The Life of a Working Male Native American
For this discussion I have chosen to analyze the life of a working male Native American. I plan to show you the changes that occurred for my character during the introduction of the railroads to the west, and the West and Indian Wars. The next era I plan to look at is the Gilded Age that continued the change of the Native American people. Finally I want to look into the effects of World War I and how my character played a part in the happenings of the nation. Through out the book, Out of Many we see Native Americans experience change.
For a Native American Working man, his responsibility to his family was his job. As Europeans and others moved across the Americas they brought, “Desires, religious conversion, and new patterns of commerce.” (p. 493). These changes along with the introduction of horses and guns developed and challenged the living style of the American Natives. A native man was able to travel faster on horseback and the gun helped develop hunting and fighting. The book states, “As commercial routes and white populations passed through and occupied Indian lands, warfare inevitably erupted.” (p. 495).
During the era of the West and Indian Wars a male Native American was most likely fighting for the rights to his land and the food that they had been hunting for centuries before the settlers arrived. “The displacement of Indians to reservations opened access by ferments, ranchers, and investors to natural resources and to markets.” (p.495) Through this era the Native working man experienced displacement from his land and his people. The book states that, “In 1871, the U.S. government formally ended the treaty system, eclipsing but not completely abolishing the sovereignty of Indian nations.” (p.514) This forced men to develop a new way of life in order to provide somewhat for his family. The Natives were forced on to reservations and, “The majority of Indian peoples lived in poverty and misery, deprived of their traditional means of survival and, more often than not, subject to fraud by corrupt government officials and privet suppliers.” (p. 515) I would also be lead to believe that men were forced into assimilation of the white culture. Luther