Native American Reservation Life and History

1235 Words3 Pages

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. Indians had been moved around much earlier than the nineteenth century, but The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the first legal account. After this act many of the Indians that were east of the Mississippi river were repositioned to the west of the river. Tribes that refused to relocate ended up losing much of their land to European peoples (Sandefur, p.37). Before the Civil War in the U.S. many farmers and their families stayed away from the west due to a lack of rainfall (Nash et al., 2010). Propaganda in newspapers lured Americans and many other immigrants to the west to farm. The abundance of natural grasses in the west drew cattlemen and their families as well. On top of the farming craze, mining soon became very popular. Towns centered on mining would emerge, but shortly after they would disappear. This caused the Indians to move according to the mining towns. All this movement in the west caused life to become even more difficult for the Native Americans. When Americans and immigrants moved to the west they brought disease and violence with them. Ninety percent of Native Americans died after the gold rush in California (p. 501 Nash et al., 2010). These movements west of the Mississippi river caused the newly relocated Indians to give up some of th... ... middle of paper ... ...r housing. The living conditions are making life harder for these already broken people. Works Cited CanupawakpaDakota. (2011, November 12). Children of the Plains [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GACcBe9Be58 Grant, U. (1873, March 4). Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1873) Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3557 Nash, G. B., Jeffery, J., Howe, J., Winkler, A., Davis, A., Mires, C., et al. (2010). The American people: creating a nation and a society. (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education Sandefur, G. (n.d.). American Indian reservations: The first underclass areas? Retrieved April 28, 2014, from http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc121f.pdf Ushistory.org. (n.d.). Life on the Reservations. Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://www.ushistory.org/us/40d.asp .

Show More
Related

  • Did the North Win the Civil War before it Began?

    1097 Words  | 3 Pages

    Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. D.C. Heath and Company, Mass. © 1990

    Read More

  • The American West: A Land of Opportunity

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    The availability of inexpensive land in the American West provided opportunity for many Americans to fulfill the American dream of individualism, economic opportunity and personal freedom. Immigrants, former slaves and other settlers moved across the country to become western farmers and ranchers to make a new life. One of the reasons why the west was a land of opportunity for the farmers and ranchers was the large quantity of cheap available land. This allowed for many Americans, both rich and poor, to buy land for farming and raising cattle. The Homestead Act of 1862 aided the process. The Homestead Act gave title to 160 acres of federal land to farmers who staked a claim and lived on the land for five years. Alternatively, a farmer could buy the land after six months for $1.25 an acre. Many blacks and immigrants joined the westward expansion, looking for a better life. Immigrants saw the land as opportunity because many could not own land in the countries where they were born. For example, in Nebraska, a fourth of the population was foreign born. These immigrants transformed...

    Read More

  • The Passamaquoddy Indians

    1933 Words  | 4 Pages

    In order to make more eastern land available for settlement, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This enabled the President of the United States to have power physically to move eastern Indian tribes to land west of the Mississippi River. Indian Title did not grant the Indians the power to sell their own lands. The result of which was that, the Indians went uncompensated for their lands and the Original Indian Title was forsaken. Although more than 70,000 Indians had been forcibly removed in a ten-year journey westward, a trip that became known as the "Trail of Tears," the Passamaquoddy Indians remained in the northeast. This was possibly due to their remoteness and harsh winters of the North Atlantic coast.

    Read More

  • The Sectionalism of the 19th Century

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.

    Read More

  • Dbq Indian Removal Act

    1284 Words  | 3 Pages

    Back in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. This act required the government to negotiate treaties that would require the Native Americans to move to the west from their homelands. Native Americans would be moved to an area called the Indian Territory, which is Oklahoma and parts of Kansas and Nebraska. Some tribes that were to be moved are Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. All of the other tribes had relocated in the fall of 1831 to the Indian Territory besides the Cherokee who did not relocate until the fall of 1838.

    Read More

  • Influence of Settlers on the Indians

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 1830's the Plains Indians were sent to the Great American Deserts in the west because the white men did not think they deserved the land. Afterwards, they were able to live peacefully, and to follow their traditions and customs, but when the white men found out the land they were on was still good for agricultural, or even for railroad land they took it back. Thus, the white man movement westward quickly began. This prospect to expand westward caused the government to become thoroughly involved in the lives of the Plains Indians. These intrusions by the white men had caused spoilage of the Plains Indians buffalo hunting styles, damaged their social and cultural lives, and hurt their overall lives.

    Read More

  • Displacement and Mistreatment of Native Americans

    2250 Words  | 5 Pages

    The removal of Indian tribes was one of the tragic times in America’s history. Native Americans endured hard times when immigrants came to the New World. Their land was stolen, people were treated poorly, tricked, harassed, bullied, and much more. The mistreatment was caused mostly by the white settlers, who wanted the Indians land. The Indians removal was pushed to benefit the settlers, which in turn, caused the Indians to be treated as less than a person and pushed off of their lands. MOREEE

    Read More

  • The American Revolution: NOT Really Revolutionary

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nash, G. and Jeffrey, J. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. Brief 4th

    Read More

  • Westward Expansion Research Paper

    1114 Words  | 3 Pages

    “By 1840 almost 7 million Americans had migrated westward in hopes of securing land and being prosperous” (Westward Expansion Facts. Westward Expansion Facts. N.p., n.d Web. 16 Sept. 2016). This movement is called Western Expansion. The movement brought new beginnings and hope to many northerners and southerners. Western expansion not only affected the lives of many Americans, but the Natives living on the land. Throughout the 1860s to 1890s, the movement West altered the lives of Native Americans forever. Settlers deconstructed the Native Americans land in the mindset to grow their economy. Americans attacked and killed large amounts of Natives for no reasonable reason. Also, in hopes to Americanize the natives, they taught and imposed their

    Read More

  • The Racial Frontier: Black Towns in Oklahoma

    1103 Words  | 3 Pages

    Oklahoma, in its earliest organized forms, consisted of over forty independent Native American Nations, though they arrived through a complex process. Native American migration predated European contact but by the mid eighteenth century Native American nations saw their lands being progressively threatened by Euro-American settlement. Migratory push/pull factors such as warfare, famine, and encroachment resulted in movements of native cultures for centuries. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century Native American migratory patterns began to be forced and regulated on European terms. Treaties, lands sales, and forced relocations onto predetermined reservations changed the way Native Americans would relate to the land and their environment, as well as, intertribal relations. By the 1820s and 1830s most Native American nations had ceded their lands east of the Mississippi River to the newly created United States by treaty or ultimately through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 further defined ‘Indian Territory’ as “all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the states of Missouri, Louisiana, or Arkansas Territory, or any other organized territory.” Over time, this vast reserved land shrank to the limits of Eastern Oklahoma as the insatiable demand for cheap land for white settlers increased.

    Read More

  • Native American Policy

    622 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 30 years after the Civil War, although government policy towards Native Americans intended to shift from forced separation to integration into American society, attempts to "Americanize" Indians only hastened the death of their culture and presence in the America. The intent in the policy, after the end of aggression, was to integrate Native Americans into American society. Many attempts at this were made, ranging from offering citizenship to granting lands to Indians. All of these attempts were in vain, however, because the result of this policies is much the same as would be the result of continued agression.

    Read More

  • How Native Americans Were Forced to Reservations

    740 Words  | 2 Pages

    When people began migrating from Europe to America many things began to change. There were people who already inhabited this land, but the “new” settlers only saw it as theirs and no one else’s. As the nation grew larger and larger the Natives were pushed further and further west. The Plains Indians were a large group that saw each and every step of this process. They were successful and self sufficient, then they endured the Trail of Tears, and finally they had to depend on the U.S. government for everything. Did these people deserve this? No, they deserved the same treatment everyone else got, but because they were different they were not seen that way.

    Read More

  • Dbq Indian Removal

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was believed that the Southern frontier would gradually expand to the Mississippi River. However, the Southern frontier advanced West much quicker than anticipated, raising a large demand for cotton from the South. This led to the demand for more land along the Gulf Coasts to be opened. As it happens, this land was designated as the Indian lands, such as Florida, Northern Alabama, Northwest Georgia, etc. Because the Indians were not changing their life styles quick enough, Indian removal was thought to be the only practical way to further develop the lands to the Mississippi River. Eastern Oklahoma and Eastern Kansas were the chosen destinations because pf their potential for farming.

    Read More

  • Manifest Destiny: The Expansion Of America

    1528 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is known that Indians moved month by month to accommodate for the weather. When they would leave one spot, they would leave their camps set up, as they would be coming back when the weather allowed. Squatters (people who could not afford to buy land) would come across this land and claim it as their own as there was nobody settled on it. In Andrew Jackson’s State of the Union Address (Document 10), he states, “The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United States, to individual States, and to the Indians themselves…It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the General and State Governments on account of the Indians/ By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably

    Read More

  • Native American Policy: The Board Of Indian Commissioners

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Board of Indian Commissioners was a committee that advised the United States federal government on Native American policy. The committee also had the purpose to inspect the supplies that were delivered to Indian reservations to ensure that the government fulfilled the treat obligations to tribes. The committee was established by congress on April 10th, 1869, and authorized the President of the United States to organize a board of ten or less people to oversee all aspect of Native American policy. President Ulysses S. Grant wanted to come up with a new policy, which would be more humane, with Native American tribes. The policy would be known as the Peace Policy, which aimed to be free of political corruption. This policy was prominent on

    Read More

More about Native American Reservation Life and History

Open Document