INDIAN
POLICY
Interpreting
Primary Sources
One
[infantry] battalion...left Fort Lyon [Colorado] on the night of the 28th of
November, 1864; about daybreak on the morning of the 29th of November we came
in sight of the camp of friendly [Cheyenne and Arapaho] Indians...and were
ordered by Colonel [J.M.] Chivington to attack the same, which was accordingly
done....Going over the battle ground the next day I did not see a body of man,
woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated
in the most horrible manner--men, women, and children's privates cut out etc.;
I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them
for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say that he had cut fingers off
an Indian to get the rings on the hand....
--Sand Creek
massacre, 1864
Whatever you
wanted of me I have obeyed. The Great
Father sent me word that whatever he had against me in the past had been
forgiven and thrown aside, and I have accepted his promises and came in. And he told me not to step aside from the
white man's path, and I am doing my best to travel in that path. I sit here and look around me now, and I see
my people starving. We want cattle to
butcher. That is the way you live, and
we want to live the same way.
--Sitting
Bull, 1883
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 initiated which more than aught
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 the occupancy of immense reservations in the West, and
of encouraging them to live a savage life, undisturbed by any earnest and well
directed efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization.
The
unsatisfactory results which have sprung from this policy are becoming apparent
to all. As the white settlements have
crowded the borders of the reservations, the Indians, sometimes contentedly and
sometimes against their will, have been transferred to other hunting grounds,
from which they have again been dislodged whenever their new-found homes have
been desired by the adventurous settlers.
These removals and the frontier collisions by which they have often been
preceded have led to frequent and disastrous conflicts between the races....
The
government has of late been cautiously but steadily feeling its way to the
adoption of a policy...to introduce among the Indians the customs and pursuits
of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens,
sharing their rights and holden to their responsibilities....
--President
Chester Arthur defending the Dawes Plan, 1881
The
President of the United States be...authorized...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....
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 band or tribes of
Indians...shall...be subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State
or Territory in which they may reside.
--Dawes
Severalty Act of l887
Questions to
think about:
1. How would you explain the depth of hostility
felt by many white Americans toward the Indians?
2. What is the goal of the Dawes plan? Do you approve or disapprove of the
plan? Why?