Conflicts with Native Americans made the Old West physically violent because Americans and Native Americans were indiscriminately massacred by each other. As mentioned in “Field Notes: Overdosing on Dodge City” by Robert R. Dykstra, “What gave them[the Indian Wars] their ... murderous quality were the massacres of. ..women, children, the elderly - by ... young males from both sides...” Violence towards women and children was seen in massacres such as the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 when around one hundred and fifty Native American people were killed, and most of them were women and children. The U.S. Army troops that killed them were ordered by Colonel Chivington to open fire on a group of Native Americans without regarding the presence …show more content…
Mike Flanagan stated in The Old West Day by Day that in 1868, Western Native Americans attacked groups of railway workers in opposition of the growth of railroads, and after forty homestead attacks, ninety-nine white settlers were killed. This occurred one year before the Union Pacific railway was completed, and the progress on the groundbreaking route was far along by 1868. Many involved in the building of the railroad were foreign immigrants who came to America to find new opportunities. The railroad workers were often impoverished and did not intend to encroach on the Native Americans’ hunting grounds, but the Native Americans attacked them anyways. A large sum of homesteaders were similar in circumstance to the railroad workers, and came to the Great Plains in search of a better life. Most of their population included families that wished to farm on the Plains, not intentionally take Native American land, but in 1868, almost one hundred were killed. As represented in the “Reported Kills in the Old West from Scattered Sources” chart by Mike Flanagan, there were a reported forty-nine settlers killed by Native Americans, sixty-four Native Americans killed by the U.S. Army, and seven members of the Army killed by Native