Question

economic history

Discuss the westward expansion and the impact on Native Americans. How has this expansion impacted the US today? What is the influence on institutions and laws that came from the removal of the Native Americans? about 3 paragraphs

Answer 1

Settlers felt justified in taking Native American land because they felt they made the land more valuable.
Treaties forced millions of native Americans to leave• Reservation: small piece of government land reserved for aboriginal Americans. Efforts to make native Americans settled farmers–colonists wanted more "productive" use of the land.
Dawes Act –Reserve land was divided into 160 acre plots and granted for benefit to individual families.
Missionaries tried to convert to Christianity Native Americans. indian Boarding Schools–Children were sent to schools to work on skills like carpentry and housekeeping. Only in 1924 were native Americans considered citizens

Settlers moved westward into what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as portions of the Ohio Valley and the Deep South, even before the American colonies won their independence from Britain in the Revolutionary War. The colonization of the West was greatly supported in the early 19th century by the Louisiana Purchase (1803), followed by the Corps of Discovery Expedition, generally known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition; the War of 1812, which secured established U.S. boundaries and vanquished native tribes of the Old Northwest, the Ohio and Upper Mississippi Valleys; and the Indian Removal Act of 1812.

Waves of treasure seekers flooded into the region when gold was found in California, obtained through the treaty that ended the war with Mexico in 1848. The Gold Rush of California was a major factor in west Mississippi growth. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 and the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862 greatly helped the western expansion. The act provided free 160-acre lots in the unsettled West to anyone who would make a claim, live five years on the land and make improvements to it, including building a home.

In August 1953, Congress adopted House Concurrent Resolution 108, which is widely considered to be the central statement of the termination policy: that same month, Congress passed Public Law 280, which in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin transferred criminal authority from the Indians to the state authorities, except for certain reservations. Congress also abrogated the laws prohibiting Indians from selling alcohol and firearms. Such initiatives could be interpreted as simply bringing Indians into line with other U.S. citizens but, as one historian has noted, "the states were not as keen to control the reservations as predicted by the proponents of termination."

Termination proved to be very difficult to resist. Opponents who emphasized the backwardness of reservations and individual Indians ' inability to cope without continued federal support only reinforced Congressmen's conviction that the IRA had failed and that a new policy was required. Even the lack of appropriate services for native People could be used as evidence of the need for termination.