Native American Almanac: More Than 50,000 Years of the Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples

By Yvonne Wakim Dennis, Arlene Hirschfelder and Shannon Rothenberger Flynn

Explore the vibrant Native American experience with this comprehensive and affordable historical overview of Indigenous communities and Native American life!

The impact of early encounters, past policies, treaties, wars, and prejudices toward America’s Indigenous peoples is a legacy that continues to mark America. The history of the United States and Native Americans are intertwined. Agriculture, place names, and language have all been influenced by Native American culture. The stories and history of pre- and post-colonial Tribal Nations and peoples continue to resonate and informs the geographical boundaries, laws, language and modern life.

From ancient rock drawings to today’s urban living, the Native American Almanac: More than 50,000 Years of the Cultures and Histories of Indigenous Peoples traces the rich heritage of indigenous people. It is a fascinating mix of biography, pre-contact and post-contact history, current events, Tribal Nations’ histories, enlightening insights on environmental and land issues, arts, treaties, languages, education, movements, and more. Ten regional chapters, including urban living, cover the narrative history, the communities, land, environment, important figures, and backgrounds of each area’s Tribal Nations and peoples. The stories of 345 Tribal Nations, biographies of 400 influential figures in all walks of life, Native American firsts, awards, and statistics are covered. 150 photographs and illustrations bring the text to life.

The most complete and affordable single-volume reference work about Native American culture available today, the Native American Almanac is a unique and valuable resource devoted to illustrating, demystifying, and celebrating the moving, sometimes difficult, and often lost history of the indigenous people of America. Capturing the stories and voices of the American Indian of yesterday and today, it provides a range of information on Native American history, society, and culture. A must have for anyone interested in our America’s rich history!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Visible Ink Press
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781578596089

Yvonne Wakim Dennis

Yvonne Wakim Dennis (Cherokee/Sand Hill/Syrian) is an award-winning author of nonfiction books for children and adults, many written with Arlene Hirschfelder, including Native American Almanac, Native American Landmarks and Festivals, the award-winning Children of Native America Today and A Kid's Guide to Native American History; and she also wrote a biography of Sequoyah. She currently serves as the Education Director for the Children’s Cultural Center of Native America and is a columnist for Native Hoop Magazine. She resides in New York City.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Why a Native American Almanac? Almanac itself is a mysterious word with no agreement on its etymology. One of its early meanings is an Arabic word for settlement. Today, almanac refers to a publication containing astronomical and meteorological data for a given year and often including a miscellany of other information and published annually. The Native American Almanac does include miscellany and some astronomical information, but will not be written every year—at least, not by us! We are probably more in tune with the word origin, settlement, as we have tried to present a historical overview of Native communities in what is now the United States. At the last minute, our publisher requested that we include the rest of Indigenous North America in an appendix. We somehow squeezed it in—it is an appendix only and is not meant to be a complete guide to our northern and southern neighbors.

The terms indigenous and First Nations Peoples still generalize the identity of the more than 550 indigenous groups in the lower 48 states and Alaska. However, I believe they are empowering generalized descriptors because they accurately describe the political, cultural, and geographical identities, and struggles of all aboriginal peoples in the United States. I no longer use Indian, American Indian, or Native American because I consider them to be oppressive, counterfeit identities. A counterfeit identity is not only bogus and misleading, it subjugates and controls the identity of indigenous peoples.

—Michael Yellow Bird, 1999

Many Native societies named themselves in their own languages—names that translate to the people, real people, or our people, for instance. Many nations’ names (like the Delaware, Navajo, or Sioux) were given by outsiders, other First Peoples or, later, Europeans. Europeans often named a group after a leader (Powhatan for example). We have used the original name (i.e., Anishinabe), as well as the more familiar, but alien name (i.e., Chippewa or Ojibwe). In several cases, the nations legally changed their name back to the original. The restored name Meskwaki, for example, means the Red-Earths, but the French named them for one particular clan les Renards, later translated to Fox in English. The Tohono O’odham (Desert People) were named Papago, a Spanish mispronunciation of the Pima word for them (fat bean eaters). The Wisconsin Ho-Chunk (People of the Sacred Language or People of the Big Voice) reinstated their traditional name and removed Winnebago (People of the smelly waters), which again is a French and English mistranslation of what other nations called them. As for terms, both Native American and American Indian are incorrect as the people were here before there was a place called America and before Columbus named them Indians. We prefer Indigenous and First Peoples, but still use the familiar labels above. It is most correct and polite when referring to First Peoples to call them by their original names.

This book is not a treatise on how valuable Native peoples were/are to immigrant settlements or all of the contributions to American life that First Peoples made (and make). We are not out to prove the worth of Native customs/inventions/values as a plea to preserve Indigenous cultures or to push back against racism. Rather, we maintain that no matter who writes the history, the nitty-gritty is that this place is the homeland of Indigenous peoples, whether they have been here since the beginning of the human species or just 50,000 years and have a right to just be without any rationalization for their continued existence.

When Europeans first arrived in the western hemisphere there were millions of people and thousands of cultures, nations, and languages. We have attempted to include as many of them as possible and you will see just how much those fateful contacts had and still have on Indigenous peoples. You will find biographies of famous people, as well as home-town heroes. Some may be important to their communities, but unknown to the entire country. Sadly, because of the long-lasting effects of successful colonialism, most Americans know very little about any Native peoples, even the famous ones. And what they do know is often incorrect.

Native people are not just another minority, although often classified as such. Many are members of a particular Native governmental entity often referred to as a domestic, dependent sovereign nation. Unlike Asian, African, or Latino Americans, most Native nations have a direct relationship with the U.S. government—they have entered into treaties (although the U.S. has never fully honored any treaty, but forces Indigenous nations to uphold them), yet do not get afforded the same rights as other nations with which the U.S. has treaties. Hundreds of Native governments are recognized by the federal government; others by state governments. Some governments, which were terminated, struggle to reclaim their rightful status. Some communities are remnant groups comprised of survivors of different nations decimated by wars and colonialism yet banded together and continue to exist. Since there is a chapter on Urban Peoples, we address cultures that are from other parts of the hemisphere (Garifuna, Maya, Taino, Mixteca), but are Americans, too. Hawaii is part of the book as Native Hawaiians are classified as Native peoples in the United States. Many Native Hawaiians do not like that classification as they feel it diminishes their status as subjects of the Kingdom of Hawaii or the Republic of Hawaii.

