During the 2nd of our 3 week creation of the questions for our Honors History class final exam, we created 40 more questions for the topic of Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans. To start the week, we watched the ABC-Clio videos and took notes on a Google Doc shared by the entire class. The class took notes on key people, important events, key terms, and main ideas just like last week.
Buffalo soldiers were Union African Americans who were part of the nation's army. Native Americans are considered to be the first groups of people that were living in the Great Plains and more of Western America. They lived in peace because there were no enemies living out in Western America of course before Westward Expansion occurred. They were very dependent on Buffalo for their resources. They would use the meat for food, the skin for clothing, and the bones for hunting weapons and other tools. There were vast ceremonies and other rituals. Being a kid as a Native American seems to be more fun than being a kid today; at least when you look at the first time. Children would get to spend time playing games and doing certain activities also being taken by their fathers learning how to hunt. Women would often make the clothing and it was also more common that women would find the herbs and plants for medicines though the plants were somewhat useful, there was never an actual cure to an illness. For a boy, becoming a man was probably the most exciting time of his life as he would complete a puberty ceremony into adulthood.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was a law that said Indian tribes in the South had to leave where they were and move west of the Mississippi River or they will live under the laws of white Americans which really means they could be treated poorly, beaten, raped, and go into slavery when it was still legal just about 25 years prior to the Civil War. However, Andrew Jackson was a pro-slavery guy and certainly wouldn't make a law to protect the Indians that stayed if they decided to. The reason for this expansion; just so Jackson and the "real Americans" in which he called about 100,000 more could have more land to settle with. While many of the Indian tribes did move westward just out of either fear or not wanting violence, they were reluctant to do so because the territory where Jackson was making them move to which he did say if they did so without conflict they would be able to live in peace, the land was unknown, and there were fewer natural resources that they could use. Then in the 1840's, there was the great gold rush that brought more and more whites westward. This resulted in whites settling on the new Indian territory, you know the territory that Jackson promised there would be no problems had they moved there peacefully. From the 60's to the 90's, American Indian wars occurred in the great plains as Gold was discovered in the Dakotas. Immigrants were abusing the Sioux tribe until they decided that they had enough and fought back. Congress in the 1860's created the 6 regiments making Buffalo Soldiers. They fought against the Indians for years until 1876 when the government ordered all Indians to return to their reservations though many took a long time to reach the plains and others were ignored leading to more confrontation amongst natives and whites.
We looked at other documents. One document called A century of dishonor discusses the Indians' experiences throughout all of the expansion. One quote says "These Indians found themselves surrounded by gold seeking settlers from the East." At this point, whites were already settled in the new areas for Indians and conflict was already arising. It was too late for the government to do anything that would have a huge affect on the problems. And the only thing that they would consider doing is making the Indians move again most likely because of a circumstantial change in this case, the gold that was being found all over the western part of the country. The Indians followed the order of Jackson by moving westward and by doing that, it was agreed that they would live in peace. Yet, when gold suddenly rises out of the ground, the rules change because it's a new circumstance and the government sees an opportunity to make money and are completely oblivious to the law they had created on Indian Removal. The fact the word Removal is linked to the word Indian and is a law gives off the feeling that the main purpose of the law is to slowly and gradually diminish total Indian population making it look like it is only pushing them out west. There was also the General Allotment Act which tried to get Indians to embrace American culture so maybe this is a sign that some policies didn't bring the worst if followed or not. In 1890, at Pine Ridge, over 150 Sioux Indians were killed in a massacre between American Indian ghost dancers and the U.S. army and Buffalo Soldiers. While the policies may have led to some good things, I personally believe that some policies like Jackson's had long lasting affects that would destroy the native in the long run and may have been discriminatory towards them while others did not have discrimination put within them yet the enforcement of the policies led to it anyways.
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