The Complete List of Old West Native Americans

List of Old West Indians

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Dog Soldiers - A warrior society of the Cheyenne tribe, the Dog Soldiers were the most elite of Cheyenne military society. Similar to societies of other tribes, the Dog Soldiers swore never to retreat in battle. When the Cheyenne began to be pushed out of their ancestral lands in the mid 1800’s, many of the Dog Soldiers chose to fight back rather than succumb to the treaties that limited their hunting grounds and restricted them to reservations. No longer trusting the U.S. government, after several treaty failures and unjust attacks, the Dog Soldiers, led by Chief Roman Nose raided frontier settlements and wagon trains in Kansas and Colorado from 1860-1868.

In no time, the U.S. Army began to retaliate, hunting down the perpetrators of the raids, subduing them in a number of battles. By early 1875, the remnants of the Dog Soldiers were forced into submission and agreed to live in exile and peace on reservations.

Cheyenne Indian in full feather bonnet,

by Edward S. Curtis, 1905.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

Though they never again regained the political and military power they once had, the Dog Soldiers have always remained revered by the Cheyenne and to this day, young Cheyenne continue to be recruited into this soldier clan. During the twentieth century, Dog Soldiers have served with the United States military in two World Wars and in the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf region. More ...

Dull Knife - Northern Cheyenne Chief (18??-1879) - Dull Knife, known as Morning Star to his tribe, first came to public notice in 1868 when, as one of the representatives of his tribe, he signed the treaty of Fort Laramie on May 10th. He was noted for his active resistance to Western expansion and the Federal government. It is due to the courage and determination held by Dull Knife and other Cheyenne leaders that the Northern Cheyenne still possess part of their traditional homeland in Montana.

Placed on a reservation in Oklahoma , Dull Knife defied the authorities and led his people home in September, 1878. Heavily pursued by the U.S. Army, they were captured and confined at Ft Robinson, Nebraska. In a desperate attempt to escape on January 9, 1879, Dull Knife was killed. More ...

Chief Gall (1840?-1895) - Lakota battle leader and one of the commanders who took part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Gall was known to his people as Pizi. Born in present day South Dakota around 1840, Gall became an accomplished warrior while still in his teens and a chief when in his twenties. He served under Sitting Bull during the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, and later fled to Canada with him until his surrender. He settled on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and eventually turned against Sitting Bull, who had become involved with the Ghost Dance movement. Gall continued to live on the Standing Rock Agency until his death December 5, 1895. More ...

Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perce

This image available for photographic prints

and downloads HERE!

Chief Joseph (1840-1904) Born in the Allowa Valley in what is now northeastern Oregon in 1840, Chief Joseph was known to his friends and family as Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. However, he was widely known as Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, because his father had taken the Christian name Joseph when he was baptized at the Lapwai mission in 1838. Though his father had long been known as a peace loving man and had even helped establish the Nez Perce reservation in Oregon and Idaho in 1855, this all changed in 1863. It was at that time, that the U.S. Government, following the gold rush into Nez Perce territory, took back almost six million acres of this land, making the reservation only one tenth its prior size. Betrayed, Joseph the Elder denounced the United States, destroyed his American flag and his Bible, and refused to move his band from the Wallowa Valley or to sign the new treaty that would make the new reservation boundaries official.

When his father died in 1871, Joseph succeeded him as chief and adamantly resisted all efforts to force his band onto the small Idaho reservation. He succeeded in 1873 by obtaining a federal order allowing his people to remain in the Wallowa Valley and removing white settlers. However, the federal government soon reversed itself, and in 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard threatened a cavalry attack to force Joseph's band and other hold-outs onto the reservation.

Reluctantly, Chief Joseph led his people toward Idaho; however, along the way, about twenty young Nez Perce warriors staged a raid on nearby settlements and killed several whites. In retaliation, the army then began to pursue Joseph's band. Though Chief Joseph was opposed to war, he soon joined with several other war leaders, and began a retreat to Canada. For over three months, the Nez Perce, numbering about 700, outmaneuvered and battled the some 2,000 U.S. soldiers pursuing them as they traveled 1,700 miles across Oregon, Washington , Idaho, Wyoming , and Montana.

Finally, after a devastating five-day battle during freezing weather conditions, Chief Joseph formally surrendered to General Nelson Miles on October 5, 1877. He and his band were less than 40 miles south of Canada in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana Territory.

Surrendering with the understanding that he and his band would be allowed to return home, Joseph and his people were instead taken first to eastern Kansas and then to a reservation in Indian Territory where many of them died of epidemic diseases. Though he was allowed to plead his case to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879, it would be another six years until he and the other refugees would be allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest. He died in 1904, many said of a "broken heart." More ...

Hollow Horn Bear, aka: Matihehlogego (1850-1913) - A Brulé Sioux chief, he was born in Sheridan County, Nebraska in March, 1850. When he was just 16 years-old, he accompanied a band led by his father against Pawnee Indians who they fought on the present site of Genoa, Nebraska. Two years later, in 1868, he joined a band of Brulé in an attack on United States troops in Wyoming, and later in another battle near the Crow Agency in Montana. The following year he participated in a raid on railroad workers who were constructing the Union Pacific Railroad. Later, he became the captain of the police force at the Rosebud Agency in South Dakota. During his tenure, he arrested his predecessor, Crow Dog, for the murder of Spotted Tail. Five years later he resigned and was appointed as a second lieutenant under Agent Spencer, but was compelled to resign on account of ill health. When General George Crook was sent with a commission to Rosebud in 1889, the chief was involved in peace negotiations. In 1905, Hollow Horn Bear was invited to take part in the presidential inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt at Washington D.C. In 1913, he led a group of Indians to the inauguration parade of President Woodrow Wilson. While he was there he caught pneumonia and died.

Kintpuash, aka: Captain Jack - (1840?–1873) - Though commonly known as Captain Jack, this famous Modoc warrior was more correctly called Kintpuash to his tribe. He was born about the year 1840 but little is known of his early life. When he grew up he became a subchief of the Modoc tribe and a leader of a hostile group in the Modoc War of (1872–73). In 1864, he had agreed to leave his ancestral home and live on the Klamath Reservation with the Klamath and Yahooskin tribes. However, the Modoc and the Klamath were historic enemies; the Modoc’s relationship with the Yahooskin was not much better. In 1870, Kintpuash and 371 Modoc fled the reservation to the lava beds of California. The Modoc War began on November 28, 1872 when Bureau of Indian Affairs, Major John Green sent troops from Fort Klamath to move the Modoc, “by force if necessary,” back to the reservation. However, the Modocs' strong defensive position frustrated numerous attempts by U.S. troops to dislodge them.

In April, 1873, a peace commission headed by General Edward Richard Canby met with Jack and several of his men. However, at the meeting, Captain Jack shot the unarmed Canby and the Modoc fled. The Army then pursued Kintpuash with great vigor, capturing him on June 1st. On October 3, 1873, Captain Jack, John Schonchin, Black Jim, and Boston Charley were hanged at Fort Klamath. The remainder of the surviving Modoc were sent to reservations in Oklahoma and back to the Klamath Reservation in Oregon.

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