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Arjun Rajesh
2/11/2010 06:43:18 am

I think that at first relations between America and the Native Americans were pretty good. I think that at one point they would have been able to live in harmony. However, the Native Americans had many things that the American Governement desperately wanted. These Native Americans were sitting on some land which had excellent potential for farming. America really wanted to convince more people to move to America so they decided to increase the pull factors in our nation. They knew that many would come from the east to use the great farmland. Americans turned bitter against the natives and kept shrinking their reservations. Another thing which attracted the American government was the gold rush. Greedy prospectors kept pressuring the U.S. government to continue shrinking the reservations so they could get to the gold buried under Native American land. With more settlers came more need to shrink the reservations to not only keep the current residents happy but to increase the population. I think that the American government had good reason for wanting the land but there was a better solution to getting it instead of getting angry with the Native Americans and forcing them off the land.


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20785/us_policy_towards_native_americans.html?cat=37
Textbook

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Jessica Reed
2/11/2010 08:22:24 am

The change in the American government’s policies was due to the conflict between settlers and Native Americans. At first, the US and settlers wanted to help the Native Americans. Missionaries were sent out to influence the Native Americans to become more like white Americans. Through this many Native Americans became educated, and prominent Native American leaders emerged, such as John Ross and John Ridge. Furthermore, treaties and negotiations were made between the tribes and the US government peacefully at this time. However, ongoing events following this time led up to the major confrontation between the Native Americans and settlers. For example, the California gold rush of 1850 brought a tremendous amount of settlers into the tribal territories. Soon more conflict arose because of the desire of the rich lands. Native Americans living on the land and did not want to leave, and settlers wanted the land to farm and make a profit. As a result, the US government made policies to remove the Native Americans from their land. For instance, President Andrew Jackson strongly wanted to get rid of the Native Americans because he thought they were inferior to white settlers. These events are what brought change in an ideal coexistence between Native Americans and settlers to complete separation between the two groups.


Sources:
Class Notes
http://www.nativeamericanrhymes.com/library/conflicts/overview.htm
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0500/stories/0503_0107.html

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Molly Buring
2/15/2010 10:55:57 am

I think that the policy changed big time when the white settlers moved. Like the Native Americans had great land, great jobs, and the white settlers wanted to take it all away from the Native Americans because they wanted all that. Like the government could basically just go over to someone's property or house and say that they need to move immediately because they want to build a train track there, or a new building, or they want that land for farming. The Native Americans basically had no say on what was to be done with their land when the white settlers came because the settlers really changed the government's way of doing things. Like the white settlers were very jealous of what the Native Americans had, thats another reason why the Native Americans kept losing land, the settlers were taking it all away from them.

sources:
previous blogs
textbook

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Jessica Reed
2/28/2010 09:50:04 am

Personally, I think that the United States goverment was wrong to strip the Native Americans of their land by making different polices that were then broken. Besides, the United States is a democracy meaning that everyone should be treated equally. Yet, by creating phony policies it contradicted what the United States was built on.

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