Native American Uprisings in America
I. 17th Century
A. Powhatan Uprising (1622)
A native uprising near Jamestown, VA of the tribe from whence Pocahontas
had come; almost 350 settlers were killed, wiping out nearly 1/6 of the settlers
in Virginia at that time. About 19 women were taken captive from Martin’s
Hundred, a plantation on the James River. After arranging a “peace parley” –
ostensibly to discuss the return of the captives from the Indians – the colonists
served the Powhatans poisoned wine, killing many of them outright, and
making the others ill, whereupon they were shot. But the chieftain,
Opechancanough, escaped. The colonists continued to terrorize the natives,
letting them plant corn, then attacking them and stealing the harvests. Some of
the captive women eventually were ransomed for a few pounds of beads, but
some never returned or were heard from again. In 1644, the Powhatan killed
another 50 or so colonists in a surprise attack after which their old chieftain was
captured and executed, ending native American resistance to the establishment
of the colony in Virginia.
B. King Philip’s War (1676)
The first Pilgrims were befriended by the Wampanoag tribe and their chieftain,
Massasoit. But by the time of his death in 1662, the new settlers outnumbered
their Indian counterparts by nearly 2 to 1. They had brought new diseases to
America and the Indian population had been devastated by epidemics. In
addition, many of them were forced into servitude as laborers and domestic
servants who were punished by the Puritans if they tried to follow their cultural
traditions. Massasoit’s son, Metacom, thought there were too many English
moving onto the Indians’ lands, and he orchestrated an attack in concert with
other New England tribes. In 1675 they attacked roughly half of the existing
ninety colonial settlements, and by 1676 almost 600 colonists had been killed.
Unfortunately for them, more than 5 times that many Indians were killed, and
captured natives were shipped off to the West Indies to be sold as slaves.
Metacom was captured and killed in August, 1676. He was known to the white
men as King Philip. This was the last native American uprising against the
colonists of New England.
II. 18th Century
A. Pontiac’s War (1763)
During the French and Indian War, the French had been allied with the Huron
branch of the Iroquois linguistic family while the British had been allied with
the Iroquois League, which comprised 5 tribal components – Mohawk, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. After acquiring Albany from the Dutch in
1664, the British colonists held a gathering there of delegates from New York,
Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut at which the Iroquois League
members were present. The colonists and the Iroquois League outlined a plan
for mutual defence. There was a second Albany Congress in 1754, when war
was imminent. In fact, while the conference was being held, George
Washington (then a lieutenant in the British army) was engaging with French
troops in the Ohio Valley, thus starting the French and Indian War (called the
Seven Years’ War in Europe). At this second Albany Congress, there were
colonial representatives from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. At this
conference begins the American tradition of making promises to the native
Americans which they do not keep, whether they ever intended to or not. The
Iroquois were sent away from this conference with promises that the English
settlers would not encroach on their lands in and beyond the Appalachian
Mountains to the Ohio River Valley.
After the British defeat the French in the war, the French retreat from all
their forts in America (pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Paris-1763),
leaving the Huron Indians who had been their ally in the war and their major
hunting and trading partners, to have to deal with the British and their colonists.
The colonists begin to move westward into Indian territory. Pontiac, an Ottawa
chieftain, coordinated an attack on all of the former French forts at the same
time in May, 1763. The strategy was successful early on, and several garrisons
were wiped out. The plan was to drive the English eastward, back across the
Appalachians. While the Indians had the upper hand, the British issued a Royal
Proclamation that all land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi is to
be reserved as Indian hunting grounds, but within 2 years, Pontiac made a
formal peace in the face of the British army regaining control. Colonial settlers
then began pouring into the Ohio River Valley.
B. Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794)
Following the defeat of the British by the Americans in the Revolutionary War,
expansion into the Indian territories took off in a big way. The Indians
desperately wanted to contain the Americans south of the Ohio River, and
during the 1780s and 1790s there were numerous violent clashes between the
natives and the now-American settlers. In 1791, an expedition of 1400 men led
by one Arthur St. Clair was surprised while still in bed in their camp at dawn.
The Indians killed over 600 men and wounded another 300, while losing only
20 or so of their own. In 1794, in the same region, the Americans under
General Anthony Wayne got their revenge in a battle against the Shawnee and
other tribes known as Fallen Timbers. In the resulting treaty, the Americans
acquired much of what ultimately became known as the Northwest Territory.
For some period of time, a Shawnee warrior named Tecumseh, who had fought
at the battle on the Maumee River where St. Clair had been surprised and
defeated, continued to oppose the encroachment of white men on Indian land.
III. 19th Century
A. Battle of Tippecanoe (1811) and Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814)
Tecumseh had a younger brother, a recovering alcoholic who became a fiery
orator against Indians’ use of “firewater.” He became known as the Prophet. He
and Tecumseh had a base camp in Indiana called Prophetstown. In 1811, while
Tecumseh was away trying to get the Creek Indians to join his tribal
conglomerate against the white man, the Americans, led by William Henry
Harrison, sent a military expedition into Indian territory. The Prophet attacked
the group, and was defeated on the Tippecanoe River near Prophetstown, which
was burned by the Americans. The following year – 1812 – the Americans went
to war against the British again. Tecumseh fought with the British in several
battles around the Great Lakes region, but was killed in 1813 in a battle near
present-day Detroit. In March, 1814, Creek Indians loyal to Tecumseh fought an
American force led by Andrew Jackson, and were defeated at the Battle of
Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in present-day Alabama. In the treaties
which follow these engagements, millions of acres of Indian territories pass into
American hands, and both Harrison and Jackson become presidents.
