Historical Survey: Indigenous People in the 19th century United States, their Adaptation to Colonization and Westward Expansion

 

Research and Design for

Indigenous People in the 19^th century United States, their Adaptation to

Colonization and Westward Expansion

Manifest destiny and Westward Expansion were great concepts for the progression of the United States of America, although they nearly decimated the population of those indigenous to the territories being newly claimed by European American settlers. In addition to the viruses and hunger many settlers brought with them to the New World, they also brought desire to own land, to till the land and make profits, and the space to do these things without authoritative rulers looking over their shoulders. However, the land was not empty upon their arrival and its inhabitants were not willing to cede their land to these new faces, though they may not have initially been combative with squatters. Some welcomed settlers, shared rations with settlers, and likely lost their land and possessions to settlers. In researching the events which took place during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, it is obvious this phenomenon continued to take place, although framed in different ways and offered different outcomes. During the 17^th century, Indigenous people who landed on plantations and forced to do agricultural work for European settlers were used as chattel and eventually reclassified and “colored” on slave rolls and in the Census. But by the 19^th century, formal plans were made to remove these communities from territories which they had spent generations.

How did the policies created out of the constant flow of settlers to Indian Territory, which displaced Indigenous people in the 19^th century, affect the descendants of these groups in the 20^th century? The economic implications of being displaced are obvious, but how did being separated from the land alter the cultural landscape of the native communities displaced by the settlers? How did it affect their ability to maintain cultural languages and traditions? And are these limitations still progressing or have native communities begun to recover from the atrocities they survived? Sources which could enhance this research project include narratives of those who experienced the Trail of Tears, Indian Wars, or any other world altering event within the scope of Westward Expansion. In this list of resources, included are primary sources which will be analyzed for facts surrounding relative experiences and occurrences, as well as secondary sources which will be used fill in research gaps and lend perspective to things that happened to Indigenous communities during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources

Carlisle Indian Industrial School Records. National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 75.

Opened on a former military base, Carlisle was one of the most recognized boarding schools for native children to receive assimilative and religious training in the United States. The records detail how the school was founded on a military base, and how students who were schooled here were forced to forget their native languages and other parts of their culture. The aforementioned  records include student case files  and photographs from the Carlisle Indian boarding school. There are also detailed personal information regarding the lives and experiences of the students in these records.

Chief Joseph. “I Will Fight No More Forever.” Speech, 1877.

 

Chief Joseph gave the speech, “ I Will Fight No More” after being defeated in battle by the US Army in 1877. The Chief conveys his sadness and disillusionment at the surrender of his people and vows not to fight anymore. “I Will Fight No More Forever” reveals the gloom of Chief Joseph over the experiences and subsequent conditions of his and other tribes, absorbing the losses and sorrow of displacement and disenfranchisement. He talks about those Indigenous people who ran away from the battle to the hills and reflects on the elders deaths and the changing environment.

 

Curtis, Edward S. and The University Press. Portfolio VI, Plate 207: Piegan Encampment. 1900. Photogravure. Portfolio VI 1995.203.26. The Cleveland Museum of Art; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Collection: PH - Photogravure; Department: Photography; Presented by Mrs. James H. Hoyt, Elton Hoyt, II, and Mrs. Amasa Stone Mather in memory of James H. Hoyt. https://jstor.org/stable/community.35667264.

 This primary resource is a photo of an Indigenous community, with rows of dwellings erected by the dwellers. It shows the mobility of these groups, relying on the structures’ ability to migrate with the families so that they do not lose their ability to shelter despite losing their land. This picture is also a contrast of the Native experience at the time because it gives an impression of a peaceful time and space.

Doris Duke American Indian Oral History Project. 1966–1972. Various universities.

This project has collected thousands of oral histories from Indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their communities. There are details of Native life memorialized in this oral history which was publicly  presented during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. The Doris Duke American Indian Oral History Project recorded Indigenous experiences on reservations, in boarding schools, and any other space or phenomenon related to involvement in the Bureau of  Indian affairs. Doris Duke awarded funds to different academic institutions for research related to this historical  collection and its preservation of Native memoirs and cultural artifacts through interviews with Indigenous Leaders and elders.

Hunkpapa Lakota, One Bull. Custer’s War. circa 1900. Pigments, ink on muslin, H.69 x W.39 in., slightly irregular. The Minneapolis Institute of Art; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The Christina N. and Swan J. Turnblad Memorial Fund. http://www.artsmia.org/. https://jstor.org/stable/community.15647559.

This resource is an illustration of Custer’s War by Hunkpapa Lakota, One Bull who was Native American, active 19th- early 20th century painter. This Indigenous Artifact is an example of the ways Native people documented their experiences during colonization and Indian removal. Custer’s War is being preserved at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Lakota Winter Counts. Smithsonian Institution. National Museum of the American Indian.

