Native Americans: history, culture, and contemporary issues

¶ … Native American Issues

Background and Historical Overview

The historical narrative of the United States presents the Native Americans in a tremendously unfair light that is as morally offensive as it is historically inaccurate. The Sioux Indians in particular have been portrayed as savage killers who raided peaceful Settlers from the North and East who tried to cultivate new lives in the unsettled so-called "Indian Country" west of the Mississippi River in the middle and late 19th century (Anderson, 1986). In truth, the Sioux were merely more defiant of the unjust treatment that all of the Native American tribes received from the white man during the immediate periods preceding and following the infamous Indian Removal Act of 1830. In Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux by Gary Clayton Anderson (1986), the author presents a more historically accurate view of the injustices to which the proud Sioux people (and the other Native American tribes) were subjected by the United States government than the perspective generally promoted by contemporary historical texts.

In principle, the revisionist history of the way that the American West was "won" is only one example of the many different historical inaccuracies that apply to the contemporary view of the way that the European explorers in general, and later, the white Colonialists of the North American Continent and the Settlers of the Wild West in particular ignored the rights of native peoples and systematically exploited, expelled, and in many cases, exterminated them in the process of "settling" lands that had been the ancestral homelands of those native peoples for millennia before the white man ever "discovered" the so-called "New World."

The Experiences of the Sioux as Detailed by Objective Contemporary Historians

Before the Indian Removal Act of 1830, most of the Native American tribes living in what was then called "Indian Country" by the white man lived in relative harmony and respected one another's territorial claims and boundaries (Takaki, 2008). One notable exception was the perpetual state of war that existed between the Sioux and the Pawnee tribes (Takaki, 2008). By the time that the U.S. government began to implement the concept of "Indian Removal" certain tribes, such as the Cherokee Nation and the Choctaws, apparently recognized the futility of armed conflict with the U.S. Army in opposition to their unfair treatment and sought to negotiate the most advantageous resettlement terms possible rather than fight against forces that were far superior in both number and in the technology of warfare (Stannard, 1993; Takaki, 2008).

In addition to securing more favorable resettlement terms and cash compensation, some tribes even achieved court victories over white Settlers who had violated treaties ceding certain territories exclusively for tribal occupation and use (Anderson, 1986; Takaki, 2008). Other Native American tribes did not capitulate so quickly or so easily to the white Settlers, fighting bravely to retain their ancestral territories after the white Settlers had repeatedly and systematically broken treaty after treaty, eventually dispensing altogether with the fiction of "negotiations" and implementing the forced removal of the remaining proud Native American tribes from the "Indian Country" that would soon become known as the "Great Plains" (Anderson, 1986; Stannard, 1993).

Those Indian tribes that remained in the disputed territories have been portrayed ever since as ruthless savages who wantonly raided and massacred innocent white settlers, thereby justifying overwhelming retaliation by the U.S. Army (Anderson, 1987; Stannard, 1993; Takaki, 2008). However, those historical narratives conveniently omit the corresponding atrocities committed by the white man against the Indian tribes as well as the degree to which the Indian tribes rather than the white Settlers were actually the victims of atrocities and massacres rather than the perpetrators (Anderson, 1987; Stannard, 1993; Takaki, 2008).

The U.S. forces became even more ruthless in their treatment of the Sioux and the other tribes who had not brokered a peaceful resettlement in between 1830 and 1865 (Anderson, 1987; Stannard, 1993; Takaki, 2008). After the conclusion of the War Between the States, the U.S. Army thought nothing of deliberately exploiting long-standing bitter rivalries between the various Native American tribes. In particular, U.S. forces secured a surrender of arms from the Pawnee in return for a guarantee of protection from the Sioux. Thereafter, the U.S. Army relied heavily on Pawnee scouts to assist their efforts eradicating the Sioux, but in the process, U.S. forces also abandoned their promise of protection and allowed the Sioux to exact revenge against their (now) unarmed rivals the Pawnee (Anderson, 1987; Takaki, 2008).