The Homestead Act and the Plains Tribes

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History Nebraska
The Homestead Act and the Plains Tribes, an illustrated lecture by Nancy Gillis. Part of the Nebraska State Historical Society's Brown Bag Lecture Series. Originally presented November 16, 2017



Transcript [Music] good afternoon my name is John strop I'd like to welcome you to the Nebraska State Historical Society's brown-bag history lecture series the brown bags have been offered since the mid 1980s with a couple of exceptions some years ago the brown bag topics for a year are not thematic however in light of Nebraska is a hundred and fiftieth celebration of statehood the Society will sponsor brown bags for 2017 related to the theme of peoples of Nebraska lectures are held monthly on the third Thursday in the auditorium at the Nebraska History Museum at 15th and P Street in Lincoln the programs have a live audience are broadcast on public access channels in Lincoln Omaha Bellevue Hastings North Platte Grand Island Papillion South Sioux City Blair Bassett Chadron Sidney and Beatrice if you are not already a member I encourage you to join benefits of membership include subscriptions to Nebraska history magazine and the Society's newsletter use of a microfilm reader printer in the Society's Library Archives to make free copies from microfilm free admission to the Society seven historic sites discounts in the Society's landmark stores at the History Museum the state capitol and chimney rock and reduce fees for kids classes tours after-hours events and similar activities where there is a feed before I introduce today's speaker I want to thank the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation for the financial support which allows us to tape and broadcast programs on public access television across the state and on the Society's YouTube page to find these videos on YouTube the directions are on the screen it's easy type in your browser www.youtube.com/user/stielv ask historical click on pay playlists and you will go to a new page there you will see a list labeled 2017 a subsection to house this special sesquicentennial brown bag series peoples of Nebraska just below that subsection you will see a sub section labeled brown bag lectures where you will find over 150 past brown bags available on YouTube today our speaker is Nancy Gillis Nancy Gillis was the executive director of the John Neihardt Center a State Historic Site from 1997 to 2014 she also spent 16 years on faculty at Wayne State College and northeast community college teaching Native American history and cultures u.s. history and world history as well as many years in both Nebraska Indian Community College and little priests tribal college gilles received the Addison Sheldon award from the Society recognizing her outstanding contributions to the preservation and interpretation of Nebraska history her topic is the Homestead Act and the Plains tribes just to let you know about asking questions Nancy prefers you wait to the end please join me in welcoming Nancy Gillis but CEO Molyneux he no autoerotic I a colicky ally an awardee chinotto Dante da go Toa Nancy Gillis I've greeted you in the Cherokee language and I have asked for the Creator to be present for everything that is said and done here today and then I told you the tribe I belong to and then the clan and only then did I tell you my name because the native culture that is the correct order of things and so I'd like to begin with again greeting you and thanking you for being here and thanking John strop for contacting me I have been here before for programs but it's been quite a number of years ago the the world of Native American Indian had existed for millennium prior to contact with Europeans the latest human created artifacts found date nearly 50,000 years ago long before the last ice age and out of the estimated population of some 54 million in the Western Hemisphere perhaps a third of that comprised over a thousand tribes in North America at the time and at least 28 of those tribes might be called Plains Indians the focus today those tribes occupied this area for hundreds of years prior to contact in the late 18th century but it's the 19th century in particular which represents the West as we think of it and that's how I want to examine the 19th century push and that white settlement in what it affected although we're here to examine the impact of some later legislation we need first to set a back story that history or context both trade alliances and conflicts existed between the native peoples and protecting hunting domains was important to their economy as all were dependent on the natural resources of the area which included two different types of buffalo many species of antelope and deer bear wolves eagles you know there's something like 59 species of eagles and a good portion of those were on the plains myriad small-game this natural environment shaped the people's thinking and culture and their perspective of both the physical and the metaphysical world the vast sky of the open plains storms tornadoes rivers and flood and so much space and it's all amplified by the mountains to the west settlers from Europe had begun to change native America as early as the 1500s with Spanish explorers looking for gold and even then they were beginning to impose European values of Christianity and economics then came the French and the Dutch and the English looking for land and raw resources and trade the contacts in the southwest and the