American Indian Wars  

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The American Indian Wars (also known as the Indian Wars or the First Nations Wars; Template:Lang-fr) is the collective name for the various armed conflicts that were fought by European governments and colonists, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settlers, against various American Indian and First Nation tribes. These conflicts occurred in North America from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the 1920s. The various Indian Wars resulted from a wide variety of factors, including cultural clashes, land disputes, and criminal acts committed by both sides. The European powers and their colonies also enlisted Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements.

After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal. The British Royal Proclamation of 1763, included in the Constitution of Canada, prohibited white settlers from taking the lands of indigenous peoples in Canada without signing a treaty with them. It continues to be the law in Canada today, and 11 Numbered Treaties, covering most of the First Nations lands, limited the number of such conflicts.

As white settlers spread westward across America after 1780, the size, duration, and intensity of armed conflicts increased between settlers and various cultures of Indians. The climax came in the War of 1812, which resulted in the defeat of major Indian coalitions in the Midwest and the South. Conflict with settlers became much less common and were resolved by treaty, often through sale or exchange of territory between the federal government and specific tribes. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the US government to enforce the Indian removal from east of the Mississippi River to the west, what the government considered the sparsely populated American frontier. (Many tribes had extensive territory in this area, however.) The federal US policy of removal was eventually refined in the West, as American settlers kept expanding their territories, to relocate Indian tribes to specially designated and federally protected reservations.

Colonial period (1540–1774)

Template:Further [[File:1622 massacre jamestown de Bry.jpg|thumb|Indian massacre of 1622]] [[File:Siege of Fort Detroit.jpg|thumb|right|Siege of Fort Detroit during Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763]] The colonization of North America by the English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish was resisted by some Indian tribes and assisted by other tribes. Wars and other armed conflicts in the 17th and 18th centuries included:

• Beaver Wars (1609–1701) between the Iroquois and the French, who allied with the Algonquians
• Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1610–14, 1622–32, 1644–46), including the 1622 Jamestown Massacre, between English colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy in the Colony of Virginia
• Pequot War of 1636–38 between the Pequot tribe and colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Connecticut Colony
• Kieft's War (1643–45) in the Dutch territory of New Netherland (New Jersey and New York) between colonists and the Lenape people
• Peach Tree War (1655), the large-scale attack by the Susquehannocks and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the Hudson River
• Esopus Wars (1659–1663), conflicts between the Esopus tribe of Lenape Indians and colonial New Netherlanders in Ulster County, New York
• King Philip's War (1675–78) in New England between colonists and the Narragansett people
• Tuscarora War (1711–15) in the Province of North Carolina
• Yamasee War (1715–17) in the Province of South Carolina
• Dummer's War (1722–25) in northern New England and French Acadia (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia)
• Pontiac's War (1763–66) in the Great Lakes region

List

See also

• Captives in American Indian Wars
• Cultural assimilation of American Indians
• Genocide of indigenous peoples
• History of the United States
• History of Canada
• Indian Campaign Medal
• List of Indian massacres
• List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Indian Wars
• Manifest destiny
• Pueblo Revolt
• Timeline of United States military operations: Battles with the American Indians
• United States Army Indian Scouts

Comparable and related events

• Australian frontier wars
• Apache–Mexico Wars
• Canadian Indian Act of 1876
• Comanche–Mexico Wars
• Conquest of the Desert
• French and Indian Wars
• Mexican Indian Wars
• New Zealand Wars
• North-West Rebellion
• Occupation of Araucanía
• Red River Rebellion