On June 26, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his army were defeated by the Native American forces led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana. The Battle of the Little Bighorn is one of the worst military disasters in American history. This paper will examine the causes for this disaster. As Americans began moving west, they encountered native Indian tribes. The United States policy of Manifest Destiny of the United States led to the continued expansion westward. It was a goal of the United States to settle the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Americans saw the Indians as savages and wanted them out of the way. On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian …show more content…
Within that war, other battles took place. The Battle of the Rosebud occurred on June 17, 1876. The battle lasted six hours and was Lakota/Cheyenne victory. The loss of life paled next to Little Bighorn was that 28 soldiers were killed and 13-36 Indians were killed.
However, settlers would move in anyway and break the treaty which was made. Gold was soon discovered on the reservation, in the Black Hills, which was sacred land to the Sioux. The government wanted them to re-locate, so white settlers could inhabit the land where gold was discovered. The location where the Sioux were supposed to live was in a much less desirable place. This proved to be another strong factor why the settlers wanted to take over Indian land.
In 1875, a treaty with the Sioux and Cheyenne was broken which angered the tribes. They gathered 10,000 men in protest of what the US government did. The government ordered the Indians to return to the reservations but 3,000 stayed
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The United States government sent in General George Armstrong Custer and his 600 men of the 7th Cavalry division to remove the Indians. The Battle was against the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes led by Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. General Custer split his division into three. The other two were led by Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen. By dividing his division in three, this outnumbered his platoon even more as General Custer ignored the plan of a coordinated attack. Leaving himself outnumbered and without reinforcements. General Custer was supposed to wait for reinforcements but he was impatient and attacked alone with his 200 men. This impulsive and impatient behavior was something he had shown on multiple occasions in the Civil War as well as the wars with Indian
Panzeri, Peter. 1995. Little Big Horn 1876: Custer's Last Stand. 8th Ed. New York, NY: Osprey Publishing.
The Steptoe Battle otherwise known as the Battle of Pine Creek marks the beginning of the Coeur d’Alene War that disarmed the tribes in the region. After Steptoe’s defeat, Colonel George Wright led an expedition into the Northeastern corner of Washington that completely subjugated the Spokane, Palouse, and Coeur d’Alene’s to American policy. Following the war, the United States Army disarmed the tribes and slaughtered three hundred horses to eliminate their ability to maneuver on a battlefield. The terms of peace laid out by Colonel Wright destroyed the tribe’s capability to mount resistance against the United States ever again.
On June 25, 1876, The Battle of Little Bighorn took place near the Black Hills in Montana. This was one of the most controversial battles of the 20th century and the line between good guys and bad guys was grey at best. Gen. George Armstrong Custer (reduced to LTC after the civil war) had 366 men of the 7thU.S. Cavalry under his command that day. Sitting Bull (A Medicine Man) led 2000 braves of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes (Klos, 2013). At the conclusion of the battle, the stories of the Indians savagery were used to demonize their culture and there were no survivors from the 7thcavalry to tell what really happened.
Many tribes resisted this policy. Wars were fought as a result. The Sac and Fox Indians in Wisconsin and Illinois reoccupied their lands after having been forced to move west of the Mississippi. They were defeated. The Seminole Indians refused to sign a treaty to give up their lands. They, too, fought and lost a bitter war to remain on their land.
Today Custer’s last stand is one of the most famous events in American History. Two Thousand Sioux Native Americans slaughtered General George Custer’s army of 600 men armed with guns. Crazy Horse was a very important leader in the Great Sioux War of 1876.
Back in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. This act required the government to negotiate treaties that would require the Native Americans to move to the west from their homelands. Native Americans would be moved to an area called the Indian Territory which is Oklahoma and parts of Kansas and Nebraska. Some tribes that were to be moved are Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. All of the other tribes had relocated in the fall of 1831 to the Indian Territory besides the Cherokee who did not relocate until the fall of 1838. They did not move from their homeland without a fight. Their homeland was parts of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They started this march in the fall of 1838 and finished in early
It encouraged Westward colonization and territorial acquisition. The Homestead Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. To America, Manifest Destiny was the idea that America was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic, to the Pacific Ocean. Throughout this time, Native Americans were seen as obstacles because they occupied land that the United States needed to conquer to continue with their Manifest Destiny Ideal. Many wars were fought between the American’s and the Indians.... ...
