Long Journeys to a Middle Ground: Indians, Catholics, and the Origins of a New Deal in Montana and Idaho, 1855-1945 Aaron David Hyams Marquette University
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Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Long Journeys to a Middle Ground: Indians, Catholics, and the Origins of a New Deal in Montana and Idaho, 1855-1945 Aaron David Hyams Marquette University Recommended Citation Hyams, Aaron David, "Long Journeys to a Middle Ground: Indians, Catholics, and the Origins of a New Deal in Montana and Idaho, 1855-1945" (2016). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 638. http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/638 LONG JOURNEYS TO A MIDDLE GROUND: INDIANS, CATHOLICS, AND THE ORIGINS OF A NEW DEAL IN MONTANA AND IDAHO, 1855-1945 by Aaron D. Hyams, B.A., M.A. A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin May, 2016 ABSTRACT LONG JOURNEYS TO A MIDDLE GROUND: INDIANS, CATHOLICS, AND THE ORIGINS OF A NEW DEAL IN MONTANA AND IDAHO, 1855-1945 Aaron D. Hyams, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2016 This study focuses on the experiences of individuals and families, on the Blackfeet, Flathead, and Nez Perce reservations of Montana and Idaho, who converted to Catholicism, adapted to agricultural living, accepted American education, and otherwise sought to find their places in a rapidly changing world. At the same time, this project follows local Catholic leaders from the missions and surrounding parishes who struggled with their contradictory roles as shepherds of their native flocks and agents of colonialism. I argue that Indians and Catholics on the reservations carved out often overlapping communities and identities as they negotiated the changes introduced by the allotment of the reservations. Both the Blackfeet and Flathead reservations witnessed a growth of Catholic communities that integrated Indians, mixed-ancestry individuals, and whites into a network of cultural, political, and economic relationships. Catholicism provided a common cultural frame for “full bloods,” “mixed bloods,” whites, and Latin Americans, to interact within. These networks provided business contacts as well as material support for people in need of it. On the Nez Perce reservation, there emerged a network of Catholic whites and Nez Perces who built a shared history with one another based on their mutual mistreatment at the hands of the federal government and the Office of Indian Affairs. Together, Catholics on the Nez Perce reservation constructed a memory of an overtly hostile Indian Agency that had precipitated the Nez Perce War and persecuted Catholics, as well. As a result, these heterogeneous communities quickly and emphatically embraced the Indian Reorganization Act, building new tribal institutions based on principles of coexistence and a recognition of the relationships that mutually tied both native peoples and non-natives to Indian Country. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Aaron D. Hyams, B.A., M.A. A project of this magnitude inevitably accrues a sizeable number of debts. I would like to start by thanking my adviser, Dr. Steven Avella, whose help in directing this project was indispensable. I would like to thank the other members of Marquette’s History Faculty, too, who made important contributions along the way, especially Dr. Kristen Foster, Dr. Michael Donoghue, and Dr. Bryan Rindfleisch. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents and family for the love and support, and for the childhood and summers spent exploring the Great American West. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………….i CHAPTER INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...1 I. LONGUE DUREE IN THE NORTHWEST…………………………………..24 II. THE SPIRIT OF 1855: THE STEVENS TREATIES AND THE MIDDLE GROUND………………………………………………………………………..78 The Washington Territory and Its Indigenous Peoples…………………..83 Stevens Courts the Chiefs………………………………………………..92 The Treaties of 1855……………………………………………………..99 III. FOUNDATIONS: THE EARLY AGENCIES AND MISSIONS………….119 Flathead Agency in the Nineteenth Century……………………………121 Nez Perce Agency in the Nineteenth Century………………………….133 Blackfeet Agency in the Nineteenth Century…………………………..139 The Office of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions...................................................................................................145 The Church and the Government at the Agencies and Missions……….155 IV. A CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATIONS: INTO THE ERA OF ALLOTMENT………………………………………………………………….169 Conversion……………………………………………………………...173 Roads to a Middle Ground……………………………………………...175 Agriculture……………………………………………………………...184 Making a “Polite” Society……………………………………………...199 A Crossroads of Civilizations…………………………………………..222 iii V. THE CHANGING FACE OF