"The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes, Native Americans and the Land, Nature Transformed, TeacherServe, National Humanities Center." The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes, Native Americans and the Land, Nature Transformed, TeacherServe, National Humanities Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. .
Towards the development of the United States of America there has always been a question of the placement of the Native Americans in society. Throughout time, the Natives have been treated differently like an individual nation granted free by the U.S. as equal U.S. citizens, yet not treated as equal. In 1783 when the U.S. gained their independence from Great Britain not only did they gain land from the Appalachian Mountains but conflict over the Indian policy and what their choice was to do with them and their land was in effect. All the way from the first presidents of the U.S. to later in the late 19th century the treatment of the Natives has always been changing. The Native Americans have always been treated like different beings, or savages, and have always been tricked to signing false treaties accompanying the loss of their homes and even death happened amongst tribes. In the period of the late 19th century, The U.S. government was becoming more and more unbeatable making the Natives move by force and sign false treaties. This did not account for the seizing of land the government imposed at any given time (Boxer 2009).
The process of assimilation, as it regards to the Native Americans, into European American society took a dreaded and long nearly 300 years. Initially, when the European’s came to the hopeful and promising land of the “New World”, they had no desire or reason anything but minimal contact with the Indians. However, starting in the 1700s the European colonists population skyrocketed. The need for more resources became evident and the colonists knew they could attain these necessities by creating a relationship of mutual benefit with the Native tribes. The Indians, at first skeptical, however became growingly open to the colonists and the relationship they were looking to attain. Indian furs were traded for colonial goods and military alliances were formed.
The history of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples of the North America and European settlers represents a doubtlessly tragic succession of events, which resulted in a drastic decline in Indigenous population leading to the complete annihilation of some Native groups, and bringing others to the brink of extinction. This disastrous development left the Indigenous community devastated, shaking their society to its very pillars. From the 1492 Incident and up to the 19th century the European invasion to the North America heavily impacted the social development of the Indigenous civilization: apart from contributing to their physical extermination by waging incessant war on the Indian tribes, Anglo-Americans irreversibly changed the Native lifestyle discrediting their entire set of moral guidelines. Using the most disreputable inventions of the European diplomacy, the colonizers and later the United States’ government not only turned separate Indigenous tribes against each other but have also sown discord among the members of the same tribe. One of the most vivid examples of the Anglo-American detrimental influence on the Native groups is the history of the Cherokee Nation and the U.S. Indian Removal Policy. The Cherokee removal from Georgia (along with many other Indian nations) was definitely an on-going conflict that did not start at any moment in time, but developed in layers of history between the Native Americans, settlers of various cultures, and the early U.S. government. This rich and intricate history does not allow for easy and quick judgments as to who was responsible for the near demise of the Cherokee Nation. In 1838, eight thousand Cherokees perished on a forced march out of Georgia, which came to be called the T...
Johansen, Bruce E., Pritzker, Barrym. Ed. Encyclopedia of American Indian History. Vol I. Santa Barbara: ABC.CLIO Inc, 2005. Print.
Debo, Angie. A History of the Indians of the United States. 6th ed. Norman: aaaaaUniversity of Oklahoma Press, 1979.
“The fact that we were unconsciously part of a plan to weaken and cross out the Indianness in you, to pattern your land with our grain and beets and corn and alfalfa now clearly hits me. It is like a blow to the gut to learn that the years spent on the reservation, the times wading in the Wind River, were not the free years of childhood, but the manipulations of a power hungry to exonerate itself, to free itself, to purge the treaties of any real meaning or responsibility. They stole from me my innocence, leaving me a co-conspirator, an enemy to the children I grew with ton the prairie, drove us apart when we could have and should have forged an alliance for our own survival. The force of this unremitting design has killed many of my friends and acquaintances and left me forever with a feeling of unintentional complicity and sadness.” (Wind River, Wunder)
Talking Back to Civilization , edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, is a compilation of excerpts from speeches, articles, and texts written by various American Indian authors and scholars from the 1890s to the 1920s. As a whole, the pieces provide a rough testimony of the American Indian during a period when conflict over land and resources, cultural stereotypes, and national policies caused tensions between Native American Indians and Euro-American reformers. This paper will attempt to sum up the plight of the American Indian during this period in American history.
Alice, N. (2006). Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America. (p. 41). Greenwood Publishing Group. Westport Connecticut. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2013 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ghv-E7OuBlMC&dq=how+iroquois+daily+lives+were+carried+out&source=gbs_navlinks_s
It had previously been the policy of the American government to remove and relocate Indians further and further west as the American population grew, but there was only so much...
Grinde, Donald, and Bruce Johansen. Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 1995. Print.
Banks, D., Erodes, R. (2004). Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement. Ojibwa Warrior. Retrieved January 20, 2005, from http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=0-8061-3580-8
The movement westward during the late 1800’s created new tensions among already strained relations with current Native American inhabitants. Their lands, which were guaranteed to them via treaty with the United States, were now beginning to be intruded upon by the massive influx of people migrating from the east. This intrusion was not taken too kindly, as Native American lands had already been significantly reduced due to previous westward conquest. Growing resentment for the federal government’s Reservation movement could be felt among the native population. One Kiowa chief’s thoughts on this matter summarize the general feeling of the native populace. “All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don’t want to give away any of it” (Edwards, 203). His words, “I don’t want to give away any of it”, seemed to a mantra among the Native Americans, and this thought would resound among them as the mounting tensions reached breaking point.
Perdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 85-86.
Utley, R., Wilcomb, W. The American Heritage History of The Indian Wars. New York: American Heritage.