History of the West

1
History of the West

• Unit 5
• End of the Indians in the Great Plains
• 1868-1900

2
Force vs. Peace

• Background
• Jeffersonian
• Indians should be removed to distance them from
  worst of American fur traders
• Cheated them or traded them whiskey
• Jacksonian
• Indians were inferior and should be removed to
  make way for American expansion
• Condescending perspective, much like that of
  slave owners toward their slaves

3
Indian Sovereignty

• Early Years Europeans had to recognize Indian
  sovereignty because they could overwhelm
  colonials
• Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia
• Domestic, dependent nations
• By 1871 congressional legislation sought to
  eliminate all Indian sovereignty
• Transfer issues
• political battle over whether Indian policy
  should be held by the Department of War or
  Department of Interior

4
Peace Policy

• Some Easterners who saw what was happening on the
  plains as genocide
• Wanted Indian policy in the Bureau of Indian
  Affairs (BIA)
• Senator James Doolittle
• Wisconsin Senator Chair of the Indians Affairs
  Committee
• Pushed a bill through Congress to setup an ad hoc
  committee of 3 senators and 4 house members
• Convinced President Johnson to give committee a
  commission to negotiate treaties
• A few Indian nations signed, but most were too
  angry and not yet pacified

5
Senator James Doolittle
6
Wars of peace policy

• For over a decade policy vacillated between peace
  and force
• Peace advocates tried to implement Concentration
• Negotiated by Doolittles committee
• Whenever Indians left reservations force policy
  kicked into action

7
Red Clouds War

• June 1866 a peace commission under Doolittle met
  with Dakota and allied leaders
• The Bozeman road had been laid out to connect the
  mine fields of Montana with the Oregon Trail
• Cut through some of the best remaining hunting
  grounds for Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho
• While negotiating, Indians see Colonel Henry
  Carrington come through with construction
  equipment and men setup three forts to protect
  travelers

8
Red Clouds War(Cont)

• Indians stormed out and lay siege to the forts
• Brought construction to a near halt
• Fettermans Massacre (Battle of a hundred Slain)
• Indians win
• In late 1868, Army vacated the forts, and the
  Indians burned them to the ground
• The military blamed it on the BIAs failure to
  stop the arms trade
• BIA blamed it on military blunders
• Indians then come back to negotiate

9
The Bozeman Road
10
Taylor Peace Commission

• Doolittle lost his Senate seat in the 1866 term
  elections
• Replaced by Senator John Henderson of Missouri as
  Chair of the Indian Affairs Committee
• Tried to appease all by selecting equal number of
  force and peace advocates
• Peace
• Henderson, Nathaniel Taylor, Samuel Tappan
• Force
• General William S. Harney, Alfred Terry, William
  T. Sherman

11
New Reservation treaties

• Peace Commission renegotiates treaties
• Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek (1867)
• Second Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868)
• Similarities in treaties
• Reservations with outlets
• No unwelcome whites on reservations
• Thirty years of annuities
• Some in the South on Reconstruction Treaties
  lands
• Promises of assimilation tools

12
Division of Great Plains

• September 1867, the plains were divided into a
  northern division and southern division
• General Philip Sheridan appointed to lead the
  Northern
• Known as the division of the Missouri
• His aggressive, Civil War, tactics played a big
  role in turning the tide

13
Dog Soldiers
14
Battle of the Washita

• Black Kettle and his band were one of the few
  that moved to the place mandated
• He couldnt control the Dog Soldiers that moved
  into and out of his encampment
• General Sherman called it all out war
• November 27, 1868 George Armstrong Custer and his
  7th U.S. Calvary attacked Black Kettles Southern
  Cheyenne camp on the Washitas River

15
Battle of the Washita (Cont)

• Hazen tried to contact Sherman at nearby Fort
  Cobb to tell him that Black Kettles band had
  surrenered
• But it was too late
• Custer led one column in another zeroing
  operation
• He attacked first, killing 875 horses, and then
  102 men
• A few women and children

16
Battle Plan
17
Battle of Beechers Island

• Angry over Sand Creek Massacre and opposed to
  Treaty of Medicine Lodge
• Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho hit farms and
  travel routes killing 79
• September 16, 1868 Major George A. Forsyth led 50
  frontiersmen out of Fort Hays
• Camped on Arikaree Fork in Colorado Territory
• Dog Soldiers under Roman Nose pinned them down on
  an island in the middle of the river
• Armed with Spencer repeating rifles, frontiersmen
  withstood many assaults
• Not conclusive who won

