Chiricahua Apache leader Victorio is killed south of El Paso, Texas

Year
1880
Month Day
October 15

The warrior Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists of all time, dies on October 15, 1880, in the Tres Castillos Mountains south of El Paso, Texas.

Born in New Mexico around 1809, Victorio grew up during a period of intense hostility between the native Apache Native Americans of the southwest and encroaching Mexican and American settlers. Determined to resist the loss of his homeland, Victorio began leading his small band of warriors on a long series of devastating raids against Mexican and American settlers and their communities in the 1850s.

After more than a decade of evading the best efforts of the Mexican and American armies to capture him, the U.S. Army managed to convince Victorio to accept resettlement of his people on an inhospitable patch of sunburnt land near San Carlos, Arizona, in 1869. But with summer temperatures reaching 110 degrees on the San Carlos reservation (an area also known as Hell’s Forty Acres) and farming nearly impossible, Victorio decided the new reservation was unacceptable and moved his followers to more pleasant grounds at Ojo Caliente (Warm Springs), thus again becoming an outlaw in the eyes of the United States. In 1878, the U.S. Army attempted to force the Apaches back to the San Carlos reservation, but Victorio eluded capture, disappearing into the desert with 150 braves. Surviving by raiding the towns and farms of Chihuahua, Mexico, Victorio and his men began to ambush U.S. troops as well as Mexican or American sheepherders.

In 1880, a combined force of U.S. and Mexican troops finally succeeded in tracking down Apache and his warriors, surrounding them in the Tres Castillos Mountains of Mexico, just south of El Paso, Texas. Having sent the American troops away, the Mexican soldiers proceeded to kill all but 17 of the trapped Apaches, though the exact manner of Victorio’s death remains unclear. Some claimed a Native American scout employed by the Mexican army killed the famous warrior. But according to the Apache, Victorio took his own life rather than surrender to the Mexicans. Regardless of how it happened, Victorio’s death made him a martyr to the Apache people and strengthened the resolve of other warriors to continue the fight. The last of the great Apache warriors, Geronimo, would not surrender until 1886.

READ MORE: How Geronimo Eluded Death and Capture for 25 Years

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Chief Seattle dies near the city named for him

Year
1866
Month Day
June 07

Thirteen years after American settlers founded the city named for him, Chief Seattle dies in a nearby village of his people.

Born sometime around 1790, Seattle (Seathl) was a chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes who lived around the Pacific Coast bay that is today called Puget Sound. He was the son of a Suquamish father and a Duwamish mother, a lineage that allowed him to gain influence in both tribes.

By the early 1850s, small bands of Euro-Americans had begun establishing villages along the banks of Puget Sound. Chief Seattle apparently welcomed his new neighbors and seems to have treated them with kindness. In 1853, several settlers moved to a site on Elliott Bay to establish a permanent town–since Chief Seattle had proved so friendly and welcoming, the settlers named their tiny new settlement in his honor.

READ MORE: Native American History Timeline 

The Euro-American settlers picked the site because of the luxuriant forest on the bluff behind the new village. The Gold Rush in California had created a booming market for timber, and soon most of the villagers were at work cutting the trees and “skidding” them down a long chute to a newly constructed sawmill. The chute became known as “skid road,” and in time, it became the main street in Seattle, though it kept its original name. When the Seattle business district later moved north, the area became a haven for drunks and derelicts. Consequently, “skid road” or “skid row” became lingo for the dilapidated area of any town.

Not all the Puget Sound Indians, however, were as friendly toward the white settlers as Chief Seattle. War broke out in 1855, and Indians from the White River Valley south of Seattle attacked the village. Although he believed the whites would eventually drive his people to extinction, Chief Seattle argued that resistance would merely anger the settlers and hasten the Indians’ demise. By 1856, many of the hostile Indians had concluded that Chief Seattle was right and made peace.

