Native American History (Analysis)

Odin Waters

From the earliest days of the formation of the United States, U.S. policy makers determined that "civilizing the Indians," by terminating their access to communal lands would clear the way for U.S. citizens to plant "civilized" crops, raise livestock and exploit as many natural resources as possible. The Northwest ordinance of 1787 exemplifies the rationalization behind U.S. policies towards Indian affairs. The ordinance declared that the U.S. would respect and recognize First Nations' boundaries except in "just and lawful wars authorized by congress" (See Footnote 1). Many of the wars described in historical records were massacres reported as battles by the news media of that era. The pattern of a reversal in treaty agreements on the part of the U.S. was mainly due to the demand for one resource or another, whether it was waterways for gold, prairie pasture for livestock, or forests for lumber.

The U.S. market economy was catapulted across Indian country like the artillery that backed it. Native Americans were left with little choice but to adapt fully to a capitalist economic system or perish at the hands of 19^th century industrialization and massive land claims by colonizers. After the end of the U.S. Civil War, the Union had to deal with the daunting task of reuniting the states. The divided republic found a common foe in the regions where Native Americans were yet to be subdued, all of which lied west of the Mississippi. The U.S. government felt driven by a sense of manifest destiny to tame the wilderness and establish a republic that extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

U.S. officials wanted all tribes to be united under one government. As the U.S. military cleared the way for Euro-American immigrants, U.S. politicians passed laws that declared all First Nations had to be contained and monitored in reservations or be considered hostiles. Although most Indigenous communities tried to defend their lands, they could not stave off the hordes of settlers. With hopes for moderate transitions between freedom and confinement, indigenous representatives signed treaties with hidden provisions, such as Article 11 of the Treaty of Fort Laramie between the Sioux and the United States. It stated that the Sioux would eventually have to "relinquish all rights to occupy permanently the territory outside their reservations" (See footnote 2). By signing the treaty they had agreed, unbeknownst to them, that they would give up their hunting ways and become farmers and allow their children to attend Euro-American schools where they would be stripped of their cultural identity. Many experiments were tried; however, in the end, the only way to guarantee the indoctrination of Native children was to send them to far off boarding schools where non-Christian rituals and ceremonies were forbidden as well as the use of indigenous languages. Generations of First Nations children were forced to adapt to the customs of strangers that were hell bent on reducing them to subjects of "White civilization."

Societies where the social networks of the community comprised bands or clans, were forced to live as sedentary single-family units with a male head of household who could only farm on a plot of private property. The U.S. offered Native Americans the "civilized" Euro-American frontier model where the church and its congregation, made up of farmers and ranchers, replaced the mobile hunting and gathering or small-scale subsistence gardening traditions of the First Nations. The spiritual beliefs of Native Americans were expressed in their diet, clothing and grooming practices. The colonizers annihilated wildlife populations, like the Bison, on which Indian people depended on for their existence and revered as a sacred gift from the Great Spirit. The Euro-American invasion hacked away at the web of life that indigenous people believed their nations to be based upon. The wild game was replaced by cattle and other domesticated livestock. Railroads, towns and cities cut through hunting grounds and wild game was replaced by cattle and other domesticated livestock. Once self-reliant and versatile, Native peoples were reduced to a diet of food commodity rations distributed by their overseers.

Bibliography

1. Calloway, Colin G. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012, page 373).

2. Calloway, Colin G. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012, page 371).