High Plains Drifting

Declining relationship between Natives and Settlers

Although many European and European American migrants to western North America had previously passed through the Great Plains on the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails, the California Gold Rush greatly increased traffic. The United States Government undertook negotiations with the Native American Plains tribes living between the Arkansas and Missouri River to ensure protected right-of-way for the migrants

Treaty of Ft Laramie

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was signed on September 17 between United States treaty commissioners and representatives of the Cheyenne, Sioux, Arapaho, Navajo Crow, Shoshone, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Airfare nations

The treaty sets forth traditional territorial claims of the tribes as among themselves

The Indians guaranteed safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail in return for promises of an annuity in the amount of fifty thousand dollars for fifty years. (A typo changed it to 10 yrs)

They were also guaranteed their lands forever. The Native American nations also allowed roads

and forts to be built in their territories

Results

The US failed to comply with almost every issue and constant warfare occurred for the next 22 yrs

Grattan fight

August 17, 1854 Killing of a stray cow by Broule Sioux High Forehead leads to

conflict Chief Conquering Bear tries to make it right offering more

than the cow was worth Lt Hugh Fleming refuses and calls for the arrest and trial of

High Forehead Conquering Bear returns to camp to warn his people

Lt John Grattan arrives with 29 soldiers and a drunken interpreter By the time the detachment reached the encampment, Auguste was intoxicated from drinking along the way, as he feared the encounter. Grattan broke his bottle and scolded him. Auguste was not well liked by the Sioux; he spoke only broken Dakota, and had little grasp of other dialects.

As they entered the encampment, he began to taunt the Sioux, calling their warriors women, and saying the soldiers were not there to talk, but to kill them all

Historians estimate the encampment had some 1,200 warriors out of the total 4,800 population

Despite the attempts of Conquering Bear to make peace the interpreter didn’t get the message across and Grattan opened fire killing Conquering Bear

Little Thunder and the Oglalas and Broule Sioux killing Grattan and all but one of the soldiers ( a 13 yr old Crazy horse witnessed the incident

Battle of Blue Water

On September 3, 1855, the U.S. Army's 600-man Sioux Expedition, commanded by Col. WilliamS. Harney, attacked and destroyed a Lakota village located three miles north on Blue Creek. Thefight became known as the Battle of Blue Water, sometimes the Battle of Ash Hollow after the nearby landmark, or the Harney Massacre.

The army's attack avenged the Indian annihilation of Lt. John Grattan's command near FortLaramie in 1854. Harney concluded the more than 250 Brules and Oglalas camped on Blue Creek were the guilty parties.

He divided his force and led his infantry towards the village. WhileHarney engaged in a delaying parley with Chief Little Thunder, the mounted troops had circledundetected to the north.

The infantry opened fire with its new, long-range rifles and forced the Indians to flee toward themounted soldiers, who inflicted terrible casualties. Eighty-six Indians were killed, seventywomen and children were captured, and their tipis were looted and burned.

Mountain Meadows

series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah. The attacks culminated on September 11, 1857, with the mass slaughter of most in the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district, together with some Paiute Native Americans

The wagon train—composed almost entirely of families from Arkansas—was bound for California on a route that passed through the Utah Territory

Fancher

While the emigrants were camped at the meadow, nearby militia leaders, including Isaac C. Haight and John D. Lee, made plans to attack the wagon train.

The militia, officially called the Nauvoo Legion, was composed of Utah's Mormon settlers (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church). Intending to give the appearance of Native American aggression, their plan was to arm some Southern Paiute Native Americans and persuade them to join with a larger party of their own militiamen—disguised as Native Americans—in an attack

During the militia's first assault on the wagon train, the emigrants fought back and a five-day siege ensued. Eventually fear spread among the militia's leaders that some emigrants had caught sight of white men, and had likely discovered the identity of their attackers. As a result militia commander William H. Dame ordered his forces to kill the emigrants.

By this time the emigrants were running low on water and provisions, and allowed some approaching members of the militia—who carried a white flag—to enter their camp. The militia members assured the emigrants their protection and escorted them from the hasty fortification. After walking a distance from the camp, the militiamen, with the help of auxiliary forces hiding nearby, attacked the emigrants. Intending to leave no witnesses and to prevent reprisals to complicate the Utah War, the perpetrators killed all the adults and older children (totaling about 120 men, women, and children). Seventeen children, all younger than seven, were spared

Following the massacre, the perpetrators hastily buried the victims, leaving the bodies vulnerable to wild animals and the climate. Local families took in the surviving children, and many of the victims' possessions were auctioned off. Investigations, temporarily interrupted by the American Civil War, resulted in nine indictments during 1874. Of the men indicted, only John D. Lee was tried in a court of law. After two trials in the Utah Territory, Lee was convicted by a jury, sentenced to death, and executed.

Cynthia Parker

was captured and kidnapped at the age of nine by a Comanche war band, who massacred her family’s settlement. She was adopted by the Comanche and lived with them for 24 years, completely forgetting her European ways.

She married a Comanche chieftain, Peta Nocona, and had three children with him, including the last free Comanche chief Quanah Parker.

She was "rescued" at age 34, by the Texas Rangers. She spent the remaining 10 years of her life refusing to adjust to life in white society. At least once she escaped and tried to return to her Comanche family and children, but was again brought back to Texas. She had difficulty in understanding her iconic status to the nation, which saw her as having been redeemed from savages. Heartbroken over the loss of her family, she stopped eating and died of influenza in 1870.