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(c.1856-1932)

Wovoka was the Paiute mystic whose religious pronouncements spread the Ghost Dance among many tribes across the American West. HHe was known as the messiah to his followers.

Wovoka was born in Western Nevada, in what is now Esmeralda County, around 1856. At about the age of fourteen his father died, leaving Wovoka to be raised by the family of David Wilson, a nearby white rancher. Wovoka soon took the name Jack Wilson, by which he was broadly known among both neighboring whites and Indians. He worked on Wilson’s ranch well into adulthood, learned to speak English and was exposed to a fair amount of the Christian religion.

At around age thirty, Wovoka began to weave together various cultural strains into the Ghost Dance religion. He had a rich tradition of religious mysticism upon which to draw. Around 1870, a northern Paiute named Tavibo had prophesied that while all whites would be swallowed up by the earth, all dead Indians would emerge to enjoy a world free of their conquerors. He urged his followers to dance in circles, already a tradition in the Great Basin area, while singing religious songs. Tavibo’s movement spread to parts of Nevada, California and Oregon. Whether or not Tavibo was Wovoka’s father, as many at the time believed, in the late 1880 s Wovoka began to make similar prophecies. His pronouncements heralded the dawning of a new world, in which whites would vanish, leaving Indians to live in a land of material abundance, spiritual renewal and immortal life.

Wovoka’s prophecies stressed the link between righteous behavior and salvation which was not to be passively awaited but welcomed by a regime of ritual dancing and good moral conduct. Wovoka charged his followers to “not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always… Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them.” And while the Ghost Dance was sometimes viewed as an expression of Indian militancy and the desire to preserve traditional ways, Wovoka’s pronouncements actually bore great similarities to Christian beliefs: invocation of a “Supreme Being,” immortality, pacifism and explicit mentions of Jesus (such as “the messiah who came once to live on earth with the white man but was killed by them”).

The Ghost Dance spread throughout much of the West, especially among the more recently defeated Indians of the Great Plains. In 1889 the Lakota sent a delegation to visit Wovoka. This group brought the Ghost Dance back to their reservations, where believers made sacred shirts — said to be bullet-proof, especially for the Dance.

The slaughter of Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890 was proof that whites were not about to simply vanish as stated in Wovoka’s prophecy. Wovoka quickly lost his notoriety and lived as Jack Wilson until sometime in 1932.

Shawnee Indian
(March 1768 – October 5, 1813)

His name comes from Tekooms?, meaning “Shooting Star” and it’s believed that he was born on March 9, 1768 outside of the current town of Xenia, Ohio, to the Panther clan of Shawnee. Tecumseh, (also spelled Tecumtha or Tekamthi), was a Shawnee leader who spent much of his life trying to rally various Indian tribes into a confederation for the mutual defense of their lands. This endeavor eventually led to his death in the War of 1812.

Tecumseh’s father, Pucksinwah, a Shawnee war chief, died at the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. Fearing the encroaching white settlers, many Shawnees, including Tecumseh’s mother, Methoataske ,moved westward first to Indiana, then Illinois, and finally to Missouri. Tecumseh, only eleven years old at the time, remained in Ohio and was raised by his eldest brother, Chiksika, and his sister, Tecumpease.

Tecumseh, the Warrior
Tecumseh was trained by Chiksika to become a warrior and his first military encounter occurred against an army led by George Rogers Clark into the Ohio Country in 1782. But, Tecumseh panicked and fled the battlefield. Humiliated by the experience, Tecumseh swore he’d never run again. He grew into a brave warrior and eventually became a Shawnee leader who fought against the army of Arthur St. Clair in 1791. The Indians in the Northwest Territory were victorious. Tecumseh soon became one of the most trusted leaders of the Shawnees, admired greatly by younger braves because of his call for violent resistance against further white settlement of native land.

The Indians, however, were not so successful against the army of Anthony Wayne in 1794. At the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Wayne’s men defeated the Natives, including Tecumseh. Many Indians believed relinquishing much of their land was the only way to appease the whites, so most tribes living in Ohio signed the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795. Under this agreement the Native Americans gave up all of their land except the northwestern corner of present-day Ohio. Not all Indians agreed with their tribes’ actions and Tecumseh was among them.

Indian Confederacy
By the early 1800s, Tecumseh decided that the best way to stop white advancement was to form a confederacy of Indian tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains. He believed that no single tribe owned the land and that it would require all tribes together to turn land over to the whites. He also believed that, if the Indians united together, they would have a better chance militarily against the whites. In attempt to gather up his forces in a unified front, Tecumseh visited most Indian tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.

His Brother – The Prophet
In 1805, Tecumseh’s younger brother, Tenskwatawa, who was known as ‘the Prophet’, helped Tecumseh to unite the Indians. Tenskwatawa urged natives to reject the ways of the whites, and to refrain from ceding any more lands to the United States. His religious teachings became widely known as did his predictions. Tenskwatawa had a vision where the Master of Life, the Shawnee Indians’ primary god, told him to have the Indians give up all white customs and products, including their religious beliefs and agricultural practices, as well as guns, iron cookware, and alcohol. By turning their backs on Indian traditional ways, he said, they had offended the Master of Life and if they returned to their native customs, they would be rewarded by the whites being driven from the land. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who was working to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States. By 1808, however, tensions with white settlers and Black Hoof’s Shawnees compelled Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh to move further northwest and establish the village of Prophetstown near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers where they were joined by other Natives who supported the Prophet’s message.

Ceding of Indian Lands
In September 1809, William Henry Harrison, governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne in which a delegation of half-starved Indians ceded 3 million acres of Native American lands to the United States. Harrison was under orders from Washington to negotiate with Indians that claimed the lands that they were ceding. However, he disregarded those orders, as none of the Indians he met with lived on the lands that they ceded. Tecumseh’s opposition to the treaty marked his emergence as a prominent leader. Tecumseh insisted that the Fort Wayne treaty was illegal; he asked Harrison to nullify it, and warned that Americans should not attempt to settle on the lands sold in the treaty.

In 1811 Tecumseh again met with Harrison at Grouseland, Harrison’s Vincennes, Indiana, home to try to resolve the situation, but Harrison as Governor had made it his primary goal to acquire as much Indian Land as he could. Tecumseh told Harrison that the Shawnee and their Native American brothers wanted to remain at peace with the United States but these differences had to be resolved. Tecumseh knowing only solidarity of the tribes would convince Washington, then traveled south, on a mission to recruit allies among those Indians who were at the time called the “Five Civilized Tribes.” Most of the southern nations rejected his appeals, but a faction among the Creeks, who came to be known as the Red Sticks, answered his call to arms, leading to the Creek War.

Attack on Phophetstown
That same year, on November 6, Harrison, noting the growing number of Indians congregating at Prophetstown led an army towards the village. Tecumseh was not there at the time because he was recruiting Indian allies in the southern part of the United States. He left his brother with orders not to attack the Americans. But, The Prophet claimed to have received another vision from the Master of Life. In this vision, he said he was told to send his warriors against the Americans ad that The Master of Life also said that the soldiers’ bullets would not harm any Indians. The battle that ensued became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. The Americans defeated Tenskwatawa and his followers, and Prophetstown was destroyed. Although Harrison ( “Old Tippecanoe”) lost more men in this battle than the Indians, he held ground and it was a victory that would eventually lead to his becoming the President of the United States

Tecumseh’s Confederation became even more weakened by this defeat. He had trouble convincing tribes to put aside their traditional differences to unite as one against the Americans. Other Indians, including some Shawnees led by Black Hoof, had actually adopted white customs and had no desire to give them up.

