“ESTABLISHING A PERMANENT PEACE”: CIVILIZING AND
SUBJUGATING NATIVE AMERICANS DURING
THE PEACE POLICY ERA (1869-1877)
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty
of
California State University, Stanislaus
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
of Master of Arts in History
By
Samantha M. Williams
November 2013
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
“ESTABLISHING A PERMANENT PEACE”: CIVILIZING AND
SUBJUGATING NATIVE AMERICANS DURING
THE PEACE POLICY ERA (1869-1877)
by
Samantha M. Williams
Signed Certification of Approval Page is
on file with the University Library
Dr. Samuel O. Regalado
Professor of History
Date
Dr. Philip Garone
Associate Professor of History
Date
Dr. Bret Carroll
Professor of History
Date
© 2013
Samantha M. Williams
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
DEDICATION
To: Richard
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my thesis advisor, Dr. Samuel O. Regalado, for his time,
assistance, and continuous support. I also want to thank my additional committee
members, Dr. Bret Carroll and Dr. Philip Garone, for their thoughtful comments and
advice. I am indebted to my father, Jim Williams, and my in-laws, Barbara and Ed
Mette, both for their encouragement, and the many hours they spent with my children
so I could finish writing. A special thanks goes to my amazingly supportive husband,
Richard, and my children, Jack and Sophie, for their love and patience.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Dedication ...............................................................................................................
iv
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................
v
Abstract ...................................................................................................................
vii
Introduction ............................................................................................................
1
“Broken Treaties and Unfulfilled Promises:” The Road to the Peace Policy .........
12
Aggression and Expansion: Native American Policy During the
Civil War ...............................................................................................
Congressional Action: Protecting Settlements and Reaffirming the
Reservation System ...............................................................................
Grant and the Peace Policy: Waging Peace and Preparing for War ...........
17
24
30
“They Must Yield Or Perish:” Assimilation and the Destruction of Tribal
Sovereignty ........................................................................................................
38
Assimilating American Indian “Wards of the State” ..................................
Creating “Missionary Outposts”: Reservations and the Peace Policy ........
The First Lessons of Civilization”: Reeducating Native Americans ..........
“The Moral Suasion of Hunger:” Farming and Civilization .......................
Ending the “Fiction” of Native American Sovereignty ..............................
41
43
48
53
57
“The Iron Fingers In A Velvet Glove:” Force, Removal, and the Peace Policy.....
63
Force and the Peace Policy: Disciplining “Refractory” Indians .................
Enforcing the Reservation System: “Vigorous Treatment, Kindness in the
End” ......................................................................................................
Removing Native Populations: The End of “Strife, Contention, and War”
66
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................
90
References ...............................................................................................................
99
vi
72
81
ABSTRACT
In December 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant announced that the United States
would pursue a new “peace policy” toward Native Americans living in the Plains and
the West. Decrying decades of broken promises and abrogated treaties, Grant pledged
that the U.S. government would treat Native American tribes with kindness and
justice to both end the country’s Indian wars, and prevent the Native population from
decline or decimation. Historians have traditionally described this era, which
extended from 1869 to 1877, as a departure from previous interactions between the
United States and Native American tribes, because of its emphasis on protecting
Native populations and treating them in a compassionate manner. However, this
characterization ignores three central aspects of the peace policy as it was
implemented during these years. Between 1869 and 1877, the federal government
subjected Native Americans to a compulsory assimilation program, in which they
were expected to adopt Christianity and the ways of white “civilization.” Further, the
government repeatedly utilized the U.S. Army to ensure that Native Americans
participated in the assimilation program, by forcing them onto reservations and
removing Native populations from their tribal lands. Additionally, U.S. officials
consistently indicated that the protection and preservation of the American Indian
population came second to the continued expansion of white settlements on the Plains
and in the West. This thesis argues that the peace policy, while portrayed by federal
officials as a humanitarian policy toward the Native population, was also a means to
vii
ensure the rapid and unhindered expansion of white settlements, through the
decimation of Native culture, sovereignty, and military capabilities.
viii
INTRODUCTION
In December 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant announced the establishment of
a new federal policy designed to end the protracted conflict between Native
Americans and white settlers in the West. Proclaiming that the history of the United
States’ dealings with its indigenous population was a source of national
“embarrassment,” Grant argued that it was time for a new approach “toward these
wards of the nation,” one that focused on “establishing a permanent peace” with the
American Indians and preparing them for “civilized life” within the United States.1
Grant’s policy, widely referred to as the “peace policy,” was based on the notion that
Native Americans could and should be “civilized” and assimilated into white society,
and that approaching the Indians in a humane and just manner, while also maintaining
the threat of military force, would lead to peace. The federal government’s blueprint
called for the appointment of missionaries and other trustworthy officials, whose
partnership would “blot out” Native American “remembrance of wrongs and
oppressions.”2
Calls to reform federal Indian policy began during the Civil War, and
intensified between 1865 and 1869. Federal officials were alarmed by calls for the
outright extermination of the American Indians by local white populations on the
1
Ulysses S. Grant, “First Annual Message,” (December 6, 1869). Gerhard Peters and Hohn T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29510. (Accessed January 10, 2013)
2
Nathaniel G. Taylor, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1868. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgibin/History/Historyidx?type=article&did=History.AnnRep68.i0003
&id=History.AnnRep68&isize=M. (Accessed February 12, 2013)
1
2
Plains and in the West, and appalled that members of the U.S. Army were implicated
in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in which Native American men, women, and
children were murdered and mutilated. Such events captured the attention of the
nation, even in the midst of the Civil War, and prompted calls for action by U.S.
officials. Consecutive government investigations, conducted in response to the
perceived crisis in United States Indian policy, warned that the Native American
population was rapidly declining, a situation that was blamed on the actions of
“unscrupulous” whites living on the frontier, who were routinely accused of
swindling Native Americans, contributing to their moral decay, and inciting conflict
with the tribes. In response, federal officials decided to reform U.S. policies to
protect Native Americans from “the aggressions of lawless white men” and ensure
their continued survival as a people.3
The “peace policy” that emerged in 1869 reflected the belief that the United
States government needed to take action to end the continuous conflicts in the West
and protect the declining Native American population. This policy was based on a
contradiction, however, because, while the federal government wanted peace with the
tribes, it also wanted to ensure the safety of its settlements, encourage western
expansion, and safeguard the construction of the railroads, through Native American
lands if necessary. Further, federal officials believed that if Native Americans
remained reliant on their own cultural traditions and tribal structures, their extinction
3
“Condition of the Indian Tribes: Report of the Joint Special Committee, appointed under joint
resolution of March 3, 1865.” (January 26, 1867). University of Michigan and Cornell University:
Making of America. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/abb3022.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.
(Accessed September 27, 2012)
3
was inevitable; the only way to ensure their survival was through their assimilation
into white society. U.S. officials did not solicit Native opinions regarding this
assertion, however, but paternalistically presumed they knew what was best for a race
deemed inferior even by those who advocated on its behalf.
These conflicting concerns impacted the federal government’s development
and execution of the peace policy from its inception in 1869, through the end of its
implementation in 1877. And while U.S. officials characterized the peace policy as a
means to protect and civilize the Native American population, it also subjugated
American Indian tribes, eliminated their ability to resist the U.S. militarily, destroyed
their sovereignty, and allowed the U.S. government to acquire their land.
This thesis examines the development and implementation of the peace policy
between 1869 and 1877, and focuses on the events that led to its pronouncement, the
scope and objectives of federal assimilation programs, and the use of military force
and removal to ensure the policy’s success. The implementation of the peace policy
occurred primarily during President Grant’s two terms in office, and remained
influential during the early months of Rutherford B. Hayes’ administration.
Beginning in 1878, however, officials appointed by Hayes significantly altered
certain aspects of the policy.4 However, the desire to assimilate the American Indians,
destroy their sovereignty, and obtain their allegedly “surplus” land influenced U.S.
policies toward Native Americans into the twentieth century.
4
Among these changes was the departure of missionaries as administrators of reservations, an
intensified focus on the Christianization and education of the Native population, the allotment of
Native lands, and new Congressional legislation designed to eliminate tribal sovereignty.
4
During the Grant presidency and beyond, the executive branch of the U.S.
government administered the federal government’s policies toward the tribes. After
introducing the peace policy in 1869, Grant’s personal engagement in Indian policy
gradually declined. By his second term, he referred all matters connected to Indian
affairs to the Department of the Interior and its subsidiary, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA).5 The BIA executed the government’s Native American policies, and
issued extensive annual reports, authored by the head of the BIA, the Commissioner
of Indian Affairs, on its activities. Further, it was the BIA, rather than the War
Department, that authorized and coordinated military action against the tribes during
the peace policy era. An examination of the peace policy era must, therefore, rely
extensively on the written records of the BIA to understand the motivations behind
major policy decisions.
Information from the BIA and other U.S. government sources, including
reports from the War Department and the U.S. Congress, provide the bulk of the
source material on which this thesis is based. However, there is also considerable
testimony from Native Americans who were subjected to the peace policy and
repeatedly articulated their objections to its implementation. These sources provide
alternate views on the nature of the peace policy, and demonstrate the impact of U.S.
policy decisions on the indigenous population. Further, the incorporation of Native
5
Grant’s lack of participation in the administration of Indian affairs during the final years of his
presidency was likely the result of his focus on Reconstruction in the South, and his need to respond to
the many scandals that plagued his administration. One scholar also suggests that Grant was only
“circumstantially” interested in reforming the country’s policies toward Native Americans, and lost
interest in the endeavor as it dragged on, seemingly without result. Henry G. Waltmann,
“Circumstantial Reformer: President Grant and the Indian Problem,” Arizona and the West. 13
(Winter, 1971): 323-342.
5
sources demonstrates how American Indian tribes managed to resist assimilation and
preserve elements of their cultures and traditions, even while under intense pressure
from the United States government.
Such resistance ran counter to most federal officials’ impressions of Native
Americans. By the middle of the nineteenth century, prominent scientists and
intellectuals in the United States had declared the superiority of white Anglo-Saxons
and inferiority of all nonwhite races. Such beliefs were bolstered by allegedly
scientific evidence, such as the study of phrenology, which concluded that Native
American brains were less developed and “inferior in size” to those of white
Americans.6 These scientific theories further emphasized the intellectual, moral, and
physical superiority of white Anglo-Saxon Americans, and in doing so justified the
subjugation of Native Americans and other nonwhite races.
American Indians were further characterized as an obstruction to U.S. plans to
settle the Plains and the West. At the same time, however, Native contact with white
Americans was viewed as problematic for the Indians, as they were, according to
advocates of such theories, unable to compete with superior white populations for
land, food, and resources. Even before the introduction of Social Darwinism or the
concept of “survival of the fittest” in the United States, intellectuals thus asserted that
Native populations faced extinction because of their inability to adopt or abide by the
standards of white society. Such claims were supposedly reinforced by the “numerous
failures” of educators and missionaries who had previously attempted the civilization
6
William Stanton. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America: 1815-59.
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1960), 3.
6
and education of Native populations.7 White Americans did not consider that Indian
nations were simply uninterested in assimilation and preferred to maintain their way
of life.
However, while some in the U.S. accepted the potential extinction of the
Native population, and indeed viewed it as the “grand and central march of
civilization,” others believed that white Americans had a duty to preserve and protect
the tribes.8 Those who sought to prevent their decimation, including the architects of
the peace policy, argued that American Indians, as the first inhabitants of the
continent, were distinct from other nonwhite populations in the United States, and in
fact represented some distinctly American characteristics, including their “unyielding
character and native love of freedom.”9 Despite the acceptance of such sentiments,
even those who hoped to “save” the indigenous population consistently maintained
that white Americans knew what was best for the tribes, and that their only hope was
the adoption of white standards of civilization.
The Reconstruction of the South after the end of the Civil War also influenced
the federal government’s establishment of the peace policy. The assimilation program
was an acknowledgement, according to U.S. officials, that the expansionist policies of
the United States had forced Native Americans into a state of “wretchedness,
7
Lewis Henry Morgan. League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1851),
108-111.
8
George Caitlin. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American
Indians. (New York: 1891), 256.
9
Brian Dippie. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1982), 94.
7
destitution, [and] beggary.”10 Providing assistance to American Indians “over the first
rough places on the white man’s road,” was therefore a means of restitution, similar
to that provided by the federal government to formerly enslaved African Americans.11
Federal administration of Reconstruction and the peace policy shared other
similarities as well. In the South, the Freedmen’s Bureau, northern missionaries, and
teachers educated African Americans and promoted free labor.12 In the West,
Christian missionaries civilized Native Americans to prepare them for integration into
mainstream society and United States citizenship. Additionally, the U.S. Army
enforced federal policy both in the South and along the western frontier.
However, there were also clear differences in the ways the U.S. government
approached African Americans and Native Americans, and in their respective
reactions. African Americans in the South largely welcomed the educational
opportunities and protections afforded by the U.S. government during Reconstruction,
and sought American citizenship. The majority of Native Americans who addressed
these issues during this period, however, explicitly rejected U.S. efforts on their
behalf. Oglala Sioux Chief Red Cloud, for example, told the Secretary of the Interior
in 1870, “What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it.”13
10
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1872).
Ibid. The post-Civil War belief that Native Americans could be civilized, and that it was the duty of
white Americans to do so, is reminiscent of sentiments expressed by George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, before the latter became a supporter of removal. It is also a marked departure from
arguments regarding the substandard moral and mental capacities of Native Americans that were
widely accepted in the antebellum period. A detailed examination of this subject is found in Reginald
Horsman, “Scientific Racism and the American Indian in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” American
Quarterly 27 (May 1975): 152-168.
12
Cathleen D. Cahill. Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian
Service, 1869-1933. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 18.
13
Red Cloud, “Speech to the Secretary of the Interior,” (1870) in Calloway, 154.
11
8
These sentiments did not diminish as the decade wore on. Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy
Horse made this clear in testimony given on his deathbed in 1877: “We preferred our
way of living…All we wanted was peace and to be left alone.”14
Despite such protests, the forced assimilation of American Indian tribes
remained a cornerstone of U.S. policy between 1869 and 1877. Much of the
historiography on the peace policy, however, does not focus on the use of military
force or assimilation as tools of Native disenfranchisement. In fact, the majority of
the academic research on the era between 1869 and 1877 describes the peace policy
as a relatively humane departure from previous federal policies, and focuses on
bureaucratic infighting during the era or the extent to which the policy was a success
or failure.15 There is little scholarship that takes Native American perspectives into
account, or that explores the multifaceted motivations of the U.S. officials who
implemented the peace policy. And while some acknowledge the underlying purpose
of the peace policy, namely the U.S. government’s desire to settle the continent and
acquire Native land, few cite this as a central aspect of the policy itself. Additionally,
there is no single book that examines the peace policy; most studies of the era are
14
Crazy Horse, “We Preferred Our Own Way of Living,” in Bob Blaisdell (ed). Great Speeches by
Native Americans. (New York: Dover, 2000), 147.
15
Additionally, much of the scholarship on the peace policy was written during the 1970s and 1980s,
making it somewhat dated in its approach. For example, an article on army generals operating in the
West touts their “humanitarian” nature because of their sympathy for Native Americans, despite their
commitment to an assimilation program that sought to decimate their culture. See Richard N. Ellis,
“The Humanitarian Generals,” The Western Historical Quarterly, 3 (April 1972): 169-178. An article
on Quaker missionary activity suggests that government interference and infighting prevented the
policy from succeeding, and praises continued Quaker dedication to the civilization of the Native
population after 1877. See Joseph E. Illick, ‘“Some of our Best Indians Are Friends…”: Quaker
Attitudes and Actions regarding the Western Indians during the Grant Administration,” The Western
Historical Quarterly 2 (July, 1971): 283-294.
9
contained within larger volumes on nineteenth-century federal policy toward the
indigenous population.16
The most prolific academic writer on American Indian policy during the
nineteenth century is Francis Paul Prucha, who chronicles federal policy toward
Native Americans most thoroughly in his books American Indian Policy in Crisis:
Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865-1900, and The Great Father: The United
States Government and the American Indian, published in 1976 and 1984,
respectively. Prucha’s examination of the peace policy, conducted within the context
of a broader assessment of U.S. Indian policy, acknowledges that U.S. efforts to
assimilate the tribes were, in some ways, grounded in the nation’s desire for land and
unfettered expansion. However, Prucha focuses more on the bureaucratic
implementation of the peace policy, and argues that the military was a hindrance to
the implementation of the policy, rather than an integral part of its execution.17 In The
Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890 (1963), Henry Fritz examines the
peace policy primarily in terms of its failure to successfully assimilate Native
16
Several recent journal articles examine specific facets of the peace policy as well. Henry E. Stamm,
for example, chronicles the experiences of an Episcopalian missionary who managed the Wind River
Reservation in Wyoming during the 1870s, and highlights his attempts to “civilize” members of the
Shoshone and Bannock tribes. See Henry E. Stamm, IV, “The Peace Policy at Wind River: The James
Irwin Years, 1871-1877,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 41 (Summer, 1991): 56-69.
David Sim examines the bureaucratic aspects of the peace policy, and argues that the policy was never
fully formulated or implemented. See David Sim, “The Peace Policy of Ulysses S. Grant,” American
Nineteenth Century History 9 (September 2008): 241-267. Additionally, John W. Ragsdale, Jr.
explores federal efforts to assimilate the Chiricahua Apache between the 1860s and 1880s, and the
legacy of this period on the tribes. See John W. Ragsdale Jr., “The Chiricahua Apaches and the
Assimilation Movement, 1865-1886: A Historical Examination,” American Indian Law Review 30
(2005/2006): 291-363.
17
For example, in both of these books, Prucha includes chapters entitled, “The Military Challenge to
the Peace Policy.”
10
populations.18 Additionally, scholar Robert Mardock emphasizes the influence of
reformers within and outside the government who, throughout the 1860s, advocated a
less severe approach toward the Native population in his book, The Reformers and the
American Indian (1971).
Further scholarship that is relevant to understanding the peace policy and
those who administered it focuses on the ways in which white Americans viewed and
characterized American Indians in the nineteenth century. In The White Man’s Indian
(1978), Robert Berkhofer, Jr. argues that attempts to assimilate Native populations
and destroy their sovereignty occurred because Native American culture represented
an affront to white American values, including individualism, land management and
property ownership.19 In Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination
(2001), Shari M. Huhndorf suggests that white Americans’ assertions of Native
“savagery” and inferiority were used to justify “centuries of slaughter of Native
peoples and usurpation of their resources.”20 Brian W. Dippie’s The Vanishing
American (1984) focuses specifically on white Americans’ belief that Native
Americans were an inferior race that would “vanish,” unless they abandoned their
traditions and agreed to assimilate into white society. Each of these volumes helps
explain the approach of U.S. officials toward the Native population in the 1860s and
1870s.