Lakota Winter Counts is a collection of pictographs which recorded counts of the Lakota peoples. Each of these pictographs held a count of a calendar year, and the preserved counts were arranged in chronological order. They depicted the events which took place in the tribal nation for the year. Winter counts were performed by other native communities as well and were remembered by correlating them with the most memorable occurrences of the year. The counts were more than a census type record, but a peer into the Indigenous past.

Office of Indian Affairs. Superintendency Records, 1819-1878. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Superintendency Records is a primary source collection which  maintained by Indian Agents and Superintendents detailing tribal government affairs prior to 1875. The superintendents were managers of the agents of Indian Affairs, and they recorded the business conducted between these agents and leaders of the Native Communities. Each agent was responsible for a specific territory or state and reported their finding to the superintendent, who then outlined this information in the Superintendency Records. These records include tribal rolls, land allotments, school records, relocation and correspondence files.

Pratt, Richard H. Battlefield and Classroom: An Autobiography. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press. 1925.

This autobiography by Richard H. Pratt discusses the occurrences which created and operated in the Carlise Boarding School. As its founder and superintendent, Pratt had firsthand knowledge of the ideals and events which occurred in Indian boarding schools created to educate Indigenous children on American language and culture, by forcing them to forget their own customs and practices. He gained knowledge of native culture as an Army soldier in the American West, and he used the knowledge and tactics gained in combat to rule over the staff and students at the Carlisle Boarding School. This piece details his experiences as a general and a jailor of surrendered Indigenous peoples, reportedly to save them from extinction.

U.S. Congress. An Act to Provide for the Allotment of Lands in Severalty to Indians on the Various Reservations (Dawes Act). Statutes at Large 24, 388-91, 1887.

The Dawes Act is also known as the General Allotment Act, and it authorized the division of tribal lands into individual allotments to assimilate Native Americans into American society.
With this legislation, the native land which was treatied to them after the Trail of Tears, was now to be divided and parceled to native families in Indian Territory. Blood quantum was used to determine eligibility, although some European settlers labeled five-dollar Indians, were able to slip through the cracks and claim Indigenous ethnicity to acquire land allotments.

U.S. Congress. Indian Appropriations Act. 31st Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 14, 1851.

Indian Appropriations Act established the reservation system, setting aside land for Native American tribes and marking a significant shift in U.S. policy. It has been described as the legislation which would provide vocational training and assist in assimilation of Natives into American society. Although it was proposed as a way to encourage natives to leave reservations, it actually justified the ending of subsidies directed to Indigenous communities. Although it claimed to be assistance for relocation of Native families, it pushed these families into situations and areas which they were not equipped to survive without education and training.

U.S. Congress. Indian Removal Act. 21st Congress, 1st Session, Chapter 148, 1830.

Indian Removal Act of 1830 is a document outlining the forced relocation of Indigenous tribes originally  residing east of the Mississippi into designated Indian Territory in  present day Oklahoma. It was signed by President Andrew Jackson, and it moved Indigenous tribes West of the Mississippi and north to the Kansas territory. The Trail of Tears was a result of the Indian Removal Act, displacing the Indigeous communities and creating a void for them to maintain their culture, practices, language and other facets of their heritage by diminishing the policies aimed at assisting Native communities.

U.S. Department of the Interior. Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. 2022.

This report provides a detailed account of the history and impact of Indian boarding schools in the United States. It details the over 400 boarding schools that Indigenous children were relegated to in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The Department of Interior utilized Indian Boarding Schools as a means to assimilate their students, by erasing their memories of native culture and inculcating them with US culture. It recalls details of investigations surrounding the welfare of the children, their living conditions and how they were treated by school officials.

Secondary Sources (Books)

Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970

Dee Brown provides information regarding the indigenous experience and the consequential battles that took place during the 19^th century. He highlights battles for land such as Wounded Knee, and details the challenges faced by Indigenous populations directly affected by the new settlements popping up west of the Appalachians. The book includes background surrounding the native experience from the beginning of colonization to the 19^th century issues and eventual encroachments which catalyzed the Indian Wars.

Deloria, Vine, Jr. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.

God Is Red was penned by an Indigenous Activist with the passion and energy of his descendants and the other Aboriginal communities who experienced loss and lack due to Indian Removal, Trail of Tears, and other blindsiding experiences on the North American continent. It details how settler expansion seemed to predate the orders to move west, and how some squatters had no fear facing the Indigenous to reappropriate their homelands. This piece also highlights how the military was often used to protect the settlers rather than the natives and their land, adding another facet of information to research on Native communities in the American West.

