Native Americans
Tecumseh
Tecumseh was a Shawnee warrior chief who organized a Native American confederacy in an effort to create an autonomous Indian state and stop white settlement in the Northwest Territory (modern-day Great Lakes region). He firmly believed that all Indian tribes must settle their ...read more
American-Indian Wars
From the moment English colonists arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, they shared an uneasy relationship with the Native Americans (or Indians) who had thrived on the land for thousands of years. At the time, millions of indigenous people were scattered across North America ...read more
King Philip’s War
King Philip’s War — also known as the First Indian War, the Great Narragansett War or Metacom’s Rebellion — took place in southern New England from 1675 to 1676. It was the Native Americans' last-ditch effort to avoid recognizing English authority and stop English settlement on ...read more
Geronimo
Geronimo (1829-1909) was an Apache leader and medicine man best known for his fearlessness in resisting anyone–Mexican or American—who attempted to remove his people from their tribal lands. He repeatedly evaded capture and life on a reservation, and during his final escape, a ...read more
Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890) was a Teton Dakota Native American chief who united the Sioux tribes of the American Great Plains against the white settlers taking their tribal land. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to the Sioux, but when ...read more
Cheyenne and Sioux decimate frontiersmen at Beecher's Island
Early in the morning on September 17, 1868, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado. Retreating to a small sandbar in the Arikaree River that thereafter became known as Beecher’s ...read more
Poor leadership leads to Cherry Valley Massacre
On November 11, 1778, Patriot Colonel Ichabod Alden refuses to believe intelligence about an approaching hostile force. As a result, a combined force of Loyalists and Native Americans, attacking in the snow, killed more than 40 Patriots, including Alden, and took at least an ...read more
Sam Mason survives Native American attack
Samuel Mason, a Patriot captain in command of Fort Henry on the Ohio frontier, survives a devastating Native American attack on August 31, 1777. The son of a distinguished Virginia family, Samuel Mason became a militia officer and was assigned to the western frontier post of Fort ...read more
Sioux military leader Crazy Horse is killed
Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little ...read more
How Stunning Photos Portraying Native American Life Carry a Mixed Legacy
In the early 1900s, photographer Edward S. Curtis set out on an epic mission: to capture the experiences of Native Americans throughout the American West. Over the span of 30 years, Curtis documented more than 80 tribes west of the Mississippi, from the Mexican border to northern ...read more
Native American History Timeline
Years before Christopher Columbus stepped foot on what would come to be known as the Americas, the expansive territory was inhabited by Native Americans. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, as more explorers sought to colonize their land, Native Americans responded in various ...read more
Colonists at the First Thanksgiving Were Mostly Men Because Women Had Perished
As families around the country prepare to gather with family, eat turkey and perhaps partake in some Black Friday shopping, they might be surprised to learn how much we don’t know about the origins of the Thanksgiving. What we do know is most of the adult colonists in attendance ...read more
Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare?
North American colonists’ warfare against Native Americans often was horrifyingly brutal. But one method they appear to have used—perhaps just once—shocks even more than all the bloody slaughter: The gifting of blankets and linens contaminated with smallpox. The virus causes a ...read more
DNA Identifies Origins of World's Oldest Natural Mummy
Scientists discovered the ancient human skeleton known as the “Spirit Cave Mummy” back in 1940, hidden in a small rocky cave in the Great Basin Desert in northwest Nevada. But it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that radiocarbon dating techniques revealed the skeleton was some 10,600 ...read more
Native Americans Weren't Guaranteed the Right to Vote in Every State Until 1962
Do U.S. citizenship and voting rights go hand and hand? For most of the country’s history, the answer has been no—just look at the example of Native voting rights, which weren’t secured in all states until the 1960s. Native Americans couldn’t be U.S. citizens when the country ...read more
What Was Life Like in Jamestown?
The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death. All of the early settlers in 1607 were men and boys, including ...read more
Caroline Weldon: A White Woman’s Doomed Effort to Save Sitting Bull
When Caroline Weldon arrived at the Standing Rock Reservation in 1889, she attracted attention. The Sioux people who lived there hadn’t invited her. The white settlers who lived nearby didn’t understand why she wanted to go there. She herself was on the run from life as a social ...read more
Why Andrew Jackson’s Legacy is So Controversial
Should Andrew Jackson be revered or reviled? The question of how to grapple with the seventh president’s tarnished reputation has persisted since Old Hickory’s lifetime. Known as a strong-willed, argumentative and combative personality, Jackson, who served as president from 1829 ...read more
New Study Debunks Tales of Mass Suicide at Custer’s Last Stand
It’s among the most famous and controversial battles ever fought on American soil. At Custer’s Last Stand, in June 1876, the U.S. Army was outnumbered and overwhelmed by Native American warriors, along the banks of the Little Bighorn River. By the end of the battle, some 268 ...read more
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a 363-mile waterway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River in upstate New York. The channel, which traverses New York state from Albany to Buffalo on Lake Erie, was considered an engineering marvel when it first opened in ...read more
When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’
On a cool May day in 1758, a 10-year girl with red hair and freckles was caring for her neighbor’s children in rural western Pennsylvania. In a few moments, Mary Campbell’s life changed forever when Delaware Indians kidnapped her and absorbed her into their community for the next ...read more
Was the Real Lone Ranger a Black Man?
On a riverbank in Texas, a master of disguise waited patiently with his accomplice, hoping that his target, an infamous horse thief, would show himself on the trail. After four days, the hunch paid off, when the bandit unwittingly walked towards the man who haunted the outlaws of ...read more
Montezuma Castle
Montezuma Castle is an ancient abode structure located in the Verde Valley in central Arizona. Thanks to its colorful name, the five-story, 20-room building sheltered high in a limestone cliff is sometimes thought to be the former home of the Aztec emperor, Montezuma. Scholars ...read more
The Enslaved Native Americans Who Made The Gold Rush Possible
James Marshall didn’t come to California to find gold. But then he noticed a glinting rock in the dirt while constructing a new mill for local landowner John Sutter. It was 1848, and Marshall’s fate—and that of California—had just changed forever. The Gold Rush that followed ...read more