Black Hawk was a Sauk Indian who lived in a village at the junction of the Rock and Mississippi Rivers in Illinois. After the Louisiana Purchase, Sauk and other tribal leaders signed a treaty that ceded Indian lands east of the Mississippi River to…

This essay outlines the events leading the massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, including the role of Ghost Dancers, and the chaotic violence that ensued on December 29, 1890.

This essay discusses the impact of the transcontinental railroad on Native American life. It focuses on the role of buffalo hunters in the federal government's policy of Indian removal. This essay, and the related Iron Horse vs. the Buffalo activity,…

The Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) organization aims to support Two-Spirit people and call attention to their presence in Indigenous communities, past and present. By organizing cultural and political events, BAAITS demonstrates the…

This worksheet helps students compare two historical documents, a journal entry from the Lewis and Clark expedition and excerpts from a Lakota Winter Count. The sections of the worksheet align to major sections of the Common Core reading standards:…

This photograph of a Native American child apprentice was taken near Red Bluff, Tehama County, California. The boy, about ten years old, would be “bound” to a master until he was 25, as California law apprenticed boys under 14 until their…

In the 1500s, European powers raced to claim lands in North and South America and establish permanent settlements in the "New World." In 1584, a group of English explorers traveled the southeastern coast of North America to find a suitable location…

In Thomas Hariot's account A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590), he describes the Algonquian village of Secota, accompanied by Theodor de Bry's engraving. After noting the village's impressive agriculture and observing its…

Thomas Hariot was an astronomer and mathematician who traveled to Roanoke Island on one of Sir Walter Raleigh's early expeditions to the New World. Encountering local Indian populations, Harriot learned the Algonquian language and later published an…

American Horse (1840-1908) was an Oglala Lakota chief who participated in the Sioux Wars of the 1870s. He was also a "keeper," responsible for maintaining his band's "winter count," which had been passed down from his grandfather, to his father, to…