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How Tecumseh fought for Native lands—and became a folk hero

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The Shawnee chief devoted his life to protecting ancestral lands. In death, he morphed into a legendary figure for Indigenous people and settlers alike.

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Tecumseh, also spelled Tecumthe, Tikamthe, or Tecumtha, (born 1768, southeast of Old Chillicothe [north of modern Xenia, Ohio, U.S.]-died October 5, 1813, near Thames River, Upper Canada [now in Ontario, Canada]), Shawnee Indian chief, orator, military leader, and advocate of intertribal Indian alliance who directed Indian resistance to white rule in the Ohio River valley. In the War of 1812 he joined British forces for the capture of Detroit and the invasion of Ohio. A decisive battle against William Henry Harrison 's U.S. troops ended in Tecumseh's defeat and death.

Early life and training

Tecumseh was born in an Indian village near present-day Xenia, Ohio. His father was killed by whites in 1774. His mother, a Muskogee ( Creek Confederacy), left him, when he was seven years old, to accompany part of the tribe to Missouri and then passed into obscurity. Tecumseh was reared by an elder sister, Tecumapease, who trained him in the strict Shawnee code of honesty; an elder brother, Cheeseekau, taught him woodcraft and hunting. He was adopted by the Shawnee chief Blackfish and grew to young manhood with several white foster brothers whom Blackfish had captured.

Murder, massacre, and the invasion of the Shawnee's lands and the destruction of their crops deepened a hatred of whites that was instilled in Tecumseh by his mother. When he was about 14 years old, during the American Revolution, he accompanied Blackfish in combined British and Indian attacks on Americans. As hostile as he was toward whites, however, Tecumseh rebuked his fellow Shawnees about a year later for the cruelty that they themselves practiced, and it was then that he discovered that words could be as powerful as weapons. He had accompanied one of the predatory Shawnee raids on the flatboats that were bringing encroaching white settlers down the Ohio River; he had seen a white man tied to a stake and burned. Horrified, he had showered his fellow tribesmen with such abuse that they never tortured a prisoner in his presence again.

After the war Tecumseh was for a number of years a marauder, fighting small actions against the whites in the Old Northwest and assisting the Cherokees in the South. He saw his brother Cheeseekau killed in an unsuccessful raid near Nashville, Tennessee, in September 1792. Although he was the youngest of the Shawnee band, Tecumseh was chosen leader, fought small actions in the South, and made an acquaintance with the Creeks that helped him later to form an alliance with them.

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At the call of Bluejacket, the Shawnee chief who was collecting a force to meet a U.S. army under Major General Anthony Wayne, Tecumseh returned to Ohio, where he directed the unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery in June 1794. On August 20, he led part of Bluejacket's force when it was decisively defeated by Wayne at Fallen Timbers. There he saw another older brother, Sauwaseekau, killed.

Break with the "peace" chiefs

When the leading chiefs of the Old Northwest gathered at Wayne's call at Greenville, in Ohio, Tecumseh held aloof; and, when the Treaty of Greenville was negotiated in August 1795, he refused to recognize it and roundly attacked the "peace" chiefs who signed away land that he contended they did not own. Land, he said, was like the air and water, the common possession of all Indians. This doctrine of communal ownership of the land became the cornerstone of his policy.

Partly because of his superb oratory, which the whites compared with that of the young Henry Clay, the rising political leader in Kentucky, Tecumseh became the spokesman for the Indians in great councils in Ohio, at Urbana (1799) and Chillicothe (1804), that undertook to settle grievances. For a time he studied treaties, spoke at councils, and lived peacefully in Ohio and Indiana.

About 1808 Tecumseh settled in the area of present-day Indiana with his brother Tenskwatawa, called "the Prophet" because he claimed to have had a revelation from the "Master of Life." There the brothers sought to induce the Indians to discard white customs and goods and to abjure intertribal wars for unity against the white invader. The code of the Prophet had a mysticism that appealed to the Indians, and many became converts.

Organizer of Indian confederation

With inexhaustible energy, Tecumseh began to form an Indian confederation to resist white pressure. He made long journeys in a vast territory, from the Ozarks to New York and from Iowa to Florida, gaining recruits (particularly among the tribes of the Creek Confederacy, to which his mother's tribe belonged). The tide of settlers had pushed game from the Indians' hunting grounds, and, as a result, the Indian economy had broken down.

In 1811, while Tecumseh was in the South, William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, marched up the Wabash River and camped near the brothers' settlement. The Prophet unwisely attacked Harrison's camp and was so decisively defeated in the ensuing Battle of Tippecanoe that his followers dispersed, and he, having lost his prestige, fled to Canada and ceased to be a factor in Tecumseh's plans.

Seeing the approach of war (the War of 1812) between the Americans and British, Tecumseh assembled his followers and joined the British forces at Fort Malden on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. There he brought together perhaps the most formidable force ever commanded by a North American Indian, an accomplishment that was a decisive factor in the capture of Detroit and of 2,500 U.S. soldiers (1812).

Tecumseh The Story of Tecumseh, by Norman S. Gurd, 1912

Fired with the promise of triumph after the fall of Detroit, Tecumseh departed on another long journey to arouse the tribes, which resulted in the uprising of the Alabama Creeks in response to his oratory, though the Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Cherokees rebuffed him. He returned north and joined the British general Henry A. Procter in his invasion of Ohio. Together they besieged Fort Meigs, held by William Henry Harrison, on the Maumee River above Toledo, where by a stratagem Tecumseh intercepted and destroyed a brigade of Kentuckians under Col. William Dudley that had been coming to Harrison's relief. He and Procter failed to capture the fort, however, and were put on the defensive by Oliver Hazard Perry's decisive victory over the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie (September 10, 1813). Harrison thereupon invaded Canada. Tecumseh with his Indians reluctantly accompanied the retiring British, whom Harrison pursued to the Thames River, in present-day southern Ontario. There, on October 5, 1813, the British and Indians were routed, and Harrison won control of the Northwest. Tecumseh, directing most of the fighting, was killed. His body was carried from the field and buried secretly in a grave that has never been discovered. Nor has it ever been determined who killed Tecumseh; Kentucky legislator Richard M. Johnson would rise to the vice presidency of the United States (1837-41) largely because of a dubious claim that he had committed the act. Tecumseh's death marked the end of Indian resistance in the Ohio River valley and in most of the Lower Midwest and South, and soon thereafter the depleted tribes were transported beyond the Mississippi River.
Glenn Tucker

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Tecumseh | Facts, Biography, & Significance

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Tecumseh, Shawnee Indian chief, orator, military leader, and advocate of intertribal Indian alliance who directed Indian resistance to white rule in the Ohio River valley. In the War of 1812 he joined British forces for the capture of Detroit and the invasion of Ohio.

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Tecumseh was a Shawnee warrior chief who organized a Native American confederacy in an effort to create an autonomous Indian state and stop white settlement in the Northwest Territory (modern-day Great Lakes region). He firmly believed that all Indian tribes must settle their differences and unite to retain their lands, culture and freedom. Tecumseh led his followers against the United States military in many battles and supported the British during the War of 1812. But his dream of independence ended when he was killed at the Battle of Thames, which led to the collapse of his Indian confederacy.

Early Years

Tecumseh, whose name in Shawnee means "shooting star" or "blazing comet," was born in 1768 in the western Ohio Valley to the Shawnee chief Puckeshinwa and his wife Methoataske. According to legend, he was given his name because at his birth a meteor or comet was seen in the sky.