Today, many Native people belong to one nation without any other ancestry. Others may be multinational, belonging to more than one Native nation. Other people may be bicultural or multicultural. Some people who are culturally Native may have ancestors from every continent, but they embrace their Native traditions. Others have been fortunate enough to have maintained their traditional religions (in spite of every attempt by the dominant culture to eradicate these ancient faiths) and many are Christian. Some may observe their traditional spirituality as well as Christianity. Native people have also intermarried with members of the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist faiths and their children may honor all sides of their families. In traditional times, being from one particular group defined one’s culture, language, government, and religion—it was all one. For some peoples, that is still true today, but for many it is not. Native peoples most often navigate two or three worlds at the same time.

We as writers are not qualified or interested in speaking about the degree of Nativeness as it just perpetuates stereotypes and is a private matter anyway. The pedigree of Native peoples has been used by the settler colonial culture as a means to divide, conquer, and even as an effective tool of genocide. In this book, we have not used terms to describe one’s mixture (if he/she is even mixed) unless it is germane to the story or a person describes him/herself in a particular way. Native peoples did not carry the racial hang-ups of white society (that’s not to say that there were not conflicts among different nations), but early European colonists and, later, U.S. government officials were not exactly multiculturalists and were determined that people should pick one ethnicity. To perpetuate genocidal tactics, having an ounce of other ancestry diminished one’s Indianess in a way similar to having one drop of African blood made one black. Except for African Americans, no other group has such a lexicon to describe its DNA make up, some of them pejorative terms: full blood, half breed, Black Indian, Wanna-be, part Indian, Aboriginal/aborigine, Amerindian, barbaros (Spanish for barbarous), First American, First Nation, Indian, indigenous, indios (Spanish for in or with God), Native American, Original, redskin, savage/sauvage, etc. Some have likened the preoccupation with Native purity as being similar to horse and dog breeding. Whatever a Native person’s appearance, mixture, or absence of mixture, it is still rude to ask, What part Native American are you? And, of course, war whooping, rain dancing, and expressing other stereotypes or anachronisms do not create pleasant encounters.

We are not presenting A Native Voice as there is not, nor has there ever been, just one Voice, and none of us or the staff at Visible Ink Press purports to be a spokesperson for Native America. Through quotations, firsthand accounts, and reporting current issues, we strive to transmit SCORES of Indigenous voices that reflect and celebrate the great diversity of Turtle Island. Of course, this is not an unbiased book as we are on the side of freedom, justice for Indigenous peoples, and peoples’ rights to INDIGENIZE!

This book started out to be an update of Portrait of a People, edited by Duane Champagne. As it turned out, most of the material is new. We organized this immense topic into geographical regions, but these regions have different climates, topography, and, of course, different cultures. Some communities in a region are so diverse from each other that they could be on opposite sides of the country instead of a couple of hundred miles away. Each of us felt her way by telling the story as we followed it. This book is not meant to be an encyclopedia of Native America—there is far too much material for such an undertaking. We were as inclusive as we could possibly be, while staying within the restrictions of our word count. It is also not meant to be scholarly work, although it is well researched.

Our belief is that the health of the country is determined by the health of First Peoples—the wellbeing of Indigenous folks can be compared to the canary in the mine, a warning for all to, as the Cherokee say, Live the Great Life. Even scientists, who are often strapped to their theories instead of being scientific, are beginning to see that Indigenous knowledge can resolve contemporary problems such as justice systems, ecology, nutrition, and mental health. Native cultures are dynamic, not static, as are any cultures that continue to exist. We laud and appreciate the intrepidness and strength of Native peoples (our own families and ancestors in some cases) to still be here, writing books, winning the Heisman Trophy, dancing in the New York City Ballet, zooming into space, or winding the world well by practicing the original religions.

The back matter section has definitions, as well as some interesting points on Indigeneity and a bit about Native peoples in Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and the Caribbean. Each chapter has a listing of both historical and contemporary groups located in the area, as well as present-day states, climate, and topography. Biographies are organized chronologically and most are at the end of the chapters. You will come across the phrase tying it up in many of the chapters. This refers to Lenape storytellers and their bags, filled with objects to help the storyteller recall details of the narrative. Once the stories are finished, the teller puts all his memory devices back into the storyteller bag and says, And now I tie it up. We ask forgiveness for any mistakes we have made. And now we tie it up!

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF INDIAN–WHITE RELATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

FIRST PEOPLES

When did people first exist in the Western Hemisphere? Were they here from the beginning of human life? Did they come from somewhere else? Over the centuries, there have been plenty of theories regarding the origin of Indigenous people. What’s clear is that the story of the first occupants of these lands is still a mystery.

Most books written about North American Indigenous people theorize that ancestors of today’s Native peoples originated in Siberia and later crossed to Alaska via a land bridge (often called Beringia) over the Bering Strait, sixteen to twenty thousand (some archaeologists say fifty thousand) years ago. The Bering Strait theory is frequently presented as irrefutable fact, but it’s being challenged.

Some researchers argue that the cornerstone of the Bering Strait theory—the land bridge migration—lacks sufficient archaeological evidence and has many holes in it. The theory also assumes that the strait was the only possible route from Asia to North America. Researchers suggest that travel along coasts by boat makes more sense than inland movement through glaciers. Researchers have pored over a growing volume of genetic data to debate whether ancestors of Native people migrated to North America in one wave or any number of migrations by any number of routes or from one ancestral Asian population or a number of different populations. According to David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University, There’s a whole lot of stuff that we don’t know and may never know, but we’re finding new ways to find things and new ways to find things out.

There is Indigenous theory regarding the origins of the people of North America. Some Native groups have creation stories that say they originated in North America. In his book, Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1997), Vine Deloria, Jr. (Dakota), a leading Native American scholar, challenged anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists to re-examine scientific theory and look at the continent through the ancestral world-view of Native Americans. Deloria warned scientists not to dismiss oral tradition stories of tribes concerning their own origins.

