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Assimilation Of Native Americans In The 1920's

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Starting as early as 1790, the United States launched an assimilation effort to transform the indigenous American Indian culture to European-American culture. This effort lasted around one-hundred years, ending approximately in the 1920’s. The “Americanization” policies were built around the idea that when indigenous people learned about American customs and values, they would be able to join peacefully with the rest of American society. This effort went on for over 100 years, ending around 1920.What effects did the assimilation effort have on the American Indian people and their culture? Near the beginning of George Washington’s first term as President, he declared that a fair Indian policy was one of his most valued objectives. Washington …show more content…

The Dawes Act tried to abolish the tribal and communal rights of American Indians force them to assimilate into American society.7 the American model of individual ownership of land and subsistence farming was viewed as a vital step to the “civilization” process. The act also stated that the government could classify the lands remaining after allotments as "excess", and sell those lands. Non-American Indians were able to purchase this “excess” land. The first major impact of the Dawes Act was the depletion of American Indian land. After only 3 years after the Dawes Act was put into place, American Indians lost almost half of their land to “excess”, which was then sold to settlers, railroad companies, and other large …show more content…

government forced tens of thousands of American Indian children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools. These boarding schools forbid American Indian children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their native way of life.9 In 1928, the Meriam Report assessed that the schools were underfunded and understaffed, too heavily institutionalized, and run too rigidly. Many events in the 1960’s and 1970’s led to the eventual closing of many American Indian boarding schools in the 80’s and 90’s. One of these events include the introduction of The National Indian Education Study, which is designed to describe the status of education for American Indian

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For this essay, the question under investigation is: “To what extent did the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 impact Native American Tribes and their culture?” The number of tribes impacted by this act is too vast for us to investigate them all, so the focus of this research question will be on the Five Civilized Tribes to make the subject less broad. Lifestyles of the Native Americans in the Five Civilized Tribes before and after the Dawes Act will be investigated to get a better understanding of the life and cultural changes these people endured. The impacts include the splitting up of land and the redistribution of the land to individual tribe members, and the introduction of "white culture," such as farming, to the Native Americans.

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The Dawes Act of 1887 was the government’s goal towards assimilation. The key points of the Dawes Act were that each Native American heads of the household was to receive 160 acres of land to farm or 320 acres for grazing. Any additional family members received 40 acres. The land was held by the government in a trust for twenty-five years. Participation in this was mandatory.

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The lives of the Plains Indians were heavily influenced by governmental action and technological innovations in the second half of the 19th century. As settlers moved to the Plains, conflict between the settlers and the Plains Indians arose. This, in turn, led to a lost of culture of the Plains Indians. Although new technology came to the West and the government enforced treaties, in the Plains Indians best interest, however, it actually was the very force that caused dissimulation within the Plains Indians’ community. Governmental actions such as setting up reservations and the Dawes Act worked in the new settlers best interest.

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This perspective was shaped by a prevailing narrative of the time, which portrayed Native Americans as a "vanishing race" that needed to be assimilated into mainstream American society. Unfortunately, the policies that were implemented with this belief led to significant harm to Native American communities. The Dawes Act, for example, was passed in 1887 with the aim of converting tribal land into individual parcels and forcing Native Americans to assimilate into American culture. This policy had disastrous consequences for Native American communities, leading to the loss of their

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From the early 1800’s to the early 1900’s, American Indians have struggled with gaining citizenship and citizenship rights. Over many decades, many different races of people have gone through the same thing. White men, White women, American Indians, African Americans, and Immigrants, have all had to fight in some way or another to be recognized as citizens and to have the rights that come with citizenship. American Indians have been greatly affected by white people. There have been many broken promises and treaties over the course of 100 years along with citizenship rights.

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The Act allowed the government to take land from the Natives and give it to white families. The textbook describes the magnitude of this theft, “In the half century after the passage of the Dawes Acts, Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land in their possession in 1887.” (Foner, 625). The Native Americans wouldn’t agree to become “civilized”, which meant losing their cultural identity, and so they were forced to lose their land. The Dawes Act was just one of the many laws, treaties, and court decisions that stole land from the Native Americans.

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First of all, Native Americans were settled on a hotbed of natural resources which included oil and precious metals such as silver and gold. There was also much fertile land that would entice farmers and frontiersmen to move out west. On this land there was so much potential economic opportunity for farmers, cattle drivers, miners and many other occupations. The government developed the popular public misconception that the indians were misusing the land and that Americans had the right to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in the west. These ideas led to the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 which authorized encroachment of Indian lands by the US government in order to divide up reservations and control Indian activity.

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The government knew that the Native Americans were uneducated to the new forms that are being implemented on their tribes, and were able to take advantage of them. Resulting from the Dawes Act, The Native American’s are now required to choose their own land to live on and only have four years to do so. Most Indians will not do this in the time frame and the government choses their land for them. The Indians have only known hunting and their nomadic lifestyle following the buffalo with their tribes.

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With the arrival of Anglo-Americans, Native Americans lost much more than just their land. Tribes were forced onto reservations, stripped of their culture, wealth and place in society, with no hope of regaining what they owned unless by complete assimilation. For the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, many Anglo-Americans continually pushed for Native Americans to abandon their cultures and “savage” ways. However, despite the many attempts to force Natives into Anglo-American culture, many Native Americans found ways to negotiate with the demands of the Anglo-Americans through mainly social, economic and legal means.

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The Act proposed that reservations would be partitioned into homesteads to give Indians the chance to ownership. The Act was a disaster and the results were shattering for the Indians. The lands they were assigned were poor and over the next decades they failed to provide the necessary resources to support their businesses and families The Indians lost more land than they initially had. They suffered massive loss of their cultures and languages. In the end the whites persuaded the government into selling them more land than

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Native Americans flourished in North America, but over time white settlers came and started invading their territory. Native Americans were constantly being thrown and pushed off their land. Sorrowfully this continued as the Americans looked for new opportunities and land in the West. When the whites came to the west, it changed the Native American’s lives forever. The Native Americans had to adapt to the whites, which was difficult for them.

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To understand what the Native American boarding schools were, we must look back to why they were created in the first place. In the 1830s president Andrew Jacksons issued a policy of removing eastern Native Americans to the west saying that lands west of the Mississippi would remain “Indian Country”. Not only did many plains Indians refuse to restrict where they lived, but when news of gold in the west came out came the moving of the settlers. With the movement of miners, cattlemen and homesteaders westward and onto native land, war was inevitable. These battles would become known as the Indian Wars which would be a driving force into the creation of the Native American Boarding Schools.

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Indian Boarding schools were created in the 1800s to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” They achieved this by transforming the natives looks, culture, language, and teaching them a certain way so they would be able to function in a “european society”. Indian boarding schools taught students both academic and “real world” skills, but they did so while ripping the indians from their culture. Most indian boarding schools were the same with their tactics in transforming the native man into a white one.

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Throughout the 19th century Native Americans were treated far less than respectful by the United States’ government. This was the time when the United States wanted to expand and grow rapidly as a land, and to achieve this goal, the Native Americans were “pushed” westward. It was a memorable and tricky time in the Natives’ history, and the US government made many treatments with the Native Americans, making big changes on the Indian nation. Native Americans wanted to live peacefully with the white men, but the result of treatments and agreements was not quite peaceful. This precedent of mistreatment of minorities began with Andrew Jackson’s indian removal policies to the tribes of Oklahoma (specifically the Cherokee indians) in 1829 because of the lack of respect given to the indians during the removal laws.

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