I. Assimilation in the ascendancy -nothing new --missionaries from long ago -fundamental tenets --make Indians

1. I. Assimilation in the ascendancy -nothing new --missionaries from long ago -fundamental tenets --make Indians culturally like Whites

2. II. Conditions • -reservations reduced in size • -most reservations were located in land not suitable for agriculture • -few jobs or ways of making a living, so poverty and starvation • -bad housing/many live in tipis with no buffalo skins to cover them • -high death rate/talk of a “vanishing race” • -had to live under the dictates of a reservation’s Indian agent, who enforced White man’s laws

3. Starving Indians

4. -Indian Police --selected from the ranks of Indian men, usually soldier sodalities --enforced White law among Indians -no practice of traditional religion -no plural marriages -no practice of traditional political structure/agents chose leadership

5. Ute Indian policeman

6. Crow Indian policeman

7. -Friends of the Indians --still believed in assimilation --most thought they were not equal and needed to fit into the mainstream -Lewis Henry Morgan • -he presented three major stages that he theorized as universal: savagery, barbarism, and civilization • -he further divided and defined each by technological inventions, such as use of fire, the bow, and pottery in the savage era/domestication of animals, agriculture, and metalworking in the barbarian era -linear progressive

8. Lewis Henry Morgan

9. -Grant’s Peace Policy --before inauguration in 1868 religious leaders, especially Quakers, convinced him to turn to what Peace Policy reformer had been promoting --once in office he created a Board of Indian Commissioners, who made recommended Indian agents/most of them were clergymen -eventually the Board worked with other Indian reform groups, and they all met annually at Mohonk, New York, to plan strategy

10. -Carlisle --Lt. Richard Pratt -worked with imprisoned Indian leaders inthe 1870s -demonstrated that they could learn the three R’s -convinced the army to let him use old barracks in Carlisle, PA, to set up a school to teach young Indians (1879) -so successful that the government took over the school in 1882 and established many more off- reservation boarding schools thereafter

11. -controversies --students were forced to attend, and many of their parents tried to hide them --students had to work half a day to support the schools --in the “outing system” students were placed in the homes of nearby White residents and in some cases became virtual slaves to these residents --often upon returning to their reservations former students didn’t fit in and had a hard time adjusting

12. Richard Pratt

13. off-reservation boarding school students and graduates

14. Carlisle Arapaho boys before

15. same boys after

16. Helen Hunt Jackson -a journalist who became an activist to improve government treatment of Indians -she wrote newspaper articles and directly to government officials -in 1882, she published A Century of Dishonor, about the adverse effects of government actions and sent a copy to each member of the Congress

17. Helen Hunt Jackson

18. Thomas Tibbles -from Omaha, Nebraska, who became an activist for Indian rights as assistant editor of the Omaha Daily Herald -in 1877, the Poncas fled the reservation they under Standing Bear had been forced onto in Oklahoma -Tibbles was instrumental in bringing Standing Bear and his peoples’ case in the U.S. District Court in 1879 -the ruled that "an Indian is a person," with all the rights of full citizens

19. Susette LaFleche -born on the Omaha Reservation -both of her parents were mixed blood/her father was the son of a French trader and an Omaha woman, and her mother was the daughter of an army contract surgeon and an Omaha-Iowa -the Poncas, who were closely related to the Omahas, suffered from sickness and starvation -in 1879 she authored a petition on behalf of the Omahas, making public the government's mistreatment of the Poncas and Omahas -Tibbles and LaFleche married and toured the country on behalf of Indian rights and changes in federal Indian policy

21. Dull Knife and Little Wolf -Northern Cheyenne whose bands were defeated in the Sioux Uprising of 1876 - they were taken to Indian Territory without consent later that same year -his people were dying for lack of food -so the leaders fled to get back to their homelands -the two bands split -in 1877 Dull Knife led 300 and got as far as near Fort Robinson -captured and taken to Fort Robinson and imprisoned -conditions were awful—little food and living with their own dung and urine -so they broke out with only a little food and a few guns -many were killed, including Dull Knife

22. Dull Knife and Little Wolf

23. Flight of the Nez Perce -in 1853 Isaac 1. Stevens, governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a treaty with the Nez Perce Nation, reserving 7,000,000 acres of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon for the Nez Per -in 1860 gold was discovered on Nez Perce land -shortly thereafter, Idaho Territory was created, dividing the Nez Perce homeland into three parts -headman Lawyer signs the Treaty of 1863, shrinking the Nez Perce Reservation to 700,000 acres -old Joseph (father of the more famous headman) refused to sign

24. -in 1873 President Grant signed an executive order, granting half the Wallowa Valley to the Nez Perce. -two years later President Grant rescinded the order -non-treaty Nez Perce suffered many injustices at the hands of settlers and prospectors, but out of fear of reprisal, Joseph never allowed violence against them, instead making many concessions in hopes of peace -in 1873, Joseph negotiated so his people could stay

25. -in 1876 two settlers murdered Wilhautyah in Wallowa -his murderers, were acquitted-in November of that year, afive-man commission met with Joseph, but the two sides could not agree -thecommissioner on its own concluded that the non-treaty Nez Perce should be moved onto the reservation -in April, 1877, a settler whipped two Nez Perce -a council of arbitration decided against the Indians the next month -in the final council between the non-treaty Nez Perce and General Howard at Fort Lapwai, Howard gave an ultimatum for all Indians to move onto the assigned reservation .

