Federal Indian Policy
in the Gilded Age

John Pyne and Gloria Sesso

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
9 (Spring 1995). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 1995, Organization of American Historians

Era 7: Standard 4

Students Should Understand: Federal Indian policy and United States foreign policy after the Civil War.

The purpose of this lesson plan is to encourage students to understand federal policy toward the Indians, specifically considering the Dawes Act and the emergence of the Ghost Dance. This lesson plan involves several types of documents, including a painting by Bierstadt. Teachers should pay special attention to the ideas and motivations of the "reformers." Were their goals laudable? Are they that different from "reformers" today? Is it possible that reformers of any era will fail to solve wide-sweeping problems--i.e., they simply cannot transcend the unique knowledge that only the individuals immediately involved understand? Or, can we consider the work of reformers generally positive? Are their concerns legitimate or patronizing?

In conjunction with History Standard 4 from Era 7, teachers should also incorporate Historical Thinking Standards 2 and 3.

HISTORICAL THINKING STANDARD 2: Draw upon visual, literary, and musical sources to clarify, illustrate, or elaborate upon information in the historical narrative.

HISTORICAL THINKING STANDARD 3: Hypothesize the influence of the past, including both the limitations and the opportunities made possible by past decisions. Also, consider multiple perspectives of various peoples in the past by demonstrating their differing motives, beliefs, interests, hopes, and fears.

Opening Activity: Distribute Albert Bierstadt's "The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak" to the students. The following questions should be asked about the painting to help them develop visual analysis skills:

1) What details do you see in the painting? What is in the foreground? Middle ground? Background?

2) What is the relationship of the mountains to the village? Why?

3) From where is light emanating? Do you think there is a reason for this?

4) What is the artist's point of view about the future of the Indian village? What clues in the painting help you develop the point of view of the artist?

5) The artist produced a pamphlet about the painting in which he concluded with the hope that upon the painting's foreground plain, "a city, populated by our decendants, may rise, and in its art galleries this picture may eventually find a resting place. . . . He who lays his ear to the wild grass may perhaps hear the distant tramp, not of the buffalos, but of civilization, coming like an army with banners."

What is the artist's point of view concerning the Indian village in this picture? Is this the main point of the picture? Why or why not?

Developing Activity 1: Distribute to the students the selections from the Dawes Act, Chester A. Arthur's and Grover Cleveland's views concerning Indian reform, the Timeline, and the selection from Helen Hunt Jackson's A Century of Dishonor.

To analyze the ideas contained in the Dawes Act, the following questions (plus, of course, any the teacher wishes to add) need to be considered by the students dealing with all of the documents. A "Point of View" chart might prove helpful.

A) What events led to the enactment of the Dawes Act?

B) How do these events help to explain the purpose of the Dawes Act?

C) How does Chester A. Arthur justify the Dawes Act? What is the relationship between justification and point of view? Does he feel it will help the Indians? Does he think it will help the United States? In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Is the Dawes Act a similar or dissimilar law?

D) What tone does Cleveland take in his letter to Hoke Smith? Is he concerned or patronizing?

E) How do Arthur's and Cleveland's points of view relate to the Bierstadt painting? How do they differ from it?

F) Would Helen Hunt Jackson support the Dawes Act? What is her point of view about how the United States should deal with Indians?

G) Analyze the text of the act to help determine its purpose. How is land distributed? Why? What happens to land that is not used? Why? How is citizenship conferred? What is the relationship between citizenship and ownership of the land?

Developing Activity 2: To understand the point of view of the American Indian concerning the "reform" aims of the Dawes Act and other Indian policies, the students should consider the "Ghost Dance" movement. Distribute the description of the Ghost Dance to students. Ask them what the motivation and purpose of the Ghost Dance was. Ask them also what clues they find that allow them to determine the purpose of the movement. What is the attitude toward community and culture reflected in the Ghost Dance? How might Native Americans involved in the Ghost Dance feel about the Dawes Act? Why?

Concluding Activity: Distribute the map of the area in which the Ghost Dance movement took place. Compare the text of the Dawes Act with the spread of the Ghost Dance and note the relationship. Consider how analyzing the points of view of those who supported the Act and those who rejected it--and the historical context of its promulgation--help us to draw conclusions about the nature of "reform." When is an intended reform simply not a reform?