18
Henry E. Fritz. The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890. (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1963), 167
19
Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to
the Present. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 135-137.
20
Shari M. Huhndorf. Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination. (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2001), 31.
11
This thesis updates the historiography of the peace policy, and rejects the
notion that the indigenous population was treated in a more humane manner between
1869 and 1877. Rather, the forced assimilation, military coercion, and removal of
Native American populations, as well as federal acquisition of Indian lands and the
elimination of Native sovereignty, were the defining aspects of the peace policy. The
destruction of Native cultures, tribal governments, and American Indian family
structures were also central to the peace policy, and American Indians who opposed
such measures were punished or deemed hostile by missionaries and federal officials
alike. Additionally, this study establishes that the U.S. Army was an integral part of
the peace policy that was frequently deployed to “discipline” Native Americans who
refused to participate in the peace policy. And while U.S. officials justified these
measures as necessary to protect American Indian populations, they also
acknowledged that the peace policy facilitated federal control over Native populations
and their lands.
“BROKEN TREATIES AND UNFULFILLED PROMISES”:
THE ROAD TO THE PEACE POLICY
As President Ulysses S. Grant indicated in his first annual message, many,
including the new president himself, viewed previous United States government
policy toward Native Americans as a stain on the reputation of the country. The peace
policy, many argued, addressed the Indian question in a fair and humane manner, and
promised an end to the government’s “shameful record of broken treaties and
unfulfilled promises.”21 Previous American presidents had also described their
policies toward Native Americans as humane, however, even when those policies
included the forced removal of Indian populations, abandonment of their cultural
traditions, or their segregation on reservations. In each of these cases, American
officials justified their policies as benefiting or protecting the Native American
population, which they argued was at risk of extinction because it was unable to
compete with white civilization.
Efforts to remove and segregate the Indians were thus deemed as protective
measures designed to assist a population that was not advanced enough to defend
itself against or resist the temptations offered by white society. As Debow’s Review
stated in 1854, “…all contact of him [the Native American] with the white races is
death,” and “He dwindles before them – imbibing all of their vices, and none of their
21
Board of Indian Commissioners, “Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners” in Documents of
United States Indian Policy, ed. Francis Paul Prucha. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990),
131.
12
13
virtues. His race is run, and probably he has performed his earthly mission.”22 These
sentiments were based on widely accepted scientific theories that emerged in the
1830s, many of which used the skull and facial measurements of different races to
categorize them in terms of their intelligence and morality. Unsurprisingly, these
theories universally claimed that Native Americans and other nonwhite populations
were inherently inferior to white Americans.23
The notion that Native Americans were members of an inferior race requiring
guidance and assistance from the United States government was also a common
refrain. White Americans generally viewed Indians as a monolithic people without
culture or intellect, who could thus be molded and shaped into civilized individuals if
given proper guidance.24 George Washington, for example, asserted that United
States’ Indian policy should be “calculated to advance the happiness of the Indians,”
and be guided by moral considerations, given the responsibility of the country toward
this “unenlightened race.”25 Thomas Jefferson echoed these sentiments and initially
argued in favor of assimilation and intermarriage between the white and Indian
populations, as it would allow the Indians to “progress” to the level of white
22
“The Indians of the United States – Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future,” De Bow’s Review.
16 (1854): 147.
23
These notions were so popular that mid-nineteenth century American schoolbooks routinely
described Indians as “savages” who were “ignorant, cruel, and treacherous” and also “doomed…to
perish.” See Ruth Miller Elson. Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks in the Nineteenth
Century. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 72, 78.
24
Dippie, The Vanishing American, 98.
25
George Washington, Third Annual Address, (1791) Yale Law School, The Avalon Project:
Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washs03.asp.
(Accessed December 8, 2012).
14
civilization.26 Andrew Jackson characterized the forced removal of Native Americans
as a humanitarian gesture, and argued that relocating them to “an ample district west
of the Mississippi” would allow them to “perpetuate the race and attest to the
humanity and justice of this Government.”27 In the process of such “humanity,”
between four and eight thousand Cherokee men, women, and children died during a
forced march from their land in 1838.28
In the 1840s and 1850s, thousands of Americans immigrated west as the
country’s borders expanded, particularly after the conclusion of the U.S. war with
Mexico in 1848. With this expansion came increased contact with Native populations
and frequent conflict between white settlers and tribes. Seeking sole possession of as
much of its newly acquired land as possible, U.S. officials established a reservation
system in the West administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).29 The
reservation system was characterized as way to prevent Native Americans, as then
Indian Affairs Commissioner Luke Lea stated, from being “swept away from the
26
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, (1785).
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html. (Accessed November 30, 2012). Though
Jefferson maintained that whites and Native Americans could, theoretically, be intellectual equals, he,
like the majority of his nineteenth-century presidential successors, treated Native Americans in a
paternalistic and childlike manner. Further, by 1808, Jefferson had become an advocate of Indian
removal. Neither Jefferson nor his contemporaries questioned whether Native Americans wanted to
adopt white civilization. In fact, this question was rarely addressed by the United States government or
those who sought to “civilize” them until well into the twentieth century.
27
Andrew Jackson, “First Annual Address,” (December 8, 1829) Gerhard Peters and Hohn T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29471. (Accessed December 9, 2012)
28
Theda Purdue and Michael D. Green. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents.
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 167-168.
29
“Modifications in the Indian Department,” (February 27, 1851) in Documents of United States
Indian Policy. Francis Paul Prucha, Ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 83.
15
mighty and advancing current of civilization.”30 As conflicts between these tribes and
white settlers increased, the government’s removal and reservation policies were thus
described as a means of protecting and preserving Native Americans from assaults by
superior white civilization. They were also, however, designed to prevent tribes from
hunting over vast swaths of land and compel them to “resort to agricultural labor or
starve.”31 That such policies often cleared the way for the expansion of American
settlements was, apparently, a fortunate side effect.
Throughout the 1850s, debates over the government’s policies toward Native
Americans were overshadowed by political debates over slavery. However, even as
war with the South loomed, white Americans continued to emigrate west in search of
their ‘manifest destiny,’ where they encountered Native American populations
unwilling to cede their land to white settlers.32 And the reactions of local government
officials, such as California Governor John McDougall, who in 1853 decreed that
“…a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the
30
Luke Lea, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government Printing
Office, 1850), 7. Online by University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Accessed on September 23,
2012 on
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep4650/reference/history.annrep4650.i0
005.pdf.
31
Francis Paul Prucha. The Great White Father: The United States Government and the American
Indians. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 110. Lea, “Annual Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1850), 4.
32
The 1840s through the 1860s were also a time of shifting alliances and military struggle between
Native American tribes. According to scholar Tom Holm, the Sioux became a military power on the
Plains during this period, largely because of the displacement of other tribes that was caused by white
expansion. Other tribes, such as the Crow, responded to these changing circumstances by establishing
alliances with the United States, both to protect themselves from the Sioux and to protect their territory
from white incursions. See Tom Holm, “American Indian Warfare: The Cycles of Conflict and the
Militarization of Native North America,” in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip
Deloria et al. (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 169.
16
Indian becomes extinct,” tended toward violence as a means to resolve conflicts.33
Federal officials in the 1850s showed little sympathy for Native American land
claims, and resolved conflicts through military force, removal, and the establishment
of more reservations. In 1858, President James Buchanan praised the military’s
efforts to “suppress Indian hostilities on the frontiers,” and stated the necessity of
protecting settlers from the “depredations of the Indians,” and the need to militarily
“keep the Indians in check.”34
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles E. Mix was equally unsympathetic to
the situation of the Indian tribes in the West, and stated that even when “whites have
gone on to occupy their [Indians’] country without regard to their rights,” this was
acceptable, because “In all cases where the necessities of our rapidly increasing
population have compelled us to displace the Indian, we have ever regarded it as a
sacred and binding obligation to provide him with a home elsewhere…”35 As the size
and number of American settlements in the West increased, however, there was little
land left onto which Indians could be moved.
33
California Native American Heritage Association. Short Overview of California Indian History.
(1998). http://www.nahc.ca.gov/califindian.html. (Accessed March 5, 2013)
34
James Buchanan, “Second Annual Addresses to Congress,” (December 6, 1858). Gerhard Peters and
Hohn T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29499 (Accessed February 25, 2013); Buchanan,
“Third Annual Address to Congress,” (December 19, 1859) Gerhard Peters and Hohn T. Woolley, The
American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29500 (Accessed
February 25, 2013); Buchanan, “Fourth Annual Address to Congress,” (December 3,1860). Gerhard
Peters and Hohn T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29501 (Accessed February 25, 2013).
35
Charles E. Mix, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1858). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep58/reference/history.annrep58.i0002.
pdf, 8. (Accessed February 25, 2013)
17
Aggression and Expansion: Native American Policy During the Civil War
Hostilities between white settlers and Native Americans did not cease with the
outbreak of the Civil War, and federal authorities faced repeated conflicts between
settlers and Indian tribes during the first half of the 1860s. The blame for these
hostilities shifted, however, as reports of white violence against Indians in the West
increased in frequency, prompting government officials to highlight the role of white
aggression in conflicts between settlers and Native populations. At the same time,
however, they also reaffirmed their commitment to enlarged western settlements and
the expansion of the railroads, setting in motion the conflicting impulses of Indian
reform in the 1860s.
In this context, Indian Affairs Commissioner William P. Dole noted in his
November 1861 report that a recent Indian war in California “appears to be a war in
which whites alone are engaged” and that “the Indians are hunted like wild beasts of
prey.”36 Reaffirming the government’s commitment to Indian reservations was Dole’s
recommendation for protecting Indians from such violence, as they would secure “the
elevation of the Indian as a race,” protect him from “vices and temptations,” and
“enable him to live credibly amongst the most enlightened nations.”37 Dole further
concluded that the “wonderful rapidity” with which new states were being created
necessitated the expansion of the reservation system.38
36
William P. Dole, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1861), 23. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep61/reference/history.annrep61.i0003.
pdf. (Accessed February 12, 2013).
37
Ibid, 29.
38
Ibid.
18
The following year, the federal government’s attention was drawn to Indian
affairs once again, this time in response to an uprising of the Sioux tribes in
Minnesota. The Sioux had sold portions of their land to the U.S. government
beginning in the 1850s, and were subsequently confined to reservations that had
decreased in size as more settlers moved to Minnesota. Having no land on which to
hunt, the Sioux became dependent on government annuities and supplies, and by
August 1862 these payments were late and possibly cancelled, the funds supposedly
having been diverted to costs related to the Civil War.39 As Mdewakanten chief
Jerome Big Eagle recalled, “war talk” began when “the Indians who had gathered
about the agencies were out of provisions and easily made angry.”40
The Sioux staged a series of attacks against the local population in response to
the federal government’s abrogation of its treaty responsibilities, and the conflict
escalated throughout the fall of 1862. Before Minnesota state and federal forces
defeated the Sioux, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey gave a speech in which
he stated “The Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever
beyond the borders of the state.”41 Though Congress revoked all treaties with the
39
Prucha, The Great White Father, 143-144. According to Prucha, the food and funds that were
intended for the Sioux either never made it to the reservation, or were taken and likely sold by local
Indian Bureau employees, who were notorious for their corruption.
40
Jerome Big Eagle, “A Sioux Story of War,” (1894) in Colin G. Calloway, ed. Our Hearts Fell to the
Ground: Plains Indian Views of How the West was Lost. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996), 94.
41
Minnesota Star Tribune, “Dayton Repudiates Ramsey’s Call to Exterminate Dakota,” (August 16,
2012). http://www.startribune.com/local/166461776.html?refer=y (Accessed March 5, 2013).
19
Sioux and sanctioned their forced removal from Minnesota in April 1863, the Sioux
Wars continued for almost three decades.42
The war between the Sioux and the United States highlighted the problems
with the reservation system, and showcased the ways in which white encroachment
on Native American lands generated conflict. Even so, Dole maintained his
commitment to the reservation system in the uprising’s aftermath, while also
conceding the “difficulties and embarrassments…arising chiefly from the contact of
the red and white races.”43 Dole further lamented that the root of the conflict between
the native and white populations was that “they [Native Americans] are brought in
active competition with their superiors in intelligence” and are thus unable to deflect
the “cupidity of their white neighbors.”44 As Dole saw it, this only reinforced the
necessity of reservations, because the “superior” white population had no plans to halt
its expansion into the West. Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith agreed with this
notion, and asserted that, while the government was obligated to protect the Indian
tribes, their presence in “a large portion of the best lands…retards the progress of the
state in population and improvement.”45 His solution was that Indians either abandon
their tribal ways and adopt farming, or move south to the Indian Territory.46
42
Ron Soodalter, “Lincoln and the Sioux,” The New York Times. (August 20, 2012).
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/lincoln-and-the-sioux/ (Accessed 11 December
2012).
43
William P. Dole, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1862), 11. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep62/reference/history.annrep62.i0002.
pdf. (Accessed February 12, 2013)
44
Ibid, 12.
45
Caleb B. Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs: Extract from the Report of the
Secretary of the Interior,” (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1862), 7-8. University of
Wisconsin Digital Collections.
20
Comments made by Dole and Smith exemplify the U.S. government’s
approach to Indian reform throughout the 1860s. While officials agreed that the
conflicts in the West were destructive for both settlers and Indians, and they
recognized their commitment to protect both groups, they sought a Native American
policy that would allow white Americans to settle any and all portions of the
continent they desired. The 1862 Homestead Act, which encouraged western
settlement and opened lands to independent farmers for a minimal cost, is an example
of the ways in which U.S. obligations to the American Indians clashed with plans for
territorial expansion. For a ten-dollar filing fee, heads of household over age twentyone could obtain up to 160 acres of “un-appropriated public lands” for “settlement
and cultivation.”47 This land, however, was obtained after removing the Native
Americans who had inhabited it, and those settlers who claimed it faced conflict with
tribes that remained in the region. Commissioner Dole acknowledged the negative
impact this system had on local Indian populations in 1863, when he noted that the
“tide of emigration” to the West was “most disastrous to the Indians.”48 Despite
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep62/reference/history.annrep62.i0002.
pdf. (Accessed February 12, 2013)
46
Ibid.
47
“The Homestead Act,” (May 20, 1862). PBS: New Perspectives on the West, Archives on the West.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/five/homestd.htm (Accessed on March 9, 2013).
48
William P. Dole, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1864). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep64/reference/history.annrep64.i0003.
pdf. (Accessed February 12, 2013).
21
Dole’s pronouncement, the government sold almost three million acres of land under
the auspices of the Homestead Act in 1863 alone.49
The construction of transcontinental railway lines was an additional source of
friction and violence between white populations and Native Americans. Plans to build
a railroad that would link the west coast to the rest of country were developed in the
1850s, and from the outset, both federal and railroad officials deemed the Native
population an impediment to the process. The railroads ruined Native American
hunting grounds and ran through Indian lands, which led to violence between the
tribes and the U.S. Army forces tasked with protecting the railroad’s construction.50
The Homestead Act and the construction of the railways, which brought white settlers
increasingly in contact and conflict with Native Americans, were deemed vital,
however, and would not be hindered. As Interior Secretary Smith declared in 1862,
“The rapid progress of civilization upon this continent will not permit the lands which
are required for cultivation to be surrendered to savage tribes for hunting grounds.”51
Further, according to Smith, the U.S. government would pursue “the removal of the
Indians when their lands are required for agricultural purposes by advancing
settlements.”52
Smith’s successor, John Palmer Usher, similarly argued that the presence of
Native Americans should not prevent American expansion into fertile tracts of land,
49
“Department of the Interior; Report of Secretary Upshur.” The New York Times. (December 10,
1863). http://www.nytimes.com/1863/12/10/news/department-interior-report-secretary-upshur-publicland-system-pacific-railroad.html?pagewanted=all (Accessed March 15, 2013).
50
Prucha, The Great White Father, 179-180.
51
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1862).
52
Ibid.
22
while also expressing concern for the tribes’ survival. In his 1863 report, Usher noted
that the Indians “would soon become extinct” if not taught “the arts of civilized life,”
and called for “immediate steps” to prevent this from occurring.53 Abraham Lincoln
also asserted in 1863 and 1864 that the Indian system should be reformed in a manner
that provided for the “welfare” of the Indians, the protection of settlers, and the
“material growth” of the country, without specifying how the latter two would be
accomplished without increasing conflict with the tribes.54
No concrete steps were taken to reform federal Indian policy, however, until
an incident in Colorado, which became known as the Sand Creek Massacre, garnered
national attention and forced the issue upon the U.S. government. Relations between
Native Americans and white settlers in Colorado were strained in the fall of 1864, due
to a series of Native raids in the area and the fear that tensions could erupt into a
broader conflict, as happened with the Sioux in Minnesota just two years prior. On
November 28, U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington, leading a regiment of Colorado
volunteers, came upon a camp of Cheyenne who raised white and American flags at
the troops’ approach. Despite this gesture, the forces under Chivington’s command
attacked, killing approximately 150 Native Americans, three-quarters of whom were
53
John Palmer Usher, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs: Extract from the Report of the
Secretary of the Interior.” (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 3. University of
Wisconsin Digital Collections. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/Historyidx?type=article&did=History.AnnRep63.i0002&id=History.AnnRep63&isize=M. (Accessed
February 12, 2013)
54
Abraham Lincoln, “Third Annual Message to Congress,” (December 8, 1863). Gerhard Peters and
Hohn T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29504 (Accessed February 25, 2013); Lincoln,
“Fourth Annual Message to Congress,” (December 6,1864) Online by Gerhard Peters and Hohn T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29505
(Accessed February 25, 2013).
23
women and children. Cheyenne warrior Little Bear survived the massacre, and
recalled lines of U.S. Army forces firing into the encampment and at “fleeing people”
trying to escape the carnage, as well as the disfigurement of countless Native
corpses.55 The outcry against the massacre was so intense that three separate federal
investigations were launched to examine the incident.56 The Congressional findings,
which detailed numerous acts of mutilation and cruelty, shocked much of the
American public, and led to Congressional action to reform federal policy toward the
Native population.
