Essay On Blackfeet

The confluence of Native American and white culture resulted in a myriad of social, political, and cultural changes that dramatically altered the daily lives of the Blackfeet nation. Many of these changes benefited the lives of the Blackfeet; however the vast majority of these cultural collisions resulted in the decay and decline of the Blackfeet way of life. Consequently, these changes not only impacted the Native Americans, but it also resulted in the near mass extinction of the Buffalo as well as other detrimental impacts upon the environment.

White settlers were also affected by the creation of the Dawes Act. However, unlike their Native American counterparts, they greatly benefited from it. White settlers gained a massive amount of tribal land, which they used for agriculture.

With good intentions congress upheld the Dawes Severalty act in 1887. It ended the reservation policy and encouraged Native Americans to intergrade into white society, as farmers and property owners.

Despite political talks, the government and settles saw that the Natives were not going to give up their lands. So in 1800s they saw that the Natives had one weakness, and that was there food source. The government sent the military to go and kill the buffalo. Trappers and traders were paid $2.00 to $3.00 for each buffalo hide taken. They used the railroads to ride out west and the companies would allow settlers to shoot as many buffalo as they want. In the winter of 1872-1873 more than 1.5 million buffalo hides were

The event which impacted the ending wars between the United States Army and the Indian nations was the passing of the Dawes Act. One of the top arguments facing the government was the concept that many reformers inferred about the dream of conforming the Indians into a piece of our countries’ white culture. The Dawes Act divided reservations into sections consisting of 160 acres per family to live in; therefore, the remainder of the land would be given to the surrounding white settlements. Although the Dawes Act seemed like a great benefit for the Indians, in many instances this was not true. The Indians’ lives were greatly affected by this act; the natives as the original land owners for generations

Native Americans thrived from nature and their way of life depended on the land of the grassy Great Plains. Their life changed due to horses, and then afterward guns, being introduced to them by the Spanish; which made it easier for them to move and hunt. As settlers moved in, the Native nations were treated poorly and had little to no ability to stand up for what they believed in and how they wanted to live with all the restrictions laid upon them. The federal government made policies towards them when settling in the west such as The Concentration Policy, “relocation”, and The Dawes Severalty Act, which lead to many warfares.

The Native Americans were exhausted when they touched base in Oklahoma, . Most of their belongings were lost on the trail. They felt betrayed and cheated by the government, who guaranteed them nourishment and supplies. With no learning of this new place, the Native Americans had no real option except to take what they had left to settle. Years later an alternate law would be passed to change the lives of the Native Americans once again. Formally titled the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Dawes Act approved the president of the United States to subdivide tribal reservations into private bundles of area that would then be "assigned" to individuals from every tribe. Intended to detribalise Indians and assimilate them into standard white society by changing them into self supporting ranchers and farmers, the Dawes Act turned into a cultural crisis amongst the Native Americans. The Dawes demonstration was made to attain to six objectives; to separate tribes as a social unit, empower singular activities, further the advancement of local agriculturists, decrease the expense of local organization, secure parts of the reservations as Indian land, and opening the rest of the Native American area to white pilgrims for benefit. All in all, the Dawes Act changed the legal status of Native Americans, and allowed President Cleveland to assimilate

These Americans wanted the Native Americans to assimilate to the American culture. They wanted the Indians to wear blue jeans and to speak English and go to American schools. The Americans feared the Native Americans because their culture seemed

The black had been confined to slavery state and their push to take part in the

In 1887, The Dawes Act was issued by President Grover Cleveland in hopes of dividing every Indian land and selling it into smaller forms offering their own private property which was then auctioned off by white Americans. “Indians who accepted the farms and “adopted the habits of civilized life” would become full fledged American citizens.” Many Indian men, women, and children had to leave their previous lives behind in order to have some sort of freedom. This meant cutting their hair short, wearing non traditional tribal clothing, and practicing christianity.

Though referred to as the Blackfeet or Blackfoot, they prefer to refer to themselves as the Nitsitapiksi, which means “Real People.” This term is not only used by the Blackfeet to refer to themselves but to all First Peoples of the Americas (Ni-tsi-ta-pi-ksi, The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2001, 3). The Blackfoot Nation is a confederacy of three Nations, the Kainai, the Pikani and Siksika (The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2001, 2/3). These three Nations however are more commonly referred to in mainstream literature as the Blood, Peigan, and the Northern Blackfoot or the Blackfeet of Montana and are not the terms chosen by the Blackfeet Nations to refer to them selves (The Blackfoot Gallery Committee, 2001, 2).

Americans who lived in the western frontier feared and resented native Americans. Americans believed that Native Americans were uncivilized, uneducated and lesser people. The Indians occupied land that the whites wanted and that was a problem for the whites. Some Americans thought a good way to rectify this problem was to change and civilize the native Americans. They wanted to convert Indians to Christianity, teach them to read and write English and adopt white American practices. In the southeastern portion of the united states, five Indian tribes embraced these changes. Even though these tribes embraced these changes and tried to conform to the white’s ways, the Americans still wanted their land. At this point the whites didn’t particularly care that they were now somewhat civilized, they just wanted the land so they could make themselves rich off of it. The whites pillaged and burned the homes of the Native Americans, stole livestock and lived on land that they didn’t own to try and force the Native Americans to leave.

The white Anglo-Americans took their land and forced them onto reservations. Reservations were land that was undesirable to the whites. The natives rebelled and out broke “The Indian Wars”. Resistance with Indians began when they started attacking isolated ranches and wagon trains. When the rebellion started, the US army became more involved and because of this involvement natives started targeting white soldiers. The Indians fought because they wanted to take back the territory that was once theirs. White vigilantes took matters into their own hands and created “Indian hunting” which made killing Indians into a sport. People who did not want to do the hunting themselves would reward people to do the dirty work for them. Some Indians were tricked when they were offered to attend peace conferences and ended up dead because they were poisoned or murdered. The Indians, however, did have some success in the Indian wars. For example the battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876, one of the largest assembled Indian army that consisted of 2,500 warriors, surrounded George A. Custer’s regiment and killed every man. The regiment was made up of 264 members. Because of the lack of supplies and political organization the warriors separated into different bands. In 1887 The Dawes Act “provided for the gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners” (Brinkley 463).

The more the white men pushed them away, the more land the Indians lost. Native Americans lost all of their crops and their hunting ground. White men began killing buffalo for sport and wasting the meat and fur. A buffalo shortage ensued. As these Native Americans began relocating, they could not hunt due to the lack of buffalo. Native Americans began to starve and die. The government was barely a part of what was happening to the Native Americans. The government was being told stories about how the Native Americans were savages and killing off many white people including women and children (United States. National

Mostly farming this was a problem for Native Americans to keep up with the demand and the competition of other farmers some Native American farmers were asked if they would sale their horses and equipment to help produce more on other farmers land. Overall after the World War 1 the US government made a lot of changes in their laws that involved Native Americans and mostly their land and their behavior against the US government. The US government had good and bad intentions with their laws involving Native Americans, some laws where to help and gain the respect of Native Americans other where to take away or to devastate them from their