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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.
Since settlers began moving westward, railroads caught the government’s attention to set policies for Native Americans. An act was passed to propose
The middle 1800s affected many people and changed America. According to document 1 “in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act.” William Wirt convinced the Supreme Court to let the Cherokees not to go off their land. President Andrew Jackson convinced the Supreme Court and forced Native Americans to the Indian Territory. Native Americans were forced off their land.
In the late 1800s, America began to grow and government decided to explore and expand to new lands. After sending explorers to see the new land, they began to move into the western territory where Natives were already settled. Western expansion affected the lives of Native Americans during the period 1860- 1890 because Americans forcefully took their land, lives and traditions away. The government pushed for the removal of Natives in any way possible or get them to convert to American ways.
The Dawes Act of 1887 started an era of forced assimilation which stripped Indian Children of their culture and heritage. Through boarding schools, the government “sought to give the Indian the schooling of the whites, teaching him to despise his old customs and habits as barbaric” (185). Leading up to the Great Depression, government policies reduced Indian-owned lands which meant many Indian families were unable to make a living or provide for themselves. The Wheeler-Howard Act of 1935 effectively ended these policies and introduced freedoms which has been previously denied to Indians. It “gave to the tribe the right to decide whether they would accept important privileges in education, self-determination and self-government” (184).
Business owners made lots of money from the railroads because they were able to transport goods farther and faster with ease. Although the railroads tremendously impacted businesses and therefore the economy, the native americans were negatively impacted because the railroads were being laid on “their” land. This caused distrust between the settlers and the natives because of the “disrespect” for the land. Because of the new ways of transportation, the industrial revolution took place causing skilled artisans to be replaced by unskilled workers that used large complex machines.
Most officials believed that the federal government should persuade or force the Plains Indians to surrender most of their land and to exchange their religion, communal property, nomadic way of life, and gender relations for Christian worship, private ownership, and small farming on reservations. in 1887the Dawes Act broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to Indian families, with the remainder auctioned off to American buyers. Indians who accepted the farms and adopted the habits of civilized life would become full-fledged American citizens. The policy proved to be a disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cultural traditions. Americans, however, benefited greatly.
Spaniards unknowingly brought bacteria and viruses from the Old World that caused destructive diseases including measles, smallpox, and others. These epidemics decimated the vast majority of Native Americans in the New World. The result was a huge decline in the number of Native Americans, which effectively turned the once-dominant Native Americans into a minority on their own land to the rising number of European and African descendants. Native Americans were not the only ones who suffered. Many of Columbus’s men contracted syphilis after having sexual interactions with New World women.
Smallpox | PBS 2005) This is not to say that before the Europeans went to the new worlds that the native people were surviving for years with no diseases in their system. This is, in fact, untrue, there were diseases present before the Europeans appearance, however due to the fact that
Diseases such as diphtheria, the bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, and scarlet fever were scattered throughout the New World as the Europeans settled inland. The Native Americans who had little to no resistance against these diseases succumbed. It is estimated around 90% of Native Americans population perished due to the diseases listed above. However the explorers weren’t the sole transmitters these diseases. Critters and livestock like mosquitoes, black rats and chickens that migrated along with the Europeans also carried the bacteria.
But now let's go more into the diseases the colonizers brought to the native people. There were many diseases that had come into the new world. Like one had to do with the pigs Columbus brought aboard his ship
It is estimated that approximately 95% of pre-Columbus Native Americans were killed by European diseases. Since the outbreak of the diseases spread because of the European colonization, it made conquering the Americas much easier. Health was definitely the most detrimental obstacle that the Native Americans had to face as a result of the European
Specifically, native populations were afflicted with smallpox, bubonic plague, influenza, scarlet fever, measles and several other diseases. In return the New World gave syphilis. Since the Spanish only brought male soldiers, they procreated with the native Indians.
In the later part of the 1800’s, the United States had started to become increasingly roaming. The creation of a new mode of transportation dubbed the Transcontinental Railroad shortened a 6 month wagon journey to just a 7 day train ride. This allowed settlers to move west and fulfill the assumed manifest destiny. This combined with the Homestead Act gave settlers the freedom and prosperity they had always dreamed of. The settlers could claim as much as 160 acres of free land.
The main social issue was the government’s attempt to assimilate the Indians and to eliminate their cultural background as a tribe. For instance, the government discouraged hunting among the tribes, a key element to the Plain Indian’s culture and way of life. Instead, agricultural techniques were to be adopted among their community, most specifically farming. Another abrupt change for the Indians was the imposing of the Dawes Act. The Dawes Act forced the Indians to live with only their family, a more individualistic way of life.
