1824 The Bureau of Indian Affairs is established within the War Department, with a primary duty to regulate and settle disputes arising from trade with Indian tribes.
1855The U.S. army establishes outposts in present-day Oklahoma, at Fort Towson on the Red River and at Fort Gibson on the Arkansas River, in preparation for the removal of the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes from the Southeast to the newly designated Indian Territory.
THE MOUNTAIN MEN (1824-1840)
Frustrated in their attempt to establish a trading post on the upper Missouri River, William Ashley and Andrew Henry revolutionize the previously river-based fur trade by sending small bands of trappers -- called brigades -- into the mountains on horseback. One of their first brigades, led by Jedediah Smith, rediscovers the South Pass in western Wyoming, where refugees from Astoria had crossed the divide a decade before, and beyond it the fur-rich Green River valley. Before year's end, Ashley himself leads a larger expedition to join Smith in the region.
1828The Cherokees of Arkansas agree to give up their land and settle in the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi.
1830Congress passes a Pre-emption Act which grants settlers the right to purchase at $1.25 per acre 160 acres of public land which they have cultivated for at least 12 months, thereby offering "squatters" some protection against speculators who purchase lands they have already improved.
1830Jedediah Smith and William Sublette, now partners in the successor to William Ashley's trading company, lead the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains at South Pass and on to the Upper Wind River. The 500-mile journey through Indian country takes about six weeks, proving that even heavily loaded wagons and livestock -- the prerequisites for settlement -- can travel overland to the Pacific.
1830Joseph Smith publishes the Book of Mormon and establishes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
1830The Indian Removal Act, passed with strong support from President Andrew Jackson, authorizes the federal government to negotiate treaties with eastern tribes exchanging their lands for land in the West. All costs of migration and financial aid to assist resettlement are provided by the government. Jackson forces through a treaty for removal of the Choctaw from Mississippi within the year.
1831In Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, a dispute over Georgia's attempt to extend its jurisdiction over Cherokee territory, Chief Justice John Marshall denies Indians the right to court protection because they are not subject to the laws of the Constitution. He describes Indian tribes as "domestic dependent nations," saying that each is "a distinct political entity...capable of managing its own affairs."
1832In Worcester v. State of Georgia, the Supreme Court rules that the federal government, not the states, has jurisdiction over Indian territories. The case concerns a missionary living among the Cherokees, Samuel A. Worcester, who was jailed for refusing to comply with a Georgia law requiring all whites residing on Indian land to swear an oath of allegiance to the state. In ruling against Georgia's actions, Chief Justice John Marshall writes that Indian tribes must be treated "as nations" by the national government and that state laws "can have no force" on their territories. Defying the court, Georgia keeps Worcester in jail, and President Andrew Jackson, when asked to correct the situation, says, "The Chief Justice has made his ruling; now let him enforce it
1832George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri, traveling more than 2,000 miles with trappers from the American Fur Company to their outpost at Fort Union, painting hundreds of portraits of Indians and Indian life along the way.
1833Samuel Colt develops his revolver.
1833The Choctaw complete their forced removal to the West under army guard.
1834Congress restructures the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the Department of Indian Affairs, expanding the agency's responsibilities to include both regulating trade with the tribes, as before, and administering the Indian lands of the West.
1834William Sublette and Robert Campbell establish Fort Laramie on the North Platte River in Wyoming, the first permanent trading post in the region and soon to be an important stopping point for pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail.
1835The Florida Seminoles reject forced removal to the West and begin a seven-year war of resistance under Chief Osceola.
1835The Cherokee finally sign a treaty of removal, giving up their lands in Georgia for territory in present-day Oklahoma.
1838Mormon founder Joseph Smith leads his persecuted followers to Missouri, to settle at a site he calls the Garden of Eden, but local opponents force the settlers to flee into Illinois where they establish Nauvoo
1838General Winfield Scott oversees the forced removal of the Cherokee from Georgia to the Indian Territory of the West along the "Trail of Tears."
1840The last rendezvous on the Green River marks the end of the mountain trapping era, as fashion changes in Europe and steady declines in the beaver population make the fur trade barely profitable
1843THE OREGON TRAIL
Seasoned mountain men Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez establish Fort Bridger on the Green River to re-supply migrants traveling the Oregon Trail. Theirs is perhaps the first mountain outpost not designed as a trading post for trappers.
