What Teachers Need to Know Background Anthropologists have categorized Native American peoples into culture regions in order to study and understand them. A culture region is a geographic area in which different groups have adapted to their physical surroundings in similar ways, and share similar cultural traits and characteristics, such as language, beliefs, customs, laws, dress, and housing. However, even within culture regions, groups still retain certain individual group characteristics. For the purpose of presenting information to your students, the diversity of the groups within areas is not discussed. For the most part, the emphasis in this lesson is on generalizations that apply to large numbers of peoples and nations within a culture region. In what is today the United States, there are eight Native American culture regions, namely, Eastern Woodlands, Southeast, Plains, Great Basin, Plateau, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and California. This section deals with some of the Native Americans west of the Mississippi the Great Basin, Plateau, Northern and Southern Plains, and Pacific Northwest. These were the Native Americans whose lands stood in the way of European Americans on their mission to extend the United States from sea to sea. At the points in history that are discussed here, native-born citizens and immigrants alike believed that Native Americans stood in the way of progress. They believed that these people, who lived in buffalo-hide tents instead of wooden or brick houses and who wore animal skins instead of cotton clothes, did not understand the value of the land or of hard work and were keeping enterprising Americans from actualizing that value. Today, many people feel that the United States treatment of the native peoples was unfair and unjust.
It is important in teaching this unit to try to help students see how the pursuit of manifest destiny studied in earlier sections of the curriculum looked very different to the native peoples who were driven from their ancestral lands. A. Culture and Life There is no definitive way to know how many people were living in the Americas when Columbus first landed in the Caribbean. Various recent studies suggest that some 5,000,000 lived in what is today the contiguous United States and another 2,000,000 in Canada and Alaska. According to the 2000 United States Census, there were about 3,000,000 Native Americans living in the United States. Today, they live mostly in Oklahoma, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska. Beliefs According to Alvin M. Josephy, The life of almost all Indian societies was colored by a deep faith in supernatural forces that were believed to link human beings to all other living things.... [E]ach manifestation of nature had its own spirit with which the individual could establish supernatural contact. Along with these beliefs was the sense that there was a balance, or harmony, in nature that people should respect. Disturbing this balance resulted in sickness, pain, and death. Common to many Native American cultures are the hero and the trickster. These characters are the subjects of stories passed down orally from generation to generation, even to the present day. One character is the hero, who was responsible for teaching the people their way of life. The other is the trickster, often in the form of Coyote, who gets himself into all sorts of trouble. Lifestyles Students may have a stereotypical view of Native Americans as mounted buffalo hunters. However, only the Plains Native Americans and those from the Basin and Plateau areas, who acquired horses and moved onto the Plains to hunt buffalo, fit this description. Archaeologists have found evidence of prehistoric horses in North America, but the horses may have died out thousands of years ago for the same reason that mastodons died out. They were hunted to extinction, as they were a source of food, clothing, tools, etc., to early inhabitants of the continent. Horses reappeared in the 1500s with the Spanish, who brought herds with them from Spain. As the Spanish moved across Mexico and north of the Rio Grande to found colonies, they went on horseback. By the 1600s, Native Americans were raiding Spanish settlements for horses, which they traded to other groups in a wide network. By the early 1700s, horses had reached Native Americans in the Plateau and Great Basin areas and greatly changed their ways of life. For example, the Shoshone (Sacagawea s people) moved into the Plains and became buffalo hunters rather than farmers. The Nez Perce turned from fishing and hunting to raising horses and trading them to hunting peoples. On the Plains, some groups that had been farmers, such as the Teton Sioux, turned to hunting
for their main source of food. The horse, which didn t become widespread on the Plains until the early- to mid-18th century, made it possible for a number of tribes living as agriculturalists along the rivers and fringes of the Plains to venture out onto the Plains following the bison herds. Culture Areas Great Basin Intermountain lowlands (from Rocky Mountains to Sierra Nevada, across Utah and Nevada and parts of Idaho, Oregon, Arizona, California, and Wyoming); very dry and rocky with desert in places Hunting small game Gathering seeds, nuts, plants, and roots Seminomadic groups that traveled on a regular cycle from lower lands to higher elevations in search of food Wickiups, cone-shaped houses made of poles covered with brush, bark, or grass mats Animal skins for clothes Sandals made of plant fibers Basketry hats for women Believed in what dreams told people Shoshone Acquired horses Moved into Plains to hunt buffalo from horseback Took on traits of Plains peoples, such as using buffalo skins for clothing Today, some 12,000 live on reservations Ute Acquired horses Moved into Plains to hunt buffalo from horseback Today, some 7,000 live on reservations and farm or raise cattle Plateau Plateau of the Columbia and Fraser river basins in the area between the Rocky and Cascade Mountains (including Canada); changes of season with accompanying rain and snow; full rivers and lush forests Fishing, especially salmon, as major food source Gathering of plants and berries Hunting game In winter, round houses covered with earth In summer, poles tied together and covered with bark or reeds Clothing made of animal skins Wove mats and baskets from grass Believed that each person could acquire a guardian spirit for life, which could be the spirit of an animal, a force of nature, such as the wind, or a thing, such as rock
