Native Americans

In the late 19th century, reformers responding to the devastation of the Native American population began to formulate policies aimed toward assimilating native peoples. In some ways, their campaign to bring “civilization” to their charges was well-intentioned. They thought that education, property ownership, and religious conversion were the means by which Native Americans could achieve equal citizenship. At the same time, support for assimilation was deeply colored by misunderstanding and even fear and hatred of Native American language, religion, and cultural practices. In their challenge to Native American tribalism, with its collective land ownership, nomadic ways, and animistic religion, reformers cooperated with others whose main purpose was to use and exploit Native American land and resources.

A threefold plan to assimilate Native Americans became the major driving force behind the U. S. government’s policy in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Through allotment policy, the government assigned individuals’ plots of land from the reservation and sold the surplus. It developed a system of BIA boarding and day schools to educate Native American children in English and in industrial and agricultural skills; and it replaced tribal authority in criminal trials with federal, state, and local courts. The undermining of tribal government effectively ended tribal sovereignty. By granting Native Americans citizenship in conjunction with allotment and military service, or in the comprehensive Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the U. S. Congress finally and forcibly integrated Native Americans into the nation. However, it was not until after World War II that some states granted Native Americans the right to vote or equal political rights.

After 1900, the policy of allotment, first begun under the Dawes Severalty Act (1887), began to take its toll on Native American land ownership. The original legislation

A group of young Native American men and women at the U. S. Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, participate in an art class. (Library of Congress)

Had put breaks on the ability of land speculators and corporations to take advantage of the allotment system and buy or lease the millions of acres of Native American reservation land. Allotted land had been put in trust for 25 years to ensure that it would not be sold wholesale to non-Native Americans. Each land sale or lease had to be approved by the Department of the Interior. Under pressure from railroad corporations, who sought the right-of-way on reservations, from oil and mining companies looking for mineral leases, and from timber companies and cattle syndicates, the Congress responded with a new series of laws that speeded up the allotment of land. In 1898, the Curtis Act ended tribal sovereignty in the Indian Territory. In 1902, the Dead Indian Land Act gave the right to Native Americans to sell inherited property, and the BuRKE Act put more Native American land at risk by eliminating the 25-year trust period. More than 90 million acres of reservation land were transferred to non-Native Americans between 1887 and 1932. While more than 100,000 Native Americans had received individual allotments, most of the land had been sold as “surplus” to non-Native American owners.

Connected to the policy of allotment was the transfer of criminal and civil legal cases from tribal authority to the federal and state court system. In part the transfer was designed to dismantle tribal authority and the separate sovereignty of Indian nations. Another consequence was that the shift to state courts aided the transfer of Native American land to white authorities. County courts soon provided supervision for, and later guardianship of, Native American lands, and the practice led to abuses. There was no compensation for the loss of tribal sovereignty. Few states accepted that Native Americans had equal political or civil rights, and in some states, Native Americans were denied the right to vote. This left them vulnerable to state and local courts. By declaring its owners legally incompetent, for example, courts and lawyers in the former Indian Territory of Oklahoma simply usurped control over Native American land and sold or leased it to mining, oil, timber, and cattle corporations. Court challenges to the forcible allotment of land, such as Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, only confirmed the second-class status of Native Americans under the law.

Along with allotment came the creation of a federal school system for Native Americans. In the schools, native languages, religious practices, dances, and chants were forbidden, as they were on many reservations under government supervision. Despite substantial resistance to Christianity and white education, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to push for its agenda of assimilation. In 1918, Congress passed a law granting citizenship to Native Americans who served their country in the military during the war; and in 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans who had not yet been naturalized.

Despite the assault on tribal land and authorities, many Native American communities proved resilient to the threat of federal and state policies. Not only through formal organization but also by retaining tribal independence, such tribes as the Navajo, Yuma, Pueblo, Hopi, Seneca, and Seminole successfully sidestepped allotment and the destructive policies of the period. For other reasons, the cessation of warfare, improvement in health care and nutrition, in particular the decline in the incidence of tuberculosis, and the creation of stable communities, the Native American population, in decline for hundreds of years, began to show signs of recovery and revival. From a low of 237,000 in the Bureau of Indian Affairs census of 1900, there was a slow growth in population to nearly 335,000 in 1930. Changes in Native American mortality were central to this growth. Life expectancy for Native Americans in 1900 was 30 to 35 years on average, significantly lower than the 50 years for the general population. Fertility also increased, as the population received better health care.

There were signs of a significant political revival as well. New groups, often coalitions of Native Americans and their white allies, took on the issues of Indian rights after 1910. The Four Mothers Society, the Society of American Indians (later the American Indian Association), the Indian Rights Association, and the American Indian Defense Association fought to stop the illegal seizure of lands attempted by Albert Fall, the secretary of the interior responsible for Teapot Dome, and supported legislation such as the Pueblo Lands Act, which defended land ownership and pushed for additional compensation for lands already lost. These groups also lobbied Congress to study Native American policies and conditions on reservations. In a 1924 report, The Indian Problem, a committee of 100 reviewed federal policy and upheld the land rights of Native Americans. In 1928, the Merriam Report on the Problem of Indian Administration directly linked allotment policy to the widespread poverty, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy of Native Americans. The Merriam Report called for the reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and improvement of living conditions. By the 1930s, with the Native American population recovering and the advent of a new, more sympathetic administration under Secretary of the Interior John Collier, the policy of assimilation ground to a halt.

Further reading: Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984); James C. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1984); Nancy Shoemaker, American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999).