Unit VII: What, Then, Is This American? ca. 1865 - 1900

Question/Problem 5:What was the impact of westward expansion on Indians?

Read the following quotes from Indians who lived in the late 19th century. Make a list of the ways westward expansion affected these people.

You have driven away our game and our means of livelihood out of the country, until now we have nothing left that is valuable except the hills that you ask us to give up.... The earth is full of minerals of all kinds, and on the earth, the ground is cove red with forests of heavy pine, and when we give these up to the Great Father we know that we give up the last thing that is valuable either to us or the white people.

We never did the white man any harm; we don't intend to.... We are willing to be friends with the white man.... The buffalo are diminishing fast. The antelope, that were plenty a few years ago, they are now thin. When they shall all die we shall be hungry ; we shall want something to eat, and we will be compelled to come into the fort. Your young men must not fire at us; whenever they see us they fire, and we fire on them.

My people, before the white man came you were happy. You had many buffalo to eat and tall grass for your ponies--you could come and go like the wind. When it grew cold you could journey to the valleys of the south, where healing springs are; and when it grew warm, you could return to the mountains of the north. The white man came. He dug up the bones of our mother, the earth. He tore her bosom with steel. He built big trails and put iron horses on them. He fought you and beat you, and put you in barren places where a horned toad would die. He said you must stay there; you must not go hunt in the mountains.

We have been broken up and moved six times. We have been despoiled of our property. We thought when we moved across the Missouri River and had paid for our homes in Kansas we were safe. But in a few years the white man wanted our country. We had schools ls for our children and churches where we listened to the same gospel the white man listens to. The white man came into our country from Missouri. And drove our cattle and horses away and if our people followed them they were killed. We try to forget t these things. But we would not forget that the white man brought us the blessed gospel of Christ. The Christian hope. This more than pays for all we have suffered.

The white man has been the chief obstacle in the way of Indian civilization. The benevolent measures attempted by the government for their advancement has been almost uniformly thwarted by the agencies employed to carry them out. The soldiers, sent for their protection, too often carried demoralization and disease into their midst. The agent appointed to be their friend and counselor, business manager, and the almoner of government bounties, frequently went among them only to enrich himself in the shortest test possible time, at the cost of the Indians, and spend the largest available sum of the government money with the least ostensible beneficial result.