Rather than fight, Seattle tried to learn white ways. Jesuit missionaries introduced him to Catholicism, and he became a devout believer. He observed morning and evening prayers throughout the rest of his life. The people of the new city of Seattle also paid some respect to the chief’s traditional religion. The Suquamish believed the mention of a dead man’s name disturbs his eternal rest. To provide Chief Seattle with a pre-payment for the difficulties he would face in the afterlife, the people of Seattle levied a small tax on themselves to use the chief’s name. He died in 1866 at the approximate age of 77.

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Chief Tecumseh urges Native Americans to unite against white settlers

Year
1809
Month Day
July 02

Alarmed by the growing encroachment of whites settlers squatting on Native American lands, the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh calls on all Native peoples to unite and resist.

Born around 1768 near Springfield, Ohio, Tecumseh won early notice as a brave warrior. He fought in battles between the Shawnee and the white Kentuckians, who were invading the Ohio River Valley territory. After the Americans won several important battles in the mid-1790s, Tecumseh reluctantly relocated westward but remained an implacable foe of the white men and their ways.

By the early 19th century, many Shawnee and other Ohio Valley tribes were becoming increasingly dependent on trading with the Americans for guns, cloth, and metal goods. Tecumseh spoke out against such dependence and called for a return to traditional Native American ways. He was even more alarmed by the continuing encroachment of white settlers illegally settling on the already diminished government-recognized land holdings of the Shawnee and other tribes. The American government, however, was reluctant to take action against its own citizens to protect the rights of the Ohio Valley Indians.

READ MORE: Native American History Timeline 

On this day in 1809, Tecumseh began a concerted campaign to persuade the tribes of the Old Northwest and Deep South to unite and resist. Together, Tecumseh argued, the various tribes had enough strength to stop the whites from taking further land. Heartened by this message of hope, Native Americans from as far away as Florida and Minnesota heeded Tecumseh’s call. By 1810, he had organized the Ohio Valley Confederacy, which united Native peoples from the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Menominee, Ottawa and Wyandot nations.

For several years, Tecumseh’s Indian Confederacy successfully delayed further white settlement in the region. In 1811, however, the future president William Henry Harrison led an attack on the confederacy’s base on the Tippecanoe River. At the time, Tecumseh was in the South attempting to convince more tribes to join his movement. Although the battle of Tippecanoe was close, Harrison finally won out and destroyed much of Tecumseh’s army.

When the War of 1812 began the following year, Tecumseh immediately marshaled what remained of his army to aid the British. Commissioned a brigadier general, he proved an effective ally and played a key role in the British capture of Detroit and other battles. When the tide of war turned in the American favor, Tecumseh’s fortunes went down with those of the British. On October 5, 1813, he was killed during Battle of the Thames. His Ohio Valley Confederacy and vision of Native American unity died with him.

READ MORE: 20 Rare Photos of Native American Life at the Turn of the Century

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Chief Satanta attacks wagon trains, killing teamsters

Year
1871
Month Day
May 18

The Kiowa Chief Satanta joins with other Indians to massacre a wagon train near the Red River in northeastern Texas.

One of the leading chiefs of the Kiowa in the 1860s and 1870s, Satanta was a fearsome warrior but also a skilled orator and diplomat. He helped negotiate and signed treaties with the U.S. establishing a Kiowa reservation in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), but Satanta remained resistant to government efforts to force the Kiowa to abandon their nomadic ways. The 1867 treaty allowed the Kiowa periodically to leave the reservation to hunt buffalo, but for more than a year, Satanta and other Kiowa continued to hunt and never even set foot on reservation lands. Fearing the Kiowa hunters would never come to the reservation, in late 1868 General Philip Sheridan had them arrested and brought in by force.

From the start, Satanta detested reservation life. He did not intend to become a farmer, a chore he considered to be women’s work. The beef provided by the Indian agents was stringy and vastly inferior to fresh buffalo, and he hated the tasteless corn they received. In 1870, when the Indian agent finally agreed that they could leave on another of the hunts provided for by the treaty, Satanta and several Kiowa happily rode off to Texas in search of buffalo. Along the way, they raided several white settlers, but the Kiowa were not identified and later returned to the reservation.

