Indians In The Great Plains

Great Plains

The Setting and the People in the Great Plains in North American on a cloudless day, stretch out forever under an infinity of bright blue sky. The Plains can be a source of endless delight, or of misery, as well they might be considering their extent. The Plains are relatively flat, semiarid, and essentially treeless. In the midnineteenth century they were unfenced, covered by endless sea of prairie grass, grass that set its roots down twenty-four inches or more to withstand the droughts and which offered some of the most nutritious plant food in the world (Ambrose Pg. 6).

Men and animals also congregated in the trees groves to escape the weather. The weather on the Plains could not be ignored. It constantly need rain, the average yearly rainfall is less that twenty inches, so every storm was welcome. Or rather nearly every storm, because at times the sky can open, and dump five inches of rain in a matter of hours, fill the stream beds to overflowing, and flood the surrounding countryside. No one could do anything about the storms those people who lived in the Plains area had to accept them (Ambrose pg. 8).

Despite the excesses of the Plains weather, however, it is an invigorating climate for the man and beast. But most of all, there were buffalo, an enormous beast-a full grown bull weighed nearly a ton and a half they looked like oversized cattle, except for the humps on their backs and their shaggy hair. Buffalo muscle was an excellent source of protein for men while the beast vital parts supplied vitamins and minerals in abundance. The Buffalo provided and apparently inexhaustible meet supply, unrivaled by anything else known to man before or since. The beast had bunched together in huge numbers, migrating over the Plains in search of fresh grass and water. The buffalo was a magnet drawing men onto the Plains even before they had solved the problem of transportation across the vast spaces. Indeed the first men in what is now the United States may have lived on the Plains. They were fascinated with horses the Sioux were successful horse thieves and as a tribe they were rolling in money. To these men the main problem was the Plains Indians was that they were too rich. These Indians were also terribly lazy they had exhibited an independence-like " the air they breathed or the wind they blew" according to one trader what was despair of the white man (Ambrose Pg. 11).

Sioux men liked nothing better that lazing around camp, smoking a pipe, telling stories, or playing with children and enjoying themselves when they were not on a war party or a buffalo hunt. The Indians felt that everything about them was for the white man, extreme. The Indian response to white intrusion, in short, was divided. Some became friend of the whites and some turned hostile. Over the centuries Indians did build civilization on the Plains. At this time Crazy Horse birth was in state of flux ad by the time he was still a small boy, the not -yet famous Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Sioux, urged his people to leave the Oregon Trail and withdraw to the ways of their ancestors. He felt that the white may get me last, but o will have good times until then. But half or more of the Sioux did nit see things the way Sitting Bull did. They thought they could obtain what the white man offered without having to give up anything of their own. Therefore, Crazy Horse was born into tension and lived his whole life with it; in the end the divided Indian response to the challenge of the white man was directly for his early death (Ambrose Pg 18).

In 1839, the year of George Armstrong Custer's birth the United States was a country of striking diversity in its physical features, its economy, and its people. Yet there was a unity to the United States, a unity of many factors, of which possibly the most important was the political genius of the Founding Fathers, who in writing the Constitution had managed to achieve a unique balance between national and local interests and governmental power (Ambrose Pg. 22).

No region in this country was typical, just as no man could be said to be a typical American, but there was one state in the United States that pulled together most of the traits usually associated with the Americans and produced a blend that could at least be called representatives. That state was Ohio, which was a wealthy state. The sources of that wealth were the labor of the people-just plain hard work, with lots of sweat, from dawn to dusk (Ambrose Pg. 24.).

Ambition was the key to the American character because, of the individual expectation of personal betterment. It mad Americans the hardest working people in the world. It was a motive power that got the work done and the one sentiment shared by all white Americans, who were otherwise so diverse. George Armstrong Cluster knew it well; late in his life he wrote: " In years long-numbered with the past, when I was verging upon manhood, my every thought was ambitious not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great. I desired to link my name with acts & men, and in such a manner as to be mark of honor-not only to the present, but to future generations." In the end his ambition was directly responsible for his early death as well as Crazy Horse (Ambrose Pg. 32)

George Armstrong Custer, what an amazing warrior. Custer was born on December 5, 1839, in New Rumley, Ohio. George had two sister's Nevin and Margaret Custer and two brothers Thomas and Boston. He spent most of his childhood time with his half-sister and brother in law in Monroe, Michigan. Immediately after high school Custer enrolled in West Point in 1861 where he had the lowest grades when he graduated at the bottom of his glass. He failed to distinguish himself in any positive way. After graduating he had failed in his duty an officer of the guard to stop a fight between two cadets. He then was martialed and saved from punishment only by the huge need for officers with there outbreak of the Civil War.

Custer compiled a creditable record as a Calvary leader in the latter part of the Civil War. He also did unexpectedly well in the Civil War. He fought in the First Battle of Bull Run, and served with the panache and distinction in the Virginia and Gettysburg campaigns. Given his own star, he was also assigned command of the Michigan cavalry brigade and, with it took part also in the Bristoe and Mine Run campaigns. Although his units suffered enormously high casualty rates even by standards of the bloody Civil War his fearless aggression in the battle earned him the respect of his commanding generals and increasingly put him in the public eye.

In July 1866 after the war, Custer applied for a leave of absence to accept command of the Mexican cavalry under the Mexican president Benito Juarez, who opposed the rule

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