Mexican and American War

 

The Mexican and American War started with a disagreement between the United States and Mexico concerning the boundary between Mexico and Texas. Another source of contention was the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845. The Mexicans believed the boundary started at the Nueces River while the U.S. decided the Rio Grande served as the border. President Polk, a strong believer in “Manifest Destiny,” pushed for the union to go to war with Mexico. On many occasions, the U.S. was more prepared and had better artillery. Disease took more lives than the actual battles, even though some of the battles were exceptionally brutal with lots of bloodshed. When the war was over, Mexico lost approximately a third of its territory. The U.S. was victorious  in the acquisition of approximately 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory which included New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and western Colorado.

            A multitude of circumstances occurred throughout the history of this country in which Native Americans lost their lives as a result of land acquisition. The Mexican/American War tells a different story. The Comanche, Kiowas, Navajo and other tribes were in control of the land in Northern Mexico (present day Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico) during the 1830s and 1840s. Northern Mexico was lightly populated by Mexicans. The Native Americans conducted a lot of raids and killed many Mexicans, took over their property and abducted their women and children. The purpose of the raids according to historians was revenge and to gain resources for their tribal communities. The land in Northern Mexico was originally inhabited by the Comanche, Kiowa, Navaho and other tribes, not Mexican people. To the white settlers the raids appeared to be random. Consideration was not given to the ability of the Comanche to organize multiple tribes to join forces with them  in their effort to hold onto their homelands.

The Indian warriors attacked the Mexicans, not because they were mighty, because the Mexican people were weak according to one source. Other sources depict the tribal people as fierce, especially the Comanches while they fought to maintain control or gain control of their land holdings. Many areas in Northern Mexico resembled ghostly deserted wastelands after a few years of raids. After the Americans settled into the Texas area, there were constant battles over boundaries. The Comanche had set boundaries clearly delineating their settlement and hunting grounds. However, the Texans violated their boundaries and continued to trespass onto their land. A common violation committed by white settlers on an on-going basis was their efforts to take over their land holdings (DeLay, 2010).

            Many questions were asked during the time of the Mexican/American War while the Mexicans in northern Mexico struggled against Indian enemies. “Who was a Mexican? What did Mexicans owe local, state, and national governments, and what did these governments owe them? What did Mexicans owe each other? These remained open questions throughout the 1830s and 1840s, and fierce disagreements, even armed rebellions, failed to settle them… by 1846, northerners found themselves divided, exhausted, and embittered in the face of another, very different kind of invasion” (DeLay, 2008, pg. xvii).

A different kind of invasion involved the American military and the take over the northern Mexico. At first the northern Mexicans and various tribes such as the Comanches were evenly matched and the attacks occurred simultaneously from the Mexicans attacking the Indians to the Indians returning the attacks. Then the Indian warriors gained the upper hand and raided the Mexican settlements on a regular basis. The raids, violent and destructive, happened when they were least expected.  The Indian warriors killed the men and abducted women and children and they were turned into slaves. The Mexicans, who lived in the north, lived in fear of taking care of their fields of crops and domestic animals (cows and sheep) because they would be out in the open fields. Fear of being attacked left them struggling to put food on their tables. If they left to find a safer location, they had to leave their domestic animals behind so they did not attract attention, realizing that their property and animals may be confiscated or destroyed. Settlements in all eight northern states were raided by the indigenous. The Mexican government did not come to their aid which created resentments.

By the time of the American invasion, northern Mexico’s economy was stagnated and much of the countryside was depopulated. Even though they were taking their lives in their own hands, many of the Mexicans who lived in northern Mexico decided to leave and move to a hopefully a safer area. One report indicated that the Apache by 1848 had caused the abandonment of ninety ranches, thirty haciendas, and twenty-six mines in the state of Sonora (DeLay, 2008).

            The American soldiers sunk to acts of cruelty when they were ambushed by guerilla forces which stemmed from the pockets of northern Mexicans. The soldiers decided to punish Mexican settlements by massacring many civilians.

The white settlers took over parcel by parcel of land in Texas and the surrounding areas. Moses Austin, a banker from Missouri, received the first land grant given by the Mexican government. He died shortly after he moved to Texas. His 29-year-old son, Stephen F. Austin, inherited his father’s land grant.  Driven to take over the Mexican land, he led 300 families into Texas.

The number of new white settlers grew to 38,000 people by 1834 with only 8,000 being Mexican citizens. Mexico believed slavery must be abolished. Part of the Mexican rule mandated that the new settlers were to not own slaves. It didn’t take long before that ruling was thrown out the window by the unruly settlers. One of the goals of Mexico when they permitted white settlers to reside in Texas was for them to gain control of the land from the Comanches, Kiowas and other tribes. Northern Mexico, sparsely populated by Mexicans, lay prey to the Indian tribes.

            White settlers moving to Texas and other parts of northern Mexico fell into Polk’s plan of what he desired for the union which was to take over all the land from the east coast to the Pacific Ocean. In 1833, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, announced that he did not want to tolerate the U.S. settlers and their unruly behavior. Austin did not take the Mexican president’s threats to lightly. He ordered the settlers to arm themselves to prepare for a possible fight. Meanwhile, the settlers armed the Comanches and Kiowas and sent them to raid the Mexicans that resided in Mexico, north of Texas. They were seen wearing peace medals given to them by the U.S. government which meant they agreed to work peacefully with the Americans (DeLay, 2010).

            On February 23, 1836, Santa Anna commanded 1500 soldiers and the regiment headed to the Alamo. Only 200 Texans defended the fort. They held out for 13-day siege, struggling to not surrender. Well-known people held down the fort such as David Crockett and Jim Bowie. All but two were killed when the Mexican soldiers stormed the walls of the fort. The slaughter of American soldiers raised the hackles of the Americans and they vowed to seek revenge.

            The battle of San Jacinto in 1836 ended badly for the Mexican army. Texan General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna’s army in a battle that only lasted 18 minutes. The Texans shouted “Remember the Alamo!” 700 of the Mexican soldiers were killed while only nine Texans died. Santa Anna, captured, decided to draw up a peace treaty, after being in captivity for three days. The treaty outlined the people of Texas’ independence and the Mexican army left Texas. According to the treaty, the Rio Grande served as the boundary between Texas and Mexico instead of the Nueces River. Santa Anna was released and he went back on his word regarding maintaining peace with the U.S. He started plotting his revenge.

Santa Anna warned the United States that if they annexed Texas and made it part of the U.S., that action would lead to war. Mexico, not in a position to make such a threat, stumbled into a quagmire of problems. In the 1840s Mexico was a divided country. Mexico’s leaders were usually military generals and most of the money was in the hands of the wealthy aristocrats. The wealthy managed large plantations. Most of the Mexicans were poor. Many were farmers, merchants and Indian people who lived off the land. The governmental system, unstable at best, changed hands many times. When General Santa Anna became president in 1840, many of the common folk such as the merchants and farmers did not notice. They went about their business of providing for their families by living off the land. The Mexicans did not join together to fight a common cause like the Texans did (Bauer, 1974).

            The U.S., on the other hand, became a bustling country by participating in the Industrial Revolution which resulted in the development of large cities, railroad companies, and factories. Farming was also a way of life for many young Americans. The U.S. was a divided country, also. The two primary political parties of the time were the Whigs and the Democrats. They disagreed as to whether a war with Mexico was appropriate. The Whigs thought the Democrats wanted to acquire more land and add additional states to the union to increase the number of states who held slaves. The Whigs from the north supported industrialization and building up a vast industrial empire while the southern Democrats desired larger land holdings to establish large plantations. The Democrats fought to prove the need for expansion.

The term “Manifest Destiny” coined by John O’Sullivan, a New York publisher in 1845, expressed the need to possess the entire continent. Americans, who bought into the concept of Manifest Destiny, believed their democratic system was the best form of government in the world. They felt it was their God-given right and went as far as to say it was their duty, to expand the borders of the country. Polk rode on the shirt tails of the Manifest Destiny belief system. Other presidential candidates opposed annexing Texas. Abraham Lincoln was one of the decenters against the Mexican/American War. Polk labeled Lincoln as a traitor, which fit with his fight against slavery during the civil war.

            John Slidell, sent by President Polk to Mexico City to offer $30. million for what is today Texas, California and much of New Mexico. Slidell was sent his merry way by General Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga after her refused the offer. One of Mexico’s greatest assets was land and they were not willing to sell any of it. Mexico consisted of a vast amount of land, 1.5 million square miles. Mexico defeated the mighty Spanish and reached sovereignty; they were upset that the U.S. wanted a large portion of their land. There was no swaying Mexican rulers, Polk became frustrated (Bauer, 1974).

            On December 29, 1845, Polk went against Mexico’s warning and annexed Texas and made it the 28^th state. He placed the U.S. on the inevitable path to war with Mexico.

            Sixty-two-year old General Zachary Taylor led Texan troops to the Rio Grande and stationed them on the Texas side while some of the Mexican soldiers were stationed on the Mexico side of the Rio Grande. By April of 1846, about 6,000 Mexico soldiers were stationed on the Mexico side of the Rio Grande. A letter was sent to Taylor by General Mariano Arista warning Taylor that his forces would cross the Rio Grande and wipe out Taylor’s Army.  Taylor remained stationed on the Texas side. Arista ordered an army of 2,000 men to take out Taylor’s guards. Only 70 men were stationed on the Texas side.  They were no match for the Mexican forces. Thornton, who was placed in charge of the soldiers at the border, and 16 other soldiers were slaughtered. This incident was referred to as the Thornton Affair and served as the last straw for the U.S. because their soldiers were killed on what they considered U.S. territory. The United States and Mexico were at war (DiConsiglio, 2012).                                                                                                     

            Polk addressed Congress and told them American blood was shed on American soil.

On May 13, 1846, Congress agreed with Polk and declared war on Mexico.

            War fever took hold of many in the U.S. At first the U.S. army only consisted of 9,000 soldiers. Congress authorized the president to seek at least 50,000 volunteers. They were given guns and uniforms and after a few days of training were sent to Mexico.  Hundreds of thousands of young men immediately set out to enlist.  The squadrons consisted of wealthy landowners’ sons, poor farmers, Irish immigrants and a few American Indians. Recruiting offices posted signs “Mexico or Death.” The response was so over the board that some needed to be turned away. Americans cheered on the soldiers as they departed and the Americans expected a quick takeover of Mexico.

            The Whigs still persisted on peace and no war. Abraham Lincoln argued that American blood was not spilled on American soil. He exclaimed “That soil was not ours.” Mexico believed the boundary was set at the Nuece River and not the Rio Grande where the American soldiers, who were killed, were stationed. The U.S. confirmed the Rio Grande as the boundary.

            Before the war was officially declared, the Mexican and U.S. military forces fought in the bushes and trees lining the Rio Grande. Palo Alto was the setting for the first battle on May 8^th,  1848.  Taylor led 2,400 troops to Fort Brown. General Arista’s 3,400 soldiers blocked the road. It was too much for the U.S. soldiers to charge into the Mexican army. Taylor tried a different technique. He ordered his soldiers to perform “flying artillery.” The soldiers rode horses fast through the thick brush in an attack and retreat manner. The soldiers, able to fire every 10 to 15 seconds with their light guns, were five times faster than the Mexican artillery. Artista’s army suffered lots of casualties which forced him to retreat across the river. The Mexicans were defeated at Resaca de la Palma in one of the battles. They thought they were hidden and had the advantage but Taylor’s army was victorious. The Mexicans had to abandon their post. The Mexican cook prepared a victory meal for the Mexican soldiers. The American soldiers enjoyed the meal instead (DiConsiglio, 2012).

           

The U.S. soldiers were at a definite advantage. The majority of the Americans had the privilege of being armed with rifles and muskets. The muskets, easy to load and fire, demonstrated range and accuracy. Many others possessed pistols, bayonets, and swords. Some of the Texas recruits armed themselves with many weapons. It was in the best interests of the American soldiers to travel light, carrying unnecessary gear through the dust and heat of the Mexican territory was not prudent. Extra weight made travel even more difficult to navigate. They also needed to carry water, blankets and a haversack (a soldier strap bag).

            The Mexicans, not as prepared as the Americans, carried weapons that were older, heavier and less accurate. The old flintlock musket called a Brown Bess was the weapon that most of them had in their possession. The British made these weapons a long time ago and they  were considered outdated. Their muskets were so heavy, they could not hold them up to their shoulders to shoot, they needed to shoot from their hips which would defer the weapon’s accuracy. A retreating regiment of Mexican soldiers left behind muskets and bayonets. Some of the American soldiers noticed how warn and old their weapons were and thought the weapons must have been labeled unserviceable by the British so they sold them to the Mexicans at a low price. Their weapons were no match to the American’s more modern and efficient pistols and muskets (DiConsiglio, 2012).

           

            General Taylor’s fighting skills were put to the test when his troops tried to take over the fortified city of Monterrey. Taylor had to wait while more troops and supplies were sent. Taylor’s troops amounted to 6,000 against 9,000 Mexican soldiers. When they entered the city, Mexican soldiers ambushed some of the American troops from behind the adobe homes in the city. He lost 11 West Point graduates, his finest soldiers. Taylor changed his tactics and conducted house to house raids using picks and crowbars. They punched holes in the adobe walls and fired 6-pound shells inside the homes. They fought hand to hand against the Mexican soldiers and as the Mexican soldiers poured into the city streets, Taylor’s canons fired at them, which became overwhelming for the Mexicans. 120 Americans were killed and the Mexicans lost 400 lives, which included civilians. Taylor allowed the Mexican troops to vacate the city with their guns and uniforms. Polk was furious. He believed Taylor’s job was to kill the enemy. He told Polk that his men had to regroup and regain their strength (DiConsiglio, 2012).

            In spite of Polk’s dislike of Taylor, Taylor gained massive popularity in Washington. The Whig party wanted him to run for president. Polk felt threatened and considered Taylor his rival to his party’s hold on the presidency.

           

            Hardships that needed to be considered during the Mexican/American War were numerous and took a lot of the lives of the soldiers. The medical practices led to many deaths. Sanitizing medical instruments was not conducted. Many of the soldiers needed amputations and the saws used were not cleaned after an amputation was conducted. Human waste, not handled in a sanitary method, posed a serious threat to the health of the soldiers. The food consisted of slabs of beef and pork with hard bread. The tents, in poor condition with holes, led to many of the soldiers sleeping in wet conditions. Illness ran rampant through the camps: yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, smallpox and measles. Approximately 13 percent of the American fighting force lost their lives to illness, 11,155 deaths altogether (Bauer, 1974).

 

            The Battle of Buena Vista proved to be the bloodiest battle during the war. Taylor was greatly outnumbered by Santa Anna’s army. The two countries fought over two days. The Mexicans surrounded the American soldiers and at one point it appeared that Santa Anna was winning the battle. He demanded Taylor’s surrender. Taylor refused. Santa Anna ordered a vicious assault on the Americans. The U.S. line was broken through. The legion of Mississippi volunteer soldiers led by Colonel Jefferson Davis managed to delay Santa Anna’s troops while Taylor’s soldiers regrouped.

            Heavy rain drenched the soldiers as they stood their ground. Taylor bravely rode through Mexican gunfire and ordered Captain Braxton Bragg to “Give them hell, Bragg!” This became his campaign slogan when he ran for the presidency in 1848. The battle ended with Taylor the victor. Santa Anna withdrew during the night. Taylor was in com-plete control of northern Mexico. Approximately 300 Americans lost their lives while the Mexicans had approximately 600 fatalities (DiConsiglio, 2012).

            The Mexicans and Americans fought another battle at Veracruz, a seaport, in which the Americans were the victors. The first American battle in which the Americans arrived by boats. On March 29, 1847 after 700 deaths, 400 were civilians. The Mexican forces surrendered. Generals, who gained much more notoriety for the Civil War, served in this battle: Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Ulysses S. Grant (DiConsiglio, 2012).

            The Americans had one more hurdle to overcome before the war could be called to a halt, they needed to defeat Mexico City. General Scott marched his 10,000 soldiers toward the capital of Mexico, Mexico City. Surprisingly, the Mexicans did not deter the Americans on their journey.  Many Mexican soldiers deserted Santa Anna’s military forces. They could not withstand another U.S. attack. Santa Anna managed to pull together 12,000 soldiers to block the Americans’ path. General Scott’s men, headed toward a mountain pass, knew they were in store for an ambush.

Lee remembered a possible trail that by-passed the mountain pass when he previously went on a scouting mission. He led the troops through muddy ground around the pass. The men struggled over the rough terrain. They ended up on high ground above Santa Anna’s soldiers. Surrounded, the Mexicans surrendered. The Americans lost approxi-mately 350 men while Mexico lost more than 1,000. The Mexicans fled so quickly they left behind weapons, food, uniforms and even one of Santa Anna’s spare wooden legs (DiConsiglio, 2012).

The final battle occurred on August, 1847 in which Scott charged towards Mexico City. He headed toward the city via the muddiest path on the southwest section of the city, it was the least guarded. The U.S. soldiers were nine miles from the city. Scott encountered heavy fighting when they came across Santa Anna’s army. The depleted Mexican army hid in a fortified convent (a religious residence for the nuns). Scott’s artillery fired at the convent until the Mexicans surrendered. Santa Anna snuck away to a large castle style fort, surrounded by a high wall.

