Buffalo Soldiers and Sioux Indians

This week was the second week we researched a topic on our own and created our own essential question, and then wrote multiple choice questions for our final. This week we researched the Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans during the westward expansion. We came up with the essential question “Did the government have good intentions when enacting policies for westward expansion? In what ways did these policies impact the natives and buffalo soldiers?”

The American government has a track record for discriminating against whole groups of people, including African Americans and Native Americans. After the Civil War when westward expansion began, mistreatment continued, but this time they used one group to help discriminate against the other.  The government needed an army presence in the Midwest, so they used African American soldiers to control the populations of Plains Indians that lived there. These soldiers became known as the Buffalo Soldiers. With experience from the Civil War and nowhere else to go the Buffalo Soldiers were ideal for the job. Most of the Plains Indians that lived in this area of the Midwest were part of the Sioux Nation. Tribes like the Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, and Apache were very well unified. They had chiefs who were the political leaders of their tribes, and they held their own religious ceremonies and rituals.

Buffalo Soldiers in the Midwest

To improve westward expansion, the government used the African American soldiers to help enforce newly enacted policies on the Indians. One of the first things the government did was use the soldiers to remove all the buffalo from the Great Plains, which were the Indians source of almost everything. The Buffalo Soldiers implemented total war tactics, destroying everything life sustaining for the Indians in hopes of forcing them off the land. After doing this, the government instituted the Allotment program, where they divided up the Native American land. They gave individuals their own land on reservations, and gave 90% of the land to the public. Then they enacted the Dawes Act that granted titles of land and U.S. citizenship to Natives who wanted to begin a new life as farmers. The Natives didn't want to be pushed off of their home land and into reservations so they began resisting and fighting back. When over 150 Sioux Indians were killed at the Wounded Knee Massacre, they finally gave up and stopped fighting.

The American government wanted to expand their territory, and didn't care that they were disrupting the homes of entire tribes of people. They destroyed the Native Americans' sources of food, and forced them onto reservations. The government had good intentions when giving the Indians land to live on after being forced off of their land, but they never should've moved them in the first place. The Natives lived there for hundreds of years and their lives were completed disrupted by the unfair actions of the U.S. government.

Sources:

ABC-CLIO Overview Videos: http://www.edline.net/pages/Reading_HS/Curriculum/LibraryMediaCenter/Links/New_Edline_folder__Burke_10_27

Buffalo Soldiers Society (PBS LearningMedia Video): http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/49e8d07f-313d-44af-924a-591b0c96aeea/buffalo-soldiers-in-new-mexico/

Excerpt from Dawes Act 1887: http://www.edline.net/files/_FFJNJ_/72e885a0a31113a13745a49013852ec4/Excerpts_from_Dawes_Act.pdf

Image "Buffalo Soldiers in the Midwest": http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/49e8d07f-313d-44af-924a-591b0c96aeea/buffalo-soldiers-in-new-mexico/