John Collier and Mexico in the Shaping of U.S. Indian Policy: 1934-1945 Wilbert Terry Ahlstedt University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, History, Department of Department of History Spring 4-6-2015 John Collier and Mexico in the Shaping of U.S. Indian Policy: 1934-1945 Wilbert Terry Ahlstedt University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss Part of the American Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Latin American History Commons, and the United States History Commons Ahlstedt, Wilbert Terry, "John Collier and Mexico in the Shaping of U.S. Indian Policy: 1934-1945" (2015). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. 82. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/82 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. John Collier and Mexico in the Shaping of U.S. Indian Policy: 1934-1945 by Wilbert Terry Ahlstedt A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College of the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: History Under the Supervision of Professor Victoria A. Smith Lincoln, Nebraska May 2015 JOHN COLLIER AND MEXICO IN THE SHAPING OF U.S. INDIAN POLICY: 1934-1945 Wilbert Terry Ahlstedt, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2015 Advisor: Victoria A. Smith Relations between Mexico and the United States have often been tense and yet they have always been interrelated. In the nineteenth century Mexicans were viewed by their northern neighbors as degenerate racial hybrids. In terms of Native Americans and their relationship to land, Mexico was seen as an example of how not to conduct Indian policy. But during the 1930s, significant numbers of officials within the Roosevelt administration expressed interest in and admiration for Mexican domestic policy, especially in relation to Indian policy. One of the most enthusiastic proponents of Mexico’s federal Indian policy was U.S. Indian Commissioner John Collier. Collier was especially interested in Mexican Indigenismo, the pursuit of greater social and political inclusion for indigenous peoples in an effort to protect their interests and ensure that they received the same rights as all other citizens. Reacting against previous U.S. policies that attempted to destroy Indian culture while stressing private property holdings, Collier, inspired by Mexico’s program of Indigenismo, sought to overhaul United States Indian education, restore Indian self-government, and move Indian land tenure back towards its traditional communal structure. In this he was promoting a Native American form of self-reliance through modernist principals that was closely related to Mexican integrationist models. This work explores the history of Indian land tenure and contrasts it with European expectations. It will examine Collier’s efforts to change prevailing Indian policies. It scrutinizes the influence that he derived from Mexico. To better understand this process of change, it will view the transition in United States and Mexican Indian policy that helped to produce this change. This study will approach the matter primarily from the perspective of land-its use and ownership-that most important asset of both the Native Americans and their European colonial “guests”. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: John Collier and Mexico in the Shaping of Indian Policy: 1934-1945 Chapter 1. The Indians and Their Land .............................................................................21 Chapter 2. A Return to Primitivism ...................................................................................54 Chapter 3. Indigenismo ......................................................................................................89 Chapter 4. Transnational Meetings, The Land Mystic, and Mexico ...............................121 Chapter 5. Moisés Sáenz and John Collier ......................................................................148 Chapter 6. The Spanish Moment in American Indian Policy ..........................................188 Chapter 7. Collier, The Indian Office, and Mexico .........................................................208 Conclusion. Betrayal and an Assessment ........................................................................283 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................341 Appendix Acknowledgments 1 INTRODUCTION JOHN COLLIER AND MEXICO IN THE SHAPING OF INDIAN POLICY The people of the United States attributed their victory in the U.S. - Mexican War (1846-1848) to a notion that Mexican people were a “mongrel and motley” product of the union of Spaniards and Indians producing an “offspring of sin”1 Some Americans believed that “The greatest misfortunes of Spanish America” could be “traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on equality with the white race.” They held the belief that this “… error destroyed the social arrangement which formed the basis of society.”2 Many Americans believed that Mexico was weakened by an overly accommodating relationship with its indigenous population that left the nation morally bankrupt and economically crippled. They viewed this as the product of an “Indian Problem” a conviction, held by many people in the United States and Mexico, that Native American people impeded national economic progress. To many, a prime example of this perception was evident in the relationship of the native peoples to their lands. This dissertation compares and contrasts U.S. and Mexican Indian land policies concerning both nation’s colonial and early national development. Its primary focus is on the early twentieth century and the years, 1933-1945 when John Collier was the U.S. Indian Commissioner in charge of the U.S. Indian Office. 1 Alvin R. Sunseri, Seeds of Discord: New Mexico in the Aftermath of the American Conquest, 1846-1861 (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979), 98; From Bartlett, Personal Narrative, 300; Missouri Republican, April 29, 1847; “ Wilson’s Explanation of Mixed Population,: Ritch Collection, microfilm, roll 4; Missouri Republican, December 24, 1855. In this work it is common for the author to refer to those in the United States as “Americans.” 2 John C. Calhoun, Congressional Globe, 30 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. 17, 51 (January 4, 1848). In the nineteenth century U.S. officials saw nothing of value in relation to Mexico and sought to avoid incorporating into the United States areas with large Mexican populations. This view was shared by much of the public. 2 Land figures prominently in the Native American narrative. Imre Sutton states that “So much pivots around land as a locus of tribalism that in many ways land constitutes the fundamental access, the one through which, as if it were a window, observers must look in order to discover the Indian. No matter how hard one tries to look elsewhere, land comes into view.” Sutton continues: “Factors such as religion, diffusion of cultural traits and material culture, the impact of commercialization, and industrialization, urban relocation, and education all contribute to the ways land may be used, acquired, or disposed of, and to the ways Indian peoples aggregate social, political, or other terms.”3 As Indians identified themselves with the land so did white observers identify Indian land use with the Indian. U.S. visitors, settlers, and U.S government officials who arrived in the lands newly acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican War saw Mexican policy in this region as too accommodating to Indian practices and thus wrongheaded and contrary to American ideas of progress. As a result, newly arrived Americans considered Mexican culture to be deficient. Nineteenth century American visitors to Mexico often remarked about the poor habits of the nation’s Indian population and their apparent resistance to “beneficial” change. In their opinion the large Indian population lacked cultural aptitude and its deficient use of the land plagued the countryside and threatened to plunge the nation into perpetual poverty. These Americans believed that if they adopted Mexican ways, especially as they were displayed in the countryside, they would recede into the sorry state that they observed Mexico to be mired in. 3 Imre Sutton Indian Land Tenure: Bibliographical Essays and Guide to Literature (New York: Clearwater Publishing, 1975), 2. 3 But in the 1930s many American observers developed a different view of Mexico. The President of the United States and many in his administration expressed support for Mexican land policies that included a form of communal land ownership patterned after traditional Indian land practices. The U.S. Indian Commissioner, John Collier, exhibiting his enthusiasm for Mexican policies, stated that: “Mexico has lessons to teach the United States in the matter of schools and Indian administration which are revolutionary and which may be epoch-making.”4 His boss, President Franklin Roosevelt, agreed adding: “What a pity that the Yankees cannot improve the processes of their civilization by emulating Mexican culture.”5 This is a marked change by U.S political leaders from condemnation to admiration. And while many in the United States continued to possess racist viewpoints towards Mexico the