Westward Expansion Post Civil War Expansion & Indian Policy 1860 -1890.

Westward Expansion

Post Civil WarExpansion & Indian Policy

1860 -1890

Study GuideIdentifications:

• Force Policy• Peace Policy• Nativism• Social Darwinism• The Indian Problem• William Tecumseh Sherman• Black Kettle• Sand Creek and Washita Massacres• Lakota Resistance & Treaty of Fort Laramie• Appropriation Act 1871 • The Dawes Act • Ghost Dance & wounded Knee

Study Guide Questions

What Characterized Westward Expansion?What factors encouraged Americans to go west?What new technologies and businesses facilitated

westward expansion?What Characterized Indian Policy?What tactics did Americans and United States

government use to facilitate expansion?What was the impact of Indian policy?

Post Reconstruction America

• Industrialization & Immigration surged post civil war– Increased Disparity of Wealth– Exploited labor: minorities, women, children– Labor struggle– Discrimination of newer immigrants

• 1830-1860 Nativism directed at Irish Catholics & Jews

• Social Darwinism: “inferior races” perceived as endangering American civilization & Life way

System of labor Repression

• Minorities & Labor classes in general persecuted socially, politically & economically– African Americans• Plessy Vs. Ferguson, 1896• Segregation, Disfranchisement, Jim Crow

• Native Americans• Policy of “Containment” of Plains Tribes• 1850 Act for the Protection & Government of Indians

– Compared to Jim Crow Laws of the south, or Black codes– No rights or legal protections– System of “apprenticeships”

System of Labor Repression• Chinese in California

• 1870-1943 Naturalization Act– Prevented Chinese from becoming citizens

• Chinese Exclusion Act 1882

• Hispanics In California in Southwest & California• Miners Tax 1850

– Targeted “Mexican” in 1850 and Chinese in 1852– People Vs. Hall, ruled that Chinese were legally

indian

War for the Far West

Beginning in 1848• Mineral wealth

(Gold Booms) and thirst for land for farms and ranches– Pike’s Peak,

Colorado

• Immigration to the west– 1865 – 1900, largest

migration of people in the history of the United States to the trans-Mississippi west

• Home Stead Act, 1862: Promise of free land– Ranchers– Farmers

Union & Pacific RR• Rail Road expansion– Corporate efforts to

usurp Indian lands– Indians as chief

obstacle to progress– Supported

Appropriation Act 1871 that destroyed political existence of the tribes

White Expansion: Indian territory (Kansas to Texas) 7,000 whites in 1880, 110,000 by 1889

Policy makers• Solutions offered to the “Indian Problem”• 1. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer– force policy of extermination– Indians heathen & savage while whites were Christian &

civilized • 2. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis Amasa

Walker– Promoted Peace Policy– Advocated reservations, assimilation through education &

Christianization– Scientific management -Viewed the machine and the

market as great forces of civilizations in America

Force Policy• General William Tecumseh Sherman

in 1866 led the postwar army and states that the military should :– Viewed the Railroad as instrumental in

the “Great Battle of Civilization” against “barbarism”

– “kill the Lakota, even to their extermination of men, women and children”

– “Nits Breed Lice”

Southern Cheyenne• Called on George Eayre to carry out

Force Policy– Attack on peaceful settlement

• Began regional plains wars» Black Kettle Survived

• Black Kettle’s Band of Southern Cheyenne

• Black kettle:– Advocate Peace – Treaty of Fort wise, 1861 – Delegation to meet Lincoln in Washington,

1863

Sand Creek Reservation

• 1858 Gold found In Pikes Peak

• Treaty of Fort Wise, 1861– Relinquished most land– Created Sand Creek

Reservation• Barren Land• Starvation

Colorado Territory

• Governor Evans issued a proclamation: • August 11, 1864 – authorizing all citizens in Colorado territory to seek out, kill

and destroy all indigenous peoples with reward. • Advocates of peaces urged end to all out warfare– Fall council, Camp Weld, Colorado– Black Kettle and 6 other chiefs agreed to peace– Black Kettle led 500 to settle at Sand Creek for the winter

• Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis Wrote to Cl. Chivington, “Make the Indians Suffer more”

Sand Creek, Black Kettle Cheyenne

• Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado, 1864• Cl. John M. Chivington , a Methodist minister – 1st & 3rd Colorado Volunteer Calvary – 4 12-pound Howitzers

• Black Kettle’s Sleeping (Kettle Survived again)– "THEY WERE SCALPED, THEIR BRAINS KNOCKED OUT; THE

MEN USED THEIR KNIVES, RIPPED OPEN WOMEN, CLUBBED LITTLE CHILDREN, KNOCKED THEM IN THE HEAD WITH THEIR RIFLE BUTTS, BEAT THEIR BRAINS OUT, MUTILATED THEIR BODIES IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD”

– Men’s scrotum kept as souvenirs and tobacco pouches

Perspectives on Massacre

• Robert Bent a local rancher commented “There seemed to be an indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children”

• The Rocky Mountain News proclaimed: “Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory,” – Chivington’s dictum, “nits make lice” allowed

locals to feel justified about the slaughter of women, elderly and children.

