Native American Wars

View more History, Politics, Society videos

Wars among Native Americans; and wars between Native Americans and Europeans and Euro-Americans. East of the Mississippi, the first type of war often took the form of “mourning wars, ” fought to take captives to avenge and replace the loss of a group member, rather than to acquire land or goods. European contact, however, brought disease and trade, intensifying these rivalries. Both factors led to a long series of “Beaver Wars” which broke out from the 1640s to 1680s between Iroquian and Algonquian groups. In the Eastern Woodlands, Indian groups fought against each other in larger European wars, such as King William's War (1698-97), Queen Anne's War (1702-13), King George's War (1744-48), and the French and Indian War (1754-63). In the Plains and the Southwest, on the other hand, wars tended to pit nomadic groups against horticulturist ones, rivalries that were also exacerbated by European contact. The horse played a critical role, shifting the balance of military power to nomadic groups, who drove agricultural groups, such as the Plains Apache and the Navajo from their lands. By the 1840s, the dominance of the nomadic Lakota Sioux led many Plains horticulturists to favor a military alliance with the United States to ensure their own survival. Wars between Native Americans and Europeans and Americans almost always arose as a result of European settlers claiming territory already inhabited by Indians. Thus, in 1622 and 1644, the Powhatan Confederacy tried to eradicate the Virginia Colony; in 1636-37, the Pequot were virtually wiped out in New England; in 1675-76, Algonquian tried to repossess land in King Philip's War; and in 1680, Pueblo Indians drove the Spanish out of New Mexico, though only for thirteen years. And while in these and other wars, groups considered a pan-Indian alliance, this became difficult to accomplish as Indian survival usually depended on continued competition between two European powers.The Revolutionary War and subsequent encouragement for Euro-Americans to settle the land engendered a number of conflicts in which Indians continued to lose their lands in the Old Northwest. These groups tried to capitalize on the War of 1812 to regain their lands, but only succeeded in delaying American dominion, finalized by their defeat in the Black Hawk War in 1832. In the South, unified Creek resistance was put down in the Creek War (1811-14), while the Cherokees were driven west on the famous Trail of Tears; and Florida Indians were likewise conquered and driven west after the Seminole Wars in 1818, 1835-42, and 1855-58. The staunchest resistance was mounted in the Pacific Northwest by the Modocs and Nez Percé, but that, too, was eventually quashed in the 1870s. The Americans' westward migration kept tensions high through the 19th century. Treaties, such as the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, tended to last for fewer years than the wars they settled. In the Plains Indians Wars that were fought between 1854 and 1890, Plains Indians resisted the expansion of the railroad and American settlement, but U.S. soldiers, with the help of Shoshone and Crow fighters, destroyed buffalo and attacked villages to subdue them. It was in these wars that George Armstrong Custer was defeated by Crazy Horse at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876) and that the tragic Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) took place. The southwest was the final area of warfare, and while prominent Apache leaders, including Cochise, Victorio, and Geronimo, mounted determined resistance, the Apaches were eventually subdued by the U.S. Army.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.