The lives of Native Americans 1877-1890 Flashcards
How was the Native American way of life undermined?
• Indian Rights Association
Even organisations sympathetic to the Native Americans, such as the Indian Rights Association, did not support the continuation of the Native American way of life.
What was involved in ‘Americanisation’?
Getting Native Americans to learn English, become Christians and learn farming.
Achievements of the Americanisation by 1899
By 1899, $2.5 million was being spent each year on 148 boarding and 255 day schools for 20,000 children.
How did the Congress support Americanisation?
Congress provided funds to set up boarding schools where Native American children could be taught American skills and attitudes away from the influence of their parents.
Limitation of the Dawes Act in 1887
The Act assumed that Native Americans could be turned into farmers.
It was doomed to failure at a time of agricultural depression.
Impact of the Dawes Act of 1887
1) After the awards were made, the surplus land was sold commercially. Most NA had sold or lost their land to whites and fallen into poverty.
2) Conditions on Native American reservations deteriorated rapidly
The Dawes Act of 1887
• What was it?
It broke up reservation land into small units held by individuals or families.
• An integrationist policy
The Dawes Act of 1887
• Benefits of the Act
Native American who accepted the allotments and ‘adopted the habits of civilised life’ were to be granted US citizenship after 25 years
What did the battle of Wounded Knee 1890 show?
The whole affair was an accident born of mutual distrust, misunderstanding and fear, epitomising relations between Plains Indians and Americans.
What happened in the Battle of Wounded Knee 1890
Seventh Cavalry fired into a group of Sioux, some 200 Sioux, many of them women and children died. So did 31 soldiers.
Criticism of the reservation policy during 1877-1890
The reservation policy led to physical disease, alcoholism, dependency and poverty
Situation of the reservation policy for the Native Americans by 1900
Only about 100,000 of the 240,000 Native Americans who had inhabited the Plains in 1865 remained. They were left without the lands they had been given to them by treaty in the 1860s
Sufferings of Native Americans due to the reservation policy
They had lost their land, their freedom, their pride and their self-respect. It condemned them to become a people without a distinctive identity, and remained the poorest group of people in the USA
The right to vote by 1900
They faced the kind of prejudice experienced by other ethnic group in the US when it came to exercising the right to vote.
Positives of the reservation policy
For those willing to adjust to the white man’s expectation, reservations offered chances for economic self-sufficiency.
