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Native americans     and the newcomers

The formulation of public policy toward the Indians was of concern to the major European colonizing powers.

Colonization

The Spanish tried assiduously to Christianize the natives and to remake their living patterns. Orders were issued to congregate scattered Indian villages in orderly, well-placed centers, assuring the Indians at the same time that by moving to such centers they would not lose their outlying lands. This was the first attempt to create Indian reservations. The promise failed to protect Indian land, according to the Franciscan monk and historian of Mexico, Juan Torquemada, who reported about 1599 that there was hardly "a palm of land" that the Spaniards had not taken. Many Indians who did not join the congregations for fear of losing what they owned fled to mountain places and lost their lands anyway.

The Russians never seriously undertook colonization in the New World. When Peter I the Great sent Vitus Jonassen Bering into the northern sea that bears his name, interest was in scientific discovery, not overseas territory. Later, when the problem of protecting and perhaps expanding Russian occupation was placed before Catherine II the Great, she declared (1769): It is for traders to traffic where they please. I will furnish neither men, nor ships, nor money, and I renounce forever all lands and possessions in the East Indies and in America.

The Swedish and Dutch attempts at colonization were so brief that neither left a strong imprint on New World practices. The Dutch government, however, was probably the first (1645) of the European powers to enter into a formal treaty with an Indian tribe, the Mohawk. Thus began a relationship, inherited by the British, that contributed to the ascendancy of the English over the French in North America.

France handicapped its colonial venture by transporting to the New World a modified feudal system of land tenure that discouraged permanent settlement. Throughout the period of French occupation, emphasis was on trade rather than on land acquisition and development, and thus French administrators, in dealing with the various tribes, tried primarily only to establish trade relations with them. The French instituted the custom of inviting the headmen of all tribes with which they carried on trade to come once a year to Montreal, where the governor of Canada gave out presents and talked of friendship. The governor of Louisiana met southern Indians at Mobile.

The English, reluctantly, found themselves competing on the same basis with annual gifts. Still later, United States peace commissioners were to offer permanent annuities in exchange for tribal concessions of land or other interests. In contrast to the French, the English were primarily interested in land and permanent settlements; beginning quite early in their occupation, they felt an obligation to bargain with the Indians and to conclude formal agreements with compensation to presumed Indian landowners. The Plymouth settlers, coming without royal sanction, thought it incumbent upon them to make terms with the Massachuset Indians. Cecilius Calvert (the 2nd Baron Baltimore) and William Penn, while possessing royal grants in Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively, nevertheless took pains to purchase occupancy rights from the Indians. It became the practice of most of the colonies to prohibit indiscriminate and unauthorized appropriation of Indian land. The usual requirement was that purchases could be consummated only by agreement with the tribal headman, followed by approval of the governor or other official of the colony. At an early date also, specific areas were set aside for exclusive Indian use. Virginia in 1656 and commissioners for the United Colonies of New England in 1658 agreed to the creation of such reserved areas. Plymouth Colony in 1685 designated for individual Indians separate tracts that could not be alienated without their consent.

In spite of these official efforts to protect Indian lands, unauthorized entry and use caused constant friction through the colonial period. Rivalry with the French, who lost no opportunity to point out to the Indians how their lands were being encroached upon by the English; the activity of land speculators, who succeeded in obtaining large grants beyond the settled frontiers; and, finally, the startling success of the Ottawa chief Pontiac in capturing English strongholds in the old Northwest (the Great Lakes region) as a protest against this westward movement, together prompted King George III's ministers to issue a proclamation (1763) that formalized the concept of Indian land titles for the first time in the history of European colonization in the New World. The document prohibited issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the Indian title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty. The proclamation reserved for the use of the tribes "all the Lands and Territories lying to the Westward of the sources of the Rivers which fall into the Sea from the West and Northwest. ”Land west of the Appalachians might not be purchased or entered upon by private persons, but purchases might be made in the name of the king or one of the colonies at a council meeting of the Indians”.

This policy continued up to the termination of British rule and was adopted by the United States. The Appalachian barrier was soon passed - thousands of settlers crossed the mountains during the American Revolution - but both the Articles of Confederation and the federal Constitution reserved either to the president or to Congress sole authority in Indian affairs, including authority to extinguish Indian title by treaty. When French dominion in Canada capitulated in 1760, the English announced that "the Savages or Indian Allies of his most Christian Majesty, shall be maintained in the lands they inhabit, if they choose to remain there." Thereafter, the proclamation of 1763 applied in Canada and was embodied in the practices of the dominion government. (The British North America Act of 1867, which created modern Canada, provided that the parliament of Canada should have exclusive legislative authority with respect to "Indians, and lands reserved for the Indians." Thus, both North American countries made control over Indian matters a national concern.)

