Examkin

Question

Difficulty: MediumWestward Expansion and American Indians

"The agent tells us we must farm, but he does not give us plows or horse-harness. He tells us we must stay on the reservation, but we cannot live on the dry sagebrush. We want to learn the white man's ways of farming, but how can we farm without tools? The government sends money and goods, but they vanish before they reach our hands, leaving my people to starve while the agent grows rich."

— Sarah Winnemucca, Northern Paiute writer and activist, *Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims*, 1883

The federal policies that created the conditions described in the excerpt were primarily intended to achieve which of the following goals?

  1. A
    To protect tribal sovereignty and preserve traditional communal land holdings from external encroachment.
  2. B
    To enforce strict laissez-faire economic principles by preventing federal involvement in western agricultural development.
  3. To encourage cultural assimilation and clear western lands for American settlement and resource extraction.Answer
  4. D
    To extend the constitutional rights and legal protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to Native Americans living on reservations.

Answer

To encourage cultural assimilation and clear western lands for American settlement and resource extraction.
The correct answer is correct because federal Indian policy in the post-Civil War era shifted toward confining Native Americans to reservations and promoting forced assimilation (later codified in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887). This strategy was designed to break up tribal cohesion and clear vast areas of the West for American homesteaders, railroad construction, ranching, and resource extraction.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the primary source document to identify the author's main complaint.
The author, Sarah Winnemucca, describes how federal agents mismanaged reservation resources, leaving Native Americans without tools to farm and starving while agents profited.
Understanding the perspective and specific criticisms in the stimulus is necessary to connect it to broader historical policies.
2
Connect the reservation system and the behavior of agents to the broader federal goals of the late nineteenth century.
During the late nineteenth century, federal policy focused on suppressing Native sovereignty, confining tribes to reservations, and forcing assimilation to clear land for white settlers and railroads.
This step contextualizes the specific complaints about reservation conditions within the larger federal agenda.
3
Evaluate the options to identify which goal matches the federal objectives of assimilation and land clearance.
The option stating the goal was to encourage cultural assimilation and clear western lands for American settlement is correct, while distractors misrepresent federal intent (e.g., claiming it protected sovereignty or followed laissez-faire).
This identifies the historically accurate motive behind the policies described.

Key Concept

Late 19th-Century Federal Indian Policy (Reservation System and Assimilation)
Rate this question

Topics

Westward Expansion and American Indians

More questions from this topic