culture of the plain indians nomads roamed vast distances main source of food -the buffalo ...
TRANSCRIPT
Culture of the Plain Indians Nomads
roamed vast distances main source of food
-the Buffalo Similarities Between Them
Extended family networks Close relationship with nature Assignment of tasks
Women generally performed domestic tasks: Rearing Children Cooking Preparing hides
Men performed a variety of tasks that included: Hunting Trading Supervising the military life
of the band
The Dakota Sioux Uprising
Dakota Sioux Government issued annuities
Payments to reservation dwellers
Abuses August, 1867
Late Payments starving to death.
Chief Little Crow food on credit.
Trader Andrew Myrick replied, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung.”
Myrick dead Grass stuffed in this mouth.
Military Tribunal 307 Dakota to death
President Lincoln reduced to 38.
Troops to the Plains Sioux – The Lakota
The Lakota offered refuge to fleeing Dakota Indians
Chief Red Cloud Chief Crazy Horse Chief Sitting Bull
Fetterman’s Massacre Bozeman Trail
Link the mining towns with the East. Sioux Indian hunting grounds
Chief Red Cloud warned Fort Phil Kearney
Northern Wyoming Frequently attacked
Captain William Judd Fetterman 82-man force sent to its rescue.
Trapped-Dec. 21, 1866 1,500 Sioux
Chief High Backbone
"The Fetterman Fight" by J. K. Ralston.
Sand Creek Massacre
Trading Stopped Raiding wagon trains & stealing cattle
and horses from ranches. Estimate 200 settlers killed. November, 1864
Chief Black Kettle Negotiate Peace
To await at Sand Creek Colonel John Chivington
Ordered to attack the Cheyenne at Sand Creek Fourteen soldiers died 69-600 Native Americans
were killed.
A Doomed Plan for Peace Fetterman’s Massacre & Sand
Creek Massacre, Congress that something had to be
done. In 1867 Congress formed an
Indian Peace Commission. Two large reservations Pressured Native American
leaders into signing treaties Those who refused
Poverty Despair Corrupt American
Traders Demise of the Buffalo
The Army encouraged buffalo killing.
By 1889 very few of the animals remained
Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor and Ramona Criticism of policy towards
American Indians
Battle of the Little Bighorn
1876 Lakota Sioux Reservation Gold Mines
Expeditionary Force General Alfred H. Terry.
Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, Seventh Cavalry
June 25, 1876 Custer launched attack in broad daylight
2,500 Lakota and Cheyenne Warriors Custer commanded about 210 soldiers
Newspapers portrayed the battle as a massacre. The United States Army responded quickly
October of 1877, Chief Joseph surrendered
“Our chiefs are killed…The little children are freezing to death. My people…have no blankets, no food…Hear me, my chiefs; I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.” -quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Tragedy at Wounded Knee
The Ghost Dance Banned Religious ceremony
Celebrated “Day of Reckoning” Reunite with deceased ancestors
Sitting Bull Blamed for defiance Resisted Arrest
Died
Wounded Knee Ghost Dance participants fled 12-29-1890
200 Men/Women/Children Dead
Assimilation Assimilate, or be absorbed, into American society as landowners and citizens.
That meant breaking up the reservation system into individual land allotments This became law in 1887 with the Dawes Act.
160 acres of reservation land for farming Like many homesteaders, they found the land allotments too small to be profitable and life
too harsh to withstand.
Same young Indians a short time later
Young Indians upon arrival at Carlisle School in Penn.
Americanization of the Indians
The Turner Thesis
…American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land,
its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.
The frontier Americanized Americans. The individual was rapidly
acclimatized, though the process lasted 300 years.
Cheap or even free land provided a "safety valve" which protected the nation against uprisings of the poverty-stricken and malcontent.
Fredrick J. Turner