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US History Essay

Decent Essays

Although the federal governments attitudes and actions towards blacks and Native Americans civil rights in the 19th century were very different they also had lots of similarities. Both blacks and Native Americans were treated poorly and did not have many rights. Blacks were slaves and Indians (Native Americans) were fighting to stay alive. All these negative actions were a bad look for a country that was growing bigger and bigger by the day to someday reach what the United States is today.
Culture was a huge part of Indian life in the 19th century, from hunting buffalo and respecting and loving the lands that they lived on to amazing spiritual and religious ceremonies. Blacks …show more content…

The Native Americans kept losing men and the U.S. kept on pushing forward. Every reservation that was set up for the Indians sooner or later was destroyed and taken over by the U.S. The U.S. did not want the Indians to continue believing in their gods and religions. The Indians culture was a huge threat to the U.S. who wanted to try and Americanize the Indians. In 1887 the Dawes act was put into action, which was an attempt to eliminate tribal ownership of land and give individual “families” 160 acres of land to live on. The U.S. was hoping this would make the Indians live the American way and give up there Indian culture. This was very hard on the Indians and they did not let this be the way they made peace with the U.S. people. Then in 1924 the Snyder act was granted which gave the Indians their citizenship so that they could believe in their culture and own land. Blacks were not as open about there culture because it was passed on threw songs and stories. Most of them were all slaves so they had no understanding of there culture. It was passed on from the older slaves from Africa through many hours or stories and songs. The blacks were slaves and that meant they were considered property so they could not be as nearly open and free-spoken about the culture that they knew of.
In the later half of the 19th century blacks and Native Americans did not have many or any political and social rights. Neither group was considered citizens of

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