On September 12, 1847, the U.S. artillery fired heavily at the Mexican castle for more than a day until finally a massive amount of U.S. soldiers stormed the walls. Scott’s troops marched proudly into the main plaza. A small group of U.S. Marines took over the National Palace and the American flag was raised. 2,000 Mexicans lost their lives and there were 450 U.S. causalities. A song that stood the test of time “From the Halls of Montezuma” was in reference to the takeover of the National Palace. By September 14, 1847, the Americans occupied Mexico City. The U.S. Army occupied the capital until the Mexican government agreed to give up their northern territories. Santa Anna resigned as Mexico’s president and fled the country in disgrace before issue of the treaty was resolved. The agreement of the release of land to the U.S. was codified in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which also declared the end of the war.

             

            The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on February 2, 1848. The treaty described the vast amount of land the U.S. acquired: Texas at the Rio Grande border, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. The tens of thousands of Mexicans remained on the territory of what was previously considered Northern Mexico (DiConsiglio, 2012).

            “The Mexican people are now receding before the Indian,” A Virginian senator observed, “and this affords a new argument in favor of occupation of the territory, which would otherwise fall into the occupation of the savages” (DeLay, 2010, para. 19).  The Americans believed they could do what the Mexicans could not concerning the Indian people which was to defeat the Indians and improve and industrialize the area that was previously northern Mexico. Article 11 of the treaty which ended the war included a commitment of the U.S. to restrain Indians residing north of the new border from conducting raids and also contained a stipulation that the U.S. would rescue Mexican captives held by Indians. The U.S. discovered it was difficult or next to impossible to carry out the aforementioned stipulations concerning the Native Americans in their newly acquired

territory. The raiding occurred more readily after the end of

the war in an effort to deter the white settlers from taking away their land. Land represented life and a means of providing for their families (DeLay, 2010).

The war with Mexico made the U.S. a world power and the conquered territory led to America’s prosperity. Many critics add that the war poisoned the democratic soul and stirred it towards a path of insatiable economic imperialism. Mexico, an enemy of the U.S., led the Americans to view the indigenous as indispensable to the redesigning of the country. However, after they served the purpose of eliminating a multitude of Mexicans for the Americans, they were again considered an enemy to be eliminated and a large portion of their land was taken from them. 

 

 

Louisiana Purchase

 

"Let the Land rejoice, for you have bought Louisiana for a Song."

Gen. Horatio Gates to President Thomas Jefferson, July 18, 1803

“Robert Livingston and James Monroe closed on the sweetest real estate deal of the millennium when they signed the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris on April 30, 1803. They were authorized to pay France up to $10 million for the port of New Orleans and the Floridas. When offered the entire territory of Louisiana–an area larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal combined–the American negotiators swiftly agreed to a price of $15 million.

Although President Thomas Jefferson was a strict interpreter of the Constitution who wondered if the U.S. Government was authorized to acquire new territory, he was also a visionary who dreamed of an "empire for liberty" that would stretch across the entire continent. As Napoleon threatened to take back the offer, Jefferson squelched whatever doubts he had, submitted the treaty to Congress, and prepared to occupy a land of unimaginable riches.

The Louisiana Purchase added 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River to the United States. For roughly 4 cents an acre, the United States had purchased a territory whose natural resources amounted to a richness beyond anyone's wildest calculations” (Miller, 1931, para. 1 - 3).

France claimed a large chunk of land that ran from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Land in which many indigenous people resided. The land exchanged hands between Spain and France and ended up in France’s possession much to the surprise of President Jefferson. At the same time, tension rose between France and Britain. The Island of Saint Dominique lost appeal for Napolean Bonapart after slave rebellions and British interference. After negotiations, France sold a young United States the Louisiana territory. End results of the sale was the migration of many white settlers, battles between Native Americans and pioneers, the ravages of disease and a huge loss of land and its valuable resources for the indigenous people. The Louisiana Purchase was the largest land takeover in the history of this country without the act of war playing a part.

            In April of 1682, Robert Cavelier, Sieur (Lord) de La Salle, a French Explorer, made claim to land near the mouth of the Mississippi River when he read a declaration before a group of confused Indian people. He pronounced his claim, for his country, the entire Mississippi basin. Cavelier named the area for Prince Louis the Great. Hence the name Louisiana which was in honor of Louis XIV.

            The French explorer Jean-Baptise le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville later founded a settlement near the site of La Salle’s claim named it Nouvelle Orleans for Philippe, Duke of Orleans and Regent of France. By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the population of whites, slaves of African American descent and Native Americans numbered approximately 8,000 within the Louisiana Territory (Harris, 2003).

           Ownership of Louisiana went back and forth between France and Spain. Spain took over and had control of the territory of Louisiana in October 1800 when Napolean made a secret deal to take back New Orleans and Louisiana from Spain. He wished to amass and send an army to protect his land holdings. Jefferson did not learn until 1801 that Napolean had reclaimed Louisiana. Faced with trepidation about how powerful France became, he did not want France to have control of the United State’s trade routes. Jefferson made plans about how he was going to purchase Louisiana from France. He equated France’s ownership of Louisiana as big of threat as the Revolutionary War (Cerami, 2003).

            Napolean pondered his hold of the island of Saint Domingue which could provide France and other countries with a vast amount of sugar, cotton, cocoa and coffee. France could use the port of New Orleans to ship the crops to Europe. The residents of Saint Domingue believed the French were going to reinstate slavery like what happened on Guadeloupe. Slavery was reinstated. The slave population suffered from food shortages and brutally forced hard labor. The slaves revolted which forced Napolean to sends more troops. More than half of the French army died from diseases, mostly Yellow Fever while at Saint Domingue. Napolean’s interest in the island diminished severely (Cerami, 2003).

Napolean feared a war with Britain may ensue and he did not have the funds to pay for such a war. He thought Britain may attack Louisiana from Canada and he would rather fight Britain from France and not Canada.

            The treaty which permitted the U.S. to use Spanish territory on the Mississippi had expired. American ship-ments could not be stored in New Orleans warehouses. Merchandise and produce had to be left on open wharfs while awaiting shipment to the other locations which risked exposure to weather and theft. The U.S. economy was in jeopardy.

            Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania drafted a resolution which requested Jefferson to form a 50,000 man army to take over the city of New Orleans. France and the U.S. definitely had a stake in the outcome of the ownership of Louisiana.

            French Minister, Francois de Barbe-Marbois, Robert Livingston, a New Yorker and the American Minster of France and James Monroe, former member of Congress and former governor of Virginia met in Paris on April 12^th to discuss the sale of Louisiana. Much to their surprise Napolean, was more than ready to sell and confirmed and stated his asking price of $22,500,000. Livingston told him the price needed to be lowered considerably.

            Barbe-Marbois stalled pretending that Napolean lost interest in the sale. By April 27^th he told Americans that Napolean firmly agreed to a selling price of $15,000,000. The treaty was signed by the three men on May 2 but was backdated to April 30. Livingston did not have permission to carry out the land deal but they needed to act fast. Nearly doubling the size of America could help make it a world power in the future.

Jefferson approved the purchase and requested the Senate to ratify the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in which they voted 24 to 7 on October 20, 1803. Congress approved the treaty. Money needed to be borrowed in the form of bonds from European countries which had to be paid back in 15 years. Business took time to be carried out because trans-atlantic mail took weeks and sometimes months. Finally, Louisiana belonged to the United States (Harris, 2003).

Fifteen states joined the union as the result of the Louisiana Purchase: Louisiana; Missouri; Arkansas; Texas; Iowa; Minnesota; Kansas; Nebraska; Colorado; North Dakota; South Dakota; Montana; Wyoming; Oklahoma; and New Mexico. Some of the aforementioned states were entirely within the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase and others were also a part of the deal struck with Mexico after the Mexican/American War (Raum, 2014). States developed statehood as a result of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance in which land was considered a territory that had a population of at least five thousand and full-fledged statehood would occur when the population reached 60,000. Self-governance applied for territories and states according to the ordinance (Cerami, 2003).

The Louisiana Purchased with an accumulated land mass of approximately 828,000 square miles led to a great westward migration. White settlers believed they had a right to move  to the uncharted territories. The Indian population did not fare well after the purchase. Much of the game, land and other valuable resources were taken over by white settlers. They faced starvation and died from diseases such as small pox. Many Native Americans lost their lives when they fought against white settlers or American armies while they tried to hold onto their land. The Louisiana Purchase represented land purchased from a country by a country who were not the original inhabitants.

 

Manifest Destiny

 

Manifest Destiny

 

           

             Native Americans have been subjugated, mutilated, and murdered in an effort to force them from their home-lands for centuries by land greedy Europeans. The vast disparity between the military prowess of the Europeans, represented by rifles, handguns, muskets, steel, gunpowder, and horses, and what the Native Americans had at their disposal, bows and arrows and wooden clubs, made it apparent to the Europeans who could easily be exploited and murdered. Treaties between the tribal groups and the U.S. government served as a method to take away their homelands. The land granted to them by treaties became the homestead for white settlers and railroad companies. Angry warriors fought to hang onto their land and their right to be self-sufficient. The vast number of Euro-Americans along with their advanced level of weaponry won out in the end. In the name of “Manifest Destiny,” they were forced to exist in a colonial relationship with white settlers and ended up displaced to fragmented reservations, economically decimated (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).

