Intentional & Unitnetional

After the time of the civil war, Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans were discriminated against by the white settlers and the government. Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers also known as the United States Colored Troops. These soldiers were needed by the federal government during the Indian Removal Act. This act was enacted  by president Andrew Jackson and was meant to move native American Tribes who were settled in southern areas more to the west so that the whites could colonize these areas, and expand the nation. Many of the Native American believed that this act was unfair, and they tried to act against it. the circumstances in which the native American were forced into were terrible and many of them lost their lives along their awful journey west. While the native american did try to stop this from happening, the Indian Removal Act was successful because of the Buffalo Soldiers, however, the conditions in which the Buffalo soldiers were put under were also terrible and they were very discriminated against. Our essential question for this topic was, Was the discrimination that the Buffalo soldiers and Native Americans faced intentional or did the White settlers and federal government actually believe that what they were doing was just? To find the information we used to create this question and learn more about the discrimination against these two groups we took notes together as a class on PBS and ABC-Clio videos about the buffalo Soldiers and the Native Americans, and we also read excerpts of primary source documents including Helen Hunt Jackson's Century of Dishonor, and The Dawes Act 1887.  

while the discrimination can be viewed as either intentional or unintentional, I believe that the discrimination against these Buffalo Soldiers and Native American was both intentional and unintentional in different circumstances. One case in which the discrimination against the Native Americans was unintentional was because the white settlers viewed them as people who needed their help in order to survive, and they believed that what they were doing was just simply to help them. we see this in Helen Hunt jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor when she states, “subsist by hunting, fishing, on roots, nuts, berries, etc., and by begging and stealing”. here she is saying that the Native American who were not receiving help from the government had to beg and steal to stay alive. Because they saw them as helpless they thought they were doing an act of justice by helping them. On the other hand, in some cases the discrimination was intentional. the federal government and white soldiers wanted to have complete control over the land in which the Indians once had control over. In the Dawes Act it states, “ ...any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes, to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or resurveyed if necessary, and to allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities…”. this quote tells us the the government gave themselves the power to slip up native American's land and distribute it in a way so that they had complete control over how much land they could own. This is an example of intentional discrimination because here the government wasn't helping them because they were helpless, they were helping them so they could take advantage of the land that they owned.while the white settlers believed that they were “Friends of the Native Americans”, some actions they took were still unjust.   

As well as the discrimination against the Native Americans, there was also both intentional and unintentional discrimination of the Buffalo Soldiers. In one case the government may have believed that what they were doing was just by providing them a job other than sharecropping, which was much like slavery, and giving them clothing, food, and shelter. However, they also discriminated intentionally against these Buffalo soldiers because they were being used to do work that no one else wanted to do. Some of the jobs that they had as Buffalo Soldiers included, fight against the native Americans, difficult labor such as laying down electrical line and clearing the paths for the Native Americans, as well as risking their lives in the most dangerous battles. Because of the horrible conditions of their jobs, in this case the discrimination was intentional. even though they provided the soldiers with many resources believing that they were helping them, they also intentionally discriminated against them in some way.  Both the Buffalo soldiers and the Native Americans were treated with discrimination, that was intentional and unintentional, from the White settlers and the federal Government.