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1. U.S. President Andrew Jackson's Message to Congress "On Indian Removal," December 6, 1830

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1. U.S. President Andrew Jackson's Message to Congress "On Indian Removal," December 6, 1830

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https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/primary-sources/pdfs/history-education-pss-removal-jackson-source.pdf

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/history-education-pss-removal-jackson-transcription.b.pdf

Why did President Jackson view Indian removal as a benefit to the nation?

How does Jackson view the migration of the Indians’ to European migration?

How does President Jackson compare the life of Native American’s to whites?

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2. Transcribed Excerpts from U.S. Supreme Court Majority Opinion on Cherokee Nation's Case Against Georgia, January 1831

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2. Transcribed Excerpts from U.S. Supreme Court Majority Opinion on Cherokee Nation's Case Against Georgia, January 1831

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https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/primary-sources/pdfs/history-education-pss-removal-marshall-source.pdf

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/history-education-pss-removal-marshall-transcription-excerpts.pdf

What entity did the Supreme Court view the Cherokee Nation and is it different from the entity that the Cherokee Nation viewed themselves?

What pattern can be predicted from the United States government about removing Indians from their homeland?

How does the Supreme Court justify their reasoning to disregard the Cherokee Nation’s attempts to keep their land?

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3. Transcribed Excerpts from "Orders No. 25" Report from Gen. Winfield Scott on Removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, May 17, 1838

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3. Transcribed Excerpts from "Orders No. 25" Report from Gen. Winfield Scott on Removal of the Cherokee from Georgia, May 17, 1838

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https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-removal-order-source.jpg

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/history-education-pss-removal-order-transcription-excerpts.pdf

How did General Scott predict the Cherokee to act based on the prescribed and heavily encouraged treatment outlined to the Army?

Why would the Cherokee resist being forced to move from their land?

What were the Cherokee treatment protocols that were outlined for the soldiers?

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4. Marion County Resolution in Response to Indian Removal Act, February 5, 1852

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4. Marion County Resolution in Response to Indian Removal Act, February 5, 1852

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https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/primary-sources/pdfs/history-education-pss-removal-marion-source.pdf

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/history-education-pss-removal-resolution-transcription.b.pdf

How did Marion County Iowans respond to the removal of Indians?

What would be the reasoning for Iowans’ to write this response?

How does Marion County’s response differ from President Jackson’s letter?

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-What did the treaty of 1804 do to the Indians living in Illinios?
-What is the Indian group still in Iowa?
-What does this document do to help show how the Indians in Iowa have decreased? Why is it important to look into this document?

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For the next 47 years, Iowa women worked continually to secure passage of a women's suffrage amendment to Iowa's state constitution. During that time, the issue was considered in almost every session of the state legislature, but an amendment was offered (having passed both houses of the state legislature in two consecutive sessions) to the general electorate only once, in 1916. In that election, voters defeated the amendment by about 10,000 votes.

The arguments against women's suffrage ranged from the charge that women were not interested in the vote to the charge that women's suffrage would bring the downfall of the family and would cause delinquency in children. Regarding the defeat of the 1916 state referendum on the female vote, Iowa-born Carrie Chapman Catt, a leader for the women's suffrage cause, argued that the liquor interests in the state should accept responsibility as they had worked hard to defeat the measure. During the long campaign to secure the vote, however, the women themselves were not always in agreement as to the best approach to secure a victory. Catt herself led the final victorious assault in 1918 and 1919 in Washington with her "winning plan." This called for women to work for both state (state constitutions) and national (national constitution) amendments. Finally, in 1920, after both houses of the United States Congress passed the measure and it had been approved by the proper number of states, woman's suffrage became a reality for American women everywhere.

Iowa: Home for Immigrants
While Iowans were debating the issues of women's suffrage in the post Civil War period, the state itself was attracting many more people. Following the Civil War, Iowa's population continued to grow dramatically, from 674,913 people in 1860 to 1,194,020 in 1870. Moreover, the ethnic composition of Iowa's population also changed substantially. Before the Civil War, Iowa had attracted some foreign-born settlers, but the number remained small. After the Civil War, the number of immigrants increased. In 1869, the state encouraged immigration by printing a 96-page booklet entitled Iowa: The Home of Immigrants. The publication gave physical, social, educational, and political descriptions of Iowa. The legislature instructed that the booklet be published in English, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish.

Iowans were not alone in their efforts to attract more northern and western Europeans. Throughout the nation, Americans regarded these new comers as "good stock" and welcomed them enthusiastically. Most immigrants from these countries came in family units. Germans constituted the largest group, settling in every county within the state. The great majority became farmers, but many also became craftsmen and shopkeepers. Moreover, many German-Americans edited newspapers, taught school, and headed banking establishments. In Iowa, Germans exhibited the greatest diversity in occupations, religion, and geographical settlement.

The Marx Goettsch family of Davenport serves well as an example of German immigrants. At the time of his emigration in 1871, Goettsch was 24 years old, married and the father of a young son. During a two-year term in the German Army, Goettsch had learned the trade of shoemaking. Goettsch and his family chose to settle in Davenport, among Germans from the Schleswig-Holstein area. By working hard as a shoemaker, Goettsch managed not only to purchase a building for his home and shop, but also to purchased five additional town lots. Later, Goettsch had homes built on the lots which he rented out. He had then become both a small business man and a landlord.

