Many people believe that the Europeans defeated American Indian tribes because they were inferior on the battlefield. Although, many have been destroyed through warfare, the vast majority of them have been conquered because they had no resistance to the multitude of diseases brought to this contin

Further loss of Indian culture, land, and way of life came through the unscrupulously handling of the General Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act). The Governments intention to merge the various tribes into white society was to turn them into American style farmers and ranchers, which was contrary to the Indian way of life (Thornton, 1942). The Indians did not believe or understand land ownership as well. The government divided the tribe’s land into small individual tracts of 160 acres for each family. The surplus land (millions of acres) was then auctioned to Anglo-Americans (Mihesuah, 1996).

Of the diseases introduced from these Eastern Hemisphere, the greatest early killers of American Indians were smallpox, typhus, and measles with smallpox probably being the most devastating of the three (Thornton, 1942). Europeans quickly learned of Indians susceptibility to diseases, and in 1763 British officers led by Lord Jeffrey Amherst sent blankets infected with smallpox to Ottawa’s and other tribes in deployment of early biological warfare tactics (Mihesuah, 1996). Tuberculosis and alcoholism have more likely headed the list of more recent killers of American Indians. The destructiveness of alcoholism is linked to the current high mortality rates of American Indians from suicide, accidents, diabetes, and liver disease.

The imposed removal and destruction of the Indian culture and way of life became rampant following the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Indian removal act called for the relocation of all eastern tribes, across the Mississippi River. The infamous, Trail of Tears, was the largest forced migration of the time. Military action, disease, starvation, and extreme harsh conditions marked the movement. Thus leading to increased mortality of the Indian population (Josephy, 1994). Scholars estimate that the Cherokee removal in the late 1830s, resulted in the loss of nearly a third of their people during transit. In the name of progress, the Removal act became very popular among the white majority because it opened more land to settlement (Thornton, 1942).

Military action: U.S. Government vs. Native Americans

Governmental Policy Toward Native Americans

Governmental Intervention in Indian Education

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