American Patriots were defeated by contigents of British Loyalists and Iroquois Raiders in a battle in Pennsylvania. After the battle, raiders hunted and killed patriots who were running away. They then ritually tortured to death about 30 to 40 people who had surrendered.
British troops, made up of soldiers from Europe, loyalists, Seneca and Mohawks, attacked a military fort where several families lived. During the raid, they targeted non-combatants including women and children. They killed 30 civilians and took 30 more prisoner.
British-allied Native Americans ambushed a caravan of Dutch-American settlers in Kentucky who were fleeing British invation. The perpetrators murdered 17 people and the British paid them a bounty of £85 for doing so.
A Loyalist captain led a war party to a Patriot military fort in Kentucky. They found abandoned by troops – but a couple civilian families were still there. The Loyalists killed 15 of the people taking shelter.
A group of Moravian Christian Native Americans who lived in Pennsylvania came under suspicion during the American Revolution because they refused to take sides during the war. U.S. militiamen went to the missionary village of Gnadenhutten where they found the Moravians gathering crops
A group of Cherokee people murdered a mother and her eleven children who were homesteaders in Tennessee. Only the father, who wasn’t home at the time, survived. Later, the father murdered a Cherokee chief and four other Cherokee people in “revenge.”
A group of Lenape and Wyandot warriors attacked a white settlement in present-day Ohio, seeking to expel them from the land. They killed 11 men, one woman and two children.
A U.S. Army force of 1,000 battled a Northwestern Confederacy force of about 1,100 near Fort Recovery, Ohio. The Northwestern Confederacy saw a major victory, which its soldiers followed up with by slaughtering civilian camp followers in retreat. An estimated 200 to 250 civilians were killed.
A Spanish commander born in present-day Alabama led a troop of soldiers to a Navajo settlement in the Canyon de Chelly, in present-day Arizona. The perpetrators killed over 115 Navajo people and kidnapped 33 women and children into slavery.
British-allied Potawatomi troops attacked Fort Dearborn in present-day Chicago during the War of 1812. The perpetrators killed 14 civilians along with 38 members of the U.S. military.
A group of Shawnee, Delaware and Potawatomi soldiers armed by the British attacked a village in Indiana. The perpetrators slaughtered 24 settlers.
British and allied Native American troops defeated the U.S. military in a battle in present-day Michigan. Hundreds of Americans surrendered. The British marched the prisoners through the snow and ice. Soldiers set fire to the buildings that housed the wounded, killing any who escaped
A religious movement that called for death of any Native Americans who allied with white people divided the Creek Nation into civil war. The “Red Sticks” planned to destroy a group of Creek planters who had taken refuge at Fort Mims, alongside white settlers and enslaved Black people
Several settler families in southern Alabama took refuge in Fort Sinquefield after the Battle of Fort Mims. A group of Red Sticks soldiers fresh off that battle killed 12 women and children at Sinquefield. They came back the next day killed a woman washing clothes at a nearby spring.
A U.S. calvary force of 900 conducted a surprise attack on a village of Red Stick Creek people. The dragoons shot and burned 186 warriors and their families. One perpetrator wrote in his memoirs of burning down a house where 46 men and their families had taken refuge.
A group of Creek people living in Hillabee had been allied with the Red Sticks. They entered peace negotiations with the U.S., which granted terms on November 17. At dawn the next morning, U.S. troops attacked and destroyed two villages, killing 64 people and taking more than 200 captive.
A group of Red Stick Creek and Seminole warriors launched an attack on a boat carrying supplies for an American military fort. They killed more than 40 people, including 20 sick soldiers and 6 women and 4 children.
One or more Coco people killed two white settlers stealing corn. Nearby white people responded by finding a village of Karankawa people and killing 19 of them. They burned the village to the ground.
White people moving into Texas decided to exterminate the Karankawa people so they could take their land. Leaders spread lies about cannibalism and paid members of other Native American tribes to murder Karankawas. The Karankawas signed a series of peace treaties and gave up land, but it didn’t stop the settlers
Nat Turner led a group of Black people door to door during a solar eclipse, rescuing people and often killing those who held them captive. They killed about 50 slavers. In retaliation, white people slaughtered hundreds of Black people who had nothing to do wth the rebellion in Virginia and North Carolina.
When the Black Hawk War broke out, many white settlers in what is now Earlville, Illinois, fled the area. A handful of families decided to remain, living at a settlement owned by man whose damming of a river had initiated tensions. A group of Potawatomi and Sauk people attacked the man’s cabin.
When the U.S. Army defeated Sauk and Fox people in the Battle of Bad Axe, they began attacking everyone in sight, men, women and children. They shot many people who were trying to swim to safety and scalped most of the dead. Those who made it across the river were killed by Sioux warriors fighting alongside the U.S
When an anti-Mormon militia rode into the Fairview township in Missouri, men and boys fled to a blacksmith shop to hide. The militia fired about 100 rifles into the log building. Members of the militia then entered the shop and killed the wounded, including children. 18 people were killed in total.
