When Christopher Columbus landed on America’s shores, he encountered copper-skinned people whom he promptly called “Indians“. Mistaken in his geography, he believed he had reached India. Current estimates indicate that there were over a million Indians inhabiting North America then. There are approximately 800,000 Indians today, of whom about 250,000 live on reservations.
The early settlers had an amicable relationship with Indians, who shared their knowledge of hunting, fishing, and farming with their uninvited guests. The stereotyped stealthy, diabolical Indian of modern Western movies was created by callous, treacherous white men; the Indian was born friendly.
Antipathy developed between the Indians and the settlers, whose encroachment on Indian lands provoked an era of turbulence. As early as 1745, Indian tribes coalesced to drive the French off their land. The French and Indian War did not end until 1763. The Indians had succeeded in destroying many of the Western settlements. The British, superficially submissive to the Indians, promised that further migrations west would not extend beyond a specified boundary. However, there was no holding back ardent adventurers like Daniel Boone, who ignored the British covenant with the Indians and blazed a trail westward.
Evicted from their lands or, worse still, ingenuously ceding their property to the whites for a few baubles, Indians were ruthlessly pushed west. Tempestuous wars broke out, but lacking their former stamina and large numbers, the Indians were doomed to capitulation. The battle in 1876 at Little Big Horn River in Montana, in which Sitting Bull and the Sioux tribes massacred General Custer’s cavalry, caused the whites to intensify their campaign against the red men. The battle at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890 rescinded the last vestige of hope for amity between Indians and whites. Thenceforth Indians were relegated to their own reservations, lands allotted to them by the federal government.
Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs has operated since 1824, presumably for the purpose of guarding Indians’ interests, Indians on reservations lead notoriously deprived lives. Poverty, unemployment, high infant mortality, and deficient medical care have maimed a once proud race. In recent times irate Indians have taken a militant stand and have appeared to the courts and the American people to ameliorate their substandard living conditions.
Tags: Christopher Columbus, India, Indian tribe, Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs