The Treatment of Native Americans on Reservations

This act served to encourage the citizens of the United States to pursue the course of westward expansion and permanently settle the land on the other side of the Mississippi River basin, the land that was “acquired” by the government from the Native Americans. In accepting the government's offer to make way into the western frontier, each man would receive 160 acres of “public land” to farm and eventually make profitable in the long run. This newly accessible “public land” was the result of the Indian Removal Act and caused the development of new problem for the United States government. After eradicating the Natives,the government came to the realization that their success was limited due to the mass population of Indians that were now without some sort of residence and facing certain starvation from the lack of buffalo. In order to “keep the promises” that were made to the Natives, the government devised the Reservation System which would allow them to facilitate the needs of the Indians without posing a threat to any of the settlers. These reservations are still in use today, although they do not serve the same purpose as they once did and are now scared places that many house the remaining culture and traditions of several

The Indian Removal Act was passed that moved the all of the Indian Tribes and many died on the way to the new established territory for Indians

The Native Americans believed that their land was sovereign, thus not subjected to the United States laws. When Andrew Jackson became president, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This allowed President Jackson to negotiate treaties with the Native Americans for their land. In the article, “Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830”, the author states, “ The Act established a process whereby the president could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that agreed to give up their home lands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives…” Andrew Jackson didn’t negotiate treaties; he bullied tribes into signing them. The tribes who signed a treaty got to their new land by walking on what is now called the Trail of Tears. In the PBS article “Indian Removal” the author stated, “[The Cherokee] were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes… 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger and disease on their way to the western land.” When the Indians were forcefully moved, they couldn’t find food on their new, unfamiliar

In these new configured reservations the Natives were each given a certain amount of land per each family and they got a yearly income of money, and other provisions. But despite how nice it sounds, the reservations kept the Natives from living their own independent lives, and forced them to drop any religious traditions and/or ways of life: “The federal government passed laws that forced Native Americans to abandon their traditional appearance and way of life.” (2016 Victoriana Magazine). There was no way that the Natives could get back to where they were before and where they needed to be.

Since the first colonies settled in America, the relationship between the white settlers and the native Americans rapidly changed from valued friends to hated enemies. Upon arrival, it is estimated that the white settlers encountered about 900,000 Native American cultures with 300 different languages. As time went on, native American population decreased while the white settler’s population increased, demanding more land and resources. During the 1800’s, President Andrew Jackson was committed to developing the western frontier and the economic progress of the states. Along with expansion came Indian reservations, Indian boarding schools, and massacres of Indian tribes. While territorial expansion was a positive action for settlers, it can be argued that it violated the human rights of native Americans.

In the time when many people where moving westward, many people sought to find many Indian civilians already living there and this made the government make an act called the Indian Removal act as stated, "It allowed the federal government to pay Native Americans to move west"(10,

stop the fighting that was going on because of this land. The Dawes Act gave Native Americans a piece of their own land that allow them to own it, which they did not hold the deed to. The Federal Government held the land in trust for twenty-five years awaiting the Indians becoming United States citizens. Despite the alleged safeguards, tribal lands were often lost by fraud or coercion, so that, by 1934, white Americans owned two-thirds of lands originally reserved for Indians.(Schultz,327) The land given to the Indians was undesirable to most because the land was barren and infertile making it hard for the Indians to grow crops and survive of the land. Also with these reservations came schooling for the children of the Indians. Reformers believed that teaching the Indians would help them understand the laws and history of the United States and help with the literacy problem and preparing them for American Citizenship. Commissioner of Indians Affairs, Thomas J. Morgan said “

People had badly mistreated American-Indians in the period of the 1800s. When it came to the dilemma of who gets the land of whom. In this specific case of "The Indian Removal Act'' it authorized the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. This was also an Act to

By the middle 1800s, almost all the Indians had been moved west of the Mississippi River. They were given land

The relocation forced some nomadic tribes to learn to live in a new environment that they were not used to, very much like many other tribes as they were being introduced into a new way of life that they had not been used to. Forced relocation was not the worst of the issues this group of people have, often times “war” broke out between the Natives and the invading Caucasians (American Indians), and the term “war” is used loosely as it can generally be considered a genocide the way this group of people was treated.

The first aspect that will be addressed is education. Indian children and Indian people did not necessarily have an “education”. They learned the ways and religion of their people. This was mainly all the people needed to know. Allotment created obstacles which caused the reservation to break up. Education was very important in saving these people’s lives, cultures, and progressing their future. As said in Calloway’s First Peoples, it states that reformers normally wanted to educate Indian Adults, but soon enough Indian children became the main focus. Some children attended day schools, which were on the reservations. Reformers preferred the children to attend off-reservation boarding schools because they thought the children would be isolated from the influences of the family and friends around them. The formation of the American Indian Boarding School was a major historical event that had a huge impact on education. The American Indian Boarding School was a school designed to put an end to the Native America culture, language, and their spirituality of Native American nations. These institutions were dispersed throughout the United States and were ran by the non-American Indian government as well as churches. School

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.

Native Americans branch out among over 500 different tribes with about 5 million identified racially mixed and unmixed native americans, or about 1.7% of the U.S. population. Each tribe differs from each other in their own way especially in beliefs and language and also through location. The Native American tribes, excluding modern day Mexico, are commonly split up into ten different areas: the Arctic, the Subarctic, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains, the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Northwest Coast and the Plateau. Most of the tribes have their own separate language but today English is their primary language. Due to the expansion of western civilization, the traditional languages of the different tribes have either been lost or abandoned.

An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations. The year’s 1870 to 1900 Federal Indian policy was when earlier policies were dominated by removal, treaties, reservations, and even war. After that the new policy wanted to cripple reservation that still exist by giving individuals deeds to land to Native Americans. As discuss in class the 10% that agreed to move was enough agreement for the European settlers to take over. I guess this was a way to reassure the 10% of Native Americans who agreed to move that they were doing the right thing. The policies also included various alternative were giving to the Native Americans either keep your identity and settlers will still oversee as well as provide for Natives. Another Option was be more

From 1940-1960 approximately 122,000 American Indians migrated from reservations to urban areas, in an attempt to find work and self-assimilate, due to the deplorable conditions of reservations within the United States. In 1952 with the establishment of the Indian Bureau Relocation Program, Indians began self-assimilating with the promise of financial assistance to relocate to urban areas of the United States. Whereas, the British Columbians granted citizenship to the Indians of their era and allow them to choose whether they will live on the reserve or within the general population of the country. The silent assimilation created by the relocation program and the decisions that the British Columbian government made regarding the Indians was successful. The indication of this success is the fact that twenty-two percent of U.S. Indians and one-third of British Columbia Indians live on reservations, showing that silent assimilation with incentives is more successful than forced