The War of 1812: Tecumseh’s Death
During the War of 1812, Tecumseh and his remaining followers allied themselves with the British. His hope was that, if the English won, that they would return the Indians’ land to them. Battles were fought along Lake Erie, in Detroit and into Canada along the Thames River near Chatham. Harrison crossed into Upper Canada on October 5, 1813. A combined English-Indian force met the American army led by Harrison, but the British soldiers ran from the battlefield, leaving Tecumseh and his Indian followers to fight on their own. The Americans drove the natives from the battlefield and won the Battle of the Thames. Tecumseh was killed, and shortly after the battle the tribes of his confederacy surrendered to Harrison at Detroit.

In 1836-37, in part because of reports that it was he who had killed Tecumseh, Richard Mentor Johnson was elected vice-president of the United States, to serve with Martin Van Buren.

Tecumseh is honoured in Canada as a hero and military commander who played a major role in Canada’s successful repulsion of an American invasion in the War of 1812. This eventually led to Canada’s nationhood half a century later. Among the tributes, Tecumseh is ranked 37th in The Greatest Canadian list. He is also honoured by a massive portrait which hangs in the Royal Canadian Military Institute.

Tatanka-Iyotanka (1831-1890)

Sitting Bull is a name in history most people can recall. He was a leader and holy man of the Hunkpapa Lakota (Hunkpapa, one of the seven bands of the Lakota/Sioux).

At the time the threat of white Europeans encroaching on land that had quietly supported the Lakota for centuries was great. Passive resistance had proven futile and treaties had been shown to be a string of government promises broken. For these reasons, Sitting Bull was instrumental in leading his people in acts of defense to preserve their way of life on the northern plains of the U.S. territories.

He remained committed to his position against the U.S. military and the lies and promises of the U.S. government through his dying day.

It is believed Sitting Bull was born along the banks of the Grand River in Dakota Territory. He was politically inclined early, as a leader of a warrior society and also as a member of a brotherhood dedicated to tribal welfare.

It was just a matter of time before Sitting Bull was at war with U.S. soldiers. His first altercation came in June of 1863 in defense of the army, which set out to suppress all plains people in response to a Santee Dakota uprising in Minnesota. One battle seemed to follow another, and by 1868 Sitting Bull’s capacity for bravery and strategy brought him to the head of the Lakota nation.

The Black Hills of South Dakota are sacred lands to the Lakota, so when a mine survey expedition led by George Armstrong Custer in 1974 announced there was gold in the Black Hills there was bound to be trouble because the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had guaranteed the preservation of the land and banned white settlement in the area. Custer’s announcement brought prospectors in droves, breaking the treaty and forcing the Lakota to defend what the government itself had deemed theirs. To try to remedy the problem, the government, illustrating a total lack of understanding of the Indian belief system, offered to buy the Black Hills. When that failed, all Lakota were ordered onto reservations by the end of 1876 or be considered “hostile Indians.” Sitting Bull and his people had no intention of leaving.

The year that followed saw many battles. During ceremony before one battle, Sitting Bull had a vision that showed soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. Later, Sitting Bull was joined by Crazy Horse and his band of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho – 3000 warriors in all, so when Custer attacked the camp at Little Big Horn he was badly outnumbered and his soldiers fell much like Sitting Bull had envisioned.

The army’s defeat only lead to a greater army presence, and they chased the Lakota relentlessly for the next year. Many chiefs surrendered, but Sitting Bull remained defiant. In May 1877 he led his band across the border into Canada, beyond the reach of the army, and when General Terry traveled north to offer him a pardon in exchange for settling on a reservation, Sitting Bull defiantly sent him away. Within four years however, with buffalo long gone, Sitting Bull returned and surrendered. None of his simple requests were honored, and he was sent to Standing Rock Reservation where it was felt he could be contained and kept from prompting any further uprisings. Still not secure, the government sent him to Fort Randall on the Missouri River where he was held as a prisoner of war. Moved back to Standing Rock, he was chided and tormented by the agent in charge, but not deterred.

Sitting Bull was allowed to leave the reservation in 1885 to join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, but remained with the troupe only four months because he could not stand such intense proximity to white society. Back at Standing Rock, Sitting Bull lived in a cabin on the Grand River, near where he had been born. He refused to give up his old ways as the reservation rules required, continuing to live with nis two wives and rejecting Christianity, though he sent his children to a nearby Christian school in the belief that the next generation of Lakota would need to be able to read and write.

Soon after his return, Sitting Bull had another mystical vision, like the one that had foretold Custer’s defeat. This time he saw a meadowlark alight on a hillock beside him, and heard it say, “Your own people, Lakotas, will kill you.” Nearly five years later, this vision also proved true. Word was traveling fast through the plains of the Ghost Dance, which would rid the area of whites forever. In 1890, fearful that Sitting Bull, still considered a leader of his people, would join the Ghost Dance movement, Lakota police who worked for the agent were sent to arrest him. As followers gathered to protect Sitting Bull, a gunfight began and a member of the Lakota police shot Sitting Bull in the head. He was buried at Fort Yates, North Dakota but in 1953 his remains were moved to Mobridge, South Dakota.

He is remembered among the Lakota as many things, including inspirational leader, courageous warrior, loving father, gifted singer and warm friend to many, whose spirituality provided him prophetic insight and lent special power to his prayers.

Sioux Indian (c 1845 – 1915)

Short Bull, a member of the Sioux tribe, was born in about 1845. He was a warrior who fought at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and a medicine man who brought the Ghost Dance religion to the Lakotas.

After the murder of Sitting Bull and the events that led up to Wounded Knee Massacre Short Bull was imprisoned at Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

In 1891 Short Bull was released from custody and he was permitted to join Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. He remained for several years and made several trips to Europe.

Through many miscalculations by federal and army officials, the Ghost Dance religion resulted in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. After the Massacre, Short Bull was sent to serve a prison term at Ft. Sheridan, near Chicago. Because they wanted to remove the Ghost Dance leaders’ influence, the federal government agreed to Buffalo Bill Cody’s request that the prisoners be released (1891) to tour with Cody in his Wild West show. Short Bull toured with the show in Europe and the United States over the next two years.

In 1894, Short Bull was invited by Thomas Edison to appear along with Annie Oakley in a film utilizing the kinetograph, the prototype of a movie camera. In 1893, Buffalo Bill Cody utilized Short Bull as an actor and a consultant in making a film that re-enacted the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Around the turn of the century many American and European ethnologists undertook research to preserve information on tribal languages, culture, history, and religious practices. Short Bull was a source to a number of these ethnologists who recorded his recollections through recorded conversations and his pictographs. There are pictographs in museums in the United States, France and Germany. Short Bull died on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota in 1915.

Cherokee Indian (1776 – 1843)

This great Cherokee Indian gave his people the enduring gift of a writing system so that the greatness of the Cherokee Nation would live forever. Never before, had one man, not literate in any language, perfected a system for reading and writing a language.

Sequoyah was a silversmith by trade who was also known as George Gist.

In recognition of his contributions, the Cherokee Nation awarded Sequoyah a silver medal created in his honor and a lifetime literary pension. He continued to serve Cherokee people as a statesman and diplomat until his death.

Background
The exact place and date of Sequoyah Gist’s birth is unknown, although it is believed that he spent his early years with his mother in the village of Tuskegee, Tennessee.

The names Sequoyah or Sequoia are both spellings given by missionaries, said to be as corruptions of the Cherokee name Sogwali or Sikwâ’y?, derived from the Cherokee word siqua meaning ‘hog’. This is either a reference to a childhood deformity or a later injury that left him disabled.

His mother, Wut-teh, was a daughter of a Cherokee Chief. Hs father was Nathaniel Gist, a Virginia fur trader.