United States policy: the late 18th and 19th centuries

The first full declaration of U.S. policy was embodied in the Northwest Ordinance (1787): The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians, their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.This doctrine was embodied in the act of August 7, 1789, as one of the first declarations of the U.S. Congress under the Constitution.The final shaping of the legal and political rights of the Indian tribes is found in the opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall, notably in decision in the case of Worcester v. Georgia: The Indian nations had always been considered as distinct, independent, political communities, retaining their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the land, from time immemorial. . . . The settled doctrine of the law of nations is, that a weaker power does not surrender its independence - its right to self-government - by associating with a stronger, and taking its protection. A weak state, in order to provide for its safety, may place itself under the protection of one more powerful, without stripping itself of the right of government, and ceasing to be a state.The first major departure from the policy of respecting Indian rights came with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. For the first time the United States resorted to coercion, particularly in the cases of the Cherokee and Seminole tribes, as a means of securing compliance. The Removal Act was not in itself coercive, since it authorized the president only to negotiate with tribes east of the Mississippi on a basis of payment for their lands; it called for improvements in the east and a grant of land west of the river, to which perpetual title would be attached. In carrying out the law, however, resistance was met with military force. In the decade following, almost the entire population of perhaps 100,000 Indians was moved westward. The episode moved Alexis de Tocqueville to remark in 1831: The Europeans continued to surround [the Indians] on every side, and to confine them within narrower limits . . . and the Indians have been ruined by a competition which they had not the means of sustaining. They were isolated in their own country, and their race only constituted a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of a numerous and dominant people.

The territory west of the Mississippi, it turned out, was not so remote as had been supposed. The discovery of gold in California (1848) started a new sequence of treaties, designed to extinguish Indian title to lands lying in the path of the overland routes to the Pacific. The sudden surge of thousands of wagon trains through the last of the Indian country and the consequent slaughtering of prairie and mountain game that provided subsistence for the Indians brought on the most serious Indian wars the country had experienced. For three decades, beginning in the 1850s, raids and sporadic pitched fighting took place up and down the western Plains, highlighted by such incidents as the Custer massacre by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians (1876), the Nez Perce chief Joseph's running battle in 1877 against superior U.S. army forces, and the Chiricahua Geronimo's long duel with authorities in the Southwest, resulting in his capture and imprisonment in 1886. Toward the close of that period, the Ghost Dance religion, arising out of the dream revelations of a young Paiute Indian, Wovoka, promised the Indians a return to the old life and reunion with their departed kinsmen. The songs and ceremonies born of this revelation swept across the northern Plains. The movement came to an abrupt end December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. Believing that the Ghost Dance was disturbing an uneasy peace, government agents moved to arrest ringleaders. Sitting Bull was killed (December 15) while being taken into custody, and two weeks later units of the U.S. 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee massacred more than 200 men, women, and children who had already agreed to return to their homes. A further major shift of policy had occurred in 1871 after congressional discussions lasting several years. U.S. presidents, with the advice and consent of the Senate, had continued to make treaties with the Indian tribes and commit the United States to the payment of sums of money. The House of Representatives protested, since a number of congressmen had come to the view that treaties with Indian tribes were an absurdity (a view earlier held by Andrew Jackson). The Senate yielded, and the act of March 3, 1871, declared that "hereafter no Indian nation or tribe" would be recognized "as an independent power with whom the United States may contract by treaty." Indian affairs were brought under the legislative control of the Congress to an extent that had not been attempted previously. Tribal authority with respect to criminal offenses committed by members within the tribe was reduced to the extent that murder and other major crimes were placed under the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The most radical undertaking of the new legislative policy was the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. By that time the Indian tribes had been moved out of the mainstreams of traffic and were settled on lands that they had chosen out of the larger areas that they had formerly occupied. Their choice in most cases had been confirmed by treaty, agreement, act of Congress, or executive order of the president. The tribes that lived by hunting over wide areas found reservation confinement a threat to their existence. Generally, they had insisted on annuity payments or rations, or both, and the U.S. peace commissioners had been willing to offer such a price in return for important land cessions. In time the view came to be held that reservation life fostered indolence and perpetuated customs and attitudes that held Indians back from assimilation. The strategy offered by proponents of this theory was the Allotment Act authorizing the president to divide the reservations into individual parcels and to give every Indian, whether he wanted it or not, a particular piece of the tribally owned land. In order not to make the transition too abrupt, the land would be held in trust for a period of 25 years, after which ownership would devolve upon the individual. With it would go all the rights and duties of citizenship. Reservation land remaining after all living members of the tribes had been provided with allotments was declared surplus, and the president was authorized to open it for entry by non-Indian homesteaders, the Indians being paid the homestead price. A total of 118 reservations was allotted in this manner, but the result was not what had been anticipated. Through the alienation of surplus lands (making no allowance for children yet unborn) and through patenting of individual holdings, the Indians lost 86,000,000 acres (34,800,000 hectares), or 62 percent, of a total of 138,000,000 acres in Indian ownership prior to 1887. A generation of landless Indians resulted, with no vocational training to relieve them of dependence upon land. The strategy also failed in that ownership of land did not effect an automatic acculturation in those Indians who received individual parcels. Through scattering of individuals and families, moreover, social cohesiveness tended to break down. The result was a weakening of native institutions and cultural practices with nothing offered in substitution. What was intended as transition proved to be a blind alley. The Indian population had been dwindling through the decades after the mid-19th century. The California Indians alone, it was estimated, dropped from 100,000 in 1853 to not more than 30,000 in 1864 and 19,000 in 1906. Cholera in the central Plains in 1849 struck the Pawnee. As late as 1870-71 an epidemic of smallpox brought disaster to the Blackfeet, Assiniboin, and Cree. These events gave currency to the concept of the Indian as "the vanishing American." The decision of 1871 to discontinue treaty making and the passage of the Allotment Act of 1887 were both founded in the belief that the Indians would not survive, and hence it did not much matter whether their views were sought in advance of legislation or whether lands were provided for coming generations. When it became obvious after about 1920 that the Indians, whose numbers had remained static for several years, were surely increasing, the United States was without a policy for advancing the interests of a living people.

20th-century reforms of U.S. policy

A survey in 1926 brought into clear focus the failings of the previous 40 years. The investigators found most Indians "extremely poor," in bad health, without education, and lacking adjustment to the dominant culture around them. Under the impetus of these findings and other pressures for reform, Congress adopted the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which contemplated an orderly decrease of federal control and a concomitant increase of Indian self-government and responsibility. The essentials of the new law were as follows: (1) allotment of tribal lands was prohibited in the future, but tribes might assign use rights to individuals; (2) so-called surplus lands not pre-empted by homesteaders might be returned to the tribes; (3) tribes might adopt written constitutions and charters of incorporation embodying their continuing inherent powers to manage internal affairs; and (4) funds were authorized for the establishment of a revolving credit program, for land purchases, for educational assistance, and for aiding the tribes in forming organizations. Moreover, the act could be rejected on any reservation by referendum.

The response to the 1934 act was indicative of the Indians' ability to rise above adversity. About 160 tribes, bands, and Alaska villages adopted written constitutions, some of which combined traditional practices with modern parliamentary methods. The revolving credit fund helped Indians build up their herds and improve their economic position in other ways. Borrowers from the fund were tribal corporations, credit associations, and cooperatives that loaned to individual Indians and to group enterprises on a multimillion-dollar scale. Educational and health services were also improved through federal aid.

Originally, the United States exercised no guardianship over the person of the Indian; after 1871, when internal tribal matters became the subject of national legislation, the number and variety of regulatory measures multiplied rapidly. In the same year that the Indian Reorganization Act was passed, Congress significantly repealed 12 statutes that had made it possible to hold Indians virtual prisoners on their reservations. Indians were then able to come and go as freely as all other persons. The Snyder Act of 1924, extending citizenship to all Indians born in the United States, opened the door to full participation. But few Indians took advantage of the law, and because of their lack of interest a number of states excluded Indians from the franchise. Organization of tribal governments following the Reorganization Act, however, seemed to awaken an interest in civic affairs beyond tribal boundaries, and when Indians asked for the franchise, they were generally able to secure it eventually, though not until 1948 in Arizona and New Mexico, after lengthy court action.

