The Land Was Not To Be Owned by Mankind

The Impact of Westward Expansion on Indigenous Americans

It was a land of wide-open prairies. No fences, no boundaries, no ownership. Plentiful game and large herds of bison provided food and other materials. Before the United States began expanding its boundaries and pushing westward, the Indigenous American tribes of the West had lived for centuries on the vast land west of the Mississippi River. Some lived in permanent villages and raised crops; others followed a pattern of moving between locations depending on the season. But all tribes, regardless of where they lived, had no concept of private land ownership. The Indigenous Americans were simply caretakers of what belonged to everyone, and no one.

But a way of life that had lasted for hundreds of years would end. For some, it ended on May 28, 1830, when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. While this granted the President the power to create treaties with any tribe east of the Mississippi, ultimately, the U.S. turned to violence to force Indigenous Americans to give up their land. The Indigenous Americans in the East and South were forced to move west into what at the time was called Indian Territory and today is part of Oklahoma. These tribes included the Shawnees, Hurons, Cherokee, and Seminole, as well as many more. Moving west was a difficult and often deadly trip, and for the Cherokee Nation in particular, so many fell ill and died the journey would become known in history as “The Trail of Tears.”

Much of the violence perpetrated against Indigenous Americans was calculated, and it was justified by the misguided idea that they were inferior to white Americans. On the Indigenous Americans, Jackson said they had “neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire for improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition... they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.” Sadly, this attitude would prevail throughout the rest of the 19th century, causing Indigenous American tribes to be moved off their lands. Shortly following the Indian Removal Act, the land east of the Mississippi would be deemed not large enough. Americans in the East, particularly those who struggled to afford land of their own, began relentlessly seeking new lives for themselves. They were fueled by their belief in the idea of “manifest destiny” — that the U.S. had a divine, God-given right to expand, which they felt gave them the right to push Indigenous Americans from their lands. After the Louisiana Purchase in May of 1803, which allowed the U.S. to buy 828,000 square miles of land from France between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, Americans set their sights on the West.

The U.S. government would continue to provide additional legislation that encouraged settlers to move West, often at the expense of Indigenous American tribes already residing on the land. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, treaties were signed by the U.S. government and various tribes, which usually resulted in those tribes losing part of their ancestral lands, or being moved to other locations where they were no longer independent and were governed by the U.S. In 1851, The Indian Appropriations Act forced tribes to move to smaller parcels of land called reservations. In addition to being smaller, the land was also less familiar, severely limiting their ability to hunt and fish and access plants, all part of their traditional ways of life. The government promised to supply them with food and other items, but this promise largely went unfulfilled. Because of the loss of land, the disruption to their ways of life, and the lack of support, many Indigenous Americans suffered from starvation, illness, and depression.

For yet even more Indigenous Americans, conditions would worsen following the Homestead Act of 1862. The act allowed settlers to acquire free land in the West by living on it for five years and making improvements. This bill created even more pressure on Indigenous Americans to move from their lands to increasingly smaller, more barren reservations. Thanks to the settlers, the land itself changed, too. The number of bison, mistakenly referred to as buffalo by pioneers, decreased from overhunting. There were also more domesticated animals and fenced-in areas, and non-native crops were planted, pushing out the native plants that Indigenous Americans had always relied on. Even water was redirected to farms, further altering the land. Railroads were constructed across the U.S. and into the West, and these gobbled up large swaths of land as well. President Harry S. Truman would later say about the westward expansion that “nobody seemed to give much thought to the livelihood of the Indians; the whites just casually took all their hunting grounds and all the places where they’d lived for centuries away from them.”

Indigenous American tribes did not always quietly move to the places they were being forced to live. Many resisted. In 1850, the Lakota Sioux tribe found that half a million people, many seeking gold in California, were crossing through the heart of their land, depleting their resources and disrupting their way of life. The government got involved, and in 1851, they met with Cheyenne, Crow, Blackfeet, Arapaho, Assiniboine, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota tribal members at Fort Laramie in Wyoming. Ten thousand tribal members turned up to the meeting with U.S. officials, in which tribal leaders agreed to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The treaty called for peace and guaranteed a payment of $50,000 to each tribe every year for ten years. In return, it required the tribes to allow the government to build roads and forts, as well as guarantee travelers safe passage along their journey on the Overland Trail which passed through tribal land. It also drew lines on the map to tell the tribes where they could hunt and fish, which eventually led to the creation of reservations. But peace did not last long. In the years that followed, conflict between Indigenous Americans and settlers over land did not slow. The U.S. Army often ended up waging war with tribes like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho over issues of land and the presence of an increasing number of settlers due to the rush for gold in California and the passage of the Homestead Act.

But Americans’ quest for land had no end in sight, and land once promised to the Indigenous Americans grew smaller as time passed. Chief Joseph was the leader of a band of the Nez Perce tribe. They were forced to give up 90% of their land in Oregon due to the discovery of gold in the area. He led his people on a journey to Canada, where they hoped to make a new life, but the U.S. Army stopped their escape and forced them onto a reservation in Idaho. There were many bloody battles, but in October of 1877, Chief Joseph surrendered. In his surrender speech he said, “Hear me my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Ultimately, the Indigenous American tribes were stripped of their lands and way of life. The U.S. government began a process of trying to “civilize” them by integrating them into American culture. They were no longer allowed to exist as their own nations. Their children would be taught in government schools and forbidden to speak their native languages. The Dawes Act of 1871 declared that “hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.”

Legislation like The Homestead Act and the Indian Appropriations Act helped expand the United States by offering Americans a way to purchase land of their own, and ultimately established new states for the Union. But it came at a high cost for Indigenous American tribes, who were seen as standing in the way of America’s pursuit of progress. The Indigenous Americans resisted, when possible, but ultimately were left to watch as the lands they had lived on for hundreds of years became unrecognizable, no longer wide open, but fenced off. The property of another.