Harvard University’s Peabody Museum buys the farm of John Lovett in Adams County, Ohio. On the tract is the Great Serpent Mound—the largest effigy mound in North America (see entry for 1000 B. C. TO A. D. 700). The mound, which measures almost a mile long, was constructed by Indians of the Adena or Hopewell culture beginning about 3,000 years ago. The Peabody’s purchase is made possible by a fund-raising campaign by museum employee F. W. Putnam, who wanted to ensure the mound would be preserved. The following year, the Peabody will open the area to the public as Serpent Mound Park.
Anthropologist Franz Boas begins his study of the Kwakiutl.
At 29, German-American anthropologist Franz Boas makes the first of many trips to British Columbia to observe and record the culture of the Kwakiutl people. Boas’s research is aided by George Hunt, a man of mixed Tlingit and white ancestry who grew up among the Kwakiutl. Acting as a liaison between the Indians and the white anthropologist, Hunt helps Boas gain access to the winter ceremonials and other rituals that dominate Kwakiutl society.
Living among the Kwakiutl, Boas discovers the extreme complexity of their society. Able in the summer to catch and preserve enough fish to feed themselves year-round, the Kwakiutl are free throughout the winter to stage elaborate ceremonies, in which they dramatize their huge body of legends. Boas also learns of the complicated societal hierarchy by participating in potlatches, grand feasts during which wealthy Kwakiutl hosts confirm their rank in society by giving lavish gifts to their guests.
Largely through the publication of his research into Kwakiutl life, Boas will redefine anthropologists’ approach toward the study of North American Indians. Rather than viewing Indians as “primitives” inferior to more “developed” peoples, Boas insists that the cultures of Indians he has observed are as sophisticated as so-called civilized societies. Boas’s work will also emphasize the importance of collecting data about all aspects of a culture, from language to religion to art.
“Anyone who has lived with primitive tribes, who has shared their joys and sorrows, their privations and their luxuries, who sees in them not solely subjects of study to be examined like a cell under the microscope, but feeling and thinking human beings, will agree that there is no such thing as a ‘primitive mind,' . . . but that each individual in ‘primitive' society is a man, woman, a child of the same kind, of the same way of thinking, feeling and acting as man, woman or child in our own society.”
—anthropologist Franz Boas on studying Indian cultures
Lakota George Bushotter is hired by the Bureau of American Ethnology.
A graduate of the Hampton Institute (see entry for APRIL 1878), George Bushotter, a Lakota Sioux, is recruited by anthropologist James Owen Dorsey to aid his research at the Bureau of American Ethnology (see entry for MARCH 3, 1879). During his 10 months there, Bushotter writes more than 1,000 pages about Lakota culture in the Lakota language and helps compile material on his language that will appear in the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Bushotter will become known as the first Lakota ethnographer. Much of his work will later be translated by the Nakota Sioux linguist and novelist Ella Deloria (see entry for 1932).
The General Allotment Act is signed into law.
One of the most influential pieces of legislation in Native American history, the General Allotment Act (also known as the Dawes Act, after its sponsor Senator Henry L. Dawes) authorizes the president to survey Indian lands and compile tribal rolls in preparation for dividing reservations into 160-acres tracts called allotments. Unlike reservation land, which is owned communally by a tribe, allotments are to be held as private property. The act stipulates that when a reservation is allotted, the male head of each family will receive U. S. citizenship with his allotment. Because the government believes that most Indians are incompetent in business affairs, allotments are to be held in trust for 25 years, during which time they cannot be sold or leased by their Indian owners. Any land left over after all allotments are granted will be sold by the U. S. government.
The Allotment policy has broad support among non-Indians. Many reformers advocate Allotment as the best means of assimilating Indians: As landowners they will be better able to live like whites. Other “friends of the Indian” hold that Indians stand to lose all their lands to unscrupulous whites unless they own it as private property. The majority of whites, however, favor Allotment because the sale of the surplus lands will open huge areas to non-Indian settlement.
Few Indians support Allotment. Several large tribes—including the Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole), the Osage, and the Seneca—are explicitly excluded from the General Allotment Act because their leaders have lobbied Congress to retain their tribally held lands and tribal government.
Crow warrior Sword Bearer is killed by U. S. troops.
A group of young Crow warriors, led by Sword Bearer, raid a camp of Blackfeet, who have stolen some of the Crow’s horses. Recapturing the horses, the young men ride triumphantly through the town of Crow Agency, Montana. During the excitement, Sword Bearer fires his rifle into the agent’s house and the town store. Fearing an uprising, the agent calls his superiors in Washington, D. C., to request military support. With the troops and local whites terrified of rebelling reservation Indians, the army orders Sword Bearer’s arrest. A shoot-out follows, leaving eight Crow Indians, including Sword Bearer, dead.
World History