coast east of the Mississippi meant that the Plains tribes were left for later contact and influences but the use of metal tools and other trade goods altered Indian ways of life from the beginning especially the gun and the plow two pieces of technology that changed the world and colonists began to settle and what they called this new world the introduction of strange diseases from which the native population suffered enormous losses with more dying due to disease than were lost in any of the wars fought for their homelands and the changes continued until now the North American continent has gone out of Indian hands except for 2% still held on reservations and enclaves which remain theirs under treaties from the acquisition of the Louisiana territory in eighteen three all government policy toward Native Americans was threefold assimilation removal or extermination Jefferson preferred the first two bonded together he encouraged in her marriage education and sessions of land in exchange for trade goods he was the first to propose the broad policies calling for removal from their homelands in fact years before he was president this is what Jefferson wrote nothing will reduce those wretches so soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country he also wrote but I would not stop there I would never cease suing them while one of them remained on this side of the Mississippi by the late 1820s Andrew Jackson began the forced removals of all Native Nations from the east to west of the Mississippi River and out of the recognized United States opening their lands to increase settlement the Indian Removal Act of 1830 made it legal and increased the numbers removed in his fifth speech to Congress he states quote it will relieve the whole state of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy and enabled those states to advance more rapidly and enable them the Indians to cast off their route institutions and savage habits to eventually become an interesting civilized Christian community a nearly all the tribes were removed from one area to another by the government at some time in their history and many more than once when this decision was reached chief spotted tail of the Lower Brule would say in the 1880s quote tell your people since the Great Father promised we should never be removed we have been moved five times I think you had better put Indians on wheels so you can run them about wherever you wish then in the 1830s the American fur trade company increased contact under what was called the rendezvous system where trappers Native American and European which included Russian and Spanish and French and American lobbied for military forts in their areas of interest in the entry of American trappers into territory previously controlled by tribes such as the Arikara Pawnee and Mandan increased the tensions and the push to then eliminate Indian competition these forts were also seen as protection for those hardy souls who set out for the rich lands and the gold fields of California and the Oregon coast most were headed there because of economic failures in the east and many of the early forts were also meant to help protect the native population from illegal settlers and miners but that will soon change at first they were a trickle just passing through but by the time we see the wagon trains later replaced by the railroad more than four hundred thousand will have traveled the multi route Trail the impact on the Plains tribes along the route was significant particularly in trade for material goods such as cloth and guns metal tools and utensils but this was mainly interactions with people passing through who had no intention of staying in what Albert Pike had termed the great American desert they were bound for lands of milk and honey further west the emigrants worried a great deal about potential Indian attacks but in spite of Pulp Fiction in the movies desperately defended wagon trains such rarely occurred and few were ever attacked in fact fewer than 400 people are documented as being killed by Indian attacks I have a friend a former professor at Wayne State College who is working on research on this idea of circling the wagons and most of the research says it never happened they didn't do that it was not practical so it's just part of our pulp fiction most of the encounters were simply business transactions the the travellers trading firearms tobacco sugar coffee clothing and trinkets in exchange for some desperately needed fresh meat and buffalo robes because their clothing was wearing out but within a few years the immigrants livestock had over grazed those prairie grasses burned all the available firewood and depleted the game for miles on either side of the trails and soon many tribes along the Platte were impoverished and even starving then the immigrants became so joiners no more they began to settle down and stay then the immigrants changed life on the plains forever here in Nebraska we have homestead National Monument the focus there is on the two decades following the American Civil War when the Western tribes were under the greatest threat from the flood of settlers and miners pouring into the plains now I'm going to begin examining why and how the greatest and longest lasting changes occurred in the lives of the Native Nations on the plains predominantly after the Homestead Act of 1862 we'll look at economics technology we'll look at it socially and politically changes in land control clothing housing family structure gender roles and political