French and Indian War
Part of the Seven Years' War
Date 1754–1763 Location North America Result British Victory; Treaty of Paris Territorial changes France cedes New France to Great Britain, retaining Saint Pierre et Miquelon, and transfers Louisiana to Spain; Spain cedes Florida to Great Britain
Belligerents
France  New France Spain New Spain Wabanaki Confederacy Abenaki Mi'kmaq Algonquin Caughnawaga Mohawk Lenape Ojibwa Ottawa Shawnee Wyandot	Great Britain British America Iroquois Confederacy Catawba Cherokee (before 1758)
Commanders and leaders
Louis-Joseph de Montcalm † Marquis de Vaudreuil Baron Dieskau (POW) François-Marie de Lignery † Chevalier de Lévis (POW) Joseph de Jumonville † Marquis Duquesne	Jeffery Amherst Edward Braddock † James Wolfe † Earl of Loudoun James Abercrombie Edward Boscawen George Washington John Forbes
Strength
10,000 regulars (troupes de la terre and troupes de la marine, peak strength, 1757)[1] 7,900 militia 2,200 natives (1759)[citation needed]	42,000 regulars and militia (peak strength, 1758)[2]

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) is the name for the North American theater of the Seven Years' War. The war was fought primarily between the colonies of Great Britain and New France, with both sides supported by military troops from Europe. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict involving Britain and France. In Canada, some historians refer to the conflict as simply the Seven Years' War, although French Canadians often call it La guerre de la Conquête ("The War of Conquest").^[3][4] In Europe, there is no specific name for the North American part of the war. The name refers to the two main enemies of the British colonists: the royal French forces and the various Native American forces allied with them, although Great Britain also had Native allies.

The war was fought primarily along the frontiers separating New France from the British colonies from Virginia to Nova Scotia, and began with a dispute over the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, the site of present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The dispute erupted into violence in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in May 1754, during which Virginia militiamen under the command of George Washington ambushed a French patrol. British operations in 1755, 1756 and 1757 in the frontier areas of Pennsylvania and New York all failed, due to a combination of poor management, internal divisions, and effective French and Indian offense. The 1755 capture of Fort Beauséjour on the border separating Nova Scotia from Acadia was followed by a British policy of deportation of its French inhabitants, to which there was some resistance.

After the disastrous 1757 British campaigns (resulting in a failed expedition against Louisbourg and the Siege of Fort William Henry, which was followed by significant atrocities on British victims by Indians), the British government fell, and William Pitt came to power. Pitt significantly increased British military resources in the colonies, while France was unwilling to risk large convoys to aid the limited forces it had in New France, preferring instead to concentrate its forces against Prussia and its allies in the European theatre of the war. Between 1758 and 1760, the British military successfully penetrated the heartland of New France, with Montreal finally falling in September 1760.

The outcome was one of the most significant developments in a century of Anglo-French conflict. France ceded French Louisiana west of the Mississippi River to its ally Spain in compensation for Spain's loss to Britain of Florida (which Spain had given to Britain in exchange for the return of Havana, Cuba). France's colonial presence north of the Caribbean was reduced to the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, confirming Britain's position as the dominant colonial power in the eastern half of North America.

Origin of the name[link]

The conflict is known by several names. In British America, wars were often named after the sitting British monarch, such as King William's War or Queen Anne's War. Because there had already been a King George's War in the 1740s, British colonists named the second war in King George's reign after their opponents, and thus it became known as the French and Indian War.^[5] This traditional name remains standard in the United States, although it obscures the fact that American Indians fought on both sides of the conflict.^[6] American historians generally use the traditional name or the European title (the Seven Years' War). Other, less frequently used names for the war include the Fourth Intercolonial War and the Great War for the Empire.^[5]

In Europe, the North American theater of the Seven Years' War usually has no special name, and so the entire worldwide conflict is known as the Seven Years' War. "Seven Years" refers to events in Europe, from the official declaration of war in 1756 to the signing of the peace treaty in 1763. These dates do not correspond with the actual fighting on mainland North America, where the fighting between the two colonial powers was largely concluded in six years, from the Battle of Jumonville Glen in 1754 to the capture of Montreal in 1760.^[5]

In Canada, both French- and English-speaking Canadians refer to both the European and North American conflicts as the Seven Years' War (Guerre de Sept Ans).^[7][8] French Canadians may use the term "War of Conquest" (Guerre de la Conquête), since it is the war in which New France was conquered by the British and became part of the British Empire, but that usage is never employed by most English Canadians.^{[citation needed]} This war is also one of America's "Forgotten Wars."^{[citation needed]}

North America in the 1750s[link]

Map showing the 1750 possessions of Britain (pink), France (blue), and Spain (orange) in contemporary Canada and the United States.

North America east of the Mississippi River was largely claimed by either Great Britain or France.

The French population numbered about 75,000 and was heavily concentrated along the St. Lawrence River valley, with some also in Acadia (present-day New Brunswick), Île Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island), and a few in New Orleans and small settlements along the Mississippi River. French fur traders traveled throughout the St. Lawrence and Mississippi watersheds, did business with local tribes, and often married Indian women.^[9]

British colonies had a population of about 1.5 million and ranged along the eastern coast of the continent, from Georgia in the south to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the north.^[10] Many of the older colonies had land claims that extended arbitrarily far to the west, as the extent of the continent was unknown at the time their provincial charters were granted. While their population centers were along the coast, they had growing populations. Nova Scotia, which had been captured from France in 1713, still had a significant French-speaking population. Britain also claimed Rupert's Land, where posts of the Hudson's Bay Company traded for furs with local tribes.

Iroquois engaging in trade with Europeans (1722)

In between the French and the British, large areas were dominated by native tribes. To the north, the Mi'kmaq and the Abenaki still held sway in parts of Nova Scotia, Acadia, and the eastern portions of the province of Canada and present-day Maine.^[11] The Iroquois Confederation dominated much of present-day Upstate New York and the Ohio Country, although the latter also included populations of Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo. These tribes were formally under Iroquois control, and were limited by them in authority to make agreements.^[12] Further south the interior was dominated by Catawba, Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee tribes.^[13] When war broke out, the French used their trading connections to recruit fighters from tribes in western portions of the Great Lakes region (an area not directly subject to the conflict between the French and British), including the Huron, Mississauga, Ojibwa, Winnebago, and Potawatomi. The British were supported in the war by the Iroquois, and also by the Cherokee — until differences sparked the Anglo-Cherokee War in 1758. In 1758 the Pennsylvania government successfully negotiated the Treaty of Easton, in which a number of tribes in the Ohio Country promised neutrality in exchange for land concessions and other considerations. Most of the other northern tribes sided with the French, their primary trading partner and supplier of arms. The Creek and Cherokee were targets of diplomatic efforts by both the French and British for either support or neutrality in the conflict. It was not uncommon for small bands to participate on the "other side" of the conflict from formally-negotiated agreements.

Spain's presence in eastern North America was limited to the province of Florida; it also controlled Cuba and other territories in the West Indies that became military objectives in the Seven Years' War. Florida's population was small, with a few settlements at St. Augustine and Pensacola.

New York and Pennsylvania theaters of the war, image from 1905

At the start of the war, there were no French regular army troops in North America, and few British troops. New France was defended by about 3,000 troupes de la marine, companies of colonial regulars (some of whom had significant woodland combat experience), and also made calls for militia support when needed. Most British colonies mustered ill-trained militia companies to deal with native threats, but did not have any standing forces.

Virginia, with a large frontier, had several companies of British regulars. The colonial governments were also used to operating independently of each other, and of the government in London, a situation that complicated negotiations with natives whose territories encompassed land claimed by multiple colonies, and, after the war began, with the British Army establishment when its leaders attempted to impose constraints and demands on the colonial administrations.

Events leading to war[link]

Céloron's expedition[link]

In June 1747, concerned about the incursion and expanding influence of British traders such as George Croghan in the Ohio Country, Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière, the Governor-General of New France, ordered Pierre-Joseph Céloron to lead a military expedition through the area. Its objectives were to confirm the original French claim to the territory, determine the level of British influence, and impress the Indians with a French show of force.^[14]

Céloron's expedition force consisted of about 200 Troupes de la marine and 30 Indians. The expedition covered about 3,000 miles (4,800 km) between June and November 1749. It went up the St. Lawrence, continued along the northern shore of Lake Ontario, crossed the portage at Niagara, and then followed the southern shore of Lake Erie. At the Chautauqua Portage (near present-day Barcelona, New York), the expedition moved inland to the Allegheny River, which it followed to the site of present-day Pittsburgh, where Céloron buried lead plates engraved with the French claim to the Ohio Country.^[14] Whenever he encountered British merchants or fur-traders, Céloron informed them of the French claims on the territory and told them to leave.^[14]

When Céloron's expedition arrived at Logstown, the Native Americans in the area informed Céloron that they owned the Ohio Country and that they would trade with the British regardless of what the French told them to do.^[15] Céloron continued south until his expedition reached the confluence of the Ohio River and the Miami River^{[disambiguation needed ]}, which lay just south of the village of Pickawillany, the home of the Miami chief known as "Old Briton". Céloron informed "Old Briton" that there would be dire consequences if the elderly chief continued to trade with the British. "Old Briton" ignored the warning. Céloron returned to Montreal in November 1749.

