Modern U.S. History

The most numerous Native American tribes in the West lived on the Great Plains. After obtaining horses from the Spanish in the 1500’s, these tribes grew in number as they were able to follow the buffalo herds and use these animals for both food and goods.

Although in the early 1800’s white Americans chose to push all Native Americans to the Great Plains, in the mid-1800’s whites realized that the Plains could support agriculture. After this, many Americans chose to push the Native Americans out of existence.

The physical act of westward migration by the whites led to the destruction of many Native Americans. Livestock destroyed timber and pastures along streams, trails cut off buffalo from certain hunting ranges, and the whites brought diseases that the Native Americans had no immunity to.

Cholera killed more than half of the Comanches and Kiowas and most other tribes lost 40% of their population from this new disease that was spread through water sources.

Once whites realized that the Plains could support agriculture, the government chose to reclaim the millions of acres previously “given” to the Native Americans and move tribes to specific reservations. The whole- scale relocation of Native American tribes off of their traditional grounds led to fighting on the Plains between the 1850’s and 1880’s.

When gold was discovered on land recently granted to the Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1864, a Methodist minister, John Chivington, led a militia force to the Cheyenne camp at Sand Creek. Chivington’s forces attacked at night and killed and scalped over 150 men, women, and children.

A victory for the Native Americans came after The Battle of 100 Slain when the Sioux wiped out an army detachment that was led by a captain who claimed he would destroy the Sioux nation. In acknowledgement of the U.S.’s defeat in the “Great Sioux War” the government signed the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 which stated that the Lakota would be given perpetual land and hunting rights in portions of their traditional territory (which they were not).

Map Legend: Lakota Nation: Reserved by the 1868 Treaty for the unreserved use of the Lakota people 1876: Lakota reservation after the US stole the Black Hills Lakota reservations after 100 years of court actions

Peace between the Lakota (Sioux) and the whites lasted until 1872 when the Northern Pacific Railroad began building a route that would violate the 2 nd Laramie Treaty. The army was sent to protect the railroad’s surveyors.

In 1874 Colonel George A. Custer led an invasion in the Black Hills to survey for gold. After he found gold, thousands of white miners illegally moved onto Sioux land.

The army tried to remove the Sioux from the area, but Sitting Bull (a Lakota chief) had a vision of soldiers and Native Americans fighting.

When Custer approached the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho encampments on the Little Bighorn River, the tribes were ready. Custer and his 7 th Cavalry were defeated, but this battle marked the end of the Sioux’s fight.

Various bands were taken in the winter of and Sitting Bull and his followers surrendered out of hiding in Canada in 1881 where they were suffering from hunger. The Lakota were just one of many Native American nations that were eventually removed from their land by the whites.

The rapid destruction of the buffalo by whites (railroads, settlers, and government sponsored hunters) also severely hurt the Native Americans. Between alone, white hunters killed 4 million buffalo. Approximately 65 million buffalo roamed the Plains in 1800, by 1890 less than a thousand remained.

The Ghost Dance began in late 1888 and reached its peak in Originally conceived by a Paiute man, the Ghost Dance was a ritual to be performed in order to rid the world of the whites and restore the earth to the Native Americans. This hopeful practice quickly spread throughout the reservations of the Plains tribes.

The end of the Dance came in 1890 when the U.S. army massacred at least 200 Lakota men, women, and children in an attempt to put an end to the Ghost Dance. This slaughter is known as the Wounded Knee Massacre and brought about the end of the wars between the Native Americans and white Americans.

Why do you think the army needed to stop the Ghost Dance?

Another method used by the American government to subdue the Native Americans was a process deemed “Americanization”. Through Americanization, Native Americans would be taught to be “more white”. Not only would this demonstrate the whites’ cultural dominance over the Native Americans, but the whites also hoped that this would destroy the Native American culture and their will to fight.

Americanization happened through a number of paths. Missionaries came to Indian reservations to teach the Native Americans Christianity instead of their own tribal religions. Native American children were sent to special boarding schools where they had to be educated like white students and were deprived of their opportunity to grow up in a traditional setting.

Tribal councils were prohibited and tribal leaders were imprisoned. The government also taught Native American men how to farm and taught women how to perform household tasks. This reduced the status of the Native American woman who had previously been respected for raising crops.

In a final effort to destroy Native American culture, the U.S. government passed The Dawes Act in The Dawes Act divided tribal lands among individual Indians. This was to teach Native Americans about private property (an important piece of capitalism). Leftover reservation land was then sold to settlers. Therefore, after the Dawes Act Native Americans had even less land.