The Neglect Of The Native American Indian

Nearly every Native American Indian tribe has experienced some kind of neglect or discrimination. The white man has forcefully moved tribes from their homes, broken treaties that were promised to them, and senselessly slaughtered thousands of innocent

Indian men, women, and children. This kind of neglect is what led to the Battle of Little Bighorn Creek, a battle that is talked about in The Great Plains, the book I chose my topic from. The reason this subject touched me personally is because almost everyone who presently lives on the Great Plains has a certain percentage Indian blood running through their veins, including myself. The neglect of the Native American Indian in America has been a problem for generations, but it is a part of our history as Americans and therefore worth studying.

Although everyone should be involved in finding out more about this subject, historians and the ancestors of Indians who have been neglected have a tendency to be the more interested than others. Historians, like Edward Sherrif Curtis, the writer of "The North American Indian", are aroused by the mysterious past of the Indians. Their curiosity is what drives them to devote their entire lives to find out more about this historic past time. Curtis, for example, devoted more than thirty years of his life, following, living with, and taking more than forty thousand pictures of eighty different Indian tribes (Curtis, par.1). Another well-known seekers of Indian information are the Indians themselves. Their drive comes from keeping their heritage alive and giving justice to their ancestors who were mistreated by the senselessness of the white man. One of their goals is to share the wealth of information that has been passed down from their elders, to help us better understand their way of life.

During my research on this topic, I found that there is a vast amount of information out there, and it can be found almost anywhere. The Internet is where I began my search. Websites that talk about the history of the Indians like, Eyewitness: History through the eyes who lived it, Tour of the Florida Territory during the Seminole (Florida) Wars, 1792-1859, and Bitterroot National Forest of Western Montana were very useful tools for writing this paper. They talked about the hardships of the Indians, the wars they were in, how those wars were started, and how the tribes in those wars have been mistreated.