Final answer:
The US government's efforts to anglicize native peoples, primarily through boarding schools and land allotment policies, aimed to erase Native American cultures and assimilate them into Euro-American society. These efforts resulted in the loss of traditional identity, though responses varied among individual Native Americans and tribes.
Step-by-step explanation:
Efforts to Anglicize Native Peoples by the US Government
The US government's efforts to anglicize the native peoples began in earnest in the late 19th century. The Americanization policy, though spearheaded by reformers with ostensibly good intentions to prepare Native Americans for life in modern America, involved aggressive measures that had detrimental effects on Native cultures. Among these measures, two of the most impactful were the boarding school system and the allotment policy.
Boarding Schools
Boarding schools such as the Carlisle Indian School were institutions where Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and educated in a Euro-American context. At these schools, children were made to abandon their native languages, clothing, and customs and were taught vocational and domestic skills in an effort to assimilate them into a European American way of life.
Land Allotment
The US government's land allotment policy resulted in the distribution of tribal lands to individual Native American households. This process not only undermined the communal landholding vital to many Native American cultures but also opened the door for surplus tribal lands to be sold to settlers, leading to widespread poverty among native populations as they lost their economic base.
Commonalities in Assimilation Efforts
Similar efforts of assimilation and anglicization were directed towards the Hispanic and Chinese immigrant populations, with a common goal of shaping these diverse groups into a single American cultural identity. However, such policies often led to systemic discrimination and a loss of traditional identity for the targeted groups.
Response to Anglicization
While some Native Americans adapted to and adopted these imposed changes, many resisted and fought to maintain their cultural heritage and autonomy. The end result of these assimilation efforts was a complexity of responses ranging from adoption of new ways to staunch resistance.