During the nineteenth century, in the developing America, Indians and white Americans had a very strained and stressed relationship. After the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, whites were granted land in the Northwest territory where Native Americans had already resided. Indians were beginning to realize that Americans were not the ideal companions, because they seized land, consumed mass amounts of resources without care, and did not treat the Earth as sacred as the Native Americans did. The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh proposed a way for the Indians to regain the purity, and strength that they used to possess. Both men also wanted to clearly warn the Americans that if compromises were not made, there would be detrimental consequences. …show more content…
He despised American Culture. Tenskwatawa believed that the Creator put the Indians on the vast, rich, and nurturing land for a purpose. He reminisces on how the Indians were free to go where they wanted without any dangers, how they did not have to beg for anything, and how they lived for long periods of time free from diseases. He ultimately believed that the whites had corrupted his people and their civilization in all ways. Tenskwatawa gave a series of rules that the Indians and whites should abide by. He believed the creator was using him as a vessel to speak to the people. He warned that the Indians should not consume liquor, or they would be forced to have hot lead poured down their mouth. He also warned that the Indian male, if single, should not chase after many women. Tenskwatawa advised that all Indian women, if they lived with a white male, return to the native lands and leave her children with the husband, so that the Indian bloodline could become pure …show more content…
Tecumseh wrote a speech to President William Henry Harrison, expressing his views on the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which gave Americans land where Indians had settled. Tecumseh boldly stated that he would not asked Harrison to tear up the treaty yet he would ask Harrison to return to his own country since they did not wish for the Indians to share the lands as common property, which he believes is the natural way of living on the lands. Tecumseh then asks that Harrison takes pity among the Indians and leave the Indians to do as they wish. He wishes that the Americans would let the Indians live freely without regulations, war, and binding yet confusing contracts. He places blame on the village chiefs for selling land off to the Americans and the Americans who take advantage of the Indians that by buying land from them. He warns the Americans that he and the people who follow his teachings, will not hesitate to punish all of those people who do so, no matter if they are Native Americans or white Americans. He ultimately believes that Americans are highly untrustworthy and could be accused of injustices, simply due to the acts that Americans have committed in the past. Tecumseh references the time when Americans mistreated, killed, and nailed Jesus Christ to a cross without any reflections or regrets for the things
By the 1800's most of the Native Americans signed a treaty with the European American government. The results left the Native Americans on small pieces of land called reservations in exchange for their land and peace. The European Americans promised that they would give the Indians living on the reservations food, water, money and education for the children. Most of these promises were not kept.
Times were a lot different back in the 1800s as compared to today, and unfortunately, for the minorities of the day, most white people did not see them as equals. The Civil War was testimony to this horrific fact. America was expanding rapidly on the heels of the gold rush and the boom of industry. This expansion posed a major problem in regards to the Native American. Most of the southern and eastern tribes had already been removed from their lands and forced to move west in the 1830s.1 Later, in 1867, a peace commission was appointed to persuade western Native Americans to relinquish their land and move to reservations. Once moved onto these reservations, the Native Americans would be wards of the government until they learned to be more like the white people.2
In the time period of 1800-1850 white Americans expanded across the vast lands on the western side of the continent and regularly encountered conflict with various Indian nations. In these documents, interactions for the various Indian nations were subjected to different cultivation between each tribe per say that there were responses that filled different needs and demands. Some tribes provided benefits such as agriculture and household manufacture and produced the idea that settlements to be blended and conform into one people. Other interactions created conflict because some of our land purchases were not 100% in compliance with the constitution. Yet some Indian nations
Ever since white men came to the New World, they were never at peace with the native peoples. One of the first white men to come to North America was Sir Walter Raleigh, who took the Indians he met as slaves as early as 1584. In the years that followed, settlers forced the Native Americans further and further west. By the year 1850, there had been many attempts at peaceful negotiations and uprisings on both sides, but the government eventually decided that reservations were the only way to contain the Indians and have peace. These reservations took away their pride, freedom, and way of life. Native Americans in reservations today are still plagued by lack of food and shelter, health and
