Describe what you see in the painting
The West &
Native Americans
Fulfilling Manifest Destiny
Moving West
• Push Factors
• Civil war displaced
persons
• Available farm land
• Religious repression
• Open spaces sheltered
outlaws
• Pull Factors
• Private property
• Morrill Land Grant
• Land to railroads
• Homestead Act 1862
• 160 acres land free if you
were 21 or head of family;
built house, lived on it for 6
months and farmed for 5
years in a row
Moving West
• Settlers believed they had a right to western land:
• they produced more food & wealth than Native
Americans
• Many agreements between the Native Americans
and the government fell apart because Native
Americans and the settlers had different ideas of
land ownership
• Immigrants went west for cheap land
• Exodusters –ex-slaves who moved west:
• To escape racial violence in the South
• To make a new beginning and farming was the skill
most already knew
The Native Americans
During 1800s, the federal government carried out
policy of moving Indians out of the way of white
settlers, encouraging attempts to take Native
American Lands
At first Indians were moved
west into Indian Territory of
the Plains
Frontier settlers kept pushing
west pressuring government to
open Indian Territory
Indians were
forced onto
reservations, no
longer free to
roam the Plains
The first move was the
Trail of Tears in 1832
Two other crises also threatened Native American
civilizations
Disease
Loss of the buffalo
Settlers introduced diseases
to which the Natives had no
immunity
Settlers slaughtered
all the buffalo
• As more and more settlers moved west, the
Native American tribes were weakened or
destroyed
Assimilation
• Some critics attacked the government policies and defended
the Indians way of life
• Most leaders and white reformers hoped that Native
Americans would assimilate into American life, be “civilized”
and adopt white culture
One way the government sought to changed
the Native American was by requiring them
to farm individual plots of land
• The Indian Rights Movement would grow out the outrage of
how government treated the Native Americans
Activity:
Indian Wars
• Many Native Americans fought to defend their land
• 1864
Sandcreek Massacre
• 1875-1876 Red River War
• 1876
Battle of Little Big Horn
• 1890-1891 Ghost Dance War
• 1890
Pine Ridge Campaign
• 1890
Wounded Knee Massacre