Native American History

An Indian History of the American West

 ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’  by Dee Brown (summary)

 ARRIVAL

·        Between 1860 and 1890 the culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed.

·        It began with Christopher Columbus, who gave the people the name Indios

·        Columbus was convinced the people should be “made to work, sow and do all that is necessary to adopt our ways.

·        1492 – 1890 several million Europeans and their descendants undertook to enforce their ways upon the people of the New World.

·        The Spaniards looted and burned villages; they kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children and shipped them to Europe to be sold as slaves.

·        English speaking white men arrived in Virginia in 1607.  They made a settlement at Jamestown.

·        The Powhatans rose up in revenge to drive the Englishmen back into the sea from which they came, but the Indians underestimated the power of the English weapons.  In a short time 8000 Powhatans were reduced to less than a thousand.

·        In Massachusetts – the Englishmen landed at Plymouth in 1620, most of them would have starved to death but for aid received from friendly natives of the New World.  They shared corn, showed them where and how to catch fish and got them through the first winter.  When spring came they gave the white men some seed corn and showed the how to plant and cultivate it.

·        For several years these Englishmen and their Indian neighbours lived in peace, but more shiploads of white people continued coming ashore.

CONFLICT

·        In 1675 the Indian confederacy went to war to save the tribes from extinction.  The Indians attacked 52 settlements, completely destroying twelve.  But eventually the firepower of the colonists virtually exterminated the Wampanoags and Narragansetts.  Indian women and children were sold into slavery in the West Indies.

·        The five nations of the Iroquois, mightiest and most advanced of all the eastern tribes, strove in vain for peace.  After year of bloodshed to save their political independence, they finally went down to defeat.

PERMANENT INDIAN FRONTIER

·        The decade following establishment of the ‘permanent Indian frontier’ (no Indians to be East of the 95^th meridian) was a bad time for the eastern tribes.  Because the Cherokees numbered several thousands, their removal to the West was planned to be in gradual stages, but discovery of Appalachian gold within their territory brought on a clamour for their immediate wholesale exodus.  During the autumn of 1838, General Winfield Scott’s soldiers rounded them up and concentrated them into camps.  On the long winter trek, one of every four Cherokees died from cold, hunger, or disease.  They called the march their “trial of tears”.

·        In 1848 gold was discovered in California.  Within a few months, fortune-seeking easterners by the thousands were crossing Indian Territory.

CIVIL WAR

·        At the beginning of the 1860’s the white men of the United States went to war with one another – the Bluecoats against the Graycoats, the great Civil War. 

·        In 1860 there were probably 300,000 Indians in the United States, most of them living west of the Mississippi.  Their numbers had been reduced by half to two-thirds since the arrival of the first settlers in Virginia and New England.

·        The most numerous and powerful western tribe was the Sioux or Dakota, which was separated into several divisions

o      Santee Sioux lived in the woodlands of Minnesota – they were 4 divisions: Mdewkantons, Wahpetons, Wahpekutes and Sissetons.  They lost most of their land and were crowed into a narrow strip along the Minnesota River.  After many battles 303 Santees were sentenced to death: Lincoln refused to authorize immediate hanging and the number was reduced to 39 for execution.  The surviving members of the Santee Sioux were removed to Dakota Territory.  Crow Creek on the Missouri River was the site chosen for the Santee reservation. The soil was barren, rainfall scanty, wild game scarce and the alkaline water unfit for drinking.  Of the 1300 Santees brought in 1863, less than a thousand survived their first winter.

o      Teton Sioux lived farther west on the Great Plains – their outstanding leader was Red Cloud.  Crazy Horse was a young man at the time.  Sitting Bull was also in his twenties at this time.  Together they would make history in sixteen years time in 1876.

o      Cheyennes were closely associated with the Teton Sioux.

o      Apaches lived in the arid Southwest – veterans of guerilla warfare with the Spaniards.  Geronimo, in his twenties, had not yet proved himself.

1860

·        US reaches 31 million, repeating rifle invented, South Carolina secedes from the Union.  Jefferson elected President of the Confederate States

1862

·        Construction of Central Pacific Railroad begins

·        Lincoln declares all slaves free

1865

·        Civil War ends.  President Lincoln assassinated.  US constitution abolishes slavery.  Indians hunted like wolves.  272 butchered on Bear River under the command of Chief Connor.  Orders were also given by Colonel Nelson Cole to kill every male Indian over twelve years of age in the Dakotas.

1866

·        Civil Rights Bill gives equal rights to all person born in United States except Indians. 

·        U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia $7,200,000. 

·        Alfred Nobel invents dynamite

1871

·        President Grant issues proclamation against Ku Klux Klan

CUSTER’S DEFEAT

·        The Black Hills of Dakota was for the Indian people the very center of their culture in the mid west.

·        They were offered $4000 a year for mineral rights because of the discovery of gold or $6,000,000 to sell the Black Hills.  (This was a massive mark down considering one mine alone yielded $500 million in gold alone.  The Indians rejected the offer – the Black Hills were not for lease or sale.  The Congress disregarded the wishes of the Indians and this put in chain a series of actions, which would bring the greatest defeat ever, suffered by the United States Army in its wars with the Indians and ultimately would destroy forever the freedom of the northern Plains Indians.

·        February 7 1876:  The War Department authorized General Sheridan to commence operations against the “hostile Sioux” including Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

·        General George Armstrong Custer was surrounded by four thousand warriors at Little Bighorn.  Custer was killed and the army defeated.

·        July 22 Sherman received authority to assume military control of all reservations in the Sioux country an to treat the Indians there as prisoners of war.

·        August 15: a new law requiring the Indians to give up all rights to the Black Hills.  They did this without regard to the treaty of 1868, maintaining that the Indians had violated the treaty by going to war with the United States.

·        The United States Army, thirsty for revenge, prowled the country killing Indians wherever they could be found.

·        Crazy Horse was killed by Private William Gentles on September 5, 1877 at the age of 35.

INDIAN SURRENDER

·        The Teton Sioux surrended after the wars of 1876-77

·        Reservations were established at Lower Brule, Crow Creek, Cheyenne and Standing Rock.

·        Sitting Bull went into exile in Canada for 4 years.

·        Sitting Bull surrended on July 19, 1881.

·        The policy was to ‘speed the process of making the Sioux as white men.”  Destroy the culture of the Sioux and replace it with the white man’s civilization.

·        Indians were offered 50 cents per acre for land or just take the land without their consent.

·        Sitting Bull refused to agree and refused to sign any agreements.

·        It was all over though.  The Great Sioux Reservation was broken into small islands round which would rise the flood of white immigration.

·        Sitting Bull was killed by Red Tomahawk who came to arrest him.

WOUNED KNEE

·        The cavalry attacked 120 men and 230 women and children.  300 Indians were killed.

·        It was the fourth day after Christmas 1890.  When the first bodies were carried into a nearby candlelit church there was a sign above the pulpit which read: PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO MEN.