Mid-1800s Native American Culture Analysis

In the mid-1800s, the culture of the Native Americans changed dramatically. The white settlers began constructing the Transcontinental railroad, which took almost every resource away from the Native Americans. Plus, the settlers were beginning to force the Native Americans to assimilate against their will because the whites believed the Native Americans were “savages.” First of all, white settlers took away from the Native American’s main resources by killing the main food source and building railroads in their land. The large herds of buffalo would run over the railroad tracks because the tracks were where the buffalo would typically graze previous to the addition of the tracks (Doc 2). This would ruin the tracks, ruin the equipment on the train itself if they were hit, or possibly severely injure those inside of the train (Doc 1). To solve the issue, settlers would hunt the …show more content…
The Native Americans would be sent to American boarding schools, where they would have their long braids cut off and forced to wear uniforms (Doc 4). They were forced to learn a different religion and were taught American history instead of their own history. Additionally, since the Native Americans had to live on reservations, settlers would sell land to them and would not let them live there without buying it (Doc 5). The Native Americans would rent what used to be their land from the settlers. The war leader of the Lakota, Crazy Horse, said that the white settlers were making it increasingly difficult to live on their own land (Doc 7). Crazy Horse also mentioned about the settlers killing the buffalo for little to no reason (Doc 7). He made sure that the settlers knew that the Native Americans did not want to live the same way that whites do (Doc