How Americans Treated the Native Americans

1776 was when the Declaration of Independence was signed, which many Americans agree was the best thing to happen to American history.  However, this event did not free the Native Americans from violent treatment, nor from the dominating structure that the colonists imposed upon them. (the Americans would permit the Native Americans to live with them, but only if they dressed as Americans, and gave up everything that proved who they really were) The Declaration of independence even prevented the King of England from allying with the Indians, or helping them in any way.  Here’s what the actual text says about the King “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions” The reference to Native Americans as “merciless Indian savages” and the fact that the Declaration forbids the King of England for uniting with them both show that the Declaration of Independence changed nothing, for the Native Americans, if anything, it made their life worse, as it was preventing the British king from helping them.

Following the signing of the Declaration of Independence, abuses against Native Americans did not stop.  For example, in 1775 a law  was signed that promised a bounty for every male “Indian” scalp obtained.  Another historical fact that reveals the oppression against Native Americans; by 1969 four hundred treaties that were signed to protect the Native Americans had been broken.  In November of 1969, a landmark event occurred.  A group of Native Americans landed on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay with the intention of occupying it. They “offered to buy Alcatraz in glass beads and red cloth, the price paid to Indians for Manhattan Island over three hundred years earlier” The government responded six months later with federal forces that invaded and physically removed the Native Americans. This event, which occurred only fourty years ago, show that the Americans, aren’t even all the way their yet themselves…