In his report, which extensively detailed the journey, Céloron wrote, "All I can say is that the Natives of these localities are very badly disposed towards the French, and are entirely devoted to the English. I don't know in what way they could be brought back."^[15] Even before his return to Montreal, reports on the situation in the Ohio Country were making their way to London and Paris, proposing that action be taken. William Shirley, the expansionist governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, was particularly forceful, stating that British colonists would not be safe as long as the French were present.^[16]

Negotiations[link]

In 1749 the British government gave land to the Ohio Company of Virginia for the purpose of developing trade and settlements in the Ohio Country.^[17] The grant required that it settle 100 families in the territory, and construct a fort for their protection. However, the territory was also claimed by Pennsylvania, and both colonies began pushing for action to improve their respective claims.^[18] In 1750 Christopher Gist, acting on behalf of both Virginia and the company, explored the Ohio territory and opened negotiations with the Indian tribes at Logstown.^[19] This beginning resulted in the 1752 Treaty of Logstown, in which the local Indians, through their "Half-King" Tanacharison and an Iroquois representative, agreed to terms that included permission to build a "strong house" at the mouth of the Monongahela River (the site of present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).^[20]

The War of the Austrian Succession (whose North American theater is known as King George's War) formally ended in 1748 with the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The treaty was primarily focused on resolving issues in Europe, and the issues of conflicting territorial claims between British and French colonies in North America were turned over to a commission to resolve, but it reached no decision.Frontiers between Nova Scotia and Acadia in the north, to the Ohio Country in the south were claimed by both sides. The disputes also extended into the Atlantic Ocean, where both powers wanted access to the rich fisheries of the Grand Banks.

Attack on Pickawillany[link]

On March 17, 1752, the Governor-General of New France, Marquis de la Jonquière died, and was temporarily replaced by Charles le Moyne de Longueuil. It was not until July 1752 that his permanent replacement, the Marquis Duquesne, arrived in New France to take over the post.^[21] The continuing British activity in the Ohio territories prompted Longueuil to dispatch another expedition to the area under the command of Charles Michel de Langlade, an officer in the Troupes de la Marine. Langlade was given 300 men comprising members of the Ottawa and French-Canadians. His objective was to punish the Miami people of Pickawillany for not following Céloron's orders to cease trading with the British. On June 21, the French war party attacked the trading centre at Pickawillany, killing 14 people of the Miami nation, including Old Briton, who was reportedly ritually cannibalized by some aboriginal members of the expedition.

French fort construction[link]

In the spring of 1753, Paul Marin de la Malgue was given command of a 2,000-man force of Troupes de la Marine and Indians. His orders were to protect the King's land in the Ohio Valley from the British. Marin followed the route that Céloron had mapped out four years earlier, but where Céloron had limited the record of French claims to the burial of lead plates, Marin constructed and garrisoned forts. The first fort he constructed was Fort Presque Isle (near present-day Erie, Pennsylvania) on Lake Erie's south shore. He then had a road built to the headwaters of LeBoeuf Creek. Marin then constructed a second fort at Fort Le Boeuf (present-day Waterford, Pennsylvania), designed to guard the headwaters of LeBoeuf Creek. As he moved south, he drove off or captured British traders, alarming both the British and the Iroquois. Tanaghrisson, a chief of the Mingo with an intense dislike for the French (whom he accused of killing and eating his father), went to Fort Le Boeuf, where he threatened action against them, which Marin contemptuously dismissed.^[22]

Robert Dinwiddie, British lieutenant governor of Virginia

The Iroquois sent runners to William Johnson's manor in upstate New York. Johnson, known to the Iroquois as "Warraghiggey", meaning "He who does great things", had become a respected member of the Iroquois Confederacy in the area. In 1746, Johnson was made a colonel of the Iroquois, and later a colonel of the Western New York Militia. They met at Albany, New York with Governor Clinton and officials from some of the other American colonies. Chief Hendrick insisted that the British abide by their obligations and block French expansion. When an unsatisfactory response was offered by Clinton, Chief Hendrick proclaimed that the "Covenant Chain", a long-standing friendly relationship between the Iroquois Confederacy and the British Crown, was broken.

Virginia's response[link]

Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia found himself in a predicament. He was one of the investors in the Ohio Company, which stood to lose money if the French held their claim.^[23] To counter the French military presence in Ohio, in October 1753 Dinwiddie ordered the 21-year-old Major George Washington (whose brother was another Ohio Company investor) of the Virginia militia to warn the French to leave Virginia territory.^[24] Washington left with a small party, picking up along the way Jacob Van Braam as an interpreter, Christopher Gist, a company surveyor working in the area, and a few Mingo led by Tanaghrisson. On December 12, Washington and his men reached Fort Le Boeuf.^[25][26]

Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who replaced Marin as commander of the French forces after the latter died on October 29, invited Washington to dine with him that evening. Over dinner, Washington presented Saint-Pierre with the letter from Dinwiddie that demanded an immediate French withdrawal from the Ohio Country. Saint-Pierre was quite civil in his response, saying, "As to the Summons you send me to retire, I do not think myself obliged to obey it."^[27] He explained to Washington that France's claim to the region was superior to that of the British, since René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had explored the Ohio Country nearly a century earlier.^[28]

Washington's map of the Ohio River and surrounding region containing notes on French intentions, 1753 or 1754.

Washington's party left Fort Le Boeuf early on December 16, arriving back in Williamsburg on January 16, 1754. In his report, Washington stated, "The French had swept south",^[29] detailing the steps they had taken to fortify the area, and communicating their intention to fortify the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.^[30]

Course of the war[link]

Dinwiddie, even before Washington returned, sent a group of 40 men under William Trent to that point, where in the early months of 1754 they began construction of a small stockaded fort.^[31] Governor Duquesne sent additional French forces under Claude-Pierre Pecaudy de Contrecœur to relieve Saint-Pierre during the same period, and Contrecœur led 500 men south from Fort Venango on April 5, 1754.^[32] When these arrived at the forks on April 16, Contrecœur generously allowed Trent's small company to withdraw, after purchasing their construction tools to continue building what became Fort Duquesne.^[33]

After Washington returned to Williamsburg with his report, Dinwiddie ordered him to lead a larger force to assist Trent in his work. While en route, he learned of Trent's retreat.^[34] Since Tanaghrisson had promised him support, he continued toward Fort Duquesne, and met with the Mingo leader. Learning of a French scouting party in the area, Washington took some of his men, and with Tanaghrisson and his party, surprised the French on May 28. Many of the French were slain, among them their commanding officer, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, whose head was reportedly split open by Tanaghrisson. Historian Fred Anderson puts forward the reason for Tanaghrisson's act (which was followed up by one of Tanaghrisson's men informing Contrecoeur that Jumonville had been killed by British musket fire) as one of desperate need to win the support of the British in an effort to regain authority over his people, who were more inclined to support the French.^[35] The Battle of Jumonville Glen is considered by historians as the opening battle of the French and Indian War in North America and the start of hostilities in the Ohio valley.

The earliest authenticated portrait of George Washington shows him wearing his colonel's uniform of the Virginia Regiment. This portrait was painted in 1772 by Charles Willson Peale.

Following the battle, Washington pulled back several miles and established Fort Necessity, which the French then attacked on July 3. The engagement led to Washington's surrender; he negotiated a withdrawal under arms. One of Washington's men reported that the French force was accompanied by Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo natives—just those Tanaghrisson was seeking to influence.^[36]

When news of the two battles reached England in August, the government of the Duke of Newcastle, after several months of negotiations, decided to send an army expedition the following year to dislodge the French.^[37] Major General Edward Braddock was chosen to lead the expedition.^[38] Word of the British military plans leaked to France well before Braddock's departure for North America, and King Louis XV dispatched six regiments to New France under the command of Baron Dieskau in 1755.^[39] The British, intending to blockade French ports, sent out their fleet in February 1755, but the French fleet had already sailed. Admiral Edward Hawke detached a fast squadron to North America in an attempt to intercept the French. In a second British act of aggression, Admiral Edward Boscawen fired on the French ship Alcide on June 8, 1755, capturing her and two troop ships.^[40] The British harassed French shipping throughout 1755, seizing ships and capturing seamen, contributing to the eventual formal declarations of war in spring 1756.^[41]

British campaigns, 1755[link]

The British formed an aggressive plan of operations for 1755. General Braddock was to lead the expedition to Fort Duquesne, while Massachusetts provincial governor William Shirley was given the task of fortifying Fort Oswego and attacking Fort Niagara, Sir William Johnson was to capture Fort St. Frédéric (at present-day Crown Point, New York),^[42] and Lieutenant Colonel Robert Monckton was to capture Fort Beauséjour on the frontier between Nova Scotia and Acadia.^[43]

Braddock led about 2,000 army troops and provincial militia on an expedition in June 1755 to take Fort Duquesne. The expedition was a disaster. At the battle of the Monongahela, Braddock was mortally wounded. Two future opponents in the American Revolutionary War, Washington and Thomas Gage, played key roles in organizing the retreat. One consequence of the debacle was that the French acquired a copy of the British war plans, including the activities of Shirley and Johnson. Shirley's efforts to fortify Oswego were bogged down in logistical difficulties and magnified by Shirley's inexperience in managing large expeditions. When it was clear he would not have time to mount an expedition across Lake Ontario to Fort Ontario, Shirley left garrisons at Oswego, Fort Bull, and Fort Williams (the latter two located on the Oneida Carry between the Mohawk River and Wood Creek at present-day Rome, New York). Supplies for use in the projected attack on Niagara were cached at Fort Bull.