Nez Perce Acquired horses in the 1700s and developed large herds; bred Appaloosas Turned from fishing for their main food source to hunting buffalo on the Plains on horseback Continued to live in the Plateau but traveled to the Plains to hunt Lost much of their land in the 1800s Today are farmers on an Idaho reservation Plains From Canada to central Texas and from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River; all changes of season with heavy to moderate precipitation Hunting buffalo and small game along with plant gathering on southern Plains Also seminomadic agriculture among some groups on northern Plains: farming corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers part of the year and hunting part of the year Tipi: cone-shaped structure made of poles and covered with buffalo hides Clothing made of animal skins, moccasins Vision quest in which a young man or woman fasted alone away from the village in the hope of dreaming of a spirit who would guard him or her for life Blackfeet Dyed their moccasins black, hence the name Relied on the buffalo for their way of life Many deaths from smallpox, lack of food when buffalo died out, actions of whites Today, some 10,000 live as farmers and ranchers on reservations Crow Allied with white soldiers in Plains Indian Wars of 1800s (frequently fought the Sioux) Scouts for General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn Today, around 5,000 on a reservation in Montana Sioux: three branches known as Dakota (Santee Sioux), Lakota (Teton Sioux), and Nakota (Yankton Sioux) Allies of the British in the American Revolution and War of 1812 Fought as allies of Cheyenne at Little Bighorn Massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890, end of Native American resistance Treaty giving Sioux the Black Hills ignored when gold found 56-year court case (1923 1979) awards Sioux $105 million for Black Hills Cheyenne Once friendly toward whites Fought white encroachment on lands and massacre of Cheyenne at Sand Creek With Sioux, massacred General Custer and his soldiers at Little Bighorn Today, more than 7,000 on reservations
Pacific Northwest Narrow strip of coast in what is today the United States and Canada from Prince William Sound to northern California; area with high annual rainfall and lush forests Fishing: salmon, halibut, shellfish, cod Hunting whales Hunting game Gathering berries Rectangular houses made of wooden planks Clothing generally of shredded cedar bark In cold weather, animal skin robes Woven cone-shaped hats with wide brims to protect against rain Spirit beings of the animal world: eagle, beaver, raven, bear, whale Use the spirit beings as design motifs in their carvings, especially in totem poles and masks Developed a hierarchical society in which social status was important; the potlatch confirmed one s rank in that social structure Practiced the potlatch ceremony, in which a wealthy member of the community gave away all his belongings to show how wealthy and important he was Kwakiutl Noted for their fine carving of animals in wood, slate, and shell About 15,000 when whites arrived Only a few thousand fishermen and farmers today Chinook Flattened children s foreheads to show social rank About 80 percent died during an outbreak of smallpox in 1829 Yakima Originally lived on rivers in the Pacific Northwest and were primarily salmon fishers Today, about 7,500 live on the Yakima Reservation and earn a living through forestry
Before the arrival of the white settlers, buffalo were plentiful on the Great Plains. Native Americans killed buffalo, but not in such numbers that the animals were endangered. The Native Americans generally used every part of the animal. They ate the meat for food and turned the skins into teepees, clothing, and storage vessels. Bones were used as utensils and tools. Muscle and sinew were used for sewing pieces of hide together. When the European-American settlers arrived, Native American hunters provided them with buffalo hides in exchange for manufactured goods. Later, European-American hunters killed buffalo themselves to feed the construction crews that built the transcontinental railroads across the plains and to supply hides to tanneries to be made into leather goods. Much of the killing was done between 1870 and 1883, and by 1890 less than a thousand buffalo remained. Some hunters also killed for sport, shooting buffalo from trains. Some scholars estimate that as many as 15 million buffalo were killed during the 1800s. By the turn of the twentieth century, the buffalo were gone in many places and the animal had become an endangered species. It is thought that there were only 34 buffalo left on the northern Plains. The combination of the land-taking and the extinction of the buffalo brought major changes to the lives of the Native Americans. B. American Government Policies Bureau of Indian Affairs The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was set up in 1824 by the United States Government within the War Department and transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior in 1849. The BIA s avowed purpose was to safeguard the welfare of Native Americans. However, in practice, the BIA implemented policies to remove Native Americans to reservations and to promote native accommodation and assimilation into European culture, which often meant destroying Native American culture and values. During the 1800s, there was a western European tradition of imposing Christianity and middle class morals and values on native peoples worldwide. This tradition was also practiced in the United States. Forced Removal to Reservations In 1871, the federal government passed the Indian Appropriation Act. Under the provisions of the law, the United States government withdrew recognition of separate Native American peoples as sovereign nations and stated that it would no longer enter into treaties with any Native American group. Treaties that were in force would be honored. That, however, proved to be a hollow promise whenever gold or silver was found on Native American lands or when American settlers wanted more land. (Native Americans were not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924.) The Plains Native Americans were forced onto reservations. Although they were hunters, not farmers, the federal government tried to turn them into farmers. Not only did they not know how to farm, the reservations they were forced to live on were often not particularly suited to farming. The BIA s purpose was to oversee the reservations and provide food, clothing, and other necessities to the Native Americans. However, greed and corruption
