Essay On Assimilation Of Native Americans

In the late 1900s, the United States government policy towards Native Americans was in full effect. The policy stated thatNative Americans should be removed to reservations, primarily in the west. The west was home to a large number of American Indians. The Native Americans have always had challenges coming their way through this era. Such as, the Americans violated their rights with treaties, and were rejected by the Americans, the Native Americans fighting back for their land, and of course, assimilation was going to become a process.
While these Americans were on the move, little did they know many American Indians were calling the West their home. The Americans would negotiate with the Native Americans through treaties. The U. S government started out by treating western Indians as autonomous nations. In 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie sought to confine tribes on the northern plains to designated areas in an attempt to keep white settlers from intruding on their land. These treaties passed out were just useless, because they were

The whites wanted the Native Americans to be one of them or how they say “Americanized.” In 1887 the Dawes Act was formulated to encourage Native Americans to assimilate. Legislation in 1891 forced Indian parents to send their children to boarding schools or else face arrest. The Native Americans suffered both ethic and religious assimilation. Indian children were given “American” names and wore uniforms in place of their native dress. Some refused to abandon their traditional social practices, and responded to challenges by resisting and holding on to their old ways. The Indians rebelled by creating a “ghost dance,” in which Indians believedthat the dance meant that they would one day regain control of the world, and the whites would disappear. In 1890, the Americans put an end to the dance and killed 250 Native Americans, many of them women and