During the closing months of the Civil War, the federal government began to
consider a new approach toward the indigenous population. Lincoln had planned to
take action after the end of the war, according to an account by reform advocate John
Beeson, and promised that “If we get through this war, and I live, this Indian system
shall be reformed.”57 The parameters of reform would, however, be conducted within
the confines of the reservation system and include efforts to civilize the Native
American population according to white standards. This was made abundantly clear
in Dole’s 1864 report, in which he wrote that the best way to establish peace with the
Indians was to ensure “the security of our frontier settlements, and the ultimate
reclamation and civilization, and consequently the permanent welfare, of the
55
Little Bear, “The Sand Creek Massacre,” in Calloway, 104.
Denver National Park Service, in consultation with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma,
the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Northern Arapaho Tribe, and the State of Colorado. Sand Creek
Massacre Project. (2000). http://godsman.wikispaces.dpsk12.org/file/view/ACF33.pdf. (Accessed
December 10, 2012).
57
Quoted in Robert Winston Mardock. The Reformers and the American Indian. (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1971), 12.
56
24
Indians,” presumably in that order.58 Subsequent efforts to protect and improve the
condition of the Native American tribes would reflect these priorities, even as
government officials continued to suggest that frontier settlers were largely
responsible for much of the conflict in the West.
Congressional Action: Protecting Settlements and Reaffirming the Reservation
System
Spurred by the events in Sand Creek, Congress examined the condition of
Native Americans in earnest beginning in the early months of 1865. In response to the
massacre, Senator James R. Doolittle, an anti-slavery Republican from Wisconsin and
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, called for the appointment of a
“joint commission to examine…Indian affairs and the treatment of the Indian tribes
by the civil and military authorities.”59 The Doolittle Committee emerged out of the
Senator’s efforts, and commenced its investigation on the state of the tribes in June
1865. Senator Doolittle and a delegation of Republican Congressmen set out from
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and personally interviewed soldiers, BIA employees,
politicians, and Native Americans, to ascertain their views on the condition of the
58
William P. Dole, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1864) 6. Online by University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep64/reference/history.annrep64.i0003.
pdf. (Accessed February 12, 2013).
59
Congressional Globe, 38th Congress, Second Session, (1865) Online by Library of Congress, A
Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage, 326 (Accessed February 28, 2013).
25
tribes, and gather their opinions regarding the causes of continued conflict between
the white and Indian populations.60
The work of the Doolittle Committee did not hinder expansion into the West,
however, and settlements continued to grow, often into Indian-claimed territory. This
was the case in Montana, where prospectors had discovered gold in 1863. Over the
following years, settlers flocked to the region, prompting the establishment of the
Bozeman Trail and the construction of a series of forts, built and protected by the
army, for miners living in the region. The Bozeman Trail also ran through Sioux
hunting lands, however, prompting the tribe to attack settlers using the Trail, and
leaving the forts in a “state of siege.”61 It was in this context that a group of Sioux in
December 1866 ambushed and killed eighty troops under the command of Captain
William J. Fetterman. The so-called Fetterman Massacre prompted U.S. Army
General William T. Sherman to call for “vindictive” action against the Sioux, “even
to their extermination, men women and children. Nothing else will reach the root of
this cause.”62
Sherman’s views were common throughout the West, as evidenced by a July
1866 editorial in the Kansas Daily Tribune that highlighted the differences between
federal and local views of the situation. “There can be no permanent, lasting peace on
60
The members of the Doolittle Committee traveled to Kansas, Indian Territory, New Mexico,
Colorado, Nebraska, the Dakota, Minnesota, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
Donald Chaput, “Indians, Agents, Politicians: The Doolittle Survey of 1865,” Western Historical
Quarterly 3 (July 1971): 272-273.
61
Francis Paul Prucha. American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 18651900. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 16.
62
Sherman, quoted in Gregory Eiselein. Literature and Reform in the Civil War Era. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996), 140.
26
our frontiers till these devils are exterminated,” according to the editorial, which
further concluded that “Our eastern friends may be shocked at such a sentiment, but a
few years residence in the West… has dispersed the romance with which these people
are regarded in the East.”63
The events in Montana, and the call for the wholesale slaughter of the Sioux
by a United States Army General, prompted Congress to take action. The Doolittle
Commission report, which had languished for over a year, was submitted to Congress
one month after the Fetterman Massacre and addressed both the status of the Indian
tribes, and the causes of conflict between whites and Native Americans.64 The
Committee Report stated that,
The Indians everywhere, with the exception of the tribes within the Indian
territory, are rapidly decreasing in numbers from various causes: by disease;
by intemperance; by wars, among themselves and with the whites; by the
steady and relentless emigration of white men into the territories of the west,
which, confining the Indians to still narrower limits, destroys that game
which, in their normal state, constitutes their principal means of subsistence;
and by the irrepressible conflict between a superior and an inferior race when
brought in the presence of each other.65
The report further noted that conflict between settlers and American Indians
was frequently “traced to the aggressions of lawless white men,” and the loss of
63
Quoted in Mardock, 22.
The interviews of the Doolittle Committee were completed at the end of 1865; it is unclear why it
took over a year for the report to be formally presented to Congress. However, Doolittle himself
complained of the difficulty in getting “the ear of Congress or the ear of the Senate on anything which
concerns our Indian relations.” Quoted in Mardock, 23. Additionally, Doolittle was an ally of Andrew
Johnson’s, and may have held the report at Johnson’s request while the president battled with Congress
on other matters throughout 1866 – namely debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Freedman’s
Bill, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Eric Foner. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution
(1863-1877). (New York: Perennial Classics, 1988), 247.
65
U.S. Congress, “Condition of the Indian Tribes: Report of the Joint Special Committee Appointed
Under Joint Resolution of March 3, 1865,” (January 26, 1867) in Prucha, Documents of United States
Indian Policy, 104.
64
27
Native hunting areas, two issues that contributed to the conflict over the Bozeman
Trail as well.66 The Doolittle Report did not, however, call for the cessation of
western expansion or question the rights of white settlers to occupy Native American
lands. The commission charged with investigating the Fetterman Massacre agreed
with the conclusions made in the Doolittle Report, and proposed that the government
cease its military campaigns against the Indian tribes and investigate the possibility of
establishing peace with the Native Americans.
Such conclusions underscored not only the culpability of settlers in the
conflicts with the Indians, but also the realization that without a change in policy, the
U.S. government would continue spending blood and treasure on costly wars in the
West. Thus, at a time when it was estimated that each regiment sent to fight Native
Americans cost the government upwards of two million dollars per year, Congress
began to reexamine federal policy toward the indigenous population. This review was
predicated both on the costliness of continued warfare, and on the fact that, as stated
by Republican Senator Lott Morrill of Maine, “…we have come to this point in the
history of the country that there is no place beyond population to which you can
remove the Indian,” which forced the government to ask itself, “will you exterminate
him, or will you fix an abiding place for him?”67 The answer to this question, as
articulated by the Doolittle report, was the continuation of the reservation system and
forced assimilation: “…as their [Native Americans’] hunting grounds are taken away,
the reservation system, which is the only alternative to their extermination, must be
66
67
Ibid, 103.
Quoted in Mardock, 29.
28
adopted.” Further, the placement of “…farmers, teachers, and missionaries” was
“absolutely necessary to take the first step toward changing the wild hunter into a the
savage into a civilized man.”68
In response to the Doolittle Commission’s findings, Congress established the
Indian Peace Commission cultivator of the soil – to change on July 20, 1867, and
gave its members the authority to determine the reasons for “the alleged acts of
hostility” by Native Americans, and conclude treaties that would address their
concerns.69 The commissioners were also mandated with establishing security for
those living near the railway lines and examining territory in the West that might be
suitable for additional Indian reservations.70 Thus, while charged with securing peace
with the Indians, the Commission members were also instructed to look for lands onto
which they could be removed. The 1867 Indian Affairs Commissioner report made
clear that this was the principal concern of the Commission, noting that “The plea of
‘Manifest Destiny’ is paramount and the Indian must give way, though be it at the
sacrifice of what may be as dear as life.”71 Peace was to be achieved, in other words,
in a manner that would accommodate American expansion, even at the risk of
destroying the Native American way of life.
Initial steps toward these goals were taken in October 1867, when the Peace
68
Ibid, 104.
U.S. Congress, “Creation of an Indian Peace Commission” (July 20, 1867) in Prucha, Documents of
United States Indian Policy, 105.
70
Ibid.
71
Charles E. Mix, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1867). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep67/reference/history.annrep67.i0004.
pdf (Accessed February 12, 2013).
69
29
Commission concluded three treaties, known as the Medicine Lodge Treaties, with
the Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Apache tribes.72 By the early 1860s,
these tribes were encircled by expanding settlements in Texas, Kansas, and along the
Platte River in Nebraska, and in danger of “starvation and extinction.”73 The Peace
Commission, in their negotiations with the tribe, emphasized that white settlements
would continue expanding, and unless the tribes agreed to settle on reservations, they
would likely perish.74 Tribal leaders agreed to sign the treaties, which also promised
annuity payments and U.S. respect for the integrity of their lands, but did so
begrudgingly. Kiowa Chief Satanta conveyed the sense of conflict experienced by
each of the tribes when he stated, with regard to the reservation, “I don’t want to
settle there. I love to roam over the wide prairie…when we settle down, we grow pale
and die.”75 For the Peace Commission, however, the Medicine Lodge Treaties were
an unqualified success and a positive step toward saving the American Indians from
extinction.
Following the conclusion of the Medicine Lodge Treaties, the Commission
produced a report in January 1868, which “unhesitatingly” asserted that the United
States government had treated the Indians in a “uniformly unjust manner.”76 Echoing
the findings of the Doolittle Report, the Commission argued that the “civilization” of
72
In addition to Taylor, the Indian Peace Commission was comprised of Chair of the Senate
Committee on Indian Affairs John B. Henderson, private supporters on Indian rights Samuel F. Tappan
and former army major general John B. Sanborn, and four military officers, including General
Sherman.
73
Calloway, 10.
74
Ibid, 112.
75
Ibid, 115.
76
Indian Peace Commission, “Report to the President by the Indian Peace Commission.” (January 7,
1868) in Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy 106.
30
the Indians was the means through which conflict between Indians and whites might
cease, and proposed that the government adopt a program to civilize the Indians.77
The Peace Commission also called upon American missionaries, who were assumed
to be of higher moral character than the majority of those living in proximity to the
tribes, to participate in the civilizing process and negate the impact of those unsavory
Americans with whom the Native population had been in contact.78
Despite the findings of the Doolittle Committee and the Peace Commission,
few concrete steps were taken toward reform in 1868, a year which saw the
impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the resumption of conflict between white
settlers and Native Americans in the West, and the election of Ulysses S. Grant as
president. Within months of assuming office in March 1869, however, Grant began
implementing changes to U.S. policy toward Native Americans, and announced his
intent to achieve peace with the Indian nations while also protecting American
interests in the West.
Grant and the Peace Policy: Waging Peace and Preparing for War
After the end of the Civil War, Grant continued to serve as commander of the
U.S. Army and then Secretary of War, and was thus aware of the ongoing violence in
the West. He was also concerned about the continued territorial growth of the nation,
and did not want conflicts with the tribes to impede American progress. In January
1867, Grant wrote to the War Department, “The protection of the Pacific railroad, so
that not only the portion already completed shall be entirely safe, but that the portion
77
78
Ibid, 108-109.
Ibid, 106.
31
yet to be constructed shall in no way be delayed…is indispensible.”79 Grant also
chafed at the fact that government policy was arranged so that officials had to “fight
them [Native Americans] with one branch of the government and equip and feed
them with another.” 80 Seeking a solution to this situation, Grant ordered Ely S.
Parker, a member of the Seneca tribe who had served as his aide-de-camp during the
Civil War and would later be appointed Grant’s first Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
to draft a plan to secure peace in the West.81 He further expressed hope in 1868 that
the efforts of the Peace Commission would put an end to the fighting, writing, “It is
much better to support a peace commission than a campaign against the Indians.”82
Thus, when Grant assumed the presidency in 1869, he had firsthand
knowledge of the government’s Indian policy and was already considering ways in
which it might change. And, though he was concerned that the expansion of U.S.
territory not be hampered by the existence of the Native population, he also expressed
sympathy for the American Indians, and blamed the succession of Indian wars on the
actions of white Americans. As early as 1854, Grant, in response to his wife’s
concerns for his safety while he was stationed in the West, wrote that the American
Indians were “the most harmless people you ever saw. It really is my opinion that the
whole race would be harmless and peaceable were they not put upon by whites.”83
79
Quoted in H. W. Brands. The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace. (New
York: Random House, 2012), 412.
80
Ibid, 413.
81
Ely S. Parker, “Report on Indian Affairs to the War Department, ” (January 25, 1867). Online by
Milestone Documents. http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/ely-parkers-report-onindian-affairs-to-the-war-department/text (Accessed September 11, 2013).
82
Quoted in Brands, 414.
83
U.S. Grant to Julia Dent Grant, 19 March 1853, in John Y. Simon. Papers of Ulysses S. Grant:
32
After his election, Grant stated his views on the need for reform, asserting in The
Boston Daily Advertiser, “Our present system is full of fraud…It ought to be
reformed,’ and “Our dealings with the Indians properly lay us open to charges of
cruelty and swindling.”84 Still, though Grant favored peace with the indigenous
population, he also announced that those tribes that refused peace “will find the new
administration ready for a sharp and severe war policy.”85
Given his desire for peace with the Indian nations and recognition of the need
to reform the government’s policies toward them, President-elect Grant agreed in
January 1869 to meet with a delegation of Quakers who had turned their attention
from slavery to the status of Native Americans after the end of the Civil War.86 Based
on the Quakers’ previous “laborious and successful efforts” with the Native
Americans, they decided to offer their service in the reform of Indian affairs.87 The
Quakers recommended that Grant reformulate the government’s approach toward the
tribes to one that was based on justice, peace, and Christianity, with the goal of
Volume I, 1837-1861. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967, 296. Grant’s desire to
reform the United States’ policy toward Native Americans was also likely impacted by his experiences
during the Civil War and the desire to avoid further violence in the West. Grant was also apparently
disgusted by the Sand Creek Massacre and the fact that it was perpetrated by the U.S. Army. He wrote
to Colorado Governor John Evans to express these sentiments, and make the point that the massacre
was not an event that occurred in the midst of battle, but was rather a “murder of Indians who were
supposed to be under the protection of the Federal Government.” Quoted in Jean Edward Smith. Grant.
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 518.
84
“Gen. Grant, The New York Times,” (January 3, 1869).
85
Quoted in Mardock, 50.
86
That Grant, a man skeptical of organized religion, implemented such a policy demonstrates the reach
of religion in nineteenth-century life. Both Robert H. Keller and Waltman, describe Grant as largely
irreligious, though he was “nominally” raised a Methodist. Grant did, however, believe that
missionaries would behave in an honorable way toward those Native Americans who required
“civilization.” See Robert H. Keller. American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 18691882. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 22-27 and Waltmann, 328-329.
87
Quaker meeting proceedings, quoted in Illick, “Some of Our Best Indians Are Friends: Quaker
Attitudes and Actions Regarding the Western Indians During the Grant Administration,” 285.
33
civilizing and assimilating them into American society.88 Grant, having already
expressed interest in reforming U.S. policy, agreed with the Quaker delegation’s
proposals, and had Parker contact the Quakers and request their assistance. Parker
informed the Quakers on February 15, 1869, that Grant wanted a list of members who
would “serve as suitable persons for Indian Agents” who could both interact with the
tribes in a fair manner, and also attend to their spiritual needs and help them become
civilized.89
Grant officially announced his intention to reform Indian affairs in his
inaugural message of March 4, 1869, in which he stated, “The proper treatment of the
original occupants of this land – the Indians – is one deserving of careful study. I will
favor any course toward them which tends to their civilization and ultimate
citizenship.”90 Congress authorized the creation of a Board of Indian Commissioners
the following month, and newly appointed Indian Affairs Commissioner Parker
charged its members with determining the specific rights to which Indians were
entitled under the law, whether the practice of negotiating treaties with the tribes
should cease, and whether Native Americans should remain on reservations.91 In
November of that year, the Board published its report, and asserted that the
government’s treatment of Native Americans was “unjust and iniquitous beyond the
88
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 48.
Ely S. Parker to Benjamin Hallowell, February 15, 1869. Printed in the Report of the Joint
Delegation Appointed by the Committees on the Indian Concern of the Yearly Meetings of Baltimore,
Philadelphia and New York. Benjamin Hallowell, Franklin Haines, John H. Dudley, and Joseph
Powell. (1869), x.
90
Grant, “First Inaugural Address.”
91
Ely S. Parker, “Instructions to the Board of Indian Commissioners,” (May 26, 1869), in Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy, 127.
89
34
power of words to express,” and that crimes committed against Indians by whites
were obscured or excused on the grounds that “the Indian is only fit to be
exterminated.”92 The Board further recommended that the government cease
negotiating treaties with the tribes, a process that was deemed farcical, given the
power imbalance between the two, and continue its policy of keeping the Indians on
reservations, which would discourage “relations” between different tribes.93 Further,
the board recommended that Native Americans be legally categorized as “wards of
the government,” and that the federal government agree to “…protect them, to
educate them in industry, the arts of civilization, and the principles of Christianity;
elevate them to the rights of citizenship, and to sustain and clothe them until they can
support themselves.”94
Interior Secretary Jacob Cox’s annual report on Indian affairs was published
at the same time, and, in addition to praising the work of the Board of
Commissioners, he pointed out that increased contact between settlers and Native
Americans would continue into the foreseeable future, as “The completion of one of
the great lines of railway to the Pacific coast has totally changed the conditions under
which the civilized population of the country come in contact with the wild tribes.”95
Further, according to Cox, because American citizens were “in contact with all the
aboriginal tribes within our borders,” the U.S. government could “no longer assume
92
“Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners,” (1869), in Prucha, Documents of United States
Indian Policy, 131-132.
93
Ibid, 133.
94
Ibid.
95
Jacob D. Cox, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, (November 18, 1869) in Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy, 129.
35
that we may, even for a time, leave a large part of them out of the operation of our
system.96
In the aftermath of these reports, Grant publicly proclaimed in December 1869
his desire to make peace with the tribes, and announced his support for the
continuation of the reservation system as a way to provide “absolute protection” for
“these wards of the nation.”97 The new policy would be partially administered by the
Quakers, who, according to Grant, had a history of honest dealings with Native
Americans. Noting that the railroads had increasingly brought the white and Native
populations in contact, and that the two did not “harmonize” well with one another,
Grant framed his new “peace policy” as a force for the civilization and protection of
the Indians until they were able to govern themselves.98 Grant also justified his
actions in moral terms that stressed the humanitarian nature of the peace policy,
asserting that “A system which looks to the extinction of a race is too horrible for a
nation to adopt without entailing upon itself the wrath of all Christendom and
engendering in the citizen a disregard for human life...”99
The peace policy, as adopted by the Grant administration, was thus designed
to prevent the physical annihilation of the Native Americans, which Grant deemed
morally unacceptable. That Native culture and traditions would be destroyed in the
process was an acceptable price to pay, however, as it would lead to the civilization
96
Ibid.
