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Picture of the day, were is all stuff in the current day, while of some which is are prominent. such as landscapes.

Kay-Anlog, Calamba

This section is an excerpt from Lomé § Geography.[edit]

At its creation, the commune of Lomé was wedged between the lagoon to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the south, the village of Bè to the east and the border of Aflao to the west.

Today, it has experienced a vertiginous extension, and is bounded by the Togolese Insurance Group (GTA) to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the south, the oil refinery to the east, and the Togo-Ghana border to the west. The agglomeration spreads over an area of 333 sq.km. including 30 sq.km. in the lagoon area.

The services of the municipality of Lomé go far beyond the limits of the gulf and the municipality to the north and east of the city.

Distance between Lomé and the rest of the country's cities

Lomé/Tsévié : 35 km

Lomé/Aného : 45 km

Lomé/Tabligbo : 90 km

Lomé/Notsé : 100 km

Lomé/Kpalimé : 121 km

Lomé/Atakpamé : 167 km

Lomé/Blitta : 273 km

Lomé/Sokodé : 355 km

Lomé/Bafilo : 404 km

Lomé/Bassar : 412 km

Lomé/Kara : 428 km

Lomé/Kandé 503 km

Lomé/Mango : 592 km

Lomé/Dapaong : 662 km

On this day

October 20

Pope Pius XII

• 1939 – Pope Pius XII (pictured) published his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which critiqued ideologies such as racism, cultural superiority and totalitarianism.
• 1951 – African-American college football player Johnny Bright was the victim of an on-field assault, eventually leading to changes in NCAA football rules that mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.
• 1967 – Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin filmed an unidentified subject, which they claimed was Bigfoot, at Six Rivers National Forest in California.
• 1984 – The Spanish trawler Sonia sank in British waters after a five-hour chase by the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel Aisling, during which almost 600 shots were fired.
• 1991 – An earthquake struck the Indian state of Uttarakhand, killing at least 768 people and destroying thousands of homes.

• Sennacherib (d. 681 BC)
• Bálint Balassi (b. 1554)
• Simon de Vos (b. 1603)
• Stéphane Hessel (b. 1917)

More anniversaries:

• October 19
• October 20
• October 21

Squaw's Tit

Anûkathâ Îpa
Bald Eagle Peak
Anûkathâ Îpa from Canmore
Highest point
Elevation	2,514 m (8,248 ft)
Prominence	34 m (112 ft)
Listing	Mountains of Alberta
Coordinates	51°08′10″N 115°20′16″W
Naming
English translation	Bald Eagle Peak
Language of name	North American Indian languages
Geography
Anûkathâ Îpa
Country	Canada
Province	Alberta
Parent range	Fairholme Range
Topo map	NTS 82O3 Canmore
Climbing
Easiest route	Scramble

Anûkathâ Îpa (/ˌɑːnunˈkʌθɒ̃ imˈpə/ AH-noon-KUH-thə eem-PUH; Stoney Nakoda Anûkathâ Îpa IPA: [ˌanũ'kʰaθã ĩ'pʰa], lit. transl. 'Bald Eagle Peak', sometimes written in English language sources as Anû Kathâ Îpa) is an outlier of Mount Charles Stewart in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta. It is one of the most prominent landmarks in the vicinity of Canmore, Alberta.

Anûkathâ Îpa is the official name for the high point of a ridge that lies southwest of the Mount Charles Stewart summit and northwest of Mount Lady Macdonald near Canmore. The peak was formerly known by a racist and misogynistic nickname, because of its resemblance to a woman's breast. It is part of a larger formation that has the appearance of a woman lying on her back, including a face, hair, and the general shape of a body, which adds to the resemblance.

On August 20, 2020 it was reported that the prominence would be renamed to avoid racist and misogynistic naming. The Stoney Nakoda people were asked to help select a culturally appropriate name and a request to support the initiative was brought to the Municipal District of Bighorn in September 2020. It was officially renamed on September 29, 2020.

Belonging to the Fairholme Range in Kananaskis Provincial Park, Anûkathâ Îpa is 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) above the Bow River valley. It is 2 km (1.2 mi) northwest of Lady Macdonald, just east of the Banff National Park gates.

Nacotchtank

The Nacotchtank, also Anacostine, were an Algonquian Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands.

During the 17th century, the Nacotchtank resided within the present-day borders of Washington, D.C., along the intersection of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.

The Nacotchtank spoke Piscataway, a variant of the Algonquian subfamily spoken by many tribes along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. This was due to close association and tribute with the nearby Piscataway chiefdom, whose tayac (grand chief) ruled over a loose confederacy of tribes in Southern Maryland from the village of Moyaone to the south.

As the neighboring Maryland colony sought land for tobacco plantations, the Nacotchtank were encroached upon and forcibly removed. They were last recorded in the late 1600s to have taken refuge on nearby Theodore Roosevelt Island located in the Potomac River. Over time, the small population that was left behind after battle and disease was absorbed into the Piscataway.

In his 1608 expedition, English explorer John Smith noted the prosperity of the Nacotchtank and their great supply of various resources. Various pieces of art and other cultural artifacts, including hair combs, pendants, pottery, and dog bones, have been found in excavations throughout Washington, D.C., on Nacotchtank territory.

Irish National Anthem

Only the chorus is the established national anthem.

Irish version	IPA transcription	English version
Sinne Fianna Fáil, atá faoi gheall ag Éirinn, Buíon dár slua thar toinn do ráinig chugainn, Faoi mhóid bheith saor Seantír ár sinsear feasta, Ní fhágfar faoin tíorán ná faoin tráill. Anocht a théam sa bhearna bhaoil, Le gean ar Ghaeil, chun báis nó saoil, Le gunna-scréach faoi lámhach na bpiléar, Seo libh canaig' amhrán na bhFiann.	[ˈʃɪ.n̠ʲə ˈfʲi(ə).n̪ˠə ˈfˠɑːlʲ] [ə.ˈt̪ˠɑː f(ʷ)ˠiː ˈjal̪ˠ ɛɟ ˈeː.ɾʲən̠ʲ] [ˈb(ʷ)ˠiːnˠ ˈd̪ˠɑːɾˠ ˈsˠl̪ˠu(ə)] [haɾˠ ˈt̪(ʷ)ˠiːn̠ʲ d̪ˠɔ ˈɾˠɑː.nʲɪɟ ˈxuː(ɡə)nʲ] [ˈf(ʷ)ˠiː ˈvˠoːdʲ vʲɛ ˈsˠeːɾˠ] [ʃanˠ.ˈtʲiːɾʲ ɑːɾˠ ˈʃiːn̠ʲ.ʃəɾˠ ˈfʲasˠ.t̪ˠə] [n̠ʲiː ˈɑːk.ˈ(f)ˠəɾˠ f(ʷ)ˠiːnʲ ˈtʲiː.ɾˠɑːn̪ˠ ˈn̪ˠɑː f(ʷ)ˠiːnʲ ˈt̪ˠɾˠɑːlʲ] [ə.ˈn̪ˠɔxt̪ˠ ə ˈheːmˠ sˠə ˈvʲɑːɾˠ.n̪ˠə ˈv(ʷ)ˠeːlʲ] [lʲɛ ˈɟanˠ ɛɾʲ ˈɣ(ʷ)eːlʲ xʊnˠ ˈb(ʷ)ˠɑːʃ n̪ˠoː ˈsˠeːlʲ] [lʲɛ ˈɡʊ.n̪ˠə ˈʃcɾʲeːx f(ʷ)ˠiː ˈl̪ˠɑː.wəx nˠə bʲi.ˈlʲeːɾˠ] [ʃɔ lʲɪvʲ ˈkɑ.n̪ˠɪɟ əu.ˈɾˠaːn̪ˠ n̪ˠə ˈvʲi(ə)n̪ˠ]	Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland, Some have come from a land beyond the wave, Sworn to be free, no more our ancient sireland, Shall shelter the despot or the slave. Tonight we man the bearna bhaoil, In Erin's cause, come woe or weal, 'Mid cannons' roar and rifles' peal, We'll chant a soldier's song.

Passamaquoddy

A Passamaquoddy story scraped onto birch bark

The Passamaquoddy have an oral history supported with visual imagery, such as birchbark etching and petrographs prior to European contact. Among the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the loose Wabanaki Confederacy, they occupy coastal regions along the Bay of Fundy, Passamaquoddy Bay, and Gulf of Maine, and along the St. Croix River and its tributaries. Traditionally, they had seasonal patterns of settlement. In the winter, they dispersed and hunted inland. In the summer, they gathered more closely together on the coast and islands, and primarily harvested seafood, including marine mammals, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish.

A mannequin representing a 16th-century Passamaquoddy man

Settlers of European descent repeatedly forced the Passamaquoddy off their original lands from the 1800s. After the United States achieved independence from Great Britain, the tribe was eventually officially limited to the current Indian Township Reservation, at , in eastern Washington County, Maine. It has a land area of 37.45 square miles (97.0 km²) and a 2000 census resident population of 676 persons. They also control the small Passamaquoddy Pleasant Point Reservation in eastern Washington County, which has a land area of 0.5 square miles (1.3 km²) and a population of 749, per the 2010 census.

Passamaquoddy have also lived on off-reservation trust lands in five Maine counties. These lands total almost four times the size of the reservations proper. They are located in northern and western Somerset County, northern Franklin County, northeastern Hancock County, western Washington County, and several locations in eastern and western Penobscot County. The total land area of these areas is 373.888 km² (144.359 sq mi). As of the 2000 census, no residents were on these trust lands.

Location of Passamaquoddy off-reservation trust lands

The Passamaquoddy also live in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada, where they have a chief and organized government. They maintain active land claims in Canada but do not have legal status there as a First Nation. Some Passamaquoddy continue to seek the return of territory now within present-day St. Andrews, New Brunswick, which they claim as Qonasqamkuk, a Passamaquoddy ancestral capital and burial ground.

