Hedges and Sacco begin the book by discussing Whiteclay, a small incorporated village in Nebraska. The clients that come to Whiteclay primarily for alcohol are Native Americans from Pine Ridge, a reservation that is located in South Dakota. Hedges and Sacco were able to direct my attention into the lives of those in the Pine Ridge reservation by describing the problems with alcoholism and poverty that they face. Using the example of Long Wolf, they really gave me a feel for the hardships that Native Americans faced among their families. For Verlyn Long Wolf, her childhood experiences were dictated by physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. It upsets me that a girl has to go through such hardships at a young age. It was really striking that she was married and divorced around seven times and that all of them were abusive, except for one. The authors linked the vivid descriptions of rape and abuse back to the tragic history of white conquest. I think what really stood out to me about the Native Americans was when Hedges and Sacco talked about the Smithsonian museum…
People often say that that the past has passed, unable to be altered, but if one chooses to do better in the present, they can have a brighter future. The idea that people can rise above their past and prevail with the power of hope even in times of tragedy is often lost amongst people when they experience misfortune. Reservation Blues articulately highlights the contrast between the permanence of circumstance and the possibility of a fruitful future. While Alexie provides somber backstories for several leading characters of the story, such as Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Chess and Checkers, Junior, Victor, and Robert Johnson, he uses each individual character to juxtapose how reactions to the past can affect the future. Furthermore, Alexie explores the theme of reconstruction and how the idea of tragedy itself can be repurposed into a new possibility of prosperity.…
Metacom was the Indian leader whom the English called King Philip, the fear that the Indians had as well as the English was that the Indian Sausimun had been found dead and they believed that was because he informed the English of an Indian plot and he was going to be killed by the Indians for doing so therefore he decided to end his own life, and because of this both the Indians and the English became afraid and armed themselves more to be prepared for a war that was to outbreak. They sat and spoke and explained how the Indians felt they had did only good to the English and how the English had wronged them by taking much of their land and were afraid of being forced to become Christian Indians. They argued that they had taught the English how to plant. Another issue was that whenever there was a problem and 20 Honest Indians testified against the English man who did them any wrong was not enough, but if one of their worst Indians were to testify against any Indian it was enough. They had many quarrels including all the land taken from the Indians and how it was taken from them, for example the English would get the Indians drunk and in a drunken state bargain land from them and thus cheating them from much land for unfair prices, and they did writings to prove the wrongful arrangement.…
As explained in this chapter of Davidson and Lytle’s After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, a historical theory is not necessarily a clear and definite principle about something, rather it is an untested hypothesis. Historians incorporate many factors into their theories to help explain events and support their hypotheses, and these focuses affect their basic understanding of history. This is commonly referred to as “Grand Theory”—an overall explanation of phenomena in a particular discipline or realm of experience such as economics, sociology, or history. As we saw in the previous chapter on the Salem Witch Trials, each historian's input and perspective introduced new possibilities and explanations…
The largest example the author uses to illustrate the repugnant actions of President Jackson is Native American removal. Even before he became president, he worked to acquire Native American land for the United States as treaty commissioner. In his time with that position, he gained large areas of land that would grow the United States. This would seem like an honorable achievement for the country, but Jackson and his fellow commissioners did not always use fair tactics when negotiating with Native American tribes that refused to give up their homes. Not only is this morally wrong, but it is the exact sort of oppression that many American colonists were trying to leave when they declared independence of Great Britain. This…
Colorado was the 38th state of the U.S. when it joined on August 1, 1876. It is America’s eight largest state. It was first explored by the Spanish in the 1500s and was given to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American in 1848. Because gold was discovered in Colorado, it attracted new settlers that caused conflicts with the Indians. This caused the Plains Indian Wars. Colorado mostly votes for Republicans but sometimes it shifts to Democrats. From 1976 to 1988, all the votes are Republican but it shifted in 1992 when they voted for a democrat. Then again, from 1996 to 2004, they went back to the Republican Party. In the 2008 election, the democrats won by a margin of 53.7% compared to the republican…
The Trail of Tears was a harsh and inhumane event that happened in the 1830’s. Indian tribes were forced off of their land and they were involuntarily relocated to what is now Oklahoma. There was fear and resentment among the white settlers when it came to their Native American adversaries. They were a different kind of people than the whites when it came to how they lived, spoke, dressed and as well as their religious beliefs. This unfamiliarity with them led to the settlers believing that they were better than the indians and that they should leave the land and be forced to live in an ‘indian land’ if they refused to conform to Christianity as well as learn to speak English. However as more and more settlers flooded into the area, the land became more and more coveted. They no longer cared how civilized the indians became; they wanted them gone (Brief History of the Trail of Tears).…
