There was neither racial nor social incompatibility between Indian and white. On the frontier white men married Indian women, and we have seen that white captives married to Indian men were reluctant to leave them. In Europe the early tendency of scholars was to consider the Indians as belonging to the white race. The tragic struggle between the two was economic and political.72
Alan Axelrod put it like this:
Contrary to the claims of some Indian as well as white activists in the twentieth century, it was never the federal government’s official policy to practice genocide against the Native peoples of the West—though there was no shortage of individual racists and fanatics who advocated just that.73
The few who argue that this was a racially motivated war would no doubt be surprised to learn that 10 Indian army scouts were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by the United States government. Surely it is unlikely that a government in a racially motivated war would confer its highest medal on no fewer than 10 members of the other race in one war.
Unfortunately, as James Wilson noted, “the issue of race has become an ugly and painful running sore in some tribes” in that full-blooded Indians claim superiority over mixed bloods.74
THE INDIANS were conquered, but they continued to resist beyond heroism. A theory concerning why they resisted when all was lost can be based on a comparison between the many invasions of England and the settler invasion of America. People from Spain and France settled in England between 8000 and 3000 B.C. There were 8 more invasions.75 The invaded English peoples repeatedly accepted the invaders to a large extent, and the invaders and the invaded even exchanged some of their culture.
In each of these invasions, the law of the invader governed when it conflicted with the law of the conquered. This is a fundamental principle of international law and should come as no surprise when given any thought at all. Some Indian advocates contend that Indian rights before the settler invasion should prevail after the invasion. They obviously did not, no more than our rights would have survived had we been invaded by the Germans or the Japanese in World War II or by the Russians or the Chinese in the Cold War.
CHAPTER 10
Government Indian Policy
Initially every English colony was responsible for dealing with the Indians as it saw fit.1 The policy of the Jamestown colony could be and was different from that of the Plymouth colony. After the Powhatan attack of 1622, Governor Wyatt urged extermination,2 but that was not true of Plymouth. Jamestown set up the first Indian reservations in 1653. A reservation was established for the Pamunkey Indians and the Chickahominy. Justices of the peace were required to remove whites who had settled in these reservations. The Massachusetts Bay Colony also created reservations for “praying Indians.” These reservations were not available to hostile Indians who were not controlled by the colonists.3 Finally, in 1754, in order to have a consistent Indian policy, the Albany Congress brought together Indian affairs under the royal government.4 The Continental Congress followed the British system of dealing with the Indians and in 1778 made its first treaty with the Delaware.5 Esarey rather forthrightly concluded that after the Revolution, “by the laws of warfare they [the Indians] had forfeited all their rights to their land and almost to their lives; yet Congress had no idea of punishing them.”6 Indians in the territory allotted to the states by the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolution, were regarded, said Alan Axelrod, as “a conquered people without civil rights,” yet the federal government did attempt “to regulate white settlement … and did offer to buy—albeit cheaply—territory rather than simply appropriate it.”7
The government of the United States of America began in 1789. Once American Indian policy had been determined, the administration of that policy created many difficulties. One of the first arose out of the fact that territorial governors were also superintendents of Indian affairs for their territories. The governor reported to the secretary of state in his capacity as governor, but to the secretary of war in his capacity as superintendent of Indian affairs. Not only did this cause confusion, but in addition there were jurisdictional disputes between civilians and the military when it was necessary to bring in the army. This remained a frequent problem until almost the 1890s.8
The settlers themselves created a serious and continuing problem. The government was close to bankruptcy. Selling the western lands was the only way of raising revenue quickly. Bil Gilbert said,
In this regard the Indians presented obvious difficulties, but the behavior of frontier whites was almost as vexing to federal officials. From their standpoint the thousands of unruly pioneers who took choice properties simply by squatting on them were stealing government property in such quantities as to threaten the solvency and therefore existence of the nation.9
The government’s response was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which federalized most of the land in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota, wiped out previous colonial and state claims to the land, and set up a form of government. Land was sold to the Ohio Company for 9 cents an acre and to other land companies for even less. For the next several years federal troops tried to keep squatting settlers off the unsold land, without much success.10
Despite its need for revenue, the government was not too anxious for the frontier to move west rapidly because the price of the land could be kept higher if there was not too much of it available. Peace commissioner Timothy Pickering instructed General Wayne that in treating with the Indians at the conclusion of Little Turtle’s War, “peace and not increase of territory has been the object of this expensive War.”11
The Louisiana Purchase was made in 1803. The land east of the Mississippi filled up, and by 1830 the frontier was west of the Mississippi to about 100 miles north of St. Louis. It then crossed northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and southern Michigan.12 There was more room for the settlers, but there were new Indians to resist them.
