Comanche Campaign Essay Outline

After President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, everyone was eager for the construction to begin. The railroad was needed to connect California to the eastern and midwestern large cities in order to ship valuables and natural resources. The problem for the Indians was that the tracks would be set right through their ancestral land. Unfortunately, The United States could care less about the native’s wants because the construction of the railroad was seen beneficial to them. One of the many reasons was because it provided Americans and immigrants with jobs. The decline in buffalo began when they would stampede across the tracks. White workers decided that they were getting “in the way” and would kill massive herds at a time. This leads in to the most important reason for the decline of the Plains culture and their ultimate defeat, the Buffalo.

The Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Indians along with a few other defiant tribes, joined forces under the Lakota holy man, Sitting Bull, in an active resistance to U.S. expansion (Gregory, 2016). In 1876, federal troops were dispatched to force the noncompliant Indians onto their reservations and to pacify the Great Plains (Powers, 2010).

On June 25, 1876, The Battle of Little Bighorn took place near the Black Hills in Montana. This was one of the most controversial battles of the 20th century and the line between good guys and bad guys was grey at best. Gen. George Armstrong Custer (reduced to LTC after the civil war) had 366 men of the 7thU.S. Cavalry under his command that day. Sitting Bull (A Medicine Man) led 2000 braves of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes (Klos, 2013). At the conclusion of the battle, the stories of the Indians savagery were used to demonize their culture and there were no survivors from the 7thcavalry to tell what really happened.

Another cause for poor relations between Native Americans and European Settlers was the constant push for acquiring new land by the Colonists. The Native Americans did not just want to give up their land and this resulted in war between the Indians and the Colonists. During this time Native Americans were sold into slavery belittled and removed from their land, due to the fact that the Colonists had more advanced technology and weapons. One of the major wars was the French and Indian War which resulted in the removal of Native Americans from their land and many casualties on both sides. Over time many battles were fought over land, even after America was an established country with presidents, laws, and court systems. Native Americans were continually pushed out of their land for hundreds of years while they were forced to move west. The constant push of Native Americans out of their land would cause an event known as the Trail of Tears where thousands of Indians were removed from their land by the Indian Removal Act. “In 1830 the Congress of the United States passed the "Indian Removal Act." Although many Americans were against the act, most notably Tennessee Congressman Davy Crockett, it passed anyway. President Jackson quickly signed the bill into law. The Cherokees attempted to fight removal legally by challenging the removal laws in the Supreme Court and by establishing an

The Government dealt with the Native Americans by sending out an army led by General Josiah Harmar. His army lost to the Native Americans. They replaced him with General Anthony Wayne. Wayne drilled his men for a whole year and the Native American leader, Little Turtle was very impressed. He encouraged his people to find peace but they didn't like that and replaced him with a less able leader. Wayne defeated the Native American Miami fort. This ended resistance in ohio

Once the Sioux figured out that they now had a chance to push the Ponca’s out of Indian Territory, that’s just what they did. They took their crops, horses, and gave many threats towards them. The third most famous war called the Great Sioux war began in 1876. Although the U.S. government had won the war, it still didn’t mean they would stop pleasing the Sioux. The U.S. government gave what was left of the Ponca land to the Sioux. The treaty they made with the Ponca’s was completely broken. They cheated the Ponca Indians, and they were furious. In January 1877, Edward C. Kemble asked the Ponca’s to let him speak during church service. He told them that the government had given their fields and farm to the Sioux for a greater purpose. He also told them that they be getting new virgin lands in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). By this time the there only 738 Ponca Indians in the tribe, which meant they were not much of a force to the federal government.

The american Indian wars is the term used to describe the fights between the two races. Some of the conflicts were spurred because of Manifest Destiny and others because of the Indian Removal Act. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government authority to move and relocate any Native American west of the Mississippi River. The Natives were forced to give up their land and leave everything behind. On the way to the new land, more than one third of the Native population died. This event is known as the Trail of Tears or “The Trail Where They Cried”. America is not a peaceful nation, its people and the country was born in the spit of violence and war and will die in the same way.

The Comanche tribe and Prophetstown represent drastically different stories of the roles of Native Americans in American Expansion. The Comanche were a conglomerate of multiple tribes that shared an economy based on horses and buffalo hunting. They acted as a controlling force, limiting European and American power in the Southwest. Prophetstown was a single unified tribe formed by shared religious belief in the Prophet, Tenskwatawa. In the Midwest, Native tribes signed treaties to sell the United States land that they either had weak claims to or had little interest in selling due to blackmail and deception. One reason for the formation of the city at Prophetstown was that natives saw their impending loss of their homes and sought to band together

They did not heed the call, so the Americans attacked. The attacking battalion was easily defeated by the Natives, and no soldier remained alive. Unfortunately, when reinforcements arrived they forced the Indians to surrender. Even though the Natives were eventually subdued, the intruders suffered a major loss. “Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, leaders of the Sioux on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to reservations” (“Battle of the Little Bighorn” 1).

Brian Delay wants the reader to be informed about the significance of the Indian people and how it plays a huge role in the U.S. Mexican War. He discusses how the Comanches, Navajos, Apaches, Kiowas, and others reshaped the Mexican territory in which was later disputed by the Americans. Furthermore, he explains how many Mexicans and Americans forget that the Indian tribes were enemies that cause U.S. to interfere with and view Mexico differently. The Indian tribes were a cause of Mexican weakness and the betrayal of the Americans of the Mexican people. In other words, Delay explains that Indian people were the definite cause that led to the international conflict.

In order for the plan to go into action, on October 31, 1862, the establishment of the Fort Sumner was declared and war was made against the Mescalero Apache and Navajo Indian tribes (Robert 2004). As shown in figure 1, a 300 miles route was walked by children, women, and men for about two months. Once they reached the destination, an estimation of 200 people had died from starvation. A couple years later had gone by when the United States decided to introduce a treaty in1868 that allowed the Navajos to return to their homes also now called the reservations.

The early 1800’s was a very important time for America. The small country was quickly expanding. With the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, America almost tripled in size by 1853. However, even with the amount of land growing, not everyone was welcomed with open arms. With the expansion of the country, the white Americans decided that they needed the Natives out.

The Native Americans did fight back on some occasions however the Native Americans could not withhold any longer and subsided to the Americans control. The expansionist forced many of the Native Americans on reservations as they continued to move westward to dominate what the expansionist thought was theirs to dominate.

Prior to the 1800s, US expansion had been accepted by the government in the thirteen colonies. Despite the government's favor for territorial expansion, the controversy was spread throughout the 13 colonies on the idea of expansion. An American who influenced expansion in America, John O’ Sullivan, conjectured that territorial expansion was destined and it was god’s given right to expand America coast to coast, or in this case into westward territories. This thought was defined as Manifest Destiny and aided the fuel of western settlement, Native American Removal and war with Mexico. Many Americans did, however, oppose expansion and war causing, but their inputs didn’t change the idea of expansion. During the period of 1800-1855, America’s idea to expand territory succeeded in events such as the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Indian Removal Act. These events certainly satisfied proponents of expansion and influenced America's westward expansion. Despite these achievements, opponents of expansions opposed because of events like the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American war. America’s shape today is indeed based on these beliefs of expanding America.

began to kill of the native people. Diseases such as small pox and typhus caused a decline in the