Cowboys & Indians (Conflicts, Myths, and Legends)

Directions: Answer the Questions below (in your packet, etc.) by reading the secondary source below. Explain your responses in detail. No response should be one (1) sentence. You must only use the reading to respond to the questions. Outside sources will not be given credit.

Part 4: Questions: According to the text:

What are the myths that surround the term "Cowboy"?
What are the myths that surround the term "Indian"?
What is the myth about Cowboys vs. Indians?
What law gave the Executive Branch the authority over Native Americans?
Why would the U.S. Government enforce the law?
What happened as a result of the law?
What is the myth surrounding Native Americans, land, and nature?
Choose any war (conflict) Native Americans have with each other, and; a) Name the war/conflict b) explain the results
Choose any war (conflict) Native Americans have with the United States, and; a) Name the war/conflict b) explain the results
Evaluate the effects upon Native Americans during and after the "Indian Wars"?
Choose one (1) famous American Indian from the list and describe, and evaluate his accomplishments for the American Indians.

Disclaimer - Please READ

The following terms are used in historical research and throughout American History, and are not intended as derogatory terms, but as historical terms known to people at the time.

Cowboys generally refer to White, Black (African-American), Hispanic, Chinese, and Texian people. Additional names for a cowboy in American English include buckaroo, cowpoke, cowhand, and cowpuncher. The English word for a cowboy, buckaroo, is an Anglicization of vaquero (Spanish pronunciation: [baˈkeɾo])

Cowgirls are the female sex version of cowboys. They generally perform the same tasks as cowboys. A person who handles and manages the horses involved in cattle work are called "wranglers".

Indians generally refer to Native Americans (Indigenous People) who sometimes referred to themselves as Red Men as referenced by the Hunkpapa Lakota Leader Sitting Bull in 1885.

Today, the consensus, however, is that whenever possible, Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name. In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people.

Overview

Though Hollywood movies and television shows would have us believe cowboys and Indians frequently fought each other in the "wild west," it just wasn't true. Nor is it true that Indians frequently attacked wagon trains heading west. In fact, a man on a wagon train was more likely to die drowning at a river crossing or having a mishap with his own gun than in a fight with an Indian.

"Soldiers and Indians" would have been more accurate than "cowboys and Indians," but even that wasn't as common as Hollywood would have us believe. The majority of soldiers serving in forts and outposts of the old west never fought Indians and some never even saw an Indian.

Indian Removal Act (1830) & Trail of Tears

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and treaties involving Jackson before his presidency made it legal for the United States government to force tens of thousands of Native Americans from their homeland.

After the US bought the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, more and more people headed west into what they believed was mostly empty land. This was just plain wrong. Native People had been living there for centuries. Many, like the Cherokee, had already been pushed west from their original lands many years earlier. Imagine living in a place where your parents and your grandparents grew up (and even their grandparents!) and then some strangers come along with guns and tell you to leave. They tell you that you and all the other people in your town now have to move to a reservation 1,000 miles away and you can't leave that reservation or you'll be arrested. This is what happened to many Native People when they were moved from all over the US to "Indian Territory" in what is now (mostly) Oklahoma and southern Kansas in the 1830s.

President Andrew Jackson lobbied Congress to pass legislation that would do just that. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. Some historians today label this ethnic cleansing although the real reason might surprise you. It was because they found gold in the mountains of Georgia and South Carolina. Yes, America's first Gold Rush! The law (Indian Removal Act) created the first forced migration of Native Americans known as the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations), were living autonomously in what would later be termed the American Deep South. There were many removals between 1828 - 1830 and commonly referred to collectively as the Trail of Tears, in which Native Americans were marched with their African-American slaves to the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma, and Southern Kansas). Approximately, Cherokee (4,000), Creek Seminole (700 in Second Seminole War – 1835–1842), Chickasaw (3,500), Choctaw (2,500–6,000), and Ponca (200) died en-route to the Indian Territory. In 1831, the Choctaw became the first Nation to be removed, and their removal served as the model for all future relocations. After two wars, many Seminoles were removed in 1832. The Creek removal followed in 1834, the Chickasaw in 1837, and lastly the Cherokee in 1838. Some historians call this an ethnic cleansing, but some Native Americans managed to evade the removals, and remained in their ancestral homelands; some Choctaw still reside in Mississippi, Creek in Alabama and Florida, Cherokee in North Carolina, and Seminole in Florida. A small group of Seminole, fewer than 500, evaded forced removal; the modern Seminole Nation of Florida is descended from these individuals. A small number of non-Indians who lived with the nations, including over 4,000 slaves and others of African descent such as spouses or Freedmen, also accompanied the Indians on the trek westward. By 1837, 46,000 Indians from the southeastern states had been removed from their homelands, thereby opening 25 million acres for white settlement, and the prospecting of gold in former Native American lands.

