The American Indian in the Great War:
Real and Imagined

By

Diane Camurat

 

The Road to War:

American Indian Affairs



Progress in America, after an 1872 painting by John Gast

CHAPTER TWO: AMERICAN INDIAN AFFAIRS BEFORE THE GREAT WAR

 

"It has become the settled policy of the Government to break up reservations, destroy tribal relations, settle Indians upon their own homesteads, incorporate them into the national life, and deal with them not as nations or tribes or bands, but as individual citizens."

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan, 1890.1

 

"Q: You told us a moment ago they [the Indians] were dying off pretty fast?
A: Yes, Sir, the older people are.
Q: Is there any special cause for that?
A: Nothing there is no disease I don't see anything other than the want of hope."

Pleasant Porter, leading man of the Creek nation, to an investigation committee, 1897.2

 

Introduction

In order to understand what motivated Native Americans to enlist as soldiers in the Great War, one must look back into their situation in general before the war. It was nothing to rejoice about. In the years between 1890 and 1900, the American Indian population in the United States had reached its nadir, with 250,000 persons. Only after 1910 did the population start to grow again, before again decreasing in the following decade.3

In 1917, when the United States entered the Great War, Native Americans had been submitted to thirty­if not fifty­years of forced and intense assimilation. Attempts to assimilate the Indians had begun with colonial times4 but had taken on an accelerated turn after the Civil War for several reasons that we will see in the coming chapter. At the same time, the features of Indian policy belong to a greater context. From 1865 and all the more from the 1880s to 1917, industrialization, standardization, capitalism, urbanization, massive immigration, and expansionism­westward until 1890 and then outward­completely changed the landscape of the United States. All the reforms undertaken to counterbalance the excesses of a society in mutation had their echo in the domain of Indian policy. When "social Gospel" dominated the general society after the Civil War, so it did among Indian policy makers. When the field of social reform was taken over from the clergy by secular people more concerned by efficiency than morality, so it was in the Indian Service.

If assimilation so preoccupied policy-makers, it was not merely because of the Indian problem, but also because of the Afro-Americans from the South who migrated west and north after the Civil War and because of the over twenty-three million immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1881 and 1920.5 Not only were the new immigrants numerous but they were markedly different from the preceding waves of immigration which had come from the Protestant countries of northwestern Europe: the new immigrants were Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe.6 In the case of the Chinese, who had arrived from the poor southern Kwangtung province of China from the early 1850s on,7 the solution was far more radical than any attempt at assimilation since in 1882 Congress simply prohibited Chinese immigration for ten years, renewing that prohibition in 1892 and then in 1902 for an indefinite period.8

Assimilation policies for the American Indians, however, were not identical to those for immigrants or for Afro-Americans. The first reason is that American Indians, in those times of nativism, were the first natives. But the main reason is that, after the late 1870s and officially after 1890, the remaining one quarter million Native Americans did not represent the same degree of threat as immigrants or Afro-Americans to the coherency of a country of 63 million people in 1890, 75 million in 1900, and 106 million in 1920.9

But if Native Americans were no longer a threat in number, they did represent a serious problem due to the vast stretches of "unused" lands they possessed in the West. For a country imbued with efficiency and overrun by millions of immigrants in search for a place to settle, this situation was unbearable. Accordingly, the main feature of Indian policy in the years following the Civil War was a strong drive to open Indian country to settlement, through the organization and then division of reservations, and under the noble­and often honest­excuse of civilizing their inhabitants. In this process, education was to play an important role as the most efficient way to "Americanize" the Native Americans.

"All Indians disposed to peace will find the new policy a peace policy. Those who do not accept this policy will find the new administration ready for a sharp and severe war policy."

President Ulysses S. Grant, February 1869.10

 

1. Grant's Peace Policy and Its Developments, 1869-1879

1.1. From Military Uniforms to Men of the Cloth

After the Civil War, some people began showing concern for the weaknesses of the Indian Service­a good many of them being former abolitionists looking for another cause.11 These people were upset by the invasion of Indian lands by miners, settlers, and traders that had occurred while the troops were busy on the Civil War front, but also by the delay in the payment of annuities and delivery of rations, and by the corruption of many Indian Bureau employees.12 The people in charge of Indian affairs, on the other hand, were increasingly concerned by the cost of military warfare in Indian country. In 1865, Secretary of the Interior James Harlan emphasized in his annual report that it cost $2 million a year to maintain a regiment on the Plains, with very little to show for it.13

The massacre at Sand Creek of some 150 Cheyenne men, women, and children in November 1864 along with the report of the Doolittle Committee in January 1867­emphasizing the decline of the Indian population, the ravages of disease among them, the aggressions of White settlers, and charges of fraud against the Indian Service­led Congress to create a United States Peace Commission to sign treaties with the Indians and thus "insure civilization for the Indians and peace and safety for the whites." Also of importance in the concerns of policy-makers was the advance of the transcontinental railways.14 And so in October 1867, the treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek was signed, creating two reservations in Indian Territory for southern Plains Indians, and, in April-November 1868, the treaty of Fort Laramie with the northern Plains Indians, setting aside the Great Sioux Reserve west of the Missouri in the Dakotas.15

What would come to symbolize President Ulysses S. Grant's self-proclaimed Peace Policy was the creation, in April 1869, of the Board of Indian Commissioners­ten men "eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy, to serve without pecuniary compensation."16 These mostly Protestant gentlemen were quick to investigate in the field and suggest policy: if put on reservations, given land in severalty, discouraged in their tribal practices, and educated by Christian missions, the American Indians would have a chance to become Americans. Expected to supply agency personnel and Christian devotion, the Quakers and other religious denominations were thus given care of the Indian agencies.17 Unprepared for this hard task, competing with each other, and faced with the corruption of the Grant administration, the church-appointed agents did not prove to be satisfactory and President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew them all in 1882. In the meantime, Congress had declared the end of treaty-making in 1871 since American Indians were "both sovereign peoples and wards of the government."18