Grant, “First Annual Message.”
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid.
97
36
and elevation of the American Indians, and, more importantly, accommodate the
‘manifest destiny’ of the American people.
The development and implementation of the ‘peace policy’ stemmed from
decades of debate over the treatment and status of the indigenous population living
within the United States. It was based on the notion that if Native Americans did not
adopt the “superior” characteristics of white civilization they would continue to
decline, potentially to the point of extinction. U.S. officials were genuinely concerned
with this possibility, and argued the immorality of allowing such a thing to happen.
At the same time, however, while they repeatedly expressed concern for the status of
Native Americans, U.S. officials refused to acknowledge that American territorial
expansion and the removal of the American Indians onto increasingly smaller plots of
land was at the root of the conflict along the frontier. Further, U.S. officials were
unwilling to adopt any policies that limited white settlements in the West or the
construction of the railroads; rather, they repeatedly expected Native acquiescence in
the face of growing white territorial demands.
This rigid approach led federal policymakers to conclude that assimilation,
even if conducted under the threat of force, was the only course of action that would
both prevent the decimation of American Indians and ensure U.S. expansion across
the continent. Thus, shortly after Grant’s announcement of the peace policy, efforts to
assimilate Native “wards of the state” began immediately and enthusiastically, and
were heralded by U.S. officials as a means to protect Native populations and end the
wars in the West. Assimilation was also, however, a means to ensure that Native
37
Americans remained within the confines of reservations, and protect white settlers
who increasingly encroached upon Native lands.
“THEY MUST YIELD OR PERISH:” ASSIMILATION AND THE
DESTRUCTION OF TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY
In January 1867, two years before assuming the office of Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, Ely Parker, aide-de-camp to then Secretary of War Ulysses S. Grant,
outlined, at the request of the future president, the basics of what later became the
peace policy. Parker, a member of the Seneca nation, proclaimed that all Indian tribes
should be placed on reservations, which he referred to as “separate districts of the
country,” where they would receive “philanthropic aid and Christian instruction.”100
He also suggested that the United States Army should protect the reservations,
prevent encroachments onto Native lands by local white populations, and force
resistant tribes to conform to life on reservations.
However, Parker’s vision for peace between the Native and white populations
also differed significantly from the peace policy as it was implemented between 1869
and 1877. He suggested that a board of inquiry composed of prominent white officials
and a “number of the most reputable educated Indians, selected from different tribes,”
be established to investigate the status of American Indians living in the West.”101
Further, Parker outlined the need for Native participation in the development of the
U.S. government’s Indian policy, and stressed both the intelligence of American
Indians, and their hostility toward U.S. government dictates. Like other U.S. officials,
100
101
Parker, “Report on Indian Affairs to the War Department,” (1867).
Ibid.
38
39
Parker wanted peace between the U.S. government and the American Indian tribes,
but on terms acceptable to both white and indigenous Americans.
The U.S. government did not adopt Parker’s vision, however, and his brief
tenure as Indian Affairs Commissioner was the only time a Native American was
involved in the development or implementation of the peace policy.102 Between his
appointment by President Grant in 1869 and his forced resignation in June 1871,
Parker consistently highlighted what he termed the steady “progress” of the tribes in
attaining a higher level of civilization, while also pointing out the ongoing tensions
between settlers and tribes throughout the West.103 He was also a staunch supporter of
the peace policy, however, and federal efforts to remove “the clouds of ignorance and
superstition” and bring the “light of a Christian civilization” to “savage” Indians.104
The Commissioner’s belief that Native Americans should be involved in the
design and implementation of the peace policy, as well as his ethnic heritage, angered
Board of Indian Commissioners member William Welsh, an Episcopal layman who
favored a more severe program of assimilation for American Indians. Welsh believed
102
President Grant appointed Parker to lead the BIA shortly after assuming the presidency. Prior to
that, Parker had served as Grant’s aide-de-camp during the Civil War, and remained on his staff
between 1865 and 1869. Though Parker, as a Native American, was not afforded the protections of the
Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendments, he was deemed eligible to for
the Commissioner position, both because of his military service and the fact that he lived as a
“civilized” man, rather than on a reservation. See C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, “The Indian at
Appomattox,” The New York Times (October 17, 2013).
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/the-indian-at-appomattox/?_r=1 (Accessed
November 13, 2013) and William H. Armstrong. Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union
General and Seneca Chief. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1978), 135.
103
Ely S. Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1870), 1. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep70/reference/history.annrep70.i0002.
pdf (Accessed September 11, 2013).
104
Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1869).
40
it was inappropriate for a Native American, even one who seemingly met white
standards of civilization and assimilation, to be involved in directing U.S. Indian
policy. According to Welsh, as “the representative of a race only one generation
removed from barbarism,” Parker had no business interacting with whites “who were
his superiors.”105 He then falsely accused Parker of abetting fraud and corruption
within the BIA, which led to a Congressional investigation and Parker’s resignation.
The ouster of Parker and exclusion of American Indians from the
development of the peace policy illustrates the common perception among white U.S.
government officials that Native peoples were ignorant and incapable of determining
their futures. Welsh, along with a majority of his contemporaries, believed that the
only way to prevent the extinction of the American Indians was through their
assimilation, which would be directed solely by white U.S. government officials. This
chapter demonstrates that, despite the alleged emphasis on the just and humane
treatment of Native Americans, their forced assimilation and the destruction of their
sovereignty were central components of the peace policy. And, while these actions
were ostensibly undertaken to prevent the extinction of the Native population,
advocates of the peace policy also consistently highlighted the ways in which Native
assimilation would ensure the continued territorial expansion of the United States.
105
Welsh, quoted in C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, “Ely Parker and the Contentious Peace Policy,” The
Western Historical Quarterly 2 (Summer 2010): 213.
41
Assimilating American Indian “Wards of the State”
The notion that the United States could and should assimilate Native
Americans living within its borders emerged after the end of the Civil War, when
James R. Doolittle’s Committee connected the decline of the Native population to the
expansion of white frontier settlements. To prevent tribes from complete decimation,
allegedly caused by their inability to compete with superior white civilization,
missionaries of high moral standing would manage reservations and educate Native
Americans in the ways of white society. While on the reservation, Indians would be
protected from corrupting influences and learn how to manage their families properly,
engage in manual labor and farming, receive the Christian gospel, and eventually
abandon their tribal structure. In short, assimilation, as defined by those who
advocated it, entailed the complete abandonment of Native American culture. Federal
officials argued that, short of total war, this was the only way to save the indigenous
population.
There were also practical reasons why the U.S. government adopted
assimilation as a cornerstone of its post-Civil War policy toward American Indians.
Having decided that exterminating the Indians was immoral, but remaining
committed to the expansion of white settlements, U.S. officials argued that
assimilation was the most humanitarian and cost-effective way to protect the Native
population and ensure peace along the frontier. As The New York Times noted in
1869, previous federal policy toward the Indians had enveloped the country in a
costly “quagmire” that cost “millions of appropriations” and created a situation “more
42
hopeless than ever.”106 Fewer wars, combined with the civilization of Indian “wards
of the state,” would both bolster the federal treasury and transform Native Americans
from an “indolent” people reliant on federal annuities, into industrious, self-sufficient
Americans.107 Additionally, reshaping the Indian tribes in the image of white
Americans would eventually end the tribes’ capacity to attack frontier settlements.
The short-term cost of “buying off the hostility of the savages” was worth their
ultimate pacification and assimilation, according to President Grant, to “relieve our
frontiers from danger of Indian depredations.”108
Though U.S. officials argued that assimilation would benefit the Native
population and ensure its survival, equally important was the continued expansion of
white settlements throughout the frontier. The United States government was clear
that Native Americans who refused its overtures of civilization would be compelled
to participate, often by the United States Army. In the words of Indian Affairs
Commissioner Frances A. Walker, American Indians had to accept that assimilation
was “the only hope of salvation for the aborigines of the continent” and acknowledge
106
“The Indian Appropriations,” The New York Times (March 23, 1869).
The suggestion that cash payments from the U.S. government encouraged Indian indolence was
repeatedly expressed by reformers inside and outside of government. See, for example, Frances A.
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government Printing
Office, 1873) 1. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep73/reference/history.annrep73.i0003.
pdf (Accessed September 11, 2013) and Robert D.D. Patterson, “Our Indian Policy,” The Overland
Monthly XI (September 1873): 209.
108
Frances A. Walker. “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1872), 1. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep72/reference/history.annrep72.i0003.
pdf (Accessed September 11, 2013), and Ulysses S. Grant, “Sixth Annual Message,” December 7,
1874. Gerhard Peters and Hohn T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29515 (Accessed September 16, 2013).
107
43
they would be “relentlessly crushed” if they did not accept this.109 Further, according
to Walker, American Indians must acknowledge that “the westward course of our
population is neither to be denied nor delayed for the sake of all Indians that ever
called this country their home…they must yield or perish.” For Native Americans,
“yielding” entailed the acceptance of sedentary life and the teachings of Christian
missionaries dedicated to preventing them from “perishing.”
Creating “Missionary Outposts”: Reservations and the Peace Policy
Reservations were central to the United States government’s assimilation
program; they offered protection to Native Americans from immoral outside
influences and ensured the tribes remained captive audiences to the missionaries sent
to civilize them. Reservations, according to Secretary of the Interior Jacob Cox, also
suited the expansionist goals of the U.S. government. Placing Indians on reservations,
wrote Cox in 1869, was primarily a means to ensure that “pioneers and settlers may
be free from the terrors of wandering hostile tribes.”110 The assimilation of Native
Americans was, for Cox, a secondary objective.
Beginning in late 1869, Quaker missionaries served as superintendents and
agents at Indian reservations in Nebraska, Kansas, and in the Indian Territory.111
Initially, a combination of Quakers and army officers supervised the seventy
reservations located within U.S. territory, but when Congress declared the
109
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1872).
Cox, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, (1869) in Prucha, Documents of United States
Indian Policy, 129.
111
It was the Quakers who first suggested that religious missionaries should administer reservations.
They were, therefore, the only religious denomination included as reservation superintendents and
agents at the outset of the peace policy.
110
44
involvement of the army in this capacity illegal, Grant and Secretary Cox invited
other religious groups to nominate men to administer the reservations.112 Additional
religious organizations were assigned to reservations beginning in 1870, based largely
on their preexisting proximity to reservations. Throughout the 1870s, members of
thirteen different religious denominations and organizations managed and
proselytized at Indian reservations across the continent in collaboration with the U.S.
government.113 In addition to their missionary activities, religious groups drafted
annual reports on the “progress” of the tribes on their reservations, and also
maintained contact with local military authorities.
Missionaries were expected not just to civilize and Christianize the American
Indians under their control, but to transform reservations into “missionary outposts”
staffed by men and women with strong moral convictions who were dedicated to their
task.114 Religious denominations appointed Indian agents to manage the reservations,
112
Grant initially planned for U.S. Army officers to have a more prominent role in implementing the
peace policy, but in the Indian Appropriations Act of 1870, Congress included a provision making it
illegal for officers to accept civil appointments. Congress had previously made these appointments,
and some members resented Grant’s decision to take this prerogative away. Others believed the
appointment of U.S. Army officers went against the humanitarian character of the peace policy. See
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 49-50.
113
In addition to the Quakers, missionaries from the Catholic, Baptist, Free Will Baptist, Methodist,
Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, United Presbyterian, Episcopal, Unitarian, Lutheran churches
participated in the program, as well as members of the Christian Union, and American Missionary
Association organizations. These religious organizations did not collaborate across denominational
lines; indeed, they often complained to the BIA that they were slighted in comparison with other
religious groups, both in terms of the number of reservations they were allotted, and in the size of the
Native populations they hoped to civilize. See Keller, American Protestantism and United States
Indian Policy, 219-222.
114
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 54. The government’s use of religious organizations to
implement the peace policy was not at odds with mid-nineteenth-century ideas about the role of
religion in American life. Christian instruction was viewed as an essential element of moral and
intellectual development, especially with regard to the task of civilizing the “heathen” Indians.
According to Keller, nineteenth century Americans viewed the relationship between the church and the
45
and hired teachers, generally from their own denominations, to instruct Native
Americans in the basics of white civilization. In exchange, the federal government
funded religious groups’ activities on the reservations.115 As early as 1871, acting
Indian Affairs Commissioner H. R. Clum touted the success of this approach, noting
“Much has been accomplished by entrusting to men of good standing and moral
character the responsible offices of superintendents and agents,” who “sought to
inspire the confidence of the Indians in the government, by dealing fairly and liberally
with them.”116
Missionaries also taught Native Americans how to farm, organize their
families according to white middle-class norms, and educate Native children on the
benefits of white civilization. Peace policy proponent Reverend Geoffrey Ainslie, an
elected official in the Idaho Territory, articulated the importance of reservations in
this regard in The Princeton Review in 1875: “Give the Indian a fair opportunity;
shield him from adverse influences; give him the teaching of the Bible; and bring him
under the power of good example, and blight of decay will no longer rest upon the
race.”117 At the same time, the use of reservations would protect white settlers “at the
mercy” of “Indian hostilities,” and save the U.S. government the cost of stationing
state as one of mutual assistance in the attainment of “common social goals.” See Keller, American
Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 3-4.
115
Robert H. Keller, “Episcopal Reformers and Affairs at Red Cloud Agency, 1870-1876,” Nebraska
History 68 (Fall 1987): 117.
116
H. R. Clum, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1871). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep71/reference/history.annrep71.i0002.
pdf (Accessed September 11, 2013).
117
Geoffrey Ainslie, “The Indian Question,” The Princeton Review. 4 (July 1875): 442-443.
46
tens of thousands of troops in the West to wage an all-out military campaign against
the tribes.118
Relying on reservations and civilization, rather than large-scale fighting, to
ensure peace along the frontier did not mean, however, that the U.S. military was
uninvolved in enforcing the peace policy. The frequent maxim of officials involved
with Indian affairs was that the “Indians should be made as comfortable on, and as
uncomfortable off, their reservations as was in the power of the Government.”119
Once on the reservation, Native peoples were prohibited from leaving without a
permit from the agent in charge of the reservation. Further, if an individual left the
reservation without permission and engaged in hostilities with white settlers or other
tribes, the U.S. Army was authorized “to strike them without parley.”120 As U.S.
Army General Philip Sheridan, commander of the Division of the Missouri, stated in
1870, “The Indian is to have a comfortable home, undisturbed by the settler’s greed;
but he is to live on it, willing or not.”121
The reservations, though characterized as crucial to the protection and
education of American Indians, were not immune to federal efforts to reduce them in
size or erase them from existence. Throughout the 1870s, U.S. officials suggested that
Indians might be concentrated on two or three large preserves, or within the Indian
Territory. This notion of “concentrating” the tribes together on large reservations was
justified on the grounds that smaller reservations were inadequate to protect Native
118
Ibid.
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1873).
120
Ibid.
121
Sheridan, quoted in “The Indian Problem,” The Nation, X (June 16,1870): 389-390.
119
47
Americans from “the cupidity of the white man.”122 Federal officials acknowledged
that the tribes were generally opposed to removal, but justified the policy by pointing
out that “large bodies of land would be thrown open to settlement, proceeds of whose
sale would be ample to defray all expense of the removals.”123
Also indicative of the U.S. government’s desire to use reservations as a tool
not just for the assimilation of the Native population, but also for the acquisition of
new territory, was its response to white violations of tribal lands. During the same
decade the federal government passed Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871 to end the
terrorist campaigns of the Ku Klux Klan in the South, it refused to take measures to
punish white settlers for their incursions on Native lands. Further, officials’ proposed
solutions to these situations was to divest Indians from their land or use annuity goods
as a means to force territorial changes. Grant, referencing the conflict between the
Sioux and prospectors who violated treaty obligations by mining for gold in Black
Hills, South Dakota, suggested in his 1875 annual message that withholding promised
annuities from the Sioux might force the tribe to relinquish portions of its territory.
Noting that negotiations over U.S. acquisition of the Black Hills had “failed,” Grant
endorsed the Interior Secretary’s suggestion that, in order to induce the Sioux’s
compliance, promised annuities could be “issued or withheld at his (the Interior
Secretary’s) discretion.”124 Similarly, Indian Affairs Commissioner Smith wrote in
122
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1876).
Ibid.
124
Ulysses S. Grant, “Seventh Annual Message,” December 7, 1875. Gerhard Peters and Hohn T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29516#axzz2fUkFG2te (Accessed September 22,
2013).
123
48
1876 that white settlers continued to violate mineral-rich American Indian
reservations, and that it was difficult for the U.S. Army to adequately patrol the
boundaries between reservations and white settlements. Rather than punish those who
violated reservation land, however, Smith suggested that concentrating Indians on “a
few reservations” would bring an end to “the difficulty now surrounding the Indian
question.”125
Between 1869 and 1877, U.S. officials consistently cited reservations as
critical to the assimilation of Native Americans. Though their borders were not
impervious to interference by white settlers or the U.S. government, they were an
important component of the peace policy because they were the venue used by
Christian missionaries to teach Native Americans the basic principles of white
civilization.
“The First Lessons of Civilization”: Reeducating Native Americans
The U.S. officials who implemented the peace policy consistently argued that
the only way to prevent the extinction of the American Indians was to teach them
how to live like white Americans. Advocates of assimilation described education as
“a fundamental and indispensible factor” of the civilization program, and as “one of
the most potent agencies for the civilization of the race.”126 The U.S. government
gave missionary organizations complete control over the administration of
125
Ibid.
Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, (Washington DC: Government Printing Office,
1875), 14; and H.R. Clum. “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.” November 15, 1871.
Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1. Online by University of Wisconsin Digital
Collections. Accessed September 11, 2013 on
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep71/reference/history.annrep71.i0002.
pdf.
