American history

Essay by nosarose November 2014

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Chapter 7: As Long As the Grass Grows or Water Runs

According to Howard Zinn, chapter seven expressed the idea that Indans were the aliens in their own lands. In this chapter, Howard Zinn will describe more detail how the Native Americans be treated. It could be the armed conflicts, the broken treaties, and the forced movement. Also in this chapter, Zinn tells more about the different response between Native American and the white people for their government mistreatment.

"When Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the nation by purchasing the Loisian from France in 1803, he thought the Indians could move there" is what Howard Zinn wrote. Thomas Jefferson persuaded the congress so that the Indians could settle on "smaller tracts", do farming, trade with whites, and surely they would be cheated by White people. Thus, Indians would sink in debt. And what they were supposed to do is to trade land in return of being free from debt.

This is one of the trick the government use to get rid of the Indians out of their land.

Another method used was broken treaty. Zinn wrote, " Jackson's 1814 treaty with the Creeks started something new and important. It granted Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out- introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western capitalism." It's surely that Jackons' friends and relatives received many of the privilege from his influence over the treaty: including Indian agents, trader, treaty commissioners, surveyors and land agents... The Indians move from land to land and sign in treaty to treaty in order to gain a promise of being secured by the government. Also the laws made by the government as soon as Jackson...