relationships in 1862 the majority federal states a Republican Party controlled Congress and Lincoln signed three monumental acts which would change the face and culture of the West forever Homestead Act the railroad Act and the Morrill land-grant Act my focus is going to be on the first two but I want to briefly touch on the Morrill Act it was sponsored by Senator Justin Morrill of Vermont as quote an act donating public lands to the several states and territories to provide colleges for the benefit of Agriculture and mechanic arts and was the first federal aid to education the first land-grant institution created was Kansas State University in 1863 now before the Civil War American engineers were educated at West Point it's the only school engineers were being trained now while initially focused on benefits to agriculture the mechanic arts or engineering would be specifically included in the Morrill Act of course the question would be how does it impact the Plains tribes because the lands granted by government for these institutions was carved out of land ceded by or forcibly taken from the tribes just a side note it was 1994 when Congress allowed the same land grant benefits to establish tribal colleges but in lieu of land returned this is still government land you can put a tribal College on it so Lincoln's vision of America informed the process of Indian Removal begun with earlier settlement the early Puritans had defied defined Native Americans as savages somehow undeserving of the rights accorded whites one argued at the time it is apparent to all acquainted with Indians they are incompetent to manage their own business or protect their rights in their intercourse with the white race so many clothes their their baser instincts in reformed garb by arguing Indians should be removed from the lands in order to get them away from the harmful effects of encroaching white society so Lincoln's belief Indians should forsake their traditional ways and take up farming proved problematic when he signed the homestead bill into law he effectively opened the West which housed by this time numerous Indian reservations wherever Native Americans inhabited fertile farmland settlers demanded it for themselves four times 1852 54 59 and 60 the house would pass homestead legislation and on each occasion the Senate or the president vetoed it with the secession of southern states from the Union during the war removal of the slavery issue and finally in 1862 it is signed into law homestead acquisition process find a piece of land file an application improve the land and you have deed of title the Homestead Act was important symbolically if not in practice by 1890 only about 3% of the lands west of the Mississippi were handled by a homestead this measure was far less effective in making vacant land productive the liberal mining laws and grants to railroads however were nevertheless it stands as a shining example of legislation passed by the north after the south had seceded in January 1863 Daniel Freeman and 417 others would file claims even before the Civil War prior to the war with Mexico 1845 people settling in the West demanded preemption or an individual's right to settle land first and pay for it later essentially an early form of credit eastern economic interests opposed this policy it was feared that the cheap labor for factories in the East would be drained by these people wanting to go west after the war with Mexico a number of developments supported the growth of new pieces of legislation to guarantee us hegemony over the new acquisitions which included five hundred and twenty-nine thousand square miles the third largest acquisition of territory in history Louisiana territory was the first Alaska was the second this would become territories and then states of New Mexico Utah Nevada Arizona California Texas and Colorado these lands were treated as if they were unoccupied wilderness to be fenced and plowed without regard to the increasing negative impacts on the current occupants whether Native Indians or Mexican but there were also detractors of the legislation Quig senator from Maine William Pitt Fessenden wondered why and he asked why law breaking whites were not restrained by law enforcement officials the Senators were dumbfounded at the prospect of using force against a white population on behalf of natives Fessenden concluded typically the law and public opinion supported a property holder against Marauders but when the possessor quote happens to be an Indian the question is changed altogether the law of God requires the white man should steal from the Indian and if he cannot do it any other way he's to cut the Indians throat and if he's not strong enough to do this the government is to help him now this is the type of advertisement seen by people both in the eastern US and Europe to encourage more westward movement after the Civil War this kind of advertisement that attracts those communities who emigrate as a whole places like the Swedish in Auckland and the Danes and Dannebrog and Men and the Irish and O'Neill where they came as large groups now in all there were 389 ratified u.s. treaties but the desire for Indian land created monuments to be a momentum that would break any promise given by the nation this land greed was the greatest cause for the majority of the treaties being broken by the United States so new treaties had to be made but then these could not be kept because of the quest for gold and silver and copper land to build homes and raised crops and