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Final Copy Abstract UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE “ABORIGINALLY YOURS”: THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS AND U.S. CITIZENSHIP, 1890-1924 A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By PATRICIA LEE FURNISH Norman, Oklahoma 2005 UMI Number: 3203322 Copyright 2005 by Furnish, Patricia Lee All rights reserved. UMI Microform 3203322 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 “ABORIGINALLY YOURS”: THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS AND U.S. CITIZENSHIP, 1890-1924 A Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY ______________________________ Gary C. Anderson ______________________________ R. Warren Metcalf ______________________________ Clara Sue Kidwell ______________________________ David W. Levy ______________________________ Karl F. Rambo © Copyright by PATRICIA LEE FURNISH 2005 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements I am indebted to my late parents, children of the Great Depression, for encouraging my studies. As their only child, I know they believed education to be central to my economic security as an adult. A small handful of public school teachers helped me learn how to learn, what should be one of the foundational features of education. They are Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Retter, Mrs. Cantrell, Mrs. Barnocky, and most influential, Mrs. Sarah Miller and Mr. Vernon Taylor (both history teachers). I must also credit the late Norma Krider for teaching me how to type. Thanks to Mitzi Foster, Lt. Col. John Regal, Shearle Furnish, Joe Mitchell, Michelle Yelle, Ron Hunt, Heather Clemmer, Sara Eppler Janda, Brett Adams, Lance Allred, Katie Oswalt, Jacqueline Rohrbaugh, Richard Atkins, Susan Kendrick, Geneva and Wayne Beachum, and Jackie Young. Barbara Million humanized the bureaucracy and became a good friend along the way. Joe always kept me on top of things. Herbert Anders’ tender friendship and counsel has helped “transatlantically” sustain me for nearly twenty years. Jacqueline Rohrbaugh has counseled me for almost a decade and made me a part of her family. Richard Adkins drove us on a tour of historical sites that dotted the Great Plains. Only people who love history could salvage a cancelled Blues Traveler concert in Denver by driving to Devil’s Tower, Wounded Knee, Little Big Horn, Sand Creek, and Carrie Nation’s museum, among others. It felt like a significant journey at the time; in retrospect, it was one of the best adventures on the road I ever had. My aunt and uncle, models of tact, broached the subject of the dissertation carefully, always mindful of the uneasy union of superglue, iv seat and occupant. I appreciate the support of students, faculty and staff at Blue Ridge Community College. My students in the Spring 2005 Women and History course merit recognition; they are Kathryn Galloway, Laura Swaringen, Karla Pan, Chrissy Carty, and Brandi Maudlin. Their courage created new avenues of expression on campus, but most importantly, in their own lives. My indefatigable work-study assistant, Mandolin Lewis, found what I lost, corrected what I goofed, and remembered what I forgot; she’s a sensitive, compassionate soul. Guest lecturers on our campus during the 2004-2005 school year also deserve mention. Dr. Bart Ehrman, a prolific writer on the New Testament and the historical Jesus and the chair of the Religious Studies Department at UNC-Chapel Hill, offered me insight into his writing process. For the record, he thought I was overworked. Dr. Candace Falk from UC Berkeley also gave a lecture on Emma Goldman for Women’s History Month. I’ve never met someone in academia more enthusiastic, open, and nurturing. I deeply admire their ability to combine historical research, quick wit, and gifted storytelling. They engaged audiences with skillfully rendered narratives of complex, often controversial, subjects. Teachers watch such their ability with respect and a little envy. I depended upon the kindness of strangers during the research and writing phases of this dissertation. Staff and professors displayed diligence and generosity as I used their resources at the Western History Collection, Sterling Library at Yale, UNC-Charlotte, and Blue Ridge Community College. I also received encouragement from three professors outside my field. Three professors of Sociology--Dr. Fred Milano and Dr. Brad Nash at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and Dr. v Rosalind Michelson at UNC-Charlotte--met me while I did the unimaginable, possibly the foolish, and took graduate courses in their discipline for the certification to teach sociology at the community college level while working on the dissertation. Finally, I want to thank Clara Sue Kidwell, who suggested this dissertation topic on Native Americans and citizenship. She also threw me a life preserver of sorts when she gave me a research assistantship. Dr. Lindsay Robertson’s Native American Law class was formative in my graduate experience. Dr. Gary Anderson always greeted me with encouragement. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vii Abstract viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: An Indian Before the Law: The Political Definition of Indians in the United States Supreme Court, 1880-1916 20 Chapter 2: “O That My People Be What I Have in Mind They Should Be”: Progressivism and the Founding of the Society of American Indians 58 Chapter 3: Shaping Indian Assimilation in the Progressive Era: The SAI, 1912-1916 99 Chapter 4: “Making Democracy Safe for the Indian”: World War I And the Demise of the SAI, 1916-1923 137 Conclusion The Future of Indian Citizenship 170 Bibliography 174 vii Abstract In 1890, the last spasm of Indian-U.S. military conflict at Wounded Knee convulsed Pine Ridge reservation. A Santee Sioux physician, Charles Eastman witnessed the massacre of approximately three hundred members of a Minneconjou Sioux band led by Big Foot, mostly women and children. He doubted the complaints of one faction of reservation tribal leaders and later recounted how several residents regaled him with “wrongs, real or fancied,” committed by responsible officials on the reservation, or by their connivance.” Eastman disavowed the stories and retained his belief that “a great government” like the United States cherished its guardianship of “a race made helpless by lack of education and of legal safeguards.” He published these interpretations of the Ghost Dance movement in 1917, after years of firsthand experience with federal Indian policy. Almost three decades after the incident, Eastman acknowledged his naiveté. “At that time,” he recollected, “I had not dreamed what American politics really is, and I had the most exalted admiration for our noted public men.” 1 His public life had been dedicated to improving the condition of Native people. Eastman worked with progressive reformers who, like himself, believed in the power of Christian civilization and democracy to improve the condition of Indians. These “Friends of the Indian” organizations abhorred massacres of Indians and the institutional disgrace that Indian reservations signified. During the Progressive Era 1890-1917, Eastman helped found a political organization of Native 1 Charles Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of An Indian , (Boston: Little Brown and Co.,1917), 117-118. viii Progressive reformers, the Society of American Indians (SAI), in 1910. They came to know the political and racial power structure of the United States as it was shaped by two wars, the Spanish American War and World War I. The SAI pushed for assimilation with consent, a racial uplift created with Indian participation and with respect for Indians as human beings. With a lifespan of less than fifteen years, the SAI’s anti-climactic implosion revealed the elusiveness of full citizenship and the dismal record of social reform during World War I. Civilizing an Indian--shifting him from “savagery into citizenship”--was a dangerous undertaking in 1895, but a moral obligation, nonetheless, stated Merrill Gates, president of both Amherst College and the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian. Change his identity, take him “out of the blanket and into trousers,” teach him the value of work and of private property—these alterations will make the Indian ready for United States citizenship. 2 Superficial symbols perhaps, but such thinking dominated assimilationist thought well beyond Gates’ term, and into the twentieth century. The process of granting U.S. citizenship to Native Americans defied easy solutions. The transformation appears, at first glance, to be another example of creating the white man’s Indian. Students of American Indian history generally regard the era of assimilation, 1890-1933, as the time when white reformers and the federal government pressured native peoples to learn English, adopt Christianity, wear “white” clothes, and abandon tribal communities; to reformers these changes represented the racial progress of the “red race.” Ironically, these pressures produced 2 Merrill E. Gates, Presidential Address, Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian (Lake Mohonk: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1896), 11-12. ix the first coherent group of Indian political activists in the twentieth century, the SAI. Native professionals and
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