126
49
educational programs at the reservations they managed, as well as the support of the
U.S. Army, if needed. The government’s placement of “men with Christian motives
in close relation to the Indians” gave reformers hope that, finally, the conflicts
between the United States and the Indian nations would be resolved and that newly
assimilated Indians would embrace the ways of white civilization.127 President Grant
was confident in this aspect of the peace policy, stating in 1870 that within a few
years the efforts of missionaries would “bring all of the Indians upon reservations,
where they will live in houses and have schoolhouses and churches, and be pursuing
peaceful and self-sustaining avocations.”128
The educational efforts of missionaries focused on traditional school subjects,
such as English and basic arithmetic, but the bulk of their efforts were spent on
lessons designed to “civilize” their students. American Indians were expected to
speak English and wear appropriately gendered clothing, and Native men were
required to cut their hair. Christian religious instruction was also obligatory for all
American Indians living on reservations. Missionaries and U.S. officials viewed
religious conversion as “the most effective agent for the civilization of any people,”
and argued that presenting other aspects of white civilization within the context of
Christianity would make assimilation more “attractive” to Native Americans.129
127
James E. Rhoads, “The Peace Policy,” The Nation 437 (November 13, 1873): 320.
Ulysses S. Grant, “Second Annual Message,” December 5, 1870. Gerhard Peters and Hohn T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29511#axzz2fHaimF5W (Accessed September 18,
2013).
129
Board of Indian Commissioners and unnamed Upper Missouri agent, quoted in Keller, 28.
128
50
The missionaries also attempted to reshape the American Indian family in the
image of the ideal white middle-class family, in which the men labored outside of the
home and the women cared for domestic matters. Native men were thus instructed in
farming and manual labor, and women in cleaning, laundry and sewing.130 Through
these labors, Native Americans would, according to missionaries and U.S.
government officials, develop strong work ethics and a sense of individualism, and in
the process abandon communal life and loyalty to the tribe.131
The tribes were also forced to abandon polygamy. These efforts met with
varying degrees of success; missionaries often tasked tribal elders with implementing
such dictates, and as such they were often only tepidly enforced. Wooden Leg, a
judge on a Northern Cheyenne reservation, recalled enforcing the ban on polygamy
out of fear that harm would come to his tribe if he did otherwise. After sending one of
his own wives away, and forcing others to do the same, however, he “listened, said
nothing, and did nothing,” when he learned that, rather than complying with the
order, many men remained in polygamous marriages and split their time between
wives.132
Because of situations like that described by Wooden Leg, missionary efforts
focused most intensely on children, who were viewed as more malleable and more
likely to adopt the ways of white civilization. Depending on the reservation, children
might attend classes at reservation schools for several hours in the morning and then
130
David Wallace Adams. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School
Experience, 1875-1928. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 29-30.
131
Keller, American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 151-152.
132
Wooden Leg, “Serving as Judge,” in Calloway, 157-159.
51
return to their families, or would live at reservation boarding schools between eight
and nine months of the year.133 Both the missionaries who managed the reservations
and the BIA preferred the latter, because, according to Commissioner Walker, “the
boarding school…takes the youth under constant care,” and provides them with
“instruction in the first lessons of civilization, which can be found only in a wellordered home.”134 According to the U.S. government, Native American homes did
not meet this definition.
Henry Sheldon, who served at the Round Valley Reservation in California
between 1877 and 1884, agreed with Walker, and requested that the federal
government authorize a boarding school at Round Valley to “take the children from
the corrupting influences of the camps,” as their exposure to them was harmful for
their “mental, or moral being.”135 The children under Sheldon’s supervision expressed
their opinions of the boarding school by consistently running away, either back to
their family camps, or by seeking paid employment off of the reservation.136 Young
women, responsible for performing most of the domestic labor at the school, also
repeatedly sought permission to return to their homes.137 In 1883, several of
133
The first off-reservation boarding school, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was established in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1879. By 1900, there were 153 Indian boarding schools operating across the
United States, which educated tens of thousands of Native Americans. Adams, 31, 58.
134
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1873). Walker also determined, through
an unstated calculation, the four or five years of instruction in civilization would cure “one-half of the
barbarism of the Indian tribe permanently.”
135
Quoted in Todd Benson, “The Consequences of Reservation Life: Native Californians on the Round
Valley Reservation, 1871-1884.” Pacific Historical Review. 60 (May 1991): 239. The Round Valley
Reservation housed members of the Yuki, Konkow, Nomlaki, Wailaki, Achumawi, Whilkut, and Pomo
nations.
136
Ibid, 240.
137
Ibid.
52
Sheldon’s charges burned down the school’s dining hall, kitchen, and main building
in protest.
Adults who defied missionaries often faced retaliation from the agents
administering their reservations. Arapaho artist Carl Sweezy, for example, recalled
that agents “threatened to withhold annuity goods, to compel us to send our children
to school or to give up our medicine dances or to break sod and plant crops,” and
similarly threatened to withhold goods from the entire families of men who “refused
to cut their hair and wear trousers.”138 Sweezy further pointed out that such treatment
was not stipulated in the 1868 Medicine Lodge Treaty that governed relations
between the U.S. and Arapaho nation, and that such actions made Indians “sullen and
uncooperative, and turned us back to the old road rather than forward to the new.”139
Such setbacks were worth the costs of constructing a few new buildings,
according to federal officials, because while efforts to teach the tribes the ways of
white civilization were expensive in the near term, these costs were not expected to
continue indefinitely. The educational efforts of the religious organizations would
relieve American Indians of their “childish ignorance,” and while this might initially
result in damage to buildings or “sullen” men and women, they ultimately benefited
from their “first useful exercise of muscle” and “lessons from…labor.”140 And, as
successive Indian Commissioners stressed, the costs of teaching civilization dwarfed
138
Carl Sweezy, “Learning the White Man’s Ways,” in Calloway, 163.
Ibid.
140
J.Q. Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1875), 16. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep75/reference/history.annrep75.i0003.
pdf (Accessed September 11, 2013).
139
53
the costs of the wars that would resume if the tribes were allowed off of their
reservations. That the resistance of Native populations, or the impulses of a few
children at the Round Valley Reservation, might represent the opposition to
assimilation felt by a majority of the Indian nations, did not matter. The expansion of
white settlements was paramount, and the assimilation of the tribes was the most costeffective way to ensure it.
Besides, the peace policy was, according to its proponents, already proving its
effectiveness among some Indian nations. Citing the success of the combined efforts
of the War Department and BIA in the Arizona Territory, Indian Affairs
Commissioner John Q. Smith highlighted the subjugation of the Apache tribe in 1872
as an example of the cost effectiveness of feeding, rather than fighting, the indigenous
population. According to Smith, since their defeat the Apache had stopped fighting
and began “digging ditches for crops and making adobe dwellings,” and as a result
had significantly lowered military expenses in Arizona.141 The U.S. government’s
success in transitioning the Apache nation from warriors to farmers was heralded as
proof that the peace policy was working and that American Indians could adopt this
crucial element of white civilization, even if forced upon them by the U.S. Army.
“The Moral Suasion of Hunger:” Farming and Civilization
A key component of missionaries’ educational mandate focused on the
transformation of American Indians into sedentary farmers. Converting Native
Americans into farmers had long been heralded as a way for white Americans to live
141
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875).
54
in peace with the tribes. In 1818, for example, members of the House Committee on
Indian Affairs argued that if the U.S. government gave Native Americans the tools
with which to farm, “they will naturally, in time, take hold of the plough; as their
minds become enlightened and expand, the Bible will be their book, and they will
grow up in habits of morality and industry.”142 Teaching Natives to embrace farming,
according to the Committee, represented a major step toward their acceptance of
Christianity and white civilization. These sentiments survived into the 1860s and
1870s, and helped spur efforts to transform American Indians into self-sufficient
farmers. Equally important, however, was the fact that Indians who farmed required
less land than Indians who roamed and hunted. Once the Indians adopted farming,
there would be “surplus” land that could be sold to white settlers for cultivation.
At the outset of the peace policy, the Bureau of Indians Affairs decided that
Native Americans would be supplied with “the means for engaging in agricultural
pursuits,” and eventually given their own homes and allotments of land, which would
induce a “strong incentive to him (the Indian) to labor” in one fixed location.143
Advocates of assimilation also hoped that the adoption of agriculture would foster
property ownership and individualism, and in the process destroy the “herd”
mentality of Native Americans.144 Missionaries thus focused on teaching Native
Americans practical skills designed to show them the value of hard work and the
benefits of owning private property.
142
Quoted in Adams, 6.
Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1869); Parker, “Report of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1870).
144
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1873).
143
55
Though the labor of Native populations was essential to the management of
reservations, and all able-bodied men and women were required to work, none of
them were actually paid for their efforts. Perhaps sensing the contradiction of this
situation in the years following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery
in the South, Indian Affairs Commissioner Smith addressed this issue in 1875.
According to Smith, Native Americans living on reservations were compensated not
only through federal annuity payments to reservations, but also in the “moral effect in
promoting habits of industry” and in the improvements on their land.145
Quaker missionary and reservation administrator Lawrie Tatum described
these efforts at a reservation boarding school attended by Cheyenne and Arapaho
boys in 1876. Tatum recounted how boys “hauled wood for the mission and agency,”
and “plowed, planted and cultivated” over one hundred and twenty acres on the
“school farm” and were taught how to invest annuity funds in seed and livestock to
increase their production capacity.146 He further described reservation programs in
which adult males were enlisted to deliver annuity goods to neighboring reservations,
allowing them to use their “energies in a way that would be beneficial to themselves
and the government” by providing them with the “opportunity to engage in some
commendable industry.147 Tatum did not relate whether the men and boys who
participated in these programs agreed that the moral benefits were payment enough
for their work.
145
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875).
Lawrie Tatum. Our Red Brothers and the Peace Policy of Ulysses S. Grant. (Philadelphia: John C.
Winston and Co., 1899), 229.
147
Ibid, 231.
146
56
If Americans Indians refused to engage in farm work, however, the BIA
decreed that they should be refused food or other rations, and “driven to toil by cold
and pangs of hunger.”148 Such a policy was perfectly valid, according to the federal
government, as it would morally benefit the tribes by “promoting habits of industry”
and teach Indians to “care for themselves.”149 According to this logic, starvation was
a tool to be deployed in the effort to civilize American Indians, and was perfectly
acceptable because it would force Indians to adopt farming, an important step on the
path to their civilization.
Some officials took this argument a step further and suggested that the federal
government cease all annuity payments to the tribes to force their adoption of
farming. Withholding all payments, even though the federal government was
prohibited by treaty obligations from doing so, would thus force Indians to engage in
agricultural labor. Indian Affairs Commissioner Smith argued, for example, that the
“moral suasion of hunger” would force Indians to feed themselves, and questioned
why the federal government should be required to “clothe and feed any class of men
who are able to shift for themselves.”150 Smith and others insisted that such harsh
steps were required in interactions with the Americans Indians, who were naturally
disinclined toward physical labor. 151
148
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875).
Ibid.
150
Ibid.
151
Missionaries assigned to reservations during the 1870s seemingly accepted such notions. Quaker
missionary Lawrie Tatum, for example, suggested that those Indians without annuity funds were
“civilized” more rapidly than those who received funds from the U.S. government. Tatum, 243.
149
57
If even this tactic failed to force the tribes to farm, Smith suggested that more
drastic measures be taken. Fertile but unfarmed land, according to Smith, should not
be “allowed to remain for an indefinite period an uncultivated waste,” rather, based
on “public interest” the government should repossess such land, “either for the
occupancy of other tribes of Indians or white people.”152 Though this would violate
treaties between the U.S. government and the Indian nations, “public necessity must
ultimately become supreme law.” Smith’s comments reflect the attitudes of U.S.
officials toward Native sovereignty, which, as part of the peace policy, was
consistently eroded throughout the 1870s.
Ending the “Fiction” of Native American Sovereignty
In his 1869 annual address, President Grant formally announced that the
federal government no longer viewed Native Americans as members of sovereign
nations, but rather as wards of the United States, in need of guidance and assistance.
For the architects of the peace policy, this characterization reflected a fact that had
long been true, and highlighted the absurdity of relying on treaties to govern
interactions between the U.S. and the Indian nations. Episcopalian Bishop Henry
Whipple, a longtime advocate of Indian reform who worked closely with the Sioux
nation in Minnesota, pointed out what he viewed as the ludicrousness of the treaty
system as early as 1864. In The North American Review, Whipple argued that
recognizing the tribes as independent nations was a “fatal mistake” on the part of the
U.S. government, because they lacked a central government and had no ability to
152
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1876).
58
“make or execute laws.”153 Four years later, in a letter to the Board of Indian
Commissioners, Whipple stated his opposition to the treaty system again. “Our
system is based on a falsehood; we recognize the wandering Indian tribe as an
independent nation, and make and ratify treaties as with foreign and civilized
powers.”154 This was done, according to Whipple, “with the full knowledge that they
are to send no representatives to us, and we none to them; that they have no power to
compel us to observe a treaty,” and despite the fact that they are “our wards.”155
Beginning in 1869, both the Board of Indian Commissioners and
Commissioner of Indian Affairs Parker recommended that the treaty system be
abandoned because the tribes were not sovereign nations of equal status to the United
States. According to Parker, “a treaty involves the idea of a compact between two
sovereign powers, each possessing a sufficient authority and force to compel
compliance.”156 The Indian nations no longer met this criterion, according to Parker,
because they lacked an “organized government” that could “secure faithful
obedience” to treaties with the U.S.157 Ending the capacity of Native Americans to
negotiate treaties, however, would also give the U.S. government more control over
Native persons and their land, and negate tribal claims of sovereignty. And, if no
153
H.B. Whipple, “The Indian System,” in The North American Review 258 (1864, Reprinted in
Winter 1973): 35-36.
154
Henry Whipple. Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate: Being Reminiscences and
Recollections of the Right Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple, D.D. LL.D., Bishop of Minnesota.
(Macmillan Company: London, 1902), 523.
155
Ibid.
156
Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1869).
157
Ibid.
59
longer considered sovereign nations, the United States could place the American
Indians and their lands under the jurisdiction of U.S. law.
Before officials in the executive branch could address the treaty issue,
however, the United States Congress did so in the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871.
At the end of a paragraph allocating funding for the Yankton tribe of Sioux, a rider
was attached which stated that, following passage of the bill, “no Indian nation or
tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged, or recognized as
an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by
treaty.”158 Though agreeing to honor those treaties already negotiated with the tribes,
the treaty system between the U.S. and the Indian nations was formally abolished.
Relations between the U.S. government and the Indian nations were no longer
characterized as those between sovereign parties; the United States government gave
itself the authority to handle relations with the tribes as it saw fit. Though the end of
the treaty system was the result of an ongoing dispute between the House of
Representatives and the Senate, advocates of the peace policy welcomed it, and used
the tribes’ officially diminished status to further reduce their sovereignty.159
158
U.S. House of Representatives, “Indian Appropriations Act 1871,” in Prucha, Documents of United
States Indian Policy, 136.
159
The House of Representatives, though responsible for appropriating funds for Indians affairs, had
no role in negotiating treaties between the U.S. and the tribes, which was the purview of the Senate and
President. Further, the treaty process was used to sell Native lands to corporations, but the Senate did
not extend similar rights to individuals who might otherwise have been able to purchase land under the
Homestead Act, a measure that was supported in the House of Representatives. To end this process and
attain equal standing with the Senate on Indian affairs, the House ended the treaty system. Prucha,
American Indian Policy in Crisis, 67-69. Members of Congress also had ideological reasons for ending
the practice. Radical Republicans argued that tribal sovereignty was a form of “local autonomy
incompatible” with federal supremacy. Additionally, railroad corporations supported the abolition of
the treaty system because they believed it was an “obstacle to construction.” Foner, 463.
60
Beginning in 1871, successive Commissioners of Indian Affairs argued that
all Native Americans should be placed under the jurisdiction of state and federal laws.
Following the dissolution of the treaty system, they determined that a new set of laws
governing relations between U.S. citizens and American Indians was required both
because of the “changed circumstances” of the tribes, and to clarify how to handle
their status in civil and criminal disputes.160 As the 1870s progressed, federal officials
further recommended that the entirety of the indigenous population be “brought
within the protection and restraint of ordinary law” and that civilized Indians be
permitted to adopt American citizenship.161 In his 1874 report, Indian Affairs
Commissioner Smith argued that such measures would benefit the Native population,
reflect the fact that their tribal government structures had collapsed, and put an end to
the “fiction of sovereignty” by which the tribes were described as independent
nations.162
Further, extending the authority of U.S. law over the tribes would actually
assist efforts to civilize them and grant American Indians the same protections as
white Americans. Bishop William Hobart Hare, who served as a missionary to the
Sioux in the Dakota Territory, expressed this view in 1877: “Wish well to the Indians
as we may…the efforts of civil agents, teachers, and missionaries are like the
160
Clum, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1871). Clum further noted that previous
laws, including the 1834 Trade and Intercourse Act, which governed trade between U.S. citizens and
Native Americans, and statutes in the 1851 Indian Appropriations Act regarding trade with tribes in the
Southwest, were outdated and did not reflect the current state of relations between the two parties.
161
J.Q. Smith, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1874). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep74/reference/history.annrep74.i0003.
pdf (Accessed November 13, 2013).
162
Ibid.
61
struggles of drowning men weighted with lead as long as by the absence of law
Indian society is left without a base.”163
The destruction of Native sovereignty, as with the rest of the peace policy,
was characterized as beneficial to American Indians. Defining Natives as “an ignorant
and helpless people,” and treating them accordingly, was the humanitarian thing to do
because relating to them as if “they were capable of acting for themselves in the
capacity of a nation,” as the United States had done through the 1860s, had nearly
caused their extinction.164 However, ending the rights of Native Americans to
negotiate treaties and placing them under the legal jurisdiction of the United States
also gave the federal government complete control over the nature of their relations.
Further, because American Indians were not afforded citizenship or the protections of
the post-Civil War Constitutional amendments, they had no ability to challenge their
changing status in relation to the U.S. This was not inconsistent with the humanitarian
goals of the peace policy, according to U.S. officials, because the destruction of
Native sovereignty would assist Native Americans in abandoning their tribal ways in
favor of “a completed civilization” that accepted the ways of white society.165
For those who believed assimilation was the only way to save Native
Americans from extinction, placing the tribes within the jurisdiction of the American
legal system, in combination with their reeducation and captivity on reservations,
163
E. A. Hayt, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC: Government
Printing Office, 1877). University of Wisconsin Digital Collections http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgibin/History/Historyidx?type=turn&entity=History.AnnRep77.p0010&id=History.AnnRep77&isize=M
(Accessed September 20, 2013).
164
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875).
165
Hayt, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1877).
62
would ensure they eventually adopted the ways of white civilization, whether they
wanted to or not. These efforts to assimilate the tribes and move them within the
sphere of U.S. domestic law were done under the guise of humanitarianism and the
concern that American Indians would become extinct if not taken under the care of
the United States. In reality, however, the destruction of Native culture, family life,
and traditions ensured the continued expansion of white settlements along the
frontier, and established a system in which the United States could dictate to the
tribes and forgo the negotiation of legally binding treaties. Native Americans on
reservations had no voice in these events, and no opportunity to shape the policies
that governed them.
For those Indian nations not yet settled on reservations, relations with the U.S.
government were a different matter. Tribes designated as “wild Indians” or “roamers”
by the U.S. fought assimilation and reservation life throughout the 1870s, making the
years that promised to usher in peace along the frontier the scene of constant fighting.
The efforts of the U.S. Army to “subdue” and remove Native American populations
during the 1870s demonstrates its important role in the implementation of the peace
policy, and highlights the U.S. government’s willingness to “discipline” American
Indians who resisted resettlement and assimilation. The use of force to compel Native
participation in federal assimilation programs, and to punish those who refused, was
thus a prominent aspect of U.S. Indian policy during the peace policy era.
“THE IRON FINGERS IN A VELVET GLOVE:” FORCE,
REMOVAL, AND THE PEACE POLICY
In April 1879, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce reflected on his tribe’s removal
from the Wallowa Valley in Oregon two years prior. In an account of Nez Perce
interactions with white settlers, Joseph emphasized that his tribe’s peaceful relations
with the United States dated back to 1805, when a group of Nez Perce met the party
of Lewis and Clark. He also chronicled efforts, beginning in the mid-1850s, of United
States officials to induce the Nez Perce to sell portions of their land and move to
different regions, far from those inhabited by whites. Joseph further recalled that his
father, who was also called Joseph and served as chief of their band until his death,
steadfastly refused such requests, because “no man owned any part of the earth, and a
man could not sell what he did not own.”166
Though the elder Joseph refused to sell his land, other Nez Perce did sell in
the 1860s, and agreed to live on reservations.167 Chief Joseph followed his father’s
policy, however, and rejected federal offers to purchase his band’s land. By 1871, two
years into the implementation of the peace policy, U.S. officials increasingly
pressured Joseph’s group of Nez Perce to sell their lands and move onto a reservation,
166
Young Joseph, “An Indian’s View of Indian Affairs,” The North American Review 128 (April
1879): 417.
167
The Nez Perce tribe was separated into different bands, each of which was led by a different chief,
the most prominent of whom were Lawyer, Big Thunder, Eagle of Light, White Bird, and the elder
Chief Joseph. Lawyer, who had converted to Christianity in the 1850s, believed that ceding land to the
U.S. government would protect the tribe from white settlers who had poured into Washington Territory
after 1860, when gold was discovered in the Clearwater River. He and fifty-two of his followers thus
signed a treaty on June 9, 1863, which granted seven million acres of Nez Perce land to the U.S.
government. Other Nez Perce bands, including that of Chief Joseph, refused to sign. See Elliot West.
The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 86-97.
63
64
where Christian missionaries would oversee the tribe’s assimilation. Joseph’s refusal
to acquiesce earned him a visit from Oliver Otis Howard, a U.S. Army General who
fought in the Civil War and administered the Freedman’s Bureau in the South before
becoming head of army operations in the Pacific Northwest, in 1877. In May of that
year, Howard informed Joseph that his group of Nez Perce had to leave the Wallowa
Valley and move to a reservation in Idaho.168
Joseph, wanting neither to live on a reservation nor abandon the Nez Perce
way of life, challenged both Howard and the philosophical notions on which the
peace policy was based. “You are as you were made, and as you were made you can
remain,” Joseph said to Howard, and “we are just as we were made by the Great
Spirit, and you cannot change us.”169 Further, stated Joseph, “I do not believe the
Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what
they must do.”170 Howard, apparently incensed at Joseph’s unwillingness to obey his
orders, accused Joseph of “disobeying the law” and vowed to make him “suffer” as a
consequence.171 The General then gave the Nez Perce thirty days to pack all of their
belongings in preparation for their removal.172
168
West, 119.
Joseph, 421.
170
Ibid.
171
Ibid.
172
Ibid, 420, 422. In June 1879, Howard published his own version of events detailing his interactions
with, and the subsequent military campaign against, the Nez Perce. In his account, Howard portrayed
his interactions with Joseph and all of the Nez Perce as courteous, and his ultimatum regarding their
removal as conducted within the confines of U.S. law. Conversely, he described the Nez Perce as
having committed ongoing acts of violence against white settlements and as treating the U.S.
government delegation disrespectfully. See O. O. Howard, “The True Story of the Wallowa
Campaign,” The North American Review 129 (July 1879): 53-65.
169
65
In the aftermath of this encounter, Joseph agreed to leave the Wallowa Valley
to avoid conflict with the U.S. Army. Howard presumed that his firm line with the
Nez Perce had worked and that their removal would proceed without issue, stating
that his “fearless sternness” had “produced the most wholesome and immediate
consequences.”173 However, Howard’s coercion angered some of the Nez Perce who
wanted to remain on their land. On June 13, 1877, two days before the removal
process was to begin, two Nez Perce, without the knowledge of Chief Joseph, killed
five white men, each of whom was accused of committing crimes against Native
Americans.174 Local white settlers agitated for retaliation and called upon the army
for assistance, which prompted Joseph and his band to flee the area. The Nez Perce
then led the army on a 1,400-mile chase that stretched from Oregon to the Canadian
border. By October 1877, Joseph and the Nez Perce, low on supplies and facing harsh
winter weather, had surrendered, and were eventually moved to the Indian Territory.
In 1885, the federal government permitted the Nez Perce to return to Washington and
Idaho, but not their tribal lands in the Wallowa Valley.175
The story of the Nez Perce reflects the federal government’s willingness to
use military force and removal during the peace policy era, both as a means of
implementing its assimilation program, and in an effort to acquire Native lands.
Between 1869 and 1877, federal authorities repeatedly deployed the U.S. Army to
“punish” tribes that refused their placement on reservations, and removed Native
173
Howard, quoted in West, 120.
Ibid, 124.
175
PBS, “Chief Joseph,” PBS: New Perspectives on the West.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chiefjoseph.htm (Accessed October 3, 2012).
174
66
populations with the justification that such actions ensured their protection and
civilization. Those tribes that refused federal “protection” on reservations or rejected
the government’s assimilation programs were subjected to military action, an
approach Harper’s Monthly referred to in 1870, as “the iron fingers in a velvet
glove.”176 Other Native populations, especially those whose land was coveted by the
federal government, were removed under the guise of aiding their efforts to become
civilized or protecting them from white settlers or hostile tribes. This chapter argues,
however, that, while the use of force and removal were justified as humanitarian in
nature, they were often undertaken to ensure the expansion of white settlements into
Native lands.
Force and the Peace Policy: Disciplining “Refractory” Indians
The use of force to subdue Native populations predated the peace policy, but
its rationale changed during the late 1860s and 1870s. The investigations of the James
R. Doolittle and Indian Peace Commissions criticized offensive military actions
against Native Americans, and suggested that military operations against the tribes
should cease while the government investigated the roots of conflict on the frontier.
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials agreed with this assessment. Writing in 1867,
for example, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles E. Mix stated his
opposition to military efforts to enforce “order by show of armed force,” which in the
process inflicted “suffering upon the innocent,” and called for a more measured
176
George Ward Nichols, “The Indian: What we should do with Him,” Harper’s Monthly 40 (April
1870): 732.
67
military response toward the American Indian population.177 Coupled with the overall
sentiment that white settlers were to blame for most conflicts with Native Americans,
and concern regarding the decline of the indigenous population, federal officials
sought to change the way the military interacted with the tribes.
In contrast, prominent military officers, who were frustrated by such
sentiments, especially since they frequently came from policymakers with little or no
experience interacting with the tribes, expressed their own ideas for establishing
peace on the frontier.178 These sentiments differed from those offered by civilian
reformers during the 1860s, and focused primarily on the removal and segregation of
Native populations as a means of preventing conflict with the tribes.179 General
William T. Sherman, for example, who served as commander of the Division of the
Missouri between 1865 and 1869 and commanding General of the Army from 1869
to 1884, argued that Native Americans should be removed as a means of establishing
peace and to make way for white expansion. In 1864, Sherman thus suggested that a
“wide belt” between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers be cleared of Native Americans
to allow “two great railroads” to pass through unhindered.180 Two years later,
177
Mix, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1867), 4.
After the end of the Civil War, the U.S. military was reorganized to address regional military needs.
In the West, the Divisions of the Missouri and the Pacific were established to address conflicts with
Native Americans and, after 1869, assist in the implementation of the peace policy. The Department of
the Pacific included California, Oregon, Nevada, and the territories of Arizona, Idaho, Washington and
Alaska. The Department of the Missouri oversaw affairs in Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Missouri, Texas, Indian Territory, and the territories of Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana,
Dakota and Utah. Robert Wooster. The Military and United States Indian Policy, 1865-1903. (Lincoln,
University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 19.
179
See Chapter One for a detailed account of reformers’ views during the 1860s.
180
Andrew Johnson, “Message of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents,
to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth
Congress,” (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1866), 21. Hathi Trust Digital Library.
178
68
Sherman suggested that any effort to achieve peace with the tribes would fail if it did
not include the concentration of Native Americans “on reservations as far removed as
possible from the white settlements and lines of travel.”181
The architects of the peace policy, however, rejected the complete separation
of white and Native populations, and instead embraced assimilation after 1869.
Further, as recommended by the 1867 Indian Peace Commission, offensive military
action against the tribes was prohibited, and soldiers were not permitted to enter
reservations without the permission of civilian authorities. These steps were taken
because federal officials deemed military involvement on reservations or with the
civilization program as antithetical to its humanitarian objectives.182 Army efforts to
assume control over the Native population and the reservation system in the 1860s
were thus rejected by civilian authorities, and the army was tasked with implementing
the orders of the Interior Department and the BIA.183
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2979875;view=1up;seq=7 (Accessed October 1, 2013). The
United States government established this “wide belt” in 1868 when it ratified the Medicine Lodge
Treaties with the Sioux, Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Kiowa Apache, Southern Arapaho, and
Southern Cheyenne tribes. These treaties stipulated the Plains tribes’ placement on two large
reservations, located north of Nebraska and south of Kansas, and guaranteed the construction of the
transcontinental railroad. This “wide belt” also split the plains bison into northern and southern herds,
and contributed to their decimation by the early 1880s. See Calloway, 111, 123.
181
Andrew Johnson, “Message of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents,
to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the Second Session of the Fortieth
Congress,” (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1868), 2. Hathi Trust Digital Library.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2979878;view=1up;seq=7 (Accessed October 1, 2013).
182
In an exception to this rule, Grant had originally wanted reservations to be managed by a
combination of Quakers and army officers. As noted in Chapter Two, however, in the Indian
Appropriations Act of 1870, Congress included a provision making it illegal for officers to accept civil
appointments. See Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 49-50.
183
Sherman, along with General Phillip Sheridan, who was promoted to commander of the Division of
the Missouri in 1869 when Sherman became commanding General of the Army, consistently argued
throughout the duration of the peace policy that the army should have sole control over Native
American populations in the West and on the Plains. According to Sherman, “military authorities of
the United States are better qualified to guide the steps of the Indian towards…self-support and
69
Civilian officials also argued that the military was ill equipped to administer
reservations in a “benevolent and humane” manner, and would likely arouse “feelings
of hostility, resistance and war even in the most civilized and peaceful
communities.”184 Such views were predicated on the mistaken belief that Native
Americans would willingly enter reservations administered by civilian missionaries
and readily submit to assimilation programs. Officials charged with managing
reservations and administering the peace policy quickly discovered, however, that the
use of military force was frequently required to persuade Native Americans to remain
on reservations, and tribes were often unwilling to be moved from their tribal lands.
Given the necessity of military force to compel some Native Americans to
accept reservation life or removal, successive Commissioners of Indians Affairs
attempted to justify how such practices coincided with the spirit of the peace policy.
Commissioner Francis Walker argued in 1872 that the use of force against Native
Americans was to be expected, because not all tribes would peacefully agree to their
placement on reservations or abandon their traditional ways. The military would thus
peaceful relations with his neighbors,” because they would better respond to “example, coupled with a
force which commands respect and obedience from a sense of fear.” In 1875, Sheridan wrote that
transferring the Indian Bureau to the military would facilitate the civilization of the Native population,
because the military would interact with the Indians “humanely and honestly,” and thereby prevent
“the troubles and bloody records which have characterized the civilization of the Indians in the many
years gone by.” William T. Sherman, “Introduction,” Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years Personal
Experience among the Red Men of the Great West, Richard Irving Dodge (Hartford: A.D. Worthington
and Company, 1882), xxxvii, xxxviii, “Report of the Secretary of War,” (1875), 57.
184
Nathaniel G. Taylor, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1868), 6. Online by University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/CommRep/AnnRep68/reference/history.annrep68.i0003.
pdf (Accessed October 16, 2013). Taylor also suggested that military administration of Indian affairs
would necessitate the existence of a large standing army in the West and overburden the military given
its Reconstruction duties in the South. Additionally, he asserted that the character of soldiers might
actually hurt efforts to make peace with the American Indians, and accused them of sexual misconduct
and spreading venereal disease among Native women, 7-13.
70
serve as an enforcer of the peace policy, but would not conduct war against the
Indians, as this would violate the tenets of the peace policy. Instead, according to
Walker, the military merely “disciplined” noncompliant tribes.185 Further, according
to Walker, the military played an essential role in “restraining or chastising refractory
individuals and bands” whose actions were “dangerous to our frontier population and
[were] obstructing our industrial progress.”186 By forcing Indians onto reservations,
the military was thus also protecting white settlements and clearing the way for the
industrialization of the frontier.187
Using the military to enforce the peace policy was important for another
reason that was unconnected to the fair treatment of the Indians. Though supporters of
the peace policy believed that Native Americans should be dealt with in a humane
manner, they did not want the tribes to think this new policy signaled weakness on the
part of the U.S. government. For this reason, advocates of the peace policy argued
that those who refused reservation life and assimilation should be punished and made
an example for other tribes considering resistance. Citing the refusal of members of
the Comanche tribe in Texas to remain on their reservation and cease “marauding”
185
Ibid, 6.
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1872), 5.
187
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the U.S. Army was ill equipped to take on such duties
in the West. In an attempt to rectify this situation, the army was reorganized into geographic divisions,
and additional troops were redeployed to the West. At the same time, however, throughout the 1870s
Congress reduced the number of troops authorized to serve in the army, and by 1874, it was half the
size it was in 1869. Further, those troops that were deployed to the West were often tasked with
protecting the construction of the railroads, or participating in relief efforts in the aftermath of natural
disasters, including a locust infestation in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota in 1874 and 1875. This
engendered complaints from the leadership of the army, which pointed out the difficultly of patrolling
so vast an area with so few troops, but no corresponding Congressional appropriations. See Robert
Wooster. The American Military Frontiers: The United States Army in the West, 1783-1900.
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 197-198, 210, 217.
186
71
among white settlements, Walker suggested that they be “punished” by the U.S.
Army. Making an “example” of the Comanche, according to Walker, would
“strengthen the policy of peace…and free the borders of Texas from a scourge that
has become intolerable.”188
Indian Affairs Commissioner John Q. Smith addressed this same issue with
regard to the Comanche, Cheyenne, and the Kiowa, two years later, and proposed
similar means for dealing with these tribes. In his 1874 report, Smith derided the
“mistaken leniency” of the federal government in dealing with these tribes, and
suggested that an ongoing military campaign against them had “effectually chastised
them” and served as a “punishment” for their rejection of reservation life and
assimilation.189 The following year, Smith further asserted that “Indians throughout
the country” needed to understand that “when outside of their reservation lines they
are subject to severe treatment by the military.”190
Indian Affairs Commissioners also argued that the proper use of military
“discipline,” coupled with the presumed success of the U.S. government’s
assimilation program, would eventually end all conflict between the Native and white
populations. Walker asserted that forcing the tribes to accept the dictates of the peace
policy would push the “most powerful and hostile bands” of Native Americans into a
state of “helplessness on the mercy of the government,” and make them “incapable of
resisting” U.S. authorities.191 In 1872, Walker incorrectly predicted the end of all
188
Ibid, 8.
Smith. “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1874), 10.
190
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875), 13.
191
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1872), 9.
189
72
Native resistance by 1875, and reasoned that, as Native populations submitted to the
peace policy, “the alternative of war” would be “eliminated.”192 Commissioner Smith
similarly suggested in 1875 that all major battles between the U.S. government and
Native populations were over because of the successful punishment and assimilation
of the tribes.193 Such claims proved premature, as demonstrated by the defeat of
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at Little
Bighorn the following year.
By early 1870, just months after the initiation of the peace policy, civilian
administrators discovered that not all tribes wanted to live on reservations. In
response, they embraced the use of force as a means to compel tribes’ submission.
Thus, at the behest of BIA officials, the U.S. Army was deployed to “discipline”
Native Americans who refused to participate in the federal government’s reservation
and assimilation programs. Forcing Native Americans onto reservations was still
framed, however, as a humanitarian endeavor, as reservation life would ensure the
civilization and survival of the tribes. Still, in most cases, such efforts were equally
influenced by the U.S. government’s desire to protect expanding white settlements
and obtain Native lands.
Enforcing the Reservation System: “Vigorous Treatment, Kindness in the End”
U.S. officials argued throughout the duration of the peace policy that
reservations were an important tool for the protection and assimilation of the
American Indian population. Reservations were also a means to control indigenous
192
193
Ibid.
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875).
73
populations and prevent them from attacking white settlements, even those that had
encroached upon Native lands or committed crimes against tribes. But for Indians
who left the reservation without permission or refused to comply with federal efforts
to place them on reservations, military force was used as a means to induce
compliance.
An early example of this type of enforcement action occurred in Montana in
January 1870, after white settlers, who had steadily encroached on land occupied by
the Piegan tribe throughout the 1860s, complained that the Piegan Indians were
leaving their reservation and attacking local settlers.194 Though Piegan crimes against
white settlers were often in retaliation for similar offenses committed against the
tribe, the local population and reservation agent, himself a Lieutenant Colonel in the
army, requested U.S. Army assistance.195 In response, and with the approval of the
BIA, General Philip Sheridan, commander of the Division of the Missouri, ordered
Colonel Eugene M. Baker to “strike them [the Piegan] hard” in the middle of winter,
when they would least expect it.196 On the morning of January 23, 1870, Baker thus
194
Calloway, 105-106.
Though the Indian Appropriations Act in 1870 prohibited from army officers serving in such
positions, as of January 1870, army officers were still permitted to maintain these posts. See Chapter 2,
footnote 19.
