There have been many controversial laws passed throughout American history that have been a source of outrage across the nation, but one of the arguably most controversial acts made into law is known as the Dawes Act. During the time that this Act was considered by the American government, racial tensions were high against the American people and the Native Americans due to the hunger for land preoccupied by the Natives. Senator Henry Dawes proposed a bill that he and his supporters believed would help reduce tensions and assimilate the supposed savages into what was believed to be a more civilized way of life. The proposed solution was to dissolve the Indian reservations and divide the land among the Indians to give them a way to provide …show more content…
The Native Americans were still seen as a less civilized race, but those against the Act believed that the Indians could become civilized without any guidance. Not to mention that the land given to the natives would more often than not be selected for them, many of the land that was allotted was poor land that made farming next to impossible. The best land would go to the more civilized of the two races or the one with the most wealth. Despite the Indians receiving poor land, there were many occasions where Indians were tricked out of their land allotment before the government would release their title to them. Any land that was gifted to the Natives was either stolen from them or poor quality, the Dawes Act seemed to be more in the White settlers’ interest than the intended party. 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
To many of the English colonists, any land that was granted to them in a charter by the English Crown was theirs’, with no consideration for the natives that had already owned the land. This belittlement of Indians caused great problems for the English later on, for the natives did not care about what the Crown granted the colonists for it was not theirs’ to grant in the first place. The theory of European superiority over the Native Americans caused for any differences in the way the cultures interacted, as well as amazing social unrest between the two cultures.
Dawes Severalty Act (1887). In the past century, with the end of the warfare between the United. States and Indian tribes and nations, the United States of America. continued its efforts to acquire more land for the Indians. About this time the government and the Indian reformers tried to turn Indians.
People know about the conflict between the Indian's cultures and the settler's cultures during the westward expansion. Many people know the fierce battles and melees between the Indians and the settlers that were born from this cultural conflict. In spite of this, many people may not know about the systematic and deliberate means employed by the U.S. government to permanently rid their new land of the Indians who had lived their own lives peacefully for many years. There are many strong and chilling reasons and causes as to why the settlers started all of this perplexity in the first place. There was also a very strong and threatening impact on the Native Americans through the schooling that stained the past and futures of Native Americans not only with blood but also with emotion. It was all a slow and painful plan of the "white man" to hopefully get rid of the Indian culture, forever. The Native American schools were created in an attempt to destroy the Native American way of life, their culture, beliefs and tradi...
Unfortunately, this great relationship that was built between the natives and the colonists of mutual respect and gain was coming to a screeching halt. In the start of the 1830s, the United States government began to realize it’s newfound strength and stability. It was decided that the nation had new and growing needs and aspirations, one of these being the idea of “Manifest Destiny”. Its continuous growth in population began to require much more resources and ultimately, land. The government started off as simply bargaining and persuading the Indian tribes to push west from their homeland. The Indians began to disagree and peacefully object and fight back. The United States government then felt they had no other option but to use force. In Indian Removal Act was signed by Andrew Jackson on May 18, 1830. This ultimately resulted in the relocation of the Eastern tribes out west, even as far as to the edge of the Great Plains. A copy of this act is laid out for you in the book, Th...
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 American Indians were promised change with the American Indian policy, but as time went on no change was seen. “Indian reform” was easy to promise, but it was not an easy promise to keep as many white people were threatened by Indians being given these rights. The Indian people wanted freedom and it was not being given to them. Arthur C. Parker even went as far as to indict the government for its actions. He brought the charges of: robbing a race of men of their intellectual life, of social organization, of native freedom, of economic independence, of moral standards and racial ideals, of his good name, and of definite civic status (Hoxie 97). These are essentially what the American peoples did to the natives, their whole lives and way of life was taken away,
The first amendment is the cornerstone of our American society founded years ago by our forefathers. Without the first amendment many ideas, beliefs, and groups could not exist today. The first amendment guaranteed the people of the United States the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom of petition. Although the first amendment guarantees us, Americans the freedom of speech, we cannot use it to cause others harm. This amendment has helped shaped Americans into what we are today, because of our right to assemble, speak freely, and worship as we please.
