With so many newcomers moving west, the federal government established a policy of restricting Native Americans to reservations, small areas of land within a group’s territory that was reserved exclusively for their use, in order to provide more land for the non-Indian settlers.
From 1830 throughout the remainder of the Nineteenth Century, the federal government responded with five policies that aimed to open up Indian land to white settlement: removal, reservations, allotment boarding schools, and elimination. The federal implementation of each policy further eroded Indian sovereignty.
The Indians were given a yearly payment that would include money in addition to food, livestock, household goods and farming tools. These reservations were created in an attempt to clear the way for increased U.S. expansion and involvement in the West, as well as to keep the Native Americans separate from the whites in order to reduce the potential for conflict.
While many tribes did settle peacefully on such reservations, others resisted giving up their lands and way of life. Tribes who resisted included the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho on the northern Great Plains, the Apache, Commanche, and Navajo in the Southwest, and the Nez Percé in Idaho.
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