Native American History in United States Timeline

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull lead an army of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians to a massive victory over General George Custer and the Seventh US Cavalry at the battle of Little Big Horn. Custer's force is part of an intended three-pronged assault against the Indian coalition that has harassed miners and homesteaders crossing their lands following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874. Partially because he badly underestimates the size of the Indian encampment along the Little Big Horn River, Custer chooses not to wait for the other units led by Generals John Gibbon and George Crook before launching his attack. Within hours, Custer and his entire detachment of 210 men are dead.

Richard Henry Pratt and Sarah Mather arrive at Carlisle, Pennsylvania with 82 Indian children recruited from the Dakota Territory for their new school. At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pratt will implement his theories about education and assimilation, developed while earlier supervising 72 Indian prisoners at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida

Major Ridge and a delegation of Cherokee leaders travel to Washington, D.C. to dialogue with President Thomas Jefferson. The Cherokee delegation rejects government proposals to relocate west of the Mississippi River but promises to continue on the path toward "civilized life" by developing "fixed laws and regular government."3

Congress enacts the Indian General Allotment Act, or Dawes Severalty Act, authorizing the president of the United States to carve existing Indians lands into 160 acre parcels to be distributed to individual Native American heads of households. "Surplus lands" (those remaining after individual allotments have been made) are to be purchased by the federal government and sold to Anglo-American homesteaders. Proceeds from these sales are to underwrite the "education and civilization" of the former Indian owners.

Sioux chief Sitting Bull is killed by Indian police attempting to arrest him under orders from the territorial Indian agent, who fears that the hero of the Little Big Horn will unite Indians incited by the Ghost Dance to launch a war against white settlements and federal authority in the Dakota Territory. In the aftermath, Sitting Bull's followers flee the camp to seek protection under Chief Red Cloud at the Pine Ridge Agency.

Having intercepted Sitting Bull's followers the previous day, a battalion of the Seventh Cavalry opens fire on the Sioux camp on the Wounded Knee Creek, killing 300 people—two-thirds of them women and children. The "Wounded Knee Massacre" effectively marks the end of armed Indian resistance to white western expansion in the nineteenth century.

The Society of American Indians is founded at Columbus, Ohio. Graduates from the Carlisle School, the Indian Industrial Training School at Haskell, and the Hampton Institute play prominent roles in founding this organization dedicated to advancing educational opportunities for Native Americans and establishing a voice for Indians in American politics. The organization argues that to achieve these objectives, Indians must begin to look beyond tribal identities and local concerns in order to advance their common national interests.

Jack Wilson dies in Yerington, Nevada. As Wovoka, Wilson led the revival of the Ghost Dance in 1890, a spiritual and political movement leading to the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

The National Congress of American Indians holds its first conference in Denver, Colorado. Building on the efforts of earlier organizations such as the Society of American Indians and the American Indian Federation, the NCAI works to overcome tribal provincialism and forge a Pan-Indian alliance to advance the common objectives of Native Americans in the modern United States. The NCAI will lead the opposition to the "termination" policies advanced by Congress during the 1950s, leading to the repudiation of these policies by President Richard Nixon in 1973.