Indigenous Leaders

Native American leaders — political, military, and diplomatic — who shaped the course of Indigenous and American history.

Black Hawk

Sauk leader whose 1832 return to Illinois became the last armed Native resistance east of the Mississippi

Chief Joseph

Nez Perce leader whose 1877 flight became a symbol of Native resistance

Crazy Horse

The Lakota war leader who defended the Plains and never surrendered to the reservation

Geronimo

The Apache leader whose final surrender in 1886 ended the last armed Native resistance in the American Southwest

Sequoyah

Cherokee polymath who invented a writing system and made his nation literate in a single generation

Sitting Bull

Hunkpapa Lakota chief who united the Plains nations against American expansion

Tecumseh

Shawnee leader who built the most powerful Indigenous confederacy in American history