the federal obligation to the tribes. The success that Indians had experienced during World War II, along with the desire to reduce federal spending and promote national unity during the Cold War, convinced many people that Indians no longer needed a “guardian.” These views produced the “termination” policy between 1953 and the early 1960s. Termination aimed to end Indian eligibility for certain federal services and abolish the federal trust status of Indian lands. This latter measure would subject reservations to state laws, state taxes, and other forces that would likely erode and destroy the distinct cultural status of Native Americans. One Plains tribe, the Northern Poncas, was declared terminated. The federal government also funded a voluntary relocation program to encourage Indians to move to urban areas, such as Denver, where they would supposedly have more employment opportunities and assimilate more easily.

In a way, relocation to urban areas could be seen as a revival of the old Plains Indian strategy of physical mobility. The results of relocation often proved mixed, however. Up to 40% of those relocated eventually returned to their home communities. Urban life caused or exacerbated ills such as alcoholism, domestic violence, and poverty. Nevertheless, some relocatees found employment, and the interaction of people from different tribes helped foster a “pan-Plains” and “pan-Indian” consciousness.

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