Diseases brought the Europeans

One estimate of population collapse in Central Mexico brought on by successive epidemics in the early colonial period. Note: Other scholars' estimates vary widely.

Early explanations for the population decline of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas include the brutal practices of the Spanish conquistadores, as recorded by the Spaniards themselves, such as the encomienda system, which was ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion, but in practice was tantamount to serfdom and slavery. The most notable account was that of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, whose writings vividly depict Spanish atrocities committed in particular against the Taínos. The second European explanation was a perceived divine approval, in which God removed the Indigenous peoples as part of His "divine plan" to make way for a new Christian civilization. Many Native Americans viewed their troubles in a religious framework within their own belief systems.

According to later academics such as Noble David Cook, a community of scholars began "quietly accumulating piece by piece data on early epidemics in the Americas and their relation to the subjugation of native peoples." Scholars like Cook believe that widespread epidemic disease, to which the Indigenous peoples had no prior exposure or resistance, was the primary cause of the massive population decline of the Native Americans. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox, but other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis, which were chronic in Eurasia.

However, recently scholars have studied the link between physical colonial violence such as warfare, displacement, and enslavement, and the proliferation of disease among Native populations. For example, according to Coquille scholar Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "In recent decades, however, researchers challenge the idea that disease is solely responsible for the rapid Indigenous population decline. The research identifies other aspects of European contact that had profoundly negative impacts on Native peoples' ability to survive foreign invasion: war, massacres, enslavement, overwork, deportation, the loss of will to live or reproduce, malnutrition and starvation from the breakdown of trade networks, and the loss of subsistence food production due to land loss."

Further, Andrés Reséndez of the University of California, Davis points out that, even though the Spanish were aware of deadly diseases such as smallpox, there is no mention of them in the New World until 1519, implying that, until that date, epidemic disease played no significant part in the depopulation of the Antilles. The practices of forced labor, brutal punishment, and inadequate necessities of life, were the initial and major reasons for depopulation. Jason Hickel estimates that a third of Arawak workers died every six months from forced labor in these mines. In this way, "slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the Indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, as it set the conditions for diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and malaria to flourish. Unlike the populations of Europe who rebounded following the Black Death, no such rebound occurred for the Indigenous populations.

Similarly, historian Jeffrey Ostler at the University of Oregon has argued that population collapses in North America throughout colonization were not due mainly to lack of Native immunity to European disease. Instead, he claims that "When severe epidemics did hit, it was often less because Native bodies lacked immunity than because European colonialism disrupted Native communities and damaged their resources, making them more vulnerable to pathogens." In specific regard to Spanish colonization of northern Florida and southeastern Georgia, Native peoples there "were subject to forced labor and, because of poor living conditions and malnutrition, succumbed to wave after wave of unidentifiable diseases." Further, in relation to British colonization in the Northeast, Algonquian speaking tribes in Virginia and Maryland "suffered from a variety of diseases, including malaria, typhus, and possibly smallpox." These diseases were not solely a case of Native susceptibility, however, because "as colonists took their resources, Native communities were subject to malnutrition, starvation, and social stress, all making people more vulnerable to pathogens. Repeated epidemics created additional trauma and population loss, which in turn disrupted the provision of healthcare." Such conditions would continue, alongside rampant disease in Native communities, throughout colonization, the formation of the United States, and multiple forced removals, as Ostler explains that many scholars "have yet to come to grips with how U.S. expansion created conditions that made Native communities acutely vulnerable to pathogens and how severely disease impacted them. ... Historians continue to ignore the catastrophic impact of disease and its relationship to U.S. policy and action even when it is right before their eyes."

Historian David Stannard says that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and "unintended consequence" of human migration and progress," and asserts that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable," but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. He also wrote:

...Despite frequent undocumented assertions that disease was responsible for the great majority of indigenous deaths in the Americas, there does not exist a single scholarly work that even pretends to demonstrate this claim on the basis of solid evidence. And that is because there is no such evidence, anywhere. The supposed truism that more native people died from disease than from direct face-to-face killing or from gross mistreatment or other concomitant derivatives of that brutality such as starvation, exposure, exhaustion, or despair is nothing more than a scholarly article of faith...

Chief Sitting Bull.

In contrast, historian Russel Thornton has pointed out that there were disastrous epidemics and population losses during the first half of the sixteenth century "resulting from incidental contact, or even without direct contact, as disease spread from one American Indian tribe to another." Thornton has also challenged higher Indigenous population estimates, which are based on the Malthusian assumption that "populations tend to increase to, and beyond, the limits of the food available to them at any particular level of technology."

The European colonization of the Americas resulted in the deaths of so many people it contributed to climatic change and temporary global cooling, according to scientists from University College London. A century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, some 90% of Indigenous Americans had perished from "wave after wave of disease", along with mass slavery and war, in what researchers have described as the "great dying". According to one of the researchers, UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin, the large death toll also boosted the economies of Europe: "the depopulation of the Americas may have inadvertently allowed the Europeans to dominate the world. It also allowed for the Industrial Revolution and for Europeans to continue that domination."

Biological warfare

When Old World diseases were first carried to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, they spread throughout the southern and northern hemispheres, leaving the Indigenous populations in near ruins. No evidence has been discovered that the earliest Spanish colonists and missionaries deliberately attempted to infect the American Natives, and some efforts were made to limit the devastating effects of disease before it killed off what remained of their labor force (compelled to work under the encomienda system). The cattle introduced by the Spanish contaminated various water reserves which Native Americans dug in the fields to accumulate rainwater. In response, the Franciscans and Dominicans created public fountains and aqueducts to guarantee access to drinking water. But when the Franciscans lost their privileges in 1572, many of these fountains were no longer guarded and so deliberate well poisoning may have happened. Although no proof of such poisoning has been found, some historians believe the decrease of the population correlates with the end of religious orders' control of the water.

In following centuries, accusations and discussions of biological warfare were common. Well-documented accounts of incidents involving both threats and acts of deliberate infection are very rare, but may have occurred more frequently than scholars have previously acknowledged. Many of the instances likely went unreported, and it is possible that documents relating to such acts were deliberately destroyed, or sanitized. By the middle of the 18th century, colonists had the knowledge and technology to attempt biological warfare with the smallpox virus. They well understood the concept of quarantine, and that contact with the sick could infect the healthy with smallpox, and those who survived the illness would not be infected again. Whether the threats were carried out, or how effective individual attempts were, is uncertain.

One such threat was delivered by fur trader James McDougall, who is quoted as saying to a gathering of local chiefs, "You know the smallpox. Listen: I am the smallpox chief. In this bottle I have it confined. All I have to do is to pull the cork, send it forth among you, and you are dead men. But this is for my enemies and not my friends." Likewise, another fur trader threatened Pawnee Indians that if they didn't agree to certain conditions, "he would let the smallpox out of a bottle and destroy them." The Reverend Isaac McCoy was quoted in his History of Baptist Indian Missions as saying that the white men had deliberately spread smallpox among the Indians of the southwest, including the Pawnee tribe, and the havoc it made was reported to General Clark and the Secretary of War. Artist and writer George Catlin observed that Native Americans were also suspicious of vaccination, "They see white men urging the operation so earnestly they decide that it must be some new mode or trick of the pale face by which they hope to gain some new advantage over them." So great was the distrust of the settlers that the Mandan chief Four Bears denounced the white man, whom he had previously treated as brothers, for deliberately bringing the disease to his people.

During the siege of British-held Fort Pitt in the Seven Years' War, Colonel Henry Bouquet ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from their hospital and gave them as gifts to two neutral Lenape Indian dignitaries during a peace settlement negotiation, according to the entry in the Captain's ledger, "To convey the Smallpox to the Indians". In the following weeks, Sir Jeffrey Amherst conspired with Bouquet to "Extirpate this Execreble Race" of Native Americans, writing, "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." His Colonel agreed to try.

Most scholars have asserted that the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic was "started among the tribes of the upper Missouri River by failure to quarantine steamboats on the river", and Captain Pratt of the St. Peter "was guilty of contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people. The law calls his offense criminal negligence. Yet in light of all the deaths, the almost complete annihilation of the Mandans, and the terrible suffering the region endured, the label criminal negligence is benign, hardly befitting an action that had such horrendous consequences." However, some sources attribute the 1836–40 epidemic to the deliberate communication of smallpox to Native Americans, with historian Ann F. Ramenofsky writing, "Variola Major can be transmitted through contaminated articles such as clothing or blankets. In the nineteenth century, the U. S. Army sent contaminated blankets to Native Americans, especially Plains groups, to control the Indian problem." In Brazil, well into the 20th century, deliberate infection attacks continued as Brazilian settlers and miners transported infections intentionally to the Native groups whose lands they coveted.

Vaccination

After Edward Jenner's 1796 demonstration that the smallpox vaccination worked, the technique became better known and smallpox became less deadly in the United States and elsewhere. Many colonists and Natives were vaccinated, although, in some cases, officials tried to vaccinate Natives only to discover that the disease was too widespread to stop. At other times, trade demands led to broken quarantines. In other cases, Natives refused vaccination because of suspicion of whites. The first international healthcare expedition in history was the Balmis Expedition which had the aim of vaccinating Indigenous peoples against smallpox all along the Spanish Empire in 1803. In 1831, government officials vaccinated the Yankton Dakota at Sioux Agency. The Santee Sioux refused vaccination and many died.

Pericú

Martyrdom of Lorenzo Carranco, at the beginning of the Pericú Revolt in Santiago de los Coras de Añiñí, 1 October 1734.