Johnson's expedition was better organized than Shirley's, something that did not escape the attention of New France's governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. He had primarily been concerned about the extended supply line to the forts on the Ohio, and had sent Baron Dieskau to lead the defenses at Frontenac against Shirley's expected attack. When Johnson was seen as the larger threat, Vaudreuil sent Dieskau to Fort St. Frédéric to meet that threat. Dieskau planned to attack the British encampment at Fort Edward at the upper end of navigation on the Hudson River, but Johnson had strongly fortified it, and Dieskau's Indian support was reluctant to attack. The two forces finally met in the bloody Battle of Lake George between Fort Edward and Fort William Henry. The battle ended inconclusively, with both sides withdrawing from the field. Johnson's advance stopped at Fort William Henry, and the French withdrew to Ticonderoga point, where they began the construction of Fort Carillon (later renamed Fort Ticonderoga after British capture in 1759).

Colonel Monckton, in the only real British success that year, captured Fort Beauséjour in June 1755, cutting the French fortress at Louisbourg off from land-based reinforcements. To cut vital supplies to Louisbourg, Nova Scotia's Governor Charles Lawrence ordered the deportation of the French-speaking Acadian population from the area. Monckton's forces, including companies of Rogers' Rangers, forcibly removed thousands of Acadians, chasing down many who resisted, and sometimes committing atrocities. More than any other factor, the cutting off of supplies to Louisbourg led to its demise.^[44] The Acadian resistance, in concert with native allies, including the Mi'kmaq, was sometimes quite stiff, with ongoing frontier raids (against Dartmouth and Lunenburg among others). Other than the campaigns to expel the Acadians (ranging around the Bay of Fundy, on the Petitcodiac and St. John rivers, and Île Saint-Jean), the only clashes of any size were at Petitcodiac in 1755 and at Bloody Creek near Annapolis Royal in 1757.

French victories, 1756–1757[link]

Conference between the French and Indian leaders around a ceremonial fire

Following the death of Braddock, William Shirley assumed command of British forces in North America. At a meeting in Albany in December 1755, he laid out his plans for 1756. In addition to renewing the efforts to capture Niagara, Crown Point and Duquesne, he proposed attacks on Fort Frontenac on the north shore of Lake Ontario and an expedition through the wilderness of the Maine district and down the Chaudière River to attack the city of Quebec. Bogged down by disagreements and disputes with others, including William Johnson and New York's Governor Sir Charles Hardy, Shirley's plan had little support, and Newcastle replaced him in January 1756 with Lord Loudoun, with Major General James Abercrombie as his second in command. Neither of these men had as much campaign experience as the trio of officers France sent to North America.^[41] French regular army reinforcements arrived in New France in May 1756, led by Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and seconded by the Chevalier de Lévis and Colonel François-Charles de Bourlamaque, all experienced veterans from the War of the Austrian Succession. During that time in Europe, on May 18, 1756, England formally declared war on France, which expanded the war into Europe which was later to be known as the Seven Years' War.

General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm

Governor Vaudreuil, who harboured ambitions to become the French commander in chief (in addition to his role as governor), acted during the winter of 1756 before those reinforcements arrived. Scouts had reported the weakness of the British supply chain, so he ordered an attack against the forts Shirley had erected at the Oneida Carry. In the March Battle of Fort Bull, French forces destroyed the fort and large quantities of supplies, including 45,000 pounds of gunpowder, effectively setting back any British hopes for campaigns on Lake Ontario, and endangering the Oswego garrison, which was already short on supplies. French forces in the Ohio valley also continued to intrigue with Indians throughout the area, encouraging them to raid frontier settlements. This led to ongoing alarms along the western frontiers, with streams of refugees returning east to get away from the action.

The new British command was not in place until July. Abercrombie, when he arrived in Albany, refused to take any significant actions until Loudoun approved them. His inaction was met by Montcalm with bold action. Building on Vaudreuil's work harassing the Oswego garrison, Montcalm executed a strategic feint by moving his headquarters to Ticonderoga, as if to presage another attack along Lake George. With Abercrombie pinned down at Albany, Montcalm slipped away and led the successful attack on Oswego in August. In the aftermath, Montcalm and the Indians under his command disagreed about the disposition of prisoners' personal effects. These sorts of items were not prizes in European warfare, but Indians were angered by the fact that the French troops prevented them from stripping the prisoners of their valuables.

Montcalm trying to stop allied Native Americans from attacking British soldiers and civilians as they leave after the Battle of Fort William Henry.

Loudoun, a capable administrator but a cautious field commander, planned only one major operation for 1757: an attack on New France's capital, Quebec. Leaving a sizable force at Fort William Henry to distract Montcalm, he began organizing for the expedition to Quebec, only to be ordered by William Pitt, the Secretary of State responsible for the colonies, to attack Louisbourg first. Beset by delays of all kinds, the expedition was ready to sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia in early August. In the meantime French ships had escaped the British blockade of the French coast, and a fleet outnumbering the British one awaited Loudoun at Louisbourg. Faced with this strength Loudoun returned to New York amid news that a massacre had occurred at Fort William Henry.

French irregular forces (Canadian scouts and Indians) harassed Fort William Henry throughout the first half of 1757. In January they ambushed British rangers near Ticonderoga. In February they launched a daring raid against the position across the frozen Lake George, destroying storehouses and buildings outside the main fortification. In early August, Montcalm and 7,000 troops besieged the fort, which capitulated with an agreement to withdraw under parole. When the withdrawal began, some of Montcalm's Indian allies, angered at the lost opportunity for loot, attacked the British column, killing and capturing several hundred men, women, children, and slaves. The aftermath of the siege may also have been responsible for the transmission of smallpox into remote Indian populations; some Indians were reported to have traveled from beyond the Mississippi to participate in the campaign.^[45]

British conquest, 1758–1760[link]

The Victory of Montcalm's Troops at Carillon by Henry Alexander Ogden.

Vaudreuil and Montcalm were only minimally resupplied in 1758, as the British blockade of the French coastline again limited French shipping. The situation in New France was further exacerbated by a poor harvest in 1757, a difficult winter, and the allegedly corrupt machinations of François Bigot, the intendant of the territory, whose schemes to supply the colony inflated prices and were believed by Montcalm to line his pockets and those of his associates. A massive outbreak of smallpox among western tribes led many of them to stay away in 1758. While many parties to the conflict blamed others (the Indians critically blaming the French for bringing "bad medicine" as well as denying them prizes at Fort William Henry), the disease was probably spread through the crowded conditions at William Henry after the battle.^[46] In the light of these conditions, Montcalm focused his meager resources on the defense of the St. Lawrence, with primary defenses at Carillon, Quebec, and Louisbourg, while Vaudreuil argued unsuccessfully for a continuation of the raiding tactics that had worked quite effectively in previous years.^[47]

The British failures in North America, combined with other failures in the European theater, led to the fall from power of Newcastle and his principal military advisor, the Duke of Cumberland. Newcastle and Pitt then joined in an uneasy coalition where Pitt dominated the military planning. He embarked on a plan for the 1758 campaign that was largely developed by Loudoun, who was replaced by Abercrombie as commander in chief, after the failures of 1757. Pitt's plan called for three major offensive actions involving large numbers of regular troops, supported by the provincial militias, aimed at capturing the heartlands of New France. Two of the expeditions were successful, with Fort Duquesne and Louisbourg falling to sizable British forces.

1758[link]

The Forbes Expedition was a British campaign in September - October 1758, with 6,000 troops led by General John Forbes to drive the French out of the contested Ohio Country. After a British advance party on Fort Duquesne was repulsed on September 14, the French withdrew from Fort Duquesne, leaving the British in control of the Ohio River Valley.^[48] The great French fortress at Louisbourg in Nova Scotia was captured after a siege.^[49]

The third invasion was stopped with the improbable French victory in the Battle of Carillon, in which 3,600 Frenchmen famously and decisively defeated Abercrombie's force of 18,000 regulars, militia and Native American allies outside the fort the French called Carillon and the British called Ticonderoga. Abercrombie saved something from the disaster when he sent John Bradstreet on an expedition that successfully destroyed Fort Frontenac, including caches of supplies destined for New France's western forts and furs destined for Europe. Abercrombie was recalled and replaced by Jeffery Amherst, victor at Louisbourg.

