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Indians right

Introduction

By the time of the Civil War, more than two centuries after the first colonist arrived in New England, half the nation's land was still nearly empty. The frontier - a ragged line of settlements from the East - ran through part of Minnesota, along the border of Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas and then swung westward into Texas. Reaching in from the West Coast there were also a thin line of settlements in California, Oregon, and Washington. Between these two frontiers there were only a few islands of settlers, such as the Mormons in Utah, the miners in Colorado, and the Mexican Americans in New Mexico. Even in the "settled" areas on the edge of the open land, it was often a long way between neighbors. In that vast open space between the two frontiers there lay an empire. A land as large as all the rest of the occupied United States. A half-known land as large as all of Western Europe. It had often been passed through by trappers hunting furs, miners seeking gold, and settlers hurrying on to California, Washington, and Oregon. But the highest mountains were still unclimbed, the swiftest rivers still unmapped. During and after the Civil War, the American people pushed into the unknown. They settled the land even before it was disovered by the explorers, geographers, painters, and naturalists. And the fact of settlement before discovery allowed Americans to dream big dreams. It fostered an optimistic, competitive, booster spirit. It produced a new kind of American. The Go-Getter out there helped find and develop the riches of the new American empire. New American ways of life were invented by a wide assortment of Go-Getters - cattle ranchers and cowboys, miners, farmers and their families.

Indian Wars And Resettlement

Today the Old West is a place of romance - the scene for an exciting book, or movie, or television program. But for a long time the West between California and the Missouri River was a place to avoid. Until just before the Civil War the area between the line of settlement in the East and the Rocky Mountains was marked on maps as the "Great American Desert." In 1856 the North American Review described the area of plains and mountains between California and Iowa as "a country destined to remain forever an uninhabited waste." Yet this area included some of the richest grasslands in the world. And it was not deserted. Thousands of Indians made their living off the land which was still the home of millions of buffalo. In time, cattle ranchers, cowboys, miners, farm families, soldiers, and railroad construction crews would all begin to move into or through the Great Plains and the mountains. Then they would come face to face again with the land's first occupants - the Indians.

The Indians of the Great Plains

Spread over the whole inland empire between the frontiers were some 225,000 American Indians. Of these, perhaps half were the fierce occupants of the Great Plains. Seldom have people adapted more perfectly to their environment. The buffalo was the basis of the Indians' way of life. This was the American name for a shaggy kind of ox technically called the bison, which had also once roamed Europe but was no longer common there. It gave them food, clothing, shelter, and fuel. When European Americans first reached the Great Plains, they had sonly single-shot long rifles. They were no match for the Plains Indians. Wonderfully at home on horseback, and Indian warrior could hold on by his heel and use the horse's body as a shield while he fired a barrage of arrows under his horse's neck. Carrying a short bow, he could shoot twenty arrows while galloping a distance equal to three football fields. His shield of buffalo hide was so hard that a bullet could pass through only if it hit straight on. Not until Samuel Colt invented the six-shooter - a revolver designed to hold six bullets at a single loading - did the white invader have a weapon equal to the Indians'. Even then, according to General William Tecumseh Sherman, 3000 United States soldiers could be halted by 50 Indians.

The Old Indian Policy

Beginning in the 1820s, the government's policy was to push the eastern Indians westward across the Mississippi River. Let the Indians live on the "Great American Desert"! That would be their "one big reservation." If the land was not good enough for white settlers- or if white settlers did not have the skills to make their living there- leave it to the Indians! In the 1850s (although they never planned it that way), white men, women, and children began to move into these areas once reserved for Indians. Some settled in Kansas and Nebraska, others moved on to Oregon, and still others went from place to place searching for gold. At first, the army in the West tried only to keep the trails open so that settlers, traders, trappers, and miners could travel across the land. Forts were built across the plains and treaties arranged with Indian tribes. Still the Indians, desperate to stop the invasion of their lands, organized deadly raids on the settlers and their wagon trains. At the same time, numerous tribes who had lived for centuries on the edge of the plains were persuaded to give up their lands and move west. This stirred discontent among the tribes already there. Times were ripe for war.

Indian Wars and a New Policy

Although there were some good government agents who wanted to help the Indians, many were inept and some were corrupt. Supplies promised the Indians were often slow to reach them. The Sioux went on the warpath in 1862 because they had not received the regular payments they expected and so were unable to buy food. The many conflicts of the following years led the government to rethink its Indian policy. In 1865, when there were 25,000 soldiers armed against the Indians, a congressional investigation concluded that a new approach must be found. A Peace Commission sent out west held two large meetings and then signed treaties with the Indians in 1867 and 1868. There, the Indians were told that they would be gathered together in large areas that would belong to them and where they were not to be bothered by the whites. Although the Indians did not realize it at the time, these treaties really announced the beginning of the end of the old Indian way of life.