Sequoyah married a Cherokee and had a family. At some point before 1809, he moved to the Willstown of Alabama where he established his trade as a silversmith.

Sequoyah and other Cherokees enlisted on the side of the United States under General Andrew Jackson to fight the British troops and the Creek Indians in the war of 1812.

Although Sequoyah was exposed to the concept of writing early in his life, he never learned the English alphabet. Unlike the white soldiers, he and the other Cherokees were not able to write letters home, read military orders, or record events as they occurred. After the war, he began in earnest to create a writing system for the Cherokees.

As a silversmith, he dealt regularly with whites who had settled in the area. Often, Native Americans were impressed by their writing, referring to their correspondence as “talking leaves”. Around 1809, Sequoyah began work to create a system of writing for the Cherokee language.

When he returned home after the war, he began to make the symbols that could make words and finally reduced the thousands of Cherokee thoughts to 85 symbols representing sounds. He made a game of this new writing systems and taught his little girl Ayoka how to make the symbols. At first, he attempted to create a character for each word, but he then decided to divide each word into syllables and create one character for each syllable. Utilizing the Roman alphabet and quite possibly the Cyrillic alphabet, he created his 85 characters to represent the various syllables. This work took Sequoyah 12 years to complete (see image of the Cherokee Syllabary).

In 1821, in order to prove the value of his creation to his fellow Cherokee, Sequoyah taught his daughter Ah-yo-ka how to read and write in Cherokee. After amazing locals with his new writing, Sequoyah attempted to display his feat to tribal medicine men only to be rebuffed by them for being possessed by evil spirits. Sequoyah finally proved his feat to a gathering of Chickamaugan warriors and news of the syllabary quickly spread. Cherokee were filling schools in order to learn the new written language. By 1823 the syllabary was in full use by the Cherokee Nation. The writing system was made official in 1825, by which time, much of the Bible and numerous hymns had been translated into Cherokee.

Sequoyah walked to the new Cherokee territory in Arkansas in 1825. There he set up a blacksmith shop and a salt works. He continued to teach the syllabary to anyone who came to him.

By 1828 they were publishing the “Cherokee Phoenix,” the first national bi-lingual newspaper, along with religious pamphlets, educational materials and legal documents.

In the same year, Sequoyah journeyed to Washington, D.C. as part of a delegation to negotiate a treaty for land in Oklahoma. He made contact with representatives of other Native American tribes from around the nation. With these meetings he decided to create a syllabary for universal use among all Native American tribes. With this in mind, Sequoyah began to journey to areas of present day Arizona and New Mexico seeking tribes there. It was on a trip seeking Cherokees who had moved to Mexico that he died between 1843 and 1845. His exact burial location is unknown.

In recognition of his contributions, the Cherokee Nation awarded Sequoyah a silver medal.

Shoshone Indian (c. 1790-1812 or 1884)

Sacagawea was a legendary figure in the history of the American West because of her indispensible role on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

She was the daughter of a Shoshone chief who was kidnapped by the Hidatsa when she was about ten years old. She was living in their village on the upper Missouri when she and another captive girl were purchased and wed to a French Canadian trapper by the name of Toussaint Charbonneau.

In 1804, when Lewis and Clark engaged Charbonneau as an interpreter for their expedition, it was with the understanding that Sacagawea would also accompany them. Her value to them was not just as another interpreter but as an amabassador of sorts to Indians they would encounter along the way. Clark described her presence in his journal this way: “a woman with a party of men is a token of peace.”

Eight weeks before Lewis and Clark set out from the their encampment, Sacagawea gave birth to her first child, a son named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Clark referred to the child as “Pomp” or “Pompey”. The expedition called the “Corps of Discovery” headed upriver in April, 1805 with Sacagawea carrying her infant on a cradleboard.

Four months into their travels, when the expedition had reached the navigable limits of the Missouri, Lewis made contact with a Shoshone Indian band. He was hoping to secure horses to help them cross the mountains. When Sacagawea arrived as interpreter, she discoverd that the band was led by her older brother, Cameahwait, who had become chief on their father’s death. Despite having a clear opportunity to use this happy reunion as a means to return to her people, Sacagawea instead helped Lewis and Clark secure the horses they needed and then continued as their interpreter-guide forward to the Pacific.

On the return journey, Sacagawea and her husband Charbonneau separated from Lewis and Clark at a Hidatsa village on the upper Missouri. It is at this point in the the historical record that little is known of their lives.

Charbonneau traveled to St. Louis at the invitation of William Clark, who had grown fond of Charbonneau’s young son, and tried to induce Charbonneau to settle there. The visit proved not to be too successful, though, as Charbonneau soon returned to trapping, leaving son Pompey in Clark’s care. Charbonneau worked for the American Fur Company.

It is not known whether Sacagawea accompanied her husband to St. Louis. Some evidence indicates that she did then returned to the upper Missouri with her husband where she died in late 1812 during an epidemic of “putrid fever”. Other accounts say that Sacagawea ultimately rejoined the Shoshone on their Wind River reservation and died there in 1884.

Ogala Makhpiya-Luta Indian (1822-1909)

Red Cloud’s success in confrontations with the United States government marked him as a warrior and a statesman and certainly one of the most important Lakota leaders of the nineteenth century.

Red Cloud was born near what is now North Platte, Nebraska. His mother was an Oglala and his father, who died in Red Cloud’s youth, was a Brulé. Red Cloud was raised in the household of his maternal uncle, Chief Smoke.

Much of Red Cloud’s early life was spent at war, most often against the neighboring Pawnee and Crow and at times against other Oglala. In 1841 he killed one of his uncle’s primary rivals, an event which divided the Oglala for the next fifty years. He gained prominence within the Lakota nation for his leadership in territorial wars against the Pawnees, Crows, Utes and Shoshones.

Beginning in 1866, Red Cloud orchestrated the most successful war against the United States ever fought by an Indian nation. The army had begun to construct forts along the Bozeman Trail, which ran through the heart of Lakota territory in present-day Wyoming to the Montana gold fields from Colorado’s South Platte River. As caravans of miners and settlers began to cross the Lakota’s land, Red Cloud was haunted by the vision of Minnesota’s expulsion of the Eastern Lakota in 1862 and 1863. So he launched a series of assaults on the forts, most notably the crushing defeat of Lieutenant Colonel William Fetterman’s column of eighty men just outside Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, in December of 1866. The garrisons were kept in a state of exhausting fear of further attacks through the rest of the winter.

Red Cloud’s strategies were so successful that by 1868 the United States government had agreed to the Fort Laramie Treaty. The treaty’s remarkable provisions mandated that the United States abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and guarantee the Lakota their possession of what is now the Western half of South Dakota, including the Black Hills, along with much of Montana and Wyoming.

The peace, of course, did not last. Custer’s 1874 Black Hills expedition again brought war to the northern Plains, a war that would mean the end of independent Indian nations. For reasons which are not entirely clear, Red Cloud did not join Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and other war leaders in the Lakota War of 1876-77. However, after the military defeat of the Lakota nation, Red Cloud continued to fight for the needs and autonomy of his people, even if in less obvious or dramatic ways than waging war.

Throughout the 1880s Red Cloud struggled with Pine Ridge Indian Agent Valentine McGillycuddy over the distribution of government food and supplies and the control of the Indian police force. He was eventually successful in securing McGillycuddy’s dismissal. Red Cloud cultivated contacts with sympathetic Eastern reformers, especially Thomas A. Bland, and was not above pretending for political effect to be more acculturated to white ways than he actually was.

