Post Civil War and the Gilded Age
Chonda Simon
Columbia Southern University
American History II
Professor Anthony Gole
June 28, 2017
The Dawes Act was the law passed by the Congress in 1887 aimed at dividing reservations and allotted pieces of land owned by individual Indians to foreign settlers. The government would confiscate private land and sell it to another person forcing the original owner of the land to look for alternative settlement area. Large groups of white settlers and US cavalry migrate towards the West in the 1800s. The groups fought Indian tribes forcing them to vacate their lands where they had lived for many years. Indians had to fight back to reclaim their ancestral lands forcing President Ulysses S. Grant to call for peace but later the two communities engaged in the war known as "The Battle of Little Big Horn" that started in 1876. Indians were forced to relocate to reservations located hundreds of miles away.
White settlers knew the land was rich in agriculture and minerals, hence; took advantage of their powers to fight Indians off their ancestral lands. Native Americans suffered during the frontier battles leading the U.S. military to a call for Native American assimilation process. Humanitarianism and greed were the main driving
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The era that lasted between 1870 and 1890 saw American settlers displacing Native Indians because of greed and optimism. U.S. found many opportunities in the trade for agricultural products and sale of minerals produced from the native Indian land acquired during the Indian's allotment process. Opportunities in mining and trade found during the Gilded Age impacted important values to the United States as a nation. White settlers took advantage of the situation leading to high rate of industrialization and the large exploitation of natural