The Sioux and other Native Americans have always been treated poorly by some people. They had to deal with the same racism that the African Americans were dealing with in the South. No one was fighting a war for the Sioux though. The truth is white supremacy runs amuck everywhere and wreaks havoc on society. Racism separated the Sioux from the settlers, but the tipping point was something else entirely. The US made a binding contract, a promise, to pay the Sioux a certain amount of Go...
The French and Indian war, also better known as the seven year war, was in 1754. It all began in the early spring of 1754 through 1763, when George Washington and some 160 Virginians and hand full of Mingo Indians started to move when they were concerned about the French military presence in their county. The battle first started when a Mingo chief, the Indian leader that was with George Washington in his campaign, led a unit of soldiers into a small French encampment in the woods. It was a very small battle but, the fight ended up with 14 French men wounded. While Washington was trying to get all the available information from their French dying commander to help their plans in the war, the Indians killed and scalped the remaining survivors including the commander.
It was thought that God had a plan for Whites to move across both coasts and start the New World. In the painting, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” it shows how difficult and unforgiving the trip westward was (Pohl 163). However, the painting also shows a sigh of relief and excitement that Native American travelers had finally met their destination (Pohl 163). Unfortunately, Native American’s new way of life would be cut short years later due to Andrew Jackson’s secured Passage of the Indian Removal Bill (Pohl 163). This bill was responsible for relocating 70,000 Native Americans to Oklahoma (Pohl 163). The Cherokee who were the most affected group of Native Americans had adopted the living format of Whites. Once they were removed, Whites were able to take over their land. This removal also led to the “Trail of Tears” which ended up taking the lives of 4,000 to 16,000 Cherokee Indians. The Manifest Destiny also caused the uproar and eventual war with
The American settlers wanted Indian land for many reasons. These reasons include geography and terrain, location, resources, and old grudges. First, the geography was perfect for farmers with its fertile land. Next, the location was perfect for trade. It was close to the Mississippi river where trading ports were located. Third, there were many resources such as gold, fertile soul, and water. Finally, the American settlers had old grudges with the Native Americans due to the fact that they sided with the British during the Revolutionary War and slaughtered many American colonists. Due to many reasons, the American settlers wanted Indian land for their own gain.
The journey of exploration to the western territories brought the white man many great things, but they did face some opposition. The US government made plans to explore the Black Hills, after hearing of the gold it contained. This was not an easy task. The Sioux, with strong force, were not giving up their sacred land easily. The only way to gain the territory of the Black Hills was to wage war against the Sioux. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was one battle that the US will never forget. General George Custer led an army of men to take out the Sioux, one of the battalions was completely wiped out including Custer. The Sioux were very strong, but US had a lot more power and technology. Why did we get massacred? This question has been a mystery to many people throughout the years. Sergeant Windolph, of Benteen’s cavalry, and John F. Finerty, from General Crooks cavalry, bring us some personal accounts and memories of this tragedy.
At the time Andrew Jackson was president, there was a fast growing population and a desire for more land. Because of this, expansion was inevitable. To the west, many native Indian tribes were settled. Andrew Jackson spent a good deal of his presidency dealing with the removal of the Indians in western land. Throughout the 1800’s, westward expansion harmed the natives, was an invasion of their land, which led to war and tension between the natives and America, specifically the Cherokee Nation.
Whites thought Indians were savages or odd people and they had all the lands. Georgia wanted the federal government to give land to the Cherokee in the Appalachian Mountain and the government approved Georgia’s request. In 1817 6,000 Cherokee were convinced by Jackson to move voluntarily to the Arkansas Territory, but most of them refused. When Jackson was elected as a President, he was committed to move the Cherokee by force. After that, congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and the other Indians tribes went, but the Cherokee planned to stay and fight back politically and legally.
For Americans to expand west, the Indians would have to leave the picture. Americans wanted to acquire more land and take advantage of the newfound resources, however with the Native Americans residing in the land it, caused more difficulties. This was largely the reason why Americans felt there was a need to kill Indians or move them. Americans were also strong believers in Manifest Destiny, “the belief that the United States had a “God-given” right to aggressively spread the values of white civilization and expand the nation from ocean to ocean” (American Promise: A History of the United States).