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THE NATIVE AMERICAN

Discuss the role of cultural conflict as well as the historical patterns of the relations between the white man and the Native Americans.

I. Concept number one: Discuss the problem of defining and maintaining an identity for the Native American in the United States today.

A. The major problem the Native American has in society today is one of establishing an identity.

B. The Native Americans remain probably some of the most misunderstood Americans of us all. They share no common native language and few common customs, but they do have some common traits.

C. Our treatment of the Native American during our past still affects the national conscience. We have been hampered by the history of our relationship with the Native American in our efforts to develop a fair national policy governing present and future treatment of Native Americans.

D. Before we can develop a successful policy to work with the Native American. we have to know where we have been in the past. Hence, it seems a basic requirement to study the history of the Native American. .,

E. The problem of identity for the Native American can best be demonstrated by the use of the word "Indian." What and who is an Indian?

I . . There is no clear answer to this question, since different people apply different definitions. Generally, however, most definitions rest either upon a "cultural" or a "racial" basis, with the former being used most widely in Latin America and the latter in the United States.

a. In Mexico, for example, people are very proud of being of native ancestry but do not consider themselves to be Native Americans unless they speak a native language and live in a native community.

b. A Mexican of pure native descent or even a person of mixed racial descent participating fully in the Mexican national culture does not ordinarily think of himself as a Native American.

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c. In brief, from the Latin American perspective, to be a Native American is to live a Native way of life. '

d. In the United States there is a tendency to define a person by his racial background rather than by his way of life. For example. the Federal government defines an "Indian" as a person of 1/4 or more United States Indian descent who resides upon Federal "trust land" (reservations) or who has preserved membership in a tribe occupying "trust land."

e. The frustration with the term "Indian" can best be demonstrated with the following quote. "Even the name Indian is not ours. It was given to us by some dumb honky who got lost and thought he landed in India."

2. Everyone knows Columbus can be blamed for much of the confusion. Many Europeans avoided the problem for several centuries by ignoring Columbus' mistake. They referred to the Native Americans simply as Americans.

.) . But European emigrants came to appreciate the term American, applied it to themselves and reverted to Columbus' label.

4. Conflict in cultures omprise one of the great barriers to any realunderstan mg of the Native American and to his problem of adjustment to American society as it exist today.

5. The core of the problem of identity stems from the fact that the NativeIAmerican has a non-Western culture and is trying to find his identity

within a dominant Western culture. Until recent times, the Native American has never been included in our society although he has been impacted by its development; consequently, this has made it difficult to preserve the basis of his culture, traditions, and philosophy of life. This point is demonstrated with the following article:

WIND RIVER'S LOST GENERATIONAN OUTBREAK OF SUICIDE PLAGUES A WYOMING RESERVATION

TIME Magazine: October, 1985

Tom between their native culture and that of the surrounding American society, Indian reservations have often been visited by despair and v'iolence. The Native American suicide rateis far above the national average, but even that depressing fact could not account for the events of the past two months at the Wind River Reservation (pop. 6,000) in Wyoming, where nine young

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tribesmen have taken their lives. That rate is some 24 times the average for Indian men ages 15 to 24, and 60 times the national figure. Last week tribal elders returned to a long-abandoned tradition in the hope of saving their children. TIME correspondent Dan Goodgame reports from Wind River.

They looked like kids on a high school field trip, clad in Levi's and Springsteen sweatshirts, lining up by the hundreds at the entrance to a tepee. These students, though. were Indians, and the healing ritual to which they were invited was solemnly dedicated to saving their lives.

Inside the tepee, redolent of burning herbs, tribal elders daubed the students with scarlet paint to cleanse them of evil spirits. This was "big medicine," last invoked during the killing flu epidemic of 1918 and now revived to banish the modem-day evil that has lately infected Wind River.

The nine recent suicides admit to no pattern, except that all the victims were young men and all died by hanging. They ranged in age from 14 to 25. Friends and relatives saw no warning signs among most of the victims, and no explanation could be found in the two notes left behind: one youth simply willed his stereo to his brother.

The rash of suicides began Aug. 12, when a 19-year-old Indian, in jail for public drunkenness, hanged himself with socks taken from a sleeping cellmate. A 16-year-old pallbearer at his funeral became the second victim, using a pair of sweatpants to hang himself from a tree. In turn, one of that youth's mourners became the third victim. Says Fremont County Coroner Larry Lee: "It seems to be a copycat, domino kind of thing."