often guided the actions of government agents in the BIA and the Native Americans saw little of the aid that was meant to sustain them in their new lives. Attempts to Break Down Tribal Life Corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs became so widespread that by the 1880s the protests of Native Americans and their supporters could no longer be ignored. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which broke up the land holdings on the reservations. The land was divided into parcels of 160 acres, and each head of a household received a parcel. Any land that was not disposed of in this way could be sold to non-native Americans. Native American families had to hold the land for 25 years, at which time they could sell it. Many did sell their land, and then had nothing to live on when the money was gone. By 1932, 96 million acres of the 138 million acres set aside for Native Americans in 1887 no longer belonged to them. One of the reasons that advocates believed the reservations should be broken up was because they believed that the communal life of Native Americans that is, living in and sharing with a large extended group kept individuals from developing a sense of ambition and becoming more like white Americans. In breaking up the reservations, reformers believed they were trying to encourage personal initiative. As part of the Dawes Act, federal funds were to be used for educating and training Native Americans and encouraging them to adopt the habits of what western Europeans and white Americans considered civilized life. These included owning land, settling in one place as opposed to moving around on a seasonal basis, farming or doing other kinds of modern labor, wearing European-style clothing, speaking English, learning to read and write, and accepting the Christian religion. The Dawes Act also made considerable quantities of land available in the West. The goal was to assimilate the Native Americans to the American way of life, in much the same way immigrants were assimilated. Indian Schools Well-meaning Americans set up schools to civilize and assimilate Native Americans. This experiment had been tried even in the colonial era. Benjamin Franklin recorded the results of one such attempt in which it was proposed to send several Native Americans to the College of William and Mary in Virginia in the 1740s. A chief wrote back to refuse the white man s offer: We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those Colleges, and that the Maintenance of our young Men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, that you mean to do us Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise must therefore not take it amiss, if our Ideas of this kind of Education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some Experience of it. Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces: they were instructed in all your Sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods... neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor Counselors, they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less oblig d by your kind Offer, tho we decline accepting it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the Gentlemen
of Virginia will send us a Dozen of their Sons, we will take Care of their Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them. After the Indian Wars in the West, similar efforts were made to educate young Native Americans for success in American society. The Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was one of 106 day and boarding schools for young Native Americans run by the federal government. Carlisle was founded by Captain Richard C. Pratt, who had fought in the Indian Wars and led a group of buffalo soldiers. Pratt s approach to educating Native Americans was summarized in a well-known phrase: kill the Indian and save the man. That is, he wanted to kill off the Indian ways of thinking and living in order to create men and women who he believed could prosper in American society. Pratt explained his philosophy as follows: The Indians under our care remained savage, because forced back upon themselves and away from association with English-speaking and civilized people, and because of our savage example and treatment of them.... We have never made any attempt to civilize them with the idea of taking them into the nation, and all of our policies have been against citizenizing and absorbing them....we invite the Germans to come into our country and communities, and share our customs, our civilization, to be of it; and the result is immediate success. Why not try it on the Indians? Why not invite them into experiences in our communities?.... It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit.... As we have taken into our national family seven millions of Negroes, and as we receive foreigners at the rate of more than five hundred thousand a year, and assimilate them, it would seem that the time may have arrived when we can very properly make at least the attempt to assimilate our two hundred and fifty thousand Indians... The school at Carlisle is an attempt on the part of the government to do this.... Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and then moves them out into our communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or the colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have. Carlisle does not dictate to him what line of life he should fill, so it is an honest one. It says to him that, if he gets his living by the sweat of his brow, and demonstrates to the nation that he is a man, he does more good for his race than hundreds of his fellows who cling to their tribal communistic surroundings....