After Puckeshinwa was killed at the Battle of Point Pleasant ( Lord Dunmore's War), Methoataske migrated to Missouri with other tribe members, leaving Tecumseh and his siblings behind to be raised by their older sister Tecumapease.

Tecumapease taught Tecumseh the tenets of Shawnee culture; his older brother Cheeseekau taught him how to be a warrior. By his teenage years, Tecumseh had come to despise Americans after witnessing the atrocities they committed against the Shawnee people and their land; however, the brutal tactics some Indians used to fight the white man also horrified him.

In the late 1780s, Tecumseh participated in a series of raids on settlers, then accompanied his brother Cheeseekau and a small band of Shawnee warriors to Tennessee to join a group of Cherokee Chickamauga. After Cheeseekau was killed, Tecumseh became leader of the Shawnee band and returned to Ohio to help Chief Bluejacket battle the U.S. Army.

Treaty of Greenville

Under Bluejacket's direction in 1791, Tecumseh led a scouting party to help defeat General Arthur St. Clair's army at the bloody Battle of Wabash. He then fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on the Maumee River, where General Anthony Wayne and his army decisively defeated the Indians, and both sides signed the Treaty of Greenville which forced the Indians to forfeit much of their land in the Northwest Territory.

Tecumseh refused to sign the treaty, however, because he felt the Indians didn't own the land they'd given up. He believed the land was shared by all Indians and could not be negotiated away. Nonetheless, Native Americans abided by the Treaty of Greenville, although white settlers and their leaders did not.

Prophetstown

By the early 1800s, Tecumseh had settled in Ohio and was a respected leader, war chief and orator. In 1805, his younger brother Lalawethika experienced an alcohol-induced vision and declared his intent to lead Indians on a quest to reclaim their lands and culture. He changed his name to Tenskwatawa and became known as "the Prophet."

After correctly predicting a solar eclipse in 1806, the Prophet gained hordes of Indian followers from various tribes. In 1808, Tecumseh and the Prophet moved their growing multi-tribal alliance to Prophetstown, near the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers in present-day Indiana.

Battle of Tippecanoe

Tecumseh traveled far to recruit disgruntled Indians to his pan-Indian alliance. In powerful speeches, he rallied them to his cause by warning that the only way to overcome their invaders was to unite and resist the American way of life.

It was while he was away on one of these recruiting trips in 1811 that Indiana Territory's Governor (and future U.S. president) William Henry Harrison marched his forces toward Prophetstown with the intent of destroying the village.

Tecumseh had warned his brother not to fight until their confederacy was stronger, but the Prophet ignored his advice and attacked Harrison's army despite a tenuous ceasefire having been reached. After two hours of intense fighting at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison defeated the Indians who then abandoned Prophetstown, leaving it open for Harrison to ransack and burn.

A few months later, Tecumseh returned to Prophetstown and found both the village and his hard-won Indian coalition destroyed.

Death and Legacy

Tecumseh rallied his remaining followers during the War of 1812 and joined British forces in Michigan, playing a key role in defeating American forces at the Siege of Detroit.

After Detroit's fall, Tecumseh joined British Major-General Henry Proctor's invasion of Ohio and fought against Harrison and his army. After Harrison invaded Canada, the British were forced to flee, and Tecumseh and his men grudgingly followed suit. Harrison pursued them to the Thames River where Tecumseh was killed on October 5, 1813.

Tecumseh was an esteemed leader, a powerful chief and a gifted orator. His death dismantled his pan-Indian alliance in the Northwest Territory. Without Tecumseh to lead them, most remaining Native Americans in the region moved to Indian reservations and ceded their land.

Though Tecumseh never lost sight of his goal to unite Indian tribes, his influence was not enough to defeat America's military and save the Indian way of life.

General Isaac Brock, Commander of the British Forces at Amherstburg, may have summed up Tecumseh's life best when he said of him, "A more sagacious or a gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist."

Sources

Tecumseh. Ohio History Central.
Tecumseh. National Park Service.
Tecumseh. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Tippecanoe. American Battlefield Trust.

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Tecumseh: Chief, Facts & Battles - HISTORY

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Tecumseh was a Shawnee chief who organized a Native American confederacy to create a free Indian state and stop white settlement in the Great Lakes region.

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Crazy Horse, Sioux name Ta-sunko-witko, (born 1842?, near present-day Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.-died September 5, 1877, Fort Robinson, Nebraska), a chief of the Oglala band of Lakota (Teton or Western Sioux) who was an able tactician and a determined warrior in the Sioux resistance to European Americans' invasion of the northern Great Plains.

As early as 1865 Crazy Horse was a leader in his people's defiance of U.S. plans to construct a road to the goldfields in Montana. He participated in the massacre of Captain William J. Fetterman and his troop of 80 men (December 21, 1866) as well as in the Wagon Box fight (August 2, 1867), both near Fort Phil Kearny, in Wyoming Territory. Refusing to honour the reservation provisions of the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), Crazy Horse led his followers to unceded buffalo country, where they continued to hunt, fish, and wage war against enemy tribes as well as whites.

When gold was discovered in the Black Hills, Dakota Territory, in 1874, prospectors disregarded Sioux treaty rights and swarmed onto the Native American reservation there. General George Crook thereupon set out to force Crazy Horse from his winter encampments on the Tongue and Powder rivers in Montana Territory, but the chief simply retreated deeper into the hills. Joining Cheyenne forces, he took part in a surprise attack on Crook in the Rosebud valley (June 17, 1876), in southern Montana, forcing Crook's withdrawal.

Crazy Horse then moved north to unite with the main Sioux encampment of Chief Sitting Bull on the banks of the Little Bighorn River, where he helped annihilate a battalion of U.S. soldiers under Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer (June 25, 1876). Crazy Horse and his followers then returned to the hill country to resume their old ways. He was pursued by Colonel Nelson A. Miles in a stepped-up army campaign to force all Native Americans to come to the government agencies. His tribe weakened by cold and hunger, Crazy Horse finally surrendered to General Crook at the Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska on May 6, 1877. Confined to Fort Robinson, he was killed in a scuffle with soldiers who were trying to imprison him in a guardhouse.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Crazy Horse, Sioux name Ta-sunko-witko, (born 1842?, near present-day Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.-died September 5, 1877, Fort Robinson, Nebraska), a chief of the Oglala band of Lakota (Teton or Western Sioux) who was an able tactician and a determined warrior in the Sioux resistance to European Americans' invasion of the northern Great Plains.

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Crazy Horse: Early Years

Crazy Horse was born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1841, the son of the Oglala Sioux shaman also named Crazy Horse and his wife, a member of the Brule Sioux.

Crazy Horse had lighter complexion and hair than others in his tribe, with prodigious curls. Boys were traditionally not permanently named until they had an experience that earned them a name, so Crazy Horse was called "Curly Hair" and "Light-Haired Boy" as a child.

As an adolescent, Crazy Horse earned the name "His Horse Looking," but he was more commonly known as "Curly" until 1858 when, following a battle with Arapaho warriors he was given his father's name, while his father took the name Worm.
READ MORE: Native American History Timeline
Crazy Horse's Vision Quest

Crazy Horse was not a traditionalist with regard to his tribe's customs, shrugging off many of the traditions and rituals that the Sioux practiced.

In 1854, Crazy Horse rode off into the prairies for a vision quest, purposefully ignoring the required rituals.

Fasting for two days, Crazy Horse had a vision of an unadorned horseman who directed him to present himself in the same way, with no more than one feather and never a war bonnet. He was also told to toss dust over his horse before entering battle and to place a stone behind his ear and directed to never take anything for himself.

