Native American Wars
After the Civil War the United States declared war upon the Native Americans and their way of life. The President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) said the native people had two choices, either become white or move to the stony mountains. In 1830 Andrew Jackson declared the Indian Removal Act. Any Indian east of the Mississippi River had to move west.
When the north won the civil war in 1865 the unemployed were moved west. This is what started the Indian Wars. When Ulysses S. Grant took office in 1869the war on the Native Americans began. This was to be a war of extinction. Grant selected William Sheridan and William Sherman for his war department. Sherman wrote the only good Indian is a dead Indian. The war on the Indians lasted 21 years.
The first big event was the Washita Creek Massacre in 1869 led by Colonel Custer and the 7th Calvary. The night after Christmas they came across a group of Indians camping by the river. Custer told them to leave and they didn’t. There were no Indian survivors. Custer and his troops even killed all their ponies and horses.
The Lakota Sioux tribe’s leaders were Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. The 1st Ft. Laramie treaty was created but Sitting Bull and crazy horse did not want to compromise with the whites. They wanted drive out the whites so they started attacking U.S. Forts. Red Cloud felt they needed to compromise in order to save their culture. In the Fetlerman Massacre they wiped out 60 U.S. soldiers.
The massacre brought about the 2nd Ft. Laramie Treaty. The U.S. surrendered, pulled out their people, and closed their forts. The U.S would not allow whites to travel through the Native peoples land without permission. They gave the Lakota Sioux land in South Dakota and Nebraska. They were also given hunting rights for buffalo in North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska. The treaty was to last until the sun stops shining and the river stops running.
Six years later the U.S broke the Ft. Laramie Treaty....
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