Throughout history, Native Americans faced atrocity after atrocity at the hands of white settlers and losing their land and most of their people was only one of them. During the nineteenth century, the United States’ population boomed, causing people to start to move west in search of riches and vast lands in the “wild west.” However, as white settlers moved west, they started to encounter more and more Native American lands. The white settlers wanted to be able to settle on their lands, claiming that they were “misusing” the land and claiming that the Native Americans were “uncivilized.” The white settlers pled their case to the United States government to forcibly remove the Native Americans and get the rights to their lands. Andrew Jackson,
Thus, the second generation began to lose sight of the morals and ways of their parents. The previous generation of English maintained peace by treating the Natives with fairness and respect. The second generation of English began to see the Indians as getting in the way of acquiring wealth and no longer felt that they needed the help of the Pokanokets for survival. Therefore, the English began treating the Pokanokets with less respect “But as was becoming increasingly apparent, the children of Pilgrims had very short memories. Now that their daily lives no longer involved an arduous and terrifying struggle for survival, they had begun to take the Indians for granted.” (Philbrick 215). In other words, as the English began to believe that they did not need the Pokanokets as much for survival, they lost respect for the boundaries of the Pokanokets. Nevertheless, instead of treating the Pokanokets fairly and with respect the English did the opposite. By the 1630’s, the ideas of land ownership had changed in ways that would have great effects on the relationship between the Pokanoket Indians and the second generation of English settlers. The English proposed
The presidency of Andrew Jackson was marked by extreme government reforms which resulted in the birth of our modern democracy, but the darkest part of Jackson’s presidency was his policy with the Native American Indians. The relationship between the United States government and the Native Americans had long been considered unstable (Marsico 6). With the arrival of European settlers at Jamestown in 1607 two radically different cultures clashed. The meeting of these two worlds was often benign but other encounters proved hostile. The enticement of the new found world and the idea of a new start were powerful incentives for European settlers to flood into America. Indians roamed the land but the European influx brought diseases to which the natives had no immunity, the native populations were severely affected. As more immigrants arrived, the land sacred to the Native Americans was being taken by white settlers, the Indians couldn’t compete with the white man’s population and technology. From 1721 to 1819, more than 90 percent of Indian land had been surrendered, including Cherokee lands (What). With the European belief of superiority the Indians seemed like a far less advanced culture and a people easily conquered. As the white man overpowered various
Before Tenskwatawa had visions about the Master of Life, he assimilated into the white man’s culture through alcoholism in order to forget about his problems (Nash, 248). Tenskwatawa was not the only one to succumb to the temptations of whiskey. “Unfortunately, many of the tribe’s shrinking resources were squandered on alcohol” (Edmunds, 72). The Shawnee tribe’s dependence on alcohol became a problem to the Prophet due to the fact that alcohol was a part of the white culture. He also believed that Native Americans should not depend on guns, iron cookware, and glass beads because all of those items represent the gradual assimilation into the white culture and practices. The Prophet claimed that the Master of Life saw the Native American practices of white society as one of the greatest sins of all. “In either case, all Indians who followed the white man’s road were the objects of Tenskwatawa’s suspicion” (Edmunds, 75). His beliefs not only spread out among the Shawnee, but among many other tribes as well. Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh carried messages south to the Cherokee and the Creek. Their messages were based on Tenskwatawa’s teachings and the overall belief that white men were evil (Nash, 248). Their messages influenced over 1,000 men who were prepared to battle at
American colonists and the Native Americans of North America have had challenges getting along with each other ever since they encountered early in the 17th century. During the American Revolutionary war they were allies but once the white settlers gained freedom, they started to seek more land, which happened to be the land Native Americans occupied. After a long ferocious thirty year war, President Andrew Jackson issued The first annual address to congress, this article fulfills Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, contains bias and assertion which marginalize and silence the voice of Native Americans.