Fearing the Army’s presence on his reservation, Red Cloud refrained from endorsing the Ghost Dance movement, and unlike Sitting Bull and Big Foot, he escaped the Army’s occupation unscathed. Thereafter he continued to fight to preserve the authority of chiefs such as himself, opposed leasing Lakota lands to whites, and vainly fought allotment of Indian reservations into individual tracts under the 1887 Dawes Act. He died in 1909, a testiment to the variety of ways in which Indians resisted their conquest. (bio courtesy pbs)

c. June 17, 1547 – c. 1618

Powhatan was the leader, or chief, of the Powhatan federation of Indians, a group of some thirty tribes, that occupied Virginia in the early seventeenth century.

His proper name was Wahunsenacawh and he was the father of Pocahontas. The Powhatan (also spelled Powatan and Powhaten) spoke an Algonquian language. The sketch to the right was taken from one of John Smith’s journals.

Location
Powhatan was actually the name of one of the towns where Wahunsenacawh lived, in the east end of the city of Richmond, Virginia. It was also the name of the adjacent river which today is called the James River. When he created a powerful empire by conquering most of Tidewater Virginia, he called himself the “Powhatan”, which is actually a title rather than his given name.

Chief Powhatan was apprehensive about the arrival of English settlers. When Captain Christopher Newport arrived with his three ships, the Chesapeake Indians of the Cape Henry region, drove a landing party back to the ships. About a week after the initial attack, Newport took a small boat up the river on a reconnoitering, get-acquainted mission, stopping at various Indian villages.

It was then that Newport learned that Powhatan ruled the whole area above Jamestown. Thinking that the Chesapeakes who had initially driven them back to the boats were not under Powhatan’s control, Newport attempted to make an alliance against them with a local chief he mistook for Powhatan. Before the Jamestown settlers could complete their fort, 200 Paspaheghs, a tribe of the Powhatans that lived near the juncture of the James and Chickahominy rivers, attacked them, killing onel and wounding eleven other colonists.

Pocahontas & Captain John Smith
During the early years of the English colony, the Powhatans conducted several small-scale raids against the fort. In 1608 Powhatan’s brother, Openchancanough, captured Captain John Smith and brought him back to Powhatan’s main village, Werowocomoco. Powhatan had already become acquainted with Smith in his previous bargaining for corn and other provisions. Smith claimed that he was tried before Chief Powhatan and sentenced to death but that his life was spared by the intercession of Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas. Some have disputed this account, alleging that Powhatan staged a mock trial and deliberately planned the rescue for his own purposes. Whatever Powhatan’s intentions, he did permit Smith to return to Jamestown.

Powhatan did exhibit some trust of the settler when he allowed his sons and daughter, Pocahontas, to travel to and from the settlement. The English needed the Indians for their corn, venison, and fish. But the relationship was a rocky one. Captain Newport, for example, in a well-intentioned gesture managed to upset the Indians when he decided to stage an elaborate coronation ceremony for Powhatan in an attempt to cement the friendship between the two groups. Powhatan was a proud and respected leader, the equivalent of an English king already.

Powhatan Coronation
Unaware of Indian customs and Powhatan’s high standing among his own people, the settlers added insult to injury by requesting that the coronation take place in Jamestown. Powhatan wanted the ceremony in his own village of Werowocomoco where he ususally received tributes. Newport, Smith and several other colonists traveled to Werowocomoco to take part in the celebration but as it turned out, neither party quite understood what was going on. The settlers thought they were crowning a king while the Indians believed they were receiving tribute from their subjects. Powhatan, in the end, received the gifts sent by King James which included a canopy bed and scarlet cloak.

War
Despite this seeming friendship, Powhatan continued to observe the English warily and his warriors still harassed the colonists with small-scale attacks. Although the colonists eventually planted their own corn, they remained dependent upon the Indians to ensure that they would have enough provisions, especially in the lean winter months. Powhatan continued to trade but his terms became stiffer. By the time Smith left Virginia in 1609, the fragile peace frayed badly, leading to the First Anglo-Powhatan War, and further English expansion beyond Jamestown and into Powhatan’s territory. Two subtribes, the Kecoughtan and the Paspahegh, were effectively destroyed at the beginning of the war, and Powhatan sent the Nemattanew to operate against the English on the upper James River, though they held out at Henricus.

Pocahontas Kidnapped
In 1613, the Englishmen kidnapped his daughter Pocahontas in order to get back some of their own people taken in prior attacks. The settlers offered a prisoner exchange and Powhatan complied but he refused to return the weapons he had stolen. Powhatan ordered the governor to treat his daughter well and seemed content to allow her to remain among the English. Later that same year Pocahontas asked permission from her father to marry the colonist John Rolfe, a leading tobacco planter. Powhatan agreed.

Powhatan Death
Upon the death of Chief Powhatan in 1618, his younger brother Opitchapam officially became paramount chief, however the real regime now effectively belonged to Opechancanough, younger brother to both of them. In the Indian Massacre of 1622, and again in 1644, he attempted to force the English from Virginia. These attempts invited strong reprisals from the English, ultimately resulting in the near destruction of the tribe.

Through his daughter Pocahontas (and her marriage to the English colonist John Rolfe), he was the grandfather of Thomas Rolfe. The Rolfe family is considered one of the First Families of Virginia, one with both English and Native American roots.

Chief Powhatan’s first known chief village, Werowocomoco, is an archaeological site in Gloucester County, Virginia which has been listed as a National Historic Site and Powhatan’s burial mound is allegedly located on the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in Virginia.

(c. 1595 – March 21 1617)

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan (also known as Wahunsenacawh), the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 and was named Matoaka, though she is better known as Pocahontas, which means “Little Wanton,” a playful, frolicsome child. She married an Englishman, John Rolfe, and became a celebrity in London in the last year of her life. After her baptism, she went by the name Rebecca and upon her marriage to Rolfe, she became known as Lady Rebecca.

In April 1607, when the English colonists arrived in Virginia and began building settlements, Pocahontas was around the age of 12-14 years old. A leading colonist, John Smith, recounted that he was captured by a group of Powhatan hunters and brought to Werowocomoco, one of the chief villages of the Powhatan Empire. He said he was laid across a stone and was about to be executed, when Pocahontas threw herself across his body to save his life. This version was met with skepticism due to conflicting dates in his historical accounts; some experts suggested that the “rescue” was part of a Powhatan ritual although there is no evidence for any similar rituals among other North American tribes.

Regardless, this encounter initiated a friendship with Smith and the Jamestown colony, and Pocahontas along with a few of her brothers, would often come to the settlement to play. She also brought the settlers provisions to stave off winter hunger. As the colonists expanded further, however, some of the Native Americans felt their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again.

Association with John Smith
In 1608, Pocahontas is said to have saved Smith a second time. Smith and some other colonists were invited to Werowocomoco by Chief Powhatan on friendly terms. They were treated kindly and traded with the Indians, but missed the tide and had to spend the night. That night, Pocahontas came to Smith’s hut and told him that her father was planning to send men with food who would kill them when they put down their weapons to eat. She had been told not to inform them, but she begged the Englishmen to leave. The English kept their weapons close by them even while eating, and no attack came.

In 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care. The English told the natives Smith was dead after being captured and taken aboard a French pirate ship. The ship then had been wrecked on the Brittany coast, and it had gone down with all hands Pocahontas believed Smith was dead until she arrived in England several years later, the wife of John Rolfe.

In March 1613, Pocahontas was residing at Passapatanzy, a village of the Patawomecks, a Native American tribe that did some trading with Powhatans. They lived on the Potomac River near Fredericksburg, about 65 miles from Werowocomoco. She was captured by two English colonists, and held for ransom in exchange for some English prisoners held by Chief Powhatan, along with various weapons and tools the Powhatans had stolen. Powhatan returned the prisoners, but not the weapons until a long standoff ensued.

