Blog Stage 5

The U.S. Government’s policy towards Native American tribes in the West from 1850 to 1934 was progressively harmful because of the intense pressure to transition into the white culture through forces of violence and land refinement. The Americans were greedy with thoughts of instant wealth with mineral findings and the desire to control a manifest destiny, and the Native Americans stood in their way.
The gruesome fighting that pushed Native Americans out of their designated territories was unjust and the government supported it. The Native Americans had been forced out of their homes once already in the East under President Jackson, and government actions like the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 only made matters more difficult. The Indians had to deal with the carving out of a new state for free blacks for white reformers, but why weren’t the reformers helping the Indians instead of hurting them by taking their land? At the battle of Sand Creek in 1864, the forced surrender of Chief Black Kettle left a massacre. The Native Americans were killed and murdered whether they were men, women or children. The government still made them give up the Sand Creek Reservation despite the tragedy and the supposed “unfairness” they found in it under investigation. More disputes came with the miners desperate for riches. The Sioux sought justice with the Sioux Wars from 1865 to 1867, and lured the army column of William Fetterman into the woods and killed them. The government had enabled the Bozeman Trail for the gold diggers right through the middle of their hunting grounds, and they caught the army flank off guard. This was seen as much bigger event because white men were killed, even though it was less than half of the Indians killed at the Sand Creek Massacre. The U.S. Army came back and crushed the Native Americans in the Red River War of 1874-1875. The Indians were trying to defend their land. The Battle of Little Big Horn was not a massacre of white men, but a compulsively planned act by Custer. Custer wanted to march in and kill the Sioux, but he didn’t know their numbers, and out of defense the 2500 warriors fought back and killed him along with his 265 men. In 1877 the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph were trying to relocate to Canada, but were caught and sent to Oklahoma when their supplies had run out. The innocence taken in the Ghost Dance Movement is quite repulsive. The army intervened on a luck dance of the Native Americans and began shooting at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890. The irreverence of the violence enacted by the government and its army upon Native Americans was ruthless because of the superiority they thought they were entitled.
The policies the Government thrashed upon the Native Americans in order to get more land was vengeful. Once the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 was gone, the U.S. encouraged white settlers to move west for new opportunities. Horace Greeley claimed you would crowd “nobody” by moving into the territory, but he forgot that the Native Americans counted as somebody. His words pushed the Civil War uprisings that headed West out to California and Oregon. In order to clear the way for settlement, the “One Big Reservation” was ablolished. Tribes in 1851 were assigned different territories with the Reservation Plan. The Concentration Policy didn’t work because the Indians needed to “hunt widely” for the buffalo in order to survive. In 1867, the Peace Commissioners tried to abolish resistance from the Sioux Wars with the isolated small reservations. These would gradually push the white man’s culture on the Indians by teaching them farming and “civilizing” them. The Indians were put into two areas, which were both the least desirable parts of the Great Plains. If they did not obey, they would be “killed of” an army commander once said. This encroachment upon a human’s rights was truly stepping into the boundary of genocide. As the 1870s and 1880s rolled around, the goal of the U.S. Government was to eradicate tribal society and “assimilate” the Native Americans. Congress ended treaty practice in 1871 which gave the Indians no more voice in their futures. The Chiefs were weakened, and in 1882, the Court of Indian Offenses was made to have Indians answer in court. Indian schools such as the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania were made to strip the Native Americans of their culture. The Government continued to push for the Native Americans to become like white people with the passing of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. It’s aim was to give land to the Indians in order to establish the “white society” criteria. U.S. Citizenship for all Native Americans was not passed unless the Indian had taken to owning land and abandoning tribal life. The prime land of the Dawes Act was given to the white men anyways in the end. The reality of the U.S. Governments power came in the end with the loss of buffalo on their precious land. The buffalo were the Indians prime resource, and now there weren’t enough left to live off of, thus they had to turn to farming to keep on living. Native Americans were hurt even more when the Burke Act of 1906 came. The act allowed the infringement of land from white people onto the Native American land from the Dawes Act if they were seen as “incompetent”. “Incompetent” was never truly defined, thus they could be kicked off of their land for no reason other than being Native American. The tyranny of the U.S. Government policies towards the Native Americans concerning land and well being were supremacist and one sided in favor of the white Americans.
The brutality of the U.S. Government through its army fighting and land acquisitions in the period of 1850-1934 in the West made the Native Americans suppressed into a new lifestyle that was unwanted. The Government compelled the Native Americans, giving them no choice but to follow the white culture.
Today I choose to beg the question if this is still true? Does the white culture dominate, or has that changed with the election of Barack Obama?? I think that change is gradual...but how far have we really come over the years since the West was won? The government is very influential in the way it leads and who leads it.