The Great Migration, a party of one thousand pioneers, heads west from Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail, guided by Dr. Marcus Whitman, who is returning to his mission on the Columbia River. Forming a train of more than one hundred wagons, and trailing a herd of 5,000 cattle, the pioneers travel along the south bank of the Platte, then cross north to Fort Laramie in Wyoming. Here they follow the North Platte to the Sweetwater, which leads up into South Pass. Once through the pass, they cross the Green River Valley to newly established Fort Bridger, then turn north to Fort Hall on the Snake River, which leads them to Whitman's Mission. Once in Oregon, they strike out along the Columbia for the fertile lands of the Willamette Valley, the endpoint to a journey of 2,000 miles. After the mass exodus of 1843, the migration to Oregon becomes an annual event, with thousands more making the trek every year.
1844Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, are killed by a mob at Carthage, Illinois. Brigham Young becomes the new head of the church.
James K. Polk is elected President with the slogan "54-40 or Fight" -- a promise to set the disputed northern border of the Oregon Territory at 54 degrees, 40 minutes by diplomacy or war, and an implicit promise to expand American territories in every direction
51The United States and representatives of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara, Assiniboin, Mandan, Gros Ventre and other tribes sign the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, intended to insure peace on the plains. The treaty comes as increasing numbers of whites -- gold seekers, settlers and traders -- make the trek westward, and as Native Americans react to this invasion by attacking wagon trains and, more often, warring against one another for territorial advantage.
The treaty divides the plains into separate tracts assigned to each tribe, who agree to remain on their own land, to cease their attacks on each other and on white migrants and to recognize the right of the United States to establish roads and military outposts within their territories. In return, the United States pledges that each tribe will retain possession of its assigned lands forever, that they will be protected by U.S. troops from white intruders and that they will each receive $50,000 in supplies and provisions annually for the next fifty years. Both sides agree to settle any future disputes, whether between tribes or between Indians and whites, through restitution.
Unfortunately, the chiefs who sign the Fort Laramie Treaty do not have the authority over their tribes that the United States negotiators assume, and the negotiators themselves cannot deliver the protections and fair treatment they promise
1854Conquering Bear, the Lakota chief who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, is killed when troops from Fort Laramie storm into his encampment to arrest a warrior who had shot a Mormon calf. Meeting resistance, the troops open fire. All but one of the troopers is killed in the Lakota counterattack, and in retaliation the army sends a force against the band which kills 86 and carries off 70 women and children. Though Conquering Bear had offered to make restitution for the calf, as the treaty required, the incident instead proves to the Lakota that Americans cannot be trusted to keep their word.
1858The first non-stop stage coach from St. Louis arrives in Los Angeles, completing the 2,600 mile trip across the Southwest in 20 days
1860The Pony Express completes its inaugural delivery, bringing mail over the 1,966 miles from St. Louis to Sacramento in 11 days. Organized by William H. Russell and Alexander Majors, the service depends on a string of 119 stations, about 12 miles apart, where the young riders -- "skinny, expert . . . willing to risk death daily" -- exchange horses to keep advancing at top speed.
1862The Civil War divides the Five Civilized Tribes, who brought slaves west with them when they were forced from their homelands in the South. Most side at once with the Confederacy, contributing a brigade to the cause. But the Creek Nation splits into pro-Union and pro-Confederate factions, who battle against one another throughout the war.
1864Congress organizes the Montana Territory and admits Nevada into the union, completing the political organization of the West under local governments loyal to the Union.
1867The first cattle drive from Texas up the Chisholm Trail arrives at the railyards of Abilene, Kansas.
1867The United States and representatives of the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other southern Plains tribes sign the Medicine Lodge Treaty, intended to remove Indians from the path of white settlement. The treaty marks the end of the era in which federal policymakers saw the Plains as "one big reservation" to be divided up among various tribes. Instead, the treaty establishes reservations for each tribe in the western part of present-day Oklahoma and requires them to give up their traditional lands elsewhere. In exchange, the government pledges to establish reservation schools and to provide resident farmers who will teach the Indians agriculture. This same principle of restricting the Plains tribes to reservations will help shape the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In both cases, the tribes' refusal to give up their free-ranging traditions and remain confined within the territory assigned to them leads to devastating warfare.
1868Congress organizes the Wyoming Territory.
1868The Chinese railbuilders of the Central Pacific finally break out of the High Sierras.
1868Chief Red Cloud and General William Tecumseh Sherman sign the Fort Laramie Treaty, which brings an end to war along the Bozeman Trail. Under terms of the treaty, the United States agrees to abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and grant enormous parts of the Wyoming, Montana and Dakota Territories, including the Black Hills area, to the Lakota people as their exclusive territory.
