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Important Historical Documents
relating to Native America

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An Account of the Pueblo Revolt
by Don Antonio de Otermin,
Governor and Captain-General of New Mexico (1680)

Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia (1831)
Supreme Court ruling on status of Indians under the Constitution.
Worcester vs. Georgia (1832)
Supreme Court rulling on state jurisdiction over Indian lands.
Andrew Jackson on the Necessity of Indian Removal (1835)
Summary of arguments for relocating Eastern tribes in the west.
The Orgeon Treaty - 1846
Documents on the Sand Creek Massacre (1864-1865)
Editorials from the Rocky Mountain News,
eyewitness testimony and John Chivington's deposition
The Fort Laramie Treaty (1868)
Prelude to war between the United States and the Lakota Nation.
Chief Red Horse, Minniconjou Lakota
An eyewitness account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1881)
Charles Erskin Scott Wood
"The pursuit and Capture of Chief Joseph" (1884)
An American military prespective on the Nez Perce retreat and the accepted text
for Joseph's famous "Fight No More Forever" speech of surrender
Indian Policy Reform:
President Chester Arthur on legislation need to dissolve "the tribal bond,
which is so prominent a feature of savage life" (1881)
The Dawes Act (1887)
Congress decrees an end to tribal homelands.
Selections from "With the Nez Perces" by E. Jane Gay (1889-1892)
Ethnologist Alice fletcher brings the Dawes Act to the people who welcomed Lewis and Clark
Mrs. Z. A. Parker, the Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge Reservation (1890)
An eyewitness account
Wovoka, The Messiah Letter (1891)
The message that sparked the Ghost Dance movement
James McLaughlin, An Account of Sitting Bull's Death (1891)
By the Indian Agent who ordered the arrest
Pvt. W. H. Prather, "The Indian Ghost Dance and War" (1891)
A barracks ballad by a member of the Ninth Cavalary
Lakota accounts of the massacre at Wounded Knee (1891)
The Survivors Speak
General Nelson A. Miles, report on the "Sioux Outbreak of 1890"
and selected field dispatches (1891)
A commander's view of the last Indian uprising