Chapter 26
January 13, 2013
Chapter 26 Notes (1865-1896) * The Clash Of Cultures on the Plains 1) As the White settlers began to populate the Great West, the Indians, caught in the middle, increasingly turned against each other, were infected with White man’s diseases, and were stuck battling to hunt the few remaining bison 2) The Sioux, displaced by Chippewas from the their ancestral lands at the headwaters of the Mississippi in the late 1700s, expanded at the expense of the Crows, Kiowas, and Pawnees, and justified their actions by reasoning that White men had done the same thing to them 3) Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) and the Treaty of Fort Atkinson (1853) – The federal government tried to pacify the Indians by signing these two treaties with the chiefs of the tribes 4) After the Civil War, the U.S. Army’s new mission became, “go clear Indians out of the West for White settlers to move in” * Receding Native Population 1) Violence reigned supreme in Indian-White relations 2) In 1864, at Sand Creek, Colorado, Colonel J.M. Chivington’s militia massacred some four hundred Indians in cold blood 3) In 1866, a Sioux war party ambushed Captain William J. Fetterman’s command of 81 soldiers and civilians who were constructing the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields, leaving no survivors 4) Colonel George Custer found gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota (sacred Sioux land), and hordes of gold-seekers invaded the Sioux reservation in search of gold, causing Sitting Bull and the Sioux to go on the warpath, completely decimating Custer’s Seventh Calvary at Little Big Horn in the process 5) The Nez Percé Indians also revolted when gold seekers made the government shrink their reservation by 90% 6) After a tortuous battle, Chief Joseph finally surrendered his band after a long trek across the Continental Divide toward Canada 7) The hardest to conquer were the Apache tribes of Arizona and New Mexico, led by Geronimo, but even
Chapter 26 Notes (1865-1896) * The Clash Of Cultures on the Plains 1) As the White settlers began to populate the Great West, the Indians, caught in the middle, increasingly turned against each other, were infected with White man’s diseases, and were stuck battling to hunt the few remaining bison 2) The Sioux, displaced by Chippewas from the their ancestral lands at the headwaters of the Mississippi in the late 1700s, expanded at the expense of the Crows, Kiowas, and Pawnees, and justified their actions by reasoning that White men had done the same thing to them 3) Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) and the Treaty of Fort Atkinson (1853) – The federal government tried to pacify the Indians by signing these two treaties with the chiefs of the tribes 4) After the Civil War, the U.S. Army’s new mission became, “go clear Indians out of the West for White settlers to move in” * Receding Native Population 1) Violence reigned supreme in Indian-White relations 2) In 1864, at Sand Creek, Colorado, Colonel J.M. Chivington’s militia massacred some four hundred Indians in cold blood 3) In 1866, a Sioux war party ambushed Captain William J. Fetterman’s command of 81 soldiers and civilians who were constructing the Bozeman Trail to the Montana goldfields, leaving no survivors 4) Colonel George Custer found gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota (sacred Sioux land), and hordes of gold-seekers invaded the Sioux reservation in search of gold, causing Sitting Bull and the Sioux to go on the warpath, completely decimating Custer’s Seventh Calvary at Little Big Horn in the process 5) The Nez Percé Indians also revolted when gold seekers made the government shrink their reservation by 90% 6) After a tortuous battle, Chief Joseph finally surrendered his band after a long trek across the Continental Divide toward Canada 7) The hardest to conquer were the Apache tribes of Arizona and New Mexico, led by Geronimo, but even