Indian wars were conflicts between the first peoples to live in North America and the European settlers who formed the United States of America. At the time of the wars, the settlers and their descendants called the first Americans Indians. These first Americans later became known as Native Americans and Indigenous people. The fighting went on for hundreds of years, from the 1500’s, when European explorers and then colonists first arrived, until the 1890’s. As newcomers arrived in greater numbers, they took more and more Indigenous lands. Indigenous people fought to keep their territory. Over the years, however, they were pushed farther and farther west and onto reservations.
The Indigenous people were divided into many diverse groups. These groups, in small bands or large confederacies, fought among themselves from time to time. Occasionally, Indigenous groups allied with one another to fight Europeans. Just as often, Indigenous peoples allied with Europeans to fight against other Indigenous peoples.
Colonial days
Most initial contacts between Indigenous people and European colonists were friendly. But the groups differed in many ways, including religious beliefs, views about land use, attitudes toward wealth, and social customs. These cultural differences often led to misunderstanding and mistrust. For example, the early English colonists often acquired land from Indigenous people by treaty, paying for the land they took. But the Indigenous people believed they had sold only the right to use the land, not the land itself, and so conflict resulted. The colonists’ push for more and more territory also caused conflict.
Jamestown.
English colonists arrived at Jamestown in what is now Virginia in 1607. More than 30 Indigenous groups in the region were united in a confederacy under the leadership of Wahunsonacock, whom the colonists called Powhatan. The English also referred to the Indigenous groups of the confederacy as the Powhatan.
The English at Jamestown survived their first year only with Powhatan’s assistance. They grew so dependent upon the food grown by the Indigenous people that, in 1609, they launched an armed campaign to seize food from the Powhatan. In the next four years, the colonists took control of additional land between the James and York rivers. In 1614, Powhatan accepted a peace treaty. Power in the confederation then began shifting to Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough. Powhatan died in 1618.
As the English pressed for additional lands, Opechancanough prepared for a massive assault against them. In a surprise attack on March 22, 1622, Opechancanough’s forces killed more than 300 people, about one-fourth of the colonists. Years of conflict followed, until the two sides made peace in 1632. In 1644, Opechancanough organized another revolt. But in 1646, he was captured and shot while being held prisoner.
The Pequot War (1637).
The English Pilgrims who landed in 1620 at Plymouth in what is now Massachusetts found the Wampanoag people there. Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem (leader), provided the colonists with food, seeds to plant, and advice on how to farm in the area. For about 50 years, the Wampanoag and the Plymouth colonists lived in peace.
In 1628, English Puritan arrivals founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth. They established towns along the coast and spread into the interior. There they found their expansion blocked by the powerful Pequot people. In 1634, Indigenous people killed some English traders. The killers were not Pequot, but Puritan officials demanded that the Pequot turn the men over to them. The Pequot did not do so. When some other Indigenous people killed a trader in 1636, the Puritans renewed their demands and raided Pequot villages. The Pequot responded with raids on settlers. In 1637, the Puritans made an alliance with the Narragansett, the Pequot’s traditional enemies. In May, colonists and Narragansett warriors attacked and set on fire a Pequot village on the Mystic River. Hundreds of Pequot were burned alive or killed trying to escape.
King Philip’s War (1675-1676).
In 1675, Plymouth authorities executed three Wampanoag men for the murder of an Indigenous Christian man. A few days later, fighting broke out between some colonists and Wampanoag at the colonial settlement of Swansea. Fighting flared up quickly in many other areas, and the conflict that became known as King Philip’s War soon engulfed New England. Colonial forces attacked Indigenous towns, and Indigenous people destroyed a number of colonial towns. The Wampanoag sachem, Massasoit’s son Metacom, also known as King Philip, withdrew to the interior and sought an alliance with the Narragansett. In December 1675, the English defeated the Narragansett in the Great Swamp Fight, near what is now West Kingston, Rhode Island. Metacom was killed in 1676, and fighting in southern New England soon ended.
The Pueblo revolt (1680-1692).
