Notable Native American Indians “R...-”
for the social studies classroom and home schoolers.

Red Cloud
Red Jacket

Louis Riel
Will Rogers

Red Cloud Great Native American Leaders Art Print

Red Cloud (1822-1909)

Poster Text: “We were told that they [federal troops] wished merely to pass through our country ... to seek for gold in the Far West. ... Yet before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. You have heard the sound of the white soldier’s axe upon the Little Piney. His presence here is ... an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.”
Speech at council at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 1866

“Men came out and brought papers. We could not read them and they did not tell us what was in them.”
Red Cloud, 1870

Chief Jack Red Cloud, Sioux, (1862-1928, son of Red Cloud) Poster

Red Cloud was a war leader of the Oglala Sioux. Throughout the 1860s, Red Cloud defended Sioux hunting grounds in present day Montana and Wyoming. The white settlers, with the help of the U.S. government, could not defeat Red Cloud and his warriors. In 1868, the United States agreed to stop building roads through Red Cloud's Sioux territory. Red Cloud is famous for being the only Indian to win a war with the U.S. government.

• The town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, home of author Willa Cather, is named after Chief Red Cloud
• South Dakota posters

Red Jacket Giclee Print George Catlin

Red Jacket
b. c. 1750; New York State
d. 1-20-1830

Sagoyewatha (translates as “he keeps them awake”) is known as Red Jacket, a name bestowed for his wearing the red coat given to him by the British, was a Seneca chief renownd for speaking out for the rights of his people.

In 1792 George Washington gave Red Jacket a peace medal engraved with their images; portraits of Red Jacket show him wearing the silver medal.

Red Jacket and Joseph Brant were enemies even though the Seneca and Mohawks fought on the side of the British in the Revolutionary War.

Louis Riel, Giclee Print

Louis Riel
b. 10-22-1844; near Winnipeg, Red River Colony, Rupert's Land, British North America (Canada)
d. 11-16-1885; Regina, Northwest Territorities, Canada (hanged for treason)

Louis Riel, a political and spiritual leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies, was a founder of the province of Manitoba. The execution of Riel, who was born into a French Canadian-Métis family, is a source of conflict in Canadian provincial relations, particularly Quebec.

FYI ~ The Métis are a distinct group of Aboriginal people in Canada who trace their descent to mixed First Nations and European heritage.

Will Rogers, Photographic Print

Will Rogers
b. 11-4-1879; Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
d. 8-15-1935; airplane crash with Wiley Post at Pt. Barrow, AK

Will Rogers, an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor, was one of the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s. Rogers was of Cherokee ancestry - he quipped that his ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower but they “met the boat.”

John Ross
b. 10-3-1790; Alabama
d. 8-1-1866; Washington, DC

John Ross, of Scottish and Cherokee ancestry, was a dominant political figure in the Cherokee Nation.

• Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation