The Role Of Native Americans

In today’s society, we don’t blink an eye at a different color/race of someone usually we treat them like they are somebody. Everyone has the right to vote and own land for example. This sounds like what America should be even though society hasn’t been like this forever, unfortunately. Especially during the early 1900s, was the beginning for change, the new peoples of America thought coming in and taking over was the right idea being they wanted to achieve manifest destiny. So in the process of this the many different ethnics of America had to deal with many of these “changes”. If you wasn’t white, then something definitely happened in your life and many had to change their lives around. For example, land-ownership, not being a slave, and …show more content…
Native Americans were the first peoples of America, and they lived off these lands for many, many years; doesn’t that deserve some rights for them to be who they are and to own the land they have been taking care of for centuries. Well, in the eyes of the new Americans it wasn’t enough; they seen the Native Americans as a weak, wild and unintelligent people. Even though, Native Americans have been keeping the new Americans land in beautiful shape. In 1887, the Dawes Act was sought out to improve Indian life even though the Indians didn’t want to be bothered with. In this article it talks about how The Board of Indian Commissioners made up The Dawes Act to break up the reservations to make the Indians more civilized. They broke up the land to 160 acres for each head of family; which then made Native Americans landowner citizens of the United States. Here is the catch though, if an Indian was not seen as a citizen they had to contest in the U.S courts and they usually lost their lands. In the article it says, The Dawes Act caused nearly 65% of Indian landholdings disappeared. The Board believed that the barbaric Indians couldn’t live next to the civilized American, so they had to change them. This article is very historically worthy because it shows how much say the Natives had over their own land and how the white people seen the Natives. In my opinion, the Dawes Act is very biased because the whites assumed they couldn’t live next to Indians because they are different. I think if they went at this a different way they may have had more positive changes instead of negative changes. So many lives were lost because the Indians just wanted to be themselves and live