Culture of the Plain Indians

1
Culture of the Plain Indians

• Nomads
• roamed vast distances
• main source of food
• -the Buffalo
• Similarities Between Them
• Extended family networks
• Close relationship with nature
• Assignment of tasks
• Women generally performed domestic tasks
• Rearing Children
• Cooking
• Preparing hides
• Men performed a variety of tasks that included
• Hunting
• Trading
• Supervising the military life of the band

2
The Dakota Sioux Uprising

• Dakota Sioux
• Government issued annuities
• Payments to reservation dwellers
• Abuses
• August, 1867
• Late Payments
• starving to death.
• Chief Little Crow
• food on credit.
• Trader Andrew Myrick replied, If they are
  hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung.
• Myrick dead
• Grass stuffed in this mouth.
• Military Tribunal
• 307 Dakota to death
• President Lincoln reduced to 38.

• Troops to the Plains
• Sioux The Lakota
• The Lakota offered refuge to fleeing Dakota
  Indians
• Chief Red Cloud
• Chief Crazy Horse
• Chief Sitting Bull

3
Fettermans Massacre

• Bozeman Trail
• Link the mining towns with the East.
• Sioux Indian hunting grounds
• Chief Red Cloud warned
• Fort Phil Kearney
• Northern Wyoming
• Frequently attacked
• Captain William Judd Fetterman
• 82-man force sent to its rescue.
• Trapped-Dec. 21, 1866
• 1,500 Sioux
• Chief High Backbone

• "The Fetterman Fight" by J. K. Ralston.

4
Sand Creek Massacre

• Trading Stopped
• Raiding wagon trains stealing cattle and horses
  from ranches.
• Estimate 200 settlers killed.
• November, 1864
• Chief Black Kettle
• Negotiate Peace
• To await at Sand Creek
• Colonel John Chivington
• Ordered to attack the Cheyenne at Sand Creek
• Fourteen soldiers died
• 69-600 Native Americans were killed.

5
A Doomed Plan for Peace

• Fettermans Massacre Sand Creek Massacre,
• Congress that something had to be done.
• In 1867 Congress formed an Indian Peace
  Commission.
• Two large reservations
• Pressured Native American leaders into signing
  treaties
• Those who refused
• Poverty
• Despair
• Corrupt American Traders
• Demise of the Buffalo
• The Army encouraged buffalo killing.
• By 1889 very few of the animals remained

• Helen Hunt Jacksons A Century of Dishonor and
  Ramona
• Criticism of policy towards American Indians

6
Battle of the Little Bighorn

• 1876 Lakota Sioux Reservation
• Gold Mines
• Expeditionary Force
• General Alfred H. Terry.
• Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, Seventh
  Cavalry
• June 25, 1876
• Custer launched attack in broad daylight
• 2,500 Lakota and Cheyenne Warriors
• Custer commanded about 210 soldiers
• Newspapers portrayed the battle as a massacre.
• The United States Army responded quickly
• October of 1877, Chief Joseph surrendered
• Our chiefs are killedThe little children are
  freezing to death. My peoplehave no blankets,
  no foodHear me, my chiefs I am tired my heart
  is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I
  will fight no more forever. -quoted in Bury My
  Heart at Wounded Knee

7
Tragedy at Wounded Knee

• The Ghost Dance
• Banned Religious ceremony
• Celebrated Day of Reckoning
• Reunite with deceased ancestors
• Sitting Bull
• Blamed for defiance
• Resisted Arrest
• Died
• Wounded Knee
• Ghost Dance participants fled
• 12-29-1890
• 200 Men/Women/Children Dead

8
Assimilation

• Assimilate, or be absorbed, into American society
  as landowners and citizens.
• That meant breaking up the reservation system
  into individual land allotments
• This became law in 1887 with the Dawes Act.
• 160 acres of reservation land for farming
• Like many homesteaders, they found the land
  allotments too small to be profitable and life
  too harsh to withstand.

9
Americanization of the Indians
10
The Turner Thesis

• American history has been in a large degree the
  history of the colonization of the Great West.
• The existence of an area of free land, its
  continuous recession, and the advance of American
  settlement westward explain American development.
  
• The frontier Americanized Americans.
• The individual was rapidly acclimatized, though
  the process lasted 300 years.
• Cheap or even free land provided a "safety valve"
  which protected the nation against uprisings of
  the poverty-stricken and malcontent.