The Three P's Collide #2

I have recently gained more understanding about the Native Americans in the West, and now I have added my new discoveries to this update of my previous post. In this blog post I have used information from a status report by General Sherman in 1868 and from a map of “The Long Walk” routes at http://reta.nmsu.edu/modules/longwalk/lesson/document/index.htm. These documents have taught me about how the Navajos were treated unfairly at the time. I have improved my Enduring Understandings with more information about people, power, and places.

KEY TERMS:

Push-pull factors are events that force or strongly encourage people to leave an area.

Nomads are people who travel to different places, especially to look for food sources.

Reservations were areas of land put aside for Native Americans by the federal government.

Wounded Knee was the creek that Big Foot, children and women escaped to after the Indian          Bureau in Washington shot chief Sitting Bull for leading the Ghost Dance.

The Dawes Act separated reservation land into individual plots with each Native American family with a head man getting a 160 acre plot of land.

The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 granted alternate areas of public land to the amount of five alternative sections for each mile on the side of the railroads.

The Morrill Land-Grant gave millions of acres of Western land to state governments so that the states could sell the land to collect money in order to build "land grant" colleges that were specifically agriculture and mechanical arts.

Land speculators were people who bought large plots of land to later sell to others to make money.

The Homestead Act was signed by Lincoln in 1862 so that for a small profit, the head of families, American citizens or immigrants that were filing for citizenship received 160 acres of land and small houses to live in for at least 6 months per year.

The Great Plains is a large grassland between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains that provided a large number of buffalo in the 1800's.

The Massacre at Wounded Knee was the last place of violence in the Indian Wars where Sitting Bull was shot, along with over 200 Sioux killed.

Bosque Redondo was a reservation in New Mexico where Navajo Native Americans traveled to between 1863 and 1868 when they were kicked out of the West.

  Enduring Understandings:       

People have power over other people when they control certain places.

• White settlers were involved with push-pull factors because they forced Native Americans out of the West. (Prentice Hall America Pathways to the Past, page 488)
• General Sherman kept Native Americans in reservations because he believed that they were lazy and thieves so it was necessary to keep an eye on them. (Status Report)

People treat others harshly when they are in power.

• White soldiers shot Native American women and children. (The "Indian Question", page 216)
• Navajos were forced to carry heavy timber for 100 miles from Fort Sumner and wood for 25 to 35 miles to Bosque Redondo. (Status Report)
• Navajos had to dig mesquite roots and carry them on their backs for 6 to 12 miles. (Status Report)

         

Places either provide or lack resources for the people who live their.

• The Great Plains gave the Native Americans opportunities to trade with other places. The French and American fur trade allowed the Native Americans to trade their hides from buffalo for guns in order to make buffalo hunting more efficient. (Prentice Hall America Pathways to the Past, 491)
• Bosque Redondo had little fuel, dirty water, and unproductiveness in soil. (Status Report)

People at the bottom of power structures have no input on how they are controlled.

• The Navajo implored General Sherman to return to the West of the Rio Grande River, where there were more resources available. Sherman demanded to keep the Navajo near a military post to punish those who were thieves. He believed that it was necessary to contain the Navajo in a reservation in order to look after them. (Status Report)
• The Indians’ supplies were stolen when the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs was in charge of delivering necessities to the Indian reservations. (Prentice Hall America Pathways to the Past, 492)
• Indians were paid 30 to 50 cents per day to plow, hoe corn, and dig acequias at Bosque Redondo, and that was also for their rations. (Status Report)

If I were a Native American in the West in the mid-1800’s, it would have been frustrating to be forced out of my home and onto a reservation. General Sherman trapped the Navajo in reservations to keep an eye on them because he was convinced that one-third of them were thieves and indolent. (Status Report). I would be furious to be treated poorly simply because I was on the bottom of the power structure. The Navajo had to walk from 375 to 500 miles from their homes West of the Rio Grande River to Bosque Redondo during “The Long Walk.” (Primary Routes Map). General Sherman claimed that the Indians could not survive without living under control of the government, even though they had successfully lived on their own before being forced out of the West. (Status Report). Being obligated to leave my home would be horrible, but it would be even worse to also be treated dreadfully by higher powers.

(Primary Routes Map)