18
Satanta

• Kiowa (Mother was Southern Arapaho)
• Only reluctantly agreed to the treaty of Medicine
  Lodge Creek
• Moved onto a reservation and ventured into the
  west to hunt buffalo
• Their numbers were dwindling
• When reservation agents punished withholding
  annuity food
• They started raiding Wichita and Caddo villages

19
Satanta (Cont)

• Satanta and his friend and fellow headman, Big
  Tree, led their men in raids into Texas
• Especially supply wagon trains, seeing it as not
  part of the U.S. and thus outside the Treaty of
  Medicine Lodge Creek
• He and his men also considered their raiding as
  pay-back for annuities not delivered
• Taken prisoner in 1871, with promises of his
  release only when his people obeyed the
  governments mandate
• To return to their reservation
• The Indians complied

20
Big Tree
Satanta
21
Buffalo Hunting
22
Red River War

• Isa-Tai, a Comanche shaman, united Indians the
  southern plains
• Called for the first Comanche Sun Dance
• Took little persuasion by Isa-Tai to convince
  Indian leaders they had to strike back
• Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapahos, Kiowas,
  Kiowa-Apache, and Comanche attacked the new
  settlement of buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls
• An old Spanish mission

23
Red River War (Cont)

• In the early-morning hours of June 27, 1874, 300
  Indians moved in hoping to surprise the buffalo
  hunters and overpower them
• led by Isa-Tai and famed Comanche headman Quanah
  Parker
• Although the 28 hunters were vastly outnumbered,
  they were well armed with long range buffalo
  rifles and held off the Indians
• 70 Indians killed without 3 buffalo hunter
  casualties

24
Red River War
25
Uprising of 1876

• Most Lakota and their allies, Northern Cheyenne,
  and Northern Arapaho moved onto the reserve after
  the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie
• Gold discovered in the Black Hills in 1873
• The government first tried to keep whites out of
  the Black Hills but gave up and tried to keep
  Indians out
• Then the usual thirty days warning for all
  Indians to come into the agencies

26
Battle of Little Bighorn

• Sioux and Cheyenne defiantly left their
  reservations and gathered with Sitting Bull
• Army sent three columns against them including
  Lt. Colonel George Custer
• Those under Sioux leader Crazy Horse enveloped
  Custers men and killed them
• Indians mutilated the bodies in order to force
  them to suffer in the afterlife
• Battle was the pinnacle of Indians power
• Created resentment toward Indians with American
  officials leading to the push to get retribution

27
The Second Treaty of Fort Laramie
28
Battle of Little Bighorn
29
Battle of Little Bighorn
30
Reservation Building

• Conditions
• Reservations reduced in size
• Most located in land not suitable for agriculture
• Goal of BIA was to turn Indians into
  self-sustaining farmers
• Few jobs or ways of making a living
• Poverty and starvation rampant
• Bad housing/many live in tipis with no buffalo
  skins to cover them
• High death rate
• Had to live under the dictates of a reservations
  Indian agent
• Enforced White mans laws

31
Starving Indians
32
Indian Police

• Selected from ranks of Indian men, usually
  soldier sodalities
• Enforced White law among Indians
• No practice of traditional religion
• No plural marriages
• No practice of traditional political
  structure/agents chose leadership

33
Crow Policeman
Ute Policeman
34
Carlisle

• Lt. Richard Pratt
• Worked with imprisoned Indian Soldiers in the
  1870s
• Convinced the army to let him use old army
  barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to setup a
  school
• Sought to assimilate and teach young Indians
• Major goal of the peace policy advocates
• So successful initially that the government took
  over the school in 1882 and established many more
  off-reservation boarding schools thereafter

35
Carlisle (Cont)

• Controversies
• students were forced to attend and many of their
  parents tried to hide them
• Students had to work half a day to support the
  school
• In the outing system students were placed in
  the homes of nearby white residents
• Virtually slaves
• Many returned to their reservations
• Former students didnt fit in and had a hard time
  adjusting

36
Carlisle Arapaho Before
Carlisle Arapaho After
37
Off-reservation boarding school students and
graduates
38
Dawes Severalty Act

