1850
Buffalo herds of 20,000,000 roamed freely from Texas to Montana and were the mane food source for the Plains tribes like the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho.
The no slavery state of California becomes the 31st state to enter the Union.
California Indian tribal lands were over run by miners in the gold rush, leaving the land devastated and void of the food sources Indians depended on for survival, forcing them to raid miners and settlers.
Miners retaliated by hunting Indians down and brutally abusing them. California’s Indenture Act allowed whites to bond Indian children into legal slavery and auction off for services up to 4 months which led to widespread kidnapping.
1850-75
The Plains Indians struggled to survive off their main food source the buffalo as herds are decimated by hide hunters and they are shot just for sport.
1851
Plains tribes of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota signed Fort Laramie treaties allowing passageway through Indian lands for payments to the tribes.
Wagon trains and miners cut passage ways through Indian lands like the Bozeman and Oregon Trail. Traffic along these routs greatly increased after the Civil war.
In Minnesota Santee Sioux Chief Little Crow signed away nearly all this peoples land to the federal government.
1852
Native American peoples were left homeless in a unfriendly white environment when California promised them 8.5 million acres of their land reserved for them, but politicians in secret rejected these treaties.
1853
150,000 Indians lived in the state of California before 1849 but after the remaining Indian population was put on severe military reservations less that 30,000 will survive.
1855
Brule Chief Conquering Bear was accused of stealing a stray cow and killed, in retribution the Indians killed 30 soldiers, setting of the Ash Hollow Massacre by Colonel William Harney’s 1,300 soldiers wiping out the entire Brule village.
1856
Indians were driven from their homes on land that white settlers wanted to build a town, in the first Battle of Seattle. The settlers fired a cannon routing the Indians, two settlers were killed.
1857
The people in Salt Lake City refused to sell supplies to settlers from Arkansas and Missouri, so the Fancher Party made camp south of the city in Mountain Meadows. Mormon militiamen with Paiute Indians attacked killing many on both sides, a five-day siege of the pioneers followed.
John D. Lee, leader of the Mormons forced the pioneers in the Fancher Party to surrender their live stock and guns for a promise of safe passage out of the area. When they did the Paiute and Mormons stormed the wagon train and massacred 123 men women and older children.
John D. Lee fled the area with his 17 wives and settled in Lee’s Ferry, Arizona, but later he was tried and executed for the crime.
1858
Indians of the Coeur d Alene, Palouse, Spokan, and Skitswich tribes banded together to defeat Colonel Steptoe at the village of To-ho-to-nim-me.
24 Chiefs of the Cayuse, Palouse, Spokan, Wallawalla, and Yakama tribes were caught and either shot or hanged.
Word count: 497
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