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Chapter Summary Of Chapters By Dee Brown

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Author Dee Brown presents a factual as well as an emotional version of the relationship among the Indians, the American settlers, and the U.S. government. The massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota on December 29, 1890, provides the backdrop for the narrative. In his introduction, Brown states the reason for his work. Thousands of accounts about life in the American West of the late nineteenth century were written. Stories are told of the traders, ranchers, wagon trains, gunfighters, and gold-seekers. Rarely is the voice of the Indian heard. The pre-European occupant of the land was classified only as a hindrance to the spreading of American civilization to the West Coast. In this book, Brown seeks to remedy the historical injustice …show more content…

Although Christopher Columbus expressed admiration for the natives of the West Indies, the Spanish were often brutal. The English, capable of brutality when the occasion called for it, usually tried subtler methods. Included in this chapter are the initial relationships between the Indians and the government of the United States. Brown relates early indignities against Indian leaders, including that of the skeleton of Black Hawk, a Sauk and Fox chief who resisted American expansion, being on display in the office of the governor of the Iowa Territory. Black Hawk was the grandfather of Jim Thorpe, an Olympic gold medal athlete in …show more content…

Leaders of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Crow, and several smaller tribes met with United States government representatives. The agreements made there permitted the building of roads and military posts in Indian territory, but no land was surrendered by the Indians. The Pikes Peak gold rush in 1858 resulted in the arrival of thousands of white prospectors, ranchers, and farmers to the lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. In spite of the loss of much land, the Indians remained peaceful until 1864. Black Kettle, the Cheyenne chief, heard about the experiences of the Navajo and the Sioux; he hoped to spare his people that suffering. War did break out in the spring of 1864, when soldiers attacked some Cheyenne on the South Platte River. The fighting ended in November with the well-planned Sand Creek Massacre of Black Kettle’s Cheyenne by a United States Army force under the command of Colonel John M.

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1197 Words | 5 Pages

Gary Clayton Anderson is an American historian who is currently a professor at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK. He is focused mainly on the history of native people in the Great Plains and southwest region of the United States. Anderson received his bachelor’s degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, his master’s degree from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, SD, and his Ph.D. from the University of Toledo in Toledo, OH. Along with the classes he teaches, Anderson travels around the country giving lectures about relations between Native Americans and white settlers and other related topics.

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1426 Words | 6 Pages

The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians written by Anthony F.C. Wallace is the story of the Native Americans being forced to move west in America in the 19th century. Wallace begins by introducing the desire for Native American land in the U.S. and ends with the aftermath of the Removal Policy and the legacy that still lives today. The book is organized into four chapters; The Changing Worlds of the Native Americans, The Conflict over Federal Indian Policy, The Removal Act, and The Trail of Tears.

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426 Words | 2 Pages

The Misplaced Massacre by Ari Kelman is a historical reconstruction of the events that took place during the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864.To Kelman the history of this event I important because it is the main cause of the culture war, as it caused in her words “participants in the sand creek memorialization project had incommensurable goals: national unity versus local autonomy, verses tribal sovereignty” this in Kelman’s mind caused the feelings over the massacre made history on the events heavily skewed into one of these three categories. As the united states government have a political view of being “nations of nations” while the residents of the Kiowa Valley have a political view based on the interests of the local communities

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413 Words | 2 Pages

In 1742 the chief of Onondaga of the Iroquois Confederacy knew that his land that the people shared would become more valuable than it has ever been. (Doc B)The reason for this was because the “white people” also known as the Americans wanted the land of the chief. The feelings of the Chief result in complaining to the representatives of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia,

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1953 Words | 8 Pages

Chief Black Kettle and another four hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho, settled in the area of Sand Creek, which was an area designated by the treaty. Early on the morning of November 29, 1864, Colorado troops attacked the Cheyenne campground. At this time of the morning most of the worriers were out hunting so the Indian village was full of elders, women and children. As soon as the attacked started Chief Black Kettle stood with his arms closed under a pole with the United States Flag and a white flag that symbolized peace, and refused to attack because he said that ‟the white men were friends’’.