1.2. The Last Native American Upheavals

The problem with the treaties signed between the U.S. government and the Indian nations was that usually the government was much quicker in seizing the land than in granting American Indians their share of the treaty: annuities. Native Americans thus rightly felt that they had lost everything through treaty-making, and gained nothing. Moreover, many East Coast "Friends of the Indians" thought that annuities predisposed Indians to idleness and thus should be stopped altogether.19

Instead of bringing peace to Indian country, treaties brought unrest. The Modoc War in the Northwest in 1872-1873, the Red River War in the southern Plains in 1875, conflicts with the Utes in 1876-1878, the Apache wars in Arizona and New Mexico in 1871-1873, the flight of the Nez Percés in 1877, "pacified" vast stretches of the West.20 But the most threatening were the Sioux who, after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, were enjoined in December 1875 to stop "roaming" and to go back to their agencies. Three columns of the Army moved towards the Sioux and Cheyenne to further convince those who had not got the message. On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were annihilated by the Sioux and Cheyenne at the Little Big Horn. The Sioux and Cheyenne had won their last major battle since heavy reinforcements were sent against them and, little by little over the next years, the different bands surrendered.21 In August 1876, without respecting the minimum requirement of three-fourths of the adult male population necessary to modify the Fort Laramie Treaty, the Manypenny Commission had some Sioux chiefs sign away the Black Hills.22

In 1883, General William Tecumseh Sherman concluded in his final report as general of the Army:

I now regard the Indians as substantially eliminated from the problem of the Army (...) The Army has been a large factor in producing this result, but it is not the only one. Immigration and the occupation by industrious farmers and miners of land vacated by the aborigines have been largely instrumental to that end, but the railroad which used to follow in the rear now goes forward with the picket-line in the great battle for civilization with barbarism, and has become the greater cause.23

 

2. The "Social Gospel," 1879-1897

In an era of massive industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, the pervading social Darwinism­the survival of the fittest applied to human societies­was counter-balanced by the moral responsibilities felt by some reformers and by some people of wealth.24 The "social Gospel" was preached by such Christian people who believed that individual actions in favor of the poor were not adapted to these times of capitalism and social crisis. They advocated social reforms and legislation.25

2.1. Growing Concern for the American Indians

2.1.1. The Ponca Removal and Flight of the Cheyenne

In 1868, the reservation that had been granted three years earlier to the peaceful and agricultural tribe of the Poncas along the Missouri was ceded by the Treaty of Fort Laramie to the Sioux. Accordingly, in 1877, the Poncas were removed to Indian Territory, suffering many deaths on the way south. In January 1879, Standing Bear and other Poncas fled northward to Nebraska. An Omaha (Nebraska) journalist, Standing Bear and an Omaha Indian woman went east to tour in the major cities and succeeded in stirring the public's interest for the Ponca cause. Helen Hunt Jackson, who was to publish in 1881 her attack on Indian policy in A Century of Dishonor had gotten interested and moved by Indian affairs after having seen Standing Bear.26

Also important in drawing the public's attention toward the "plight of the Indian" was the flight of Northern Cheyenne from Indian Territory northward in 1878 and 1879. After investigation, a Senate committee discovered how badly the Cheyenne had been treated, both before their flight and then by the Army on their way north. Finally, the handling of Chief Joseph's Nez Percés after their surrender had not been outstanding either­a long exile from their native lands of Idaho to Indian Territory and Washington state.27

2.1.2. Humanitarian Organizations

Public emotion over the treatment of American Indians gave birth to a series of humanitarian associations. The best known and most influential of them was the Indian Rights Association, founded in December 1882 in Philadelphia by Henry S. Pancoast and Herbert Welsh after they had visited the Sioux Indian reservation.28 They advocated the necessity of investigations followed by legislation in Indian country and gave strength to their ideas through the organization of a national network of local branches, extensive publication and lecturing, and direct lobbying in Washington. The work of the Indian Rights Association, of the other associations, and of all official and unofficial persons concerned by Indian affairs found a forum of exchange as early as October 1883, and then each year after that, at the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, organized by the two Quaker brothers Albert and Alfred Smiley.29

The purpose of the Friends of the Indians was clearly summed up by Lyman Abbott, a Congregational clergyman and oft-time chairman of the platform committee at the Lake Mohonk conferences:30

 

 

 

We do owe the Indians sacred rights and obligations, but one of those duties

is not the right to let them hold forever the land they did not occupy, and which

they were not making fruitful for themselves or others.31

 

 

Even though this kind of statement seems ironical, if not cynical, it was certainly sincere and representative of the goodwill of Indian reformers, who acted in the name of Christian charity. Americanism first meant Protestantism. In an era of industrialization, Jefferson's agrarian dream was still alive­private property (as opposed to the barbarous practice of communal land holding), farming, and education were to be instrumental in making an American citizen out of the Red Man. These themes were formalized in February 1882 in the petition to Congress supported by senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, and which would take five years to become law.32

The reservation was the basic unit of the civilization program. Isolated from White settlers, they were true laboratories for social experimentation where the key figure was the agent, backed by Indian police and the Courts of Indian Offenses created respectively in 1878 and 1883.33 All forms of "heathenish" practices­dances, polygamous marriages, medicine men­were actively denounced and punished.34

2.1.3. Education

Education of the American Indians had begun as early as colonial times at the initiative of missionaries and was most of the time equated with Christianization. In 1819, for the first time, money ($10,000 a year) was appropriated by Congress for "the civilization of the Indian tribes adjoining the frontier settlements."35 Thereafter, many schools combining both academic and manual training opened, especially among the Cherokees and Choctaws in the Southeast, many of these schools being operated by the tribes. All these efforts were shattered by the Civil War. In 1870, Congress authorized an annual appropriation of $100,000 for schooling for the Indians; by 1883, the appropriation was of $2.3 million a year.36