On Election Day in Louisville, Kentucky, members of the Know-Nothing Party formed armed groups to “guard the polls” and intimidate Irish and German Catholics from voting. They began attacking immigrant neighborhoods in town, and killed at least 22 people.
A group of Santee Sioux attacked a settlement of white people in northern Iowa, seeking revenge for the murders of the lead perpetrator’s family. They killed between 35 and 40 settlers in the area and took four prisoners.
A group of Mormons, including local military, government, and religious leaders, laid siege to a wagon train made up of families from Arkansas passing through Utah on the way to California. False conspiracy theories blamed the families for the deaths of some Mormons
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A large number of German-Americans who lived in central Texas opposed slavery. The Confederate government imposed martial law on the area. When German-Americans attempted to flea to the U.S.-controlled area of New Orleans, a company of Confederates intercepted and murdered 37 of them.
A Confederate regiment captured 13 people accused of sympathizing with the United States in the Shelton Laurel Valley of North Carolina. They shot all 13 to death. Three children were among those executed.
Working-class white people in New York City were upset over the military draft to fight the Confederacy. Sympathy for slavery and resentment towards a system where wealthy men could buy their way out of the draft drove protests that turned into a racist massacre.
A group of pro-Confederate guerillas attacked the town of Lawrence, Kansas, because its residents had long supported the end of slavery. They entered town with lists of people to kill and buildings to burn. In all, they killed 164 men and children.
A group of pro-Confederate guerillas attacked U.S. soldiers attempting to surrender in Cherokee County, Kansas. The perpetrators murdered most of the detachment, including a military band and a civilian journalist. 131 people were killed.
After Confederate troops defeated Union soldiers at the Battle of Fort Pillow in Tennessee, they murdered every Black soldier who attempted to surrender
A Confederate guerilla group looted the town of Centralia, Missouri and stopped a train passing through. There were 24 U.S. soldiers on board, all headed home on leave. The U.S. soldiers surrendered but the guerillas murdered them all, mutiliating their bodies.
A Confederate unit defeated the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry in a battle in Smyth County, Virginia. After the battle, Confederate soldiers and guerillas then killed those who were wounded, including many being treated at a field hospital. The perpetrators killed about 46 Americans.
A group of Cheyenne and Arapaho set up camp near Fort Lyon in Colorado, in accordance with a peace parley. The leader, Black Kettle, flew a U.S. flag and a white flag tied beneath it. But when the 3rd Colorado Cavalry rode to the fort, the perpetator’s commander ordered them to attack
During Sherman’s famed “March to the Sea,” thousands of newly-free Black people followed U.S. troops for protection. Hundreds of people fleeing pursuing Confederates were attached to the 14th Army Corps as it built a pontoon bridge to cross Ebenezer Creek on the way to Savannah. The troops quickly removed the bridge
White police officers went to break up an impromptu street party held by Black soldiers, women and children. One of the officers accidentally shot himself in the leg. His injury was blamed on the soldiers, more armed police came to the scene, and another officer was shot and killed
Former Confederate soldiers and the New Orleans Police Department attacked Black demonstrators and a marching band at the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in New Orleans. The convention had been called by Republicans to extend suffrage to Black men and elminate racist laws passed by the state legislature.
In 1868, white people expelled 33 Black members of the Georgia General Assembly. In protest, Rep. Philip Joiner led a 25-mile march of several hundred people to the city of Camilla to attend a Republican political rally on the courthouse square
Three white supremacists attacked a newspaper editor who was teaching Black children in a classroom in Opelousas, Louisiana. Over the next several weeks, Black people began arming themselves for protection while white supremacists hunted, caputred, and killed Black people and white Republicans
About a week before the U.S. Presidential Election, white people mobilized to murder Black people who had just gained the right to vote. They went through the Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish, killing at least 35 and perhaps more than 100 Black people
Hundreds of white and Hispanic residents of Los Angeles went into Old Chinatown and murdered 19 immigrants, lynching 15. The massacre was prompted by racist propaganda spread after the accidental killing of a white rancher. Eight perpetrators were convicted, but those were overturned on appeal.
The U.S. Army attacked Yavapai people who had taken shelter in Skeleton Cave in Salt River Canyon, Arizona. Soldiers opened fire and dropped boulders on the people. About 75 people were found dead in the cave, including women and children.
When white Democrats lost the 1872 gubernatorial election for Louisiana, a mob of former Confederates attacked the courthouse in Colfax with rifles and a cannon. Black Republicans and the state militia who were inside the courthouse surrendered.
A group of Confederate veterans organized into the White League and plotted an insurrection against the elected government. They assassinated six white Republicans and murdered between 5 and 20 Black people who were witnesses.
In August 1874, Vicksburg, Mississippi elected a Black man sheriff. White residents spent the next few months buying new guns and preparing for a race war. In December, they kidnapped the new sheriff and held him before running him out of town