[A] But soon the settlers wanted bigger farms and more land for themselves and their families. More and more immigrants were coming from Europe and all these people needed land. So the Europeans started to take the land from the Indians. The Indians had to move back into the center of the continent because the settlers were taking all their land.
[B] By 1857 the Indians had lost the fight: they were living in special places called "reservations". But even here the White Man took land from them -- perhaps he wanted the wood, or perhaps the land had important minerals in it, or he even wanted to make national parks there. So even on their reservations the Indians were not safe from the White Man. Between 1500 and 1900 the Indian population of the area that is now the United States declined from close to 1,000, 000 to 300, 000. and for those remained, the agony was great. Many were forced to take land in new and strange places. They were introduced to new tools, implements and techniques. They were forced to abandon their old way of life.
[C] In 1960s, Indians moved in great numbers to the nation’s cities. Many Indians moved into poverty rows. It was hard for them to find jobs. It was hard -- almost impossible -- to compete with the White Man in the white man’s world. Many Indians returned to the reservations. But if the reservations had been broken up there was no place to go. The gap between Indian American and white American was growing wider.
[D] The native Americans, the people we call the" Indians", had been in America for many thousands of years before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. Columbus thought he had arrived in India, so he called the native People" Indians". The Indians were kind to the early settlers. They were not afraid of them and they wanted to help them. They showed the settlers the new world around them; they taught them about the local crops like sweet potatoes, corn and peanuts; they introduced the Europeans to chocolate and to the turkey; and the Europeans did business with the Indians.
[E] The Indians couldn’t understand this. They had a very different idea of land from the Europeans. For the Indians, the land, the earth, was their mother, everything came from their mother, the land, and everything went back to it. The land was for everyone and it was impossible for one man to own it. How could the White Man divide the earth into parts How could he put fences round it, buy it and sell it Naturally, when the White Man started taking all the Indians’ land, the Indians started to fight back. They wanted to keep their land, they want to stop the White Man taking it all for himself. But the White Man was per and clever. Slowly he pushed the Indians into those parts of the continent that he didn’t want -- the parts where it was too cold or too dry or too mountainous to live comfortably.
[F] Meanwhile the Indians have been working hard in their own interests. They are building new communities, establishing new industries, and erecting new schools. They are developing motels and other recreational schemes on the reservations. There is a growing Pan-Indian Government. Indians have become active in writing and publishing. Some tribes have benefited through settlement of their land or other claims against the government. They are using the funds for their own development. Perhaps a new day has already dawned for the American Indians.
[G] Many of their tribes were resettled on reservations in the west. The land belonged to the United States Government but was reserved tax-free for the Indians. The federal government provided the tribes with rations, tools, and equipment. Boarding and day schools were set up. In many cases responsible agents were sent to administer the reservations. But the change from a free life to the restricted life of reservations brought the Indians near despair. They did not change easily.
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