-
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Allowed the war department to have control over Native Americans. Specifically trade, removal to the West, protection against exploitation, and their concentration on reservations. It was created because there were many unhappy people in the West. The Bureau was able to keep them under control but the Native Americans weren't happy with it. -
Indian Removal Act
Congress passed this law to allow the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi River in exchange for Indian lands within the borders. Very few tribes agreed to move without a fight. The rest were forced to go and many died on the way to the West. This journey was then called The Trail of Tears. -
Cattle Drives
The act of driving cattle over land to reach a destination. They usually took five or six months. During the Civil War, they basically stopped as the frontier retreated. -
Fort Laramie Treaty
Indian homelands would belong to the Indians and white settlers could not enter them. They compensated for the loss of land by giving provisions for ten years to the Indians. They set this treaty up to gain control over the Natives because the settlers were afriad to move West for fear of their safety. The treaty didn't keep the Native Americans where the Americans wanted them. It generally failed. -
Billy the Kid
Billy was an outlaw that killed twenty-one people, one for each year of his life before he died at twenty-one. He was shot by lawman Pat Garratt in 1881. -
Homestead Act
It was passed to provide public land grants to farmers. Any adult citizen with a family could qualify for a grant of 160 acres of land by paying a registration fee and living on the land for five years. This act wasn't very successful because once a family bought the land, they could barely afford to farm on it. This means that they lose money. The land ended up in the hands of speculators and not where it was intended to be. -
Battle of Apache Pass
Traveling through the Apache Pass, the Union column was attacked by about five-hundred Chiricahua Apache fighters. The Apache fighters controlled the Apache Pass springs but the Union soldiers didn't have it as easy. They were all thirsty because they didn't have water around them. The Union moved to the mouth of the pass and that move allowed them to continue fighting. There were only two Union losses and three men injured. The Apache tribe lost sixty-six men due to a fire. -
Little Crow's War
It started from a revolt by the Santee Sioux led by Chief Little Crow in protest against the reservations. The Santee Sioux had moved onto a reservation that had poor land and their crops failed. Compensation payments that had been promised by the government had not been delivered and the tribe faced starvation. In August 1862 the Santee Sioux warriors attacked the government Agency. They continued to attack white settlers and the army for three months before being defeated by the army. -
Cheyenne Uprising
The Cheyenne agreed to move to the Sand Creek Reservation by the terms of the Fort Wise Treaty. Their new land was very poor which made it hard for them to survive. They began to steal food from wagons that they attacked. -
Sand Creek Massacre
This happened because the Native Americans attacked the wagon trains in the West. One hundred and sixty-three Indians (including women and children) were killed. The affect of this event was that many were killed. -
Fetterman Massacre
Native Americans wanted to determine the growing Amercian military presence in their territory so they lured Lieutenant Colenel WIlliam Fetterman and his troops into an ambush. This was the American army's worst defeats in the West, the Native Americans continued to try to fight us so we left their territory. -
Red Cloud's War
The Sioux chief, Red Cloud, started the attacks because the White settlers used the Bozeman Trail which passed through the Sioux's hunting grounds. The settlers began buidling forts to increase the attacks which also made Red Cloud angry. The war was so successful that the U.S. government agreed to the Fort Laramie Treaty. -
Completion of Transcontinental Railroad
The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad made life in the West a lot easier. It was really made to make more money but it ended up doing more than that. It helped transport goods, raised the economy, and carried immigrants to the homestead land. -
Indian Appropriations Act
To weaken the authority of tribal leaders, Congress passed this act. This act ended the practice of treating tribes as independent nations. -
Camp Grant, AZ Apache Massacre
The Camp Grant Massacre was an act of vigilantism. Which means that someone who isn't with the law enforcement punishes the ones who do the law breaking. In this case, the punishment was murder. There were 144 victims, all but eight of them were women and children. -
The Lakota War
The Lakota refuse to alter the terms of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and declare they will protect their lands from intruders if the government will not. So Congress repealed the 1868 treaty in 1877, stopped all benefits the Indians argued they were to receive, and Congress took back 40 million acres of land -
The Battle of Little Bighorn
This battle started because the army decided to attack the Native Americans camped in Little Bighorn. General George Armstrong Custer didn't wait for all of his troops to show up so he and all of his men died. By losing this battle, the Native Americans had the chance to keep their way of life until they were moved onto reservations later. -
Desert Land Act
Congress passed this act to promote the development of arid western lands. It allowed settlers 640 acres of public land at 25 cents per acre in return for settler's promise to irrigate the land within 3 years. -
Capture of Nez Perce
The Nez Perce decided to go along with their orders to move. While they were moving, a band of the Nez Perce Indians went out and killed eighteen settlers. Captain David Perry was ordered to bring in all of the Nez Perce. Thirty-three soldiers died at Whitbird Canyon, but only three Nez Perce warriors died. After the battle, the indians did nothing to the dead. -
The Battle of Lincoln
In Lincoln County, New Mexico there was a battle between two troops. It lasted four days when the Murphy-Dolan faction set a house on fire. The battle did hardly anything in the end except support dishonesty in the area. Fugitives like Billy the Kid were involved but once the battle was over, they continued to run away and fight. -
Pratt Boarding School
The school was founded to train Native Americans to act as Americans acted. He gathered up over one-hundred Native Americans and put them in the boarding school. He believed that he was helping them because they needed education. His ideas are still around today so he made quite a big impact on our society. -
"A Century of Dishonor" by Helen Hunt Jackson
This book tells the tail of Native Americans in the United States. It mostly talks about how badly Europeans treated Native Americans. It isn't widely read today but it did have influence on government treatment towards Native American troops in the nineteenth century. -
Bill Cody's "Wild West Show"
Bill Cody created the Wild West Show to provide entertainment to people. He got a group of Native Americans together and created a circus. The show was very successful and ot provided Americans with a new form of entertainment. -
The Capture of Geronimo
Geronimo and his band agreed to live on the reservation but then they decided to leave during the night. They traveled to Mexico and then they were caught. He was later moved to Fort Bowie and then he got out and moved to Florida where he became a public figure or a celebrity. -
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act was passed by Congress to provide the granting of landholdings to Native Americans and to absorb tribe members into the national society. By passing this act, we also collected revenue from oil, minerals, timber, and grazing leases on Native Americans land. -
Yosemite National Park
John Muir had concerns about how the land would end up because of sheep grazing. He presented his idea of the park to Congress and they accepted.Congress decided to set aside 1,500 acres of land to be called Yosemite National Park. The park was a huge success because it is still open today. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
A group of soliders shot at a group of Sioux at the Pine Ridge reservation in Wounded Knee Creek. This massacre killed 153 NAtive American men, women, and children. This happened because someone shot their gun not knowing what was going on. This was the last showdown between the United States army and the Native Americans -
Forest Reserve Act
This act was a law that allowed the president to put aside land to be named as national forests. It protected watersheds from flooding and erosion and to prevent the timber supply from over-exploitation. -
Turner Thesis
Frederick Jackson Turner created this thesis because it would connect two important forces of the 1890s. This thesis called for a new frontier abroad. He laid the intellectual groundwork for a new kind of United States foreign policy. -
Carey Act
This act was passed by Congress providing the transfer to Western States of United States owned desert lands as long as they were irrigated. All of the settlers were required to buy a minimum of one-hundred and sixty acres of land at fifty cents per acre not including the cost of water. The settlers were disappointed because their hopes for the land didn't work out.
