Choosing Home
I had chosen Sitting Bull’s speech he gave for he was honest and true in every word he spoke that is why it is a short speech he went straight to the main ideas. In Sitting Bull’s speech, “The life my people want is a life of freedom” he explains why he and his people wish to live freely. Bull also explains his beliefs as a Native American from the Sioux nation he believed that he was put here on earth for a reason. Bull’s speech compares his people to those of white color. He expresses the unfairness to be told to live on a reservation “The life of a white men is slavery” (Bull 169). He goes on to show how different white men and Native Americans are; by how they collect food by hunting, where they choose to live is not in the same place for long periods, and although white men have everything they did not have the right to take away liberty.
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It was a time when white men wanted to claim everything. They wanted to let Native Americans know they had all the fire power to do as they pleased. Sitting Bull did not agree to this IRA because in his speech he said loved the freedom to go where his people pleased, to hunt wherever, and set up teepees where they chose to set up home base. It was this act that led to Sitting Bull’s important speech. The additional information I knew prior to reading Sitting Bull’s speech is everything I had learned in high school about Native American history. Mentioning my background knowledge, had helped me want to write more and read more in depth about Sitting Bull’s speech. I had known about these IRA’s, but I never knew how famous Sitting Bull’s speech could
But as Sitting Bull, Runs the Enemy, and many other Lakota and Cheyenne realized that day, he came frighteningly close to winning the most spectacular victory of his career.” Philbrick
Sitting Bull Champion of the Sioux: A Biography, by Stanley Vestal, is a great book to read for anyone wanting vivid, yet serious, insight of the lives of the Sioux Indians, or more specifically, one Sioux Indian, Sitting Bull. There are three sections in the book that describe three major time periods of Sitting Bull’s life. Each section focuses on a different time span. The author highly exceeds his goal of “writing the first biography of a great American Indian soldier and statesman in which his character and achievements are presented with the same care and seriousness they would have received had he been of European ancestry.” (xxi)
The Bull Moose Party, was a former political party in the United States, founded by Theodore Roosevelt during the presidential campaign of 1912. The Bull Moose Party was formed because Theodore Roosevelt was beaten in the Republican primary by Taft yet still wanted to run for president. Right around this time, the political party called for direct election of U.S. senators, women's voting rights, reduction of tariffs, and many social reforms. Roosevelt, who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, began his campaign as the party's presidential candidate. A key point of his platform is "Square Deal", Roosevelt's concept of a fair business competition based on society and the added benefits to Americans who need it.
difference was Sitting Bull thought the best for the people was to fight for the land. More forts were built, Fort Union and Fort Buford went deep into Sioux land near Yellowstone, and Sitting Bull truly hated them, especially Fort Buford. By the end of the civil war people were coming in droves, the government still trying to take the land peaceable, sent in Pierre-Jean-De Smet, who was a Jesuit Priest. While Sitting Bull would not meet with government officials, he did meet with the priest. He did agree to peace, but later in the ceremony he still had the same concerns he had throughout the invasion of the land, as long as the whites left the land and stayed off, he would agree to peace.
Finally, this essay will give you my perspective on how I relate to the tough decisions he had to make on behalf of his Sioux Tribe. Visionary Leader Sitting Bull was a Visionary Leader as evidenced by his decision-making during the war with American Forces in the 1870s. During this period, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills resulted in a rush of Americans to this land. The land was sacred to the Native Americans and protected by the U.S. government signed Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Thomas Jefferson explains that Native Americans are highly intellectual and “astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory…” (148). Subsequently, he compares African Americans and states, “But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of pain narration…” (148). He claims that the blacks are equal to whites in memory, yet they lack their imagination and creativity. The document also mentions inherent superiority seen in the white race.
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man, born in 1831 in present-day South Dakota. Son of honored Sioux warrior Returns-Again, Sitting Bull idolized his father and wanted to be exactly like him, but he struggled initially in skill; he lacked natural talent for violence, and thus was deemed “Slow” in his early years. A few years later at fourteen, he would assist in war against a rival tribe. He would be given the new name of “Tatanka-Iyotanka”; a Lakota phrase meaning “a buffalo sitting”. Growing up, Sitting Bull’s destiny was seemingly shaped by the conflicts the Native peoples were fronting in the face of white settlers moving in on their land and ways of life.
One main point that is effective for Sitting Bull is the fact that he talks about the white men taking away the land that the Native Americans were granted in a treaty. Sitting
”Sitting Bull made sure that his fellow indians would not be pushed around. He did not want his people to go through the suffering like what the Cherokee nation went
The Cherokee had dressed like white people, learned the language of white people, and even made a government just like the U.S. Constitution, but the common man had found gold and farm land on their homeland so they were still going to be evicted. A letter from one of the Cherokees named Elias Boudinot had said,” look at our people! They are wretched! Look, my dear sir, around you, and see the progress vice and immorality have already made! See the misery!”
Since Sitting Bull worked to preserve his land he allied with the other tribes to fight against the government. The wars resulted in reservations that are still currently active today.
Native Americans flourished in North America, but over time white settlers came and started invading their territory. Native Americans were constantly being thrown and pushed off their land. Sorrowfully this continued as the Americans looked for new opportunities and land in the West. When the whites came to the west, it changed the Native American’s lives forever. The Native Americans had to adapt to the whites, which was difficult for them.
During this time period, some Native American tribes were forced to move into reservations. In the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and some other tribes defeated George Armstrong Custer’s armies. Despite this, Sitting Bull had to surrender his tribes years later when they were about to go starving (Sitting Bull). The government pushed Native Americans into reservations to keep them out of Euro-American settlements used for farming, ranching, and mining.
Merrell’s article proves the point that the lives of the Native Americans drastically changed just as the Europeans had. In order to survive, the Native Americans and Europeans had to work for the greater good. Throughout the article, these ideas are explained in more detail and uncover that the Indians were put into a new world just as the Europeans were, whether they wanted change or
The main difference that we see between both racial ethnic groups is that white Americans believed that they could strip Native Americans from their culture and civilize them while “nurture could not improve the nature of blacks” (67). Although some Native Americans did try to live under the laws of white Americans, they were eventually betrayed and forced to leave the