Lee, however, has found no evidence of a suicide pact. He believes that alcohol or drugs were factors in fewer than half the cases. "Many parents of these kids are friends of mine, and we can't explain it," he says. "These kids haven't even lived yet, and they're killing themselves."

Some tribes people view the suicide epidemic as a reason to re-examine the reservation's social and economic ills. About 70% of the Wind River work force is unemployed, and jobs for the young are especially scarce. At the same time, the reservation's oil and gas wealth provides royalty payments of up to $300 a month per person, thus fostering a debilitating welfare culture. Howard Smith, fiscal officer for the Arapaho tribe, which shares the 2 million-acre reservation with the Shoshones, says, "Too many of our young people have time on their hands, so they drink and watch TV and get depressed."

Set apart from American society, yet unable to escape its corrosive influence on tribal life, young Indians often face suicidal despair. "Our Creator can be cruel when he wants to open our eyes," says Wes Martel of the Shoshone Business Council. "Our tribes have great elders, but we have not used them to provide for our children's spiritual needs." To help the young recover some of their cultural identity, elders at Wind River are introducing students to a tribal tradition

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that may ease their plight. In the past few days, teachers and clinic workers have reported thatthe wave of suicide attempts has subsided. Perhaps the healing ritual has survived the decades of neglect.

6. In recent years there have been attempts to assimilate Native Americans into society with the idea of destroying everything that has been a part of their past culture and traditions.

The result of these attempts to assimilate has been to create an unstable environment for the Native American. Consequently , this has made it impossible for the Native American to develop a gradual but consistent process by which they can gradually assimilate into our Western culture while at the same time preserving some of the basic foundations of their own culture, traditions and philosophy of life.

7. Two factors have contributed greatly to the cultural confusion of the Native American:

The first was the cultural dominance and undermining influence of Western culture. Western culture was so dominating and penetrating because of its technological base that it ended up undermining and polluting the Native American 's culture

The desire for Western technology made him dependent on th.e bimefits of that technology and therefore jt wai i:mpOiiihle for the

Natiye American to preserve bjs own culture and iaewi ty intakt which lead to tbe Si68BS faeisi;.

The sec.and factor involves limited culn1ra! integration or lack of £_ultural integration into Western cThe Native American accepts the matenal part of Western culture but finds that Western thought and ways of doing things conflict with his traditions , culture and life-style. Consequently, the Native American tries to reject Western tradition, culture, and its philosophy of life because it does conflict so dramatically with his past traditions and philosophies.

c. The result of this rejection is ISOLATION from and within Western culture and the loss of ABILITY to preserve and determine his own identity. Native Americans are a people qelonging to two cultures but belonging to neither completely.

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8. The affects of this cultural conflict become apparent when studyi:t;lg the population figures for the Native American over the past 500 years. At the time of Columbus there were over 100 different tribes in the continental United States and the Native Americans numbered about 900,000 to 2,000,000.

a. In 1910 the Native American population was 222,000 and has risen to over 2,000,000 at present.

b. These figures show that the historical relationship between the white man and the Native American have not been very positive.

A Changing World

For the surviving , the question was how to live in this strange new world. But for the white people and their governments, the question was: what to do about the

---At different times, the white people tried two different answers.

One was to ignore , in the belief that they were bound to die out anyway.Meanwhile, they could be given handouts of food. Also, areas of land were set aside as reserves for them to live in. But even these did not belong by law to the , but to the State.

The other answer was that should give up everything to do with their old way of life, learn to take jobs, and become just like white settlers.

More and more tried to do this. But all too often they found they were not wanted. They could get no jobs, or only the most menial and worst paid. They were not allowed to live in the towns, only in camps on the fringes. Ifchildren went to school, teachers rearely bothered with them.

Besides this, to "succeed" in the white man's world meant learning new ways of behaving. Some of these were only strange and unfamiliar, but others went quite against ideas of right and wrong.

The believed that the Ancestors had given them their land, to look after and keep. Many of the white newcomers believed God had given them the land as sort of construction kit, to be made into something else.

To people who think like this, as many still do, anyone who does not change, or "develop" the land has no right to be on it. A settler thought that if the local hunted over the part he had marked out for himself, then they were trespassers.

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The law of the new white settlers said that had no right at all to the land.

Bit by bit, the white settlers occupied the continent, and everywhere they came the died. In the south and south-east only remnants of the groups who had lived there were left by the middle of the 19th century .

But in the far north and the desert centre, many groups stayed for a long time undisturbed. In parts of the desert there were people who had never seen a white man until the 1960s.