The following spring, Satanta grew more aggressive. He joined a large party of other Kiowa and Commanche who bridled under the restrictions of the reservation and determined to leave. Heading south to Texas, the Indians eluded army patrols along the Red River and crossed into Texas. On this day in 1871, they spotted a wagon train traveling along the Butterfield Trail. Hoping to steal guns and ammunition, the warriors attacked the 10 freight trains, killing seven teamsters. They let the remaining drivers escape while they looted the wagons.

Again, Satanta and the other warriors returned to the reservation. Informed of the Texas raid, the Indian agent asked if any of his charges had participated. Amazingly, Satanta announced that he had led the raid, and that their poor treatment on the reservation justified it. “I have repeatedly asked for arms and ammunition,” he explained, “which you have not furnished, and made many other requests, which have not been granted.”

Taken to Texas for trial, Satanta was sentenced to hang, but the penalty was later commuted to life in prison. Besieged with humanitarian requests, the Texas governor paroled Satanta back to the reservation in 1873. The following summer, Satanta again led war parties off the reservations, this time to participate in the Red River War from 1874 to 1875. By October 1875, Satanta and his allies were again forced to surrender.

Despite his vocal protests that he preferred execution to imprisonment, Satanta was returned to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. He fell into a deep depression, refused to eat, and slowly began to starve to death. Transferred to the prison hospital in 1878, he died by suicide by leaping headfirst from a second-story window.

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Chief Dull Knife makes last fight for freedom


Year
1879
Month Day
January 22

Cheyenne chief Dull Knife and his people are defeated by Anglo-Americans soldiers. In doing so, the so-called Dull Knife Outbreak came to an end. 

A leading chief of the Northern Cheyenne, Dull Knife (sometimes called Morning Star) had long urged peace with the powerful Anglo-Americans invading his homeland in the Powder River country of modern-day Wyoming and Montana. However, the 1864 massacre of more than 200 peaceful Cheyenne Indians by Colorado militiamen at Sand Creek, Colorado, led Dull Knife to question whether the Anglo-Americans could ever be trusted. He reluctantly led his people into a war he suspected they could never win. In 1876, many of Dull Knife’s people fought along side Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull at their victorious battle at Little Bighorn, though the chief himself apparently did not participate.

During the winter after Little Bighorn, Dull Knife and his people camped along the headwaters of the Powder River in Wyoming, where they fell victim to the army’s winter campaign for revenge. In November, General Ranald Mackenzie’s expeditionary force discovered the village and attacked. Dull Knife lost many of his people, and along with several other Indian leaders, reluctantly surrendered the following spring.

In 1877, the military relocated Dull Knife and his followers far away from their Wyoming homeland to the large Indian Territory on the southern plains (in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma). No longer able to practice their traditional hunts, the band was largely dependent on meager government provisions. Beset by hunger, homesickness, and disease, Dull Knife and his people rebelled after one year. In September 1878, they joined another band to make an epic march back to their Wyoming homeland. Although Dull Knife publicly announced his peaceful intentions, the government regarded the fleeing Indians as renegades, and soldiers from bases scattered throughout the Plains attacked the Indians in an unsuccessful effort to turn them back.

Arriving at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, near their Wyoming homeland, Dull Knife and his people surrendered to the government in the hopes they would be allowed to stay in the territory. To their dismay, administrators instead threatened to hold the band captive at Fort Robinson until they would agree to return south to the Indian Territory. Unwilling to give up when his goal was so close, in early January, Dull Knife led about 100 of his people in one final desperate break for freedom. Soldiers from Fort Robinson chased after the already weak and starving band of men, women, and children, and on January 22, they attacked and killed at least 30 people, including several in the immediate family of Dull Knife.

