The Great Chiefs II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Captain Jack (Kintpuash)

In 1872 Kintpuash led a band of Modoc off the Klamath Reservation in Oregon in an attempt to return to their traditional lands in California. In the resulting Modoc War, also known as the Lava Beds War, Captain Jack's small group held off numerous U.S. Army units attempting to return them to the reservation.

After his eventual capture, Kintpuash was convicted of war crimes and executed. He was the only Native American leader charged with such crimes.

Answer: Seattle

As leader of his people, Chief Seattle was conciliatory toward the Americans and their desire for native lands in his homeland in today's Washington state. When converted to Christianity, he took the name Noah. He and "Doc" Maynard, one of the founders and city fathers of the city of Seattle, forged a strong friendship which benefited both men.

Answer: Wovoka, aka Jack Wilson

Wovoka was the founder of the Ghost Dance movement, which was first practiced by Paiutes in 1889. Wovoka and the Ghost Dancers believed the ceremony would unite them with their dead ancestors, bring back the buffalo, and begin a period of peace and prosperity.

Although the Ghost Dance was not a military concept, white Americans believed it threatened them so much so that in December of 1890 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, U.S. troops massacred at least 153 Lakota dancers.

Answer: Mangas Coloradas

Mangas Coloradas was a contemporary of the more famous Chiricahua Apaches Geronimo and Cochise, who was also Mangas Coloradas' son-in-law. Another Mimbreņo Apache chief, Victorio, was also a son-in-law of Mangas Coloradas.

Answer: Black Kettle

A peace leader who signed the 1861 Fort Wise treaty, Black Kettle was flying both an American flag and a white flag outside his lodge at Sand Creek, when it was attacked by the Colorado Cavalry in 1864. He and his wife, who received nine wounds in the attack, but both survived.

Although he asked for peace at both the 1864 Little Arkansas Treaty and at Medicine Lodge in 1867, Black Kettle and his wife were both shot in the back by members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry under George Custer at the Washita River in 1868.

Answer: Little Turtle

On 4 December 1791 Little Turtle inflicted the worst defeat the United States ever suffered at the hands of Native Americans. Known as the Battle of the Wabash River, or St. Clair's Defeat, the engagement was part of the Northwest Indian War, which would be effectively won by the U.S. under Mad Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers about three years later.

Referred to by Native Americans of the time as the Battle of a Thousand Slain, however, Little Turtle's victory was a match of even proportions personnel-wise, as 1,100 warriors met about 1,000 whites. While the victors suffered 61 casualties, U.S. losses numbered 933 casualties, with only 24 whites escaping unscathed.

Answer: Wahunsonacock, Opechancanough

Brothers Wahunsonacock (aka Powhatan) and Opechancanough were members of Virginia's Powhatan Confederacy at the time of the establishment of Jamestown by England. Wahunsonacock was the leading chief of the entire confederacy, and Opechancanough was chief of the Pamunkey tribe.

While Wahunsonacock allowed the founding and growth of the colony, at his death Opechancanough waged an intense 24-year war beginning with the 1622 massacre. He was finally defeated at the age of something over 90 years, despite fighting even when he had to be carried into battle and needed assistance keeping his eyes open.

He was shot in the back while in captivity by the English in 1646.

Answer: Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)

Joseph Brant was a major player in the struggle for control of North America between the English and the Americans in the late Eighteenth Century. He'd met both George Washington and George III and, in the end, cast his lot and that of the Iroquois Confederacy, with the British during the Revolution. Following the war he led his followers to Upper Canada in the area now known as the Six Nations Reserve of Ontario.

It is the only reserve that contains members of all six Iroquois peoples, the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora, living together.

Answer: Sequoyah

George Gist (or Guess) was the English name for Sequoyah, the silversmith who created a written syllabary for the Cherokee language in 1821. It was adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825, and the literacy rate for Cherokees quickly rose to a level higher than the American society of the general area.

In 1814 Sequoyah was a member of the Cherokee Regiment fighting alongside Andrew Jackson against the Creek "Red Sticks."

Answer: Neolin, aka The Delaware Prophet

Neolin, whose name in Algonquin means "the enlightened" (yes, the same as "Buddha") was a prophet whose message was that Native Americans needed to reject all the elements of white society. He especially attacked the whites' attachment to alcohol, polygamy, and materialism. His most famous adherent was the Ottawa chief Pontiac.