By 1900 the number of Aborigines had dropped from about 300,000 to about 66.000.Many had died from bullets and many more from diseases such as tuberculosis, which they caught from the whites.

The rest had lost their land and their sacred places, the homes of their souls. It was not their world any longer and nothing made any senase. The Aborigines became despondent, and the death rate rose dramatically. Soon, it seemed, there would be no more Aborigines.

II. Concept number two: Discuss the seven historical patterns that demonstrate the relationship between the white man and the Native American.

A. The first pattern: The pattern of the attitude of superiority was established early when the first contact of Native Americans and whites began with Christopher Columbus, who wrote that these Indians would make good servants . Hence, the

history of native-white relations.commenced with the white Il!an'f eclaration of superiority over the red man.

B. The second pattern: The pattern of exploitation was first developed by the Spaniards who enslaved the Native Americans in the mission system and took them back to Europe as slaves. The French, English and Americans also participated in this pattern through the fur trade. By use of the fur trade practice, the Native Americans killed off their own wildlife which had been a basis of their culture for hundreds of years, in order to obtain products from whites and thus they became technological junkies . Because of this dependents upon white culture this in tum would lead to the destruction of their own culture.

The fur trade practice is also an example of the cultural dominance and underminin influence of Western culture.

c. The third pattern: The pattern of divide and conQuer is also an example of exploitation as the Europeans stimulated the natural conflicts between the Native in order to use them as allies in wars against other Europeans and Americans native tribes who sided with those Europeans.

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1. An example of this practice can be seen during the French and Indian War. IThe Iroquois were given 30 wagon loads of gifts, including guns, to keepthem loyal to the British. At the same time the French were making use of the Algonquins against the British.

2. A second and just as important example of divide and conquer will be [discussed in detail when we discuss the concentrated reservation policywhich developed.

D. The fourth pattern: The fourth pattern of conflict over land developed soon after fthe British arrived in North America. Initially, both the British and NativeAmericans were friendly and the Native Americans even taught the British how to \ [raise com and other crops in order to survive.

1. Thus, developed the "noble savage" image or stereotype which is an example of attitude of superiority and was first developed by Columbus.

2. But the friendly spirit disappeared as the numl:ier of whites increased and .,...., the British sought to remove the Native Americans from their land. As conflict over territorial expansion developed, the image of the Native American changed from the "noble savage" to the "brutal savage,"without civilization or religion, who did not believe in private property, • the Christian God, or the power of the king of England.

3. Cultural Naturalism was used as the justification to remove the Native American from his land. For example the Puritans justified the seizure of native lands with the Book of Genesis: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." Thus, the Massachusetts General Court declared in 1652, "Indians within this jurisdiction have just right there to" only those lands they have "by possession or improvement."

a. Most Puritans considered the Bible-based policy not only divinely inspired, but also just and fair.

b. John Winthrop concluded: "If we leave them sufficient land for Itheir own use, we may lawfully take the rest, there being more than

enough for them and us." {E. The fifth pattern: Pattern number five, land acquisition by treaty. developed

under the new government of the United States as an attempted solution to settlethe problems that developed as a result of pattern number four. J

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1. In the beginning , the United States government stated that the Native Americans possessed rights to the soil they occupied and could not be Jdispossessed without their consent.

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This laid the foundation for pattern number five as the treaty making process was made the legal way to drive the natives from their lands. The initial solution to the problem of land acquisition was to force the removal of the natives to the West.

4. In 1784, the nation's first treaty with the Native Americans was negotiated at Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois, who agreed to relinquish their claims to part of western New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The treaty set the pattern for Native American affairs until (after 1871 called agreements) 1887.

Tr s that took advantage af Native Americans were negotiatedwa·s: fl ) by use of inadequate interpreters for th! p iyet treaty c./.councils, (2) lcohol at treaty cqupcils, and (3) unrepresett't'auv sign. 1

As the pattern of c flict over land continued to develop, tries showe.fL themselves merel to b measures as eventually settlers would_ave onto the land designated for the natives, ignormg t e1r nghts, and I

wo..u,,..ld try to move them off.

a. When conflict ensued, the settlers demanded military protection.

b. This process started in 1791 in the Northwest territory and continued up until the 1870's in the Black Hills, when Custer was asked to go in and protect the gold seekers who were mining on the Sioux reservation.

F. • The sixth :pattern: After pattern five showed itself to be only temporary, pattern six, isolation, developed in 1830 with the passage of the Indian Removal Act.

1. The Indian Removal Act of 183mpowered the President to exchange land west of the Mississippi for territory east of the river that was held byNative Americans. By 1850 most of the surviving eastern tribes or about l92,664 Native Americans were in locations beyond the Mississippi.

2. With this new Indian Removal Act the federal government initiated a new policy, the reservation system, and established another pattern of ISOLATION by use of the reservation system.

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I3. The purpose of this policy was to create "ONE BIG RESERVATION" out

of the central grasslands (the Great American Desert , as it was sometimes called) which everyone knew at the time was unusable for farming as practiced east of the Mississippi.

4. The Indian Removal Act primarily affected the powerful nations of theSoutheast or the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, JChickasaws, and the Seminoles) as they were called. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS POLICY PRODUCED ONE OF THE • DARKEST CHAPTERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY ... "THE TRAIL OF TEARS ."

5. The justification of the act by whites was the superiority of a farming over a hunting culture. The ideals of a savage society are built around the HUNT and WARFARE and its members can develop no further, no higher, than their lifestyle will let them.

Such a rationalization had one serious weakness. The farmer's right ofeminent domain over the lands of the savage could be asserted consistently Ionly so long as the tribes involved were "savages." However, the Southeastern tribes were agriculturists as well as hunters and had been for two generations prior to the Indian Removal Act.

6. The Cherokee nation, located within the state of Georgia, demonstrates·this point well. They had developed their own written language along with a constitution, a legal system which included a bicameral legislature, and a judicial system.

a. With Georgia's growing population and the need for more fertile land, plus the discovery of gold on Cherokee land in 1828, the state of Georgia decided the natives must go.

b. Between 1828-31 the Georgia legislature fought attempts by the Cherokees to organize their own government and claimed the

.Cherokees as her subjects and tenants-at-will. In 1832 when Chief Justice Marshall and the Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Geoniia that the laws of Georgia had no force in Cherokee territory, President Jackson is said to have remarked, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

c. By December 1835, about 400 (many of them were mixed-bloods or white men who had married into the tribe) of the more than 18,000 Cherokee showed up at a tribal meeting to vote on a treaty

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that paid $5 million plus a section of land in Indian territory in modem-day Oklahoma for ALL their lands east of the Mississippi. The treaty was approved by a vote of 75 to 7 with a statement posted before the meeting that any tribe member who did not attend would be counted as voting in agreement with whatever might be decided. This represents a good example of unrepresentative signers in dealing with the Native Americans on treaty negotiations.

d. The treaty allowed two years from (December, 1835,) the date of ratification before the tribe had to be gone. By May of 1838, only some 2,000 Cherokees had left. The rest, close to 16,000, simply went about their ordinary business. Consequently, some 7,000 soldiers were used to round up every Cherokee man, woman and child to transport them during the winter of 1838 to present day Oklahoma. On the journey which is called "The Trail of Tears" itis estimated that close to 4,000 Cherokees, or about 114 of the tribe, had died or were missing at journey's end.

7. Although the Indian Removal Act had its negative side such as "The Trail of Tears," there was also a positive side. So long as the United States held to the concept "ONE BIG RESERVATION" the two races could live in

[ peace and the natives could more easily preserve their culture.

r However, the advance of the mining and transportation frontiers launched a new conflict over lqnd. The mass migrations across the Plains, thedevelopment of freighting and express lines, and the plans for transcontinental railroads, all demonstrated during the early 1850's that the policy of "ONE BIG RESERVATION" was destined for a speedy extinction. I

The frontier pressure for a highway forced the United States to abandon its policy of "ONE BIG RESERVATION" for a system of "CONCENTRATED RESERVATIONS" which led directly to war.

I8. The first step in applying the new policy of "CONCENTRATED

RESERVATIONS" was taken in 1851 when chiefs of the principle Plains tribes were assembled at Ft. Laramie. In return for gifts and annuities the natives agreed to this policy of divide and conquer and to accept definite tribal limitations. For example, the Sioux were assured of keeping the Dakota country north of the Platte River.

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rThe natives were told they could live unmolested for all time, each .tribe rsecure in the knowledge its lands were clearly defined. But this phase wasonly acceptable to the whites until gold, silver, oil, or some other valuable use for the reservation land developed.

