Westward Expansion Questions

1. The government wanted assimilation to work. So that the Native Americans would no longer be a problem for the government, they would be apart of the U.S.'s population. Assimilation didn't work mainly because the Native Americans did not like Americans. The Americans killed off the buffalo, which was an important Native Americans needed to survive. The Americans killed Native American chiefs and thousands of people and even children. The Americans didn't give the Native Americans any respect, even though the Native Americans were there first. The Dawes Act promised them land and money, in which the Native Americans lost 2/3 of their land and didn't get any money for the sales for the rest of their reservation. In other words, Americans did absolutely nothing to welcome the Native Americans to become apart of the white culture.
2. The governments efforts to promoe settlement of the Great Plains worked very well. Such as the Homestead Act, where 600,000 families migrated west after hearing about the free land and 2 million acres were claimed in Oklahoma. The government spent alot of money on railroads to places where land was sold cheap. Many immigrants moved to states such as Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin when taking adavantage of the railroads. The railroads made it easier allow families to move to the western states from the eastern states. The Great Plains soon became populated with many farms and families.