1868General Philip Sheridan sends Colonel George Armstrong Custer against the Cheyenne, with a plan to attack them during the winter when they are most vulnerable. Custer's troops locate a Cheyenne village on the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma. By a cruel coincidence, the village is home to Black Kettle and his people, the victims of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Custer's cavalry attacks at dawn, killing more than 100 men, women and children, including Black Kettle.
1869Wyoming becomes the first place in the United States where women have the right to vote.
1870Buffalo hunters begin moving onto the plains, brought there by the expanding railroads and the growing market for hides and meat back east. In little more than a decade, they reduce the once numberless herd to an endangered species.
Railroad companies begin massive advertising campaigns to attract settlers to their land grants in the West, sending agents to rural areas in the eastern states and throughout Europe to distribute handbills, posters and pamphlets that tout the rich soil and favorable climate of the region. But the higher costs of railroad land compared to public lands, and the fact that railroads pay no taxes on their lands, soon stirs charges of extortion, leading to state laws controlling railroad rates and land sale practices by the decade's end.
1870The Union Pacific in Wyoming hires Chinese laborers for $32.50 a month rather than pay $52.00 a month to whites. From incidents like this one, white laborers across the West develop the opinion that Chinese immigrants are competing unfairly for jobs, a feeling that will lead to violent racial conflict and labor unrest in years to come.
1871Congress approves the Indian Appropriations Act, which ends the practice of treating Indian tribes as sovereign nations by directing that all Indians be treated as individuals and legally designated "wards" of the federal government. The act is justified as a way to avoid further misunderstandings in treaty negotiations, where whites have too often wrongly assumed that a tribal chief is also that tribe's chief of state. In effect, however, the act is another step toward dismantling the tribal structure of Native American life.
1872The Yellowstone Act sets aside more than 2 million acres in northwest Wyoming as a public "pleasuring-ground" for the "preservation... of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders... and their retention in their natural condition." It marks the first time any national government has set aside public lands to preserve their natural beauties and sets a precedent later followed in countries around the world. Much of the impetus for establishing the park can be traced to William H. Jackson's photographs of its natural wonders, taken when he traveled there with the Hayden expedition of 1871.
1872"Buffalo Bill" Cody is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service as a scout in General Philip Sheridan's four-year campaign against the Cheyenne. The same year Cody begins his theatrical career, appearing as "Buffalo Bill" in Ned Buntline's The Scouts of the Plains
George Armstrong Custer announces the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Dakota, setting off a stampede of fortune-hunters into this most sacred part of Lakota territory. Although the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty requires the government to protect Lakota lands from white intruders, federal authorities work instead to protect the miners already crowding along the path Custer blazed for them, which they call "Freedom's Trail" and the Lakota call "Thieve's Road."
1876Federal authorities order the Lakota chiefs to report to their reservations by January 31. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and others defiant of the American government refuse.
General Philip Sheridan orders General George Crook, General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon to drive Sitting Bull and the other chiefs onto the reservation through a combined assault. On June 17, Crazy Horse and 500 warriors surprise General Crook's troops on the Rosebud River, forcing them to retreat. On June 25, George Armstrong Custer, part of General Terry's force, discovers Sitting Bull's encampment on the Little Bighorn River. Terry had ordered Custer to drive the enemy down the Little Bighorn toward Gibbon's forces, who were waiting at its mouth, but when he charges the village Custer discovers that he is outnumbered four-to-one. Hundreds of Lakota warriors overwhelm his troops, killing them to the last man, in a battle later called Custer's Last Stand. News of the massacre shocks the nation, and Sheridan floods the region with troops who methodically hunt down the Lakota and force them to surrender. Sitting Bull, however, eludes capture by leading his band to safety in Canada.
1877Crazy Horse finally surrenders to General George Crook at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, having received assurances that he and his followers will be permitted to settle in the Powder River country of Montana. Defiant even in defeat, Crazy Horse arrives with a band of 800 warriors, all brandishing weapons and chanting songs of war. By late summer, there are rumors that Crazy Horse is planning a return to battle, and on September 5 he is arrested and brought back to Fort Robinson, where, when he resists being jailed, he is held by an Indian guard and killed by a bayonet thrust from a soldier.
1877Congress votes to repeal the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and take back the Black Hills, along with 40 million more acres of Lakota land.
