1. Unit 5 End of the Indians in the Great Plains 1868-1900

2.  Background  Jeffersonian ▪ Indians should be removed to distance them from worst of American fur traders ▪ Cheated them or traded them whiskey  Jacksonian ▪ Indians were inferior and should be removed to make way for American expansion ▪ Condescending perspective, much like that of slave owners toward their slaves

3.  Early Years Europeans had to recognize Indian sovereignty because they could overwhelm colonials  Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia ▪ Domestic, dependent nations ▪ By 1871 congressional legislation sought to eliminate all Indian sovereignty  Transfer issues  political battle over whether Indian policy should be held by the Department of War or Department of Interior

4.  Some Easterners who saw what was happening on the plains as genocide  Wanted Indian policy in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)  Senator James Doolittle  Wisconsin Senator Chair of the Indians Affairs Committee ▪ Pushed a bill through Congress to setup an ad hoc committee of 3 senators and 4 house members ▪ Convinced President Johnson to give committee a commission to negotiate treaties ▪ A few Indian nations signed, but most were too angry and not yet pacified

6.  For over a decade policy vacillated between peace and force  Peace advocates tried to implement Concentration ▪ Negotiated by Doolittle’s committee ▪ Whenever Indians left reservations force policy kicked into action

7.  June 1866 a peace commission under Doolittle met with Dakota and allied leaders  The Bozeman road had been laid out to connect the mine fields of Montana with the Oregon Trail ▪ Cut through some of the best remaining hunting grounds for Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho ▪ While negotiating, Indians see Colonel Henry Carrington come through with construction equipment and men setup three forts to protect travelers

8.  Indians stormed out and lay siege to the forts  Brought construction to a near halt  Fetterman’s Massacre (Battle of a hundred Slain)  Indians win ▪ In late 1868, Army vacated the forts, and the Indians burned them to the ground  The military blamed it on the BIA’s failure to stop the arms trade ▪ BIA blamed it on military blunders  Indians then come back to negotiate

10.  Doolittle lost his Senate seat in the 1866 term elections  Replaced by Senator John Henderson of Missouri as Chair of the Indian Affairs Committee ▪ Tried to appease all by selecting equal number of “force” and “peace advocates  “Peace”  Henderson, Nathaniel Taylor, Samuel Tappan  “Force”  General William S. Harney, Alfred Terry, William T. Sherman

11.  Peace Commission renegotiates treaties  Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek (1867)  Second Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)  Similarities in treaties  Reservations with outlets  No unwelcome whites on reservations  Thirty years of annuities  Some in the South on “Reconstruction Treaties” lands  Promises of “assimilation” tools

12.  September 1867, the plains were divided into a northern division and southern division  General Philip Sheridan appointed to lead the Northern ▪ Known as the division of the Missouri  His aggressive, Civil War, tactics played a big role in turning the tide

14.  Black Kettle and his band were one of the few that moved to the place mandated  He couldn’t control the Dog Soldiers that moved into and out of his encampment ▪ General Sherman called it all out war  November 27, 1868 George Armstrong Custer and his 7th U.S. Calvary attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita’s River

15.  Hazen tried to contact Sherman at nearby Fort Cobb to tell him that Black Kettle’s band had surrenered  But it was too late  Custer led one column in another “zeroing operation”  He attacked first, killing 875 horses, and then 102 men ▪ A few women and children

17.  Angry over Sand Creek Massacre and opposed to Treaty of Medicine Lodge  Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho hit farms and travel routes killing 79  September 16, 1868 Major George A. Forsyth led 50 frontiersmen out of Fort Hays  Camped on Arikaree Fork in Colorado Territory  Dog Soldiers under Roman Nose pinned them down on an island in the middle of the river ▪ Armed with Spencer repeating rifles, frontiersmen withstood many assaults  Not conclusive who won

18.  Kiowa (Mother was Southern Arapaho)  Only reluctantly agreed to the treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek  Moved onto a reservation and ventured into the west to hunt buffalo ▪ Their numbers were dwindling  When reservation agents punished withholding annuity food ▪ They started raiding Wichita and Caddo villages

19.  Satanta and his friend and fellow headman, Big Tree, led their men in raids into Texas  Especially supply wagon trains, seeing it as not part of the U.S. and thus outside the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek  He and his men also considered their raiding as pay-back for annuities not delivered  Taken prisoner in 1871, with promises of his release only when his people obeyed the government’s mandate ▪ To return to their reservation ▪ The Indians complied

20. Big Tree

22.  Isa-Tai, a Comanche shaman, united Indians the souther plains  Called for the first Comanche Sun Dance ▪ Took little persuasion by Isa-Tai to convince Indian leaders they had to strike back  Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapahos, Kiowas, Kiowa-Apache, and Comanche attacked the new settlement of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls ▪ An old Spanish mission

23.  In the early-morning hours of June 27, 1874, 300 Indians moved in hoping to surprise the buffalo hunters and overpower them  led by Isa-Tai and famed Comanche headman Quanah Parker  Although the 28 hunters were vastly outnumbered, they were well armed with long range “buffalo rifles” and held off the Indians  70 Indians killed without 3 buffalo hunter casualties

25.  Most Lakota and their allies, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho moved onto the reserve after the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie  Gold discovered in the Black Hills in 1873  The government first tried to keep whites out of the Black Hills but gave up and tried to keep Indians out ▪ Then the usual thirty days warning for all Indians to come into the agencies

