1.Discuss the different approaches of the federal government toward the Plains Indians. The different Approaches the Federal Government wanted to use in dealing with the plains Indians in the late 1800's and early 1900's came down to either assimilate them into American Culture, or to completely eradicate Native American way of life by killing them off and destroying their economy. Many people such as Philip H. Sheridan wanted to destroy The Native American way of Life by setting out to destroy the foundations of the Indian economy like their villages, horses, and especially the buffalo. Methods were implicated against the Plains Indians that were once used against the Confederacy. The Massacre of Wounded Knee is a fitting example of such …show more content…
Most officials believed that the federal government should persuade or force the Plains Indians to surrender most of their land and to exchange their religion, communal property, nomadic way of life, and gender relations for Christian worship, private ownership, and small farming on reservations. in 1887the Dawes Act broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to Indian families, with the remainder auctioned off to American buyers. Indians who accepted the farms and adopted the habits of civilized life would become full-fledged American citizens. The policy proved to be a disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cultural traditions. Americans, however, benefited greatly. Other laws and treaties in the nineteenth century offered Indians the right to become an American citizen if they left the tribal setting and become a part of American society. But tribal identity was the one thing nearly every Indian wished to maintain, and very few took advantage of these offers. Thus, few Indians were recognized as American citizens. After WWI congress made all Native Americans US
Many Americans were influenced by the Homestead Act which gave them 160 Acres of land as long as they maintained the land for 5 years. Eventually, the Native Americans no longer had somewhere to go. They decided to sign a treaty with the Americans which granted them a small reservation in which no American would cross and a promise that supplies would be sent. However, the supplies never came and Americans continued to cross into the reservation. The Native Americans wanted to fight back but they were powerless against the American’s
After the Civil War ended many people were in hope of finding land since population was increasing. Since the West was underdeveloped and uncivilized, many decided to expand the land. First the Louisiana Purchase increased the opportunity of expansion. Then industrialization and the Homestead Act also caused many companies encouraged to move West due to the low cost of land and that the transportation was provided through the railroads. In order to complete such goals, something had to be done with the Natives since it conflicted with their home area.
Post Civil War and the Gilded Age Chonda Simon Columbia Southern University American History II Professor Anthony Gole June 28, 2017 The Dawes Act was the law passed by the Congress in 1887 aimed at dividing reservations and allotted pieces of land owned by individual Indians to foreign settlers. The government would confiscate private land and sell it to another person forcing the original owner of the land to look for alternative settlement area. Large groups of white settlers and US cavalry migrate towards the West in the 1800s. The groups fought Indian tribes forcing them to vacate their lands where they had lived for many years.
More indians tribes were destroyed during war with the whites, and since the Native Americans did not have as much technology, food, and medicine as the whites, they lost a lot of warriors. Many Native Americans would leave their tribes in search for food only to be confronted and ambushed by white soldiers. Some Native Americans chose to surrender rather than to be moved to a different location. After the Indian and American War, the General Allotment Act was passed, also known as The Dawes Act of 1887. The Dawes Act granted Native Americans land allotments.
The Indians did establish schools, develop written language and laws and even became sedentary farmers. Even though they had done all this to become a citizen they were still not recognized. They gave up hunting to adapt the European-American culture. The policy was designed to remove the Native Americans by the American government. The Indian Removal Act was not just created in the 1830’s but was culminated in the nineteenth century.
Class, When considering the events regarding the Plains Indians there are three things that come to mind first as contributing factors to the decline of their culture. The existence of the buffalo was seriously threatened. The white pioneers brought disease not experienced by the Indians. The federal government fought them with “military force”.
From 1865 onward, Native American culture was greatly changed by the westward expansion of the united states. Government action effectively destroyed native culture. The US was not justified in its ruthless westward expansion because of the harm dealt to the native people and the change in the American economy. One reason that westward expansion was not justified was the damage done to the native people. When the US really started to settle the west in 1865, we would offer chiefs compensation to move their tribes farther west or on to reservations.
No other transformation was more measurable in the west was the Assault on Indian way of life caught by miners and settlers who grasped their homes and federal Government extortion, (Doc C) by the 1890s Native Americans reservations had been the aftereffect on Most Indians, natives effortlessly combated to preserve their assets. Bison and buffalo had been their Linked article commonly utilizing it for food, clothing and trade. Promptly of the millions of
The issue of invading American Indian territory quickly became a problem. The new residents of the West also required food, which was quickly reducing the population of the American Bison. As stated by General Sheridan the buffalo hide hunters were “destroying the Indians’ commissary.” (Roark, James L; Johnson, Michael P; Cohen, Patricia Cline; Stage, Sarah; Hartmann, Susan M;, 2014). The Dawes Act created in 1887, divided Indian land and distributed it to individual Indians. This Act made the American government provide protected land to the American Indians and provide allotments (Roark, James L; Johnson, Michael P; Cohen, Patricia Cline; Stage, Sarah; Hartmann, Susan M;, 2014).
Lilly Fuller-Delmont 1/17/18 S.S8 DBQ Essay Per.3 In the mid 18th century settlers moved to the west. Their move brought them more opportunities and a better lifestyle on the frontier. Such as the transcontinental Railroad.
Many tribes had cultural ties to the environment itself. When the Americans established the Indian Removal Act, the Native Americans were forced to leave these cultural grounds. Those who refused to leave their original homeland had to conform to the ways of colonial life instead
First of all, Native Americans were settled on a hotbed of natural resources which included oil and precious metals such as silver and gold. There was also much fertile land that would entice farmers and frontiersmen to move out west. On this land there was so much potential economic opportunity for farmers, cattle drivers, miners and many other occupations. The government developed the popular public misconception that the indians were misusing the land and that Americans had the right to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in the west. These ideas led to the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 which authorized encroachment of Indian lands by the US government in order to divide up reservations and control Indian activity.
In order to control even more the natives, another Indian Appropriation Act was passed in 1871. It said that Indian tribes were no longer seen as an indepedent nation but that all Indians were just individuals, like everyone. But also that they were "wards" of the federal government. This obviously made the natives less powerful, because as a tribe, they were numerous so they had more power and they could have treaties with the government. But with the act, it did not work anymore.
The Allotment Act The Dawes Act and its supporters sang a very similar tune to southerners who justified slavery as their patriarchal and christian duty. The Dawes Act allowed the President of the United States to survey the reservations Indians lived on and allot its land to heads of households, single persons over eighteen, and to orphans. This meant that the President went into reservations and redistributed the land, upsetting the system Native Americans had previously. Slave owners of the Antebellum South believed that the Black men and women needed to be enslaved, for they could not function without a patriarchal master. Westerners too saw the Native Americans as inferior, and felt that they had to help the tribal people be free of
Throughout the 19th century Native Americans were treated far less than respectful by the United States’ government. This was the time when the United States wanted to expand and grow rapidly as a land, and to achieve this goal, the Native Americans were “pushed” westward. It was a memorable and tricky time in the Natives’ history, and the US government made many treatments with the Native Americans, making big changes on the Indian nation. Native Americans wanted to live peacefully with the white men, but the result of treatments and agreements was not quite peaceful. This precedent of mistreatment of minorities began with Andrew Jackson’s indian removal policies to the tribes of Oklahoma (specifically the Cherokee indians) in 1829 because of the lack of respect given to the indians during the removal laws.