Why did the Indigenous Nations lose the battle for the Plains?

A first reason the Indigenous Nations lost the battle for the Plains was technological.  When Crazy Horse ambushed Fetterman’s troop, they killed them with arrows, fired from bows with strings made from buffalo sinews.  Messages were passed by smoke signals or flashing mirrors.  The US Army sent its communications in seconds by telegraph, rushed men a thousand miles to the war by railroad, and fought using Gatling machine guns and Winchester repeating rifles.  One of the factors in Sitting Bull’s victory at the Little Bighorn was that Custer’s men had old-issue rifles, but the Sioux had acquired Winchesters, but usually the technological balance was in favour of the US Army. 

A second reason that the Indigenous Nations were defeated was because they had a different way of making war.  They relied on guerrilla warfare: surprise attacks by small raiding parties.  The Indigenous warrior’s main aim in war was to stay alive to care for his family, and he retreated if the battle started to go badly.  He would turn out to fight a battle, but he had to go home for the hunt and the harvest; the brilliance of Red Cloud’s War was that he managed to keep an army in the field for two years – Sitting Bull could not keep feeding the huge army which destroyed Custer in 1876, and it had to split up into small raiding parties, which the US Army hunted down one by one.  By contrast, US Army soldiers were a disciplined, full time army.  After 1876, they fought during the winter as well as the summer.  When they attacked an Indian village in winter, the Indigenous Nations had no food left, and had to surrender. 

A connected factor in their defeat was that the Indigenous Nations were divided.  Red Cloud had to fight his war against the US government whilst also at war with the Crows and the Poncas.  And while many older Chiefs realised they could never win and made peace treaties with the white Americans (Fort Laramie and Medicine Creek Lodge), younger warriors (such as Chief Gall who said: 'You fought me and I had to fight back') stayed on the warpath.  These 'hostiles' were easily hunted down by the government.  Some Indigenous warriors even joined the US army and helped them to do so. 

Fourthly, by contrast, the white Americans were united in greed and revenge.  They wanted the land, and nothing would stop them.  Many agreed that 'extermination is our motto': “Kill ‘em all”, said Chivington at Sand Creek in 1864.  “The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year”, said General Sheridan.  They offered money for Indian scalps.  They fought through the winter.  This helped them to grind down the Indians' resistance.  Even those white Americans who did not want to kill all the Indigenous people wanted to assimilate them by destroying their tribes and way of life (hence the Dawes Act and Boarding Schools). 

A fifth reason the Indigenous Nations lost was that the white Americans killed the buffalo.  The Indigenous Nations depended on the buffalo for almost everything - food, clothes, parfleches, saddles, water-bags, cups, knives and bow-strings; their glue and soap; their teepees and bedding; their fuel (buffalo dung); their crafts; their social system, nomadic life and even their religion (e.g.  the Buffalo Dance) all depended on the buffalo.  After 1870, white hunters set about killing the buffalo deliberately to starve the Indigenous Nations to death.  “They are destroying the Indigenous Nations supplies” wrote General Sheridan; he believed correctly that the Indigenous Nations would be defeated when the buffalo were exterminated. 

Another factor in their defeat was that the Indigenous Nations were weakened by starvation and disease.  As soon as they moved onto the reservations after 1867 they began to grow weaker and fewer.  The government did not send enough food or medicines.  The Indigenous people could not grow crops on the poor land they had been given.  They starved.  Because they had no natural immunity, they died of wašíču diseases such as measles, whooping cough and cholera.  Some Indigenous Nations started drinking wašíču whisky, and became alcoholics.  As they grew weaker, they became demoralized: “I shall fight no more” , swore Chief Joseph when he was captured. 

Most of all, the main reason the Indigenous Nations lost the war with the white Americans was simply because the US was way more powerful than the Indians.  The United States was becoming the greatest industrial nation in the world; the government’s budget for 1901 was $0.6 billion.  The Indigenous Nations were hunter-gatherers who lived had to trade furs for guns.  There were fewer than a quarter-million Indigenous people in 1890; the population of the United States was 63 million; so when the Indigenous Nations defeated Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876, the government simply rushed thousands of 'Custer's Avengers' westwards to continue the fight.  The Indigenous Nations were defeated by sheer weight of power; they never had a hope once the white Americans decided they wanted the Great Plains.As Chief Schonchin of the Modoc told Superintendent of Indian Affairs Alfred Meacham in 1875:

“I thought, if we killed all the white men we saw, that no more would come.  We killed all we could; but they came more and more, like new grass in the spring.  I looked around, and saw that many of our young men were dead, and could not come back to fight.  My heart was sick.  My people were few.  I threw down my gun.  I said, I will not fight again”.