Just like this century actually runs longer thematically than just 1800 to 1900, the story of the Indians extends backward before the first shots of the Civil War were fired and stretches forward past Reconstruction. Throughout this elongated era, different tribes had different experiences. Some, like the nations of the Iroquois, started their travails with warfare of white Americans as far back as choosing between the French and British during the French and Indian War. Others, like the Seminole, had fought many independent wars against America (or Spain or Britain) in their homelands long before they faced the Civil War. Still others, like the Cherokee, had attempted to assimilate into white culture, were forced off their lands, thought they were “safe” on guaranteed reservation lands, and then were forced again to participate when the Civil War bled westward into Indian Territory. The concepts of racism and “whiteness” that flowed like a river through themes of religion, progress, immigration, territory, slavery, and Reconstruction during the “long nineteenth century” also affected Native Americans; the “war of a thousand deserts” fought by the native tribes of the Southwest was both a unique experience and a shared experience as almost every tribe fought their own wars against whites and sometimes against other tribes
Since the first arrival of colonists to America in 1607, disputes between the Native Americans and the colonist began arousing. In the years following the first arrival of the colonist, numerous outburst of war and treaties were made. Many of these treaties between the US and the natives were broken and by 1830, many Native American tribes found themselves being confined in reservations. During the second latter of the 19th century the US began to become industrialized and expand westward to fulfill the ultimate manifest destiny. The plains Indians, specifically found themselves begin affected by the various technologic developments and government action during the second half of the 19th century due to the completion of the trans continental railroad , gun invention, and broken treaties
At the start of the Revolution in 1776 many of the patriots view towards the Indians was that of Thomas Jefferson’s, the paternalistic view. That the Indians were “noble savages, “uncivilized in their present state but if they would adapt to ways of the white society they could be redeemed. While others felt that they should be treated as conquered people because some of the tribes helped the British in the War, one of which was the Mohawks. That was one the main reason why most of the tribes choose to stay out of the war. At this point in time the patriots felt that they were merely trying to provide for their families and start a new life in the new world. But to the Indians they felt that the patriots were trying to push them off their lands, threatening their families and their way of life. And over time these views towards each other change with each push westward on the part of the patriots and each conflict of resistance on the part of the Indians. As the new nation grew the need for more land became evident, as a way of trying to bring resolve the government signed treaties with the tribes. The treaties promised them protection of the lands they had held if they ceded certain lands. But when it came right down to it treaty after treaty was broken, which lead to more and more distrust by the Indians. As time passed the views of Indians changed, in the early 1800’s whites viewed Indians as “savages” that should be removed from the valuable land that the
Throughout the eighteenth century, lives of the early western Indian tribes suffered due to the many discriminating opinions of new coming white men. The white people deceived the western Indian tribes in several ways. White men took advantage and persuaded the tribes into signing agreements on a numerous amount of treaties in order to forcibly push them west away from their current lands. The several present western Indian people effectively, although often forcibly, aborted from their homes due to the men seeking new discoveries, the desire for an increase in land, and the white people searching to fulfill their profound desire of supremacy. Not only the social power the men endowed within themselves produced the outcome but, the Native Americans
Overtime, the United States and Great Britain were edging closer to war. Western Americans also began to suspect the British military was supporting the American Indians who were contributing to the armed resistance of the growth of the colonial frontier to the Northwest. Americans typically suspected those hanging around the well-known war Chief Tecumseh and his half-brother, Tenskwatawa, also known as the Prophet who participated in the resistance to American expansion. Tenskwatawa influence had spread very quickly so he established the core of his new faith in the center of Prophetstown in the Indiana territory. Tenskwatawa was able to convince William Henry Harrison (the Indiana territory governor) that his movement was friendly to the
The Native Americans wanted to be nonviolent towards the Americans while trying to keep their lands. Many Native American chiefs including the chiefs of the Tetons wanted to remain on good terms with the Americans, even if it meant signing a treaty. One of the chiefs who wanted peace was Spotted Tail. He was not interested in leaving his ways of life behind but he was willing to compromise to avoid war”,(Brown 10) especially if compromising meant keeping his people safe. Spotted Tail knew that if he did not compromise then he would lose everything because the Americans were not concerned about the Native Americans' way of life or even their safety. The Americans did not have any interests in the amount of Native Americans killed as long as they got the land, Spotted Tail along with other chiefs knew how ruthless the Americans were. Also in the search for land the Americans used any means they saw necessary to