The Spaniards who attempted to colonize the Southwest in the 1500’s encountered several Indigenous groups. Spanish Franciscan missionaries worked for many years to convert Indigenous people to Christianity. They met with the most success among the Pueblo. In the 1670’s, the Spaniards began a campaign to stamp out all traces of the traditional Pueblo religion. A Pueblo holy man, Popé of San Juan Pueblo, became the leader of a movement to overthrow the Spaniards. The Pueblo revolt began in August 1680. After attacks all over the region, the Pueblo advanced on Santa Fe in present-day New Mexico. There, they killed more than 400 Spaniards. Hundreds of Spaniards fled south to what is now El Paso, Texas.
Popé made Santa Fe the capital of a Pueblo confederacy. He ordered the destruction of churches and forbade the use of Spanish customs and language. The Pueblo kept such useful things introduced by the Spaniards as horses, sheep, fruit trees, wheat, and metal tools. But with the Spaniards gone, attacks by the Pueblo’s traditional enemies, the Navajo and the Apache, increased. By the time Popé died in 1688, the Pueblo alliance was weakening. The Spaniards retook Santa Fe in 1692 and reconquered the area by 1696.
The French and Indian wars (1689-1763).
The French in North America focused on the fur trade. They tried to establish friendly trading relationships with Indigenous groups and generally encouraged them to remain at peace so the hunting grounds would be safe.
In the late 1600’s, the English and French in North America became locked in an intense struggle for control of the profitable fur trade. The struggle was part of a larger conflict between the two powers unfolding in Europe. The result was a series of wars known in North America as the French and Indian wars. As a result of the wars, the British gained most of France’s territory in North America.
Pontiac’s War (1763-1764).
In early 1763, the Ottawa sachem Pontiac organized an alliance of Ohio Valley Indigenous groups to fight the British. In the spring of 1763, in an uprising known as Pontiac’s War, the alliance captured eight British military posts. But the British hung on to the key forts of Niagara, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. 
To avoid future costly wars with the Indigenous people, the British issued the Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation drew a line through the Appalachian Mountains and forbade white settlements west of the line. It set aside the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River for Indigenous people. But many colonists, eager for new land, ignored the proclamation line and continued to stream into the lands west of the Appalachians.
Lord Dunmore’s War (1774).
After the Proclamation of 1763, British agents began negotiating for land from Indigenous groups. In the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the Iroquois ceded lands south of the Ohio River. However, the lands were occupied primarily by the Shawnee. In 1774, Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, led an army into the ceded area to secure the colony’s claim to the land. On Oct. 10, 1774, in a battle at what is now Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Dunmore’s forces defeated the Shawnee, who were led by Cornstalk.
The new nation
When the American Revolution began in 1775, most Indigenous groups sided with the British against the American colonists to protect their own interests. After the war ended in 1783, many Indigenous people continued to fight. The new government of the United States signed treaties with various Indigenous groups. But many treaties were broken as increasing numbers of settlers entered Indigenous lands.
Conflicts in the Midwest.
The Indigenous people of the Ohio Valley continued to fight until the 1830’s.
Little Turtle
was a Miami chief and leader of a confederacy of Indigenous groups in the Ohio Valley and other parts of the Great Lakes region. In 1790, Little Turtle defeated a force led by Brigadier General Josiah Harmar. In 1791, U.S. forces again faced Little Turtle, this time with a large but unprepared army under Major General Arthur St. Clair. In a surprise attack, Little Turtle’s forces killed or wounded about 900 U.S. soldiers.
President George Washington then appointed Major General “Mad Anthony” Wayne to lead U.S. forces into the Ohio Valley. Wayne’s troops defeated Indigenous forces on Aug. 20, 1794, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. In the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, Little Turtle and other representatives of 12 Indigenous nations ceded lands that included most of present-day Ohio, southeastern Indiana, and other areas, including Detroit and Chicago.
The Shawnee Prophet.
In 1805, a Shawnee named Lalawethika fell into a coma and then recovered. After his recovery, he said the “Master of Life” had sent him back to lead the Indigenous people. He took a new name—Tenskwatawa, meaning the open door. Non-Indigenous Americans called him the Shawnee Prophet.
Tenskwatawa emphasized that the Master of Life wanted Indigenous people to reject settler culture. He gained many followers, and his brother Tecumseh became the military leader of the movement. The brothers urged the Shawnee and other Indigenous groups east of the Mississippi to unite and resist non-Indigenous settlement on their lands. They established a village in central Indiana that became known as Tippecanoe, also called Prophetstown.
