American Frontier Quiz

french and indian war and american revolution, northwest territory, frontier wars, sectional issues and War of 1812, Underground Railroad

Between 1775 and 1782 (the years of the American Revolution) a smallpox epidemic spread across North America. By 1782, the disease had reached the villages of the Mandans and Hidatsas. The death rate was very high. The Dakotas attacked the weakened Mandan villages including On-a-slant village (today the villiage is in Fort Lincoln State Park) and Double Ditch village. By 1790, the survivors (of both disease and war) left the Heart River area and moved north to establish villages near Painted Woods Creek and at the mouth of the Knife River. The Mandans who had once occupied six large villages now lived in two small villages. There were only two remaining Hidatsa villages and another village where both Mandans and Hidatsas lived. The populations of the two tribes had been reduced by 75 percent. The Mandans and Hidatsas also suffered cultural losses because of the smallpox outbreaks. The Mandan villages had always shared some common cultural traits, but each village had a slightly different language. As the survivors were forced to move together for security, the differences disappeared. There were similar cultural losses for the Hidatsas. The Arikaras who lived farther south along the Missouri River also experienced the smallpox epidemic. By 1790, the Arikaras had been reduced from a large population living in 32 villages to a group that occupied two villages. Only 500 men of military age remained of the 4,000 Arikara warriors who had protected their villages in previous decades. In 1801, smallpox struck the people of the northern Great Plains again. This time, the epidemic killed fewer people. It is possible that the survivors of the 1782 epidemic were still immune to the virus this time. In 1830, the Army identified smallpox as a dangerous disease at Indian agencies on the lower Missouri River (in modern-day Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska). The Secretary of War, L. G. Randolph, authorized Indian agents to hire doctors to vaccinate American Indians living at the agencies. However, these agents were not ordered to vaccinate Indians. Many mothers feared the vaccine. They had seen many babies become sick because doctors did not use sterile procedures (which were unknown at the time). Sometimes vaccine was not effective and the children became sick anyway. For a variety of reasons, the Army’s vaccination campaign did little to stop smallpox epidemics among the Indians of the frontier. Indian agents on the frontier were concerned about smallpox. Non-Indian settlers were approaching the lands where the tribes lived. Disease was spreading and the agents begged the Office of Indian Affairs (part of the War Department) to provide vaccine for Indians. Finally, in 1832, Congress passed the Indian Vaccination Act. The bill appropriated $12,000 to purchase vaccine and hire doctors to vaccinate Indians. Exactly which tribes would be vaccinated was not specified in the bill. Secretary of War Lewis Cass, who administered the program, decided that the vaccination program would be extended to tribes that were friendly to the United States, those with important economic roles, and those tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) that were being forced out of southern states to relocation sites in the West. Cass specifically excluded the Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras (along with other tribes living farther up the river) from the vaccination program. Cass believed the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River was no longer economically important. He also stated that the treaties that all three tribes signed in 1825 identified them as hostile towards the U. S. and its citizens. (See Document 1.) Other tribes, including the Teton Sioux (Lakotas) did not have such statements in their treaties. Cass excluded the Upper Missouri tribes from vaccination because he considered them to be far removed (both geographically and socially) from “civilized man.”

Write question 2. Early British Actions in the Colonies In 1760, near the end of the Seven Years’ War, a new British king, George III, began his reign. During his 59-year rule, he resisted revolutionary and Napoleonic France. However, George appointed advisors to manage his more distant foreign affairs in North America. These advisors knew very little about the day-to-day lives of colonists and were soon taking actions that enraged many of them. The Proclamation of 1763 The British government faced many problems after the Seven Years’ War. One was how to protect colonists and their land claims as they pushed westward into areas settled by Indigenous groups. In his Proclamation of 1763, George III said to simply draw a line down the crest of the Appalachian Mountains and order colonists not to settle past the boundary. To colonists whose fortunes were founded on Indigenous land, the king’s order suggested tyranny, or the unjust use of government power. They argued that White colonists had already claimed most of the land east of the Appalachians and that farmers had to move west to find land. Besides, colonists and land investors had already crossed the mountains into Indigenous territory. The British government ignored colonists’ arguments. To control the frontier, it sent an additional 7,500 soldiers to the colonies. The Proclamation of 1763 would later be cited as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence. The Stamp Act The British government had other problems besides stopping colonists from encroaching on Indigenous land. Another dilemma was how to pay off the large debt from the Seven Years’ War. The solution seemed obvious to Prime Minister George Grenville, the leader of the British government. People in Great Britain were already paying taxes on everything from windows to salt. In contrast, American colonists were among the most lightly taxed people in the British Empire. It was time, said Grenville, for them to pay their fair share of the cost of Britain protecting colonists and their interests. In 1765, Grenville proposed a new act, or law, called the Stamp Act, which required colonists to buy a stamp for every piece of paper they used. Newspapers, wills, licenses, and even playing cards had to be printed on stamped paper. Again, the colonists sensed tyranny. One newspaper, The Pennsylvania Journal, said that as soon as “this shocking Act was known, it filled all British America from one End to the other, with Astonishment and Grief.” It was not just the idea of higher taxes that upset the colonists. They were willing to pay taxes passed by their own assemblies, in which their representatives could vote on them. However, because the colonists had no representatives in Parliament, they saw the Stamp Act as a violation of their rights as British subjects. For this reason, they argued Parliament had no right to tax them. “No taxation without representation!” they declared. Loyalists simply refused to buy stamps, while other colonists protested the Stamp Act by sending messages to Parliament. Patriots took more aggressive action. Protesters calling themselves the Sons of Liberty organized in 1765 and began attacking tax collectors’ homes. In Connecticut, they even started to bury one tax collector alive. Only when he heard dirt being shoveled onto his coffin did the terrified tax collector agree to resign from his post. After months of protest, Parliament repealed, or canceled, the Stamp Act. Colonists greeted the news with great celebration. Church bells rang, bands played, and everyone hoped the troubles with Great Britain were over. The Quartering Act As anger over the Stamp Act began to fade, Parliament passed another controversial law in 1765. The Quartering Act ordered colonial assemblies to provide British troops with quarters, or housing. The colonists were also told to furnish the soldiers with “candles, firing, bedding, cooking utensils, salt, vinegar, and . . . beer or cider.” Providing these things for British soldiers cost money. New Jersey protested that the new law was “as much an Act for laying taxes” on the colonists as the Stamp Act. New Yorkers asked why they should pay to keep troops in their colony during peacetime. In 1767, the New York assembly decided not to approve any funds for supplies for the British troops, forcing them to remain on their ships. In retaliation, the British government suspended New York’s assembly until it agreed to obey the Quartering Act. Once again, tempers began to rise on both sides of the Atlantic.

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