Analyze federal policy toward American Indians in the late 1800s, including the destruction of the buffalo, the reservation system, conflicts such as Wounded Knee, the Dawes Act, and the assault on tribal sovereignty and culture (Tennessee Academic Standards for Social Studies, United States History and Geography, US.02).

What this topic is asking

Standard US.02 asks how federal policy and the rush of western settlement affected American Indians in the late 1800s. For the EOC that means understanding the Plains Wars, the destruction of the buffalo, the reservation system, the tragedy at Wounded Knee, and above all the Dawes Act of 1887 and its goal of forced assimilation, all of which devastated tribal land, culture, and sovereignty.

The reservation system and the Plains Wars

As settlement advanced, the government pressured or forced American Indian nations onto reservations, often on poor land, and frequently broke the treaties it signed. Resistance led to the Plains Wars of the 1860s to 1890s.

The most famous clash was the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876), where Lakota (Sioux) and Cheyenne warriors, led by figures such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, destroyed George Custer's command. But such victories were temporary. The army, the railroads, and the collapse of the buffalo economy steadily wore down Native resistance.

The destruction of the buffalo

Wounded Knee

In 1890, fear surrounding the Ghost Dance religious movement led the army to confront a band of Lakota at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The encounter became a massacre in which hundreds of Lakota, including women and children, were killed. Wounded Knee is usually marked as the end of the armed Plains Wars and of organized Native military resistance.

The Dawes Act and forced assimilation

The centerpiece of late-1800s policy was the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887.

Assimilation went beyond land. The government promoted boarding schools (such as the Carlisle school, whose motto was "Kill the Indian, save the man") that took Native children from their families and forbade them to speak their languages or practice their traditions.

The results were catastrophic for American Indians: the Dawes Act and related policies stripped away the majority of remaining tribal land, undermined tribal sovereignty (self-government), entrenched poverty, and attacked Native cultures. Many of these policies were not reversed until the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Why this matters for the EOC

The EOC frames this topic around cause and effect and point of view: how settlement and federal policy caused the loss of land and culture, and how documents (a treaty, a school photograph, a reformer's argument) reveal the assimilationist goals of the era. It is also a recurring contrast: the same westward expansion celebrated as opportunity for settlers was a disaster for the people already living there.

Try this

Q1. Explain the goal of the Dawes Act and one of its effects. [2]

• Cue. The goal was forced assimilation (turning American Indians into individual farmers and breaking up tribes); an effect was the loss of most remaining tribal land and weakened sovereignty.

Q2. Explain why the destruction of the buffalo was so harmful to Plains peoples. [2]

• Cue. The buffalo supplied food, clothing, shelter, and tools, so its near-extinction destroyed the economy and independence of Plains life and helped force people onto reservations.