The Jesuits established their first permanent mission in Baja California at Loreto in 1697, but it was more than two decades later that they felt prepared to move into the Cape Region. Missions serving the Pericú, at least in part, were established at La Paz (1720), Santiago (1724), and San José del Cabo (1730). A dramatic reversal came in 1734 when the Pericú Revolt began, resulting in the most serious challenge the Jesuits experienced in Baja California. Two missionaries were killed, and for two years Jesuit control over the Cape Region was interrupted. The Pericú themselves suffered most, however, with combat deaths added to the already devastating effects of Old World diseases. By the time the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits from Baja California in 1768, the Pericú seem to have been culturally extinct, although some of their genes may survive in local mestizo populations.

Wichita

The Wichita had a large population in the time of Coronado and Oñate. One scholar estimates their numbers at 200,000. Villages often contained around 1,000 to 1,250 people per village. Certainly they numbered in the tens of thousands. They appeared to be much reduced by the time of the first French contacts with them in 1719, probably due in large part to epidemics of infectious disease to which they had no immunity. In 1790, it was estimated there were about 3,200 total Wichita. Conflict with Texans in the early 19th century and Americans in the mid 19th century led to a major decline in population, leading to the eventual merging of Wichita settlements. By 1868, the population was recorded as being 572 total Wichita. By the time of the census of 1937, there were only 100 Wichita officially left.

In 2018, 2,953 people were enrolled in the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. In 2011, there were 2,501 enrolled Wichitas, 1,884 of whom lived in the state of Oklahoma. Enrollment in the tribe required a minimum blood quantum of 1/32.

Coast Salish

The first smallpox epidemic to hit the region was in the 1680s, with the disease travelling overland from Mexico by intertribal transmission. Among losses due to diseases, and a series of earlier epidemics that had wiped out many peoples entirely, e.g. the Snokomish in 1850, a smallpox epidemic broke out among the Northwest tribes in 1862, killing roughly half the affected native populations, in some cases up to 90% or more. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 started when an infected miner from San Francisco stopped in Victoria on his way to the Cariboo Gold Rush. As the epidemic spread, police, supported by gunboats, forced thousands of First Nations people living in encampments around Victoria to leave and many returned to their home villages which spread the epidemic. Some consider the decision to force First Nations people to leave their encampments an intentional act of genocide. Mean population decline 1774–1874 was about 66%. Though the Salish peoples together are less numerous than the Cherokee or Navajo, the numbers shown below represent a small fraction of the group.

• Pre-epidemics about 12,600; Lushootseed about 11,800, Twana about 800.
• 1850: about 5,000.
• 1885: less than 2,000, probably not including all the off-reservation populations.
• 1984: sum total about 18,000; Lushootseed census 15,963; Twana 1,029.
• 2013: an estimate of at least 56,590, made up of 28,406 Status Indians registered to Coast Salish bands in British Columbia, and 28,284 enrolled members of Coast Salish Tribes in Washington state.

Tonkawa

Recent research indicates that as of 1601 the tribe inhabited what is now northwestern Oklahoma. By 1700, Apache and Wichita enemies had pushed the Tonkawa south to the Red River which forms the border between current-day Oklahoma and Texas. In the 16th century, the Tonkawa tribe probably had around 1,900 members. Their numbers diminished to around 1,600 by the late 17th century due to fatalities from European diseases and conflict with other tribes, most notably the Apache.

In the 1740s, some Tonkawa were involved with the Yojuanes and others as settlers in the San Gabriel Missions of Texas along the San Gabriel River.

In 1758, the Tonkawa along with allied Bidais, Caddos, Wichitas, Comanches, and Yojuanes went to attack the Lipan Apache in the vicinity of Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, which they destroyed.

Tonkawa lands

The tribe continued their southern migration into Texas and northern Mexico, where they allied with the Lipan Apache.

In 1824, the Tonkawa entered into a treaty with Stephen F. Austin to protect Anglo-American immigrants against the Comanche. At the time, Austin was an agent recruiting immigrants to settle in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. In 1840 at the Battle of Plum Creek and again in 1858 at the Battle of Little Robe Creek, the Tonkawa fought alongside the Texas Rangers against the Comanche.

The Tonkawas often visited the capital city of Austin during the days of the Republic of Texas and during early statehood.

In 1859, the United States removed the Tonkawa and a number of other Texas Indian tribes to the Wichita Agency in Indian Territory, and placed them under the protection of nearby Fort Cobb. When the American Civil War started in 1861, Texas declared for the Confederacy, so the federal troops at the fort received orders to march to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, leaving the Indians at the Wichita Agency unprotected.

In response to years of animosity (in part regarding rumors that the Tonkawas engaged in ritual cannibalism against defeated enemies ), a number of pro-Union tribes, including the Delawares, Wichitas, and Penateka Comanches, attacked the Tonkawas in 1862 as they tried to escape. The fight, known as the Tonkawa Massacre killed nearly half of the remaining Tonkawas, leaving them with little more than 100 people.

The tribe returned to Fort Griffin, Texas where they remained for the rest of the Civil War. After the war, the tribe was returned to Texas.

In October, 1884, the United States removed them, once again, to the new Oakland Agency in northern Indian Territory, where they have remained. This journey involved going to Cisco, Texas, where they boarded a railroad train that took them to Stroud in Indian Territory, where they spent the winter at the Sac and Fox Agency. The Tonkawas travelled 100 miles (160 km) to the Ponca Agency, and arrived at nearby Fort Oakland on June 30, 1885.

On October 21, 1891, the tribe signed an agreement with the Cherokee Commission to accept individual allotments of land.

By 1921, only 34 tribal members remained. Their numbers have since increased to close to 950 as of 2023. The Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma incorporated under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act in 1938.

A 60-acre property (24 ha), was purchased by the Tonkawa Tribe in 2023 in commemoration of its status as a site sacred to the Tonkawa. Sugarloaf Mountain, the highest point in Milam County, Texas, will become part of a historical park.

Disappearance of Native American tribe

After thousands of years of different indigenous cultures in present-day Virginia, the Manahoac and other Piedmont tribes developed from the prehistoric Woodland cultures. Historically the Siouan tribes occupied more of the Piedmont area, and the Algonquian-speaking tribes inhabited the lowlands and Tidewater.

In 1608 the English explorer John Smith met with a sizable group of Manahoac above the falls of the Rappahannock River. He recorded that they were living in at least seven villages to the west of where he had met them. He also noted that they were allied with the Monacan, but opposed to the Powhatan. (The historic Manahoac and Monacan tribes were both Siouan-speaking, which gave them some shared culture and was part of the reason they competed with the Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy.)

As the Beaver Wars upset the balance of power, some Manahoac settled in Virginia near the Powhatans. In 1656, these Manahoac fended off an attack by English and Pamunkey, resulting in the Battle of Bloody Run (1656).

By the 1669 census, because of raids by enemy Iroquois tribes from the north (during the Beaver Wars) and probably infectious disease from European contact, the Manahoac were reduced to only fifty bowmen in their former area. Their surviving people apparently joined their Monacan allies to the south immediately afterward. John Lederer recorded the "Mahock" along the James River in 1670. In 1671 Lederer passed directly through their former territory and made no mention of any inhabitants. Around the same time, the Seneca nation of the Iroquois began to claim the land as their hunting grounds by right of conquest, though they did not occupy it.

In 1714, Lt. Governor of Virginia Alexander Spotswood recorded that the Stegaraki subtribe of the Manahoac was present at Fort Christanna in Brunswick County. The fort was created by Spotswood and sponsored by the College of William and Mary to convert natives to Christianity and teach them the English language. The other known Siouan tribes of Virginia were all represented by members at Fort Christanna.

The anthropologist John Swanton believed that a group at Fort Christanna, called the Mepontsky, were perhaps the Ontponea subtribe of the Manahoac. The last mention of the Ontponea in historic records was in 1723. Scholars believe they joined with the Tutelo and Saponi and became absorbed into their tribes. In 1753, these two tribes were formally adopted in New York by their former enemies, the Iroquois, specifically the Cayuga nation. In 1870, there was a report of a "merry old man named Mosquito" living in Canada, who claimed to be "the last of the Manahoac" and the legal owner of much of northern Virginia. He still remembered how to speak the Siouan language.

Diseases about the Native Americans

Nineteenth-century American artist's conception of a medicine man caring for a sick American Indian, from an 1857 book illustration.

The arrival and settlement of Europeans in the Americas resulted in what is known as the Columbian exchange. During this period European settlers brought many different technologies, animals, plants, and lifestyles with them, some of which benefited the indigenous peoples. Europeans also took plants and goods back to the Old World. Potatoes and tomatoes from the Americas became integral to European and Asian cuisines, for instance.

But Europeans also unintentionally brought new infectious diseases, including among others smallpox, bubonic plague, chickenpox, cholera, the common cold, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, measles, scarlet fever, sexually transmitted diseases (with the possible exception of syphilis), typhoid, typhus, tuberculosis (although a form of this infection existed in South America prior to contact), and pertussis. Each of these resulted in sweeping epidemics among Native Americans, who had disability, illness, and a high mortality rate. The Europeans infected with such diseases typically carried them in a dormant state, were actively infected but asymptomatic, or had only mild symptoms, because Europe had been subject for centuries to a selective process by these diseases. The explorers and colonists often unknowingly passed the diseases to natives. The introduction of African slaves and the use of commercial trade routes contributed to the spread of disease.

The infections brought by Europeans are not easily tracked, since there were numerous outbreaks and all were not equally recorded. Historical accounts of epidemics are often vague or contradictory in describing how victims were affected. A rash accompanied by a fever might be smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, or varicella, and many epidemics overlapped with multiple infections striking the same population at once, therefore it is often impossible to know the exact causes of mortality (although ancient DNA studies can often determine the presence of certain microbes). Smallpox was the disease brought by Europeans that was most destructive to the Native Americans, both in terms of morbidity and mortality. The first well-documented smallpox epidemic in the Americas began in Hispaniola in late 1518 and soon spread to Mexico. Estimates of mortality range from one-quarter to one-half of the population of central Mexico.

