Oppression Of Native Americans In Post-Bellum America

In the late 1800s, Captain Richard Henry Pratt set out to “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”(A Plea to “Citizenize” Indians). The goal to erase Indian cultures and replace it with white American culture was sought to be achieved through boarding schools. Pratt was the creator of the first Indian boarding school: Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. These government-funded boarding schools would take children from their homes on reservation, often for them to not see their family again until they are grown(lecture). Pratt’s goal was to eliminate the Indian culture and incorporate the Indian people into the more “civilized”(Marr) American culture. This meant forcing the Indian students to speak only English and to give up all cultural traditions, religions, names and take up Christianity and American sounding names. Students were put into these boarding schools with little or no contact with their families for “eight to nine months of the year” (Marr). These schools operated with minimal funds, so the education was very insufficient. It was clear from the beginning; the actual goal was not to give quality education for the Native American children but to get rid of the Indian culture.

Imagine living in a world that consistently devalues your existence and is heavily populated with individuals who are quick to use and abuse your resources, but are slow to share the wealth that is accumulated from those resources. How would you feel? Unfortunately, certain populations do not have to visualize the disparity that is pictured above. This is because inequity is one of the most demoralizing social issues that plague America today. The worst thing about inequity is the fact that it continues to disproportionately burden individuals who are categorize as being minority in today’s society.

When arriving to Carlisle they cut the children’s long hair and supplied them with military uniforms and they were banned to use their native language. Not only did they lose their language, but they would also lose their Indian names. The school wasn’t prepared when the children arrived, so they had to sleep on the bare floors and had very little food. The children would attend school regularly with the classes structured with academics during the

Soon children were removed from their homes and placed in Indian Boarding Schools some of which were off the reservations. The goals of the boarding schools, which were run by the religious orders that were being paid by the government for the purpose of assimilating the young Indian population and desecrating their culture, were to Christianize Native Americans in hopes that they would accept our capitalistic system. “Kill the Indian…Save the Man”.

I agree that the treatment of American Indians during the mid-1800s could be considered as ethnic cleansing. The value of land increased dramatically when cotton became the major product in the south. Many whites wanted to push west and acquired the Native American’s fertile soil. Still, many Native Americans had remained in the South. They adopted white Americans culture, attended to school, owned private property and formed constitutional, republican governments. Most southern whites, however, denounced the Indian civilization as a shame and believed the Indians could never be civilized. Although federal policy had been to respect the rights of American Indian to inhabit the land, President Andrew Jackson abandoned this policy and adopted

There have been devastating times when people’s hatred makes them do things that are inhumane. Unfortunately, this still happens in today’s society, perhaps not literally but metaphorically; however, thankfully it is not as bad as it was in the late 19th century. I chose to discuss this document because I have always been one to try to understand the roots of any situation, good or bad. In this case, I wanted to understand the federal government at the time wanted to convert young native Americans into the ideal mainstream American. The document does its best to explain the purpose of this movement. Although the federal government at the time thinks the implementation of conversion boarding schools is

For many years Native American people have been discriminated against in the United States as well as in the Public School system. Beginning with the common-school movement of the 1830s and 1840s, which attempted to stop the flow toward a more diverse society, the school systems have continued to be geared exclusively toward WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Native Americans have been forced to abandon their culture and conform to our “American” ways (Rothenberg, 1998, pp. 258-259.)

The English say the Native Americans cause all the problems. Their drunkenness was their fault because no one forced them to drink. They would rather undergo penalty than pay the English. Native Americans were hateful to the English after all they did for them. According to Randolph, “these have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English” (Randolph, par. 3). The Native Americans were the ones at fault according to the English. Around 600 English men and captains were killed due to the war the Native Americans caused. This whole scenario is a case of he said she said, both the English and the Native Americans were at fault, they both caused issues and refuse to admit it.