Techniques for dating objects and materials found in excavation sites have been steadily improving over the years. In 2003, more sophisticated radiocarbon tests of carbonized plant remains were used on artifacts unearthed along the Savannah River in South Carolina. The sediments containing these artifacts are at least 50,000 years old, meaning that humans inhabited North America long before the last ice age. There are similar accounts of other findings in different parts of the Americas.

What’s at stake regarding these theories about the origins of the first Native people? A lot, according to Professor Theodore Van Alst (Sihasapa Lakota/Eastern Cherokee), former director of Yale University’s Native American Cultural Center. He said the Bering Strait theory is invariably used to discredit notions of Indigenous rights to landholding, used to support the notion that we’re just an earlier set of people on a long continuum of immigrants.

Like every people in the world, Native cultures were dynamic and changing over hundreds of centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Generation after generation created new knowledge and responded to their transforming natural and social worlds. The First Peoples developed enormous cultural varieties well suited to the vastly different environments in which they lived. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived, millions of people with complex languages, myriad ways of knowing, technologies, tools, trading societies, political systems, and art forms existed in North America. Charles Mann, award-winning journalist and author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, sums up the current view regarding the Western Hemisphere before 1492: It was a thriving, stunningly diverse place, a tumult of languages, trade, and culture, a region where tens of millions of people loved and hated and worshipped as people do everywhere. Much of this world vanished after Columbus, swept away by disease and subjugation.

THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY (DESTRUCTION)

When Christopher Columbus sailed west across the sea in 1492 and set foot on Guanahani Island (San Salvador), he performed a ceremony to take possession of the lands for the king and queen of Spain. He was authorized to take possession of any lands he discovered that were not under the dominion of any Christian rulers. He and the Spanish sovereigns were following an already well-established tradition of discovery and conquest. After Columbus returned to Europe, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal document, the bull Inter Cetera of May 3, 1493, granting to Spain the right to conquer the lands which Columbus had already found as well as any lands which Spain might discover in the future.

Papal documents (letters from popes) and sixteenth-century charters by Christian European monarchs were frequently used in their conquest of Americas to justify a brutal system of colonization—which dehumanized the Indigenous people by regarding their territories as being inhabited only by brute animals.

The Doctrine of Discovery (DOD) became the legal bedrock upon which the United States and other nations rationalized their domination of Indigenous peoples. A code of international law, it became the theological and political justification for the appropriation of the lands and resources of Indigenous people, undermining the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and peoples, the basis for the African and Native slave trade, colonization of the Americas, and the genocides of Indigenous peoples of Africa and the Americas. In 1823, the DOD was adopted into U.S. law by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Johnson v. McIntosh. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that Christian people who had discovered the lands of heathens had assumed the right of ultimate dominion. This presumption of dominion diminished the Indians’ rights to complete sovereignty as independent nations. Indians merely had a right to occupy their lands. This ruling is still in effect and is sometimes referred to in legal decisions.

COLONIAL ERA

The initial encounters between Native Americans and non-Natives occurred at different times in different places in present-day North America. The Hopi of Arizona and the Huron of eastern Canada both experienced encounters with Europeans by about 1540. The Lakota of the Plains did not experience firsthand knowledge of them until the late 1600s. The Wintu of Northern California and Unangan of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands encountered Europeans over a hundred years later in the mid-1700s.

An 1847 painting by American artist John Vanderlyn depicts Christopher Columbus landing on Guanahani (San Salvador) in 1492 and declaring the land for Spain. The arrival of Columbus marked the beginning of the end for Native peoples in the Americas.

Spain

Spain, which considered Native people pagans and inferior, held a region known as New Spain that extended down the Pacific Coast from Vancouver Island to the tip of South America and inland as far east as the Mississippi River, including the Florida peninsula. St. Augustine, Florida, a permanent settlement, was established in 1565; Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1610.

During the late sixteenth century, the Spanish moved into southwestern lands for wealth, converts, and slaves and ruled there until 1821. Since Indians were forced to labor in their mines, ranches, farms, and public works, they were not driven from their territories. While the Spanish crown exploited their labor, missionaries carried on large-scale efforts to convert their souls. Hostility developed between the Spanish and the Apache and Pueblo peoples. The harsh rule of some Spanish governors, plus religious and economic oppression, led to an allied Pueblo–Apache revolt against the Spanish empire in northern New Spain. The 1680 Pueblo revolt was ended by Spanish counteroffenses in 1692. Native hostility persisted until Spain was forced to abandon her colonies in the 1820s.

France

The French, who were the most congenial to Native peoples, also believed Native peoples to be pagan and inferior. The French in Canada were primarily interested in dominating the fur trade, which required miniscule amounts of land. They developed no permanent settlements in the interior and farmed little of mainland Canada. The French depended on the friendship of Indian trappers and go-betweens, both sides benefiting from the reciprocal economic relationship. They became absorbed in Native life, adopting its customs and dress, learning Native languages, and intermarrying. New France extended west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River and south from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Quebec was founded in 1608.

New Netherland

The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A successful Dutch settlement in the colony grew up on the southern tip of Manhattan Island and was christened New Amsterdam. Since the Netherlands hungered at first for furs, the Dutch negotiated with Native peoples for small pieces of land for trading posts and villages. After furs were depleted in coastal areas by the 1630s, the Dutch turned to agriculture and used force and cajolery to acquire larger chunks of Indian land. The popular myth that the Lenape sold New York City to Dutch governor Peter Minuit for $24 is just that, a myth. In 1626, the Lenape signed a lease agreement, which allowed Dutch settlers to share their territory, but the Dutch assumed they owned the land outright and renamed Lenape lands New Amsterdam. Beginning in 1641, a protracted war was fought between the colonists and the Lenape, which resulted in the death of more than one thousand Indians and Dutch settlers. In 1664, New Amsterdam passed to English control.

A 1902 photo of the ruins of the Old Church in Jamestown that was built in 1639.

