"To domesticate and civilize wild Indians": Allotment and the campaign to reform Indian families, 1875-1887

Journal of Family History

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 265-286

  Stremlau, Rose ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

Author keywords

Allotment; Assimilation; Dawes Act; Gender; Kinship; Reform

Indexed keywords

EID: 20744440452     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0363199005275793     Document Type: Review

References (145)

1. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1881 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1881), III.
2. Ella Cara Deloria, Waterlily (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), x.
3. For elaboration on matrilineal kinship, see Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 44.
4. In Waterlily, Deloria described a patrilineal kinship system.
5. See also Carolyn Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth: The Lives and Legends of American Indian Women (1977; New York: Touchstone, 1996), 91-96.
6. Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth, 63-69;
7. Nancy Shoemaker, introduction to Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women (New York: Routledge, 1995), 7;
8. and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, ed. Mrs. Horace Mann (New York: Putnam, 1883; reprint, Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994).
9. Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth, 96-99.
10. For an example of divorce, see Nancy Oestreich Lurie, ed., Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 37-38.
11. Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth, 105-31.
12. E. Jane Gay, With the Nez Perces: Alice Fletcher in the Field, 1889-92, eds. Frederick E. Hoxie and Joan T. Mark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 35.
13. Laura F. Klein and Lillian A. Ackerman, introduction to Women and Power in Native North America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 13-15.
14. Charles A. Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977).
15. For a girl's perspective, see Gilbert L. Wilson, ed., Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story (Webb Publishing Company, 1927; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).
16. Niethammer, Daughters of the Earth, 48-52.
17. As Frederick E. Hoxie explained, Morgan was not the first or only scholar to develop this concept, but he was particularly influential upon late nineteenth-century reformers; A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 17-29.
18. Craig Miner, The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty and Industrial Civilization in the Indian Territory, 1865-1907 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976).
19. Only one reform organization opposed allotment and other assimilationist policies: the National Indian Defense Association, led by Dr. Thomas A. Bland; Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law (Dawes Act) of 1887 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1975).
20. See Hoxie, A Final Promise.
21. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1881 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 77-79.
22. William T. Hagan, The Indian Rights Association: The Herbert Welsch Years, 1882-1904 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985);
23. D. S. Otis, The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands, ed. Francis Paul Prucha (1934; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973);
24. Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990);
25. and Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 611-23.
26. Joan T. Mark, Four Anthropologists: An American Science in its Early Years (New York: Science History Publications, 1980).
27. Alice Kehoe, "The Shackles of Tradition," in The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, eds. Patricia Albers and Beatrice Medicine (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1983), 53-70.
28. Alice C. Fletcher, "Feminine Idleness," Woman's Journal 4 (September 13, 1873): 291.
29. Joan T. Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988);
30. and David J. Wishart, An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
31. Rose Stremlau, "Reforming the Reformer: Native American Women, Alice Fletcher, and Allotment" (paper presented to the American Society for Ethnohistory Conference, London, Ontario, 2000).
32. John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 56-57.
33. For a study of how Anglo-American intellectuals conceived of their own gender roles in relation to those of nonwhite people, see Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
34. For good examples, see the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1877 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877), 51, 114.
35. Ironically, many female reformers came to recognize that Native women's labor gave them the economic independence and social status that non-Indian women, particularly those involved in the emerging women's rights movement, wanted. See Pascoe, Relations of Rescue.
36. and Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land.
37. Kehoe, "The Shackles of Tradition," 70.
38. See also D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 138.
39. Alice C. Fletcher, Indian Education and Civilization (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), 13-19.
40. The Women's National Indian Association (WNIA), in particular, criticized the federal government for allowing Indian men to be robbed of their livelihood without giving them a viable alternative; Carabel Gilman, The Religious Nature of the Indian (Philadelphia: WNIA, 1890).
41. House Committee on Indian Affairs, Lands to Indians in Severalty to Accompany Bill, H. R. 5038, 46th Congress, 2nd sess., 1879, H. R. Report No. 1576, 3.
42. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1877 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877), 4.
43. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1882 (Washington, DC; Government Printing Office), xlii.
44. Congressional Record, 49th Congress, 1st sess., 1886: 189-92, 224-26, 772-73, 1558, 1559, 1630-35, and 1762-64.
45. This debate over Indian men's ability to work culminated on January 20; House Committee on Indian Affairs, Lands to Indians in Severally to Accompany Bill H. R. 6268, 45th Congress, 3rd sess., 1879, H. R. Report No. 165;
46. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 1576.
47. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 165, 2.
48. Congressional Record, 49th Congress, 1st sess., 1886: 189-92, 224-26, 772-73, 1558, 1559, 1630-35, and 1762-64.
49. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1889 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 151-52.
50. See Herbert Gans, "Deconstructing the Underclass," in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study, ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: Worth, 2001), 80-86.
51. As quoted in Gay, With the Nez Perces, 35.
52. As quoted in Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land, 94-95.
53. For an example, an 1890 Indian Rights Association report described the sale of Chilkat girls into sexual slavery by their families; Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1890, pp. 64-65.
54. Indian Collection, Hampton University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia. For people unaccustomed to reading and discussing sexual matters, these reports could be quite racy. The Comstock Laws prevented the free and open discussion of sexuality in public; perhaps discussions of Indians' sexuality and supposed immorality served as an outlet for repressed non-Indians. See D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 57, 156-57.
55. For good examples of the WNIA's vignettes, see "Missionary Work of the Women's National Indian Association and Letters of Missionaries" (Philadelphia: Women's National Indian Association, 1885), 16-17.
56. I do not doubt that many Indian women had real problems in their lives, but I question the authenticity of reformers' romanticized stories. In her book Southern Ute Women: Autonomy and Assimilation on the Reservation, 1887-1934, Katherine M. B. Osburn explained how Ute women used reformers and the Indian Service to resolve problems when their status or security was threatened (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
57. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 56, 87-93, 134-38;
58. Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, 56-59.
59. Theda Perdue, "Columbus Meets Pocahontas in the American South," Southern Cultures 3 (1997): 4-10.
60. For a particularly vivid account, see the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1883 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1883), xliii;
61. and Annual Report of the Indian Rights Association for 1890, 61-67.
62. The Annual Report for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1882 contains a chart listing the numbers of American Indians infected with sexually transmitted diseases on nearly every reservation - see page 366.
63. Alice C. Fletcher, "Observation of the Laws and Privilege of the Gens in Indian Society," Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 32 (1884): 395-96.
64. For several good examples, see the WNIA, Annual Report of the Women's National Indian Association for 1884;
65. and Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, 50-51.
66. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1877, 3.
67. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1882, xxxiv.
68. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1882, vi-vii;
69. Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1890, 4.
70. Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, Proceedings for 1887, 58;
71. WNIA, Annual Report for 1884, 34-35.
72. Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, Proceedings for 1885, 45.
73. Congressmen also named them bills "to provide law for the Indians." Both seem to be equally used throughout the Congressional Record.
74. Merrill E. Gates, "Land and Law and Agents in Educating Indians," in Annual Report for 1878, Board of Indian Commissioners (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1978), 30-31.
75. Gates, "Land and Law," 13-35.
76. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1877, 121.
77. During the Coke debate, occurring during the 3rd session of the 46th Congress, many congressmen did not understand why the bill excluded the Indian Territory, which popular opinion held was ready to implode. The Dawes Act also excluded the Indian Territory because the tribes there owned their land under separate titles. The Jerome Commission subsequently treated with the tribes of western Indian Territory, and the Dawes Commission allotted the Five Tribes.
78. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1877, 75-76, 121;
79. Fletcher, "The Crowning Act," Morning Star (March 1887): 1;
80. Prucha, The Great Father, 747-55.
81. Gates, "Land and Law," 27.
82. During the debates over the Coke bill in the 3rd session of the 46th Congress, the predecessor to the Dawes Act, Senator Coke repeatedly used the term individualization interchangeably with allotment. They also used the term absorption.
83. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 906.
84. Many scholars of allotment commented on reformers' magical faith in the policy. For a definitive example, see William T. Hagan, "Private Property," Ethnohistory 3 (1956).
85. To convince the skeptical, reformers listed allotment's known results; the House Committee on Indian Affairs believed that allotment caused Indians to cultivate more land, grow a greater variety of crops, use machines in their work, live in appropriate houses, drink less, speak English, buy necessary and luxury goods, adopt white customs, educate their children, express interest in American citizenship, and die less often. See H. R. Report No. 1576.
86. WNIA, Annual Report for 1884, 53.
87. Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1887, 4.
88. Painter was on to something in noting this new trend in policy. Prior to this point, missionaries had focused assimilationist efforts on women and children, and this turn to men was a shift in Indian policy. See D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 93.
89. Looking to expedience, Congress debated who should receive allotments, but all agreed that the maintenance of Indian women's property rights was not a priority, even though previous allotment experiments resulted in Indians' seeking the equalization of land grants between men and women. At a dramatic moment in the congressional debates, Senator John Morgan of Alabama demanded to know how the policy was going to circumvent female heads of households. While he shared the goals of the policy, he believed it could not achieve its aim without revision and clarification: "What sort of head of family? The head of a civilized family or a savage family? Who is the head of an Indian family? The bill does not say ! When we speak of 'the head of a family,' of course, under this act, I understand that we mean the head of a civilized family; but the Indians do not recognize that." Morgan's comment also reflects the degree to which reformers believed Indian families were in anarchy such that they lacked clear lines of authority. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 912.
90. Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, Proceedings for 1885, 33, Indian Collection, Hampton University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia.
91. As initially passed, the Dawes Act granted 160 acres to heads of households, presumably men or, rarely, widowed women; 80 acres to single adults and orphans regardless of gender; and 40 acres to minor children. Within a few years, Congress equalized allotments and granted married women 80 acres retroactively in response to demand from allotment agents, Indian Service staff, and Indian people. Indian people believed that the policy unfairly excluded women, and reformers watched in horror as the policy seemed to encourage men to abandon their wives to take up with single women who had received allotments. See Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1889, 8-9;
92. Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1890, 9-10;
93. Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1889, 76;
94. and Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1890, 105.
95. Reformers were willing to let Indians suffer during this transition. In their 1875 annual report, the Board of Indian Commissioners concurred that only the "pangs of hunger" would motivate Indian men to work; Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report of 1875, 23-25.
96. Indian Collection, Hampton University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price proposed what sounds like an unfortunate reality TV show - relocate all Indians onto homesteads, give them one year's supplies, and let them live or die according to their own efforts; Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1881, v.
97. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1878.
98. Alice C. Fletcher, "Land, Law, and Education - The Three Things Needed by the Indians," Southern Workman 14 (March 1885): 33.
99. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1876, iii-xxv;
100. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 878-81.
101. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 165, 2-3.
102. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1879, iv-v.
103. Or as the Board of Indian Commissioners explained, "Naturally, when a man begins to toil for that which he receives, he beings to learn the value of personal-property rights, and thus takes the first step in separating from his tribe, and toward individual manhood"; Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1875, 23-25.
104. See also House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 1576.
105. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1883, 69-70.
106. Gates, "Land and Law," 27.
107. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 165;
108. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 2247.
109. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1881, xxii.
110. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 907.
111. D'Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 86-87, noted how white Americans combined sexual and racial ideology to justify their control of nonwhite people, particularly women.
112. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 877.
113. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report for 1878 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1878), xxvii.
114. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1881, 8.
115. Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1889, 19.
116. Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1888, 24-25.
117. Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1887, 53-54.
118. Other organizations, including the federal government and several Christian churches, supported female missionaries and matrons. For more information, see the Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1887, 129;
119. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1890, 42-44;
120. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1891, 30;
121. WNIA, Annual Report for 1886, 11;
122. and Pascoe, Relations of Rescue. For more information about the home-loan program, which was initiated at the suggestion of Alice C. Fletcher.
123. see WNIA, Annual Report for 1885, 13.
124. For information on mission boxes, see WNIA, Annual Report for 1884, 24;
125. WNIA, Annual Report for 1885, 29-31;
126. and WNIA, Annual Report for 1886, 36-37.
127. Gates, "Land and Law," 30-31.
128. As the Indian Rights Association reported, "The children, in a home of their own, form industrious habits, which give promise of good citizenship"; Annual Report for 1888, 24-25.
129. Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 3rd sess., 1881: 779.
130. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 1576.
131. For an interesting example of these home-education programs, see the Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1884, 40-41.
132. For more on the home-loan program, see WNIA, Annual Report for 1886, 12;
133. and the Lake Mohonk Conference, Proceedings for 1887, 53-54.
134. House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 165.
135. Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1888, 24-25.
136. Alice C. Fletcher, "The Crowning Act."
137. In 1879, Commissioner Hayt made this remark. He believed that within a few years, allotment would lead to Indians' being "clothed with citizenship and left to their own resources to maintain themselves as citizens of the republic"; House Committee on Indian Affairs, H. R. Report No. 165.
138. For an excellent account of this debate, see Loring Benson Priest, Uncle Sam's Stepchildren: The Reformation of United States Indian Policy, 1865-1887 (1942; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), chap. 16.
139. Congressional Record, 49th Congress, 1st sess., 1886: 189-92.
140. Congressional Record, 49th Congress, 1st sess., 1886: 1634.
141. Indian Rights Association, Annual Report for 1887, 82.
142. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1883, 5-6.
143. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report for 1888, 4.
144. Indian Emancipation Day Program for 1892, Boxes 12 and 13, Dawes Bill/Indian Citizenship Days Records, Indian Collection, Hampton University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia.
145. Indian Emancipation Day Flier for 1887, Boxes 12 and 13, Dawes Bill/Indian Citizenship Days Records, Indian Collection, Hampton University Archives, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia.