The Greatest Damage Done to Native Americans in the Late 19Th Century Was by Those Who

AP Document Based Question

The greatest damage done to Native Americans in the late 19th century was by those who believed they had the best interests of Native Americans at heart. Assess the validity of this statement.

Document A

“...Since the political relationship of the Five Civilized Nations with the United States government was basically international, the accepted method for working out political relations was through the negotiation treaties... Reconstruction of the Five Civilized Nations in Indian Territory as viewed by the United States, seemed to offer the opportunity to extract from the Indians more of their land that had been given to them by the earlier treaties and to secure Indian concentration and a consolidated territorial government... The reconstruction policies which the United States imposed upon the Five Civilized Nations indicated that the reconstruction treaties were not designed primarily to benefit the Indians...used instead as a means by which the Federal government could circumvent the old removal treaties and concentrate other tribes in the territory, thus releasing additional land for white settlement in other states as well as Indian Territory ...the blessings of the Anglo-Saxon laws and practices...were instituted whether the residing inhabitants desired it or not, because it was "good for them" and for the progress of the western-oriented United States.” SOURCE: M. Thomas Bailey, Reconstruction in Indian Territory (New York: Kennekat Press, 1972), 192-95, p. 201-203.

Document B

“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. They do not protect my father's grave. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.....There has been too much talking by men who had not right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misinterpretations have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace.....Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. Let me 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 act for myself--and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.” SOURCE: Chief Joseph Lament, April 1879. Document C

“There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians [in the United States] one which has not suffered cruelly at the hands of the Government or of white settlers.....This is especially true of the bands on the Pacific slopes. One of its strongest supports in so doing is the widespread sentiment among the people of dislike to the Indian, of impatience with his presence as a "barrier to civilization", and distrust of it as possible danger. President after president has appointed commission after commission to inquire into and report upon Indian affairs, and to make suggestions as to the best methods of managing them. The reports are filled with eloquent statements of wrongs done to the Indians, of perfidies on the part of the Government; they counsel, as earnestly as words can, a trial of the simple and unperplexing expedients of telling the truth, keeping promises, making fair bargains, dealing justly in all ways and all things. The history of the Government connections with the Indians is a shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises. The history of the border, white man's connection with the Indian is sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs committed by the former, as the rule, and occasional savage outbreaks and unspeakably barbarous deeds of retaliation by the latter, as the exception...... that is the refusal of the protection of the law to the Indians rights of property,"of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." SOURCE: Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881).

Document D

”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,.....to allot the lands in said reservation 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 single person under the 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...... 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 every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made.....and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up.....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, priviledges, and immunities of such citizens.” SOURCE: The Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act, 1887. Document E

“In the center of the camp the Indians had hoisted a white flag as a sign of peace and guarantee of safety..... Shortly after 8 o'clock in the morning the warriors were ordered to come out from the tipis and deliver their arms.....While the soldiers had been looking for the guns Yellow Bird, a medicine man, had been walking about among the warriors, blowing on an eagle-bone whistle, and urging them to resistence, telling them that the soldiers would become weak and powerless, and that the bullets would be unavailing against the sacred "ghost shirts".....Yellow Bird stooped down and threw a handful of dust in the air.....a young Indian.....drew a rifle from under his blanket and fired at the soldiers...... Guns trained on the camp opened fire and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children.....In a few minutes 200 Indian men, women, and children, with 60 soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground.....” SOURCE: James Mooney, "The Ghost Dance and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890", (Washington, D.C., 1896), 868-70.

Document F

Mandan, N. Dak., November 18, 1890 Dear Sir,

.....The settlers who live in the country surrounding Mandan desire to urge strongly that the Indian Department from henceforth deny to Indians the right to carry arms or ammunition off their reservations. Game off the reservations belongs to the white men anyway, and it is utterly impossible for the ordinary white man to see why the Indians should be permitted to roam all over the country off the reservations armed to the teeth. The most conservative men in this community will be powerless to suppress the determination of the majority of the settlers to kill off every Indian that presents his face in this country in the future unless the Government does something to protect us.....Their property has been destroyed and their children and wives frightened by these worthless nomads.....” R.M. Tuttle, Chairman Jesse Ayers P.B. Wickham Joseph Miller SOURCE: "Indians Armed to the Teeth" 1890 Document G

“In the latter part of November the military authorized the arrest of Sitting Bull by W.F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill")....Sitting Bull's camp where the dancing had been going on was on Grand River.....The number of Indian policemen in that vicinity was increased and he was kept under close surveillance...... December 14 the police notified the agent that Sitting Bull was preparing to leave the reservation.....it was decided that the arrest should be made the following morning...... December 15, 39 Indian police and 4 volunteers went to Sitting Bull's cabin and arrested him. He agreed to accompany them.....while dressing caused considerable delay.....his followers began to congregate to the number of 150, so that when he was brought out of the house they had the police entirely surrounded. Sitting Bull then refused to go and called on his friends, the ghost dancers, to rescue him. At this juncture one of them shot Lieutenant Bullhead. The lieutenant then shot Sitting Bull, who also received another shot and was killed outright.” SOURCE: Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1891

Document H

“Prominent among the matters which challenges the attention of Congress at its present session is the management of our Indian affiars.....it is but recently that any effort has been made for its solution...... white settlements have crowded the borders of reservations, the Indians.....have been transferred to other hunting grounds..... For the success of the efforts now making them to introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens, sharing their rights and holden to their responsibilities..... First. I recommend the passage of an act making the laws of the various States and Territories applicable to the Indian reservations within their borders and extending the laws of the State of Arkansas to the portion of the Indian Territory not occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes.The Indians should receive the protection of the law..... Second.....The enactment of a general law permitting the allotment in severality.....of a reasonable quantity of land secured to them by patent, and for their own protection made inalienable for twenty or twenty-five years.....A resort to the allotment system would have a direct and powerful influence in dissolving the tribal bond, which is so prominent a feature of savage life..... Third. I advise a liberal appropriation for the support of Indian schools.....” SOURCE: James D Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897) vol. 10 4641-43. Document I

“We do not believe that the Government of the United States in dealing with its Indian wards would act righteously or wisely if it were to attempt to crush out from those who are of Indian descent all the racial traits which differentiate the North American Indian from the other race stocks of the world...... We think that the wisest friends of the Indians recognize with great delight and value highly the art impulse in certain Indian tribes, which has shown itself in Indian music, in Indian art forms...... we firmly believe that the way to preserve the best of what is distinctively characteristic in the North American Indians is to civilize and educate them, that they may be fit for life of the twentieth century under our American system of self-government...... we wish to see children of Indian descent educated in the industrial and practical arts and trained to habits of personal cleanliness, social purity, and industrious family life. We do not believe that it is right to keep the Indians out of civilization in order that certain picturesque aspects of savagery and barbarism may continue...... We believe that while the effort should never be made to "make a white man out of an Indian"...... it is still most desirable that all the Indians on our territory should come as speedily as possible to the white man's habits...... precisely so does it seem to us that all the efforts of the Government...... should be steadily employed in the effort to make out the Indian children of this country intelligent, English-speaking, industrious, law-biding Americans. We believe that the breaking up of tribal funds as rapidly as practicable will help toward this end.” SOURCE: U.S. Department of Interior, "Board of Indian Commissioners' Reports," in Annual Reports(June 30, 1905), H. DOC. 20: 59th Cong., 1st session, 17-18.

Document J

“Before this allotment scheme was put in effect in the Cherokee Nation we were a prosperous people. We had farms. Every Indian in this nation that needed one and felt that he needed one had it...... but when I came to examine the Curtis law, and investigated the orders and rules established by the Dawes Commission...... away went my crop, and if the same rule had been established in your counties in your State you would have lost your dwelling house; you would have lost your improvements. Now that is what has been done to the Cherokees...... I have a piece of property that doesn't support me, and is not worth a cent to me, under the same inexorable, cruel provisions of the Curtis law that swept away our treaties, our system of nationality, our every existence, and wrested out of our possession our vast territory. The Government of the United States knows that these allotments of the Indians are not sufficient. Congress recognizes the fact forcibly, by implication, that these allotments are not sufficient...... you will find that these people have been put off with a piece of land that is absolutely inadequate for their needs.” SOURCE: Senate Report 5013, 59th Congress (1906), 2nd session, Part 1. Document K