Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

Native Americans From 1865 to the Present

Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

The history of Native Americans since the close of the Civil War in 1865 has been
one of struggle, oppression and terrible tragedy. Much of this tragedy can be attributed
to the treatment they received at the hands of the white settlers and encroaching
Americans. It can be argued that the conflict between Native Americans and the settlers
who were coming in and taking their land was an inevitable byproduct of a clash
between two cultures with diametrically opposed views about how one should live and
one's relation to nature and the land. There are any number of incidents that help to
illustrate both how differently Native Americans and the European Americans viewed
life, and how this had a very negative affect on Native Americans, often forcing them to
abandon their lands, culture, language and beliefs.
One of the most important examples of the cultural clash that took place between
Native Americans and American settlers in the West was the annihilation of the buffalo
(or bison) herds that existed in the region. These buffalo herds numbered in the millions,
and served as a primary food source for Native Americans, particularly after the
introduction of the horse. Not only did they provide food, they also provided skins and
other materials that were used by Native Americans in their everyday lives. Generally
speaking, Native Americans tried to make use of all parts of any animal that they killed
during a hunt. However, there is no question that the introduction of the horse and the
rifle to Native Americans caused them to change their hunting habits to ones which were

Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

less environmentally sound (Ruzzo, 2004, p. 211).

American buffalo covered vast swaths of the American continent's interior, from
Pennsylvania and Tennessee in the East all the way to Oregon and Nevada in the West.
The gigantic herds often covered the planes like a blanket. Before the American settlers
came, the population of buffalo in the West was controlled by limited hunting by natives,
wolves, droughts and other environmental factors. Prior to the introduction of guns, the
tribes followed a subsistence pattern in which they combined hunting with agriculture
(Mamet 2013,p. 12). This was largely because the migration patterns of the buffalo
could not be easily predicted. Guns and horses made it much easier to follow the herds.
Many tribes abandoned their old traditional lifestyle of fixed settlements and became
nomadic, following the herds. This had a negative effect in that it caused the tribes to be
dependent on a single food source, and also made them more dependent on the
Europeans with whom they traded. In fact, it was with the increased trade with the
Europeans, particularly in buffalo hides, that many of the natives cultural traditions
about fully using all of the animal began to be abandoned. Instead, natives began to hunt
the animals simply for their skins and the tongue, which is what the traders wanted.
However, while greed and wastefulness among Native Americans themselves
undoubtedly played a small role in the ultimate near extinction of the buffalo in North
America, there were a number of other factors involved, including the environmental,
economic and cultural factors that resulted from the clash of these two societies. The

Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

killing of buffalo by Native Americans was dwarfed by the impact that the incoming
American settlers had. Following the opening of the Oregon Trail, America's began
settling in the natural habitat of the buffalo. One of the problems that impacted the
buffalo was that the settlers cattle began competing for the grass on which the buffalo
fed.
In addition, the settlers themselves hunted the buffalo in great numbers. In addition,
in the 1870s buffalo hides became fashionable. Also, factories discovered that buffalo
hides could be employed as machine belts in machinery. Railroads were able to speed up
the process of getting hides to market, making buffalo hunting more efficient and
economical. Finally the railroads themselves wanted to get rid of the buffalo because of
the delays and damage they caused. As one writer mentioned, as many as 80,000 buffalo
hides might be shipped out in a single day.
It should also be noted that there were more insidious motivations for the destruction
of the buffalo herds. Many commenters at the time noted that the destruction of the
buffalo would be one way for America to deal with the "Indian problem." The secretary
of the state himself suggested that the elimination of the buffalo would force Indian
tribes onto reservations where they could be "civilized." While there is no clear evidence
that the government actually instituted this policy, it seems obvious that they were more
than happy with the result (Wise, 2011, p. 63).
Destruction of the bison were not the only means that the government used to control

