Indian Wars

Before the white man came, the vast region that is now the United States was inhabited by one million Native Americans, organized into six hundred distinct societies and scattered from the desolate ice wastes of the Far North to the hot swamps of the South; from the great forests of the East to the plains and deserts of the West. The first meetings between the Natives and white men in the southeast and along the Atlantic coast were not important historically in themselves, but they kindled the sparks that were to burn savagely for hundreds of years. The Native nations, living in peace and prosperity for the most part, despite intermittent but limited intertribal warfare, learned that the white invaders could not be trusted, and that their object was not the peaceful intercourse of trade, which the Natives offered them, but flagrant conquest. After four centuries of nearly continuous warfare, from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, the Native Americans have been reduced numerically to less than 400,000, with their lands gone and their homes a series of reservations in, for the most part, the western United States. This book tells the story of their battle against the invaders of their land, and the price they were to pay for their ultimate defeat. Book jacket.

Bringing together Custer, Sherman, Grant, and other fascinating military and political figures, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo, this “sweeping work of narrative history” (San Francisco Chronicle) is the fullest account to date of how the West was won—and lost. After the Civil War the Indian Wars would last more than three decades, permanently altering the physical and political landscape of America. Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail. He illuminates the intertribal strife over whether to fight or make peace; explores the dreary, squalid lives of frontier soldiers and the imperatives of the Indian warrior culture; and describes the ethical quandaries faced by generals who often sympathized with their native enemies. In dramatically relating bloody and tragic events as varied as Wounded Knee, the Nez Perce War, the Sierra Madre campaign, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, we encounter a pageant of fascinating characters, including Custer, Sherman, Grant, and a host of officers, soldiers, and Indian agents, as well as great native leaders such as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud and the warriors they led. The Earth Is Weeping is a sweeping, definitive history of the battles and negotiations that destroyed the Indian way of life even as they paved the way for the emergence of the United States we know today.

Traces the history of the U.S. Army's campaign against the Native American population during the nineteenth century, describing major battles and legendary figures on both sides.

The Indian wars of Pennsylvania an account of the Indian events, in Pennsylvania, of the French and Indian war, Pontiac's war, Lord Dunmore's war, the revolutionary war, and the Indian uprising from 1789 to 1795 tragedies of the Pennsylvania frontier.

Acclaimed independent history scholar Gregory Michno has created a chronological listing of every significant fight between Indians and the United States Army, as well as better-known Indian battles with civilian emigrants. This detailed study is more tha

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accomodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people"). The book sheds light on the war's legacy, including the near sainthood that was bestowed upon Chief Joseph, whose speech of surrender, "I will fight no more forever," became as celebrated as the Gettysburg Address. Based on a rich cache of historical documents, from government and military records to contemporary interviews and newspaper reports, The Last Indian War offers a searing portrait of a moment when the American identity--who was and who was not a citizen--was being forged.

Drawing on anthropology and ethnohistory as well as the ‘new military history’ Indian Wars of Mexico, Canada and the United States, 1812-1900 interprets and compares the way Indians and European Americans waged wars in Canada, Mexico, the USA and Yucatán during the nineteenth century. Fully illustrated with sixteen maps, detailing key Indian settlements and crucial battles, Bruce Vandervort rescues the New World Indian Wars from their exclusion from mainstream military history, and reveals how they are an integral part of global history. Indian Wars of Mexico, Canada and the United States: * provides a thorough examination of the strategies and tactics of resistance employed by Indian peoples of the USA which contrasts practices of warfare with the Métis (the French Canadian-Indian peoples), their Canadian-Indian allies, and the Yaqui and Mayan Indians of Mexico and Yucatán * presents a comparison of the experience of Indian tribes with concurrent resistance movements against European expansion in Africa, exposing how aspects of resistance that seem unique to the New World differ from those with broader implications * draws upon concepts used in recent rewritings of the history of imperial warfare in Africa and Asia, Vandervort also analyzes the conduct of the US Army in comparison with military practices and tactics adopted by colonialist conquests worldwide. This unique and fascinating study is a vital contribution to the study of military history but is also a valuable addition to the understanding of colonialism and attempts to resist it.

The expulsion of Native Americans from the east is one of the most notorious events in U.S. history. Preeminent Jacksonian scholar Remini now provides a thoughtful analysis of the story of Jackson's wars against the Indians. This is at once an exuberant work of American history and a sobering reminder of the violence and darkness at the heart of our nation's past. of illustrations.