26. -General Oliver Howard held a council, trying to convince Joseph and his people to relocate -Joseph finished his address to the General, which focused on human equality, by expressing his disbelief that “the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do“ -the day after negotiations following the council, Joseph and two other headmen accompanied General Howard to look at different areas for a reservation -Howard offered them land inhabited by Whites and Indians, promising to clear them out -the Indian leaders refused, adhering to their tribal tradition of not taking what did not belong to them

27. -unable to find any suitable uninhabited land on the reservation, Howard informed Joseph that his people had thirty days to collect their l and move to the reservation –Joseph pleaded for more time, but Howard told him that he would consider their presence in the Wallowa Valley beyond the thirty-day mark an act of war -returning home, Joseph called a council among his people, speaking on behalf of peace, preferring to abandon his father's grave over war -Too-hul-hul-sote, insulted by his incarceration, advocated war—more evidence of a tribal split

28. -the Wallowa band began making preparations for the long journey, meeting first with other bands at Rocky Canyon -while the council was underway, a young man whose father had been killed rode up and announced that he and several other young men had already killed four white men, an act sure to initiate war. -knowing that this meant trouble and still hoping to avoid further bloodshed, Joseph and other Nez Perce headmen began leading their people north toward Canada in a desperate attempt to escape

29. Joseph and his family

30. Joseph

31. map of the escape attempt

32. another one/they thought they had made it into Canada

33. Courts of Indian Offenses -in 1883, Henry Teller became Secretary of the Interior and was alarmed at the “heathenish” behavior still going on among reservation Indians after over a decade of the government’s forced assimilation policy -he created the Courts to punish those Indians who practiced traditional religion or ruled according to their own governmental systems -the courts consisted primarily of select members of the Indian police and enforced White man’s law among Indians

34. Henry Teller

35. Dawes Severalty Act -pushed through congress by Henry Dawes in 1887 -goal was to turn Indians away from communal land tenure to private land ownership -divided reservations into individual plots, usually 160 acres for men and 80 acres for women and children -promises of farm equipment and training -no taxation on Indian lands/gambling

36. -after allotting reservations and assigning plots to individuals, remaining lands (“surplus lands”) were opened to Whites to claim under homesteading laws -the bill was supported by Whites because they could buy “surplus lands,” by reformers who thought assimilation was best for Indians, and by the military because money made through land sales was earmarked for the army

37. -but promoters realized that without knowledge of individual land ownership Indians would get cheated by Whites in land sales • -so they included in the bill a 25-year trust • restriction/an “educational” period • -but little farming equipment or training • in farming or in private land ownership • was forthcoming • -congress kept extending the restriction

38. “surplus lands” promoted

39. -the loss of allotted lands --most allotment accomplished by 1900/eventually over 87 million acres “surplus land” was lost -in 1894 a bill was enacted that authorized the Secretary of the Interior to grant rights-of-way for easements across allotted lands for telephone and telegraph lines & offices -it also contained a provision subjecting allotted lands to condemnation under the laws of the state or territory in which they were located

40. -in 1902 an amendment established a procedure whereby the adult heirs of a deceased allottee could sell the heirship lands with approval of the Secretary of the Interior. … In the case of minor heirs their interests shall be sold only by a guardian duly appointed by the proper court upon the order of such court, made upon petition filed by the guardian”/also known as “The Dead Indian Act”

41. -The Reclamation Act of 1902 funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 17 states in the West -the act set aside money from sales of semi-arid public lands for the construction and maintenance of irrigation projects -the newly irrigated land would be sold and money would be put into a revolving fund that supported more such projects, leading to the eventual damming of nearly every major western river -lands were divided into districts, including Indian lands

42. -Indians usually could not afford the cost -this became another reason to lease more Indian land -the Winters vs. United States the Supreme Court held that Indian nations retained water rights because of treaty guarantees -this was largely ignored until much later -very few Indian groups could afford the cost of reimbursing the government

43. -by 1919, four-fifths of the land on the Flathead Reservation was owned and controlled by whites -by 1927, Flatheads irrigated a pitiful 452 acres or 1.3 percent of the 34,441 acres of irrigated land on their reservation

44. Competency Commissions -established in the early 1900s to determine whether individual Indians were competent to utilize their lands allotted to them -the purpose was to provide a way to fee patent (grant full land title and drop trust restrictions) Indian lands under the Dawes Act -lands of Indian allotees determined to be non-competent were leased by the federal government, usually to Whites near reservations

45. -at first individual Indians had to apply for a fee patent, and in most cases a White encouraged an Indian to apply so he could buy the land for very little, in other words cheat Indians out of their allotment • -in 1909 newly appointed CIA Robert Valentine was frustrated over how the process • usually ended so he tried to crack down • -policy vacillated in an interdepartmental “tug-of-war” between those who wanted it easy and those who wanted it hard to fee patent allotments • -by the late 19-teens the commissions could force Indians into fee patenting without their applying or consenting

46. The Ghost Dance -started with a Piute Indian, Tavibo -in 1870, he had a vision, telling him that deliverance was near -Whites would be destroyed in an Earthquake -Indians would be spared, and the world would be restored to the old order

47. --still, few believed him, so he had a second revelation/this time it was the same except that all would be destroyed, but Indians would be resurrected on the third day after the cataclysm --still few followed Tavibo, so in a third vision only Indians who believed would be resurrected

48. Wovoka (Jack Wilson) -took over his father’s work -saw himself as the next Christ after the first one had been killed -his version included frequent bathing, rejecting alcohol, no violence -dancing for five consecutive days demonstrated one’s worthiness and gave Indians of the restored world once Whites were eliminated in a cataclysm

49. Wovoka (Jack Wilson)

50. another shot