Western Expansion During The Nineteenth Century

During the Nineteenth Century, western expansion was erupting in America, and federal policy decided that certain tribes had to be confined to fixed land plots to continue their traditional lifestyles. American Indians were being forced off of their lands, and they were not adjusting well. Federal policy was trying to Americanize the “savage” indians so that they could be introduced into American society. American Indians were sent to live on small areas of land within a group’s territory that was reserved exclusively for their use, or reservations. Native Americans retaliated against the American government wanting to relocate them due to it’s former policy of treating the much of the west as Indian preserved territory. These reservations were created in an attempt to help westward expansion, as well as keep conflict down between the American Indians and American citizens. …show more content…
This act decreed that Indian Reservation land was to be divided into plots and distributed to individual Native Americans, and also promised American citizenship to the Indians who complied with the act. This act was widely resisted by the American Indians who found it to destroy their traditional lifestyles, and those who didn’t resist could not adapt to the life of farming. This was America’s way of civilizing and Americanizing the Native Americans. Due to decades of discriminatory and corrupt policies instituted by the United States government between 1850 and 1900, life for the American Indians became significantly more complicated and difficult. The Indian population heavily decreased due to relocation and retaliation of foreign policy, and many had a hard time adapting to this new “American”