Indian Policy• Call for investigation into American Indian Affairs• Movement against Genocide or extermination as

Indian policy– Bloodshed of Civil War– Shrinking military budget– Severely reduced indigenous population

• Call for reform & diplomacy– Campaigns against Indians violent & threatened

perception of white morality– National mood was reform– Grudgingly began to lean towards the reservation system

as a solution to the Indian problem.

Doolittle Commission & the Peace Policy

• Senator James Doolittle under the administration of Andrew Johnson led an investigation into native people. – In 1867 The Report on the Condition of Indian

Tribes or the Doolittle Report • (Helen Hunt Jackson 1881 A Century of Dishonor)

– Touched of a national debate about American Indian policies

– Force Policy Vs. Peace Policy

Advocacy for Peace Policy• Commissioner of Indian affairs Lewis V Bogy – entered into the fray of those in favor of the peace policy • which promoted negotiated settlements with the tribes and

established the reservation system.

• 1850-80s warfare engulfed the advancing frontier. Invading Americans bore ultimate responsibility. – General Philip Sheridan for example declared of the Indians

“We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?”

Policy of Containment or “Concentration”, 1851

• Compulsory removal and relocation• Concentration on Reservations• Relinquishment of life way and identity– Army of agents, reformers, missionaries and educators

• Strict government control• Indian Education– President Johnson

• Nathanial G Taylor as Commissioner of Indian Affairs– advocated the recognition of 2 reservations,

» northern plains tribes north of Nebraska, » southern plains tribes south of Kansas.

President Grant continued the “peace commission” and reservation system.

• 1869 Congress created the Board of Indian Commissioners • composed of prominent white men who professed remove

corruption within the system of Indian affairs. • Cherokee Tobacco, 1870

– congressional laws were superior to Indian treaties – treaties with foreign nations were superior to those made

with Indian nations. • 1871, Appropriations Act

– nations no longer be recognized as an independent political entity– No longer position to negotiate treaty’s

» wards of the state » Denied rights as members of sovereign nations.

Impact of Treaties and Peace Policy

• Reduction of Indian Territory• Continual erosion of Indian power • Punished the nations for involvement in the civil war• Effort to destroy power, economics, land bases and

resources.• Whites purged Kansas of native people. – “a set of miserable, dirty, lousy, blanketed, thieving, lying,

sneaking, murdering, graceless, faithless, gut eating skunks” who should be exterminated.

Forced Removal Osages chose to stay on allotments

whites attacked them, murdered, burned, and drove them from their homes. Those who survived joined the Osages in Indian

territory • Ponca Agency: Pawnees, Otoes, Missouri's,

Tonkawa's, and Ponca's, Nez Perce and Palouse – Dire straights on the reservations • outlawing by Americans, criminals and military,

continued rape and murder etc.

Resistance in the Southern Plains 1860-90• Federal Peace Commission met with Kiowa,

Kiowa-apache, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho – treaties to relinquished their claims to the lands north

of the Arkansas River• `issue of band leadership, democracy and treaty fraud

Treaties

• Established reservations • US agreed to prevent settlers from moving into Indian

lands• Agreement not honored• Americans, businessmen, ranchers, farmers demanded land

and further containment– Senate failed to ratify the treaties – Destroyed Buffalo

• RR businessmen began surveying lands – Whites blamed native people for the conflict arguing the stood

in the way of progress, business and civilization.

Military Campaigns

• 1867 General Winfield Scott Hancock – Desire to clear the southern plains & western trails of

resistance fighters• Charged with peace negotiations with tribes, ordered burning of a

Cheyenne village

• Destroy resistance fighters– Military expedition against Ogallala Sioux & Cheyenne

village without warning– Campaigned against the Kiowa's, Comanche's, Arapahos,

Cheyenne's

Medicine Lodge Treaty

• Peace Commission: Medicine Lodge, Kansas– They urged native Americans to end their way of

life and settle peacefully onto reservations– Government would Provide • Food• Housing• medical care• education • civilization

Comanche Chief Ten Bears

• They did not start the war• They did not want:– White civilization– White homes– Confinement on Reservations

• They wanted – to continue to live freely as their ancestors had

Reservations• Reordering of life • New and unnatural situation• End to self determined travel, including to sacred

places• Spiritual and economic restrictions • Changes of yearly activities of the tribes– Agents of the government, civilian and military, began

dictating the movement and activities• Disease • Malnutrition & Starvation• The government forgot to fulfill their agreement to

deliver food and supplies to Indians living peacefully on the reservations– Some youth began raiding settlements for supplies and hunting

the Buffalo triggering new conflict and beginning another round of military campaigns.

Results of Peace Policy

• Malnutrition• Small pox, measles, cholera and other disease• Warfare• Low birth rate• High mortality rate. • Army at fault for pursuing policies detrimental to the

Indians.

Military Campaigns

• Following signing of Medicine Lodge Treaty and removal of Arapaho and Cheyenne from Colorado and Kansas to Indian Territory in Oklahoma– Black Kettle and the survivors of the Sand Creek

Massacre had joined other southern Cheyenne and other tribes at the Washita River

Custer struck in the predawn hours in November 1868 killing 102 women and children and men

including Black Kettle and his wife.