England

The English colonists differed from the Spanish and French. After the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, English families came to stay and to transplant their own ideas of civilization in the New World. The colonists had little use for Native peoples, who they perceived as savages and devil-worshippers and nuisances who blocked the growth of the English-speaking world. The English wanted their lands for farming although some were involved with fur trading. English agricultural practices destroyed Native traditional economies and forced tribes to move away or convert to the English lifestyle. Since the British crown was unable to enforce uniform policy and regulations, treatment of Indians varied widely in the British colonies, which eventually fought with each other as well as with the crown over Indian land acquisition and trade policies and defense. In an effort to gain control over all relations between Indians and non-Indians throughout the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, the British crown put Indian affairs under the control of Indian superintendents in the newly created Northern and Southern departments. Lawless traders and others who moved into restricted Indian territories interfered with the effectiveness of the system.

Russia

Russia established claims to land along the North Pacific Coast beginning in the 1740s. Throughout its tenure in North America, Russians enslaved and forced Aleut (Unangan) men to hunt furs, children to prepare the hides, and women to become concubines. Russia established a permanent settlement in 1783 on Kodiak Island to control the Native people, whom they bullied and tortured. From 1812 to 1841, Russians maintained a fort in Bodega Bay, California. Finally, in 1867, when Russia ceded Alaska to the United States, its rule in North America ended.

Sweden

A Swedish colony was established in what is now Delaware in 1638 by Peter Minuit, a German native of French extraction and former governor of New Amsterdam. The New Sweden Company had been chartered to create an agricultural (primarily tobacco) and fur-trading colony which could bypass the French, English, and Dutch. The colonists established farms and small settlements along both sides of the Delaware River. The Swedes purchased lands which would later become the states of Delaware and Maryland and a portion of Pennsylvania, which would become Philadelphia.

COLONIAL ERA POWER STRUGGLES

During the colonial era, the British, French, and Spanish used North America as a battleground of their Old World rivalries. Wise Native leaders sensed the danger of being absorbed into the power struggles. Why do not you and the French fight in the old country and the sea? Why do you come to fight on our land? This makes everybody believe you want to take the land from us by force and settle it, Delaware chief Shingas told the British in 1758. Most Natives found it impossible to maintain neutrality. They were swayed by bribes, bound by trade alliances, or chose to exploit strife to get revenge on old enemies.

Historian Alden T. Vaugh (1979) states that in every area settled by Europeans, Indians were victims … they suffered discrimination, exploitation, and wholesale destruction—by disease and demoralization if not sword and bullet.

Wampanoag historian Nanepashemet explained the way in which Native Americans perceived Europeans in their first encounters as follows:

The Native worldview was a lot different from the European worldview because Native people did not believe there was finite knowledge. Knowledge was infinite. Any person could acquire new knowledge and introduce it to his community, and it would be accepted if it was useful. So the idea of Europeans and their material culture and their beliefs was alien to people, but their cultural makeup allowed them to accept new information.… They were able to accept European goods although they used many things according to their own cultural dictates.…

Encounters, 1600s–1754

At the beginning, some early Native–white encounters boded well. The first arrivals to North America were received with hospitality. Massasoit, the Wampanoag’s principal chief in southern New England, and Wahunsonacock, known to the English as Powhatan, the principal chief of a large confederacy of eastern Virginia Algonquin tribes, offered food and shelter and showed the English how to survive in the North American environment. Both men maintained peace with the white colonists until they died.

Before the French and Indian War began in 1754, there were incessant hostilities east of the Mississippi among the English, French, and a multitude of Native peoples. English colonists pressured Native peoples to adopt the so-called civilized European lifestyle and Christianity and often employed repressive measures to overpower Indians who did not comply. They often used deceit to extinguish title to Indian lands when rightful owners refused to sell. When English settlements became stronger, permanent, and armed, they forced Indian peoples to obey their laws and to submit to their demands.

Almost every colony in New England witnessed Indian–white conflicts. Many Indians tried to resist seizure of their lands. In New York, the Dutch and bands of Algonquian Indians engaged in border warfare until the Indians were defeated. Two major wars fought between the English and southern New England Indians in the seventeenth century—the Pequot War in 1637 and King Philip’s War in 1675–1676, involving Wampanoag and their allies—led to bitter defeat for the Indians and the end of organized resistance. In Virginia, two fiercely fought wars, in 1622 and 1644, also led to the defeat of the Indians and the decline of Indian political power in that region. By the end of the seventeenth century, tribes along the Atlantic seaboard had been weakened by disease, destroyed, dispersed, or subjected to the control of European colonists.

The Tuscarora War of 1711–1712, a revolt against white encroachments, resulted in the partial destruction of North Carolina Indians and the northward retreat of survivors. In the Yamassee War of 1715, a rebellion of southern Indians prompted by general resentment against English economic exploitation and a fear of English agricultural expansion, settlers in South Carolina nearly exterminated the Yamasee.

THE FUR TRADE

Throughout the colonial period and well into the nineteenth century, the fur trade was one of the principal business enterprises in North America. European fashions demanded furs for making hats, coats, dress trimmings, and other items. Trading with Indian peoples for furs began immediately in colonies along the Atlantic Coast. The French, English, and Dutch (and later the Americans) competed for exclusive trading privileges with Native groups, who were experienced traders long before the coming of Europeans.

For a time, trading pelts for European goods benefited Indians. Guns made hunting bountiful, metal kettles were more practical to cook in, and steel tools were more efficient than stone and bone. Cloth, needles, and scissors replaced clothing made from furs that required hours of preparation. Soon, traders’ goods became necessities as Indians discarded their own equivalent tools and technologies. With their basic economic systems disrupted, their wildlife resources depleted, and their subsistence areas diminished, the Native Americans became even more dependent on Europeans for commodities in order to survive.

A 1777 illustration depicts French trappers trading fur with Indians.

