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The destruction of the Native Americans. Stage Set for Conflict. Culture of the Plains Indians Buffalo provided food, clothing, and shelter for the nomadic lifestyle of the Indians. They did not believe land should be bought and sold, and white farmers felt it should be divided.
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Stage Set for Conflict • Culture of the Plains Indians • Buffalo provided food, clothing, and shelter for the nomadic lifestyle of the Indians. They did not believe land should be bought and sold, and white farmers felt it should be divided. • Government policy • Instead of continuing to move the Indians westward, the government changed its policy. Indian land was seized, and they were forced onto reservations. • Destruction of the buffalo • The buffalo-centered way of life was threatened, with vast herds driven to extinction by reduced grazing lands and hunting for sport and profit.
The Indian Wars Army troops attacked and massacred surrendering Cheyenne. Congressional investigators condemned the Army actions, but no one was punished in the Sand Creek Massacre. Sand Creek Massacre After the massacre, Cheyenne and Sioux stepped up their raids. In return for closing a sacred trail, the Sioux agreed to live on a reservation. Other nations signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty and were moved to reservation lands in western Oklahoma. Treaties George Armstrong Custer led his troops in headlong battle against Sitting Bull and lost. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was a temporary victory for the Sioux. The U.S. government was determined to put down the threat to settlers. The Battle of the Little Bighorn
The Indian Wars The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon ended the Indian Wars on the southern Plains. With their ponies killed and food stores destroyed, surviving Comanches moved onto the reservation. Palo Duro Canyon The Ghost Dance was a religious movement that inspired hope among suffering Native Americans. Newspapers began suggesting that this signaled a planned uprising. The military killed Sitting Bull while attempting to arrest him in a skirmish. The Ghost Dance The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred the day after the surrender. Shooting began after a gun went off, and the fleeing Sioux were massacred. This action marked the end of the bloody conflict between the army and the Plains Indians. Wounded Knee
The Treaty of Fort Laramie (the Treaty of 1868) • Signed by Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux. • Bozeman Trail closed. • Sioux move onto great Sioux reservation. • U.S. Government would provide protection and supplies. • Not signed by Sioux chiefs such as Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
The Sioux Wars of 1870s • American promises of the Treaty of 1868 were violated. • Bands of Sioux left the reservation and resumed previous way of life. • Many Sioux leaders, like Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse of the Lakota had not signed the treaty.
Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse • Whites began returning to Sioux lands in Black Hills when rumor of Gold had been discovered on the Great Sioux Reservation. • General Custer sent to investigate & reported gold indeed had been found. • Government tried to buy Sioux lands. • Sioux refused to sell their sacred ground. • Sioux and Cheyenne held a Sun Dance, Sitting Bull had vision of victory over army.
The Battle of Little Big Horn CUSTER’S LAST STAND
Smashing the Sioux Resistance • Defeat of Custer at the Little Big Horn, caused the U.S. Government to increase the military effort to defeat the Sioux and others that resisted the reservation system. General Phil Sheridan
A P A C H E • People of the desert Southwest • Hunters and Warriors • Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona & Northern Mexico Cochise- Chief who lead Apache resistance in 1870s
Geronimo & the Apache Resistance • Lead a band of Apache from New Mexico off the reservation in 1881. • Conducted raids for two years across the Southwest. • Surrendered and resumed raiding a few times. • Final surrender was in 1886 to General George Crook, and he and his followers were shipped to Florida.
“I Will Fight No More, Forever” • Nez Perce lived in Northwest of United States. • Peaceful people who earlier had befriended and helped Lewis and Clark. • Lost much of their lands to white settlers by treaty. • When gold found on their remaining lands, whites attempted to seize that from them. • Young Nez Perce raided and killed white settlers. • U.S. Army moved to quell Nez Perce. Chief Joseph, Nez Perce
Chief Joseph, Nez Perce “Tell General Howard I Know his heart. What he told me before, I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The Old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes and no. He who lead the young men is dead. 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.”
