Lakota Indians

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Lakota History

Throughout North American expansion the Lakota people have suffered some of the worst and straight forward persecutions against Native American Indians, and live in some of the poorest if not the poorest conditions in the United States. This is sad for a people who use to be one of the strongest nations in the Central Plains, feared by white men and other Indian nations alike for their ferocity and warrior abilities in the heat of battle. The Lakota arrived at positions of dominance because of their success in controlling live¬stock, land, trading rights, and people. Wars for conquest were motivated principally by these practical considerations, not driven by aggressive instincts. Their success in this respect rested on significant socioeconomic transformations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Lakota adapted their traditional way of life to an equestrian buffalo-hunting economy which followed the herds around the plains and expanded their territory. Because of this the Lakota experi¬enced political and social decentralization during their movement onto the prairies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some political consolida¬tion occurred during the nineteenth century, but only after they had achieved dominance in the northern central plains.

One of the most famous and controversial Lakota people is Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala, for years he frustrated he United Stats government efforts to open up the west by way of the Bozeman trail. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and other Lakota warriors were constantly attacking white settlers and miners crossing their territory to reach the gold fields of Montana. The most famous of these was the Fetterman Massacre of 1866, on the bitterly cold mo...

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...ll parties that they can agree on. Whether it be that the sacred lands be given back with little or no delay by the local people of the area, or to take monies from the tourism business in order to improve the conditions and education on the reservations, in a hope to make right a wrong that has been repeated throughout history not only to the Lakota people but to indigenous people everywhere. And to be used a model for further disputes to come in the future, because we all know that when it comes to mankind there will always be disputes between peoples.

Bibliography

Facing East from Indian Country by Daniel K Richter

Major Problems in American Indian History by Albert L Hurtado and Peter Iverson

“We are Still Here” American Indians in the Twentieth Century by Peter Iverson

Our Hearts Fell to the Ground by Colin G Calloway

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