The Pros And Cons Of Native Americans

Native Americans are considered the indigenous settlers of America. The Natives nomadic ancestors came from Asia and settled in the region many thousands of year before Christopher Columbus has rediscovered this new territory. Nearly around ten million Native Americans inhabited North America before the Europeans arrived in the 15th century. The natives suffered severely from European diseases and the population precipitously declined. Violence over ethnic and cultural differences, social and political tension arise. As the United States started to develop more intricately, the government passed several policies in the 1830s to the 1930s. Starting with Andrew Jackson when he passed the Indian Removal leading to the Trail of Tears, then to the

This land which the had been reserved for the Indians was now being distributed by the government. There were thousands of landless and hungry Indians due to the white taking over their land. The federal government never removed the illegal settlers, instead, they forced the Natives to sign a new treaty that surrendered more of the Native American’s land. Treaty after treaty the Americans pushed aside the Natives and did not fulfil their promise. The eagerness to enlarge the horizon of the United States and the invasion of white people due to the gold rush, troubled the Indians and sent them into a disastrous downward spiral (Garraty 405, Lecture-21

The Plain tribes were unique because they possessed a uniform culture. They all depended on hunting buffalo for a source of food, clothing and shelter. As the migration to California and Oregon continued to grow, the native’s life and animal migration patterns were affected. They adopted many white technology and culture such as cloth, weapons, horses and many more. A man by the name of Thomas Fitzpatrick persuaded each tribe to have their limits to the hunting ground. This technique provided the government to negotiate treaties separately with each tribe. The U.S. did not honor these treaties and were often broken or altered. The gold rush in Colorado led to the demise of many Natives. Whites were sent to drive the Cheyenne and Arapaho from land that they were guaranteed. In 1884, a Colorado militia surprised attacked the Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek. This massacre was brutal, the Indians were butchered and around 450 Cheyenne died. The government tried to enforce another policy, the concentration policy stated that the Plain Indians would be confined into two small reservations. One was in Black Hills of Dakota Territory and another was located in Oklahoma. This policy was later upheld because when gold was found in the Black Hill in 1874, the whites came rushing in and taking over the territory. The