The Way West

The Gold Rush sent hundreds of thousands of people rushing across the continent to California and Oregon, the world of Native Americans was turned upside down. The ever-quickening pace of expansion led to a series of bloody confrontations between Native Americans and white emigrants, culminating in 1862's Minnesota conflict and, two years later, the massacre at Sand Creek.

In the four years following the Civil War, railroads reached up and over the Sierra Nevada, and farther into the Great Plains, threatening to destroy the remaining buffalo ranges. This period was marked by the triumph, in 1868, of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse over the U.S. Army on the Bozeman Trail, and the joining, in 1869, of the two ends of the transcontinental railroad.

The struggle over the last unceded territories of Indian domain continued, including the U.S. invasion of the Black Hills in search of gold. This treaty violation, along with the systematic extermination of the buffalo, helped set the stage for a final showdown between the U.S. Army and the tribes of the Great Plains.

The U.S. cracked down on Native American tribes across the Northern Plains and the Northwest in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876. Witness the final, desperate days of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and examine the rise of the Ghost Dance religion and the last, horrendous massacre at Wounded Knee.