1. Describe what you see in the painting

2. The West & Native Americans
Fulfilling Manifest Destiny

3. Moving West Push Factors Civil war displaced persons
Available farm land
Religious repression
Open spaces sheltered outlaws
Pull Factors
Private property
Morrill Land Grant
Land to railroads
Homestead Act 1862
160 acres land free if you were 21 or head of family; built house, lived on it for 6 months and farmed for 5 years in a row

4. Moving West
1862 Lincoln passed the Pacific Railway Act authorizing the completion of transcontinental railroad; gave huge government land grants to do it
Settlers believed they had a right to western land:
they produced more food & wealth than Native Americans
Many agreements between the Native Americans and the government fell apart because Native Americans and the settlers had different ideas of land ownership
Immigrants went west for cheap land
Exodusters –ex-slaves who moved west:
To escape racial violence in the South
To make a new beginning and farming was the skill most already knew

5. At first Indians were moved west into Indian Territory of the Plains
The Native Americans
During 1800s, the federal government carried out policy of moving Indians out of the way of white settlers, encouraging attempts to take Native American Lands
Indians were forced onto reservations, no longer free to roam the Plains
At first Indians were moved west into Indian Territory of the Plains
Frontier settlers kept pushing west pressuring government to open Indian Territory

6. The first move was the Trail of Tears in 1832

7. Two other crises also threatened Native American civilizations
Settlers introduced diseases to which the Natives had no immunity
Disease
Loss of the buffalo
Settlers slaughtered all the buffalo
As more and more settlers moved west, the Native American tribes were weakened or destroyed

8. 1887 Dawes General Allotment Act
Assimilation
Some critics attacked the government policies and defended the Indians way of life
Most leaders and white reformers hoped that Native Americans would assimilate into American life, be “civilized” and adopt white culture
The Indian Rights Movement would grow out the outrage of how government treated the Native Americans
One way the government sought to changed the Native American was by requiring them to farm individual plots of land; this went against everything the Natives believed about land ownership
1887 Dawes General Allotment Act

9. Activity: In a 10 sentence paragraph…
Describe the impact westward movement had on the Plains Indians.