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Native american policies
Native american policies
Native American life before colonization
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The Red River War of 1874 During the summer of 1874, the U. S. Army launched a campaign to remove the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indian tribes from the Southern Plains and enforce their relocation to reservations in Indian Territory. The actions of 1874 were unlike any prior attempts by the Army to pacify this area of the western frontier. The Red River War led to the end of an entire way of life for the Southern Plains tribes and brought about a new chapter in Texas history. A number of factors led to the military's campaign against the Indians. Westward-bound settlers came into conflict with the nomadic tribes that claimed the buffalo plains as their homeland during the nineteenth century. To provide a measure of protection for these settlers, the Army established a series of frontier forts. The outbreak of the Civil War resulted in a withdrawal of the military from the western frontier. The Indians took advantage of the situation and aggressively exerted control over the Southern Plains. There was an outcry for the government to take action. The Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 called for two reservations to be set aside in Indian Territoryone for the Comanche and Kiowa and another for the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. According to the treaty, the government would provide the tribes with a variety of basic services and training, housing, food and supplies, including guns and ammunition for hunting. The goods would be allotted to the tribes each year for a thirty-year period and the Indian tribes would be allowed to continue to "hunt on any lands south of the Arkansas River so long as the buffalo may range thereon." In exchange, the Indians agreed to stop their attacks and raids. Ten chiefs endorsed the treaty and many tribal members moved voluntarily to the reservations. But the treaty was destined for failure. Commercial buffalo hunters essentially ignored the terms of the treaty as they moved into the area promised to the Southern Plains Indians. The great southern herd of American bison, lifeblood of the Southern Plains tribes, was all but exterminated in just four yearsfrom 1874 to 1878. The hunters slaughtered the animals by the thousands, sending the hides back East and leaving the carcasses to rot on the plainsand the U.S. government did nothing to stop them. The disappearance of the buffalo impoverished the tribes and forced them to depend on reservation rations.
Many tribes resisted this policy. Wars were fought as a result. The Sac and Fox Indians in Wisconsin and Illinois reoccupied their lands after having been forced to move west of the Mississippi. They were defeated. The Seminole Indians refused to sign a treaty to give up their lands. They, too, fought and lost a bitter war to remain on their land.
However, the issues that the southern Plains tribes faced did not end there: intensive pastoralism brought on negative environmental impacts that led to the decline of the bison population.
... the unwilling tribes west of the Mississippi. In Jackson’s letter to General John Coffee on April 7, 1832, he explained that the Cherokees were still in Georgia, and that they ought to leave for their own benefit because destruction will come upon them if they stay. By 1835, most eastern tribes had unwillingly complied and moved west. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1836 to help out the resettled tribes. Most Cherokees rejected the settlement of 1835, which provided land in the Indian territory. It was not until 1838, after Jackson had left office, that the U.S. Army forced 15,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia. The hardships on the “trail of tears” were so great that over 4,000 Cherokees died on their heartbreaking westward journey. In conclusion, the above statement is valid and true. The decision the Jackson administration made to remove the Cherokee Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River was a reformulation of the national policy. Jackson, along with past Presidents George Washington, James Monroe, and Thomas Jefferson, tried to rid the south of Indians This process of removing the native people was continuous as the years went on.
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.
One species famously affected by these pioneers and settlers was the American Bison, a relic of the last ice age. It is estimated that over 40 million of these great beasts roamed the American Plains in 1800. By 1883 the population was down to less than 6001. What happened? Why did those pioneers, so appreciative of the bounty that the “new” territory had given them, slaughter the bison throughout the 19th century?
To take these lands, American settlers physically invaded the lands to claim as their own, however, they also petitioned the Federal Government to remove the Indians from their native lands. By doing this, they gained the support of the government’s resources and influence, especially President Jackson’s. Using both political and military attacks, the settlers quickly gained the upper hand over the Indians.
Whites thought Indians were savages or odd people and they had all the lands. Georgia wanted the federal government to give land to the Cherokee in the Appalachian Mountain and the government approved Georgia’s request. In 1817 6,000 Cherokee were convinced by Jackson to move voluntarily to the Arkansas Territory, but most of them refused. When Jackson was elected as a President, he was committed to move the Cherokee by force. After that, congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the other Indians tribes went, but the Cherokee planned to stay and fight back politically and legally.