This reoccurring problem of conflict over land can best be demonstrated with the gold rush in the Black Hills on the Sioux reservation in the early 1870's.

a. Under the Ft. Laramie treaty of 1851 and a later Treaty of 1868. the .I

Black Hills lay within the boundaries of the Sioux reservation. Considered worthless by the government at that time, the area had become both a sacred place and a prime hunting ground for the Sioux.

b. By 1872, miners had begun moving into the region in search of gold, openly violating the treaty. Within two years the talk of gold in the Black Hills reached such proportions that numerous parties of prospectors entered the region, despite efforts by the army to keep them out.

c. Native Americans, on and off the reservation, were angered over this invasion of their sacred land. Hence, in September, 1875, a commission from Washington met with some 20,000 Cheyennes, Sioux, and Arapahos. The commissioners first tried to purchase the Black Hills outright for $6 million; then they attempted to buy the mineral rights for $400,000 a year. Both offers were firmly rejected.

d. By this time, the treaty was being repeatedly broken by both sides as the natives resumed raiding along the frontier. Washington officials now viewed the natives in this area not only as a menace to the frontier but as a potential threat to the entire reservation system. So the Commissioner of Indian Affairs sent word to the Sioux, northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho to return to their reservations or "military force would be used."

e. The result of this "military force" was the Battle of the Little Bighorn were George Custer and 264 of his men were killed in what remains a milestone in the history of native resistance to white domination. At the time of the victory it shocked the nation and forced the army to redouble its efforts against the natives.

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As sensational as the victory was, in the long run it did the m;ttives little good as they were forced by hunger to surrender in 1881.

G. The seventh pattern: Pattern seven, assimilation. developed when there was no longer any more land on which to isolate the Native American.

1. In 1887 a new policy and pattern were introduced with the passage of the Dawes Act. According to this act, the President could allot reservation land individually to the natives, the title to be held in trust by the Unitedfor 25 years .States government

( a. After the 25 year period, full citizenship would accompany the allotment. Heads of families were to receive 160 acres and a single individual would get 80 acres. The surplus, after the natives had been taken care of, was to be sold by the government or would beused for national parks.

.-b. The Dawes Act was an attempt to assimilate the Native American

into our culture by completely isolatin him from his own culture and forcing him to find his identity within our society.

c. Part of the significance of the act is that it revealed at this late date the white man's lack of understanding of the Native American and his values on individual ownership of land. Even if the natives wanted to become farmers, much of the land was unfit for subsistence farming. THE DAWES ACT WAS A HUGEMISTAKE, BUT IT REMAINED THE MAJOR POLICY FOR I

( l DEALING WITH THE NATIVE AMERICANS UNTIL 1933.J

2. In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act introduced a new policy whichbrought an end to the allotment policy. The new act encouraged tribal self-government, extended financial credit to the tribes, began an improvement of education and medical facilities, and promoted a revival of native culture.

a. The act did not mean that assimilation was forgotten, but that the natives could move toward assimilation more at their own pace.

b. In 1953, as a result of the slowness of assimilation and taxpayer unrest at having to pay for services guaranteed to the natives, the Eisenhower administration brought a sudden end to the IndianReorganization Act with a new policy which was called ITERMINATION.

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3. TERMINATION and RELOCATION was an attempt to isolate the Native fAmerican by having Congress termi nate federal responsjbjl jty for Native 'Ameri · · · tribes, settling all {outstanding claims of the tribes against the United States, concluding a .,tfeaty-assi · 1 concessions to tribes wi in out reservations, andera icating tribal governments which the Indian Reorganization Act ha (only recently restored.

a. This would lead to the ass imilation of the Native American into the dominant western society and thus erase tribal culture and enable the federal government to terminate its relationship with the Native American.

b. In 1954, Congress subsequently adopted a series of laws

implementing the policy of TERMINATION. Thus between 1954 rand 1962 Congress stripped 61 tribes, groups, and bands of federal

services and protection. td>,vo.. ,·l>k.. IN'f"'I ..io\...•'"'l'/ (c. The TERMINATION policy was also augmented by a program

called relocation. Many natives were screened, and those judged best suited to survive in the cities were sent off the reservation to be assimilated into America's cities. Some natives were successfully relocated and fit well into the white urban world. Others returned to the reservation or remained jobless and homeless in the city.

d. The policy of TERMINATION remained in force in one form or lanother until 1970. Its greatest contribution to native welfare was that it eventually produced such an intensively negative public reaction it brought about policy changes which promised fulfillment through the Indian Reorganization Act goals of ethnic restoration.

e. In 1970, President Nixon repudiated the policy of termination in support of a new policy of "self determination."

Wealth Gives Indian Tribes Political Clout lA few years ago, American Indian tribes could only dream of having the political cloutthat the Mississipi Band of Choctaw now enjoy. [

Congress was considering a tax on tribes to pay for regulating their casinos. Alarmed, theChoctaws put their Washington lobbying firm to work. What happened next stunned federal {

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