During the year-long wait, Pocahontas was kept at Henricus, in modern-day Chesterfield County, Virginia. While there, an English minister taught her about Christianity and helped to improve her English. After she was baptized, her name was changed to Rebecca.

In March 1614, the standoff built to a violent confrontation between hundreds of English and Powhatan men on the Pamunkey River. The English permitted Pocahontas to talk to her countrymen; however, according to the deputy governor, Thomas Dale, Pocahontas was upset that her father had not been among the senior chiefs sent to do battle with the English. As a result, she claimed that if she were to be valued “less than old swords, pieces, or axes” that she would prefer to live with the English.

Marriage to John Rolfe
During her stay in Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe, a successful tobacco farmer, whose English-born wife had died. John Rolfe was a very religious man who agonized over the decision to marry a “strange wife,” a heathen Indian. He finally decided to marry Pocahontas after she had been converted to Christianity, “for the good of the plantation, the honor of our country, for the glory of God, for mine own salvation …” Pocahontas was baptized and christened Rebecca. She married John Rolfe on April 5, 1614. A general peace and a spirit of goodwill between the English and the Indians resulted from this marriage.

For a few years after the marriage, the couple lived together at Rolfe’s plantation, Varina Farms, which was located across the James River from the new community of Henricus. They had a child, Thomas Rolfe, born on January 30, 1615. Their marriage did not win back the English captives, but it created a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan’s tribes for several years.

England and Death
The Virginia Colony’s sponsors found it difficult to lure new colonists and investors to Jamestown. They used Pocahontas as an enticement and as evidence to convince people in Europe that the New World’s natives could be tamed.

In June 1616, the Rolfes traveled to England, arriving at the port of Plymouth on the June 12th. They were accompanied by a group of around eleven other Powhatan natives including Tomocomo, a holy man. John Smith was living in London at the time, and in Plymouth, Pocahontas learned he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas at this point, but he wrote a letter to Queen Anne urging Pocahontas be treated with respect. And so she was. The arrival of Pocahontas in London was well publicized and while there is no evidence that Pocahontas was formally presented to King James and his court, she was introduced to him at a ball, and she met the best of London’s high society.

In March 1617, Rolfe and Pocahontas boarded a ship to return to Virginia. But she had only had only gotten as far as Gravesend on the River Thames when she became ill. She was taken ashore and died. Pneumonia or tuberculosis were likely causes, although smallpox had also been suggested. Her funeral took place on March 21, 1617 and she was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. She was 22 years old. Pocahontas is commemorated there with a life-size bronze statue at St George’s Church.

Descendants
Pocahontas and Rolfe had one child, Thomas Rolfe, who was born in Virginia in 1615 before his parents left for England. Through this son Pocahontas has many descendants. Many First Families of Virginia trace their roots to Pocahontas and Chief Powhatan, including such notable individuals as Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson; George Wythe Randolph; Admiral Richard Byrd; Virginia Governor Harry Flood Byrd; fashion-designer and socialite Pauline de Rothschild; former First-Lady Nancy Reagan; and astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell.

Nez Percé Allalimya Takanin Indian
(c.1832-1877)

The son of a prominent Nez Percé chief, Looking Glass was born around 1832 in what is now western Montana. Although he bitterly resented white encroachments on his ancestral lands, he opposed going to war with the United States over its plans to force his people onto the small reservation assigned to them at Lapwai, Idaho.

When the Nez Percé and the U.S. Army first clashed at Whitebird Canyon on June 17, 1877, Looking Glass was already living on the Lapwai reservation, as he had agreed to do. Nevertheless, General Oliver Howard believed that Looking Glass would soon join the fighting, and he sent a detachment of troops to arrest him. Howard’s plans backfired, however, for Looking Glass eluded arrest and fled the reservation to join Chef Joseph and his fugitive band just as Howard had feared.

For both better and worse, the Nez Percé flight bore the mark of Looking Glass’ leadership. A respected battlefield commander, he convinced the band to flee to Montana, despite Joseph’s opposition, and then persuaded them to stop at Big Hole, where he incorrectly believed they would be free from attack. After soldiers under the command of Colonel John Gibbon surprised the Nez Percé there on August 9, inflicting heavy casualties, Looking Glass lost much of his prestige as a military leader.

Nearly two months later, when the Nez Percé were finally surrounded by Colonel Nelson A. Miles’ troops in Northern Montana’s Bearpaw mountains, Looking Glass remained stubbornly opposed to surrender. By this time, however, Chief Joseph had concluded that surrender was the only viable option, and on October 5, he rode out to hand over his rifle. That same day, Looking Glass set out to join Sitting Bull’s band in Canada, but before he could make it to the border, he was killed by a Cheyenne scout. (bio courtesy of pbs)

Sauk Indian
(c 1780-1848)

Chief Keokuk (Kiyo`kaga, ‘one who moves about alert’ ) of the Sauk tribe in central North America was one of the men responsible for starting the Black Hawk War.

He was a member of the Fox clan, born on Rock river, Illinois. He was not a chief by birth, but rose to command through ability and force of character. At an early age he became a member of the Sauk council and later stepped into prominence as a tribal guest-keeper. His lodge soon became a center for all social and political affairs and Keokuk was able to use his office to further his own ambitions. He worked his will against custom in veiled, diplomatic ways, secretly playing one faction against another. In time he became the leading councilor in the Sauk assembly, and enjoyed great popularity among his people.

On July 15, 1830, U.S. Indian Comissioner William Clark signed a treaty with Saulk and Fox which ceded over 26-million acres of Sauk land east of the Mississippi to the government of the United States. It also created a neutral gound boundary between the Sauk and Foxes and their traditional enemies, the Sioux. The treaty was signed by Keokuk, and in November 1830 was approved by the Dakota Sioux. In the spring of 1830, when Black Hawk and his followers returned from their hunt, they found white settlers occupying their village. Black Hawk had not sanctioned the sale of this land and was determined to regain the village. This was the instigation of the 1832 Black Hawk war.

Those of the Sauk who favored a call to arms turned to Black Hawk who became their leader. Black Hawk was of the Thunder clan (Black-big-chest). Thus the political union between the Sauk and the Foxes was broken. The fighting began before Black Hawk was ready, and he was forced to charge with only a small number of those on whose support he had depended. With his depleted forces he could not successfully contend against the Illinois militia and their Indian allies.

Keokuk loomed up again during the final negotiations growing out of the war, and played so deftly into the hands of the Government officials that he was made chief of the Sauk, an action that aroused great anger and contempt by Black Hawk. When Keokuk became chief of the Sauk he was generally ridiculed by both Sauk and Foxes because he was not of the ruling clan. But there was one occasion in which he was honored. In the city of Washington, in debate with the representatives of the Sioux and other tribes before Government officials, he established the claim of the Sauk and Foxes to the territory comprised in what is now the state of Iowa. He based this claim primarily on conquest.

On his death from dysentery, in April 1848 in Kansas, where he had moved three years earlier, the chieftainship, with its unsavory associations, went to his son, Moses Keokuk (Wunagisäa, ‘he leaps up quickly from his lair’). Those who knew both father and son maintain that the son was superior in both intellect and ethics.

In 1883 the remains of the elder Keokuk were removed from Kansas to Keokuk, Iowa, where they were reinterred in the city park and a monument erected over his grave by the citizens of the town.

Mohawk Indian (He-Who-Makes-Rivers)

Hiawatha was a statesman, reformer, lawgiver, shaman, and great unifier who lived around 1570. He is celebrated as one of the founders of the League of the Iroquois, the Confederation of Five Nations. Later, in 1721, the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois confederacy, and they became the Six Nations.