S.G. Colley, a U.S. Indian Agent, writes in a Report for the Committee on the Conduct of War, “That notwithstanding his knowledge of the facts as above set forth, he is informed that Colonel Chivington did, on the morning of the 29th of November last, surprise and attack said camp of friendly Indians and massacre a large number of them, (mostly women and children,) and did allow the troops of his command to mangle and mutilate them in the most horrible manner” (Colley, 1865). This quote shows the Americans were exterminating innocent American Indians for no justifiable reason. For Americans to expand west the Indians would have to leave the picture. Americans wanted to acquire more land and take advantage of the newfound resources, however with the Native Americans were residing in the land it, caused more difficulties. This was largely the reason why Americans felt there was a need to kill Indians or move them. Americans were also strong believers in Manifest Destiny, “the belief that the United States had a “God-given” right to aggressively spread the values of white civilization and expand the nation from ocean to ocean” (American Promise: A History of the United States). Americans didn 't believe in the Native Americans way of life or culture and strongly felt the need for Americans culture to conquer. This was
The Lone Wolf v Hitchcock case was only part of the long line of judicial measures that relocated Native Americans from their homelands, forced them into reservations, and eventually took their culture away from them. The Medicine Lodge Treaty was suppose to give the Kiowa-Comanche reservation complete use and occupancy of those lands. There was also supposed to be a ¾ approval from the males of the three tribes. Then when the Allotment Act came about, it violated the rule under the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
Beginning in the 1860s and lasting until the late 1780s, government policy towards Native Americans was aggressive and expressed zero tolerance for their presence in the West. In the last 1850s, tribal leaders and Americans were briefly able to compromise on living situations and land arrangements. Noncompliance by Americans, however, resumed conflict. The beginning of what would be called the "Indian Wars" started in Minnesota in 1862. Sioux, angered by the loss of much of their land, killed 5 white Americans. What resulted was over 1,000 deaths, of white and Native Americans. From that point on, American policy was to force Indians off of their land. American troops would force Indian tribe leaders to accept treaties taking their land from them. Protests or resistance by the Indians would result in fighting. On occasion, military troops would even lash out against peaceful Indians. Their aggression became out of control.
Throughout the book Black Elk Speaks, the bison is very important to the people of the Sioux tribe. The bison provided food, shelter, and clothing to the people so when the whites would kill the bison just to kill, it took all of that away from them. “I can remember when the bison were so many that they could not be counted,
The government ordered for all of the buffalo to be killed to get rid of all of the Native Americans food resources. Before the Indian Wars, the buffalo had a population of 50 million across the United States. After the Indian Wars, the population was 15 million. Thus, leading to the decrease of the population if the Native American.
During the late 1860s the Red River Settlement was rapidly changing and along with these changes came multiple causes and conflicts that would subsequently to a resistance called the Red River Rebellion. Many profound changes occurred in the Red River Settlement that had caused problems and hostility among the inhabitants to emerge such as:the arrival of Canadians to the settlement, the economic problems and the decline of the Hudson Bay Company. However, the Red River Rebellion was sparked by the Hudson Bay Company selling Rupert’s Land to the new Dominion of Canada without consulting with the inhabitants nor paying any regards to their interests.The colonists of the Red River Settlement, many of whom were Metis, feared for their culture and land rights under the dominion’s control. In order to ascertain that their rights would be protected, the Metis set up a provisional government under the leadership of Louis Riel to negotiate an agreement with the new Dominion of Canada that the Red River Settlement and the lands surrounding it, could enter Confederation as the province of Manitoba under their own terms.
The government immediately wanted the land back in exchange for land that they considered useless to them. When the Indians refused to leave, Custer was sent to force them out (Drago, 2008). Military. The Indians were not a conventional military force. Sitting Bull had, in a way, organized a militia to fight for their way of life one last time....
One of the first causes of the Indian Wars was that the settlers were trespassing on Native American’s lands without authorization while they were looking for gold, or just trying to get to Oregon. ...