196
Sheridan and many of his contemporaries considered it both appropriate and effective to target
Native American civilian populations and their livelihoods. Sheridan wrote, “I have to select that
season when I can catch the fiends; and if a village is attacked and women and children killed, the
responsibility is not with the soldiers, but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.” This
was a notion with which Sherman agreed. “It is very difficult to catch their warriors if once on their
guard,” Sherman stated, “and the only mode of restraining them is by making them feel we can reach
their families and property.” Sheridan, quoted in Paul Andrew Hutton. Phil Sheridan and His Army.
(Norman; University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 185. Sherman, quoted in Andrew Johnson, “Message
of the President of the United States, and Accompanying Documents, to the Two Houses of Congress,
at the Commencement of the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress,” (Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1867), 34. Online by Hathi Trust Digital Library.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2979876;view=1up;seq=7 (Accessed October 1, 2013).
195
74
attacked a Piegan village encamped on the banks of the Marias River, killing 173
members of the tribe, the majority of whom were women and children.197
Despite the fact that the army had actually attacked the wrong village, the War
Department characterized the incident as a “severe chastisement” of the tribe and a
“positive public necessity.”198 Local white settlers also praised the army attack, which
became known as the Massacre of the Marias, as a “happy result” that allowed them
to sleep in “blissful security” and settle the land with “bolder spirit.”199 Bear Head, a
Piegan warrior who survived the massacre, described the situation quite differently.
Recalling the massacre decades later, Bear Head described a scene in which Native
men, women, and children were shot or suffocated in burning buildings, while U.S.
soldiers who took part in the attack were “talking, pointing, [and] laughing” at the
carnage around them.200
In contrast, Lieutenant Colonel Alf Sully, the local reservation agent, saw the
massacre as a success, because, in its aftermath, members of the Piegan tribe
contacted him to request “peace and a settlement with the government.”201 This
development, according to Sully, marked a good opportunity for the federal
government to renegotiate the boundaries of their reservation and take steps toward
197
Calloway, 106.
U.S. Department of War, “Official Report of the Military Department of Dakota in Reaction to
Criticism in the East Regarding the Baker Massacre of Heavy Runner’s Band on the Marias River,”
(January 23, 1870) The Montana Historical Society.
http://mhs.mt.gov/education/textbook/chapter7/IEFA%20Lesson%20PlansBlood%20on%20Marias.pdf (Accessed October 18, 2013).
199
H. N. McGuire, “The Happy Result of Col. Baker’s Piegan Campaign,” The Pick and Plow (July
29, 1870) The Montana Historical Society.
http://mhs.mt.gov/education/textbook/chapter7/IEFA%20Lesson%20PlansBlood%20on%20Marias.pdf (Accessed October 18, 2013).
200
Bear Head, “Account of the Massacre of the Marias,” in Calloway, 109.
201
Parker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1870), 191.
198
75
civilizing the tribe, both of which would be bolstered “by the use of troops,” who
would be stationed along the Piegan reservation’s border.202 The army massacre of
the Piegan, according to Sully, thus presented an excellent opportunity for the
government to implement the peace policy and acquire more land for white settlers in
the process.
The U.S. Army was also deployed to “discipline” the Modoc Tribe in 1872, in
an effort to force the tribe to remain on its designated reservation. White traders first
ventured onto Modoc territory, near Tule Lake on the California-Oregon border, in
the 1820s and 1830s. As thousands of white settlers emigrated to California after the
discovery of gold in 1849, sometimes on trails that traveled through Modoc land,
clashes between settlers and the tribe increased. By the late 1850s, volunteers from
California and Oregon, with the support of local military officers, openly called for
the extermination of hostile members of the tribe as a means of protecting
settlements.203 By 1863, following more than a decade of conflict with the local
white population, the Modoc sought a treaty with the U.S. government, which
removed them twenty-five miles north to the Klamath reservation in Oregon the
following year. Led by a Modoc leader called Captain Jack, the tribe then left
Klamath in the late 1860s, both because its members were unhappy with the land
ceded to them, and because of ongoing conflicts with the larger group of Klamath
Indians with whom they were forced to share the reservation. Captain Jack
202
Ibid.
Keith A. Murray. The Modocs and Their War. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), 31,
32.
203
76
maintained that the local Indian agent was aware of the Modocs’ difficulties, but did
nothing to assist them, which was one of the reasons he and his band decided to
return to their tribal lands.204
According to Jeff C. Riddle, a member of the Modoc nation who was a child
in the 1870s, Captain Jack stated, with regard to efforts to force the Modoc onto the
Klamath Reservation, “I and my men shall not be slaves for a race of people that is
not any better than my people. If the agent does not protect me and my people I shall
not live there.”205 In the years since they had left Tule Lake, however, white settlers
had moved on to their territory and were apparently unsettled by the return of the
Modoc.206 Local reservation officials persuaded Captain Jack to return to Klamath in
1870, but he and his followers returned to California in 1871. Though the BIA offered
to find new land on the Klamath reservation for the tribe, that would “make them [the
Modoc] better satisfied” and at the same time “render it less difficult to keep them
there,” Captain Jack and his followers remained in California.207
In mid-1872, the U.S. Army was deployed to force the Modoc back onto the
Klamath Reservation. The tribe fought back, however, which prompted the outbreak
of the Modoc War, which lasted until June 1873. Sporadic fighting took place
between July 1872 and January 1873, at which time the government established a
peace commission to resolve the situation. In the midst of the negotiations, however,
Captain Jack, under the influence of members of his tribe who were less amenable to
204
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 86.
Jeff C. Riddle. The Indian History of the Modoc War and Causes that Led to it. (San Francisco:
Marnell and Company, 1914), 39.
206
Murray, 59.
207
Walker, “Report of the Indian Affairs Commissioner,” (1872), 361.
205
77
reaching a settlement with the U.S., murdered General Edward R.S. Canby, the
military officer charged with negotiating a settlement to the conflict.208
The reaction to these murders was harsh and immediate. President Ulysses S.
Grant reaffirmed his commitment to the peace policy, but also reiterated his position
that American Indians who refused to settle on reservations or who defied or caused
“injuries [to] the servants of the government” would be punished with “unsparing
severity.”209 Interior Secretary Delano echoed Grant’s statements, noting that there
would be “no mercy for the Modocs,” and vowed to turn those Native Americans
who were “unruly and hostile” and rejected the principles of the peace policy, over to
the military.210 General Sherman, who minced no words on the matter, called for the
“severest punishment” for the Modocs, including their “utter extermination.”211 A
renewed and intensified military campaign against the Modocs concluded in June
1873, and resulted in the trial of six Modocs, including Captain Jack, who was
hanged with three others in October 1873.212
Modoc resistance, coupled with the tribe’s unwillingness to accept federal
entreaties for peace, led some U.S. officials to call for a broader role for the military
in enforcing the placement of indigenous populations on reservations. Writing in
1873, Commissioner Walker expressed irritation that certain tribes, including the
Sioux, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche, continued to refuse to settle on
208
Peace commission member Reverend Eleasar Thomas was murdered as well, and Superintendent of
Indian Affairs for Oregon John Meacham was severely injured. Murray, 189-190.
209
Quoted in “The Modoc War: Feelings in Washington – Views of President Grant, Gen. Sherman,
and Other Officials,” The New York Times, (April 15, 1873).
210
Ibid.
211
Ibid.
212
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 87.
78
their assigned reservations. Additionally, BIA officials and army officers were
frustrated that members of these tribes snuck off of their reservations to commit
crimes, and then used reservations as places on which to hide from the authorities that
were looking for them. Further, as Walker highlighted in his 1873 report, some
reservation agents were unable to control members of the Sioux, Kiowa, and
Comanche nations who refused to follow rules regarding the disbursement of rations
or census counts, thereby forcing agents to yield to their charges and causing Indians
to “grow bold by successful resistance to authority.”213
The solution to this problem, according to Walker, was to integrate the U.S.
Army onto reservations. 214 Army soldiers, while still deferring to BIA control of the
reservations, would help civilian administrators enforce federal policies and prevent
American Indians from escaping reservations and committing crimes against local
white communities. Walker acknowledged that this would violate treaties between the
U.S. government and the tribes to which this policy change was applied, but
rationalized it as a necessity. With regard to the Sioux, he suggested that embedding
military forces on their reservations was necessary for the successful subjugation of
each of these tribes. If “brought to obedience by the military,” according to Walker,
213
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,”1873, 6.
Walker’s arguments resonated with the leadership of the U.S. Army, which had lamented its lack of
access to Native Americans on reservations. Writing in 1870, General John Pope lamented the fact the
military had “no jurisdiction whatever within the reservation,” and complained that, when the military
engaged tribes that committed crimes against local white populations, “upon being closely pursued the
Indians retreat to their reservations, where the military cannot touch them.” See William Belknap,
“Report of the Secretary of War, Being Part of the Message and Documents Communicated to the Two
Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Third Session of the Forty-First Congress: Volume II,”
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870), 8-9. Hathi Trust Digital Library.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2979875;view=1up;seq=7 (Accessed October 1, 2013).
214
79
the Sioux “could be induced to live quietly and…adopt habits of civilization.”215
Regarding the Kiowa and Comanche, he advocated the use of force to punish the
entirety of their tribal populations within their reservations, and asserted that
“destroying them in part, and scattering the remainder on the plains” would
eventually compel them to accept their confinement on reservations.216 Walker
further concluded that, though such a policy would mean that “many innocent ones
will probably suffer with the guilty…I am persuaded that vigorous treatment will be
kindness in the end.”217
According to this logic, placing Native Americans under military rule and
meting out punishment to entire tribes, regardless of their involvement in illicit
activities, and violating treaties between the U.S. and the tribes, was acceptable
because it would lead to the subjugation and assimilation of the indigenous
population. However, despite the efforts of Walker and the military to allow the
stationing of troops on reservations, such actions were not permitted during the peace
policy era because of consistent opposition on behalf of successive Secretaries of the
Interior, the Board of Indian Commissioners, and a majority of the religious
missionaries managing the reservations, each of which argued that the military was ill
suited to administer the humanitarian aspects of the peace policy.218
Further, stationing soldiers on reservations would not assist U.S. efforts to
force what the BIA referred to as the “wild tribes,” particularly the Sioux, onto
215
Ibid.
Ibid, 8.
217
Ibid.
218
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 78, 91, 98.
216
80
reservations. Attempts to compel the Sioux to stay within the boundaries of their
reservations occurred through the 1870s and beyond. Federal officials argued that, by
signing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the Sioux had agreed to settle on
reservations near the Powder River in Montana and on the Great Sioux Reserve in the
Dakota Territory, west of the Missouri River.219 Not all Sioux abided by the treaty,
however, and some members of the tribe maintained their nomadic lifestyle and
staged raids against local white settlements and Native tribes. The Sioux were
frustrated with the United States as well, however, because of the influx of white
settlers into their territory after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, and because
of plans to construct rail lines through their land.220
In 1876, officials at the Department of the Interior launched a new effort to
force the Sioux onto reservations, and acquire the Black Hills. The U.S. government
thus declared that all American Indians not living on reservations were considered
hostile, and deployed the army in the spring of 1876 to force the Sioux onto their
reservations.221 For months, neither side achieved a decisive victory. Then, on June
25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel Custer and all 263 members of Seventh Cavalry were
killed in Battle of Little Bighorn, effectively putting an end to the 1876 campaign
against the Sioux.222 The United States government was shocked by the events at
Little Bighorn, which not only failed to compel the Sioux to enter their reservations,
219
U.S. Senate, “Treaty with the Sioux – Brule, Oglala, Miniconjou, Yanktonai, Hunkpapa, Blackfeet,
Cuthead, Two Kettle, Sans Arcs, and Santee – and Arapaho,” (April 28, 1868) Oklahoma State
University Library. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/sio0998.htm (Accessed
October 22, 2013).
220
Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, 93.
221
Calloway, 133.
222
Wooster, 166.
81
but also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers. Sitting Bull, who led the
battle against Custer, had a different assessment of the events at Little Bighorn.
Recalling the conflict in 1882 he stated, “We marched across the lines of our
reservation, and the soldiers followed us. They attacked our village, and we killed
them all. What would you do if your home was attacked? You would stand up like a
brave man and defend it.”223 For U.S. officials, the defeat at Little Bighorn
underscored the need to use force to compel Native submission to the peace policy.
U.S. officials viewed reservations as a critical tool in the civilization and
assimilation of Native populations, and repeatedly used military force to compel
American Indians to accept life upon them. However, enforcing Indians’ placement
on reservations was not the only way U.S. officials attempted to subdue Native
Americans during the peace policy era. Administrators of the peace policy also
embraced the removal of Native populations as means to accomplish this goal. And
though removal was characterized as a humanitarian measure to protect Native
populations and enhance efforts to assimilate them, such policies also allowed the
U.S. government to acquire Native lands and expand white settlements.
Removing Native Populations: The End of “Strife, Contention, and War”
Though reservations remained inaccessible to the military throughout the
duration of the peace policy, U.S. officials developed other ideas that would make
reservations easier for civilian and military officials to control, while at the same time
maintaining the allegedly humanitarian spirit of the peace policy. Within this context,
223
Sitting Bull, “The Life My People Want is a Life of Freedom,” in Blaisdell, 170.
82
the notion of “consolidating” the number of reservations within the United States, and
then removing Native Americans to specific regional locations, emerged as a solution
that, according to its advocates, would better protect Native populations from
aggressive white setters, or hostile tribes. Further, by placing large groups of Native
Americans together, according to proponents of consolidation, those who were less
civilized would, in theory, be better able to learn from the “thrift, enterprise, and
energy” of those American Indians who had already adopted white standards of
civilization.224 Consolidation and removal were further promoted as policies designed
to reduce conflict and save the federal government money, while also opening Native
lands to white settlement.
In 1869, the same year Grant introduced the peace policy, Secretary of the
Interior Jacob D. Cox suggested that Native Americans be encouraged to “assemble
on larger reservations,” preferably within the Indian Territory, because those on
smaller reservations were “surrounded by white settlers,” who “crowded [Native
Americans] out of their homes” and forced them to renegotiate the boundaries of their
land.225 For Cox, consolidating the tribes onto larger reservations would thus permit
white settlers to remain on lands they had illegally taken from tribes. Two years later,
Cox’s successor Columbus Delano suggested that the Indian Territory had enough
available acreage to give all Native Americans living within U.S. borders enough
224
“Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners,” (1876), quoted in Prucha, American Indian Policy
in Crisis, 112.
225
Jacob D. Cox, “Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior,” (November 15, 1869) in Prucha,
Documents of United States History, 130.
83
room to establish “comfortable homes.”226 Delano further pointed out that
concentrating the entirety of the American Indian population within the Indian
Territory “would release from Indian occupancy 93,692,731 acres of land, and throw
it open to white settlement and cultivation.”227
Federal officials also touted the practical benefits of removal during the peace
policy. In his 1875 report, Indian Affairs Commissioner Smith provided a detailed
explanation of the ways in which removal could benefit the U.S. government. While
arguing the “humanity and kindness” of removal, which would contribute to the
speed with which Native assimilation might occur, Smith was also quick to point out
that consolidating reservations and removing tribes to a few select locations was
economical for the U.S. government.228 Further, he suggested that federal officials
could encourage tribes’ “allegiance” by pledging to reverse the removal of Native
populations that expressed loyalty to the U.S. government.229 Most importantly,
however, removal was a means for the U.S. to gain territory. Smith thus suggested
that “wild Indians,” as he characterized the Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa, be
removed from their traditional lands to permit their “opening” for white settlement.230
In 1876, Smith further suggested that four regional reservations, in the Indian
Territory, Minnesota, Washington state, and either Colorado or Arizona, be
established to protect Native Americans from “the most lawless and desperate white
226
Columbus Delano, “U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report,” (October 31, 1871). Online by
Wikisource. Accessed on October 20, 2013 on
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Report_of_the_Secretary_of_the_Interior/1871.
227
Ibid.
228
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1875), 11.
229
Ibid.
230
Ibid, 13.
84
men in America.”231 The consolidation of reservations would cause the “Indian
question” in the United States to “vanish,” and significantly reduce the expense of
maintaining numerous reservations.232 More importantly, however, the consolidation
of reservations would, according to Smith, allow “large bodies of land [to] be thrown
open to settlement” for white Americans.233 Such policies permitted the U.S.
government to remove tribes from lands if they were deemed hostile, in danger from
unscrupulous white settlers, or because they lived in areas the U.S. government
wanted to settle.
Not all removal efforts, however, involved consolidation or the removal of
tribes to Indian Territory. In March 1873, the U.S. government negotiated with the
Crow in the Montana Territory in an effort to acquire their reservation along the
Yellowstone River. The U.S. wanted to expand white settlements in this region,
especially after the discovery of gold, and safeguard the construction of a Northern
Pacific Railroad line through the territory.234 In exchange, the Crow would be
removed to a smaller reservation in the Judith Basin, which was a less desirable piece
of land, but far from white settlements.
The removal of the Crow, a tribe that traditionally allied with the U.S. against
their shared enemy, the Sioux, was framed as a humanitarian action to protect the
231
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1876), ix.
Ibid.
233
Ibid.
234
Walker, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1873), 23. Additionally, federal designs
on Crow land were also linked to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872.
Yellowstone was touted as a region of “primeval solitude” that included innumerable locations never
“trodden by human footsteps.” The residence of the Crow within the Park’s boundaries ran counter to
the U.S. government’s narrative that Yellowstone was an uninhabited area allegedly discovered by
white Americans. See Karl Jacoby. Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the
Hidden History of American Conservation. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 84-85.
232
85
Crow from the influence of white settlers. According to James Wright, the
administrator of the Crow reservation, “the removal…should be accomplished at the
earliest practicable period,” because its proximity to the Yellowstone River made it
“an easy matter for unprincipled white men to carry on an illicit trade with the
Indians.”235 Blackfoot, a Crow Chief who attended negotiations regarding his tribe’s
removal, believed otherwise, and argued that U.S. officials should not pressure the
Crow to cede their land. In August 1873 he asserted, “we do not want to exchange our
land…if we were to go to the white man’s country and bloody it as they do our
country, you would not like it.”236 When Congress rejected the Crow’s removal to the
Judith Basin, Wright suggested an alternate location for the tribe.237 Asserting that the
land from which the U.S. wanted to remove the Crow “does not suit the Indians…it is
a long way from their hunting grounds, inconvenient to timber, and would be hard to
defend if attacked by hostile Indians,” Wright further recommended that the Crow be
moved forty to sixty miles east, and urged that federal authorities take “immediate
measures” toward the tribe’s removal.238
Removal was also proposed as a means to end ongoing conflicts between
white settlers and Native populations, especially if gold or other valuable minerals
were discovered in Native lands. In 1877, Indian Affairs Commissioner E.A. Hayt
235
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1874), 261.