Native Americans initially believed that illness primarily resulted from being out of balance, in relation to their religious beliefs. Typically, Native Americans held that disease was caused by either a lack of magical protection, the intrusion of an object into the body by means of sorcery, or the absence of the free soul from the body. Disease was understood to enter the body as a natural occurrence if a person was not protected by spirits, or less commonly as a result of malign human or supernatural intervention. For example, Cherokee spiritual beliefs attribute disease to revenge imposed by animals for killing them. In some cases, disease was seen as a punishment for disregarding tribal traditions or disobeying tribal rituals. Spiritual powers were called on to cure diseases through the practice of shamanism. Most Native American tribes also used a wide variety of medicinal plants and other substances in the treatment of disease.

Smallpox

Sixteenth-century Aztec drawings of victims of smallpox (above) and measles (below)

Smallpox was lethal to many Native Americans, resulting in sweeping epidemics and repeatedly affecting the same tribes. After its introduction to Mexico in 1519, the disease spread across South America, devastating indigenous populations in what are now Colombia, Peru and Chile during the sixteenth century. The disease was slow to spread northward due to the sparse population of the northern Mexico desert region. It was introduced to eastern North America separately by colonists arriving in 1633 to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and local Native American communities were soon struck by the virus. It reached the Mohawk nation in 1634, the Lake Ontario area in 1636, and the lands of other Iroquois tribes by 1679. Between 1613 and 1690 the Iroquois tribes living in Quebec suffered twenty-four epidemics, almost all of them caused by smallpox. By 1698 the virus had crossed the Mississippi, causing an epidemic that nearly obliterated the Quapaw Indians of Arkansas.

The disease was often spread during war. John McCullough, a Delaware captive since July 1756, who was then 15 years old, wrote that the Lenape people, under the leadership of Shamokin Daniel, "committed several depredations along the Juniata; it happened to be at a time when the smallpox was in the settlement where they were murdering, the consequence was, a number of them got infected, and some died before they got home, others shortly after; those who took it after their return, were immediately moved out of the town, and put under the care of one who had the disease before."

By the mid-eighteenth century the disease was affecting populations severely enough to interrupt trade and negotiations. Thomas Hutchins, in his August 1762 journal entry while at Ohio's Fort Miami, named for the Mineamie people, wrote:

The 20th, The above Indians met, and the Ouiatanon Chief spoke in behalf of his and the Kickaupoo Nations as follows: "Brother, We are very thankful to Sir William Johnson for sending you to enquire into the State of the Indians. We assure you we are Rendered very miserable at Present on Account of a Severe Sickness that has seiz'd almost all our People, many of which have died lately, and many more likely to Die..." The 30th, Set out for the Lower Shawneese Town and arriv'd 8th of September in the afternoon. I could not have a meeting with the Shawneese the 12th, as their People were Sick and Dying every day.

On June 24, 1763, during the siege of Fort Pitt, as recorded in his journal by fur trader and militia captain William Trent, dignitaries from the Delaware tribe met with British officials at the fort, warned them of "great numbers of Indians" coming to attack the fort, and pleaded with them to leave the fort while there was still time. The commander of the fort, Simeon Ecuyear, refused to abandon the fort. Instead, Ecuyear gave as gifts two blankets, one silk handkerchief and one piece of linen that were believed to have been in contact with smallpox-infected individuals, to the two Delaware emissaries Turtleheart and Mamaltee, allegedly in the hope of spreading the deadly disease to nearby tribes, as attested in Trent's journal. The dignitaries were met again later and they seemingly hadn't contracted smallpox. A relatively small outbreak of smallpox had begun spreading earlier that spring, with a hundred dying from it among Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area through 1763 and 1764. The effectiveness of the biological warfare itself remains unknown, and the method used is inefficient compared to airborne transmission.

21st-century scientists such as V. Barras and G. Greub have examined such reports. They say that smallpox is spread by respiratory droplets in personal interaction, not by contact with fomites, such objects as were described by Trent. The results of such attempts to spread the disease through objects are difficult to differentiate from naturally occurring epidemics.

Gershom Hicks, held captive by the Ohio Country Shawnee and Delaware between May 1763 and April 1764, reported to Captain William Grant of the 42nd Regiment "that the Small pox has been very general & raging amongst the Indians since last spring and that 30 or 40 Mingoes, as many Delawares and some Shawneese Died all of the Small pox since that time, that it still continues amongst them".

19th century

In 1832 President Andrew Jackson signed Congressional authorization and funding to set up a smallpox vaccination program for Indian tribes. The goal was to eliminate the deadly threat of smallpox to a population with little or no immunity, and at the same time exhibit the benefits of cooperation with the government. In practice there were severe obstacles. The tribal medicine men launched a strong opposition, warning of white trickery and offering an alternative explanation and system of cure. Some taught that the affliction could best be cured by a sweat bath followed by a rapid plunge into cold water. Furthermore the vaccines often lost their potency when transported and stored over long distances with primitive storage facilities. It was too little and too late to avoid the great smallpox epidemic of 1837 to 1840 that swept across North America west of the Mississippi, all the way to Canada and Alaska. Deaths have been estimated in the range of 100,000 to 300,000, with entire tribes wiped out. Over 90 percent of the Mandans died.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, at a time of increasing European-American travel and settlement in the West, at least four different epidemics broke out among the Plains tribes between 1837 and 1870. When the Plains tribes began to learn of the "white man's diseases", many intentionally avoided contact with them and their trade goods. But the lure of trade goods such as metal pots, skillets, and knives sometimes proved too strong. The Indians traded with the white newcomers anyway and inadvertently spread disease to their villages. In the late 19th century, the Lakota Indians of the Plains called the disease the "rotting face sickness".

The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic, which was brought from San Francisco to Victoria, devastated the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, with a death rate of over 50% for the entire coast from Puget Sound to Southeast Alaska. In some areas the native population fell by as much as 90%. Some historians have described the epidemic as a deliberate genocide because the Colony of Vancouver Island and the Colony of British Columbia could have prevented the epidemic but chose not to, and in some ways facilitated it.

Effect on population numbers

Graph of population decline in central Mexico caused by successive epidemics

Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members dead from disease. Additionally, some smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.

A specific example was what followed Cortés' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. A 2018 study by Koch, Brierley, Maslin and Lewis concluded that an estimated "55 million indigenous people died following the European conquest of the Americas beginning in 1492." Estimates for the entire number of human lives lost during the Cocoliztli epidemics in New Spain have ranged from 5 to 15 million people, making it one of the most deadly disease outbreaks of all time. By 1700, fewer than 5,000 Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region of the United States. In Florida alone, an estimated 700,000 Native Americans lived there in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2,000.

Some 21st-century climate scientists have suggested that a severe reduction of the indigenous population in the Americas and the accompanying reduction in cultivated lands during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries may have contributed to a global cooling event known as the Little Ice Age.

The loss of the population was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness". By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness.

Disease had both direct and indirect effects on deaths. High mortality meant that there were fewer people to plant crops, hunt game, and otherwise support the group. Loss of cultural knowledge transfer also affected the community as vital agricultural and food-gathering skills were not passed on to survivors. Missing the right time to hunt or plant crops affected the food supply, thus further weakening the community and making it more vulnerable to the next epidemic. Communities under such crisis were often unable to care for people who were disabled, elderly, or young.

In summer 1639, a smallpox epidemic struck the Huron natives in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes regions. The disease had reached the Huron tribes through French colonial traders from Québec who remained in the region throughout the winter. When the epidemic was over, the Huron population had been reduced to roughly 9,000 people, about half of what it had been before 1634. The Iroquois people, generally south of the Great Lakes, faced similar losses after encounters with French, Dutch and English colonists.

During the 1770s, smallpox killed at least 30% (tens of thousands) of the Northwestern Native Americans. The smallpox epidemic of 1780–1782 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians.

By 1832, the federal government of the United States established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1839 reported on the casualties of the 1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic: "No attempt has been made to count the victims, nor is it possible to reckon them in any of these tribes with accuracy; it is believed that if [the number 17,200 for the upper Missouri River Indians] was doubled, the aggregate would not be too large for those who have fallen east of the Rocky Mountains."

Historian David Stannard asserts that by "focusing almost entirely on disease ... contemporary authors increasingly have created the impression that the eradication of those tens of millions of people was inadvertent—a sad, but both inevitable and 'unintended consequence' of human migration and progress." He says that their destruction "was neither inadvertent nor inevitable", but the result of microbial pestilence and purposeful genocide working in tandem. Historian Andrés Reséndez says that evidence suggests "among these human factors, slavery has emerged as a major killer" of the indigenous populations of the Caribbean between 1492 and 1550, rather than diseases such as smallpox, influenza and malaria.

Diseases about New Spain

The role of epidemics

Nahua depiction of smallpox, Book XII on the conquest of Mexico in the Florentine Codex (1576)

Spanish settlers brought to the American continent smallpox, measles, typhoid fever, and other infectious diseases. Most of the Spanish settlers had developed an immunity to these diseases from childhood, but the indigenous peoples lacked the needed antibodies since these diseases were totally alien to the native population. There were at least three separate, major epidemics that devastated the population: smallpox (1520–1521), measles (1545–1548) and typhus (1576–1581).

During the 16th century, the native population of Mexico fell from an estimated pre-Columbian population of 8 to 20 million to less than two million. Therefore, at the start of the 17th century, continental New Spain was a depopulated region with abandoned cities and maize fields. These diseases did not affect the Philippines in the same way because they were already present; Pre-Hispanic Filipinos had contact with other foreign nationalities prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.