Summary Discussion: What were the ultimate results of the Dawes Act on Native Americans? On westward movement? On reform? Should the Dawes Act be evaluated within the context of its times or by its results?

SIGNIFICANT INDIVIDUALS

Henry L. Dawes (1816-1903) represented Massachusetts in both the U.S. House and Senate for thirty-six years. During the Civil War, he served on the War Contracts Committee. Though a quiet man, he masterfully led several key pieces of legislation through the two chambers and helped to eliminate war-time fraud. Disturbed by what he considered a brutal removal and reservation process, Dawes--in conjunction with the Indian Rights Association--proposed the ending of the current Indian system, replacing it with severalty. He hoped to turn the Indians into self-sufficient economic individualists.

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was the only Democratic president of the United States between 1861 and 1913. He is also the only president to have served two non-consecutive terms (1885-9 and 1893-7). Though he won the popular vote three times, the electoral college voted for Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Known for his unyielding convictions, honesty, and integrity, Cleveland gained a committed following. In 1880, he was elected mayor of Buffalo, New York. In 1882, he won the governor's office of that state, and only two years later the American people chose him as the 22nd president. Cleveland championed many reforms, including a reduced tariff, less government patronage, and the Dawes Act. In fact the latter was a part of a larger package that reduced businesses' control over western lands.

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) was a poet, reformer, and novelist. After the tragic deaths of her husband and two sons, Jackson moved to the American West. In 1881, she published her first work, A Century of Dishonor, a non-fictional account of U.S.-Indian relations. In 1884 she published Ramona, a novel she hoped would serve as the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Indian reform movement. She supported the goals of the Dawes Act.

Chester A. Arthur (1830-86) was elected vice president of the United States and became the twenty-first president after the assassination of President Garfield in 1881. Arthur is best remembered for modernizing the navy and the passage of both the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and a civil service reform bill in 1883; his contemporaries, though, saw him as little more than a machine politician before he became a very dignified president.

Wovoka (ca. 1856-1932), a Paiute messiah commonly known to whites as Jack Wilson. During an eclipse of the sun, Wovoka claimed to have visited the "Supreme Being." During their talks, the Supreme Being told Wovoka to live in peace and teach other Indians a celebratory dance--what would become the Ghost Dance. By dancing, living and dead Indians would inhabit one world, and the whites would disappear. The dance and its ideals spread quickly during 1890.

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), a German by birth, was a famous painter in his day. A romanticist, he was fascinated with the dramatic landscapes of the American West.

DOCUMENT 1
General Allotment Act (a.k.a. The Dawes Act) of 1887, excerpted

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use, either by treaty stipulation or by virtue of an act of Congress or executive order setting apart the same for their use, the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, whenever in his opinion any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes, to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or resurveyed if necessary, and to allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities as follows:

To each head of a family, one quarter of a section; To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; To each orphan child under eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section; and

To each other single person under eighteen years now living, or who may be born prior to the date of the order of the President directing an allotment of the lands embraced in any reservation, one-sixteenth of a section: Provided, That in case there is not sufficient land in any of said reservations to allot lands to each individual of the classes above named in quantities as above provided, the lands embraced in such reservation or reservations shall be allotted to each individual of each of said classes pro rate in accordance with the provisions of this act: And provided further, That where the treaty or act of Congress setting apart such reservation provides for the allotment of lands in severalty in quantities in excess of those herein provided, the President, in making allotments upon such reservation, shall allot the lands to each individual Indian belonging thereon in quantity as specified in such treaty or act: And provided further, That when the lands allotted are only valuable for grazing purposes, an additional allotment of such grazing lands, in quantities as above provided, shall be made to each individual. . . .

Sec. 5. That upon the approval of the allotments provided for in this act by the Secretary of the Interior, he shall cause patents to issue therefor in the name of the allottees, which patents shall be of the legal effect, and declare that the United States does and will hold the land thus allotted, for the period of twenty-five years, in trust for the sole use and benefit of the Indian to whom such allotment shall have been made, or, in case of his decease, of his heirs according to the laws of the State or Territory where such land is located, and that at the expiration of said period the United States will convey the same by patent to said Indian, of his heirs as aforesaid, in fee, discharged of said trust and free of all charge or incumbrance whatsoever. . . .