Blackfoot, “They say ‘Yes, Yes’; But it is Not in the Treaty,” quoted in Blaisdell, 142.
237
In 1874, President Grant signed an executive order ceding the Judith Basin to the Crow, upon
Congressional approval. Local white settlers opposed the removal, and immediately established two
trails that crossed the Judith Basin. The U.S. Army deployed troops to protect the trails, and
established a post, Fort Lewis, in the Basin, to protect traffic on the trail. The opposition of local
settlers to the removal of the Crow to the Judith Basin caused Congress to reject the proposed removal
and Grant to cancel his 1874 order. See John S. Gray. Custer’s Last Campaign: Mitch Boyer and the
Little Bighorn Reconstructed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 108-109.
238
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1874), 261.
236
86
suggested that the entire population of Native Americans in Colorado be removed to
the Indian Territory, because gold and silver mines were “found in every conceivable
direction, running into Indian reservations.”239 Hayt’s assessment of the situation
mirrored that of President Grant and Commissioner Smith after the discovery of gold
in Black Hills, South Dakota in 1875, when federal officials sought ways to force the
Sioux from their territory rather than protect it from white prospectors.
In the case of Colorado, Hayt argued that that the continued presence of
Indians in Colorado “would lead to strife, contention, and war” at “enormous
expense” to the federal government because miners would not respect reservation
boundaries. 240 Removing all Indians from the state was thus, according to Hayt, the
easiest way to resolve the situation. After all, he asserted, “a mining population
needs…abundant facilities for agriculture to feed it,” and “the question of the feeding
of the white population of the state is one of paramount importance.”241 Moving the
Native population to the Indian Territory would save money, prevent conflict, permit
whites to settle Colorado, and, “better than all,” according to Hayt, move Native
tribes to an area where they would be more likely to learn “obedience” and “become
civilized and self-supporting,” while under the influence of tribes more civilized than
themselves. 242
The Ponca tribe, which resided on a reservation in Nebraska along the
Missouri River, was also subjected to removal. In 1877, during the final year of the
239
Hayt, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1877), 6.
Ibid.
241
Ibid.
242
Ibid.
240
87
peace policy era, the federal government removed the Ponca from their land,
according to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, to “get them out of the way of the
much more numerous and powerful Sioux, with whom their relations were
unfriendly.”243 Of course, the reason the Sioux had become a threat to the Ponca was
the fault of the United States, which had mistakenly ceded a portion of the Ponca
reservation to the Sioux at Fort Laramie in 1867.244
Rather than renegotiate the treaty or risk conflict with the Sioux, the federal
government decided to remove the Ponca, with the justification that the presence of
the Sioux forced the Ponca to focus on self-defense, which “has been hitherto been a
serious obstacle in the way of the progress in civilized life which they seem disposed
to make.”245 By separating the Ponca from the Sioux, the tribe could thus focus on its
civilization and would “readily come into a condition of self-support by
agriculture.”246 U.S. officials first suggested removal to the Ponca in 1875, at which
point the tribe agreed to move to the nearby Omaha Reservation. By 1877, however,
the U.S. government maintained that the Ponca had agreed to move to the Indian
243
Carl Schurz. Removal of the Ponca Indians: Open Letter to Hon. John D. Long, Governor of
Massachusetts. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880).
244
Valerie Sherer Mathes and Richard Lowitt. The Standing Bear Controversy: Prelude to Indian
Reform. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 11.
245
Smith, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1876), XVII.
246
Ibid. The U.S. likely had other self-serving motivations in its removal of the Ponca. According to
Smith, Ponca land “will offer a suitable home for some of the wild bands of Sioux” where “the
experiment of their civilization may be tried to advantage.” In the aftermath of Custer’s defeat at Little
Bighorn, the subjugation and assimilation of the Sioux apparently took priority over comfort of the
peaceful Ponca.
88
Territory, despite Ponca claims to the contrary.247 Ignoring the tribe’s protests, the
U.S. government initiated the removal of the Ponca to Indian Territory in May 1877.
The removal of the Ponca, though undertaken with the stated objectives of
protecting the tribe from the Sioux and promoting its ability to more rapidly adopt
white standards of civilization, also demonstrated the devastating impact such actions
had on Native tribes. It took three months for the Ponca to travel from their former
lands to the Indian Territory, and during the process approximately one-third of the
tribe died.248 Upon their arrival at the Quapaw Reservation in Indian Territory, they
discovered that the federal government had erected no facilities in preparation for
their arrival, forcing them to live in their tents, or the half-dozen log huts left behind
by members of the Quapaw nation, from whom the federal government had
purchased the Ponca’s new land.249 The situation that greeted the Ponca upon their
arrival was so abysmal that the agent who accompanied them to survey their new land
commented, “It is a matter of astonishment to me that the government should have
ordered the removal of the Ponca…without first having made some provision for their
settlement and their comfort…these people have been placed on an uncultivated
reservation to live in their tents as best they may.”250 The comfort and well being of
247
The confusion regarding the location to which the Ponca would be removed was attributed to a
mistaken translation. Ibid, 11-12.
248
Mark van de Logt, “Ponca,” Oklahoma State University.
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/p/po007.html (Accessed October 20, 2013).
249
E. A. Hayt, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (November 1, 1878).
Washington DC: Government Printing Office, xxxvi. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/Historyidx?type=turn&entity=History.AnnRep78.p0041&id=History.AnnRep78&isize=M (Accessed October
20, 2013).
250
Ibid. The following year, in a rare exhibition of contrition, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hayt
noted, “I am sorry to be compelled to say, the Poncas were wronged, and restitution should be made as
89
the Ponca, however, was apparently less important than promoting the rapid
assimilation of the tribe.
Throughout the duration of the peace policy, those charged with its
implementation used military force to compel Native Americans to live on
reservations, and used removal as a means of acquiring Native lands and to advance
the assimilation objectives of the peace policy. In both cases, these polices were
characterized as humanitarian in nature, and designed to benefit Native populations.
In reality, however, reservations were used not just to civilize Native Americans, but
as a means to permit white populations to settle land not included within reservation
boundaries. Similarly, the U.S. government framed the removal of American Indians
as a protective measure that would assist indigenous efforts to adopt white standards
of civilization, while also viewing removal as an opportunity to gain territory.
Ultimately, though the peace policy was designed with the ostensible objective of
protecting and preserving the Native population, the willingness of the U.S.
government to use military force and removal suggests that officials placed the
acquisition of Native lands above these principles.
far as it is in the power of the government to do so.” Hayt also acknowledged that the “removal
inflicted a far greater injury upon the Poncas” than the mistake made at Fort Laramie, and that the
death of so many members of the tribe was worth more than any reparations that could be paid by the
U.S. government. See Hayt, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (November 1,
1878).
CONCLUSION
In 1885, former Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker wrote a letter
detailing his observations on federal attempts to civilize the Native American
population. “I have little or no faith in the American Christian civilization methods of
healing the Indians of the country,” Parker wrote.251 Further, he feared that efforts to
assimilate American Indians were hastening “the absorption of the Indian race back
into the bosom of Mother Earth.”252 Parker also characterized the civilizing efforts of
the United States government as “schemes…apparently to serve the Indians” that
were, in reality, “put out to hoodwink the civilized world that everything possible has
been done to save this race from total annihilation, and to wipe out the stain on the
American name for its treatment of the aboriginal population.”253
Parker’s frustration with the U.S. government’s assimilation program is
tragically ironic, given his early involvement in its establishment and implementation.
His comments also reflect the fact that those who administered the peace policy and
sought to “protect” the Native population from extinction were motivated not just by
the desire to safeguard the tribes, but also by their desire to ensure the unhindered
expansion of the United States. The peace policy was thus designed to preserve
declining Native populations by forcing their assimilation, while also facilitating the
United States’ control over American Indians and their lands.
251
“Ely Parker: Letter to Harriet Maxwell Converse about Indian Policy Reform.” Milestone
Documents. http://www.milestonedocuments.com/documents/view/ely-parkers-letter-to-harrietmaxwell-converse-about-indian-policy-reform/text. (Accessed November 3, 2013).
252
Ibid.
253
Ibid.
90
91
The assimilation of the Native population was central to this effort. Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) officials argued throughout the duration of the peace policy that
the assimilation of Native Americans was the only means by which the tribes could
survive in their confrontation with white society. This assumption was grounded in
the racist assumptions of the mid-nineteenth century, and assertions that Native
Americans, as well as all people of color, were morally, physically, and intellectually
inferior to members of the white Anglo-Saxon race. At the same time, however, the
American Indians, inferior as they allegedly were, deserved protection on account of
their status as the original inhabitants of the North American continent.
The architects of the peace policy determined that placing Native Americans
on reservations and utilizing Christian missionaries to oversee their civilization would
protect them from local white populations and teach them how to behave as proper
middle-class Americans. Native peoples thus attended Christian religious services,
learned how to arrange their families in accordance with white middle-class norms,
attended reservation schools, and were taught how to farm for sustenance.
Participation in such programs was not optional, however, and though some Native
Americans resisted assimilation, their protests were ignored. After all, according to
federal officials, as an inferior race, the Indians simply did not understand that their
very existence depended on the adoption of white civilization and the abandonment of
their cultures and traditions.
Assimilation also negated the need for treaties and tribal sovereignty,
according to U.S. officials, because Indian “wards of the state” were not the equals of
92
the United States government, and therefore should not be treated as such. Further, if
Native American tribes were no longer considered sovereign nations, they and their
lands could be placed under the jurisdiction of U.S. law. Thus, once the treaty system
was abolished in 1871, the U.S. government dictated the parameters of the
relationship between the federal government and the tribes.
U.S. officials did acknowledge, however, that not all Native Americans would
willingly accept their changing status, and might resist the assimilation efforts of the
U.S. government. To combat such resistance, federal officials repeatedly deployed the
U.S. Army to force tribes onto reservations, where the BIA could see to their
civilization. The use of force to “discipline” or “punish” tribes that refused to settle
on reservations was an essential element of federal efforts to assimilate the Native
population, and remained so until the final defeat of the tribes in 1890, when the U.S.
Army massacred 300 Sioux men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek,
South Dakota.254 Further, the federal government repeatedly used the removal of
Native populations during the peace policy, allegedly as a means to protect tribes
from hostile environments or to facilitate the assimilation process. However, removal
was also a way to clear Native lands for the construction of railroads or for the
establishment of white settlements.
254
Between 1877 and 1890, there were other instances of hostilities between the U.S. military and
Native tribes, including conflicts with the Ute and Cheyenne in the late 1870s. However, by 1883,
General William T. Sherman declared an end to major Indian Wars, writing in his annual report, “I
now regard the Indians as substantially eliminated from the problem of the army.” Sherman cited army
action, western immigration, and the construction of the railroads as vital factors in the pacification of
the American Indians. See “Annual Report of the Secretary of War,” (Washington: Government
Printing Office, 1883), 45. Hathi Trust.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b2979942;view=1up;seq=51. (Accessed November 3, 2013).
93
The forced assimilation of American Indians and the destruction of their tribal
sovereignty continued to influence U.S. policy toward Native Americans until the
passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934, which restored some aspects of
sovereignty. Throughout the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries,
reservations remained central to civilization efforts, and BIA officials continued to
emphasize, albeit more intensely, that the Christianization of Native Americans was
essential to the assimilation process.255 In his 1882 report, for example, Indian Affairs
Commissioner Hiram Price asserted that Christian education offered the only means
by which “our Indian population [can] be so speedily and permanently reclaimed
from…barbarism, idolatry and savage life.”256 Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Thomas J. Morgan later added that Native Americans who refused to abandon their
religious practices and “conform to the white man’s ways,” would “be crushed.”257
Educating Native American children also remained an essential element of the
civilization process, and by 1900, federally managed boarding schools educated the
255
Though the Christianization of Native Americans remained important after the end of the peace
policy, the new Secretary of the Interior under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Carl Schurz, opposed
the practice of having missionaries administer reservations. Schurz equated the appointment of
members of religious organizations to administer policy toward Native Americans with permitting
novices to develop “the solution of a problem that has engaged the best efforts of statesmen and
philanthropists ever since the first days of the republic.” Thus, by 1882 all of the religious
denominations that had participated in the administration of reservations between 1869 and 1877 had
withdrawn from service and BIA employees administered reservations. Schurz, quoted in Report of
Board of Inquiry Convened by Authority of Letter of the Secretary of the Interior of June 7, 1877, to
Investigate Certain Charges Against S.A. Galpin, Chief Clerk of the Indian Bureau, and Concerning
Irregularities in Said Bureau. (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1878), 63. Prucha, The
Great Father, 164.
256
Hiram Price, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (October 24, 1881) in
Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, 156.
257
Thomas J. Morgan, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (October 1, 1889). in
Prucha, Documents of American Indian Policy, 177.
94
majority of Native children.258 American Indian children took courses in
mathematics, science, and English, and learned how to dress and groom themselves
according to white standards. They also studied the fundamentals of Christianity,
which the BIA described as the “true religion,” in an attempt to ensure that they
abandoned Native religious practices.259 Providing Native children with academic
skills and vocational training was intended, according to Commissioner Morgan, to
“convert them into American citizens, put within reach the blessings which the rest of
us enjoy, and enable them to compete successfully with the white man on his own
ground and with his own methods.”260
The federal government also extended its control over Native American lands
during the 1880s and 1890s. The consolidation of reservations and the removal of
Native populations became increasingly unpopular following the mishandled
removals of the Ponca and the Nez Perce at the end of the 1870s. U.S. officials thus
turned to allotment as a means of encouraging Native assimilation, and, at the same
time, opening additional land for white settlements. To advance these objectives, the
U.S. Congressed passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes
Severalty Act, in 1887, and reservations were divided into individual farms and
private residences. The Dawes Act dispossessed Native Americans of approximately
258
According to Adams, three-quarters of Native children educated by the U.S. government attended
boarding schools by 1900. Adams, 320.
259
Thomas J. Morgan, “Supplemental Report on Indian Education,” (December 1, 1889) in Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy, 178.
260
Ibid.
95
two-thirds of their reservation lands, which were deemed “surplus” by the U.S.
government and sold to settlers and businessmen.261
The U.S. government also continued to erode Native sovereignty during the
final decades of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously refusing to extend civil
rights protections to the tribes. The Supreme Court decided in 1884, for example, that
Native Americans, as “members of, and owing immediate allegiance to, one of the
Indian tribes,” were not entitled to citizenship or voting rights, as guaranteed by the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution.262 The following year,
however, the U.S. government passed the Major Crimes Act, which stipulated that the
crimes of “murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and
larceny,” even if committed within the boundaries of reservations, would be tried in
U.S. courts.263 Thus, while Native Americans were excluded from Constitutional
protections, they were simultaneously subject to criminal prosecution under the U.S.
legal system. This particular situation was not rectified until the passage of the Indian
Citizenship Act in 1924.264
261
John Collier, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1934) in Prucha, Documents
of American Indian Policy, 225. In 1898 the Dawes Act was extended to the Indian Territory, which
had been exempted from allotment in 1887 because the U.S. government had planned to formally
incorporate it as a territory and then a state.
262
U.S. Supreme Court, “Elk V. Wilkins,” (November 3, 1884). Cornell University Law School: Legal
Information Institute. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/112/94. (Accessed November 1,
2013)
263
U.S. Congress, “Major Crimes Act,” (March 3, 1885), in Prucha, Documents of United States
Indian Policy, 167. Additionally, in a 1903 challenge to the Dawes Act by Kiowa leader Lone Wolf,
the Supreme Court ruled that “federal plenary power” took precedence over treaties made between the
federal government and the American Indian tribes. The Supreme Court thus upheld the legality of the
Dawes Act, despite the fact that it violated the 1868 Medicine Lodge Treaty with the Kiowa. Blue
Clark, “Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903),” Oklahoma State University.
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/l/lo009.html (Accessed November 19, 2013).
264
U.S. Congress, “Indian Citizenship Act,” (June 2, 1924) Oklahoma State University
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol4/html_files/v4p1165.html. (Accessed November 2, 2013)
96
Efforts to assimilate Native Americans and destroy their sovereignty were not
challenged until John Collier, a critic of assimilation, became Commissioner of
Indian Affairs in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Collier was
instrumental in the passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, also known as the
Indian Reorganization Act or the Indian New Deal, which reversed the allotment
policy of the Dawes Act, restored “surplus” lands to Native populations, and
encouraged the rebuilding of tribal governments.265 The Wheeler-Howard Act, as
envisaged by Collier and its supporters, was designed to reverse the “evil
consequences” of allotment, and allow the “economic and spiritual rehabilitation of
the Indian race.”266
The Indian Reorganization Act was an initial step taken by the federal
government to cease its policy of forced assimilation, and reverse the erosions of
Native sovereignty that began with the introduction of the peace policy in 1869.
Further steps to ensure Native American civil rights and religious freedom were
achieved in the 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to the activism of the American
Indian Movement (AIM).267 In more recent decades, tribal governments and U.S.
The Indian Citizenship Act passed, in part, because of Native American participation in combat during
World War I. It was also, however, part of the ongoing effort to assimilate the Indian population and
bring it completely under the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system. Prucha, The Great Father, 273.
265
U.S. Congress, “Wheeler-Howard Act,” (Indian Reorganization Act). (June 18, 1934) In Prucha,
Documents of United States Indian Policy, 222-224.
266
Collier, “Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” (1934), in Prucha, Documents of
United States Indian Policy, 225.
267
These protections were established through the passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 and
the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978. Additionally, it was not until 1966 that a Native
American was once again appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Robert L. Bennett, a member of
the Oneida nation, received his appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, nearly a century
after the appointment of Ely S. Parker in 1869.
97
officials have worked together to expand tribal authority and Native sovereignty.268
However, the fact that American Indian populations continue, even in the twenty-first
century, to renegotiate their rights in relation to the U.S. government, demonstrates
the far-reaching impact of the policies initiated during the peace policy era.
268
For example, in January 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act,
which was designed to enhance “tribes’ authority to prosecute and punish crimes” on reservations,
after consultation with the tribes. See U.S. Department of Justice, “Tribal Law and Order Act,”
(January 5, 2010) United States Department of Justice. http://www.justice.gov/tribal/tloa.html.
(Accessed November 2, 2013).
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99
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