Ispravci

In the early 1800s, the relations between the U.S Government and the Native Americans were very strained because of culture differences mainly.

That’s why in 1851, the U.S government made a step and decided to propose a treaty called the Treaty of Fort Laramie: each Native American tribe accepted a bounded territory, in return the US government promised not to attack the tribes who lived there.

Native Americans accepted but this nonviolent accord between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes did not last long.

The government soon broke their promises established in the Treat of Fort Laramie by allowing thousands of non-Indians to go into their area.

With so many strangers moving west, the federal government tried to force western Indians onto reservations, where, it was thought, they could be ‘’civilized’’.

Reservations usually consisted of those areas of a group’s previous territory that were least desirable to white.

In a series of new treaties the U.S. government forced Native Americans to give up their land and move to reservations in exchange for protection from attacks by white settlers.

In addition, the Indians were provided with food, livestock, clothing, household goods and farming tools.

These reservations were created in an attempt to clear the way for increased U.S. expansion and involvement in the West, as well as to keep the Native Americans separate from the whites in order to reduce the potential for conflict.

These agreements had many problems.

First many of the native peoples did not completely understand the document that they were signing or the conditions within it; moreover, the treaties did not think about the cultural practices of the Native Americans.

The U.S. government rarely completed their side of the agreements even when the Native Americans moved quietly to their reservations.

Finally as settlers demanded more land in the West, the federal government continually reduced the size of the reservations.

By this time, many of the Native American peoples were fed up with the treaties and angered by the settlers’ constant demands for land.