That "heathenish" practices should be discouraged, Captain Richard Henry Pratt was in total agreement. As for the reservation system, he was in total disagreement. For this veteran of the 1875 Red River War against the Kiowas and Comanches, human beings were products of their environment and the reservation was the worst of barbarous environments.37 Given charge of taking 72 Kiowa, Comanche, and Southern Cheyenne prisoners to Fort Marion in Florida, and then to be their jailor for three years, Captain Pratt undertook to civilize them. It turned out that he enjoyed the experience as much­and probably more­than his wards, so Captain Pratt decided to continue and broaden the experience. After a year spent at the Hampton Institute­Booker T. Washington's alma mater38­where Pratt and 17 of his former prisoners shared buildings with Afro-American students, Captain Pratt reaped the results of his intense lobbying at the Indian Office: the old cavalry barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Two hundred children from twelve different tribes, but mostly Sioux, were enrolled in the 1879-1880 academic year. Twenty-four years later, when Pratt was dismissed from the Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School in 1904, the enrollment had risen to more than 1,200 and the school had educated 4,903 Indians in all.39

Captain Pratt's principle of educating the American Indian to American ways by completely immersing him in a White environment away from his or her tribe was rapidly emulated at Forest Grove, Oregon, in 1880, at Chilocco, Indian Territory, Genoa, Nebraska, Haskell, Kansas, in 1884, and in 19 other government boarding schools until 1900.40 He was later supported in his enterprise to "kill the Indian and save the man"41 by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan (1889-1893) who believed that the education of the Indian was a government responsibility. Exactly as Pratt, Morgan put special stress on industrial training (which actually was "institutional labor" as the students often acted as caretakers for their school42), on co-education, and on the teaching of English, with some concessions made in general literary and scientific classes.43

As emphasized by Morgan in his 1889 annual report, patriotism was to be a major part of the curriculum: "The stars and stripes should be a familiar object in every Indian school, national hymns should be sung, and patriotic selections be read and recited."44 Congress also made it clear in a law in 1891 that education should be enforced upon the young Indians.45

In parallel to the system of boarding schools, a network of day schools was developed on the reservations. They had many less supporters than the boarding schools until the late 1890s because they left the American Indian kids prey to the "evil influences" of the reservation. Nonetheless, they gradually became more popular since they were much cheaper for the government­$30 a year per child as opposed to $150 for off-reservation boarding schools­and also since the students could positively influence their relatives on the reservation.46

Some children drew benefits from government education and later succeeded in the White Man's world­nearly all the future members of the Society of American Indians had been educated in off-reservation boarding schools, Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa),47 Charles E. Daganett, Thomas L. Sloan, etc.48. Yet, the experience was often traumatizing for children who, far from home, were forbidden to speak their language, to wear traditional clothing, or to practice their religion, whose hair was cut upon arriving in the school, and who were objects of curiosity for Friends of the Indian eager to see the marvels that education had worked on their little Indian wards. Zitkala-Sa, a Sioux Indian woman later known as Gertrude Bonnin, justly wondered in 1900 if "life or long-lasting death [lay] beneath this semblance of civilization."49

2.2. Allotment and Resistance

2.2.1. Allotment

The General Allotment Act (February 8, 1887)

In the phrasing of Merril E. Gates, President of the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1887, the Dawes (General Allotment) Act was to be "a mighty pulverizing engine for breaking up the tribal mass."50 And pulverizing it was. It authorized the President of the United States to survey and allot reservation land, attributing 160 acres per head of family, with a patent in trust for twenty-five years after which period the Indian would receive his lot in fee simple. Upon being issued his allotment, the allottee was to receive American citizenship, without this impinging on his tribal rights. Then all surplus land resulting from the allotment of the reservations could be purchased by the Secretary of the Interior. The money from the sale would be held in Treasury for each tribe and could be appropriated by Congress for Indian "education and civilization." Several tribes, especially the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian territory, were excluded from the Act.51

The main purpose of the Act­apart from opening Indian reservations to settlement­was to make farmers out of the Indians. And this rapidly proved a failure since Congress had given Indians the access to private property but not the means of buying agricultural implements to cultivate the land.52 Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, who opposed the bill from the beginning, said that it "ought to be entitled 'a bill to despoil the Indians of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth.'"53 Senator Teller's prediction proved to be highly accurate and was to be one of the major criticisms raised against the Act in the 1920s and early 1930s.54 Between 1887 and 1900, about 3 million acres were allotted and 28 million acres­nearly ten times as much as the surface allotted­sold as "surplus" land.55

Allotment in Indian Territory

Because of special treaties having guaranteed them self-government, the several tribes in the Indian Territory had been excluded from the Dawes Act. Yet, in the 1880s, the pressures concerning their land from White settlers and railway companies, along with assumptions of lawlessness in the territory, fueled the fires of proterritorial arguments. By April 1889, President Benjamin Harrison had proclaimed the land open to settlement, giving the start for the first of the Oklahoma "runs," and in May 1890, a formal territorial government was organized.56

In September 1893, 15 million acres of the Cherokee Outlet were opened to settlement and the Curtis Act of 1898 abolished tribal laws and tribal courts, putting all persons in Indian Territory under United States jurisdiction. Between 1897 and 1902, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Creeks, and Cherokees signed agreements to allot their lands. Between 1898 and 1907, tribal rolls were made for the Five Civilized Tribes. In 1901, the Native Americans of the Indian Territory were declared U.S. citizens. In 1907, Oklahoma became a State of the Union. In less than twenty years, pressured by railroad and mining companies, by homesteaders, and divided by their own factionalism, the tribes of Oklahoma had lost both their sovereignty and their lands.57

2.2.2. Ghost Dance: A Doomed Revival

Misery on the Reservations

With the disappearance of the buffalo­by 1884, the last great herds had been hunted out from the Plains as part of the wider plan to make farmers out of the Indians58­all the Native American societies that drew their food, clothing, tools, dwellings, ceremonial life, etc., from this animal lost the base of their culture.59 Of course the Plains Indians culture was relatively recent--­about a hundred and fifty years old in 189060­--, the result of the general westward movement of Native Americans due to White encroachment in the East. After a period of intense warfare and submission on reservations, the Plains Indians had to rely on the government for food, housing, and clothing and the buffalo had come to represent all that was lost from the past.