The Ghost Dance movement • Begun by Wovoka, a Paiute prophet who had a vision that Indian dead would return, Buffalo would return and whites would disappear. • Spread rapidly. Spread from tribe to tribe. Pan-Indian movement • Ritual of the Ghost Dance would bring realization of this vision. Indian lands would be returned
The Ghost Dance Movement Whites viewed the Ghost Dance as dangerous and would lead to Indian uprising.
Wounded Knee • Sioux ordered to camp at Wounded Knee Creek near Pine Ridge. • Lead by Big Foot of the Oglala Sioux, the Indians gave up their weapons to the army. • Then the army opened fire, the result was …
The End of Indian Wars & Native American Resistance “I Buried My Heart at Wounded Knee” The final “BATTLE” of the Indian Wars. December 29, 1890
The Dawes Severality Act (1887) • Ended tribal holdings of land. • Lands of Indian Reservations surveyed and divided into 160-acre farms. • Individual Native Americans given an allotment. • Could not sell or lease it for 25 years. • If they adopted “habits of civilized life” they could become citizens. • Excess lands belonged to U.S. • Indian lands shrank from 138 million to 47 million acres.
Oklahoma Land Runs • Series of 7 runs between 1889 and 1893 • Settlers purchased rights to race to lands in Oklahoma and acquire homesteads. • Lands previously had belonged to various Native American tribes as part of the Organized Indian Territory (1828)
Resistance in the Northwest The government took back nine-tenths of the Nez Percé land when gold miners and settlers came into the area. Fourteen years later they were ordered to abandon the last bit of that land to move into Idaho. Chief Joseph tried to take his people into Canada, but the army forced their surrender less than forty miles from the Canadian border. Chief Joseph and many others were eventually sent to northern Washington. Resistance in the Southwest The Apache people were moved onto a reservation near the Gila River in Arizona. Soldiers forcefully stopped a religious gathering there, and Geronimo and others fled the reservation. They raided settlements along the Arizona-Mexico border for years before finally being captured in 1886. Geronimo and his followers were sent to Florida as prisoners of war. His surrender marked the end of armed resistance in the area. Resistance Ends in the West
Life on the Reservation The government wanted control over all the western territories and wanted Indians to live like white Americans. The Bureau of Indian Affairs began to erase the Indian culture through a program of Americanization. Indian students could speak only English and could not wear their traditional clothing. They learned to live like Americans. The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up many reservations and turned Native Americans into individual property owners. Ownership was designed to transform their relationship to the land. The Indians received less productive land, and few had the money to start farms. Most of the land given to the Indians was unsuitable for farming.
Indian Schools • Indian children taken from their homes and placed in government run schools. • Indian children were instructed in the ways of being white.
Benevolent Assimilation • Native Americans give up their beliefs, customs, culture and way of life and become a part of white culture.
A Century of Dishonor • Helen Hunt Jackson • Documented the mistreatment of Native Americans and outlined the broken promises of the United States. “It makes little difference… where one opens the record of the history of Indians; every page and every year has a dark stain.”
Cowboys • Become a romanticized myth of American cowboys. • Long days 10-14 hours, 18 or more while on the trail. • Most were young and bow legged. • Had to be an expert rider and roper. • If carried a gun, probably never shot anyone. • More likely to die of disease or an accident or outlaws than Indians.
The Golden Era of the Cowboy • 1866-1885 • As many as 55,000 Cowboys worked in the West. • Season began with Spring Round-up. • Drive cattle from ranches to shipping yards. • Wasn’t paid until drive was complete. • Overgrazing, drought, prairie fires and record heat & cold killed off livestock between 1883-87. • Fencing in of the plains. Joseph Glidden’s barbed-wire
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” • By Frederick Jackson Turner • 1890 Census announced the end of the frontier as a clear dividing line between settled and undeveloped areas. • Stressed that the availability of free land and influence of the frontier had played a major role in development of democracy in the U.S. • Asked what would happen to the nation now that the possibility of free land and a new life in the West was vanishing.
Wild West Shows Buffalo Bill & Sitting Bull
