There was a significant amount of argument over who owned the land. There was also the constant westward push for more land. This concerned the Indians, who were worried about the safety of the wildlife
They didn’t want to conquer land like the settlers did later on. They didn’t believe that people could own land. However there was a competition of the hunting grounds and living space. The Plains Indians wars
Multiple factors led to the start of the French and Indian War. A power struggle was already occurring, and Britain and France were already enemies. Colonists were aligned with their respective countries, and Native Americans were caught in the middle of European expansion. Natives were more apt to be allied with the French due to their trading economy, but both sides had Native American allies depending on the circumstances. 1 “To safeguard their lands west of the mountains, Native Americans played off one European power against another.”
In the late 1800s, tensions were rising between white Americans and Native Americans. The white Americans wanted the Native Americans to conform to their definition of civility. The Native Americans had clung tightly to their culture and religious practices during a time of continuous encroachment and governmental pressure by the white Americans. By this time, Native Americans had already been forced westward onto reservations through government action. Andrew Jackson had set this migration in motion earlier in the century, and the migration pattern would later be referred to as the “Trail of Tears”.
Eventually the US government was able to contain the Indian tribes but wanted to transform them into Americans. They began a process called Americanization which was simply to teach the Indians the ‘white’ ways. There would be preachers and teachers going to reservations very frequently attempting to convert the Indians into Christians and to create schools for children so they learn to be civilized. With all the preachers and teachers commuting daily trying to change the ways of the Indians lives it still didn 't stop them from practicing their religious beliefs. For example, the Indian tribes would have a ritual dance called the Sun Dance, which was done very often.
The Indians were forced to move west, Andrew Jackson offered the Indians the same amount of land, but that wasn’t the point. The Indians couldn’t care less on the land in the west. That land they were on was their sacred land. Overall the Native Americans were given the same amount of land that didn’t allow Jackson or the government to take
Native Resistance Towards U.S. Government and Settlers Tecumseh was a Shawnee leader who believed that the Native American way of life should continue to thrive and flourish. The Cherokee are a Native American tribe that was subjected to assimilation of American culture by Christian missionaries and the dwindling of their claimed land. Both tribes had land that was encroached upon by United States government and settlers, but each tribe reacted to this encroachment in different ways. Certain strategies of each tribe were effective while others caused great losses for the Native Americans. Tecumseh and the Shawnee tribe desired unity between all tribes because a united front would be stronger when battling against the U.S. for “the land which
The Western Indian Wars was a conflict between “the Western tribes and the U. S troops ended with the 1886 surrender of Apache leader Geronimo in Arizona and the 1890 overthrow of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (“America’s Wars”, 2004).” Throughout the history of the United States, American Indians were treated poorly. Ever since the white men crossed the Atlantic Ocean 200 years ago till the mid 1900’s the poor treatment and killing of Indians never ceased. U.S polices passed between the Revolutionary war and the mid 1900’s hurt American Indians and put them at an extreme disadvantage. There were series of wars, before the western Indian wars in the United States.
Native Americans were mistreated, and as a result, they too started to rebel and defend their territory. “Red River War…their mounts and supplies were so depleted that they could not survive the winter on the plains and were forced to enter the reservation” (Comanche Reading 4). The settlers eventually took control of them and forced them to cede their lands, their ancestral lands. The numerous conflicts and wars that Native Americans were involved in also resulted in a decline in their population. Such as the Wounded Knee massacre, site of two conflicts between Native Americans and U.S. representatives.
The United States negotiated more than 200 treaties with Indian nations, trying to get them to move West and off their land that America wanted to expand to. The Indians were offended at being asked to leave their sacred land where all their ancestors were buried. Many of the Indians reacted violently, causing America to come in with the military and remove the Indians during the Trail of Tears in 1831-1850. A third cause was that there was an agricultural depression. Many of the Westerners wanted the war to help them out of this depression.
The Sioux Indians were allied with many Native Americans during the civil war period. The Lakota tribes, which are apart of the total Sioux population, attacked the settlers and emigrants moving into the land forcing America to respond. America responded by sending an army to Lakota killing many women, men, and children. A series of short followed these attacks, which led the Sioux to flee west to their allies in Montana and the Dakota Territory. This action increased illegal settlement after the civil war, which led to another war shortly.
Their beliefs were rejected by the white-american culture which made it difficult to assimilate or control the tribes by the United States. The U.S. was trying to convert the plains tribes from hunter-gatherers to farmers in the the European-American tradition. Native Americans tends to focus around nature. Their religion includes a number of practices,ceremonies and traditions. Their religion ceremonies included feasts, music, dances, and other performances.
Class, One reason for the defeat of the Plains Indians was the decline of the buffalo herds, due to the killing by white hunters. The buffalo was one of the most sacred things to the Native Americans, but was their main source of supplies, because they used every part of the buffalo to help them. Second are the former Indian lands being settled by homesteaders, because this reduced the ability of tribes to migrate freely through the plains. This also did not allow the Indians to hunt for more buffalo herds. Lastly was the hostile encounter with the US Army which provided a few victories for the Indian population although Sitting Bull and the Indians fought stunning battles such as the defeat of the US Calvary at Little Big Horn, in the end
Many tribes had cultural ties to the environment itself. When the Americans established the Indian Removal Act, the Native Americans were forced to leave these cultural grounds. Those who refused to leave their original homeland had to conform to the ways of colonial life instead
First of all, Native Americans were settled on a hotbed of natural resources which included oil and precious metals such as silver and gold. There was also much fertile land that would entice farmers and frontiersmen to move out west. On this land there was so much potential economic opportunity for farmers, cattle drivers, miners and many other occupations. The government developed the popular public misconception that the indians were misusing the land and that Americans had the right to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in the west. These ideas led to the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 which authorized encroachment of Indian lands by the US government in order to divide up reservations and control Indian activity.
