History Through a Native Lens

Explore this chronological timeline written by Dr. Karina Walters, containing historically traumatic events, settler colonial policies, and Native resistance movements. View the Interactive Timeline

Timeline Overview

Historically traumatic events are events designed to eradicate a people (genocide) and/or their culture, language, and lifeways (ethnocide) and/or their worldviews, teachings and epistemologies (epistemicide). Historically traumatic events should not be confused with traumatic events such as hurricanes- as those too produce significant trauma and upheaval- but historical trauma events specifically target a group- by nationality, religion, or other oppressed status with the intent to eradicate or in some cases, subjugate and assimilate the group into the dominant class. Historically events consist of events such as massacres, forced relocation and removal from traditional homelands, forced removal and separation of children from parents, and medical experimentation among many other types of events. These events are never singular events, but consist of a series of targeted traumatic events over generations. These events are experienced as collective traumas and in many cases, the psychological, physical and spiritual aftermath of these events can be carried into subsequent generations-whether these events are known or conscious in the subsequent generations. Recent epigenetic research is beginning to provide preliminary evidence of intergenerational transmission of stress from traumatic events in preceding generations.

It is important to note that historically traumatic events targeting American Indians and Alaska Natives in what is now the United States of America is particularly fraught and continues to manifest to this day. Historically traumatic events include not only events from 500 years ago, but also include events that happen daily in modern times. For example-the illegal dispossession of Indigenous lands for oil extraction in the DAPL pipeline and targeting of Native women and girls for sexual exploitation and human trafficking leaving a trail of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada are prime examples of modern historically traumatic events.

Finally, historically traumatic events do not occur in isolation from the polices and structures that support the unfolding of such trauma. American Indian and Alaska Native communities continue to survive and thrive despite being continuously occupied and living within the structures of U.S. settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is a system that is borne of land dispossession and attempted erasure of AIAN land ties and identities. Settler colonialism is the structure and the historically traumatic events serve to perpetuate and uphold the structure, system and policies of a settler colonial society. This chronological timeline provides three elements: the settler colonial policies (green), the historically traumatic events (black), and the resistance movements by AIAN peoples (blue) in fighting oppressive and genocidal polices and surviving historically traumatic events. The events documented here are not exhaustive- there are many more stories of atrocities among the current 573 federally and 100 state tribes than can be documented here. The events provided are mislabeled as “wars, battles or skirmishes” in American textbooks, but the events noted in this document are not wars, but are known to AIAN communities as massacres-primarily targeting women, children and communities for purposes of extermination or subjugation. Historically traumatic events- by definition (see Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) are genocidal events. According to Article 2-genocide is defined as: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Noting such atrocities and in support of Indigenous peoples worldwide, in 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) was passed delineating and defining the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including their ownership rights to cultural and ceremonial expression, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues. It "emphasizes the rights of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions, and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations". It "prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples", and it "promotes their full and effective participation in all matters that concern them and their right to remain distinct and to pursue their own visions of economic and social development" with a major emphasis on Indigenous rights to protect their culture and tradition in order to preserve their heritage from over controlling nation-states. In 2010, President Obama declared support for the declaration. Tribal Independence Era Prior to 1491

Overview

Prior to 1491 and at the time of first contact with Europeans, tribal societies throughout the Americas and surrounding island nations were flourishing. Many of the tribal nations and, in some cases, empires developed sophisticated agricultural, navigational, medicinal, and technological advances that we continue to use and learn from to this day. There is oral history and documentation of possible contact with what seem to be Vikings as well as Chinese and Maori/New Zealander populations in the Americas, but with the arrival of Columbus and the Spanish quest for gold and slaves, the next 500 years would produce years of resistance to settler colonialism, land dispossession, slavery, and genocide. Despite settler colonialism, Native peoples in what is now known as the United States (including Alaska and Hawai’i) and surrounding Pacific Island and Caribbean U.S. territories have managed to survive and, in many cases, thrive, despite long-term threats to survival. Below are just a few examples from across the North American continent of the sophisticated empires and tribal nations that proliferated here, prior to the European colonial settler invasions.

3000 BCE Southwestern tribal peoples develop sophisticated farming techniques for arid climates

By 3000 BCE (Before the Common Era), ancestors of the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Puebloan peoples of the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) develop sophisticated horticultural and agricultural practices that continue to this day, including growing and harvesting several strains of corn, beans, and squash in harsh environments. During this period, not only does the population increase but so does the sophistication of culture, arts, and technology (Native Voices, "3000 BC: Southwestern peoples plant corn, beans, squash; population grows").

Map showing Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon settlements in what is now known as New Mexico and Arizona. Image: National Library of Medicine

1000 BCE Ancestors of peoples of the Southeast develop major trading centers The Adena (1000 BCE-AD 200) and Hopewell (300 BCE-AD 700) agricultural societies build large earthwork mounds and cities from the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley floodplains to the southeastern shores. Like other communal farming societies in the Southwest, they produce and grow mainly corn, beans, and squash. Mississippian Moundbuilder peoples establish metropolitan centers (Native Voices, "1000 BC–AD 1550: Urban gardeners build earthen mounds in Ohio River valley"). Wall painting at Cahokia Mounds, Illinois. Image: Good Free Photos

200 BCE Arctic Peoples create sophisticated arctic sea boats, gear, and tools

Ancestors of the Inupiaq, Inuit, Yupik, and other Arctic peoples develop sophisticated boats and tools to navigate and survive the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia in order to hunt sea mammals. They design and develop hide-wrapped, wood frame boats, as well as smaller kayaks (Native Voices, "200 BC: Arctic hunters make ingenious boats and gear").

400 Marquesan Islanders sail north to Hawai'i

Indigenous peoples from the Marquesas Islands arrive at the Poi po under, used to mash taro root into poi, a main staple in the traditional Hawaiian Islands and continue to navigate the Pacific Island chains Hawaiian diet. Image: Bernice Pauahi as part of a sophisticated trade network of goods and cultural Bishop Museum. items, such as poi pounders and mother-of-pearl items made from shells (Native Voices, "AD 400: Marquesan Islanders sail north to Hawai‘i").

650-1400 Communal farming feeds ancient urban citydwellers

Cahokia (AD 600-1400), one of the largest cities built by the ancient Cahokian civilization, was located just five miles east of what is now St. Louis. Like other mound builders, Cahokians planted family farms within the city to supply its urban dwellers with corn, squash, and sunflowers, among other foods and medicines. Cahokia’s neighborhoods included houses, large plazas, public buildings, and more than 100 monumental earthen mounds. Suburban towns radiated outward 50 miles in every direction from the city (Pauketat, 2009). Remains of a mound at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, a few miles west of Collinsville, Illinois. Image: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

1400 Tahitians control trade routes

Utilizing sophisticated navigational techniques based on astronomy and mathematics, Tahitians sail double-hulled canoes and establish oceanic trade routes between Hawai’i and Tahiti (Native Voices, "AD 1400: Tahitians control trade routes").

John Webber, an artist aboard British Navigator James Cook's ship, represents Hawaiians sailing a double-hulled canoe. Image: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum Epidemics, Slavery, Massacres, and Indigenous

Resistance 1492-1599

Overview

Christopher Columbus makes four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean from 1492 to 1502. Spain is focused on establishing dominance and subjugation across the southern portion of North America, particularly on the lands now known as Mexico (Cortes); Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (de Soto); and Arizona and New Mexico (Coronado) (Nies, 1996). Conquistadores wreak violence and havoc. An estimated 90 percent of the populations they encounter are exterminated due to introduction of foreign diseases, such as smallpox, measles, chicken pox, and plague, to which Native peoples had no immunity. Millions die, death and disease in numbers that fail to capture the social upheaval and devastation. The Spanish stretch their colonial reach from the Caribbean to California. By the end of the century, France establishes colonial outposts in Canada, into the Mississippi Valley, and along the Carolina coast. By 1588, after the Netherlands and England defeated the Spanish Armada, they begin to identify potential colonies in New England (English) and in New Amsterdam (Dutch) (Nies, 1996). By the end of the 1500s, the Mississippian chiefdoms and ancient Moundbuilder cities and their descendants, the Timucua, Calusa, Coosa, Mobila, Natchez, and Caddo, are facing annihilation. Remnants are absorbed into the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and other southeastern Mississippian descendant peoples. European colonizers always “settle” and establish their colonies on dispossessed Native lands that are already developed for agriculture and yielding crops (Nies, 1996). They traverse already developed Indian highways and utilize technologies and tools captured from Native communities. “Without Indian villages, it’s entirely possible there could have been no successful European settlements” (Nies, 1996, p. 73).

1492 Columbus makes landfall

Columbus makes landfall on Guanahani (Caribbean name; Columbus names it San Salvador) in the Caribbean Islands and Bahamas in search of gold and slaves. In his letter to the Queen and King of Spain he reports: “The inhabitants … are destitute of arms, which are entirely unknown to them … they are very guileless and honest, and very liberal of all they have. No one refuses the asker anything that he possesses; on the contrary they themselves invite us to ask for it. They manifest the greatest affection towards all of us, exchanging valuable things for trifles, content with the very least thing or nothing at all … in order to win their affection, and that they might become Christians and inclined to love our King and Queen and Princes and all the people of Spain; and that they might be eager to search for and gather and give to us what they abound in and we greatly need” (Columbus, n.d.). On October 12, 1492, Columbus writes in his journal: “They should be good servants … I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses" (Bourne, 1906). Columbus writes in his journal (October 14, 1492): “with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." Columbus’ next voyage to the Americas would be focused on capturing Native people for the slave trade (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).

Traumatic Event

Settler Colonial Policy 1493 Spanish colonizers enslave the Taino

In Haiti and the Dominican Republic (which they name Hispaniola), Spanish colonists force Taino people into slave labor, mutilate them, or kill them. Columbus loads his ship with enslaved Taino people. In less than four decades, slavery and disease outbreaks contribute to the near-annihilation of Taino people on Hispaniola (Native Voices, "AD 1493: Spanish settlers enslave the Taíno of Hispaniola").

Columbus landing on Hispaniola, greeted by Arawak Indians. Image: Theodor de Bry

Traumatic Event

1493+ Disease decimates island populations

Post-Columbus contact, measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and other diseases kill Natives by the hundreds of thousands in the Caribbean, as they have no immunization. In Puerto Rico alone, it is estimated that tens of thousands die.

