Indian Wars
Frontier military campaigns
The Indian Wars were armed conflicts between Indigenous peoples of North America and European colonizers and later the United States government, spanning roughly from the early 1600s through the late 1800s.
The term typically refers to U.S. military campaigns to remove Native Americans from their lands and force them onto reservations.
Major conflicts include King Philip's War, the Seminole Wars, and the wars against Plains tribes culminating at Wounded Knee in 1890.
- Ghost DanceIndigenous messianic religious movement
- King Philip's WarColonial-indigenous New England conflict
- Great PlainsCentral North American grassland
- cavalry unitsMilitary forces on horseback
- broken treatiesAgreements no longer honored
boarding schools · guerrilla warfare · intergenerational trauma · assimilation policies · militias · Manifest Destiny · indigenous resistance · forced migration · Trail of Tears · Homestead Act · oral histories · peace pipe · ambush tactics · war paint · Gold Rush · buffalo · Sioux · massacre
Indian Warspeaceful coexistence
Non-hostile international relations
peace treaties · tribal sovereignty · diplomatic relations · treaty negotiations · diplomatic negotiations
Indian WarsWounded Knee Massacre
1890 military killing of Lakota