|
Pre-1795
|
|
|
1792 |
- On November 6,
George Washington, in his fourth annual address to Congress,
expressed dissatisfaction that "Indian
hostilities” had not stopped in the young country’s frontier, north
of the Ohio River.
|
|
1795 |
- The Treaty of Greenville - This
treaty marked the end of an undeclared and multi-tribal war begun in
the late 1770s and led by the Shawnees who fought to resist American
expansion into Ohio. In 1795, over a thousand
Indian delegates ceded two-thirds of present-day Ohio, part of
Indiana, and the sites where the modern cities of Detroit, Toledo,
and
Chicago are currently situated. The
Indians, in return, were promised a permanent boundary between
their lands and American territory.
|
|
1802 |
- Federal law prohibits the sale of
liquor to
Indians.
|
|
1803 |
|
|
1804 to 1806 |
- Lewis and Clark expedition with
Sacagawea. Under direction of President Jefferson, Lewis and Clark
charted the western territory with the help of Sacagawea, a Shoshone
Indian.
|
|
1804 |
- The
Sioux
meet the Lewis and Clark Expedition
- Trading posts begin to be
established in the west.
- Fur trading becomes an important
part of Oglala life.
- Oglala and other
Lakota tribes expand their region of influence and control to
cover most of the current regions known as North and
South
Dakota ,
westward to the Big Horn Mountains in
Wyoming
and south to the Platte River in
Nebraska.
- On March 26, the U.S. government
gave first official notice to
Indians to move west of the Mississippi River.
|
|
1808 |
- The Osage, a
Sioux
tribe, sign the Osage Treaty ceding their lands in what is now
Missouri
and
Arkansas to the U. S.
|
|
1808 to 1812 |
- Tecumseh, Chief of the
Shawnees, and his brother known as The Prophet, founded Prophetstown
for the settlement of other
Indian peoples who believed that signing treaties with the US
government would culminate in the loss of the
Indian way of life. At the same time, Tecumseh
organized a defensive confederacy of
Indian tribes of the Northwestern frontier who shared a common
goal - making the Ohio River the permanent boundary between the
United States and
Indian land. Meanwhile, William Henry Harrison, governor
or Ohio, began enacting treaties with various tribes. At a
meeting between Tecumseh and Harrison at Vincennes in 1810,
Tecumseh declared that he and the confederacy would never recognize
any treaties signed with the US government. When Tecumseh was
away from Prophetstown in November 1811, Harrison led troops to the
town and after the ferocious Battle of Tippicanoe,
destroyed the town as well as the remnants of Tecumseh's
Indian confederacy.
|
|
1809 |
-
On February 8,
Russians who built a blockhouse on the Hoh River (Olympic
Penninsula, Washington) were taken captive by Hoh
Indians, and were held as slaves for two years.
|
|
1810 |
- This Treaty of Fort Wayne brought
the Delawares, Potawatomi, Miami, and Eel River Miami nations
together to cede 3 million acres of their land along the Wabash
River to the United States.
- Nicholas Biddle of the Lewis & Clark
expedition noted that among the Minitaree
Indians the effeminate boys were raised as females. Upon
reaching puberty, the boys were then married to older men. The
French called them Birdashes.
|
|
1811 |
- On August 31, Fort Okanogan was
established at the confluence of the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers;
Indians met the Astorians with pledges of friendship and gifts
of beaver.
- On November 7, Shawnee leader
Tecumseh’s dream of a pan-Indian
confederation was squashed when his brother Tenskwatawa led an
attack against Indiana Territory militia forces in the Battle of
Tippecanoe. Tenskwatawa was defeated.
|
|
1813 to 1814 |
- The Creek War was instigated by
General Andrew Jackson who sought to end Creek resistance to ceding
their land to the US government. The Creek Nation was defeated and
at the Treaty of Fort Jackson, the Creek lost 14 million acres, or
two-thirds of their tribal lands. To count the Creek dead, whites
cut off their noses, piling 557 of them. They also skinned their
bodies to tan as souvenirs. This was the single largest cession of
territory ever made in the southeast.
|
|
1815 |
|
|
1816 |
- On July 27, Fort Blount, a Seminole
fort on Apalachicola Bay, Florida, was attacked by U.S. troops. The
fort, held by 300 fugitive slaves and 20
Indians, was taken after a siege of several days. The fort was
destroyed, punishing the Seminoles for harboring runaway slaves.
|
|
1817 |
- Congress passed the
Indian Country Crimes Act which provided for federal
jurisdiction over crimes between non-Indians
and
Indians, and maintained exclusive tribal jurisdiction of all
Indian crimes.
|
|
1818 |
- On April 18, Andrew Jackson defeated
a force of
Indians and African Americans at the Battle of Suwanee, ending
the First Seminole War.
|
|
1820 |
- By this year, more than 20,000
Indians lived in virtual slavery on the
California missions.
|
|
1821 |
- South Carolina settlers and their
Cherokee
allies attack and defeat the Yamassee.