Dowd, Gregory Evans. War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Dowd outlines the cultural reasons for the Pontiac War, and illustrates the strategies employed by the British Military. He also details their attitudes toward Indigenous people and how it was reflected in the way they treated Natives. Dowd’s record is different than the typical Indigenous story told from the imperial point of view. He offers a much less biased account of the Natives’ fight to maintain their land and autonomy during the formation of the American West. The piece informs that the cultural practices of the Indigenous contributed to the relations between their communities and the British military.

Fixico, Donald L. The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge (2003).

This resource is a detailed account of the ways and means of cultural preservation by the Indigenous groups who experienced displacement and cultural dissimilation during the formation of the American West. Fixico illustrates the challenges Native peoples faced as they were removed from their homelands and the practices they were able to maintain throughout their migration and the reconstructing of their societies. He suggests that Native peoples and communities think in a “circular fashion” rather than a “linear fashion” due to their practices and culturally relative understanding of logic.

Smith, Sherry L. The View from Officers' Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

In The View from Officers' Row, Sherry Smith documents some of the main turning points and foundational practices of the Army in the American West, which challenged the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and pushed them west of the Mississippi. The View from Officers' Row  covers the major battles and features of the Indian Wars, and the subsequent decimation of Indigenous culture and lives. It highlights the appreciation some of the soldiers and their spouses developed for the Indigenous people and the many stories that were shared, suggesting that the soldiers and military leaders connected with the Natives more than any other group in the American West.

Secondary Sources (Scholarly Journal Articles)

Gleach, Frederic W. “Anthropological Professionalization and the Virginia Indians at the Turn of the Century.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 2 (2002): 499–507. http://www.jstor.org/stable/684000.

 

Gleach proposes anthropology as a means of cultural preservation for marginalized and displaced ethnic groups like the Natives of North America. He highlights anthropological studies done on Virginia Indians during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, explaining the necessity for the examination, which in part made anthropology in the United States a viable discipline, was due to the intermixing of Indigenous peoples in the Virginia territory and the growing inability to determine the ethnicity of people living among tribal groups. In analyzing the need for anthropological studies on the Native groups of Virginia, the writer asserts the role of “Black Indians” and those who had been detribalized played a role in the binary classification of some Indigenous peoples in the United States.

 

Sandefur, Gary D. “American Indian Migration and Economic Opportunities.” The International Migration Review 20, no. 1 (1986): 55–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/2545684.

 

Data regarding migration patterns of Indigenous Americans post Indian removal is provided in this journal article. It details the reasons why Natives would choose to or not to move away from reservations into urban or other areas. Sandefur uses a sociological perspective to collect and present the data of White married couples, intermarried couples with one being Indigenous, and Indigenous married couples, tracking the rate of interstate migration in the 20^th century. He suggests that intermarried couples are more likely to be migratory than Indigeous married couples, adding that older generations were the least likely to relocate. The article stated that older Indigenous couples are more connected to the cultural practices maintained in their communities.

 

Steinman, Erich. “Settler Colonial Power and the American Indian Sovereignty Movement: Forms of Domination, Strategies of Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 117, no. 4 (2012): 1073–1130. https://doi.org/10.1086/662708.

 

The writer gives an in-depth understanding of the ISM and the strategies used by Indigenous communities and leaders in activism against residuals of colonialism and reservation politics. He compared the plight of the Indigenous to that of African Americans, citing the idea that the natives never sought equality, or acute inclusion, but rather sovereignty, peace from encroachment, and the upholding of treaties. The piece also details why efforts toward inclusivity of other minority groups in the United States were not as effective when employed by the Indigenous communities. Activism for land rights is one of ISM’s main targets and is what made the organization visible on the social activism scene.

 

Svingen, Orlan J. “Jim Crow, Indian Style.” American Indian Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1987): 275–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/1184288.

 

Orlan Svingen  compares the experiences of Indigenous people in Big Horn, Montana and their fight for voting rights to the Jim Crow experiences of African Americans in the post Bellum South. He outlines the methods used to disenfranchise Native voters in Big Horn and the litigation which intensified the stand off between “non-Indian” and Indigeous voters in Montana. The article describes instances of voter suppression with regards to voter registration, the communication barriers used to discourage the Natives from voting in elections and running for office. The historian surmises that state officials utilized state rights to continue this voter suppression after the 1925 Citizenship Act granted citizenship to Indigeous people in the United States.

Thornton, Russell. “Tribal Membership Requirements and the Demography of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Native Americans.” Population Research and Policy Review 16, no. 1/2 (1997): 33–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40230131.

 

In this article, Thorton highlights blood quantum and urbanization as catalysts for the decline in Native populations and culture. He details the different requirements as constructed by tribal governments, as well as defined by the US government, diving deep into the differences between tribes who hold strict quantum requirements and those who regularly intermarry and how it affects Indigenous communities. Thorton suggests as Native people join the masses in urbanization, away from reservations, tribal communities will become smaller and have more difficulty in maintaining their cultural identities and practices.