Explanation:
Well, just take a look at the policies that the federal government was pushing then.
Removal Act was signed in 1830. And this policy was followed into subsequent decades. In fact, it’s kind of hard to really put an end date when when the Removal Act policies were no longer pursued by the feds.
Anyway, the mid-1800s represented an era of open hostilities and warfare. This direct action against native tribes was usually focused on removing them from their traditional lands and assigning them to diminished reservations. Or, in some cases, it was containing a population to ever-decreasing territorial footprints. And it also involved confining bands to even smaller reservations and restricting their movements, or keeping them on less productive and more desolate lands. By the 1870s, the US government ended the formal treaty making process. This coincided with the Reservation Era.
This was also a time of increased Assimilation efforts.
Although, there was no singular law that took that moniker, the government treated tribes as conquered people or in a sort of ward status. So, reservations were run like concentration camps in some locations. Children were sent to boarding schools and churches were looking to “save souls.”
And for tribes in Indian Territory, you had huge numbers of squatters moving in just after the Civil War. By the 1870s, White settlers were already clamoring for access to Native American reservation lands. And then by the 1880s, there was the Allotment Act, and this often involved the dissolution of tribal governments.
So, uh…no…it wasn’t a good time in Native American history.
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Chuck Rikli
Chuck Rikli, VP-Global Quality (2018-present)
Answered Jan 11, 2018
For me, it’s a bit personal. Literally the reason I’m from Oklahoma instead of Mississippi or Alabama. Many of my white ancestors were pushing my Choctaw and Chickasaw ancestors out of Mississippi and Alabama to take their land and grow cotton. Once in the Indian Territory, a number of other unconscionable activities took place. Often, when oil or other valuable commodities were found on Indian land in Oklahoma, the government of the state allowed whites to “adopt” Indians and steal their mineral rights. And that’s only in Oklahoma. Read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” for a more expansive
