The U. S. Army leaves the Black Hills region.
Under pressure from white citizens, President Ulysses S. Grant pulls the army out of the Black Hills (see entry for SUMMER 1874). The retreat shows that the government has no intention of protecting the area on behalf of the Lakota, despite the 1868 treaty promise that only officials authorized by the Indians would be “permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory.” Immediately after the military leaves the Black Hills, the region is flooded by whites looking to take over the gold-rich lands.
The U. S. government attempts to concentrate the Apache on the San Carlos Reservation.
To open more land for whites, the United States announces plans to consolidate all Apache on the San Carlos Reservation, along the Gila River in present-day Arizona. San Carlos offers little to the Indians. The land is barren, and the area is a hotbed for malaria. Despite the terrible living conditions at San Carlos, most Apache agree to resettle there. The exceptions are about half of the Chiricahua, who escape to Mexico, and most of the Warm Springs Apache, who find refuge in the mountains.
United States v. Joseph gives individual Pueblo the right to sell land.
In the United States v. Joseph, the federal government attempts to prevent Pueblo individuals from selling lands without its consent. Because the Pueblo were given property rights by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (see entry for FEBRUARY 2, 1848), the Supreme Court finds against the government, holding that the Pueblo should have the same rights as U. S. citizens to sell their land. Its ruling also cites that the Pueblo are unique among Indians because of their settled way of life, implying that they are superior to other Indian groups and hence deserve a greater amount of autonomy over their economic affairs. The Court will overturn this decision in United States v. Sandoval (see entry for 1913).
White hunters’ slaughter of the northern Plains buffalo begins.
After having killed most of the buffalo of the southern Plains (see entry for 1875), professional hunters turn to the smaller herds to the north, which the Northern Pacific Railway has made accessible. During the early 1880s, more than 5,000 white hunters and skinners will come to the region. By 1883, they will have killed so many animals that the northern herds will have largely disappeared.
Plains Indians refuse to return to their reservations.
Despite a federal government ultimatum (see entry for DECEMBER 1875), several thousand Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, embittered by the invasion of the Black Hills (see entry for SUMMER 1874), refuse to report to their reservation agencies. In response, General Philip Sheridan sends out three columns of soldiers—led by General George Crook, Colonel John Gibbon, and General Alfred H. Terry—to subdue the Indians, now branded as “hostiles,” and force them to live within reservation boundaries.
U. S. troops are defeated at the Battle of Powder River.
General George Crook orders Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds and his men to launch a surprise attack on a Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne village in the Powder River Valley, in what is now Montana. Confronted by Reynolds’s forces at daybreak, the Indians, still dressed in nightclothes, flee into the frozen countryside. Having taken their weapons with them, the warriors of the village quickly regroup and return to fight the soldiers, who are torching the Indians’ tipis and possessions. The warriors inflict heavy casualties and force the troops to retreat. Although an embarrassing defeat for the United States, the Battle of Powder River does succeed in alerting the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne to the army’s commitment to battling Indians found outside reservation borders (see entry for JANUARY 31, 1876).
April 12 that were initiated under British rule. The act applies only to people of full Indian descent, thereby excluding the Metis (a people of Indian and French ancestry) and the Inuit.
The Indian Act recognizes the Indian reserves established by treaty and allows for the creation of band councils. The real governing power on reserves, however, is to be held by agents, employees of Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs. The department’s goal is to “civilize” Canada’s Indians by assimilating them into non-Indian society.
The act also creates for Indians a distinct legal status that is to be defined exclusively by the government. For example, the government’s new definition of “Indianness” holds that an Indian man can give up his Indian status in exchange for citizenship and that an Indian woman who marries a non-Indian man forfeits her Indian status under the law. (See also entries for 1920; 1927; JUNE 20, 1951; and 1989.)
Sitting Bull has a vision of fallen soldiers.
While performing the Sun Dance, a traditional ritual of supplication, Lakota leader and holy man Sitting Bull hears a voice instructing that he study a vision that appears to him as he stares at the sun. Sitting Bull sees a great number of soldiers riding toward an Indian village. The soldiers and their horses are upside down, as are a few of the Indians. The voice tells him that the soldiers will all die, but Sitting Bull and his men must not plunder their bodies.
The vision is greeted with great enthusiasm by Sitting Bull’s followers. It is interpreted as a prophesy that a great army of soldiers will descend on them. Although some Lakota will die in battle (as symbolized by the upside-down Indians), all of the soldiers will be killed. (See also JUNE 25 TO 26, 1876.)
The Canadian Parliament passes the Indian Act.
Enacted nine years after the confederation of Canada (see entry for JULY 1, 1867), the Indian Act of 1876 announces the new government’s intention to uphold the paternalistic policies toward Indians
U. S. troops meet Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in the Battle of the Rosebud.
From the Crow and Shoshone scouts accompanying his soldiers, General George Crook learns that a large group of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne “hostiles” are occupying the Rosebud River Valley in Montana and moves his 1,200 soldiers there to confront them. While camped along the Rosebud, the soldiers are instead set upon by approximately an equal number of warriors led by Crazy Horse.
