Red River War

Red River War, (1874–75), uprising of warriors from several Indigenous tribes thought to be peacefully settled on Oklahoma and Texas reservations, ending in the crushing of the Indigenous dissidents by the United States. Presumably the Treaty of Medicine Lodge (Kansas, October 1867) had placed on area reservations a number of southern Plains tribes: the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and Kataka. Many warriors, unwilling to accept this life of confinement, broke out repeatedly to raid white travelers and settlers. Encouraged by chiefs Big Tree and Satanta, Native fighters carried out an attack in 1874 that killed 60 Texans and launched the war. In the fall of 1874, about 3,000 federal infantry and cavalry, under the overall command of General William Tecumseh Sherman, converged on the Native forces concentrated in the Red River valley, Texas. Resistance was so determined that 14 pitched battles were required to curb the Indigenous power by mid-November. The half-starved survivors surrendered the following summer and returned to their reservations.