Mean Spirit
Our story takes place on an oil-rich Native American town, called Watona, on a reservation in Oklahoma. The course of the story extends from 1918 to the mid-twenties.
There is a multitude of characters that accompany this story. One of the most important characters is Nola Blanket, a young teenager who is a full-blooded Osage Indian. She is a very delicate girl but still very strong. Her mother, Grace Blanket, is a very beautiful, well-liked young woman who is very outgoing and fun-loving.
Belle Graycloud is a feisty, strong-willed Indian woman. She is well respected and is the commanding grandmother of her household. Her family is very close to the Blankets, who are distant cousins. Belle’s daughter, Lettie, is a close friend of Grace. Lettie’s lover, Benoit, is an Osage man that is married to Grace’s crippled sister, Sara Blanket; but he is more like a brother and caretaker to her than he is a husband.
Michael Horse is the fire keeper of the Osage tribe, but he also writes in his spare time. He is an old man who observes everything around him and writes it down in his journals.
Stace Red Hawk is a Sioux Indian that works for the FBI. He became a federal agent in hopes of helping the Native Americans and protecting them from being taken advantage of.
John Hale is a tall, lanky white rancher and oilman. He is trusted by the Indians, and seems to be a generous and helpful person.
Watona was a small Indian town that prospered due to the rich rivers of oil flowing beneath it. As part of the Dawes Act, each Indian was allowed to choose an allotment of land not already claimed by white Americans. Although the 160 acres of land per Indian seemed generous, the land was barren and dry. The government did not know, however, that black oil seeped up out of the earth, and many Indians became very wealthy because of their “worthless” pieces of land. As a result of the Indians’ wealth, hundreds of white businessmen, fortune-hunters, traders, thieves, and swindlers swarmed to the reservation to make cash.
When Grace Blanket is murdered by John Hale on a warm summer morning, it is made to look like a suicide and the local law enforcement passes it off as such.
In the legendary period of American history known as the Old West, the law of the whole nation had yet to tame that frontier which was spottily settled. This resulted in lawlessness seen in the personage of those known as outlaws and lawbreakers whose notorious reputations often exceeded their very person to mythical proportions. Belle Starr was one such outlaw. From her association with outlaws such as Jesse James and the Younger brothers, she reached a level of fantastic infamy that today leaves the facts of her life not always distinguishable from the fiction. Belle's life is an odyssey of many marriage's and affairs with felons, petty criminals, and unsavory characters. Belle Starr’s legacy will live on forever reminding us of the past events that still connect with current societies events.
...so that the debt would force Indians to sell their land to the whites (Foner 310). Under the rule of the two parties, Indians had two choices: to give up their land to the whites and move further west or to assimilate themselves into the white society.
On the east coast people were also being taken advantage of by the government. As a result of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, the government began giving out land grants ‒through the Homestead Act of 1862‒ for Americans to live on and farm; the only problem was that another culture was already living on the land: the Sioux Nation. After the S...
Now I will look later into the story and look into how Hale is slowly changing. Towards the end of the first act we finally get to see (or read) John Hale. Because of this there is some direct and indirect characterization by the author. We also get a look at Mr. Hales motives because of this. “Coming into Salem now, Reverend Hale conceives of himself much as a young doctor o...
By 1873, gold was discovered at a time of desperation for the United States. The Black Hills in Lakota territory was abundantly filled with it. The fact that the gold was located in the Great Sioux Reservation mattered not. The U.S. government was going to mine the gold regardless of the consequences. They were desperate and greedy. Their first attempt to gain access was to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux. The Sioux clearly objected and most of the peoples told the government it was not for sale. Those who were agreeable to the sale of this gold rich land asked a higher price than the government was prepared to pay. The government's second attempt and ultimate victory was much more nefarious in nature.
