European Recessions and Native American Conflict

We investigate the extent to which conflicts between Native American tribes and U.S. Army troops were caused by poor economic conditions in Europe from 1869 to 1890. We hypothesize that contractions in economic activity pushed many Europeans to move to the western United States in search of better economic opportunity. The empirical analysis demonstrates that immigration, interacted with US railroad access, caused the probability of a Native American conflict to increase by approximately 46 percent.