Sec. 6. That upon the completion of said allotments and the patenting of the lands to said allottees, each and every member of the respective bands or tribes of Indians to whom allotments have been made shall have the benefit of and be subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State or Territory in which they may reside; and no Territory shall pass or enforce any law denying any such Indian within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. And every Indian both within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made under the provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens, whether said Indian has been or not, by birth or otherwise, a member of any tribe of Indians within the territorial limits of the United States without in any manner, impairing or otherwise affecting the right of any such Indian to tribal or other property. . . .

Sec. 8. That the provision of this act shall not extend to the territory occupied by the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Osage, Miamies and Peorias, and Sacs and Foxes, in the Indian Territory, nor to any of the reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York Indians in the State of New York, nor to that strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation on the south added by executive order.

DOCUMENT 2
Reformer Helen Hunt Jackson's Viewpoint

To assume it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke of legislative policy possible, to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past, set the Indian policy of the country right for the future, and make the Indians at once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and misinformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply to make all Indians at once citizens of the United States would be a sovereign and instantaneous panacea for all their ills and all the Government's perplexities, is a very inconsiderate one. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden, all round, to all Indians, barbarous and civilized alike, would be a grotesque blunder as to dose them all around with one medicine. . . . Nevertheless, it is true that. . . . "so long as they are not citizens of the United States, their rights of property must remain insecure against invasion. The doors of the federal tribunals barred against them while wards and dependents." All judicious plans and measures for their safety and salvation must embody provisions for their becoming citizens as fast as they are fit.

Source: Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1881).

DOCUMENT 3
President Chester A. Arthur's Viewpoint

"It has been easier to resort to convenient makeshifts for tiding over temporary difficulties than to grapple with the permanent problem, and accordingly the easier course has been pursued. . . . It was natural, at a time when the national territory seemed almost illimitable and contained many millions of acres far outside the bounds of civilized settlements, that a policy should have been enacted which more than anything else has been the fruitful source of our Indian complications. I refer, of course, to the policy of dealing with the various Indian tribes as separate nationalities, of relegating them by treaty stipulations, to immense reservations in the west, and encouraging them to lead a savage life, undisturbed by any earnest and well directed efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization. The results of this policy are increasingly unsatisfactory. White settlements have crowded the borders of reservations. . . . Indians transferred to new hunting grounds (which have soon become) new homes desired by adventurous settlers. Frequent and disastrous conflicts between the races have resulted. . . thousands of lives have been sacrificed and. . . . millions of dollars expended to solve the Indian problem which exists today as it did half a century ago. The very existence of the Indian prompts us to act now, to introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens, with equal sharing of rights and responsibilities, before the very Indian culture itself evaporates."

Source: James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897).

DOCUMENT 4
Letter from President Grover Cleveland to Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith, 4 May 1895, concerning allotment.

As the commissioners to negotiate and treat with the five civilized tribes of Indians are about to resume their labors, my interest in the subject they have in charge induces me to write you a few words concerning their work. As I said to the commissioners when they were first appointed, I am especially desirous that there shall be no reason in all time to come to charge the commissioners with any unfair dealing with the Indians, and that whatever the results of their efforts may be the Indians will not be led into any action which they do not thoroughly understand or which is not clearly for their benefit.

At the same time I still believe, as I have always believed, that the best interests of the Indians will be found in American citizenship, with all the rights and privileges which belong to that condition. The approach to this relation should be carefully made and at every step the good and welfare of the Indian should be constantly kept in view, so that when the end is reached citizenship may be to them a real advantage, instead of an empty name.

I hope the commissioners will inspire such confidence in those Indians with whom they have to deal that they will be listened to and that the Indians will see the wisdom and advantage of moving in the direction I have indicated. If they are unwilling to go immediately so far as we may think desirable, whatever steps are taken should be such as to point out the way and the results of which will encourage these people in future progress. A slow movement of that kind, fully understood and approved by the Indians, is infinitely better than swifter results gained by broken pledges and false promises.

Source: Allan Nevins, ed., Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850-1908 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933).

DOCUMENT 5
"The Ghost Dance Religion" by James Mooney, excerpted

"You must not fight. Do no harm to anyone. Do right always."--Wovoka.