            The Europeans also found expansion westward necessary due to population growth. The constant inflow of European immigrants astonished the Europeans and Americans. From 1790 to 1830 the population over tripled to almost 13 million people. Families were quite large and owning land in which to farm was the goal of many Europeans and Americans. Settlers needed to move west because the land in the East became densely populated. They were also on the look out for better land and increased financial opportunity. The land the Native Americans hunted on was up for grabs because it was not being farmed. Taking the land in North America from the Native Americans was considered their divine right (Greenberg, 2018).

In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan formally proposed the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to describe the expansion of the United States territory and considered prearranged by the divine. European immigrants were to be the beneficiaries. These beliefs further justified the takeovers of Indian resources, such as water, land, timber, silver, gold and other valuable reserves. The ideals promoted by this concept held true before O’Sullivan brought it to the public eye. From when Europeans first stepped foot on the land currently referred to as North America to the present, it has been the belief that white men owned the land from sea to shining sea. For example, during the termination era around the 1950s, many tribal groups lost their tribal status so the government could take over the resources that belonged to the tribes such as the timber the Menominee used for their thriving business.

Manifest Destiny: A Legacy of Genocide presents a revolutionary view of the genocidal actions based on greed and Christian beliefs for more than four centuries. Anglo-invaders inflicted a tragic firestorm of violence on the Native Americans. The North American land, considered too good for them, was taken over by land hungry Europeans through various extermination tactics, many murdered in cold blood. Land not being farmed considered free for the taking. Native American men struggled in freezing waters to seek beaver, while at the same time they were introduced to alcohol’s menacing grip. Their food sources eliminated and placed on useless plots of land to perish. The frightening institutions fed upon the children’s souls, they learned how to adapt to an acceptable form of whiteness. Native American women missing and murdered and others poisoned by corrupt corporations. Disease, intentionally and unintentionally inflicted, decimated millions. The building of the United States in its entirety came at a high cost for the Native Americans under the guise of Manifest Destiny.

 

“Colonialism began with a huge migration, when millions of Europeans moved overseas to invade, settle, and rule other countries. When Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, there were up to 100 million people living on the continent. Within 150 years, there were only 3.5 million. They died of imported diseases or starvation, or were massacred by the colonizers” (Mehta, 2019, p). “In the case of US settler colonization, land was the primary commodity” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014, pg. 7).

 

Unknown to the Native Americans, white leaders wanted to lure settlers into the various areas which reduced the Indian domain and changed their life styles forever. Land ownership served as the tax basis by which the new government was financed. The increased white population reduced hunting grounds. Plans for the development of the new country demanded voters, willing workers, and an infrastructure that was foreign to the Native Americans (Watson, 2011).

 

            While writing this much needed book of reference, there was a struggle to come up with what an honorable race of people should be called. It was decided to use the terms Indian, indigenous, American Indians and Native Ameri-cans. They lived on what is considered the United States thousands of years before the Europeans set foot on the continent. Columbus referred to the people he discovered as Una gente in dios (later referred to as Indians) because he thought of them as children of God that was why the name Indian was considered honorable. The tribal people, who were forced to endure years of abuse, demonstrated vast resilience. Non-tribal people were referred to as Euro-Americans, Anglo-invaders, Americans, and white settlers.

 

“The term ‘genocide’ was coined by Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in 1944. Frank Chalk and Kurt Johassohn summarize Lemkin’s pioneering thinking:

“Under Limkin’s definition, genocide was the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious, or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group. Lemkin conceived of genocide as ‘a composite of different acts of persecution or destruction.’ His definition included attacks on political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of the group. Even nonlethal acts that undermined the liberty, dignity, and personal security of members of a group constituted genocide if then contributed to weakening the viability of the group. Under Lemkin’s definition, acts of ethnocide – a term coined by the French after the war to cover the destruction of a culture without the killing of its bearers – also qualified as genocide” (Stannard, 1992, pg. 279).

Three types of genocide occurred at the hands of the Euro-Americans and Americans against the Native American people. Physical genocide, which included direct and immediate extermination, consisted of mass killings such as the Wounded Knee Massacre or slow death measures such as starvation, lack of medical care and hard physical labor. Biological genocide involved involuntary sterilization, compulsory abortion, segregation of the sexes and obstacles to marriage and exposure to deadly diseases. Cultural genocide encompassed forcing individuals to take on another persona unlike their own, forced exiles of individuals representing the culture of a group, prohibition of one’s own language, destruction of spiritual and religious practices and sacred items and locations, and destruction of books associated with individuals’ culture and language. The Indian boarding schools, General Allotment Act, and the banning of tribal spiritual practices were some of the ways the Americans achieved cultural genocide for the Native Americans. “Manifest Destiny” afforded Anglo-invaders their perceived entitlement to apply multiple forms of genocidal acts to gain access to land, a precious commodity (Churchill, 2004). 

Settler colonialism, as an institution or system, usually required violence or the threat of violence to reach its goals of taking over land. People don’t hand over their land, resources, children or futures without a fight, and that fight was met with harsh aggression. While employing the force necessary to accomplish the white settler’s expansionist goals, the colonizing command instilled blatant force. The belief that both sides, the white settlers and Native Americans, were equally matched, has confused the nature of the historical ramifications. The Euro-American soldiers were often heavily armed and their weaponry was more advanced. Euro-American colonialism, a part of a capitalist economic globalization effort, had from the very beginning a genocidal tendency (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014).

The expansion and colonization of the United States upon tribal land holdings continued throughout the beginning of the European invasion. “By 1840, with the exception of a handful of tiny Iroquois reservations in upstate New York and the remaining Seminoles in the Florida Everglades, the eastern third of what would become the continental United States had been cleared of its indigenous population. The idea that America west of the Mississippi was ever seriously intended to be the exclusive domain of the continent’s native people was belied – even before their removal was achieved – by the creation of the territories of Missouri (1816), Arkansas (1819) and Iowa (1838). In 1837, Anglo invaders in Texas fought a war of secession from Mexico, creating a temporary republic which became a state in December 1845. Six months later, on June 15, 1846, the United States acquired the Oregon Territory (present-day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho) from Great Britain. Two years after, in 1848, the northern half of Mexico – California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and southern Colorado – was taken by force” (Churchill, 1997, pg. 218). Groups of Odawa, Potawatomi and Ojibwe resided in  Michigan and other northern states and remained in these areas after the relocation of other tribal groups.

Most settlers and political leaders feared and misunderstood the Indian people. Many tactics, utilized to solve the “Indian problem,” such as biological warfare along with other destructive methods in a long line of historical abuses were used against the Indian people. An example of biological warfare was the exposure to smallpox perpetuated against a segment of the population unprepared to fight off its lethal properties.  The unfortunate people who contracted this virus could expect to have two outcomes: death, or blindness along with grotesque scars.  Once smallpox found a host in a community, it rampantly took off on its own.  The virus was easily transmitted through exposure to contaminated scabs or dried-out body secretions. Hernando Cortez introduced the first attack of smallpox genocide in 1519.  Unsuspecting Aztecs were the victims.  They were given blankets infected with the virus, and thousands died.

In 1763, many of the Odawa Indians died of the deadly disease after they returned British soldiers to their post in Montreal. The British provided the Odawa Indians in Michigan gifts of little insulated metal boxes. The British instructed them to not open the metal boxes until the Odawa returned from Montreal to their village near present day Petoskey, Michigan.  Once the metal boxes were opened, which were filled with small pox spores, the smallpox virus ran rampant amongst the tribal people in the Odawa villages and thousands lost their lives. In the dry-pus-form stored in insulated metal boxes, the virus can maintain its virulence for up to two years. Smallpox can be transferred to hosts through clothing and bedding, being exposed to cadavers who died from it, and inhaling the virus. Cremation served as the only definitive way to destroy the virus.

            The recognition of the arrival and impact of epidemic diseases on the indigenous population has been studied by many historians. A key concept, linked to the phenomenon of early outbreaks of pandemics within specific populations, was referred to as “virgin soil epidemic” (VSE). VSE has occurred when a disease infects a population for the first time or when enough time has passed in which even the oldest members of a population have not experienced the disease. No one in the population has developed an immunity to the disease. It’s what the world has been experiencing with the Coronovirus (covid19). Death from the initial infections of smallpox for the Native Americans occurred at as high as 70 percent or more. Survivors of the original outbreaks remained sick and debilitated for long periods of times.

            Documentation of the dreadfulness of the aforementioned epidemics did not occur until Europeans took the time and effort to do so. The death toll was terribly high and damaging for many Native Americans. Archaeologist Karl Schlesier reported that the mortality was as high as 90 to 95 percent. Epidemics such as the smallpox epidemic among the Native Americans took the lives of warriors, child bearers, the young and the strong, hunters, collectors, the elderly, and the keepers of tribal knowledge (maintained through oral traditions) perished within a historic

instant such as weeks and/or months. Many memories and a chance for future generations was erased forever.

