Who were the Indians of the trans-Mississippi West?
• They shared few characteristics in common. • Common characteristics they shared include: • a precarious subsistence economy • dependent on “a simple technology” • religious beliefs grounded in the natural world • exaltation of war and the individual warrior • premium placed on individual freedom and government by persuasion and consensus • veneration of homelands and keen sense of group possession U.S. government Indian policy from 1850 • relocation to reservations • part of U.S. and British govt. traditions of exclusion • subjugation of resistant Indians left to the U.S. Army • assimilation selected Indian wars • 1872-3 Modoc War • northern California and southern Oregon • 1874-5 Red River War • fought by the Comanche and the Cheyenne in Texas • major step in U.S. conquest of the southern half of the Great Plains • the Sioux Wars on the Great Plains, 1862-77 • key events • Sand Creek/”Chivington” massacre(1864) • Fetterman “Massacre”(1866) • U.S.-Sioux War of 1874-77 • representativ
