1877
While living along the Salmon River some white peoples death were blamed on the Nez Perce Indian tribe. Chief Joseph, trying to evade a battle, fled with 800 of his tribe north 1500 miles towards the Canadian border, but they were stop just 30 miles from freedom. The survivors were promised to be able to return to their homeland but were instead transferred to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
The Chief of the Ponca Indian tribe Standing bear refused to move his people onto reservation land that was already promised the Lakota Sioux.
Another treaty is broken by the U.S. government when the Lakota Sioux sacred Black Hills are confiscated and put under control of the army.
For his part in the Fancher party Massacre of 1857, John D. Lee was tried and convicted by a Mormon jury and taken to the site of the crime Mountain Meadows. Still cursing Brigham Young for deserting him he spoke his last words to his firing squad, “Center my heart, boys. Don’t mangle my body.”
Against all odd of survival Sitting Bull takes the risk and flees to Canada with, Her Holy Door his mother, Good Feather Woman his sister, Walks Looking his daughter, and 300 other followers.
Rebellious in defeat Crazy Horse surrenders to General George Crook, he and 800 warriors arrives at Fort Robinson singing war songs and wielding their weapons. They are promised to be allowed to settle in the Power River country of Montana.
In the last battle of the Great Sioux Wars, General Nelson A. Miles led the U.S. Army in an attack on what was left of the Minneconjou warriors and overwhelmed them bring that conflict to an end.
The Ponca Indian are driven of their ancestral homeland and removed to a reservation only to be forced to move again to the Otto reservation. With no help from the army, the Otto people provided them with some horses to help move their people or they would have not made it there alive.
Based on just rumors of an Indian uprising, Chief Crazy Horse of the Sioux is arrested and taken to Fort Robinson. At the age of 36 he is killed for trying to escape with a bayonet in the back assisted by one of his own people that were tasked with guarding him.
The U.S. Government breaks the Treaty of 1868 and reduced the land promised to the Sioux Indians from 134 million acres to 15 million acres when Congress passes the Many penny Agreement ending the Sioux right to their Black Hills and restricts them to the Great Sioux Reservation.
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and his starving band of followers successfully avoided the U.S. Army for months. With no hope of victory over the invading white settlements Chief Joseph made this statement, “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever,” as he surrendered his rifle to General O. Howard at Eagle Creek in Montana.
The Native American Plains Indians were very self-sufficient but their main source of food, shelter and survival, the Buffalo, have been wiped out by extermination killings approved by the U.S. Government, leaving the Lakota Sioux with no other option but to beg for handouts from the U.S. Government.
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Word count: 542