Our Manifest Destiny: Home For The Homeless

“Free Homes for Millions! Land for the Landless! Home for the Homeless!” (Wexler 254)
This is an example of a three of the many slogans that advertised a new world for millions of families and couples on their way to a better life. What the couples didn’t know is that the “Land for the Landless” and the “Home for the Homeless” were making hundreds of Native American tribes homeless and landless. Tribes like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Apache were being forced off their land, the land they had lived on for generations, all in the spirit of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was a term coined by John Louis O’Sullivan, a newspaper columnist in 1854.
“Our Manifest Destiny [is] to overspread and possess the whole continent which Providence has given

us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”(Wexler NP)
To “overspread and possess” is a dangerous goal. It involves killing millions of Native Americans not wanting to leave their rightful land to go live on reservations, almost killing a whole species of buffalo, building miles and miles of railroads through the Native American’s rightful land without permission. The United States was not justified with our policy of weakening Native American culture in the second half of the 1800s.
Sitting Bull was a Native American peace chief who convinced many tribes to resist the white armies forcing them to relocate to a reservation.

Sitting Bull believed in peace, and detested all the bloody massacres that were going on between the tribes and the white military. When he finally surrendered himself and his followers to the government and moved to a reservation, he was shot and killed by some members of the Indian Police who thought he was the leader of the Ghost Dance religious movement. Started in 1870 with the Paiute Indians, The Ghost Dance was a peaceful way for Native Americans to mourn their culture that was being destroyed. When reservation officials learned of this, they grew scared and banned the dance. This led to the powerful chief's death. So many Native Americans only wanting peace were killed, so many women, men, and children were murdered and slaughtered in bloody

massacres.
As mentioned before, the buffalo population, which sustained almost all of the Central Plain Indians, went from hundreds of healthy, thriving herds, to “Thousands upon thousands of hides are being brought in here by hunters. In places, whole acres of ground are covered with these hides spread out… to dry. It is estimated that there is, south of the Arkansas and west of the Wichita, from one to two thousand men shooting buffalo for their hides.” (Wexler 255) by the Wichita Eagle on November 7, 1872. Sometimes, the hunters killed for sport, or to clear off railroads. The Native Americans who relied on buffalo to live considered them sacred, and used absolutely every part of the buffalo to survive. From droppings to the teeth, every part of the buffalo was necessary to live the traditional lifestyle of many tribes.
Railroads were essential for the move west and making the Civil War the “first modern war”.

But for miles and miles of railroad track to cross across America, even more buffalos had to be killed to clear off the area where railroads were to be built. The tracks traversing through the West cut through the Native American land without permission, furthermore pushing more and more tribes out of their rightful land and onto reservations. The reservations Native Americans were forced on to was on poor soil and in land that was not at all like the traditional land tribes had lived on for generations, celebrating traditions, hunting, and harvesting food. The food they received on the reservations was cheap and purchased with ration tickets. The clothing the reservations provided were handed out twice a year and were made of bad quality materials. The food and clothing Native Americans would receive was only enough for basic survival, and not anything like the traditional garbs they were accustomed to wearing. On reservations, there were staged buffalo hunts with cattle instead of buffalo and rifles instead of bows and arrows. It was not the same as the herds of buffalos stampeding through the West’s prairies while Native Americans went after them as the people before them and their ancestors. The children raised on reservations were forced to have an American name and follow American customs. The schools only allowed English, and students would be punished if they spoke anything

else.
The extreme suffering and pain the white military forced hundreds of tribes into was horrendous, and their treatment of the Native Americans went through was terrible. The United States was never, and will never be justified for the horrible things they put the Native Americans through. The people who were here before the settlers, whose land was trespassed and torn apart, whose culture was killed along with the men, women, and children that the white militaries went through on their path towards Manifest Destiny did not deserve for their homes and land to be treated the way they were.