Expansion Of The United States - 1761 Words

The United States expanded territorially in many different ways. One of the main ways was war, also purchasing land or just taking land, as they did to the Indians. There were many points of view on expanding territorially and many reasons why or why not the United States should expand. The ideas of manifest destiny, imperialism, social darwinism, and the fear that if the United States didn’t join in and try to acquire land then there would be no land left for them. They would be inferior to other countries and that is not what they wanted. On the other hand anti-imperialist thought that expansion was immoral and they were afraid that expanding too much would start polluting America and threaten American Liberties. In the end the United†¦show more content†¦The white Anglo-Americans took their land and forced them onto reservations. Reservations were land that was undesirable to the whites. The natives rebelled and out broke â€Å"The Indian Wars†. Resistance with Indians began when they started attacking isolated ranches and wagon trains. When the rebellion started, the US army became more involved and because of this involvement natives started targeting white soldiers. The Indians fought because they wanted to take back the territory that was once theirs. White vigilantes took matters into their own hands and created â€Å"Indian hunting† which made killing Indians into a sport. People who did not want to do the hunting themselves would reward people to do the dirty work for them. Some Indians were tricked when they were offered to attend peace conferences and ended up dead because they were poisoned or murdered. The Indians, however, did have some success in the Indian wars. For example the battle of Little Bighorn in June 1876, one of the largest assembled Indian army that consisted of 2,500 warriors, surrounded George A. Custer’s regiment and killed every man. The regiment was made up of 264 members. Because of the la ck of supplies and political organization the warriors separated into different bands. In 1887 The Dawes Act â€Å"provided for the gradual elimination of tribal ownership of land and the allotment of tracts to individual owners† (Brinkley 463). Cheap train fair