In the aftermath of generally poor French results in most theaters of the Seven Years' War in 1758, France's new foreign minister, the duc de Choiseul, decided to focus on an invasion of Britain, to draw British resources away from North America and the European mainland. The invasion failed both militarily and politically, as Pitt again planned significant campaigns against New France, and sent funds to Britain's ally on the mainland, Prussia, and the French Navy failed in naval battles at Lagos and Quiberon Bay. In one piece of good fortune, some French supply ships managed to depart France, eluding the British blockade of the French coast.

1759-1760[link]

British General Jeffery Amherst

British victories continued in all theaters in the Annus Mirabilis of 1759, when they finally captured Ticonderoga, James Wolfe defeated Montcalm at Quebec (in a battle that claimed the lives of both commanders), and victory at Fort Niagara successfully cut off the French frontier forts further to the west and south. The victory was made complete in 1760, when, despite losing outside Quebec City in the Battle of Sainte-Foy, the British were able to prevent the arrival of French relief ships in the naval Battle of the Restigouche while armies marched on Montreal from three sides.

In September 1760, Governor Vaudreuil negotiated a surrender with General Amherst. Amherst granted Vaudreuil's request that any French residents who chose to remain in the colony would be given freedom to continue worshiping in their Roman Catholic tradition, continued ownership of their property, and the right to remain undisturbed in their homes. The British provided medical treatment for the sick and wounded French soldiers and French regular troops were returned to France aboard British ships with an agreement that they were not to serve again in the present war.

End of the war[link]

The descent of the French on St. John's, Newfoundland, 1762.

Most of the fighting between France and Britain in continental North America ended in 1760, while the fighting in Europe continued. The notable exception was the French seizure of St. John's, Newfoundland. When General Amherst heard of this surprise action, he immediately dispatched troops under his nephew William Amherst, who regained control of Newfoundland after the Battle of Signal Hill in September.^[50]

Many troops from North America were reassigned to participate in further British actions in the West Indies, including the capture of Spanish Havana when Spain belatedly entered the conflict on the side of France, and a British expedition against French Martinique in 1762.^[51]

General Amherst also oversaw the transition of French forts in the western lands to British control. The policies he introduced in those lands disturbed large numbers of Indians, and contributed to the outbreak in 1763 of the conflict known as Pontiac's Rebellion.^[52] This series of attacks on frontier forts and settlements required the continued deployment of British troops, and was not resolved until 1766.^[53]

The war in North America officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, and war in the European theatre of the Seven Years' War was settled by the Treaty of Hubertusburg on February 15, 1763. The British offered France a choice of either its North American possessions east of the Mississippi or the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had been occupied by the British. France chose to cede Canada, and was able to negotiate the retention of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and fishing rights in the area. The economic value of the Caribbean islands to France was greater than that of Canada because of their rich sugar crops, and they were easier to defend. The British, however, were happy to take New France, as defense was not an issue, and they already had many sources of sugar. Spain, which traded Florida to Britain to regain Cuba, also gained Louisiana, including New Orleans, from France in compensation for its losses. Navigation on the Mississippi was to be open to all nations.^[54]

Consequences[link]

The war changed economic, political, governmental and social relations between three European powers (Britain, France, and Spain), their colonies and colonists, and the natives that inhabited the territories they claimed. France and Britain both suffered financially because of the war, with significant long-term consequences.

Map showing British territorial gains following the Treaty of Paris in pink, and Spanish territorial gains after the Treaty of Fontainebleau in yellow.

Britain gained control of French Canada and Acadia, colonies containing approximately 80,000 primarily French-speaking Roman Catholic residents. The deportation of Acadians beginning in 1755 resulted in land made available to migrants from Europe and the colonies further south. The British resettled many Acadians throughout its North American provinces, but many went to France, and some went to New Orleans, which they had expected to remain French. Some were sent to colonize places as diverse as French Guiana and the Falkland Islands; these latter efforts were unsuccessful. Others migrated to places like Saint-Domingue, and fled to New Orleans after the Haitian Revolution. The Louisiana population contributed to the founding of the modern Cajun population. (The French word "Acadien" evolved to "Cadien", then to "Cajun".)^[55]

Following the peace treaty, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763 on October 7, 1763, which outlined the division and administration of the newly conquered territory, and to some extent continues to govern relations between the government of modern Canada and the First Nations. Included in its provisions was the reservation of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to its Indian population,^[56] a demarcation that was at best a temporary impediment to a rising tide of westward-bound settlers.^[57] The proclamation also contained provisions that prevented civic participation by the Roman Catholic Canadians.^[58] When accommodations were made in the Quebec Act in 1774 to address this and other issues, religious concerns were raised in the largely Protestant Thirteen Colonies over the advance of "popery".

The Seven Years' War nearly doubled Britain's national debt. The Crown, seeking sources of revenue to pay off the debt, attempted to impose new taxes on its colonies. These attempts were met with increasingly stiff resistance, until troops were called in so that representatives of the Crown could safely perform their duties. These acts ultimately led to the start of the American Revolutionary War.^[59]

France attached comparatively little value to its North American possessions, especially in respect to the highly profitable sugar-producing Antilles islands, which it managed to retain. Minister Choiseul considered he had made a good deal at the Treaty of Paris, and philosopher Voltaire wrote that Louis XV had only lost "a few acres of snow".^[60] For France however, the military defeat and the financial burden of the war weakened the monarchy and contributed to the advent of the French Revolution in 1789.^[61]

For many native populations, the elimination of French power in North America meant the disappearance of a strong ally and counterweight to British expansion, leading to their ultimate dispossession.^[61] The Ohio Country was particularly vulnerable to legal and illegal settlement due to the construction of military roads to the area by Braddock and Forbes.^[62] Although the Spanish takeover of the Louisiana territory (which was not completed until 1769) had only modest repercussions, the British takeover of Spanish Florida resulted in the westward migration of tribes that did not want to do business with the British, and a rise in tensions between the Choctaw and the Creek, historic enemies whose divisions the British at times exploited.^[63] The change of control in Florida also prompted most of its Spanish Catholic population to leave. Most went to Cuba, including the entire governmental records from St. Augustine, although some Christianized Yamasee were resettled to the coast of Mexico.^[64]

France returned to North America in 1778 with the establishment of a Franco-American alliance against Great Britain in the American War of Independence. This time France succeeded in prevailing over Great Britain, in what historian Alfred Cave describes as "French [...] revenge for Montcalm's death".^[65]

See also[link]

	History of Canada portal
	New France portal

• French and Indian Wars (article includes King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War, and this war.)
• Northwest Indian War
• Franco-Indian alliance
• Great Britain in the Seven Years' War
• New Hampshire Provincial Regiment

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: French and Indian War

• The French and Indian War Website
• Historical Preservation Archive: Transcribed Articles & Documents
• The War That Made America from PBS
• FORGOTTEN WAR: Struggle for North America from PBS
• French and Indian War study guide, analysis, primary sources, teacher resources
• Select Bibliography of the French and Indian Wars compiled by the United States Army Center of Military History
• Seven Years' War timeline
• Montcalm and Wolfe, by Francis Parkman online ebook
• French and Indian War Living History Reenactments (videos)

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American Indian Wars
An 1899 chromolithograph of US cavalry pursuing Native Americans, artist unknown
Date 1622–1924 (intermittent) Location North America, United States Result Sovereignty of United States of America extended to its present borders; Indian reservation system established by various treaties with individual tribes.
Belligerents
Native Americans	Kingdom of Great Britain (1622–1783) British America  United States (1783–1918)  Confederate States (1861–1865) Republic of Texas (1836–1846)

American Indian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between American settlers or the federal government and the native peoples of North America before and after the American Revolutionary War. The wars resulted from the arrival of European colonizers who continuously sought to expand their territory, pushing the indigenous populations westwards. The wars were spurred by ideologies such as Manifest Destiny, which held that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the American continent, and which resulted in the policy of Indian removal, by which indigenous peoples were removed from the areas where Europeans were settling, either forcefully or by means of voluntary exchange of territory through treaties.