By the mid-1700s, European traders wanted Indian lands as well as pelts. Unscrupulous English and French traders along the northeastern colonial frontier swindled Indians out of furs and large acres of land. Some traders forced tribes to trade entire catches of furs to them under threats of punishment. Deeply in debt to certain traders, tribes gave up immense areas of valuable land to cancel their obligations. Spanish, English, and French traders who competed for furs manipulated tribal peoples into supporting the country that supplied them with goods they wanted. The increasing demand for furs by rival European traders led to tribal competition for limited supplies and pelts. Incessant wars between European powers exacerbated intertribal conflicts as European nations encouraged tribes allied with them to attack tribes allied with other European powers.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–1763)

Anglo–French rivalry in the fur trade, which contributed to the struggle for control of North America, culminated in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). The French and British also competed in giving presents to the Six Nations Iroquois and their allies, as well as Algonquian tribes, to secure their allegiance during the war. The British successfully recruited thousands of Indians as allies through tremendous outlays of gifts. Mutually exchanged presents cemented political relationships between an Indian nation and a European nation. European powers gave peace medals to heads of various Indian nations, a practice continued by American leaders. While medal giving secured diplomatic alliances, it cost colonial governments great sums of money.

Defeated in the war, the French lost control of Canada to England in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. The British substantially reduced the giving of presents to Indians, which the Indians believed served to cement alliances and ensure good-faith relationships. Tribes needed goods, especially ammunition for hunting, to alleviate their suffering after the war. Furthermore, an extremely high schedule of prices for goods was instituted, which outraged Indians who could not go to English trading posts and obtain supplies on credit or as gifts, as had been the custom with the French. British forts, which reduced Indian hunting territories, and the British failure to supply western Indians enabled certain chiefs to mobilize Indian discontentment. In 1763, Pontiac of the Ottawa, Guyashota of the Seneca, Shinga of the Delaware, and other war chiefs of the Ottawa, Huron, Chippewa, Shawnee, Erie, Potawatomi, and Wyandot launched a multi-tribal assault that destroyed every British fort west of the Appalachians except Detroit, Niagara, and Fort Pitt. They captured nine English forts and killed some one thousand settlers. Unable to sustain the uprising, Pontiac agreed to peace on October 3, 1763.

PROCLAMATION OF 1763 AND AFTERMATH

In an effort to avert further trouble with the Indians, the colonial government in London responded with its Proclamation of 1763, forbidding white settlement in the region west of the Appalachian Mountains. It set a tentative boundary line along the Appalachian crests: immigrant settlements to the east, Native communities to the west. The British government tried to maintain the boundary line. It dispatched troops to evict squatters and burn their cabins, but, as an observer reported, within months, the cabins were rebuilt with double the number of inhabitants … that ever was before. The British government itself planned to extend military outposts beyond the mountains. Shawnee Cornstalk recognized that when a fort appears, you may depend upon it; there will soon be towns and settlements of white men.

The British government achieved little control over the stream of immigrants. Settlers and land speculators alike simply ignored British regulations and invaded the Indians’ domain in the Old Northwest—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and northeastern Minnesota. They pushed across the line, competing with Natives for the same resources. In the Ohio Valley, both Natives and immigrants combined farming, grazing practices, and hunting in order to survive. The Delaware, who had already been pushed westward, responded: The Elks are our horses, the Buffaloes are our cows, the deer are our sheep, and the whites shan’t have them. Natives had to detour around burgeoning settlements and garrisoned forts where they had moved freely.

In 1768, various Algonquian and Iroquoian representatives met at Fort Stanwix with British officials in order to sort out land matters and to set a new permanent boundary west of the original line. Soon, the boundaries outlined in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix were erased. Native people from the Great Lakes to communities in the south struggled to hold on to their homelands.

The British government established and manned posts along the length of this boundary, which was a very costly undertaking. The British ministry argued that these outposts were for colonial defense and as such should be paid for by the colonies. From the American perspective, this amounted to a tax on the colonies to pay for a matter of Imperial regulation that was opposed to the interests of the colonies. The colonists protested and revolted against the British government, resenting the closing of the frontier, the British military force, and the taxes levied for its support. These and other grievances led to the American Revolution.

THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA (1775–1783)

Most Indians tried to stay neutral in what they saw as a British civil war, a domestic disturbance. Even when they eventually sided with the British or Americans, they were not fighting for or against freedom like the American patriots or British troops. In Indian eyes, aggressive Americans posed a greater threat than did a distant king to their land, their liberty, and their way of life. The American War of Independence was an Indian war for independence as well.

The new American Congress initially tried to secure Indian neutrality during its war with Britain. Later, it tried to engage Indians in the service of the United Colonies. Some factions of the Oneida and Tuscarora took the American side, and most of the Six Nations [Iroquois] Confederacy took the British side against land-avaricious colonists, but individuals within the nations chose which side to support. Thus, there are examples such as Mohawk allying with Great Britain while other Mohawk were allied with the United States as well as examples of American Indians remaining neutral throughout the war.

The Northeast was just one of several theaters of the war. Indians of the Old Northwest and the Southeast were also involved, for the most part on the British side. Southern tribes like the Creek, Cherokee, and Chickasaw supported the British, but the Catawba aided the Americans. The Americans failed to win the allegiance of most Indians because their goods were no match for British goods, and Americans in the Ohio Valley were committing atrocities against Indians.

During and after the Revolution, Natives paid a high price for their involvement. Some tribes and confederacies had split in their allegiances, especially the Iroquois. This led to Iroquois fighting Iroquois, razing each others’ villages. Unified groups faced devastation as well. Colonial troops invaded Native communities, killing residents, burning houses, and ruining crops. They used the war as an excuse to take more Native lands.

TREATY OF PARIS OF 1783

The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the Revolutionary War. The tribes who had allied with the British were not present at the signing of the treaty. The Crown recognized American independence and granted the Americans title to the entire Northwest Territory, trading Native property with the United States as if the communities had no independent right over their own land or loyalty. The Crown made no provisions for the many Indian allies who supported their cause. Officials on both sides apparently considered Natives as incidental to both the past and future of North America.

The British did extend some favors to those Indians who moved to Canada after the Revolution. Joseph Brant and his followers were among others who were granted parcels of land. The Indians who elected to stay were left to fend for themselves with the new American nation. In New York, Indians were treated harshly, forced off their land and onto reservations because of their past British alliance. The British, however, held on to frontier posts around the Great Lakes, from which they continued to trade English goods for Indian furs.

