Native Americans In The 19th Century

Since the fifteenth century when the first Anglo-American explorers came to explore the New World with all its land, riches and resources, settlers have struggled with peacefully cohabiting with the Native American people who inhabited these lands long before Christopher Columbus had even sailed the ocean blue. Native Americans helped settlers when they first arrived; teaching them how to grow crops, weave baskets, and make shelter. But tensions quickly rose as settlers became greedy for land and the natural resources around. They promptly enforced a sense of superiority over the Native American Indians whom they presumed were uncivilized and unintelligent. At the beginning of the 19th century, settlers were hungry with their need to expand
Back on the reservations, Native Americans were fed up with the unfair and harsh conditions. With the United States army deployed in the Civil War, openings for uprisings among Natives arose. The Civil War ended in 1865, but the following decade was plagued with wars between different indigenous tribes, known as the Indian Wars. By the late 1880’s most Native American groups had been forced onto the reservations. Following the Civil War, the government experimented with new policies for handling Native American affairs. In 1887 under President Grover Cleveland signed The Allotment/Dawes Act, ending the reservations system by dividing their lands into even smaller allotments. The Dawes Act was an attempt at opening up the Indian Reservation lands to white settlement and to encourage assimilation of Native Americans into American society. Under the Dawes Act, each head of the household was granted 160 acres of land to farm and harvest, the remaining land was then sold. The Dawes Act succeeded at granting the United States government the land they wanted but failed at improving the quality of life for the Native American Indians and integrating them into American society. Much of the land granted to the Native American men, was unsustainable for farming and couldn’t hold a harvest, most Native American Indians also didn’t have any money for farming equipment or supplies. In 1934, under the Indian Reorganization Act/Indian New Deal, the United States’ federal legislation terminated the allotment program of the Dawes Act. Legislation also provided funds for Native American tribes to purchase new lands, and finally formally recognized tribal