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: ''Red River War may also refer to the conflict between Oklahoma and Texas known as the Red River Bridge War''. The Red River War was a military campaign launched by the United States Army in 1874 to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Native American tribes from the Southern Plains and forcibly relocate them to reservations in Indian Territory. Lasting only a few months, the war saw several army columns crisscross the Texas Panhandle in an effort to locate, harass and capture highly mobile Indian bands. Most of the engagements were small skirmishes in which neither side suffered many casualties. The war wound down over the last few months of 1874 as fewer and fewer Indian bands had the strength and supplies to remain in the field. Though the last significantly sized group did not surrender until mid-1875, the war marked the end of free roaming Indian populations on the Southern Plains. ==Background== Prior to the arrival of English American settlers on the Great Plains, the Southern Plains tribes had evolved into a nomadic pattern of existence. Beginning in the 1830s significant numbers of permanent settlements were established in what had previously been the exclusive territory of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Attacks, raids, and counter-raids occurred frequently. Prior to the Civil War, the U.S. Army was only sporadically involved in these frontier conflicts, manning forts but limited to a handful of larger expeditions due to manpower limitations. During the Civil War, the Regular Army withdrew almost completely and Indian raids increased dramatically. Texas, as part of the Confederate States of America, lacked the military resources to fight both the Union and the tribes.〔Gwynne, S.C. "Empire of the Summer Moon". Scribner, 2010, p. 207-221〕 After the war, the military began reasserting itself along the frontier. The Medicine Lodge Treaty, signed near present day Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in 1867, called for two reservations to be set aside in Indian Territory, one for the Comanche and Kiowa and one for the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. According to the treaty, the government would provide the tribes with housing, agricultural training, and food and other supplies. In exchange, the Indians agreed to cease raiding and attacking settlements. Dozens of chiefs endorsed the treaty and some tribal members moved voluntarily to the reservations, but it was never officially ratified and several groups of Indians still on the Plains did not attend the negotiations. In 1870, a new technique for tanning buffalo hides became commercially available.〔Cronon, William. "Nature's Metropolis". W. W. Norton & Company, 1992, p. 216〕 In response, commercial hunters began systematically targeting buffalo for the first time. Once numbering in the tens of millions, the buffalo population plummeted. By 1878 they would be all but extinct. The destruction of the buffalo herds was a disaster for the Plains Indians, on and off the reservations. The entire nomadic way of life had been based around the animals. They were used for food, fuel and construction materials. Without abundant buffalo, the Southern Plains Indians had no means of self-support. By the winter of 1873-1874, the Southern Plains Indians were in crisis. The reduction of the buffalo herds combined with increasing numbers of new settlers and more aggressive military patrols had put them in an unsustainable position. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red River War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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