Broken Promises, Shattered Hopes

The Road to Wounded Knee: Indian Wars on the Plains, 1854-1890.

Historian Steve Adelson focuses on the confrontation between the U.S. Government’s military forces and Plains Indians in the 1800s, as the two cultures collided in an epic struggle.

As whites poured west in the mid-1800s, inundating the land and devouring resources critical to the survival of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe and other tribes, the plains exploded in a tumultuous firestorm of incident and reprisal between angry warriors and U.S. Army troops. 

Historian Steve Adelson focuses on the confrontation between the U.S. Government’s military forces and Plains Indians, as the two cultures collided in an epic struggle: One people fiercely resisting the erosion of their traditional way of life, while Euro-Americans exert their efforts to tame and conquer a land already occupied.

We will examine the historic clashes, battles, and massacres, and the controversies that surround them; controversies that still haunt the American consciousness even today. The Gratten Fight, Sand Creek Massacre, Fetterman Fight, Washita, Battle of the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee, and others will be revisited.  

Steve Adelson is an historian, author, producer and seasonal Ranger Interpreter at Little Bighorn National Monument in Montana. He has been on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and other media productions profiling the Battle of the Little Bighorn.