How Did Technology Affect The Plains Indians

The environment hugely affected the Native American Indians in many different ways. This is because of the way in which the Indians used the environment and the surrounding land. The Indians were very close to nature, and so that meant that any changes in nature would be changes in the Indians.

government has unspecified and unorganized policies, which were unprotected for Native Americans who lived in the west because of all the new coming Americans. During westward expansion, a majority of who moved were whites, who didn’t know the Native Americans who already lived in the west. The Natives felt their land was being conquered, because of the U.S government policies(Louisana Purchase & Homestead Act) and the whites not wanting them to be there, which lead to fighting between the Natives and the whites. These acts and policies such as the Indian Removal Act often resulted in violated treaties and violence. The Indian Removal Act was the removal of Native American homes and tribes. “This also confines the Indians to still narrower limits, destroys that game which in their normal state, and constitutes their principal means of subsistence.” Resulting in westward expansion, Native Americans began rapidly decreasing in the area by wars and new diseases caught by new coming

During westward expansion, the Native Americans got kicked to the side. The settlers coming west often saw the Indians as a threat to them and their families. However, this was not the main reason the Indians were pushed aside. The settlers saw the Indians had fertile land and wanted it for themselves. The Indians were the opposite of what the settlers thought they were. The Indians often helped the people moving west across the plains; giving them food, supplies, and acting as guides. However, the U.S. Government did not see this side of the Indians, instead they forced the Indians onto reservations. During the time of the expansion of the United States to the present, the Native Americans went through many things so that the United States could expand; they were pushed onto reservations, and forced to give up their culture through the Ideas of Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism.

Plains Indians adapted to their environment in that they lacked many natural resources and their landscape was very flat so they were hunting and gathering societies. However, hunting and gathering also transformed their environments when the horse was introduced to them and hunting became much easier and the population of animals decreased.

The Great Plains were home to many Native Americans and several animals, most importantly the buffalo. Life was peaceful for the Native Americans until the railroad started being built and Americans began to expand westward. The Great Plains at first were viewed at in a negative way by the Americans because they thought it was just a “useless wasteland.” Americans thought that this land was too dry for their farming and agriculture. As these railroads were built westward Americans realized how beneficial they actually were. For example, many settlers found no dry land, but millions of acres of fertile soil. Also, cattlemen saw an open range for cattle and the opportunities here started to open up. Although this land was already taken by both Native Americans and buffalo, that meant nothing to the new settlers as they planned to get rid of both of them (Doc 1). I thought that the expansion of the Great Plains was negative for the Indians, but also positive for the Americans. I believe that the expansion of the railroad was positive for the Americans because as I said earlier, it brought them new opportunities find better lives and better land. It was very negative for the Indian because Americans decided to invade their land and get rid of them and

In addition to the social and political changes that impacted the Indians, there were changes aimed at the economy which also negatively affected the Indians. One act that negatively affected the Indians was the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. This act was created to help the construction of a railroad and telegraph lines from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Permission was given to the company creating the railroad that they can take away any land touching that of which the railroad is to be built on within 200 feet in width. Although the railroad was a great impact of Manifest Destiny because it allowed for quicker transportation of goods and people to and from the west, it legally allowed for Indian land titles to be extinguished [Doc 7].

Supposedly a mission to civilize the “savages”. Basically, to convert them into becoming a white American as much as possible, rather than being the dirty savage that they depicted them to be. This included their religion/beliefs, clothing, independence, how they acted, and even simple things like hair style. Children had to go to boarding schools away from their parents and or tribe so that they could not be influenced, and this way they would grow up as a “true American”. “Where they believed the young people could be educated to abandon tribal ways” (Wingerter, Claire. "APUSH Chapter 16 IDs." Flashcards. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.). The Dawes Act did promise citizenship to the Indians who took advantage of this policy and adapted to the life of a “civilized” American, but wasn’t necessarily done nor very helpful. With this act, it “was supposed to encourage Indians to become farmers” ("Digital History." Digital History. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.), but ended up being just another way to eliminate the ownership of land for tribes and transfer that ownership to individual owners. “Federal policy was enshrined in the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 which decreed that Indian Reservation land was to be divided into plots and allocated to individual Native Americans.” (Boxer, Andrew. "Native

By 1890, the vast hunting ground that was so hard fought and won by Red Cloud and the Oglala Sioux would be lost. New treaties scattered the Indians to reservations and opened the last great Native American holding to the settlers so steadily branching outward from the iron road. Although the railroad affected the Native Americans negatively, the railroad affected the settlers and immigrant positively.4 Mixed emotions led to be a problem for some time to come.

