First Contact

The French, Spanish, English & Portuguese all began arriving in North America beginning in the 16th century (Library of Congress, n.d.).

These visitors relied on Indigenous populations for guidance & food, and carried unfamiliar pathogens (Marr & Cathey, 2010).

The first permanent English settlement was Jamestown, in 1607-this is where some of the first "Indian policies" were enacted (NMAI, 2006).

King Philip's War was a bloody confrontation that took place from 1675-1676.

Metacom forged a military alliance with about 2/3 of Native Americans in the region that would eventually become New England, particularly Massachusetts & Rhode Island.

By the end of the War, 12 of 90 colonial towns would be destroyed, 5% of English colonists killed, 40% of Indigenous people in the area killed, forced to flee, or enslaved (Stanford History Education Group, 2021); and King Philip was assassinated, his head displayed on a pike outside of Plymouth.

Seminole Wars

There were two conflicts: the first began after the War of 1812, and the second began after Florida became a U.S. territory and ended in 1842 (Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2022).

The Seminole tribe offered sanctuary to runaway slaves, and together they traded weapons to the British during the 

War of 1812. The U.S. army invaded Spanish Florida & fought these groups 1817-1818 (Florida Center for Instructional Technology, 2022). 

After Florida became a U.S. Territory, new settlers quickly ran into conflict with the tribe. Treaty and resettlement attempts by the U.S. government were rejected by parts of the tribe, leading to additional confrontations with U.S. troops. When the fight ended, many tribal members were relocated to the west.

Arikara Wars

Considered by some historians to be the first of the "Plains Wars" (Barnhill, 2002), clashes between fur traders and the Arikara tribe of South Dakota led to retaliatory attacks by the U.S. Army. 

This relatively short conflict officially began and ended in the summer of 1823 (Nichols, 1984). Traditional Arikara enemies, the Sioux, allied with the U.S. soldiers to suppress their adversaries.