Government policy from the Washington administration to the Jackson administration, said Bernard W. Sheehan, “persisted in trying to civilize the tribes,” along with efforts to keep the settlers off Indian land. Secretary of War Knox instructed that the Indians should be treated with “entire justice and humanity.” His successor, William H. Crawford, announced that the appearance of force or menace should be avoided and the government should “lean in favor of the Indians.”13
Continued attempts to protect the Indians from the settlers failed. The Trade and Intercourse Act, which largely restated earlier laws, provided that anyone going onto Indian land without a passport was subject to fine and imprisonment, anyone committing a crime against the person or property of a friendly Indian should also be subject to fine and imprisonment, and anyone murdering a peaceful Indian should suffer death.14 By the time Jefferson became president, however, it was evident that the frontier could not be controlled.15
In 1806, a new law created a superintendent of Indian trade, but as Logan Esarey commented, he was in the main powerless:
The government factors were forbidden to sell whiskey to the natives, but unprincipled traders, most of them criminal outcasts from the east, swarmed into the Indian country, furnishing liquor to all who had anything to give in return, denouncing the government agents as robbers, and inciting the Indians to all kinds of deeds of violence on one another or to depredations on the settlers.16
Government Indian policy was not only inadequate but conflicting from the military point of view. Wilcomb E. Washburn reported that army generals “complained that the reservations were often regarded as sanctuaries from which Indians could issue forth to raid the settlements and to which they could return to avoid the risk of retaliation by settlers or soldiers.”17 For example, the Kiowa raided from the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation, then after the raid returned to the reservation (where they drew government rations), knowing the army could not follow them there.18
There was also disagreement between the War Department and the Interior Department. The Times said, “The Secr
etary of War and the Secretary of the Interior are constantly working at cross purposes, so far as the Indians are concerned.”19 This conflict was described by Edward Lazarus “as a heated and frequently vicious battle between the Departments of War and Interior for control of Indian policy. During the next decade, each would frustrate the other’s policies and trade endless accusations and recriminations. “20
When the eastern Indians were first taken west of the Mississippi under the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s and 1840s, they were allowed to go pretty much where they wanted to hunt or to farm. In the 1860s, however, the Indian Peace Commission negotiated separate treaties with each removed tribe. Those treaties required each to settle on a reservation, normally the land on which the tribe hunted or had already settled.21
The system made all those Indians wards of the government. They no longer had to provide for their own food, clothing, and shelter. The leaders of the tribes were bypassed and made ineffective. The tribes were not allowed to become economically independent, and there was a forced breakdown of tribal traditions and religious practices.22 Reservations got the Indians off the lands the settlers wanted.23 The more the Indians were insulated, the less likely they were to raid the settlers.
The reservations even had some advantages for the Indians. In addition to furnishing them food, clothing, and shelter, Wilcomb E. Washburn observed that
whatever else the reservation system may represent it does mark an acceptance of the Indians’ right to live and to retain land and resources for their support. While such a concession may not seem exceptional, on balance it ran against a persistent current of thought—not solely in America—that cared little whether aborigines disappeared from the face of the earth.24
Nevertheless, as Robert M. Utley and Washburn wrote in Indian Wars, “every big Indian conflict since 1870 had been essentially a war not of concentration but of rebellion—of Indians rebelling against reservations they had already accepted in theory if not in fact.”25
A week before his inauguration in 1869, President-elect Grant said he planned a fresh and fair Indian policy. The general acclaim for that policy drowned out his statement that he would also have a sharp and severe war policy toward the Indians. The Indians were dissatisfied with reservation life, however, and by 1874 there were hostilities approaching a full-scale war on the southern Plains. The army had been stopping at the boundaries of the reservations, but that year Sheridan was authorized to make war on hostile Indians wherever they were found.26 The Peace Policy collapsed. Inconsistency of policy characterized government-Indian relations for many years. And it was “at its worst,” Alan Axelrod noted, “during the period of the Peace Policy as military and civilian authorities fitfully vied for control.”27
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THE GENERAL Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, of 1887 marked a major change in American policy. By that time most religious denominations had developed some experience dealing with Indians and had some ideas about policy. Their thoughts were the substance of the Dawes Act, which made the following provisions: (1) Each Indian head of family would be given 160 acres of reservation land as his own, 80 acres for each single person over 18, and 80 acres for each orphan under 18; (2) the land would be held in trust by the secretary of the interior for 25 years; (3) any land left over after these “allotments” were made could be sold (if the tribe and the government agreed on a price) to the government for resale to “actual and bona fide settlers”; and (4) every Indian who had been allotted land or who had resided apart from any allotted land was declared to be a citizen of the United States if the Indian “had adopted the habits of civilized life.” Some of the land of 11 tribes was exempted.28 The act had the effect of substantially decreasing the amount of land owned by the Indians. They owned over 136,000,000 acres in 1887 when the act became effective. By 1934, when the allotment policy was finally abandoned, the Indians owned less than 50,000,000 acres, a decrease of more than 63 percent.29
