Native American Reservation Life and History

1235 Words3 Pages

Many people today know the story of the Indians that were native to this land, before “white men” came to live on this continent. Few people may know that white men pushed them to the west while many immigrants took over the east and moved westward. White men made “reservations” that were basically land that Indians were promised they could live on and run. What many Americans don’t know is what the Indians struggled though and continue to struggle through on the reservations. Indians had been moved around much earlier than the nineteenth century, but The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the first legal account. After this act many of the Indians that were east of the Mississippi river were repositioned to the west of the river. Tribes that refused to relocate ended up losing much of their land to European peoples (Sandefur, p.37). Before the Civil War in the U.S. many farmers and their families stayed away from the west due to a lack of rainfall (Nash et al., 2010). Propaganda in newspapers lured Americans and many other immigrants to the west to farm. The abundance of natural grasses in the west drew cattlemen and their families as well. On top of the farming craze, mining soon became very popular. Towns centered on mining would emerge, but shortly after they would disappear. This caused the Indians to move according to the mining towns. All this movement in the west caused life to become even more difficult for the Native Americans. When Americans and immigrants moved to the west they brought disease and violence with them. Ninety percent of Native Americans died after the gold rush in California (p. 501 Nash et al., 2010). These movements west of the Mississippi river caused the newly relocated Indians to give up some of th... ... middle of paper ... ...r housing. The living conditions are making life harder for these already broken people. Works Cited CanupawakpaDakota. (2011, November 12). Children of the Plains [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GACcBe9Be58 Grant, U. (1873, March 4). Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1873) Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3557 Nash, G. B., Jeffery, J., Howe, J., Winkler, A., Davis, A., Mires, C., et al. (2010). The American people: creating a nation and a society. (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education Sandefur, G. (n.d.). American Indian reservations: The first underclass areas? Retrieved April 28, 2014, from http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc121f.pdf Ushistory.org. (n.d.). Life on the Reservations. Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://www.ushistory.org/us/40d.asp .

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