American Indian History19th Century

Broken Treaties

• Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

--government agency for managing American Indian issues

• U.S. government gave American Indians money and promises of other land and supplies in exchange for their land

Reservation System

• created to serve desire for farmland and gold• gave government control over American

Indians• used to assimilate American Indians

Violence in the West

• Sand Creek Massacre (1864)—as they were about to surrender, 200 Cheyenne were killed by American forces, mostly women and children

• Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)—Sioux killed General Custer and his entire battalion, last victory of the Sioux

Violence in the West

• Massacre at Wounded Knee (1890)—150 Sioux and 30 U.S. soldiers killed, marked the end of conflict on the Great Plains

• After some Nez Percé killed four white settlers, Chief Joseph led the tribe in an attempted escape to Canada.

Wounded Knee

Decline of the Buffalo

Assimilation

• cultural absorption of American Indians into “white America”

• schools were set up for American Indians• made them learn and speak English• lost their cultural ties: “Americanization”• government felt this was for Indian survival

Dawes General Allotment Act (1887)

• gave American Indians an allotment of reservation land for farming

• any remaining land would be sold• lost majority of their land• many Indians rejected this system• Some land was not suitable for farming

The West

• What is a frontier? • How has the frontier changed throughout

American history? • What happened to the frontier?• How did this change the foreign policies of

the United States?

Land Acts

• Homestead Act (1862)—law that encouraged settlement in the West by giving government-owned land to small farmers

• Morrill Act (1862)—federal law that gave land to western states to build agricultural and engineering colleges

Who moved West?

• 1. whites from the East—searching for available cheap land

• 2. exodusters—African Americans who settled in the West after Reconstruction to escape the South

• 3. immigrants—northern and western Europeans (i.e. Scandinavians, Irish)