What Did The Plains Indians Lost Their Land Analysis

During the period 1800 to 1890, the Plains Indians lost their ancestral homelands to white settlers from the USA, leading to them being forced into reservations. This was due to reasons including the actions of the federal government and the US army, their own mistakes which affected public opinion of them and the westward movement of settlers due to the railroads and the discovery of gold.
One factor that meant that the Plains Indians lost their land was the actions of the federal government. A piece of legislation that would support this view is the Dawes Act of 1887, which was made under the belief that if the Plains Indians were to adapt to the white American way of life, they must be given land to farm. This would mean removing them from …show more content…
One thing that caused the westward movement of settlers was the discovery of deposits of gold and other valuable resources on lands that belonged to the Plains Indians. An example of this was the discovery of gold in land that was part of the Black Hills of Dakota, that had previously been promised to the Cherokee forever. This led to a rush of gold prospectors and miners entering land that belonged to the Cherokee leading to conflict and their displacement. This meant that the Plains Indians even lost land that had been promised to them forever, and it showed that they were naive to trust the federal government to enforce the treaties that had been agreed upon. A second thing that caused the westward movement of white settlers from the eastern states of the USA was the construction of the railroads. The construction itself caused problems such as encroachment onto their lands and traditional hunting grounds, with the US army protecting those constructing them. The railroads also brought multiple disadvantageous secondary effects to the Plains Indians such as the faster transportation of soldiers and homesteaders onto the plains, along with the mass slaughter of buffalo in order to feed the railway workers, with the most famous hunter being 'Buffalo Bill ', and also smaller scale hunting as part of the tourist industry. The discovery of gold deposits and the railroads meant that the Plains Indians due to the encouragement of the westward movement of white settlers that they caused, leading to the destruction of their way of