Native Americans In The 1800s

The relationship between the Native Americans and the United States hasn’t always been perfect. The U.S. government, before the 1800’s, had come to the land already claimed by the Native Americans and taken it as their own. They took their land, and also relocated all Indigenous tribes to one area in the Great Plains, confining all the different tribes together. As a result, conflicts between the tribes increased. In the mid to late 1800s, the U.S tried to assimilate the Native American groups into modern society, taking away their traditional culture. This was not acceptable to the Native Americans, because the Americans were trying to replace their culture with a totally foreign one. The Americans had a policy of oppressive legislation that led to the Indian Appropriations Act, as well as many other similar acts passed during the late 1800’s, which treated the Native Americans unfairly. …show more content…
Native American culture consisted of tribes, which were large groupings consisting of many families and one chief who was their leader physically and spiritually. The Natives were involved in such things as hunting Buffalo, and practicing theological religion. They often had very strong inter-tribal bonds, and defended their own tribes in battle while fighting other opposing tribes. Natives were a very spiritual people, this spirit tied to the earth and their ancestors as well as other god-like beings. A popular American belief, especially in the 1800s, was that they were pure savages not knowing right from wrong. But what these people failed to understand was that just because people may seem different, they have many of the same basic principles as all of us. This ignorant mentality is what caused the Americans in this time period to feel superior over the Natives, and in the end try to fight them and assimilate them into their separate