The Indian Wars in the West include hundreds of ferocious, savage battles and skirmishes fought between American troops and many different Indian tribes (population over 200,000) between the 1860s and 1890s.

After the Civil War, thousands of Americans, learning about fresh new economic opportunities, moved westward. They had begun to disregard an earlier view of the West as a harsh and uninhabitable desert that had been ceded to the Indians as a vast preserve. Americans now saw the potential for ranching and news of discoveries of gold and other precious metals lured thousands more adventurers westward. Following a course plotted by Iowan Grenville Dodge, they also built the transcontinental railroad, attracting more people to gold mines and newly-formed towns—activities that encroached on tribal lands. Nothing, however, outraged Native Americans more than the wholesale slaughter of their most important source of livelihood, the buffalo. Millions were shot for sport and as policy, bringing this large animal to the point of extinction.

Americans as a whole viewed Indians as obstacles to progress, and debated a range of “solutions” from armed annihilation to the paternal missionary policies of the reservation system. Americans tried to convert the Indians’ nomadic, horse-centered way of life into one that emphasized a settled life as farmers. Thus America reneged on treaties that had established Indian territorial rights. The words of Civil War General William Sherman to President Grant in 1866 typified the views of many Americans: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children.” They “must die or submit to our dictation.”

Many Native Americans tribes strongly resisted the reservation system, finding that it offered a dismal life on often undesirable tracts of land. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the Indians offered fierce and courageous yet futile opposition. The formidable Siouxwere led by Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Crazy Horse. These highly skilled horsemen, adept at hit and run tactics, lived in the Northern Plains. To the southwest, the Apache, primarily led by Cochise and Geronimo, adopted highly elusive tactics suited for their desert and canyon terrain. The most prominent American military leaders during these campaigns were Kit Carson, General George Crook, and General Philip Sheridan. Iowa-born Medal of Honor recipient William “Buffalo Bill” Cody was one of America’s most famous Indian fighters. Iowa soldiers earned the Medal of Honor as a part of many of the major conflicts.

In the Great Plains the U.S. Army battled the Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa and Arapaho. Tensions erupted in response to the notorious 1864 Chivington massacre of hundreds of Indian women and children in Colorado. Lakota Sioux chief Red Cloud’s War of 1866 was fought along the Bozeman Trail to stop its construction and the building of forts. The culminating battle was the defeat and killing of 79 men under Captain William Fetterman. This ended with the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868 in which the Indians were promised the Bozeman Trail would be abandoned.

This treaty soon fell apart in the face of continued American settlement and Indian resentment of the reservation system. The most notorious and bloodiest outbreaks involved the western Sioux in the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. A unit under George Armstrong Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874. This sparked a gold rush of miners upon the Great Sioux Reservation. Hunkpapa chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led the resistance to this new American advance. The famous Little Big Horn defeat of Custer and forces in Montana in 1876 was during this war. This was a costly victory for the Native Americans because an outraged American public supported a stronger American effort to defeat the Sioux. Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877. Sitting Bull and his forces retreated to Canada and gave up to the reservation system in 1881.

A number of Iowans earned the Medal of Honor in the southwestern territories of Arizona and New Mexico American where troops (including the Buffalo Soldiers) tried to protect ranchers, miners and other settlers. They battled the Apache tribes who refused to capitulate to the reservation system. General Stephen Kearney succinctly characterized the practice of the major southwestern Indian tribes and American military policy, “The Apaches and Navahos come down from the mountains and carry off your sheep, and even your women, whenever they please. My government will correct all this. It will keep off the Indians.” In trying to do what Kearny promised, the Americans built a series of forts or camps to offer protection and to serve as military bases. There were countless unnamed and undocumented skirmishes.

The Apaches had lived in the arid southwestern deserts and mountains for hundreds of years, and were determined to protect their ancestral lands. They raided American and Mexican ranchers and farmers (as well as other Indian tribes), taking their food, horses, and guns. Being at war so often, they developed superior skills with the bow and arrow as well as excellent fighting tactics on horseback. They could hide themselves ingeniously and knew the desert country much better than their foes. Learning about poor conditions on other Indian reservations, they resisted the America troops that sought to end their nomadic ways. The U.S. military faced a clever, motivated, very formidable foe. One American general called them “tigers of the human species.”

One of the most skilled native leaders was the elusive Chief Cochise who raided white settlers and soldiers in Arizona and New Mexico until 1873. By then most Apache leaders had accepted their fate and entered reservations. One of the last Apache uprisings began in 1881 under the leadership of Geronimo extended into 1886, the year of his surrender. Seldom were large battles fought, instead, running skirmishes constituted the Indian wars.

The Red River War erupted in northwestern Texas in 1874 as Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas, outraged by the slaughter of the buffalo, raided wagon trains and ambushed Texas Rangers. Even after the death of Coshise that same year Apache chief Victorio continued to resist and the U.S. cavalry chased him through and exhausting pursuit across New Mexico’s mountains and deserts. He was killed in 1880.

The Plains Indians Wars ended with the infamous Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. Chief Big Foot band of 350 men, women and children were surrounded by 500 cavalry with a Hotchkiss cannon. During the course of the Indians surrendering their weapons, a shot was fired and a battle ensued with the Hotchkiss doing the most damage. As a result, some 200 Indians perished along with twenty five soldiers. By 1900, the Native American population had been greatly reduced and they offered no obstacle to westward expansion.