Native Americans
Beginnings to Civil War
Early Indian Wars
Powhatan Confederacy nearly wipe out
struggling Jamestown colony in1622.
1636-1637 Pequot War in New England
King Phillip’s (Metacom) War
1676 Bacon’s Rebellion in VA
1675-1676 New England Confederation basically
eliminates native tribes
1680 Pueblo revolt against the Spanish in New
Mexico
1689-1763 Native Americans involved on both
the side of the French and the English in various
wars that were fought in part in North America –
ending with French and Indian War 1754-1763
1763 Pontiac’s Rebellion leads to Proclamation
of 1763
1776-1781 Many Native Americans see colonists
as greater threat than British so fight with British
in American Revolution.
1787 - The Northwest Ordinance - The ordinance stated that
Indians were to be treated with the "utmost good faith" and
specified that "their lands and property shall never be taken
away from them without their consent."
As settlers pushed forward into occupied Indian territory,
however, they received military protection. As governor of
Indiana William Henry Harrison threatened, bribed and
purposely intoxicated Indians. He was opposed by
Tecumseh who began to organize an Indian Confederation.
In 1811 and 1812 Harrison fought and defeated Tecumseh at
the battle of Tippecanoe.
1819 - The purchase of Florida - For years Indians had fled south to
Florida to escape American authorities. There the Spanish were
powerless to control the Indians where a new tribe was formed called the
Seminoles.
The Seminoles, comprised of both native Americans and escaped slaves
began to raid American settlements and then escape back into Spanish
territory.
In 1818 Andrew Jackson led a raid on Florida, captured two Spanish forts
and crushed the Seminoles.
Fearing the loss of their territory without compensation the Spanish sold
Florida to the United States whereupon the Seminoles were swiftly
moved to a reservation in central Florida.
1828 - Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia - In 1828 the Cherokee, a "civilized" tribe
who had lived in peace working as farmers, building houses and roads found
gold on their land.
As a result white settlers moved in and the State of Georgia claimed jurisdiction
over the Cherokee. The Cherokee sued claiming they were independent from
Georgia.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee.
The victory was short lived, however, as President Andrew Jackson in response
to the Courts decision is reputed to have said, "John Marshall has made his
decision. Now let him enforce it." Instead the federal government removed the
Indians to Oklahoma.
1830 - Indian Removal Act - This act authorized the President to
negotiate treaties and remove the remaining Eastern Indians to lands
west of the Mississippi.
Under Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, federal agents
again used threats, bribes and liquor to secure Indian consent to one
sided treaties.
The federal government removed thousands of Indians, some in chains,
on a trip marked by hunger, disease and death. This became known as
the "trail of tears."
By the late 1840's almost all native Americans had been moved to lands
west of the Mississippi.
1877 - President Rutherford B. Hayes in a
message to Congress said, "Many, if not most of
our Indian wars have had their origin in broken
promises and acts of injustice on our part." In
1881 Helen Hunt Jackson further helped awaken
white Americans to their shameful treatment of
the Indians through her book A Century of
Dishonor.
“Settlers” & Native Americans in
the West, 1865 - 1900
U.S. History II
Buffalo Hide Painting
The Plains Indians
Approx. 250,000 Indians in Great Plains in 1865
– smallpox, tuberculosis & malaria killed many & reduced
fertility among survivors
– women outnumbered men 2:1 in some tribes
– destroyed cultures as well when elders killed before they
could pass on oral traditions
2 main groups:
– semi-sedentary farmers living in earthen lodges along
Missouri R. (Arikaras, Hidatsas, Mandans, Pawnees &
Omahas)
– horse-mounted, nomadic buffalo hunters on “high plains”
(Arapahoes, Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Comanche, Crow, Kiowas
& Sioux)
The Indian Wars
Ft. Laramie Treaty (1851) set
boundaries for Northern tribes, but soon
violated
Sitting Bull
– Cheyenne & Arapaho annihilated at Sand
Creek (1864)
– Oglala Sioux Chief Red Cloud fought U.S.
to stalemate in 1866-67 war & received
guaranteed boundaries in 1868 treaty
– when George Custer’s expedition verified
gold in Black Hills, U.S. tried to back out of
treaty, so war broke out with Sitting Bull
– Custer’s 7th Cav. wiped out at Little
Bighorn in 1876
Sand Creek Massacre
Indian Wars. With more and more whites moving west, Indians had little
hope of stopping the invasion of their lands. Despite great odds,
however, many tribes fought back.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Indian wars were almost constant, and they
continued intermittently in the 1880s. The deaths of Gen. George A.
Custer and more than two hundred of his men in a battle with Sioux and
Cheyenne warriors at Little Bighorn in 1876, the resistance and flight of
the Nez Percé in 1877, and the long fight with Chiricahua Apaches led by
Geronimo, whose capture in 1886 brought the Indian wars to a virtual
end, vividly demonstrated to white Americans that the subjugation of
Native Americans would not be easy.
The Southern Plains Indians
Treaty of Medicine Lodge (1867) set
boundaries for southern plains tribes, but
gov’t failed to supply them as promised, so
Indians resumed hunting & war broke out
Gen. Phil Sheridan
– Sheriden & Custer destroyed villages & pony
herds
– Resistance broken by 1875
– 72 leaders imprisoned in Florida & subject to
experimental “civilization by immersion”
program run by Capt. Richard Pratt
– Wovoka’s Ghost Dance movement crushed
by massacre of 200+ Sioux at Wounded
Knee in Dec. 1890
Wovoka & the Ghost Dance
Big Foot Killed at Wounded Knee
The Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 made all
Native Americans wards of the federal
government and nullified all treaties with them.