A follower of The Great Peacemaker (Dekanawida) Hiawatha was a skilled statesman and charismatic orator who was instrumental in persuading the Iroquois peoples, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, a group of Native North Americans who shared similar languages, to accept The Great Peacemaker’s vision and band together to become the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy. While The Great Peacemaker was considered the man behind the ideas, Hiawatha was the one who actually implemented the reformation.

These two sought to bring about reforms which would end all strife, murder, and war, and promote peace and well-being among the tribes. One reform was the regulation to abolish intratribal blood-feud by fixing a price of 10 strings of wampum, a cubit in length, as the value of a human life. It was decreed that the murderer or his kin must offer to pay the bereaved family not only for the dead person, but also for the life of the murderer who by his sinister act had forfeited his life to them, and that therefore 20 strings of wampum should be the legal tender to the bereaved family for the settlement of the homicide of a co-tribesman.

By birth, Hiawatha was most likely a Mohawk, but he began his reform work among the Onondaga, where he encountered bitter opposition from one of their most remorseless tyrants, Wathatotarho (Atotarho). When his attempts at reform failed, Hiawatha left the Onondaga and sought the aid of the Mohawk and other tribes. But, meeting with little success among the former, he continued his mission to the Oneida, who accepted his plan provided that the Mohawk do the same.

The Mohawk, the Cayuga, and the Oneida finally formed a tentative union for the purpose of persuading the Onondaga to adopt the plan of confederation, and the latter accepted it on condition that the Seneca should also be included. A portion of the Seneca finally joined the confederation, and the Onondaga, through Wathatotarho, accepted the proposed union.

As the Onondaga chieftain was regarded as a great sorcerer, it was believed that he must have been overcome by a superior magic power exercised by Hiawatha and Dekanawida. In time, the character of Hiawatha became couched in mystery, and he was reputed to have done things which properly belong to some of the chief gods of the Iroquois. As a result, he became the central figure of a group of interrelated mythic legends.

In “The Song of Hiawatha”, a popular poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the character of Hiawatha is actually drawn from the writings of Henry R. Schoolcraft, who had confused the real Hiawatha with a Chippewa deity. Longfellow’s version of events and character, therefore, in any way relates to the great Iroquois reformer. Unfortunately, there are no known images of Hiawatha.

Apache Indian (Goyathlay –1829-1909)

To other members of the Chiricahua (chair-i-cow-ah) Apache, Geronimo seemed to reflect all things they embraced as a people – courage, diligence and aggressiveness – qualities that for years kept them relatively safe from the increasing white encroachment in Arizona and New Mexico.

The Chircahuas were nomadic, following game and farming in the warmer months. But when times were tough and food was scarce raids on other tribes was the way of life, and considered honorable.

Geronimo was born Goyathlay (One Who Yawns) in Arizona, grandson of a chief of the Nedni Apache, but his father married a Bedonkohe Apache and joined her tribe, thereby forfeiting his hereditary right as leader. Therefore, contrary to popular ideas, Geronimo was never a chief. He was a dutiful follower of many great chiefs though, including Cochise and Coloradas.

While many Europeans were trickling into the area, the Spanish were already firmly in place for years. The whites were a problem, but it was Mexican soldiers who raided and killed Geronimo’s family – his mother, wife and three children. Prior to this event, Geronimo had been considered more a holy man than a warrior, but as a result of his loss he often spoke of his hatred for whites and coveted a vengeance that would bring him to kill as many as he could.

Geronimo’s “white name” came as a result of his fearless and resourceful as a warrior. While leading a charge against Mexicans they began to shout “Geronimo!” seeking help from their patron saint, Jerome, or Geronimo in Spanish. Emerging conqueror over the Mexicans, the warriors bestowed the name of Geronimo on their fearless leader. To this day the name remains a battle cry.

The army tried to place all the Chiricahua on reservation in 1876, but Geronimo fled to Mexico and escaped capture for a decade. While the press is accused of “making news” these days, so it was then. The press had Geronimo everywhere and doing everything, often at the same time.

The media image of Geronimo made him the most high-profile and feared of all the Apache. It wasn’t all myth however. His name was associated with terror in the Southwest and ultimately it took more than 5,000 soldiers and 500 scouts to track down Geronimo and his followers.

He finally surrendered after hearing his people were being sent East. He was the very last renegade Indian to surrender to white authority. Geronimo was sent to a reservation in Florida for two years, where many died of malaria or tuberculosis. Geronimo longed to return to his beloved Arizona, but that was not to be so. He was to make another stop in Alabama before finally being placed on a reservation in Oklahoma, which at least bore a climate more similar to that of the Southwest. It was here, at Fort Sill, that he spent the last 14 years of his life.

In his old age, Geronimo learned a little English and how to write his name. He became very enterprising in his ability to market himself and his legacy, selling buttons from his coat for a quarter apiece, his hat for five dollars or bows and arrows that he made. For 50 cents, he would sign his name. If asked he would show off his battle wounds with pride. He also made personal appearances at places like Oklahoma fairs, the Exposition in Omaha in 1898, the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901, the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in 1905.

Despite making the rounds as an “attraction,” Geronimo was never allowed to return to Arizona. As an old man, he remained a crack shot, and he enjoyed good health well into his 80s. Geronimo also drank, sometimes to excess and this ultimately was his demise. On a cold night in February of 1909, drunk, he fell off his horse and lay undiscovered on the cold ground. This brought on pneumonia and he died a few days later.

Tashunca-uitco
Oglala Lakota (Sioux) — 1849-1877

While there have been many renowned leaders among the Lakota (Sioux), perhaps the most high-profile of them all is Crazy Horse. A fierce and fearless warrior, and considered a visionary by his people, Crazy Horse also wielded great power and influence in many social and political affairs that faced the Lakota. While his role in battle is often recounted, more important perhaps was his dedication to tradition and the Lakota way of life.

As a child, Crazy Horse looked little like the rest of his people. In fact, his hair was so light and wavy he was called “Curly” as a childhood name. Many a white settler who saw him playing along side the trail they traveled thought he was actually a white captive living among the Indians. An enigma then, Crazy Horse remained so. While other Lakota and their leaders sat for portraits, Crazy Horse never allowed a rendering of himself in any medium, especially photographs, saying: “Why would you wish to shorten my life by taking my shadow from me?”

While still a very young man, Crazy Horse began his journey toward becoming a legendary warrior. At 13 he stole horses from the Crow and led his first war party before the age of 20. Early on he decided he would fight to protect the Lakota way of life and encroachment of white armies and settlers, fighting against the new arrivals in Wyoming with Red Cloud in the 1865-68 war, playing a key role in destroying William J. Fetterman’s brigade at Fort Phil Kearny in 1867. That victory did not stop the influx, however, and the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 opened the door of Lakota land to all that Crazy Horse fought to prevent. Undaunted, Crazy Horse led an attack on a surveying party sent into the Black Hills by General George Armstrong Custer in 1873.

When the U.S. War Department ordered all Lakota bands onto reservations in 1876, Crazy Horse took it upon himself to lead the resistance. Crazy Horse had taken a Cheyenne woman as his first wife, which allowed a close alliance between the Lakota and Cheyenne. Crazy Horse called upon his Cheyenne relatives to join forces with his Oglala warriors in an attempt to keep General George Crook from following the Rosebud Creek to Sitting Bull’s camp on the Little Big Horn River. Crazy Horse and his band of 1,200 warriors turned Crook and his men back on June 17, 1876. This victory paved the way for hope. A week later Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull and Hunkpapa Lakota leader Gall in an attack that destroyed Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.