1879To complete its consolidation of federally-funded scientific exploration in the West, Congress creates the United States Bureau of Ethnology to coordinate study of the region's native peoples and complete a record of their cultures before they vanish under the pressure of expanding white settlement. Directed by John Wesley Powell, the Bureau of Ethnology launches an ambitious program to document the culture and society of Native Americans, sending one of its first field teams to Zuni Pueblo, where ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing anticipates the methods of 20th century anthropology by becoming a member of the Zuni community.
The first students, a group of 84 Lakota children, arrive at the newly established United States Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a boarding school founded by former Indian-fighter Captain Richard Henry Pratt to remove young Indians from their native culture and refashion them as members of mainstream American society. Over the next two decades, twenty-four more schools on the Carlisle model will be established outside the reservations, along with 81 boarding schools and nearly 150 day schools on the Indians’ own land
1881Sitting Bull returns from Canada with a small band of followers to surrend er to General Alfred Terry, the man who five years before had directed the campaign that ended in the Lakota Chief’s victory at Little Bighorn. After insulting his old adversary and the United States, Sitting Bull has his young son hand over his rifle, saying, "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living."
1881Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, the first detailed examination of the federal government’s treatment of Native Americans in the West. Her findings shock the nation with proof that empty promises, broken treaties and brutality helped pave the way for white pioneers.
1881Late summer brings the last big cattle drive to Dodge City. With livestock plentiful on the plains, the long trek up the Western Trail is no longer profitable, and most states now prohibit driving out-of-state cattle across their borders. The increasing use of barbed wire to enclose farms and grazing land has ended the era of the open range. In the fifteen years since Texas cowboys first hit the trail, as many as two million longhorns have been driven to market in Dodge.
1882Jesse James, the notorious outlaw who was a veteran of Quantrill’s Raiders during the Civil War, is shot in the back by Robert Ford, a kinsman who hoped to collect a $5,000 reward. James' death ends the career of an outlaw gang that terrorized the West for more than a decade.
1883A delegation of U.S. Senators meets with bitter resistance from Sitting Bull when they propose opening part of the Lakota's reservation to white settlers. Despite the old chief's objections, the land transfer proceeds as planned.
1883The Northern Pacific Railroad, connecting the northwestern states to points east, is finally completed, after a 19-year struggle against treacherous terrain and intermitent financing. Along the line, crews blast a 3,850-foot tunnel through solid granite and construct a 1,800-foot trestle. As a result, the round trip to the Columbia River that took Lewis and Clark two-and-a-half years in 1803 now takes just nine days.
1883Buffalo hunters gather on the northern Plains for the last large buffalo kill, among them a Harvard-educated New York assemblyman named Theodore Roosevelt, who hopes to bag a trophy before the species disappears. Hunters have already destroyed the southern herd, and by 1884, except for small domestic herds kept by sentimental ranchers, there are only scattered remnants of the animal that more than any other symbolizes the American West.
1885Federal troops are called in to restore order in Rock Springs, Wyoming, after British and Swedish miners go on a rampage against the Chinese, killing 28 and driving hundreds more out of town. This "Rock Springs Massacre" follows a similar race riot in Tacoma, Washington, where whites force more than 700 Chinese immigrants to spend the night crowded onto open wagons, then ship them to Portland, Oregon, the next day.
1887Congress passes the Dawes Severalty Act, imposing a system of private land ownership on Native American tribes for whom communal land ownership has been a centuries-old tradition. Individual Indians become eligible to receive land allotments of up to 160 acres, together with full U.S. citizenship. Tribal lands remaining after all allotments have been made are to be declared surplus and sold. Proponents of the law believe that it will help speed the Indians’ assimilation into mainstream society by giving them an incentive to live as farmers and ranchers, earning a profit from their own personal property and private initiative. Others see in the law an opportunity to buy up surplus tribal lands for white settlers. When the allotment system finally ends, Indian landholdings are reduced from 138 million acres in 1887 to only 48 million acres in 1934. And with their land many Native Americans lose a fundamental structuring principle of tribal life as well.
1887A fare war between competing rail lines and the inducements of eager land speculators bring newcomers to Los Angeles by the trainload; 120,000 arrive in 1887, drawn by the promise of pure air, warm sunshine and prosperity. Within a few years, the city is transformed and the Californios who have lived there for more than a century are suddenly regarded as strangers in their own land.
1888Deep snows and raging blizzards, following a dry summer, devastate the cattle herds of the northern Plains. When the snows finally melt, hundreds of thousands of carcasses litter the range, leading the ranchers who must gather them up to call the winter of '88 "The Great Die-Up."
