Sacagawea belonged to the Shoshone tribe and lived a short but legendary life. In 1800, when she was 12 years old, Hidatsa warriors raided her tribe and captured many young people, including Sacagawea.

The Hidatsa, an American Plains Indian tribe related to the Sioux, were traditionally a sedentary people, meaning they established villages rather than travel around from place to place. They lived in earthen lodges and traded with other Plains tribes and English and French traders.

Hidatsa men and women each had clearly defined tasks and responsibilities. Men hunted bison and other game and went to war. Along with maintaining the lodges, women did most of the farming and grew corn, squash, and beans. During the 19th century, Hidatsa warriors often went on raiding parties like the one where they captured Sacagawea.

Sacagawea lived with the Hidatsa for a few years, but in 1804, at the age of 16 was sold or gambled away to a French-Canadian trapper and trader, Toussaint Charbonneau. She became one of Charbonneau's wives and shortly thereafter gave birth to their son, Jean Baptiste.

When Lewis and Clark came through town, they quickly recognized the couple’s invaluable combined language skills and invited them to join their expedition. Charbonneau spoke French and Hidatsa while Sacagawea spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone.

On February 11, 1805, husband and baby in toe, the 17 year old Sacagawea led the Abraham Lincoln appointed explorers Lewis and Clark across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific ocean and back.

Her biggest strength turned out to be her calming presence on both the expeditioners and the Native American Indians they encountered along the way who might have otherwise been hostile and very dangerous.

Apache chief Geronimo (1829-1909) was born in the upper Gila River country of Arizona. He came to maturity in the final years of Mexican rule of the region. His antagonism toward the Mexicans was as deep-rooted as it was understandable. In one fateful encounter, Mexican soldiers killed his mother, his wife, and his three small children. This tragic event steeled the young man for a long life of frequent conflict.

Although he harbored animosity toward the Mexican soldiers who killed his family, he also grew to dislike the Anglo-Americans who took over the region following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. After his Chiricahua Apaches were forced onto Arizona’s San Carlos Reservation in the mid-1870s, Geronimo led his followers on a series of escapes that bolstered his legend and embarrassed the U.S. government. He surrendered to General Nelson Miles in 1886, and remained a celebrity in captivity until his death at Oklahoma’s Fort Sill.

When Geronimo died, he had been a legend for more than a generation. But his courage and determination did more than provide a battle cry for paratroopers of another day. It helped sustain the spirits of his people, the Chiricahua Apaches, in the last desperate days of the Indian wars.

Elizabeth Marie “Betty“ TallChief was born in Fairfax, Oklahoma on January 24, 1925 as a member of the Osage Nation. Her great-grandfather, Peter Bigheart had helped the Osages negotiate important oil contracts that enriched the Osage Nation and benefitted its people.

As a result, Betty was spared the typical challenges of an ordinary household, not to mention that of native American Indian, that had to make ends meat to pay for food and shelter.

Her mother, who had always dreamed about becoming a performer but lacked the resources when she was young, was determined that her daughters would not suffer the same fate.

At age 3, Betty Marie was enrolled in summer ballet classes in Colorado Springs and performed at rodeos and other local events. When she was 8, her family relocated to Los Angeles to advance the careers of her and her younger sister Marjorie. At age 17, she moved to New York City in search of a spot with a major ballet company, and, at the urging of her superiors, took the name Maria Tallchief.

She spent the next five years with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where she met legendary choreographer George Balanchine, who would become her first husband in 1946. The combination of Balanchine’s difficult choreographing and Tallchief’s passionate dancing revolutionized the ballet. Her 1949 role in ‘ The Firebird’ catapulted Tallchief to the top of the ballet world, establishing her as a prima ballerina. Her role as the Sugarplum Fairy in ‘ The Nutcracker’ transformed the ballet from obscure to America’s most popular. She traveled the world and became the first American to perform in Moscow’s Bolshoi theater.

Tallchief was honored by the people of Oklahoma with multiple statues and an honorific day. She was inducted in the National Woman’s Hall of Fame and received a National Medal of Arts. In 1996, she received the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievements. Her has life has been subject to multiple documentaries and biographies.

Crazy Horse was born around 1840 in Rapid City, South Dakota. He was a visionary and legendary Oglala Sioux Indian chief warrior who fought for the traditions and values of the Lakota way of life and against the confinement to the reservation engineered by the white man.

In 1876 he joined with Cheyenne forces as the leader of the resistance and in a surprise attack beat back Gen. George Crook as he tried to sneak up Rosebud Creek to catch Sitting Bull who was camping out on the Little Bighorn, Wyoming.

Feeling pretty good after such an impressive victory, he and Sitting Bull became buddies and on June 25th the two led a band of seasoned warriors who would destroy the Seventh Cavalry in one of the most epic battles known as Custer’s Last Stand.