Crazy Horse followed these instructions until his death.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

In 1866, the discovery of gold along the Bozeman Trail in Montana spurred General William Tecumseh Sherman to build a number of forts in Sioux territory.

Under the command of Captain William Fetterman, a troop clashed with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors after Crazy Horse acted as a decoy to lead the 80 white soldier to their death in an ambush. The soldiers' bodies were hacked up to send a message to Sherman.

In 1867, Crazy Horse took part in an attack on a small fort. Shortly after, Sherman toured the Native prairie lands to meet with leaders and seek peace.

By 1868, soldiers were pulled out of the disputed forts and a treaty was signed that gave the native populations ownership of the Black Hills, areas west of Missouri and land in Wyoming. No whites would be allowed to enter that territory under threat of arrest.

Crazy Horse, however, eschewed the treaty signing, preferring to conduct raids on enemy tribes.

Black Buffalo Woman

Black Buffalo Woman was Crazy Horse's first love. They met in 1857, but she married a man named No Water while Crazy Horse was on a raid.

Crazy Horse continued to pay her attention and in 1868 eloped with her while No Water was on a hunting party.

He and Black Buffalo Woman spent one night together before No Water took back his wife, shooting Crazy Horse in the nose and breaking his jaw.

Despite fears of violence between villages, the two men came to a truce. Crazy Horse insisted that Black Buffalo Woman shouldn't be punished for fleeing and received a horse from No Water in compensation for the injury.

Crazy Horse eventually married Black Shawl, who died of tuberculosis, and later a half-Cheyenne, half-French woman named Nellie Larrabee.

Black Buffalo Woman's fourth child, a girl, was a light-skinned baby suspected of being the result of her night with Crazy Horse.

General George Armstrong Custer

As the railroads expanded west, tensions rose between Native Americans and soldiers.

In 1872, Crazy Horse took part in a raid with Sitting Bull against 400 soldiers, where his horse was shot out beneath him after he made a reckless dash ahead to meet the U.S. Army.

In 1873 General George Armstrong Custer crossed into Sioux territory. Somewhere along the Yellowstone River, Crazy Horse encountered Custer for the first time, coming upon a contingent of napping soldiers. The Sioux attempted to steal their horses but failed, and Crazy Horse retreated after a scuffle.

Custer's troops made their way into the Black Hills in search of gold, violating treaties while also ushering in civilian miners who outnumbered the Native population.

Battle of Rosebud

By 1876, large numbers of tribes gathered near the Little Big Horn River in Montana to join Sitting Bull.

General George Crook, who had recently raided a village that was wrongly claimed to be Crazy Horse's, attempted an attack, but Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led forces to push back Crook in what is called the Battle of Rosebud.

Battle of the Little Big Horn

One week later, General Custer entered into battle at Little Big Horn after refusing the advice of his Native guides, who assured him he would lose the confrontation.

One week later, General Custer entered into battle at Little Big Horn after refusing the advice of his Native guides, who assured him he would lose the confrontation.Crazy Horse led as many as 1,000 warriors to flank Custer's forces and help seal the general's disastrous defeat and death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer's Last Stand.
READ MORE: What Really Happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn?
Crazy Horse Surrenders

Crazy Horse traveled to Big Butte to harass white miners in the Black Hills, while the Sioux faced continued hostilities from General Crook during a harsh winter that decimated the tribe.

Sensing the tribe's struggle for survival, Colonel Nelson A. Miles tried to strike a deal with Crazy Horse, promising to help the Sioux and treat them fairly.

When Crazy Horse sent emissaries to discuss the deal, soldiers shot and killed several and Crazy Horse fled. Miles repeatedly attacked Crazy Horse's encampment until winter weather prevented action.

Incapacitated by the winter, Crazy Horse negotiated with Lieutenant Philo Clark, who offered the starving Sioux their own reservation in exchange their surrender. Crazy Horse agreed.

Crazy Horse's Arrest

During negotiations, Crazy Horse found trouble with both the Army and his fellow tribesmen. Clark tried to convince him to go to Washington, but Crazy Horse refused, furthering the Army's belief that Crazy Horse was too unreliable for negotiation.

Some of the Sioux were agitating with others following a rumor that Crazy Horse had found favor with white people, who planned to install him as leader of all the Sioux.

Tensions rose as the Army sought Crazy Horse's help in their conflict against the Nez Perce natives. During these meetings, an interpreter claimed Crazy Horse had promised he would not stop fighting until all white men were killed, though Crazy Horse had not said that.

Some Sioux warriors signed on with the Army to fight the Nez Perce warriors. Disgusted, Crazy Horse threatened to leave negotiations and was soon after arrested.

Crazy Horse Death

Returning to camp the next day, Crazy Horse requested to talk to military leaders, but was led to a cell instead.

Realizing the betrayal, Crazy Horse struggled. An old friend, Little Big Man, worked for the Army as a policeman and attempted to restrain Crazy Horse, who pulled a concealed knife on him.

Trying to prevent Crazy Horse from stabbing Little Big Man, a soldier shoved a bayonet into Crazy Horse's abdomen, piercing his kidneys. Crazy Horse collapsed and was moved to an office, where he refused a cot. Only his father was allowed to visit.

Crazy Horse died at some point later on the night of September 6, 1877, at the age of 35, lying on the bare floor in Fort Robinson, Nebraska. His body was taken away by Sioux and buried at an unknown location near a creek called Wounded Knee.
READ MORE: American-Indian Wars: Timeline, Battles & Summary
Crazy Horse Memorial

Cray Horse is remembered for his courage, leadership and his tenacity of spirit in the face of near-impossible odds.

His legacy is celebrated in the Crazy Horse Memorial, an uncompleted monumental sculpture located in the Black Hills, not far from Mount Rushmore. Started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziółkowski (who also worked on Mount Rushmore), the Crazy Horse Memorial would be the largest sculpture in the world when completed.

Operated by the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, the sculpture grounds are open to the public and reportedly receive more than one million visitors each year.

Sources

Crazy Horse: A Life. Larry McMurtry.
Crazy Horse: War Chief Of The Oglala Sioux. Martin S. Goldman.
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Dee Brown.
Crazy Horse Memorial: Quick Facts. Crazy Horse Memorial.

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Crazy Horse was born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1841, the son of the Oglala Sioux shaman also named Crazy Horse and his wife, a member of the Brule Sioux. Crazy Horse had lighter complexion and hair than others in his tribe, with prodigious curls.

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What is Sitting Bull known for?

How did Sitting Bull become famous?

How did Sitting Bull die?

Read a brief summary of this topic

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Sitting Bull, Lakota Tatanka Iyotake, (born c. 1831, near Grand River, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota], U.S.-died December 15, 1890, on the Grand River in South Dakota), Teton Dakota Indian chief under whom the Sioux peoples united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains. He is remembered for his lifelong distrust of white men and his stubborn determination to resist their domination.

Sitting Bull was born into the Hunkpapa division of the Teton Sioux. He joined his first war party at age 14 and soon gained a reputation for fearlessness in battle. He became a leader of the powerful Strong Heart warrior society and, later, was a participant in the Silent Eaters, a select group concerned with tribal welfare. As a tribal leader, Sitting Bull helped extend the Sioux hunting grounds westward into what had been the territory of the Shoshone, Crow, Assiniboin, and other Indian tribes. His first skirmish with white soldiers occurred in June 1863 during the U.S. Army's retaliation against the Santee Sioux after the "Minnesota Massacre," in which the Teton Sioux had no part. For the next five years he was in frequent hostile contact with the army, which was invading the Sioux hunting grounds and bringing ruin to the Indian economy. In 1866 he became principal chief of the northern hunting Sioux, with Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglala Sioux, as his vice-chief. Respected for his courage and wisdom, Sitting Bull was made principal chief of the entire Sioux nation about 1867.