Despite the Indian victory at the Little Bighorn, things changed. Though all three leaders chose not to submit to government orders to report to the reservation, Sitting Bull and Gall decided to lead their people to Canada. Crazy Horse chose to remain in the sacred lands of the Lakota. General Nelson Miles pursued Crazy Horse, the Lakota and their allies relentlessly throughout the winter of 1876-77, bringing Crazy Horse into battle several times. Eventually, the intense focus of the military on his position and intent, coupled with the decline of the buffalo population, led Crazy Horse to surrender on May 6, 1877.

Even in defeat, Crazy Horse remained a free spirit. On September 5, 1877, he left the reservation without authorization to take his sick wife to her parents. General George Crook, whom Crazy Horse had defeated a year earlier, ordered 43 men to go and arrest him, fearing that he was plotting an outbreak and return to battle. Crazy Horse did not resist arrest at first, but when he realized that he was being led to a guardhouse, he began to struggle. For the entirety of his life, Crazy Horse had abhorred gunfire and believed he could not be killed by bullets, and this belief held firm in the end for once he began to struggle, his arms were held by one of the arresting officers and a soldier ran him through with a bayonet.

He was secretly buried by his parents somewhere in the hills in the vicinity of where he was camped when he was arrested. The location has been known to very few over the years and remains a secret today.

Birthdate unknown – 1874

Drive south down Highway 666 through the farmlands of Arizona and watch as the Dragoon Mountains rise in a prime example of “purple mountains majesty.” It was among the canyons and rises of these mountains that Cochise, leader of a band of Chiricahua Apache, and his people were able to elude the countless government forces sent to corral them. The area became known as the Cochise Stronghold, and still bears that name today and while the land once sheltered the Chiricahua it still shelters Cochise as the site of his tomb.

The Apache were known as fierce warriors, resistant to government efforts to settle their lands and place them on a reservation. The few thousand whites in the area felt threatened and routinely responded to encountering an Apache village with violence. Retaliation by the Apache always followed close behind any white act. Cochise was no exception, however he also was no fool. He realized it was fruitless to continue to resist the western movement of the whites along the Overland Trail, and actually entered into an “agreement” with the staff of the Butterfield Stage Line. It was “understood” that Cochise could raid or attack anything he chose south of the Mexican border to secure what he needed but would leave the stage line alone.

This situation fell apart in 1860, when a band of Pinal Indians raided the area and abducted a young boy. Despite the arguments of the stage line personnel, a young army officer sent to retrieve the child was convinced it was Cochise and the Apache behind the attack. Hearing this, Cochise came forward under a flag of truce when summoned by the army to declare his innocence. The army chose not to believe him and tried to place him under arrest. Cochise pulled his knife, slashed the wall of the tent in which the meeting was being held and escaped into the brush. The six men who had accompanied him, including three relatives, were held and then hanged.

This act erased any sense of fairness in Cochise’s mind and negated the arrangement he had made with the stage line. Reports list 150 white travelers along the Overland Trail killed within the 60 days following the attempted arrest of Cochise and murder of the six Chiricahua men. For more than 10 years Cochise and his small band staved off the army waging war throughout southern Arizona, an area that became the most dangerous corner of the entire country. Tucson, the largest white settlement in the area, was virtually cut off during portions of this was, as Cochise let nothing go through Apache Pass.

After a decade of struggle, both sides were weary. In 1872 Tom Jeffords, owner of a small stage line through the area, a trusted friend of Cochise and the only white man with access to him arranged for Cochise to surrender to General O.O. Howard. Jeffords knew Cochise would respect Howard, as he had been head of the Freedman’s Bureau, the agency responsible for assisting freed black slaves. (Howard University is named for the general.) Cochise was literally able to dictate his own terms of surrender, one of which was that Jeffords be named Indian agent.

The remote White Mountains had been chose as the Apache reservation because they were distant from white settlements and transportation routes but still held decent grazing lands for Apache herders. Cochise refused to settle there however, remaining at Camp Bowie. By the time he surrendered he was in his 50s and had been at war constantly for 12 years. He became ill and died just two years later, in 1874. His body remained in the Stronghold. Chiricahua warriors rode their horses back and forth across the burial site until no evidence of its location would remain. It was always believed that Jeffords knew, but he never told, perhaps eliminating the belief Jeffords was a friend of Cochise because he supplied the Apache with weapons and fortifying the belief that their friendship existed because Cochise considered Jeffords an honorable man.

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (1840-1904) — Nez Perce Indian

He ultimately became famous as “Chief Joseph,” but the man born in the Wallowa Valley in what is now northeastern Oregon was also called Joseph and Joseph the Younger, as his father had been baptized with that Christian name before Chief Joseph was born. However, at the time of his birth in 1840, the Nez Perce (nay pehr-SAY) called Chief Joseph, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, which translates as “thunder coming up over the land from the water” or “thunder coming down the mountain.”

As a tribe, the Nez Perce had been on good terms with white Europeans after Lewis and Clark opened their lands in Idaho and Washington to exploration. Chief Joseph’s father, Old Joseph, signed an 1855 treaty that guaranteed the Nez Perce the rights to their homelands, and, as Old Joseph also converted to Christianity, Chief Joseph attended school in a Christian mission.

But after a gold rush that identified Nez Perce lands as prime mining territory, the white government created a second treaty in 1863 that took most of their traditional lands away,almost six million acres, including their beloved Wallowa Valley. The government then restricted the Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho that was only one tenth its prior size. Old Joseph always insisted his people never agreed to any conditions of this treaty and turned away from cooperation with whites, refusing to acknowledge and sign the treaty, burning his American flag and Bible and refusing to move his people.

Upon his father’s death in 1871, Chief Joseph took his place as chief and his own strong feelings about the validity of the second treaty would shape his life and change the interaction between the Nez Perce and whites forever. He became highly resistant to government attempts to corral his people onto the reservation even as white settlers streamed into the territory.

Chief Joseph got a brief reprieve in 1873, when a federal order was issued to remove white settlers and let the Nez Perce remain in the Wallowa Valley making it appear that he might be successful. But the federal government soon reversed itself, and in 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard threatened a cavalry attack to force Joseph’s band and other hold-outs onto the reservation. Believing military resistance futile, Joseph reluctantly led his people toward Idaho. Unfortunately, they never got there. About twenty young Nez Perce warriors, enraged at the loss of their homeland, staged a raid on nearby settlements and killed several whites. Immediately, the army began to pursue Joseph’s band and the others who had not moved onto the reservation. Although he had opposed war, Joseph cast his lot with the war leaders. In over three months, the band of about 700, fewer than 200 of whom were warriors, fought 2,000 U.S. soldiers and Indian auxiliaries in four major battles and numerous skirmishes.

By the time he formally surrendered on October 5, 1877, Joseph was widely referred to in the American press as “the Red Napoleon.” But Chief Joseph was really a strategist and was never considered a “war chief” by his people. His younger brother Olikut generally led the war parties of his band, while Joseph remained behind, responsible for guarding the women and camp. Joseph opposed the decision to flee into Montana and seek aid from the Crows and that other chiefs — Looking Glass and some who had been killed before the surrender — were the true strategists of the campaign.

It was his widely reprinted surrender speech has immortalized him as a military leader in American popular culture: “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, “Yes” or “No.” He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are — perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

Although he had surrendered with the understanding that he would be allowed to return home, Joseph and his people were instead taken first to eastern Kansas and then to a reservation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Once there, many died of malaria or starvation. And although he was allowed to visit Washington, D.C., in 1879 to plead his case to U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, it was not until 1885 that Joseph and the other refugees were returned to the Pacific Northwest. Even then, half, including Joseph, were taken to a non-Nez Percé reservation in northern Washington, separated from the rest of their people in Idaho and their homeland in the Wallowa Valley.