            Livestock brought into this country by the European settlers have been linked to many lethal diseases existing today such as, but are not limited to, flu, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles, small pox and cholera. The history books that defined the outcomes of any war portray the winners by the maneuvers of the generals and their weapons.  However, many wars have been won by those who had the most horrible and destructive germs to spread to their foes. The Euro-American germs were so lethal that they decimated up to 95 percent of the Indian population (Diamond, 1999).  Unintentional and intentional acts of genocide against the Indian people continued to accomplish the goals of expansionism associated with “Manifest Destiny.”

           

A multitude of lives were lost on all sides as a result of the unrelenting legacy of various battles and wars. From 1775 to 1791, the Native Americans won 22 battles such as the French Creek expedition.  Native American men were fearless fighters, and well-disciplined strategists. The European and Euro-American armies made the mistake of thinking they were undisciplined, unknowledgeable “savages.”  Indian warriors became valued, but not completely trusted, and  recruited to become allies for Euro-American armies as a part of expansion endeavors (Holms, 1996).

            The Declaration of Independence, ratified on July 4^th, 1776, included in the Declaration of Independence provisions which involved the “merciless Indian Savages.” While some Indian warriors exhibited extreme and harsh behaviors, Euro-American soldiers were far more brutal.  Euro-American soldiers maimed women and children of all ages. Indian babies were even thrown to dogs as food, while they were still alive in front of their mothers. At the same time these atrocities were occurring, the American government continued to take steps to address the “Indian problem” under the pretenses that Indians were solely at fault for all the problems the Euro-Americans were facing.

 

Treaties served as a formalized way of securing land holdings for Euro-Americans where Indian people used to reside. The first treaty was established in 1778 and the last was enacted in 1871. Congress sent commissioners to assure that treaty documents were secured with the tribes and the tribes were carrying out their end of the bargain.  These meetings were not based on equality, they exemplified expansionism and held in a foreign language the Native American people did not understand. The idea of owning land, a foreign concept, baffled them. When the settlers wanted to take over the Native American homelands, Indian people did not know how to place a value on it. They did not know what a stream or a tract of forest was worth in terms of gunpowder, iron pots or cloth. They went along with the government treaty negotiators who wrote on paper what specific land holdings were valued. They did not understand how that could be determined, considering the change of seasons and the yield of the hunt. The traders often short changed the unsuspecting Indian people and to back up their claims they would show them a statement of accounts. These statements also resembled a foreign language to them. For example, the Treaty of Paris in 1783 took possession of Indian Territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi (Hall, Schaessens, et. Al, 2007).  Not all of the 550 federally recognized tribes established treaties with the federal government (Utter, 1993).

            Henry Knox, Secretary of War, contacted George Washington during the summer of 1789.  Knox proposed to Washington that Indian policy needed further clarification and additional revisions. Indian policy was customarily under the Articles of Confederation. Knox proposed that Indian tribes be considered foreign nations. Under the Constitution, authorization was given to Congress to control all commerce with foreign nations, which caused even further alienation between the Euro-Americans and the Indian people (Ellis, 2007). Native Americans were considered foreign inhabitants in their own country of origin.

            During the 1790s, the United States government faced four alternatives concerning Indian policy.  These options included extermination; re-location of Indian tribes to small plots of land, while towns sprouted up around them; assimilation by transforming them into Christian farmers; or relocation to unsettled territories west of the Mississippi.  President Thomas Jefferson supported assimilation as the only viable and humane process.

            In 1793, Congress gave authorization to George Washington to provide tribes with domestic animals and farm tools.  Congress sent agents to demonstrate how to use these tools.  Policymakers were pessimistic about the possible outcomes of these acts of assimilation.  They believed the Indian people would not accept the Euro-American culture and its value system and plans were being put into place to quarantine them. 

            President Jefferson’s plan encompassed the transfer of the tribal people from the southern states to northern states. Plantations were set up in the southern states and slaves were utilized to enhance prosperity for the Euro-Americans by expanding the goods produced by the wealthy landowners. The land in the south was divided into territories with a plan to establish states in the future.  The lands vacated in the south by the Indians would be sold to help pay for part of the cost of Louisiana, the Louisiana purchase.

            On July 5, 1803 Meriwether Lewis set off on the well-known Lewis and Clark expedition. William Clark joined Lewis in October of 1803 in the Indiana territory, across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. Jefferson’s plan was to have Lewis inform the tribes about the election of the new “father” of the United States.  Jefferson’s hopes included tribal people embracing a commercial system, a system which had the potential to benefit anyone involved in an American economic process which involved capitalism. Jefferson wanted to establish peace and a trading domain in which the Indian people would stop their resistance and put down their weapons (Utter, 1993).          

In 1803, The Louisiana Purchase included all land west of the Mississippi River and east of the continental divide, which consisted of today’s Louisiana, Arkansas, parts of northeastern Texas, Oklahoma, eastern Colorado and Minnesota.  Jefferson received fame and notoriety for his ingenuity and foresight leading to the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  Jefferson was relentless with ensuring that these portions of land did not become additions to the British colonies. The Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition served a prominent role in the forming of what was known as the United States (Ambrose, 1996).

 

            William Henry Harrison put into place an Indian Removal policy in 1809, because Indian people were thought to lack the capacity to live up to Euro-American standards.  He negotiated the treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, which ceded the majority of land in Indiana and Illinois to the Euro-American settlers.  Harrison was not going to let a few “wretched savages” get in his way of populating an area that had the potential to support a large civilized population.  He backed up his convictions with a large military garrison. Harrison became the governor of the Northwest Territories and then was elevated to one of the highest honors when he was elected as the 9^th president of the United States (Sugden, 1997).

            Contrary to how Harrison despised the Indian people, he did recognize the power and respect held by the Shawnee leader, Tecumseh.  He gave careful consideration to this fearless leader.  Harrison paid this tribute to Tecumseh:

            “The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him is really astonishing, and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him on those uncommon geniuses, which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things. If it were not for the vicinity of the United States, he would, perhaps, be the founder of an empire that would rival in glory that of Mexico or Peru. No difficulties deter him. His activity and industry supply the want of letters.  For four years he has been in constant motion. You see him today on the Wabash and in a short time you hear of him on the shores of Lake Erie or Michigan, or on the banks of the Mississippi, and wherever he goes he makes an impression favorable to his purposes” (Sugden, 1997, page 215).

 

The U.S. government continued to find ways to address the “Indian Problem.” Congress passed a bill in 1819 to establish a “civilization fund,” which allotted ten thousand dollars for agricultural and literacy instruction of the Indian people. Those, who were in agreement with participating with this instruction, were provided assistance by missionaries. These missionaries served dual roles. First and foremost, they wanted to Christianize the Indian people. Secondly, they provided instruction to them about the proper customs required to obtain citizenship. Missionary sponsored farms and households were popping up in various locations in the country. These served as models of acceptable values and customs for Indian people to copy (Nies, 1996). 

 

            During the 1820s, Henry Schoolcraft visited the Ojibwe tribes and traveled with some of  Indian men.  He was impressed with the wisdom of the tribal people and the detailed pictographs left behind by them at each area visited.  The Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun recommended Schoolcraft to the Michigan Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass, to assist with an expedition.  The mission was to explore the land surrounding Lake Superior. Schoolcraft served as a geologist on the expedition. 

            Beginning in 1822, Schoolcraft conducted ethnological research while he was appointed the Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  He learned the Ojibwe language from his wife, Jane Johnston, who happened to be of Ojibwe and Scottish/Irish descent. Schoolcraft’s admiration for the native people quickly dissipated once he discovered that it would be more profitable to support the actions of Andrew Jackson. He took steps to obliterate the very same people who were connected to his wife’s family, the Ojibwe people. One of the ways he did so was he took a portion of their written works and rewrote them to erase some of the Indian history. Schoolcraft also had a strong desire to obtain notoriety for his own written works. He went on to implement the Treaty of Washington which took a large portion of land away from the Ojibwe and Odawa people (Bremer, 1987).

The United States government has had long established mechanisms in place empowering those in authority to have control over the actions and resources of the general population.  Public laws become enforced legislation through the actions of contradictory parties of a two-party system, divergent priorities, and confrontational approaches. Laws governing the masses resulted in enforced legislation. The federal government strived to avoid the pitfalls of what happened in Europe with regards to land ownership and utilitarian form of leadership. Land in Europe was controlled by landlords. The giving of parcels of land to settlers created a country comprised of independent citizens. 

 “All for the public good” were the politicians’ claims in their effort to hide their and their supporters’ self-serving agendas.  When Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States, he was supported by the wealthiest men in the south.  The land in which the Cherokee, Choctaw, and other tribes resided was targeted by wealthy entrepreneurs who wanted to expand their cotton plantations (Nies, 1996). Jackson despised the Indian people and did not defend Indian rights. He openly rejected federal treaty obligations. Jackson pushed for the Indian Removal Act, which was passed by Congress in 1830. This act gave the President the privilege of selecting the tribes to be removed and he was provided the financing for such removals.  Seeds of greed and hatred fueled these acts of genocide and discrimination and the joint collaboration falsely justified the takeover of the Indian people’s land enforced by Jackson and the rich land owners.  

