1. What does this image suggest about conditions on the Reservations?
“If they are hungry let them eat grass, or their own dung”

2. Sand Creek massacre

3. To explain the key Plains wars 1862 – 68
The Plains Wars
To identify the reasons why the Native Americans and the Whites went to war in the 1860s (incl. Reservation conditions)
To explain the key Plains wars 1862 – 68
To evaluate the consequences of the Plains Wars for the whites and Native Americans

4. What were the Plains Wars?
First Fort Laramie Treaty
Little Crow’s War
Massacre at Sand Creek – 1864
Red Cloud’s war / Fetterman Massacre
Second Fort Laramie Treaty 1868
The Battle of Little Bighorn – 1876
1890 – Wounded Knee
After each ‘war’ a new treaty was drawn up and the Indians inevitably lost land

5. Your Task
Use the information from the green book (84 – 89) and white book (128 – 131) to consider the key events of;
Little Crow’s War
Massacre at Sand Creek – 1864
Red Cloud’s war / Fetterman Massacre
Causes, what happened, consequences (what did the Indians lose, what did the settlers gain)?

6. Little Crow’s War Little Crow = Chief of the Santee Sioux
War = revolt against poor reservation conditions, 12,000 face starvation.
1862 in desperation Sioux attack white traders and settlers.
20 men killed, 10 women and children captured.
Results? Moved to a smaller reservation with even worse conditions, first winter several hundred died.

7. Cheyenne uprising and the Sand Creek Massacre 1864
Black Kettle = chief . Reservation land in Colorado dry and infertile = impossible to survive.
Attacked wagon trains and steal food.
Army mounts attack and wipes out peace party sent to negotiate.
Colonel Chivington then attacks Black Kettles camp at Sand Creek. American flag and white flag ignored.
Hundreds killed, scalps shown to theatre audiences. News not welcomed in the East, Chivington left army.

8. Violent consequences
Sioux, Arapaho, Kiowa and Comanche join forces – Medicine Lodge Creek peace treaty signed, some make peace. Red Cloud of Oglala Sioux would not admit defeat.

9. Red Cloud’s War
Gold discovered in Montana, trails pass through Sioux hunting grounds.
Attack travellers – peace talks but protective forts built, Red Cloud not happy.
1866 – Fetterman Massacre (soldiers sent to protect those building forts). Withdrew, forts abandoned.

10. How might attitudes to the Plains Indians change during this time period?
Humanitarians (mainly in the East) - should live with the Native Americans but be stripped of their culture
Exterminators (mainly the army/ settlers in West) believed they should be destroyed