The federal courts consistently upheld the treaties made with Indian tribes and also held that property may not be taken from Indians, whether or not a treaty exists, "except in fair trade." The latter contention was offered by the Hualapai Indians against the Santa Fe Railway. The company was required by the courts in 1944 to relinquish about 500,000 acres it thought had been granted to it by the U.S. The lands had been occupied since prehistory by the Indians, without benefit of treaty recognition, and the Supreme Court held that, if the occupancy could be proved, as it subsequently was, the Indians were entitled to have their lands restored. In 1950 the Ute Indians were awarded a judgment against the United States of $31,750,000 for lands taken without adequate compensation. A special Indian Claims Commission, created by act of Congress on August 13, 1946, received many petitions for land claims against the United States and awarded, for example, about $14,789,000 to the Cherokee nation, $10,242,000 to the Crow tribe, $3,650,000 to the Snake-Paiute of Oregon, $3,000,000 to the Nez Perce, and $12,300,000 to the Seminole. The period from the early 1950s to the 1970s was one of increasing federal attempts to establish new policies regarding the Indians, and it was also a period in which Indians themselves became increasingly vocal in their quest for an equal measure of human rights and the correction of past wrongs. The first major shift in policy came in 1954, when the Department of the Interior began terminating federal control over those Indians and reservations deemed able to look after their own affairs. From 1954 to 1960, support to 61 tribes and other Indian groups was ended by the withdrawal of federal services or trust supervision. The results, however, were unhappy. Some extremely impoverished Indian groups lost many acres of land to private exploitation of their land and water resources. Indians in certain states became subject exclusively to state laws that were less liberal or sympathetic than federal laws. Finally the protests of Indians, anthropologists, and others became so insistent that the program was decelerated in 1960. In 1961 a trained anthropologist was sworn in as commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first anthropologist ever to hold that position. Federal aid expanded greatly, and in the ensuing decade Indians were brought into various federal programs for equal economic opportunity. Indian unemployment remained severe, however.

American Indians came more and more into public attention in the late 20th century as they sought (along with other minorities) to achieve a better life. Following the example set by black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Indian groups drew attention to their cause through mass demonstrations and protests. Perhaps the most publicized of these actions were the 19-month seizure (1970-71) of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay (California) by members of the militant American Indian Movement (AIM) and the February 1973 occupation of a settlement at the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge (South Dakota) reservation; the latter incident was the second conflict to occur at Wounded Knee. Representing an attempt to gain a more traditional political power base was the establishment in 1971 of the National Tribal Chairman's Association, which eventually grew to include more than 100 tribes.

Indian leaders also expanded their sphere of influence into the courts; fishing, mineral, forest, casino gambling, and other rights involving tribal lands became the subject of litigation by the Puyallup (Washington state), the Northern Cheyenne (Montana), and the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy (Maine), among others. Although control of economic resources was the focus of most such cases, some groups sought to regain sovereignty over ancient tribal lands of primarily ceremonial and religious significance.

Facts  about  American  Indians  today

Source: Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior

Who is an Indian?

No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person's identity as an Indian. Tribal membership is determined by the enrollment criteria of the tribe from which Indian blood may be derived, and this varies with each tribe. Generally, if linkage to an identified tribal member is far removed, one would not qualify for membership.

To be eligible for Bureau of Indian Affairs services, an Indian must (1) be a member of a tribe recognized by the federal government, (2) be of one-half or more Indian blood of tribes indigenous to the United States; or (3) must, for some purposes, be of one-fourth or more Indian ancestry. By legislative and administrative decision, the Aleuts, Eskimos and Indians of Alaska are eligible for BIA services. Most of the BIA's services and programs, however, are limited to Indians living on or near Indian reservations.

The Bureau of the Census counts anyone an Indian who declares himself or herself to be an Indian. In 1990 the Census figures showed there were 1,959,234 American Indians and Alaska Natives living in the United States (1,878,285 American Indians, 57,152 Eskimos, and 23,797 Aleuts). This is a 37.9 percent increase over the 1980 recorded total of 1,420,000. The increase is attributed to improved census taking and more self- identification during the 1990 count.

Why are Indians sometimes referred to as Native Americans?

The term, “Native American,” came into usage in the 1960s to denote the groups served by the Bureau of Indian Affairs: American Indians and Alaska Natives (Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska). Later the term also included Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in some federal programs. It, therefore, came into disfavor among some Indian groups. The preferred term is American Indian. The Eskimos and Aleuts in Alaska are two culturally distinct groups and are sensitive about being included under the “Indian” designation. They prefer “Alaska Native.”

How does one trace Indian ancestry and become a member of a tribe?

The first step in tracing Indian ancestry is basic genealogical research if one does not already have specific family information and documents that identify tribal ties. Some information to obtain is: names of ancestors; dates of birth; marriages and death; places where they lived; brothers and sisters, if any; and, most importantly, tribal affiliations. Among family documents to check are Bibles, wills, and other such papers. The next step is to determine whether one's ancestors are on an official tribal roll or census by contacting the tribe.

What is a federally recognized tribe?

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