Different Native American Tribes as Treated by the Federal Government

The gold rush had a dark side for the Indian population.

An Indian agent from the federal governwork forcet made a report in 1854 concerning the atomic number 20 mines and the condition of the Indians in the region. He has visited a number of the Indian campys to try to ascertain their exact number and has found this a difficult proposition. He finds that mortality has been high, a nonher reason wherefore it has been difficult to fixate the exact number of persons in these tribes, and he notes that the reason for these deaths is uncertain:

The cause of this mortality has been attributed to different causes. almost allege that it is the result of the change of their mode of life-time, being instanter compelled to live on entirely different food to what they were at once accustomed. Again it is said it is caused by adopting the customs of the Americans in eating away clothes, that habitual use of ardent spirits which some traders give way very improperly and illegally sold to them. . . but the great number of deaths has been caused by the great Indian Scourge the subatomic Pox.

The agent states that the Indians were better off before the coming of the vacuous settlers, and he sees that the changes have been many. The Indians build their homes differently, arrange their huts differently, shape their camps differently. The men used to hunt and now sit around the camp doing nothing. It does not appear that the Indians are being forced not to hunt or that the government is doing anything directly harm

The Navajo situation was investigated by the government in 1867 to determine how the Indians were living and how well they were being regulated, and the results were not unlike those in California. Conditions were found to be deplorable. According to the Indian Peace Commission, members of relation back had no understanding of Indian issues and theory only of how to puddle the Indians' lands. Kessell indicates that the Indians were exploited, robbed, and left in poverty. Part of the impetus for doing something roughly the living conditions of the Navajo was simply to prevent them from becoming angry enough and inexpugnable enough to renew the war. Sherman wanted to move them east to set about them further from their originally homeland for just this reason.

Kessell also notes the differences mingled with the White man and the Indian on nearly each question:

Personally, he doubted the Indians' capacity for citizenship, but he thought they deserved the chance. For their part, they must cooperate. They must settle on percipient reservations, embrace "civilized" pursuits, and in no way crush the westward march of the Union so recently preserved.

"An Indian Agent Views Conditions in the California Mines, 1854." In Major Problems in American Indian History, Albert L. Hurtado and Peter Iverson (eds.). Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1994. 292-294.

The peace commissioners verbalise of artificial lines on maps, of parallels and meridians, the Navajos of geographical features, of canyons, mountains, and mesas. The white man talked about ownership and a claim to the land, the Indians about using the land. Moreover, confabulation between them suffered the unavoidable distortion of translation: from English, a more than abstract, mainly noun- and adjective-oriented tongue of different sounds and conceptual bases spoken by members of a western, preindustrial society, through Spanish to Navajo, an exceedingly literal verb-oriented style in the minds and mouths of a vastly differen
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