1889Wovoka, a Paiute holy man, awakes from a three-day trance to teach his tribe the Ghost Dance, with which they can restore the earth to the way it was before the whites arrived in the West. His teachings will soon touch many tribes across the West, stirring a spiritual revival that whites nervously misinterpret as a return to hostilities.
1889Washington, Montana and the Dakotas join the Union.
1890Wyoming enters the Union
1890Sitting Bull is murdered in a confrontation at the Standing Rock Reservation when Lakota policemen attempt to arrest him as part of a federal crackdown on the Ghost Dance.
Federal troops massacre the Lakota Chief Big Foot and his 350 followers at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in a confrontation fueled by the government’s determination to stop the spread of the Ghost Dance among the tribes. The incident stands in U.S. military history as the last armed engagement of the Indian Wars
1891Congress passes the Forest Reserve Act, which authorizes setting aside public forests in any state or territory to preserve a timber supply for the future. The law marks the first step in a process that will steadily place more and more Western land in the hands of the federal government while leaving less and less available for private purchase and use. As a result, federal priorities in the West gradually shift from selling public land to managing public resources, from land development to land conservation, and federal regulations become a permanent presence on the once wide open spaces.
1892Under the Dawes Act, nearly two million acres of Crow tribal land is opened to white settlers in Montana.
1893Experts estimate that fewer that 2,000 buffalo remain of the more than 20 million that once roamed the Western plains.
1899Robert Parker and his partner, Harry Longbaugh, better known as Butch Cassidy and "The Sundance Kid," lead their "Wild Bunch" in a series of bank and train robberies across the West. When they eventually flee to South America in 1901, the era of the outlaw band comes to an end.
1909Under the Dawes Act, 700,000 acres of former tribal land is opened to white settlers in Washington, Idaho and Montana. The steady erosion of tribal integrity represented by the Dawes Act will continue until its repeal in 1934.
1909The Industrial Workers of the World, led by "Big Bill" Haywood, bring the Montana timber industry to a standstill through a series of strikes reinforced by "direct action" tactics that include sabotage and arson. This willingness to use violence as a force for social reform, which some link to the union's Western heritage, together with a commitment to radical socialism, sharpens opposition to the Wobblies among industrialists and more conservative unionists alike
1914Socialist mine workers overthrow the Western Federation of Miners in Butte, Montana, where it has represented labor interests since 1892. Accusing WFM leaders of election fraud and collusion with the copper companies, the insurgents blow up the union hall, leading Montana's governor to send in the state militia to restore order. While the city is under martial law, company officials take advantage of the situation by withdrawing union recognition, leaving miners on both sides of the dispute without job protections.
1917"Buffalo Bill" Cody dies in Denver, Colorado, where he is buried in a tomb blasted out of Lookout Mountain.
1917The United States declares war on Germany, entering World War I.
Sitting Bull
Tatanka-Iyotanka
(1831-1890)
A Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man under whom the Lakota tribes united in their struggle for survival on the northern plains, Sitting Bull remained defiant toward American military power and contemptuous of American promises to the end.
Born around 1831 on the Grand River in present-day South Dakota, at a place the Lakota called "Many Caches" for the number of food storage pits they had dug there, Sitting Bull was given the name Tatanka-Iyotanka, which describes a buffalo bull sitting intractably on its haunches. It was a name he would live up to throughout his life.
As a young man, Sitting Bull became a leader of the Strong Heart warrior society and, later, a distinguished member of the Silent Eaters, a group concerned with tribal welfare. He first went to battle at age 14, in a raid on the Crow, and saw his first encounter with American soldiers in June 1863, when the army mounted a broad campaign in retaliation for the Santee Rebellion in Minnesota, in which Sitting Bull's people played no part. The next year Sitting Bull fought U.S. troops again, at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain, and in 1865 he led a siege against the newly established Fort Rice in present-day North Dakota. Widely respected for his bravery and insight, he became head chief of the Lakota nation about 1868.
Sitting Bull's courage was legendary. Once, in 1872, during a battle with soldiers protecting railroad workers on the Yellowstone River, Sitting Bull led four other warriors out between the lines, sat calmly sharing a pipe with them as bullets buzzed around, carefully reamed the pipe out when they were finished, and then casually walked away.