Effects on indigenous populations[link]

Today Native Americans make up between 0.9 and 1.5 percent of the U.S. population.^[1][2][3][4] No conclusive evidence exists to determine how many native people lived in North America before the arrival of Columbus.^[5][6] David Stannard notes that more conservative demographers cite a figure of about 7 or 8 million inhabitants.^[7] The Library of Congress uses 900,000 as the total number in its educational article "Destroying the Native American Cultures".^[8] By 1800, the native population of the present-day United States had declined to approximately 600,000, and only 250,000 Native Americans remained in the 1890s.^[9] As the direct result of written and broken treaties, warfare, and of forced assimilation, the Indians were virtually destroyed by the European immigration that created the United States.^[8] Scholars believe that among the causes of the overwhelming population decline of the American natives were new infectious diseases carried by Europeans. Native Americans had no acquired immunity to such diseases, which had been chronic in Eurasian populations for centuries.^[10] For instance, some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.^[11]

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), "The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians."^[12]

Colonial Period[link]

While some historians suggest that settlers were engaged in warfare to open further land for settlement, other historians suggest that settlers needed to defend themselves from attacks by the Indians. The wars, which ranged from the 17th-century (Jamestown Massacre of 1622, Pequot War of 1637, Anglo-Powhatan Wars, King Philip's War, King William's War, as well as Queen Anne's War, Tuscarora War, Yamasee War and Dummer's War at the opening of the 18th century) to the French and Indian War, Pontiac's Rebellion and Lord Dunmore's War after the middle of that century until the Wounded Knee massacre and "closing" of the American frontier in 1890, generally resulted in the opening of Native American lands to further colonization, the conquest of Native Americans and their assimilation, or forced relocation to Indian reservations.

External images
the Indian Wars
	The great Dispersion
	Battles of the Indian Wars in the West

East of the Mississippi (1775–1842)[link]

These wars were fought primarily by the newly established United States against the Native Americans until shortly before the Mexican–American War of 1848.

American Revolutionary War 1775–1783[link]

For the American rebels the American Revolutionary War was essentially two parallel wars: while the war in the east was a struggle against British rule, the war in the west was an "Indian War". The newly proclaimed United States competed with the British for control of the territory of Native American nations east of the Mississippi River. The colonial interest in westward colonisation, as opposed to the British policy of maintaining peace by designating areas reserved to Native Americans west of the Appalachians following the end of the Seven Years' War, was one cause of the revolution.^{[citation needed]} Most Native Americans who joined the struggle sided with the British, hoping to use the war to reduce settlement and expansion onto their land. The Revolutionary War was "the most extensive and destructive" Indian war in United States history.^[13]

Some native communities were divided over which side to support in the war. For the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York and Pennsylvania, the American Revolution resulted in civil war; the Six Nations split, with the Oneidas and Tuscaroras siding with the rebels, and Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas, fighting for the British. While the Iroquois tried to avoid fighting directly against one another, the Revolution eventually forced intra-Iroquois combat. Both sides lost territory under the new political dispensation. The Crown aided the landless Iroquois by rewarding them with a reservation at Grand River in Ontario. In the Southeast, the Cherokee split into a neutral (or pro-rebel) faction and a pro-British faction, which the rebels referred to as the Chickamaugas, led by Dragging Canoe. Many other tribes were similarly divided.

Both immigrant and native noncombatants suffered greatly during the war, and villages and food supplies were frequently destroyed during military expeditions. The largest of these expeditions was the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which razed more than 40 Iroquois villages.

When the British made peace with the Americans in the Treaty of Paris (1783), they ceded a vast amount of Native American territory (without the consent of the indigenous peoples) to the United States. The United States treated the Native Americans who had fought with the British as enemy allies, a conquered people who had lost their land. The federal government of the United States was eager to expand, and the national government did so by purchasing Native American land in treaties and through warfare.

Chickamauga Wars[link]

These frontier conflicts were almost non stop, beginning with Cherokee involvement in the American Revolutionary War and continuing through late 1794. The so-called "Chickamauga Cherokee", later called "Lower Cherokee," were those, at first from the Overhill Towns and later from the Lower Towns, Valley Towns, and Middle Towns, who followed the war leader Dragging Canoe southwest, first to the Chickamauga (Chattanooga, Tennessee) area, then to the Five Lower Towns. There they were joined by groups of Muskogee, white Tories, runaway slaves, and renegade Chickasaw, as well as by more than a hundred Shawnee, in exchange for whom a hundred Chickamauga-Cherokee warriors migrated north, along with another seventy a few years later. The primary objects of attack were the colonies along the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky rivers, and in Carter's Valley in upper East Tennessee, as well as the settlements along the Cumberland River beginning with Fort Nashborough in 1780, even into Kentucky, plus against the colonies, later states, of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The scope of attacks by the Chickamauga/Lower Cherokee and their allies ranged from quick raids by small war parties of a handful of warriors to large campaigns by four or five hundred, and once over a thousand,^{[citation needed]} warriors. The Upper Muskogee under Dragging Canoe's close ally Alexander McGillivray frequently joined their campaigns as well as operated separately, and the settlements on the Cumberland came under attack from the Chickasaw, Shawnee from the north, and Delaware. Campaigns by Dragging Canoe and his successor, John Watts, were frequently conducted in conjunction with campaigns in the Northwest. The response by the colonists were usually attacks in which Cherokee towns in peaceful areas were completely destroyed, though usually without great loss of life on either side^{[citation needed]}. The wars continued until the Treaty of Tellico Blockhouse in November 1794.

The Chickamauga Wars were in reality a continuation of what some historians call the Second Cherokee War, fought between the whole Cherokee nation and the colonies as allies of the British in the years 1776 and 1777, waged by those who did not wish to stop resisting frontier encroachments.^{[citation needed]}

Northwest Indian War[link]

The Battle of Fallen Timbers

In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance officially organized the Northwest Territory for white settlement. American settlers began pouring into the region. Violence erupted as indigenous tribes resisted this encroachment, and so the administration of President George Washington sent armed expeditions into the area to suppress native resistance. However, in the Northwest Indian War, a pan-tribal confederacy led by Blue Jacket (Shawnee), Little Turtle (Miami), Buckongahelas (Lenape), and Egushawa (Ottawa) crushed armies led by Generals Josiah Harmar and Arthur St. Clair. General St. Clair's defeat was the most severe loss ever inflicted upon an American army by Native Americans. The Americans attempted to negotiate a settlement, but Blue Jacket and the Shawnee-led confederacy insisted on a boundary line that the Americans found unacceptable, and so a new expedition led by General Anthony Wayne was dispatched. Wayne's army defeated the Indian confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The Indians had hoped for British assistance; when that was not forthcoming, the indigenous people were compelled to sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ceded modern-day Ohio and part of Indiana to the United States.

Tecumseh, the Creek War, and the War of 1812[link]

The United States continued to gain title to Native American land after the Treaty of Greenville, at a rate that created alarm in Indian communities.^{[citation needed]} In 1800, William Henry Harrison became governor of the Indiana Territory and, under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, pursued an aggressive policy of obtaining titles to Indian lands. Two Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, organized Tecumseh's War, another pan-tribal resistance to American expansion.

While Tecumseh was in the South attempting to recruit allies among the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws, Harrison marched against the Indian confederacy, defeating Tenskwatawa and his followers at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The Americans hoped that the victory would end the militant resistance, but Tecumseh instead chose to ally openly with the British, who were soon at war with the Americans in the War of 1812.

Like the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 was also a massive war on the western front. Encouraged by Tecumseh, the Creek War (1813–1814), which began as a civil war within the Creek (Muscogee) nation, became part of the larger struggle against American expansion. Although the war with the British was ultimately a stalemate, the United States was more successful on the western front. Tecumseh was killed by Harrison's army at the Battle of the Thames, ending the resistance in the Old Northwest. The Creeks who fought against the United States were defeated. The First Seminole War in 1818 was in some ways a continuation of the Creek War^{[citation needed]} and resulted in the transfer of Florida to the United States in 1819 from Spain.

As in the Revolution and the Northwest Indian War, the British abandoned their Indian allies to the Americans after the War of 1812. This proved to be a major turning point in the Indian Wars, marking the last time that Native Americans would turn to a foreign power for assistance against the United States.

Removal era wars[link]

Numerous Indian removal treaties were signed. Most American Indians reluctantly but peacefully complied with the terms of the removal treaties, often with bitter resignation.^{[citation needed]} Some groups, however, went to war to resist the implementation of these treaties, e.g., two short wars (the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Creek War of 1836), as well as the long and costly Second Seminole War (1835–1842).

Second Seminole War[link]

American settlers began to push into Florida, which was now an American territory and had some of the most fertile lands in the nation.^{[citation needed]} Some scholars have noted that covetousness, racism, and claims of "self-defense" against Indian raids (real or imagined) became the order of the day in the 1820s, and played a major part in the settlers' determination to "rid Florida of Indians once and for all".^[14] To compound the tension, runaway black slaves sometimes found refuge in Seminole camps. The inevitable result was clashes between white settlers and the Native Americans already residing there. Andrew Jackson sought to alleviate this problem by signing the Indian Removal Act, which stipulated forced relocation of Native Americans (if necessary) out of Florida. The Seminoles, led by such powerful leaders as Aripeka (Sam Jones), Micanopy, and Osceola, had little or no intention of leaving their ancestral homelands and quickly retaliated against settler theft, encroachment and attacks on their camps. This led to what is known as the Second Seminole War, the longest and most costly war ever waged against Indians.

