IV. Subjugating the Indians
subjugate: to bring under complete control; conquer
Some Statistics:
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Estimate of Indian population at
time of Columbus: 8-16 million
spread over 2 continents.
÷ into hundreds of tribal societies
most advanced were Mayans,
Aztecs, Incas (Spanish America)
90% of Native population lost
A. Characteristics of the Plains Indians
1. Nomadic
2. organized in small bands of appx 500
3. very diff.culture than whites (called
“wild Indians” white frontiersmen)
4. life revolved around the buffalo
The Galloping
Grocery Store
- 1865: appx 15m buffalo roamed GP. By
1885, only about 1000 remained. In 1937,
only 37 remained. What happened?
a. Transcontinental RR
- 1863-1869: RR crews paid to kill buffalo for food
& robes which were fashionable in E
- became nuisance (herds so numerous that
in 1868, a Kansas & Pacific train waited 8 hrs
for herd to cross the track)
b.
– to make travel across GP safer for
whites in route to CA gold, US adopted
policy of destroying nomadic life of
Plains Indians - how? By
encouraging the killing of buffalo
herds – the Indians’ livelihood
- “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone”
Rath & Wright’s Buffalo Yard 1878 – 40,000 hides
Dodge City, KS
c. Participation in the Buffalo Kill
- William F. Cody killed 4,280 buffalo in 18 mos.
while working for Kansas-Pacific RR –”Buffalo
Bill”
- RR ads for buffalo safaris – drew men from all
over world (even royalty!) – lean out of train
windows or take a few steps out of train cars
and shoot them
Slaughtered buffalo lying dead in the snow in 1872,
courtesy National Archives
Their plight did not go unnoticed..
• Thirty years ago millions of the great unwieldy animals existed
on this continent. Innumerable droves roamed, comparatively
undisturbed and unmolested, . . . Many thousands have been
ruthlessly and shamefully slain every season for past twenty
years or more by white hunters and tourists merely for their
robes, and in sheer wanton sport, and their huge carcasses
left to fester and rot, and their bleached skeletons to strew the
deserts and lonely plains.
"In the Prime of the Buffalo," J. F. Baltimore
The Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine
November 1889
Good News?
The buffalo population has
been rescued from extinction
by preservationists. By the
early 21st century, the number
of buffalo had increased to
about 300,000
Adopt a Bison
Hear a Bison
• America’s largest herd is owned by Media
Mogul, Ted Turner (50,000 bison +)
• “sometimes you have to eat an animal to
save it”
• http://www.perc.org/articles/article900.php
“Bisonomics”
B. United States Indian Policies
- reflected & aided white settlers’ desire for Indian lands
1. Removal (Early 1800s)
a. 1830: Indian Removal Act - forced removal of
SE tribes to Indian territory –present day OK
b. Gave Indians “unwanted” land (remember –
the Great American Desert?) GP = “one big
reservation”
c. Temporary fix – until gold, oil or other
valuable resource found on their territory
Indian Removal Act of 1830
2. Containment
a. As Americans crossed Miss. R to reach
Pacific , new policies needed
- 1851: Treaty of Ft. Laramie - assigned
boundaries to the various tribes of the
Plains. Major tribes agreed to hunting ground
boundaries from which federal
authorities would exclude whites.
- gifts and promises of annuities persuaded
Indians to go along
- Sioux to stay north of Platte River
- Cheyenne & Arapahoe were to stay in
Colorado foothills
b. Failure of Containment
- In Theory: The US maintained that each tribe was a
sovereign nation, to be treated as an = in all
treaties
- In Reality: containment fails b/c
- Plains Indians overreliance on buffalo – often
wandered outside their assigned boundaries in
pursuit of game (+ we killed them all)
- desire for minerals (g & s) – prospectors had little
respect for Indian territorial rights
- broken promises (not a single treaty honored!)