The treaties signed with American Indians, and especially with the Sioux in 1868 and 1876, stipulated that annuities and rations would be given to the American Indians in payment for their lands and in order to give them time to become farmers. Yet the rations and other provisions were always of poor quality and quantity, and always late to come.61 Black Elk, the respected Sioux medicine man, said in the conversations he held with John G. Neihardt in 1932: There was hunger among my people before I went across the big water [1886], because the Wasichus did not give us all the food they promised in the Black Hills treaty (...) But it was worse when I came back [1889]. My people looked pitiful (...) We could not eat lies and there was nothing we could do.62

Moreover, if the Sioux ever had the will to become farmers, the lands of the Great Sioux Reserve were much too poor to be cultivated in a climate much too extreme to permit regular crops.63 James Mooney, who had been sent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to investigate on the Ghost Dance,64 described the situation in 1896:

In 1888 their cattle had been diminished by disease. In 1889, their crops were a failure (...) Thus followed epidemics of measles, grippe, and whooping cough, in rapid succession and with terrible fatal results (...) Then came an entire failure of crops in 1890, and an unexpected reduction of rations, and the Indians were brought face to face with starvation.65

In this context of misery and despair­--and not of burgeoning civilization--­it is no doubt that the words of a Messiah promising the return of the dead and of the old ways was received with enthusiasm by American Indians.

The Ghost Dance

"The great underlying principle of the Ghost Dance doctrine is that the time will come when the whole Indian race, living and dead, will be reunited upon a regenerated earth to live a life of aboriginal happiness, forever free from death, disease and misery," explained James Mooney in 1896.66 This synchretic pan-Indian revival, gathering influences from Indian and Christian traditions, was preached by Wovoka, or Jack Wilson, or the Messiah from his Paiute reservation in Nevada.67 His name and preachings became all the more famous as the new transcontinental railways allowed American Indians from all over the United States to visit the Messiah and form their own opinion.68 By Ghost Dancing, the American Indians could enter in contact with the dead whom they were soon to rejoin, by the spring of 1891 for the Sioux Lakota.69

"Those who needed the new gospel most tragically were the Sioux," wrote Ruth Underhill since "the bands found themselves confined on small, separate reservations and treated just like a conquered people."70 The Ghost Dances multiplied and frightened many agents who falsely saw in the new religion a large-scale armed revolt of the American Indians,71 especially Daniel F. Royer in charge of the Pine Ridge agency. In December 1890, Royer called in the troops, thus frightening the Sioux who fled into the Bad Lands to dance peacefully their dances of hope.72 On December 15, 1890, James McLaughlin, agent at the Standing Rock reservation, had Sitting Bull arrested because he was supposedly the "leader and instigator of the excitement on the reservation."73 The great chief was killed during his arrest. A few days later, Big Foot and his band at the Cheyenne River Reservation welcomed refugees from Sitting Bull's band and all rapidly fled to join other bands of "hostiles" in the Bad Lands. They were intercepted by the Seventh Cavalry and taken to Wounded Knee Creek some twenty miles north of Pine Ridge. On December 29, 1890, for still obscure reasons, about 300 men, women, and children of the band led by Big Foot were massacred by the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek.74 Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan concluded in his 1891 report: "A few skirmishes with the Indians followed the Wounded Knee affair, but by the end of January the Indians had come into the agencies and all serious troubles were practically ended."75

 

3. A "Progressive Era" for the American Indians, 1897-1917

Although the years between the turn of the century and 1917 were mainly a continuation of the policies embodied in the Dawes Act, this period was especially important since it marked the culmination of allotment and loss of lands for American Indians, accompanied by a growing­instead of the planned decreased­role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and greater stability and efficiency of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs.76

Also very important in this period was the loss of influence of Christian reformers, paralleling a wider movement of the secularization of American society. The incarnation of the Christian reforming spirit of the 1880s, the Lake Mohonk Conference, progressively faded away and survived the death of Albert Smiley in 1912 by only four years. The Board of Indian Commissioners remained in existence but was no longer consulted by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The Indian Rights Association continued its involvement but did not obtain much result.77

3.1. Loss of Lands and Acculturation

3.1.1. Acceleration of Allotment

The Five Commissioners of Indian Affairs

In 1897, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones inaugurated a period of stability and emphasis on self-support, even if his "short hair" order of 1902 showed that he was also the heir of the old Christian reform.78 With the arrival of Francis E. Leupp in 1905 came the first recognition of the value of the Indian heritage:

The Indian is a natural warrior, a natural logician, a natural artist. Let us not make the mistake, in the process of absorbing them [the Indians], of washing out of them whatever is distinctly Indian. Our aboriginal brother brings, as his contribution to the common store of character, a great deal which is admirable, and which needs only to be developed along the right line. Our proper work with him is improvement, not transformation.79

Francis Leupp was perhaps influenced by the problems raised by the arrival of millions of new immigrants in the United States. Sheer eradication of all that was not White Anglo-Saxon and Protestant proved impossible when these newcomers arrived in massive numbers with beliefs and traditions from southern and eastern Europe. More than ever, the American character was seen as a composite one, made of the different influences constituting its body­what playwright Israel Zangwill would call the "melting pot" in 1908.80 Yet the traditions of the American Indians still had to "be developed along the right line" to be acceptable and if Francis Leupp allowed the American Indian to keep some of his cultural background, it was only in the framework of assimilation. Commissioners Robert G. Valentine, from 1909 to 1913, and Cato Sells, appointed in 1913, followed in the assimilationist steps of Francis Leupp and further carried on the commitment to efficiency.81

The Culmination of Allotment

Between 1900 and 1921, over 14 million acres were allotted and 20 million ceded outside of Oklahoma. The lands allotted were located mainly in Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and northern California. The movement of allotment reached its peak between 1900 and 1910 especially in Oklahoma where nearly 16 million acres were allotted and 3.5 ceded over these ten years.82