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1493 Spanish monarchy supports Columbus’ second voyage for gold and slaves

Queen Isabella and the King of Spain agree to supply Columbus with 17 ships, 1,200 colonists, 300 soldiers, and 34 horses for a second expedition to the New World in search of gold and slaves (Nies, 1996).

Map of the second voyage of Cristopher Columbus. Image: Keith Pickering

Traumatic Event

Settler Colonial Policy 1493 Doctrine of Discovery provides rationale for colonization

On May 4, Pope Alexander VI of the Roman Catholic Church issues “Inter Caetera,” a public decree stating that any land inhabited by people who are not Christians can be “discovered” and then claimed by Christian rulers who have the authority to overthrow “barbarous nations” and forcibly bring tribal nations “to the faith itself.” The decree not only provides the rationale for Spanish rule over lands “discovered” by Columbus the previous year but ultimately provides the pretext for stealing Native lands and mandating Christian conversion by European colonizers and, later, Pope Alexander VI, 15th century. Image: Anonymous via American colonizers. With this decree, the Pope authorizes Spain and Portugal to seize land, colonize, and convert and enslave Indigenous populations.

Settler Colonial Policy

1495 Columbus enslaves the Arawak and commits genocide

Columbus and his men round up Arawak men, women, and children and enclose 550 of them in pens and four caravels bound for the slave market of southern Spain during his second voyage to the New World. Approximately 200 perish during the passage, and their bodies are cast into the sea. After the survivors are sold as slaves in Spain, Columbus later writes: “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (Resendez, 2016). Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. Las Casas's "Brevisima relación de la If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands destrucción de las Indias." Image: Flemish artists Joos vanWinghe and Theodor de Bry cut off and tortures them. Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest, witnessed many atrocities committed by Spaniards against Native peoples. He later wrote: “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” Las Casas describes the treatment of Natives thus: “Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). Las Casas also notes that the Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.”

Traumatic Event 1500 Spanish Monarchy issue a royal decree to make Indians of the New World “vassals of the Crown.”

Wedding portrait of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. Image: GEO Epoche. Als Spanien die Welt beherrschte

Settler Colonial Policy

1500+ Arawak resistance and mass suicides

Facing extermination, the Arawak organize and attempt to fight back against the Spaniards. Overwhelmed by Spanish military, the Arawak when captured are burned at the stake or hanged. Arawak begin committing mass suicides to avoid capture and subjugation, feeding cassava poison to their infants. In just two years, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti are dead through murder, mutilation, or suicide. By 1550, there are only 500 documented Arawak and by 1650, with the possible exception of a few remnant Arawak in the mountains, most have been annihilated (Zinn, 1950). Image: Theodor de Bry

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1500+ Native slave trade specifically targets women and children

In contrast to the African slave trade, which consisted mostly of adult males, Indian enslavement under the Spanish as well as the English consisted primarily of women and children. “If we were to add up all the Indian slaves taken in the New World from the time of Columbus to the end of the nineteenth century, the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million Native slaves” (Resendez, 2016, p. 5).

Traumatic Event 1500-1501 Inuit of Greenland are kidnapped for the Lisbon slave market

Portuguese invader Gaspar Corte-Real abducts 50 Inuit of the northeast Atlantic Coast and takes them to Lisbon (Nies, 1996). He also captures two shiploads of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and other peoples from what is now known as Newfoundland and New England and sells them into slavery. Like Gaspar Corte-Real, many other Spanish, Portuguese, and, later, English slave traders rush to make a profit in the slave market trade network throughout the West Indies, the Caribbean, and, later, the triangular trade routes (Gallay, 2015). “If we were to add up all the Indian slaves taken in the New World from the time of Columbus to the end of the nineteenth century, the figure would run somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million Native slaves” (Resendez, 2016, p. 5).

Traumatic Event

1500-1542 Encomienda system of communal slavery and rise of Mestizo

Under Spain during this period, more than 2,500 Natives are shipped to the Iberian Peninsula as slaves. By the mid-1550s, Queen Isabella officially declares Indian slavery illegal, but it continues in Spanish colonies via the encomienda system, a communal slavery system. The Spanish Crown provides a grant (encomienda) to a Spanish colonizer (encomendero) stipulating access to Natives, who are expected to provide labor and tributes to the encomenderos. Encomenderos are also mandated through these grants to convert Natives to Christianity and endorse Spanish as their primary language. Native peoples are forced to engage in hard labor and subjected to torture, extreme abuse, and, in some cases, death if they resist (Nies, 1996). The encomienda system, because it was tied to indigeneity, helps facilitate intermarriage of Indigenous people with non-Indigenous spouses (e.g., Spaniards or Creoles) and sets the stage for the rise of the mestizaje caste system by the 1700s. Mixed-blood offspring cannot, by law, be subject to the encomienda communal slave system because they are mixed and no longer “Native.” Thus, the encomienda system lays the foundation for the uptake of a Mestizo identity and population and the relinquishment and renunciation of Indigenous Hernan Cortes, encomendero of New Spain identities (Nies, 1996).

Settler Colonial Policy

1501-1503 English fishermen launch a slave trade business Off the cost of Maine, English fishermen abduct Abenaki and Passamaquoddy Indians for slave markets. As a result, the Abenaki will only trade with Europeans from boats off shore (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

1508-1511 Genocide in the West Indies

The Caribbean population of the Lesser Antilles is mostly exterminated (Nies, 1996).

Map of the Caribbean with the Lesser Antilles highlighted in green. Image: Uniongreen113

Traumatic Event

1512-1513 Spain issues requerimiento and Laws of Burgos, demanding subjugation

The Laws of Burgos are the first legal code in the Americas, directing Spaniards to read aloud a religious justification and demand for obedience from the Native populations, known as El Requerimiento. The law gives Native peoples a chance to submit before being attacked or enslaved, but this is an impossible task since Natives do not speak Spanish. Thus, the Spaniards continue to enslave and seize Indigenous lands. “Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the ruler and superior of the whole world. But if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him: and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to you and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this Requisition” (Rubios, 1513).

Settler Colonial Policy 1513 Calusa of Florida drive Ponce de Leon away

Ponce de Leon accompanies Columbus on his second voyage and by the time they arrive in Florida, Calusa tribal people and other southeastern Native communities have spread the word and alerted other communities of the brutality of the Spaniards. When Ponce de Leon arrives in the bay off the coast of the Calusa territory, over 80 war canoes drive him off (Nies, 1996).

Juan Ponce de Leon

Native Resistance

1519+ "Virgin-soil" epidemics devastate and depopulate Native communities

European-induced epidemics ravage Native tribes in Florida, the Carolinas, and Virginia, including smallpox, bubonic plague, typhus, mumps, influenza, yellow fever, and measles (Dobyns, 1983; Merrell, 1984). Epidemics force many Native tribes to combine and amalgamate to survive. Estimates of Native population decline due to epidemics and contact range from between 1 and 18 million before European contact (c. 1500) to an estimated 530,000 by 1900. In the Caribbean Basin, along the Gulf Coast, and across northern Mexico and the American Southwest, it is estimated that Native populations were reduced by 70-90 percent through a combination of warfare, famine, epidemics, and slavery.

Traumatic Event

1520 Guarocuya leads 14-year Arawak rebellion and resistance

On Hispaniola, Guarocuya, an Arawak resistance fighter, is eventually granted land by the Spanish without having to pay Spanish tribute (Nies, 1996).

Native Resistance 1521 Calusa chief outwits and kills Ponce de Leon

A Calusa chief tricks Ponce de Leon into building a settlement, only to attack it with a huge force of Calusa warriors. Ponce de Leon is shot with a poison arrow and retreats to Cuba, where he dies of his injury (Nies, 1996).

Map of Calusa. Image: Heironymous Rowe

Native Resistance

1522 Native slave rebellion in Hispaniola

A large-scale Native slave rebellion takes place against Spaniards.

Native Resistance

1528 Timucua of Florida drive Spanish invaders away

The Timucua drive off 400 Spanish settlers who attempt to land in Tampa Bay to start a new colony. The Timucua send a quarter of the group back to their ships, while the remainder scatter north, only to be attacked by Native populations there as well. At Apalachee Bay, the Spaniards kill their own horses to create hide boats in an unsuccessful effort to reach Mexico (Nies, 1996).

Timucua Indian tribe territory. Image: Bryan Strome

Native Resistance

1531 Yaqui of northern Mexico drive away Spanish slave traders Nuno de Guzman seeks Native slaves in northern Mexico, but the Yaqui attack and drive the slave traders away (Nies, 1996).

Nuno de Guzman. Image: Codex Telleriano Remensis

Native Resistance

1537 Native slaves in Hispaniola organize another rebellion against Spanish slave owners

Native Resistance

1539 Napituca Massacre

De Soto, after defeating Timucuan warriors at the village of Napituca, conducts a mass execution. This is the first large-scale massacre by Europeans on what is now known as U.S. soil (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event 1539 Spain wages war against southeastern Native peoples

The Spanish launch a four-year military campaign under de Soto to secure slaves and maraud gold from large Native settlements, ranging across what is now peninsular Florida to northern Arkansas and eastern Texas. De Soto’s army cuts a path of destruction from Florida to Texas, seizing Timucua slaves, plundering food, and looting burial sites (Nies, 1996).

Engraving of Hernando De Soto. Image: John Sartain

Traumatic Event

1539 De Soto, in quest for slaves and gold, is driven from southeastern tribal lands

Timucua, Appalachia, Coosa, Mobile, Natchez, Tonkawa, Choctaw, and other southeastern tribal groups fight de Soto’s invasion. Spain had given de Soto license to “conquer, pacify, and people” the lands known as La Florida (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). Once he reaches the Mobiles in Alabama, the Choctaw and Mobile conspire to drive him out and force the Spaniards to retreat, with de Soto injured.

Hernando de Soto in Florida, 16th century. Image: Theodor de Bry

Native Resistance

1540 Mississippian woman chief of Cofitachequi outwits de Soto While de Soto is among the Apalachee Indians in Florida, he hears of a kingdom called Cofitachequi near Columbia, South Carolina. When he reaches the village, he is met by a woman who his chroniclers call the “Lady of Cofitachequi.” She greets him with gifts of pearls. He captures her and loots her tribe of pearls and holds her hostage for several weeks as ransom to ward off retaliatory attacks. She eventually escapes and takes with her the pearls from the looted stash.

