IV. Subjugating the Indians subjugate: to bring under complete control; conquer

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IV. Subjugating the Indians subjugate
to bring under complete control conquer
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Some Statistics

• Estimate of Indian population at time of
  Columbus 8-16 million spread over 2 continents.
  
• into hundreds of tribal societies
• most advanced were Mayans, Aztecs, Incas
  (Spanish America)
• 90 of Native population lost

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• A. Characteristics of the Plains Indians
• 1. Nomadic
• 2. organized in small bands of appx 500
• 3. very diff.culture than whites (called
  wild Indians white frontiersmen)
• 4. life revolved around the buffalo

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The Galloping Grocery Store
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• - 1865 appx 15m buffalo roamed GP. By
• 1885, only about 1000 remained. In 1937,
• only 37 remained. What happened?
• a. Transcontinental RR
• - 1863-1869 RR crews paid to kill buffalo
  for food robes which were
  fashionable in E
• - became nuisance (herds so numerous that
  in 1868, a Kansas Pacific train
  waited 8 hrs for herd to cross the
  track)

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• b. Gold!
• to make travel across GP safer for
  whites in route to CA gold, US adopted
  policy of destroying nomadic life of
  Plains Indians - how? By
  encouraging the killing of buffalo
  herds the Indians livelihood
• - every buffalo dead is an Indian gone

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Rath Wrights Buffalo Yard 1878 40,000 hides
Dodge City, KS
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• c. Participation in the Buffalo Kill
• - William F. Cody killed 4,280 buffalo in 18
  mos. while working for
  Kansas-Pacific RR Buffalo Bill
• - RR ads for buffalo safaris drew men from
  all over world (even royalty!)
  lean out of train windows or take a few
  steps out of train cars and shoot them

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Slaughtered buffalo lying dead in the snow in
1872, courtesy National Archives
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Their plight did not go unnoticed..

• Thirty years ago millions of the great unwieldy
  animals existed on this continent. Innumerable
  droves roamed, comparatively undisturbed and
  unmolested, . . . Many thousands have been
  ruthlessly and shamefully slain every season for
  past twenty years or more by white hunters and
  tourists merely for their robes, and in sheer
  wanton sport, and their huge carcasses left to
  fester and rot, and their bleached skeletons to
  strew the deserts and lonely plains."In the
  Prime of the Buffalo," J. F. BaltimoreThe
  Overland Monthly and Out West MagazineNovember
  1889

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Good News?

• The buffalo population has been rescued from
  extinction by preservationists. By the early
  21st century, the number of buffalo had increased
  to about 300,000

Adopt a Bison
Hear a Bison
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• Americas largest herd is owned by Media Mogul,
  Ted Turner (50,000 bison )
• sometimes you have to eat an animal to save it
• http//www.perc.org/articles/article900.php
• Bisonomics

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• B. United States Indian Policies
• - reflected aided white settlers desire for
  Indian lands
• 1. Removal (Early 1800s)
• a. 1830 Indian Removal Act - forced
  removal of SE tribes to Indian
  territory present day OK
• b. Gave Indians unwanted land (remember
  the Great American Desert?) GP
  one big reservation
• c. Temporary fix until gold, oil or
  other valuable resource found on
  their territory

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Indian Removal Act of 1830
Trail of Tears
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• 2. Containment
• a. As Americans crossed Miss. R to
  reach Pacific , new policies needed
• - 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie - assigned
  boundaries to the various tribes of
  the
• Plains. Major tribes agreed to hunting
  ground boundaries from which federal
  authorities would
  exclude whites.
• - gifts and promises of annuities persuaded
  Indians to go along
• - Sioux to stay north of Platte River
• - Cheyenne Arapahoe were to stay in
  Colorado foothills

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• b. Failure of Containment
• - In Theory The US maintained that each
  tribe was a sovereign nation, to be
  treated as an in all
• treaties
• - In Reality containment fails b/c
• - Plains Indians overreliance on buffalo
  often wandered outside their assigned
  boundaries in pursuit of game ( we killed
  them all)
• - desire for minerals (g s) prospectors
  had little respect for Indian territorial
  rights
• - broken promises (not a single treaty
  honored!)
• - Transcontinental RR across Indian territory
• - by 1860, Plains Indians had lost all but 1.5
  m of 19m acres of hunting grounds
  given them in treaties