Very rapidly after the Dawes Act, it proved evident that the architects of the law had not foreseen all the problems it would raise. For example, if the owner of an allotment died during the twenty-five year trust period, what was to become of his allotment? It was decided that it would be divided between the heirs. But the heirs often owned their own allotment and did not want to use their inherited land. Furthermore, the land inherited was much too small to be of any use, even too small to be leased. In 1902, Congress thus authorized the sale of inherited land and dividing of the proceeds between the heirs. Still, the problem of inheritance did not cease, since it led to a growing fractionalization of Indian land, from generation to generation.83

In 1906, the Burke Act brought another restriction to the Dawes Act­the Secretary of the Interior could issue a patent in fee before the end of the trust period if the American Indian was deemed "competent." No need to say that the word "competent" was hard to define and that it led to all kinds of excesses.84 Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells wanted so much to have the Indian lands utilized that they issued countless competency declarations. Nonetheless, issuing patents in fee to the American Indians did not mean that they would become farmers and many of them chose to sell their land rather than cultivate it.85

3.1.2. Difficult Adaptation for the American Indians

Not only was it difficult for American Indians to become farmers when they had no money to invest in basic tools, but it was also hard for them to farm without water, given that most allotments were located on arid or semi-arid lands. The Indian Office rapidly realized this and launched wide-scale irrigation projects. Once again, the results proved more detrimental to American Indians than anything else. The irrigation projects, which were financed by millions of dollars from tribal funds, threatened Indian water rights and benefited White settlers more than American Indians. Moreover, even when their land was irrigated, the American Indians often preferred to lease rather than cultivate it.86

The state of despair on Indian reservations at the turn of the century was high. The creation of Indian police forces on the reservations in 1878, along with the establishment of Courts of Indian Offenses in 1883 often intensified the conflicts between the "friendly" Indians, or "progressives," and the "traditional" ones.87 Not only were the American Indians deprived of their land and of their traditional life, but the internal coherence of their societies was also torn to pieces. In 1892, Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan defined which offenses were to be punished by the Indian courts: all types of dances, polygamous marriages, medicine men practices, "immorality," and "intoxication."88 "Offenses" then meant everything the White man did not understand and saw as barbaric, everything that might have allowed the American Indians to live rather than merely survive on their reservations.

The example of the Utes is telling. After their conflict against the land-hungry settlers and miners of Colorado in the late 1870s, and their uprising against their agent Nathan C. Meeker in 1878, the Utes had been "given" land in Utah­the Uintah Reservation.89 In the summer of 1906, over 200 Utes fled the reservation because, after their land had been allotted, exactly as in 1878, they refused to become farmers. Having received their allotments, they were citizens and they used this new freedom to leave the reservation. For some unknown reason, the band of "non progressive" Utes wanted to settle at Wounded Knee, an idea that did not correspond to what had been decided for them. The ambiguity of the Dawes Act, which gave citizenship to the American Indians without impairing their tribal rights, proved once again that, according to the situation, the government chose to treat the American Indians as wards or as citizens. In the Ute flight case, they were treated as wards. In the end, an arrangement was struck between both parties and the Utes were given the right to lease land on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota.90

3.1.3. Two Forms of Pan-Indianism

In the 1880s, Wovoka's promises of hope and the development of transportation and communication had enabled the Ghost Dance to become a pan-Indian religion. The bloodshed at Wounded Knee had seriously shaken Ghost Dancers across the United States even if some tribes continued to believe in Wovoka's predictions.91 The transition from traditional life to life on the reservations, or to life in the White man's world, was not an easy one. The peyote cult, a religion influenced by Christianity but with rituals rooted in Native American traditions, offered an alternative to either complete Christian acculturation or to forbidden American Indian religious practices. At the same period, in 1911, acculturated American Indians having succeeded in the White world decided to create a pan-Indian organization to promote assimilation of the American Indians. Two years earlier, W.E.B. Du Bois had founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.92

The Peyote Religion

The use of peyote­a small cactus, the Lophophora williamsii with hallucinogenic power­goes back to pre-Columbian times in Mexico and was introduced in the United States through the Mescalero Apaches, and then the Comanches and Kiowas in the 1870s.93 Quanah Parker, the great chief of the Comanches, was an early practitioner of the peyote religion. He fought the Whites until the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1875, and then decided to adapt to the ways of the Whites, hoping to conciliate his Comanche traditions inherited from his father to those of the White world inherited from his mother. The peyote religion, being strongly embedded in Indian tradition but influenced by Christianity, proved to be exactly what Quanah Parker needed to achieve his goal. Quanah Parker, due to his prestige, was instrumental in the diffusion of peyotism in Oklahoma.94 Here is how the Comanche chief explained the difference between peyotism and Christianity:

The white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus.95

Until the last years of the 19th century, the peyote religion developed mainly in New Mexico and Oklahoma. But then, it spread rapidly into the Great Plains and the Prairies in the first decade of the 20th century. Offering a mixture of American Indian traditions and Christianity, the peyote religion particularly attracted bi-cultural "progressive" American Indian students having received an education in boarding schools but eager to keep some of their traditional heritage.96

Peyotism also appeared as a major tool against the plague of alcoholism, an argument that was frequently advanced by peyotists when their practice was condemned and questioned by all humanitarian organizations between 1912 and 1916. Ironically, the attacks of the Indian Bureau and of missionaries against peyote were part of the temperance movement, peyote being assimilated to an intoxicating product.97 As many influential members of the Society of American Indians were practitioners of the peyote religion, it brought about major conflicts in the association. As there was no evidence of the narcotic and addictive effects of peyote and as attacks on peyote could violate the freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution, its use was not forbidden and the peyote cult continued to flourish, becoming official in October 1918 with the incorporation of the Native American Church in Oklahoma.98