Lady of Cofitachequi gives De Soto the town's "treasure." Image: Library of Congress

Native Resistance

1540 Mabila Massacre

When de Soto arrives at Atahachi’s village plaza, he is greeted by Choctaw Chief Tuscaloosa (Black Warrior), who allows himself to be taken prisoner, saying that the things de Soto wants are in the town of Mabila. De Soto takes Tuscaloosa and enslaved women from the village to Mabila. As planned, Choctaw and Mabila warriors enter the fortified area and launch an attack. The Spaniards flee the palisade and encircle the town, launching a two- day counterattack, which ends in the burning down of the palisade and town. Historians note that more than 2,500 Choctaw and Mabila are killed (some estimate up to 7,500). De Soto suffers non- fatal injuries and he and his men retreat for a month to recover from the battle. (https://www.alabamanewscenter.com/2016/11/08/bloody-alabama- battle-1540-changed-south)

Chief Tuskaloosa. Image: Herb Roe

Traumatic Event

1541-1542 Tiguex Massacres (New Mexico) Spaniards seize the land, houses, food, and clothing of the Tiguex villagers and rape their women. The Tiguex fight back but are overwhelmed by the Spanish military. The Spanish burn at the stake the 50 Tiguex who surrender, and murder 200 fleeing warriors of the Moho Pueblo (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1542 De Soto dies/is killed?

Textbooks note that de Soto suddenly becomes ill and dies. However, Choctaw and Chickasaw tribal oral stories note that when de Soto returned near their territories, they sought him out and killed him and 12 of his men. According to oral history, the heads of de Soto and another captain were kept by the tribe, and the rest were placed on poles near villages as a warning to other Spanish conquistadores.

Native Resistance

1564 Disease nearly annihilates the Timucua

An unidentified disease sweeps through the barrier islands, Georgia, and Florida, nearly annihilating the Timucua. Spaniards abduct and enslave the few hundred survivors, sending them to Cuba and Mexico (Nies, 1996).

Sketch of Timucua village. Image: Theodor de Bry

Traumatic Event

1566 Calusa refuse forced conversion to Christianity (southwest Florida)

Already weakened by disease, the Calusa allow a Jesuit missionary into their territory but refuse conversion. In response, Spain orders and succeeds in beheading the Calusa chief and 20 of his warriors. The Calusa are outraged by this and burn down the fort that the Spanish had established in their territory (Nies, 1966).

Traumatic Event Native Resistance

1590 Spain establishes colony at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo

Spanish forces under colonial governor Juan de Onate march north from Mexico. The Apaches and Puebloans drive them back, but the Spaniards establish a colony near modern-day Santa Fe, New Mexico (Native Voices, "AD 1590: Spain attacks pueblos; establishes colony at Ohkay Owingeh").

Equestrian Statue of Juan De Onate. Image: Advanced Source Productions

Traumatic Event

1597 Guale Indians rebel (Georgia)

The Guale off of the Georgia coast rebel against the Spanish mission and encomienda system.

Guale Indian greets early settler. Image: National Park Service

Native Resistance

1599 Acoma Pueblo Massacre

New Mexico governor Juan de Onate is determined to consolidate his rule in New Mexico and subjugate all of the Pueblo. Onate sends Juan de Zaldivar to Acoma, which ends in a siege and a massacre of 800 Acoma Pueblo Indians, including 300 Pueblo elders, women, and children. Two Hopi men have their right hands cut off and are sent to the Hopi mesas as a warning. All Native women between the ages of 12 and 25 became indentured slaves atAcoma, New Mexico. Image: C.B. Graham the Spanish capital of San Juan. All males over the age of 14 are mutilated in the plazas of other pueblos and all males over the age of 12 have one foot chopped off (Nies, 1996). King Philip III of Spain later punishes Onate for his excessively brutal regime (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).

Traumatic Event Invasion from All Directions—Stolen Lands, Stolen

Peoples 1600-1699

Overview

The Spanish invade the southeastern tribal nations from the south, through Florida and into Mexico and move into the American Southwest by 1540, colonizing Pueblos and establishing a regional capital at Santa Fe in 1609. The French invade from the north, moving through Canada along the St. Lawrence River down into the Mississippi River. The French settlement of Quebec is founded on an ancient Haudenosaunee village site in 1608 (Nies, 1996). During the 1600s, France sends French fur and pelt traders down the Mississippi River and establishes trading posts to claim all lands on either side of the river as Louisiana. On the Atlantic coast, the English invade Virginia and Massachusetts and the Dutch invade Manhattan (1626) and travel up the Hudson River, establishing the colony of Albany. Despite the onslaught of historical traumas during this era, tribes maintain their sovereignty and nationhood while navigating the onslaught of competing foreign interests. They maintain treaty- making powers and ally with foreign powers against other tribal nations to establish their own territorial dominance, managing their territories through treaty negotiations.

1600+ International American Indian slave trade in 13 colonies ignites

Demand for labor in the West Indies grows with the cultivation of sugar cane. Europeans enslave and export Native Americans to the “sugar islands.” British settlers, especially those in the southern colonies, purchase or capture Native Americans to use as forced labor in cultivating tobacco, rice, and indigo (Gallay, 2002). The international trade of American Indian slaves leads to depopulation and decimation for some and near-total annihilation for others (Hixson, 2013). Spaniards enslave Native Americans. Image: Theodor de Bry

Traumatic Event

1600 Juan de Onate colonizes Pueblos (New Mexico)

The pueblos are occupied and forced into the Spanish encomienda system, where the labor of Indigenous people is awarded to conquerors.

Traumatic Event

1600 Spanish target Apaches, Dine', Utes for slave trade

The Spanish kidnap and sell Apaches, Dine’ (Navajos), and Utes into slavery. Spanish governors also sell and kidnap Apaches and Dine’ to silver mining camps. Spanish rulers in the colonies develop an active slave trade by abducting Dine’ and other Indigenous women and children through the early 1900s (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

1601 Tompiro Pueblo Massacre (New Mexico)

Spanish troops destroy three Indian villages and 900 Tompiro Pueblo people in the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico (Riley, 1995).

Sandia Mountains. Image: G. Thomas

Traumatic Event

1607 Colony of Virginia is established

The Virginia Colony is established under the corporate charter of the Virginia Company of London (London Company), a joint-stock company chartered by King James I of Great Britain and led by John Smith, John Rolfe, and other British colonists. Corporations are empowered by the Crown to govern themselves and confer that right to their colonies. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p264.html)

John Smith map of Virginia. Image: Travel Encyclopedia

Settler Colonial Policy

1607 Powhatan assist English settlers in Jamestown during their first winter Chief Wahunsonacock (Powhatan) of the Powhatan confederacy, and his people, bring gifts of fish, wild game, and corn to the starving settlers (Hixson, 2013).

Chesapeake Bay area and Indian place names, with inset of Chief Powhatan; created by John Smith. Image: Granger Collection.

1608 Jamestown settlers demand from Powhatan annual tribute of corn

John Smith orders the Powhatan to submit to the English Crown and provide settlers with an annual tribute of corn. John Smith forcefully takes corn from villages, and Powhatan orders him to be captured (Hixson, 2013).

John Smith. Image: Houghton Library

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1609 Jamestown settlers drive Powhatan off their lands and enslave them War breaks out between the Powhatan and the Virginia colonists as they steal land, pillage graves, occupy Native villages, and enslave Natives (Everett, 2009).

Powhatan. Image: Virtual Jamestown

Traumatic Event

1609+ Spanish Crown uses slave labor to develop missions

The Spanish monarchy use slave labor and forced conversion to Christianity in their development of Spanish missions in the southwest. Slave markets include Indigenous women and children (Resendez, 2016).

Traumatic Event

1610 Paspahegh Massacre

Paspahegh Massacre. Virginia’s Lord De la Warr sends 70 colonists to attack the Paspahegh Indians living in their village near Jamestown, killing between 16 and 65 people. The wife and children of the village chief are captured, tortured, and executed (“List of Indian massacres”). Paspahegh historical marker. Image: Department of Historic Resources

Traumatic Event

1613 English kidnap Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Wahunsonacock

They offer to ransom her for all the English prisoners held by the Powhatan. The Powhatan release their prisoners, but the English keep Pocahontas and take her to England. While captive, she is Christianized, given the name Rebeca, and married to her captor, John Rolfe (Nies, 1996). She dies traveling home to Virginia in 1617. Her child remains in England.

Pocahontas. Image: Simon van de Passe

Traumatic Event

1614-1621 Pilgrims rob graves and pillage villages

The Pilgrims had learned that Native people bury their dead with stores of corn and beans. After their arrival, the Pilgrims desecrate Native graves and take the seeds. Seeing this, the Wampanoag attack the Pilgrims but retreat upon the sound of gunfire. (https://lenapeprograms.info/celebrate-november/thanksgiving-pov)

Traumatic Event

1614 Slave ships and plague epidemic

Captain Thomas Hunt captures 20 Patuxets and 7 Nausets, selling them as slaves to Spain. Captain Hunt's expedition brings the plague, destroying the Pawtuxet. An estimated 72,000 to 90,000 Malaga, 40 years before Squanto was people lived in southern New England before contact with delivered there in slavery. Image: Georg Europeans. Braun, Frans Hogenberg

Traumatic Event

1614 Tisquantum (Squanto), a Patuxet Indian, is kidnapped and enslaved

Squanto is 1 of 24 Indians kidnapped by the English and taken to Spain for the slave market. Ransomed by monks in Spain, Squanto escapes to England, where he works for a wealthy merchant who teaches him English and arranges for Squanto’s return to his home (Nies, 1996).

Squanto or Tisquantum teaching the Plymouth colonists to plant corn with fish. Image: Garland Armor Bricker

Traumatic Event

1616-1619 Yellow fever and smallpox (New England)

Yellow fever kills two-thirds of the Wampanoag and smallpox ravages other tribes in New England. An estimated 45,000 Wampanoag from Massachusetts to Rhode Island die from yellow fever introduced by European traders and slavers. Two-thirds of the nation perishes (“List of Indian massacres”).

Interview of Samoset with the Pilgrims. Image: Baharris.org

Traumatic Event

1618 Chief Powhatan dies

His death ignites nearly two decades of fighting between Powhatans and English colonists, ending in 1644 with the destruction of the Powhatan Confederacy.

1619 Jamestown colonists start Indian school

English colonists start a school to convert Indian children to Christianity (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

1622-1646 Powhatan rebel against Virginia colonists

The Powhatan Confederacy and allied Indians burn the Jamestown settlement to the ground in what is remembered by the English as the First Virginia War. Opechancanough, leader of the Pamunkey, and his chiefs declare it time to resist colonial invasion of their lands and kill 347 colonists, one-third of the colony; others are pushed off the lands. The Powhatan Chiefdom fights two wars with English colonists in Virginia, the first in 1622-23 and the second in 1644-46. Both end in treaties between the Indians and the English. Treaties typically are violated, and Virginia’s Native people are Coronation of Powhatan. Image: John eventually forced from their homelands by thousands of English Gadsby Chapman newcomers.

Native Resistance

1622 Royal British Virginia Company orders extermination of all Powhatan The Royal British Virginia Company orders all colonists to exterminate all Powhatan and prohibit any peacemaking with them. The Chickahominy people are nearly exterminated during this time.

Approximate boundaries and tribes of the Powhatan in the early 1600s

Traumatic Event

1622 Powhatan resistance as justification for genocide

John Smith notes that the uprising provides a great rationale for complete extermination of Native peoples. Smith states that the war “will be good for the Plantation, because we have just cause to destroy them by all means possible” (Nies, 1996, p. 130). When John Smith first arrived, there had been an estimated 30,000 Powhatan and allied Indians; by 1669, the population is decimated and only 2,000 remain.

Approximate boundaries and tribes of the Powhatan in the early 1600s

Settler Colonial Policy

1623 Wessagusset Massacre (Massachusetts).

Under false peaceful pretenses, several chiefs and villagers are invited to Wessagusset to meet with colonists and are executed (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1623 Pamunkey Peace Talk Massacre

At the Pamunkey “Peace Talks,” Virginia colonists secretly poison wine, which kills Powhatan leaders and 200 Pamunkey people. Additionally, 50 Pamunkey are physically murdered (“List of Indian massacres”).

John Smith taking the King of Pamunkey prisoner. Image: Robert Vaughan

Traumatic Event

1624 Dutch West India Company establishes colony of New Amsterdam (New York)

The Dutch West India Company establishes New Amsterdam, at first for fur/pelt trade and later as a major slave port to the New World. In 1664 the English take over New Amsterdam and rename it New York.

Earliest known plan of New Amsterdam. Image: New York Public Library

Settler Colonial Policy

1626 Kalinago genocide of Carib Indians

English and French settlers invite Carib Indians to a gathering, where they serve alcohol and intoxicate the Carib population. After they return to their village, colonists sneak into the village and murder 120 Caribs in their sleep, including their chief, Tegremond. The following day, nearly 4,000 Caribs are rounded up and forced into an area known as Bloody Point and Bloody River, where they are massacred. During the Carib resistance, 100 settlers are killed, and the remaining Carib flee. By 1640, those not already enslaved are moved to Dominica for the slave trade (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1627 Carib slaves brought to Jamestown

As part of triangle trade slave labor, the English import Carib Indigenous slaves into Jamestown due to loss and death of Powhatans. Escaped Carib slaves seek refuge among Powhatan communities (Resendez, 2016).

Triangle trade. Image: SimonP

Traumatic Event

1628 Massachusetts Bay Colony is established

In 1627, the Council for New England issues a land grant to a new group of investors, including a few from the Dorchester Company, to establish a for-profit enterprise, “The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay.” The Massachusetts Bay Colony becomes the first English chartered colony whose board of governors does not reside in England, thus paving the way for permanent settlement.

Massachusetts Bay Colony. Image: Encyclopedia Britannica

Settler Colonial Policy

1630 Puritans invade and displace Wampanoag (Massachusetts)

English Puritans arrive by the thousands and invade the area now known as Massachusetts, displacing Wampanoag and other Indigenous populations.

Wampanoag. Image: Nikater

Traumatic Event

1632 English colonists violate truce (Virginia)

Although a truce is reached between Pamunkey and Chickahominy Indians in Virginia and English colonists, slave raids on Native communities continue, as do land grabs (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

1633 Maryland Colony established

In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, driven by “the sacred duty of finding a refuge for his Roman Catholic brethren” (https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01-2.html), applies to Charles I for a royal charter to establish a colony south of Virginia. Despite the Christian refuge angle, Calvert sees this as an opportunity, through the tobacco trade, to recoup losses he acquired through his earlier colonial ventures. Original boundaries of Maryland. Image: (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ma01.asp) U.S. History Images

Settler Colonial Policy

1633 Zuni revolt against the Spanish

Zuni revolt against Spanish slavery and mission system, killing all of the Spanish soldiers and half of the Spanish missionaries. (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=526)

Native Resistance 1633-1635 Jesuit missionaries give Huron smallpox blankets

French Jesuit missionaries tell the Huron that if they are baptized and convert to Christianity they will be spared the disease. Among those who refuse, they provide smallpox-laden blankets (Nies, 1996). More than 10,000 Huron Indians die from smallpox.

Traumatic Event

1636 Mystic Massacre of the Pequot

John Mason and Captain John Underhill of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Militia launch a genocidal night attack on May 26, along with Mohegan and Narragansett allies. They attack a large Pequot village on the Mystic River, where over 700 men, women, and children of the Pequot Tribe are gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival. In the predawn hours they are surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries, who order them to come outside, where they are shot or clubbed to death. Those huddled inside the longhouse, mostly women and children, are burned alive. Troops use dogs to hunt down survivors to carry out tortures and executions or send into slavery (Hixson, 2013). The day after the massacre, the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony declares “a day of Thanksgiving, thanking God that they had eliminated over 700 men, women, and children” (Oxendine, 2019; Bradford, 1654).

Traumatic Event

1636 Providence Plantations established (Rhode Island)

Persecuted groups, such as Quakers and Jews, settle in the area. Progressive for its time, the colony passes laws abolishing witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt, most forms of capital punishment, and, in 1652, chattel slavery (Bicknell, 1920). In 1663, King Charles II grants a Royal Charter, uniting four settlements into the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Settler Colonial Policy

1636 Connecticut Colony established Governor John Haynes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony leads 100 people to Hartford in 1636. He and Puritan minister Thomas Hooker are primary founders of the Connecticut Colony.

Connecticut Colony: Coat of Arms of Connecticut. Image: U.S. History Images

Settler Colonial Policy

1636-1637 Pequot War and Pequot enslavement

As Puritan colonists expand beyond territorial boundaries, tensions mount between tribes and Puritan settlements. Governor John Winthrop declares that since the “Indians had not subdued the land” then all uncultivated land are public domain according to English Common Law and thus ripe for the taking. Puritans biblically defend the forced taking of land from tribes, and even murder, with Psalm 2:8: “Ask of me and I shall give thee the heather for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Oxendine, 2019). Miles Standish beheads 1637 battle between English settlers and Native leader Wituwamat and displays the head on a wooded post Pequots near the Mystic River. Image: in the Plymouth Town Square (Oxendine, 2019). Native Library of Congress communities resist such attacks and loss of land. Thus, the Pequot War refers to a series of armed conflicts between colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies, the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes, against the Pequot. During this period, Puritans “embarked on an unprovoked war of annihilation against the Pequot” (Hixson, 2013), which eventually leads to the decimation and enslavement of Pequot by Puritan colonizers almost immediately after the founding of Connecticut as a colony. Most enslaved Pequot are noncombatant women and children, with court records indicating that most serve as chattel slaves for life (Hixson, 2013). Women and children over 14 are sold into slavery while the rest are murdered. Boats loaded with as many as 500 slaves regularly leave the ports of New England filled with Pequots. Bounties are paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1637 “Thanksgiving Day” Massacres

On June 5, Captain Mason attacks a Pequot village near present- day Stonington and massacres the community. Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announce a second day of “thanksgiving” to celebrate victory. Reportedly, during the feasting, the hacked-off heads of Natives are kicked through the streets like soccer balls. On July 28, a third attack and massacre occur near present-day Fairfield and the Pequot “War” comes to an Mystic Massacre. Image: MoonWaterMan end. The day after the massacre, William Bradford, the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, writes that from that day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequot and “For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.” This event marks the first actual Thanksgiving. During this period of history, the Puritans and other English colonists generally declared a day of thanksgiving to celebrate the successful massacre of Native communities and to honor “victories” ordained by God rather than celebrating successful harvests (Oxendine, 2019; Native Voices, "AD 1637: English settlers burn Pequot village").

Traumatic Event

1638 Puritans force Quinnipiac onto the first reservation

The first reservation within the borders of the current U.S. is established by Puritans near New Haven, Connecticut. They force the Quinnipiac onto the reservation and forbid them from leaving and from traditional ceremonial practices. Puritans use Quinnipiac lands for their own settlements (Native Voices, "AD 1638: Puritans force Quinnipiac onto the first reservation").

New Haven, the first reservation, on a map. Image: Kmusser

Traumatic Event

1638 Captain “Indian Killer” John Underhill writes about Pequot Massacres John Underhill’s Newes from America is the most complete contemporary published account of the Pequot War of 1636-1637. “It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious (as some have said) should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David’s war, when a people is grown to such a height of blood, and sin against God and man, and all confederates in the action, there he hath no respect to persons, but harrows them, and saws them, and puts them to the sword, and the most terriblest death that may be: sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents; some time the case alters: but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings….” (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/37/)

Title page from Newes from America. Image: John Underhill, Houghton Library

Traumatic Event

1640 Massacre of Raritan (Staten Island)

Eighty-eight Dutch soldiers under Cornelis van Tienhoven attack a village of Raritan on Staten Island over stolen pigs. Van Tienhoven intends only to demand payment, but his men want to massacre the Indians and he eventually consents.