Thousands of Native Americans were confined to reservations, and many tribes had to fight for their lands, rights and traditions. The Dawes Act signed by President Grover Cleveland in 1887, was an attempt to protect the property rights of Native Americans. But as history tells, the Dawes Act had a more devastating impact on Native Americans than anything else. Millions of acres were divided, tribes were broken up, and Indians were forced to become “civilized.” I believe the social and political values during this era changed drastically post war, and they were different depending on what class and region you were from.

Throughout the years, following the civil war (1860’s-1900’s), the United States was guilty of genocide on the behalf of the Native Americans. The Natives were discriminated against and were pressured into abandoning the Midwest and the Great Plains due to excruciating circumstances. The Homestead and Pacific Railroad Acts pushed the Native Americans to the brink of existence. The policies within the acts targeted these tribes in order to pursue the goals of the government. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed the selling of hundreds of acres of land to families, therefore tripling the amount of farms from two million to six million in a matter of decades. This led to over 500,000 natives migrating westward, while families inhabiting the former

As to the European settlement, Indians had interacted with the land in a way that minimized their impact. Indians were marked by greater mobility, changing their location of living depending on the season; from agriculture to hunting. Like the "golden age" of Indians living in harmony with nature, their relationship was one in which they changed the landscape but done in a way that was less of any cause of damage as in using fire to clear

This was a contributing factor to the mass extinction of the Native American population. Most tribes lost anywhere from fifty to ninety percent of their people due to illnesses alone (Delema). On May 28, 1830, Andrew Jackson enacted the Indian Removal Act; it was meant to encourage and assist [force] members of the "five civilized tribes" from eastern states to move west into the "Indian Territory" (Delema). "Indian Removal" policy was put into action to clear the land for white settlers. This act led to the Trail of Tears and more atrocities. The tribes decided to travel to the other side of the Mississippi. This commenced a relocation of over 70,000 Native Americans, a destructive movement known as the Trail of Tears (Delema). Many people died from exhaustion and starvation from the long journey. As America was expanding, Native Americans were being pushed farther west and even up into Canada (Delema). With Manifest Destiny and the United States constantly taking shape, the English settlers were much greedier for land and grew less tolerant of the Natives standing in their way. There were numerous amounts of massacres. There was a large migration to the west after the discovery of gold in California in1848 (Delema). The Homestead Act (1862) revived greed for money and land (Delema). In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of the natives by white men. “In California, the decrease from about

Five specific groups were especially affected by industrialization: Native Americans, African Americans, children, farmers, and immigrants. Due to federal and state policies, Native Americans were removed from their traditional land into reservations, which were often smaller, more undesirable land. The Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up reservation lands, was ultimately detrimental to Native Americans. Settlers and federal troops pushed the remaining free tribes off their homelands in the Great Plains, and killed most of the buffalo population on which Native Americans relied for survival (The USA online, n.d.).

Religion changed as well, as Christianity blended with and much of the time subsumed conventional convictions. Maybe the two greatest improvements to impact the lives of Indians were the presentations of the steed and of guns. As of now said, ailments from abroad additionally took an extraordinary toll on local populaces, as did, increasingly,warfare and in addition venereal infection and

The Dawes Act assigned allotments of land to individual Indians, vocational training for adults, education for Indian children through boarding schools, and established churches to watch over Indian policies. The aspects of the Dawes Act, in an attempt to solve the “Indian Problem,” led to a wide range of actions and responses of the Native Americans.