cattle creating an incredible force so the idea of owning land was foreign to the American Indian who could not conceive of owning the earth until it was taken away from them believing they were settling an empty land many of the settlers failed to recognize or accept Indian rights and the government nor land speculators were interested in educating them differently the railroad Act of 1862 would seem unlikely the railroad and the Plains Indians and the Buffalo could live together in this rapidly changing world the problems emerged with the railroad cutting through the interior bringing an increasing number of military and settlers and opportunists into the homeland of the Plains tribes and the Buffalo vastly different cultural values put the settlers and the tribes at odds the railroad also disrupted the migratory patterns of the bison and thus the patterns of the hunt then buffalo robes become popular in the east and they also became a source of industrial leather and companies hired professional hunters to ride on the trains and kill bison sometimes at the rate of a hundred an hour our beloved Cody was hired to do that more than a thousand Wars would be fought this huge encroachment into their lands also made the Plains tribes even more dependent on the Bison weighing up to 2500 pounds and over six feet tall at the shoulder they're capable of running at 35 miles per hour and they are a formidable adversary the people had always used absolutely everything of the buffalo meat was eaten fresh then dried stored in par fleshes for the winter skull and spiritual ceremonies water containers from the bladders cooking pots from the stomach bones became tools even Buffalo dung called chips by the settlers was burned as fuel and crushed fine for medical pulses and baby powder and because they depended so much on them the natives honored them and regarded them as sacred and basing much of their spiritual identity and names upon them when the native almost disappeared with the Buffalo an estimated 60 million less than a thousand were left by the turn of the 20th century and at that time in 1900 population of Native Americans had dropped to 225,000 that was it now note well is more iconic than the tepee travelers on the plains commented on the graceful lines and decoration and they're well adapted for nomadic life you're erected around a pole frame with covers containing as many as 30 buffalo hides to cover 118 foot high and 30 feet in diameter as mentioned in other programs the horse was responsible for being able to have these larger teepees and 18-foot tepee could weigh a couple hundred pounds so trade brought tent canvas this is one of the changes and I'm talking about it was lighter and with no back-breaking and time-consuming scraping and tanning of the hides ironically it often took more raw buffalo hides in trade to purchase enough canvas then would have been needed to make a true shanell buffalo hide cover so hunting increased and over hunting of the bison not only by those professional hunters but the native people themselves if anyone has ever wondered there is a specific way to put one up the trade now so important to maintaining any level of tribal autonomy began to change dramatically trade had always been a part of the life and we see this you know prior to contact with shells and other natural materials between tribes a couple of examples one indicator of prosperity for a crow woman was a dress made of blue or red wool but decorated traditionally with help teeth now this tells you a company's pictures tell you a couple of things one the woman was a savvy trader and her husband her father was a mighty hunter because the elk only have two teeth like this a bull elk has two ivories suitable for this use every two of these is one bull elk same kind of thing with the other dress which is covered with dental iam shells of the Northern Plains and a suit of student trader and fine craftsmanship because the dental iam shells had to be traded for because you only find those on the coast all the Plains tribes purchase things from Anglo or Hispanic traders but they're still preferring filling they're beginning to prefer filling the TPS with factory made utensils replacing buffalo stomachs and earth and pottery with iron and brass kettles what housewife wouldn't bone all's and hide scrapers replaced with metal ones steel knives awls needles far more durable much clothing was still buffalo or deerskin but more and more trade for cloth brightly colored glass beads replaced shell beads and porcupine quills ribbon appliquéd replace paint glass mirrors small bells and steel to light campfires this is also an area where changes begin showing up in gender roles because in trade for these items as in the Thomas Hart Benton painting here the men are fronting they're the ones in direct contact but it was the woman who was in charge of what was traded when it was traded and how much they would get for it because other than his personal sacred items his weapons and horses the women owned everything they owned the lodges the food the clothing the hides the tools and the children all of those things had been created by the women they owned everything they were the manufacturers this changes gender roles because white traders would only negotiate man-to-man ignoring the women the women were much shrewder negotiators in trade the trade the tradesmen knew this and rarely could be coerced into taking liquor and payment for their handiwork unlike the men another change in roles is found in