Badly bloodied, most of the survivors returned to Fort Robinson and accepted their fate. Dull Knife managed to escape, and he eventually found shelter with Chief Red Cloud on the Sioux reservation in Nebraska. Permitted to remain on the reservation, Dull Knife died four years later, deeply bitter towards the Anglo-Americans he had once hoped to live with peacefully. The same year, the government finally allowed the Northern Cheyenne to move to a permanent reservation on the Tongue River in Montana near their traditional homeland. At last, Dull Knife’s people had come home, but their chief had not lived to join them.

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Black Spanish explorer Estevan is reported killed

Year
1539
Month Day
May 21

Word reaches Fray Marcos that Indians have killed his guide Estevan, a black enslaved man who was the first non-Indian to visit the pueblo lands of the American Southwest.

Thought to have been born sometime around 1500 on the west coast of Morocco, Estevan was sold to the Spanish as a slave. He ended up in the hands of Andres Dorantes de Carranza, who took him on an ill-fated expedition to Florida in 1527. A series of disasters reduced the original exploratory party of 300 to four men: Estevan, Dorantes de Carranza, Cabeza de Vaca, and Alonso del Castillo. The four survivors lived with Indians on the Gulf of Mexico for several years before finally heading west in hopes of reaching Mexico City. With the assistance of Spanish slave hunters they encountered, they finally made it to Mexico City in 1536, where their amazing story of survival caused a sensation.

Intrigued by reports by the four men of rich cities of gold to the north, the Spanish Viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, immediately began to plan an expedition. The three white men, however, wished only to return to Spain and refused to serve as guides. As a slave, Estevan had no choice in the matter and he was sold to the viceroy.

In 1539, the viceroy ordered Estevan to lead the Catholic friar and explorer Fray Marcos de Niza on a preliminary mission to investigate the rumors of cities of gold. Setting out on March 7, 1539, the two men and a party of retainers headed north into the modern-day states of Arizona and New Mexico. On March 21, Marcos sent Estevan ahead to scout the territory, in part because the pious Marcos had become annoyed with Estevan’s penchant for collecting turquoise and his too-evident enjoyment of the native women.

Six days later, Estevan sent back word to Marcos that he had encountered Indians who had told him spectacular places lay ahead. Marcos took this to mean that Estevan had heard reports of one of the fabulous golden cities. The two travelers trudged on through the hot desert sands, with Estevan traveling ahead by several days and periodically sending Indian messengers back to the friar with reports. By mid-May, they were nearing the White Mountains of Arizona. On this day in 1539, another messenger came riding from the north to tell Marcos that Estevan was dead.

From the messenger, Marcos learned that Estevan had made contact with a band of Pueblo Indians. In his earlier transcontinental trek, the black man had acquired a sacred rattle used by the Plains Indian tribes. Estevan had previously found that the gourd filled with pebbles worked wonders in gaining the trust and respect of certain Indians. The Pueblo people, however, deeply feared anyone using the paraphernalia of a Plains Indian medicine man. Estevan may have also further alienated the Pueblo Indians by demanding women and treasure. After keeping him for three days, the Indians killed Estevan near the modern-day Arizona border southwest of Zuni, New Mexico.

Upon hearing this frightening news, Marcos immediately returned to Mexico City. Based on the third or fourth-hand reports from Estevan of spectacular places ahead, Marcos told the viceroy the rumored golden cities of the north might actually exist. Encouraged by the friar’s tales, the explorer Coronado headed north a year later, confidently promising to return with hordes of gold. Like Estevan and Marcos, he found no gold but he did return with a wealth of useful knowledge about the geography and people of the Southwest. However, it was the black slave Estevan, not the white nobleman Coronado, who was the first non-Indian to penetrate the southwest territory.

READ MORE: Was the Real Lone Ranger a Black Man?

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Black Hawk War begins

Year
1832
Month Day
April 06

Determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands, the Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States.

Called Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak by his people, Black Hawk was born in 1767 in the village of Saukenuk in the present-day state of Illinois. He quickly earned a reputation as a fierce and courageous fighter in the frequent skirmishes between the Sauk and their principle enemy, the Osage. By the early 1800s, however, Black Hawk began to realize that the real threat to his people was the rapidly growing numbers of white people streaming into the region.

