Treatment of Native Americans Timeline

  • The Gnadenhutten Massacre

    The Gnadenhutten Massacre

    A group of militiamen from Pennsylvania killed 96 Christianized Delaware Indians, illustrating the growing contempt for native people.
  • Battle of Tippecanoe

    Battle of Tippecanoe

    William Henry Harrison in 1811 attacked and burned Prophetstown, the Indian capital on the Tippecanoe River, while Tecumseh was away campaigning the Choctaws for more warriors, incited the Shawnee leader to attack again.
  • The Creek War

    The Creek War

    The War of 1812 bled into the Mvskoke Creek War of 1813-1814, also known as the Red Stick War. An inter-tribal conflict among Creek Indian factions, the war also engaged U.S. militias, along with the British and Spanish, who backed the Indians to help keep Americans from encroaching on their interests.
  • Office of Indian Affairs

    Office of Indian Affairs

    As white settlers pushed ever further westward across the American continent, these brutal conflicts over land became more frequent and more problematic for the US government. The Office of Indian Affairs was to resolve the land issue.
  • Indian Removal Bill of 1830

    Indian Removal Bill of 1830

    Law that authorized the president to negotiate removal treaties with Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River to relocate them to lands in the West.
  • Indian Appropriations Act of 1851

    Indian Appropriations Act of 1851

    Authorized the establishment of reservations in Oklahoma and inspired the creation of reservations in other states as well.
  • The Sand Creek Massacre

    The Sand Creek Massacre

    Indians fighting back to defend their people and protect their homelands provided ample justification for American forces to kill any Indians on the frontier, even peaceful ones.
  • Dawes Act

    Dawes Act

    A law used to destroy Indian tribes ad to thereby eliminate the remains of Indian culture and society.
  • The Ghost Dance

    The Ghost Dance

    A shaman of the Northern Paiute tribe, had a vision. He claimed that God had appeared to him in the guise of a Native American and had revealed to him a bountiful land of love and peace, he founded a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance.
  • The massacre at Wounded Knee

    The massacre at Wounded Knee

    On December 29, 1890, the US 7th Cavalry Regiment surrounded an encampment of Sioux Indians near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A shot was fired and a scuffle ensued. The US army soldiers opened fire on the Sioux, indiscriminately massacring hundreds of men, women, and children.