Key People
Ely Parker
Ely Samuel Parker, or Hasanoanda (“Leading Name”), was born in 1828 at Indian Falls, on the Tonawanda (Seneca) Reservation in western New York State. Parker rose to prominence as a federal policy maker during the Reconstruction era, a moment of potential optimism for a reconfiguration of racial politics in the United States.
Tecumseh
Tecumseh rose to prominence fighting against renewed American westward expansion after the Revolutionary War. Born in 1768 at a Shawnee Indian village probably near the modern city of Xenia, Ohio, he fought passionately for an Indian confederacy, but his efforts were unsuccessful. He was killed at the Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, in 1813.
Spotlight
Treaty of Fort Laramie
The Treaty of Fort Laramie was one of the last great treaties signed between the American government and the Plains Indians. Despite the peaceful intentions of the treaty, the unwillingness of the federal government to live up to its stipulations and the inability of the signing tribes to enforce the treaty on all their members resulted in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877 and the eventual removal of the Black Hills from Lakota ownership.
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Andrew Jackson: On Indian Removal
On December 6, 1830, in his annual message to the nation, Andrew Jackson praised Congress for putting into law an Indian removal policy that he had recommended for over a decade. He also attempted to provide Congress and the public with justifications for why Native Americans in the East needed to be removed beyond the reach of American settlement.
