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Imagery & Stereotyping Explained
Indian Caricatures |
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How some people try to distance themselves from these images |
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| 1861 Civil War Begins: Many tribes,
including the Five Civilized Tribes (now living in Oklahoma
Territory), sided with the Confederacy, which promised
to respect Indian sovereignty in return for Indian support.
After the end of the War, the U.S. government punished
the Five Civilized Tribes by forcing the Tribes to give
up land. |
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| 1862, May 20; The Homestead
Act gave freehold title to 160 acres (one quarter
section or about 65 hectares) of undeveloped land in
the American West. The person to whom title was granted
had to be at least 21 years of age, and to have built
on the section, and lived in for 5 years, a house that
was at least 12 by 14 feet in size. The Act was signed
into law by President Abraham Lincoln. |
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| 1862
Dakota Wars: In 1851, the US government and
Dakota Sioux leaders negotiated a treaty ceding
vast amounts of land in the Minnesota territory
in exchange for money and goods. Much of the payment
never arrived, due to slowness of the part of
the government, inefficiency and corruption within
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and unscrupulous
Euro-American traders. Dakota leaders went back
to Washington to urge further action, and left
with even less land than they had had before.
In the meantime the ceded land was being divided
into townships, forests were cleared, and game
was hunted to the point where the Native way of
life was threatened. These events combined with
a season of crop failure in 1862 to push the Dakota
to the point of starvation. The failure of the
US government to live up to their end of an emergency
food negotiation seems to have pushed some young
Dakota men to the breaking point. Most accounts
trace the beginning of the violence to the killing
of five Euro-American settlers by four Dakota
men on August 17. In the days that followed, violence
eructed in South Central and Northwestern Minnesota,
with the Euro-American settlers and soldiers bearing
the brunt of the casualties. Several requests
for federal help finally convinced President Lincoln
so divert troops from the Civil War to Minnesota,
where six weeks of fighting ensued. At least 500
settlers and soldiers died in the conflict. |
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Six weeks
later, 303 Sioux prisoners were convicted of murder
and rape by military tribunals and sentenced to
death. Some trials lasted less than 5 minutes,
and the Dakotas had no one to explain the proceedings
to them or to represent them. President Lincoln
reviewed the trial records and approved of the
execution of 38 of the convicted, and commuted
the death sentences of the others. The 38 were
executed by public hanging on December 26, 1862,
in Mankato. It remains the largest execution in
the history of the United States. As a result
of the war, the U.S. government abolished the
reservation, declared all previous treaties with
the Dakota null and void, and undertook proceedings
to expel the Dakota people entirely from Minnesota.
To this end, a bounty of $25 per scalp was placed
on virtually any Dakota found free within the
boundaries of the state. The only exceptions to
this were 208 Mdewakanton "friendlies"
who sat out and even helped to protect a few white
settlers in the conflict. But even these who were
loyal to the US were deemed |
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too untrustworthy
and were moved. 1,300 to 1,700 Dakota people were
rounded up and held through the winter of 1862–1863
in a compound that some historians have called a
concentration camp. This compound was located on Pike
Island below Fort Snelling. In the spring, the camp
was moved southwest toward the current site of the Mall
of America, prior to the mass removal of these people
to Nebraska and South Dakota including the Crow Creek
Indian Reservation on the Missouri River on May 4, 1863.
More than 130 Dakota died in the camp and subsequent
removal.
[ Suggested listening: "Minnesota's
Uncivil War" from Minnesota Public Radio, September
26, 2002] |
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| 1864 Sand Creek Massacre: In 1851, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes had been recognized
and holding a vast territory spanning most of what are
today 4 Western states. When gold was discovered in
Colorado in 1858, Euro-American encroachment began and
by 1861 the US government had pressured the Indians
into negotiating another treaty, whereby they ceded
twelve thirteenths of their 1851 territory. Some bands
of Cheyenne refused to recognize the treaty and ignored
the new boundaries. The outbreak of Civil War prompted
the organization of military forces in Colorado. After
defeating a Texas Confederate Army in New Mexico, the
First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers returned to Colorado
Territory under Colonel John Chivington as home guard. Chivington and Colorado
territorial governor John Evans adopted a hard
line against Indians, accused by white settlers
of stealing stock. A series of small conflicts
between settlers and Indians broke out in the
spring of 1864. As the incidents grew more serious, |
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many of the Cheyenne and Arapahos (including
those bands under Cheyenne chiefs Black Kettle
and White Antelope who had sought to maintain
the peace in spite of pressures from whites)
tried to negotiate peace. They were told to
camp near Fort Lyon on the eastern plains and
that they would be regarded as friendly.
Black Kettle, a chief of a group of around
800 mostly Southern Cheyenne, reported to Fort
Lyon and declared peace, then retired from the
fort and camped at nearby Sand Creek, less than
40 miles north, to await surrender terms. The
Cheyenne Dog Soldiers whose refusal to recognize
the 1861 boundaries had sparked much of the
conflict were not there. Having received assurances
of their safety, Black Kettle sent most of his
warriors to hunt, leaving only around 60 elderly
men in the village. Black Kettle flew an American
flag over his lodge, also as a gesture of peace. Colonel
Chivington and his 800 troops of the First Colorado
Cavalry, Third Colorado Cavalry and a company
of First New Mexico Volunteers marched to their
campsite, drinking heavily along the way. On the
morning of November 29, 1864, Chivington |
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his troops to attack. One officer, Captain Silas
Soule refused to follow Chivington's order and
told his men to hold fire. Other soldiers in Chivington's
force, however, immediately attacked the village.
