Sunday, 11 March 2012

PROGRESS ? -- PROFIT -- INDIAN SUNSET

                                                                                           



The weather on the Plains is either boiling hot summers or freezing cold winters. 

In the summer months the tribes were busy hunting for meat which they either ate or tried in the hot sun and kept it for the winter. They also hunted other games and fished. 

Buffalo supplied meat for fresh or sun-dried for the winter; hides for tents, blankets, clothes, shoes, saddlery, cooking pots; bones for tools and weapons; sinew for thread; horn for drinking cups and headdresses and so on.
Now the Indians were the perfect conservationists. They only took what they needed which did no harm at all.

The European idea of ownership of land was right the opposite. Although more than plenty, they wouldn't share with the Indians which baffles them.  They 
either killed more than they ever could eat or drove them away.


SITTING BULL

In 1830 pushing the Indians back was well in progress. As the white settler's population grew and so did the pressure for more land.


The tribes were either forced or bribed to go west. The US government purchase Louisiana which is between the Mississippi and the Rockies and wanted the Indians to move there. It was a surprise that some tribes didn't want to but any concern of theirs.
In 1832 The Permanent Indian Frontier was drawn for the Indian to have a permanent home as long as the river flows and the grass grew.

The Eminoles went into the swamp of Florida and were hunted down.

The Tennessee Cherokees were forced to march to Oklahoma. It was reported that 4000 Cherokees died and it was called the Trail of Tears.

On top of it all, it was a journey to an infertile land. The tribes who were already living there did not welcome them.  US government in their righteousness thought that they were there for their own good and it is no concern of theirs

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