26.  Sioux and Cheyenne defiantly left their reservations and gathered with Sitting Bull  Army sent three columns against them including Lt. Colonel George Custer  Those under Sioux leader Crazy Horse enveloped Custer’s men and killed them ▪ Indians mutilated the bodies in order to force them to suffer in the afterlife  Battle was the pinnacle of Indians power  Created resentment toward Indians with American officials leading to the push to get retribution

30.  Conditions  Reservations reduced in size  Most located in land not suitable for agriculture ▪ Goal of BIA was to turn Indians into self-sustaining farmers ▪ Few jobs or ways of making a living ▪ Poverty and starvation rampant ▪ Bad housing/many live in tipis with no buffalo skins to cover them ▪ High death rate ▪ Had to live under the dictates of a reservation’s Indian agent ▪ Enforced White man’s laws

32.  Selected from ranks of Indian men, usually soldier sodalities  Enforced White law among Indians ▪ No practice of traditional religion ▪ No plural marriages ▪ No practice of traditional political structure/agents chose leadership

33. Ute Policeman

34.  Lt. Richard Pratt  Worked with imprisoned Indian Soldiers in the 1870’s  Convinced the army to let him use old army barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to setup a school ▪ Sought to assimilate and teach young Indians ▪ Major goal of the peace policy advocates  So successful initially that the government took over the school in 1882 and established many more off-reservation boarding schools thereafter

35.  Controversies  students were forced to attend and many of their parents tried to hide them  Students had to work half a day to support the school ▪ In the “outing system” students were placed in the homes of nearby white residents ▪ Virtually slaves ▪ Many returned to their reservations ▪ Former students didn’t fit in and had a hard time adjusting

36. Carlisle Arapaho After

38.  Pushed through Congress by Henry Dawes in 1887  Goal was to turn Indians away from communal land tenure to private land ownership  Divided reservations into individual plots ▪ usually 160 acres for men and 80 acres for women and children  Promised farm equipment and training ▪ No taxation on Indian lands

39.  After allotting reservation and assigning plots the remaining lands (Surplus lands) were opened to Whites to claim under homesteading laws  Bill was supported by Whites because they could buy “surplus lands”  Reformers thought assimilation was best for Indians and by the military ▪ Money made through land sales was earmarked for the army

40.  Problems  Promoters soon realized that without knowledge of individual land ownership Indians would get cheated by Whites in land sales  So included in the bill a 25 year trust restriction on the land ▪ Could not sell the land until the trust ended  Little farming equipment or training in farming ▪ No help in private land ownership was forthcoming

42.  Most allotment accomplished by 1900  Indians lost over 87 million acres of “surplus lands”  1894 bill authorized the Secretary of Interior to grant easements across allotted lands for telephone and telegraphy lines  By 1902 the “Dead Indian Act” allowed adult heirs to sell their deceased relatives land

43.  Started with Piute Indian Tavibo  In 1870 he had a vision telling him that deliverance was near  Whites would be destroyed in an earthquake ▪ Indians would be spared and the world would be restored to the old order  Few initially believed so he had a second revelation  Same as first however Indians would be resurrected on the third day  Still few follow so he had a third vision  Only the Indians that believed in the Ghost Dance would be resurrected

44.  Took over his father’s work on the Ghost Dance  Saw himself as the next Christ after the first one had been killed  His version included frequent bathing, rejecting alcohol and no violence ▪ Dancing for five consecutive days demonstrated ones’ worthiness ▪ Gave Indians vision of a restored world once Whites were eliminated in cataclysm

46.  Lakota had become divided  Some had assimilated ▪ Role of Shaman had faded ▪ Political leadership was changing  Continuing loss of land ▪ Allotment Act - 2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie required 3/4 vote for the government to take anymore land ▪ Government won the vote using scare tactics and bribery

47.  Lakota believed that the “Ghost Shirts” would protect them from bluecoats’ bullets  During the fall of 1890 the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota Reservations ▪ Revitalized the Indians and brought fear to the Whites  A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired a message to Washington ▪ “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy... We need protection and we need it now.”  Order went out to arrest Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation ▪ Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on December 15 by Indian Police

49.  On December 15 Sitting Bull had been killed  The reason given for the shooting claimed that he had resisted arrest  Many fled to Spotted Elk’s band due to his reputation as a peaceful leader  Yet, after slaying of Sitting Bull Spotted Elk was put on the list of “fomenters of disturbances” and arrested  Lakota had sent representatives to learn Wovoka’s new religion  7th Calvary commanded by Major Samuel Whiteside intercepted Spotted Elk’s band of Lakota and took them westward to Wounded Knee Creek to camp

50.  The rest of 7th Cavalry arrived and surrounded Spotted Elk’s encampment with four Hotchkiss guns  Morning of December 29 the troops went into the camp to disarm the Sioux  During the process a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote would not give up his gun ▪ A scuffle ensued where a shot was fired ▪ Led to the Cavalry opening fire with the their guns and killing all in their path ▪ Women, children and fellow troopers  All in all, at least 150 men, women and children of Lakota had been killed  Only 25 American troops died, most to friendly fire  End of Indian dominance in the Great Plains

53. Spotted Elk