Adam Taylor

                                                                                                            Per. 2 AP US History

                                                                                                            12-26-04

Ruining the Natives Lives

            In the time period of thirty years from around the Civil War and beyond, the governments policy towards Native Americans shifted from separation to integration into our society. During this time period America, went from allowing the Native Americans, to be on their own due to them respecting our settlers traveling through their lands. Then we moved onto forcing the Native Americans onto reservations. Once we did this we had doomed the Native Americans. Because once we had done this our government just kept shrinking the reservations until in the end we the government even went and took most of those away from the Native Americans, with the Dawes Act. Thus in the course of roughly thirty years the American government would greatly change its policy on how it dealt with the Native Americans.

            At the time around the Civil War, America was starting to greatly expand out into the west, and through this we pushed to get the Native Americans to allow our settlers to travel through their lands. This was through the Ft. Laramine Conference, that we got many Native Americans to agree to allow settlers to pass through their territories, and in exchange, the American government would pay them for the damage being done to their hunting grounds. For a while this treaty worked out great, but then when more and more settlers came and started settling things started to change. The American government started to push for the Native Americans to give more and more but in return they would only get the American word that we would leave them alone on their private lands. This would last for a time and then settlers would start coming and settling and passing through and once again, the American government would make the Native Americans move. After a while of nothing but lies and never kept words the Native Americans started to get angry at being force onto smaller and smaller reservations of land that was theirs in the first place.

            In the mid 1860’s some Native Americans were feed up with the American government pushing them onto reservations, and then being forced to be treated like children with government aid. Not being able to hunt, or use their ancient traditional lands to live their lives the way they want to. So they started to fight back, and started to harass the settlers that were traveling and settling in their lands. They started to hunt on the lands they lost, and even to defending their lands against American military groups. This is what really got the American government to push for strictly enforced military watch over Native American Reservations. Even then if a group of Native Americans were forced and went peacefully onto these reservations were not a lot of times there for long, on the small, dry and non fertile lands they got. Some groups were forced off their lands and to move to new lands because gold, or other valuable resources were found on their lands. This was another cause for the Native Americans to rebel and start trying to get their freedoms back and to keep them. Thus were the Indian Wars of 1864-1890.  During those years many battles took place and both the Native Americans and the American army had both victories and loses. For the Native Americans some of their great victories for them would be Fetterman’s Massacre, and the battle of Little Big Horn. After years of war, and forcing the Native Americans onto reservations. Once this was complete the government would see that a change would need to be made with how they were going to deal with the Native Americans.

            Once the Native Americans were forced onto their small, desolate reservations, and being forced to wait for issue day of government aid to survive, the American government started to change their strategy. Now that the American government had to feed, clothe, and shelter, basically be like parents to huge numbers of non productive Native Americans. So came up the idea in Congress of making the Native Americans, Americans. To integrate them into American society were they would supposely be better off. Thus the idea of the Dawes Act, which was passed in 1887. Through this the Native Americans were given land, to farm and government aid to get them started. Then the left over land from the reservations that was not made into farm land was given away to settlers. Through this process the Native Americans got only 47 million acres of the circa 150 million acres that was their reservations. On top of that the farming land was not fertile, and so a lot of the Native Americans did not do so well. But never the less the government was not having to deal wit the Native Americans really any more, because they had gotten them integrated into American society as farmers, or on tiny reservations to this day.