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Indians in the USA - past and present AND Cowboys - Referat
Indians in the USA – in the past and present
Today my topic is the life of the Indians in the USA in the past and today. First of all i want to start with the past. Native Americans, or ’Indians’, had lived in America for at least ten thousand years before the white men came. Over the next four hundred years the settlers drove the Indians off their land and destroyed their way of life. Additionally in the 19th century Americans moved west across the country to settle new territory. The Indians thought that the land should be for everyone to use, but the Americans did not belive a person could own a piece of land. They tried to resist, but the US army was too strong for them. The goverments signed many treties with them but they broke them all. The Indians moved into reservations where they could not be controlled. There was the Battle of Wounded Knee, which was a very awful massare.
Today Indians exist, too. There are about two million people in the USA who see themselves as Native Americans. Three quarters live in towns and cities, and a quarter in reservations, mostly west of the Mississippi. Some reservations work in mining or in oil and gs production. Some have opened casinos and tourist hotels. Additionally today Native Americans have more problems that other people, such problems as poverty and alcoholism.
All in all I think the Indians today have not as such as a good life as other people have. I think this is partly because of this driving out of the Indians in the 19th century.
Cowboys and cattle drivers
Today I want to talk about Cowboys and cattle drivers. First of all I want to start with why cowboys are needed. In the 1860s there were lots of cattle in Texas. Moreove rin the same time the population of cities in the north and east growing, and so was the market for meat. In Texas the cattle were cheaper, so it was a profit to get the cattle into the big cities like New York. But the question was how. And that why cowboys are needed. It was a thousand miles to the nearest railroad, which drove to the north. But it was open country and there was gras, which was needed by the cattle. So the time of he cowboys began. Many of them were soldiers, factory workers or slaves. It was a difficult and dangerous work because there was always a chance that Indians could attack you. Moreover it was very hot in summer and very cold in winter. And there were many problems. First of all the cows died in the hot summers and froze to death in the cold winters. Furthermore there was later too many cattle and the cowboys could not protect alll of them. And the most important point was the invention of the barbed wire in 1873 because the cowboys could not go as easily as before in the grazing places, so the days of the cowboys and cattle drivers were over.
All in all I think that the cowboys and cattle drivers were very needed in this times, but they are not needed anymore.
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