Jackson’s agents bribed, used deception and threatened individual Indian people and groups to accomplish the President’s goals. Records were falsified. Tribal leaders for the Cherokee nation resisted their removal from their tribal lands at the state and federal level. In 1831, the tribe won their case due to their independent sovereign nation rights. Their victory was the result of Chief Justice John Marshall’s legal expertise.  However, Jackson was not going to let this setback deter him from his goal of Indian removal from the southeastern portion of the country.

            The Choctaw nation was the first to be removed from their ancestral land in Mississippi during the winter of 1831.  Several groups were pressed to travel through blizzards and subzero temperatures. Many of these individuals were without foot coverings and were malnourished from lack of food. One blanket was allotted to each family. The Creek nation was driven off their land in Alabama in 1836 in the same fashion, except many were in chains. 1837 marked the first year of the Cherokee ejection and the historic “Trail of Tears.” In the same cruel way, the Cherokee nation lost approximately one-quarter to one-half of their tribal people during the deadly march to Oklahoma (Nobokov, 1992).   

            In 1836, in support of President Jackson’s efforts, Henry Schoolcraft resolved disputes over land with the Ojibwe and Odawa tribes. He employed tribal leadership to bring about the 1836 Treaty of Washington. The aforementioned tribes surrendered to the United States government a considerable amount of land, more than 13 million acres, which was worth millions of dollars. Schoolcraft believed these native people would be better off learning how to farm. Government officials established a subsidy system through which they were given supplies during the transition period from hunting to farming (Nobokov, 1992).

            By the 1840s, the American boundary reached the Pacific Ocean.  Indian people were considered to be of heathen nature since they did not farm the land they lived on. Reservations served as a dumping ground for the Indian people. The population of these unfortunate people was numbered at only a few hundred thousand, reduced from millions when the Europeans first set foot on the Western Hemisphere (Ellis, 2007).

The mid 1840s was a turning point concerning the ideals of expansionism in the United States.  Seeds were planted to adopt the principles of expansionism by John Adams and John C. Calhoun during the development of the original Constitution, after the war of 1812 and further propagated by John L. O’Sullivan.  O’Sullivan formally proposed the phrase “Manifest Destiny.” “Manifest Destiny” involved the expansion of United States territory, which was considered prearranged by the divine, and European immigrants were to be the beneficiaries. These beliefs further justified the takeovers of Indian resources, such as water, land, timber, silver, gold and other valuable reserves. The expansion included a massive move westward to form a larger civilized land base for those who participated in the acts of freedom described by the federal government.  

“Manifest Destiny” made its public debut in the Democratic Review in the July and August 1845 issues. O’Sullivan founded the Democratic Review and was a co-founder of the New York Morning News. During this time period, he was considered a scholar, visionary, as well as a politician, adventurer, and literary artist. With popularity on his side, the concept he advocated took hold of the American public like a storm.

 

Without government sanction, the practice of slave ownership of Native Americans continued for many years after California became an American possession. Free labor was becoming more and more scarce. Abducting and making slaves out of the Indian people seemed like a good idea. It became even more prominent after the “Emancipation Proclamation” and after Lincoln won the Civil War. Many African American people felt they were trapped by their captors out of fear of not being able to feed themselves. Many of the African American people ended up serving as indentured servants alongside the Native American people. California’s Indians, who suffered a lot of losses due to the gold rush and the Spanish invasion, ended up serving as complacent slaves.  It was discovered that they “…make as obedient and humble slaves as the negroes in the south” (Stannard, 1992, pg. 142). This comment came from a New Orleans cotton broker. A ranch owner claimed they were even better than the blacks. They accepted their situation with more humility (Stannard, 1992).

The discovery of the docility of Native American children led to a thriving business of hunting and capturing Indian children. Newspapers reported sightings of white men leading Native American children on back-country roads to the slave markets located in Sacramento and San Francisco.  The slave economy depended on the quality of the slaves, sometimes the prices climbed as high as $200. per slave.  Indian boys and girls aged three and four years sold for fifty dollars each. The shortage of women in California at the time jacked up the price for girls, sometimes twice as much as an Indian boy. The parents of the Indian children proved to be a nuisance. The prospect of losing their children created a fear of going to the reservations. Being on the reservations did lead to many of the parents losing their children. The slave traders murdered the parents when they tried to save them from being abducted. The killing of the Indian parents permitted the slave traders to call their charges “orphans” which gave them freedom from contradiction, from being denied the right of sale. When Indian adults made the attempt to seek justice for the murders, they discovered the law of the land prohibited them from testifying against white people. Slavery ended up being the demise of a multitude of Native Americans of all ages.

 

            The Euro-American infringement of tribal lands continued during the gold strikes of 1858 in Colorado, which offset the equilibrium of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes who resided in that area. The government, in their effort to appease the white settlers, moved the two tribes to small reservations. These encroachments triggered the eruption of a bloody war that ensued until 1865.  The white man’s greed for gold led to even more threats to other tribal nations such as the Santee Sioux nation to the north. In 1867, Congress organized a Peace Commission to cease the Sioux War which ensued due to the invasion of their land (Nies, 1996).

Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and thousands of their Indian comrades evaded and fought U.S. troops in the effort to hold onto their land and its resources. The U.S. Army continued to unwisely think the Indian people lacked the sophistication to be a threat. In 1866, an incident took place that came to be known as the Fetterman Massacre. Crazy Horse, Hump and Little Wolf were the leaders of a decoy group. They managed to trick the soldiers quite easily into following them. Several warriors ambushed and killed 81 troops (Nies, 1996).

 

The 1860s was a busy time in the United States which included the building the transcontinental railroad and the Bosque Redondo experiment. During the time of the Sand Creek Massacre, the Union Soldiers and Confederate Soldiers were heavily engaged in the American Civil War which had served as a defining event in the history of the U.S. 10,000 battles were fought between 1861 and 1865 across the continent, from Vermont to the New Mexico Territory, and beyond. The war started when the Confederates attacked Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.  The war ended in Spring of1865 when  Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. 

The Civil War was fought in thousands of different places, from southern Pennsylvania to Texas; from New Mexico to the Florida coast, the majority of the fighting took place in the states of Virginia and Tennessee. While many still debate the ultimate causes of the Civil War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson writes "The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform, he pledged to keep slavery out of the territories. Seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of the secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries"(American Battlefield Trust, N.D., paras. 1 – 10). The U.S. government was very busy putting out major fires, primarily in the eastern part of the country.

In 1868, three years after the civil war ended, federal officials implemented a second Fort Laramie Treaty that established geographic boundaries for the Lakota reservation. This treaty ensured that encroachments would not occur within these boundaries.  Ranchers, settlers, miners and others would be prevented from stepping foot on this land. However, the treaty was dismissed soon after its inception when miners wanted to tap into the “Black Hills gold.”  Cattle ranchers, railroad companies, and farmers followed suit and claimed additional parcels of land defined in the treaty as trust land. 

 

The nation became interconnected by the construction of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.  Before Lincoln’s death he was the driving force behind this project. The building of the railroad was considered a pivotal accomplishment. Government officials set up a system of military forts to provide security to the railroads and their associated municipalities. Before the completion of the railroads, railroad companies lobbied for free land with Congress. Congress endowed them with considerable expanses of tribal lands. Every acre of land that was given to these companies interfered with access to land, water, and game for the Indian people.

The transcontinental railroad stretched from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California. Chinese men predominantly worked on the Central Pacific Railroad, and Irish men worked primarily on the Union Pacific. These immigrants numbered up to 15,000 at any given time during the construction of these railroads. Captive and free Indian men were also enlisted to work on the railroads (Ambrose, 2000).

 

In 1871, Congress began the process of dismissing all federal treaties.  Many of the tribal people were forced to live on useless arid plots of land, suffering slow agonizing deaths due to starvation. Related to the construction of the railroad and the development of reservations was the disappearance of bison herds. Bison served as the main source of sustenance for the Plains Indians and also furnished meat for the railroad builders. An industrialized market was established for bison hides. Eastern hunters and sportsmen from Europe visited the plains to hunt the bison before the herds became depleted. 

Before 1874, three main herds of bison were known to trek from Texas to Canada annually. By 1876 bison hunters contracted by the federal government had annihilated all three herds. The needless slaughter of bison destroyed the balance with nature the Indian people had maintained by taking only what was needed for food, clothing, and shelter. Starvation became unavoidable. This extreme suffering led to the surrender of the Lakota people, one of the most powerful tribes of the northern Great Plains, to the American military forces during the winter of 1877.     

In 1885, the Major Crimes Act was enacted by Congress.