In 1868 the Sioux accepted peace with the U.S. government on the basis of the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which guaranteed the Sioux a reservation in what is now southwestern South Dakota. But when gold was discovered in the Black Hills in the mid-1870s, a rush of white prospectors invaded lands guaranteed to the Indians by the treaty. Late in 1875 those Sioux who had been resisting the whites' incursions were ordered to return to their reservations by January 31, 1876, or be considered hostile to the United States. Even had Sitting Bull been willing to comply, he could not possibly have moved his village 240 miles (390 km) in the bitter cold by the specified time.

In March, General George Crook took the field against the hostiles, and Sitting Bull responded by summoning the Sioux, Cheyenne, and certain Arapaho to his camp in Montana Territory. There on June 17 Crook's troops were forced to retreat in the Battle of the Rosebud. The Indian chiefs then moved their encampment into the valley of the Little Bighorn River. At this point Sitting Bull performed the Sun Dance, and, when he emerged from a trance induced by the rigours of the ceremony, he reported that he had seen soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky. His prophecy was fulfilled on June 25, when Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer rode into the valley and he and all the men under his immediate command were annihilated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Strong public reaction among whites to the Battle of the Little Bighorn resulted in stepped-up military action. The Sioux emerged the victors in their battles with U.S. troops, but though they might win battle after battle, they could never win the war. They depended on the buffalo for their livelihood, and the buffalo, under the steady encroachment of whites, were rapidly becoming extinct. Hunger led more and more Sioux to surrender, and in May 1877 Sitting Bull led his remaining followers across the border into Canada. But the Canadian government could not acknowledge responsibility for feeding a people whose reservation was south of the border, and after four years, during which his following dwindled steadily, famine forced Sitting Bull to surrender. After 1883 he lived at the Standing Rock Agency, where he vainly opposed the sale of tribal lands. In 1885, partly to get rid of him, the Indian agent allowed him to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, in which he gained international fame.

The year 1889 saw the spread of the Ghost Dance religious movement, which prophesied the advent of an Indian messiah who would sweep away the whites and restore the Indians' former traditions. The Ghost Dance movement augmented the unrest already stirred among the Sioux by hunger and disease. As a precaution, Indian police and soldiers were sent to arrest the chief. Seized on Grand River, December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was killed while his warriors were trying to rescue him. He was buried at Fort Yates, but his remains were moved in 1953 to Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks his resting place.

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Sitting Bull | Biography, Leader, Death, & Facts

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Sitting Bull, Lakota Tatanka Iyotake, (born c. 1831, near Grand River, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota], U.S.-died December 15, 1890, on the Grand River in South Dakota), Teton Dakota Indian chief under whom the Sioux peoples united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains.

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Contents

1. Sitting Bull's Early Life

2. Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government

3. Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty

4. The Battle of Little Bighorn

5. Sitting Bull Surrenders

6. Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show

7. Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site

Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890) was a Teton Dakota Native American chief who united the Sioux tribes of the American Great Plains against the white settlers taking their tribal land. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to the Sioux, but when gold was discovered there in 1874, the U.S. government ignored the treaty and began to remove native tribes from their land by force.

The ensuing Great Sioux Wars culminated in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, when Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse led united tribes to victory against General George Armstrong Custer. Sitting Bull was shot and killed by Indian police officers on Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 1890, but is remembered for his courage in defending native lands.

Sitting Bull's Early Life

Library of Congress

Sitting Bull was born in 1831 near Grand River, Dakota Territory in what is today South Dakota. He was the son of Returns-Again, a renowned Sioux warrior who named his son "Jumping Badger" at birth. The young boy killed his first buffalo at age 10 and by 14, joined his father and uncle on a raid of a Crow camp. After the raid, his father renamed him Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull, for his bravery.

Sitting Bull soon joined the Strong Heart warrior society and the Silent Eaters, a group that ensured the welfare of the tribe. He led the expansion of Sioux hunting grounds into westward territories previously inhabited by the Assiniboine, Crow and Shoshone, among others.

Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government

Sitting Bull first battled the U.S. Army in June of 1863, when they came after the Santee Sioux (not the Dakota) in retaliation for the Minnesota Uprising, sparked when federal agents withheld food from the Sioux living on reservations along the Minnesota River. Over 300 Sioux were arrested in the Minnesota Uprising, but President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 39 of the accused.

Sitting Bull faced the might of the U.S. military again at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain on July 28, 1864, when U.S. forces under General Alfred Sully surrounded an Indian trading village, eventually forcing the Sioux to retreat. These face-offs convinced Sitting Bull to never sign a treaty that would force his people onto a reservation.

Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty

His resolve was not shared by all. In 1868, Red Cloud, or Mahpiua Luta (1822-1909), chief of the Oglala Teton Dakota Sioux, signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with 24 other tribal leaders and representatives of the U.S. government including Lieutenant General William Tecumseh Sherman. The treaty created the Great Sioux Reservation and earmarked additional land for the Sioux in parts of South Dakota, Wyoming and Nebraska.

Sitting Bull's anti-treaty stance won him many followers, and around 1869, he was made supreme leader of the autonomous bands of Lakota Sioux-the first person to ever hold such a title. Members of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes soon joined him.

The uneasy peace of the Fort Laramie Treaty was short-lived. In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, a place sacred to the Sioux and within the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation. White settlers seeking their fortunes rushed to claim the land as their own. The U.S. government reneged on the treaty, demanding that any Sioux who dared resist move to the redrawn reservation lines by January 31, 1876 or be considered an enemy of the United States. Sitting Bull was expected to move everyone in his village an impossible 240 miles in the bitter cold.

Defiant, Sitting Bull refused to back down. He mustered a force that included the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Sioux and faced off against General George Crook on June 17, 1876, winning victory in the Battle of the Rosebud. From there, his forces moved to the valley of the Little Bighorn River.

The Battle of Little Bighorn

It was in a camp at Little Bighorn River that Sitting Bull, then a revered leader and holy man, or "Wichasa Wakan," participated in a Sun Dance ceremony where he famously danced for 36 hours straight, making 50 sacrificial cuts on each arm before falling into a trance. When he awoke, he revealed that he had a vision of U.S. soldiers falling like grasshoppers from the sky, which he interpreted as an omen that the army would soon be defeated.

On June 25, 600 men under the leadership of General George Custer, a West Point graduate, entered the valley. Sitting Bull ensured the women and children of the tribe were safe while Crazy Horse (c.1840-77) led over 3,000 Native Americans to victory in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, overwhelming Custer's smaller force of 300. Custer and every single one of his men were killed in what came to be known as Custer's Last Stand.

Sitting Bull Surrenders

In the wake of The Battle of Little Bighorn, the incensed U.S. government redoubled their efforts to hunt down the Sioux. At the same time, the encroachment of white settlers on traditionally Indian lands greatly reduced the buffalo population that the Sioux depended on for survival. In May 1877, Sitting Bull led his people to safety in Canada.

With food and resources scarce, Sitting Bull surrendered to the U.S. Army on July 20, 1881 in exchange for amnesty for his people. He was a prisoner of war in South Dakota's Fort Randall for two years before being moved to Standing Rock Reservation.

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show

Library of Congress

Sitting Bull was occasionally permitted to travel, and it was on one of his trips outside the reservation that he struck up a friendship with sharpshooter Annie Oakley, whom he affectionately nicknamed "Little Sure Shot" after seeing her perform in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1884.

