November 29, 1864 · Southern Plains Theater

Colorado militia under Colonel John Chivington attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment flying a white flag and a U.S. flag. The village, led by Chief Black Kettle, had been assured of protection. Chivington's force of 700 men slaughtered approximately 230 men, women, and children. Soldiers mutilated the bodies and returned to Denver displaying scalps and body parts as trophies.

December 21, 1866 · Northern Plains Theater

Near Fort Phil Kearny in present-day Wyoming, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors under the strategic leadership of Red Cloud executed a brilliant decoy ambush. Crazy Horse and a small party lured Captain William Fetterman's detachment of 81 soldiers over Lodge Trail Ridge and into a devastating trap where roughly 1,500 to 2,000 warriors waited. The entire U.S. force was wiped out in less than 30 minutes.

November 27, 1868 · Southern Plains Theater

Custer's 7th Cavalry launched a dawn attack on Chief Black Kettle's Southern Cheyenne village on the Washita River in present-day Oklahoma. Black Kettle, a tireless advocate for peace who had survived Sand Creek four years earlier, was killed along with his wife and more than 100 Cheyenne — mostly women and children. Custer also destroyed the village, killed approximately 875 horses, and captured 53 women and children.

June 27, 1874 · Southern Plains Theater

Inspired by a Comanche medicine man's prediction of invulnerability, an alliance of approximately 700 Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne warriors led by the young Quanah Parker attacked a small outpost of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle. The 28 hunters barricaded inside, armed with long-range buffalo rifles, repelled repeated charges. On the third day, hunter Billy Dixon made a famous shot at approximately 7/8 of a mile, knocking a warrior off his horse and convincing the attackers to withdraw.

June 17, 1876 · Northern Plains Theater

Eight days before Little Bighorn, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors under Crazy Horse intercepted General Crook's column of 1,300 soldiers and Crow and Shoshone scouts along Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory. The battle lasted six hours, ranging across three miles of terrain. Crook's force held the field at day's end but was so badly battered that he was forced to retreat and spend weeks resupplying — leaving Custer without support.

June 25–26, 1876 · Northern Plains Theater

Custer's 7th Cavalry attacked the largest encampment of Plains Indians ever assembled — perhaps 7,000 people including 2,000 warriors — along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. Splitting his command into three columns, Custer led five companies directly into the encampment from the north while Reno and Benteen attacked from other angles. Custer's 210-man battalion was completely surrounded and annihilated in under an hour. Reno and Benteen's survivors held a hilltop under siege for two days before relief arrived.

November 25, 1876 · Northern Plains Theater

Following Little Bighorn, General Crook dispatched Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's cavalry to destroy the Northern Cheyenne village of Dull Knife and Little Wolf in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Mackenzie's force of 1,100 soldiers and 400 scouts located the village of approximately 183 lodges in a sheltered canyon and attacked at dawn in bitter cold. The village was destroyed, 500 horses captured, and the Cheyenne were driven into the mountains with inadequate clothing and no food. Many froze to death.

September 30 – October 5, 1877 · Northern Plains Theater

After a 1,170-mile fighting retreat through Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana — one of the most remarkable military withdrawals in American history — the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph were intercepted by Colonel Nelson Miles just 40 miles from the Canadian border and safety. A five-day siege ensued in freezing conditions. Looking Glass was killed by a sniper. Chief Joseph, his people starving and freezing, surrendered on October 5 with his famous speech: 'From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.'

September 29 – October 5, 1879 · Southwest Theater

When Major Thornburgh's column marched onto Ute lands in Colorado without permission — responding to an agent's call for troops to suppress a Ute leader — White River Ute warriors under Colorow and Jack ambushed the column at Milk Creek. Thornburgh was killed in the initial fighting. His command of 190 men was pinned down and besieged for six days until relief arrived. Simultaneously, Ute men killed Indian agent Nathan Meeker and nine employees at the agency, and took Meeker's wife and daughter hostage.

September 4, 1886 · Southwest Theater

After nearly a decade of resistance across the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico and the Arizona Territory, Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apache — at times no more than 36 men, women, and children — surrendered to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. The pursuit had consumed 5,000 U.S. soldiers and 500 Mexican troops. Lieutenant Charles Gatewood's negotiations, aided by Apache scouts from Geronimo's own tribe, finally convinced the exhausted but undefeated warrior to surrender.

December 29, 1890 · Northern Plains Theater

The 7th Cavalry surrounded Chief Big Foot's band of 350 Miniconjou Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, had been traveling to Pine Ridge to seek peace. As soldiers attempted to disarm the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote struggled to surrender his rifle, and a shot was fired. The 7th Cavalry opened fire with rifles and four Hotchkiss artillery pieces, killing approximately 250–300 men, women, and children. Some victims were found miles away, having been cut down while fleeing.