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• c. Dakota Sioux Uprising summer 1862
• - DS confined to small reservation in MN
• - promised annuities, but often cheated
  by American traders
• - Annuities late. Dakota Sioux starving
  (Previous payments
  had been irregular and had been
  mostly usurped by unscrupulous white
  traders. Crops had failed in 1861. Game was
  scarce. Pleas for release of foodstuffs
  from white- controlled granaries were
  ignored.
• - asked for food on credit. Response?
  If they are hungry, let them eat grass
  or their own dung
• - Dakota Sioux attack Am. Traders and
  other settlers
• - US troops arrive to put down uprising
• - 38 Dakota Sioux executed in response
  (largest mass execution in US History)

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Chief Little Crow
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• d. Sand Creek Massacre ( Nov1864)
• - Rev. Chivington leads troop of
  volunteers/soldiers to Black Kettles camp at
  Sand Creek
• - purpose to kill peaceful Indians
• - accounts vary, but they kill at least 105
  women children 28 men
• - took trophies back to Denver set up
  saloon
• - investigation, but no punishment

Black Kettle (seated center) and other Cheyenne
chiefs conclude successful peace talks with Major
Edward W. Wynkoop (kneeling with hat) at Fort
Weld, Colorado, in September 1864. Based on the
promises made at this meeting, Black Kettle led
his band back to the Sand Creek reservation,
where they were massacred in late November.
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Sand Creek Massacre

• News Release Washington, December 20, 1864
• "The affair at Fort Lyon, Colorado, in which
  Colonel Chivington destroyed a large Indian
  village, and all its inhabitants, is to be made
  the subject of congressional investigation.
  Letters received from high officals in Colorado
  say that the Indians were killed after
  surrendering, and that a large proportion of them
  were women and children."

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• e. Sioux Wars 1866-67
• - Sioux protested construction of Bozeman
  Trail being built by US through their
  hunting grounds in MT (trail being built for
  gold)
• - Led to Fettermans Massacre Dec. 1866
• - fought near Ft. Phil Kearny Wy territory
• - Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chief
  Red Cloud were able to decoy Capt.
  William J. Fetterman and 80 men out of the
  fort
• - the carefully planned ambush worked to
  perfection. Fetterman and
  every man (80) in his detachment died
• - authority over Indians
  passed to War Dept. tougher
  policies

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• 3. Reservations
• a. 1867 Congressional Peace Commission
  appointed to end Sioux War begin
  restrictive Reservation Policy
• - Plains Indians settled on 2 reservations
  Dakota Territory and Indian Territory
  (OK)
• b. Told to abandon old habits become
  farmers and learn to walk the white
  mans road
• c. Most tribes agreed, but some refused.
  With their whole way of life at stake, fierce
  warfare raged across Plains

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• d. Battle of Little Bighorn June 25, 1876
• - Last major battle of Indian War
• - all started with gold
• - 1874 gold discovered on Sioux reservation
  in Black Hills of SD (US gave this land to
  Sioux as permanent home in 1968
  Treaty of Ft. Laramie)
• - Fed. Troops tried to prevent miners from
  area was Sioux ancestral burial ground
• - tried to buy back land from Indians no go
• - Sioux on warpath to stop gold rush
  concentrated forces near Little Big
  Horn River in MT territory
• - On 6/25/1876, Lt. Col Custer (had political
  ambitions) disobeyed orders to
  wait for help ordered an attack
• - Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull
  Crazy Horse surround Custer kill him all
  264 soldiers

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Custers Last Stand
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• - Battle of Little Big Horn a turning pt last
  great Indian victory on the Plains
• - fed. Troops set out on a vengeance to capture
  Sitting Bull Crazy Horse and force the
  Plains Indians to live on reservations.
• - Crazy Horse surrendered in 1877, Sitting Bull
  in 1881 and in opening up the Plains for
  unimpeded white settlement

film
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Sitting Bull
Crazy Horse
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• 4. The Final Roundup
• a. Indians no match for US Troops. Troop
  advantages
• - telegraph speedy communication
• - RR allowed army to outrun even fastest
  horses
• - army had firepower advantage colt
  revolver
• - professionalism of soldiers including
  famous troop of black-Americans known by the
  Indians as Buffalo Soldiers