the half-breed or mixed Bloods these matisse or to use the pejorative breeds were the children of mixed Indian white parentage this is where I stand as a mixture of Cherokee Choctaw Muscogee and scots-irish and French this made them marginal people living in an uncomfortable space between the two groups nearly all were accepted completely into what was usually their their mother's society but not so in non-indian society but during the the height of the fur trade and early settlement they were indispensable they spoke both won parents European language and perhaps several native languages and could be negotiators for prices they were valuable Gras guides for hunters and trappers and of course trappers became notorious for taking a wife with each of several tribes because this gave them an automatic in with those tribes and their allies some of the most famous ones around our area would be of course the bents and the Bordeaux's and Quanah Parker son of a Comanche chief and a white captive Cynthia Parker then in 1862 the Railroad Act was passed designating the 32nd parallel for the initial Transcontinental Railroad and when you look at the map it goes right along the Platte River the same way the Pioneers did so they're taking advantage of Nebraska's flatness this is advantageous for roads and we all enjoy our interstate somewhat and so it was it was the perfect cut across the country and as the former director of the night hearts foundation I had to put something from Neihardt up there when William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865 was put in charge of the Military District of Missouri which meant all land west of the Mississippi and he was given the assignment to eradicate Plains Indians resistance to the railroad he is quoted we are not going to let a few thieving ragged Indians stop or check the progress of the railroad in a letter to General Grant it's also well documented by the 1860s the bison extermination as a policy to gain control over the tribes so as the Buffalo disappeared the way of life for Native people began to disappear because the Buffalo were essential for sustenance as mentioned before by the 1870s buffalo robes were popular in the east and more importantly their hides were used for industrial leather the railroad hired professional hunters military commanders promoted the butchery as a way of further undermining Indian resistance and starving the people out without the Bison to hunt with the populations of other game species depleted by over hunting they were increasingly dependent on the federal government and moved on to the reservations this is actually a historical photograph these are all skulls skulls only not the rest of the bones just skulls the bones and skulls were also used ground-up to use as fertilizer if you've ever grown roses you know that they need bone meal and that's what they're getting thus begins a period called the Indian Wars from 1864 through 1890 when the tribes would fight their last desperate battles to hold on to their autonomy and sovereignty but due to the context of their separate cultures both sides were committed to total warfare yet they fought differently American troops were made up of a standing army and could rely on supplies and reinforcements from the scattered forts and even back east with steamboats and railroads new troops could be on site from st. Louis in 16 days but native people were not an army at war a community at war Indian warriors fought to protect families and wives and children who were often near or right there on the battlefield often victims of horrible attacks on villages and many outright slaughters of their women and children this begins to change the role of native men within the society the presence of the military and settlers was rapid fire and longer range rifles made close range weapons less practical so trade was brisk for rifles and revolvers to replace traditional weapons and that only increased the trade in exchange for waning resources leadership also changed most tribes had been led by a combination of peace Chiefs and war Chiefs following the Peace Chiefs mature and seasoned men usually in their late 40s who had accumulated broad experience in keeping the camps and villages running on a daily basis these were successful warriors who had gained respect as diplomats in contrast WarChiefs were usually younger and needing to prove their abilities in protecting the people in both as both hunters and warriors so traditionally when a crisis arose requiring warfare these young men were called upon but once the crisis was over they were to relinquish the leadership back to the peace Chiefs however after the mid 1860s many of the Plains tribes were in a constant state of warfare and the role of war chief began to surpass the role of peace chief that's why you read through less and less about Red Cloud and some of those and more and more of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull and gall an American horse and all of those who were on the front lines of the fighting scouting was a long honored tradition particularly during the fur trade period but in the 1860s and 70s another change for the male role the use of Scouts from tribes familiar to an area but hostile to another tribe was common some enlisted a Scouts for brief terms there were others who were hired as employees of the US Army prior to the act in 1866 these Scouts were considered not soldiers but employees during the Indian Wars they were a fast-moving aggressive and knowledgeable asset