Week 10 Day 3

Today in class we began the "Last Stand at Little Bighorn" documentary. The makers of this documentary feel that it gives a more fair account of what truly occurred, as it offers the perspectives of both white Americans and Native Americans.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, which is also commonly referred to as "Custer's Last Stand," took place on June 25 and 26 of the year 1876, but we began many years before the battle itself.
In the middle of the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was growing at an exponential rate, and thousands of whites were moving westward. In 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged people to buy land in western territories. Companies had to buy acres of land just to send a strip of railroad through them, an they were desperately pushing for people to buy the extra land so that they could avoid bankruptcy during the Panic of 1873. They used propaganda to make the west look as appealing as possible and portrayed it as a wonderland of resources and beauty just waiting for settlers. This, however, was not true as the West was already inhabited by the Native Americans. The Native American tribes of western America were nomadic people who followed the buffalo, who provided them with many essential resources like food and clothing. The Native Americans did not stay in one place permanently, but this did not mean they would not come back. The whites interpreted the vacancy of the land, regardless of how temporary it was, and an invitation to scoop it up and make it their own. Despite any treaties that had been made, the Native Americans were seen as an obstacle to the United States's progress, and in accordance with the "white eyes" vision, white people continued to move westward and do whatever it took to get rid of the Native Americans.
General Armstrong Custer was last in his class at West Point. At the age of 23, he became a general of the Civil War. He was a very effective commander and achieved a good reputation. He was also known for selling stock in Colorado silver mines and making a business deal with Good Enough Horseshoe Company to sell horseshoes to the cavalry that did not actually meet the expected standard of good enough. Custer was dispatched to serve in the American Indian Wars.
In the Laramie Treaty, the Lakota tribe was ceded a large amount of land and was guaranteed ownership of the Black Hills, a smaller mountain range from South Dakota to Wyoming that was central to the cultivation of Lakota lives and culture. But, as expected, this treaty would not truly be fulfilled, especially when there was gold discovered in the heart of the Black Hills.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, who succeeded Grant as Commanding General of the Army, urged the Native American tribes to learn the white man's ways, for he felt it was the only way they could continue to survive in the changing world. This idea became a horrifying reality for the Native Americans with the rise of the reservation system.
 Natives had to learn how to become an agricultural people, if they could not, they would starve, and if they tried to leave the reservations, they would be killed. The reservation system was a tool for the U.S. government to take advantage of the Native Americans. Too often reservations would be established on the least fertile land (probably land that the government couldn't sell to those moving westward), and this caused the Native Americans to be constantly dependent on the government. This dependency and adoption of white ways demonstrates how the Native Americans were being held by the government almost exactly where they wanted them, but, of course, the United States still wanted more.

And in case you were wondering, we ended the video at 33:12.