The Reason For The Relocation

My hand swung to my side, feeling the sharp stone puncture layers of skin and muscle. Wailing in agony as blood spurted out of the wound, I run towards nearby shelter. The shrill screams of dying men rip through the air, accompanied by the sounds of arrows whizzing through the air and the Indians whoop when they hit a target. Dizzy from pain and hunger, I lay in a more comfortable position, just hoping to survive this wretched attack. ”Why did I ever come here?” the thought pounded through my head. “Oh yeah, I remember why. Land. Money.” That irritating know-it-all voice answered. I hear feet pounding around me and realize that the Indians have gone inside the town. One enters the door and maliciously grins when he sees me. He runs toward me and my eyes widen with shock as the spear plunges down, and becomes closer and closer….

The idea of moving West started in the mid-nineteenth century. Editor Horace Greely said “Go west, young man” which encouraged many people to move west. The Journey Westward was hard on many families. They were being uprooted and leaving their homes. They sold their farms and homes in the east and packed wagons with enough supplies to travel for about 6 months. In 1869 alone, an estimated 50,000 people migrated to the new territory. Many women felt that their husbands were on “a wild goose chase” and could not understand why they were being moved to this land.

In the year 1843, the stage was set for the Great Migration. Throughout the 1840s westward expansion started rolling. People living in the crowded east were lured west with

There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough

The Native Americans would offer the Europeans almost everything they had, which included fish and turkey to bread and the companionship of the chief’s daughter. The Europeans mistook the Native American’s generosity as evidence they were childlike. The old land in Columbus’ time was luscious and full of many different types of wildlife. Today that land is used and farmed down to provide food and tools for the Americans living here in the United States. “The land they left is different now. The white pines that towered over New England became masts for the Royal Navy's sailing ships. The redwoods that stretched from the Rockies to the Pacific exist in pockets smaller than the Indians' shrunken reservations. The hours long thunder of bison hooves no longer shakes Kansas or Nebraska, where only a few stretches of grassland remain on the prairie (pg. 6 Lord,

The Great Migration was a massive movement of African Americans from the South to the North from 1863 to 1960. The largest spike in this migration occurred from about 1910 to 1920.

Michael L. Tate’s book Indians and Emigrants looks to the years on the Overland Trails from 1840-1870 and makes a seemingly bold statement. He refutes the old ideal of Indian and White relations and provides a persuasive scholarly work explaining that more often than not whites and Indians interacted peacefully and for each other’s benefit. The thirty years of widespread cooperation can be condensed into three practical realities of emigrant’s time on the Overland Trails. To start, the emigrant’s main goal was to make

Many were forced to evacuate to other regions within the country and endure the infamous Trail of Tears. While Native Americans are not forcibly removed from their homes anymore, this story shows a modern-day example of mistreatment or borders that Native Americans deal with. While the mother faced many different conflicts, externally and internally, she readily accepts the challenge and is not willing to step down. She displays the pride of the Blackfoot Indians and is not willing to let the government tell her who she is and let them define her. She sets an example for Native Americans, standing up against a government that has held them down for so long. That they should always have pride in who they are, and where they came

The somewhat nomadic lifestyle of the plains natives often interfered with White America’s exploration of the great Wild West. To solve this inconvenience, White Americans moved the Natives onto reservations, which were smaller plots of land, sometimes not in the tribe’s home area, and were subject to White American authority. The creation of reservations was just one of many assaults on Native culture and destroyed the Native’s idea that freedom meant the ability to roam.

…I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west… …One can never forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning. Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle sounded and the wagons started rolling many of the children rose to their feet and waved their little hands good-by to their mountain homes, knowing they were leaving them forever... (Burnett).

As I struggled to learn to kayak I pushed through the same water the Edisto’s paddles had touched. My experiences mirror those of Joseph Bruchac, in his work “At the End of Ridge Road.” Bruhac has a cabin in the country that is very close to “the homestead where [his] grandfather and his twelve brothers and sisters were born…Even closer to us are the unmarked burial places of Abenakis and Mohawks and Mohicans” (215-216). Bruhac’s modern home’s proximity to places of cultural importance for Native Americans shows that the way the land has been impacted and used by Native Americans should not be overlooked. The Native presence on the land is often overlooked since the Edisto people had all died from disease or war by the early 1700s. The Edisto people are often overlooked because of heavy focus on Civil War history in the area. The land that I’ve been walking for twenty years has an entire culture buried beneath it and I haven’t thought about it once. The Native Presence is not entirely gone. The Island’s infamous Captain Ron, a white man raised by the Cherokee, has had arrangements with my family for decades. Like the Edisto people before Ron uses the land to procure majority of the food his family eats. His children Rain, Tide, Marsh, and Wind learn these same skills and continue to grow up on Edisto Island.

The Trail of Tears represents one of the most catastrophic eras in the history of the United States. It was the start of the Cherokee tribe’s extermination. The Cherokee Indians have existed on this mainland way longer than anybody of British background however, they were removed in a ruthless style, from their homeland, on which they have lived for countless centuries. This paper will show and prove the detrimental effect it had on the Cherokee. It will be expressed through the way they existed before they were forced off, address the situation that led to their elimination, explain the conditions of travel, and tell what has happened to the Cherokee following the Trail of Tears.

There are two events that triggered the biggest migration in US history. First was the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862; each family that was willing to settle to the West was granted at least 160 acres of land. Second was the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, when it was finally possible to send the agricultural products such as live cattle to the more populated areas within less than a week. In addition, the frontiers were also able to get the much-needed tools and equipment by trains from those big cites. During this period, different groups of people had experienced huge yet completely different changes with their lives. Some experienced happiness and hope, while others experienced hardship and tragedy. Native

Bourgmont set out on his expedition, sending a party of seventeen French and five Canadian men by river with the larger supplies that couldn’t easily be taken by land and the goods for trade to the Kansa village. Bourgmont’s land crew followed a well-established trail on the north side beside the Missouri River. Bourgmont and his party made it to the Kansa village, but the boats with the goods and big supplies weren’t there yet and should have been. The expedition couldn’t continue without the goods to pay the Indians for their stay. Bourgmont remained worry-free as best as he could and greeted the Indians. The Indians came welcoming, greeting Bourgmont with awe and affection, with two horses as a gift and all at once the chiefs began giving their speeches. The chiefs spoke the same message and they stated, “Your will is our command” to Bourgmont and his crew.

My earliest memory of food is lentils and rice cooked in a pressure cooker. Lentils were cooked at least three days a week. Other days we had different vegetable curries, curd and more rice. This was what I took to school as my lunch every day. As I grew older and started caring more about my social life and people around me, I started noticing what my classmates brought for lunch from their homes. I started understanding how food reflected different cultures and communities. One day, in our