At the Carlisle School Native American children as young as seven years of age were sent to become Christians and English speakers. They were to forget their traditional ways and embrace the values of mainstream society. The school taught both academic subjects and preprofessional skills. Students learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. Boys studied carpentry, tinsmithing, and blacksmithing. Girls studied cooking, sewing, and baking. The boys wore uniforms and the girls wore Victorian-style dresses. Long hair was cut short. Shoes were required and no moccasins were allowed. Students were not allowed to speak their native languages. All of this was well intentioned, but in the attempt to assimilate children to a new culture, the educators at Carlisle were also systematically destroying the culture into which their students had been born. C. Conflicts The Plains Wars The period from the 1850s to the 1880s on the narrowing frontier saw a number of conflicts between settlers and soldiers and the increasingly desperate and dwindling Native American population. These conflicts are sometimes called the Plains Wars. It was not surprising that some Indians resisted westward expansion. As United States General Philip Sheridan said: We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less? Sand Creek Massacre In the 1850s, the Arapaho and Cheyenne in Colorado had been forced to accept a small area of land near Sand Creek for their reservation. Within ten years, gold had been found on the reservation and settlers and miners wanted Sand Creek. A conflict began and scattered fighting continued for three years until Chief Black Kettle and his band camped near Fort Lyon asking to negotiate for peace. In November 1864, militia under the command of Colonel John Chivington, a Methodist minister, led an attack against Black Kettle s camp. Chivington and his men claimed to be seeking revenge on the Native Americans for an earlier attack on white miners. They attacked Black Kettle and his camp even though it was flying both a U. S. flag and the white flag of truce. Chivington and his force carried out their attack on a camp of sleeping men, women, children, and elderly. It is estimated that up to 500 Native Americans were killed (and in some cases mutilated) by Chivington s men. Some Americans applauded Chivington s actions, but many others were disgusted. A Congressional committee investigated the attack and ultimately condemned Chivington s massacre. Crazy Horse Crazy Horse (Ta-sunko-witko), a chief of the Oglala Sioux, was one of the strongest leaders of the Native American resistance on the Great Plains. During the 1850s, he acquired a reputation as a great warrior, based on the bravery he displayed in conflicts with other groups of Native Americans. Later, Crazy Horse would turn these skills against the white men.
In the 1860s, Crazy Horse refused to remain on the reservation assigned to his people, insisting instead on venturing out to hunt buffalo. He also led attacks on the army and white settlers. In 1866 he led a party of roughly 1,000 warriors in an attack on soldiers near Fort Kearny in the Wyoming Territory. Crazy Horse led a decoy party that drew the commander and some soldiers out of the fort. The soldiers were then ambushed by a large Native American force and 80 soldiers were killed. The defeat, known as the Fetterman Massacre, was the worst defeat the army had suffered at the hands of the Native Americans up to that point. In the 1870s, Crazy Horse led additional attacks on railroad workers and the army. He and his followers helped destroy the troops of George A. Custer at the famous battle of the Little Bighorn. After Little Bighorn, the army pursued Crazy Horse more intensively. He was forced to surrender in May 1877. Later that year, he was killed during a tussle with a guard. A memorial to Crazy Horse is currently under construction in South Dakota. Sitting Bull Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) was the Dakota Native American chief who led the Sioux tribes in their efforts to resist American expansion. As a young man he gained a reputation for bravery and skill in battles against the Shoshone and other tribes, which gave the Dakota more land on which to hunt. Sitting Bull began a long career of resistance to the U.S. Army and the white man in 1863. Along with Crazy Horse, he became a chief leader of Native American resistance. In 1868 the Sioux made a peace treaty with the U.S. government that gave the Sioux a reservation in the Black Hills (current-day South Dakota). In 1876, the government ordered the Sioux onto reservations when gold was discovered in the area and white miners wanted to prospect for gold. Sitting Bull and others did not comply. The noncomplying Native American chiefs camped in the valley of the Little Bighorn River. Sitting Bull performed a ritual known as the Sun Dance and entered into a trancelike state. He reported that he saw the defeat of army soldiers, which foretold the defeat of General Custer and his men at the Battle of Little Bighorn. After Little Bighorn, the Army applied additional pressure. By this point the buffalo population, on which the Sioux depended, was rapidly waning. Many of the Sioux suffered from hunger, and growing numbers began to surrender. Sitting Bull and other Sioux who continued to resist the government went to Canada and lived there from 1877 to 1881. He continued to lose followers to starvation and finally was forced to surrender. For some time Sitting Bull was confined to a reservation. Then, in 1885 he was allowed to join Buffalo Bill s Wild West show. He was paid $50 a week for riding around the arena and he gained a popular following; however, Sitting Bull remained with the show for only four months. Ghost Dance The Ghost Dance was a ceremony associated with a movement that began among the Paiute [PIE-oot] in western Nevada in the 1880s. It was led by Wovoka [woh-voh-ka], a Paiute mystic. He claimed that if the Ghost Dance was performed often enough, in time the settlers would disappear, the buffalo would reappear, dead Native Americans would be reborn, and land would be restored to the Native Americans.
