1875

Congress passes the Indian Homestead Act.

Modeled after the Homestead Act (see entry for MAY 20, 1862), the Indian Homestead Act offers 160-acre homesteads to western Indians willing to leave their reservations and become private landowners. These Indians are to receive title to their homesteads if they occupy them for five years and make certain improvements to the land. Intended to encourage Indians to assimilate into white society, the act will have little impact because few Indians will opt to take up homesteads under its terms.

White hunters exterminate the southern buffalo herds.

In a matter of years, professional buffalo hunters have killed so many buffalo on the southern Plains that the once-great herds native to the region are nearly extinct (see entry for 1871). Between 1872 and 1874, the height of the buffalo hunt, whites slaughter more than 5 million of the animals. (By comparison, the Plains Indians who depend on the buffalo for their survival hunt just over 1 million during the same period.) Some hunters shoot more than they can skin, infuriating Indians by leaving the animals’ bloody carcasses to rot. Even those who skin them often leave the rest to rot. The Indians traditionally used every part of the buffalo. The extermination of the buffalo has been supported by some officials, including the secretary of the interior, as a means of destroying traditional Plains Indian culture.

P

“Twelve hundred men were employed in the construction of the [Kansas Pacific Railroad]. The Indians were very troublesome, and it was difficult to obtain fresh meat for the hands. The company therefore concluded to engage expert hunters

To kill buffaloes____During my

Engagement as hunter for the company, which covered a period of eighteen months, I killed 4,280 buffaloes.”

—William “Buffalo Bill” Cody on his career as a professional buffalo hunter

May 3

Kiowa chief Kicking Bird dies under mysterious circumstances.

Kicking Bird, who is considered the principal chief of the Kiowa by the United States, is found dead, possibly poisoned by his political enemies. Long an advocate of peaceful relations with the U. S. government, Kicking Bird had been asked by federal officials to identify Kiowa war leaders who had participated in the Red River War (see entries for JUNE 27, 1874, and for SEPTEMBER 28, 1874). These men are soon exiled to Florida, where they are imprisoned for three years at Fort Marion (see entry for MAY 21, 1875).

May

The Comanche under Quanah Parker surrender.

Comanche leader Quanah Parker, after four years of fighting and weeks of negotiation, leads his 400 men to Fort Sill in Indian Territory and surrenders to U. S. Army colonel Ranald Mackenzie. The meeting between the former adversaries is cordial. Perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate himself to Mackenzie, Parker, whose followers long terrorized Texas settlers with their raiding, reminds the colonel that his white mother had been a Texan (see entries for MAY 19, 1836, and for DECEMBER 1860). Throughout the encounter, the Comanche displays his considerable talents as a diplomat— skills that will make him an extremely effective leader as his people adjust to reservation life and to dealing with Indian agents and other white authorities.

May 21

Plains Indian prisoners arrive at Fort Marion.

After surrendering to the U. S. Army, 72 Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors are sent to Fort Marion, a prison in St. Augustine, Florida. Considered the most dangerous Indians of the southern

Plains, they are imprisoned thousands of miles from their homelands to keep them from further influencing other members of their tribes.

During their three years in prison, the Fort Marion inmates are overseen by Richard Pratt, a former army officer. Sympathetic to the Indians’ plight, he teaches his charges English and educates them about non-Indian customs. Pratt also gives the Indians pencils and paper to draw pictures, which he sells to non-Indian tourists to raise funds for his school. Using simple lines and figures reminiscent of hide paintings, the inmates, such as Howling Wolf and Zotom, use their pictures to tell the story of their imprisonment and to record their memories of living as hunters and fighters on the Plains. (See also entry for MAY 3,

1875. )

December

The commissioner of Indian affairs orders Plains Indians to settle on reservations.

The commissioner of Indian affairs announces that any Indians on the northern plains who do not report to their reservation agencies by January 31,

1876,  will be considered “hostiles” at war with the United States. The declaration helps justify a military solution to the problem presented by Americans clamoring for access to lands and goldfields in the Black Hills (see entry for SUMMER 1874), an area assigned to the Lakota Sioux by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.