In 1885, Sitting Bull joined Oakley in performing in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Buffalo Bill was by then a celebrity with a storied past straight out of a Western: He'd rode horses for the Pony Express, fought in the American Civil War and served as a scout for the Army.

Sitting Bull rode in the show's opening act, signed autographs and even met President Grover Cleveland, though he could also be mocked and booed onstage. He left the show in October at age 54 and never returned.

Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site

Standing Rock Reservation soon became the center of controversy when the Ghost Dance Movement started gaining traction. Followers believed that deceased tribe members would rise from the dead along with killed buffalo while all white people would disappear. Worried that the influential Sitting Bull would join the movement and incite rebellion, Indian police advanced on his cabin to arrest him.

On December 15, 1890, Indian police woke the sleeping Sitting Bull in his bed at 6 a.m. When he refused to go quietly, a crowd gathered. A young man shot a member of the Indian police, who retaliated by shooting Sitting Bull in the head and chest. Sitting Bull died instantly from the gunshot wounds. Two weeks after his death, the army massacred 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee, the final fight between federal troops and the Sioux.

Sitting Bull was buried at Fort Yates Military Cemetery in North Dakota by the army. In 1953, family members exhumed what they thought was Sitting Bull's grave and reburied the bones they found near Mobridge, South Dakota, overlooking the Missouri River.

Sources:

Sitting Bull. Biography.com.
New Perspectives on The West: Sitting Bull. PBS.
Sitting Bull. NPS.gov.
Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill And The Circus of Lies. The Independent.
The Native American Ghost Dance, A Symbol of Defiance. ThoughtCo.
Last Stand to Save Grave of Sitting Bull. The Telegraph.

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Sitting Bull's Early Life Sitting Bull Resists U.S. Government Sitting Bull and The Fort Laramie Treaty The Battle of Little Bighorn Sitting Bull Surrenders Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show Sitting Bull's Death and Burial Site Sitting Bull (c.

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Squanto, also called Tisquantum, (died November 1622, Chatham Harbor, Plymouth Colony [now Chatham, Massachusetts, U.S.]), Native American interpreter and guide.

Squanto was born into the Pawtuxet people who occupied lands in present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Little is known about his early life. Some authorities believe that he was taken from home to England in 1605 by George Weymouth and returned with explorer John Smith in 1614-15. He was, in any event, seized with other Indians by one of Smith's men, Thomas Hunt, who took them to the Mediterranean port of Málaga, Spain, to be sold into slavery. Squanto somehow escaped to England and joined the Newfoundland Company. He returned home in 1619 on his second trip back to North America only to find that his people had been wiped out by disease.

During the spring of 1621, Squanto was brought to the newly founded Pilgrim settlement of Plymouth by Samoset, an Indian who had been befriended by the English settlers. Squanto, who had been living with the Wampanoag people since his return from England, soon became a member of the Plymouth Colony. Because Squanto was fluent in English, Gov. William Bradford made him his Indian emissary, and he then served as interpreter for Edward Winslow, the Pilgrim representative, during his negotiations with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags. Squanto died while serving as a guide to Governor Bradford on an expedition around Cape Cod.

Amy Tikkanen.

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Squanto, Native American interpreter and guide who, after becoming a member of the Plymouth Colony, was made Governor William Bradford's Indian emissary. Squanto later served as interpreter for Edward Winslow, the Pilgrim representative, during his negotiations with Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags.

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For generations, the dominant cultural narrative of America's Thanksgiving holiday has told how a Native American man named Squanto showed the Pilgrims how to get food after they arrived on the Mayflower in Massachusetts in 1620. Having fled their native England, the new émigrés endured hardship and privation in both their journey and their adjustment to the new land. Those who survived in the early settlement are said to have gathered with the Native people in a feast of gratitude, establishing the time-honored tradition of having a "Thanksgiving" dinner on the fourth Thursday of November.

The historical details of this somewhat mythologized story are far more complicated-as was the life of Squanto, whose actual name was Tisquantum. He and his Indigenous relatives would have been quite familiar with the tradition of "thanksgiving" because it was, and still is, an essential aspect of their regular spiritual practices, one that predates by many generations the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

A member of the Patuxet Tribe of the Wampanoags, Tisquantum was likely born around 1580. When he encountered the Plymouth Colony settlers, he spoke English, having lived five years in Europe, including time at the home of a London merchant. He proved indispensable to the English settlers at Plymouth, but in the end was reviled by some of his own people for his role in brokering a treaty that undermined tribal sovereignty.

But without Tisquantum to interpret and guide them to food sources, the Plymouth Colony Pilgrims may never have survived.

"His is such a seminal backstory to Plimoth [historic spelling] Colony that the lack of historical reference to it is conspicuous," writes Paula Peters, a journalist and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag, in an essay about Tisquantum, the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. His name remains ubiquitous in Thanksgiving stories, but little is known of his life, family and tribulations prior to encountering the Plymouth Colony settlers.

Tisquantum Spoke English After Being Kidnapped to Europe

The Wampanoag, whose name means "People of the First Light," and their ancestors had lived in Patuxet for at least 10,000 years. They hunted, fished and farmed corn, beans and squash when encountered for the first time by Europeans. Their non-hierarchical system of governance and nature-based spirituality bewildered the new settlers.

By 1619, the Wampanoag survived a devastating plague brought by European explorers called the Great Dying. The disease killed about two-thirds of their 70,000 people who had been living in 69 villages along what is now the southern Massachusetts coast.

So sudden and overwhelming was the sickness, that when the Mayflower landed, its passengers had to stride across the bleached bones of plague victims, writes Peters. Some of the colonists described the Great Dying as a providential act of god that made way for a flourishing of their Puritan faith.

Tisquantum escaped this scourge because, years earlier, he had been lured, along with about two dozen other Wampanoag, onto a British ship bound for a slave market in Spain, according to James Seelye Jr and Shawn Selby, historians at Kent State University and authors of Shaping North America: From Exploration to the American Revolution. He escaped with the help of Catholic Friars and made his way to London, where he lived with John Slaney, treasurer of the Newfoundland Company, which had colonized Cuper's Cove in Newfoundland in 1610. Tisquantum likely used this connection to depart England for home, working on a ship for Captain John Mason, the Newfoundland Colony's governor. He then found passage on another ship that brought him south, where he eventually made his way back to Patuxet.

Tisquantum was among 2 to 5.5 million Indigenous people enslaved in the Americas between 1492 and 1880, many of whom were sent to work in the Caribbean. According to Wampanoag historian Linda Jeffers Coombs, Tisquantum was one of only two tribal members who found his way back home from the slave ship that landed in Spain.

Pilgrims Likely Didn't Invite Native People to Their First Harvest Thanksgiving

On his return, Tisquantum was distraught to find his people decimated by plague. When he encountered the Mayflower's ragged survivors, he was an orphan himself. But he was uniquely poised to help them survive, and willing to help them form a vital alliance with his Wampanoag leader, named Ousamequin.

Tisquantum favored the English enough to teach them how to grow corn, and where and how to fish and hunt beaver. He also gained protection from the English at times from his own people. The treaty he helped negotiate between his people and the English allowed the Wampanoag to gain a powerful ally against their enemy, the Narragansett. But it also empowered the English with the dominant rule of law, while restricting the Wampanoag's use and display of weapons at meetings. This treaty led to subjugation, and Tisquantum died while allied with the English-perhaps even poisoned by his own people in late 1622, writes historian Nathaniel Philbrick in his book Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War.

