American Indian Wars

American Indian Wars
Part of the European colonization of North America and the territorial expansion of the United States
An 1899 chromolithograph of U.S. Cavalrymen pursuing American Indians
Date 1609–1890 Location United States with spillover in Alaska, Canada, and Mexico Result Sovereignty of various combatants extended or lost Massive indigenous population decline Deportation and forced assimilation of indigenous tribes Many treaties, truces, and armistices made and broken by combatants Indian reservations established in the United States
Belligerents
Indigenous North Americans: American Indians, including the tribes: Cherokee, Creek (Muscogee), Lakota, Miami, Shawnee, Seminole, Wampanoag, Northwestern Confederacy and Tecumseh's Confederacy Comanche Alaska Natives	Colonists, Viceroyalty and Europeans: British Empire:  Kingdom of England Kingdom of Great Britain British America United Kingdom British North America  Dominion of Canada First French Empire: Kingdom of France New France  Spanish Empire: Kingdom of Spain Council of the Indies Viceroyalty of New Spain Dutch Empire: New Netherland  Russia Russian America  United States Union  Mexico  Republic of Texas  Confederate States Indigenous North Americans[note 1]

The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars,^{[note 2]} was a conflict initially fought by European colonial empires, United States of America, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for Indian tribes' lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal.

As American settlers spread and expanded westward across the United States after 1780, armed conflicts increased in size, duration, and intensity between settlers and various Indian tribes. The climax came in the War of 1812, when major Indian coalitions in the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States fought against the United States and lost. Conflict with settlers became less common and was usually resolved by treaties between the federal government and specific tribes, which often required the tribes to sell or surrender land to the United States. These treaties were frequently broken by the federal U.S. government.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 that was passed by the United States Congress neither authorized the unilateral abrogation of treaties guaranteeing Native American land rights within the states, nor the forced relocation of the eastern Indians.^[1] Yet both occurred and on a massive scale, it forced Indian tribes to move from east of the Mississippi River to the west on the American frontier, especially to Indian Territory which became Oklahoma. As settlers expanded onto the Great Plains and the Western United States, the nomadic and semi-nomadic Indian tribes of those regions were forced to relocate to Indian reservations.

Indian tribes and coalitions often won battles with the encroaching settlers and soldiers, but their numbers were too few and their resources too limited to win more than temporary victories and concessions from the U.S. and other countries that colonized areas that had composed the modern-day borders of the United States of America.

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