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Life on the Plains

•360, 000 Native Americans lived west of the Mississippi during the mid to late 1800s

•These people have been originally isolated but increasingly become exposed to the Culture of the people in the east

•https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7StpIJ2Zy0

•Contact had both positive and negative effect-how?

•Many different tribes, societies and cultures-Sioux, Crow, Mandan, Blackfeet, Arapaho, Dakota Sioux, Pawnee, Comanche

•Many different religious and cultural ideas, for example the Mandan ritual practice of hooking a young man on a barb and elevate him on a stake annual Okipa (Oh-Kee-Pa) ceremonies as well as the Sun Dance and Ghost Dance Riturals

The Buffalo/Bison-supermarket of the west

•Tens of millions of buffalo roamed the plains on annual migratory paths

•The Native used the buffalo as main food supply, so important that the buffalo become part of the native’s religious ideas

•Buffalo was used for meat, clothing, shelter, tools, weapons, utensils, and fuel for fires

•Nothing was wasted

Conflict : Coming of the Iron Horse
Transcontinental Railroad and the Buffalo

•As the railroads pushed west the great herds of buffalo disrupt the movement of the trains

•The railroad hire buffalo hunters to kill off the herds

•Between 1872-1875 nine million were killed

•So many killed by 1900 the American Bison was almost extinct

•One man killed 4,300 in 8 months, getting him the nickname of Buffalo Bill (William Cody)

•As the Buffalo decline the native food source became scarce

•As the Railroads pushed west, conflict with natives and settlers became more common

U.S. Government opens western land for settlement

•U.S. Government reservation policy

•Some Natives accept and move onto land set aside for their people

•Resistance begin among the Western Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Comanche and Nez Perce

•Uprising usually followed by Army action- 1864 the United States Army killed 200 men, women and children of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes

•The Natives respond with the killing of gold miners in the Teton Mountains this became known as the Teton Massacre (note the difference depending on who is killed, what it is called)

Treaties signed and broken

•1867 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty promised the 68,000 southern plains Natives land Oklahoma, the next year 54,000 Sioux agreed to relocate south

•Not all tribal chiefs signed and felt no obligation to obey, Native continue to raid settlers

•Lieutenant Colonel George Custer is sent west –August 1868 he attacked a sleeping Cheyenne village killing 100 warriors and capturing 53 women and children

•Custer thanks to his own public relations, becomes a hero in the east

Government attempts to help the Natives

•Board of Indian Commissioners 1869

•Reform minded people wanting to improve the conditions on the reservation

•Government subsides support the reservations since most are not near or allowed to use, traditional hunting grounds

•Economic down turns meant that rations reduced  

Battle of Little Big Horn

•Custer is sent to the Black Hills of South Dakota

•Supposed to be on a mapping expedition, but as he also began to encourage gold mining

•More settlers come, some in search of gold

•More conflict with Natives,  Custer hopes to make a name for himself

•Pressing further into Sioux territory more conflict

•June 1876 Custer and the Seventh Cavalry meet the Sioux at the Little Big Horn River, Custer divided his forces and was easily surrounded

•He and 209 of men were killed, Nation is shocked by “Custer’s Last Stand”

•Sitting Bull become “America’s Most Wanted”  

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

•1881 Sitting Bull out of provisions gives himself up

•William Cody aka Buffalo Bill gets him to travel in his Wild West show, touring the East and Europe, spreading the truths, myths and legends of the  west

•Mock Native battles, stagecoach robberies, trick roping and horse riding as well as sharp shooting

•Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill join Anne Oakley and others creating an image of the west that would last even to today

Saving the Indian –Carlisle Indian School

•Some people in the East wanted to help the Natives assimilate into the culture

•Richard Pratt of Carlisle Pennsylvania began a Native boarding school that would take the Natives from the west and dress them in eastern fashions, Christianize them, and educated them into a trade

•Pratt once stated, “ to save the Indian, you must kill the Indian”, meaning kill the culture of the Native and give them a new culture

•Like most Native schools they did not have a lot of success, some were able to assimilate and get some industrial jobs

Ghost Dance

•Rations on the Reservations were reduced greatly mid-1880’s

•With the increase misery, the Sioux turn back to the Ghost Dance Religion

•The Ghost Dance Religion claimed that braves if wear the ghost shirt and dance the ghost dance will have power over whites and will not be harmed

•By 1890, the revival of this religion spread through the Sioux Reservations

•Government was worried, they wanted Sitting Bull, who retired to tell the people to stop, but when the government attempted to arrest Sitting Bull he was killed.

•With Sitting Bull’s death, the Sioux began to openly resist

Dawes Severalty Act 1887

•Law forced Natives to become citizens, farmers, landowners and taxpayers

•Native Land divided up into farmland, 160 acres for farming or 320 for herding

•Good intentions met with Land Speculators who bought up the land from the natives and sold the land to settlers

•By mid-1880’s most Natives were living on reservations