Why did the Native Americans lose the battle for the plains?

        The settlers were not the only people who caused the Indians downfall; another group that furthered the Indians destruction was the American government. They encouraged American citizens to settle the west in order to carry out manifest destiny; this sped up the onset of large numbers of settlers which caused the effects of the settlers upon the Indians to be sudden and substantial, the Indians could provide little opposition to this. Another government action which the Indians couldn’t oppose was the use of acts and paperwork, the government realised the advantage they had in the fact that the Indians were uneducated, this meant that the Americans could legally take from the Indians without having to worry about them coming back with misgivings about the contracts, they couldn’t read them to see what they were signing away. The government were also responsible for pushing for the railways; these were a big cause of many of the Indians problems. Many of them interrupted the grazing of the buffalo and went onto the some of the Indians reservations. This caused the Indians to attack the settlers and railway companies, therefore breaking the peace agreements in place. The army was then called in to protect the settlers, the army defeated the Indians and then the Indians were forced by the government to sign more peace treaties which they might then break, this continued in a vicious circle with the Indians always being forced by the government to sign away more land and rights in the peace treaties.

        Although I have previously talked about other people causing the Indian downfall, the Indians themselves played a major part. To start with, they were un-united; the whites could easily communicate amongst themselves, whereas the Indians did not have that technology and were always fighting amongst themselves. This meant that all action to stop the onset of whites was either made by individual tribes or small groups of tribes, never by the whole Indian community. The fact that all of the tribes were so different, with various beliefs, religions etc meant that they would be unwilling to join together and unite against their joint cause therefore the government won through fighting many small conflicts which it could easily win.  The Indians lost lots of these small battles for many reasons, had few weapons suitable for opposition to the guns of the whites and they also had to protect their families, the US army didn’t have to worry about this since their women and families were well out of the way in the towns and settlements, or back at home in the east. The Indians were too naïve from the outset, they thought of the whites as ‘people from heaven’ and happily handed them land and were welcoming towards them; this meant that the settlers had no qualms about taking from the Indians. Although the Indians lived on the plains they did not believe that the land was their own so they didn’t believe that they could keep it for themselves and not share it with the settlers, anyway. The Indians were also uneducated (in a western fashion) so the Government then took advantage of the naive and uneducated nature of them by getting them to sign various acts and documents (as I mentioned previously). These acts entitled the government to take the Indians land, by the time the government passed the acts putting the Indians into allotted land, or reservations they stood little chance of ever getting the plains back, they had handed all power to the whites at the start of the battle and so by now had little say in their own futures.

           The Indians won some great battles, such as the battle of little bighorn, but these just caused the Government to come back with more power and hit harder. Although to begin with the Indians fate was in their own hands they wasted this opportunity to hold onto the plains through their naivety and from then onwards their fate was in the hands of the Settlers and government. It was when the Indians lost the power over their destinies that their fate was doomed; control had been lost to a powerful, relentless enemy with resources and manpower, defeat was unavoidable.

Helen Crutcher