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A Brief History of Indians in America
Regardless of what one says about the Indians, the words genocide, tragedy, and moral stain upon the
national character can’t be far from the conversation. From the first contacts with the Indians, the European invaders
spread disease, death, and dislocation. While the Spaniards may have been the most brutal in their subjugation, and
the French the friendliest, the English had their moments in which they matched both of those extremes. By the time
that the colonies formed the United States, few, if any, Americans saw the Indians as anything other than an obstacle
to be overcome.
From the beginning, the English settlers spread disease among the Indians of the Northeast. The entire New
England area was decimated by smallpox spread by English fishermen; tellingly, the Puritans saw this as a sign of
God’s providence clearing their new promised land of its former inhabitants in preparation of their coming. In
Virginia, the Indians were met with theft and violence as well; the 1622 massacre of the colonists, and the resulting
poisonings of the Indians at a peace party, were only the most extreme of this relationship. Colonists both in
Virginia and New England faced starving times; both groups survived only through food gained from the Indians,
and the knowledge of how to plant corn. Corn was the miracle crop of the Americas, cultivated everywhere by the
Indians (often by the women, while men hunted); corn allowed all the colonies to survive.
Split by language, culture, and tribal thinking, the Northeast Indians could not resist to begin with; when
one tribe was willing to kill another, few chances of allying against the invaders were possible. Colonists north and
south played one Indian tribe against another. In the 1637 Pequot War, the Puritans used the Narragansetts to nearly
wipe out the Pequots. In the 1675-76 King Philip’s War, Metacom (King Philip) made one last ditch attempt to unite
the Wampanoag Indians against the Puritan invaders, only to fail when other Indian tribes allied with the Puritans.
This pattern of divide and conquer would be used for the next several centuries to take down any threats to white
expansion and domination.
The Iroquois Confederacy, located in the New York area, managed to resist the longest, due to its strong
political alliances and common culture. But even they became ground up by the war between the French and British
Empires in the 1700s. King William’s War; Queen Anne’s War; King George’s War; the French and Indian War
(W.A.G the French and Indians!): all of these were won by one empire or the other, but in each case the Indians lost
out. By the time of the American Revolution, the Indians had largely been removed from the Atlantic seaboard and
forced inland. Finally, the Indians rose up in the first of organized efforts to resist the loss of their lands. In 1763,
the French ally Pontiac led a series of raids, capturing nearly every British fort west of Niagara Falls (now known as
Pontiac’s Rebellion). In response, the British passed the Proclamation Line of 1763 in an attempt to prevent another
Indian conflict; the Line forbade settlement west of the Appalachians. Colonial anger fumed at this betrayal of their
war efforts; many colonists felt they had given up their lives, and now their reward was taken from them. Ironically,
this attempt to protect the Indians would lead to the loss of the American colonies.
In the American Revolution, the Indians chose the wrong allies in the British. The Iroquois nation, led by
the half-breed Joseph Brant, fought on the side of the British in western New York. The Indians were left out of the
peace process, and were ultimately betrayed by the British, who made no treaty arrangements to protect their former
allies. All of the land between the Mississippi and the Appalachians was ceded to the United States; the northwest
forts were also to be abandoned (although this did not happen until the 1790s). The U.S. asserted its ownership of
all of these Indian lands by right of conquest and treaty.
In the early years of the Republic, the Indians once again attempted to resist western expansion. In 1784,
under the Articles of Confederation, treaties were made relinquishing claims in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.
Little Turtle, repudiating the treaties as having been signed under duress (threats and alcoholic intoxication), formed
a Western Confederacy to defend their lands. Little Turtle crushed the American army under Arthur St. Clair in
1791; Washington sent another army under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, who crushed the Indian allies at the
Battle of the Fallen Timbers in 1794. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville renounced all U.S. claims of the transAppalachian west in exchange for ceding much of the Old Northwest. The Indians placed themselves under the
protection of the U.S., thus foiling British hopes that they could use their continuing possession of the northwest forts
to regain the West. Britain shortly withdrew, complying with the Treaty of Paris (1781) and Jay’s Treaty (1795).
The next great Indian resistance came with Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet Tenskwatawa, who
organized a religious revival calling for a ban on liquor and a return to Indian ways. The Prophet promised that any
who followed his brother would be magically protected from harm. Building up his alliance, Tecumseh ran head on
into William Henry Harrison, the future President who used liquor and shady treaties to steal millions of acres. In
1811, Harrison defeated the Shawnee in Tecumseh’s absence at Tippecanoe. When the War of 1812 broke out,
Tecumseh turned to the British for aid and alliance. Tecumseh lost when the British withdrew, as did the Indians of
the Southwest and Florida when Andrew Jackson defeated them both during and after the war, building up his
reputation as an Indian fighter.
The next great tragedy for American Indians came when the Southern states began pushing them out of the
Old Southwest, especially Georgia. Despite rulings by the Supreme Court under John Marshall forbidding Georgia
to do so, Andrew Jackson’s refusal to enforce the ruling led to their widespread expulsion on the Trail of Tears when
they were forcibly moved west.
By 1860, all the resettled eastern tribes were again forced to cede their lands and move west. From the
1850s on, the plains Indians struck back. The Sioux fought to keep a road from being built through their hunting
grounds to reach the mining town of Bozeman, Montana. The Office of Indian Affairs responded by pushing the
Indians onto reservations, with the promise to care for them until they could learn to be white. Oklahoma was set
aside for the majority of southwest Indians, as well as the southern Plains Indians. Treaties were again made and
broken, leading to various leaders refusing to follow these agreements. Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce on a 1500
mile attempt to Canada in 1877 to avoid being confined on a reservation. The US Army was largely undermanned
on the frontier, but many of them were veterans, including 2,000 black “buffalo soldiers.” Telegraphs, railroads,
repeating rifles, and Gatling guns were major advantages the cavalry ruthlessly applied, as was the willingness of
other Indian tribes to sign up for Indian warfare. The various Indian tribes resisted until the capture of the last major
leader, Geronimo of the Apache, in 1886.
The Sioux fought several wars with the cavalry in the 1870s, with their greatest success coming under
Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Big Horn, where they massacred Custer in his famous last stand. But even the
mighty Sioux were broken up and placed on reservations.
Shortly after, however, even the reservations were under assault. The boom brought on by the various
transcontinental railroads led to efforts to cut up Oklahoma; in 1889, there was a huge land rush to take this land
(seen in the movie Far and Away). Despite such protests as Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor (1881),
which chronicled a century of unjust treatment for the Indians, a new policy of assimilation was adopted formally by
the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. Indian lands were parceled up, and given to individual Indian families to
encourage them to become assimilated; after 25 years, the Indians who stayed on their land would become citizens.
The overall effect of the Dawes Act was to free up more land for white settlement and to set the Indians into a
lifestyle they neither wanted nor were prepared for. Drought and starvation drove the Indians to resist once again in
1890.
The prophet Wovoka spoke of a new magic, the Ghost Dance. As the federal government threatened to
take away more of the Sioux reservation, Wovoka preached that God had sent a vision that the white man would be
destroyed, the Indian restored, and the Buffalo would return, if the Indians only banded together and practiced the
Ghost Dance. Local whites became fearful and called in the government. The government tried to arrest Siting Bull.
A gun battle broke out, killing Sitting Bull and twelve others. Soon, an attempt to disarm the rest of the Indians led
to the last battle at Wounded Knee (see the seventies as well); the Indians were slaughtered.
Until the 1930s, the process of severalty continued, breaking up the reservations and pushing for
assimilation. But in 1934, John Collier created the “Indian New Deal” under FDR’s approval. The Indian
Reorganization Act reversed the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act and restored control of the reservations to tribal councils
who set up constitutions. The attempts to enforce assimilation ended, and a commitment to cultural respect and
diversity ensued. The government pledged help to preserve Indian cultural traditions, but the problems of poverty,
unemployment, alcoholism, crime, and a lack of education would continue to plague the Indians until the present
day.
In the fifties, Eisenhower returned to an attempt to enforce assimilation by terminating the legal standing of
native tribes and pushing members to move off of reservations. The Cold War drive to conform and assimilate also
coincided with the greed of mining, timber, and agricultural sectors who wanted Indian lands. The Bureau of Indian
Affairs subsidized moves to the cities and set up relocation centers. This was a disaster, since the Indians had great
difficulties in dealing with an urban environment. By the time the policy was halted in 1958, 60,000 Indians had
moved to the cities, largely to poor urban neighborhoods with other minorities.
The sixties and seventies saw both triumphs and tragedies for Indians, who now wished to term themselves
native Americans. Nixon signed the 1971 Alaska Native Land Claims Act, which restored 40 million acres and paid
nearly a billion dollars to Eskimos, Aleuts and other natives. Other tribes gained smaller settlements in other states.
The tribal termination program was completely abandoned by the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1974, which
restored the legal status of tribes as governing entities. Using the model of the black civil rights movement, many
native Americans banded together to lobby for participation in LBJ’s war on poverty. But a more radical movement
of young native Americans formed the American Indian Movement (AIM), and took up the confrontational tactics of
the black power movement. In 1969, they seized Alcatraz Island and offered $24 worth of trinkets (to satirize the
purchase of Manhattan). They held the island until 1971. In 1972, they occupied the headquarters of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, the most hated organization in the native American world. The most violent action took place in
1973, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, site of the massacre of the Sioux in 1890. The protestors took hostages, and
the siege was violently broken up by an FBI assault.
To the present day, native Americans remain one of the most troubled groups in America. But recently,
many tribes have taken advantage of their extralegal status and opened gambling casinos. Ironically, they now are
thriving off the vices of the white community, and are using the funds to remake their communities into more
prosperous areas.