- Transcontinental RR across Indian territory
- by 1860, Plains Indians had lost all but 1.5 m of
19m acres of hunting grounds given them in
treaties
c. Dakota Sioux Uprising summer 1862
film
Chief
Little Crow
- DS confined to small reservation in MN
- promised annuities, but often cheated by American
traders
- Annuities late. Dakota Sioux starving
(Previous payments had been irregular and had
been mostly usurped by unscrupulous white
traders. Crops had failed in 1861. Game was
scarce. Pleas for release of foodstuffs from whitecontrolled granaries were ignored.
- asked for food on credit. Response? “If they are
hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung”
- Dakota Sioux attack Am. Traders and other settlers
- US troops arrive to put down uprising
- 38 Dakota Sioux executed in response (largest mass
execution in US History)
d. Sand Creek Massacre ( Nov1864)
- Rev. Chivington leads troop of
volunteers/soldiers to Black Kettle’s camp at
Sand Creek
- purpose to kill peaceful Indians
- accounts vary, but they kill at least 105 women &
children + 28 men
- took “trophies” back to Denver –set up saloon
- investigation, but no punishment
Black Kettle (seated center) and other Cheyenne
chiefs conclude successful peace talks with Major
Edward W. Wynkoop (kneeling with hat) at Fort
Weld, Colorado, in September 1864. Based on the
promises made at this meeting, Black Kettle led his
band back to the Sand Creek reservation, where
they were massacred in late November.
Sand Creek Massacre
News Release: Washington, December 20, 1864
"The affair at Fort Lyon, Colorado, in which Colonel Chivington
destroyed a large Indian village, and all its inhabitants, is to be made
the subject of congressional investigation. Letters received from high
officals in Colorado say that the Indians were killed after surrendering,
and that a large proportion of them were women and children."
e. Sioux Wars 1866-67
- Sioux protested construction of Bozeman Trail
being built by US through their hunting grounds
in MT (trail being built for gold)
- Led to Fetterman’s Massacre Dec. 1866
- fought near Ft. Phil Kearny Wy territory
- Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chief
Red Cloud were able to decoy Capt.
William J. Fetterman and 80 men out of
the fort
- the carefully planned ambush worked to
perfection. Fetterman and every man (80)
in his detachment died
- authority over Indians passed to War Dept.
– tougher policies
3. Reservations
a. 1867 = Congressional Peace Commission
appointed to end Sioux War & begin
restrictive Reservation Policy
- Plains Indians settled on 2 reservations:
Dakota Territory and Indian Territory (OK)
b. Told to “abandon old habits & become
farmers” and “learn to walk the white man’s
road”
c. Most tribes agreed, but some refused.
With their whole way of life at stake, fierce
warfare raged across Plains
d. Battle of Little Bighorn June 25, 1876
- Last major battle of Indian War
- all started with gold
- 1874 – gold discovered on Sioux reservation in
Black Hills of SD (US gave this land to Sioux as
permanent home in 1968 Treaty of Ft. Laramie)
- Fed. Troops tried to prevent miners from area –
was Sioux ancestral burial ground
- tried to buy back land from Indians – no go
- Sioux on warpath to stop gold rush – concentrated
forces near Little Big Horn River in MT territory
- On 6/25/1876, Lt. Col Custer (had political
ambitions) disobeyed orders to wait for help –
ordered an attack
- Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull & Crazy
Horse surround Custer – kill him & all 264 soldiers
Custer’s Last
Stand
- Battle of Little Big Horn a turning pt – last
great Indian victory on the Plains
- fed. Troops set out on a vengeance to capture
Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse and force the Plains
Indians to live on reservations.
- Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877, Sitting Bull
in 1881 – and in opening up the Plains for
film unimpeded white settlement
Sitting Bull
Crazy Horse
4. The Final Roundup
a. Indians no match for US Troops. Troop
advantages:
- telegraph = speedy communication
- RR allowed army to outrun even fastest
horses
- army had firepower advantage: colt
revolver +
- professionalism of soldiers including
famous troop of black-Americans known
by the Indians as “Buffalo Soldiers”
Buffalo Soldiers
b. Nez Perce and Chief Joseph 1877
- Oregon & Idaho
- (Nez Perce had helped Lewis & Clark 1803)
- Nez Perce kicked out of Oregon after having been
relocated several times
- Chief Joseph led his tribe on 3 mo. 1300 mi +
journey to escape to Canada, caught 30 mi from
border, shipped to Kansas
“It is cold and we have no blankets. The little
children are freezing to death. My people, some of
them, have run away to the hills and have no
blankets, no food. No one knows where they are-perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look
for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe
I shall find them among the dead.
Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick
and sad. From where the sun now stands,
I will fight no more forever.”
c. Apaches of the SW
- the last to resist capture
- led by Geronimo until his capture in 1886
- Geronimo taken to OK reservation
- 1904 Geronimo sold pictures of himself at St. Louis
World’s Fair
- 1905 rode in Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural
parade
- died at age 80 in 1909
Geronimo
d. Battle of Wounded Knee 1890
- last Indian battle
- 1884 US Dept of Interior issued a criminal code
forbidding Indian religious practices
- Indians disregarded code, Plains Indians turned an
emotional religion as they faced an end to their way
of life
* The Ghost Dance: emphasized coming of a
Messiah, return to a life before white man’s
arrival, if performed, could be immune from
white man’s bullets
- US agents on the Sioux reservation feared an
insurrection and summoned troops
- troops fired on and killed 200+ Indian men, women
and children at a creek called Wounded Knee in
present-day SD – buried in common grave
The Ghost Dance
Wounded Knee: Aftermath
Wounded Knee Common Grave
C. A Way of Life Destroyed
1. Movement in 1880s to “save” the
Indians
a. Led by Helen Hunt Jackson, whose “A
Century of Dishonor” (1881) chronicled
gov’t’s mistreatment
b. Won sympathy from many
2. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
a. Many Americans believed the situation for
Indians would only improve if they
assimilated into white culture
- abandon collective, tribal society and
become individual property owners – like
white people!
b. Broke up reservations
- Head of household = 160 acres
- Single Men = 80 acres; kids = 40 acres
- Began to education Indians
read/write
farming techniques
- road to citizenship if accepted the deal
c. Failure of Dawes Act
- many Indians had no training or desire to
farm or ranch
- land allotments too small to be profitable
- some Indians attached to reservation and
didn’t want them to be broken up
- goal not achieved: by 1934, 86m acres
out of 138m acres given to them were in
the hands of whites
d. Disaster of the Dawes Act
* Destroyed the culture of the Plains
Indians by breaking up tribal ties
Dawes Act
Indians of the West
Indian Land Cessions
Expansion came at a
high cost to
American Indians, for
they were dispossessed
of their lands through
purchase, treaties, and
force. The map
shows the areas of land
ceded by the Indians
through 1890.
Land ceded by the Indians
quickly filled with a steady
stream of
miners,
cowboys, and
farmers—
all moving westward
to advance their fortune
3. The Plight of the American Indian
a. Failure of Reservations
- usually on poor land where Indians were
unable to hunt enough food or raise
sufficient crops
- often lacked the tools and training to
succeed as farmers
- Depended upon gov’t agencies, which
were often corrupt
- poor conditions led to illness, alcoholism,
unemployment and despair
b. Life for Native Americans after 1890
- total Indian population fell to less than
250,000 btwn 1890-1910
- 1924 Indian Citizenship Act: granted
citizenship to ALL Native Americans
born in the US (finally!)
President Calvin Coolidge with
four Osage Indians after
Coolidge signed the bill granting
Indians full citizenship. Source
— LOC, LC-USZ62-111409
DLC.
- 4.1 million The number of U.S. residents
who reported as American Indian and
Alaska Native alone or in combination
with one or more races in Census 2000
- Unfortunately, Native Americans remain
among the poorest and most
unemployed Americans
The Pine Ridge Reservation, located in rural SD is
plagued with deteriorating infrastructure, poverty,
lack of local employment, and high utility bills.
Many of the residents—the Oglala Lakota
Nation—live in mobile homes or substandard
housing and spend nearly 25% of their income on
utilities. Few people on the reservation have the
resources or construction knowledge necessary to
improve their current residences or build energyefficient, culturally appropriate houses.”
Indian Reservations Today
The West’s Legacy?
That’s all, Pilgrim,
Study for that Test!