The great underlying principle of the Ghost dance doctrine is that the time will come when the whole Indian race, living and dead, will be reunited upon a regenerated earth, to live a life of aboriginal happiness, forever free from death, disease, and misery. On this foundation each tribe has built a structure from its own mythology, and each apostle and believer has filled in the details according to his own mental capacity or ideas of happiness, with such additions as come to him from the trance. Some changes, also, have undoubtedly resulted from the transmission of the doctrine through the imperfect medium of the sign language. The differences of interpretation are precisely such as we find in Christianity, with its hundreds of sects and innumerable shades of individual opinion. The white race, being alien and secondary and hardly real, has no part in this scheme of aboriginal regeneration, and will be left behind with the other things of earth that have served their temporary purpose, or else will cease entirely to exist.

All this is to be brought about by an overruling spiritual power that needs no assistance from human creatures; and though certain medicine-men were disposed to anticipate the Indian millennium by preaching resistance to the further encroachments of the whites, such teachings form no part of the true doctrine, and it was only where chronic dissatisfaction was aggravated by recent grievances, as among the Sioux, that the movement assumed a hostile expression. On the contrary, all believers were exhorted to make themselves worthy of the predicted happiness by discarding all things warlike and practicing honesty, peace, and good will, not only among themselves, but also toward the whites, so long as they were together. Some apostles have even thought that all race distinctions are to be obliterated, and that the whites are to participate with the Indians in the coming felicity; but it seems unquestionable that this is equally contrary to the doctrine as originally preached.

Different dates have been assigned at various times for the fulfillment of the prophecy. Whatever the year, it has generally been held, for very natural reasons, that the regeneration of the earth and the renewal of all life would occur in the early spring. In some cases July, and particularly the 4th of July, was the expected time. This, it may be noted, was about the season when the great annual ceremony of the sun dance formerly took place among the prairie tribes. The messiah himself has set several dates from time to time, as one prediction after another failed to materialize, and in his message to the Cheyenne and Arapaho, in August, 1891, he leaves the whole matter in open question. The date universally recognized among all the tribes immediately prior to the Sioux outbreak was the spring of 1891. As springtime came and passed, and summer grew and waned, and autumn faded again into winter without the realization of their hopes and longings, the doctrine gradually assumed its present form—that some time in the unknown future the Indian will be united with his friends who have gone before, to be forever supremely happy, and that this happiness may be anticipated in dreams, if not actually hastened in reality, by earnest and frequent attendance on the sacred dance....

One of the first and most prominent of those who brought the doctrine to the prairie tribes was Porcupine, a Cheyenne, who crossed the mountains with several companions in the fall of 1889, visited Wovoka, and attended the dance near Walker lake, Nevada. In his report of his experiences, made some months later to a military officer, he states that Wovoka claimed to be Christ himself who had come back again, many centuries after his first rejection, in pity to teach his children. He quotes the prophet as saying:

"I found my children were bad, so I went back to heaven and left them. I told them that in so many hundred years I would come back to see my children. At the end of this time I was sent back to try to teach them. My father told me the earth was getting old and worn out and the people getting bad, and that I was to renew everything as it used to be and make it better.

He also told us that all our dead were to be resurrected; that they were all to come back to earth, and that, as the earth was too small for them and us, he would do away with heaven and make the earth itself large enough to contain us all; that we must tell all the people we met about these things. He spoke to us about fighting, and said that was bad and we must keep from it; that the earth was to be all good hereafter, and we must all be friends with one another. He said that in the fall of the year the youth of all good people would be renewed, so that nobody would be more than forty years old, and that if they behaved themselves well after this the youth of everyone would be renewed in the spring. He said if we were all good he would send people among us who could heal all our wounds and sickness by mere touch and that we would live forever. He told us not to quarrel or fight or strike each other, or shoot one another; that the whites and Indians were to be all one people. He said if any man disobeyed what he ordered his tribe would be wiped from the face of the earth; that we must believe everything he said, and we must not doubt him or say he lied; that if we did, he would know it; that he would know our thoughts and actions in no matter what part of the world we might be."

Here we have the statement that both races are to live together as one. We have also the doctrine of healing by touch. Whether or not this is an essential part of the system is questionable, but it is certain that the faithful believe that great physical good comes to them, to their children, and to the sick from the imposition of hands by the priests of the dance, apart from the ability thus conferred to see the things of the spiritual world.

SOURCE: James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, ed. Anthony F.C. Wallace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).