Unit 3: Native Americans and the Gilded Age Flashcards
(15 cards)
By the start of the Gilded Age, to what extent had the reservation system been established?
- The 1830s removal act had demarcated land for Native Americans, often far from their ancestral homelands
- In 1868, the Fort Laramie treaty was signed, which designated land, including the Black Hills, for the Great Sioux Reservation
- This is one example of many reservations being established to confine Native Americans tribes, many of which were nomadic, and facilitate assimilation
What is an example of the federal government betraying territorial promises made to tribes?
- The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 had granted the Black Hills to the Sioux tribe
- It stipulated that no white settlement was to infringe on the land
- In 1877, during a gold rush, the government unilaterally siezed the land via an act of Congress
- The loss was just one instance of the iniquity tribes experienced facing a federal government that prioritised its economic and political interests over legal commitments
How many military engagements occurred between the federal government and Native Americans as a result of land encroachment in the Gilded Age?
1,065
What are two examples of harsh retribution being exacted against Indians?
- In 1864, after the chief of the Cheyenne tribe sued for peace, poorly disciplined and vengeful American troops brutally slaughtered hundreds of Indians
- This became known as the Sand Creek massacre
- The 1890 Massacre at Wounded Knee was the culmination of federal resistance to the Ghost Dance Movement, a form of Native American spiritual resistance
- Around 300 Lakota Indians were killed in the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota
To what extent were buffalo lost in the Gilded Age and what impact did this have on Native Americans?
- Western expansion, particularly the construction of railroads, brought many hunters over who sought to extract the wealth of the buffalo
- Between 1865 and 1883, the buffalo population of the Great Plains declined from 13 million to just 200
- Plains tribes, who relied on buffalo for survival and centred their way of life around them, lost large numbers of people and were forced to change their customs
Which acts significantly expedited the process of westward expansion?
- The 1862 Homestead Act, which designated land in the West for Americans to settle
- The Indian Appropriation Acts, like the one in 1889, opened up land reserved for Native Americans to white settlement
What was Custer’s last stand and what was its aftermath?
- American colonel George Custer led an expedition to Montana to occupy Sioux land in the wake of a gold rush
- Facing an army that outnumbered his tenfold, he was decisively defeated at Little Big Horn
- The victory improved morale for Native Americans and brought attention, if some resentment, to their plight
- However, the Sioux were soon forced to surrender by resource shortages and retaliatory attacks
Like this one, most conflict between American Indians and the federal government ultimately ended in resounding defeat for the Indians
How was tribal legal sovereignty eroded in the Gilded Age?
- The 1885 Major Crimes Act meant reservation criminals were subject to federal jurisidiction rather than any tribal justice framework
- The constitutionality of this act was unheld in United States vs Kagama
Which Supreme Court decision upheld the disenfranchisement of Native Americans in the Gilded Age?
- Elks v Wilkins Supreme Court
- John Elks, a Native American, was denied the right to vote on account of not being a citizen
- The Supreme Court ruled that he was not a U.S citizen as he was born on a reservation, so therefore did not have Fourteenth Amendment rights
- It confirmed Native Americans’ position as wards of state until 1924, though some were given citizenship by the Dawes Act
What did the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 require?
- It divided reservations into allotments, which were given to individual Native American families to farm
- It was a centerpiece of the federal government’s assimilation policies, with the act granting US citizenship to the new land owners who had previously been wards of state
- The capitalist framework that it imposed conflicted with the long-standing belief that everyone played a collective role in caring for the land but did not own it
What were the effects of the Dawes Act of 1887 on Native Americans?
- Between 1887 and 1934, Indians lost 86 million acres of land due to the act
- All surplus land (land not allocated) was given directly to the federal government or the highest white bidder
- Poorly agriculturally trained and equipped, many Native Americans sold their allotments to white farmers instead of trying to compete
- This led to thousands of Natives being without land and dependent on the federal government’s aid
- That said, some did become successful farmers
- Most Native Americans who were granted citizenship by the act had great difficulty exercising their rights due to discrimination
Other than the Dawes Act, how did the federal government attempt to assimilate Native Americans in the Gilded Age?
- Groups like the Indian Rights Association persuaded the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to dismantle tribal structures
- Boarding schools were established to eradicate Native culture by bestowing western ideals on Indian children while providing a practical education to help them thrive in mainstream America
- The BIA prohibited many tribal customs like polygamy, sacred dances and the use of mind-altering drugs, though these bans were often defied
How did educational access for Native Americans change in the Gilded Age?
- Congress established a federally funded education system on reservations, which included the aforementioned boarding schools
- More than 20,000 Indians attended a federal school by the turn of the century
- These schools allowed some Native Americans to begin a new life in American society, though many returned to the reservations without using their newly acquired skills
How did job opportunities for Native Americans expand in the Gilded Age?
- Many jobs were created on reservations, like those associated with the police force or courts
- Alhough these were established by Congress, many Indians gained valuable skills working in these roles
- Many Indians worked as farmers using land given to them by the Dawes Act
- There were further opportunities as army scouts, miners and railroad workers off the reservation
What is an example of an organisation that sympathised with the Native American plight?
- The Women’s National Indians Association, founded in 1879
- Consisting mostly of white women, it raised awareness of the suffering of many tribes and supported Native Americans through grassroots volunteering like providing education
