Key Events: Bosque Redondo, Sand Creek, Ghost Dance, Wounded Knee (1868-1890)

Navajo and Mescalero relocation to Bosque Redondo; conditions included starvation, disease, and death.
By $06/01/1868$ , a treaty ended the policy of genocide and allowed relocation back to traditional homelands; US responsibility for the act was erased.

700 Colorado Territory Militia under Colonel John Milton Shivington attacked a peaceful Northern Cheyenne encampment near Fort Lyon on $11/29/1864$ .
About $800$ troops from the First and Third Colorado Cavalry and Company of First New Mexico Volunteers.
Casualties: approximately $53$ men and $110$ women and children killed; $15$ militia killed; over $50$ wounded.
Militia plundered, wore regalia with trophies; a congressional committee condemned the atrocity, but no one was punished.

Post-C Civil War: US pursued a protracted program of annihilation of native peoples west of the Mississippi.
California $1850-1855$ : Indian hunting season; natives killed as if game; widespread dehumanization (carved wooden Indian imagery in towns).
Public narratives (Hollywood, frontier myths) framed as civilizing taming of the wilderness; modern militarized language and equipment echo these tropes (e.g., Tomahawk missiles, Apache helicopters, Comanche drones).

Ghost Dance movement begins 1889 among the Nevada Paiute (Wavoka), later spreading to the Lakota; incorporated and adapted by various Native nations.
Aimed at peaceful end to white expansion and cross-cultural cooperation; spiritual revival amid displacement.
Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on $12/29/1890$ at Wounded Knee Creek, Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota.
First, a detachment of the US Seventh Cavalry under Major Samuel M. Hitside escorted Lakota; four Hotchkiss guns supported the assault.
Disorder during disarming led to indiscriminate fire; Lakota casualties estimated at $150-300$ killed and $51$ wounded (some died later).
US casualties: about $25$ dead and $39$ wounded; many Lakota deaths attributed to chaotic close-range fire and sometimes friendly fire.
The massacre ended with the encampment destroyed and the survivors dispersed.