Native American Indian Chiefs & Warriors Educational Posters
for the social studies classroom and home schoolers.

The Last Inca Chief, Atahualpa, from “The Narrative and Critical History of America”, Giclee Print

Atahualpa
b. Cusco, Peru
d. c. 8-29-1533; Peru

Atahualpa was the last sovereign emperor of the Inca Empire. Spaniard Francisco Pizarro captured Atahualpa and used him to control the Inca, eventually executing him by garrote.

Black Hawk Great Native American Leaders Art Print

Black Hawk (1767-1838)

Poster Text: “[Black Hawk] has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it.”
Speech upon surrender, Prairie du Chein, Wisconsin (August 27, 1832)

Black Hawk was a Sauk Indian chief. His tribe lived in the northwestern part of present-day Illinois. White settlers tricked the Sauk into signing away their land, but Black Hawk refused to recognize the sale of his home. During the Black Hawk War in 1832, the Sauk fought for the right to live on their land west of the Mississippi River, but they lost. Black Hawk's tribe was the last to live in the Illinois region.

• FYI - Abraham Lincoln was part of a militia unit in the Black Hawk War.

Joseph Brant, Chief of the Mohawks, Giclee Print, George Romney

Joseph Brant
b. 1742; Ohio, near present day Akron
d. 11-24-1807; Ontario, Canada

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), a Mohawk leader and British military officer during the American Revolution, is remembered in US history for his attacks on settlers in on the western frontier and in Canada for trying to regain indigenous lands. Brant, perhaps the most well-known North American Indian of his generation, met both George Washington and King George III. His portrait was painted by English artist George Romney, 1775-1776.

Kiontwogky “Cornplanter” Giclee Print

Cornplanter
b. c. 1750; Canawaugus (Caledonia) NY
d. 2-18-1836; Warren Co., PA

Seneca war chief Kiontwogky, known as Cornplanter, was the son of a Seneca mother and a Dutch fur trader father.

He had decided to live peacefully but was drawn into the conflict known as the Revolutionary War. The Iroquois Confederacy suffered greatly from the scorched earth campaign of the victorious and vengeful Americans.

Crazy Horse
b. c. 1840;
d. 9-5-1877; Red Cloud Agency, near Crawford, NE

Crazy Horse fought against the US federal government to save the traditions of the Lakota Sioux way of life. Crazy Horse Memorial is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

• Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas

Charles Curtis, who as a child lived with his maternal grandparents on the Kaw reservation, was a United States Representative, a longtime United States Senator, and the 31st Vice President of the United States (under Herbert Hoover). He was the first person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach either of the two highest offices in the United States government's executive branch.

• Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity
• more Native American posters

Charles Eastman
née Hakadah, renamed Ohíye S’a
b. 2-19-1858; near Redwood Falls, MN
d. 1-8-1939; Detroit, MI

Writer, physician, and reformer Charles Eastman was of Santee Sioux and Anglo-American ancestry. Eastman, who had degrees from Dartmouth and Boston College, also helped found the Boy Scouts of America organization. He was married to Elaine Goodale, a poet and educator.

• The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa), Revised and Updated Edition: Light on the Indian World

Geronimo Great Native American Leaders Art Print

Geronimo
b. 6-16-1829; New Mexico
d. 2-17-1909; Ft. Sill, OK

Poster Text: “[Arizona] is my land, my home, my father’s land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people, placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.”
From Geronimo’s autobiography (1906)

Geronimo Holding a Rifle, 1884, Giclee Print

Geronimo was an Apache warrior. His tribe lived in Mexico and the southwestern United States. In 1877, the U.S. government forced the Apaches to live on a reservation in the desolate area of Arizona, but Geronimo lead a small band of Apaches that refused to settle on the reservation. After years of fighting, captures, and escapes, Geronimo surrendered for the final time in 1886, after the U.S. government promised that he and his tribe could return to their homelands in Arizona. After a brief period of exile in Florida, part of the Apache tribe was allowed to return to Arizona. But Geronimo and the tribe members who resisted with him were never again allowed to return to their homelands.

Hiawatha, Founder of the Iroquois League, Giclee Print

Hiawatha (Ayenwatha or Haiëñ'wa'tha; Onondaga)
fl. 1100s, 1400s. or 1500s

Hiawatha, a follower of The Great Peacemaker, is credited as the founder of the Iroquois confederacy, known as the Haudenosaunee, a political and cultural union of the Iroquois, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, in the present day region of upper New York state. The confederacy modeled a balance of power and decision making by consensus to which each representative had an equal voice. In 1721 the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois confederacy, today known as the Six Nations.

Both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had direct contact with the Iroquois confederacy; the influence, if any, of the confederacy on the US Constitution is hotly debated.

• Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)
• Howard Zinn on Democratic Education
“No laws and ordinances, sheriffs and constables, judges and juries, or courts or jails – the apparatus of authority in Europena societies – were to be found in the northeast woodlands prior to the European arrival. Yet boundaries of acceptable behavior were firmly set. Through priding themselves on the autonomous individual, the Iroquois maintained a strict sense of right and wrong...” Gary Nash, quoted by Zinn.
• Leon Shenandoah
• Jake Swamp

Chief Joseph Poster

Chief Joseph
(c. 1840-1904)

“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself...”
CHIEF JOSEPH, 1879

Poster Text: “Our chiefs are killed. ... The old men are all dead. ... The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death, I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I can find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

Chief Joseph was the leader of the Nez Percé Indians. In 1877, the U.S. government tried to drive the Percé from their home in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon to a reservation in Idaho. Instead, Chief Joseph led his tribe on a retreat toward Canada. The tribe was eventually stopped 40 miles from the Canadian border and sent to a reservation in Oklahoma. Chief Joseph's tribe was later relocated to a reservation in Washington state.

Keokuk
b. c. 1767
d. 1848 in Kansas; buried in Keokuk, Iowa

Keokuk, the namesake of Keokuk, Iowa, was noted for his policy of cooperation with the U.S. government. Chief Keokuk, who had not opposed the advance of the white men and voluntarily moved west of the Mississippi River from present day Illinois, was then removed again to a reservation in Kansas, although a four hundred square mile strip surrounding his village was exempted from the 1832 Black Hawk Purchase. Keokuk position was in conflict with Black Hawk who led part of their band into the Black Hawk War.

Susan LaFlesche Picotte
b. 6-17-1865; Omaha Reservation, NE
d. 2-17-1932

Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first American Indian woman to become a physician in the US. She cared for both Indian and white patients, opening a hospital on the reservation in 1913. Her sister Susette LaFlesche was an artist and writer, their brother Francis was an anthropologist.

Little Turtle, Chief of Miami Tribe, Giclee Print

Little Turtle
b. c. 1747
d. 7-14-1812

Little Turlle, a war chief of the Miami tribe in present day Indiana, was one of the most successful Native Americans in leading his followers in several victories over the United States in the 1790s. He was an advocate for peace with the U.S. in the years leading up to the War of 1812.

Peace Treaty Between Chief Massasoit and Plymouth Colonists, 1621, Giclee Print

Massasoit
b. 1581; present day Rhode Island
d. 1661

Wampanoag, Chief Metacomet, or King Philip, Giclee Print

Metacomet (King Philip)
b. 1639
d. 8-12-1676; killed in King Philip's War

Metacomet was the second son of Massasoit. He adopted the English ways, including the name Philip, but when the Iroquois Confederacy pushed eastward, and the English demanded concessions of land, hostilites broke out. King Philip's War was one of the most costly and bloodiest conflicts in American history.

Osceola, Giclee Print George Catlin

Osceola

Osceola was a war chief of the Seminoles during the Second Seminole War fought against the US in Florida during the 19th century.

Ely Samuel Parker
b. 1828; Indian Falls, NY
d. 8-31-1895; Red Cloud Agency, near Crawford, NE

Parker, an Iroquois of the Seneca tribe, was an aide to U.S. Grant and wrote the final draft of the Confederate surrender terms at Appomattox. Parker was educated as both a lawyer and civil engineer.

• Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief

Chief Pontiac
b. 1720; Michigan - Ohio area
d. 4-20-1769; Cahokia, IL

Pontiac was an Ottawa, noted for the conflict called Pontiac's War that began with an attack on Fort Detroit.

• Pontiac and the Indian Uprising

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

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.

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

• FYI- Did you the town of Red Cloud, Nebraska was named in honor of Chief Red Cloud? Do you know who the most notable resident of Red Cloud was?
• 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.

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.

• Pontiac and the Indian Uprising

Sacagawea (also Sakakawea, Sacajawea)
b. c. 1788; present day Idaho
d. 12-20-1812 ?; present day North Dakota

Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman who acted as an interpreter and guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, traveled thousands of miles from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806.

As a twelve year old she had been kidnapped from her home area and taken to a Hidatsa village. Sacagawea was then taken as a wife by a French trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau and her knowledge of the Shoshone language secured his being hired by the Expedition over the winter of 1804-05 at the encampment called Fort Mandan.

The presence of Sacagawea and her infant son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, nicknamed “Little Pomp”, also served as a signal of the peaceful intentions of the Expedition.

It is also notable that Sacagawea was given voting rights, along with the African American slave York, in the decisions of group. She insisted on her right to see the whale that washed ashore.

• Sacajawea (Lewis & Clark Expedition)

Chief Seattle Great Native American Leaders Art Print

Chief Seattle
(c. 1786-1866)

Poster Text: “Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.”
Chief Seattle’s Oration, Pugit Sound (1854)

Sequoyah, Giclee Print

Sequoyah
b. 1774; present day Tennessee or North Carolina
d. 1843; Mexico

Sequoyah was a Cherokee silversmith, blacksmith, teacher and soldier who developed a writing system that was adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825.

• Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People Writing

Sitting Bull Great Native American Leaders Art Print

Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890)

Poster Text: “What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? ... What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux: because I was born where my father lived: because I would die for my people and my country?” Statement

Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux chief and holy man Sitting Bull lead a band of Sioux Indians who resisted all of the U.S. government's attempts to change the way the Sioux traditionally lived. The U.S. government eventually drove Sitting Bull's people out of their homelands around the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota, but not without a fight. In 1876, Sitting Bull's tribe defeated the U.S. government's forces in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, in which Colonel George Armstrong Custer was killed. Sitting Bull's tribe later retreated to Canada. Starving and cold, tribe members surrendered to the U.S. government several years later. Sitting Bull was killed in 1890 when tribal police tried to arrest him at his home on the Standing Rock Reservation.

“What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a [Lakota]; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?”
Sitting Bull, 1877

• South Dakota posters

Spotted Weasel, Ecureuil Tachete, Plains Chief, Art Print

Spotted Weasel

Squanto of the Pawtuxet Tribe, Befriended the Pilgrims, Giclee Print

Squanto (Tisquantum)
b. c. 1580s; area of present day Plymouth, Massachusetts
d. November, 1622

Tecumseh & Tenskwatawa, Giclee Print

Tecumseh
b. March 1768; Ohio
d. 10-5-1813; Ontario, Canada

Tecumseh, a war leader of the Shawnee, rallied various Indian tribes in a mutual defense of their lands, which eventually led to his death in the War of 1812. Cities in the states of Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, are named after Tecumseh., as well as a city the province of Ontario. The Canadians rank Tecumseh 37th in the Greatest Canadian list.

Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman said he was given the middle name Tecumseh because “my father . . . had caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees.”

White Cloud, Chief of the Iowas, Giclee Print George Catlin

White Cloud, Chief of the Iowas

This portrait of The White Cloud, head chief of the Iowa nation, probably was painted in London while the chief was touring with Catlin's Indian Gallery, 1844/45. [National Gallery of Art]

• Edward S. Curtis photographs

Iron Breast, Piegan, 1900
The Piegan, based in Montana, are one of the three tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Photograph illustrates the costume of the Bulls, an age society (many years obsolete).