The Clash of Cultures

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  • The Clash of the Cultures
    • Many settlers viewed the Native Americans as Inferior
      • The stereotypical Native American in settlers' eyes was lazy and savage
      • Many settlers believed their own culture of private property and more intensive land use should have priority over tribal rights to the land
      • Exceptions to this attitude tended to belong to those settlers, like former mountain man Jim Bridger, who knew the Native Americans best
    • Population pressures led to conflict
      • In 1830, the US government gave the whole of the Great Plains over to the Native Americans
      • The eastern edge of the Plains was known as the permanent Indian Frontier
      • Most settlers viewed the land as wild and inhospitable. Known as the 'Great American Desert'
      • Population of US was rapidly increasing.
      • In 1843, pioneers began the great migration, moving west across the Plains to Oregon and California in search of land
      • This migration caused some disruption to the herds which the Native Americans hunted
      • But it meant trade opportunities for the Plain Indians
      • First major problems began with the Gold Rush in 1849
        • Hunting and gathering were so disrupted by the mines that many Plain Indians were left near starvation
        • Diseased brought by miners
      • Native American numbers in California dropped from 100 000 in 1846, to 30 000 in 1870
      • Increasingly during the 1850s and 1860s, tribes fought the settlers and the US army
    • Native Americans were forced onto reservations
      • The US Government often tried to reserve lands where tribes could be confined by treaty
      • The problem tended to be that the lands,if poor, were insufficient for the tribes
        • And if good, were grabbed by settlers in defiance of treaties
      • Likewise, many chiefs lacked the authority to compel their people's adherence to these arguments
    • Outside the reservations, there were often problems
      • By 1830s, the Cherokees in Georgia had taken to settled farming and lived in European-style houses
      • Published newspaper in their own alphabet
      • President Jackson, under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, authorised their forced expulsion from Georgia to what is now Oklahoma
      • This eventually happened in 1838, and 4000 Cherokees died on the way- called it the 'Trail of Tears'

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