Native American DBQ

I do not believe that the greatest amount of damage done to the Native Americans in 19th Century was inflicted by those who thought they had the Native American’s best interests at heart. No, the greatest damage was done by those who saw the Native Americans as barbarians and unfit to live and those who conned the Native Americans out of their land. While the ones trying to “help” the Native Americans did inflict damage, they did not commit atrocities such as the mass killing of defenseless Native Americans.
In M. Thomas Bailey’s Reconstruction in Indian Territory, it says that “The reconstruction policies the United States imposed on the Five Civilized Nations were not designed to primarily to benefit the Indians… used instead as a means” to strip the Native Americans of more of their land. This shows that what the American government had on its mind when it signed treaties with Native Americans; how to take away more land from the Native Americans. And in Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor, it says “There is not one among these three hundred bands of Indians… which has not suffered cruelly at the hands of the government or of white settlers.” And this also shows that the government damaged every tribe it knew of just to expand. The whites thought they must be forced to accept their ways or be eradicated. They didn’t care about the Indians.
On November 18, 1890 R.M. Tuttle, Jesse Ayers, P.B. Wickham, and Joseph Miller wrote a letter to the Indian Department. In the letter they said “…to urge strongly that the Indian Department henceforth deny the Indians the right to carry arms or ammunition off their reservations… the most conservative men in this community will be powerless to suppress the determination of the settlers to kill off every Indian… property has been destroyed and their children and wives have been scared by these worthless nomads…” Letters like these how much hatred the settlers had for the Indians. They wanted the Indians to give up their guns and not to hunt; that would take their self sufficiency away, giving the government more opportunities to take their land away.
In April of 1879 Chief Joseph Lement made a plea to Congress. In it he said “If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace… Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.” This shows that the Indians weren’t being given the same opportunities as the whites, and that the government refused to be fair with them. In Senate Report 5013, to the 59th Congress it states “Before this allotment scheme was put in effect in the Cherokee Nation we were a prosperous people. We had farms… but when I came to examine the Curtis law… away went my crop… If the same rule had been established in your state you would have lost your house, you would have lost your improvements. Now that is what has been done to the Cherokee.
Although both groups were responsible for damaging the Indians, the group that pushed the Indians out of their homelands and destroying parts of their culture are responsible for most of the damage.