The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, ended the war between Britain and the fledgling United States, but it also impacted Natives by negotiating their lands as if they belonged to the European colonists.

WARS FOR THE OLD NORTHWEST AND SOUTHEAST

After the Revolution, the fledgling United States claimed all the land east of the Mississippi River, 847,000 square miles. The settlers poured onto Indian lands, ignoring Indian rights. In 1788 alone, 18,000 settlers moved into Ohio country. Chiefs such as Little Turtle, a Miami, reacted to the hordes of land-hungry settlers. Between 1783 and 1790, he and his allies, including Miami, Shawnee, Chippewa, Lenni Lenape (Delaware), Potawatomi, and Ottawa, killed some 1,500 settlers in isolated frontier attacks. Little Turtle and his followers routed General Josiah Harmar’s force in 1790, killing 183 and wounding thirty-one more. In 1791, Little Turtle dealt General Arthur St. Clair, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Army, the worst military defeat in its history. George Washington’s next choice of command was General Mad Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary hero. After Wayne’s troops defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers in 1794, the Indians were forced, in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, to sign away huge tracts of lands amounting to all of present-day Ohio and a good part of Indiana.

The extent of the land cessions dissatisfied Shawnee Indian leaders, such as Tecumseh (called Tekamthi, Shooting Star, by his people), and his brother, a religious leader named Tenskwatawa, or the Prophet. Tecumseh believed only a united front could withstand American military power. While Tecumseh was away gathering support among southern tribes, William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana Territory, marched on Tippecanoe (a town where Indian people of all tribes attempted to live a traditional lifestyle) and burned it to the ground. The British listened to Tecumseh’s complaints against American intruders and led him to believe they would support him in driving Americans back from the Ohio country. A war between some of Tecumseh’s followers and American troops began in 1811, which persisted through the War of 1812 between Americans and the British, the last war in which some Indians allied themselves with a foreign power. Again, some Indians were pro-American although the sympathies of most tribes, in the Northeast and Southeast, were with the British. When the war broke out, most tribes in the Old Northwest, already hostile to the Americans, became auxiliaries, scouts, and raiders for the British forces. Tecumseh, who had become a brigadier general in the British army at the beginning of the War of 1812, was shot in October 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in what is now Ontario, where Harrison defeated the combined British and Indian forces.

In the South, a portion of the Creek called the Red Sticks were armed against the Americans from 1813 to 1814. Andrew Jackson headed military operations in the upper Creek area and waged a campaign to level Creek towns. The tribe, with its forces split, suffered defeat by the American troops, resulting in the cession of twenty-three million acres, nearly all the Creek lands in Alabama.

After the end of the War of 1812, tribes in the Northeast and Southeast, deprived of British allies, were coerced into signing a series of treaties extinguishing their title to large areas of land. Nearly all the tribes continued to occupy greatly reduced portions of their ancestral lands until Andrew Jackson became president in 1828, when eventually, the government forcibly removed the tribes to the west of the Mississippi River.

EARLY FEDERAL INDIAN POLICY

The federal Indian policy of the U.S. government has had a profound impact on Native nations and has shifted dramatically over the past two-hundred-plus years. In the late 1700s, the newly formed U.S. government treated Indian tribes as independent sovereign nations, often seeking their allegiance and support and negotiating with them as equals.

One of the issues addressed by the 1781 Articles of Confederation was how to handle affairs between the Indian nations and the United States by establishing regional departments overseen by American commissioners.

Beginning in 1775, the Second Continental Congress created three Indian departments: Northern, Middle, and Southern. Each was headed by commissioners who reported directly to Congress. (Patrick Henry and Benjamin Franklin served as commissioners.) The commissioners were responsible for winning the support of Indian nations during the American Revolution.

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation stipulated that Indian affairs were to be handled by the national government. By 1786, the three departments were organized into two regions. The heads of the departments, called superintendents, were responsible to the secretary of war, who was charged with such duties as shall from time to time be enjoined on, or entrusted to, him by the president of the United States, agreeably to the Constitution, relative to … Indian affairs. With this arrangement, the basic structure of what was to become the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) began to emerge. Indian agents, who were located in the field, reported to superintendents. Superintendents reported to the secretary of war, who reported to the president. During this time, Indian affairs consisted mainly of negotiating treaties, acquiring land, regulating Indian trade, and arranging payments to Indians as specified in treaties.

TREATIES, 1778–1868

The Constitution of the United States gave Congress plenary power over Indian affairs and reserved to the United States the power to make treaties to acquire land for a growing population and westward expansion. Beginning in 1778 and for almost a hundred years, the treaty was the principal instrument of federal Indian policy. The first treaty was written in September 1778 with the Delaware (Lenape) Indians and the last ratified in August 1868. The list that follows gives a historical overview of five periods of treaty making, which resulted in the loss of nearly two billion acres of Native lands.

Colonial Treaties (1600–1776)

Period of independence and equality for most Indians

Indians held positions of power in Western hemisphere

European colonists still small in number

England and France sought military assistance from the Indians

Trade relations

Treaties of Alliance and Peace (1776–1816)

Indians still strong militarily, numerically, and economically

Indians could choose which European powers with which to align

Increasing need to clarify boundaries between Indian government and U.S. arose

U.S. government recognized that Indians owned their land, and to seize it would mean constant warfare, which the U.S. wanted to avoid

Prevent powerful Indian nations from joining forces against the U.S.