The stage was set for war between Sitting Bull and the U.S. Army in 1874, when an expedition led by General George Armstrong Custer confirmed that gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, an area sacred to many tribes and placed off-limits to white settlement by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Despite this ban, prospectors began a rush to the Black Hills, provoking the Lakota to defend their land. When government efforts to purchase the Black Hills failed, the Fort Laramie Treaty was set aside and the commissioner of Indian Affairs decreed that all Lakota not settled on reservations by January 31, 1876, would be considered hostile. Sitting Bull and his people held their ground.
In March, as three columns of federal troops under General George Crook, General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon moved into the area, Sitting Bull summoned the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho to his camp on Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory. There he led them in the sun dance ritual, offering prayers to Wakan Tanka, their Great Spirit, and slashing his arms one hundred times as a sign of sacrifice. During this ceremony, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw soldiers falling into the Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky.
Inspired by this vision, the Oglala Lakota war chief, Crazy Horse, set out for battle with a band of 500 warriors, and on June 17 he surprised Crook's troops and forced them to retreat at the Battle of the Rosebud. To celebrate this victory, the Lakota moved their camp to the valley of the Little Bighorn River, where they were joined by 3,000 more Indians who had left the reservations to follow Sitting Bull. Here they were attacked on June 25 by the Seventh Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer, whose badly outnumbered troops first rushed the encampment, as if in fulfillment of Sitting Bull's vision, and then made a stand on a nearby ridge, where they were destroyed.
Public outrage at this military catastrophe brought thousands more cavalrymen to the area, and over the next year they relentlessly pursued the Lakota, who had split up after the Custer fight, forcing chief after chief to surrender. But Sitting Bull remained defiant. In May 1877 he led his band across the border into Canada, beyond the reach of the U.S. Army, and when General Terry traveled north to offer him a pardon in exchange for settling on a reservation, Sitting Bull angrily sent him away.
Four years later, however, finding it impossible to feed his people in a world where the buffalo was almost extinct, Sitting Bull finally came south to surrender. On July 19, 1881, he had his young son hand his rifle to the commanding officer of Fort Buford in Montana, explaining that in this way he hoped to teach the boy "that he has become a friend of the Americans." Yet at the same time, Sitting Bull said, "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle." He asked for the right to cross back and forth into Canada whenever he wished, and for a reservation of his own on the Little Missouri River near the Black Hills. Instead he was sent to Standing Rock Reservation, and when his reception there raised fears that he might inspire a fresh uprising, sent further down the Missouri River to Fort Randall, where he and his followers were held for nearly two years as prisoners of war.
Finally, on May 10, 1883, Sitting Bull rejoined his tribe at Standing Rock. The Indian agent in charge of the reservation, James McLaughlin, was determined to deny the great chief any special privileges, even forcing him to work in the fields, hoe in hand. But Sitting Bull still knew his own authority, and when a delegation of U.S. Senators came to discuss opening part of the reservation to white settlers, he spoke forcefully, though futilely, against their plan.
In 1885 Sitting Bull was allowed to leave the reservation to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West, earning $50 a week for riding once around the arena, in addition to whatever he could charge for his autograph and picture. He stayed with the show only four months, unable to tolerate white society any longer, though in that time he did manage to shake hands with President Grover Cleveland, which he took as evidence that he was still regarded as a great chief.
Returning to Standing Rock, Sitting Bull lived in a cabin on the Grand River, near where he had been born. He refused to give up his old ways as the reservation's rules required, still living with two wives and rejecting Christianity, though he sent his children to a nearby Christian school in the belief that the next generation of Lakota would need to be able to read and write.
Soon after his return, Sitting Bull had another mystical vision, like the one that had foretold Custer's defeat. This time he saw a meadowlark alight on a hillock beside him, and heard it say, "Your own people, Lakotas, will kill you." Nearly five years later, this vision also proved true.
In the fall of 1890, a Miniconjou Lakota named Kicking Bear came to Sitting Bull with news of the Ghost Dance, a ceremony that promised to rid the land of white people and restore the Indians' way of life. Lakota had already adopted the ceremony at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, and Indian agents there had already called for troops to bring the growing movement under control. At Standing Rock, the authorities feared that Sitting Bull, still revered as a spiritual leader, would join the Ghost Dancers as well, and they sent 43 Lakota policemen to bring him in. Before dawn on December 15, 1890, the policemen burst into Sitting Bull's cabin and dragged him outside, where his followers were gathering to protect him. In the gunfight that followed, one of the Lakota policemen put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head.
Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates in North Dakota, and in 1953 his remains were moved to Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks his grave. He was remembered among the Lakota not only as an inspirational leader and fearless warrior but as a loving father, a gifted singer, a man always affable and friendly toward others, whose deep religious faith gave him prophetic insight and lent special power to his prayers.
