The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various conflicts resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for tribal lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; many involved retaliatory violence.
As American settlement expanded westward after the American Revolution, conflicts between the United States and Native American nations increased in scale and frequency. A major turning point came during the War of 1812, when Native confederacies in the Old Northwest and the Southern United States allied with the British against the United States. Following the war, armed resistance continued in some regions, but relations between the United States and Native nations were increasingly governed through treaties that transferred large areas of Indigenous land to the United States. Historians have noted that the United States frequently failed to uphold treaty obligations, contributing to recurring disputes and further conflict.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the president to negotiate treaties exchanging Native American lands east of the Mississippi River for lands in the west. Although the act itself provided for negotiated removals, federal and state authorities subsequently used a combination of treaties, political pressure, and coercion to relocate many Native nations from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory. The resulting removals, including the Trail of Tears, transferred millions of acres of Indigenous land to the United States and opened much of the Southeast to American settlement.
As American settlement expanded across the Great Plains and the Western United States, the federal government increasingly confined Native peoples to Indian reservations through treaties, military campaigns, and congressional legislation.
Native American tribes and confederacies often achieved significant military victories against American settlers and soldiers, but generally lacked the population, resources, and logistical capacity to sustain prolonged resistance against the expanding United States.
Some scholars have characterized aspects of United States policies toward Native Americans, including forced removals, warfare, and reservation policies, as constituting genocide against Native Americans. Other scholars dispute the application of the term genocide to the American Indian Wars as a whole, arguing that the conflicts varied significantly across time and place.
Colonial periods (1609–1774)
The colonization of North America by English, Spanish, French, Russian and Dutch was resisted by some Indian tribes and assisted by other tribes. Wars and other armed conflicts in the 17th and 18th centuries included: Beaver Wars (1609–1701) between the Iroquois and the French, who allied with the Algonquians Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1610–1614, 1622–1632, 1644–1646), including the 1622 Jamestown Massacre, between English colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy in the Colony of Virginia Pequot War of 1636–38 between the Pequot tribe and colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut Colony and allied tribes Kieft's War (1643–1645) in the Dutch territory of New Netherland (New Jersey and New York) between colonists and the Lenape people Peach War (1655), the large-scale attack by the Munsee on several New Netherland settlements Esopus Wars (1659–1663), conflicts between the Esopus tribe of Lenape Indians and colonial New Netherlanders in Ulster County, New York King Philip's War (Metacom's Rebellion) (1675–78) in New England between colonists and the local tribes including, but not limited to, the Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and Narragansett Chowanoc War (1675–1677) in the Province of Carolina King William's War (1688–1697) between England and France, and their Indian allies, in New France, New England, and the Province of New York Tuscarora War (1711–1715) in the Province of North Carolina Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the Province of South Carolina Dummer's War (1722–1725) in northern New England and French Acadia (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) Pontiac's War (1763–1766) in the Great Lakes region Lord Dunmore's War (1774) in western Virginia (Kentucky and West Virginia)
In several instances, the conflicts were a reflection of European rivalries, with Indian tribes splitting their alliances among the powers, generally siding with their trading partners. Various tribes fought on each side in King William's War, Queen Anne's War, Dummer's War, King George's War, and the French and Indian War, allying with British or French colonists according to their own self interests.
On 14 August 1784, Russian fur traders led by Grigory Shelikhov attacked a fortified Alutiiq refuge at Awa'uq (Refuge Rock) on Sitkalidak Island in present-day Alaska. Hundreds of Koniag Alutiiq people were killed during the assault in what became known as the Awa'uq Massacre.On 14 August 1784, Russian colonists had massacred 200–3,000 Koniag Alutiiq tribesmen in Sitkalidak Island, Alaska. This massacre is known as Awa'uq Massacre. Despite the incidents that occurred between European colonists and the Native population, most Indian tribes were friendly towards the Swedes in New Sweden as result of Swedish authorities respecting tribal land.
