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Welcome! I am Diane, your host, please don't hesitate to contact me with any comments, questions or suggestions that you may have.
I would like to get transcriptions of cemeteries, birth, marriage, and death certificates, biographies, tribal information, photos and anything else you feel may benefit other researchers.
Please help me to make this the best source of information for Native Americans on the internet!
After the colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived of the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for United States citizenship. Assimilation (whether voluntary as with the Choctaw, or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of Manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate most Native Americans of the Deep South east of the Mississippi River from their homelands to accommodate European-American expansion from the United States. Government officials thought that by decreasing the conflict between the groups, they could also help the Indians survive. Remnant groups have descendants living throughout the South. They have organized and been recognized as tribes since the late 20th century by several states and, in some cases, by the federal government. The first European Americans encountered western tribes as fur traders. As United States expansion reached into the American West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Plains tribes. These were complex nomadic cultures based on using horses and traveling seasonally to hunt bison. They carried out strong resistance to American incursions in the decades after the American Civil War, in a series of "Indian Wars", which were frequent up until the 1890s. The coming of the transcontinental railroad increased pressures on the western tribes. Over time, the US forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, and established reservations for them in many western states. US agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but the lands were often too poor to support such uses. Contemporary Native Americans today have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, or bands of Native Americans who have sovereignty or independence from the government of the United States. Their societies and cultures flourish within a larger population of descendants of immigrants (both voluntary and slave): African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European peoples. Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship in 1924 by the Congress of the United States.