The history of relations between Native American and the residents of the expanding United States is fraught with thievery, violence, forceful removal and acculturation, and even genocide, with the Native Americans as the vast majority of victims. From the Revolutionary War to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad the end of Homesteading, Native Americans were pushed away from the best lands and forced to move to reservations. Despite efforts to fight back, Native American resistance was doomed to fail due to overwhelming superiority of U.S. military force.
Hoping to retain their ancestral lands and the lifestyle that defined their identities, various Native American nations resorted to different means to accomplish this. The Cherokee and their allies adopted a constitution and developed institutions like schools and a newspaper. The Sioux and the Dakotas offered active resistance and fought against settlers and U.S. military forces. Other groups attempted to adapt to changing local circumstances through passive resistance. All of them however, assumed that the agreements they negotiated with the United States would be honored, but that was never the case as the U.S. violated every one of them in order to seize land.
Fans of American history will appreciate the details provided on some of the conflicts that affected the Westward expansion of the United States and will become witnesses to how badly the Native population was treated and continues to be impacted to this day.
Books in the Primary Sources of Westward Expansion series include Native American Resistance, Homesteading and Settling the Frontier, The Gold Rush, The Transcontinental Railroad, Lewis and Clark and Exploring the Louisiana Purchase, and Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War.
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