INDIAN COUNTRY………………………..225 The Frontier of Imagination Meets the Frontier of History…………….231 The New Constituents of Indian Country………………………………236 Institutions of Integration……………………………………………….254 Rethinking “Indianness”………………………………………………..265 VI. AN ILLNESS AT ITS HEART: ALLOTMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY……………………………………………………………………...272 The Missions, the Agencies, and Disintegration……………………….276 Living under Allotment…………………………………………………286 Bootlegging……………………………………………………………..296 The Call for Reform in Indian Country………………………………...317 VII. REORGANIZATION……………………………………………………..321 The Outward Structure of Reorganization and Recovery………………328 The Indian New Deal and Non-Indians………………………………...332 The Indian New Deal and the Missions………………………………...338 An Indian New Deal in the Northwest?...................................................360 EPILOGUE: THE MAKINGS OF MODERN INDIAN COUNTRY IN MONTANA AND IDAHO……………………………………………………..367 Recovering Indian Country in the Modern Context……………………369 Reconsidering the “Indian Metanarrative” and “Genocide”……………376 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………382 1 Introduction and Review of Sources This study focuses on the experiences of individuals and families, on the Blackfeet, Flathead, and Nez Perce reservations of Montana and Idaho, who converted to Catholicism, adapted to agricultural living, accepted American education, and otherwise sought to find their place in a rapidly changing world. At the same time, this project follows local Catholic leaders from the missions and surrounding parishes who struggled with their contradictory roles as shepherds of their native flocks and as agents of colonialism. I argue that Indians and Catholics on the reservations carved out often overlapping communities and identities as they negotiated the changes introduced by the allotment of reservations. Both the Blackfeet and Flathead reservations witnessed a growth of Catholic communities that integrated Indians, mixed-ancestry individuals, and whites into a network of cultural, political, and economic relationships. Catholicism provided a common cultural frame for “full bloods,” “mixed bloods,” whites, and Hispanics, to interact within. These networks provided business contacts as well as material support for people in need of it. On the Nez Perce reservation, there emerged a network of Catholic whites and Nez Perces who built a shared history with one another based on their mutual mistreatment at the hands of the federal government and the Office of Indian Affairs. Together, Catholics on the Nez Perce reservation constructed a memory of an overtly hostile Indian Agency that precipitated the Nez Perce War and persecuted Catholics as well. As a result, these heterogeneous communities quickly and emphatically embraced the Indian Reorganization Act, building new tribal institutions based on principles of coexistence and a recognition of the relationships that mutually tied both native and non-native peoples to Indian Country. 2 Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mountainous stretches of Western Montana and the Idaho Panhandle were completely transformed. In the centuries prior to American settlement, Native Peoples carved out their own societies in the mountains, valleys, and foothills. As Americans arrived, they confined Native Peoples to reservations. In the late nineteenth century, the federal government commenced a massive effort to assimilate Indians, in the region and across the country, by allotting them private lands and insisting they take up agriculture. By the late 1920s, this program had shown itself to be a complete disaster. Not only had it failed to encourage economic independence for Native Peoples, it had also failed in its goals to assimilate them. At the same time, though, the reservations emerged as microcosms of the region’s complexity, and the movement of peoples and cultures that shaped its history. Allotment unfolded in the Northwest in an altogether different manner than in the Midwest, Great Plains, or Southwest. Accounting for the difference, first, and most practically, was the simple fact that intensive settlement and sustained contact between Indians and whites came far later to the mountainous region of the Northwest than it did to other regions. Much of the strife, death, and warfare that wracked the Midwest with near constancy from the turn of the nineteenth century, the Southwest following the Mexican-American War, and the Great Plains after the Civil War, arrived to the region later. Furthermore, the region did not see its demography significantly changed by the Indian removals and mass exodus of Native Peoples from the eastern United States in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s. As is covered in the first three chapters, the confinement of the Blackfeet, Nez Perces, and Confederated Salish