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During the Gilded Age, Anglo settlers moved into the Great Plains and Mountain West regions in increasing numbers, setting up conflicts with Native American Indians who had lived on the land for many generations. Imagine you are either a Plains Indian, or an Anglo farmer, in the West. Write 250 words, about your experiences.

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Final answer:

Conflict and changes characterized the relationship between Anglo settlers and Native American Indians during the Gilded Age in the Great Plains. The settlers' drive for land and the native tribes' migratory lifestyle led to the Plains Wars and the forced movement of natives onto reservations.

Step-by-step explanation:

Great Plains and Mountain:

During the Gilded Age, conflict arose as Anglo settlers poured into the Great Plains and Mountain West, encroaching on the lands of Native American Indians. The Plains Indian way of life was characterized by a communal sense of property and a nomadic lifestyle - a stark contrast to the Anglo settlers' desire for land acquisition and production to meet distant demands. Trade amongst natives, once routine, was now heavily influenced by modern transportation and the influx of these settlers. Anglo settlers pursued agriculture and homesteading, driven by the same individualistic acquisition that had characterized their previous lives in different regions.

Native Americans in the Great Plains lived migratory lives, some maintaining stationary structures, while others, like the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux, were nomadic hunters, attributing to their sophisticated trade networks. However, the government's push to confine Plains Indians to reservations and the disruption of buffalo migration patterns by railroads and ranches, led to the Plains Wars, which deeply affected the existence of the native tribes. These conflicts, alongside expansions such as railroads and large-scale agriculture, which benefited from economies of scale, contributed to a rapidly changing landscape for both Native Americans and Anglo settlers, with long-lasting repercussions on the native population.

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