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274 Words | 2 Pages

President Jefferson told Lewis and Clark to “cultivate good relations with the Sioux” because at the time “the Sioux were the dominant power on the northern and central Great Plains more than able to hold their own against white Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century.” (The American Journey Ch.13 Pg.349). This was because the Sioux were able to successfully mix important components of American life with their traditions. Unfortunately these components including guns they had acquired from the French and horses introduced to the New World by the Spanish helped the Sioux push weaker tribes to the south and west of the Missouri River basin. These weak tribes became dependent on the Sioux.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

Andrew Jackson, John Marshall, and The Trail of Tears There have been many dark times in our History as Americans. Among them is the Trail of Tears,brought upon by Andrew Jackson, which exiled the Indians from the American south and resulted in the death of thousands on the way to Oklahoma. Before this trying time there was speculation within the supreme court whether to treat the Native tribes as a sovereign foreign nation or as a dependent entity within the United States. I will discuss how these decisions came to be, the reactions to said decisions, and the aftermath of these rulings which inevitably leads to the Trail of Tears.

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1007 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

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1123 Words | 5 Pages

X-Marks Native Signatures of Assent written by Scott Richards Lyons explores the history of the American Indians in the United States. Further, Lyons goes into depth about boarding schools, assimilation, treaties, broken promises, and tragic events that caused harm to millions of American Indians. In this paper, I will discuss how the White Europeans came to the United States and basically assimilated the tribes that were located here before the “discovery” of the Americas. Next, I will define the terms treaty and x-marks. Lastly, I will explain how unjust everything is, in particular when we talk about the rights, and properties that tribes had before the Europeans came to contact them.

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585 Words | 3 Pages

In chapter 9, Brooks introduces Samuel Johnson through a brief biography of his distressing life. Johnson’s life is seemingly one of hardship from the beginning as he is the son of an “unsuccessful bookseller” and “uneducated mother” (p 213). More so, he is described as a “frail infant,” one who was infected with tuberculosis by the wet nurses’ milk. Brooks subsequently discusses Johnson’s appearance, “ugly and scarred” (ibid), as a result of the small pox he developed. Eventually, Johnson becomes a Christian at Oxford (p 215), where he “emphasized that worldly pursuits fail to fill the heart” (ibid).

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681 Words | 3 Pages

The victory at Little Big Horn turned out to be the eventual downfall of the Sioux nation with the eventual pressing of the American government and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills to be a major downfall. As the Sioux continues to define its existence, the American government can never repay the harmful destruction that the ideas manifest destiny, the hypocritical egalitarian policies while practicing subjection, and the utter destruction of an entire culture. As Charles Eastman states to Senator Dawes in the climax of the argument prior to the massacre of Wounded Knee Creek in regards to the Sioux “Must they adapt, sir, to the point of their own extermination?” As the Sioux fight on the tragic state of the treatment of the Sioux continues to pay a heavy price for the one victory long

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1452 Words | 6 Pages

In 1874 George Armstrong Custer led an Expedition to find gold which leads President Ulysses S. Grant to send Officers to negotiate a sale of the protected area. Dee Brown elaborated on this in his book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He states, “When the Teton Sioux tribes surrendered after the wars of 1876–77, they had lost the Powder River country and the Black Hills. The government’s next move was to change the western boundary of the Great Sioux Reservation from the 104th to the 103rd meridian, thus slicing off another fifty-mile strip adjoining the Black Hills, and taking an additional triangle of valuable land between the forks of the Cheyenne River.” (Brown.

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251 Words | 2 Pages

“Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress”, chapter one of “A People’s History of the United States”, written by professor and historian Howard Zinn, concentrates on a different perspective of major events in American history. It begins with the native Bahamian tribe of Arawaks welcoming the Spanish to their shores with gifts and kindness, only then for the reader to be disturbed by a log from Columbus himself – “They willingly traded everything they owned… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” (Zinn pg.1) In the work, Zinn continues explaining the unnecessary evils Columbus and his men committed unto the unsuspecting natives.

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543 Words | 3 Pages

The Western Indian Wars was a conflict between “the Western tribes and the U. S troops ended with the 1886 surrender of Apache leader Geronimo in Arizona and the 1890 overthrow of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (“America’s Wars”, 2004).” Throughout the history of the United States, American Indians were treated poorly. Ever since the white men crossed the Atlantic Ocean 200 years ago till the mid 1900’s the poor treatment and killing of Indians never ceased. U.S polices passed between the Revolutionary war and the mid 1900’s hurt American Indians and put them at an extreme disadvantage. There were series of wars, before the western Indian wars in the United States.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

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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