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