These advocates expected the Native Americans to leave their lands voluntarily. With the promise for land west of the Mississippi there would be no limits to the tribe’s choice of government, assistance, relocation and protection. Jefferson believed that the Indians’ failures were theirs to own and they needed to depend on themselves alone to become numerous and great people. He encouraged them to take the new land and cultivate it, build a home, and leave it to his children. He was failing to tell them that they really didn’t have much of a choice. Boudinot determined that many of the Cherokee people would leave their land if the true state of their condition was made known to them. They were left with only two real alternatives, one to live under the white man’s law or to be forcibly removed to another country. However some American’s worried about the future of the Native Americans. John Ross’s letter to president Jackson believed it was the white man’s duty to relieve the Indians from their suffering. This could only be accomplished by allowing the Native Americans to obtain their land in Georgia under the rights and privileges as free men. Nevertheless no great lands good for farming would be given to the Native Americans and Jackson would sign the Indian removal act. This act would allow the government to exchange fertile land for land in the west, where they would forcibly relocate the Indian
The Dawes Act may have been written in order to keep the Indians safe and thriving, but it was doomed to fail. In the past, multiple treaties and acts have been proposed and passed with what seems to be in the native’s best interest but all have been forsaken and rewritten with less offered time and time again. Lands that were given to the Natives were often not the easiest to tame, nor were they the best to attempt a decent living on. Often times the Indians would even have their land weaseled away. In the end, the Dawes Act was a land-grabbing attempt, and a very successful one at
On February 8, 1887, the United States Congress decided to pass the Dawes Act also known as the General Allotment Act. The Dawes Act was named after its writer Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts. The congressmen who sought to pass and enforce the Dawes Act aimed at pushing the Native Americans into assimilation at a high pace. The reformers of the act also expected Native Americans owning private property to build a foundation on which the natives could support themselves and their families (Stremlau, 265). The Act allowed the President of the United States to break up Indian reservation land into 160 acre allotments, and divide it out among each individual Native American. The Dawes Act Stated, “To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section; To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and to each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section…” (PBS-Archive of the West). The act also determined which tribal lands were too allotted. Tribes such as the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and many mo...
Since the beginning of European colonization whites have taken Native American’s lands in order to expand their own settlements. Throughout the years there have been many disputes and up rises because Indians have refused to give up or sell their lands. With an escalating white population, Native American communities have been disintegrated, killed in conflicts, or forced to move into Indian Territories. The year of 1828 would again demonstrate how white settlers would obtain Native American’s lands with the Cherokee Indian Removal. Known as the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees would start their tragic journey to Indian Territory in which thousands of Indians would die along the way and soon after their arrival due to illnesses or violent encounters. The Cherokee Indian Removal was not only cruel but injustice, the Cherokees shouldn’t have ceded their lands because before the removal they attempted to be “civilized” by the Americans giving up their cultural and religious beliefs and the federal government by treaty had to protect Indians from any state oppressions.
It was thought that God had a plan for Whites to move across both coasts and start the New World. In the painting, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” it shows how difficult and unforgiving the trip westward was (Pohl 163). However, the painting also shows a sigh of relief and excitement that Native American travelers had finally met their destination (Pohl 163). Unfortunately, Native American’s new way of life would be cut short years later due to Andrew Jackson’s secured Passage of the Indian Removal Bill (Pohl 163). This bill was responsible for relocating 70,000 Native Americans to Oklahoma (Pohl 163). The Cherokee who were the most affected group of Native Americans had adopted the living format of Whites. Once they were removed, Whites were able to take over their land. This removal also led to the “Trail of Tears” which ended up taking the lives of 4,000 to 16,000 Cherokee Indians. The Manifest Destiny also caused the uproar and eventual war with
The Indians thought of land very differently to the white man. The land was sacred, there was no ownership, and it was created by the great spirit. They could not sell their land to others, whereas the white people could fence off the land which belonged to them, and sell it freely to whoever they wanted. The Europeans didn't think that the Indians were using the land properly, so in their eyes, they were doing a good favour to the earth. To the Indians, the land was more valuable than the money that the white man had brought with him, even though it didn't belong to them.
The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 brought about the policy of Cultural Assimilation for the Native American peoples. Headed by Richard Henry Pratt, it founded several Residential Schools for the re-education and civilization of Native Americans. Children from various tribes and several reservations were removed from their families with the goal of being taught how to be c...
Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations.
Dorothy Johnson in “A Man Called Horse” writes about a young man who was born and raised in Boston. He lives in a gracious home under his grandmothers and grandfather’s loving care. For some reason, he is discontent. He leaves home to try to find out the reason for his discontent. Upon leaving he undergoes a change in status and opinion of himself and others. He begins a wealthy young man arrogant and spoiled, becomes a captive of Crow Indians- docile and humble, and emerges a man equal to all.
In the article review “ How the West was Lost” the author, William T. Hagan explains that in a brief thirty-eight year period between 1848 and 1886, the Indians of the Western United States lost their fight with the United States to keep their lands. While nothing in the article tells us who Hagan is, or when the article was written, his central theme of the article is to inform us of how the Indians lost their lands to the white settlers. I found three main ideas in the article that I feel that Hagan was trying to get across to us. Hagan put these events geographically and chronologically in order first by Plains Indians, then by the Western Indians.