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  1860 – 360,000 Indians in the West  In the path of migrating settlers  Impacted by diseases (ex. Cholera, typhoid, smallpox)  Reduction of buffalo population Expansion impacts Indians

  Treaties created the reservation system in the West  Whites could not understand that most Indians had no real leader and did not recognize an authority outside their immediate family  Indians surrender their lands after promises to be left alone and provided with food, clothing and other supplies  Indian agents corrupt Treaties of Fort Laramie (1851) and Fort Atkinson (1853)

  White troops and Native Americans had a series of violent clashes beginning in the 1860s  These clashes intensified after gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota which was part of the Sioux reservation  Culminated in the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876)  General George Custer and his 264 men were killed in the battle Violence erupts George Custer

  Violent confrontations continued as one by one Indian groups were defeated  Why were the Indians ultimately defeated?  Indian spirit shattered  Indians cheaper to feed than fight  Railroad made transportation easier  Disease  Virtual extermination of buffalo “Taming” the Indians

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  Attempt at Indian assimilation  Focus on educating Indian children  Dissolved tribes  Wiped out tribal ownership of land  Head of each Indian family got 160 acres  Would get the title to their land and citizenship in 25 years  Reservation land not allotted to Indians was sold to railroads and white settlers Dawes Act (1887) Sen. Henry Dawes who introduced the Dawes Act

 Arrest of Sitting Bull  In December 1890, the US Army ordered the arrest of the Sioux’s chief, Sitting Bull, because of a rapidly growing Ghost Dance movement, a ritual that promised to restore their land and way of life  During the arrest, Sitting Bull was killed and the remaining 350 starving and freezing Sioux were arrested and taken to Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota The Ghost Dance Ritual

 Battle of Wounded Knee  The next day, the soldiers demanded that the Sioux give up their weapons – a shot was fired, no one knows from which side, and when it was over, 300 Native Americans, including several children, were dead  This brought the Indian Wars to a bitter end – Native Americans in the United States were fully confined to reservations Spotted Elk lies dead after the Battle of Wounded Knee

  By 1900, Indians had lost 50% of the 156 million acres they held 2 decades earlier  By 1887, only about 243,000 Native Americans remained Impact on Indians

  Gave settlers as much as 160 acres of land by living on it for 5 years and paying a fee of $30  2 out of 3 were forced to give up their land as result of drought  Led to fraud Homestead Act of 1862