Traumatic Event

1641 Laws support scalping and raping and enslaving Native women The Dutch governor of Manhattan, Willem Kieft, offers the first bounty in North America for Indian scalps in 1641, just 21 years after the Puritans land at Plymouth Rock. The Massachusetts Bay Colony offers a bounty of $60 per Indian scalp and money for every Native prisoner sold into slavery. The governors of the colonies institute scalping as a method for one Indian tribe to eliminate another tribe, and to have colonists eliminate as many Indians as possible. Colonial men are allowed to rape and enslave any Native woman or child. Moreover, colonial law gives permission to “kill savage Indians on sight at will” (Oxendine, 2019). In an article for “The American Historical Review” in 2015, Benjamin Madley writes, “Policymakers offered bounties for Native American heads or scalps in at least twenty-three states of their colonial, territorial, or Mexican antecedents.” (https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/scalping-in-amer ica-AvU3W-1ae0W3AjR4BHCvEg) Portrait of William Kieft

Settler Colonial Policy

1643 Campaign to exterminate Natives in New Amsterdam (Manhattan)

Governor Kieft and the West India Company military support extermination of Indians as a way to address the small-scale cycle of colonist-Indian murder and revenge. The Council of Eight Men of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and John Winthrop are not comfortable with the idea and ask Kieft to do it himself, assuming full responsibility for such slaughter. Kieft requests 25,000 guilders and enlists John Underhill, already known as a skilled Indian killer, for the job (Wolfe, 2012). “What was most wonderful is, that among the vast collection of men, women, and children, not one was heard Flag of the Dutch West India Company. to cry or scream. According to the report of the Indians Image: Fentener van Vlissingen themselves, the number then destroyed exceeding five hundred. Some say, full 700, among whom were also 25 Wappingers, our God having collected together there the greater number of our enemies, to celebrate one of their festivals. No more than eight men in all escaped, of whom even three were severely wounded,” said Captain John Underhill (Wolfe, 2012)

Traumatic Event

1643 Stamford Massacre (Connecticut) Kieft enlists Commander John Underhill to massacre a Munsee village of 500 near Stamford, Connecticut, whose inhabitants had gathered for a new moon ceremony. Underhill wipes out the entire village, killing 500-700 Munsee Indians and 25 Lenape. In two years, Underhill and his men massacre an estimated 1,600-2,000 Indians and destroy most of the Native villages on western Long Island. (http://www.montaukwarrior.info/?page_id=277)

Map of Lenape and Munsee tribal areas

Traumatic Event

1643 Massacre of Wappinger Confederacy

Manhattan’s Dutch Governor Kieft orders the massacre of the Wappinger People. Eighty Natives are “massacred and severed heads were kicked around the streets of Manhattan. One native was castrated, skinned, forced to eat his own flesh while colonists watched and laughed” (Oxendine, 2019, p. 5). A witness and critic of the events, David DeVries, wrote of Kieft's brutality: “When [the Indian prisoners] had been kept a long time in the corps de garde, the Director became tired of giving them food any longer and they were delivered to the soldiers to do with as they pleased. The poor Wappinger territory in the center "Wappinges". Image: Nicolaes Visscher unfortunate prisoners were immediately dragged out of the guard house and soon dispatched with knives of from 18 to 20 inches long which Director Kieft had made for his soldiers for such purposes, saying that swords were for use in the huts of the savages, when they went to surprise them; but that these knives were much handier for bowelling them…. The soldiers then cut strips from the other's body, beginning at the calves, up the back, over the shoulders and down to the knees. While this was going on, Governor Kieft, with his comrade Jan de la Montaigne, a Frenchman, (and Fort physician) stood laughing heartily at the fun…. He then ordered him to be taken out of the fort, and the soldiers bringing him … [forcing him to dance] the entire time, threw him down, cut off his genetales, thrust them in his mouth while still alive, and at last placing him on a mill stone cut off his head…. What I tell you is true, for by the same token there stood at the same time 24 or 25 female savages who had been taken prisoner … when they saw this bloody spectacle they held up their arms, struck their mouth, and, in their language exclaimed: “For shame! For shame! Such unheard of cruelty was never known, or even thought among us!” (Wolfe, 2012). Traumatic Event

1643 Pavonia Massacre of Lenape (New Jersey)

Hundreds of Lenape flee Mahican invaders and seek refuge in New Amsterdam. Kieft refuses and then leads a raiding party to slaughter over a hundred unarmed Lenape men, women, children, and elders in the settlement of Pavonia. The Dutch local citizen advisory group had been against the raid and were horrified when they heard the details of the massacre. (https://janos.nyc/2015/02/25/today-in-nyc-history-massacre-of-lenape-triggers-war-that-almost-ruins- new-amsterdam)

Traumatic Event

1644 Hempstead torture and massacre

Seven Natives are alleged to have killed pigs; it later is discovered that a colonist had killed them. Kieft sends John Underhill and soldiers to Hempstead in response. Three of the seven are killed and the four remaining Indians are tortured: Kieft orders them into a boat, with two of them being towed by a string around their necks in the water, where they drown. The other two are detained as prisoners at Fort Amsterdam, where they are brutally tortured (Wolfe, 2012).

Traumatic Event

1644 Pound Ridge Massacre of Lenape Indians (New York)

John Underhill, hired by the Dutch, attacks and burns a sleeping village of Lenape (possibly the Siwanoy and Wechquaesgeek bands of the Wappinger Confederacy), killing 500-700 Indians. The killings occur at a winter village of the Indians located in present-day Pound Ridge, in Westchester County, New York. Underhill relentlessly fulfills his bloody reputation as the “scourge of the Indians” and exercises his fundamental Puritan belief that “Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents.” Dutch navigator Captain David Pieterszoon describes Underhill’s slaughter in his journal: “Infants were torn from their mother’s breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents, and pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings, being bound to small boards, were cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to move a heart of stone. Some were thrown into the river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavored to save them, the soldiers would not let them come on land but made both parents and children drown….” (http://www.montaukwarrior.info/?page_id=277)

Traumatic Event 1644 Massapequa Massacre (New York)

John Underhill's men massacre more than 100 Indians near present-day Massapequa. Governor Willem Kieft, who hired Underhill for 25,000 guilders to kill Indians, declares a day of thanksgiving. It is said that Underhill’s men pile the bodies of the dead Indians in a single large mound. Locals claimed that the surrounding ground is stained red for almost 50 years afterward (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1655 Timucua rebellion and destruction

The Timucua rebel against the Spanish in a final resistance movement, after suffering huge losses due to Spanish invasion, slave labor, and disease. A Timucua chief known as Lucas Menendez calls for a rebellion and kills all soldiers and civilians at the San Pedro Mission. The Spaniards retaliate and sell the remaining Timucua survivors into slavery; some escape into other Indigenous communities, becoming part of the Seminoles of Florida (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1661 Indians attack Spanish missions (Georgia)

Spanish missions are abandoned north of the Savannah River.

Native Resistance

1661 Spanish outlaw Pueblo ceremonies and destroy sacred objects

Spanish governor orders a raid of Pueblo kivas across Pueblo villages and burns sacred objects and Kachina masks. Ceremonial dances are prohibited and punishable by death (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event 1661 Slavery in the colonies

By 1661, slavery is legal in nine colonies; eventually it is legal in the 13 colonies that eventually become the United States. Virginia later declares that “Indians, Mulattos, and Negros are to be real estate.” In 1682, New York forbids African or Native American slaves from leaving their master's homes or plantations without permission (Resendez, 2016).

Native Americans enslaved by Spaniards. Image: Theodor de Bry

Settler Colonial Policy

1664 Pueblo Natives are restricted from contact with Apaches

Spanish governors declare that no “foreign” Indians may enter into Pueblos except at designated times.

Settler Colonial Policy

1670+ West Indies slave trade decimates southeastern tribes

Carolina traders operating out of Charles Town export an estimated 30,000 to 51,000 Native American captives between 1670 and 1715 in a well-established slave trade with the Caribbean, Spanish Hispaniola, and northern colonies. “Between 1670 and 1715, more Indians were exported into slavery through Charles Town than Africans were imported” (Gallay, 2002).

Traumatic Event

1675 Great Swamp Massacre (Rhode Island)

Colonial militia and Indian allies attack a Narragansett village near South Kingstown, Rhode Island. At least 40 warriors are killed. An estimated 300 to 1,000 women, children, and elders are burned alive in the village (“List of Indian massacres”).

Great Swamp Fight. Image: Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts

Traumatic Event

1675-1676 Virginia colonists violate peace agreement (Bacon’s Rebellion)

Colonists in western Virginia attack Nanticoke and Susquehannock villages and seize their land, despite a peace agreement.

Burning of Jamestown, Virginia during Bacon's Rebellion. Image: Howard Pyle

Traumatic Event

1675-1676 King Philip’s (Metacomet) War Metacomet (King Philip) and his Indian coalition of Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Mohegan, and Podunk rebel against the illegal colonial land seizure, enslavement of their people, and genocidal attacks on their Peoples. They launch an attack on 52 out of 90 towns in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In response, Puritan ministers encourage their parishioners to “exterminate the savage Canaanites.” New England colonies offer bounties for Native scalps. Colonists respond by slaughtering the Narragansett and imprisoning the Wampanoag, including Christian Indians. The Nipmuck, Mohegan, and Podunk are nearly exterminated. More than 500 Wampanoags are sold into slavery in the West Indies, including Metacomet’s wife and son (Nies, 1996). By June 29, 1676, the Puritans and their governing council determine that to “express thanks for the victories in War with the Heathen Natives” they would from now on declare June 29 as an annual Day of Thanksgiving which is then celebrated in the early colonies for many years to come (Oxendine, 2019).

King Philip, Metacomet. Image: Paul Revere

Native Resistance

Traumatic Event

1676 Metacomet is executed

On August 12, Captain Benjamin Church tracks down Metacomet and kills him. He mutilates his body, mounts his skull on a pole, and sends his hands to Plymouth Plantation, where they are set upon a pole for display on the newly declared Thanksgiving Day (Wolfe, 2012). The Puritans set off to capture Metacomet’s son because “the offspring of the Devil must pay for the sins of their father.” He is eventually captured and sold into slavery, bound for the Caribbean (Oxendine, 2019). (http://www.getmetaz.xyz) Site of King Philip's death. Image: R.I. Historical Society

Traumatic Event

1676 Massacre at Occoneechee Island (Virginia) Virginia colonist Nathaniel Bacon turns on his Occoneechee allies and destroys their village on Occoneechee Island, near present-day Clarksville, Virginia. It is estimated that Bacon's troops kill over 200 men, women, and children (“List of Indian massacres”).

Nathaniel Bacon

Traumatic Event

1676 Turner Falls Massacre (Massachusetts)

Captain William Turner and 150 colonial militia volunteers attack a fishing Indian camp at present-day Turners Falls. At least 100 women and children are killed in the attack (“List of Indian massacres”).

Monument on the Gill, Massachusetts side of the Turners Falls. Image: Denimadept

Traumatic Event

1676 Narragansett Massacre (Rhode Island)

Major Talcott and his colonist militia volunteers massacre a band of Narragansetts on Rhode Island, killing 34 men and 92 women and children (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1680 Public whippings for idolatry

Pope’ and 46 traditional Pueblo leaders are publicly whipped for “idolatry” by the Spanish.

Traumatic Event

1680-1692 Massive, coordinated Pueblo revolt (New Mexico)

Under the leadership of Pope’, Pueblo resistance fighters aim to drive out Spanish colonizers. Runners are sent to more than 90 villages with messages for the time and place of the coordinated rebellion. The revolt begins on August 10, 1680 at Taos pueblo. Twenty-one priests and 400 Spanish are killed; Spanish missionaries are thrown off cliffs. Crosses and rosaries are burned, and the Spanish language outlawed to eliminate all traces of European influence (Nies, 1996). They slaughter European Artist's portrayal of the Pueblo Revolt livestock, cut down fruit trees, and bathe in rivers to wash away the effects of Christian baptism. (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psi d=526)

Native Resistance

1691 Virginia outlaws interracial marriage

English colonists married to Indians, Africans, or anyone of mixed ancestry are banished (Nies, 1996).

Settler Colonial Policy

1692 Spanish re-conquer Pueblo Indians (New Mexico)

Santa Fe is again colonized and restored as the capital of New Mexico.

Traumatic Event 1695 First Pima revolt against the Spanish (Arizona and New Mexico)

Pima Territory in 1700. Image: Barbara Trapido-Lurie

Native Resistance

1697 “Mother” of American tradition of scalp hunting

Allegedly, Hannah Duston, a Massachusetts colonist and Puritan, is taken captive by Abenakis during the Raid on Haverhill, in which 27 colonists are killed. Indians capture Hannah, her nurse, Mary Neff, and a 14-year-old boy named Samuel. While in captivity, Hannah leads Mary and Samuel in a revolt, using a hatchet to scalp 10 of her captors (two adult men, two women, and their six children) while they are sleeping. They escape by canoe. Since wives have no legal status, Hannah's husband, Thomas Duston, petitions the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for a scalp bounty. On June 16, they are awarded 50 pounds for the 10 "Hannah Duston Killing the Indians" (1847) scalps (25 pounds are awarded to Hannah and 25 are split between Image: Junius Brutus Stearns Mary and Samuel). Cotton Mather, who interviews Hannah upon her return, writes of the events in 1702 in "Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of New England." Duston becomes a legend, and her narrative becomes the justification for guilt-free scalping of Native peoples, particularly by local people, for generations to come. She is the first woman memorialized in a statue in what is now the United States. Strategic Alliances and Trail of Broken Treaties 1700-1799

Overview

In the early 1700s, Native communities still maintain their sovereignty and reside in the territories that they had inhabited since time immemorial. With the Spanish, Dutch, English, and French invasions of the 1600s and the Russian invasion of Alaska in the 1700s, Native peoples often have to strategically select alliances. Most tribes focus on allying with international partners according to trading interests and/or driven by protection of Indigenous land interests. Some alliances pit rival tribal nations against one another, or Native warriors become the on-the-ground soldiers for British or French forces (e.g., the French and Indian War). Native communities pay a high cost for international battles fought on Indigenous lands, particularly when they are on the losing end, experiencing enslavement, land dispossession, and land cessions. Moreover, English and American forces actively engage in germ warfare, decimating many Native populations. By the end of the 1700s, the former colonies evolve into the United States of America, with new treaty-making powers with Native nations. The rise of the United States as a central power in North America and the relinquishment of territories by European powers incite White colonial settlers to flood into Native territories, causing major chaos and upheaval. Native nations encounter mounting pressure to remove from their lands in the Great Northwest (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee) or cede lands. Some tribes in the east are reduced by two-thirds, due to slavery, disease, economic deprivation, and missionization; of those that survive, many merge with other tribes for survival. “As the 18th century dawned the slave trade in American Indians was so serious that it eclipsed the trade for furs and skins and had become the primary source of commerce between the English and the South Carolina colonials” (Minges, 2002, p. 454).

1700 Virginia Native peoples succumb to smallpox.

In less than 100 years, by 1700, more than 75 percent of the NativeWoman infected with smallpox. Image: Library and Archives Canada: In peoples of Virginia, including the Powhatan, Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Quarantine: Life and Death on Grosse Ile. and Chickahominy, die from smallpox that was introduced by English settlers at Jamestown. The epidemic sweeps the Atlantic coast and moves inland.

Traumatic Event

1700+ Slave trade is primary economic activity By the early 18th century, the Indian slave trade is the colonies’ primary economic activity, with some 30,000 to 50,000 Indians enslaved (Resendez, 2016).

Native Americans enslaved by Spaniards. Image: Theodor de Bry

Settler Colonial Policy

1704 Apalachee Massacre (Florida)

Former Carolina governor James Moore, his colonial militia, and Apache Arrival in St Augustine. Image: National Park Service: Castillo de San allied Muscogee forces launch a series of attacks on Apalachee Marcos villages in northern Florida. They massacre 1,000 Apalachee and enslave more than 2,000 survivors (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1705 Blood quantum laws support chattel slavery and stealing of lands

The Virginia Colony is the first to adopt “race” (blood quantum) Certified Degree of Indian Blood Card issued to Morris Phillip Konstantin in 1996 laws that limits the civil and land rights of American Indians and shows him to be 3/16ths Cherokee by blood. Africans, based on blood degree: 1/2 Native ancestry = mulatto/not Image: Phil Konstantin Native; 1/8 African ancestry = Black (Forbes, 2010). “Any amount of African ancestry, no matter how remote, and regardless of phenotypical appearance, makes a person Black. For Indians, in stark contrast, any non-Indian ancestry compromises indigeneity, producing ‘half breeds,’ a regime that persists in the form of contemporary blood quantum regulations today. As opposed to enslaved people, whose reproduction augmented their owners’ wealth, Indigenous people obstructed settlers’ access to land, so their increase was counterproductive. In this way, the restrictive racial classification of Indians straightforwardly furthered the logic of elimination” (Wolfe, 2006). This is the origin of the one-drop rule for African ancestry and the 1/2 or more rule for American Indians: If one was one drop African, they could be slave chattel; if they were less than 1/2 Native, their land could be taken, as they were deemed to be not Native and therefore not tied to land rights. Natives identified as mixed were designated “mulatto,” with associated limited civil rights parallel to Africans. Settler Colonial Policy

1708 English enslave 10-12,000 Yamasee Indians

In the Carolinas, English traders kidnap and enslave Yamasee Indians, who have already been missionized, and send them to the West Indies (Resendez, 2016).

Slaves sent to the West Indies. Image: The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Traumatic Event

1711-1715 English traders enslave Indians through fiscal debt

During the period known as the “Tuscarora wars,” the Tuscarora Tuscarora people. Image: Robfergusonjr resist English slave traders, who use fiscal debt as a means of enslaving them. English traders sell goods on credit in the fall, expecting full payment post spring hunting season. If the debt cannot be paid, traders seize the man’s wife and/or children and sell them into slavery in the West Indies (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event

1712 Tuscarora Massacre at Fort Narhantes (North Carolina) The North Carolina militia and their Indian allies attack the Southern Tuscarora at Fort Narhantes on the banks of the Neuse River. More than 300 Tuscarora are massacred and another 100 sold into slavery (“List of Indian massacres”).

Mouth of the "Nuss" river. Image: Francis Lamb

Traumatic Event

1712 Mesquaki (Fox) Indian Massacre (Michigan)

French troops with Indian allies kill around 1,000 Fox Indian men, women, and children in a five-day massacre near the head of the Detroit River.

Kee-shes-wa, A Fox Chief. Image: Charles Bird King, Lithograph by J.T. Bowen

Traumatic Event

1712 Tuscarora Massacre at Fort Neoheroka (South Carolina) Colonel James Moore, his militia volunteers, and Indian allies attack the main stronghold of the Tuscarora Indians at Fort Neoheroka. The Carolina Province colonists burn the village, and an estimated 200 men, women, and children are burned to death, with another 900-1,000 subsequently killed or captured and enslaved (“List of Indian massacres”).

Fort Neoheroka historical marker. Image: Roskerah

Traumatic Event

1715 Yamasee and Muscogee (Creek) resist English slave traders

The Yamasee of Georgia ally with the Muscogee Nation to revolt against British slavers to end the practice of collecting trading debts via slavery. Within a year, the Yamasee are defeated and migrate to Florida to become part of the Seminole nation. Others migrate to Central Georgia and Alabama to join the Muscogee Confederacy (Nies, 1996).

Tomo Chachi Mico or King of Yamacraw, and Tooanahowi his nephew, son to the Mico of the Etchitas. Image: John Verelst, New York Public Library Digital Collections

Native Resistance

Traumatic Event

1722-1725 Massachusetts puts scalping bounty on Native families

The Massachusetts Bay Colony calls for Native scalps during Father Rale’s War (also called the Dummer's War or the Wabanaki-New England War), a series of battles between New England and the Wabanaki Confederacy (Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Abenaki), allies of New France. During this period, Ranger John Lovewell is well known for his scalp-hunting expeditions throughout New Hampshire (O'Toole, 2005).

Settler Colonial Policy

1724 New Hampshire authorizes scalp hunting

The New Hampshire colony pays 100 pounds for each male scalp, 50 pounds for a woman’s scalp, and 25 pounds for a child’s scalp.

Settler Colonial Policy

1724 Abenaki Norridgewock Massacre (Maine)

Two hundred colonial rangers attack the Abenaki village of Norridgewock to kill Father Sebastian Rale, a Wabanaki Confederacy leader, and to destroy the settlement. Eighty Abenakis are killed, including 24 women and children.

Traumatic Event

1724-1729 Natchez revolt against the French on lower Mississippi River

The Natchez resist French attempts to tax and confiscate Natchez lands, leading to a series of rebellions. The French vow extermination and, with allied Choctaws, capture the sacred Chieftain, one of the last major leaders of the Moundbuilder Chiefdoms, as well as 480 Natchez, who are then sold into slavery in the Caribbean (Nies, 1996).

Panorama of the Mississippi Valley. Image: John J. Egan

Native Resistance

Traumatic Event 1725 Peter the Great colonizes Alaska

The emperor of Russia sends Vitus Bering to Alaska’s coast for colonization. The Russians are primarily interested in the abundance of fur-bearing mammals on Alaska's coast after overharvesting around the Bering Sea.

Vitus Bering's expedition is wrecked on the Aleutian Islands in 1741.

Traumatic Event

1730 Chawasha Massacre (Louisiana)

Governor Perrier orders 80 Black slaves to attack the village of the Chawasha (Chaouacha/Chitimacha) Indians. At least seven Indians are killed (“List of Indian massacres”).

Portrait of two Chitimacha Indians. Image: François Bernard

Traumatic Event

1730 French massacre Mesquaki (Fox) Indians

As the Mesquaki migrate eastward seeking refuge among the Seneca, they are attacked by an army of French soldiers and Indian allies. More than 500 are massacred (an estimated 300 women and children) as they try to flee, and another 500 are captured and sold into slavery (Nies, 1996).

Traumatic Event 1737 “Walking Purchase” ends in confiscation of Lenape (Delaware) lands

English colonists “discover” a treaty (never seen or verified) with three Lenape chiefs, ceding lands to William Penn, the area equaling the distance “as far as a man can go in a day and a half.” To identify the boundary, Lenape chiefs and colonists select their best athletes and offer money and land to the one who can travel the greatest distance. Lenape think this refers to walking distance; colonists choose to run (two die from dehydration), and thus the identified territorial boundaries are much farther than the Lenape feel is accurate. Lenape refuse to move (Nies, 1996).

The area acquired by the Penns under the Walking Treaty of 1737. Image: Nikater

Traumatic Event

1740 South Carolina slave codes

The 1740 slave codes of South Carolina serve to blur the distinction between African, American Indian, and interracially mixed child slaves, declaring: “All negroes and Indians, (free Indians in amity with this government, and negroes, mulattoes, and mustezoses, who are now free, excepted) mullatoes and mustezoes who are now, or shall hereafter be in this province, and all their issue and offspring … shall be and they are hereby declared to be, and remain hereafter absolute slaves” (Hurd, 1862, p. 303, as cited in Minges, 2002, p. 455).(https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/lowCountry_furthRdg1.htm)

Settler Colonial Policy

1745 Munsee Massacre at Walden (New York)

British colonists and vigilantes massacre several peaceful Munsee families near Walden, New York (“List of Indian massacres”).

Map of Walden. Image: Wiki Commons Traumatic Event

1745 Russians enslave Unangan (Aleut)

Russian colonizers attack Unangan women and take them and their children hostage, demanding that the men trap animals for the fur trade in exchange for their families’ lives. While the men are hunting, the Russian colonizers rape the hostages; if the men fail to return with furs, their families are executed. On the island of Attu, 15 Unangan women and children are massacred to set an example (Native Voices, "1745: Russians enslave Unangan (Aleut) people").

Unangan in a quajaq (kayak) off the coast of Saint Paul Island, Alaska. Image: Louis Choris

Traumatic Event

1747 Chama River Massacre of Utes (New Mexico)

Spanish troops massacre 111 Ute Indians and take 206 Ute as captives (“List of Indian massacres”).

Map of Rio Chama and a portion of Rio Grande in New Mexico. Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Traumatic Event

1749 Alcohol as tool of genocide Benjamin Franklin writes in his autobiography, “And, indeed, if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast” (Franklin, 1896).

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Image: Joseph Duplessis

Settler Colonial Policy

1756 Canada issues resolution calling for scalping of MicMac Indians

Governor Charles Lawrence’s proclamation says: “And, we do hereby promise, by and with the consent of His Majesty’s Council, a reward of 30 pounds for every live male Indian prisoner, above the age of sixteen years, brought in alive; or for a scalp of such male Indian twenty-five pounds, and twenty-five pounds for every Indian woman or child brought in alive: Such rewards to be paid by the Officer commanding at any of His Majesty’s Forts in this Province, immediately upon receiving the Prisoners or Scalps above mentioned, according to the intent and meaning of this Proclamation.” This proclamation is still on the books; a motion in 2008 to reverse it did not pass. However, the Canadian government says it is not in effect.

Governor of Nova Scotia Charles Lawrence. Image: Nova Scotia Historical Society

Settler Colonial Policy

1759 Russian fur trade expands in Aleutian Islands On Umnak and Unalaska, two islands off southwestern Alaska, the Russian merchant Stepan Glotov begins trading with the Unangan (Aleut) for sea otter and seal pelts that he will sell on the European market. When Glotov brings Russian trade to the islands, there are 24 Unangan villages with a combined population of about 1,000 (Native Voices, "1759: Russian fur trade expands in the Aleutian Islands").

One ruble Russian note, issued by the Russian-American Company for use in North American colonies. Image: Alaska State Museum, Juneau

Traumatic Event

1762 Unangan (Aleut) resist Russian occupation

Unangan (Aleut) resist Russian merchants and merchant Stepan Glotov. A group of armed Unangan men attack and destroy most of the Russian fleet in the Aleutian Islands. The emerging conflict takes the lives of many Russian traders and the Unangan (Native Voices, "1762: The Unangan (Aleut) resist Russian occupation").

Promyshlenniki. Image: V.G. Vagner, Krasnoyarsk Kray Museum

Native Resistance

1763 French and Indian War ends; Britain claims Native lands England and France end the French and Indian War (also called the Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763) with the Treaty of Paris, and France cedes land claims east of the Mississippi to Britain. Subsequently, King George III issues the Indian Proclamation Line of 1763, forbidding colonists from settling west of the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. But English settlers ignore this line, expanding west and inciting conflicts with Native peoples over land in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and other western regions (Native Voices, "1763: Treaty of Paris ends war; Britain claims Native lands"; Native Voices, "1763: Indian Proclamation Line ignored; settlers move west"). Royal Proclamation of 1763. Image: King George III, Library and Archives Canada

Settler Colonial Policy

1763-1766 Ottawa Chief Pontiac’s rebellion

Ottawa Chief Pontiac refuses British seizure of Ottawa lands. He organizes a pan-Indian alliance against British rule in the Lake Erie region. By the end of 1763, only 2 of 13 French forts are under British control.

In a famous council on April 27, 1763, Pontiac urged listeners to rise up against the British. Image: Alfred Bobbett

Native Resistance

1763 Massacre of Susquehannock and last members of the Conestoga Tribe (Pennsylvania)

In response to Pontiac’s rebellion, Pennsylvania colonists led by the Paxton Boys massacre 20 peaceful Susquehannock at Conestoga Town and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Fourteen of the 20 Indians who are murdered had originally been placed in jail for their safety (Nies, 1996). Land is also illegally seized. Benjamin Franklin writes a broadside attacking them, but the killers are not punished. The Paxton Boys succeed in killing the last living members of the Conestoga Tribe. Colonials also kill and scalp Indians in Virginia,

Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, Lithograph of the Paxton massacre at California, New Mexico, and other states. Indians return the favor, Lancaster killing and scalping White people in as many states. (https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/scalping-in-amer ica-AvU3W-1ae0W3AjR4BHCvEg/; (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1763 Germ warfare with smallpox-infested blankets

Militia Captain William Trent notes on June 24, 1763, that dignitaries from the Delaware tribe met with Fort Pitt officials, warning them of “great numbers of Indians” coming to attack the fort. They plead with the officials to leave the fort while there is still time, but the commander refuses to abandon the fort. Instead, after the parley, the British give “gifts” from the smallpox hospital to two Delaware delegates, a principal warrior named Turtleheart and a chief, Maumaultee. “Out of our regard to them … we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect” (Fenn, 2001).

Image of a Mesoamerican infected with smallpox. Image: Granger Collection, New York

Traumatic Event

1763 Germ warfare documented in letters

During the French and Indian War, Jeffery Amherst, Britain's commander in chief in North America, authorizes the use of smallpox to wipe out their Native American enemy. In his writings to Colonel Henry Bouquet about the situation in western Pennsylvania, Amherst suggests that the spread of disease would be beneficial in achieving their aims. General Amherst, July 8, 1763: “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.” Colonel Bouquet, July 13, 1763: “I will try to inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets that may fall in their hands, taking care however not to get the disease myself.” Amherst, July 16, 1763: “You will Do well to try to Inoculate the Indians by means of Blankets, as well as to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.” Bouquet, July 19, 1763: “All your Directions will be observed” (Kent and Stevens, 1941, p. 161).

Traumatic Event

1764 Unangan and Sugpiaq organize resistance against Russian occupation (Alaska)

For more than 20 years Russians have continued massacres, sexual exploitation of women, and taking of Indigenous lands. The Sugpiaq rebel and organize an uprising with multiple Unangan/Eastern Aleut tribes, who attack four Russian ships simultaneously at Umnak, Unimak, and Unalaska. Only 12 Russian traders survive of the 200 attacked. (http://sites.kpc.alaska.edu/jhaighalaskahistory/files/2018/02/Chapt er-4-Unangan-and-Sugpiaq-.pdf)

Map of Umnak Island. Image: Dr. Blofeld

Native Resistance

1766 Armed Russian fur traders massacre Unangan (Aleut)

Russian trader Ivan Solovief arms his workers to murder Unangan (Aleut) men, women, and children in retaliation for their resistance. Solovief vows to reduce the Unangan population from 25,000 to 2,500. Russian workers go to Umnak, Unalaska, and Kodiak Islands, where they systematically kill people and enslave young women and men. Russians establish control of the region following this massacre (Native Voices, "1766: Armed Russian fur traders massacre Unangan (Aleut)").

Map of Kodiak Island. Image: USGS

Traumatic Event

1769 Spanish establish missions in California

Beginning in 1769, the Spanish build 21 missions in California with Indigenous slave labor. They enforce Christianity and prohibit traditional Native spiritual practices. More than 300 separate Native bands in southern California are forced to give up their traditional lifeways of hunting and gathering. Santa Barbara records over 4,000 deaths of Natives due to enslavement and disease. It is estimated that the Coastal Indian population of 70,000 at the start of the mission period dropped to less than 15,000 in Idealized 19th century depiction of San just 30 years (Nies, 1996). Indian communities resist through Diego Mission, California. Image: The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley poisoning priests, burning churches, and uprisings (Native Voices, "1769: Spanish missions crush traditional cultural ways").

Traumatic Event

1774 Shawnee and Lenape Confederacy resist European encroachment

Under the leadership of Cornstalk, a Shawnee leader, Lenape and Shawnee Indians raid English settlements in Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio. The confederacy is outnumbered and coerced to cede lands and “accept” European settlement in their traditional territories. The confederacy continues to fight settler western expansion through the War of 1812 (Nies, 1996).

Painting of Cornstalk. Image: Hal Sherman

Native Resistance

1774 Spanish massacre Comanche at Spanish Peaks (New Mexico)

Spanish troops massacre nearly 300 Comanche Indians (men, women, and children) and take 100 captives in Raton, New Mexico (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1775 Colonies declare war on Britain Enslavement of American Indians continues throughout the Revolutionary War and within the colonies.