- The U.S. government began moving
what it called the "Five Civilized Tribes" of southeast America (Cherokee,
Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) to lands west of the
Mississippi River.
|
|
1823 |
- Johnson v. McIntosh
Supreme Court decision - This case
involved the validity of land sold by tribal chiefs to private
persons in 1773 and 1775. The Court held that that
Indian tribes had no power to grant lands to anyone other than
the federal government. The government, in turn, held title to all
Indian lands based upon the "doctrine of discovery" - the belief
that initial "discovery" of lands gave title to the government
responsible for the discovery. Thus,
Indian "...rights to complete sovereignty, as independent
nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of
the soil, at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied
by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive
title to those who made it."
|
|
1824 |
- The
Indian Office federal agency was established by the
Secretary of War and operated under the administration of the War
Department. The Office becomes the Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) in 1849.
|
|
1825 |
- Creek chief William McIntosh signs
treaty ceding Creek lands to the U.S. and agrees to vacate by 1826;
other Creeks repudiate the treaty and kill him.
|
|
1827 |
- Creek
Indians sign a second treaty ceding lands in western Georgia
|
|
1828 |
- Elias Boudinot and Sequoyah begin
publishing the Cherokee Phoenix, the first American newspaper
published in a
Native American language.
|
|
1829 |
- Creek
Indians receive orders to relocate across the Mississippi River
|
|
1830 |
- On April 7, President Andrew Jackson
submitted a bill to Congress calling for the removal of tribes in
the east to lands west of the Mississippi. On May 28th, the
Indian Removal Act was passed, and from 1830 to 1840 thousands
of
Native Americans were forcibly removed.
- On September 15, the Choctaws sign a
treaty exchanging 8 million acres of land east of the Mississippi
for land in
Oklahoma .
- On December 22, the State of Georgia
made it unlawful for
Cherokee
to meet in council, unless it is for the purpose of giving land to
whites.
|
|
1831 to 1832 |
- Two U.S. Supreme Court cases change
the nature of tribal sovereignty by ruling that
Indian tribes were not foreign nations, but rather were
"domestic dependent nations." As such, both cases provided the basis
for the federal protection of
Indian tribes, or the federal trust relationship or
responsibility.
|
|
1831 |
- Black Hawk of the
Sac and Fox
tribes agrees to move west of Mississippi.
- Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
- The
Cherokee Nation sued the State of Georgia for passing laws and
enacting policies that not only limited their sovereignty, but which
were forbidden in the Constitution. The Court's decision proclaimed
that
Indians were neither US citizens, nor independent nations, but
rather were "domestic dependent nations" whose relationship to the
US "resembles that of a ward to his guardian." In this case,
the federal trust responsibility was discussed for the first time.
- On December 6, President Andrew
Jackson, in his Third Annual Message to Congress, praised the
beneficial results of
Indian Removal for the States directly affected and the Union as
a whole, as well as being "equally advantageous to the
Indians.”
- On December 25, a force of Black
Seminole
Indians defeated U.S. troops at Okeechobee during the Second
Seminole War.
|
|
1832 |
- Worcester v. Georgia -
A missionary from Vermont who was working
on
Cherokee territory sued the State of Georgia which had arrested
him, claiming that the state had no authority over him within the
boundaries of the
Cherokee
Nation. The Court, which ruled in Worchester's favor, held that
state laws did not extend to
Indian country. Such a ruling clarified that
Indian tribes were under protection of the federal government,
as in Cherokee v. Georgia.
- On July 23, Eastern
Cherokees
met in Red Clay, Tennessee to discuss President Jackson's proposals
for their removal to
Indian
Territory in present day
Oklahoma .
The proposal was rejected and the
Cherokees
refused to negotiate unless the federal government honored previous
treaty promises.
- On August 2, some 150 Sac and Fox
men, women and children, under a flag of truce, were massacred at
Bad Axe River by the
Illinois
militia.
|
|
1833 |
- On January 12, a
law was passed making it unlawful for any
Indian to
remain within the boundaries of the state of Florida
|