The Ghost Dance conveyed a powerful message, inspiring hope in its believers. Word of the Ghost Dance was picked up by other bands and found its way onto the Plains. The government had the army break up the religion, fearing new outbreaks of violence just as the Plains Native Americans seemed to be subdued. Government officials gave orders to arrest Sitting Bull, one of the most important native leaders on the Plains and a supporter of the Ghost Dance. A scuffle broke out as officials were trying to arrest him, and Sitting Bull was accidentally killed. Battle of the Little Bighorn The Battle of the Little Bighorn is also known as Custer s Last Stand. The Little Bighorn River flows through southeastern Montana. It was on its banks, on June 25, 1876, that Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and part of his Seventh Cavalry were completely destroyed. Sioux and Cheyenne, led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Gall, carried out the attack. The stage had been set for the battle when, in 1874, Custer invaded the Black Hills. This land was sacred to the Sioux and had been ceded to them in a treaty by the government. (See p. 309.) Custer already had a bad reputation among Native Americans. He had earlier led a raid on a peaceful Cheyenne village at Washita, killing many of the inhabitants. On his expedition in 1874, Custer wanted to find out whether there was gold in the Black Hills. When the rumors of gold turned out to be true, word spread quickly and miners soon followed. The Native Americans protested the encroachment of people into the land, but the army seemed unable to remove the trespassers. In an effort to keep peace, the federal government offered to buy the Black Hills from the Sioux. The offer was refused because the Sioux felt they could not sell land that was sacred to them. The government then ordered the Sioux onto reservations by February 1876. Sitting Bull and many others did not comply, and the federal government sent the army out looking for them. Custer was in charge of an advance party of 600 officers and enlisted men. There is debate about whether Custer misunderstood or ignored his orders, but when his scouts sighted a Native American village, he took part of his regiment and attacked. Unfortunately for him and his 236 men, they had located a small part of the major Sioux and Cheyenne encampment that housed 2,500 warriors. Custer and his men were surrounded and killed within minutes. His remaining troops narrowly escaped to the main army. 65 The army gave chase and by winter 1876 77, most Sioux either had fled into Canada or, seeing no hope of outrunning and outlasting the army, had surrendered. Those who surrendered were sent to reservations. In 1881, Sitting Bull and his band returned from Canada to reservation life. Wounded Knee After the death of Sitting Bull, a group of Sioux joined Sitting Bull s half brother, Big Foot, and left the reservation. Like his half brother, Big Foot was a strong supporter of the Ghost Dance. About 500 U.S. Army troops set out after Big Foot s group, which included 100 warriors and 250 women and children. Big Foot was persuaded to lead his people to Wounded Knee, in what is today the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, where they were to be disarmed and led to a reservation. When the army attempted to disarm the
Native Americans, many refused to surrender their weapons. A young warrior raised a rifle above his head and declared he would not give it up. A scuffle broke out and the warrior s rifle went off, probably accidentally. The frightened soldiers opened fire. By noon, 300 Native Americans, including Big Foot and many women and children, lay dead. The army suffered 25 dead and 39 wounded, though many of these were probably victims of friendly fire. The Battle of Wounded Knee some prefer to call it a massacre, not a battle put an end to the Ghost Dance movement and, although scattered Native American resistance continued, Wounded Knee Massacre is widely seen as marking the end of the Indian Wars, one of the saddest chapters in American history.