B. The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears (1828-1830s)
In 1796, George Washington decided to that the native Americans needed to be
integrated into American society and civilization, and he chose the Cherokee tribe
as a pilot project. Funds were allocated to educate the Cherokee, and they
become, in many ways, acculturated into western society at the expense of their
native culture. The Cherokee adapt, and adopt a system of government modeled
on the American system. They adopt a constitution and provide for an elected
head of the tribe. They publish the first Indian newspaper in 1828, based upon an
alphabet invented by Sequoyah, The Cherokee Phoenix. Their lands were in
western North Carolina and in Georgia, with their capital at New Echota (near
present-day Calhoun, Georgia), and the tribe prospered.
Unfortunately for the Cherokee, in 1828 Andrew Jackson was elected
president. He was the first president from west of the Appalachians, and he had
been an Indian fighter. He knew that the land-hungry Americans had their eyes
on the Cherokee territory, and, in 1829, gold was discovered there, fueling the
fires of greed and prejudice. In 1830, Jackson asked Congress to pass the Indian
Removal Act, which it did. It provided that Indian land between the Appalachian
Mountains and the Mississippi River would be exchanged for lands west of the
Mississippi. The Cherokee resisted, and took their case to the Supreme Court of
the United States. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Indian tribes were a
federal responsibility and that any attempt by a state (in this instance, Georgia) to
appropriate tribal lands was unconstitutional. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
(1831). A year later, in Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme Court declared that
Georgia had violated the Cherokee nation’s sovereign status and violated the
federal government’s sole right to a relationship with the Cherokee nation.
President Jackson, though, refused to enforce the decision, and pressed the
Cherokees to leave the southeastern U.S. The Cherokee were split between those
who wanted to stay in Georgia and North Carolina, and those who wanted to
surrender and head west. The latter were called the “Treaty Party” and they
signed the Treaty of New Echota without the authority or permission of the chief
of the Cherokee, John Ross. The treaty required the Cherokee nation to exchange
its national lands for a parcel in the Indian Territory set aside by Congress, in
what is now Oklahoma, and to move there within two years. The federal
government promised to give the Nation $5 million, to pay individuals for the
personal and real property being abandoned by them, and to pay for the cost of
relocating and getting established in the Indian Territory. It also promised to
honor the Cherokee’s title to the new land, respect its political sovereignty, and to
protect the tribe from future trespasses upon tribal land for “as long as the grass
grows and the rivers run.” The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty – even though
signed without the permission or even involvement of the duly-elected Cherokee
government – by one vote. The Cherokee government continued to reject the
treaty as being illegal until 1838, when President Van Buren ordered the U.S.
Army to round up the Cherokee and march them to the Indian Territory, which it
did. Between 4 and 5 thousand Cherokee, and another 15,000 members of
neighboring tribes who also were forcibly removed (the Choctaw, the Chickasaw,
the Creek and the Seminoles), died on the forced march, known as the Trail of
Tears. By 1907, a sufficient number of settlers had violated the treaty by
encroaching on the Indians’ lands that Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as
the 46th state.
C. The Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876)
The last group of native Americans to experience appropriation of their lands by
white settlers were the Plains Indians. By the 1860s, railroads were expanding
westward and, after the Civil War, so were ranchers, miners, and farmers. To
make matters worse, the buffalo – the traditional mainstay of all the Plains tribes
– was being systematically annihilated. Finally, gold was discovered in one place
after another between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. Each time
there was a new discovery of gold, settlers poured in, followed by federal troops
to protect them from the Indians. Black Kettle, a Cheyenne chieftain, tried to
convince the other Indians that peaceful coexistencewith the white men was
possible. In 1864, he moved his people to an area that he was told by federal
representatives would be safe for them. In November, they were camping at Sand
Creek, near Fort Lyon, Colorado, when they were attacked at dawn by a troop of
Colorado militia. Between 150 and 500 people died. Black Kettle did not die,
and he moved his people again in compliance with the white men’s orders to what
he was assured would be a safe place. In November, 1868, while asleep in their
tents, his people were again attacked and massacred by federal troops. This time,
Black Kettle and his wife died in the attack. The commander of the troops was
General George Custer, who maintained that he was in hot pursuit of an Indian
raiding party.
In 1874, Custer led a military force into the Black Hills of South Dakota,
where he confirmed the rumored discovery of gold. The Black Hills were sacred
to the Sioux people, and they had been promised by treaty that no settlers would
be allowed to move there. When Custer’s expedition confirmed the presence of
gold “in them thar hills,” it set off a new gold rush. The U.S. government tried to
purchase the Black Hills, but the Sioux refused, whereupon they were ordered to
move onto reservations at the beginning of 1876, or risk being labeled “hostile.”
In June, 1876, a Sioux chieftain, Crazy Horse, repulsed army troops at the
Rosebud River iin southern Montana. Then he joined a significantly larger Sioux
gathering encamped on the Little Bighorn River with Sitting Bull, another Sioux
chief. Together, they led approximately 10,000 people. On June 25, 1876,
George Custer, in command of the 7th Cavalry, decided to attack the encampment
without waiting for reinforcements. He was leading 263 men, all of whom died.
The only survivor of the engagement was one horse, named Comanche. That was
the final big Sioux victory against the U.S. forces, and in 1877, Crazy Horse
surrendered. Sitting Bull went to Canada, where he remained until 1881, when he
turned himself in and later joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Both Crazy
Horse and Sitting Bull died later while in the custody of American soldiers or
policemen. Shortly after Sitting Bull’s death in 1890, another group of peaceful
Sioux people were slaughtered at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The
people had already been surrounded and were in the process of turning over their
weapons when an unexpected shot was fired and panic ensued. They were fired
upon with machine guns, and hundreds of men, women and children were shot to
death. That event marked the end of native American resistance to the wrongful
acquisition of their lands by the white man.