Native America-White Relations—U.S., 1871-1933

Tribes affected: Pantribal

Significance: This period saw the last of the Indian wars, significant changes in white attitudes toward Native Americans, and important attempts to regularize the legal status of American Indians by new acts of law

In the period between 1871 and 1933, the last of the tragic Indian wars were fought, and several attempts were made by the federal government to reform Indian policy. The attempts at reform were often wrongheaded, and they ultimately had to be reversed, but they demonstrate the popular perception that the existing policy could not be sustained indefinitely.

Indian Wars

A series of serious Indian wars characterized the period between 1871 and 1890. Some of these were precipitated by the desire of whites for Indian lands or by the desire of white settlers to eliminate the Indians because of prejudice or fears of attack. Others seem primarily to have been the result of the inability of many tribes and tribal leaders to accept confinement on reservations, which were often composed of extremely poor land. Confinement also flew in the face of traditional patterns of Indian life.

In 1871, the Kiowas rose up in Texas under Satanta, Satank, Big Tree, Eagle Heart, and Big Bow, engaging in a campaign that included the ambush of a wagon train on Salt Creek Prairie. In the period 1872-1873, the Modoc War erupted as the Modocs, a Northern California tribe, resisted resettlement in Indian Territory. The war ended with the trial and execution of Captain Jack, the Modoc leader. The years 1874-1875 saw the outbreak of the so-called Red River War, with the U.S. Cavalry under General Philip Sheridan and Nelson A. Miles and the Texas Rangers battling an alliance of Comanche, Cheyenne, and Kiowa warriors under Big Tree, Lone Wolf, and Satanta. The war ended with the surrender of Quanah Parker, the feared Comanche chief.

The famous campaign known as the pursuit of the Nez Perce occurred in 1877. It began when young braves resisting a forced march to reservation land led a substantial group of the tribe in flight, with General O. O. Howard in pursuit. Led by chiefs Joseph the Younger and Looking Glass, the Nez Perce evaded army pursuit across Idaho and Wyoming, fighting battles at White Bird Canyon, Clearwater, Big Hole River, Camas Meadows, Billings, and Bear Paw Mountain. They reached a point only 100 miles from their goal of Canadian sanctuary before surrendering.

In 1878-1879, the campaign of the pursuit of the Northern Cheyenne followed the pattern of the Nez Perce campaign, but in less spectacular form. Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf led three hundred braves off the reservation, pursued by regular army troops and civilian volunteers. Dull Knife’s faction surrendered at Camp Robinson but then refused to proceed to the reservation. In a fight with the troops, half of Dull Knife’s followers were killed. Little Wolf’s band surrendered later.

The Bannock War commenced in 1878. Bannocks, under Chief Buffalo Horn, began raiding in southern Idaho and Oregon. Paiutes under Chief Egan and the medicine man Oytes broke out from the Malheur Reservation and joined the Bannocks, pursued by General Howard. The Indian confederates were defeated at the Battle of Birch Creek, and during their subsequent flight Chief Egan was killed by Umatilla warriors through a trick involving a war council with the Umatillas to discuss an alliance.

The year 1879 contained two complete Indian wars. The Sheepeaters War involved a band of renegade Shoshones and Bannocks who raided throughout Idaho and neighboring areas. The Ute War occurred in Colorado when Indian agent Nathan Meeker telegraphed for aid against restive Utes. Relieving forces were put under siege after the Battle of Milk Creek, and additional forces were required to subdue the Utes.

Less confined in time were the Sioux and Apache wars, which stretched out over many years. In 1872, a band of Yavapais Apaches died at the Battle of Skull Cave in Salt River Canyon; after the subsequent Battle of Turret Peak, many Apaches returned to the reservation. When the Apaches were ordered to the hated San Carlos Reservation in Arizona in 1876, however, the war reignited. There followed several years when Geronimo and Victorio broke from their reservations, raided, and crisscrossed the Mexican border at will. For a decade, until 1886, Geronimo would be a constant problem for the army and for the government.

Finally, in 1876, the Sioux reacted against orders to move from the Black Hills to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. Battles included Sitting Bull’s attack on General Crook’s column at Rosebud Creek, the defeat of Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Battle of Slim Buttes, the Battle of Wolf Mountain, and the Battle of Muddy Creek. Sitting Bull fled into Canada with his warriors but returned to surrender to U.S. forces in 1881.

In the latter days of 1890, a sad sequel to the Sioux wars was enacted. The Ghost Dance Uprising and the Battle of Wounded Knee (the Wounded Knee Massacre) ended the era of the Indian wars. The prophet Wovoka preached a vision of Indian resurgence and resurrection based on the use of the magical Ghost Dance. Sitting Bull was killed by reservation police at the Standing Rock Reservation. At the camp of Chief Big Foot at Wounded Knee, three hundred Indians were slaughtered in what has become known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. The surrender of the Sioux the next year at White Clay Creek ended the era of direct warfare between the whites and Indians.

Legal Status and Governmental Policy

When Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869, a new “peace policy” was adopted in U.S. relations with the Indian tribes. Under the new policy, new appointments of Indian agents would be made from among the religious groups who sent missionaries among the tribes, and extraordinary efforts would be made to get the Indians to adopt white ways—living in houses, practicing agriculture, and so on.

Many other developments in Indian affairs filled the Grant years. In 1870, in the Cherokee Tobacco case, the Supreme Court upheld the principle that new acts of Congress supersede prior treaties, including those with the Indian nations, when they contradict. The next year saw the complete abandonment of treaty making in regard to the tribes, with all future agreements replaced by statutes and executive orders. Partly this represented the desire of the House of Representatives to have a say in such agreements, and partly it represented a reaction to the fact that treaties, after the Cherokee Tobacco case, offered no enhancement of protection over simple statute. Some reservations were established by treaty, others by statute, but beginning in the 1870’s, executive orders were also employed.

