U.S. History Study List

WESTERN EXPANSI0N

1. Native Americans - They were the original peoples who came to the New World by way of the land bridge from 20-40 thousand years ago. These nomadic peoples scattered throughout the Americas. Starting about 7000 B.C. some groups learned to grow crops while others remained hunters and gatherers.

2. Revolution in World Ecology - It was the geographic exchange of foods, insects, exotic plants, animals, disease germs, etc. brought on by the Geographic Revolution. For example in the case of foods, new crops such as corn, potatoes, manioc, squash, peppers, cacao, went from the New World to all parts of the rest of the world. European foods such as wheat, rye, oats, etc. went to the Americas.

3. Indian Influence on Government - They are ideas from the Native American culture used in modern political America. They are ideas such as the vote for women, chiefs as servants, respect for diversity of people, and democracy/representative government.

4. Indian Influence on Culture - They are ideas from the Native American culture used in modern American culture. They are such things as sign language; tobacco; names of trees, cities, rivers, etc., medicine, dog sleds, ice fishing, art work, sun glasses, canoes, kayaks, and many more.

Southwest Indians

5. Apache - They were a semi nomadic people in the Southwest who were fond of warfare. They raided early settlers including Spanish, Americans, and Mexicans until the 1880s. They fiercely resisted being placed on reservations. Cochise and Geronimo were major leaders.

6. Cochise - He was a Chiricahua Apache chief who was friendly to whites until he was falsely accused of kidnapping a rancher’s son, in 1861. He escaped the whites and retaliated in kind for the killing of his Indian companions. He led the Apaches in an 11-year terror war against the whites. He surrendered in 1872 and died in captivity in 1874.

7. Geronimo - He was an Apache medicine man who suffered the slaughter of his entire family by Mexicans. He took up raiding of whites in Mexico in revenge and later Americans to. He was forced onto a reservation in Arizona in 1876 and escaped four times to resume raiding. His last escape in 1881 took 5000 U.S. troops and 500 Indian scouts a year to track and persuade his band to surrender. He was resettled in Oklahoma and died in 1909.

8. Navajo - They were a semi nomadic people who wandered to the southwest from Alaska and Canada about A.D. 1000. They adopted from the Spanish the practices of sheepherding and silversmithing. They learned to grow crops from their Pueblo neighbors. They were rounded up to stop their raiding of whites and imprisoned in New Mexico for 4 years. In 1868 they were settled on a reservation in northern Arizona and New Mexico.

9. “Long Walk” - It was the campaign the U.S. Army ordered Kit Carson to carry out in 1864 against the Navajos to stop their raiding. He destroyed Navajo farms and homes and forced about 8,000 Indians to march over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Thousands died during the march and in their prison. In 1866 they returned to their homeland and were settled on a reservation.

10. Hopi - They are a Pueblo tribe living in northeastern Arizona and possibly descendants of the ancient Anasazi. They live in eleven villages on the mesas of which one, Oraibi, is the oldest continuously inhabited in the U.S. Oraibi was first settled over 800 years ago. This tribe farms the valley land. Their religious ceremonies are very important to them.

11. Pueblo - They were descendants of the ancient Anasazi and now live in Western New Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley and its branches. A settled people, they grew crops, built stone and adobe apartment complexes for their villages. In the 1600s they briefly forced out the Spanish. They remained in their lands under Spanish, Mexican and now American rule.

12. Pope’ - He was the Pueblo leader who led his people in revolt against the Spanish in 1680. He tried to remove all traces of Spanish influence from Pueblo life. He ruled harshly and was forced out of power in 1688 and died later that year after partially regaining power. The Spanish regained control in 1692.

Great Basin and Plateau tribes

13. Nez Perce - They are a Plateau region tribe living in the area where the borders of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho meet. Their name means pierced nose, but few ever did. They lived by fishing, hunting and by gathering wild plants. Gold was discovered in their area during the 1860s and they ended up on reservations. A major escape attempt in 1877 failed.