East of the Mississippi (1775–1842) Following the American Revolution, British officials in Canada maintained alliances with Native American nations in the Old Northwest and continued to supply them with trade goods and weapons. American leaders believed that British support encouraged Native resistance to U.S. expansion into the trans-Appalachian West. British policymakers also considered the creation of a Native American buffer state in the Great Lakes region as part of the peace negotiations that ended the War of 1812.
Many Native nations, including those allied with Tecumseh, sided with the British during the war in an effort to resist further American settlement. Following Tecumseh's death at the Battle of the Thames in 1813 and subsequent American victories under commanders including William Henry Harrison, Native resistance in the Old Northwest was significantly weakened. The war also intensified existing rivalries among Native nations, with different tribes and factions supporting opposing sides or pursuing their own regional interests.
Many refugees from defeated tribes went over the border to Canada; those in the South went to Florida while it was under Spanish control as they would be considered free, and not slaves, under the Viceroyalty of New Spain. During the early 19th century, the federal government was under pressure by settlers in many regions to expel Indians from their areas. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 stated the "authorizing of the President to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders." Some tribes resisted relocation fiercely, most notably the Seminoles in a series of wars in Florida. They were never defeated, although some Seminoles migrated to Indian Territory. Other tribes were forced to move to reservations west of the Mississippi River, most famously the Cherokee whose relocation was called the "Trail of Tears".
American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
The American Revolutionary War had distinct eastern and western theaters. While the conflict in the east centered on the struggle between the American colonies and Great Britain, the war in the trans-Appalachian West involved contests among the United States, Great Britain, and numerous Native American nations for control of territory east of the Mississippi River. Many Native nations allied with the British, viewing them as a potential check on American settlement and westward expansion. Historian Colin G. Calloway has described the Revolutionary War as "the most extensive and destructive" Indian war in United States history.
Some Indian tribes were divided over which side to support in the war, such as the Iroquois Confederacy based in New York and Pennsylvania who split: the Oneida and Tuscarora sided with the American Patriots, and the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga sided with the British. The Iroquois tried to avoid fighting directly against one another, but the Revolution eventually forced intra-Iroquois combat, and both sides lost territory following the war. The Crown aided the landless Iroquois by rewarding them with a reservation at Grand River in Ontario and some other lands. In the Southeast, the Cherokee split into a pro-patriot faction versus a pro-British faction that the Americans referred to as the Chickamauga Cherokee; they were led by Dragging Canoe. Many other tribes were similarly divided.
When the British made peace with the Americans in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, they ceded a vast amount of Indian territory to the United States. Indian tribes who had sided with the British and had fought against the Americans were enemy combatants, as far as the United States was concerned; they were a conquered people who had lost their land.
Cherokee–American wars
The frontier conflicts were almost non-stop, beginning with Cherokee involvement in the American Revolutionary War and continuing through late 1794. The so-called "Chickamauga Cherokee", later called "Lower Cherokee", were from the Overhill Towns and later from the Lower Towns, Valley Towns, and Middle Towns. They followed war leader Dragging Canoe southwest, first to the Chickamauga Creek area near Chattanooga, Tennessee, then to the Five Lower Towns where they were joined by groups of Muskogee, white Tories, runaway slaves, and renegade Chickasaw, as well as by more than a hundred Shawnee. The primary targets of attack were the Washington District colonies along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky Rivers, and in Carter's Valley in upper eastern Tennessee, as well as the settlements along the Cumberland River beginning with Fort Nashborough in 1780, even into Kentucky, plus against the Franklin settlements, and later states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The scope of attacks by the Chickamauga and their allies ranged from quick raids by small war parties to large campaigns by four or five hundred warriors, and once more than a thousand. The Upper Muskogee under Dragging Canoe's close ally Alexander McGillivray frequently joined their campaigns and also operated separately, and the settlements on the Cumberland came under attack from the Chickasaw, Shawnee from the north, and Delaware. Campaigns by Dragging Canoe and his successor John Watts were frequently conducted in conjunction with campaigns in the Northwest Territory. The colonists generally responded with attacks in which Cherokee settlements were completely destroyed, though usually without great loss of life on either side. The wars continued until the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in November 1794.Wiley Sword, President Washington's Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1985).
Northwest Indian War