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Monday November 23, 2009    2:46 AM
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Questions and Answers about the Spokane Indians
 

what were the dark years?
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In her book, They Walked Before: The Indians of Washington State, the Nisqually historian Cecelia Svinth Carpenter speaks of the period from 1860 to 1930 as the Dark Years for Indian People.(1)

  • Settlers came in large numbers into the Plateau Region to farm and to live. They forced the Indian off the land they had occupied for centuries.

  • Indians from different tribes were crowded on to centralized reservations and lost their sense of tribal identity.

  • Alcohol and disease took a terrible toll on individuals and families of the Native Americans.

  • Smallpox epidemics killed many people.

  • The natural resources that Native Americans had depended upon for thousands of years were destroyed

  • Indian men who had fought in the Indian Wars were labeled as murderers and were killed.

  • The Indian Agent, the federal overseer of the reservations, was able to take over and institute rules and regulations over the people under his protection.

  • There was a conscious attempt to deprive the Indian of their language and culture.

  • English names were assigned to Native Americans

  • Old villages and burial grounds that were not on reservations were often destroyed through landscaping and in the building of new homes.

  • Indians suffered from prejudice and racism from the ruling white society.

    (1) Cecelia Svinth Carpenter, They Walked Before: The Indians of Washington State Tacoma: 1997, p. 37











    • Last Updated
    December 24, 2004
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