Prairie Lotus Key Events
1. Read this article to understand the history and symbolism of the lotus flower.
“The lotus flower's daily resurrection is certainly interesting, and surely symbolic of revival.”
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2. Homestead Act (1862) “The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to “improve” the plot by building a dwelling and cultivating the land. After 5 years on the land, the original filer was entitled to the property, free and clear, except for a small registration fee. Title could also be acquired after only a 6-month residency and trivial improvements, provided the claimant paid the government $1.25 per acre. After the Civil War, Union soldiers could deduct the time they had served from the residency requirements.” U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=31 |
3. The Chinese Massacre of 1871 - Read this article.
Forgotten Los Angeles History: The Chinese Massacre of 1871
https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/chinese-massacre-1871
4 . The Sioux Treaty of 1868 - Library of Congress article. Read this article.
5. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 - "Chinese Exclusion Act." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 24 May. 2019. school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/Chinese-Exclusion-Act/319548. Accessed 30 Sep. 2020.
“ The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first and only major U.S. law to ban immigration for a specific nationality. The law prohibited Chinese laborers—defined as “both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining”—from entering the United States. Later amendments to the law prevented Chinese laborers who had left the United States from returning.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882. It came after years of anti-Chinese hostility by white Americans, especially in California. Since the time of the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants had been widely stereotyped as exotic, dangerous, and competitors for jobs and wages. The act set the precedent for later restrictions against immigration of other nationalities. It was repealed in 1943 by the Magnuson Act. The new law permitted a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants each year.
By the 1840s the U.S. Army and the various Indian tribes in the Plains and parts of the Southwest and the Plateau were in a continual state of war. As white settlers encroached on Indian land, war would break out. Either the Indians would be defeated and transported elsewhere, or a treaty would be made in which the Indians and the U.S. government agreed to an exchange. Usually the Indians would trade part of their lands for a promise that the government would provide them with food, financial aid, health care, and schools. Because the land was to belong to others forever, the government was supposed to provide fresh supplies and services to the Indians forever. However, the government often broke these agreements after it had taken possession of the land.
Thousands of white settlers poured into the Oregon Territory after it was acquired from Great Britain in 1846. Numerous clashes erupted with tribes in the Northwest. In the 1850s wars broke out around Puget Sound after several small tribes were deceived into signing treaties in which they gave up most of their land. But they were quickly defeated and confined to reservations—tracts of land set aside for the Indians. Typically, the government created reservations on land that was difficult to develop economically.
In other areas of the Northwest, war continued into the late 1870s. In 1877 the Nez Percé Indians, led by Chief Joseph (Hinmaton-yalatkit), were defeated after refusing to agree to treaties ceding nearly all their land in the Pacific Northwest to the United States. Privations from loss of land, lack of food, and disease led to an unsuccessful uprising of the Bannock Indians of Idaho in 1878.
The Southwest came under U.S. control as a result of the Mexican-American War of 1846–48. In 1847 Pueblo Indians rose up against settlers at Taos (later in New Mexico) and were defeated. But relations between settlers and the Pueblo, Pima, and Tohono O’odham (Papago) were usually peaceful. The Navajo and Apache retaliated when settlers seized their lands and destroyed their animals and gardens. The Navajo were overpowered in the 1860s and forced onto a reservation, but the Apache fought on. Even after they too were restricted to reservations, small bands continued to mount raids. When the Apache leader Geronimo (Goyathlay) finally surrendered in 1886, Indians in the Southwest ended their military resistance to colonization.
In about 1850 the tribes of the Great Plains had begun attacking wagon trains carrying settlers westward. They were angered by ill treatment from the settlers and by the driving away of bison herds on which they were dependent for food, clothing, and shelter. Efforts by the Army and the government to preserve peace led to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The Plains tribes promised to confine themselves to designated hunting grounds, and the government agreed to keep settlers out of those areas. But when the government violated the treaty in 1865 by starting to construct forts and a wagon road to mining camps in Montana Territory, the Oglala Sioux under Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta) attacked and destroyed several forts. By the terms of the second Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868, the government stopped the road construction, dismantled the forts, and again guaranteed the Indian reserve.
In 1871 Congress decided that Indian tribes were no longer to be recognized as sovereign powers with whom treaties must be made. Although existing treaties were still valid, violations continued to occur. The treaty of 1868 had made the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory part of a large Sioux reservation. The discovery of gold there in 1874 started a stampede of white gold seekers. In 1875 the Sioux (an alliance of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota) refused to sell the land to the government, which then ordered them out of the area and onto reservations. When the Sioux refused, the Army, including troops under Lieut. Col. George A. Custer, was sent to enforce the order. On June 25, 1876, the government troops attacked a large group of Sioux and Cheyenne. The main body of Indians, under the Sioux leaders Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) and Crazy Horse (Tashunke Witko), wiped out Custer and his 200 men.
This was the last major military victory by the Indians. Gradually they were rounded up and confined to reservations. Sitting Bull and other Sioux soon joined a new supernatural cult that predicted the white man would be wiped out and the Indian way of life preserved if enough Indians would perform the ceremonies known as the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance movement was crushed in 1890 with the arrest and murder of Sitting Bull and the massacre by the Army of several hundred Indians at the village of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Almost 400 years after Columbus’ arrival, this massacre completed the military conquest of the American Indian. Across the continent, however, most groups continued to resist conquest in other ways, such as by maintaining their traditional languages and religious practices.
Government Policy
The first federal agency to oversee governmental promises under Indian treaties was placed under the secretary of war by Congress in 1789. A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created within the War Department in 1824 and was transferred to the new Department of the Interior in 1849.
The BIA was supposed to enforce the restrictions against whites on Indian lands and to prevent the illegal sale of such lands. The BIA was also supposed to help Indians sell or lease their land when it was legal to do so and to keep track of land inheritance when the owner died. Money deposited in the U.S. Treasury to the credit of Indian tribes in payment for land was administered on behalf of the Indians by the BIA. Unfortunately, many BIA agents were corrupt. As a result, many Indian lands were illegally sold or even stolen.
Forcibly restricted to reservations, and finding it difficult to make them productive, the Indians needed the government to fulfill its treaty promises of supplies and services. Many whites, regarding ownership of land as the basis of success, hoped that by owning their own farms the Indians would become independent farmers. Other whites, hungry for land, thought that too much land had already been reserved for the Indians. In addition, many whites thought that the government support of Indians was a kind of charity rather than a legal obligation.
All of these groups of whites urged the passage of the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. This act provided for dividing reservations, which had been held in common by the tribes, into parcels to be allotted to individual Indians. The “surplus” land, in at least one case a larger area than that divided among the Indians, was eventually sold to white homesteaders. Provisions of the act also granted citizenship to the Indians receiving parcels of land and to any other Indians who agreed to give up tribal life for “civilized” ways.
The Dawes Act resulted in the loss of tens of millions of acres of Indian land. Many Indians were unused to the idea of individual ownership of land and had little understanding of money. They sold their allotments at absurdly low prices, spent the money, and became destitute. Where land was retained, the amount possessed by each Indian became smaller as the land was divided through inheritance.
At the same time, the government tried to assimilate, or integrate, Indians into the mainstream culture. One method of assimilation was the boarding, or residential, school. From the mid-1800s until as late as the 1960s, native families were forced to send their children to these institutions. The instruction was designed to eliminate any use of traditional language, behavior, or religion. Upon arrival, for instance, the children were forced to trade their clothes for uniforms. Students often experienced cruel forms of punishment, verbal abuse, and in some cases sexual abuse. Assimilation policies were also enforced on reservations. For example, government authorities prohibited traditional religious practices such as the Sun Dance and the potlatch. However, just as the Pueblo had hidden their religious activities when pressured by Spanish missionaries, many Indians continued to engage in traditional practices in secret.
