THE GILDED AGE (jan 1, 1870 – dec 31, 1900)
Description:
Themes: ACTIVE OPPOSITION (to American policy), DECEIT (overturning treaties/changing terms), DAMAGING TO TRIBAL CULTURE, ASSIMILATION, GOVERNMENT, RESOURCES, PASSIVE
Progress in the Gilded Age:
- victory at Little Bighorn
- off-reservation boarding schools provided vocational training
- Indian reservation agencies provided some jobs
- reservations gave opportunities for farming and better healthcare
- reservations allowed tribal life to continue
- some tribes e.g. Navajo made definite gains from reservation life and prospered
- Dawes Act turned some Native Americans into landowners
Set-backs in the Gilded Age:
- reservation life was overall very damaging - lost rights and land and the conditions were harsh and degrading
- massacre at Wounded Knee
- reservation education was poor
- education away from reservations usually failed to gain employment and usually returned to the reservations having been educated as whites, culturally alienated from both communities
- industrial progress e.g. railroads damaging to Native American's
- Allotment Policy (Dawes Act) total failure
- women negatively affected - whites believed men should own the property
Added to timeline:
Native Americans and Civil Rights
1865 - 1992
Date:
