Treaties and Reservations

By 1867 most of the Indians and White Americans realised that new policies were needed to keep peace between the two groups. Both sides had had numerous arguments and they both thought it was time to sort it out properly and finally make an agreement between them. The only problem was that they both wanted ownership of the Great Plains.

In March 1867 the US government decided to set up a peace commission which was to attempt to keep peace in Western lands. They put the Indians in to smaller areas and put them all together called reservations so the White Americans could use the rest of the Plains to build railroads and farm land. The first man to suggest this policy was a man called Andrew Jackson. The Government decided to end the last policy of concentration and replace it with the idea of reservations.

The White Americans met with representatives of the southern Plains tribes called Kiowas and Comanches tribes at Medicine Lodge Creek in October. They finally agreed to move into the reservations that were 3 million acres in area and the Cheyennes and Arapahos moved into another area.

Northern tribes had another meeting with the Commissioners. Red cloud said he would take his tribe to a reservation in Dakota. This meant that they could use their old hunting ground as long as the government didn’t need it and this meant that they were all happy for the time being.

In 1868 the Government decided to extend its small reservation to the Rocky Mountains.

At first when this agreement was made the Indians and White Americans thought that they would finally live happily in separate places. However, the Indians slowly began to realise that they could not live the way they wanted to in the reservations. One reason was that they didn’t have enough room to hunt buffalo and they couldn’t roam freely. So this meant that they had to learn a different way of life. They had to learn how to farm differently, attend school and learned to have different attitudes towards the land and this didn’t make the Indians as happy about the agreement after all.

Georgia Drake

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