The Seminoles' continued resistance to relocation led Florida to prepare for war. The St. Augustine Militia asked the U.S. War Department for the loan of 500 muskets. Five hundred volunteers were mobilized under Brig. Gen. Richard K. Call. Indian war parties raided farms and settlements, and families fled to forts, large towns, or out of the territory altogether. A war party led by Osceola captured a Florida militia supply train, killing eight of its guards and wounding six others. Most of the goods taken were recovered by the militia in another fight a few days later. Sugar plantations along the Atlantic coast south of St. Augustine were destroyed, with many of the slaves on the plantations joining the Seminoles.

The U.S. Army had 11 companies (about 550 soldiers) stationed in Florida. Fort King (Ocala) had only one company of soldiers, and it was feared that they might be overrun by the Seminoles. Three companies were stationed at Fort Brooke (Tampa), with another two expected imminently, so the army decided to send two companies to Fort King. On December 23, 1835, the two companies, totaling 110 men, left Fort Brooke under the command of Major Francis L. Dade. Seminoles shadowed the marching soldiers for five days. On December 28, the Seminoles ambushed the soldiers, and wiped out the command. Only three men survived, and one, Edwin De Courcey, was hunted down and killed by a Seminole the next day. Two survivors, Ransome Clarke and Joseph Sprague, returned to Fort Brooke. Only Clarke, who died of his wounds later, left any account of the battle from the army's perspective. Joseph Sprague was unharmed and lived quite a while longer, but was not able to give an account of the battle because he had sought immediate refuge in a nearby pond. The Seminoles lost just three men, with five wounded. On the same day as the Dade Massacre, Osceola and his followers shot and killed from ambush Wiley Thompson and six others outside of Fort King.

Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock was subsequently among those who found the remains of the Dade party in February. In his journal he accounted for the discovery, then vented his bitter discontent with the conflict: "The government is in the wrong, and this is the chief cause of the persevering opposition of the Indians, who have nobly defended their country against our attempt to enforce a fraudulent treaty. The natives used every means to avoid a war, but were forced into it by the tyranny of our government."

On December 29, General Clinch left Fort Drane (recently established on Clinch's plantation, about twenty miles (32 km) northwest of Fort King) with 750 soldiers, including 500 volunteers on an enlistment due to end January 1, 1836. The group was traveling to a Seminole stronghold called the Cove of the Withlacoochee, an area of many lakes on the southwest side of the Withlacoochee River. When they reached the river, the soldiers could not find the ford, so Clinch ferried his regular troops across the river in a single canoe they had found. Once they were across and had relaxed, the Seminoles attacked. The troops only saved themselves by fixing bayonets and charging the Seminoles, at the cost of four dead and 59 wounded. The militia provided cover as the army troops then withdrew across the river.

In another key skirmish known as the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, Colonel Zachary Taylor saw the first major action of the campaign. Leaving Fort Gardiner on the upper Kissimmee with 1,000 men on December 19, Taylor headed towards Lake Okeechobee. In the first two days ninety Seminoles surrendered. On the third day Taylor stopped to build Fort Basinger, where he left his sick and enough men to guard the Seminoles that had surrendered. Three days later, on Christmas Day, 1837, Taylor's column caught up with the main body of the Seminoles on the north shore of Lake Okeechobee.

The Seminoles, led by Alligator, Sam Jones, and the recently escaped Coacoochee, were well positioned in a hammock surrounded by sawgrass. The ground was thick mud, and sawgrass easily cuts and burns the skin. Taylor had about 800 men, while the Seminoles numbered fewer than 400. Taylor sent in the Missouri volunteers first, moving his troops squarely into the center of the swamp. His plan was to make a direct attack rather than encircle the Indians. All his men were on foot. Missouri volunteers formed the first line. As soon as they came within range, the Indians opened with heavy fire. The volunteers broke, and their commander, Colonel Gentry, fatally wounded, was unable to rally them. They fled back across the swamp. The fighting in the sawgrass was deadliest for five companies of the Sixth Infantry; every officer but one, and most of their non-commissioned officers, were either killed or wounded. When that part of the regiment retired a short distance to re-form, they found only four men of these companies unharmed. Only about a dozen Seminoles had been killed in the battle. Nevertheless, the Battle of Lake Okeechobee was hailed as a great victory for Taylor and the army. Twenty-six U.S. soldiers, including the majority of Taylor's officers and NCOs, were killed, with 112 wounded, compared to only 11 Seminoles killed and 14 wounded. No Seminoles were captured, although Taylor did capture 100 ponies and 600 head of cattle.

By 1842, the war was winding down, and most Seminoles, save a few hundred diehards, had left Florida for Oklahoma. Estimates of the true cost of the Seminole War range from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000. But no analysis of the actual cost has been made. Congress appropriated funds for the "suppression of Indian hostilities", but the costs of the Creek War of 1836 are included in that. An inquiry into extravagance in naval operations found that the navy had spent about $511,000 on the war. The investigation did find questionable expenditures. Among other things, while the army had bought dugout canoes for $10 to $15 apiece, the navy spent an average of $226 per canoe. The number of army, navy and marine regulars who served in Florida is given as 10,169. About 30,000 militiamen and volunteers also served in the war.

Sources agree that the U.S. Army officially recorded 1,466 deaths in the Second Seminole War, mostly from disease. The number killed in action is less clear. Mahon reports 328 regular army killed in action, while Missall reports that Seminoles killed 269 officers and men. Almost half of those deaths occurred in the Dade Massacre, Battle of Lake Okeechobee and Harney Massacre. Similarly, Mahon reports 69 deaths for the navy, while Missal reports 41 for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, but adds others may have died after being sent out of Florida as incurable. Mahon and the Florida Board of State Institutions agree that 55 volunteer officers and men were killed by the Seminoles, while Missall says the number is unknown. There is no figure for how many militiamen and volunteers died of disease or accident, however. The number of white civilians and Seminoles killed is also uncertain. A northern newspaper carried a report that more than eighty civilians were killed by Indians in Florida in 1839. Nobody kept a cumulative account of the number of Indians killed, or who died of starvation or other privations caused by the war. The Indians who were shipped west did not fare well either. By the end of 1843, 3,824 Indians had been shipped from Florida to what became the Indian Territory, but in 1844 only 3,136 remained. As of 1962 there were only 2,343 Seminoles in Oklahoma and perhaps some 1,500 in Florida.

West of the Mississippi (1811–1923)[link]

The series of conflicts in the western United States between Native Americans, American settlers, and the United States Army are generally known as the Indian Wars. Many of the most well-known of these conflicts occurred during and after the Civil War until the closing of the frontier in about 1890. However regions of the West that were settled before the Civil War, such as Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, California and Washington, saw significant conflicts prior to 1860.

Various statistics have been developed concerning the devastation of these wars on the peoples involved. One notable study by Gregory Michno used records dealing with figures "as a direct result of" engagements and concluded that "of the 21,586 total casualties tabulated in this survey, military personnel and civilians accounted for 6,596 (31%), while Indian casualties totaled about 14,990 (69%)." for the period of 1850–90. However, Michno says he "used the army's estimates in almost every case" & "the number of casualties in this study are inherently biased toward army estimations". His work includes almost nothing on "Indian war parties", and that "army records are often incomplete"; his work is a "workable" number, not a definitive account of events, since it excluded other figures.^[15]

According to Michno, more conflicts with native Americans occurred in the states bordering Mexico than in the interior states. Arizona ranked highest, with 310 known battles fought within the state's boundaries between Americans and the natives. Also, when determining how many deaths resulted from the wars, in each of the American states, Arizona again ranked highest. At least 4,340 people were killed, including both the settlers and the Indians, over twice as many as occurred in Texas, the second highest-ranking state. Most of the deaths in Arizona were caused by the Apache. Michno also says that fifty-one percent of the Indian war battles between 1850 and 1890 took place in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, as well as thirty-seven percent of the casualties in the county west of the Mississippi River.^[16]

Background[link]

The western United States had been penetrated by United States forces and settlers before this period, notably by fur trappers, the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail and the Mormon emigration to Utah, as well as by settlement of California and Oregon. Relations between American Immigrants and Native Americans were generally peaceful. In the case of the Santa Fe Trail, this was due to the friendly relationship of the Bents of Bent's Fort with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and in the case of the Oregon Trail, to the peace established by the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Signed in 1851 between the United States and the plains Indians and the Indians of the northern Rocky Mountains, the treaty allowed passage by immigrants and the building of roads and the stationing of troops along the Oregon Trail.

The Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859 introduced a substantial white population into the Front Range of the Rockies supported by a trading lifeline that crossed the central Great Plains. Advancing settlement following the passage of the Homestead Act and the building of the transcontinental railways following the Civil War further destabilized the situation, placing white settlers into direct competition for the land and resources of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West.^[17][18] Further factors included discovery of gold in the Black Hills, resulting in the gold rush of 1875–1878, and, earlier, in Montana during the Montana Gold Rush of 1862–1863 and the opening of the Bozeman Trail, which led to Red Cloud's War and later the Great Sioux War of 1876–77.^[19]

As in the East, expansion into the plains and mountains by miners, ranchers and settlers led to increasing conflicts with the indigenous population of the West. Many tribes-—from the Utes of the Great Basin to the Nez Perces of Idaho-—fought Americans at one time or another. But the Sioux of the Northern Plains and the Apache of the Southwest provided the most celebrated opposition to encroachment on tribal lands. Led by resolute, militant leaders, such as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, the Sioux were skilled at high-speed mounted warfare. The Sioux were relatively new arrivals on the Plains, as, previously, they had been sedentary farmers in the Great Lakes region. Once they learned to capture and ride horses, they moved west, displacing other Indian tribes and became feared warriors. Historically the Apache bands supplemented their economy by raiding others and practiced warfare to avenge a death of a kinsman. The Apache bands were adept at fighting and highly elusive in the environments of desert and canyons.

