...a variety of cultures which had been completely wrecked." There were probably no more than three million Native Americans in what became Canada and the US when Jamestown was founded in 1607, the vast majority living in the Southeast and Northeast. It took white Americans over two centuries to conquer the nations east of the Mississippi, but little more to complete the Indian Wars. The truth is that once Lewis and Clark proved President Jefferson had caused the US to purchase what was the most valuable real estate in the world there was no way the white settlers, government and business interests were going to let the approximately three thousand Indians who lived there keep it. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills and such situations made the process a little faster, but the main impetus was simply the land itself. The central plains of North America is the richest farmland on the planet, and the lure was irresistible.
The process, from the Powhatan War of 1622 to the Massacre at Wounded Knee took about 270 years. Most Native cultures were completely destroyed, only a shadow of some remaining in the West. Red Cloud was the only Indian leader to actually win a war with the US, although the reservation he accepted and many of the freedoms his people were guaranteed were eroded over time. The worst defeat by the Natives was visited on two US Army regiments in 1791 at the Battle of the Wabash, where some 623 soldiers were killed under the command of Gen. Arthur St. Clair by the Miami nation under Little Turtle.
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