In the mid-nineteenth century the trans-Mississippi west was home to some 350,000 Native Americans
living in scores of distinct cultural groups. Many of these people lived according to their traditional ways
and had little or no interaction with mainstream (people of European or African ancestry) Americans. By
the 1880s, all of the American Indian peoples had been militarily defeated and placed on reservations,
where they were often dependent on government handouts for survival. Indians who left the reservations
were regarded as “hostiles” and were hunted down and either killed or returned to the reservations.
Do you think that the military conquest of Native Americans in the Trans-Mississippi West was inevitable?
Sample Solution