“…Sec.9.  Then immediately upon and after the date of the passage of this act all Indians, committing against the person or property of another Indian or other person any of the following crimes, namely, murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, larceny within any territory of the United States, in either within or without an Indian reservation, shall be subject therefore to the laws of such territory relating to set crimes, and shall be tried therefore in the same courts in the same manner and shall be subject to the same penalties as are all other persons charged with the commission of set crimes, respectively; and the said courts are hereby given jurisdiction in all such cases; and all such Indians committing any of the above crimes against the person or property of another Indian or other person within the boundaries of any state of the United States, with the limits of any Indian reservation, shall be subject to the same laws, tried in the same courts and in the same manner, and subject to the same penalties as are all other persons committing any of the above crimes within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.”

“To prevent a recurrence of cases like the murder of Spotted Tail by Crow Dog, in which the murderer was set free because the federal courts had no jurisdiction over crimes committed by one Indian against another within Indian country, Congress declared that seven major crimes committed by Indians on reservations would fall under the jurisdiction of the United States courts. This was a major encroachment upon traditional tribal autonomy” (Prucha, 2000).

In the past, Indian people doled out corrective actions for behaviors that were considered of a criminal nature against other tribal members and their property.  The corrective actions were embraced as a deeply entrenched cultural practice that maintained order and peace within the tribal villages. For example, when someone was killed either intentionally or unintentionally, the family of the lost one made the determination of what was to happen to the one who committed the crime. The family would adopt the guilty party into their family to replace the person who was killed or the family would put the person to death to avenge their family member’s death.  It was the family’s decision.  When the federal government took over this responsibility, it threw off balance of an organized system of governance.

 

Along with the beginning of the boarding and residential school era, the year 1887 was another turning point for Native American people. Congress passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, because Henry Dawes was its chief supporter. President Grover Cleveland signed this act.

“An act to provide for the allotment of land in severalty to Indians on the various reservations, and to extend the protection of the laws of the United States in the territories over the Indians, and for other purposes.

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereinafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use, either by treaty stipulations are by virtue of an act of Congress or executive order setting apart the same for other for their use, the president of the United States be, and he thereby is, authorized, where whenever and his opinion any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is at advantageous for agriculture and grazing purposes, to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or re-surveyed if necessary, and to allow the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon…” (Prucha, 2000).

The General Allotment Act afforded the President the ability to distribute quarter sections (160 acres) of Indian reservation lands to each Indian person who was the head of a household. Bachelors over eighteen years of age received an eighth section. Those who accepted these allotments were required to live on their homesteads away from their fellow tribesmen. Another advantage to this initiative was to extend citizenship to the Native Americans as legal landowners. Therefore, Indian land could be and was taxed (Nies, 1996).

The Dawes Act was strongly enforced in Michigan. Any reservation land that was not appropriated to Indian people went to the Euro-Americans. The Dawes Act was a part of the assimilation process which involved detribalization that caused Indian people to lose their tribal identities and thus, become American citizens. The “Indian problem” would fade away because Indian people would disappear into the fabric of American society and be a part of the large tapestry. The allotment process, which lasted two decades, caused long-lasting dependency and resentment by the Indian people and served as a catalyst for the accomplishment of the goals set forth by “Manifest Destiny.” 

Another historical event that has caused long lasting traumatic effects for the Lakota people occurred during the month of December in 1890, a few days after Christmas. A band of approximately 300 Lakota men, women and children were ordered to travel almost 150 miles through inclement weather without adequate food and clothing to the Pine Ridge Agency. After these unfortunate people were held captive by the American military upon reaching their destination, they were murdered in cold blood. The United States government awarded 18 of the soldiers, who participated in this mass slaughter, the Congressional Medal of Honor for shooting mostly children and women, some of the women were pregnant. This incident was known as the Wounded Knee Massacre (Holms, 1996). Indian people continued to be plagued with additional hardships during the Twentieth Century.

            For centuries federal laws have been affecting various sectors of the population in a variety of ways and have exerted control over the actions and resources of the entire population either directly or indirectly.  Many governmental agencies put into place to serve the Indian population had a hand in various acts of discrimination, assimilation and genocide including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). 

During the early 1900s, the BIA worked at coercing tribal people to become peaceful farmers and adopting their white neighbor’s morality and need for materialism. A BIA directive denounced the Sun Dance and other spiritual ceremonies. Strong spiritual connections were associated with these ceremonies and provided a healthy balance within tribal communities. The ability to practice these sacred ceremonies was not legally reinstated until 1978 (Churchhill, 1997). 

 

In 1924, Congress implemented the “Citizen Act.”  Indian people were made citizens of their own country. This act came with high costs such as the taxes that were imposed which led to the loss of a vast amount of tribal land. During the next three decades, the BIA continued to break up parcels of communally held land which was allotted to Euro-Americans.  Euro-American businessmen repeated the behavior of “Manifest Destiny” fanatics, took advantage of unsuspecting tribal people and leased or bought approximately two million acres per year of land that originally belonged to the Native Americans (Churchhill, 1997).

            By 1928, most Indian people were living in poverty. That same year, Lewis Meriam conducted his historical study. His report indicated the vast majority of Indian people suffered from a lack of health care and educational opportunities. The Euro-American economic and social standards were of no benefit to them. The “Great Depression” was another hardship. Policy makers continued to ignore the needs of tribal people even after the Meriam report was publicized.

            During the late 1940s, the government decided to continue to coerce the tribal people from their lands and communities for various reasons. One reason was the costs allotted to provide financial support for Indian people. Another reason involved the clearing of reservations for purposes of mining. The overarching reason was to continue the process of assimilation.  

            In spite of these acts of discrimination, Indian men continued to “fight the white man’s wars.”  “According to John Collier, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, there were 7,500 American Indians in the armed forces as of June 1942, less than six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  By October of that year, another observer reported that the number of Native Americans in the military had risen to well over 10,000.  By 1944 almost 22,000, not counting those who had become officers.  At the war’s end, there were over 25,000 Native Americans scattered throughout the military services, with the bulk of them in the U.S. Army” (Holms, 1996, page 104).

Native Americans primarily fought in the American wars because they linked being a warrior with honor, and because they felt they were upholding what the Indian people promised in treaties; however, the Americans did not honor treaty obligations. 

 

During the 1950s and early 1960s, a massive termination effort was conducted, which was reflected by governmental policies. During this time, 13 tribes lost their federal recognition status. Loss of status involved the disappearance of federal protections and services along with their trust status. The Menominee tribe in Wisconsin and Klamath in Oregon were the largest tribes to fall prey to this calamity. When tribes lost their trust status, it meant these tribal entities had to pay taxes. In order to pay these taxes, they had to start selling off their land. Their reserved land bases shrunk immensely, which continued to support the goals set forth by “Manifest Destiny” (Dewing, 2000).

 

Beginning in 1952, federal policymakers passed legislation that allowed the storing of highly radioactive waste by-products from the mining of uranium primarily in reservation areas.  Mining was also conducted in reservation areas in spite of massive amounts of ore deposits located in other locations. Maximization of profits for energy corporations served as the motive for these mining practices. The Navajo, Lugunas and other tribal communities were exposed to highly carcinogenic and mutagenic agents as a result of these mining maneuvers. The storage of nuclear waste has continued to occur on reservations such as the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, in the Yucca Mountain area, and the Navajo treaty land base (Churchhill, 1997). 

 

            The American Indian Movement (AIM), created in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1968, served as a means of protecting the rights of Indian people. This movement replaced an anti-poverty program based in Minneapolis.  AIM was originally referred to as Concerned Indian Americans until members recognized the comparison of titles to the Central Intelligence Agency.  The initial goals of AIM included the improvement of economic and educational conditions for Indian people.

            Many Vietnam veterans returned to the United States and found an unbearable situation and became members of AIM. The majority of Indian people were still living in poverty. Vietnam veterans who experienced “cognitive dissonance” as a result of fighting in that war turned their psychological distress into political activism. The term “cognitive dissonance” refers to when people’s values and beliefs turn out to be drastically different from the realities he or she was experiencing (Holms, 1996).

Many Indian men fought in wars because they felt they were upholding requirements set forth by treaties between their tribes and the U.S. government. “Why was I fighting to uphold a U.S. treaty commitment halfway around the world when the United States was violating its treaty commitments to my own people and about 300 other Indian nations?. I was fighting the wrong people, pure and simple…” (Holms, 1996, page 175).

According to Indian activists, the government was continuing to instill policies associated with sadistic national colonialism. Native Americans were openly questioning termination, and relocation which resulted in extreme levels of poverty and other serious issues that has existed and continued to exist on reservations. AIM became a part of a crusade process that strived to restore treaty rights, and change the educational system. Under the educational system, Indian people were taught self-hatred, and the goal of AIM was to reestablish and safeguard tribal identity (Holms, 1996). 