It's likely the Pilgrims didn't actually invite the Wampanoag to the first harvest "Thanksgiving" memorialized in the now-popular American holiday. In fact, the tense days-long feast convened to put at ease some 90 Wampanoag warriors who had arrived at Plymouth fully armed in response to a volley of celebratory gunfire they had heard shot by the colonists.

Historical sources state that, once they realized the gunfire wasn't intended as hostile, the Wampanoags killed five deer and brought them to Plymouth as their contribution to what has been described as a harvest feast, and perhaps a celebration of survival for making it through their second winter. "If you're getting ready to eat, we will bring food for you. That's who we are as people," says Anita Peters, known as Mother Bear, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member. "But that feast was never repeated, and that should tell you something."

Nakai Clearwater Northup, museum educator at Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, says the Thanksgiving holiday likely conflates several feasts held during the time period, including the Pilgrims' celebration of their victory in the Mystic Massacre of 1637, in which 600 Pequots lost their lives in about an hour.

"This was the primary tragic moment in our history," Northup said. "It laid the foundation for colonialism, and the first reservation was created right here in Connecticut. This laid the blueprint for the rest of our Native relatives for generations to come."

Indigenous religions-which have long included the ubiquitous ceremonies of giving thanks for many food sources throughout the year-would be suppressed by the dominant culture of Christianity. Yet the spiritual practices of reciprocity and thanksgiving for the gifts of the earth, survive among the Wampanoag and many other Indigenous nations to this day.

"When I was young, we were taught by our grandparents and great grandparents to believe that the purpose of life is to be in a state of thanksgiving every day," says Mother Bear.

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Who Was Squanto, and What Was His Role in the First Thanksgiving? | HISTORY

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Without Squanto, a.k.a. Tisquantum, to interpret and guide them to food sources, the Plymouth Colony Pilgrims may have never have survived.

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Sacagawea was not afraid. Although she was only 16 years old and the only female in an exploration group of more than 45 people, she was ready to courageously make her mark in American history.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought more than 825,000 square miles of land from France in what was called the Louisiana Purchase. To explore this new part of the country, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on a two-year journey to report on what they found. They needed local guides to help them through this unknown territory. Sacagawea, a young Native American, joined them.

Born to a Shoshone chief around 1788, Sacagawea had been kidnapped by an enemy tribe when she was about 12, then sold to a French-Canadian trapper. When he was hired as a guide for Lewis and Clark's expedition in 1804, Sacagawea also joined as an interpreter to talk to Native-American people on their 8,000-mile journey.

Sacagawea soon became a respected member of the group. She was skilled at finding plants for food and medicine to help keep the explorers alive. When a boat capsized on the Missouri River as they were crossing into what is now Montana, Sacagawea saved important books and much-needed supplies. When they needed horses to cross rough terrain, she convinced a Shoshone tribe-led by her long-lost brother-to give them some. She was so respected by Lewis and Clark that when they reached the Pacific Ocean in November 1805, Sacagawea was asked to cast her vote for where they should build a fort.

Sacagawea proved herself again after the group took a different route home through what is now Idaho. As they passed through her homeland, Sacagawea remembered Shoshone trails from her childhood and helped the expedition find their way through. Clark even praised her as his "pilot."

Sacagawea left the group to return to what is now Bismarck, South Dakota, before the triumphant return of Lewis and Clark to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1806. She received no pay for her services and died on December 20, 1812. But Sacagawea's bravery and skill live on in the expedition's journals, which are full of praise for the 16-year-old Shoshone girl who guided the most famous American expedition of all time.

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Sacagawea was not afraid. Although she was only 16 years old and the only female in an exploration group of more than 45 people, she was ready to courageously make her mark in American history. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought more than 825,000 square miles of land from France in what was called the Louisiana Purchase.

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Sacagawea | Biography, Husband, Baby, Death, & Facts

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Sacagawea (Sacajawea), Shoshone Indian woman who, as interpreter, traveled thousands of miles with the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06), from the Mandan-Hidatsa villages in the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest. Read here to learn more about Sacagawea.

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Who Was Sacagawea?

Possibly the most memorialized woman in the United States, with dozens of statues and monuments, Sacagawea lived a short but legendarily eventful life in the American West. Born in 1788 or 1789, a member of the Lemhi band of the Native American Shoshone tribe, Sacagawea grew up surrounded by the Rocky Mountains in the Salmon River region of what is now Idaho.

The Shoshone were enemies of the gun-possessing Hidatsa tribe, who kidnapped Sacagawea during a buffalo hunt in 1800. The name we know her by is in fact Hidatsa, from the Hidatsa words for bird ("sacaga") and woman ("wea").

Did you know? Sacagawea was a highly skilled food gatherer. She used sharp sticks to dig up wild licorice, prairie turnips (tubers the explorers called "white apples") and wild artichokes that mice had buried for the winter.

Today, however, many Shoshone, among others, argue that in their language "Sacajawea" means boat-pusher and is her true name. (And in North Dakota the official spelling is "Sakakawea.") Her captors brought her to the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota; the Mandan is an affiliated tribe.

In 1803 or 1804, through a trade, gambling payoff or purchase, Sacagawea became the property of French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, born no later than 1767 and well over two decades her senior. Charbonneau had lived among Native Americans for so long he had adopted some of their traditions, including polygamy. Sacagawea became one of his two wives and was soon pregnant.

The Louisiana Purchase

Meanwhile, President Thomas Jefferson had made the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803-828,000 square miles of almost completely unexplored territory. Within this vast wilderness he hoped would lie the rumored Northwest Passage, the legendary waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that was long-sought trade route.

But Jefferson wanted more from the explorers who would search for the passage: He charged them with surveying the landscape, learning about the varied Native American tribes, collecting natural specimens and making maps. He turned to his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to head the Corps of Discovery. Lewis, 29, chose his friend and former military superior, 33-year-old William Clark, as his co-captain.

Lewis and Clark Meet Sacagawea

After more than a year of planning and initial travel, Lewis and Clark and their men reached the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement-about 60 miles northwest of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota-on November 2, 1804, when Sacagawea was about six months pregnant.

They recognized the potential value of Sacagawea and Charbonneau's combined language skills. Most of the Corps members spoke only English, but one, Francois Labiche, spoke French as well. Charbonneau spoke French and Hidatsa; Sacagawea spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone (two very different languages).

Through this translation chain, communications with the Shoshone would be possible. Lewis and Clark also recognized that the Shoshone had horses they would need to purchase.

Without horses, they wouldn't be able to transport their supplies over the Bitterroot Mountains (a rugged section of the Rockies) and continue toward the Pacific. And they couldn't procure horses earlier, because they'd be traveling by water until they reached the Rockies' edge.

Sacagawea delivered her son Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau (known as Baptiste) on February 11, 1805. On April 7, Sacagawea, the baby and Charbonneau headed west with the 31 other Corps members.

Sacagawea Saves the Day

Within a month, a near-tragedy earned Sacagawea particular respect. The boat in which she was sailing nearly capsized when a squall hit and Charbonneau, the navigator, panicked.

Sacagawea had the presence of mind to gather crucial papers, books, navigational instruments, medicines and other provisions that might have otherwise disappeared-all while simultaneously ensuring her baby's safety. In appreciation, Lewis and Clark named a branch of the Missouri River for Sacagawea several days later.

Clark, in particular, developed a close bond with Sacagawea as she and Baptiste would often accompany him as he took his turn walking the shore, checking for obstacles in the river that could damage the boats.

