The Western Frontier, Essay Example

Since white settlers drove farther to the West and continually pushed local Americans out of their lands, fights between settlers and tribes became unavoidable. In the year 1864, several women of Indian origin and children were killed by Union troops at a Massacre known as the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. The American army was also involved in fighting the Sioux Wars in the Dakota Territory’s Black Hills in the 1860s and the 1870s. The year 1876 saw General George Armstrong Custer make his renowned final stand during Little Bighorn’s Battle, when all his 264 troops fell in Chief Sitting Bull and his warriors’ hands. However, the victory of Sioux was brief because a year later the tribe was defeated. Many local Americans also lost their lives at the Wounded Knee Battle in 1890, during the attempt of the army to stop the Ghost Dance Movement.

After the local American forces had been defeated, the American government attempted to herd local populace onto reservations on New Mexico, Oklahoma and Dakotas’s poorest land to create space for the growing population of white settlers. Working under pressure from reformers who desired to adapt local Americans to the white culture, the Dawes Severalty Act was passed by Congress in 1887. The Act prohibited ownership of land by any other tribe and compelled 160-acre homes into the possession of Indian individuals and their households with an assurance of making them citizens in the future. The aim was to incorporate local Americans into the culture of the white as soon as possible. The Act failed to assimilate local Americans into the American society but was successful only in taking land away from tribes.

The 1893 Depression and high defensive tariffs had catastrophic results on poor farmers in the South and Midwest. Most of these farmers were in debts, and they were not able to afford the unfettered railway fares to take their produce to cities. As an effect, over one million farmers arranged for the National Grange to take care of their living.