            In 1969, more than 300 Native Americans took over Alcatraz Island at San Francisco Bay.  “…Indians occupied and claimed the abandoned federal property on the presumed stipulation put in an Indian treaty that said abandoned federal lands would revert to Indian ownership… A Sioux treaty of 1868 did indeed contain a provision stating that abandoned American forts would revert to Indian ownership, but only a few of the activists were Sioux and none were duly elected tribal officials who could take administrative control of the property in the name of the tribe.  Still, the takeovers continued, if for no other reason than to publicize the revival of Indian activism and notify whites that Indians were going to assert their tribal rights wherever and whenever possible” (Holms, 1996, page 173).

In September 1971 approximately 60 Indian people, led by Russell Means, descended upon the BIA’s Washington office to confront Wilma Victor, a past headmistress of the Intermountain Boarding School near Brigham City, Utah.  She served as Deputy BIA Commissioner, and this new role was considered a conflict of interest.  AIM representatives felt she may not support the needs of the Native Americans (Dewing, 2000). 

In 1972, Indian activists organized a massive march on Washington, D.C., known as the Trail of Broken Treaties. The caravan was to form on the West Coast and wind its way across the nation picking up followers as it went. The caravan arrived in Washington during the final week of the presidential campaign. Native Americans poured into the city. The bulk of them assembled at the Bureau of Indian Affairs building to await word regarding where they were to be housed during their stay at the capital.  Eventually they were told they were to be housed in the Department auditorium.

As they were leaving the BIA, guards began to push a number of people out the door. The young protesters turned on the guards and seized the building. The occupation of the BIA building lasted for nearly a week before the Indian people agreed to leave.  In return, the federal government agreed not to prosecute the protesters” (Holms, 1996). For many years federal agents conducted secret missions to discredit and eventually put behind bars the entire leadership of the American Indian Movement. Today, AIM is still an active advocate for Native American rights.

            During the 1970s an organization called the Indian Health Service (IHS), established to provide services to Indian people, implemented sterilization services for Indian women.  This program resulted in involuntary and oftentimes uninformed sterilization of 42 percent of all Indian women of childbearing age, in an attempt to decrease the Indian population and as part of the genocide efforts. The sterilization program was ceased in 1976. During the same time period, approximately 13,000 Navajos residing in the Big Mountain region in Arizona were removed from this land base to make way for the Peabody Coal Company (Churchhill, 1997).

            The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed by Congress on November 8, 1978 and was signed by President Carter after numerous hearings were held in the Senate to cover all issues regarding the status of Indian people in the United States. The most significant discovery from these hearings was the high percentage of Indian families that were disrupted by the removal of their children by private and public agencies. The purpose of this act was to protect the best interests of Indian children and support the permanence of tribal communities and families.  However, child abuse and neglect continued to occur at higher rates for tribal children than for the rest of the population (Renick, 2018). 

             

            During the 1980s, Inuit children residing on the oil rich North Slope in Alaska served as guinea pigs for field testing hepatitis vaccines, which happened to be banned by the World Health Organization (WHO) from international distribution due to a possible link to the transmission of Human-immunodeficiency (HIV) microbes. When Alaskan parents refused to allow further inoculation, the field tests were transferred to the lower 48 states, and the unfortunate targets were reservation children. The profits of two major pharmaceutical corporations were connected to this study (Churchhill, 1997).         

            In order for tribal people to access services, such as medical care and food subsidies provided by the federal government, they need to present identification cards to prove their tribal lineage. This created another dilemma faced by many Indian people. A definition needed to be developed by the various tribal and governmental entities in order to determine who would share the benefits of tribal membership.

Blood quantum issues have created dissention amongst Native Americans.  To define what it meant to be Indian, not only predicated biological factors, but a cultural sense and feeling of belonging to a distinct tribal nation. Historically, Indian people welcomed anyone into their tribal community who wished to participate in their cultural practices. This interference by governmental officials created further alienation within tribal communities, due to preserving and securing tribal benefits as a means of survival. The idea of blood quantum has been based on the quantitative approach to determining tribal membership that dates from the early nineteenth century. The determination of tribal identification, loss of tribal lands and other cruel and harsh treatment continued to cause many problems for Indian people.

 

The Native American population suffered a great loss concerning their population as a result of the genocidal tactics of the Euro-Americans and Americans, almost near complete annihilation. For example, between the time of initial contact of the European invaders to close to the 17^th century most of the eastern Indian people in the areas of Virginia and New England lost approximately 95% of their population. The eradication did not stop. After the aforementioned time period, the native population drop an additional 93% from 1685 to 1790. In Eastern North and South Carolina, the decline in population from 1685 to 1790 dropped 91%. In Florida the native population dropped 88%. By the end of the 18^th century in all of eastern Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana combined, only 5000 Native Americans remained. In 1520 in Florida, there were approximately 700,000 Indians, only 2,000 survived after the holocaust.  In western Arizona and eastern New Mexico, within 50 years about half of the Zuni, two-thirds of the Acoma, and 80% of the Hopi people had been erased. 90% of the Upper Missouri River Mandan lost their lives in less than a year’s time. Approximately, 100,000 Native Americans lost their lives during the California Gold Rush. Entire tribal nations disappeared or were almost completely annihilated across the entire continental United States due to genocidal efforts (Stannard, 1992).

 

After over 500-year relationship between Native Americans and the white settlers, it is a miracle that there are 5.2 million American Indians and Alaska Native people who live in America today with 573 federally recognized tribal nations. Each tribal nation has distinctive histories of colonization since the first European contact. One common denominator to this day is that tribal members believe that the United States must honor treaties. The U.S. government signed 370 treaties with a multitude of tribal nations from 1778 to 1871. The language may differ concerning treaties, however, common features exist with each one: a guarantee of peace; definition of land boundaries; preserved hunting and fishing rights; and protection against domestic and foreign foes. Native American requests must be paramount for the U.S. government. The Land Pact Rights Act has revealed that the entire state of Oklahoma may belong to the Cherokee and other tribal nations. Treaties represented the “Supreme Law” of the United States that many tribal nations were essentially forced to sign or felt they had no other alternative actions (Taylor, 2019). 

“Our people had agreed to these treaties in the hopes of finding reprieve from the genocide that was being perpetrated against us by the … government and citizens. Some of my own family members signed these treaties, and later they would tell stories about how hard-fought these negotiations were and how they struggled to reconcile what they had to compromise in order to protect future generations and to protect our lands… When tribes would come to the table to negotiate treaties, they weren’t thinking only about many generations into the future. Their negotiations were about relationship, responsibility, respect, and reciprocity” (Taylor, 2019, para. 13).

Although the U.S. government started securing treaties with tribal nations in 1778, a Congressional Act dated September 16, 1776 guaranteed guidelines concerning the granting of lands of 100 to 500 acres. The land was termed “bounty land” for the military enlisted in the Continental Army to fight in the American Revolution (Powell, 2019).

 

The new country did not have a solid mechanism in place to have a cohesive federal government until 1787. “So after Congress adjourned in early 1787, delegates from twelve states converged on Philadelphia. Their mission was to create a stronger federal government. The participants included future presidents George Washington and James Madison; Alexander Hamilton, who did more to shape the US government than most presidents; and Benjamin Franklin, the most famous American in the world. As May ended, they went into Independence Hall, closed the shutters, and locked the doors. By the time they emerged in late summer they had created the US Constitution, a plan for welding thirteen states into one federal nation. Once it was approved by the states, its centralizing framework would finally give Congress the authority it needed to carry out the functions of a national government: collecting revenue, protecting borders, extinguishing states’ overlapping claims to western territory, creating stable trade policy, and regulating the economy… (Baptist, 2014, pg. 9).

Importance was placed on the economy and many actions taken against the Native Americans were based on the federal funds of the United States. For example: President Lincoln pushed for the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad to aid the nation with transporting goods back and forth from sea to shining sea.  Many Native Americans lost their lives as a result of the railroad because the American soldiers murdered many Native Americans to secure the building of the railroads, the decimation of the buffalo and many were forced onto reservations where they faced starvation. As early as the fur trading days, fur-traders took advantage of the Native Americans by the introduction of alcohol in which many native people used to mask the pain of the European invasion. The Europeans introduced a market economy to the western hemisphere which has caused many to suffer from its greedy grip.

 

The introduction of the term “Manifest Destiny” supported the white settler belief that they had the divine right and privilege to pursue the takeover of all land and resources between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans or what is known today as the United States. Their beliefs were supported by the federal government, U.S. military, and by Roman Catholic Popes. As a result, tribal people throughout the United States have had to work diligently to rebuild their tribal governments and begin to regain a sense of balance after they have been victimized over and over again by acts of discrimination, assimilation, and genocide. In spite of the social welfare programs put into place to address the problems Indian people have been facing, many still experience the social ills of domestic violence, substance abuse, child abuse and neglect more than any other segment of the population. Land represented life, granted to the Native Americans by the Creator, to provide food and a place to live for their families which was taken away by greedy Anglo-invaders.