he American Indian Wars (or Indian Wars) is the collective name for the various armed conflicts fought by European governments and colonists, and later the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settlers, against various American Indian and First Nation tribes. These conflicts occurred within the United States and Canada from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the 1920s. The various Indian Wars resulted from a wide variety of sources, including cultural clashes, land disputes, and criminal acts committed on both sides. European powers and the colonies also enlisted Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against one another's colonial settlements.
After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; some entailed cycles of violent reprisal. The British Royal Proclamation of 1763 included in the Constitution of Canada prohibited white settlers from taking the lands of indigenous peoples in Canada without signing a treaty with them. It continues to be the law in Canada today, and 11 Numbered Treaties covering most of the First Nations lands limited the number of such conflicts.
As white settlers spread westward after 1780, the size, duration, and intensity of armed conflicts increased between settlers and Indians. The climax came in the War of 1812, which resulted in the defeat of major Indian coalitions in the Midwest and the South, and conflict with settlers became much less common. Conflicts were resolved by treaty, often through sale or exchange of territory between the federal government and specific tribes. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the US government to enforce the Indian removal east of the Mississippi River to the other side of the sparsely populated American frontier. The policy of removal was eventually refined to relocate Indian tribes to specially designated and federally protected reservations.
The colonization of North America by the English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish was resisted by some Indian tribes and assisted by other tribes. Wars and other armed conflicts in the 17th and 18th centuries included:
Beaver Wars (1609–1701) between the Iroquois and the French, who allied with the Algonquians
Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1610–14, 1622–32, 1644–46), including the 1622 Jamestown Massacre, between English colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy in the Colony of Virginia
Pequot War of 1636–38 between the Pequot tribe and English colonists in Massachusetts and Connecticut
Kieft's War (1643–45) in the Dutch territory of New Netherland (New Jersey and New York) between Dutch colonists and the Lenape people
Peach Tree War (1655), the large-scale attack by the Susquehannocks and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the Hudson River
Esopus Wars (1659–1663), conflicts between the Esopus tribe of Lenape Indians and colonial New Netherlanders in Ulster County, New York
King Philip's War (1675–78) in New England between colonists and the Narragansett people
Tuscarora War (1711–15) in the English Province of North Carolina
Yamasee War (1715–17) in the English Province of South Carolina
Dummer's War (1722–25) in northern New England and French Acadia (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia)
Pontiac's War (1763–66) in the Great Lakes region[1]
Lord Dunmore's War (1774) in western Virginia (Kentucky and West Virginia)
