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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos

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U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Native Americans in the Gilded Age
9665 Views

Today we'll learn about plans to assimilate the American Indian population after reconstruction. If you've ever seen Star Trek, you'll know that fo...

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U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Native Americans in the Gilded Age 9665 Views


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Description:

Today we'll learn about plans to assimilate the American Indian population after reconstruction. If you've ever seen Star Trek , you'll know that forced assimilation is a big no no...whether you're stripping someones culture away, or turning them into a creepy cyborg automaton. 

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

Seems like we pretty much got the Gilded Age figured out at this

00:07

point right top hat millionaires corruption scandal more top hats but

00:12

being about a boon Gilded Age in a nutshell I'm sorry to burst your bubble [Gilded Age checklist appears]

00:16

there SH bumpers but there was more going on after reconstruction than just

00:19

the invention of the champagne fountain sure everybody in the Gilded Age was [A champagne fountain appears]

00:23

looking for a little slice of opportunity but not all the new

00:27

opportunities found in northeastern factories were fed by the last the West

00:31

trouble was that Western land territory and Natural Resources actually belonged [River and Private Property sign appears]

00:36

to other people and they weren't too pleased about being asked of course to

00:42

hand it all over and clear out if we're talking about the American Indians well

00:47

US policy toward the natives had always been awful even back in the colonial

00:51

days the bad news is that while the US had always treated American Indians like

00:55

pests to be eliminated it all got a lot worse during the gilded ages period of

01:01

rapid westward expansion well during the Gilded Age US policy toward natives [Man capturing woman]

01:06

turns downright schizophrenic lots of different factions had lots of different

01:10

ideas and they didn't mind arguing about them some groups argued for policies

01:15

that were supposedly humanitarian for these people the humane way to deal with

01:19

the tribes was to assimilate them into white culture these groups went by the

01:24

slogan kill the Indian and save the man we didn't make this up these groups [Group of indian people and Richard Pratt appears]

01:30

wanted an extreme makeover of the worst possible time they didn't really care

01:35

about the fact that completely erasing somebody's culture is a lot like killing

01:39

the person that they are just imagine if aliens just over the country and told us [Alien spacecraft flys towards Earth]

01:43

we could keep living here as long as we acted like them [Alien pointing gun at people]

01:49

of course while the assimilation strategy was culturally insensitive at

01:53

best there were significantly worse strategies out there like oh say they

01:59

kill them all strategy while the US Army had plenty of American Indian massacres

02:03

on their hand some white volunteer groups even took it upon themselves the

02:07

massacre native children inspired by the charming phrase nits become life uncle [Native child and gun points towards her]

02:16

thinking the Pineda's didn't fight back there were plenty of Indian Wars

02:19

rebellion and minor skirmishes but in the end well they just couldn't stand

02:24

out to the superior technology and power and resources of the u.s. machines like

02:30

bows and arrows don't do much against bullets so American Indians attempted [Rifle fires at bow and arrow]

02:37

violent resistance basically totally failed well except for the Battle of

02:41

Little Bighorn in which General Custer and most of his men were annihilated by

02:45

the Lakota Cheyenne and Arapaho trot now this event was also called Custer's last

02:51

stand for all those out there who taught the term refer to the last custard on [Custard and gelati stand]

02:56

the block not case

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