The Demise of the Natives

• Objective: I can evaluate the conflict between settlers and Native Americans due to westward migration.

• Preview: Define: Assimilation means…

• Process: Guided Notes/discussion.• On Your Own: Bury My Heart at Wounded

Knee—video guide.

Native Americans• Spanish had brought horses to the

West in 1598. This changed the Native Americans way of life.

• Many of the Plains tribes became nomadic--they moved – followed food• Lived in small extended families

• As hunters, buffalo was their most important resource.• Give me examples of how one

can live off a buffalo.

• Land was for tribal use = no land ownership.

Culture Clashes on the Prairie• The coming of the railroad to the Great Plains

drastically changed the lives of the Plains tribes.

• Railroad could not exist alongside buffalo because the buffalo herds blocked the tracks.

• Railroad companies slaughtered the buffalo which meant the Plains tribes had no way to live (in ~50 years, buffalo population went from 15 million to 600).

Settlers Push West• While Indians did not believe land could be

owned, settlers believed that owning land meant having a stake in the country.

• The government had been pushing Native American tribes westward onto one enormous reservation.

• In the 1850s however, the government changed its policy.• Defined specific boundaries for each tribe.• Indians ignored these boundaries.• Began clashing with settlers.

Sand Creek Massacre, 1864

• Cheyenne tribe, assuming they were protected under US gov’t policy, returned to Colorado’s Sand Creek for the winter.

• Tensions had been festering between them and the settlers.

• Under command of Colonel John Chivington, the US Army attacks

• Chivington gave direct orders to kill everyone – no prisoners.

• Killed more than 130 men, women and children, many of whom they mutilated after death.

• Displayed body parts in public, in Denver.

• “The massacre lasted six or eight hours….I tell you Ned it was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized….there was no organization among our troops, they were a perfect mob….You would think it impossible for white men to butcher and mutilate human beings as they did there, but every word I have told you is the truth….It was almost impossible to save any of them. When the women were killed the Bucks did not seem to try and get away, but fought desperately….Charly Autobee saved John Smith….They were going to murder Charlie Bent, but I run him into the Fort….I expect we will have a hell of a time with the Indians this winter.”• -Captain Silas Soule

1st Colorado Cavalry (USV) to Major Edward Wynkoop, former commander, Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory. December 14, 1864

• “I heard Colonel Chivington give no orders in regard to prisoners. I tried to take none myself, but killed all I could…I think and earnestly believe the Indian to be an obstacle to civilization and should be exterminated.”• -Major Jacob Downing

3rd Colorado Cavalry (USV)

Continued Resistance• Sioux chief Red Cloud signed

the Treaty of Fort Laramie—agreement to settle on a reservation along the Missouri River in 1868.

• Sioux chief Sitting Bull never signed it so didn’t follow it.

• Colonel George Custer reported that there was gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

• 1876—Sitting Bull has visions of soldiers and Native Americans falling from their horses.

Battle of Little Bighorn--June 1867Custer and his men were

headed for the Little Big Horn River (in Montana). When they arrived, the Native Americans under Crazy Horse & Sitting Bull were ready for them.

Within an hour, Custer and all of his men were dead.

Tensions continue.

Assimilation By 1887, the US Government

wanted to make assimilation—giving up your beliefs and way of life and become something else (in this case, white)-- the official policy toward Native Americans.

By this point, Native Americans were expected to give up their culture, their way of life, and be absorbed into white culture.

DAWES ACT: 18871. Broke up reservation land

into farm land and grazing land.

2. Gave 160 acres of land to each adult head of family3. Government sold the rest of the reservation land to settlers. 4. Children forced to attend American schools

• Taught English language, dress, culture, etc.

Oklahoma Land Rush• 1889—a major land giveaway in

what is now Oklahoma.• In less than 1 day, land-hungry

settlers claimed 2 million acres of land.

• Some took the land before it was declared open for the taking.

• This is why Oklahoma is known as the Sooner State.

Battle of Wounded Knee: 12/29/1890

• The Ghost Dance—a spiritual movement that prophesied the return of the traditional Indian way of life (have the whites vanish, return to nomadic tribes).

• Sitting Bull was killed by Indian police.

• Last armed encounter between Native Americans and the US Army.

• US troops v. 350 Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

• 25 soldiers and more than 150 Indians—many of them women, children, and the elderly died in the massacre.

Mass Burial• Blizzard hits soon after the

battle.• Civilian burial party (paid $2 a

day) was sent to bury the dead.• Mass grave.

• 4 babies were found still alive, wrapped in the blankets of their dead mothers.

• Hundreds of Sioux watched from nearby hillsides as the pit was closed without ceremony

• Ghost Dance movement ends soon after.

Helen Hunt Jackson• Wrote A Century of Dishonor: about the broken promises to the Native Americans• Land deals, agricultural education, treaties etc.• Brought Native American issue into the homes, just like Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought slavery into the homes of readers across the nation.

Native American Civil Rights• 1924: Native Americans declared citizens of the US• 1932: Native Americans can consolidate land.• 1964: Finally given the right to vote during the Voting Rights Act.