In the summer of 1810, Tecumseh and a delegation of chiefs and warriors met with William Henry Harrison, the territorial governor and later a U.S. president. They proclaimed their intent to prevent federal surveyors from entering the Wabash River Valley in southern Indiana. The following year, while Tecumseh was in the South attempting to gather more support for the his confederacy, Harrison marched against Prophetstown. The Indigenous people were defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe, fought on Nov. 7, 1811. Tenskwatawa and his followers fled, and his movement fell apart. Tecumseh joined the British forces fighting against the United States in the War of 1812. He was killed in what is now Canada in October 1813.
Black Hawk.
The last of the so-called Indian conflicts in the area had its origins in an incident in 1804. Governor Harrison had a Sauk man arrested for killing three U.S. citizens. Harrison said the Sauk must cede their lands to the United States before the man would be freed. The Sauk gave up land. But before the prisoner’s pardon arrived, he tried to escape and was shot by a U.S. soldier. By 1830, most of the Sauk had moved west of the Mississippi River. From April to August 1832, the Sauk leader Black Hawk and his followers fought to take back one of their villages (now Rock Island, Illinois) but failed. 
Conflicts in the South.
During the early 1800’s, Indigenous groups in the South, especially the Creek and Seminole, fought a series of wars with white settlers who wanted their lands. General Andrew Jackson, later president of the United States, led U.S. forces against these Indigenous peoples.
The Red Sticks.
A Creek group known as the Red Sticks rejected U.S. claims to Creek land that were based on the 1783 treaty with the British that had ended the Revolutionary War. The Red Sticks argued that the U.S. claims were not valid because the Creek had not taken part in the negotiations. The Creek War broke out in 1813. It ended the following year with Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The Creek then gave up about 23 million acres (9.3 million hectares) to the United States.
The Seminole.
In 1816, U.S. troops pursued Black people who had fled from slavery into Spanish-owned Florida. In 1817, troops attacked the Seminole village of Fowltown and began the First Seminole War. In 1818, Jackson led a force of U.S. soldiers and Indigenous warriors against the Seminole. In 1819, at the end of the conflict, Spain ceded Florida to the United States. In 1823, the United States forced the Seminole to give up their claim to most of Florida for reservation land that lay mostly inland from Tampa Bay.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. This law called for the removal of Indigenous groups east of the Mississippi River to land called Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. After the Indian Removal Act was passed, many Seminole refused to leave their Florida lands. Led by Osceola, they fled into the swamplands of central Florida. There, the men formed raiding parties that kept U.S. forces at bay. The Second Seminole War lasted from 1835 to 1842. The Seminole held out even after Osceola was taken prisoner in 1837. During the war, the United States captured thousands of Seminole and sent them to Indian Territory. But in 1842, after spending millions of dollars on the war, the United States gave up and stopped fighting the Seminole.
Wars on the Plains
In 1848, the discovery of gold in California began to attract a steady stream of migrants. As the gold seekers flowed west across the continent, a new phase of the Indian wars began—conflicts with the Plains people. In the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, Indigenous groups of the northern plains granted the United States the right to establish military posts and roads across the plains. The United States agreed to make annual payments to the Indigenous groups for the loss of game. In 1853 at Fort Atkinson, in what is now Nebraska, Americans negotiated a similar treaty with Indigenous groups of the southern plains. In the 1850’s, the United States also began buying parts of Indian Territory from Indigenous people and settling them on reservations.
Indigenous people fought on both sides of the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1862, members of several southeastern Indigenous groups that had been removed to reservations in Indian Territory signed treaties with the Confederacy. In 1866, after the Confederacy lost the war, the U.S. government imposed new treaties upon these groups that greatly reduced the size of their reservations.
The Great Sioux Uprising (1862).
In 1862, the Santee, or Dakota, Sioux in Minnesota faced starvation. The government payments they depended upon were delayed because of the Civil War, and the government agent refused to release food supplies until the cash payments arrived. In August, the Santee carried out several raids against the settlers in a conflict known as the Great Sioux Uprising, or the Dakota Conflict. The Santee killed from 400 to 800 settlers before the state militia ended the rebellion. Many Santee fled west to join other Sioux.
Sand Creek.