The war against the native Americans in the west and southwest with the US was designed to destroy the Indians culture and can very well be considered an American holocaust. It wasn’t enough the Native American gave up some of their land but, the white settlers and the US army wanted it all. As natural resources were discovered on the land that the natives lived on, the whites and US army wanted that too. It was taken from the Native Americans at any cost, even annulation of the entire race. The white people looked down on the Indians as if they were less than human and they were willing to take from them anything they wanted. Even the elderly, women and children were murdered because of their race. The white people just wanted them gone.

When it was decided that the Native American culture was of no benefit and needed to be eradicated, the children were stripped from their homes and forced to spend year after year in a boarding school, where their lifestyle, their language, their very culture was taken

For longer than we care to admit, as European Americans, racism has been a significant and controversial part of our identity. Every race and culture new to the United States has experienced unique stereotypes and discrimination, and although these issues have for the large part been amended, racism and racist tendencies have yet to be completely eradicated from our nature. The most prevalent in today’s American society is directed towards the land’s own original peoples: Native Americans. According to a study “Native Americans were nearly 13 times more likely to be assaulted or raped than Hispanics, seven times more likely than Whites, five times more likely than African-Americans and 39 times more likely than Asian-Americans. Overall, Native Americans experienced less than 1 percent of all total violent crimes in 2000.” However, "American Indians and Alaska Natives make up less than 1 percent of the population, according to Census Bureau figures.” (STAR 2003). Being such a small part of the overall American population, it is no surprise Native American issues are overlooked. But, wWe have a moral obligation to rectify all our misdeeds towards Americans, both occurring presently, and the unjustified hate and discrimination of the past that caused us to drive these people from what is by right theirs.

I do not think the U.S. government pursued the correct policy in regard to the Native Americans, and they realized it too. At one point the congressmen, and even the president, realized how badly they treated the Natives and quickly tried to correct themselves, although that didn't work out well either. In an attempt to help they tried to "Americanize" them, which was essentially assimilation, which is a whole other racist issue. They passed the Dawes Act and abolished Native tribes, which they had absolutely no right to do, and taught their children that they were barbarians. What they did to the Natives was 100% genocide, they were very content with killing all of them if it meant that they could take their land. It was so sick that

The treatment of Native Americans by the United States Government –while unsympathetic- was entirely within the rights of our government and the etiquette in which conquered nations are handled. Comparatively, the treatment of the Indians was gentle in contrast to Europeans countries who had been defeated. The land which belonged to the Indians would have belonged to the American people because of the claim they had and the military power to enforce it. The raiding parties of the Native American tribes would lead to government intervention often resulting in the death of many Indians.

After arriving at their new reservations, life for the Cherokee and other Native American tribes was not much better. The people remained depressed and often had little initiative to begin to build new settlements. They also were unfamiliar with their land and usually the land was not the same environment that they had lived in back east. This led to degraded crop production, and poor pastureland for their cattle to graze on. The Cherokee should have had time to adjust to this, as the Treaty of New Echota stated that the government would provide provisions for the reservation for a year. However, the supplies that was provided to them, was far from what would have been required to sustain the population, and what was provided was usually extremely poor in quality.

America is, and was, never as equal as we like to think. Most of that comes from us, as humans, thinking that we are superior to other races, genders, or groups of people in general. First we had issues with how we treated the Native Americans when the colonists arrived. Yes the colonists tried to have as little conflict as possible, when they came over to settle this new land, they saw the Natives as “savages”. From then on, we used them as slaves, which progressed into slavery of other races, Hispanics, Africa-Americans, and even our own race, simply because they were not as rich or as high on the social ladder. Eventually they broke free of those reins, but we still had issues. Starting in the early to mid-1800s, people began to try and take the land, which they thought was theirs because they were ignorant, that the Native Americans had owned for who knows how long. The same land that they had grown up on. The same land that their ancestors had lived on for so long, and where they buried their dead. When Andrew Jackson came to office, the poor Cherokee’s, among other tribes, world came crashing down on top of them, as they were removed from their land, and taken on a trip, which became known as the trail of tears, or “The Trail that we cried on.” The trail itself led them to the Indian Containment Zone, or the “ICZ”, in present day Arizona. In that time frame, Andrew Jackson; a long supporter of the Indian removal act, among the many citizens of the United States,