Population in early 1800s

New Spain in 1819 with the boundaries established at the Adams–Onís Treaty

Español and Mulata with their Morisco children, 1763 by Miguel Cabrera

Mestizo and India with their Coyote children, 1763

While different intendancies would conduct censuses to get insights into their inhabitants (namely occupation, number of persons per household, ethnicity etc.), it was not until 1793 that the results of the first national census would be published. That census is known as the "Revillagigedo census" because its creation was ordered by the Count of the same name. Most of the census' original datasets have reportedly been lost; thus most of what is known about it comes from essays and field investigations made by academics who had access to the census data and used it as reference for their works, such as Prussian geographer Alexander von Humboldt. Each author gives different estimates for the total population, ranging from 3,799,561 to 6,122,354 (more recent data suggest that the population of New Spain in 1810 was 5 to 5.5 million individuals) and not much variation in ethnic composition, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 23% of New Spain's population, Mestizos ranging from 21% to 25%, Amerindians ranging from 51% to 61% and Africans being between 6,000 and 10,000. It is concluded then, that across nearly three centuries of colonization, the population growth trends of Europeans and Mestizos were steady, while the percentage of the indigenous population decreased at a rate of 13%–17% per century. The authors assert that rather than Europeans and Mestizos having higher birthrates, the reason for the indigenous population's decrease lies with their higher mortality, due to living in remote locations rather than in cities and towns founded by the Spanish colonists, or being at war with them. It is also for these reasons that the number of indigenous Mexicans presents a greater variation between publications, with their numbers in a given location estimated rather than counted, leading to possible overestimations in some provinces and underestimations in others.

Intendancy/territory	European population (%)	Indigenous population (%)	Mestizo population (%)
México (only State of Mexico and capital)	16.9%	66.1%	16.7%
Puebla	10.1%	74.3%	15.3%
Oaxaca	06.3%	88.2%	05.2%
Guanajuato	25.8%	44.0%	29.9%
San Luis Potosí	13.0%	51.2%	35.7%
Zacatecas	15.8%	29.0%	55.1%
Durango	20.2%	36.0%	43.5%
Sonora	28.5%	44.9%	26.4%
Yucatán	14.8%	72.6%	12.3%
Guadalajara	31.7%	33.3%	34.7%
Veracruz	10.4%	74.0%	15.2%
Valladolid	27.6%	42.5%	29.6%
Nuevo México	~	30.8%	69.0%
Vieja California	~	51.7%	47.9%
Nueva California	~	89.9%	09.8%
Coahuila	30.9%	28.9%	40.0%
Nuevo León	62.6%	05.5%	31.6%
Nuevo Santander	25.8%	23.3%	50.8%
Texas	39.7%	27.3%	32.4%
Tlaxcala	13.6%	72.4%	13.8%

~Europeans are included within the Mestizo category.

Regardless of the imprecision related to the counting of indigenous peoples living outside of the colonized areas, the effort that New Spain's authorities put into considering them as subjects is worth mentioning, as censuses made by other colonial or post-colonial countries did not consider American Indians to be citizens/subjects. For example the censuses made by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata would only count the inhabitants of the colonized settlements. Another example would be the censuses made by the United States, that did not count Indigenous peoples living among the general population until 1860, and indigenous peoples as a whole until 1900.

Once New Spain achieved independence, the legal basis of the colonial caste system was abolished and mentions of a person's caste in official documents was also abandoned, which led to the exclusion of racial classification from future censuses, and made it difficult to track demographic development of each ethnicity in the country. More than a century would pass before Mexico conducted a new census on which a person's race was listed, in 1921, but even then, due to its huge inconsistencies with other official registers as well as its historic context, modern investigators have deemed it inaccurate. Almost a century after the 1921 census, Mexico's government has begun to conduct ethno-racial surveys again, with results suggesting that the population growth trends for each major ethnic group haven't changed significantly since the 1793 census.

Karuk

The Karuk language originated around the Klamath River between Seiad Valley and Bluff Creek. Before European contact, it is estimated that there may have been up to 1,500 speakers. Linguist William Bright documented the Karuk language. When Bright began his studies in 1949, there were "a couple of hundred fluent speakers," but by 2011, there were fewer than a dozen fluent elders. A standardized system for writing the languages was adopted in the 1980s.

The region where the Karuk tribe lived remained largely undisturbed until beaver trappers came through the area in 1827. In 1848, gold was discovered in California, and thousands of Europeans came to the Klamath River and its surrounding region to search for gold. The Karuk territory was soon filled with mining towns, manufacturing communities, and farms. The salmon that the tribe relied on for food became less plentiful because of contamination in the water from mining, and many members of the Karuk tribe died from either starvation or new diseases that the Europeans brought with them to the area. Many members of the Karuk tribe were also killed or sold into slavery by the Europeans. Karuk children were sent to boarding schools where they were Americanized and told not to use their native language. These combined factors caused the use of the Karuk language to steadily decline over the years until measures were taken to attempt to revitalize the language.

Piscataway

The three Piscataway tribal leaders representing the Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory, Piscataway-Conoy Tribe of Maryland, and Cedarville Band of Piscataway received official recognition as tribes from the State of Maryland in 2012. Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is 2nd from right.

The Piscataway /pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ/ pih-SKAT-ə-WAY or Piscatawa /pɪsˈkætəˌweɪ, ˌpɪskəˈtɑːwə/ pih-SKAT-ə-WAY, PIH-skə-TAH-wə, are Native Americans. They spoke Algonquian Piscataway, a dialect of Nanticoke. One of their neighboring tribes, with whom they merged after a massive decline of population following two centuries of interactions with European settlers, called them the Conoy.

Two major groups representing people who identify as Piscataway descendants received state recognition as Native American tribes in 2012: the Piscataway Indian Nation and Tayac Territory and the Piscataway Conoy Tribe of Maryland. Within the latter group was included the Piscataway Conoy Confederacy and Sub-Tribes and the Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians. All these groups are located in Southern Maryland. None are federally recognized.

Introduction of Erie people

Nation du Chat region

The Erie people were an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian-speaking tribe, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio before 1658. Their nation was almost exterminated in the mid-17th century by five years of prolonged warfare with the powerful neighboring Iroquois for helping the Huron in the Beaver Wars for control of the fur trade. Captured survivors were adopted or enslaved by the Iroquois.

Their villages were burned by Haudenosaunee warriors. This destroyed their stored maize and other foods, added to their loss of life, and threatened their future, as they had no way to survive the winter. The attacks likely forced their emigration. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was known for adopting captives and refugees into their tribes. The surviving Erie are believed to have been largely absorbed by other Iroquoian tribes, particularly families of the Seneca, the westernmost of the Five Nations. Susquehannock families may also have adopted some Erie, as the tribes had shared the hunting grounds of the Allegheny Plateau and Kittanning Path that passed through the gaps of the Allegheny. The members of remnant tribes living among the Iroquois gradually assimilated to the majority cultures, losing their independent tribal identities.

Precontact

Elements of Erie shown in the general area of the Upper Ohio Valley.
Clip from John Senex map ca 1710 showing the people Captain Vielle passed (1692–94) by to arrive in Chaouenon's country, as the French Jesuit called the Shawnee

While Indigenous peoples lived along the Great Lakes for thousands of years in succeeding cultures, historic tribes known at the time of European encounter began to coalesce by the 15th and 16th centuries. The Erie were among the several Iroquoian peoples sharing a similar culture, tribal organization, and speaking an Iroquoian language which emerged around the Great Lakes, but with elements that may have originated in the south. People from the Whittlesey culture and Fort Ancient culture of Ohio and Pennsylvania may have been ancestors of the Erie people.

Haudenosaunee oral history suggests that the Erie are descendants of Iroquoians specifically from the St. Lawrence River Valley. It also says the Eries defeated an unknown tribe who built earthworks. Names given for this group are of uncertain origin, with one account using Alligewi, the Lenape word for the Erie themselves, and the other using Squawkihaw, the word the Iroquois used for the Meskwaki. Neither group built the mounds in question, three of which were excavated by archaeologists in Pennsylvania and Ohio. These are Sugar Run Mound, North Benton Mound and Towner's Mound. Only Towner's Mound, in Kent, Ohio, still stands. Linguists who have studied the handful of words on record believed to be of Erie origin believe the tribe was closer to the Huron than the Iroquois, however. If descended from the Iroquois, archaeology suggests they couldn't have arrived before the 12th or 13th centuries. A Huron origin would suggest them arriving even later.

The editors of New American Heritage state the various confederacies of Iroquoian tribes migrated from south to the Great Lakes regions and in between well before pre-Columbian times. Conversely, others such as the editors of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggest the tribes originated in what became Algonkian territories along the Saint Lawrence and moved west and south when the Algonquian tribes moved north up the coast and spread west.

Post-contact

By the time of European contact, Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes traded and competed with each other and spent most years in uneasy peace. Separation between tribes living in wilderness ensured contacts were mainly small affairs before the use of firearms tipped the balance of warfare to enhance the killing ability of a people who could not outrun a bullet, a limitation which existed before guns and the ability to kill at range. Rivalries and habitual competition among American Indians tribes for resources (especially fire arms) and power was escalated by the lucrative returns of the fur trade with French and Dutch colonists beginning settlements in the greater area before 1611. Violence to control the fur-bearing territories, the beginnings of the long-running Beaver Wars, began early in the 17th century so the normal peace and trading activity decreased between the tribes, who had responded to the demand for beaver and other furs by over-hunting some areas.

1715 map showing the Nation du Chat, détruite ("Nation of the Cat, destroyed") to the south of Lake Erie.

The Erie encroached on territory that other tribes considered theirs. During 1651, they'd angered their eastern neighbors, the Iroquois League, by accepting Huron refugees from villages that had been destroyed by the Iroquois. Though reported as using poison-tipped arrows (Jesuit Relations 41:43, 1655–58 chap. XI), the Erie were disadvantaged in armed conflict with the Iroquois because they had few firearms. Beginning in 1653 the Erie launched a preemptive attack on western tribes of the Iroquois, and did well in the first year of a five-year war.

