Chiefs

In the years following the Civil War, a hard-fought Sioux resistance to western expansion, led by the warrior Sitting Bull, seemed to have accomplished the impossible: a treaty in which the United States gave the Sioux control of their territory. However, the potential to harvest the riches of the western plains, especially gold, soon proved more important to the U.S. than honoring their treaty.

In the years following the Civil War, a hard-fought Sioux resistance to western expansion, led by the warrior Sitting Bull, seemed to have accomplished the impossible: a treaty in which the United States gave the Sioux control of their territory. However, the potential to harvest the riches of the western plains, especially gold, soon proved more important to the U.S. than honoring their treaty.

This episode tells the story of the great Indian Chief who demonstrated to the world the British were not invincible. In the 1750s, Pontiac, had a peaceful relationship with the French. That harmonious situation changed when the British defeated the French in Quebec’ in 1759. The British were confident of their supremacy on the frontier, but Pontiac proved them wrong.

Born in 1742 in what is now New York State’s Mohawk Valley, Joseph Brant’s parents gave him the traditional Mohawk name Thayendanegea – two sticks bound together in strength. Though unintended, the name would be strikingly symbolic of Brant’s twin ambitions: to be a power broker between Indian and English societies and to satisfy his thirst for power, recognition, and eminence.

For two days in August of 1885, Plains Cree leader Poundmaker sat shackled in a Regina courtroom, accused of participating in a rebellion against the Queen’s Canadian government. Administrators in Canada’s Indian Department, including the Superintendent, Sir John A. Macdonald, saw the Cree leader as an agitator and assumed that the Cree were in complete collusion with the Louis Riel rebellion.