The Beginning of Land Cessions (1784–1817)

Land cessions began in New England and mid-Atlantic states in exchange for annuities and specific services delivered to tribes

Treaties began to be used to legally extinguish Indian title to land

Methods used to permanently wipe out title were (1) drawing of boundaries between Indian Country and U.S. territory and (2) the securing of rights of way and land for military forts and trading posts

With the establishing of boundaries and land cessions, the concept of reservation introduced into American policy

Treaties of Removal (1817–1846)

The departures of France, England, and Spain diminished Indians regaining power

As settlers wanted more land, the primary goal of the U.S. in making treaties became the removal of Indians from their lands

The primary goal was the removal of Indian nations in the East to lands west of the Mississippi River (now Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma)

Western Treaties (1846–1868)

A new policy forced Indians to smaller, well-defined reservations

Education Provisions in Treaties

Early on, the newly established government began a continuing involvement in Native education. The first U.S. treaty to contain a provision for education was the 1794 treaty with the Oneida, Tuscarora, and Stockbridge Indians. Eventually, ninety-five treaties specifically mentioned that Native ownership of land would be exchanged for a variety of things, including education. Education meant forced assimilation, which was viewed as the humanitarian solution to the so-called Indian problem. There seemed to be two choices, as the House Committee on Appropriations put it in 1818: In the present state of our country, one of two things seems to be necessary, either that those sons of the forest should be moralized or exterminated. At first, missionaries were funded by the federal government to do the moralizing.

In 1819, Congress passed the Civilization Fund Act, which provided for an annual appropriation for the education of Indians. In the beginning, the funds were given to missionaries to allow them to expand their network of schools to teach the habits and arts of civilization to Indians. Later, with legislation that made it illegal for the government to support religious organizations, the federal government took on the responsibility of eventually establishing and operating hundreds of schools.

EARLY LAWS, 1790–1795

The early laws of the U.S. government that recognized the largely independent character of Native American tribes were built around policy confirming Indian land ownership on areas they occupied, which could not be taken without their consent. The Indian Intercourse Acts of 1790, 1793, 1796, and 1802 governed Indian relations and attempted to control the trade relationship between Indians and Euro-American traders. The specified geographic boundaries separating Indian Country from white settlements sought to restrain lawless frontier whites who circumvented federal laws. Other laws governing the fur trade sought to prevent the use of liquor by traders among Indians.

The Indian Intercourse Act of 1790

Section 4 of The Indian Intercourse Act of 1790 read:

And be it enacted and declared that no sale of lands made by any Indians, or any nation or tribe of Indians in the United States, shall be valid to any person or persons, or to any state, whether having the right of pre-emption to such lands or not, unless the same shall be made and duly executed at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States.

Under the terms of the Constitution and the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790 and its subsequent re-enactments, no purchase, grant, lease, or other conveyance of land from an Indian nation was valid without the participation and approval of the United States government. Land claims pursued by American Indian tribes on the East Coast during the twentieth century rested on the Nonintercourse Act of 1790.

President George Washington signed the first Indian Intercourse Act into law in 1790.

The federal government attempted early on to compete with the British and private fur companies by creating a system of government-operated trading houses by act of Congress in 1795. Designed to help Indians secure goods at fair prices and to reduce warfare with tribes, the system established seventeen trade factories between 1795 and 1821. The system, which suffered heavy losses during the War of 1812, was criticized by Indians, agents, and private trading interests, and by 1822, Congress closed down the factories.

NORTHWEST ORDINANCE OF 1787

In the period after the Revolution, the American government increasingly turned its attention to the acquisition of land. Recognizing that the United States was not strong enough militarily to take Indian land by force and that peace with Indian nations was a matter of national security, Congress expressed an enduring, if often violated, commitment to treat Indians fairly and to respect their property rights. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress set forth elements of an official U.S. policy toward Indians that is part of the basis for the trust responsibilities of the United States for Indian rights and property. The ordinance specifies that:

The utmost faith shall always be observed toward Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress, but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs done to them and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

The superintendents were responsible for carrying out the commitments expressed in the Northwest Ordinance. Since the official policy was against taking Indian land by force, one of the main duties of the superintendents was to arrange for treaty negotiations in which the United States could acquire land within a legal framework, and the Indian people would get something in return. The superintendents were also responsible for distribution of goods, money, and services to Indians as specified in treaties.

GROWTH OF U.S. GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACY, 1787–1849

As more and more treaties were signed, the work of the departments expanded. At the same time, the governmental process became increasingly bureaucratic. Treaties stipulated that Indian title to land was exchanged for a variety of things, most often money, goods, and/or services. It was often stipulated that a specified amount of money was to be distributed for a specified number of years, sometimes forever. The money payment was called an annuity. The accounting procedure for appropriating money from Congress and for acquiring the goods was, then as now, time consuming and complicated. New treaties were signed every year, each one stipulating a different mix of money, goods, and services in payment for land. In addition, non-Indians were pushing back the frontier and encroaching on Indian land, causing hostilities. They began to demand reparation for damages from attacks by Indians. The secretary was authorized to make payments to non-Indians whose property was damaged by Indian attack. The money was to come from money owed to Indians as a result of land transfers. This meant that in addition to seeing that each tribe received its annuities, goods, and services, the secretary of war had to assess the validity of claims and make arrangements for payments from treaty money. The secretary could not keep up with the work. By 1816, the War Department was eighteen years behind in settling the accounts of the Indian departments.

In 1824, the secretary of war, John C. Calhoun, without authorization from Congress, upgraded the Indian Department to bureau status and appointed Thomas L. McKenny, the former superintendent of Indian trade, to handle the day-to-day business. Calhoun’s reasoning was to establish an independent bureau so that it could be responsible for its own complex accounting and record keeping. He used the term the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the first time in his letter of appointment to McKenny on March 11, 1824. However, since Secretary Calhoun did not have authorization from Congress, he did not actually have the power to transfer some of his authority to someone else or create a separate branch in the War Department. Nevertheless, the Indian Office grew, and the question of its legality was overlooked for a time.

In 1832, Congress passed an act that legalized McKenny’s position to that of commissioner of Indian affairs. A House committee investigation then reported that it could find no basis in law for making the Indian Office an independent branch of the War Department and recommended that Congress enact a statute to make the office legal. Congress did so on June 30, 1834. The Act of 1834 is therefore considered the organic act of the Indian Office (the law by which an organization exists). This meant that the commissioner of Indian affairs could handle the daily business of the Indian Office under the supervision of the secretary of war. The Indian Office, as it was called at the time, remained part of the War Department until 1849, when Congress created the Department of the Interior and transferred the Indian Office to its jurisdiction.

