The Indian West

One of the greatest catastrophes in North America, maybe even the world, happened right here on American soil. The old west was a glorious time for America: gold searching in California, boomtowns appearing because of the exploding population, sheriffs enforcing the law, cowboys herding up the cattle, and the open range just waiting to be pioneered. They were times of exploration and violence. There is one critical aspect that maybe some Americans know about: the Native Americans were there as well. Because of the endless lust for gold and precious gems all over the western lands and the excitement of Manifest Destiny, the army was determined to kick all of the Native Americans out of their homelands even if it meant using destructive force. While America was starting to build its industrial empire, settlers moving west had an obstacle in the way of their newly discovered gold: Native Americans.

This was a great time of sorrow, grief, but most of all, confusion for the Indians. Since the first Americans started to move west, the Native Americans made a lasting peace with the settlers, but with the open range of new land waiting to be settled, the rich industrial companies thought of this new frontier as an opportunity to build new factories where the Indians villages were. Only the ancestors of the present-day Native Americans would be able to remember the "already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered” (Brown 7) because of the industrialization and modernization of this once beautiful land, and thousands killed because of the cultural diversity. “To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature-the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself” (Brown 7). Brown describing in his book the harmful tolls the environment has been taking on back in the 1800’s because...