Indian Wars

From the founding of the Early Republic until the 1880s, the U.S. Army was involved in a series of conflicts with Native American tribes throughout the country. Armed conflict between Native Americans and White settlers in the present-day United States emerged as soon English settlers arrived on the continent in the late 1500s and continued until the last Indian tribes were subdued and forced onto reservations in the 1880s.

White expansion fueled most of the Indian Wars. The forced expulsion of most southeastern Indians to territories west of the Mississippi represented a crucial turning point in Indian-White relations. These actions took place under the Indian Removal Act of 1830s and resulted in the creation of an “Indian Territory” primarily in present-day Oklahoma. Until the Civil War, ...