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The Plight of the Native Americans

As in the East, expansion into the leading a small detachment of cavalry plains and mountains by miners, encountered a vastly superior force of ranchers, and settlers led to increasing Sioux and their allies on the Little Bighorn conflicts with the Native Americans of the River. Custer and his men were West. Many tribes of Native Americans – completely annihilated. Nonetheless the from the Utes of the Great Basin to the Native-American insurgency was soon Nez Perces of Idaho – fought the whites at suppressed. Later, in 1890, a ghost dance one time or another. But the Sioux of the ritual on the Northern Sioux reservation Northern Plains and the Apache of the at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, led to an Southwest provided the most significant uprising and a last, tragic encounter that opposition to frontier advance. Led by ended in the death of nearly 300 Sioux such resourceful leaders as Red Cloud and men, women, and children. Crazy Horse, the Sioux were particularly Long before this, however, the way skilled at high-speed mounted warfare. of life of the Plains Indians had been The Apaches were equally adept and destroyed by an expanding white highly elusive, fighting in their environs of population, the coming of the railroads, desert and canyons. and the slaughter of the buffalo, almost Conflicts with the Plains Indians exterminated in the decade after 1870 by worsened after an incident where the the settlers' indiscriminate hunting. Dakota (part of the Sioux nation), The Apache wars in the Southwest declaring war against the U.S. government dragged on until Geronimo, the last because of long-standing grievances, important chief, was captured in 1886. killed five white settlers. Rebellions and Government policy ever since the attacks continued through the Civil War. Monroe administration had been to move In 1876 the last serious Sioux war the Native Americans beyond the reach of erupted, when the Dakota gold rush the white frontier. But inevitably the penetrated the Black Hills. The Army was reservations had become smaller and supposed to keep miners off Sioux more crowded. Some Americans began to hunting grounds, but did little to protect protest the government's treatment of the Sioux lands. When ordered to take Native Americans. Helen Hunt Jackson, for action against bands of Sioux hunting on example, an Easterner living in the West, the range according to their treaty rights, wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881), however, it moved quickly and which dramatized their plight and struck vigorously. a chord in the nation's conscience. Most In 1876, after several indecisive reformers believed the Native American encounters, Colonel George Custer, should be assimilated into the dominant Free K-12 Worksheets and More www.STUDENTHANDOUTS.com Name: ______Date: ______Class: ____ culture. The federal government even set ______up a school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in an ______attempt to impose white values and beliefs on Native-American youths. (It 3. What happened at Wounded Knee, was at this school that Jim Thorpe, often South Dakota, in 1890? considered the best athlete the United ______States has produced, gained fame in the ______early 20th century.) ______In 1887 the Dawes (General ______Allotment) Act reversed U.S. Native- American policy, permitting the president 4. The Apache wars in the southwest to divide up tribal land and parcel out 65 dragged on until _____, the last hectares of land to each head of a family. important leader, was captured in Such allotments were to be held in trust 1886. by the government for 25 years, after a. Crazy Horse which time the owner won full title and b. Geronimo citizenship. Lands not thus distributed, c. Red Cloud however, were offered for sale to settlers. d. Sitting Bull This policy, however well-intentioned, proved disastrous, since it allowed more 5. Who wrote A Century of Dishonor plundering of Native-American lands. (1881), which dramatized the plight of Moreover, its assault on the communal Native Americans and struck a chord organization of tribes caused further in the nation’s conscience? disruption of traditional culture. In 1934 ______U.S. policy was reversed yet again by the ______Indian Reorganization Act, which attempted to protect tribal and communal 6. Describe the Dawes Act (1887). life on the reservations. ______1. What Native American groups ______provided the most significant ______opposition to the advance of the ______frontier? ______7. Describe the Indian Reorganization ______Act (1934). ______2. What happened to Colonel George ______Custer in 1876? ______

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