Most Americans have heard of the Little Bighorn, the 1876 battle in which a band of Lakota Sioux and their allies wiped out most of the 7th US Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer. The movie images are of fierce warriors in long eagle feather headdresses flowing behind them as they gallop across the plains on nimble Indian ponies. In fact, many Americans know the names of the commanders who beat Custer, most notably Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and there are famous photographs of the stolid looking, copper-skinned Sitting Bull participating in Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show.”

Children in schools also learn that there were more battles in the coming years as American settlers pushed west, and names like Geronimo are instantly famous after the US Army’s tough fight with the Apache. A few may even have learned of the formidable Comanches in the Texas Panhandle, and maybe even events like the Fetterman Massacre or the fights at Adobe Wells.

Today, far fewer people are familiar with the conflicts that took place east of the Mississippi before the Indian Wars of the late 19th century, fought in the forests and woodlands rather than on the prairies. The names of a few of the tribes involved are well known: the Cherokee, Iroquois, Seminole, and Choctaw–while other formidable groups like the Yamasee, Miamis, Delaware, Powhatan, and Shawnee are less known. As whites pushed west from the East Coast, there were fights against the Abenaki, and during the French and Indian War, two regiments of Redcoats and colonial militia were decimated near what is now Pittsburgh. An alliance under Chief Pontiac threw the British and Americans out of the Great Lakes country for a time in the mid-18th century and had much to do with the fracture between colonies and the mother country. And tribal leaders like Blue Jacket and Little Turtle waged bitter wars in the Old Northwest, including inflicting the worst defeat ever of the US Army at the hands of Native Americans.

While these battles are more historically obscure due to the passage of time and not as well documented, they were also far deadlier and involved more personal hand-to-hand combat. Flintlocks and tomahawks were used by both sides, and the fighting was most often on foot, relying on stealth instead of charges on horseback. Raids on frontiers in the East killed thousands of settlers and sometimes pushed the edge of settlements back 100 miles as the Native Americans and whites fought in the region for nearly three centuries.