14. Chief Joseph - He was a peacemaker chief of the Nez Perce Indians. In 1877, when the whites ordered his tribe to move to a smaller reservation he was going to do so peacefully. Some of his tribe’s young men murdered 20 whites. Fearing military retaliation he and his entire band tried to escape to Canada. For three months he conducted a masterly rearguard 1,600-mile campaign to reach Canada. He fought 10 battles with 13 Army units before being trapped only 30 miles from the border. He surrendered saying “Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” He died on a reservation in 1904.

15. Shoshoni or Shoshone - They are a Great Basin tribe also known as the Snake Indians. Their most famous member was Sacagawea who was the guide for Lewis and Clark. They lived in the most barren land in the U.S. They lived in isolated family groups constantly moving in search of seeds, roots, fish, birds, rabbits, insects, etc. Once they acquired horses they became buffalo hunters.

16. Washakie - Born about 1804, he was known for being an Shoshone Indian chief friendly to whites and for being a relentless enemy against other Indians. In the 1840s he furnished aid to pioneers on the Oregon Trail. In the 1850s he helped Mormon settlers in Utah. His warriors helped General Crook against the Sioux in 1876. His last years were spent getting lands and rights for his people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. He renounced many Indian customs and joined the Episcopal Church, before he died in 1900.

17. Ute - They are a Great Basin tribe living in the mountains and lowlands of Colorado, Utah and northern New Mexico. They moved around hunting big game like buffalo, elk, deer and antelope. Once they acquired horses they developed an advanced trading economy bartering meat and hides for other goods. They also fought Great Plains tribes. In the late 1800s they were removed from Colorado and put on reservations in Utah.

18. Ouray - He was the great Southern Ute chief and a life long friend of the whites. Appointed head chief, by the whites, he stood for peace. In the late 1870s, the Northern Utes killed Nathan Meeker the Indian agent who tried to settle the Utes into a farming lifestyle and education in white schools. He stopped the Utes from continuing to fight after the Meeker massacre and Thornburgh battles. He arranged the release of the white captives and ended the war. He died in 1880 before seeing his people expelled from their tribal hunting grounds.

19. Paiute - They were a Great Basin tribe called Digger Indians by the mountain man explorer Jedediah Smith. He called them “the most miserable objects in creation” because of their wandering desert lifestyle of meager food gathering. Their religion focused on spirits of nature and they were great folktale tellers. The northern group fought the whites winning a big victory at Pyramid Lake in Nevada. They ended up on reservations. The southern group remained peaceful and ended up on reservations also.

Great Plains Indians

20. Comanche - They were a southern plains tribe who won fame as the most skilled Indian horseback riders, by eluding arrows and bullets by hanging against the side of or under their horses. They were a hunting people who followed the buffalo. They fiercely defended their lands until they were placed on a reservation in Indian Territory in 1867.

21. Cheyenne - Once all of them lived by hunting and fishing in the region near Lake Superior. They moved to the Great Plains in the middle 1700s and hunted buffalo. They divided in the early 1830s into Northern and Southern groups. Many of the Southern group were massacred at Sand Creek in 1864 and the survivors of the wars were placed on a reservation in 1869. The Northern group helped defeat Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876, but ended up on a reservation in Montana in 1884.

22. Sun Dance - It is one of the most important religious ceremonies of almost all the Plains Indians. Originally the Indians danced to thank the Great Spirit for providing for their needs and to ask provision for the coming year. While dancing the dancers have visions with the Great Spirit and gained sacred power.

23. Black Kettle - He was the peace leader of the Southern Cheyenne. After several years of warfare, he led the peace delegation to negotiate with the Whites in Denver. Colorado Territory. His village, established under a cease-fire, was surprise attacked by the Colorado Volunteers and wiped out. His wife was shot nine times and managed to survive the massacre.