In 1804, representatives of the Sauk and Fox (Mesquakie) Indians signed a treaty that ceded all of their territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States. Black Hawk, however, maintained the treaty was invalid and had been signed by drunken Indian representatives. In 1816, he reluctantly confirmed the treaty with his own signature, but he later said he did not understand that this meant he would someday have to cede his home village of Saukenuk on the Rock River.

As the U.S. Army built more forts and droves of settlers moved into the territory during the next 15 years, Black Hawk grew increasingly angry. Finally, in 1831, settlers began to occupy the village of Saukenuk, an area that would later become Rock Island, Illinois. Regardless of the provisions of the 1804 treaty, Black Hawk refused to leave his own home. He began to prepare for war.

Early in 1832, General Edmund P. Gaines arrived in the area with a sizeable force of U.S. soldiers and Illinois militiamen. Initially, Black Hawk withdrew his large band of warriors, women, and children to the west side of the Mississippi. On April 5, however, he led them back into the disputed territory, believing that other Indian forces and the British to the north would support him in a confrontation. The following day, a large army of soldiers caught up to Black Hawk and his followers near the Rock River of northern Illinois. When neither the British nor his Indian allies came to his support, Black Hawk attempted to surrender. Unfortunately, one of his truce bearers was killed in the confusion, and the Black Hawk War began.

In May, Black Hawk’s warriors won a significant victory that left the Americans badly demoralized. As subsequent generations of Indian fighters would learn, however, the mighty force of the U.S. government was relentless. On August 2, U.S. soldiers nearly annihilated Black Hawk’s band as it attempted to escape west across the Mississippi, and Black Hawk finally surrendered.

Casualties in the 15-week war were grossly one-sided. An estimated 70 settlers or soldiers lost their lives; estimates for the number of Indians killed are between 442 and 592. Black Hawk was captured and incarcerated for a time in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. In order to demonstrate the futility of further resistance to the powerful Americans, Black Hawk was taken on a tour of the major eastern cities before being relocated to an Iowa Indian agency. He lived the remaining six years of his life under the supervision of a Sauk chief who had once been his enemy. Unlike Black Hawk, the Sauk chief had cooperated with the United States government.

READ MORE: When Native Americans Briefly Won Back Their Land

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Apache chief Cochise dies

Year
1874
Month Day
June 08

Chief Cochise, one of the great leaders of the Apache Indians in their battles with the Anglo-Americans, dies on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona.

Little is known of Cochise’s early life. By the mid-19th century, he had become a prominent leader of the Chiricahua band of Apache Indians living in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Like many other Chiricahua Apache, Cochise resented the encroachment of Mexican and American settlers on their traditional lands. Cochise led numerous raids on the settlers living on both sides of the border, and Mexicans and Americans alike began to call for military protection and retribution.

War between the U.S. and Cochise, however, resulted from a misunderstanding. In October 1860, a band of Apache attacked the ranch of an Irish-American named John Ward and kidnapped his adopted son, Felix Telles. Although Ward had been away at the time of the raid, he believed that Cochise had been the leader of the raiding Apache. Ward demanded that the U.S. Army rescue the kidnapped boy and bring Cochise to justice. The military obliged by dispatching a force under the command of Lieutenant George Bascom. Unaware that they were in any danger, Cochise and many of his top men responded to Bascom’s invitation to join him for a night of entertainment at a nearby stage station. When the Apache arrived, Bascom’s soldiers arrested them.

Cochise told Bascom that he had not been responsible for the kidnapping of Felix Telles, but the lieutenant refused to believe him. He ordered Cochise be kept as a hostage until the boy was returned. Cochise would not tolerate being imprisoned unjustly. He used his knife to cut a hole in the tent he was held in and escaped.