The Society of American Indians

The Society of American Indians was founded at Columbus, Ohio, in 1911 by a non-Indian idealist and social reformer, Fayette McKenzie, and by a group of prominent "progressive" American Indians: Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a Santee Sioux graduated from the Boston University Medical School; Charles E. Daganett, a Carlisle-educated Peoria from Oklahoma; Dr. Carlos Montezuma, a Yavapai who had served in the Indian service and who was a fervent admirer of Captain Pratt; Reverend Sherman Coolidge, born in the Arapaho tribe, adopted by a White army officer, and an Episcopalian minister; Thomas L. Sloan, a lawyer brought up on the Omaha reservation and another supporter of Pratt; Henry Roe Cloud, a Winnebago graduated from Yale; and Arthur C. Parker, an anthropologist from the Iroquois Confederacy, who was to play the most important role in the development of the Society.99

Having been educated in the White man's schools, Society of American Indians members were strongly influenced by evolutionary thinking and the first platform adopted by the organization in 1912 emphasized the need for an American Indian status­citizenship­and the importance of developing education. The idea was that salvation would come through dignity and assimilation.100 The newspaper published by the association, entitled Quarterly Journal from 1913 to 1915, and American Indian Magazine from 1915 to 1920, was a forum for a diversity of opinions, even if all were centered around the best way to attain assimilation. By 1915 however, the consensus began to fade away as the members disagreed upon how fast the Bureau of Indian Affairs should be suppressed. The use of peyote also brought major disagreement between those who opposed it and those who, being peyotists, supported it. The organization was still sufficiently alive in 1917 to support the enlistment of American Indians in the military, but its influence quickly decreased after the war.101

3.2. Education and Health

In February 1928, after seven months of fieldwork with his nine-member staff of the (Brookings) Institute for Government Research, Lewis Meriam submitted his report to the Secretary of the Interior­The Problem of Indian Administration. Emphasized in the study were the deplorable conditions of Indian health and education, administered by inefficient personnel.102 Even if worsened by wartime budget cuts and lack of personnel, the situation described by Lewis Meriam was that of the prewar period.

3.2.1. From Off-Reservation Boarding School to the Public School

Attack on the Off-Reservation School System

Commissioner William Jones and then Commissioner Francis Leupp were strongly opposed to the twenty-five off-reservation boarding schools existing in 1900 and did all they could to undermine them. The two commissioners reflected a growing opposition against the boarding school system, which was expensive, which supposedly spoiled the student by giving him (or her) habits of comfort and spared him (or her) hard work, and which did not produce satisfying results.103 William Jones gave his opinion in his 1901 annual report:

Here [in the off-reservation boarding school] he remains until his education is finished, when he is returned to his home­which by contrast must seem squalid indeed­to the parents whom his education must make it difficult to honor, and left to make his way against the ignorance and bigotry of his tribe. Is it any wonder he fails? Is it surprising if he lapses into barbarism?104

Indeed it was no wonder that the American Indian students failed upon returning home. But rather than "lapsing into barbarism," they fell into "no man's land," educated enough in the White man's ways to feel awkward when coming back home but not educated enough to succeed in the White man's world. Their situation betrayed the failure of the school system rather than their own.

Francis Leupp did not have the power to cut the appropriations for the famous Carlisle or Hampton schools. He tried to turn them into specialized high schools but they continued to enroll children for primary and elementary education.105

The final goal of Indian reformers was that there should be no more Indian schools, only public schools­in the same way as the reservation was supposed to disappear and make place for civilization. In the early 1890s, the Indian Service had already tried to contract with local public schools for the enrollment of American Indian students, but the experience had often failed due to problems of language and racism.106 The steady efforts of commissioner Robert G. Valentine (1909-1913) considerably increased the number of American Indians enrolled in public schools, so that by 1912, there were more Indians in public schools than in government schools.107

Vocational Training

From the beginning, the underlying principle of Indian education had been to make American citizens out of the Native American pupils. In this sense it foreshadowed the preoccupations of progressive educator John Dewey who, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, advocated the role of public schools as instruments of progress that had to prepare children for practical life, and thus had to rely more on experience than on acquired academic knowledge.108

Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian Education from 1898 to 1910, introduced a uniform curriculum in Indian government schools. Apart from some academic courses, the accent was put on vocational training­sewing, cooking, and cleaning the schools for girls, farming, learning trades, and repairing the school for the boys.109 In his 1916 annual report, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells once again stressed the importance of vocational training for American Indians. Exactly as public schools, but even more so, "Indian schools must train the Indian youth of both sexes to take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of citizenship." To attain this goal, "Indian schools must provide that form of training and instruction which leads directly to productive efficiency and self-support."110

In practice, "progressive" education in Indian schools meant to thrust the American Indian child brutally into an unknown environment and then teach him how to make his way in White society. Sometimes it succeeded as we saw with members of the Society of American Indians or as it happened with Luther Standing Bear who later wrote an autobiography.111 Often it failed. Having been taught how to farm, how to live in a square house, how to sew and cook for the girls, the Native American children had become aliens to their old world. Yet, the course of study having little emphasis on academic training, they did not start in life with the same chances as White children to succeed in the White world.112

3.2.2. Indian Health

In 1928, Lewis Meriam also emphasized another aspect of the Indian schools in his report: being overcrowded, providing a poor diet and poor medical service, accepting sick children to raise enrollment figures (and thus appropriations), the schools were unhealthy places where many children contracted diseases.113 William J. McConnell, one of the Interior Department's Indian inspectors between 1897 and 1901, went as far as saying: "The word murder is a fearful word but yet the transfer of pupils and subjecting them to such fearful mortality is little less."114

Reservations were also afflicted by disease. In 1910, Commissioner Robert G. Valentine decided to launch an "intensive attack" against the two major diseases threatening American Indians­trachoma and tuberculosis. This campaign was also to include efforts for prevention.115 In 1912, an investigation was asked for by Congress. It showed that 22.7% of the American Indians examined had trachoma, frequently contracted at school and transmitted by American Indian students, and that tuberculosis was widespread. This was due to unsanitary conditions on the reservations, overcrowded homes, poor food, and the status of physicians who, if they worked hard, did not work in satisfactory conditions.116 Commissioner Cato Sells, adding that high infant mortality was also a major cause of death for American Indians, launched a whole campaign to build new hospitals, appoint ophthalmologists, lecture on health, better sanitation of Indian homes, and fight infant mortality but his efforts received a major blow with the Great War and the postwar inflation.117

Conclusion

The fifty years that preceded the Great War, and especially the three decades between 1887 and 1917, were times of hard transition for Native Americans. Their military struggle being over, they had to submit to the authority of the government with which they had signed treaties, in exchange for which they were supposed to receive food, clothing, and lodging to insure the passage from "primitive" life to that of "civilized" farmers­but the food was scarce, the clothing and the lodging of poor quality. The payment for the land ceded was made through annuities, quickly considered as gratuities­and thus fated to disappear­at the hand of the government.

