Native Americans

Native American Genocide

Causes:

Native Americans are the first real settlement to experience Genocide. Not only were they forced to leave their land, they were brutally slaughtered as well. The Native Americans were the first to settle America and the first to call it their home. But as the world grew and the population rose, the age of exploration was eager to meet America and the Natives who lived there. At first the Europeans welcomed the Natives and were interested in them as well as the land but as time progressed the new settlers disregarded the fact that they were guests and took over them and the land. What makes this matter so important is the way the Europeans removed the Native Americans.

During American expansion into the western frontier, one primary effort to destroy the Indian way of life was the attempts of the U.S. government to make farmers and cattle ranchers of the Indians. We now also know that the Indians were intentionally exposed to smallpox by Europeans. The discovery of gold in California, early in 1848, prompted American migration and expansion into the west. The greed of Americans for money and land was rejuvenated with the Homestead Act of 1862. In California and Texas there was blatant genocide of Indians by non-Indians during certain historic periods.

In California, the decrease from about a quarter of a million to less than 20,000 is primarily due to the cruelties and wholesale massacres perpetrated by the miners and early settlers. Indian education began with forts made by religious followers, in which indigenous youths were incarcerated, taught with non-indigenous Christian values, and forced into manual labor. These children were forcibly removed from their parents by soldiers and many times never saw their families until later in their adulthood. This was after their value systems and knowledge had been supplanted with colonial thinking. One of the foundations of the U.S. imperialist strategy was to replace...