American Indians
Ever since the first Europeans inhabited America there has been a fascination with its land. Its beautiful scenery and its rich soil made, for the settlers, an attractive place to settle . Shortly after the colonies formed, the people started to accept farming as a way of life. Gradually the colonists became self-sufficient and eventually broke all political ties with their mother country, England. In the distance the native Americans (dubbed Indians by the settlers) watched as more and more Europeans came into their homeland. American government took advantage of the Indians by tricking them into selling there lands, not aware of what they were doing, and forcing them off if they resisted. The Indians became upset as they were constantly being shouldered off of their land. In order to respect each others space, treaties were made between the government and the various tribes of Indians. The discovery of gold, however, changed all of this. Instantaneously the treaties were out of the question and white settlers streamed into tribal lands. As society kept surging west and more treaties were broken, Indian tribes either resisted or were taken advantage of in the formation of other treaties. The beginning of capitalism only enhanced
Communication increased with the invention of the telegraph. Eventually, all of the Indians would lose their lands to white settlers. This was just one example of many instances where Indians lost their land. While the Indian was at peace with nature, the white man was destroying it, cutting down its forests and exploiting its natural resources. The Black Hills in South Dakota were the most sacred of all places for the Sioux Indians. " (Brown 100) Another thing the Indians did not understand about the whites was the extent of their "land greed". From 1872 to 1874 3,700,000 buffalo were killed, only 150,000 of them were killed by Indians. The Indian had no concept of time other than that of the sun and of the seasons, while the whites had business deadlines and busy schedules. The one assumption that led to the Indians losing almost all of their land was that they thought they could hold whites to their word. When they fought the whites, however, they found themselves up against not individual men, but a group of soldiers fighting in a line together. To justify the invading of Indian territories, the Americans came up with Manifest Destiny. The Indians assumed that they could trust the whites - they were wrong. The Indian way of life was fundamentally different from that of white culture. Soon, telegraph wires streamed from the west coast to the east coast. (Brown 265) The white soldiers were too many for the brave Indian warriors to fight off, and eventually, they lost their struggle for freedom.
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Acceptance Essays