During the next decade, Cochise and his warriors increased their raids on American settlements and fought occasional skirmishes with soldiers. Panicked settlers abandoned their homes, and the Apache raids took hundreds of lives and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damages. By 1872, the U.S. was anxious for peace, and the government offered Cochise and his people a huge reservation in the southeastern corner of Arizona Territory if they would cease hostilities. Cochise agreed, saying, “The white man and the Indian are to drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace.”

The great chief did not have the privilege of enjoying his hard-won peace for long. In 1874, he became seriously ill, possibly with stomach cancer. He died on this day in 1874. That night his warriors painted his body yellow, black, and vermilion, and took him deep into the Dragoon Mountains. They lowered his body and weapons into a rocky crevice, the exact location of which remains unknown. Today, however, that section of the Dragoon Mountains is known as Cochise’s Stronghold.

About a decade after Cochise died, Felix Telles—the boy whose kidnapping had started the war—resurfaced as an Apache-speaking scout for the U.S. Army. He reported that a group of Western Apache, not Cochise, had kidnapped him.

READ MORE: Native American History Timeline

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300 Santee Sioux sentenced to hang in Minnesota

Year
1862
Month Day
November 05

In Minnesota, more than 300 Santee Sioux are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Native Americans was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of Minnesotans.

The Santee Sioux were found guilty of joining in the so-called “Minnesota Uprising,” which was actually part of the wider Indian wars that occurred throughout the West during the second half of the nineteenth century. For nearly half a century, Anglo settlers invaded the Santee Sioux territory in the Minnesota Valley, and government pressure gradually forced the Native peoples to relocate to smaller reservations along the Minnesota River.

At the reservations, the Santee were badly mistreated by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors; during July 1862, the agents pushed the Native Americans to the brink of starvation by refusing to distribute stores of food because they had not yet received their customary kickback payments. The contractors callously ignored the Santee’s pleas for help.

Outraged and at the limits of their endurance, the Santee struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking women as hostages. The initial efforts of the U.S. Army to stop the Santee warriors failed, and in a battle at Birch Coulee, Santee Sioux killed 13 American soldiers and wounded another 47 soldiers. However, on September 23, a force under the leadership of General Henry H. Sibley finally defeated the main body of Santee warriors at Wood Lake, recovering many of the hostages and forcing most of the Native Americans to surrender. 

The subsequent trials of the prisoners gave little attention to the injustices the Native Americans had suffered on the reservations and largely catered to the popular desire for revenge. However, President Lincoln’s commutation of the majority of the death sentences clearly reflected his understanding that the Minnesota Uprising had been rooted in a long history of Anglo abuse of the Santee Sioux.

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“Dances with Wolves” premieres in theaters

Year
1990
Month Day
November 04

On November 4, 1990, Dances with Wolves, a film about an American Civil War-era soldier and a group of Sioux Native Americans that stars Kevin Costner and also marks his directorial debut, premieres in Los Angeles. The film, which opened across the United States on November 21, 1990, was a surprise box-office success and earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Costner. Dances with Wolves took home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and solidified Costner’s place on Hollywood’s A-list.

Costner was born on January 18, 1955, in Lynwood, California, and by the early 1980s had racked up a small list of film credits. He was cast in the 1983 hit The Big Chill, but all his scenes were cut before the film was released. Costner went on to co-star in Silverado (1985), with Kevin Kline and Danny Glover; The Untouchables (1987), with Sean Connery, Andy Garcia and Robert De Niro; and No Way Out (1987), with Gene Hackman and Sean Young. Costner then struck box-office gold with the baseball films Bull Durham (1988), in which he starred in the title role opposite Susan Sarandon, and Field of Dreams (1989), in which he played a farmer who builds a baseball diamond in his corn field. Field of Dreams was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In 1990’s Dances with Wolves, Costner played the Union Army’s Lieutenant John Dunbar, who travels to a desolate Western post, befriends his Sioux neighbors and eventually becomes an honorary member of their tribe. Based on a novel by Michael Blake, the film was shot on location, primarily in South Dakota, and contained Lakota dialogue with English-language subtitles.

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