Disregarding both the American flag and a white
flag that was run up shortly after the soldiers
commenced firing, Chivington's soldiers massacred
the majority of its mostly-unarmed inhabitants.
Fifteen U.S. soldiers were killed and more than
fifty wounded, mostly by friendly fire from drunk
soldiers. An estimated 150 Indians were killed
and mutilated, mostly women, children, and elderly
men. In testimony before a Congressional committee
investigating the massacre, Chivington reported
that as many as 500-600 Indian warriors were killed.
One source from the Cheyenne said that about 53
men and 110 women and children were killed. Chivington
and his men decorated their weapons, hats, and
equipment with scalps and other body parts, including
Indian fetuses that had been cut from their pregnant
mothers, and male and female genitalia. They also
publicly displayed these battle trophies in the
Apollo Theater and saloons in Denver. The congressional
investigations resulted in public outcry against
the slaughter of the Native Americans, but it
didn't last long. |
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| 1866 "The Battle of One Hundred
Slain": In retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre
and other atrocities, Plains tribes banded together
and declared war on the United States. |
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| 1867 Treaty of Medicine
Lodge: The largest treaty-making gathering in U.S.
history, between U.S. and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations,
resulted in the removal of the two tribes to a reservation
in Indian Territory (modern day Oklahoma). Their reservation
was created out of lands taken from the Five Civilized
Tribes who had been forced to give them up because of
their support for the South during the Civil War. Crow,
Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Apache and dozens of other
tribes were represented. |
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| 1868 Lakota Treaty: In 1868, Lakota
Indians signed a treaty guaranteeing their rights to
the Black Hills of Dakota. |
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| 1868 Battle of Washita River:
The US Army, led by George Armstrong Custer, destroyed
the village occupied by Black Kettle's Cheyenne, encamped
at the Washita River. This raid was part of a massive
military campaign to contain all Indians who refused
to stay within their newly assigned reservations. |
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| 1873-74 The "Buffalo
War": A last desperate attempt by the Cheyenne,
Arapaho, Comanche and Kiowa to save the few remaining
buffalo herds from destruction by Euro-American hunters
in Oklahoma and Texas. |
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| 1874: An expedition
led by Lt. Col. George A. Custer discovered gold in
the Black Hills, sending a rush of prospectors to the
area in violation of the 1868 treaty. The Lakota revolted. |
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| 1876
Battle of the Little Big Horn: On June 25,
Custer attacked a large hunting camp of Lakota,
Cheyenne and Arapaho on the Little Big Horn River
in Montana. Sitting Bull, Gall, Crazy Horse, and
several Cheyenne leaders defeated Custer and the
7th Cavalry. General Custer and 250 soldiers were
killed. |
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| 1877, May: Sitting
Bull refused to surrender and led his band across the
border into Canada, where he remained in exile for many
years, refusing a pardon and the chance to return. |
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| 1877 Nez Perce: After
an impressive flight of more than 1,000 miles from their
homeland in Oregon, the Nez Perce led by Chief Joseph
finally surrendered. The U.S. relocated the Nez Perce
to Indian Territory, breaking its promise to allow them
to return to their homeland. |
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| 1881, July 19: Sitting
Bull surrendered at Fort Buford. He and his band were
transferred first to Fort Yates, the military post located
adjacent to the Standing Rock Agency. Arriving with
185 people, his band was kept separate from the other
Hunkpapa gathered at the agency. Army officials remained
concerned that the famed Hunkpapa chief would use his
influence to stir up trouble among the recently surrendered
northern bands and consequently, they decided to transfer
him and his band to Fort Randall to be held as prisoners
of war. Again loaded on a steamboat, Sitting Bull's
band, totaling 172 people, were sent down river to Fort
Randall where they spent the next 20 months. He was
finally allowed to return to the Standing Rock Agency
with his band, arriving in May 1883. |
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| 1885: Sitting Bull
was allowed to leave the reservation to join Buffalo
Bill Cody’s Wild West show. He only stayed with
the show for four months, but was rumored to earn about
$50 a week for riding once around the arena and cursing
the patrons in his native tongue, much to their delight.
Sitting Bull became what today we would refer to as
a celebrity. He earned a small fortune by charging for
his autograph and picture. |
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| 1886: After more than
two decades of armed conflict with the US government,
Geronimo and his band (including women and children)
were sent by train to Florida and imprisoned at St.
Augustine. |
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| 1887 The Dawes Act and
"allotment": During the 1880s American
reformers grew concerned that Indians on the reservations
were not improving themselves and becoming self-sufficient,
but were instead sinking into poverty and despair. The
purpose of the Dawes Act was to dissolve the reservation by forcing individual
Indians to live on small family farms. Every Indian
would receive 160 acres of land of reservation land.
