Native Americans After World War 1

Some wanted to fight to keep the land that their family has lived on forever.

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

Native Americans have existed in the different regions-the plains, mountains, marshes- of the North American continent- long before the United States existed. Yet, most were not treated with the respect and dignity that the white American settlers were given. Viewed as outlandish and savage by white settlers, series of negotiations to “correct” the Indian way of life were implemented- through forced relocation, war, and assimilation into white culture. Those who stood up against the American government were viewed as beacons of hope by their fellow Native Americans. Many Native American traditions still exist today, but unfortunately most of them have been lost along with their people.

The biggest impact the United States had on the Native American society was that they kept pushing them off of their land. There is a quote from Chief Joseph from document 4, Perspectives from the Chiefs, talking about how the United States keep taking things that aren't rightfully theirs. He compared the US government to grizzly bears and Native Americans as deer. The grizzlies who repeatedly went at the deer needing more. Even after the US was given more land they asked for more. Year after year they were pushed further west and then all around when manifest destiny began. Document 1 shows a map of Native American land loss from year to year. The NAtive Americans have been pushed around since the first English settlers came over. They had lost most of their land between 1850 and 1870. (Doc 1) The US invaded peaceful lands of the Native Americans out of pure greed. In document 3, 2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868, shows a map of a piece of land owned by Indians with a treaty and a few years after. In 1868 there was a treaty that was signed so that Americans couldn’t even enter the land. After gold was found in that area the treaty did not matter. ( Doc 2) The forced them into a reservation nearly ten times smaller than their original land area. Court actions made it worse, their land was even smaller. America forced the Native Americans to go and move to places they did not want to go despite treaties and people’s actions.

During the World War II, many ethnic groups such as the Native Americans, Latinas, Japanese Americans and African Americans were struggling and fighting for their freedom and equal rights, many of the ethnic group achieved their goals due to the effort they all had to go through.

The Dawes Act of 1887 began the process of allotment. By trying to force Native Americans to become farmers, the federal government cast many groups into poverty. The land which the United States held in trust for Indians was usually not choice farmland. Those trying to make a living off the inhospitable lands of the West found little success. During the interwar period of the early twentieth century, the government made new efforts to alleviate Indians’ position as a marginalized group. Over 10,000 Native Americans volunteered and served with distinction in the armed forces during World War I. In recognition of their efforts, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924, making all American Indians United States citizens.

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.

Times were a lot different back in the 1800s as compared to today, and unfortunately, for the minorities of the day, most white people did not see them as equals. The Civil War was testimony to this horrific fact. America was expanding rapidly on the heels of the gold rush and the boom of industry. This expansion posed a major problem in regards to the Native American. Most of the southern and eastern tribes had already been removed from their lands and forced to move west in the 1830s.1 Later, in 1867, a peace commission was appointed to persuade western Native Americans to relinquish their land and move to reservations. Once moved onto these reservations, the Native Americans would be wards of the government until they learned to be more like the white people.2

The Native Americans suffered during the Louisiana purchase by having more of their land taken away. There were some tribes that the colonists did not interact with, thus with the expansion of territory, they began to find them as a problem. The government on a national level was trying to acquire even more land, they did so by

Imagine a person bought something that the person valued. The person was the owner of the product and took good care of it.Then, all of a sudden, a stranger comes and takes that product and declares it “discovered”. Now since the stranger “discovered” it, the product now has to be shared among them. This is similar to what happened to Native Americans in North America. Native Americans owned and lived in North America for several thousand years. Then, all of a sudden, European explorers came to North America and claimed the land “discovered”. Europeans started moving into the land and later, started sharing the land. Encounters between Europeans and Native Americans in the colonial era led to the exchange of diseases with Native Americans,

Native Americans were affected negatively in the United States Western Expansion. The Americans stripped the Natives from their culture, land, and the buffalo. From all that Native Americans onced lived all over the West were now living on reservations. The Natives suffered at the Sand Creek massacre, which killed over 200 Native Americans. Also another battle that affected the Native Americans negatively was the Battle of Little Bighorn. The battle was over the Sioux’s right to Sioux land with Sitting Bull as the Sioux war chief and spiritual leader and George A. Cluster as the commander of U.S troops. It wasn’t just land that affected the Natives it was also their culture. Natives boys had their culture stripped away. There clothes,

The Native Americans sustained and took care of their home, while the Europeans pushed and pulled for more money to fall from it. This caused the land to lose a lot of its density and eventually the Europeans’ wealth as well. Things that were lost were proper farming grounds, culture of the Native Americans, and wild life. Different views of the Europeans and Native Americans caused a lot of conflict. The Europeans’ views on the Indians’ way of life became critical once they saw and felt as if their society was not controlled

Native Americans during 1785-1829 were affected by western expansion because of the removal of Native Americans from the land, white settlers attempting to assimilate Native Americans to their culture, and were involved in battles between the a Native Americans and white setters which led to the depleting number of Native Americans.

In the early nineteenth century, the United States wanted position in the West, power was still in the hands of Native peoples. The Native Americans outnumbered whites and controlled the resources and routes of movement. Native Americans were not only fighting with the U.S. but with other Indian nations. Natives started to become even more unsettled as the U.S. government removed most eastern Native groups beyond the Mississippi River.

Due to America’s expansion in the West, it made a very negative impact on the Native Americans there. For example, numerous amount of native Americans died due to the new diseases that they were being exposed to; such as influenza and smallpox. Additionally, Settlers tooks over large amounts of the Native Americans’ hunting grounds. Due to their inhabitants of the hunting grounds, it chased the animals that they would hunt. Lastly, the Native American population decreased. Seeing all this change being brought on to their land, Native Americans began to resist. America responded by attacking the Shawnee villages on the Tippecanoe River while Tecumseh was away, looking for allies. __________________________________________________________________________________