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Social Studies
Lesson 18.3
Did You Know?
* In 1943 the musical Oklahoma! opened on
Broadway and became an instant American classic.
Set in the Oklahoma territory just after the turn of
the century, the show
had main characters who succeeded in making a
new life together. This new life symbolized the
territory's new life after becoming the forty-sixth
state in 1907.
Following the Buffalo
* The increase of settlers on the Plains in the latter
part of the nineteenth century affected Native
Americans by squeezing them off their land.
Many Native American groups, such as the
Arapaho, Apache, and Comanche, lived on the
Plains. Their way of life was dependent on the
buffalo, the horse, and open land. They used
horses to follow huge buffalo herds across the
Plains, which they used for food and most of the
other essentials of life.
* After the Civil War, American hunters hired by
the railroads began to slaughter the buffalo to
provide meat for the crews of workers and to
prevent large herds from blocking the trains.
Other hunters traveled west to kill buffalo as
sport. Buffalo hides also became popular for
leather goods, increasing the incentive for hunters
to kill them. Government officials encouraged the
killing of buffalo because they thought it would
force the Native Americans to change from
nomadic hunters into farmers.
Discussion Question
* How do you think the killing of the buffalo
affected the way of life of Native Americans of the
Plains?
* It changed the way they lived greatly because
Native Americans of the Plains depended on the
buffalo for food, clothing, and shelter. These
cultures could no longer preserve their lifestyle
when the buffalo disappeared.
Conflict
* When whites did not regard the Great Plains as
a suitable place to farm and set up
communities, the Native Americans of the
Great Plains were largely left alone. But once
the Great Plains became a destination for
settlers, the government developed a new
policy to move the Native Americans of the
Plains out of the way.
* In the latter part of the 1800s, the government
stepped up its policy of moving Native Americans to
a few large tracts of land set aside for them, called
reservations. One large reservation was the
Oklahoma Territory, the Indian Territory the
government had created decades before for Native
Americans relocated from the Southeast. Another
large reservation was in the Dakota Territory.
* The reservations were often on poor land that
whites did not want. The government went back on
many promises to deliver food and supplies, and
what was delivered was often of inferior quality.
* Some Native Americans accepted the
reservation policy at first, and peacefully
relocated to these lands. But some Native
Americans refused to move to reservations, and
some who had tried it abandoned it as an
unacceptable way of life.
* Armed clashes between Native Americans and
whites had taken place since the 1850s, but after
the government began forcing an increasing
number of Native Americans onto reservations,
resistance grew stronger, especially among the
Cheyenne and the Sioux.
* Fighting with the Cheyenne began in the mid1860s when they refused to move to a reservation.
In November 1864, a group of volunteer militia
surprised a group of Cheyenne at Sand Creek,
Colorado. Although they tried to surrender, the
military killed more than 100 Cheyenne men,
women, and children.
* Most Cheyenne moved to a reservation by 1867,
but Chief Black Kettle continued to fight.
Cheyenne resistance ended in November 1868
when troops led by General Custer killed Black
Kettle and most of his followers along the Washita
River in the Indian Territory.
* Conflict with the Sioux centered on government
promises that the Black Hills area of the Dakotas
would be reserved for them without white
interference. These promises were broken after
reports that the Black Hills contained gold. White
prospectors swarmed in, and the U.S. government
offered to buy the land from the Sioux. When they
refused, the United States sent the army to
remove the Sioux.
* During a confrontation at Little Bighorn River in
Montana, a force of thousands of Sioux and
Cheyenne warriors killed the men in a smaller
U.S. army unit under General Custer.
* The superior force and firepower of the United
States Army soon defeated the Native American
uprising, sending most of the Native Americans
involved to reservations and others fleeing to
Canada. By 1881 all of the remaining Lakota and
Cheyenne, starving and exhausted, agreed to live
on a reservation.
* Many Chiracahua Apache, who had been moved
to a reservation in Arizona in the 1870s, resented
their confinement. Their leader, Geronimo,
escaped the reservation and fled to Mexico with
some followers. During the 1880s, he led raids
against settlers and the army in Arizona.
Geronimo finally surrendered to the United States
government in 1886-the last Native American to
formally surrender to the United States.
* Both the slaughter of the buffalo and the
movement of whites onto what had been
Native American lands contributed to
changing the Native American way of life
in the late 1800s. More change came
from well-meaning reformers who wanted
Native Americans to adopt white
American culture.
* The Dawes Act of 1887 was aimed at eliminating
what whites thought were two weaknesses of
Native American life: a lack of private property and
a nomadic existence. It sought to break up
reservations and end Native American
identification with a tribal group. Native Americans
were to be given individual plots of land and turned
into farmers. Native American children would be
sent to white-run boarding schools.
* Over the 50 years following passage of the
Dawes Act, the government divided up the
reservations, and speculators acquired most of the
valuable land. Native Americans received dry plots
of land with poor soil not suitable for farming.
* The Dawes Act weakened Native American
culture and changed the way of life of Native
Americans forever. In their despair, the Sioux
turned in 1890 to a prophet, Wovoka, who said
the Sioux could regain their former home if they
performed a ritual called the Ghost Dance. As
the dance spread, reservation officials became
alarmed and banned it.
* Believing the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, was behind
the spread of the dance, police went to his camp
to arrest him. Sitting Bull was killed in a scuffle.
* Several hundred Lakota Sioux fled in fear after
Sitting Bull's death. They gathered at a creek called
Wounded Knee in South Dakota. On December 29,
1890, fighting started between the U.S. army and
the Sioux. More than 200 Lakota Sioux were killed.
Wounded Knee marked the end of armed conflict
between Native Americans and whites.
Discussion Question
* How did reports of the discovery of gold in the
Black Hills of the Dakota Territory cause relations
between Native Americans and the United States
government to deteriorate?
* The Black Hills had previously been given to Native
Americans by the United States government for their
exclusive use. When rumors of gold in the hills spread,
whites poured into the area. Instead of protecting the rights
of the Native Americans, the government offered to buy the
land. When the Native Americans refused, the government
sent the United States Army to move them out of the way.
This set up additional conflict between the government and
Native Americans.