Washita Massacre

Killed 800 Cheyenne horses and burned 51 Tipi’s

53 women and children captive

Surrender

• Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache• Surrender at Fort Cobb• Reservation administered through Fort Sill

Red River Wars

• Soldiers continued to patrol the region to round up people who refused to join the reservations

• 1870 in search of food people returning to the plains found thousands of bloating carcass– Destruction of Buffalo prompted last stand

Genocide of Buffalo

• Military and civilian officials encouraged extermination of the herds to destroy native culture and resistance

• Without Buffalo the plains Indians would starve

9 million slaughtered , 1872 - 1875

Resistance of the Northern Plains

• Arapaho & Lakota – signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)• Agreed to move to reservations in what is now South

Dakota in exchange – provisions & money– Sacred Black Hills and Powder River Country closed to white

expansion– Included “civilizing” articles to force agricultural lifestyle,

mission-izing and English education• Gold Discovered in Black Hills

– increased conflict: opening up of the northwestern plains to expansion and re-settlement

– Whites continuously violated treaties and Indian rights.– Government seized lands in 1877

Black Hills Gold

• Between 1868-74 whites and natives clashed

• 1874 gold found in the Black hills of the Dakotas– mining and military invasion – Government and military did not honor the

treaties that forbade expansion or mining interests in the region.

– The United states pushed the Lakota to War when they refused to settle onto a reservation.

Military Preparation • Generals Sherman, Sheridan,

Crook and Terry anticipated war while Lakota,

• Non treaty Cheyenne, Arapaho and allies prepared for war– Crazy Horse of the Ogallala– Sitting Bull, Black moon and Gall

of the Hunk papa group of Teton Sioux

– Lame Deer and Hump of the Miniconjous Sitting Bull

Custer’s Last Stand, 1876• November 1875: Colonel George

Armstrong Custard sought to drive the Indians out of the Black Hills after treaty negotiations broke down

• January the government announced they would hunt down Indians outside reservations

• Little Big Horn, or “Greasy Grass” present day Montana– Custard walked into the hub of Indian

Resistance, 12,000 warriors of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne led by Sitting Bull

– Wiped out Custard and his unit

1875-1881

• 1875-1881 the army pursued the plains nations until they fled to Canada or were removed to reservations

• Starvation & Disease = surrender

• Treaty promises – provide food, housing and

medical treatment– Murder of Crazy Horse

Dawes Act 1887• Use of Walkers’ Scientific Management to “reform” the

Indian in a technological society culminated in Dawes Act– Proposed to break up reservations• Accelerate transformation of Indian into individual property

owner, more easily dispossess tribes of remaining lands– Allotted 160 acres to each family head– Sold surplus lands: Over the 47 years of the Act's life,

about 90 million acres of treaty land — about two-thirds of the 1887 land base — was lost to Native Americans, and about 90,000 Indians were made landless• Assured destruction of tribes, availability of new lands to

whites and assimilation

The Ghost dance

• 1888 by Paiute holy man Wovoka from Nevada– The earth would soon perish and then come alive

again in a pure, aboriginal state, to be inherited by the Indians, including the dead, for an eternal existence free from suffering.

– To earn this new reality, however, Indians had to live harmoniously and honestly, cleanse themselves often, and shun the ways of the whites, especially alcohol, the destroyer

Spread of Ghost dance

Kicking Bear, a Miniconjou Teton Lakota, made a pilgrimage to Nevada to learn about this new "religion" Emphasized the possible elimination of the whites

Wounded Knee

1890 banned Ghost Dance

Military Campaign In Wounded Knee ended in the killing of entire band of 350

Wounded knee

•

Miniconjou Chief Big Foot lies dead in the snow. He was among the first to die on December 29, 1890

Lost Bird

• 3 days following the slaughter– An infant girl found with a buckskin cap with the

American flag embroidered – Brigadier General L.W. Colby, adopted the infant

he re-named Marguerite• The Indians called her “Lost Bird,” passed in 1862

Aftermath – Boarding Schools

• Military south to punish most native leaders– disarmed– stripped naked– placed in cramped stables

• Fort Sill, Fort Reno where soldiers – fed them raw meat and slop– took everything they owned – placed them in shackles treating them like prisoners of

war• Sending them to Pratt-------boarding school system is

created

Origin of the Off-Reservation Indian Boarding School System

• Federal Indian Policy– “The only good Indian, is a dead Indian”

Reformed Indian Policy “Kill the Indian, save the man”

• Richard Henry Pratt- Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Florida.– 3 years – warriors of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa,

Comanche,Caddo

“Transformation”

Miss Harriet Beecher Stowe described these warriors as “being the wildest, the most dangerous, and

most untamable of the tribes.” Pratt had by all public standards, succeeded in transforming them from “wild blood thirsty savages who terrified American” re-settlements to near –white men who could read, write, farm and who quoted and preached from the bible.

• Based on his success in Florida Pratt conceived Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1879.

Outing Program

Vocational Training

Domestic Training

Parade Grounds/Tourism