Between 1887, when the Dawes Act was passed, and 1934, when the policy of allotment was put to an end, the total surface of American Indian land shrank from 138 million acres to 48 million acres. American Indians had lost a third of their land.118 In this same period, education programs for American Indian children had been launched on a wide scale, giving birth to a category of "progressive" Indians, those who were to create the pan-Indian Society of American Indians in 1911 and to promote rapid assimilation of the American Indian. Yet, education did not always carry out the goal of assimilation successfully. Many students returned home lost between two worlds and unable to live in either.


The Road to War: Chapter III: Portraying the Indian

Table of Contents


Footnotes:

 

1 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan. September 5, 1890. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.438.

2 . Quoted by Edward H. Spicer. A Short History of the Indians of the United States. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969, p.284.

3 . Russell Thornton. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman &London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990 (1987), pp.133, 160.

4 . Wilcomb E. Washburn. The Indian in America. New York: Harper &Row Publishers, 1975, p.234.

5 . Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols, &David M. Reimers. Natives and Strangers: Blacks, Indians, and Immigrants in America. Second edition. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp.127, 144-47.

6 . Ibid., pp.134-44.

7 . Randall E. Rohe. "Chinese Miners in the Far West." In Major Problems in the History of the American West. Ed. Clyde A. Milner II. Lexington, Mass., Toronto: D.C. Heath &Company, 1989, pp.329-30.

8 . Mary Beth Norton, et al A People &A Nation: A History of the United States. Third edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990, p.550.

9 . Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.160.

10. Quoted in Robert M. Utley. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984, pp.129-30.

11 . Lydia Maria Child wrote in 1868: "Without intermitting our vigilant watch over the rights of black men, it is our duty to arouse the nation to a sense of its guilt concerning the red men." Quoted by Robert W. Mardock. "Indian Rights Until 1887." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.303.

12 . Christine Bolt. American Indian Policy and American Reform: Case Studies of the Campaign to Assimilate the American Indians. London: Allen &Unwin, 1987, pp.71-72.

13 . William T. Hagan. "The Reservation Policy: Too Little and Too Late." In Indian White Relations: A Persistent Paradox. Eds. Jane F. Smith &Robert M. Kvasnicka. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981, p.159.

14 . Francis Paul Prucha. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged edition. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, pp.152-55. Robert M. Utley, op. cit., pp.102-06.

15 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.155-56.

16 . Francis Paul Prucha, ed. Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian," 1880-1900. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1973, p.3. William T. Hagan. "United States Indian Policies, 1860-1890." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.55.

17 . Robert W. Mardock, op. cit., p.303.

18 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.158-65.

19 . Ibid., p.160.

20 . Carl Waldman &Molly Braun. Atlas of the North American Indian. New York, NY &Oxford, England: Facts on File Publications, 1985, pp.132-36, 138, 139-43, 152-53.

21 . Robert M. Utley. "Indian-United States Military Situation, 1848-1891." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp.175-76.

22 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.212. Don C. Clowser. Dakota Indian Treaties: From Nomad to Reservation. Deadwood, South Dakota: Don C. Clowser, 1974, pp.226-33.

23 . Quoted by Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.179.

24 . Mary Beth Norton, et al., op. cit., pp.506, 547.

25 . Yves-Henri Nouailhat. L'Amérique, puissance mondiale, 1897-1929. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1987, p.64.

26 . Frederick E. Hoxie. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 (1984), pp.4-10. Vine Deloria, Jr. "The Indian Rights Association." In The Aggressions of Civilization: Federal Indian Policy since the 1880s. Eds. Sandra L. Cadwalader &Vine Deloria, Jr. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984, p.4.

27 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.185-87. Robert M. Utley, op. cit., p.208.

28 . Francis Paul Prucha, ed. Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian," 1880-1900. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1973, p.155.

29 . Hazel W. Hertzberg. "Indian Rights Movement, 1887-1973." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.305.

30 . Francis Paul Prucha, ed., op. cit., p.31.

31 . Francis Paul Prucha. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged edition. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, pp.206-07.

32 . Ibid., p.200.

33 . William T. Hagan. "United States Indian Policies, 1860-1890." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp.57-58.

34 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.218-19.

35 . Francis Paul Prucha. American Indian Policy in the Formative Years: The Indian Trade and Intercourse Acts, 1790-1834. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970 (1962), pp.219-24.

36 . Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan. "American Indian Education." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp.284-90.

37 . Francis Paul Prucha. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged edition. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, pp.235-36.

38 . Frederick E. Hoxie, op. cit., p.55.

39 . Richard Henry Pratt. Battlefield and Classroom: Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904. Edited and with an introduction by Robert M. Utley. New Haven &London: Yale University Press, 1964. Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan, op. cit., p.291. Frederick E. Hoxie, op. cit., pp.54-56.

40 . William T. Hagan, op. cit., p.59. Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan, op. cit., p.291.

'1 . Captain Pratt's slogan. Hazel W. Hertzberg. The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971, p.16.

42 . Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan., op. cit., p.293.

43 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.238.

44 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan. October 1, 1889. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, pp.432-33.

45 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan. October 1, 1891. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.556.

46 . William T. Hagan, op. cit., p.59.

47 . Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa). From the Deep Woods to Civilization. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1977 (1916), pp.51-75.

48 . Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., pp.42, 46.

