Native American History

Native American history spans an array of diverse groups and leaders, including Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Tecumseh, and events like the Trail of Tears, the Battle of Little Bighorn and the occupation of Alcatraz.

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They've had to fight continually to maintain their way of life.

The treaty that made the first Thanksgiving possible has a dark backstory.

Chief John Ross devoted much of his life to fighting against the forced removal of his people from their ancestral lands.

There are more than nine million Native Americans living in the United States, representing hundreds of tribal nations with diverse languages, cultures and traditions.

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Native American History

Native American tribes are still seeking the return of their children.

They resisted government attacks to take their children—and paid the price.

By the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 Indigenous people remained of the estimated 5 million-plus living in North America before European contact.

Early American plays portrayed her as a mythical 'Indian princess.'

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Severe exposure, starvation and disease ravaged tribes during their forced migration to present-day Oklahoma.

King Philip’s War, a failed effort by Native Americans of New England to drive out English colonists, was led by Wampanoag chief Metacom (aka King Philip).

Sitting Bull (1831-1890) was the Native American chief under whom the Lakota tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains.

Crazy Horse was a Lakota leader and warrior who clashed with the U.S. federal government.

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Witness to some of the most consequential military interactions between Plains Indians and the US government in the latter part of the 19th century, Black Elk wrote a vivid chronicle of Lakota Sioux history and spiritual traditions.

Sacagawea was a Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06, exploring the lands procured in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

When the first European settlers arrived in the region around Narragansett Bay (present-day Rhode Island) around 1635, they encountered a number of Indigenous peoples, including the Algonquian-speaking Narragansett.

Wounded Knee in South Dakota was the site of an 1890 Indian massacre by U.S. Army troops, and a deadly 1973 occupation by Native American activists.

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In 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the British issued a proclamation, mainly intended to conciliate the Indians by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The group has organized many high-profile protests and occupations, and was a driving force behind the Native American civil rights movement of the 1970s.

Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief who organized a Native American confederacy to create a free Indian state and stop white settlement in the Great Lakes region.

As explorers sought to colonize their land, Native Americans responded in various stages, from cooperation to indignation to revolt.

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