Background
Native Americans were the first pioneers to explore and settle in North American frontier. They developed advanced farming approaches including exceptional crop irrigation systems. They cleverly herded fish down river to catch as many as 1,000 fish in just a few hours. One innovative hunting technique included digging pits to lure buffalo to fall into.
Late 19th-century political cartoon showing injustices and cruelty to Native Americans, including the Cherokee, Shawnee and Delaware nations, by American railroad companies, politicians, federal courts and others.
Bettmann Archives/Getty Images
The beginning of Native American suffering was when the government encouraged the white settlers to take land from the Native Americans during westward expansion. In 1830 the government came up with the Indian Removal Act. Andrew Jackson was the President at this time and he passed this act which said the government could move the Indians from the land that they were on in the east and move them to the west, into the “Indian colonization zone”.
When George Washington was President in the early years of the American republic, white settlers referred to the Native Americans as the “Indian Problem”. If I was one of the people back then and the government said that, I would believe the Indians were a problem since George Washington was the highest person in command at the time. White settlers thought the Indians needed to be more like them. To solve the “Indian Problem”, Washington thought that the Native Americans needed to be civilized which meant they needed to read, write, speak in English and be Christians.
"American Progress", John Gast, 1872
To add to the justification of the displacement of Native Americans, John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny”. This phrase reinforced the idea that the white settlers were right in taking the land from the Indians because God said it was their destiny to expand westward. Then to make matters worse, the Pacific Railway Act and the Homestead Act were passed in 1862. The Pacific Railway Act helped build the railroads so people could get from the east to the west much more easily. The Homestead Act said that any adult citizen could claim 160 acres of government land and the settlers only had to pay a small registration fee.
These are just a few examples of how the white settlers ended up taking so much of the land from the Native Americans. Sometimes pictures can say a thousand words. Do you see how the picture above called “American Progress” displayed the justification of the white settler?