New Battles and Smaller Reservations

The Indians naturally resisted. So for twenty years after the Civil War, the American West was plagued by a quite different kind of war. In one sense it was another kind of civil war- between two groups of Americans both trying to make their living off the North American continent, the earliest settlers against the latest settlers. White Americans did not understand what the Indians had achieved. With their spears and bows and arrows and different manner of living, they had mastered the ways of the American wilderness. The Indians had learned to get along with nature by following in the footsteps of their forefathers. Most of them lived a wandering way of life because they needed large areas to support even a few people. Against them were the latecomers who had brought with them all the modern equipment of European civilization. In this unequal war, it was not hard to predict who would win in the long run. Before the issue was decided, thousands died and more thousands lived in fear while blood and tears were shed on both sides. The wild American West had become a battlefield. In 1864, a militia force under Colonel John M. Chivington slaughtered about 450 Cheyenne and Arapaho men, women, and children who had thought they were under the protection of the United States. Only a few years later, soldiers under Captain W. J. Fetterman were ambushed by a group of Sioux, and all 92 troopers were killed. It was an all-out war. These battles and many others led to a new policy of even smaller "reservations." Here the Indians were too confined and the lands too unfamiliar for them to carry on their hunting and foraging way of life. No longer could they roam the plains in pursuit of the buffalo or other wild game. Deprived of their ancient ways of making a living, the Indians were forced to look to the United States government. In 1871, the government even ceased dealing with the tribes as independent nations. No more treaties would be made. Now they were considered wards of the state, and they would be dealt with by acts of Congress. Strangely, the same Congress that was trying to bring equality and integration to the blacks of the South approved the destruction of the Indians. General William T. Sherman, who had done much to free the slaves, now set about either killing the Indians or making them "beg for mercy."

The Defeat of the Indians

The next years were marked by many battles until, in 1874, peace finally seemed to have arrived. Then, unexpectedly in the Black Hills (an area which had been given to the Indians "forever"), gold was discovered. Hordes of settlers rushed in from the East and West. Once again, the Indians were crowded out. The fearless Sioux, under the leadership of Chief Crazy Horse and Chief Sitting Bull, made another desperate effort to hold back the flood. This battle in June 1876 came to be called "Custer's Last Stand,' because when General George A. Custer got himself trapped near the Little Bighorn River in Montana, he and his 264 troopers from the 7th Calvary were killed to the last man. But it might more accurately have been called the Sioux's Last Stand, for in other battles Crazy Horse was captured, Sitting Bull fled to Canada, and the desolate Sioux were left conquered and leaderless. The reservation policy produced a saga of Indian courage in the face of overwhelming odds and certain defeat. As the Nez Percés in Oregon were about to go to a new reservation, some whites stole their horses. This provoked a group of young braves to go on the warpath. Chief Joseph, who had wished all along to avoid a fight, now tried to lead his people to safety in Canada. There followed one of the great stories of the West. Chief Joseph led his tribe, defended only by their 300 warriors against a well-equipped United States army, on a spectacular 1300-mile trek. On their way across Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, the warriors fought a series of amazing battles, regularly defeating much larger army forces. Finally, after several months of marching and fighting, Chief Joseph and his depleted tribe reached a point only 30 miles from the Canadian border. Thinking they were already safe, they paused to rest. Then, suddenly, a United States army group galloped in from an unexpected direction. After suffering a five-day siege, it was plain to Chief Joseph and his courageous people that they had to surrender. Chief Joseph said,

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking-Glass is dead. Too-hul-hut-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men now who say "yes" or "no." He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I can find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more, forever.

The final act in the tragedy of the Indian wars came on December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. There, shortly after the killing of their famous leader Chief Sitting Bull, a band of men, women, and children was arrested by the 7th Calvary. Somehow, a fight broke out. The soldiers opened fire upon the unarmed Indians and left more than 200 dead.

The Buffalo Slaughter

Whether the Plains Indians won or lost battles did not, in the long run, matter. They were doomed to defeat, not only by the guns of the army and the ever-increasing number of settlers who occupied their land, but most of all by the destruction of their food supply- the buffalo.

References

Boorstin, Daniel J., and Kelley, Brooks Mather. A History Of The United States. Prentice-Hall, Inc; 2002