During the early 1860’s, violence and raiding mounted in what is now Colorado as the territorial government tried to push Indigenous people off more land to make room for miners and settlers. In November 1864, the Cheyenne leader Black Kettle brought his large band to Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado and asked for the protection of the soldiers there. A few months earlier, the governor of the Colorado Territory had indicated that peaceful Indigenous people would be allowed to set up camp near Army posts for protection. Black Kettle was told to establish his camp at nearby Sand Creek. 
On the morning of Nov. 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington of the Colorado militia led an attack on Black Kettle’s camp. Black Kettle displayed a U.S. flag and a white flag of truce, but the militia attacked anyway, killing more than 150 people in the camp, including many women and children. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho bands took revenge for Chivington’s attack, which came to be called the Sand Creek Massacre. They burned ranches and stagecoach stations along the South Platte River and killed many settlers.
Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868).
Soon after a gold strike in Montana in 1862, federal authorities began developing the Bozeman Trail. The trail crossed northeastern Wyoming, through a hunting area guaranteed by treaty to the Sioux. In 1866, the Sioux warrior Red Cloud went to Fort Laramie to protest, but the Army would not halt its plans to construct several forts along the trail. Two years of fighting followed, known as Red Cloud’s War. The Sioux and Cheyenne besieged the forts and prevented travelers from using the trail. In 1868, the United States agreed to close the trail and abandon the forts along it. As the U.S. citizens left, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors burned the forts. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that ended the conflict, the United States recognized the rights of the Sioux to land west of the Missouri River in what is now the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. 
Washita River.
In three treaties signed at Medicine Lodge in Kansas in 1867, the United States established reservations in Indian Territory for several Indigenous groups, including the Southern Cheyenne. Nevertheless, an Army campaign to end Indigenous resistance began in 1868. Black Kettle, who had survived the Sand Creek Massacre, led his peaceful band of Southern Cheyenne into Indian Territory near the reservation. They set up camp on the Washita River. On Nov. 27, 1868, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer led the Seventh Cavalry in an attack on the camp. The soldiers killed or wounded more than 100 Cheyenne. Black Kettle was among those killed.
Little Bighorn.
In 1874, Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills, a part of the Sioux reservation, to investigate rumors that gold had been discovered. His report indicated that there was gold in the area, and miners and settlers poured into the region. Some Sioux leaders, including Red Cloud, had become convinced they must accommodate the newcomers. But younger Sioux leaders, including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, continued to resist. Sitting Bull urged the Sioux to oppose U.S. attempts to buy the Black Hills.
In late 1875, reservation agents called for all Sioux to enter the reservation by the end of January 1876 and remain there. The Sioux outside the reservation ignored the order. In the spring, some Indigenous people left the reservation for their annual buffalo hunt. A large group of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho assembled in southeastern Montana at a place they called the Greasy Grass, along the Little Bighorn River. On June 25, 1876, Custer and more than 200 of his men rode into a village that probably contained about 2,000 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. In the battle that took place, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the warriors killed Custer and his men.
Although the Sioux and Cheyenne won many battles, they could not win the war with the United States. The U.S. Army prevented Indigenous people from hunting or gathering food and starved the Sioux into surrender. In May 1877, Crazy Horse gave himself up at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska. In September, he was shot by a U.S. soldier during a scuffle and bled to death in a reservation jail. Sitting Bull and his followers fled to Canada but returned and surrendered in 1881.
Wovoka.
Following the Sioux defeat in 1877, the United States took possession of the Black Hills. The government divided the Sioux reservation into six smaller reservations and forced the Sioux onto them.
In 1890, a number of Indigenous people turned to a Northern Paiute prophet, Wovoka, and his new spiritual movement, the Ghost Dance. Wovoka urged his followers to give up alcohol, live simple lives, and dedicate themselves to meditation, prayer, and ritual dancing. If they did so, he said, they would regain control of their lives and lands.
Wounded Knee.
The Ghost Dance movement flourished among the Sioux. Followers came together for rituals that lasted many days, dancing themselves into a trance. To the government agents at the reservations, the Ghost Dance was frightening. In November 1890, the agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota telegraphed Washington, D.C., requesting Army troops. The government sent the Seventh Cavalry to Pine Ridge.
Government officials ordered the arrest of some of the Sioux chiefs. Indigenous police working for the government went to arrest Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull‘s followers resisted the arrest, and an Indigenous policeman shot and killed Sitting Bull.
