What We Need is Faith

Wounded Knee was a terrible event in US history. It showed how the US government didn't understand the Native Americans and treated them badly and unfairly.

Many of the Indians that left with the missionaries were gone for many years and did not know how much had changed back at home. In the story The Soft-Hearted Sioux a young man comes back home after receiving an education from the missionaries. He had left before he was taught how to survive out in the wild. He came back to dying and starving parents. He was brainwashed by the missionaries because he went against his family’s customs and told the medicine man never to come back and that God will save his father. He started preaching God’s words to his people and they left the community. His father was growing sicker and sicker and he needed food. His son went out everyday trying to get something but had no skills in hunting. His father had told him to go two hills over and he could find meat. With no concept of ownership, the son went and killed a cow that belonged to an American. Upon leaving with the meat he was chased down and attacked by the “owner” of the cattle. The son accidentally killed the man and fled back to his father’s teepee only to realize that he was too late and that his father had died. He was so conditioned by the white man that he had forgotten his ancestors’ ways of survival.

The Our hearts fell to the ground book it simple Indians opinions on how the West was lost. It presents us with the original viewpoints of Indian tribes who existed through those periods of appearance and absorption. From the Lewis and Clark journey to the construction of railroads, he tries to describe the traumatic differences of the Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century. He tries to open our eyes from what first historians whose work shows now antiquated, preferring to save details of their job.

The Indian Removal act of 1830 was passed by President Jackson. President Jackson wanted the Natives land so he made false treaties with them in order to speed up the process of taking their land. Some of the Natives agreed to go to Indian territory on their own but, the majority of them didn’t like the idea of leaving their home. Many of the natives fought and raided the settlers many of the natives tried to make peace with the white men. Soon many of the Natives grew weary and finally decided to cede their land and move to Indian Territory. Still many Natives had to be forced to make the journey. Many of the natives didn’t survive the journey. The Five Tribes that were removed were the Choctaw,Creek,Chickasaw,Cherokee, and the Seminole.

This shows how little European settlers thought of Native Americans. Even their dead were given no consideration and they were stolen from even as they were being forced from their land. This was just adding to the numerous amounts of ways Native Americans were oppressed as they were stripped of even basic rights in death and their plight ignored due to greed.This making their already dangerous trip worse as they lost valuable sources of food and transportation without their cattle and horses.

lives of Indians forever. The Indians had to give up their religious beliefs. The Battle of Wounded Knee

Especially since the difficulty they faced trying to adapt to their new environment could have spelled doom for the 5 “Civilized” Indian Tribes.

Monsters. Cannibals. Humans? Unlikely. These savages kill for sport. They’re mostly naked, with no sense of decency. They still used bows and arrows. And to top it off, they aren’t even Christian. The Indians may be uncivilized in the European’s eyes, but in all reality, they’ve built nations that are bigger and more advanced than what Europeans could have ever imagined.

With essentially nothing to live for and no reason to go on, many of the prisoners gave up

The idea of removal as a solution to the “Indian problem” had been kicked around since the eighteenth century. Policy makers were drawn to it in the 1820s for two reasons: the weaken position of the Native Americans after the War of 1812 made removal possible; and the pressure to open up new lands made this action politically desirable. (9)

#Sioux wars in Wyoming Minnesota and South Dakota Sioux under sitting bull and crazy horse resisted waves and settlers to keep hunting grounds

While the government set its bias plan in motion, it was up to tribes to resist forceful evacuations. US soldiers fueled by racism and prejudice, forced the Cherokee west (Dwyer, 2014, p. 37). This began the final tribe’s relocation, the Cherokee. The Cherokee explained that it was common to see US soldiers sacking graves and removing objects of financial value from corpses along what they called, “The Place Where We Cried” (Dwyer, 2014, p. 37). This was the most blatant form of bias, racism and prejudice during the Trail of Tears. This behavior continued, but eventually created additional pain and suffering for Native Americans making this death defying journey.

Faith can make the road a bit clearer, because what cannot be seen through the eyes will show through the heart. During the Holocaust, however, many Jews had to live in concentration camps where they struggled to maintain faith. These people were put through such horrible atrocities that remaining faithful became a struggle for them. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel struggled to maintain his faith because he lost hope in humanity, believed that his God was no longer present, and was to weak to believe in himself. Wiesel lost hope in humanity after he had witnessed such devastating events.

After the Indians were subdued and disabled militarily, the Government and the Church began to assimilate Indians in the Judeo-Christian culture. They robbed the parents of their children, dumping the children into white adoptive families or boarding schools, forcing them to dress and behave in white ways, forbidding them to speak their native languages, and pressuring them to relinquish their native religions. As a result, many young Indians were cut off from their traditional culture and virtually lost. They are deceived into believing that the Indians are inferior and dying out. They are also abused due to the conception that they are inferior.

grasped God in the environment they were placed in. We must go back to the Old Testament