The mission of the Indian Office reflected the government’s policy toward Indians. Initially, the government was concerned with peace and land acquisition. Activities were aimed at achieving peaceful coexistence with Indian nations, securing equitable trade relations, and acquiring land. Treaties contained clauses that defined boundaries that separated Indian land from white land, but whites often encroached on Indian land, taking for it themselves, destroying the environment, and treating Indians with aggressive hostility. Often, the government did not even try to keep intruders off Indian land. By 1803, however, the policy switched from peaceful coexistence to aggressive destruction of the Indian way of life. This was to be accomplished either by the physical removal of Indians or by making Indians indistinguishable from white Americans. Both the first option, removal, and the second, assimilation, became government policy for many years.

REMOVAL AND ASSIMILATION, 1820s–1860s

During the 1820s, government officials and religious and reform organizations who argued for the assimilation of Native Americans into non-Indian society merged this philosophy with that of moving eastern Native peoples to lands west of the Mississippi River, where they thought the civilizing program could be pursued more successfully. President Thomas Jefferson first suggested the removal policy in 1803. The Jeffersonian generation initially believed in a program of civilizing Indians through secular and religious education, which would transform them into individual farmers, who eventually would be incorporated into white society. That generation witnessed, however, the disintegration of Indian tribal and personal life as a result of the civilization program, renewed warfare with whites, exposure to European diseases, and the influence of liquor. Some Jeffersonians argued that Indians in the East should be removed to west of the Mississippi River, where the civilizing program that failed in the East could be carried on. During the Jefferson era, there were three unsuccessful attempts to remove voluntarily Southeastern tribal groups to unsettled portions of the Louisiana Territory acquired by the United States from France. Subsequent presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were unwilling to use military force to remove tribes.

President Thomas Jefferson believed in moving Natives west of the Mississippi, where it would be easier to assimilate them into a European-style culture, and so he approved the first removal policy in 1803.

THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY, 1823

In 1823, the Doctrine of Discovery (DOD) was adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court in the case Johnson v. McIntosh . Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall observed that Christian European nations had assumed ultimate dominion over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery and that—upon discovery—the Indians had lost their rights to complete sovereignty as independent nations and only retained a right of occupancy in their lands. The Court affirmed that United States law was based on a fundamental rule of the Law of Nations—that it was permissible to virtually ignore the most basic rights of Indigenous heathens and to claim that the unoccupied lands of America rightfully belonged to discovering Christian European nations. The term unoccupied lands referred to the lands in America which, when discovered, were ‘occupied’ by Indians’ but ‘unoccupied’ by Christians.

The long-term effects of the Eurocentric documents still impact laws today. United States federal policy regarding Native peoples has been based on the DOD. Although the U.S. had become independent of England, the new lawmakers chose to continue with the tenets of white Christian dominion and manifest destiny. The DOD is still referred to in legal decisions. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York ruled against the Oneida, who disputed the taxation of recently reacquired ancestral lands. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the Discovery Doctrine: Under the ‘Doctrine of Discovery,’ fee title to the lands occupied by the Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign—first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States.

Today, many faith communities have called for repudiation of the doctrine, among them the United Methodist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church, the World Council of Churches, several Quaker meetings, and the United Church of Christ. Catholic nuns have also challenged the papal sanctioning of Christian enslavement and power over non-Christians and urged the pope to rescind the papal bulls. It would be helpful for the church to throw out her sin of colonialism. Some acknowledgment of the pain of the past would be helpful, said Philip Arnold, Syracuse University religious studies professor.

TWO CHEROKEE SUPREME COURT CASES

From 1828 to 1830, Georgia passed laws imposing state jurisdiction over Cherokee Territory. The Supreme Court handed down decisions in two cases, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), in which tribes were viewed as largely autonomous governments retaining inherent powers not expressly ceded away by the tribes or extinguished by Congress and essentially independent of state control. In the Worcester decision, the court spelled out virtually every basic doctrine in Indian law: federal plenary power : The whole intercourse between the United States and this nation is, by our Constitution and laws, vested in the government of the United States; trust relationship : From the commencement of our government, Congress has passed acts to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indians, which treat them as nations, respect their rights, and manifest a firm purpose to afford that protection which treaties stipulate; reserved rights : The Indian nations possessed a full right to the lands they occupied until that right should be extinguished by the United States with their consent; and the general exclusion of state law from Indian Country : The Cherokee nation … is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force.

REMOVAL

Southeast

In the wake of the Cherokee cases, great numbers of settlers in the Southeast demanded that prospering tribes with extensive landholdings be cleared out of their way. State interference with the Cherokee Nation continued despite the court mandate. Removal was seen as the only solution to the problem. President Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, supported removal, declaring that the only hope for the Southeastern tribes’ survival would be for them to give up all their land and move west of the Mississippi River. Jackson warned the tribes that if they failed to move, they would lose their independence and fall under state laws. He backed an Indian removal bill in Congress. Members of Congress, like Davy Crockett, argued that Jackson was violating the Constitution by refusing to enforce treaties that guaranteed Indian land rights, but Congress passed the removal law in the spring of 1830.

The Removal Act called for the forcible removal of Indian people from their homelands in the eastern United States to tracts of land west of the Mississippi. The act, designed to use Congress’s exclusive authority over Indian affairs to gain further land cessions, spoke of securing the consent of Native nations, i.e., through treaties, to remove them to the West. However, the removal of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole, whose lands were coveted by plantation owners, was under military escort. Tribes in the Northeast were also coerced to sign removal treaties.

By the late 1830s, Indian nations such as the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Chocktaw had been largely extirpated from the Southeast.

The federal government’s removal policy inspired some of the most devastating losses of tribal landholdings, resulting in the exclusion of many groups from any portion of their ancient land base. Removal not only divested tribes of their homelands, it broke down tribal autonomy, breaking some nations into fractionated political units. In other cases, it forced distinct nations to occupy lands in common with other tribes that had not been historical allies and did not share a cultural basis.

Some tribes resisted removal, particularly the Florida Seminoles. The resistance, led by Osceola, raided farms and settlements, destroyed bridges essential to transporting troops and artillery, and ambushed Florida militia. Lured into captivity through treachery, Osceola died at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, in 1838. By 1842, the U.S. government gave