So why all this fighting ? Turns out that even though a treaty had given the Sioux exclusive rights to the Black Hills, once Gold was discovered and the miners started to pour in, the U.S. Government didn’t want the Indians to have all those Hills, uhm … Gold, uhm … Power.

Sitting Bull (c.1831-1890) was the Native American chief under whom the Sioux tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Great Plains. Following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1874, the Sioux came into increased conflict with U.S. authorities.

The Great Sioux wars of the 1870s would culminate in the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and a confederation of tribes would defeat federal troops under George Armstrong Custer. After several years in Canada, Sitting Bull finally surrendered to U.S. forces with his people on the brink of starvation, and was finally forced to settle on a reservation.

In 1890, Sitting Bull was shot and killed while being arrested by U.S. and Indian agents, fearful that he would help lead the growing Ghost Dance movement aimed at restoring the Sioux way of life. Sitting Bull is remembered for his great courage and his stubborn determination to resist white domination.

Perhaps one of the most capable warriors from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribesmen ever faced by the US military, Makhpiya Luta, his Sioux name, led his people in what is known as Red Cloud’s War. This battle was for the rights to the area known as Powder River Country in Northern Wyoming and Southern Montana.

Red Cloud's War was the name the US Army gave to a series of conflicts fought with Native American Plains tribes in the Wyoming and Montana territories. The battles were waged between the Northern Cheyenne, allied with Lakota and Arapaho bands, against the United States Army between 1866 and 1868.

In December 1866, the Native American allies attacked and defeated a United States unit in what the whites would call the Fetterman Massacre (or the Battle of the Hundred Slain), which resulted in the most US casualties of any Plains battle up to that point. Red Cloud eventually led his people during their time on reservation.

Zitkala-Sa, (Lakota: Red Bird) (1876–1938) was born at the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. For her first eight years, Zitkála-Šá lived on the reservation. She later described those days as ones of freedom and happiness, safe in the care of her mother's people and tribe. In 1884, when Zitkala-Ša was eight, missionaries came to the Yankton Reservation.

They recruited several of the Yankton children, including Zitkala-Šá, taking them for education to the White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a missionary Quaker school that taught speaking, reading, and writing English. Eventually marrying a Captain of Yankton decent, Zitkala-Sa wrestled with the conflicting influences of American Indian and white culture throughout her life. By contrast, she took joy in learning to read, write and play the violin.

Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In evocative prose laced with political savvy, she forces new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions, and customs of both Sioux and white cultures and raises issues of assimilation, identity, and race relations that remain compelling today. Zitkala-Sa also wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera, (1913), the first American Indian Opera.

Tecumseh (March 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Native American Shawnee warrior and chief, who became the primary leader of a large, multi-tribal confederacy in the early 19th century. Born in the Ohio Country (present-day Ohio), and growing up during the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War, Tecumseh was exposed to warfare and envisioned the establishment of an independent Native American nation east of the Mississippi River under British protection. Tecumseh was among the most celebrated Native American leaders in history and was known as a strong and eloquent orator who promoted tribal unity. He was also ambitious, willing to take risks, and make significant sacrifices to repel the settlers from Native American lands in the Old Northwest Territory.Tecumseh's confederation fought the United States during Tecumseh's War, but he was unsuccessful in getting the U.S. government to rescind the Treaty of Fort Wayne (1809) and other land-cession treaties. Tecumseh and his confederacy continued to fight the United States after forming an alliance with Great Britain in the War of 1812. During the war, Tecumseh's confederacy helped in the capture of Fort Detroit. However, after U.S. naval forces took control of Lake Erie in 1813, the British and their Native American allies retreated into Upper Canada, where the European American forces engaged them at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, and Tecumseh was killed. His death and the end of the war caused the pan-Native American alliance to collapse.

Chief Augustine led the Clear Lake Pomo Tribe in 1850, when the United States Calvary murdered and estimated 150 Pomo people, the majority of whom where women and children. Operating under the erroneous belief that these victims had murdered two notoriously brutal white settlers, the US Calvary attacked their traditional gathering site called Bo-no-po-ti (Old Island) with artillery, riflemen, and bayonets, turning it into the Bloody Island massacre.

Lozen (1840 -1889) was a Native American warrior and prophet for the Chihenne Chiricahua Apache. She and her brother fought against those who had taken their land in New Mexico. She could “ride, shoot, and fight like a man.” She is known for escorting a new mother and her infant across the Chihuahuan Desert. Not only did Lozen safely deliver them to their final destination, but she also escaped gunfire, stole a horse, killed for food, and acquired much-needed tools and provisions along the way. She's a true legend !