By declaring that the government would no
longer sign treaties with Indian tribes, Congress
effectively erased the remaining traces of the
Native Americans’ national sovereignty
Beginning in the 1850s and intensifying efforts in
the West after the Civil War, the government
created reservations, tracts of land on which
tribes agreed to settle in return for a restricted
amount of cultural and legal freedom. Yet even
the reservation system started to crumble as
white settlers eagerly pressed against the
borders of reservations in Oklahoma, Arizona,
South Dakota, and Idaho.
The Reservations
Reservations seen as temporary - designed to
civilize & Christianize Indians
Run by Bureau of Indian Affairs (est. 1824)
– controls schools & legal system, grants recognition
– agents white, but lesser officials Indian, which deflected
hostility onto traitors
Traditional practices & communal work replaced by
individualism, because whites believed indiv. land
ownership was bedrock of democracy
Children often sent to boarding schools & punished
for speaking native tongue
The Dawes Act. The Dawes Act of 1887 decreed that reservation lands,
previously held in common by a tribe, should be divided into 160-acre
plots for families, 80-acre parcels for single men, and 40-acre pieces for
orphans.
Any land left over was defined as “surplus,” and tribes were required to
sell all surplus land to the government for resale to non-Indians.
Sen. Henry M. Dawes of Massachusetts, who sponsored the bill,
intended the legislation as a “reform” measure to introduce Native
Americans to the concepts of individual ownership and agricultural life—
white beliefs about the “proper” way for Indians to live.
The new policy proved devastating to the Native Americans, many of
whom did not live in traditional family units or fully understand the
concept of private property.
General Allotment
Dawes Severalty Act (1887) broke up reservations to
encourage individualism
– each head of household given 160 acres (320 if suitable only
for grazing)
– could pick own land, but held in trust by gov’t for 25 years
– would become citizens after 25 years if gave up tribal ways
– reduced Indian-owned acreage from 138 to 48 million - rest
opened up to white settlement
Curtis Act (1898) terminated tribal gov’ts that rejected
allotment
Repercussions. For every three acres owned by Native Americans in the
1880s, two were no longer under their control by the 1920s as a result of
the Dawes Act.
Socially, the act encouraged individualism over traditional ideas of
communalism. It upheld the sanctity of the family rather than
emphasizing the importance of community.
The land allotments were rarely large enough to sustain a family, and
divisions of the parcels among heirs created smaller and smaller
sections.
Such situations encouraged Native Americans to lease or sell their land
to whites and increased their displacement.
Shrinking Reservations
Indian Schools. Another component of the Indian policy during this period was the
establishment of Indian boarding schools, which brought children from many nations
together and discouraged them from speaking anything but English. “The language of the
white man and the black man ought to be good enough for the red man,” a commissioner
of Indian affairs announced in 1887.
Schools established in Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and California emphasized vocational
and technical training and taught their pupils that future success lay in blending into white
society.
In such settings Indian youths suffered. Many caught diseases for which they had no
immunity, and all were deprived of education in their nations’ traditions and ceremonies.
The schools encouraged youths to embrace Christianity and to leave behind the old
religion of their people.
Many resisted enrollment or ran away.
Denying Tribal Sovereignty
Legal status as nations with treaty rights
stripped by Congress, with Supreme
Court’s approval
1871: Congress declared tribes no longer
sovereign nations, but wards of gov’t
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903): Court
ruled Congress had plenary power over
tribes - could act unilaterally to violate
treaties & dispose of Indian lands as it
saw fit
Indian Citizenship Act (1924) granted
citizenship to all Native Americans
Indian Reorganization Act, also called Wheeler–Howard Act, (June 18, 1934),
measure enacted by the U.S. Congress, aimed at decreasing federal control of
American Indian affairs and increasing Indian self-government and
responsibility. In gratitude for the Indians’ services to the country in World War
I, Congress in 1924 authorized the Meriam Survey of the state of life on the
reservations. The shocking conditions under the regimen established by the
Dawes General Allotment Act (1887), as detailed in the Meriam report of 1928,
spurred demands for reform.
The act curtailed the future allotment of tribal communal lands to individuals
and provided for the return of surplus lands to the tribes rather than to
homesteaders. It also encouraged written constitutions and charters giving
Indians the power to manage their internal affairs. Finally, funds were
authorized for the establishment of a revolving credit program for tribal land
purchases, for educational assistance, and for aiding tribal organization.
1953 - Termination Policy - This was a new sharply different
policy that ended the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and all of
the programs that went with it.
It divided tribal property among the tribes members thus
subjecting them to taxation.
It also curtailed tribal self government and relocated many
Indians to the cities where jobs were available.
The Termination policy also ended federal responsibility and
social services - education, health and welfare, to the
Indians.
1970 - President Richard Milhouse Nixon
recommends self determination for Indians.
Indian tribes were once again brought under
federal funding with the promise that federal
control would be lessened.
1974 - Iroquois Nation vs. The State of New York
- Claiming they have been using certain lands
since 1805 Indians sue and win in federal court.
The federal government is forced to be
responsive to their treaty claims.
1980's - Several Indian nations, most notably in
Connecticut and New York, sue to gain
autonomy (independence) on tribal reservation
land. Indians win these cases paving the way for
the creation of gambling operations on
reservation land. Today there are casinos on
several reservations providing millions of dollars
of income for those tribes.