Levi Strauss
(1829-1902)
One of the best-known beneficiaries of California's gold rush economic boom, Levi Strauss was born in Bavaria and came to San Francisco in 1850, one of the thousands hoping to stike it rich. Trained as a tailor, he planned to manufacture tents and wagon covers for the Forty-niners, but finding no market for these items, he instead used the stout canvas he had brought with him to make especially durable pants, which miners found perfect for their close-to-the-ground line of work. He quickly began selling these "wonderful pants of Levi's" as fast as he could make them.
Strauss opened a factory at 98 Battery Street in San Francisco, began adding copper rivets at the stress points in his pants and switched from canvas to a heavy blue denim material called genes in France, which became "jeans" in America. Following his quick success in the clothing business, he branched out to serve as a director of an insurance company, a utility company, several banks, and in a variety of charitable organizations.
The company Levi Strauss founded remains one of the nation's leading apparel manufacturers, but even more impressively, the garment he created, still known as "levis," has long since left the diggings to become not only an emblem of the American West but an emissary of the Western lifestyle -- egalitarian, utilitarian, independent -- around the world. Levi Strauss died in San Francisco in 1902.
Marcus Whitman
(1802-1847)
Narcissa Whitman
(1808-1847)
Among the first American settlers in the West, the Whitmans played an important role in opening the Oregon Trail and left a tragic legacy that would continue to haunt relations between whites and Indians for decades after their deaths.
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were both from upstate New York. Narcissa Prentiss was born in 1808 in Prattsburgh, New York, into a devout Presbyterian family. She was fervently religious as a child, at age sixteen pledging her life to missionary work. After she completed her own education, she taught primary school in Prattsburgh. In 1834, still awaiting the opportunity to fulfill her pledge, she moved with her family to Belmont, New York.
Marcus Whitman was born in 1802 at Rushville, New York. After studying under a local doctor, he received his degree from the medical college at Fairfield, New York, in 1832. He practiced medicine for four years in Canada, then returned to New York, where he became an elder of the Presbyterian church. In 1835 he journeyed to Oregon to make a reconnaissance of potential mission sites.
Shortly before Marcus' trip westward, Narcissa had also volunteered her services to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the umbrella group for Protestant missions to Indian peoples. The Board, however, was unwilling to send unmarried women as missionaries. After Marcus visited the Prentiss family for a weekend, the couple -- who may have had a passing acquaintance beforehand -- agreed to be married, and the Board in turn offered them positions as missionaries.
In 1836 the Whitmans headed West with another missionary couple, Henry Harmon Spalding (who had been jilted by Narcissa) and his wife Eliza, and with a prospective missionary named William H. Gray. St. Louis was their departure point and Oregon their ultimate destination. The group travelled with fur traders for most of the journey, and took wagons farther West than had any American expedition before them. Along the way, Narcissa and Eliza became the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains. The Whitmans reached the Walla Walla river on September 1, 1836, and decided to found a mission to the Cayuse Indians at Waiilatpu in the Walla Walla Valley. The Spaldings travelled on to present-day Idaho where they founded a mission to the Nez Percé at Lapwai.
The Whitmans labored mightily to make their mission a success. Marcus held church services, practiced medicine and constructed numerous buildings; Narcissa ran their household, assisted in the religious ceremonies, and taught in the mission school. At first the couple was optimistic and seemed almost thrilled by the challenges their new life posed; Narcissa wrote home, "We never had greater encouragement about the Indians than at the present time." This optimism soon faded, however. The Whitman's two-year-old daughter drowned in 1839, Narcissa's eyesight gradually failed almost to the point of blindness, and their isolation dragged on year after year. Above all, the Cayuse continued to be unreceptive to their preaching of the gospel.
To the Cayuse, whose souls the Whitmans felt they were destined to "save," the mission was at first a strange sight, and soon a threatening one. The Whitmans made little effort to offer their religious message in terms familiar to the Cayuse, or to accommodate themselves even partially to Cayuse religious practices. Gift-giving was essential to Cayuse social and political life, yet the Whitmans saw the practice as a form of extortion. For the Cayuse, religion and domestic life were closely entwined, yet Narcissa reacted with scorn when they suggested a worship service within the Whitman household. Even a sympathetic biographer admits that "her attitude toward those among whom she lived came to verge on outright repugnance."
