The Indian Wars: A Change of Worlds

In Pre-Columbian America, millions of Native Americans were spread across the continents, made up of a large number of unique civilizations and tribes.

The first English settlement of Jamestown lead to the English dominating the East Coast and conflict became inevitable as they pushed up against the Native American lands to the west.

As tensions between the French and English colonists boiled over into the French and Indian War, the Native tribes provided assistance to their trading partners in hopes of driving the English out.

After overthrowing their monarch, the United States government begins their own relationship with the Native Americans. But as the country pushes expansion still further west, they begin to break treaties with the Native Americans.

While the United States fights itself in the Civil War, the western border territories find themselves engaged in the Dakota War of 1862, a bloody conflict between settlers and the Native Americans.

The slaughter of the buffalo populations in the western United States is used to corral Native Americans into reservations. But these reservations were still not far enough from the reach of the United States.