During the American Civil War U.S. Army units were withdrawn to fight the war in the east. They were replaced by the volunteer infantry and cavalry raised by the states of California and Oregon, by the western territorial governments or the local militias. These units fought the Indians besides keeping open communications with the east, holding the west for the Union and defeating the Confederate attempt to capture the New Mexico Territory.

Texas[link]

Battles, army posts, and the general location of tribes

In the 18th century, Spanish settlers in Texas came into conflict with the Apache, Comanche, and Karankawa, among other tribes. Large numbers of Anglo-American settlers reached Texas in the 1830s, and from that point until the 1870s, a series of armed confrontations broke out, mostly between Texans and Comanches.

The first notable battle was the Fort Parker massacre in 1836, in which a huge war party of Comanches, Kiowa, Witchitas, and Delaware attacked the settler outpost Fort Parker. Despite the small number of white settlers killed during the raid, the abduction of Cynthia Ann Parker caused widespread outrage among Texas' Anglo settlers.

Once the Republic of Texas was declared and had secured some sovereignty in their war with Mexico, the Texas government under President Sam Houston pursued a policy of engagement with the Comanches and Kiowa. Ironically, since Houston had lived with the Cherokee, the republic faced a conflict called the Cordova Rebellion, in which Cherokees appear to have joined with Mexican forces to fight the fledgling country. Houston resolved the conflict without resorting to arms, refusing to believe that the Cherokee would take up arms against his government.^[20] The Lamar administration, which followed Houston, took a very different policy towards the Indians. Under Lamar Texas removed the Cherokee to the west. With that policy in place, the Texas government sought to deport the Comanches and Kiowa. This led to a series of battles, including the Council House Fight, in which, at a peace parley, the Texas militia seized a number of Comanche chiefs and the resulting Great Raid of 1840 and the Battle of Plum Creek.

Quanah Parker, son of a Comanche Chief and an Anglo-Texas settler. His family's story spans the history of the Texas–Indian Wars.

The Lamar Administration was known for its failed and expensive Indian policy; the cost of the war with the Indians exceeded the annual revenue of the government throughout his four-year term. It was followed by a second Houston administration, which resumed the previous policy of diplomacy. Texas signed treaties with all of the tribes, including the Comanche.

After Texas joined the Union in 1846, the struggle between the Plains Indians and the settlers was taken up by the federal government and the state of Texas. The years 1856–1858 were particularly vicious and bloody on the Texas frontier, as settlers continued to expand their settlements into the Comanche homeland, the Comancheria, and 1858 was marked by the first Texan incursion into the heart of the Comancheria, the so-called Antelope Hills Expedition, marked by the Battle of Little Robe Creek. This battle signaled the beginning of the end of the Comanche as a viable people, since, for the first time, they were attacked in the heart of their domain, in force.

The battles between settlers and Indians continued and in 1860, at the Battle of Pease River, Texas militia destroyed an Indian camp. In the aftermath of the battle, the Texans learned that they had recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker, the little girl captured by the Comanche in 1836. She returned to live with the Parkers, but missed her children, including her son Quanah Parker. He was the son of Parker and Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and would go on to be a Comanche war chief at the First Battle of Adobe Walls. As chief of the Quahadi Comanches, he finally surrendered to the overwhelming force of the federal government and in 1875 moved to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma.

Pacific Northwest[link]

A number of wars occurred in the wake of the Oregon Treaty of 1846 and the creation of Oregon Territory and Washington Territory. Among the causes of conflict were a sudden immigration to the region and a series of gold rushes throughout the Pacific Northwest. The Whitman massacre of 1847 triggered the Cayuse War, which saw fighting from the Cascade Range to the Rocky Mountains. The Cayuse were defeated in 1855, but by then the conflict had expanded and continued in what became known as the Yakima War, 1855–1858. One of the triggers of the Yakima War was the creation of Washington Territory and the effort of its first governor, Isaac Stevens, to compel tribes to sign treaties ceding land and establishing reservations. The Yakama signed one of the treaties negotiated during the Walla Walla Council of 1855, and the Yakama Indian Reservation was established. The treaties were poorly received by the native peoples and served mainly to intensify hostilities. Gold discoveries near Fort Colville resulted in many miners crossing Yakama lands via Naches Pass, and conflicts rapidly escalated into violence. It took several years for the US Army to defeat the Yakama, during which time war spread to the Puget Sound region west of the Cascades. The Puget Sound War of 1855–1856 was triggered in part by the Yakima War and in part by the use of intimidation to compel tribes to sign land cession treaties. The Treaty of Medicine Creek, signed in 1855, established an unrealistically small reservation on poor land for the Nisqually and Puyallup people. Violence broke out in the White River valley, along the route to Naches Pass, which connected Nisqually and Yakama lands. Although limited in its magnitude, territorial impact and losses in terms of lives, the Puget Sound War is often remembered in connection with the 1856 Battle of Seattle and the execution of a central figure of the war, Nisqually Chief Leschi.^[21]

In 1858, the fighting on the east side of the Cascades spread. This second phase of the Yakima War is known as the Coeur d'Alene War. The Yakama, Palouse, Spokane, and Coeur d'Alene tribes were defeated at the Battle of Four Lakes in late 1858.^[21]

In southwest Oregon tensions and skirmishes between American settlers and the Rogue River peoples, starting about 1850, escalated into the Rogue River Wars of 1855–1856. The California Gold Rush helped fuel a large increase in the number of people traveling south through the Rogue River Valley.

Gold discoveries continued to trigger violent conflict between prospectores and indigenous peoples. Beginning in 1858, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in British Columbia drew large numbers of miners, many from Washington, Oregon, and California, culminating in the Fraser Canyon War. Although this conflict occurred in what is now Canada, the militias involved were formed mostly of Americans. Due to the discovery of gold in Idaho and Oregon in the 1860s, similar conflicts arose that culminated in the Bear River Massacre in 1863 and Snake War from 1864 to 1868.

In the late 1870s another series of armed conflicts occurred in Oregon and Idaho, spreading east into Wyoming and Montana. The Nez Perce War of 1877 is known particularly for Chief Joseph and the three-month fighting retreat of a band of about 800 Nez Perce. As with the other wars in the Pacific Northwest, the Nez Perce War was caused by a large influx of settlers, the appropriation of Indian lands, and a gold rush-—this time in Idaho. The Nez Perce were pressured into a new treaty in 1863, establishing a new, smaller reservation in Idaho, which did not include the tribe's traditional lands in the Wallowa Valley. The Bannock War broke out the following year for similar reasons. The Sheepeater Indian War in 1879 was the last conflict in the area.

Southwest[link]

The acquisition of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México from Mexico at the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, and the Gadsden Purchase in 1853, brought about conflicts with native peoples that spanned from 1846 to 1895 in this large geographical area. The first conflicts were in New Mexico Territory and in California and Utah Territory during and after the California Gold Rush.

The tribes or bands in the southwest had been engaged in cycles of trading and fighting each other and foreign settlers for centuries prior to the United States' purchasing their region from Mexico in 1848 and 1853. These conflicts with the United States involved every non-pueblo tribe in this region and often were a continuation of Mexican–Spanish conflicts. The Navajo and Apache conflicts are perhaps the best known. The last major campaign of the U.S. military against native Americans in the Southwest involved 5,000 troops in the field, which caused the Apache Geronimo and his band of 24 warriors, women and children to surrender in 1886.

California[link]

Because of the small U.S. garrison west of the Rockies, and the economic and political effects of the gold rush, most of the early conflicts with the Indians involved local parties of miners or settlers or companies of the California Militia. Later, during the American Civil War, California and Oregon State volunteers replaced Federal troops west of the Rocky Mountains and engaged in many conflicts with the Indians in California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico and the Arizona Territories. Following the Civil War, California was mostly pacified, but Federal troops replaced the volunteers and again took up the struggle against Native Americans in the remote regions of the Mojave Desert, and in the northeast of the state against the Snakes and Modoc for the next three decades.

Great Basin[link]

The tribes of the Great Basin, for the most part Shoshone, were severely impacted by the Oregon and California Trails and by Mormon emigration to Utah. Beginning with their encounter with Lewis and Clark the Shoshone had generally had friendly relations with American and British fur traders and trappers. At first, relationships were friendly with travelers on the trails, but, with time, the volume of emigrants severely impacted natural resources in the areas traversed by the trails. Often travelers treated the Indians they encountered badly and the Indians on their part continued to engage in their traditional avocation of stealing horses and other stock.