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Native Americans at this time. One thing they desire to do was to remove any rights the
tribes might have had to speak for themselves. One consequence of this was the Indian
Appropriation Act of 1871. The purpose of this act was to declare that Native Americans
would no longer be recognized as free nations. As a consequence, the federal
government would no longer make treaties with them as they had so often in the past.
After this act, the policies created regarding Native American tribes would no longer
be based on treaties discussed and negotiated with those tribes. Instead, orders would be
handed down by fiat from the Executive branch and based on Congressional statutes or
bureaucratic rulings. This decision marked a significant reduction in rights and voice for
native tribes. From this time on, they were no longer be independent people with true
governments of their own. Instead, they would be treated as dependent wards of the
state, with no rights that the state did not grant them. Moreover, they would be required
to go where the state wanted them to go and do what state wanted them to do (Michno,
2006, p. 38).
In many ways, the Indian Appropriation Act of 1871 represented the greatest disaster
Native Americans have ever faced. It laid the legal framework for all the problems and
evils that they would face in the future. Without this act, the government would continue
to treat Native Americans tribes as states of their own, which might have minimized the
future troubles they would face.
The most immediate effect that this act had was that it made it much easier for the

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federal government to simply take lands from Native Americans. Prior to this, treaties
would have to be negotiated and signed in which Native Americans agreed (even if
reluctantly and under pressure) to relinquish certain lands to the United States. After this
act was passed, it was no longer necessary for the federal government to negotiate with
Native Americans in order to take their land (Wunder, 2009, p. 1256). The Department
of the Interior (which managed The Bureau of Indian Affairs) could simply order tribes
to leave their ancestral lands and go to reservations. Of course, this was the legal aspect
of the problem. He did not guarantee that the Native Americans would not put up a
vigorous resistance to such orders.
To a large extent, this new policy and its implementation was one of the reasons for
the Indian wars of the 1870s. Indians were often slaughtered en masse by US soldiers or
private groups acting to take their lands. The savagery of the attacks against the Native
Americans is rarely discussed these days. Instead, there is often a focus on the attacks
made by Native Americans. However, one only has to look at the Sand Creek massacre
to see cruelty against Native Americans so terrible that it can hardly be spoken of
(Spude, 2008, p. 46). Men, women, children and old people all slaughtered and tortured
and raped by American forces. While this attack occurred in the 1860s, many others took
place in the 1870s, and the Native Americans naturally fought back. The Battle of the
Little Big Horn is one example of the tribes achieving a victory against US troops, even
if it was ultimately fruitless.

Native Americans from 1865 to the Present

The battle of Little Big Horn took place in 1876, it is also known as Custer's Last
Stand. General George Armstrong Custer was a veteran of the Civil War and had more
recently been fighting and slaughtering Native American tribes and villages. It done so
as indiscriminately as anyone else had at the time, rarely sparing women or children. In
this incident, Custer decided to attack the combined forces of Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull at Little Big Horn. He did this despite the fact he had only 250 men and it had been
reported to him that the Sioux had a combined force of almost 4000. Other forces in the
area, such as those under Benteen, did not come to Custer's assistance. Custer, along
with the vast majority of the men under his command, were killed and mutilated during
this battle (Potts, 1994, p. 310).
An interesting result of this "massacre" was the anger and outrage in the American
government, military and public. Americans were furious that Native Americans had
fought and won in this way, humiliating the U.S. Army. As a consequence, many
punitive expeditions were carried out to finely crush them. Over the next two years, the
Lakota were tracked down and killed or forced onto reservations. Few people pointed
out the irony of the public being outraged over the death of more than 200 American
soldiers in a legitimate battle, while ignoring the senseless slaughter of Native American
women and children encamped in their own villages.
At about the same time, another approach to "dealing with" Indian tribes in the
United States was introduced. These were the Indian boarding schools. Indian boarding

