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Document Set #1: Indian Policy on the Frontier (Unit 6)FOCUS QUESTION: Examine the rationale behind, the specifics of, and the consequences of the United States government’s policies toward the western Indian tribes, and discuss the reactions of Indians to these policies. DOCUMENT A: Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (New York, 1881), p. 337-38, 340-42. : Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jungle, and Silent Spring, Helen Hunt Jackson’s Century of Dishonor aroused the nation’s conscience and stimulated political action against injustice, in this case the nation’s unjust treatment of Indians. Jackson’s goals – education, and individual land ownership – were embraced by many late 19th-century Indian reformers. DOCUMENT: There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one which has not suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of white settlers. The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the band, the more certain the cruelty and outrage to which they have been subjected....It makes little difference...where one opens the record of the history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain. The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by differences of time and place....Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and Ohio in 1795, and the United States government breaks promises now as deftly as then, and with the added ingenuity from long practice....To assume that it would be easy...to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past...is the blunder of a hasty and uninformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply to make all Indians at once citizens of the United States would be a...panacea for all their ills...is a very inconsidered one.... Nevertheless, it is true, as well stated by one of the superintendents of Indian Affairs in 1857, that “so long as they are not citizens of the United States, their rights of property must remain insecure against invasion. The doors of the federal tribunals being barred against them....The utter absence of individual title to particular lands deprives every one among them of the chief incentive to labor and exertion....”Cheating, robbing, breaking promises--these three are clearly things which must cease to be done. One more thing, also, and that is the refusal of the protection of the law to the Indian's right of property....When these four things have ceased to be done, time, statesmanship, philanthropy, and Christianity can slowly and surely do the rest.DOCUMENT B: Dawes Act (1887), U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. XXIV, p. 388. : Approved on February 8, 1887, “An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations,” known as the Dawes Act, emphasized severalty, the treatment of Native Americans as individuals rather than as members of tribes. Congressman Henry Dawes, author of the act, once expressed his faith in the civilizing power of private property with the claim that to be civilized was to “wear civilized clothes…cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property.”DOCUMENT: Be it enacted, That in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use, either by treaty stipulation or by virtue of an act of Congress or executive order setting apart the same for their use, the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, whenever in his opinion any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or resurveyed if necessary, and to allot the lands in said reservations in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities as follows:To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section;To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section;To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and,To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section; . . .... SEC. 5. That upon the approval of the allotments provided for in this act by the Secretary of the Interior, he shall . . . declare that the United States does and will hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made, . . . and that at the expiration of said period the United States will convey the same by patent to said Indian, or his heirs as aforesaid, in fee, discharged of such trust and free of all charge or encumbrance whatsoever: . . ..... SEC. 6. That upon the completion of said allotments and the patenting of the lands to said allottees, each and every member of the respective bands or tribes of Indians to whom allotments have been made shall have the benefit of and be subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State or Territory in which they may reside; . . .And every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made under the provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens, whether said Indian has been or not, by birth or otherwise, a member of any tribe of Indians within the territorial limits of the United States without in any manner impairing or otherwise affecting the right of any such Indian to tribal or other property. . . .DOCUMENT C: Chief Joseph, “An Indian’s View of Indian Affairs,” North American Review, No. 269 (April 1879, p. 415-33) : In 1879, Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce Indians, delivered a speech in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D.C., to a distinguished audience including President Rutherford B. Hayes. Two years earlier, U.S. troops had tracked Joseph and his people on a 1,700-mile trek through the Far West as they sought to escape to Canada after fights with settlers who had encroached on tribal lands in Oregon and Idaho. The speech was delivered in the Nez Perce language and then translated by an interpreter. An unidentified reporter took down the interpreter’s version and passed it along to an influential magazine, North American Review, for publication. DOCUMENT: My friends, I have been asked to show you my heart. I am glad to have a chance to do so. I want the white people to understand my people. Some of you think an Indian is like a wild animal. This is a great mistake. I will tell you all about our people, and then you can judge whether an Indian is a man or not. I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. I will tell you in my way how the Indian sees things. The white man has more words to tell you how they look to him, but it does not require many words to speak the truth. What I have to say will come from my heart, and I will speak with a straight tongue. For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last. White men had found gold in the mountains around the land of winding water. They stole a great many horses from us, and we could not get them back because we were Indians. The white men told lies for each other. They drove off a great many of our cattle…We had no friend who would plead our cause before the law councils…We gave up some of our country to the white men, thinking that then we could have peace. We were mistaken. The white man would not let us alone. We could have avenged our wrongs many times, but we did not…When the white men were few and we were strong we could have killed them all off, but the Nez Perces wished to live at peace……but there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain. I can not understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and then breaks his word. Such a Government has something wrong about it. I can not understand why so many chiefs are allowed to talk so many different ways, and promise so many different things…I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done, Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men…Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that come to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises…If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it….…I know that my face must change. We can not hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men……Let me be a free man – free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself – and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty. SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSEAmerican government policy towards Native Americans dating back to the colonial period left Native populations with limited options; to either assimilate, fight back, or flee westward. By the end of the 19th century, American expansion and the realization of Manifest Destiny once again complicated the “Indian problem.” American policy at the turn of the century shifted away from a focus on reservations that stressed tribal authority, towards individual land ownership and assimilation. The ever changing American policy was met with harsh criticism from reformers like Helen Hunt Jackson and Native themselves such as Chief Joseph who argued that American ideals of equality and citizenship were not fair and equitable. Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor, in 1881, claimed that Indians “suffered cruelly” under American policies that time and again were simply “broken promises.” (Doc. A) She further noted that the rights of citizenship and property were integral to righting the wrongs of history. In similar fashion Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe provided an Indian perspective noting the U.S. government “has something wrong with it.” (Doc. C) He too called for Native Americans to be treated as “free men” who would then “obey every law.” While the Dawes Act of 1887 attempted to once again solve the “Indian problem” by granting individual ownership of land to Native Americans, its overall effect, like most of the American Indian policies, minimized Native American tribal authority and let to the destruction of Native American culture. ................
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