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Example research essay topic: Indian Removal Native Americans - 1,885 words

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... essentially trading-based, and not currency-based (King, 1885). Another event that was catastrophic for these tribesmen was the loss of one of their sources of food, the buffalo. After exposing the land to white settlers, the buffalo was excessively hunted by them for its meat and hide.

In the beginning of the 18 th century, it was thought that there was approximately 40 million heads of buffalo roaming the country. After uncontrolled hunting and gaming, the population of these animals decreased drastically to the thousands. In 1895, they were ruled to be almost extinct. Without their basic source of protein, many Native Americans once again faced starvation (Trabich, 1991). Indians attacked America before the secure emergence of the country. They exemplified fears that the independent nation could not survive, fears that had led many Americans to intrigue at its dismemberment.

An Indian will claim everything and anything, complained Andrew Jackson, after including 10 million acres of Cherokee land in a treaty coerced from the Creeks. Indians became the bad children upon whom was projected the whites own aggressive expansionism. (Knopf, Alfred 1975). Respected by their fellow African-Americans, the Buffalo soldiers were subjected to adverse conditions in the course of their duty. Since they were blacks, they were often treated with prejudice by both the military and the people. No wonder, they got the hard assignments.

They had little food, even spoiled food that could not sustain them in battle. People benefited from what they did such as the building of roads. Railways and the telegraph. They got very little salary, but they were the ones who had the lowest desertion rate in the Army at that time. (1866: Congress Creates the First Peace time African American Units). Thus, they were assigned to fight off the Indians who were most feared. The Buffalo soldiers were also compliant to the wishes of their authorities.

They were sent to dangerous missions too such as searching for cattle, thieves, exporting stages and hoarding the supply wagons, cattle herds and railroads. The Buffalo soldiers had much going for them because they had the stamina to withstand the pressures of their plight, (Medinaviles, Israel et al). They were most useful in warding off the fierce Indians who attacked them as they made the railways (Medinaviles, Israel et al). The Buffalo soldiers managed to fight the fierce Comanche, Ute, Kiowa, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Bannock, Kickapoo, Sioux and Blackfoot. These Buffalo soldiers were really trained to fight and so they were made to go to the frontlines. Even if outnumbered, such as on one occasion when a unit of 90 soldiers lost only 3 soldiers.

At that time, they were attacked by 700 Cheyenne Indians Among the other tribes Buffalo Soldiers fought against were the Comanche, Ute, Kiowa, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Bannock, Kickapoo, Sioux and Blackfoot. At times the soldiers were outnumbered, but they gave pursuit anyway. On one occasion, a unit of 90 soldiers lost only three men when they were attacked by 700 Cheyenne Indians. (Medinaviles, Israel et al). Indeed, the Buffalo soldiers were brave and honest men who faced hardships with the strength and courage.

They carved their own niches in the history of the West. While it is true that the Dawes Act of 1887 endeavored to assimilate the Native Americans into white society and culture, the Act was sorely lacking in preparation in terms of studying these peoples cultures and way of life. It is very clear that the Native Americans concept of land ownership is very different from that of the white settlers. Both the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the succeeding Dawes Act of 1887 failed to see this. The Native Americans use of land is based on communal living. The tribes worked the land as a team, and thus reaped the bounty of the land also as a team.

The idea of individual ownership of the land did not exist to them at all. When white settlers first entered, the Indians greeted them in peace. As late as the 1820 s and 1830 s, white hunters, trappers, and explorers moved freely throughout the West, unmolested by natives. Some lived with the Indians and took Indian wives. Even in the 1840 s, when wagon trains passed through the Great Plains on their way to Oregon, relatively few of the settlers were harmed by Indians. In The Trail Of Tears by Gloria Jahoda, presented how Indian populations dropped and how white people are the ones responsible for the drop of their populations.

But as more and more whites began to move into the Indians domain, an inevitable conflict began to brew. The presence of large numbers of whites threatened to destroy the Indian way of life. Sometimes the whites came in droves. For example, the Colorado gold rush in 1859 sent thousands of prospectors into territory the federal government had guaranteed to the Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1851. As ranchers and homesteaders moved into other sections of the Great Plains, Indians watched land they considered theirs being taken. Some white men dealt deceitfully with the Indians.

In addition, Indian proved to be very susceptible to white mens diseases, such as smallpox (Yancey, David). Indeed, the Cherokee people lived in the southern Appalachian mountains for many years before the Europeans and Americans forced them to move to western lands (Underwood, 2002). Nothing posed a bigger threat to the Indian way of life than the destruction of the buffalo. At the close of the Civil War, some 15 million of these huge American bison still grazed on the Great Plains.