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schools were designed to remove Native American culture from Indian children. An
interesting facet of Native American boarding schools is that while they began operation
in the 19th century, it wasn't until the 1960s that they reached their peak, with thousands
of Native American children being boarded and essentially brainwashed by the schools.
Frequently, the schools punished misbehavior with physical violence. Punishable
behavior included speaking your native language, dancing or singing. Many children
would run away from the boarding schools, only to be brought back and punished again
(Juneau, 2001, p. 100).
However, research conducted in the 60s and 70s which condemned the existence of
the boarding schools and their practices, as well as the growth of Indian activism
movements resulted in Congress passing the Indian self-determination and education
assistance act of 1975. This shifted the focus away from centralized boarding schools to
nearby community schools where students could learn the basics while still maintaining
their cultural heritage. As a consequence, most of the major Indian boarding schools
were finally closed in the 80s and 90s, although some still exist today.
One of the Indian activist movements that grew up during this period was AIM
(American Indian Movement). Begun in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the
organization's initial goal was to deal with poverty and police harassment issues in the
immediate area. However, in the early 70s the group was led by Russell Means and
attracted membership from across the country. This group took a fairly militant attitude

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toward the government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Kelly, 2007, p. 257). It
temporarily seized control of the national headquarters of the BIA in 1972, presenting a
list of demands.
In many ways, this list of demands dealt with many of the issues previously
discussed. For instance, AIM wanted a return to the policy in which the government
negotiated treaties with tribes, rather than dictating policy. They also wanted a review of
previous treaty violations and compensation. They wanted the return of millions of acres
of Native American land, as well as the replacement of the BIA with a new office of
Federal Indian Relations.
In 1973 this group took part in an armed occupation of Wounded Knee, which is
located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In doing so, they were in opposition to
certain factions within the tribe. They again demanded restoration of treaty rights that
had been taken away. They held out against the siege for many weeks, but eventually the
Lakota elders ordered an end to the incident. However, following this there were many
murders and unexplained deaths within the tribe in the years to come. To an extent, this
factionalism within Native Americans is representative of the schism produced between
those who want to work within the US system and those who want major changes. In a
way, this was the conflict between Native Americans themselves over how much they
were going to adhere to their own traditions.
During the Carter administration, one of most significant steps forward for the

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10

maintenance of Native American traditions was the passage of the American Indians
Religious Freedom Act (Linge, 2000, p. 307) . This act was intended to protect the
religious rights and traditional ceremonies of Native Americans, as well as Eskimos and
Hawaiians. In detail, the rights guaranteed included the right to gather and worship at
sites considered to be sacred, the right to carry out traditional ceremonies in traditional
ways, and the right to possess objects or materials related to those religious practices.
Many Native American tribes across the country are trying to reconnect with their
original languages, customs and religious practices, so the American Indians Religious
Freedom Act helps to remove impediments to this process.
There is no question but that the last century and a half has been a devastating one
for Native Americans in the United States. During this time, they have lost not only
millions of their own people, they have lost land, languages, customs and selfgovernance. To a large extent, the United States government has treated them as errant
children who have to be controlled and occasionally punished. However, there are
indications over the last few decades that this is in the process of changing.

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11

References
Kelly, C. (2007). RHETORICAL COUNTERINSURGENCY: THE FBI AND THE
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT. Advances In The History Of Rhetoric, 10
223-258.
References
Linge, G. (2000). Ensuring the Full Freedom of Religion on Public Lands: Devils Tower
and the Protection of Indian Sacred Sites. Boston College Environmental Affairs
Law Review, 27(2), 307.
Mamet, D. (2013). AMERICAN BUFFALO. Smithsonian, 41(7), 12-13.
Michno, G. (2006). The Indian Trail of Broken Treaties. Wild West, 19(2), 38.
Potts, J. B. (1994). Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Journal Of Military History, 58(2), 305-314.
Ruzzo, B. (2004). THE ORIGINAL PLAINS HUNTERS. Outdoor Life, 211(2), 79.
Spude, R. L. (2008). On the Plain of Sand Creek, in the Valley of Washita. Perspectives
On History, 46(5), 20.
Wise, M. (2011). Colonial Beef and the Blackfeet Reservation Slaughterhouse, 1879 1895. Radical History Review, (110), 59-82
Wunder, J. R., & Steinke, C. (2009). Indian Affairs: Law and Treaties/Early Recognized
Treaties with American Indian Nations. Journal Of American History, 95(4), 12551256.