The Sioux leader Big Foot and his band had left their homes on the Cheyenne River Reservation to come to the Pine Ridge Reservation. The Seventh Cavalry met them and told them to camp on Wounded Knee Creek on the reservation. There, on the morning of Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. troops tried to disarm the Sioux. A gun went off, and the soldiers began firing. They killed more than 200 people, including Big Foot.
Wars in California and the Northwest
In 1848, when gold was discovered in California, about 100,000 Indigenous people lived there. By 1861, the Indigenous population numbered no more than 30,000. Disease and warfare had taken many lives, and the miners had organized volunteer companies to hunt down and kill Indigenous people.
Beginning in the 1850’s, many Indigenous groups in California and the Northwest were settled on reservations. But poor conditions on the reservations and further inroads into Indigenous lands caused conflict.
The Modoc War (1872-1873).
In 1864, the Modoc of northern California agreed to move to the Klamath Reservation in southern Oregon. But conditions there were so poor that a group of Modoc under Kintpuash, whom the settlers called Captain Jack, returned to their homelands near Tule Lake in northern California. In 1872, a cavalry regiment under Captain James Jackson tried to force the Modoc back onto the reservation. Captain Jack led his people into hiding in the lava beds south of the lake. In 1873, the U.S. Army defeated the Modoc. The Army hanged Captain Jack and sent the remaining Modoc to Indian Territory.
The Nez Perce War (1877).
An 1855 treaty with the Nez Perce created a reservation for them in the Washington and Oregon territories. In 1863, government officials reduced the size of the reservation after the discovery of gold brought miners and new settlers to the region. The Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph negotiated to keep his band on their land. However, the government opened the land to white settlement in the 1870’s. In May 1877, the Nez Perce were given 30 days to move to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph counseled his people to obey the order, but on June 12, 1877, some young Nez Perce men killed four white men. Fearing that the settlers would seek revenge, the Nez Perce went into hiding and reluctantly went to war.
Soldiers caught up with the Nez Perce at White Bird Canyon in Idaho on June 17, 1877. The Nez Perce sent a party under a flag of truce, but a soldier fired on them. The Nez Perce responded by killing two soldiers. A battle began, and the Nez Perce won.
Chief Joseph then led his people—most of them women, children, and old men—in a flight across the Bitterroot Mountains, through Yellowstone Park, and into central Montana, trying to reach safety in Canada. Along the way, the Nez Perce engaged in several battles with federal troops. In October 1877, the weary Nez Perce surrendered after a six-day battle near the Bears Paw Mountains in Montana.
Wars in the Southwest
Conflicts between the U.S. Army and the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest began after troops entered the area to fight the Mexican War (1846-1848). The last of the Indian wars in the area—and the country—ended in the 1890’s.
Navajo conflicts.
During the Mexican War and into the 1850’s, U.S. troops clashed with Navajo bands that raided settlements of other Indigenous groups, U.S. citizens, and Mexicans. During the Civil War, Union forces led by General James H. Carleton and Colonel Kit Carson followed a scorched-earth policy against the Navajo. Soldiers burned everything in their path that the Navajo could use for food or shelter. The Army then arrested the starving Navajo.
In 1864, federal troops forced the Navajo to march to a reservation in eastern New Mexico called Bosque Redondo. The Navajo lived there in near starvation for more than four years. In 1868, Navajo leaders negotiated a settlement that allowed the Navajo to return their homelands, now the Navajo Reservation.
Apache warfare.
In the 1860’s, bands of Apache under such leaders as Cochise and Mangas Coloradas fought the U.S. Army. In 1862 and 1863, the Army forced several bands to go to Bosque Redondo, but most soon escaped. In the 1870’s, many Apache were moved to reservations, either voluntarily or by force. On the reservations, the Apache suffered from crowded conditions and lack of food, and many tried to leave. But the Army pursued them.
In 1881, for example, the Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo and a number of his followers became disgusted with conditions at the San Carlos Reservation and left. Geronimo surrendered to General George Crook in 1883 but left the reservation again in 1885. He surrendered in early 1886 but escaped yet again. In September 1886, Geronimo and 34 men, women, and children surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles and were imprisoned.
Geronimo’s final surrender marked the end of most military resistance by Indigenous peoples in United States territory. Occasional raids by other Apache bands ended in the 1890’s. By the early 1900’s, most Indigenous people in the United States lived on reservations.