Consequently, in 1654 the whole Iroquois Confederacy went to war against the Erie and neighboring tribes such as the Neutral people along the northern shores of Lake Erie and across the Niagara River, the Tobacco people between the Erie and Iroquois, neighbors to all three groups. As a result, over five years of war they destroyed the Erie confederacy, the Neutrals, the Tobacco, with the tribes surviving in remnants. By the mid-1650s, the Erie had become a broken tribe. Dispersed groups survived a few more decades before being absorbed into the Iroquois, especially the westernmost Seneca nation.

Historically the Monacan and Erie were trade allies, especially copper, but years later that relationship fell apart due to growing colonial pressure. During that period remnant Erie were believed to have migrated to Virginia by 1656 and became known as the Richahecrian when they fought along side the Nahyssans and Manahoac, against the Virginia colonialists and Pamunkey, at the Battle of Bloody Run. Another branch also migrated to South Carolina and became known as the Westo.

Because the Erie were located further from the coastal areas of early European exploration, they had little direct contact with Europeans. Only the Dutch fur traders from Fort Orange (now Albany, New York) and Jesuit missionaries in Canada referred to them in historic records. The Jesuits learned more about them during the Beaver Wars, but most of what they learned, aside from a single in-person encounter, was learned from the Huron who suffered much reduction before the Erie did. What little is known about them has been derived from oral history of other Native American tribes, archaeology, and comparisons with other Iroquoian peoples.

After the Haudenosaunee routed the Erie in 1654 and 1656, the group dispersed. In 1680, a remnant group of Erie surrendered to the Seneca people. Erie descendants merged with Haudenosaunee in Ohio, who lived on the Upper Sandusky Reservation from 1817 to 1832, when Ohio forcibly removed its tribes to Indian Territory. These included the tribes who would form the present-day Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma.

Crow

In the Northern Plains

Landscape on the Crow Indian Reservation, Montana

The early home of the Crow Hidatsa ancestral tribe was near Lake Erie in what is now Ohio. Driven from there by better armed, aggressive neighbors, they briefly settled south of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. Later the people moved to the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota before the Crow split from the Hidatsa and moved westward. The Crow were largely pushed westward due to intrusion and influx of the Cheyenne and subsequently the Sioux, also known as the Lakota.

To acquire control of their new territory, the Crow warred against Shoshone bands, such as the Bikkaashe, or "People of the Grass Lodges", and drove them westward. The Crow allied with local Kiowa and Plains Apache bands. The Kiowa and Plains Apache bands later migrated southward, and the Crow remained dominant in their established area through the 18th and 19th centuries, the era of the fur trade.

Their historical territory stretched from what is now Yellowstone National Park and the headwaters of the Yellowstone River (E-chee-dick-karsh-ah-shay in Crow, translating to "Elk River") to the west, north to the Musselshell River, then northeast to the Yellowstone's mouth at the Missouri River, then southeast to the confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder rivers (Bilap Chashee, or "Powder River" or "Ash River"), south along the South Fork of the Powder River, confined in the SE by the Rattlesnake Mountains and westwards in the SW by the Wind River Range. Their tribal area included the river valleys of the Judith River (Buluhpa'ashe, or "Plum River"), Powder River, Tongue River, Big Horn River and Wind River as well as the Bighorn Mountains (Iisiaxpúatachee Isawaxaawúua), Pryor Mountains (Baahpuuo Isawaxaawúua), Wolf Mountains (Cheetiish, or "Wolf Teeth Mountains") and Absaroka Range (also called Absalaga Mountains).

Once established in the Valley of the Yellowstone River and its tributaries on the Northern Plains in Montana and Wyoming, the Crow divided into four groups: the Mountain Crow, River Crow, Kicked in the Bellies, and Beaver Dries its Fur. Formerly semi-nomad hunters and farmers in the northeastern woodland, they adapted to the nomadic lifestyle of the Plains Indians as hunters and gatherers, and hunted bison. Before 1700, they were using dog travois for carrying goods.

Enemies and allies

Ledger drawing of a Cheyenne war chief and warriors (left) coming to a truce with a Crow war chief and warriors (right)

From about 1730, the Plains tribes rapidly adopted the horse, which allowed them to move out on to the Plains and hunt buffalo more effectively. However, the severe winters in the North kept their herds smaller than those of Plains tribes in the South. The Crow, Hidatsa, Eastern Shoshone, and Northern Shoshone soon became noted as horse breeders and dealers and developed relatively large horse herds. At the time, other eastern and northern tribes were also moving on to the Plains, in search of game for the fur trade, bison, and more horses. The Crow were subject to raids and horse thefts by horse-poor tribes, including the powerful Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Pawnee, and Ute. Later they had to face the Lakota and their allies, the Arapaho and Cheyenne, who also stole horses from their enemies. Their greatest enemies became the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the Lakota-Cheyenne-Arapaho alliance.

A scout on a horse, 1908 by Edward S. Curtis

In the 18th century, pressured by the Saulteaux and Cree peoples (the Iron Confederacy), who had earlier and better access to guns through the fur trade, the Crow had migrated to this area from the Ohio Eastern Woodland area of present-day Ohio, settling south of Lake Winnipeg. From there, they were pushed to the west by the Cheyenne. Both the Crow and the Cheyenne were pushed farther west by the Lakota, who took over the territory west of the Missouri River, reaching past the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming and Montana. The Cheyenne eventually became allies of the Lakota, as they sought to expel European Americans from the area. The Crow remained bitter enemies of both the Sioux and Cheyenne. They managed to retain a large reservation of more than 9300 km² despite territorial losses, due in part to their cooperation with the federal government against their traditional enemies, the Sioux and Blackfoot. Many other tribes were forced onto much smaller reservations far from their traditional lands.

The Crow were generally friendly with the northern Plains tribes of the Flathead (although sometimes they had conflicts); Nez Perce, Kutenai, Shoshone, Kiowa, and Plains Apache. The powerful Iron Confederacy (Nehiyaw-Pwat), an alliance of northern plains Indian nations based around the fur trade, developed as enemies of the Crow. It was named after the dominating Plains Cree and Assiniboine peoples, and later included the Stoney, Saulteaux, and Métis.

Historical subgroups

By the early 19th century, the Apsáalooke fell into three independent groupings, who came together only for common defense:

• Ashalaho ('Many Lodges', today called Mountain Crow), Awaxaawaxammilaxpáake ('Mountain People'), or Ashkúale ('The Center Camp'). The Ashalaho or Mountain Crow, the largest Crow group, split from the Awatixa Hidatsa and were the first to travel west. (McCleary 1997: 2–3)., (Bowers 1992: 21) Their leader No Intestines had received a vision and led his band on a long migratory search for sacred tobacco, finally settling in southeastern Montana. They lived in the Rocky Mountains and foothills along the Upper Yellowstone River, on the present-day Wyoming-Montana border, in the Big Horn and Absaroka Range (also Absalaga Mountains); the Black Hills comprised the eastern edge of their territory.
• Binnéessiippeele ('Those Who Live Amongst the River Banks'), today called River Crow or Ashshipíte ('The Black Lodges') The Binnéessiippeele, or River Crow, split from the Hidatsa proper, according to tradition because of a dispute over a bison stomach. As a result, the Hidatsa called the Crow Gixáa-iccá—"Those Who Pout Over Tripe". They lived along the Yellowstone and Musselshell rivers south of the Missouri River and in the river valleys of the Big Horn, Powder and Wind rivers. This area was historically known as the Powder River Country. They sometimes traveled north up to the Milk River.
• Eelalapito (Kicked in the Bellies) or Ammitaalasshé (Home Away From The center, that is, away from the Ashkúale – "Mountain Crow"). They claimed the area known as the Bighorn Basin, from the Bighorn Mountains in the east to the Absaroka Range to the west, and south to the Wind River Range in northern Wyoming. Sometimes they settled in the Owl Creek Mountains, Bridger Mountains and along the Sweetwater River in the south.

Apsaalooke oral history describes a fourth group, the Bilapiluutche ("Beaver Dries its Fur"), who may have merged with the Kiowa in the second half of the 17th century.

Gradual displacement from tribal lands

Crow Indian territory (areas 517, 619 and 635) as described in Fort Laramie treaty (1851), present Montana and Wyoming

When European Americans arrived in numbers, the Crows were resisting pressure from enemies who greatly outnumbered them. In the 1850s, a vision by Plenty Coups, then a boy, but who later became their greatest chief, was interpreted by tribal elders as meaning that the whites would become dominant over the entire country, and that the Crow, if they were to retain any of their land, would need to remain on good terms with the whites.

By 1851, the more numerous Lakota and Cheyenne were established just to the south and east of Crow territory in Montana. These enemy tribes coveted the hunting lands of the Crow and warred against them. By right of conquest, they took over the eastern hunting lands of the Crow, including the Powder and Tongue River valleys, and pushed the less numerous Crow to the west and northwest upriver on the Yellowstone. After about 1860, the Lakota Sioux claimed all the former Crow lands from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains of Montana. They demanded that the Americans deal with them regarding any intrusion into these areas.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 with the United States confirmed as Crow lands a large area centered on the Big Horn Mountains: the area ran from the Big Horn Basin on the west, to the Musselshell River on the north, and east to the Powder River; it included the Tongue River basin. But for two centuries the Cheyenne and many bands of Lakota Sioux had been steadily migrating westward across the plains, and were still pressing hard on the Crows.

"Eight Crow prisoners under guard at Crow agency, Montana, 1887"

Red Cloud's War (1866–1868) was a challenge by the Lakota Sioux to the United States military presence on the Bozeman Trail, a route along the eastern edge of the Big Horn Mountains to the Montana gold fields. Red Cloud's War ended with victory for the Lakota. The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868 with the United States confirmed the Lakota control over all the high plains from the Black Hills of the Dakotas westward across the Powder River Basin to the crest of the Big Horn Mountains. Thereafter bands of Lakota Sioux led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and others, along with their Northern Cheyenne allies, hunted and raided throughout the length and breadth of eastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming, which had been for a time ancestral Crow territory.

