Gilded Age Natives

What is key to enforcing concentration and undermining NA culture?

Concentration policy, destruction of buffalo since 1865

What is 1869 Grant’s peace policy?

Forced concentration as precursor to assimilation, dramatic shift of federal policy

What is the 1871 Indian Appropriations Act?

NA designated as wards for the federal government, Congress to determine reservation policy

Bureau of Indian affairs to implent policy, undermine Native tribal sovereignty

What is the 1874-5 Red river war’s impact?

Southern Plains are forced into concentration

What is the impact of the 1876-77 Great Sioux War?

Northern Plains forced concentration, loss of 33% of land

End Sioux resistance

Black hills confiscated for gold

Many Indians in federal prison

The Crow gave info on Lakota Sioux to the government

What are FG’s policy towards NAs in 1877?

Policy of assimilation, Americanisation

What school is formed in 1879?

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

What law limited NA cultural rights in 1883?

Code of Indian Offences

What is the impact of 1886 US v Kagama?

Confirms congressional authority over NA affairs, further erosion of NA sovereignty

What is 1890 Wounded Knee?

Non violent resistance brutally put down by government

What is the 1887 Dawes Act?

Basis of assimilation until 1934

How much Native land is lost by end of Gilded Age?

50% by 1990, 70% by 1934

What does Natives receive from Dawes Act?

160 acres of farmland or 320 acres of grazing land for 25 years in trust, then full rights of ownership

What happens to native land in the Dawes act?

Unallocated land on reservations to be offered to whites for settlement

By 1900 only 78m of 150m reservation land remained

Effect of Dawes on Natives?

Natives spent much from settlers on consumer goods and were thrown back to support of families who retained their land or for did onto reservations

Many lands brought by white owners, natives went into debt, farming dependent on land quality allocated

End tribal sovereignty and government, second cornerstone of assimilation

1906 Curtis Act

Passed to terminate right of 5 civilised tribes to self governance

Matriarchy in Natives

Cherokee, all family property belonged to wives while responsibility of men was hunting and making provision for family, in Dawes land was given to male head of family

1905 Muskogee convention

Majority support for Sequyoah fibre, Congress rejected it, 2 territories combined 8k to Olklahoma 1907

Economic disadvantage of Natives in Dawes

Lost economic rationale of independent freedom of buffalo hunts

Farm machinery was unavailable, inadequate technical assistance from government so crops failed year after year

By1930s, whites owned 2/3 of native land 1887

Curtis act

Staggering loss of land, 1881 155 632k estate, 1900 77865k

By 1900, 100 of 240k Indians in plains remained

Wounded knee 1890s

Rations decrease, whooping cough, influenza, measles for Lakota

Ghost dance swept through tribes for west, purify themselves dance in large circles to call to ancestors to banish white peoples and for the buffalo to return

1 native shot Dakota policemen, fighting started

250 dead, 1881, 4k ghost dancers surrendered