Revolutionary War: Delaware Regiment at the Battle of Long Island. Image: Domenick D'Andrea

Settler Colonial Policy

1776-1779 Thomas Jefferson promotes Indian removal

Jefferson recommends the forced relocation of Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to lands west of the Mississippi. This policy foreshadows his first act as president, in which he makes a deal with the State of Georgia to release its claims to discovery of lands in the West in exchange for U.S. military expulsion of Cherokee people from Georgia, ignoring Cherokee rights to the land based on U.S. treaty with the tribe (Miller, 2006).

Thomas Jefferson. Image: Mather Brown, National Portrait Gallery

Settler Colonial Policy

1777 Continental Congress approves Articles of Confederation

A governing body of 13 delegate states, the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation, which initiates authority over “Indian affairs.” Three Indian commissions (northern, middle, and southern) are established. The Declaration of Independence. Image: John Trumbull; Yale University Art Gallery

Settler Colonial Policy

1778 U.S. treaty period with Native tribes begins

“One of the most significant acts by those colonies was the decision to negotiate an agreement with militarily powerful Indian tribes, either to gain the tribes’ alliance or, at least to ensure the tribes’ neutrality in the imminent revolutionary war. That act set the stage for dealing with the tribes through formal government-to- government agreements such as treaties. Between 1789 and 1871, the primary instrument for relations between the United States and Indian nations was the treaty” (Monette, 1996). In 1778, the Continental Congress makes its first treaty with the Lenape

(Delaware) Nation, promising to admit the Lenape Nation as a Historical marker denoting the Indian treaty state. It is the first treaty between the newly formed United States boundary line. Image: Rivers Langley and an American Indian tribe. Tribal nations continue to be sovereign equals with the United States through 1828 (Native Voices, "1778: The first U.S. treaty with an American Indian tribe is ratified").

Settler Colonial Policy

1778 British Captain James Cook arrives on Kaua’i, Hawai’i

Kealakekua Bay. Image: Hawai'i State Archives

1781 Spanish steal Chumash Indian lands (California) Spanish soldiers are “awarded” stolen land from California Indians for their service to the Spanish Crown. The Mission of San Buenaventura confiscates huge tracts of lands, forming the foundation for the land grant system for land dispossession in California (Nies, 1996).

Restored Mission San Buenaventura. Image: Geographer

Traumatic Event

1782 Gnadenhutten Massacre of Lenape (Ohio)

Pennsylvania militiamen massacre and scalp over 100 non- combatant Christian Lenape, mostly women and children.

Monument at the Gnadenhutten Massacre Site, located in the cemetery at Gnadenhutten, Ohio. Image: Kevin Myers

Traumatic Event

1783 End of Revolutionary War; illegal seizure of Native lands

The revolutionary war ends with the Treaty of Paris, and Americans seize lands of the British as spoils of war, ignoring Native treaty rights. The set of treaties that end the war defines U.S. territory ranging from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. There is no reference to American Indian tribes having any rights within the U.S., nor whether their previous treaties with other foreign powers will be honored (Native Voices, "1783: The Peace of Paris ignores Native peoples’ rights").

Red-Lined Map shows British interpretation of the boundary between the new United States and provinces that later formed Canada. Image: John Mitchell; The British Library Board

Traumatic Event

Settler Colonial Policy

1784 Massacre at Refuge Rock, Awa’uq (Alaska)

More than 1,000 Sugpiaq men, women, and children hide on a small rocky outcrop off of Sitkalidak Island to avoid Russian capture. Russians find them and slaughter 500 to 1,000; some jump off the cliffs to their deaths. Men are forced into slavery, and women and children are taken as hostages to ensure the men’s cooperation (Native Voices, "1784: Russian fur traders massacre Sugpiaq on Kodiak Island").

Shelikhov settlement in Kodiak Island. Image: Rasmuson library, University of Alaska

Traumatic Event

1784 First Russian permanent settlement established (Alaska)

Catherine the Great of Russia sends Grigory Ivanovich Shelikhov to colonize Alaska. The first permanent settlement is at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island. Within 10 years, the first group of Orthodox Christian missionaries arrive, with a focus on Christianizing thousands of Alaska Natives. (http://sites.kpc.alaska.edu/jhaighalaskahistory)

Grigory Shelikhov. Image: The Library of Congress

1786-1792 Shelikhov launches a campaign to conquer Alaska Natives Shelikhov confiscates land and establishes forts and permanent settlements on Kodiak Island. He enslaves Aleuts as domestic servants (Nies, 1996).

Shelikhov settlement in Kodiak Island. Image: Rasmuson library, University of Alaska

Traumatic Event

1786 Unangan families enslaved, forced to relocate

Russian fur trader Gavriil Prilbylov forces Unangan hunters to hunt northern fur seals off remote islands in the Bering Sea and forcibly relocates Unangan families to live there permanently as slaves. The enslavement continues under the Russian America Company until 1867. (http://sites.kpc.alaska.edu/jhaighalaskahistory/files/2018/02/Chapter-4-Unangan-and-Sugpiaq-.pdf)

Traumatic Event

1787 U.S. declares Ohio Valley open to settlers

U.S. declares Ohio Valley open to settlers. Congress enacts the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, opening the Ohio Valley to American settlement. Members of the Western Lakes Confederacy utilize armed resistance to protect their land (Nies, 1996).

Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Image: Library of Congress

Traumatic Event

Native Resistance

1787 George Washington proposed treaties as basis for conducting Indian relations

Portrait of George Washington. Image: Gilbert Stuart

Settler Colonial Policy

1787 U.S. Constitution identifies Indian tribes as sovereign nations

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate commerce among foreign nations and tribes.

Chief Justice John Marshall established a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. Image: Wiki commons

Settler Colonial Policy

1788 Massacre of Cherokee Peace Chiefs (Tennessee) Old Tassel and four other Cherokee Peace leaders are lured by U.S. settlers into a trap to be murdered. They come in peace and are axed to death under a flag of truce in Chilhowee (“List of Indian massacres”).

Traumatic Event

1789 George Washington is elected president

George Washington is elected first president. Members of the Iroquois Confederacy call the first U.S. president “Conotocarious,” which means “devourer of villages” (Nies, 1996).

Portrait of George Washington. Image: Gilbert Stuart

Settler Colonial Policy

1789 Congress places Indian Affairs under the newly formed War Department

Following the Revolutionary War, the U.S. Congress insists that Americans hold possession of all territory east of the Mississippi River, since they won the war. Congress argues that by supporting the British, tribes forfeit any claim to territory. Secretary of War Henry Knox agrees that Indian nations hold legal title to their lands “until the government by just negotiation -- or a just war” extinguishes that title (Nies, 1996, p. 212).

Seal of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Image: Department of the Interior

Settler Colonial Policy 1790 U.S. initiates the "Civilization Campaign"

The Treaty of New York restores some Muscogee lands ceded in the treaties with Georgia and calls for a policy of "civilization" aimed to create permanent settlements and to encourage farming instead of “remaining in a state as hunters.” Ironically, Muscogee are already advanced agriculturalists and farmers (Nies, 1996).

Settler Colonial Policy

1790s Indian nations unite to fight American invasion

The United Indian Nations of the Old Northwest fight the establishment of military forts and settlements in Ohio. Wyandot (Huron), Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa), Miami, Munsee, and other tribes wage three campaigns against the U.S. to try to prevent their own displacement and land dispossession as land-hungry Americans illegally move into their territories. Among their leaders are Blue Jacket, War Chief of the Shawnee, and Little Turtle, leader of the Miami. The U.S. retaliates and is defeated in several campaigns (Nies, 1996; Native Voices, "1790s: Indian nations unite to fight Three chiefs of the Huron. Image: Edward American expansion"). Chatfield.

Native Resistance

1790 U.S. settlers illegally seize Penobscot and Passamaquoddy lands (Maine)

Penobscot logo. Image: Wiki Commons

Traumatic Event 1790 Congress prohibits land seizure and restricts trade

Congress passes the Indian Trade and Intercourse Act, establishing federal oversight of Indian land and trade. The law restricts access to Native lands to federal agents and licensed Indian traders. It restricts trade between White traders and American Indians. It also introduces federal policies regarding the prosecution of non-Indians who commit crimes in Indian Country.

Settler Colonial Policy

1793 Congress creates Legion of the United States

The Legion of the United States is a federal army to subdue Indians of the Northwest Territory.

Legion of the United States. Image: H. Charles McBarron, Jr.

Settler Colonial Policy

1794 Oneida, Tuscarora, and Stockbridge Munsee are given money for Indian education

Because of their allegiance to American forces during the Revolutionary War, the tribes are given $5,000 to compensate them for their property losses and to establish any form of education they request.

1794-95 British rule in Hawai’i British Captain George Vancouver sails to Hawai’i in 1793 where he presents the Union Flag to Kamehameha. Kamehameha is in the process of trying to unite the Hawaiian Islands into a single state. In 1794, Kamehameha cedes Hawai’i to Vancouver for one year. The Union Jack is the flag of Hawai’i until 1816.

Union Jack. Image: Wiki Commons

Traumatic Event

1794 Russian missionaries come to Kodiak (Alaska)

The first Russian Orthodox missionaries arrive at Kodiak and begin trying to convert the Sugpiaq (Yup’ik, Alutiiq).

Traumatic Event

1795 Kingdom of Hawai’i is founded by Kamehameha I

By 1795, Hawaiian Islands and chieftains are brought into a single state as the Kingdom of Hawai’i. The Kingdom remains in power from 1795 until its overthrow in 1893 with the fall of the House of Kalakaua.

Kamehameha I. Image: Bishop Museum, Honolulu

1795 Tribes attempt to set permanent The Greenville Treaty of Peace is signed by 1,100 chiefs of the Western Confederated Tribes (Shawnee, Delaware, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Miami, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Wea, Piankashaw, and Kaskaskia). Although the treaty extinguishes Indian title to lands representing two-thirds of present-day Ohio, a section of Indiana, and sites in Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, and Peoria, the treaty provides a firm boundary line between White settlements and Indian lands and stipulates that only tribes, not individuals, can cede lands. William Henry Harrison violates the treaty almost immediately in response to Jefferson’s orders (Nies, 1996). Page one of the Treaty of Greenville. Image: National Archives and Records Administration

Native Resistance

1796 Civilization campaign continues