Ch. 21: Westward Expansion

1
Ch. 21 Westward Expansion

• Vocabulary
• westward expansion, reservations, Manifest
  Destiny, transcontinental railroad, tycoon,
  Andrew Jackson, John Ross

2
Trouble for the Native Americans

• Dozens of Native American tribes had lived
  throughout the West.
• On the Great Plains, tribes like the Arapaho and
  the Sioux hunted buffalo.
• In the Southwest, the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo
  were successful hunters and farmers.
• In the Pacific Northwest, the Nez Perce were
  traders and fishermen.

3
Trouble for the Native Americans

• After the United States government bought the
  Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark Expedition
  explored it, many settlers from the East Coast
  wanted to move onto the new lands.
• They claimed that it was the Manifest Destiny of
  the United States to stretch from the Atlantic to
  the Pacific Oceans.
• They also didnt think they should share the land
  that the United States had just bought from
  France.

• Conestoga Wagon

4
Trouble for the Native Americans

• Over time, the Native Americans found the lands
  that they had lived on filled with new American
  settlers.
• Railroad tycoons were building the
  Transcontinental Railroad on lands that were
  originally theirs, taking up spaces that used to
  be grazing lands for buffalo herds.
• They became angry and bands of men from both
  sides Native American and settler alike would
  attack each others villages and towns.

• Transcontinental Railroad

5
Trouble for the Native Americans

• In time, the U.S. Army was called in to deal with
  the problem of the Native Americans attacking
  American towns.
• The Native Americans would sit down with Generals
  and form treaties to keep new settlers out of
  their lands, but in a few years the treaties
  would be broken and the fighting would begin
  again.
• Oftentimes, the U.S. Army would use diseases like
  smallpox and measles to kill large sections of
  Native Americans.

6
The Battle of Little Bighorn

• In one battle, the Native Americans were actually
  successful against the U.S. Army the Battle of
  Little Big Horn.
• General George Custer was defeated by the Lakota
  tribe at Little Bighorn in Montana.
• But even that success was short lived.
• The Lakota were eventually defeated and sent to
  live on reservations with other Native American
  tribes.

7
Broken Promises

• In the early 1800s the Cherokee were living in
  the Appalachian Mountains around Georgia,
  Tennessee, and North Carolina.
• A group of Creeks, called the Red Sticks,
  attacked Fort Mims in Alabama, and started the
  Creek War.

8
Broken Promises

• Andrew Jackson was a Colonel in the U.S. Army
  during the Creek War.
• He enlisted the help of the local Cherokees to
  fight against the Red Sticks.
• When the Cherokee got back to their villages
  after the Creek War, they found their homes and
  villages destroyed.
• The Cherokee leaders were furious.

• Gen. Andrew Jackson

9
Broken Promises

• After the Creek War, the U.S. government wanted
  to thank the Cherokee people for their help.
• The Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New
  Echota.
• It said that the Cherokee were allowed to keep
  the lands that they lived on in Georgia.
• Soon, the state of Georgia gave the land that
  belonged to the Cherokee to American settlers.

10
Broken Promises

• The Chief of the Cherokee, John Ross, knew that
  this was against the law.
• So, instead of declaring war, he took the state
  leaders of Georgia to the Supreme Court.
• The Supreme Court said that the land belonged to
  the Cherokee, and American settlers could not
  take it away from them.
• The Cherokee were thrilled, and they celebrated
  their victory.

• Chief John Ross

11
Broken Promises

• Settlers from Georgia, however, kept moving onto
  Cherokee lands.
• The Cherokee complained again, but the U.S.
  government did nothing to stop the new settlers.

12
The Trail of Tears

• To make matters worse, a few years later, Andrew
  Jackson was elected to be president of the United
  States and as one of his first acts signed the
  Indian Removal Act of 1830.
• The Indian Removal Act of 1830 stated that all
  Native Americans east of the Mississippi were to
  be moved, forcibly if necessary, to reservations
  in Oklahoma.

13
The Trail of Tears

• The U.S. Army came back to Cherokee lands to move
  them to Oklahoma.
• They started moving from the mountains, on foot,
  in October of 1838.
• They travelled all winter to their new lands on
  the reservation in Oklahoma.
• Over 4000 Cherokee died on this journey because
  of cold or disease.

14
The Trail of Tears

• John Burnett, a soldier that escorted Native
  Americans to the reservations in Oklahoma wrote
  in his journal
• I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and
  dragged from their homes, and driven at the
  bayonet point into the stockadesOne can never
  forget the sadness and solemnity of that morning.
  Chief John Ross led in prayer and when the bugle
  sounded and the wagons started rolling, many of
  the children rose to their feet and waved their
  little hands good-bye to their mountain homesthe
  suffering of the Cherokees were awful. The trail
  of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to
  sleep in the wagons and on the ground without
  fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of
  them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill
  treatment, cold, and exposure.

15
Questions about Chapter 21

1. Why did many Native American groups have a right
   to be angry?
2. What happened to Native Americans who fought
   against the American settlers in the West?
3. What two Native American groups were involved in
   the Creek War? Tell what their relationships to
   the United States were.
4. Who was the leader of the Cherokee during the
   Trail of Tears?
5. How did he react differently than other Native
   American chiefs when their lands were being taken
   by settlers?