In 1874, the Report of the Indian Commissioner proposed major changes in the status of the Indians and their way of life. Citizenship was proposed for any Indian who desired it. It was also proposed that the protection and obligations of white law be extended to Indian Territory and that reservation land be held in individual plots—called “allotments in severalty”—rather than communally by tribes. This would promote agriculture and the improvement of land.

In 1879, the case Standing Bear v. Crook, decided by Judge Elmer S. Dundy of the U.S. Circuit Court, District of Nebraska, declared Indians to be “persons” under the Constitution and extended the writ of habeas corpus to them to protect their liberty.

In 1883, Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller instigated “courts of Indian affairs” on reservations to create a rule of law on tribal lands. The drive to bring Indians under white law suffered a major setback in the 1883 Supreme Court case Ex parte Crow Dog, wherein the Brule Sioux Chief Crow Dog’s conviction and death sentence for the murder of Spotted Tail was overturned on the grounds that there was no federal jurisdiction over the crime of an Indian against another Indian on Indian land. Further separating Indians from white governance was the 1884 Supreme Court case Elk v. Wilkins, whereby the Court refused to enforce a franchise right for the plaintiff, who had severed his ties to his tribe and lived among whites.

These moves away from white law began to be reversed in 1885 with Congress’s passage of the Major Crimes Act, which placed seven serious felonies under federal law if committed on reservations or other Indian territory in order to avoid situations such as that in the Crow Dog decision. In 1886 in United States v. Kagama, the high Court upheld the constitutionality of the act.

Assimilation of the Indians into white society became the stated solution to all problems in white-Indian relations, and indeed, to all problems of Indian society. Politicians rushed to embrace this solution, as did many of those who regarded themselves as friends and defenders of the “red man.” In 1884, the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian issued a program which called for assimilation by bringing the Indians under territorial law, private individual ownership of land, and other forms of white civilization. Groups such as this were torn between their recognition of the potential loss of Indian culture and the need to prevent further depredations by white society.

In 1887, the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) provided for allotments in severalty for reservation Indians, providing citizenship for Indians on such allotments. In that year as well, Commissioner J. D. C. Atkins ordered that, in all schools on reservations, all instruction was to be in the English language to aid in assimilation. Two years later, the government moved to establish a system of government-run Indian schools. By 1889, Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan was calling for the conscious destruction of the tribes as the ultimate means of assimilation of the Indians into the dominant culture.

In 1892, Indian courts were authorized to punish as offenses such Indian practices as traditional dances, polygamy, and the practices of medicine men as well as standard criminal offenses such as destruction of property, fornication, and drunkenness. Truancy of children enrolled in government schools was also an offense. The inclusion of several Indian cultural and religious practices as “offenses” struck sharply at the Indian way of life.

In 1898, upon the failure of the Dawes Commission to achieve agreement with the Five Civilized Tribes and the other tribes of the Indian Territory, Congress imposed the Curtis Act, which essentially applied the provisions of the Dawes Act to that territory, destroying tribal government. The Supreme Court upheld the act in Stephens v. Cherokee Nation (1899).

Twentieth Century

In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court upheld the plenary power of Congress over Indian affairs and established the right of Congress to abrogate treaties. By 1905, however, the government was having second thoughts about its wholesale reforms. Commissioner Francis E. Leupp issued a report to Congress which endorsed attempts to institute Indian self-sufficiency and called for presentation of aspects of Indian culture.

In 1906, the Burke Act provided for discretion in the length of trust periods for allotments and provided that citizenship should come at the end rather than at the beginning of such periods. The Lacey Act (1907) further struck at the tribal system by providing for allotment of tribal funds to individuals under specified conditions.

In 1919, as an acknowledgment of its gratitude for war service, Congress passed an act providing U.S. citizenship to Indian veterans of World War I upon request. In 1928, the Institute for Government Research issued the Meriam Report, which dealt systematically with the general problems facing Indians in the nation and was critical of U.S. government policies. It would lead to milestone legislation in 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act.

Bibliography

Axelrod, Alan. Chronicle of the Indian Wars: From Colonial Times to Wounded Knee. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference, 1993. This work provides a useful and detailed overview of the armed struggles of the Indians and the whites.

Faulk, Odie B. Crimson Desert: Indian Wars of the American Southwest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Faulk presents a fine and detailed description of the campaigns of this region.

Jackson, Helen. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. 1880. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1993. This volume is a reprint of an 1880 history of Indian-white relations from earliest colonial times through 1871, with many excellent quotations from official documents.

Marshall, Samuel L. A. Crimsoned Prairie. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972. Details the Indian campaigns of the West. The author is an excellent military historian, although slightly biased in the direction of preserving the honor of the military.

Prucha, Francis Paul, ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 2d ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Reprints major documents in the history of U.S. policy toward native peoples.

Shattuck, Petra T., and Jill Norgren. Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Liberal Constitutional System. New York: Berg, 1991. This study carefully analyzes the relationship of U.S. Indian law and policy to the U.S. constitutional order and governmental administrative policy.

Tyler, Lyman S. A History of Indian Policy. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973. This work sets out accurately and in great detail the development of the Indian policy of the United States.

Wilkinson, Charles F. American Indians, Time, and the Law: Native Societies in a Modern Constitutional Democracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. This treatise traces Indian law and rights through court cases, primarily U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Williams, Robert A., Jr. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. This book deals with earlier times in white-Indian relations but is vital reading for anyone who wishes to understand the philosophical and traditional bases of American Indian law.