In Utah, expanding Mormon settlement pushed natives from the fertile and well-watered valleys where they had lived and the cattle of the Mormons consumed the grasses and other plants which made up the traditional Shoshone diet. While unwilling to compensate the Shoshone, or the Ute, for their lands the Mormons did offer food to the Indians. However relations were not smooth, with the Indians being aggressive and demanding while the Mormons found the burden imposed by the Church leadership onerous. The federal government had little presence in the Great Basin and made little effort to ameliorate the situation.

The Indians, their traditional way of life disrupted and in retaliation for outrages suffered at the hands of emigrants, engaged in raiding of travelers along the trails and engaged in aggressive behavior toward Mormon settlers. The efforts of the undisciplined California militia who were stationed in Utah during the Civil War to respond to complaints resulted in the Bear River Massacre.^[22] Following the massacre a series of treaties were agreed to with the various Shoshone tribes exchanging promises of peace for small annuities and reservations. For the most part Indian title was not addressed in those treaties.^[23][24]

Great Plains[link]

Initially relations between participants in the Pike's Peak gold rush and the Native American tribes of the Front Range and the Platte valley were friendly.^[25][26] An attempt was made to resolve conflicts by negotiation of the Treaty of Fort Wise which established a reservation in southeastern Colorado, but the settlement was not agreed to by all of the roving warriors, particularly the Dog Soldiers. During the early 1860s tensions increased and culminated in the Colorado War and the Sand Creek Massacre where Colorado volunteers fell on a peaceful Cheyenne village killing women and children ^[27] which set the stage for further conflict.

The peaceful relationship between settlers and the Indians of the Colorado and Kansas plains was maintained faithfully by the tribes, but sentiment grew among the Colorado settlers for Indian removal. The savagery of the attacks on civilians during the Dakota War of 1862 contributed to these sentiments as did the few minor incidents which occurred in the Platte Valley and in areas east of Denver. Regular army troops had been withdrawn for service in the Civil War and were replaced with the Colorado Volunteers, rough men who often favored extermination of the Indians. They were commanded by John Chivington and George L. Shoup who followed the lead of John Evans, territorial governor of Colorado. They adopted a policy of shooting all Indians encountered on sight, a policy which in short time ignited a general war on the Colorado and Kansas plains, the Colorado War.^[28]

Raids by bands of plains Indians on isolated homesteads to the east of Denver, on the advancing settlements in Kansas, and on stage line stations along the South Platte, such as at Julesburg,^[29][30] and along the Smoky Hill Trail, resulted in settlers in both Colorado and Kansas adopting a murderous attitude towards Native Americans, with calls for extermination.^[31] Likewise, the savagery shown by the Colorado Volunteers during the Sand Creek massacre resulted in Native Americans, particularly the Dog Soldiers, a band of the Cheyenne, engaging in savage retribution.

Dakota War[link]

Settlers escaping the Dakota War of 1862

The Dakota War of 1862 (more commonly called the Sioux Uprising of 1862 in older authorities and popular texts) was the first major armed engagement between the U.S. and the Sioux. After six weeks of fighting in Minnesota, lead mostly by Chief Taoyateduta (aka, Little Crow), records conclusively show that more than 500 U.S. soldiers and settlers died in the conflict, though many more may have died in small raids or after being captured. The number of Sioux dead in the uprising is mostly undocumented, but after the war, 303 Sioux were convicted of murder and rape by U.S. military tribunals and sentenced to death. Most of the death sentences were commuted by President Lincoln, but on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Dakota Sioux men were hanged in what is still today the largest mass execution in U.S. history.^[32]

After the expulsion of the Dakota, some refugees and warriors made their way to Lakota lands in what is now North Dakota. Battles continued between Minnesota regiments and combined Lakota and Dakota forces through 1864, as Colonel Henry Sibley pursued the Sioux into Dakota Territory. Sibley's army defeated the Lakota and Dakota in three major battles in 1863: the Battle of Dead Buffalo Lake on July 26, 1863, the Battle of Stony Lake on July 28, 1863, and the Battle of Whitestone Hill on September 3, 1863. The Sioux retreated further, but again faced an American army in 1864; this time, Gen. Alfred Sully led a force from near Fort Pierre, South Dakota, and decisively defeated the Sioux at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain on July 28, 1864.

The Sand Creek massacre and the Sioux War of 1865[link]

On November 29, 1864, Colorado volunteers attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho village camped on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Under orders to take no prisoners, the militia killed and mutilated about 200 of the Indians, two-thirds of whom were women and children,^[33] taking scalps and other grisly trophies of battle.^[34] The Indians at Sand Creek had been assured by the U.S. Government that they would be safe in the territory they were occupying, but anti-Indian sentiments by white settlers were running high. Later congressional investigations resulted in a short-lived public outcry against the slaughter of the Native Americans.

Following the massacre, the survivors joined the camps of the Cheyenne on the Smokey Hill and Republican Rivers. There, the war pipe was smoked and passed from camp to camp among the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho camped in the area and an attack on the stage station and fort at Julesburg was planned and carried out in January 1865. This successful attack was followed up by numerous raids along the South Platte both east and west of Julesburg and a second raid on Julesburg in early February. A great deal of loot was captured and many whites killed. The bulk of the Indians then moved north into Nebraska on their way to the Black Hills and the Powder River^[35][36]

In the spring of 1865 raids continued along the Oregon trail in Nebraska and the Sioux, the Northern Cheyenne, the Northern Arapaho together with the warriors who had come north after the Sand Creek massacre raided the Oregon Trail along the North Platte River, and in July 1865 attacked the troops stationed at the bridge across the North Platte at the present site of Casper, Wyoming, the Battle of the Platte Bridge Station.^[37][38]

Black Hills War[link]

Custer and Bloody Knife (kneeling left), Custer's favorite scout.

In 1875, the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, the last serious Sioux war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills. The U.S. Army did not keep miners off Sioux (Lakota) hunting grounds; yet, when ordered to take action against bands of Sioux hunting on the range, according to their treaty rights, the Army moved vigorously. In 1876, after several indecisive encounters, General George Custer found the main encampment of the Lakota and their allies at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Custer and his men—who were separated from their main body of troops—were all killed by the far more numerous Indians who had the tactical advantage. They were led in the field by Crazy Horse and inspired by Sitting Bull's earlier vision of victory. The massacre of Custer and his troopers as a popularized episode in the history of western Indian warfare was fostered by an advertising campaign by the brewery, Anheuser-Busch. The enterprising company ordered reprints of a dramatic painting that depicted "Custer's Last Fight" and had them framed and hung in many American saloons, helping to create lasting impressions of the battle and the brewery's products in the minds of bar patrons.^[39][40]

Later, in 1890, a Ghost Dance ritual on the Northern Lakota reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, led to the Army's attempt to subdue the Lakota. On December 29 during this attempt, gunfire erupted, and soldiers killed up to 300 Indians, mostly old men, women and children in the Wounded Knee Massacre. The approximately 25 soldiers who died may have been killed by friendly fire during the battle. Long before this, the means of subsistence and the societies of the indigenous population of the Great Plains had been destroyed by the slaughter of the buffalo, driven almost to extinction in the 1880s by indiscriminate hunting.

Last conflicts[link]

Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, 1890

• October 5, 1898, Leech Lake, Minnesota: Battle of Sugar Point. Last Medal of Honor given for Indian Wars campaigns was awarded to Private Oscar Burkard of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment.
• 1907, Four Corners, Arizona: Two troops of the 5th Cavalry from Fort Wingate skirmish with armed Navajo men. One Navajo was killed and the rest escaped.
• March 1909, Crazy Snake Rebellion, Oklahoma: Federal officials attack the Muscogee Creeks and allied Freedmen who had violently resisted the government since 1901, headquartered at Hickory ceremonial grounds in Oklahoma. A two-day gun battle seriously wounded leader Chitto Harjo and quelled this rebellion.^[41]
• 1911, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico: A company of cavalry went from Fort Wingate to quell a possible uprising by Navajo.
• January 19, 1911, Washoe County, Nevada: The Last Massacre occurred. A group of Shoshones and Bannocks killed four ranchers. On February 26, 1911 eight of the natives involved in the Last Massacre were killed by a posse in the Battle of Kelley Creek; the remaining four were captured.
• March 1914 – March 15, 1915, Bluff War in Utah between Ute natives and Mormon settlers.
• January 9, 1918, Bear Valley, Arizona: The Battle of Bear Valley was fought in Southern Arizona. United States Army forces of the 10th Cavalry engaged and captured a band of Yaquis, after a brief firefight.^[42]
• March 20–23, 1923, Posey War in Utah between Ute and Paiute natives against Mormon settlers.
• Some time in 1924 both the Renegade Period and the Apache Wars ended which had begun decades earlier and brought the American Indian Wars to a close 302 years after the Jamestown Massacre of 1622.

Historiography[link]