native
Storyboard Text
- Federal government policies against Native Americans
- Decimation of the Buffalo
- Indian Wars: Sand Creek and Little Bighorn
- Traditional policy of the government was to regard the tribes simultaneously as independent nations and to negotiate treaties with them that were ratified by the Senate. Over time, agreements from tribes seldom survived the pressure of white settlers eager for access to Indian Land. One policy enacted was known as the “Concentration Policy.” This policy, enacted in 1851, assigned each tribe with its own defined reservation, confirmed by separate treaties. This arrangement had many benefits for whites, and little to none for Indians. After a series of bloody conflicts as a result, Congress established an Indian Peace Commision. The commision recommended replacing the “concentration” policy with a plan to move all the Plains Indians into two large reservations.
- Indian Hunting and "Ghost Dance"
- The slaughter of buffalo was detrimental to the life and culture of African Americans. Buffalo was the primary source of food and supplies for Indians, and white Americans began killing them in order to provide supplies for migrants. In 1865. There had been at least 15 million buffalo; a decade later, fewer than a thousand remained. Indian warriors began to feel the need to fight to preserve their way of life.
- Wounded Knee
- In the Sand Creek Massacre, white forces enlisted the help of a large militia. The governor of Colorado then issued all Indians to their outpost for protection. In November 1864, a band of Native Americans led by Black Kettle camped near Fort Lyon on Sand Creek, believing they were protected by the government because they weren't hostile. Colonel Chivington, an American soldier, led a volunteer militia to the camp and slaughtered 133 people. In 1876, General George Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to Little Bighorn to gather up a group of Indians who had fled from their reservation. The tribe warriors, on the other hand, had surprised Custer and his 264-man regiment, killing every single one of them.
- Dawes Act
- Indian Hunting introduced unofficial violence by white vigilantes towards natives. The killing of natives became sort of a hobby. Sometimes killing was in response to Indian raids on white communities. Often it was in service to a more basic and terrible purpose. Considerable numbers of whites were committed to the goal of complete “elimination” of the tribes. The “Ghost Dance” showed a spiritual awakening that repread around revival. It was a mass, emotional dance inspiring ecstatic visions. This new revival inspired visions of the retread of white people from the plains and a restoration of the great buffalo herds. Click to Edit Description
- On December 29, 1890, the Seventh Cavalry (which had once been one of General George Custer's regiment) tried to round up a group of about 350 cold and starving Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Fighting broke out in which 40 white soldiers and more than 300 Indians, including women and children, had died. What precipitated the conflict is a matter of dispute. But the battle soon turned into a one-sided massacre, as the white soldiers turned their revolving cannons on the Indians and mowed them all down in the snow.
- The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 provided for the gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners: 160 acres to the head of the family, 80 acres to a single adult or orphan, and 40 acres to each independent child. The act applied to most of the western tribes. This led to the stoppage of Indian religious practices and the spread of Christianity. The desired effect of the Dawes Act was to get Native Americans to farm and ranch like white homesteaders. An explicit goal of the Dawes Act was to create divisions among Native Americans and eliminate the social cohesion of tribes. Obviously, Indians weren’t satisfied, but at the same time, they had nothing they could do. Whites successfully settled the American west only at the expense of the region’s indigenous peoples.
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