The removal of
Native Americans
Settlers pushing
Westward
Different Beliefs
•
•
•
•
•
Native Americans:
No one could “own” the land.
It belong to no one.
They had to be nomadic in
order to survive.
Led by a group, not one.
Learned history, etc. by
telling stories.
White Settlers:
• You can buy and own land.
• Making a claim or starting a
business would give them a
stake in the country.
• Natives forfeited their rights
when they failed to make
improvements to it of “settle
it.”
How do members of
each group earn
respect?
Read page 203 of
your textbook
about the
importance of
Buffalo and
complete the notes.
The Lure of Silver
and Gold
• Tens of thousands of miners flocked to the region in
search of the gold discovered in Colorado in 1858.
• Mining camps and Boomtowns forever changed the
pristine landscape.
This changed the landscape from
this…..
•
To this…
and this..
and this..
and this..
Can they peacefully co-exist?
The Government Restricts
Native Americans
Railroads help to change everything
•Before railroad travel in the west, the
government passed an act that designated
all the Great Plains as one giant reservation.
Why?
•In the 1850 the government started to
divide land between the tribes and define
boundaries. However, they didn’t listen and
hunted their traditional land anyway.
* This created clashed between natives and
white settlers.
Government’s attempt to
remove Native Americans…
Eliminate
their source
of survival
Buffalo
Skulls
Government’s attempt to
remove Native Americans…
Prairie
Dogs
Massacre at Sand Creek
• The Cheyenne returned to the Sand
Creek Reserve in Colorado the winter
of 1864 assuming that they were still
under the protection of the U.S.
government.
http://www.kawvalley.k12.ks.us/schools/
rjh/marneyg/03-04_PlainsProjects/goolsby_04_sand-creek.htm
Death on the Bozeman Trail
•The Bozeman Trail was used a short cut for
gold prospectors and then used by the military.
•The problem was that it cut through some of
the best hunting grounds of the Sioux.
•The Sioux chief, Red Cloud, asked to have
white settlement stop. He was ignored.
•A warrior named Crazy Horse ambushed
Captain Fetterman along the trail and killed
over 80 soldiers.
http://nv.essortment.com/fettermanmassa_rfkt.h
tm
Treaty of Fort Laramie: The government agrees to
close the trail in exchange for the Sioux agreeing to
live on reservations along the Missouri river. The
tribal leader who signed it still expected to hunt on
their traditional hunting grounds. (Sitting Bull didn’t
sign.)
NPS - The Peace Commissioners in council with Indians at Fort Laramie in 1868.
From a photograph by Alexander Gardner in the Newberry Library.
The treaty set aside the Black Hill as part of the Great Sioux reservation and for
the exclusive use of the Sioux people. However, after Custer reported gold was
found miners moved in and demanded protection by the government. Native
pleaded their case to Washington to no avail. The government soon ordered
wondering troops to be rounded up. One of these actions included Custer’s last
stand. Eventually, the government would confiscate the land back in 1877.
There is still an ongoing legal dispute about ownership of the Black Hills
between the Sioux and the government.
Red River War
• The Kiowa and Comanche had been raiding for six years.
• Army rounded up friendly tribes onto reservations and killed all
others.
•
The tactic of burning villages, and killing warriors and horses
crushed the resistance of the southern plains.
• This was brought to an end on September 28, 1874 when Colonel
Mackenzie surrounded a large group of Kiowa, Comanche, and
Cheyenne. There tactic was to kill their horses and they
slaughtered more than 1,100. Without any swift means of
transportation, the virtually defenseless surrendered and returned
to the reservations.
Custer’s Last Stand
• In June of 1876 the Sioux and Cheyenne held a sun dance.
http://library.thinkquest.org/15215/Culture/dance.htm
*Sitting Bull saw a vision of soldiers falling off of their horse. They took it as a warning and
started to prepare. Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Gull out numbered the coming troops.
*Custer and his troops were killed within an hour of arriving at Little Big Horn:
After the battle, the Indians came through and stripped the bodies and mutilated all the
uniformed soldiers, believing that the soul of a mutilated body would be forced to walk the
earth for all eternity and could not ascend to heaven. Inexplicably, they stripped Custer's
body and cleaned it, but did not scalp or mutilate it. He had been wearing buckskins instead
of a blue uniform, and some believe that the Indians thought he was not a soldier and so,
thinking he was an innocent, left him alone. Because his hair was cut short for battle, others
think that he did not have enough hair to allow for a very good scalping. Immediately after
the battle, the myth emerged that they left him alone out of respect for his fighting ability,
but few participating Indians knew who he was to have been so respectful. To this day, no
one knows the real reason.
(Source: www.axel-jacob.de/ little_bighorn2.html )
* The victory was short term. The Sioux were defeated by late 1876. Sitting Bull escaped to
Canada for awhile, but to avoid starvation, surrendered and was put on a reservation. He
later joined the “Buffalo Bill” show.
6.15 "Scene of Gen. Custer's last stand, looking in the direction of the ford and the Indian
village." The skeletal remains of horses still litter the battlefield in this photograph taken one
year later, in 1877.
The Sun Dance
Chief Sitting Bull
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/s_z/sittingbull.htm
Assimilation
1.
Native Americans should give
up their way of life and beliefs to
become part of the white
culture.
-Many children sent away to white
schools to learn white ways.
Punished for speaking or acting
Native American.
-Failed because it isolated
Americanized Natives from family
and friends who were not.
2. Dawes Act: Broke up
reservations and was supposed
to give land to individual Native
American families. White
settlers took most and natives
received nothing.
The Battle of Wounded Knee
• The Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old regiment,
took about 350 starving and freezing Sioux to
the Wounded Knee reservation in South Dakota.
• Soldiers demanded that the tribal people give up
their weapons. After a shoot was fired by an
unknown source, the soldiers opened fire and
killed 300 unarmed Native Americans, including
many children.
• The soldiers then left the bodies where they lay
to freeze on the ground.
• The event brought the Indian wars to a “bitter
end.”
The Battle of Wounded Knee
Sitting Bull's half-brother, Big Foot,
was chosen as the new leader of the
tribe. On the way to help fellow chief
Red Cloud make peace with the
Whites, Big Foot was intercepted by
Major Samuel Whitside of the 7th
Cavalry. Whitside transferred Big
Foot to an army ambulance due to
his severe pneumonia and escorted
the Native Americans to their camp
for the night at Wounded Knee
Creek. The army supplied the Native
Americans with some tents and
rations, and then conducted a
census, determining that there were
120 males and 230 women and
children.
-Wikipedia encyclopedia
Miniconjou Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow
•
Fill out your graphic organizer
about Native Americans now.
Why did they go out West?
What hardships did they face?
What accomplishments did they have?