Analysis Of After The Frontier: Separation And Absorption In US Indian Policy

White residents of the United States clashed with the Indigenous people on land, food, and rights, without a permanent compromise. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson proposes to move all Indigenous people within America’s current territory to reservations. After being pursued for nearly thirty years, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes agreed for their removal. This would allow whites to live their civilized lives as the Indigenous people cast off their savage habits in remote reservations. President Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act shows that those of power and majority decide the terms of segregation.

Wolfe discusses the evolution of the methods used by European colonists to eliminate the Native Americans and take control and settle in their lands. He plots the shifting course of the strategies used to incorporate Indians into US society, going in chronological order. He starts by discussing Indian Removal becoming obsolete. He then describes the system of allotment, where Indians were given individuals plots of land to farm and manage. Finally, Wolfe discusses Blood Quantum, the method of evaluating one’s “Indian-ness.”

Native Americans who emigrated from Europe perceived the Indians as a friendly society with whom they dwelt with in harmony. While Native Americans were largely intensive agriculturalists and entrepreneurial in nature, the Indians were hunters and gatherers who earned a livelihood predominantly as nomads. By the 19th century, irrefutable territories i.e. the areas around River Mississippi were under exclusive occupation by the Indians. At the time, different Indian tribes such as the Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees had adapted a sedentary lifestyle and practiced small-scale agriculture. According to the proponents of removal, the Indians were to move westwards into forested lands in order to generate additional space for development through agricultural production (Memorial of the Cherokee Indians).

One thing must also be considered in the Allotment Act: The act looked to make Native Americans into US citizens. Reformers believed that Native Americans should adopt to the ways of white people so as a result looked to generally improve the lives of these Plains

“Then later you tried to divide our land up and give us little pieces, you tried to make us have last names and marriage certificates, like we were white people,” (Nerburn 272). Undoubtedly, the U.S. was trying to change the way the Natives lived and

As the Indians now had land to live on, and didn’t have to worry about maintaining the land as much. The way the Indians were able to have land was because they lived on reservations. Reservations, were controversial, but they did give pretty stable land to the Indians. On the topic of reservations, Bennett Elmer said, “The 1851 Indian Appropriation Acts allocated funds to move Western tribes onto reservations.”

The United States gave the Indians time to move west and those that had not done so by choice were forced. The removal of the Indians was a long going issue for The United States, that no one knew just how to deal with. “Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was simply to “civilize” the Native

According to the article, “Move the Cherokee to Indian Territory”, it says, “ It is estimated that there are no more than 50,000 Indians in the southwest, which represents more than one square mile per person”. That is a lot of land for the Indians. Technically, each person could get one square mile of land for themselves. Also, the same article states that, “Not only were they given the land in Indian Territory for free, but they were also given $5 million.” The Americans were offering so much for the Indians, but none of them were grateful enough to accept it.

Over the years, the Americans had created several policies relating to the use and ownership of Indian land. Plots of land, which are called reservations, were drawn up and reserved for the Indians. Although the Indians were given land to live on, most them had chosen not to move. There was a lot of pressure,

When the Europeans began colonizing the New World, they had a problematic relationship with the Native Americans. The Europeans sought to control a land that the Natives inhabited all their lives. They came and decided to take whatever they wanted regardless of how it affected the Native Americans. They legislated several laws, such as the Indian Removal Act, to establish their authority. The Indian Removal Act had a negative impact on the Native Americans because they were driven away from their ancestral homes, forced to adopt a different lifestyle, and their journey westwards caused the deaths of many Native Americans.

Losing one’s cultural knowledge, and therefore the reality of their culture, allows others to have control over their collective and individual consciousness as well as their destiny. In this case, it is clear that the United States government has had the dominant relationship over the Native

In the book, The Cherokee Removal, Perdue and Green argue that the Cherokee Nation was treated unfairly by the U.S. Government in the 1800s. The majority of Americans were not fond of the Native Americans, and the Americans felt as if the Native Americans were on their rightfully owned property. Perdue and Green display how the states were trying to remove the Natives when they write, “A state could use its legal institutions to make life for Indians so miserable that they would gladly sell their lands and flee to the West” (Perdue and Green, 73).

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended the allocation of lands to individual Native Americans, encouraged them to preserve their culture, and to develop their own governments. It allowed tribes become sovereign nations. This act created a cultural resurgence but halted economic progress for the tribes. The political structure of the tribes were also unstable and

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.

If that were not the case we would not be witnessing significant disparities in poverty, illness, criminalization, and injustice of Native Americans in particular. These outcomes reveal the long-lasting insufferable consequences of assimilation policies that were enforced during the 18th and 19th centuries, furthermore, perpetuated in Richard Pratt’s