Top 5 Wars America Should Have Stayed Well Away From

4) The Black Hills War

The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles and negotiations which occurred between 1876 and 1877 involving the Native American tribes of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne against the United States.

© WIKIPEDIA Battle of the Big Horn. Shows the smoking guns of General Custer and his U. S. Army troops being defeated in battle with Native American Lakota Sioux, and Northern Cheyenne, Little Bighorn Battlefield, June 26, 1876 Little Bighorn River, Montana.

As gold was discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands.

“The US government was unable (and largely unwilling) to restrict white migration into the Black Hills, and after unproductive negotiation simply decided to seize some of the most valuable area,” Farley says.

“The war resulted in one of the most serious US military defeats of the Indian Wars, the annihilation of the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn.”

“Eventually, however, a combination of military and diplomatic efforts forced most of the Cheyenne and Sioux to surrender, apart from a portion that fled to Canada.”

Sporadic fighting would continue for another fifteen years or so the author says.

In the end, the US government “pacified” the Cheyenne and Sioux and assumed full control over the eastern half of what would become South Dakota.

“The death and destruction caused by the war provided an appropriate coda for US mistreatment of Native American tribes across the 19th century,” he furthermore states.