When the white Americans began migrating to the Great Plains in the 19th century, the lives of Native Americans dramatically changed, forever. The new emigrants who came to the land of the Indians brought with them many diseases and bacteria that the Natives were not immune to. An Indian chief remembers, "the white people came, they brought with them some good, but they brought the small pox, and they brought evil liquors; the Indians since diminish and they are no longer happy" (p.5). Diseases such as smallpox, cholera, measles, and scarlet fever wiped out an enormous amount of Indians. The white man brought another type of disease with him, the disease of war. White Americans and Native Americans fought many battles over the ownership of the Indian's land. In 1851, the Americans and the Indians made the Treaty of Fort Laramie that said Indians accepted American proposals that they recognize tribal boundaries. However, a few years later more fighting broke out. A misunderstanding about the loss of an emigrant's cow in 1854 resulted in the killing of Lt. John Grattan and his command by Brule Sioux. Retaliation on an Indian village at Ash Hollow by General William S. Harney set

Following the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, Americans developed into an industrializing nation hoping for westward expansion to help reunite the nation. While the white man expanded westward, they proclaimed their right as Americans to occupy all land westward to the Pacific, putting the Indians living on the plains under siege. The United States government and Army embarked on a series of campaigns to restrict the nomadic tribes of the plains to reservations. The American armies engaged in total war with the Indians in hopes of confining them to reservations where they could become "civilized" to American standards. As battles continued for almost twenty years resistance became weak, and the Indians who survived were placed under the control of the American government.

When their boarding school days were done, many Indian students left with no real training or preparation for life in American society. The boys left with some vocational and manual skills and the girls left with maid skills, but none left with any real knowledge of what was in store for them. They left their designated boarding schools, which were designed to assimilate them into American culture, with a complete loss of identity. Having been forced to renounce their Tribal culture, many felt they no longer belonged among their own people. When students returned home, other Indians looked upon them with a sort of distrust, for they had become too white. Now, they were not one with their own people and they certainly did not belong among the American people. This was a tragic period of readjustment and confusion for many, in which some people resorted to suicide.

The United States believed that education was the key to saving the Indian. In 1880, the Board of Indian Commissioners stated, ""As a savage we cannot tolerate him any more than as a half civili

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Approximate Word count = 1260
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)