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As I said, white people spread across the plains and mountains of the American West, where the Amerindians lived. The Amerindians saw that it was impossible to drive the newcomers away from their hunting grounds, so they made treaties with the government in Washington, giving up large pieces of their land for white farmers to settle upon. In return for such agreements the government promised to leave the Amerindians in peace on the lands that remained theirs.
By this time the Amerindian peoples of the Great Plains were facing another serious problem: The buffalo was beginning to disappear. The Amerindians lived by hunting the buffalo, it provided them with everything they needed - food, clothing, tools and homes. The land that the big animals needed to graze upon was being taken by ranchers and farmers. Worse still, white hunters were shooting down the buffalo in thousands. The American army saw the extermination of the buffalo as a way to end Amerindian resistance to the occupations of their land.
As more settlers claimed homesteads in the West the American government needed more land for them. To obtain this it decided to force the Amerindians to give up their wandering way of life. It sent soldiers to drive the Amerindians onto "reservations". These reservations were areas of land that were usually so dry or rocky that the government thought white settlers were never likely to want them. The Amerindians tried to fight back, but they had no chance of winning. They surrendered and the white soldiers marched them away to the reservations.
The United States government said that it would help and protect the reservation Amerindians. It promised them food, materials to build homes and tools to cultivate the land. But the promises were often broken. There was great suffering on the reservations. Epidemic diseases swept through them, killing their people.
In 1924 Congress finally passed the Indian Citizenship Act. This recognised Amerindians as full citizens of the United States and gave them the right to vote. In spite of such improvements, Amerindians remained far behind most other Americans in health, wealth, and education.
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