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Buffalo Soldiers
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• b. Nez Perce and Chief Joseph 1877
• - Oregon Idaho
• - (Nez Perce had helped Lewis Clark 1803)
• - Nez Perce kicked out of Oregon after having
  been relocated several times
• - Chief Joseph led his tribe on 3 mo. 1300 mi
  journey to escape to Canada, caught 30 mi
  from border, shipped to Kansas

     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.
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• c. Apaches of the SW
• - the last to resist capture
• - led by Geronimo until his capture in 1886
• - Geronimo taken to OK reservation
• - 1904 Geronimo sold pictures of himself at
  St. Louis Worlds Fair
• - 1905 rode in Pres. Theodore Roosevelts
  inaugural parade
• - died at age 80 in 1909

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Geronimo
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• d. Battle of Wounded Knee 1890
• - last Indian battle
• - 1884 US Dept of Interior issued a criminal
  code forbidding Indian religious practices
• - Indians disregarded code, Plains Indians
  turned an emotional religion as
  they faced an end to their way of
  life
• The Ghost Dance emphasized coming of a
  Messiah, return to a life before white mans
  arrival, if performed, could be immune from
  white mans bullets
• - US agents on the Sioux reservation feared an
  insurrection and summoned troops
• - troops fired on and killed 200 Indian men,
  women and children at a creek called Wounded
  Knee in present-day SD buried in common
  grave

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The Ghost Dance
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Wounded Knee Aftermath
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Wounded Knee Common Grave
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• C. A Way of Life Destroyed
• 1. Movement in 1880s to save the
  Indians
• a. Led by Helen Hunt Jackson, whose A
  Century of Dishonor (1881) chronicled
  govts mistreatment
• b. Won sympathy from many

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• 2. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887
• a. Many Americans believed the situation
  for Indians would only improve if they
  assimilated into white culture
• - abandon collective, tribal society and
  become individual property owners like
  white people!
• b. Broke up reservations
• - Head of household 160 acres
• - Single Men 80 acres kids 40 acres
• - Began to education Indians read/write
• farming techniques
• - road to citizenship if accepted the deal

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• c. Failure of Dawes Act
• - many Indians had no training or desire to
  farm or ranch
• - land allotments too small to be profitable
• - some Indians attached to reservation and
  didnt want them to be broken up
• - goal not achieved by 1934, 86m acres
  out of 138m acres given to them were in the
  hands of whites
• d. Disaster of the Dawes Act
• Destroyed the culture of the Plains
  Indians by breaking up tribal ties

Dawes Act
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Indians of the West
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Indian Land Cessions
Expansion came at a high cost to American
Indians, for they were dispossessed of their
lands through purchase, treaties, and force. The
map shows the areas of land ceded by the Indians
through 1890.
Land ceded by the Indians quickly filled with a
steady stream of miners, cowboys,
and farmers all moving westward to advance their
fortune
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• 3. The Plight of the American Indian
• a. Failure of Reservations
• - usually on poor land where Indians were
  unable to hunt enough food or raise
  sufficient crops
• - often lacked the tools and training to
  succeed as farmers
• - Depended upon govt agencies, which
  were often corrupt
• - poor conditions led to illness, alcoholism,
  unemployment and despair

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• b. Life for Native Americans after 1890
• - total Indian population fell to less than
  250,000 btwn 1890-1910
• - 1924 Indian Citizenship Act granted
  citizenship to ALL Native Americans born in
  the US (finally!)

President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians
after Coolidge signed the bill granting Indians
full citizenship. Source LOC, LC-USZ62-111409
DLC.
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• - 4.1 million The number of U.S. residents
  who reported as American Indian and Alaska
  Native alone or in combination with one or
  more races in Census 2000
• - Unfortunately, Native Americans remain
  among the poorest and most unemployed
  Americans

The Pine Ridge Reservation, located in rural SD
is plagued with deteriorating infrastructure,
poverty, lack of local employment, and high
utility bills. Many of the residentsthe Oglala
Lakota Nationlive in mobile homes or substandard
housing and spend nearly 25 of their income on
utilities. Few people on the reservation have the
resources or construction knowledge necessary to
improve their current residences or build
energy-efficient, culturally appropriate houses.
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Indian Reservations Today
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The Wests Legacy?
Thats all, Pilgrim, Study for that Test!