Westward Expansion and Native Americans

Nativism

A policy of favoring native-born individuals over foreign-born ones. During the 1800's many Americans favored their own kin far more than that of the Irish and other European immigrants arriving in the east and the Chinese and other Asian immigrants in the west.

Reservation

By 1860's Indians were forced onto separate territories specifically set aside by the US government for Indian use.

Bureau of Indian Affairs

Federal agency that managed the delivery of goods to Indian Reservations and the dismantling of Native American culture; highly corrupt, which resulted in the theft or sabotage of most of the materials that were supposed to be transported to reservations.

Great plains

A vast grassland that extends through the central portion North America, from Texas northward to Canada, east of the Rocky Mountains. Fertile farmland.

Westward Expansion

(1850-1890) A movement westward for jobs, land, hope, the gold rush, adventure, a new beginning. Made further possible by the transcontinental railroad.

Indian Policies

Due to efforts to assimilate Native Americans, including the Dawes Act (1887), the traditions of Native Americans disappeared as they were removed from their homelands, isolated on reservations, and forced to abandon their rituals.

Klondike Gold Rush

Attempt by an estimated 100 thousand people to travel to the Klondike region of the Yukon in NW Canada between 1897 and 1899 for gold

Assimilation

A policy in which a nation forces or encourages a subject people to adopt its institutions and customs. Ex: Indian Schools

Transcontinental Railroad

(transportation) train route that connected the U.S from east to west. Completed in 1869. Drastically changed the United States through trade and westward expansion.

Homestead Act

(1862) law that provided 160 acres of Western land to any citizen who was head of household and would cultivate the land for five years. This law gave land that was previously reserved by treaty for nomadic Native Americans to whites as private property.

Dawes Act

An Act that removed Indian land from tribal possession, redivided it, and distributed it among individual Indian families. Designed to break tribal mentalities and promote individualism.

Manifest Destiny

A notion held by a nineteenth-century Americans that the United States was destined to rule the continent, from the Atlantic the Pacific.

Chinese Exclusion Act

(1882) banned Chinese immigration to the US for a total of 40 years; after the completion of the transcontinental railroad many in the United States viewed the Chinese as a threat to American jobs and culture.

Alice Fletcher

A pioneer ethnologist and leader in the movement to bring Native Americans into the mainstream of white society, was nearly unique among her peers for putting her ideas into practice as an administrator of Indian policy in the field.

Chief Joseph

Chief of the Nez Pearce tribe. Fought to preserve his homeland and did much to awaken the conscience of America to the plight of Native Americans. "I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."