A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes

In 1879, federal officials arrest Chief Standing Bear and other Poncas for running away from their reservation in Indian Territory—a reservation to which they had been force-marched—but a federal district judge rules that the principle of habeas corpus applies to the Poncas. Freed from federal custody, Standing Bear travels east, where he tells his story far and wide, and the tribe prepares to sue in federal court for recovery of its lands in Dakota Territory. 

In an exchange of letters between Jackson and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz, when Jackson asks the secretary’s position on the Ponca case, Schurz replies that the case is closed, and argues that raising funds for the Poncas’ proposed legal challenge is futile because the Supreme Court already has concluded that tribes may not sue in federal court. Schurz wishes to see individuals rather than tribes established as landowners—a policy that would intentionally undo the strong community ties of tribal membership. Schurz insists that money raised for legal challenges would be better spent on “educating Indian children” (363), since a legal challenge would be hopeless and therefore pointless and even possibly counterproductive as several bills providing for conferring individual land titles are now before congressional committees.

This exchange of letters between Jackson and Schurz comes to the attention of the New York Times, which publishes the editorial “Civil Rights in Acres,” a critique of the secretary’s opinion. The editorial’s author laments that the secretary “did not pause here long enough to show how the giving to an Indian of 160 acres of land can clothe him with civil rights which he does not now possess, and which the Secretary thinks that the courts cannot give him” (368).

The Omaha Ponca Relief Committee’s July 1880 report details the “heart-sickening” (370) treatment of the Poncas, as well as the “high-handed outrage” (371) that occurred when a federal agent arrested a member of the Omaha Committee who traveled to Indian Territory to meet with the Poncas.

Jackson quotes with approval an excerpt from Jacob Burnet’s Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-western Territory (1847), in which Burnet argues for the similarity of European Americans and Indigenous Americans. When Euro-American children are taken captive and grow up among Indigenous peoples, for instance, they acquire habits peculiar to those tribes. In like manner, when members of Indigenous tribes adopt Euro-American practices, they also develop Euro-American modes of thinking and behavior. Burnet also laments the US government’s predatory policies toward the tribes of the Old Northwest, whose degradation and removal Burnet witnesses over 50 years.

The second part of this section includes excerpts from multiple sources written by missionaries and others who have traveled and lived among different tribes, in some cases for decades. These writers testify, for instance, to the intense piety of the Nez Perces and the sharp intellect of the Hurons. They also argue that although the “wildest tribes” can indeed be bloodthirsty in war, cruelty is not a “racial” quality unique to Indigenous Americans (379): In the 17th century, for instance, Jesuits comment on the uncommon generosity of the Iroquois, while another early source from New France (in present-day Canada) demonstrates Indigenous aversion to the corporal punishment of children.

Excerpts from multiple published sources illustrate the extreme cruelty of some frontier vigilantes. Traveling among the Rocky Mountain tribes in the 1830s, Captain Benjamin Bonneville documents several incidents in which fur trappers whose furs or horses were stolen by members of certain tribes take vengeance by murdering innocent members of those same tribes. A letter from F.M. Smith, sub-agent for the Indian Bureau, details the January 1854 massacre of 16 Nasomahs by a band of 40 miners in Oregon Territory who accuse a Nasomah chief of firing his rifle at them and threatening to kill all settlers. Smith investigates the incident and concludes that the band of Nasomahs is too small, weak, and frightened to pose a threat to those miners, and that the massacre constitutes “one of the most barbarous acts ever perpetrated by civilized men” (384-85).

This section concludes with an excerpt from Jacob Burnet’s Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-western Territory (1847). Burnet describes a massacre averted thanks to the courage of Brigadier-General Simon Kenton. During the War of 1812, Kenton commands an Ohio militia regiment. After militiamen under his command concoct a plan to “attack an encampment of friendly Indians, who had been threatened by the hostile tribes” (385), Kenton denounces the plan. When his words fail to dissuade the would-be murderers, Kenton threatens to shoot the first militiaman who tries to carry out the planned attack. No one does.

In the late 1870s, after the Battle of Little Bighorn, Chief Sitting Bull and his fellow Sioux, who had fought US troops on the northern Plains, take refuge in Canada. A three-man US government commission meets with Sitting Bull at Fort Walsh. The US commissioners propose that the Sioux return to the US, surrender their weapons and horses, and relocate to Indian Territory. Jackson deems these proposals “so ludicrous” that it is impossible to believe the Sioux “could have listened to them without laughter” (386). Indeed, Sitting Bull replies that the commissioners must think him a fool or else they would not have traveled so far simply to tell such lies. Other Sioux chiefs respond in a similar manner. The commissioners depart, unable to comprehend the depth of Sioux antipathy.

This section includes excerpts from two books. The first is Isaac V.D. Heard’s History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863 (1863). Heard describes a council meeting at which Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey questions Red Iron, a chief of the Sisseton Sioux, over purported Sioux debts. When Red Iron requests someone from Washington to hear Sioux grievances, Ramsey denies this request, claiming that he, as governor, represents the “Great Father” (390) in Washington, and insists that the Sioux must pay their purported debts. After this brief exchange, Red Iron is kept in the guardhouse overnight. Red Iron’s warriors, who witnessed the governor’s attempted browbeating and subsequent imprisonment of their chief, contemplate an attack, but they are talked out of it by “half-breeds” and “white men who were known to be friendly to them” (392). Traders and US government officials continue to defraud the Sioux, setting the stage for the massacres of 1862.

The second set of excerpts comes from George Washington Manypenny’s Our Indian Wards (1880). These excerpts describe the removal of friendly Sioux and Winnebagoes following the Minnesota Sioux War of 1862 and the harsh conditions that awaited them in Dakota Territory. After being forcibly removed from their Minnesota homes, 3,000 Sioux and Winnebagoes receive inadequate food and medical care on the journey to Dakota. Dozens sicken and die along the way; 150 more suffer the same fate upon reaching Dakota, where they subsist on poor-quality beef and an “unpalatable,” “nauseous mess called soup” (394) rationed to them only every other day.

In a letter dated April 4, 1870, Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of the Pah-Ute chief, writes to Major H. Douglas at Camp McDermott, Nevada. She explains that her father opposes the tribe’s resettlement on the Truckee River Reservation; that when she and others lived on that reservation before, they received poor treatment and would have starved had they stayed; that the Pah-Utes are willing to learn agriculture but would rather subsist in the mountains; that the government is foolish and unjust in its efforts to move them to reservations and keep them there by force; and that the tribes only want permanent homes free from encroachments by settlers.

On July 21, 1866, at their reservation in Indian Territory, the Delawares adopt a written code of laws. The code features ten articles, each article consisting of 1-14 sections that provide for the punishment of crimes such as theft, arson, murder, assault, slander, and public intoxication. The code also sets terms for the execution of wills and the dispensation of property. For instance, if a Delaware woman marries a white man, the code protects her property by preventing her husband from removing it beyond the boundaries of the reservation. The code punishes rape with a fine of $50 dollars and a 35 day jail term for the first offense.

Two brief excerpts, one from the North American Review and one from London’s The Saturday Review, describe the early life, character, inspiration, and ultimate achievement of Sequoyah, the Cherokee man who, in 1821, converts 86 syllables into a unique Cherokee alphabet and then teaches other Cherokee to read. The North American Review extols Sequoyah’s “extraordinary genius,” and The Saturday Review suggests that “a clever boy may thus be taught to read in a single day” (405).

James Buchanan’s Sketches of the History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians: With a Plan for Their Melioration (1824) shows that, during wartime, colonial legislatures paid bounties for enemy scalps. Likewise, George Gale’s Upper Mississippi (1867) asserts that “nearly every important massacre in the history of North America was organized and directed by agents” (406) of Great Britain, France, or the United States.

The sixth article of this treaty, completed October 14, 1865, acknowledges the massacre committed on November 29, 1864, “by Colonel J.M. Chivington, in command of United States troops” (406) and provides reparations in the form of land: 320 acres each to chiefs and 160 acres each to widows and orphans. Jackson notes that a Senate amendment struck out the phrase “by Colonel J.M. Chivington, in command of United States troops.” She wonders if the Senate, in so doing, meant to spare the US Army the infamy associated with the massacre.

In his 1877 report, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Dakota indicates that “[o]rders have been received to stop the cutting of wood by Indians” (407) on their own lands. This order springs from a “recent decision which deprives Indians of any ownership in the wood” unless they own the land as individuals rather than as a tribe (407). The superintendent does not identify the source of the orders or the decision, but he does note, with a hint of frustration, that now everyone cuts wood on tribal lands except Indigenous Americans themselves.

A narrative printed November 1, 1879, in the Army and Navy Journal describes events that occurred in Oregon Territory 30 years earlier.

In the late 1840s, Methodist minister Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa establish a mission in Walla Walla (in present-day Washington State). The Whitmans live peacefully among the neighboring Cayuses until a measles outbreak kills many in the tribe. Convinced that the Whitmans are responsible, the Cayuses ask them to leave, but the missionaries refuse. The governor of the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver also asks the missionaries to leave, but again they refuse. On November 29, 1847, the Cayuses attack the mission, killing the Whitmans and a dozen others. Reprisal violence follows. Three years later, Governor Joseph Lane decides to bring the Whitmans’ murderers to justice, so he makes a show of force and demands that the Cayuses surrender the guilty. The Cayuse chief responds that white settlers killed many more of his own people than were killed at the mission, but to save their tribe, three Cayuse men volunteer to be taken into custody and tried for the murders.

The author of this narrative admires the courage of the three Cayuses, who “walked with their heads erect” (409) through a hostile crowd in Oregon City. These three accused men endure a farce of a legal proceeding in an atmosphere of hysteria that the author likens to the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. The outcome is predetermined, and the Cayuses know “[t]hey had come to die” (410). They are convicted and hanged. The author concludes that the people of Oregon City who participated in that “horrid scene” are “either dead and damned, or they are sunk in the oblivion that is the fate of those who are born without souls” (410).

By far the longest entry in the Appendix, this section consists entirely of an 1872 report compiled by Francis A. Walker, US Commissioner for Indian Affairs, which tallies population figures and places of residence for all tribes living within the borders of the United States and its territories, except Alaska. It also includes general living conditions. Jackson presents the report without comment, though she does exclude details regarding the tribes to whom she devotes individual chapters in Part 1 of the book.

Walker divides his report into five geographical areas, each with more granular subdivisions. Walker reports, for instance, that in New York state descendants of the Iroquois number more than 5,000. They have established schools, cultivate 20,000 acres, and their numbers are growing. By contrast, the Cherokees of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia—descendants of those who evaded removal—number around 1,700 and are, thanks to the Civil War, “much impoverished” (419).