Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans

In class the other day, we learned about the Buffalo soldiers in the American Civil War, and we created the following question about it to answer.  "Were federal policies towards Native Americans and buffalo soldiers intentionally discriminatory or well-intentioned?"  To answer this, we found multiple different examples that clearly add up to a discriminatory outcome.  Federal policies being discriminatory towards these minority groups had a hard hitting effect on the culture and way of life for the Native Americans.  As Americans took up westward expansion, they gave the tribes three choices; they could join American society and conform to it, they could be put on a small designated piece of land to live, or they could choose to fight back, which often resulted in their demise through the American's total war.  If Americans and their policies for dealing with Natives were aimed to help the Natives, they wouldn't have gone and slaughtered men women and children.  Native Americans often tried to negotiate with the U.S. Government to try to get an extension for their removal, but were ultimately turned down and forced off.  Another reason that federal policies were there to discriminate against people is because `many deals and agreements between the Natives and the Americans were broken, and while they were promised things such as some of their land to stay on it was often times only less than 10% of what it was before.  Though the Buffalo soldiers were given many more rights since they gained their freedom, they were still given lower jobs in the military compared to whites, and were forced to do the work that people normally didn't want to do such as telegraphing, mapping, and exterminating Natives.  All in all, federal policies employed by the government ended up discriminating both the Native Americans and the Buffalo Soldiers and created further tension between America and its cultural diversities.  

Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, 1890