Assignment 6

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” deals with the time period between 1860 and 1890, however the introduction and chapter one give us a brief highlight into history and the Native Americans living during that time. It is an era where we get our cowboys, schoolmarms, homesteaders, gold miners, gunmen, and Indian stories. However, it is a bit more difficult for us to completely understand the Indian perspective because many Indians did not know English and even if they had, they would not have had a publisher or printer. Since much of oral history is lost with its people, this book takes reliable statements from treaty councils and other formal meetings in order to write a history of the conquest of American West as the Native Americans experienced it.
When Christopher Columbus landed in San Salvador in 1492 he called the natives the name Indios. There were several different pronunciations that later became Indian or redskin. He wrote in letters to the King and Queen of Spain that the natives were so tractable and peaceful and there was not a better nation. However, because they were naked and so nice, they were thought to be weak and heathen. Over the next four centuries, Europeans took it upon themselves to enforce their ways and culture on the natives of the New World.
Beginning in San Salvador Columbus kidnapped ten of the friendly Taino people and sent them over to Spain, and the rest of the people were forced to give up their land and adopt the European’s religion as well as many villages being burned and looted. In 1607 the English came to Jamestown, VA. The English were a bit more civilized than the Spaniards, however, after Wahunsonacook of the Powhatans died, the Pothatans rose up in revenge and were reduced from 8,000 to 1,000 people. When the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, the Wampnoags saw them as helpless children and brought them food and helped them through the first winter. Things continued for them fairly peacefully until more and more shiploads of white people began pouring on shore. Eventually the Indians were pushed farther into the wilderness by the encroachment of more invaders, and fought back only to be defeated in the long run by white man’s weapons.
This continued for many years until many Native Americans were driven completely out of their home regions. In 1829 Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United States. He had seen many battles throughout his frontier days and believed white people and Indians could not coexist in the same area. Thus, he stipulated a law that was later passed that guaranteed Indians land west of the Mississippi. With this new law there were to be no Indians east of the Mississippi so they had to be on reservation land or they had to be moved west of the Mississippi. However, before these new laws were put into effect, waves of white settlers moved westward and formed territories of Wisconsin and Iowa. Since the guidelines had changed, this forced lawmakers to change the “permanent Indian frontier” from the Mississippi River to the 95th meridian (Minnesota-Canada border going south through Minnesota and Iowa, and then along the western borders of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Galveston Bay, Texas).
After the establishment of the “permanent Indian frontier” there were hard times for the eastern tribes, especially the Cherokee. Because their numbers were in the thousands, the idea was to move them westward gradually, unfortunately, that was quickly sped up because gold had been discovered in the Appalachian Mountains. From the prison camps, they were marched along the “trail of tears” where many died from the cold, hunger, and disease. Many other southern tribes also gave up their homelands and were forced west.
In 1847 the war between Mexico and the U.S. had ended and left the United States with possession of territory between Texas and California. All of this land was west of the Indian frontier, but in 1848 gold was discovered in California. Shortly thereafter, fortune seekers started making their way through Indian Territory which had once been reserved for only licensed traders, trappers, and missionaries. In order to justify this breach of treaty, lawmakers in Washington invented Manifest Destiny. After this, more territories were becoming states with Minnesota becoming a state in 1858. It wasn’t long after Sharp Knife Andrew Jackson’s Indian Trade and Intercourse Act that white settlers had driven north, south, and west of Indian Territory while miners and traders had entered directly into it. In the beginning of 1860 the Civil War began and there were still about 300,000 Indians living in the United States and its territories. This is where we begin our story with a little history of the Indian tribes living at this particular time.