Discrimination Of Native Americans Essay

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Before European exploration and colonization, Indians attained a massive population throughout the Americas. Living mostly in harmony with neighboring tribes, they were self-sufficient by utilizing their lands. However, the arrival of Europeans greatly altered the lives of American Indians by lessening their population, introducing diseases, and dominating their lands.

By the end of the 1400s, Europeans began to take an interest in the world outside their own boundaries. In October of 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. Shortly after arrival, many of his people set out to conquer the Indian civilizations to find their treasure and capture their wealth, commencing the years of abuse the Native Americans endured. The Spanish …show more content…

It continued throughout the nineteenth century with the most well known occurring during Andrew Jackson’s presidency from 1829 to 1837. Jackson supported Georgia’s attempt to take over the land of the Cherokee Indians, one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast, and relocate them west of the Mississippi River. Under his presidency, the entire Cherokee tribe was marched westward by the United States Army. One-fourth of them died along the way. Settlers had at last conquered most of the land of North America. In 1851, the American government launched a reservation policy attempting to restrict the Indians to designated areas, which were usually the poorest and most unwanted lands. For the next forty years, clashes continued between the United States Army and the American Indians.

The outcome was inevitable. The indians were restricted to reservations. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 dissolved Indian tribes by law and divided the reservation land among individual Indians, weakening their collective power.

From the time of Christopher Columbus to Andrew Jackson, the American Indians were discriminated against to the point of destruction, ultimately resulting in the colonization of the Europeans. At this time, most Europeans did not see their treatment towards the Indians as unethical. However, today, it is expected of the United States as a nation to strive for