On 25 June 1876, the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne achieved a major victory over army forces under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in the Crow Indian Reservation, but the Great Sioux War (1876–1877) ended in the defeat of the Sioux and their Cheyenne allies. Crow warriors enlisted with the U.S. Army for this war. The Sioux and allies were forced from eastern Montana and Wyoming: some bands fled to Canada, while others suffered forced removal to distant reservations, primarily in present-day Montana and Nebraska west of the Missouri River.

In 1918, the Crow organized a gathering to display their culture, and they invited members of other tribes. The Crow Fair is now celebrated yearly on the third weekend of August, with wide participation from other tribes.

Crow Tribe history: a chronological record

1600–1699

A group of Crow went west after leaving the Hidatsa villages of earth lodges in the Knife River and Heart River area (present North Dakota) around 1675–1700. They selected a site for a single earth lodge on the lower Yellowstone River. Most families lived in tipis or other perishable kinds of homes at the new place. These Indians had left the Hidatsa villages and adjacent cornfields for good, but they had yet to become "real" buffalo hunting Crow following the herds on the open plains. Archaeologists know this "proto-Crow" site in present Montana as the Hagen site.

1700–1799

Some time before 1765, the Crow held a Sun Dance, attended by a poor Arapaho. A Crow with power gave him a medicine doll, and he quickly earned status and owned horses as no one else. During the next Sun Dance, some Crow stole back the figure to keep it in the tribe. Eventually the Arapaho made a duplicate. Later in life, he married a Kiowa woman and brought the doll with him. The Kiowas use it during the Sun Dance and recognize it as one of the most powerful tribal medicines. They still credit the Crow tribe for the origin of their sacred Tai-may figure.

1800–1824

The trading posts built for trade with the Crows

The enmity between the Crow and the Lakota was reassured right from the start of the 19th century. The Crow killed a minimum of thirty Lakota in 1800–1801 according to two Lakota winter counts. The next year, the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies killed all the men in a Crow camp with thirty tipis.

In the summer of 1805, a Crow camp traded at the Hidatsa villages on Knife River in present North Dakota. Chiefs Red Calf and Spotted Crow allowed the fur trader Francois-Antoine Larocque to join it on its way across the plains to the Yellowstone area. He traveled with it to a point west of the place where Billings, Montana, is today. The camp crossed Little Missouri River and Bighorn River on the way.

The next year, some Crow discovered a group of whites with horses on the Yellowstone River. By stealth, they captured the mounts before morning. The Lewis and Clark Expedition did not see the Crow.

The first trading post in Crow country was constructed in 1807, known as both Fort Raymond and Fort Lisa (1807–ca. 1813). Like the succeeding forts, Fort Benton (ca. 1821–1824) and Fort Cass (1832–1838), it was built near the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Bighorn.

The Blood Blackfoot Bad Head's winter count tells about the early and persistent hostility between the Crow and the Blackfoot. In 1813, a force of Blood warriors set off for a raid on the Crow in the Bighorn area. Next year, Crows near Little Bighorn River killed Blackfoot Top Knot.

A Crow camp neutralized thirty Cheyenne bent on capturing horses in 1819. The Cheyenne and warriors from a Lakota camp destroyed a whole Crow camp at Tongue River the following year. This was likely the most severe attack on a Crow camp in historic time.

1825–1849

The Crows put up 300 tipis near a Mandan village on the Missouri in 1825. The representatives of the US government waited for them. Mountain Crow chief Long Hair (Red Plume at Forehead) and fifteen other Crows signed the first treaty of friendship and trade between the Crows and the United States on 4 August. With the signing of the document, the Crows also recognized the supremacy of the United States, if they actually understood the word. River Crow chief Arapooish had left the treaty area in disgust. By help of the thunderbird he had to send a farewell shower down on the whites and the Mountain Crows.

In 1829, seven Crow warriors were neutralized by Blood Blackfoot Indians led by Spotted Bear, who captured a pipe-hatchet during the fight just west of Chinook, Montana.

In the summer of 1834, the Crow (maybe led by chief Arapooish) tried to shut down Fort McKenzie at the Missouri in Blackfeet country. The apparent motive was to stop the trading post's sale to their Indian enemies. Although later described as a month long siege of the fort, it lasted only two days. The opponents exchanged a few shots and the men in the fort fired a cannon, but no real harm came to anyone. The Crows left four days before the arrival of a Blackfeet band. The episode seems to be the worst armed conflict between the Crows and a group of whites until the Sword Bearer uprising in 1887.

The death of chief Arapooish was recorded on 17 September 1834. The news reached Fort Clark at the Mandan village Mitutanka. Manager F.A. Chardon wrote he "was Killed by Black feet".

The smallpox epidemic of 1837 spread along the Missouri and "had little impact" on the tribe according to one source. The River Crows grew in number, when a group of Hidatsas joined them permanently to escape the scourge sweeping through the Hidatsa villages.

Fort Van Buren was a short-lived trading post in existence from 1839 to 1842. It was built on the bank of the Yellowstone near the mouth of Tongue River.

In the summer of 1840, a Crow camp in the Bighorn valley greeted the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet.

From 1842 to around 1852, the Crow traded in Fort Alexander opposite the mouth of the Rosebud.

The River Crows charged a moving Blackfeet camp near Judith Gap in 1845. Father Pierre-Jean De Smet mourned the destructive attack on the "petite Robe" band. The Blackfeet chief Small Robe had been mortally wounded and many killed. De Smet worked out the number of women and children taken captive to 160. By and by and with a fur trader as an intermediary, the Crows agreed to let 50 women return to their tribe.

1850–1874

De Smet map of the 1851 Fort Laramie Indian territories (the light area). Jesuit missionary De Smet drew this map with the tribal borders agreed upon at Fort Laramie in 1851. Although the map itself is wrong in certain ways, it has the Crow territory west of the Sioux territory as written in the treaty, and the Bighorn area as the heart of the Crow country.

Crow Indian Chief Big Shadow (Big Robber), signer of the Fort Laramie treaty (1851). Painting by Jesuit missionary De Smet.

Lone Dog's Sioux winter count, 1870. Thirty Crows killed in battle.

Fort Sarpy (I) near Rosebud River carried out trade with the Crow after the closing of Fort Alexander. River Crow went some times to the bigger Fort Union at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. Both the "famous Absaroka amazon" Woman Chief and River Crow chief Twines His Tail (Rotten Tail) visited the fort in 1851.

In 1851, the Crow, the Sioux, and six other Indian nations signed the Fort Laramie treaty along with the U.S. It should ensure peace forever between all nine partakers. Further, the treaty described the different tribal territories. The U.S. was allowed to construct roads and forts. A weak point in the treaty was the absence of rules to uphold the tribal borders.

The Crow and various bands of Sioux attacked each other again from the mid-1850s. Soon, the Sioux took no notice of the 1851 borders and expanded into Crow territory west of the Powder. The Crows engaged in "… large-scale battles with invading Sioux …" near present-day Wyola, Montana. Around 1860, the western Powder area was lost.

From 1857 to 1860, many Crow traded their surplus robes and skin at Fort Sarpy (II) near the mouth of the Bighorn River.

During the mid-1860s, the Sioux resented the emigrant route Bozeman Trail through the Powder River bison habitat, although it mainly "crossed land guaranteed to the Crows". When the Army built forts to protect the trail, the Crow cooperated with the garrisons. On 21 December 1866, the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho defeated Captain William J. Fetterman and his men from Fort Phil Kearny. Evidently, the U.S. could not enforce respect for the treaty borders agreed upon 15 years before.

The River Crow north of the Yellowstone developed a friendship with their former Gros Ventre enemies in the 1860s. A joint large-scale attack on a large Blackfoot camp at the Cypress Hills in 1866 resulted in a chaotic withdrawal of the Gros Ventres and Crow. The Blackfoot pursued the warriors for hours and killed allegedly more than 300.

In 1868, a new Fort Laramie treaty between the Sioux and the U.S. turned 1851 Crow Powder River area into "unceded Indian territory" of the Sioux. "The Government had in effect betrayed the Crows…". On 7 May, the same year, the Crow ceded vast ranges to the US due to pressure from white settlements north of Upper Yellowstone River and loss of eastern territories to the Sioux. They accepted a smaller reservation south of the Yellowstone.

The Sioux and their Indian allies, now formally at peace with the U.S., focused on intertribal wars at once. Raids against the Crows were "frequent, both by the Northern Cheyennes and by the Arapahos, as well as the Sioux, and by parties made up from all three tribes". Crow chief Plenty Coups recalled, "The three worst enemies our people had were combined against us …".

In April 1870, the Sioux overpowered a barricaded war group of 30 Crow in the Big Dry area. The Crow were killed to either last or last but one man. Later, mourning Crow with "their hair cut off, their fingers and faces cut" brought the dead bodies back to camp. The drawing from the Sioux winter count of Lone Dog shows the Crow in the circle (the breastwork), while the Sioux close in on them. The many lines indicates flying bullets. The Sioux lost 14 warriors. Sioux chief Sitting Bull took part in this battle.

In the summer of 1870, some Sioux attacked a Crow reservation camp in the Bighorn/Little Bighorn area. The Crows reported Sioux Indians in the same area again in 1871. During the next years, this eastern part of the Crow reservation was taken over by the Sioux in search of buffalo. In August 1873, visiting Nez Percé and a Crow reservation camp at Pryor Creek further west faced a force of Sioux warriors in a long confrontation. Crow chief Blackfoot objected to this incursion and called for resolute U.S. military actions against the Indian trespassers. Due to Sioux attacks on both civilians and soldiers north of the Yellowstone in newly established U.S. territory (Battle of Pease Bottom, Battle of Honsinger Bluff), the Commissioner of Indian Affairs advocated the use of troops to force the Sioux back to South Dakota in his 1873 report. Nothing happened.