Cameahwait and Sacagawea

Five days after the first members of the Corps crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, Sacagawea did, as planned, translate the captains' desire to purchase horses to the Shoshone they encountered. Sacagawea was surprised and happy to recognize the Shoshone's leader, Chief Cameahwait, as her brother, and they had an emotional reunion.

Sacagawea also put her naturalist's knowledge to use for the Corps. She could identify roots, plants and berries that were either edible or medicinal. Sacagawea's memories of Shoshone trails led to Clark's characterization of her as his "pilot." She helped navigate the Corps through a mountain pass-today's Bozeman Pass in Montana-to the Yellowstone River.

And although it couldn't be quantified, the presence of a woman-a Native American, to boot-and baby made the whole corps seem less fearsome and more amiable to the Native Americans the Corps encountered, some of whom had never seen European faces before. This eased tensions that might otherwise have resulted in uncooperativeness at best, violence at worst.

After reaching the Pacific, Sacagawea returned with the rest of the Corps and her husband and son-having survived illness, flash floods, temperature extremes, food shortages, mosquito swarms and so much more-to their starting point, the Hidatsa-Mandan settlement, on August 14, 1806.

For his service Charbonneau received 320 acres of land and $500.33; Sacagawea herself received no compensation.

Sacagawea's Later Years

Three years later, in fall 1809, Sacagawea, Charbonneau and Baptiste ventured to St. Louis, where Charbonneau was taking the kind-hearted Clark up on an offer: Clark would provide the Charbonneau family with land to farm if the parents would agree to let Clark educate Baptiste.

The farming didn't work out, however, and Sacagawea and Charbonneau left Baptiste in St. Louis with Clark-now his godfather-in April 1811 so that they could join a fur-trading expedition.

How Did Sacagawea Die?

In August 1812, after giving birth to a daughter, Lisette (or Lizette), Sacagawea's health declined. By December, she was extremely ill with "putrid fever" (possibly typhoid fever).

She died at 25, on December 22, 1812, in Fort Manuel, located on a bluff 70 miles south of present-day Bismarck. She may have been buried on the Wind River Reservation, occupied by Lemhi Shoshone tribe, but some scholars dispute that.

Within a year, Clark became legal guardian to both Lisette and Baptiste. While little is known of Lisette's life, Baptiste traveled in Europe and held a variety of jobs in the American West before he died in 1866. Charbonneau died in 1843.

Legacy

Sacagawea's fictionalized image as a "genuine Indian princess" was promulgated most widely in the early 20th century by a popular 1902 novel by Eva Emery Dye that took liberties in recounting the travails of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

A suffragist, Dye was not satisfied to present the facts then known about Sacagawea; she wanted to make her a compelling model of female bravery and intelligence, and didn't mind rewriting history to do so.

"Out of a few dry bones I found in the old tales of the trip, I created Sacajawea," Dye wrote in her journal. Today, some scholars contend that the romanticized versions of the Sacagawea "legend" popularized before and after the publication of Dye's novel do the real woman a disservice, as her true legacy of accomplishments speaks for itself.

Sacagawea Coin

In addition to numerous memorials throughout the United States, Sacagawea was honored with a dollar coin made by the U.S. Mint from 2000 to 2008. The manganese brass coin features an image of Sacagawea carrying Jean Baptiste, her infant son.

Designed by artist Glenna Goodacre, the coins show Sacagawea looking directly at the viewer, a break with coin-making tradition, where subjects are typically viewed in profile. Goodacre used a modern-day Shoshone student as her model.

Sources

Sacagawea / Sacajawea / Sakakawea. National Women's Hall of Fame.
The Sacagawea Mystique: Her Age, Name, Role and Final Destiny. Columbia Magazine.
Sacagawea Golden Dollar Coin. U.S. Mint.

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Sacagawea: Facts, Tribe & Death - HISTORY

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Sacagawea was a Shoshone Indian woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06, exploring the lands procured in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

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Pocahontas, also called Matoaka and Amonute, Christian name Rebecca, (born c. 1596, near present-day Jamestown, Virginia, U.S.-died March 1617, Gravesend, Kent, England), Powhatan woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them.

Among her several native names, the one best known to the English was Pocahontas (translated at the time as "little wanton" or "mischievous one"). She was a daughter of Powhatan (as he was known to the English; he was also called Wahunsenacah), chief of the Powhatan empire, which consisted of some 28 peoples of the Tidewater region. Pocahontas was a girl of age 10 or 11 when she first became acquainted with the colonists who settled in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1607.

By the account of colonial leader John Smith, she interceded to save Smith's life in December of that year, after he had been taken prisoner by her father's men. Smith wrote that, when he was brought before Powhatan, Pocahontas halted Smith's execution by placing herself over him as he was about to have his head clubbed on a stone. Powhatan released Smith to return to Jamestown. Some writers have theorized that Smith may have misunderstood what he saw and that what he believed to be an execution was instead a benign ceremony of some kind; others have alleged that he invented the rescue outright.

What is known is that Pocahontas became a frequent visitor to the settlement and a friend of Smith. Her playful nature made her a favourite, and her interest in the English proved valuable to them. She sometimes brought gifts of food from her father to relieve the hard-pressed settlers. She also saved the lives of Smith and other colonists in a trading party in January 1609 by warning them of an ambush.

After Smith's return to England in late 1609, relations between the settlers and Powhatan deteriorated. The English informed Pocahontas that Smith had died. She did not return to the colony for the next four years. In the spring of 1613, however, Sir Samuel Argall took her prisoner, hoping to use her to secure the return of some English prisoners and stolen English weapons and tools. Argall did so by conspiring with Japazeus, the chief of the Patawomeck people, who lived along the Potomac River and whom Pocahontas was visiting. Japazeus and his wife lured Pocahontas onto Argall's ship, where Argall kept her until he could take her to Jamestown. Although Pocahontas's father released seven English prisoners, an impasse resulted when he did not return the weapons and tools and refused to negotiate further.

Pocahontas was taken from Jamestown to a secondary English settlement known as Henricus. Treated with courtesy during her captivity, Pocahontas was converted to Christianity and was baptized Rebecca. She accepted a proposal of marriage from John Rolfe, a distinguished settler; both the Virginia governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and Chief Powhatan agreed to the marriage, which took place in April 1614. Following the marriage, peace prevailed between the English and the Native Americans as long as Chief Powhatan lived. According to Powhatan tradition and the account of one colonist, Pocahontas had previously been married to a Powhatan man named Kocoum.

In the spring of 1616 Pocahontas, her husband, their one-year-old son, Thomas, and a group of other Native Americans, men and women, sailed with Governor Dale to England. There she was entertained at royal festivities. The Virginia Company apparently saw her visit as a device to publicize the colony and to win support from King James I and investors. While preparing to return to America, Pocahontas fell ill, probably with an upper respiratory ailment (though some historians believe that she may have contracted smallpox or dysentery). Her illness took a turn for the worse and interrupted her return voyage before her ship left the River Thames. She died in the town of Gravesend at about age 21 and was buried there on March 21, 1617. Afterward her husband immediately returned to Virginia; her son remained in England until 1635, when he went to Virginia and became a successful tobacco planter.

Pocahontas has been an enduring image in American literature and art, the prototypical "Indian princess," whose narrative has been relentlessly refashioned to suit the polemical, poetic, or marketing needs of its interpreters. From the early 19th century the emphasis of her story shifted from Smith's description of his rescue to Pocahontas's relationship with Rolfe, a mixed marriage that provided a practical and metaphoric model for the beneficial possibilities of the blending of indigenous and colonial cultures. By the time of John Gadsby Chapman's painting of The Baptism of Pocahontas for the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in 1836-40, the benefits of the coupling of Rolfe and Pocahontas had become more contingent, predicated on her assimilationist acceptance of Christianity.