Cowboys

The Cattle Trails from Texas to Train Towns for shipment eastward.

If you look at the map of the trails in the image to the right you'll see some cross the area promised to the Indians (which seems crazy since it was their land to begin with). This meant occasionally they would have fights with cowboys, but usually, cowboys and Indians never saw each other at all.

Instead of the stereotype from the movies of fighting cowboys and Indians, the real story was very different. One cowboy who did see Indians wrote, "The people we saw, scattered about in small villages or begging [beef] from us, were not the 'savage foes' of Western lore but a sorry lot of starving human beings."

Despite what you see in the movies, about 60% of all cowboys were Mexican or black.

Because the United States government made it illegal for Indians to leave their "reservations," they were given food rations, but as this cowboy pointed out, "rations are issued for seven days but last only three. After months of pleading with the government agent, Cheyenne braves were allowed to go on a buffalo hunt, where they found nothing but bones left by white hunters". The Native People of the Americas had their land stolen, their families killed, were forced onto reservations, and because these were often in areas with little resources and no jobs, they also faced starvation.

There were a few battles (battle is a poor word, however since the army had Gatling guns and could kill Indians, including women and children, without penalty) between the army and Native American nations in this area during the heyday of the cowboy, but the idea that cowboys and Indians were constantly at war is a myth, except in the movies.

Though there are working cowboys today, cowboys of Hollywood legend only existed for a very short time, between about 1866 and 1886 when 20 million cattle were driven by cowboys on horseback from Texas to northern railheads (places where railroads started or ended). The price for cattle in Texas was very low, but people in eastern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, or New York would pay much more for beef. That made it worth it for ranch owners to hire cowboys to drive their herds 1,000 miles or more along trails such as the Chisolm Trail or the Goodnight-Loving Trail. The cattle could then be shipped by train to the east where they could make much more money selling them.

Indian Wars (Pre 1492 to the 20th Century)

The myth that Native Americans were peaceful and lived in harmony with the land is absurd at best. Most tribes were nomadic, foraged the land, stripped the land of its resources (plants and animals), and moved on to a new place when their natural world supplies ran out. There was no living in harmony for the environment. Native Americans had been living this mostly nomadic lifestyle up until the time of the arrival of Europeans. The Native Americans had no concept of land ownership, not because they lived as one with nature, but because they believed the land provided what they needed and then when the resources were depleted moved on, only to return when the resources (plants & animals) became available to them once again in that area. This lifestyle clashed heavily with European, and eventually American notions of land ownership with boundaries and borders as part of a political and socio-economic system.

From before the arrival of Europeans in 1492 to the early 20th centuries, Native Americans were in conflict with each other, and then with the settlers who moved into Native American areas. This is not to say that they were always the aggressor. Obviously before the European arrival some tribes were the aggressors, but after the European arrival they took sides with various European colonizers, maybe for self-preservation and maybe not. Then the tide turned on the Native Americans once the colonists and the Americans starting moving westward.

The links below represent a good understanding of the Indian Wars, first against each other, and then against European colonists and then American western settlers.

Famous American Indians

The stories of heroism, tenacity and courage of the American West weren’t just reserved for cowboys. Long before them were Native Americans, whose cultural and spiritual diversity, as well as deep-rooted connection to the land, revealed an entirely different way of living that Americans are able to admire today. But during the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States — motivated by its political and economic agendas — had a hostile perspective on its older neighbors, believing them to be inferior and even more, a threat to its plans of westward expansion. Notably during the Gold Rush of the 1800s, these two opposing world views clashed into violence, but in turn, gave birth to legendary Native American war leaders.

Explore the American Indian leaders biographies:

Geronimo