In the election of 1824, candidates John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson did not gain enough electoral votes to win. In accordance with the constitution, the election was settled in the House, and to the people’s dismay, Henry Clay helped John Quincy Adams gain enough votes to become President, in what what later known by the Democrats as the “corrupt bargain.” A war hero and aristocrat from the agrarian state of Tennessee who liked to chew tobacco and duel with pistols, Andrew Jackson was particularly livid about the results of this election, considering he had won the popular vote. Andrew Jackson and his party, the Democratic Party, won in the election of 1828 and went on to radically alter the principles and functions of democratic government by championing the “common man” and taking a brutal stance towards the Native Americans.…
The Wounded Knee Massacre came after a battle between the United States and the Sioux. The Sioux had won the battle and clearly the United States were not happy. The Wounded Knee Massacre started with soldiers from the United States that were sent to this tribe to arrest the leaders because the Indians had different beliefs. They started with a man named Sitting Bull who was killed in the process. The United States were sent back and a man named bigfoot was in charge now. A fight between a soldier and an Indian broke out and a shot was fired from an Unknown side. The Indians could have done something to try to prevent this but the United States soldiers and government were the ones that started this because they attacked…
The great Cherokee Nation that had fought the young Andrew Jackson back in 1788 now faced an even more powerful and determined man who was intent on taking their land. But where in the past they had resorted to guns, tomahawks, and scalping knives, now they chose to challenge him in a court of law. They were not called a 'civilized nation' for nothing. Many of their leaders were well educated; many more could read and write; they had their own written language, thanks to Sequoyah, a constitution, schools, and their own newspaper. And they had adopted many skills of the white man to improve their living conditions. Why should they be expelled from their lands when they no longer threatened white settlements and could compete with them on many levels? They intended to fight their ouster, and they figured they had many ways to do it. As a last resort they planned to bring suit before the Supreme Court. Prior to that action, they sent a delegation to Washington to plead their cause. They petitioned Congress to protect them against the unjust laws of Georgia that had decreed that they were subject to its sovereignty and under its complete jurisdiction. They even approached the President, but he curtly informed them that there was nothing he could do in their quarrel with the state, a statement that shocked and amazed them.…
The Indians during this time were having problems of their own. They were not getting paid for the land the government had gotten from them. They were not able to hunt and fish throughout the land as they did previously and they were starving. The Indians did not adapt well to farming. Confined to the reservations along the Minnesota River, Chief Big Eagle later remarked that it seemed too sudden to make such a change. Unhappy with the whole situation, the Indians in August 1862 made an intense effort to drive the settlers off the land. On August 18, 1862, the Indians attacked the Lower Sioux Agency and it wasn't long before they crossed the river and preceded to loot, kill and burn buildings on the north side. At the onset of the Sioux uprising…
During the first Seminole War (1817-1818) Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, destroyed Black and Indian towns. During this time Blacks fled to the Bahamas.…
The Lost Cause influenced the honor and commencement offered to the Confederate heroes, and deemphasized the importance of slavery in their fight; without regard to the limitations due to the poor economic situation they were left in when the war ended. The purpose of Lost Cause of the Confederacy was to spread the idea that the American Civil War was not centralized around slavery, but was a struggle to preserve the Southern way of life, and their rights as states. While on the surface the actions taken by the Lost Cause advocates seemed not to focus on politics, it was perhaps underneath it all a political matter.…
In the 1830’s the trails of tears was an act of removal of Native Americans out of their home lands. White Americans who also occupied the same land as Indians resented Native Americans. Most whites saw them as aliens and uncivilized people. Therefore, President Washington tried to solve the “Indian problem’ by making them as much as the whites. They encourage them to convert to Christianity and learn to speak and read English. Five different tribes embraced their customs and became known as the “Five civilized tribes”. These included Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee.…
By 1876, gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The gold was found on Sioux land, and this region was considered sacred to the Lakota Sioux Indians. The he land was to be protected and respected by the United States Army, because of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 18681, but the Army could not keep miners off the Sioux ground, which led to the increase of Sioux grievances towards the Americans; some grievances that are still taken offense to today. These battles and negotiations soon were known at the Great Sioux War of 1876.…