Occasionally trains crossing the western prairies had to stop and wait for hours for herds to amble across the tracks, since experience proved that attempting to plow through was likely to cause derailment. In 1868, a Kansas Pacific train ran for 120 miles alongside an almost unbroken herd. But when white hunters came with their powerful rifles, the herds quickly began to disappear. In addition to the buffalo that were killed for their hides, largely to meet the demand for buffalo robes, which were in high fashion back east. Other buffalo were shot just for their tongues and a few other choice cuts, and some were shot just for sport. By 1885, fewer than a thousand buffalo were left in the United States and the once numerous beasts faced extinction.

Without the buffalo, the Indian was of life could not survive (Knopf, Alfred 1975). Another evidence to prove this is the fact that when their way of life seemed threatened, Indians resorted to war. Between 1869 and about 1890, almost constant war raged in various sections of the West against these Indians. Whenever Indians went on the warpath, the federal government sent in troops. The battles were fierce, and there was cruelty in the course of that path. Many of the soldiers sent to put down Indian uprisings were Civil War veterans.

Among them were four black units. A total of about one fifth of the frontier soldiers during these years were blacks. The best-known commanders of the frontier troops were also Civil War veterans. Among them were Colonel George Armstrong Custer, General John Sherman, and General Philip H. Sheridan. The cavalry troops found that the Indians, with their swift ponies and their knowledge of the land, were formidable foes.

Fifty Indians were often a match for several thousands troops. (1866: Congress Creates the First Peace time African American Units). Indians attacked America before the secure emergence of the country. They exemplified fears that the independent nation could not survive, fears that had led many Americans to intrigue at its dismemberment. An Indian will claim everything and anything, complained Andrew Jackson, after including 10 million acres of Cherokee land in a treaty coerced from the Creeks. Indians became the bad children upon whom was projected the whites own aggressive expansionism. (Knopf, Alfred 1975).

Respected by their fellow African-Americans, the Buffalo soldiers were subjected to adverse conditions in the course of their duty. Since they were blacks, they were often treated with prejudice by both the military and the people. No wonder, they got the hard assignments. They had little food, even spoiled food that could not sustain them in battle.

People benefited from what they did such as the building of roads. Railways and the telegraph. They got very little salary, but they were the ones who had the lowest desertion rate in the Army at that time. (1866: Congress Creates the First Peace time African American Units). Thus, they were assigned to fight off the Indians who were most feared.

The Buffalo soldiers were also compliant to the wishes of their authorities. They were sent to dangerous missions too such as searching for cattle, thieves, exporting stages and hoarding the supply wagons, cattle herds and railroads. The Buffalo soldiers had much going for them because they had the stamina to withstand the pressures of their plight, (Medinaviles, Israel et al). These Acts ought to be known as the most shameful Acts in the history of the United States. It seemed that the tribesmen were really looked upon with disdain and were treated as second class citizens by the white settlers.

What the latter did not understand was that these peoples already had more than 2000 years of history in their hands. They had owned the land and roamed the larger part of it even before the great civilizations in Europe were being born. Ownership was not in the sense of titled ownership, but to them the land was a gift and thus, they had to take care of it not only for themselves, but for future generations as well. Their culture reflected a love of nature, of the land and of all the creatures therein. In general, they led peaceful lives and never tried to instigate any form of violence. This very sad part of history resulted in the decimation of the Native American population.

They owned the land, and yet it was forcibly taken away from them. Along with the land, their lives were stolen from them too. WORKS CITED Bureau of Public Affairs. (2005). Indian Removal Act of 1830. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: (web) Cave, A. (2003). Abuse of Power: Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The Historian. 65 (6): 865 - 890, December, 2003. Darrenkamp, A. (2003). History Matters. The Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears: Cause, Effect, and Justification. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: web Jahoda, Gloria.

The Trail of Tears. King, H. (August 1885). The Indian Country. The Century Magazine, 30: 4. Medinaviles, Israel, Arriaga, Angelo, Moore, Local and Saenz Jesus. Buffalo Soldiers Defended Western Frontier.

Borderlands. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: web Myers, J. No Idle Past: Uses of History in the 1830 Indian Removal Debates. The Historian, 63, 2000.

Sanchez, K. (2000). Cherokee Nation: Trail of Tears. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: (web) Trabich, L. (1991). Exposing the Land to the White Settlers. An End to Intolerance. 5: June 1991.

U. S. Government (1830). The Indian Removal Act of 1830.

Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: (web) Underwood, Thomas Bryan. Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears. Cherokee Publications; 1 edition (June 10, 2002) 1866: Congress Creates the First Peace time African American Units. The Buffalo Soldiers on the Western Frontier. Retrieved Nov. 29, 2007 at: web


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Research essay sample on Indian Removal Native Americans

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