Review of the Article “How the West was Lost”

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In the article review “ How the West was Lost” the author, William T. Hagan explains that in a brief thirty-eight year period between 1848 and 1886, the Indians of the Western United States lost their fight with the United States to keep their lands. While nothing in the article tells us who Hagan is, or when the article was written, his central theme of the article is to inform us of how the Indians lost their lands to the white settlers. I found three main ideas in the article that I feel that Hagan was trying to get across to us. Hagan put these events geographically and chronologically in order first by Plains Indians, then by the Western Indians.

The first point he made was how the Westward expansion affected the Plains Indians. The Plains Indian tribes consisted mostly of the Kiowa, Kiowa Apaches, Comanche, Sioux, and Cheyenne. As the white settlers made their way across the country taking land, the Indians pushed back by raiding settlements and killing the occasional settler. More and more white settlers were pouring into the West in search of gold and silver. As the settlers came into the territories, large herds of buffalo were killed, much of the time just for the sport of it. This had an adverse affect on the Indians since they relied on buffalo not only for food, but also for hides and blankets as well as to make teepees. Another factor was the pony herds; the U.S. Army frequently seized herds and a herd of upwards of one thousand was killed just so the Indians would not be able to use them. The soldiers that were on patrol in the West kept pushing the Indians, driving them away from their hunting and fishing grounds.

The second point that Hagan talked about in the article were the peace treaties. Most Indians did ...

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...ing revelation of the greed, covetousness, and desire that dwells in humankind. It really makes you think that almost entire races of people were wiped out just for gold and land. This article by Hagen brought back to me the realization of how the American Indians were treated. I am a non-traditional student, so I have studied what happened to the American Indian in other history classes and I am familiar with much of the information in the article, although I did not know that it happened in such a small amount of time

Hagan’s article was fascinating from a white man’s perspective, but as a student who enjoys history, I would like to study some of this information from the Indians point of view. I am not sure that there are many of those types of articles; nevertheless, I would like to find out what made the Indians retaliate and what they wanted to accomplish.

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