to the US Army while they refused army discipline or uniforms they proved expert in knowing the landscape and providing intelligence that there was fear whether Indian scouts would remain faithful or might betray the the white soldiers or turn against them but as we know in the case of Custer's crow Scouts they did know more than their commanders and would make sure they were out of harm's way if their advice had not been taken John Neihardt met curly in his travels who was one of Custer's Scouts and Curley explained to him and when Custer said we don't need you anymore the scouts were gone they knew what was coming they're the ones who told Custer this 5,000 you over here and Custer ignored the advice in our area probably the most famous group would be company a fort on Omaha Scouts meetup of Winnebago and Omaha men under chief little priest who scouted for Colonel Granville dodge against the Lakota Cheyenne and Arapaho protecting the Bozeman trail during the Powder River campaign the last of the treaties were signed in 1871 and Congress tried to put an end to native resistance by establishing more reservations and giving the Army authority to deal with those who refused to report to or remain there a note on the military presence most troops in the West were disgruntled draftees minimally trained and all too ready to abuse power over people who could not retaliate at first the tribes resisted the reservation system and engaged in the Indian Wars for decades but they were finally defeated by military force and the encroaching settlement and negotiated treaties to resettle on reservations which kept getting smaller this late 19th century political cartoon satirizes the corruption of federal agents in charge of the reservations it's well documented that many pocketed most of the federal money and doled out only starvation rations to the inhabitants now there were movements against the mistreatment and the corruption but they were small and they were easily sidetracked by other issues even the Friends of the Indians who had been abolitionists and then friends of the Indians got sidetracked by women's suffrage and the looming war between Spain and Mexico and the Caribbean labor riots in the cities of the east and the Chinese race riots in the West another great change brought by this legislation was how Native people could use their lands treaties had been the legal means for obtaining the Indian homelands as the ultimate goal the government chose the location and area of the reservations on pieces of land settlers did not desire land usually insufficient for growing crops and raising animals in Nebraska earlier ceded huge areas of land now would be included in the Homestead Act further removals onto the reservation system guaranteed more open land and remember this was also a fundraiser for the US government to be used in other pockets they sold parcels for much higher than they had paved the tribes for the land so there was a profit to the government the reservation system allotted each tribe a claim to their new lands they were legally able to protect their territories and the right to govern themselves until attitudes began to change again in the halls of Congress now the traditional tribal organization was a highly cohesive group led by powerful men opposed to any changes that weaken their position and many Americans feared them and saw complete control they feared Sitting Bull that's why he was murdered they feared Red Cloud sometimes where the natives were placed on a reservation was far away and very different geographically then the tribe had occupied before for instance woodland Indians ending up on the plains or tribes lumped together on a reservation some who had been adversaries in the past forced to coexist on the same piece of land creating some strange combinations such as the Northern Arapaho and the southern Arapaho one group having to live with the Cheyenne and the other group with the Pawnee but by the end of the 1880s a general government consensus was reached it was time for them to leave behind their tribal land holdings traditions and identities On February 8 1887 the Dawes allotment Act was signed into law by Grover Cleveland and it had several goals dividing the reservation into plots of land for individual households this would break up the tribes as a social communal unit and there's all this land that has not been allotted think of a checkerboard they take one end of the reservation and chopped it up in a hundred and sixty acre plots and assign different native families to those plots and then oh there's all this that does not allot it what should we do it that the Indians don't know how to use it so that would come under government control for leasing for grazing and also occasionally would go out of native hands the government did not give allotments to Indians I hear that a quite a bit people will ask well you know the government gave the Winnebago their reservation gave the Omaha their reservation not so government agents assigned allotments cut from land already held by the people on the reservations this was their land it was paid for many years earlier by sessions of millions of acres of traditionally held lands settlers then acted on the belief that the natives were now part of the larger American society now the government did pay for those excess lands on the reservations not taken by allotments but the prices offered were from 30 cents to a dollar and a half an acre which that money was not given to individuals but was held