The goal was to pressure Indians into becoming farmers or ranchers, thereby helping to assimilate them. In some cases, the alloted land was then further reduced by opening up the excess to white settlers.
T he individual allotment policy continued until , when it became clear that the policy of disbanding reservations had failed. The new Indian Reorganization Act laid out new rights for Native Americans, and encouraged tribal sovereignty and land management by tribes. The act slowed the assignment of tribal lands to individual members, and reduced the assignment of "extra" holdings to nonmembers. In , legislation was enacted that was intended to terminate the relationship between Indian tribes and the federal government.
Reservations would cease to exist as independent political entities. The government also instituted an employment and relocation program which gave financial assistance and social services to Indians who wanted to leave reservations for urban areas with supposedly better employment prospects.
Only a few tribes were terminated before this approach was also abandoned. Today, tribes possess tribal sovereignty, even though it is limited by federal and state or local law. Laws on tribal lands vary from those of the surrounding areas. The tribal council, not the local or federal government, generally has jurisdiction over reservations.
Different reservations have different systems of government. A map of current reservations. The Library of Congress. Waldman, Carl, and Molly Braun.
Atlas of the North American Indian. An explicit goal of the Dawes Act was to create divisions among Native Americans and eliminate the social cohesion of tribes. Explore This Park. Article The Dawes Act. What was the Dawes Act? In the Badlands area, members of the Oglala Lakota tribe had to contend with the Dawes Act -- how could they advocate for their rightful land?
How could they fight the pressure to assimilate? The Homestead Acts encouraged Westward expansion. The more people homesteading in the Midwest, the greater pressure for Native Americans to assimilate.
NPS Photo What is assimilation? A further 40, Native Americans worked in war-related industries. For many, this involved a permanent relocation to the cities and a willingness to assimilate into mainstream white culture. Collier himself recognised that the federal government would need to change its Native American policy fundamentally as a result of the war. The following year he even hinted at a return to the policy of assimilation. Never before have they been so well prepared to take their places among the general citizenry and to become assimilated into the white population.
The nation had just fought a major war to destroy one collectivist ideology — Nazism — and the onset of the Cold War in the late s made most Americans worried about the power and ambitions of another — Communism. Americans began stridently trumpeting the virtues of individual freedom against the collective ideology of the USSR.
Many conservative Congressmen had never liked it because they believed that the autonomy it granted to Native American communities gave them special privileges. In January Collier, worn down by the growing hostility to his policies, resigned as Commissioner. The notion that it was time to terminate the wardship status of Native Americans and wind up federal responsibility for their welfare became increasingly popular in Washington in the postwar years.
This would mean that BIA could be abolished, the reservations broken up, Indian resources sold off and the profits divided among tribal members. Indians would become just like any other Americans — responsible as individuals for their own destiny. The IRA, by returning the land to communal ownership and making it inalienable, had limited the property rights of individual Indians. This programme was gradually expanded and by nearly 30 per cent of Native Americans lived in cities, as opposed to just 8 per cent in Securing housing, coping with prejudice and even understanding the everyday features of urban life such as traffic lights, lifts, telephones and clocks made the experience traumatic for many Indians.
Not surprisingly, many suffered unemployment, slum living and alcoholism. Federal funding for the relocation project was never sufficient to assist Native Americans to cope with these problems, and many drifted back to the reservations.
The first step towards terminating the reservations came in when Congress, in part to reward Native Americans for their contribution to the war effort, set up the Indian Claims Commission to hear Indian claims for any lands stolen from them since the creation of the USA in The Commission was initially supported by the National Congress of American Indians NCAI , a pressure group formed in , because they welcomed a federal initiative to deal with long-standing grievances.
However, it was clear that the Commission would provide only financial compensation and not return any land. In August , Congress endorsed House Concurrent Resolution which is widely regarded as the principal statement of the termination policy:.
It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, to end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship. In the same month Congress passed Public Law which, in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin, transferred criminal jurisdiction from the Indians to the state authorities, except on certain specified reservations.
Congress also repealed the laws banning the sale of alcohol and guns to Indians. In some Indian areas law and order disappeared altogether.
Many Native Americans were alarmed about the termination policy. But in Washington, it was seen in terms of freedom and opportunity. The death of the Indian way of life happened as much at the hands of well-intentioned reformers as those who wished to see the Indians exterminated.
With so much of their life stripped away, it was ever more difficult for the Indians to maintain their tribal integrity. Army opening fire and killing over Indians. Sand Creek Massacre a militia raid led by Colonel Chivington on an Indian camp in Colorado, flying both the American flag and the white flag of surrender; over one hundred men, women, and children were killed. Skip to main content. Go West Young Man! Westward Expansion, Search for:. Tell General Howard I know his heart.
What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food.
No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever. It is worth looking through the photographs and records of the school to see how this well-intended program obliterated Indian culture.
Section Summary The interaction of the American Indians with white settlers during the western expansion movement was a painful and difficult one. Army opening fire and killing over Indians Sand Creek Massacre a militia raid led by Colonel Chivington on an Indian camp in Colorado, flying both the American flag and the white flag of surrender; over one hundred men, women, and children were killed. Licenses and Attributions.
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