• Pushed through Congress by Henry Dawes in 1887
• Goal was to turn Indians away from communal land
  tenure to private land ownership
• Divided reservations into individual plots
• usually 160 acres for men and 80 acres for women
  and children
• Promised farm equipment and training
• No taxation on Indian lands

39
Dawes Severalty Act (Cont)

• After allotting reservation and assigning plots
  the remaining lands (Surplus lands) were opened
  to Whites to claim under homesteading laws
• Bill was supported by Whites because they could
  buy surplus lands
• Reformers thought assimilation was best for
  Indians and by the military
• Money made through land sales was earmarked for
  the army

40
Dawes Severalty Act (Cont)

• Problems
• Promoters soon realized that without knowledge of
  individual land ownership Indians would get
  cheated by Whites in land sales
• So included in the bill a 25 year trust
  restriction on the land
• Could not sell the land until the trust ended
• Little farming equipment or training in farming
• No help in private land ownership was forthcoming

41
Surplus lands promoted
42
Loss of Allotted Land

• Most allotment accomplished by 1900
• Indians lost over 87 million acres of surplus
  lands
• 1894 bill authorized the Secretary of Interior to
  grant easements across allotted lands for
  telephone and telegraphy lines
• By 1902 the Dead Indian Act allowed adult heirs
  to sell their deceased relatives land

43
Ghost Dance

• Started with Piute Indian Tavibo
• In 1870 he had a vision telling him that
  deliverance was near
• Whites would be destroyed in an earthquake
• Indians would be spared and the world would be
  restored to the old order
• Few initially believed so he had a second
  revelation
• Same as first however Indians would be
  resurrected on the third day
• Still few follow so he had a third vision
• Only the Indians that believed in the Ghost Dance
  would be resurrected

44
Wovoka (Jack Wilson)

• Took over his fathers work on the Ghost Dance
• Saw himself as the next Christ after the first
  one had been killed
• His version included frequent bathing, rejecting
  alcohol and no violence
• Dancing for five consecutive days demonstrated
  ones worthiness
• Gave Indians vision of a restored world once
  Whites were eliminated in cataclysm

45
Wovoka (Jack Wilson)
46
Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek

• Lakota had become divided
• Some had assimilated
• Role of Shaman had faded
• Political leadership was changing
• Continuing loss of land
• Allotment Act - 2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie
  required 3/4 vote for the government to take
  anymore land
• Government won the vote using scare tactics and
  bribery

47
Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (Cont)

• Lakota believed that the Ghost Shirts would
  protect them from bluecoats bullets
• During the fall of 1890 the Ghost Dance spread
  through the Sioux villages of the Dakota
  Reservations
• Revitalized the Indians and brought fear to the
  Whites
• A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired a
  message to Washington
• Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and
  crazy... We need protection and we need it now.
• Order went out to arrest Sitting Bull at the
  Standing Rock Reservation
• Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on
  December 15 by Indian Police

48
Ghost Shirt
49
Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (Cont)

• On December 15 Sitting Bull had been killed
• The reason given for the shooting claimed that he
  had resisted arrest
• Many fled to Spotted Elks band due to his
  reputation as a peaceful leader
• Yet, after slaying of Sitting Bull Spotted Elk
  was put on the list of fomenters of
  disturbances and arrested
• Lakota had sent representatives to learn Wovokas
  new religion
• 7th Calvary commanded by Major Samuel Whiteside
  intercepted Spotted Elks band of Lakota and took
  them westward to Wounded Knee Creek to camp

50
Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (Cont)

• The rest of 7th Cavalry arrived and surrounded
  Spotted Elks encampment with four Hotchkiss guns
• Morning of December 29 the troops went into the
  camp to disarm the Sioux
• During the process a deaf tribesman named Black
  Coyote would not give up his gun
• A scuffle ensued where a shot was fired
• Led to the Cavalry opening fire with the their
  guns and killing all in their path
• Women, children and fellow troopers
• All in all, at least 150 men, women and children
  of Lakota had been killed
• Only 25 American troops died, most to friendly
  fire
• End of Indian dominance in the Great Plains

51
Hotchkiss Gun
52
Battle of Wounded Knee Map
53
Dead at Wounded Knee
Spotted Elk