Westward Expansion
From the Archives: Custer’s Last Stand?
On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and five companies of the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Unlike D-Day, it’s not the kind of historical event that generates lots of anniversary coverage. (Though I suspect it will garner some attention on its 150th anniversary in…
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The Sand Creek Massacre is Tracking Me Down
I assume most of you, at least in the United States, have heard of the Battle of Wounded Knee, the final battle of the Plains Wars of the late nineteenth century and the focus of Native American activism in the 1970s.(1) But have you heard of the Sand Creek Massacre? I stumbled across the story…
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Toby Riddle: “Pocahontas of the Lava Beds” ?
Last week I was stunned to read this tweet from the Women’s History Museum of California:(1) Toby Riddle was one of the first Native American women acknowledged by US Congress for her actions in time of war. In 1891 Congress granted her a pension of at “the rate of twenty-five dollars per month” for her…
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