in trust by the office of Indian Affairs to put out education and civilization so the native land base was reduced and reduced notice what happened right next door this is from December 15 1872 Omaha Daily News 15 years before the Dawes general allotment act and you can see the prices being offered to white settlement is $1 to $3 to $5 an acre on one of the side issues on allotment has to do with fractional heirship of those hundred and sixty acres that concept of Indian money paid out from leased land is almost a joke I have a Navajo friend who gets 72 cents a year as her lease money and we can come back to this issue during question and answer if you wish some are forced into subsistence farming many did go into ranching particularly in the tribes of the Sandhills area it was appropriate one that would reinforce some of the priorities of Indian society such as owning horses and and hiring extended family members they could take an off reservation homestead under the Homestead Act but to do so meant accepting US citizenship and giving up their tribal identity and rights paka chief standing there when he returned to the area took up a homestead but he was no longer considered Ponca by the federal government other attempts that reform missionaries boarding schools also impacted the tribes in the language of Horace Greeley one of the most well known newspaper editors the idea that the Indian was not capable of being civilized on their own forced assimilation became justified it was a non guilt solution to the Indian problem where a high level of cultural extermination was accomplished missionaries used both religious and secular education teaching domestic mechanical and agricultural pursuits as preparation for domestics and farm labor while the earliest contact with Christianity was with Catholicism the majority of the Plains Indians after being on reservations were forced into government schools where Protestantism was required they believed to Christianize and civilize would take strict adherence to three proposals first to break up the tribal relations in their reservation base end of a individualised the Indians on their homesteads make the Indian citizens with protection and restraints of the law and provide universal government system of education was actually a step backwards in educational style while the east and west coasts were heavily involved in industrialization textiles machinery electricity and other trades even the automobile and machine manufacturing the curriculum in these boarding schools was teaching harness making blacksmithing truck farming for the boys and for the girls cooking ironing cleaning to make them housekeepers these skills no longer fit on the reservation in teepees or in the towns and cities because their skills were obsolete from the beginning and those positions could be more easily filled by raw immigrants from Europe who did not have to be indoctrinated into town and city living in conclusion these are some of the impacts of settlement begun with early expansion policies and spurred by the Homestead Act the railroad Act and the Morrill land grant act each of which undermined tribal culture settlers could take Indian lands without guilt because the government said they could the railroad act allowed the government and private companies to own and control vast swaths of land and create the towns that continue to spread confined to smaller and smaller reservations the tribes or endured disease loss of tribal identity forced assimilation and many other social economic and political stresses but I don't want you to see this as just some good Indian versus greedy White's presentation far from it history is much more complicated than that but I do want us to see a less idealized view of this portion of our nation's history maybe stop focusing our classroom celebrations on hard scrapple but happy homesteaders and look at the wider picture our state is making more of an effort to do so especially during this one hundred and fiftieth year for which I am pleased and proud but there's so much more to be done for equality of honest portrayal as well as equality under the law thank you are there questions yes did the Indian cultures have things made of cloth or weaving their own cloth more like basketry it would be like mats those kinds of things but rarely clothing some of the Northern California and some of those tribes wove hats and sometimes capes out of grasses but not weaving of cloth until trade the south-western rugs the chimayo blankets the Navajo rugs that comes with the Spanish bringing sheep and goats and the Spanish taught them to weave so the Spanish could have a item to send back to the mother country for trade yes was the smallpox purposely spread yes it is well-documented of blankets that were known to be infected from one tribe being sent to another yes we've got just a minute here does anybody have a last burning question question on the the population figures they have been by some anthropologists and one of my degrees is in anthropology I consider myself a recovering anthropologist estimates as high as 95 million for what we consider North and Central America there have been others who have looked at that as being the entire Western Hemisphere with about 54 million in North America we can't be sure we have to extrapolate from sizes of villages in very productive areas particularly on the east coast and in Florida so places where we do have productive areas populations would be large and so they extrapolate out from that.