24. Sand Creek Massacre - It was the dawn November 29, 1864 attack on Black Kettle’s encampment, even though it was under the promise of U.S. Army protection. Over 600 Colorado Volunteers’ under command of Colonel John Chivington killed over 70 warriors and over 200 women and children. This inflamed the Plains tribes into renewed warfare and outraged people in the east by the unprovoked killings.

25. Pawnee - They were a settled tribe of Plain’s Indians who lived in the Nebraska area. They lived in villages and raised corn, beans and squash. Once or twice a year they hunted buffalo. Religion played an important part in their life and they had many ceremonies centered on corn. They were restricted to a reservation in 1857 and then moved to Indian Territory in 1875.

26. Cherokee - They were the most numerous of the Southeastern U.S. tribes. They lived in large permanent villages farming corn and squash. They successfully adapted white culture by raising stock and operating farms, adopting Christianity and putting their language into writing. They even adopted a Constitution with a popularly elected legislature. They were removed from their Southeast U.S. lands by force during the 1830s, once gold was discovered on their lands. They were marched to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

27. “Trail of Tears” - It is the name of the forced emigration of the Cherokee from their Southeastern lands to the Great Plains. During the winter of 1838 the Cherokee were rounded up and forced to leave their homes. They were marched to Indian Territory and resettled. One Cherokee out of every four died from cold, hunger and disease during this deportation.

28. Cree - They were a Northern Canadian people who once lived in the forests of eastern and northern Canada. They drove the Sioux onto the Great Plains using their advantage of French provided firearms. During the mid-1700s some bands went to live on the Northern Great Plains and became buffalo hunters. During the 1700s they dominated the Northern Great Plains all the way to the Arctic and west as far as the Rockies. Their superiority over other Indians ended when other tribes acquired guns and because they were devastated by the small pox epidemics in 1784 and 1838.

29. Blackfoot or Blackfeet - They are the ancients of the Great Plains. They have lived longer on the Great Plains than other tribes. Their region is in what is now the northern U.S. and southern Canada just east of the Rocky Mountains. In the early days they hunted buffalo on foot. Later, after they had stolen enough horses, they became mounted buffalo hunters. They killed so many mountain men during the early 1800s they were allowed to trap and trade beaver hides to the whites. They suffered severe small pox deaths in the 1800s. Today they live on reservations in both the U.S. and Canada.

30. Sioux - The Cree drove them out of the east and onto the Great Plains during the 1700s. They had many nations and lived from Minnesota to the eastern Dakotas. During the 1850s and 1860s gold seekers overran their hunting grounds. They struggled to stay off of reservations and in 1876 won their biggest victory when they wiped out George A. Custer and his command at the Battle of Little Big Horn. After that, the enraged U.S. Army rounded them up, but some escaped to Canada.

31. Red Cloud - He was the war chief of the Oglala Sioux when the U.S. Army built a trail in 1866 to the Montana gold fields. This trail sparked a war from 1866-1868 with the Sioux and Cheyenne besieging the Bozeman Trail U.S. Army forts. He successfully wiped out the entire 80-man command of Captain Fetterman in December 1866. By 1868, he had forced the U.S. to close the trail and abandon the forts. His Indians then burned the forts.

32. Gall - He was the war leader of the Hunkpapa Sioux Indians. During the Battle of Little Big Horn he forced Marcus Reno’s troops to retreat and then helped wipe out Custer’s command. Later in 1876 he and other Hunkpapa fled to Canada to avoid being put on a reservation. In 1880 he returned to the U.S. and after a battle in January 1881 surrendered and was imprisoned. He ended up on a reservation in Dakota Territory.

33. Battle of Washita - It was the pivotal battle in the war for the southern Great Plains. It took place, by General Sheridan’s design, in the winter of 1868-69, when the Indians were at their weakest. General Custer managed to approach Black Kettle’s Indian village undetected and launch a successful dawn surprise attack. The 7th Cavalry wiped out the village, and killed most all Indians, including Black Kettle. Custer and his vastly outnumbered command then managed to fight off the enraged Indians from the nearby villages.