49 . Excerpts from three articles written in 1900 by Zitkala-Sa­"Impressions of an Indian Childhood," "The Schooldays of an Indian Girl," and "An Indian Teacher among Indians"­for the Atlantic Monthly quoted in Women's America: Refocusing the Past. Third edition. Eds. Linda K. Kerber &Jane Sherron De Hart. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp.286-89.

50 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.227.

51 . "General Allotment Act." February 8, 1887. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. III. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, pp.288-93.

52 . William T. Hagan. "The Reservation Policy: Too Little and Too Late." In Indian White Relations: A Persistent Paradox. Eds. Jane F. Smith &Robert M. Kvasnicka. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1981, p.161.

53 . Quoted by Nelcya Delanoë &Joëlle Rostkowski. Les Indiens dans l'Histoire américaine. Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy, 1991, p.118.

54 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.227-28.

55 . Laurence C. Kelly. "United States Indian Policies, 1900-1980." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.66.

56 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.253-56.

57 . Ibid., pp.257-62.

58 . Elise Marienstras. Wounded Knee ou l'Amérique fin de siècle. Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1992, pp.34-36. In 1874, Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano said before Congress: "I regard the destruction of such game as Indians subsist upon [the buffalo] as facilitating the policy of the Government, of destroying their hunting habits, coercing them on reservations, and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilization." Quoted by Robert Wooster. The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903. New Haven &London: Yale University Press, 1988, p.171.

59 . Russell Thornton. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Norman &London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990 (1987), pp.123-24. Russell Thornton gives a list of all the Native American societies that relied on the buffalo: the Arapaho, Assiniboin, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, Sarsi, Teton, Santee, Yankton Sioux, Arikara, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kansa, Mandan, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Oto, Pawnee, Ponca, Wichita, Plains Cree, Ojibwe, Shoshoni, Caddo, Quapaw, Kutenai, Flathead.

60 . William K. Powers. Oglala Religion. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1982 (1975), p.25.

61 . William T. Hagan. "United States Indian Policies, 1860-1890." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp.53-54. George Hyde. A Sioux Chronicle. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956.

62 . Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux As Told Through John G. Neihardt (Flaming Rainbow). Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989 (1932), pp.208, 230, 232.

63 . Elise Marienstras, op. cit., pp.56-58.

64 . Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.148.

65 . Quoted by Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.146.

66 . Quoted by Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.140.

67 . Ruth M. Underhill. Red Man's Religion: Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico. Chicago &London: University of Chicago Press, 1965, p.258.

68 . Hazel W. Hertzberg. The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1971, p.14.

69 . Elise Marienstras. "L'Histoire ou la mémoire." In "Terre indienne: un peuple écrasé, une culture retrouvée." Ed. Philippe Jacquin. Autrement. Hors Série N°54. Paris: Autrement, May 1991, pp.84-85.

70 . Ruth M. Underhill, op. cit., p.259.

71 . Wovoka's message was one of non-violence: "You must not hurt anybody or do harm to anyone. You must not fight. Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life." Quoted in I Have Spoken: American History Through Voices of the Indians. Ed. Virginia Irving Armstrong. Chicago: The Swallow Press, Inc., 1971, pp.128-29.

72 . Russell Thornton, op. cit., pp.148-49.

73 . James Mooney quoted by Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.149.

74 . Elise Marienstras, op. cit., pp.81-100. Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.248. Russell Thornton, op. cit., p.152.

75 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan. October 1, 1891. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.568.

76 . Francis Paul Prucha. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged edition. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986, pp.263-64.

77 . Ibid., pp.267-70.

78 . Ibid., pp.264-65.

79 . Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp. September 30, 1905. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.745.

80 . Werner Sollors. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, p.66.

81 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.266, Appendix A.

82 . Laurence C. Kelly. "United States Indian Policies, 1900-1980." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.66.

83 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.297-98. Laurence C. Kelly, op. cit., p.66.

84 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.298.

85 . Ibid., pp.299-301.

86 . Laurence C. Kelly, op. cit., p.69. Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.303-04.

87 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.196-97, 219.

88 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan. August 27, 1892. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, pp.598-99.

89 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.172-73.

90 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis E. Leupp. September 30, 1907. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, pp.781-87.

91 . Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., p.13.

92 . Mary Beth Norton, et al., op. cit., p.621.

93 . Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., p.240, note 1 p.338.

94 . Ibid., pp.241-43.

95 . Quoted by Wilcomb E. Washburn. The Indian in America. New York: Harper &Row Publishers, 1975, pp.222-23.

96 . Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., pp.245-50.

97 . Ibid., pp.249-51. Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.271.

98 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.271. Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., pp.256, 272.

99 . Hazel W. Hertzberg, op. cit., Chap.2.

100 . Ibid., pp.71-78.

101 . Hazel W. Hertzberg. "Indian Rights Movement, 1887-1973." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, pp.306-08.

102 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.278. Vine Deloria, Jr., &Clifford Lytle. The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984, pp.45-46.

103 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.280-82.

104 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones. October 15, 1901. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.704.

105 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., p.282.

106 . Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan. "American Indian Education." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.293.

107 . Laurence C. Kelly. "United States Indian Policies, 1900-1980." In "History of Indian-White Relations." Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. Vol. 4. of Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. William C. Sturtevant. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988, p.69.

108 . Mary Beth Norton, et al. A People &A Nation: A History of the United States. Third edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990, p.615.

109 . Margaret Connell Szasz &Carmelita Ryan, op. cit., p.294.

110 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells. October 2, 1916. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.854.

111 . Luther Standing Bear. My People the Sioux. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1975 (1928), Chap.13-18.

112 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.284-85.

113 . Ibid., pp.278-79, 286-87.

114 . Ibid., pp.288-89.

115 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert G. Valentine. November 1, 1910. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, p.800.

116 . Francis Paul Prucha, op. cit., pp.290-91.

117 . Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells. October 2, 1916, op. cit., pp.847-53.

118 . Francis Paul Prucha, ed. Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the "Friends of the Indian," 1880-1900. Lincoln &London: University of Nebraska Press, 1973, p.10.


Diane Camurat