In the journey from Simon van de Passe's 1616 engraving from life to her depiction in Chapman's painting, Pocahontas's features and skin tone were dramatically altered to more closely resemble European and European American concepts of human beauty. Over the years, Smith's mythic description of his rescue was increasingly accepted as history, and imaginative presentations of Pocahontas's story were often molded into romances that sometimes focused as much on her relationship with Smith-as in the Walt Disney Company's animated feature Pocahontas (1995)-as on her relationship with Rolfe. In the run-up to the American Civil War, according to cultural historian Robert P. Tilton, abolitionists claimed Pocahontas as a symbol of the possibility of racial harmony, while Southerners pointed to her and Rolfe as progenitors of Southern aristocracy who offered an alternative national foundation myth to the Northern version centred on the Pilgrims. Pocahontas even found her way into rock music. Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young's paean "Pocahontas," from his album Rust Never Sleeps (1979), casts her as the object of male romantic desire situated in pristine, unspoiled America.

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Pocahontas | Biography, Cultural Legacy, & Facts

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Pocahontas, Powhatan woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them. Learn more about Pocahontas's life and her legacy, including her portrayal in popular culture.

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Historian Camilla Townsend separates fact from fiction as a new documentary premieres about the American Indian princess

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Pocahontas Matoaka

Pocahontas was named Amonute at birth and went by the name Matoaka. She supposedly earned the nickname Pocahontas, which means "playful one," because of her happy, inquisitive nature.

As the daughter of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas may have had more luxuries than many of her peers, but she still had to learn so-called women's work such as farming, cooking, collecting herbs, building a house, making clothes, butchering meat and tanning hides.

Pocahontas and John Smith

The first English settlers arrived in Jamestown colony in May 1607. That winter, Pocahontas' brother kidnapped colonist Captain John Smith and made a spectacle of him in front of several Powhatan tribes before taking him to meet Chief Powhatan.

According to Smith, his head was placed on two stones and a warrior prepared to smash his head and kill him. But before the warrior could strike, Pocahontas rushed to Smith's side and placed her head on his, preventing the attack. Chief Powhatan then bartered with Smith, referred to him as his son and sent him on his way.

Smith's account of Pocahontas' lifesaving efforts is hotly debated, partly because he wrote different versions of this initial meeting with Chief Powhatan. Many historians believe Smith was never in peril and the placement of his head on the stones was ceremonial.

Even so, if Smith's explanation of the incident is true, he had no way of knowing about Powhatan ceremonial customs and from his terrified point of view, Pocahontas was undoubtedly his benevolent rescuer.

Pocahontas Saves John Smith Again

Pocahontas became known by the colonists as an important Powhatan emissary. She occasionally brought the hungry settlers food and helped successfully negotiate the release of Powhatan prisoners in 1608. But relations between the colonists and the Indians remained strained.

By 1609, drought, starvation and disease had ravaged the colonists and they became increasingly dependent on the Powhatan to survive. Desperate and dying, they threatened to burn Powhatan towns for food, so Chief Powhatan suggested a barter with Captain Smith.

When negotiations collapsed, the chief supposedly planned an ambush and Smith's execution. But Pocahontas warned Smith of her father's plans and saved his life again.

Soon after, Smith was injured and returned to England; however, Pocahontas and her father were told he died.

Kidnapped by the English

It's thought that Pocahontas married an Indian named Kocoum in 1610. Afterwards, she avoided the English until 1613 when she was lured onto the English ship of Captain Samuel Argall and kidnapped during the First Anglo-Powhatan War.

Argall informed Chief Powhatan that he wouldn't return Pocahontas unless he released English prisoners, returned stolen weapons and sent the colonists food. Much to Pocahontas' dismay, her father only sent half the ransom and left her imprisoned.

While in captivity, Pocahontas lived in the settlement of Henricus under the care of a minister named Alexander Whitaker where she learned about Christianity, English culture and how to speak English. Pocahontas converted to Christianity, was baptized and given the name "Rebecca."

Marriage to John Rolfe

During her imprisonment, Pocahontas met widower and tobacco planter John Rolfe. The couple decided to marry, likely for both love and political purposes - although the decision wasn't an easy one for the staunchly Christian Rolfe until Pocahontas converted.

They sent word to Chief Powhatan that they wanted to marry; he consented as did the Virginia governor, Sir Thomas Dale. It's unclear what happened to Pocahontas' first husband, but divorce was allowed in Powhatan culture.

Pocahontas married Rolfe in April 1614. The match was considered an important step towards re-establishing positive relations between the colonists and the Indians. Indeed, the marriage brought a season of peace to the region.

Journey to England

In 1616, Sir Thomas Dale sailed to England to rally financial support for the Virginia Company, the company owned by wealthy Londoners that had financed the Jamestown colony.

The company also wanted to prove they had met their goal of converting Native Americans to Christianity, so Rolfe, Pocahontas, their infant son Thomas (born in 1615) and a dozen Powhatan Indians accompanied Dale on the trip.

In London, Pocahontas was revered as a princess and referred to as "Lady Rebecca Wolfe." She attended plays and balls and was even presented to the royal family.

Much to her surprise, Pocahontas encountered Captain Smith (whom she thought was dead) in London. Although she was overcome with emotion upon seeing him alive and called him "father," she also reportedly chastised him for his treatment of Chief Powhatan and her people.

The Virginia Company commissioned a portrait of Pocahontas dressed in expensive clothes with an engraved label that said, "Matoaka, alias Rebecca, daughter of the most powerful prince of the Powhatan Empire of Virginia." It is the only image drawn of her in person.

How Did Pocahontas Die?

In March 1617, Pocahontas, her husband and son set sail for Virginia. But they had hardly made progress when she became gravely ill and was taken ashore at Gravesend, England.

It's uncertain what disease struck her down. Some speculate it was tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery or smallpox; others believe she was poisoned. According to Rolfe, Pocahontas said on her deathbed, "All must die. But 'tis enough that my child liveth."

Pocahontas was buried at St. George's church in Gravesend on March 21, 1617. Rolfe returned to Virginia, but her son Thomas remained with relatives in England. He returned almost two decades later at age 20 to claim inheritances from his father and grandfather and became a successful gentleman tobacco farmer.

Chief Powhatan was devastated upon learning of his daughter's death. He died about a year later and relations between the Powhatan and Virginia colonists declined rapidly.

Much of Pocahontas' life has been romanticized and sensationalized in movies and books. But written accounts and Native American oral history show she lived a brief yet significant life.

She was instrumental to maintaining relations between her father and the Jamestown colonists and is believed to be the first Powhatan Indian to convert to Christianity. She is remembered as a courageous, strong woman who left an indelible impression on colonial America.

Sources

Ambassador to England. Jamestown Rediscovery.

Captain John Smith. National Park Service: Historic Jamestown.

Marriage. Jamestown Rediscovery.

Pocahontas Biography. Biography.

Pocahontas. Gravesend St. George's.

Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. National Park Service: Historic Jamestown.

Virginia Company. Jamestown Rediscovery.

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Pocahontas Matoaka Pocahontas was named Amonute at birth and went by the name Matoaka. She supposedly earned the nickname Pocahontas, which means "playful one," because of her happy, inquisitive nature. As the daughter of Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas may have had more luxuries than many of her peers, but she still had to learn so-called women's [...]

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