creaked the covered wagons of the the Sioux were particularly skilled
farmers bringing their families, their at high-speed mounted warfare .
draft horses, cows, and pigs . Under The Apaches were equally adept and
the Homestead Act they staked their highly elusive, fighting in their envi-
claims and fenced them with a new rons of desert and canyons .
invention, barbed wire . Ranchers
Conflicts with the Plains Indians
were ousted from lands they had worsened after an incident where the
roamed without legal title .
Dakota (part of the Sioux nation),
Ranching and the cattle drives declaring war against the U .S . gov-
gave American mythology its last ernment because of long-standing
icon of frontier culture — the cow- grievances, killed five white settlers .
boy . The reality of cowboy life was Rebellions and attacks continued
one of grueling hardship . As de- through the Civil War . In 1876 the
picted by writers like Zane Grey and last serious Sioux war erupted, when
movie actors such as John Wayne, the Dakota gold rush penetrated
the cowboy was a powerful mytho- the Black Hills . The Army was sup-
logical figure, a bold, virtuous man posed to keep miners off Sioux hunt-
of action . Not until the late 20th cen- ing grounds, but did little to protect tury did a reaction set in . Histori- the Sioux lands . When ordered to
ans and filmmakers alike began to take action against bands of Sioux
depict “the Wild West” as a sordid hunting on the range according to
place, peopled by characters more their treaty rights, however, it moved
apt to reflect the worst, rather than quickly and vigorously .
the best, in human nature .
In 1876, after several indecisive
encounters, Colonel George Custer,
THE PLIGHT OF
leading a small detachment of cav-
THE NATIVE AMERICANS
alry encountered a vastly superior
A
force of Sioux and their allies on the
s in the East, expansion into the Little Bighorn River . Custer and his
plains and mountains by miners, men were completely annihilated .
ranchers, and settlers led to increas- Nonetheless the Native-American
ing conflicts with the Native Amer- insurgency was soon suppressed .
icans of the West . Many tribes of Later, in 1890, a ghost dance ritual
Native Americans — from the Utes on the Northern Sioux reservation
of the Great Basin to the Nez Perces at Wounded Knee, South Dakota,
of Idaho — fought the whites at one led to an uprising and a last, tragic
time or another . But the Sioux of encounter that ended in the death
the Northern Plains and the Apache of nearly 300 Sioux men, women,
of the Southwest provided the most and children .
significant opposition to frontier ad-
Long before this, however, the
vance . Led by such resourceful lead- way of life of the Plains Indians
ers as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, had been destroyed by an expand-
180
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
ing white population, the coming which time the owner won full title
of the railroads, and the slaughter of and citizenship . Lands not thus dis-
the buffalo, almost exterminated in tributed, however, were offered for
the decade after 1870 by the settlers’ sale to settlers . This policy, however indiscriminate hunting .
well-intentioned, proved disastrous,
The Apache wars in the South- since it allowed more plundering of
west dragged on until Geronimo, the Native-American lands . Moreover,
last important chief, was captured in its assault on the communal orga-
1886 .
nization of tribes caused further
Government policy ever since the disruption of traditional culture . In
Monroe administration had been 1934 U .S . policy was reversed yet
to move the Native Americans be- again by the Indian Reorganiza-
yond the reach of the white frontier . tion Act, which attempted to pro-
But inevitably the reservations had tect tribal and communal life on the
become smaller and more crowd- reservations .
ed . Some Americans began to pro-
test the government’s treatment of
AMBIVALENT EMPIRE
Native Americans . Helen Hunt Jack-
son, for example, an Easterner liv- The last decades of the 19th century ing in the West, wrote A Century of were a period of imperial expansion Dishonor (1881), which dramatized for the United States . The American their plight and struck a chord in story took a different course from
the nation’s conscience . Most re- that of its European rivals, however,
formers believed the Native Ameri- because of the U .S . history of strug-
can should be assimilated into the gle against European empires and its
dominant culture . The federal gov- unique democratic development .
ernment even set up a school in Car-
The sources of American ex-
lisle, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to pansionism in the late 19th century
impose white values and beliefs on were varied . Internationally, the pe-
Native-American youths . (It was at riod was one of imperialist frenzy,
this school that Jim Thorpe, often as European powers raced to carve
considered the best athlete the Unit- up Africa and competed, along with
ed States has produced, gained fame Japan, for influence and trade in
in the early 20th century .)
Asia . Many Americans, including
In 1887 the Dawes (General Al- influential figures such as Theodore
lotment) Act reversed U .S . Native- Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and
American policy, permitting the Elihu Root, felt that to safeguard its
president to divide up tribal land own interests, the United States had
and parcel out 65 hectares of land to stake out spheres of economic in-
to each head of a family . Such al- fluence as well . That view was sec-
lotments were to be held in trust by onded by a powerful naval lobby,
the government for 25 years, after which called for an expanded fleet
181