Date:1893 Annotation: Article on Chinese exclusion in the North American Review. The United States imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It barred the entry of Chinese laborers and established stringent conditions under which Chinese merchants and their families could enter. Document: Should the Chinese Be Excluded? By Col. R. G. Ingersoll and Representative Geary of California.…

Date:1892 Annotation: Article on Chinese Exclusion Bill in the American Missionary. Document: The Chinese Exclusion Bill, 1892 Undoubtedly this nation must throw some limitations on immigration to its shores. We cannot safely make this land the dumping-ground for the pauper and criminal classes of the old continents. But, in making such limitations, we must be guided by…

Annotation: Sitting Bull was the Indian chief of the Dakota Sioux. In 1876, his people were driven from the Black Hills reservation. In response, they took up arms against the whites to protect the right to remain on their lands. Sitting Bull and his people defeated a group of Custer’s men that had been sent in…

Author:   James Mooney Date:1891 Annotation: James Mooney, an ethnologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology, was sent to investigate the Ghost Dance movement in 1891. He obtained a copy of Wovoka’s message from a Cheyenne named Black Short Nose, who had been part of a joint Cheyenne-Arapaho delegation that visited Wovoka in Nevada in August…

Date:1890 Annotation: Mrs. Z.A. Parker, a white woman, gave an eyewitness account of a Ghost Dance she observed while visiting the Pine Ridge reservation, Dakota Territory on June 20, 1890. After a spiritual vision, a Paiute Indian shaman named Wavoka (or Jack Wilson) began the Ghost Dance movement. Wavoka taught the Indians that by performing the…

Date:1889 Annotation: Andrew Carnegie’s essay “Wealth.” Andrew Carnegie was born to poor Scottish parents that later immigrated to the United States. A true “rags to riches” story, he became a hugely successful business man, creating an American steel conglomerate by providing iron and steel to the railways. To contradict the creation of wealth, he created the…

Date:1887 Annotation: In 1871 Congress declared that tribes were no longer separate, independent governments. It placed tribes under the guardianship of the federal government. The 1887 Dawes Act allotted reservation lands to individual Indians in units of 40 to 160 acres. Land that remained after allotment was to be sold to whites to pay for Indian…

Date:1884 Annotation: Article on Chinese exclusion in the North American Review. From 1882 until 1943, most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation’s first law to ban immigration by race or nationality. All Chinese people–except travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States–were barred…

Date:1883 Annotation: George Plunkitt, a local leader of New York City’s Democratic Party, defended the spoils system, through which elected politicians filled government jobs with their friends and supporters. “You can’t keep an organization together without patronage,” he declared. “Men ain’t in politics for nothin’. They want to get somethin’ out of it.” But in one…

Date:1882 Annotation: The Chinese Exclusion Act, the first major restriction on immigration since the 1790 Naturalization Law, suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years and made Chinese residents ineligible for naturalization. While non-laborers remained eligible for entry into the United States, few were allowed into the country. The Chinese themselves remained ineligible for citizenship until…