Why Are So Few Reservations In the East?

If you look at a map of American Indian Reservations, you'll notice they're almost all west of the Mississippi. But why? Tai Leclaire has the story.

All this Native American Heritage Month, check out more episodes of A People's History of Native America on PBS Origins

[JRoss-zxzx]

4000 is definitely a massive understatement

[connorletkeman]

Wishing the best for you and for everybody at PBS!

[melifer]

After the first question, I was like, "No, it was the Trail of Tears."
Because I am old and grew up when public schools still taught the truth of westward expansion and the many treaties broken by our American government.

[danielland]

What's wild is schools in Georgia they give the history lessons of names of the area which most have origin with Native American tribes but changed over time

[richardmiller]

There's some really generous wording in there.

[asweet]

Gold was found in North Carolina in 1799. Jackson's Indian Removal Act was to expand mining. Just recently Lithium was found in the same area that was flooded by Hurricane Helene.

[Josette]

We have so many reservations in California. And most of them are impoverished. The casinos don't share their profits with the Natives. It's infuriating.

[SusanPetty]

So important to tell the stories of our indigenous people. They are the true Americans. Listen to them.

[JaimeLannister]

great video! editing so fresh & so cleanclean 🙌

[madamsloth]

Sad how sanitized this short is on this topic

[mavdecapua]

Alaska 😮 I had no idea! Thats as far west as you can get 😢 This was super informative

[amandabates]

I have Blackfoot, Crow, and Seminole in my heritage. Thank you for teaching people about my ancestors journeys.

[TheOnlyKateslate]

Keep teaching about our real shared history!

[mistapoli]

I went to a powwow at the Meskwaki Nation of Iowa once. They had a small museum setup in a portable canopy tent, it had many small artifacts and signs describing the history of the tribe. A few things caught my eye.

One, a sign describing a letter that the Nation received from the state government somewhere in the early 1900s “advising” them under threat of force to not participate in powwows or other tribal practices. They claimed that it was doing a disservice to their families that they spent that time not working. Mind you, the tribe legally bought the land it inhabits with its own funds, they own that land in every sense of the word. Could you imagine a tribal official walking into your living room on thanksgiving or Christmas, and telling you that you were doing a disservice to your family? That if you didn’t stop, they would stop you? The level of disrespect is unimaginable. Of course, the tribe responded by holding a powwow that was open to the public in the surrounding area, and the state could do nothing because they were doing nothing wrong. They’ve been holding them ever since.

There was also another run in that they had with the government, possibly at an earlier date, but if you haven’t already noticed I am bad at dates. The tribe used to have horses, and lots of them. They would use them to travel to their ancestral land to hunt, and they did so within the confines of the law of course. The government didn’t like that. So one day, they raided the nation and shot every horse they could find. There are no longer any horses left on the reservation. The few that survived were not able to breed, and they died off.

The utter disrespect and inhumanity that these people have had to endure is something that a lot of people do not grasp or even know about. Even in wanting to exist in their own way on their own property, they were harassed and had their rights stamped upon by people who would call THEM the savages. Horrible injustices have been inflicted upon our native population, and they still are. They have never been truly made up for, nor could they ever be. What they have lost was the entire world as they knew it. Nothing can replace that. Nothing can compensate for that.

[leslieholland]

My late husband's family were on the Trail of Tears. I cried when he explained it to me from a Native perspective. We owe them so much!❤❤

[oO_Cass_Oo]

my teacher had each kid make a section of the trail of tears on que cards and do a little blurb about the why when and how of it. and then at the end each kid from each period got to put their piece of the map up.
by the final period the map stretched across the double length class room and all the desks where moved around, everyone from all of the previous classes where also popping up every now and then to look at how massive it had gotten.
super fun class at the time.
as an adult you also get to have a horrifying visualization of just how long this was now that my mind comprehends scale.

[Elibel]

Don’t forget that in the 17-18th century, much of the native populations of the North East were decimated by european diseases they had no antibodies for. So not only were they killed, but there was little of them left to resist a forced displacement. Some communities had taken root in remote areas where colonization had not developed.

[Slingbladess]

Hope someday the Native Indians get thier land back?

[lorekeepermeerah]

My ancestors were forced on the trail of tears. History books and shows really sugar coat what they did to us.

[RosyMiche]

And there are still so many groups fighting to be federally recognized. Chinook Wawa is a massive trade language that was spoken all up and down the Pacific Northwest coast (and many people are working hard to revive it today!!), and yet Bush legislated away the Chinook people's tribal status in the early 2000s. It's definitely important to recognize how certain groups were adopted into larger ones, and help them fight for their sovereignty and recognition!