The Native Americans’ Forgotten Victories: The History and Legacy of Early Battles Won by Indigenous Groups Before the Indian Wars

Most Americans have heard of the Little Bighorn, the 1876 battle in which a band of Lakota Sioux and their allies wiped out most of the 7th U.S. Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer. The movie images are of fierce warriors in long eagle feather headdresses flowing behind them as they gallop across the plains on nimble Indian ponies. In fact, many Americans know the names of the commanders who beat Custer, most notably Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and there are famous photographs of the stolid looking, copper-skinned Sitting Bull participating in Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show.”

Children in schools also learn that there were more battles in the coming years as American settlers pushed west, and names like Geronimo are instantly famous after the U.S. Army’s tough fight with the Apache. A few may even have learned of the formidable Comanches in the Texas Panhandle, and maybe even events like the Fetterman Massacre or the fights at Adobe Wells.

Today, far fewer people are familiar with the conflicts that took place east of the Mississippi before the Indian Wars of the late 19th century, fought in the forests and woodlands rather than on the prairies. The names of a few of the tribes involved are well known - the Cherokee, Iroquois and Seminole and Choctaw – while other formidable groups like the Yamasee, Miamis, Delaware, Powhatan, and Shawnee are less known. As whites pushed west from the East Coast, there were fights against the Abenaki, and during the French & Indian War, two regiments of Redcoats and colonial militia were decimated near what is now Pittsburgh. An alliance under Chief Pontiac threw the British and Americans out of the Great Lakes country for a time in the mid-18th century and had much to do with the fracture between colonies and the mother country. And tribal leaders like Blue Jacket and Little Turtle waged bitter wars in the Old Northwest, including inflicting the worst defeat ever of the U.S. Army.