Any land left over was sold. One goal of allotment was
to destroy Indian "communalism," i.e., the
practice of many families living together and sharing
property. Tribes affected by allotment were those located
in states where land was most sought after for farming
by Euro American settlers: North and South Dakota, Kansas,
Minnesota and Wyoming. Within the first ten years of
allotment, more than 80 million acres of Indian land
were opened for settlement. |
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| 1889: An act by the
U.S. Congress in March 1889 split the Great Sioux Reservation
into five smaller reservations. Some of the tribes began
performing the Ghost Dance, a religious ceremony that
sought to extinguish the Euro Americans and return the
buffalo and the former way of life. South Dakota was
admitted into the Union in November. The split was carried
out in February, 1890. Once on the reduced reservations,
tribes were separated into family units on 320 acre
plots, forced to farm, raise livestock, and send their
children to boarding schools that forbade any inclusion
of Native American traditional culture and language. |
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| 1889, April 22 Land Rush: 50,000 people lined up for the chance to stake claim
to two million acres of land in present-day Oklahoma;
land that had been taken away from Indians by the Dawes
Act. |
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| 1890
Ghost Dance: After experiencing a vision during
a solar eclipse, Wovoka, a Paiute prophet (also
known as Jack Wilson), defined a new religion
combining Christian and Native elements. In the
vision, Wovoka was given a glimpse of the afterlife.
To reach it, God's message was for the Native
peoples to love each other, to not fight, and
to live in peace with Euro Americans. God also
stated that Native Americans must work, not steal
or lie, and that they must not engage in the old
practices of war or the traditional self-mutilation
practices connected with mourning the dead. The
religion was dubbed the "Ghost Dance"
religion and it quickly swept through the Great
Plains and even out to California, though each
area modified it to their own belief. The religion
gained a huge following from peoples devastated
by disease, warfare, and Euro American encroachment.
One modification of the Ghost Dance tradition
was the so-called "Ghost Shirt". These
special garments were supposed to repel bullets
through spiritual power. It is uncertain where
this belief |
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that Chief Kicking Bear brought the concept his
Lakota Sioux in 1890. The Lakota also reinterpreted
Wovoka's vision of peaceful coexistence with Euro-Americans, replacing it with
the idea of a "renewed Earth" in which "all
evil is washed away". In the Lakota interpretation
of the Ghost Dance, all Euro-Americans would be removed
from their lands. |
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1890,
Fall: To help support the Sioux during the
period of transition into the five smaller units,
the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), was delegated
the responsibility of supplementing the Lakota
with food and hiring Euro American farmers as
teachers for the people. The farming plan failed
to take into account the difficulty Lakota farmers
would have in trying to cultivate crops in the
semiarid region of South Dakota. By the end of
the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat
and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was
unable to produce substantial agricultural yields.
At this same time, the government, fed up with
what they saw as Indian laziness, cut rations
to the Lakota in half. The Lakota had no options
available to escape starvation. Increased performances
of the Ghost Dance ritual ensued, frightening
the supervising agents of the BIA. Kicking Bear
was forced to leave Standing Rock, but when the
dances continued unabated, Agent McLaughlin asked
for more |
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| troops, claiming that Sitting
Bull was the real leader of the movement. A former agent,
Valentine McGillycuddy, saw nothing extraordinary in
the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have
overcome the agencies. Nevertheless, thousands of additional
US Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested
on the reservation for failing to stop his people from
practicing the Ghost Dance. During the incident, a Sioux
witnessing the arrest fired at one of the soldiers prompting
an immediate retaliation; this conflict resulted in
deaths on both sides, including Sitting Bull. |
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| 1890,
December 29: Wounded Knee Creek: The Miniconjou
leader Big Foot was on his way to a meeting with
the remaining Sioux chiefs when he was stopped
by US Army officers and forced to relocate with
his people to a small camp near the Pine Ridge
Agency so that they could keep an eye on him.
On the evening of December 28, the small band
of Big Foot's Sioux erected their tipis on the
banks of Wounded Knee Creek. The following day,
US Army officials arrived to collect any remaining
weapons from the band. One young and deaf Sioux
warrior refused to relinquish his arms. A struggle
followed, and a weapon was discharged into the
air. One US officer gave the command to open fire
and the Sioux responded by taking up the confiscated
weapons. The US forces opened fire with carbine
firearms and several rapid fire light artillery
(Hotchkiss) guns mounted on the overlooking hill.
When the fighting had concluded, 25 US soldiers
lay dead, many killed by friendly fire. 153 Sioux
were killed, mostly women and children. |
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Following the massacre, Chief Kicking Bear
officially surrendered his weapon to General
Nelson A. Miles. When the American public heard
the news of the massacre, there was general
outrage. For months the US government had been
portraying the Plains Indian as having been
pacified. Now there were 153 dead Indians, mostly
women and children. Buckling to public pressure,
the US government reversed policy by reinstating
the previous treaty’s terms, including
full rations and more monetary compensation
for lands taken away.
Document:Lakota
Wounded Knee Accounts |
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