The attack leads to one of the largest battles of the Indian wars. After six hours of intense fighting along the three-mile river valley, the Indian forces end the battle. Crook declares a victory, but in fact the conflict is more of a draw, with both sides suffering relatively few casualties. The battle, however, largely incapacitates Crook’s soldiers for two months, thus reducing the number of U. S. troops available to fight hostile Indians.
Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors triumph at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
On orders from General Alfred H. Terry, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, commanding the Seventh Cavalry, travels up the Rosebud River to attack Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne hostiles camped along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory.
Grossly underestimating the Indians’ fighting forces, Custer divides his men into three battalions—one led by him, one headed by Major Marcus Reno, and the third assigned to Captain Frederick Benteen. Custer sends Benteen to scout the bluffs to the south, as Reno approaches the camp from the north and Custer moves toward it from the south. Reno and his men are met by a large Indian force, which compels them to retreat to the bluffs. Custer, meanwhile, leads more than 200 troops forward; they are met by an army of several thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. Custer and all of his men are killed in the ensuing battle.
Although the victory has great symbolic meaning to the Indians, it gives them little advantage in the overall war the U. S. Army is waging against Indians in the northern plains. In fact, the Battle of Little Bighorn allows the popular press to demonize the Indians fighting to protect their territory and encourages the army to pursue its war against them with increased ferocity.
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“Indians kept swirling round and round, and the soldiers killed only a few. Many soldiers fell. At last all horses killed but five. . . . [F]ive horsemen and the bunch of men, maybe forty, started toward the river. . . . One man all alone ran far down toward the river, then round up over the hill. I thought he was going to escape, but a Sioux fired and hit him in the head. He was the last man.”
—Northern Cheyenne warrior Two Moons, describing the Battle of Little Bighorn
Yellow Hand is scalped by William F. Cody.
While serving as an army scout, William F. Cody, also known by the stage name Buffalo Bill, scalps the body of Yellow Hand, a Cheyenne chief shot in a skirmish with soldiers seeking to avenge the deaths of the cavalrymen led by George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn (see entry for JUNE 25 TO 26, 1876). Wearing a garish Mexican vaquero outfit made of black velvet and trimmed with silver buttons and lace, Cody defiles the corpse.
Dressed in this costume, he replays the event in a play titled The Red Right Hand; or the First Scalp for Custer, which depicts Cody himself killing Yellow Hand (renamed Yellow Hair in the play and in the popular press) in hand-to-hand combat. He also displays Yellow Hand’s scalp for the audience. The
This image shows a romanticized depiction of the Battle of Little Bighorn dating from 1889. (Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Call no. X-33633)
Success of the play will inspire Cody to launch his famous Wild West Show (see entry for MAY 17, 1883).
Canadian Indian leaders sign the “Medicine Chest” Treaty.
Cree and Assiniboine leaders in what are now Alberta and Saskatchewan agree to Treaty Six, which will become known as the “Medicine Chest” Treaty. In addition to promising extra rations to relieve famine in Indian settlements, the agreement states that “a medicine chest will be kept at the house of each Indian Agent for the use and benefit of all Indians.” In the late 1960s, the Canadian government will agree to provide Indians with free health care on the basis of this treaty.
American Horse dies in a parley with U. S. troops.
Lakota Sioux war leader American Horse and his band are set upon by U. S. troops under the command of Anson Mills while the Indians are traveling south for the winter. In the ensuing conflict, later named the Battle of Slim Buttes, American Horse and 19 others are trapped in a cave. The troops are driven off by hundreds of warriors led by Sitting Bull and Gall, but not before American Horse is fatally wounded by a gunshot to his stomach. The troops possibly set out to kill American Horse because they believe (perhaps erroneously) that he had fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn (see entry for JUNE 25 TO 26, 1876).
Sitting Bull’s followers escape to Canada.
Wanting to escape warfare but unwilling to be confined to a reservation, Sitting Bull and his followers set off for Canada. Although free from the threat of massacre by the U. S. Army, they find it difficult to replicate their traditional ways because there are too few buffaloes in the area. On the brink of starvation, the Canadian exile of Sitting Bull’s people will end four and a half years later with their reluctant return to the United States (see entry for JULY 19, 1881).
Soldiers destroy Dull Knife’s camp.
Eleven hundred troops led by Colonel Ranald Mackenzie attack Cheyenne leader Dull Knife’s camp of 183 lodges along the Powder River, in present-day Wyoming. During the surprise assault, 40 Cheyenne are killed. The others watch helplessly as Mackenzie’s soldiers set their camp and possessions ablaze. With the Indians’ defeat, more than 1,000 Cheyenne are left without food or shelter in the dead of winter. The night after the attack, 11 infants freeze to death when temperatures fall to 30 below zero. (See also entry for SEPTEMBER 9, 1877.)
World History