There is a telling footnote to the Dawes Act. The Cherokee and the Choctaw would not allow the government to make allotments. Indeed, they filed suit in federal court. Congress then passed the Curtis Act in 1898, which dissolved their tribal governments and all others in Oklahoma.30
The Meriam Report of 192831 was sharply critical of the Indian policies of the government. The report found that most Indians were poor and many destitute. Their diet, housing, sanitation, and health were appalling. Disease was a problem. Indians were discontented, unhappy, and lacking in hope and initiative.32 After that report, Congress enacted the Wheeler-Howard Act, the so-called Indian Reorganization Act, in 1934. That act specifically rejected many of the provisions of the Dawes Act and the Curtis Act, which supplemented the Dawes Act. The Indian Reorganization Act did more than simply reverse provisions of the Dawes Act; it reversed Bureau of Indian Affairs regulations designed to force cultural assimilation. The act tried to relate reservation life to the economic life of the nation. It sought to develop Indian democracy and sought to use the tribal councils as training grounds for Indians to start managing their own communities.33
In most sessions of Congress after the act was passed, bills to terminate the reservations were introduced. Many thought that the reservations were overcrowded, a kind of concentration camp, and that the Indians should be set free. There were conflicts between the tribes and county governments, between the agency and the states.34
A joint resolution of Congress in 1953 declared that Indians should be granted all the privileges of citizenship and their status as wards of the government ended. Several tribes were specifically mentioned. This was called the process of termination. The Indians strongly opposed the resolution,35 but the government proceeded to terminate its relationship with 2 of the named tribes, the Menominees in Wisconsin and the Klamaths in Oregon, both of whom voted in favor of termination, which meant loss of control of their timber lands. The Menominees reversed the termination in 1973, but the Klamaths never did.36 Termination acts passed between 1954 and 1962 resulted in the termination of 61 Indian tribes and related organizations.37 The policy of termination continued to be discredited both by Indians who wanted to remain separate political entities and others who thought the Indians were not yet ready for complete independence.
In a special message to Congress in 1970, President Nixon stated, “This policy of forced termination is wrong.”38 “Self-determination among the Indian people can and must be encouraged without the threat of eventual termination.”39 The 1984 Commission on Reservation Economics report stated flatly that the policy had failed.40
President Reagan addressed Indian affairs in 1983 and said, “The only effective way for Indian reservations to develop is through tribal governments which are responsive and accountable to their members.” Reagan recognized the lack of constancy in American Indian policy, but he also added, “Throughout our history, despite periods of conflict and shifting national policies in Indian affairs, the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes has endured.”41
THE UNITED States’ shifting governmental Indian policies were made even worse by incompetent administration of those policies. An indignant congressman complained, “No branch of the national government is so spotted with fraud, so tainted with corruption, so utterly unworthy of a free and enlightened government, as this Indian Bureau.”42 Under the 1786 act of the Continental Congress, the 2 superintendents of Indian affairs were to license all traders with the Indians and supervise them in their work. Esarey revealed the pitfalls of this system. “It was the hope of Congress to attract good men into this work, but the majority of the early traders were refugee criminals, seeking a field where their criminal propensities might have freer range.”43
When the settlers flooded the Ohio Valley, they compounded problems of the administration of Indian policy. During the 5 years between 1785 and 1790, 20,000 people immigrated into the Ohio Valley. Most of them were dissidents, dissatisfied with life in the East and with no strong ties to th
e government. There was talk for a time that the western settlers might form their own nation or join the British or the Spanish. Secretary Knox told Congress that the “whole western territory is liable to be wrested out of the hands of the Union by lawless [white] adventurers or by the savages.”44
In response to the flood of new settlers, the “wild nations”—the Shawnee, the Miami, and others—killed between 1,500 and 2,000 settlers in the 1780s. The settlers asked for military help from the government, preferably a general Indian war. The government responded that settlers should stay out of Indian country for now. The settlers were unhappy with this restriction.45
The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was created in 1824, had deplorable administrators. According to Alan Axelrod,
The Bureau of Indian Affairs [the administrator of the reservations] was regarded more as a cache of political favors than as a committed policy-making body. Between 1834 and 1907, no fewer than 21 men served as commissioner of Indian Affairs. Almost to a man, they were political hacks for whom the job was a patronage reward—an opportunity for profits both legal and illegal. Between 1834 and 1890, according to one authoritative estimate, 85 percent of all Congressional appropriations for Indian subsistence, education, and land payments were diverted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to defray padded administrative costs, overpriced supplies, as well as unvarnished graft and fraud.46
One commissioner was ousted from office for giving a bribe. Another resigned after a House committee rebuked him for incompetence.47 Indian fighter Kit Carson was appointed Indian agent for the Ute in 1853. He was said by Axelrod to have served “with honesty, intelligence, and compassion—qualities very rare in the generally corrupt and inept Indian agency system.”48
The Wild Frontier Page 34