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.

Today Native Americans make up between 0.9 and 1.5 percent of the U.S. population. No conclusive evidence exists to determine how many native people lived in North America before the arrival of Columbus.David Stannard notes that more conservative demographers cite a figure of about 7 or 8 million inhabitants. The Library of Congress uses 900,000 as the total number in its educational article "Destroying the Native American Cultures". 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. 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. 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. For instance, some estimates indicate case fatality rates of 80–90% in Native American populations during smallpox epidemics.

American Indian may refer to:

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"). 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.

The Modoc War, or Modoc Campaign (also known as the Lava Beds War), was an armed conflict between the Native American Modoc tribe and the United States Army in southern Oregon and northern California from 1872 to 1873. The Modoc War was the last of the Indian Wars to occur in California or Oregon. Eadweard Muybridge photographed the early part of the campaign.

Captain Jack led 52 warriors in a band of more than 150 Modoc people who left the Klamath Reservation. Occupying defensive positions throughout the lava beds south of Tule Lake, for months those few warriors successfully waged a guerrilla war against hundreds of United States Army forces sent against them and reinforced with artillery. In April 1873, Captain Jack and others killed General Edward Canby and another peace commissioner, and wounded others.

After more warfare with reinforcements of US forces, finally some Modoc warriors surrendered, and Captain Jack and the last of his band were captured. Jack and five warriors were tried for the murder of two peace commissioners; Jack and three warriors were executed and two others sentenced for life imprisonment. The remaining 153 Modoc of the band were sent to Indian Territory, where they were held as prisoners of war until 1909. Some at that point returned to the Klamath Reservation, but most (and their descendants) stayed in what was then the state of Oklahoma. As a result, there are federally recognized Modoc tribes in Oregon and Oklahoma today.

Thomas C. Dula (June 22, 1845 – May 1, 1868) was a former Confederate soldier, who was tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of his fiancée, Laura Foster. The trial and hanging received national publicity from newspapers such as The New York Times, thus turning Dula's story into a folk legend. While the murder happened in Wilkes County, North Carolina, the trial, conviction, and execution took place in Statesville, North Carolina. There was considerable controversy surrounding his conviction and execution. In subsequent years, a folk song was written (entitled “Tom Dooley”, based on the pronunciation in the local dialect), and many oral traditions were passed down, regarding the sensational occurrences surrounding the murder of Foster, and Dula's subsequent execution.The Kingston Trio recorded a hit version of the murder ballad in 1958.

Tom Dula was born to a poor Appalachian hill country family in Wilkes County, North Carolina, most likely the youngest of three brothers, with one younger sister, Eliza. The young Dula grew up, attended school, and "probably played with the female Fosters", Ann (later Melton) and her cousins Laura and Pauline. As the children grew up, Tom and Ann apparently became intimate. Three months before his eighteenth birthday, on 15 March 1862, he joined the Confederate Army. Dula served as a private in Company K in the 42nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment until the war ended in 1865. Surprisingly, there is some evidence that Dula was literate, as according to accounts at the time, he wrote a 15-page account of his life, as well as the note that exonerated Ann Melton. His literacy is highly unusual given his station in life, and the harsh poverty of his upbringing.