Because the Whitman's missionary efforts bore so little fruit, the American Missionary Board decided to close the mission in 1842 and transfer the Whitmans elsewhere. Marcus headed East, undaunted by the coming winter, in an ultimately successful effort to convince the board to reverse its decision. On his return journey in 1843, he helped lead the first "Great Migration" to the West, guiding a wagon train of one thousand pioneers up the Oregon Trail. Soon, the Whitmans were spending more time assisting American settlers than they were in ministering to the Cayuse. Childless since their daughter had drowned, they took in eleven children of deceased immigrants, including the seven Sager children whom they adopted in 1844. Their mission also served as a kind of boarding school for early Oregon settlers like Joe Meek, whose daughter lived there for a time.
These close connections between the Whitmans' mission and white colonization further alienated the Cayuse. The swelling number of whites coming into Oregon brought with them numerous diseases which ravaged the Cayuse, and the Whitmans' aid to the wagon trains made the Cayuse especially suspicious of them. Even Narcissa observed this, noting in July 1847 that "the poor Indians are amazed at the overwhelming numbers of Americans coming into the country... They seem not to know what to make of it."
The Indians' suspicions gave way to rage in late 1847, when an epidemic of measles struck nearby whites and Cayuse alike. Although the Whitmans ministered to both, most of the white children lived while about half of the Cayuse, including nearly all their children, died. On November 29, 1847, several Cayuse, under the leadership of the chief Tiloukaikt, took revenge for what they perceived as treachery. They killed fourteen whites, including the Whitmans, and burnt down the mission buildings.
A subsequent white militia attack on a band of uninvolved Cayuse escalated the conflict into a war, which went very poorly for the Cayuse. Two years after the attack, Tiloukaikt and several others involved in the Whitman Massacre voluntarily surrendered themselves in an effort to avoid the destruction of the entire tribe. Tiloukaikt was defiant to the end, announcing on the gallows, "Did not your missionaries teach us that Christ died to save his people? So we die to save our people."
Already weakened by disease and subjected to continued white raids, the remnants of the Cayuse joined nearby tribes, especially the Nez Percé and Yakima. Thus the Whitmans' efforts ended in both their own deaths and the end of the Cayuse as an independent people.
Sacagawea
(c. 1790-1812 or 1884)
A near-legendary figure in the history of the American West for her indispensible role on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Sacagawea has become an enigma for historians seeking to trace her later life.
The daughter of a Shoshone chief, Sacagawea was kidnapped by the Hidatsa when she was about ten years old and taken back to their village on the upper Missouri. There, she and another captive girl were purchased and wed by Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper.
When Lewis and Clark engaged Charbonneau as an interpreter for their expedition in 1804, it was with the understanding that Sacagawea would also accompany them. Aside from her value as an interpreter, they expected her mere presence to speak well of them to Indians they would encounter along the way. As Clark noted in his journal, "a woman with a party of men is a token of peace."
Eight weeks before Lewis and Clark set out from the upper Missouri, a second token of peace was added to the expedition when Sacagawea gave birth to her first child, a son named Jean Baptiste Charbonneau but called Pomp or Pompey by Clark. Sacagawea carried her infant on a cradleboard as the "Corps of Discovery" headed upriver in April, 1805.
Four months later, when the expedition had reached the navigable limits of the Missouri, Lewis set out to make contact with a Shoshone band, from whom he hoped to obtain horses for their trek across the mountains. When Sacagawea arrived to serve as interpreter, she found the band was led by her older brother, Cameahwait, who had become chief on their father's death. Deeply moved by this reunion, Sacagawea might have taken advantage of such an astounding coincidence to return to her people, but instead she helped the explorers secure the horses they needed and journeyed on with them and her husband to the Pacific.
On the return journey, Sacagawea and Charbonneau parted with Lewis and Clark at a Hidatsa village on the upper Missouri, and from this point the historical record of their lives becomes somewhat conjectural.
Charbonneau evidently traveled to St. Louis at the invitation of William Clark, who had grown fond of the young Pompey and hoped he could induce his father to settle there. After a brief trial, however, Charbonneau returned to trapping, leaving his son in Clark's care. He worked for the American Fur Company, and later accompanied Prince Maximillian on the expedition that brought the artist Karl Bodmer to the upper Missouri in 1833.
Whether Sacagawea accompanied Charbonneau to St. Louis is uncertain. Some evidence indicates that she did make this journey, then returned to the upper Missouri with her husband where she died in an epidemic of "putrid fever" late in 1812. Other accounts say that Sacagawea ultimately rejoined the Shoshone on their Wind River reservation and died there in 1884.
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