1875–1899

Crooks army before battle of the Rosebud. The Crow and Shoshone scouts and the Army are crossing Goose River on the way to the Rosebud in 1876. The equestrian woman may be either the Crow berdache Finds-them-and-kills-them or the Crow amazon The-other-magpie.

Two years later, in early July 1875, Crow chief Long Horse was killed in a suicidal attack on some Sioux, who previously had killed three soldiers from Camp Lewis on the upper Judith River (near Lewistown). George Bird Grinnell was a member of the exploring party in the Yellowstone National Park that year, and he saw the bringing in of the dead chief. A mule carried the body, which was wrapped in a green blanket. The chief was placed in a tipi "not far from the Crow camp, reclining on his bed covered with robes, his face handsomely painted". Crow woman Pretty Shield remembered the sadness in camp. "We fasted, nearly starved in our sorrow for the loss of Long-Horse."

Exposed to Sioux attacks, the Crows sided with the U.S. during the Great Sioux War in 1876–1877. On 10 April 1876, 23 Crow enlisted as Army scouts. They enlisted against a traditional Indian enemy, "... who were now in the old Crow country, menacing and often raiding the Crows in their reservation camps." Charles Varnum, leader of Custer's scouts, understood how valuable the enrolment of scouts from the local Indian tribe was. "These Crows were in their own country and knew it thoroughly."

Notable Crows like Medicine Crow and Plenty Coups participated in the Rosebud Battle along with more than 160 other Crows.

The Battle of the Little Bighorn stood on the Crow reservation. As most battles between the US and the Sioux in the 1860s and 1870s, "It was a clash of two expanding empires, with the most dramatic battles occurring on lands only recently taken by the Sioux from other tribes." When the Crow camp with Pretty Shield learned about the defeat of George A. Custer, it cried for the assumed dead Crow scouts "… and for Son-of-the-morning-star [Custer] and his blue soldiers …".

On 8 January 1877, three Crow participated in the last battle of the Great Sioux War in the Wolf Mountains.

In the spring of 1878, 700 Crow tipis were pitched at the confluence of Bighorn River and Yellowstone River. Together with Colonel Nelson A. Miles, an Army leader in the Great Sioux War, the large camp celebrated the victory over the Sioux.

Indian removal

Representatives of the Five Civilized Tribes: (clockwise from upper left) Sequoyah, Pushmataha, Selecta, Osceola, and a typical Chickasaw

When Andrew Jackson became president of the United States in 1829, his government took a hard line on Indian removal; Jackson abandoned his predecessors' policy of treating Indian tribes as separate nations, aggressively pursuing all Indians east of the Mississippi who claimed constitutional sovereignty and independence from state laws. They were to be removed to reservations in Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi (present-day Oklahoma), where they could exist without state interference. At Jackson's request, Congress began a debate on an Indian-removal bill. After fierce disagreement, the Senate passed the bill by a 28–19 vote; the House had narrowly passed it, 102–97. Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law on May 30, 1830.

That year, most of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee—lived east of the Mississippi. The Indian Removal Act implemented federal-government policy towards its Indian populations, moving Native American tribes east of the Mississippi to lands west of the river. Although the act did not authorize the forced removal of indigenous tribes, it enabled the president to negotiate land-exchange treaties.

Choctaw

On September 27, 1830, the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and became the first Native American tribe to be removed. The agreement was one of the largest transfers of land between the US government and Native Americans which was not the result of war. The Choctaw signed away their remaining traditional homelands, opening them up for European–American settlement in Mississippi Territory. When the tribe reached Little Rock, a chief called its trek a "trail of tears and death".

In 1831, French historian and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed an exhausted group of Choctaw men, women and children emerging from the forest during an exceptionally cold winter near Memphis, Tennessee, on their way to the Mississippi to be loaded onto a steamboat. He wrote,

In the whole scene there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu; one couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung. The Indians were tranquil but sombre and taciturn. There was one who could speak English and of whom I asked why the Chactas were leaving their country. "To be free," he answered, could never get any other reason out of him. We ... watch the expulsion ... of one of the most celebrated and ancient American peoples.

Cherokee

While the Indian Removal Act made the move of the tribes voluntary, it was often abused by government officials. The best-known example is the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a small faction of twenty Cherokee tribal members (not the tribal leadership) on December 29, 1835. Most of the Cherokee later blamed the faction and the treaty for the tribe's forced relocation in 1838. An estimated 4,000 Cherokee died in the march, which is known as the Trail of Tears. Missionary organizer Jeremiah Evarts urged the Cherokee Nation to take its case to the US Supreme Court.

The Marshall court heard the case in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), but declined to rule on its merits; the court declaring that the Native American tribes were not sovereign nations, and could not "maintain an action" in US courts. In an opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), individual states had no authority in American Indian affairs.

The state of Georgia defied the Supreme Court ruling, and the desire of settlers and land speculators for Indian lands continued unabated; some whites claimed that Indians threatened peace and security. The Georgia legislature passed a law forbidding settlers from living on Indian territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state; this excluded missionaries who opposed Indian removal.

Seminole

The Seminole refused to leave their Florida lands in 1835, leading to the Second Seminole War. Osceola was a Seminole leader of the people's fight against removal. Based in the Everglades, Osceola and his band used surprise attacks to defeat the US Army in a number of battles. In 1837, Osceola was duplicitously captured by order of US General Thomas Jesup when Osceola came under a flag of truce to negotiate peace near Fort Peyton. Osceola died in prison of illness; the war resulted in over 1,500 US deaths, and cost the government $20 million. Some Seminole traveled deeper into the Everglades, and others moved west. The removal continued, and a number of wars broke out over land.In 1823, the Seminole signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, which reduced their 34 million to 4 millions acres.

Muskogee (Creek)

In the aftermath of the Treaties of Fort Jackson, and the Washington, the Muscogee were confined to a small strip of land in present-day east central Alabama. The Creek national council signed the Treaty of Cusseta in 1832, ceding their remaining lands east of the Mississippi to the US and accepting relocation to the Indian Territory. Most Muscogee were removed to the territory during the Trail of Tears in 1834, although some remained behind. Although the Creek War of 1836 ended government attempts to convince the Creek population to leave voluntarily, Creeks who had not participated in the war were not forced west (as others were). The Creek population was placed into camps and told that they would be relocated soon. Many Creek leaders were surprised by the quick departure but could do little to challenge it. The 16,000 Creeks were organized into five detachments who were to be sent to Fort Gibson. The Creek leaders did their best to negotiate better conditions, and succeeded in obtaining wagons and medicine. To prepare for the relocation, Creeks began to deconstruct their spiritual lives; they burned piles of lightwood over their ancestors' graves to honor their memories, and polished the sacred plates which would travel at the front of each group. They also prepared financially, selling what they could not bring. Many were swindled by local merchants out of valuable possessions (including land), and the military had to intervene. The detachments began moving west in September 1836, facing harsh conditions. Despite their preparations, the detachments faced bad roads, worse weather, and a lack of drinkable water. When all five detachments reached their destination, they recorded their death toll. The first detachment, with 2,318 Creeks, had 78 deaths; the second had 3,095 Creeks, with 37 deaths. The third had 2,818 Creeks, and 12 deaths; the fourth, 2,330 Creeks and 36 deaths. The fifth detachment, with 2,087 Creeks, had 25 deaths. In 1837 outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana over 300 Creeks being forcibly removed to Western prairies drowned in the Mississippi River.

Friends and Brothers – By permission of the Great Spirit above, and the voice of the people, I have been made President of the United States, and now speak to you as your Father and friend, and request you to listen. Your warriors have known me long. You know I love my white and red children, and always speak with a straight, and not with a forked tongue; that I have always told you the truth ... Where you now are, you and my white children are too near to each other to live in harmony and peace. Your game is destroyed, and many of your people will not work and till the earth. Beyond the great River Mississippi, where a part of your nation has gone, your Father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and he advises you to remove to it. There your white brothers will not trouble you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it you and all your children, as long as the grass grows or the water runs, in peace and plenty. It will be yours forever. For the improvements in the country where you now live, and for all the stock which you cannot take with you, your Father will pay you a fair price ...

— President Andrew Jackson addressing the Creek Nation, 1829

Chickasaw

Unlike other tribes, who exchanged lands, the Chickasaw were to receive financial compensation of $3 million from the United States for their lands east of the Mississippi River. They reached an agreement to purchase of land from the previously-removed Choctaw in 1836 after a bitter five-year debate, paying the Chocktaw $530,000 for the westernmost Choctaw land. Most of the Chickasaw moved in 1837 and 1838. The $3 million owed to the Chickasaw by the US went unpaid for nearly 30 years.

Aftermath

The Five Civilized Tribes were resettled in the new Indian Territory. The Cherokee occupied the northeast corner of the territory and a 70-mile-wide (110 km) strip of land in Kansas on its border with the territory. Some indigenous nations resisted the forced migration more strongly. The few who stayed behind eventually formed tribal groups, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee (based in North Carolina), the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Creeks in Alabama (including the Poarch Band).

Featured Picture

The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a passerine bird of the sparrow family Passeridae. Originally native to Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and a large part of Asia, it is now found in most parts of the world and is the most widely distributed wild bird. It is closely associated with human habitation and resides in both urban and rural areas. The house sparrow is a small bird with a typical length of 16 cm (6.3 in) and a mass of 24–39.5 g (0.85–1.39 oz). Females and young birds are coloured pale brown and grey, and males have brighter black, white, and brown markings. It is sometimes considered a pest but is also sometimes kept as a pet or used as a food item. This male house sparrow was photographed in Prospect Park, New York City, United States.

Photograph credit: Rhododendrites

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