Indian policy gradually shifted from this aggressive mindset to a more peaceable and soft line policy. The Indian Wars ended in 1980 with the Battle of Wounded Knee. The battle resulted in over 200 deaths, but also, almost officially, marked a change in Indian policy. Although the change had subtly began before then, policies then became more kind. The Peace Commission created the reservation policy, although this was created 27 years before the Battle at Wounded Knee. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was the greatest of reform efforts. The Act provided the granting of landholding to individual Native Americans, replacing communal tribal holdings. Another policy, the Burke Act of 1906, allowed Indians to become citizens if they left their tribes. Citizenship was eventually granted to all Native Americans in the 1920s.
In Cleveland's view, the Native Americans were wards of the nation, like wayward but promising children in need of a guardian. Regarding himself as an Indian reformer, Cleveland sought to persuade Native Americans to forego their old tribal ways. He sought to be assimilate them into white society by means of education, private land ownership, and parental guidance from the federal government. Though he did not campaign for the bill, he eagerly supported and signed into law the Dawes Act of 1887, which empowered the President to allot land within the reservations to individual Indians—with all surplus land reverting to the public domain. It was a disastrous policy that robbed Native Americans of much of their land and did little to improve their way of life.
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more, if only they had known they were slaves.” Harriet Tubman was a woman known for her important role during the time that led up to the Civil War. She was a woman of incredible strength, courage, and determination. And while Harriet Tubman is credited for giving the slaves an option as to what way they shall spend the rest of their life, the sad truth lies within the quote above. While many people like to believe that slavery was a horrendous act that happened only with small minded people from the south many years ago, that isn’t the case in all honesty. In fact, the idea of slavery was highly debated about and troubled more minds than many are led to believe. While there are
On February 8, 1877, Congress passed the Dawes Act. This was named after its author, and Senator Henry Dawes from Massachusetts. The federal government stopped signing treaties with Native Americans, and replaced that with a new law, giving individual Indians ownership of land that had been tribal property. This showed the treatment of Native Americans as individuals, instead of members of their tribe. It also gave them the chance to be known as U.S citizens. This new policy made its focus on breaking up the reservations and giving the Native Americans land. The entire purpose of the Dawes Act was to protect Indian property rights of Native Americans, but the providing of the law, was fixed in a way that the members of the tribe would be taken
Therefore, the Indian Removal Act was not justified. Needless to say, an agreement is only properly made when both or multiple people involved in the deal give their approval and acceptance to whatever the agreement may be. In this case, with the Native Americans, they did not give their proper consent to the agreement according to the Cherokee appeal to Congress of December 1829. The tribe states, “[This] is the land of our nativity, and the land of our…birth. We cannot consent to abandon it…” This means, the Indians, and specifically the Cherokee tribe, did not give their permission to the law being passed. Knowing this, it was not right for the US to continue with the act since it was not agreed upon. Selfishly, the act was still passed and it forced the unhappy Indians to move. Because the Indians didn’t give their permission, it was quite obvious as to why they were unhappy. This goes on to demonstrate just how unjustified the Indian Removal Act
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...
In the Autobiography, “Narrative Life of Fredrick Douglas: An American Slave,” Fredrick Douglas writes to show what the life of a slave is like, because from personal experience, he knows. Fredrick Douglas not only shows how his life has been as a slave but shows what it is like to be on the bottom and be mistreated. Douglas shows that freedom isn’t free, and he took the initiative to become a free man. Not many African-Americans had the opportunity to make themselves free and were forced to live a life of disparity and torture. Through his experience Douglas shows us the psychological effects of slavery. Through Douglas’s memory we are able to relive the moments that continued to haunt his life. Douglas’s book showed the true
Also the state of Georgia and the citizens did not want Indians to stay on the land. “In 1820, pressure from the government and the people of Georgia made it exceedingly hard for the Cherokees to stay in the state of Georgia”, (Rozema 42). Therefore that is to say the Indians chose to do everything and anything to stay together as a tribe even if it meant they had to move across the country for that. This then led to the Indian Removal Act. This was the first major legislature that said the U.S. would no longer respect the legal and political rights of the Indians. The Act gave President Andrew Jackson a grant to acquire the Indian tribe’s unsettled western lands in exchange for their territories within the state borders in the Southeast, where they would be removed from. The Indians were forced to accept the land exchange and the removal