An eloquent speaker, Chief Joseph continued to appeal to government officials in attempts to return his people to their homelands. He never gave up hope that one day the principles of American equality and justice would one day extend to native peoples as well. He did not live to see it. He died in 1904, still in exile from his homeland, according to his doctor “of a broken heart.”

Cheyenne Indian (unknown – 1868)

Southern Cheyenne chief Black Kettle was best known for his repeated efforts to secure a peace with honor for his people despite broken promises and attacks on his own life. He is spoken of as a great leader who believed in the possiblity for coexistence between white society and Indian culture.

Black Kettle lived on the vast territory in western Kansas and eastern Colorado that had been guaranteed to the Cheyenne under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Within less than a decade, however, the 1859 Pikes Peak gold rush sparked an enormous population boom in Colorado, and this led to extensive white encroachments on Cheyenne land. Even the U.S. Indian Commissioner admitted that “We have substantially taken possession of the country and deprived the Indians of their accustomed means of support.”

Rather than evict white settlers, the government sought to resolve the situation by demanding that the Southern Cheyenne sign a new treaty ceding all their lands save the small Sand Creek reservation in southeastern Colorado. Black Kettle, fearing that overwhelming U.S. military power might result in an even less favorable settlement, agreed to the treaty in 1861 and did what he could to see that the Cheyenne obeyed its provisions.

As it turned out, however, the Sand Creek reservation could not sustain the Indians forced to live there. All but unfit for agriculture, the barren tract of land was little more than a breeding ground for epidemic diseases which soon swept through the Cheyenne encampments. By 1862 the nearest herd of buffalo was over two hundred miles away. Many Cheyennes, especially young men, began to leave the reservation to prey upon the livestock and goods of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains. One such raid in the spring of 1864 so angered white Coloradans that they dispatched their militia, which opened fire on the first band of Cheyenne they happened to meet. None of the Indians in this band had participated in the raid, however, and their leader was actually approaching the militia for a parlay when the shooting began.

This incident touched off an uncoordinated Indian uprising across the Great Plains, as Indian peoples from the Comanche in the South to the Lakota in the North took advantage of the army’s involvement in the Civil War by striking back at those who had encroached upon their lands. Black Kettle, however, understood white military supremacy too well to support the cause of war. He spoke with the local military commander at Fort Weld in Colorado and believed he had secured a promise of safety in exchange for leading his band back to the Sand Creek reservation.

But Colonel John Chivington, leader of the Third Colorado Volunteers, had no intention of honoring such a promise. His troops had been unsuccessful in finding a Cheyenne band to fight, so when he learned that Black Kettle had returned to Sand Creek, he attacked the unsuspecting encampment at dawn on November 29, 1864. Some two hundred Cheyenne died in the ensuing massacre, many of them women and children, and after the slaughter, Chivington’s men sexually mutilated and scalped many of the dead, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.

Black Kettle miraculously escaped harm at the Sand Creek Massacre, even when he returned to rescue his seriously injured wife. And perhaps more miraculously, he continued to counsel peace when the Cheyenne attempted to strike back with isolated raids on wagon trains and nearby ranches. By October 1865, he and other Indian leaders had arranged an uneasy truce on the plains, signing a new treaty that exchanged the Sand Creek reservation for reservations in southwestern Kansas but deprived the Cheyenne of access to most of their coveted Kansas hunting grounds.

Only part of the Southern Cheyenne nation followed Black Kettle and the others to these new reservations. Some instead headed north to join the Northern Cheyenne in Lakota territory. Many simply ignored the treaty and continued to range over their ancestral lands. This latter group, consisting mainly of young warriors allied with a Cheyenne war chief named Roman Nose, angered the government by their refusal to obey a treaty they had not signed, and General William Tecumseh Sherman launched a campaign to force them onto their assigned lands. Roman Nose and his followers struck back furiously, and the resulting standoff halted all traffic across western Kansas for a time.

At this point, government negotiators sought to move the Cheyenne once again, this time onto two smaller reservations in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where they would receive annual provisions of food and supplies. Black Kettle was again among the chiefs who signed this treaty, the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, but after his people had settled on their new reservation, they did not receive the provisions they had been promised, and by year’s end, more and more of them were driven to join Roman Nose and his band.

In August 1868, Roman Nose led a series of raids on Kansas farms that provoked another full-scale military response. Under General Philip Sheridan, three columns of troops converged to launch a winter campaign against Cheyenne encampments, with the Seventh Cavalry commanded by George Armstrong Custer selected to take the lead. Setting out in a snowstorm, Custer followed the tracks of a small raiding party to a Cheyenne village on the Washita River, where he ordered an attack at dawn.

It was Black Kettle’s village, well within the boundaries of the Cheyenne reservation and with a white flag flying above the chief’s own tipi. Nonetheless, on November 27, 1868, nearly four years to the day after Sand Creek, Custer’s troops charged, and this time Black Kettle could not escape: “Both the chief and his wife fell at the river bank riddled with bullets,” one witness reported, “the soldiers rode right over Black Kettle and his wife and their horse as they lay dead on the ground, and their bodies were all splashed with mud by the charging soldiers.” Custer later reported that an Osage guide took Black Kettle’s scalp.

On the Washita, the Cheyenne’s hopes of sustaining themselves as an independent people died as well; by 1869, they had been driven from the plains and confined to reservations. (bio courtesy of pbs)

Saux Indian (1767-1838)

In 1804, representatives of the Saux and Fox tribes were called to St. Louis where federal agents secured an agreement to a treaty ceding all tribal lands east of the Mississippi. The tribal leaders had been deceived through trickery, bibery or even threats into signing a treaty that they didn’t understand . The tribes were then forced out of their homes, to the other side of the river where they lived a meager existence for three years.

In the Spring of 1831, a 50-year old warrior named Black Hawk led his people back across the river to their village of Saukenuk to plant crops. He was appalled at what he found there. Whites had moved into the abandoned Sauk lodges and had fenced in the cornfields and were plowing right up to his ancestor’s graves. “My reason tells me that land cannot be sold – nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.” – Black Hawk.

With that, Black Hawk and 300 of his warriors settled in for the summer, refusing to budge. A year later his band was 600 strong and the federal government took notice of his brazen defiance by sending out a large militia force. The militia arrived in May of 1832 and Black Hawk tried to settle the matter peacefully, under a flag of truce. Jittery militiamen opened fire and this started the Black Hawk war.

In the first skirmish, 40 Sauk warriors repelled 275 militiamen. Over the next three months, Black Hawk had several thousand federal and state troops to contend with. The forces chased Black Hawk and his people north across Illinois and Wisconsin. Whites fell ill with cholera and the Sauk, traveling with women and children, with little time to hunt, suffered starvation and fatigue.

In August, Black Hawk and his people arrived at the Bad Axe River in Wisconsin where they hoped to build canoes and rafts and float downstream to the Mississippi River and then on to safety. The next day, they were met with a U.S. gunship filled with troops. And again, Black Hawk raised his flag of truce. He was immediately fired upon and 23 of his men fell dead. The following morning, 1,300 troops swept through the Indian encampment, firing wildly at men, women and children. As many as 300 Sauk were killed. Black Hawk led the survivors north to seek refuge with the Winnebago who later betrayed him to white authorities for $100 and 20 horses.

“You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved…I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before I surrendered. Black Hawk is now a prisoner of the white man. But he can stand torture, and he is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian.” – Black Hawk.

Black Hawk died in 1838 and his remains were eventually placed in the Burlington Historical Society in Illinois. But the building burned down in 1855 and his remains were forever lost.