During the next 25 years, Goettsch and his wife, Anna, raised six children and enjoyed considerable prosperity. For Marx and Anna, life in America, surrounded by fellow German-Americans, did not differ greatly from life in the old country. For their children, however, life was quite different. The lives of the Goettsch children - or the second generation - best illustrate the social and economic opportunities available to immigrants in the United States. If the family had remained in Germany, probably all five sons would have followed their father's occupation of shoemaker. In the United States, all five pursued higher education. Two sons received Ph.D.s, two sons received M.D.s, and one son became a professional engineer. With the third generation, education was also a crucial factor. Of seven grandchildren, all became professionals. Moreover, five of the seven were female. As the Goettsch experience indicates, opportunities abounded for immigrants settling in Iowa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The newcomers and their children could take up land, go into business, or pursue higher education. For most immigrants, these areas offered a better, more prosperous life than their parents had known in the old country.

Iowa also attracted many other people from Europe, including Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Hollanders, and many emigrants from the British Isles as shown by the following table. After 1900, people also emigrated from southern and eastern Europe. In many instances, immigrant groups were identified with particular occupations. The Scandinavians, including Norwegians, who settled in Winneshiek and Story Counties; Swedes, who settled in Boone County; and Danes, who settled in southwestern Iowa; were largely associated with farming. Many Swedes also became coal miners. The Hollanders made two major settlements in Iowa, the first in Marion County, and the second in northwest Iowa.

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For the next 47 years, Iowa women worked continually to secure passage of a women's suffrage amendment to Iowa's state constitution. During that time, the issue was considered in almost every session of the state legislature, but an amendment was offered (having passed both houses of the state legislature in two consecutive sessions) to the general electorate only once, in 1916.

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- How does this map of Iowa compare to a map today?
- Which way is the government expanding their control of Native American land?
- How does this show what we know about western expansion.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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9. Tribal Newspaper Article about Cherokee Nation and White Settlers in Georgia, March 4, 1829

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9. Tribal Newspaper Article about Cherokee Nation and White Settlers in Georgia, March 4, 1829

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-What do the Cherokee, who authored this article, believe about the land on which they are being forced to live?
-How do the Cherokee view their white neighbors? What evidence from the article can you provide to support your conclusion?
-What authority do the authors claim for the truth of their words in this article?

-How did the experience of the Meskwaki (Sac and Fox) in Iowa compare to the experience of the Cherokee in Georgia?

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6. Iowa History Journal: Tracing the Treaties

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6. Iowa History Journal: Tracing the Treaties

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-What does this 19th century map show us about how treaties impacted Indians and Iowa?
-What was the motive that drove the creation of these treaties?
-What were the terms of the treaties? How much money was exchanged? What were the boundaries? How did they shape Iowa?

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By Bill Sherman

Before white settlers transformed a wilderness prairie into a state that would become the argicultural capital of the United States, it belonged to American Indian tribes like the Sac and Fox, often called the Sauk and Meskwaki, while leaders like Keokuk, Black Hawk and Poweshiek ruled its land.

All of that would change, as history has taught us, through a series of 368 treaties and executive orders used by the U.S. government from 1776 to 1886 to seize more than 1.5 billion acres from America's indigenous people. Some historians call it the largest land grab in the world, which led to the formation of states like Iowa.

So what were the terms of the treaties? How much money was exchanged? What were the boundaries? How did they shape Iowa?

"The treaty pattern established by British, French and Dutch colonies was used in part because some tribes were more powerful than the U.S. government which was born broke and tired from the battle for independence," said Eric S. Zimmer, a doctoral candidate specializing in American Indian history at the University of Iowa

The federal government used nine treaties to remove American Indians from Iowa. Historians say that the Sac and Fox, often called the Sauk and Meskwaki, held the largest amount of land in Iowa. (Zimmer claims the tribal group has been incorrectly treated as one tribe for nearly 200 years and should be referred to as Sauk/Meskwaki).

The first treaty that required American Indians to cede land in what is now Iowa was signed on Aug. 4, 1824, in Washington, D.C. Ten members of Sauk/Meskwaki agreed to relinquish their claim to the land they possessed in what is now Missouri. The treaty also included a provision referred to as the Half Breed Tract. It was a small 119,000-acre, triangular area between the Des Moines and Mississippi rivers on the southeastern tip of Iowa where the city of Keokuk is located. It was set aside for use by mixed marriage families - usually white men married to American Indian women. The half-breed citizens could live there, but could not buy or sell any of the land.

This arrangement, however, was short lived. In 1834, Congress repealed the Half Breed Tract portion of the 1824 treaty. White claim jumpers, attracted by Iowa's rich soil began moving into the area as they ran out of farm land east of the Mississippi River.

The first large American Indian land loss in Iowa was triggered by an 1804 document. That year, William H. Harrison, governor of the Indiana territory, completed a series of agreements with representatives from the Sauk/Meskwaki, Fox, Illinois and Delaware tribes. One provision, signed by five Sauk/Meskwaki representatives, required them to relinquish their holdings east of the Mississippi River when white settlers started moving into the area. This would not happen until the early 1830s when white farmers started moving into the territory near where the city of Rock Island, Ill., is now located.

When white farmers arrived, the Sauk/Meskwaki were asked to leave by the Illinois governor. One faction headed by Black Hawk refused. Indian women, who did the farming, pressured him to stay. They complained that the prairie soil west of the Mississippi River in Iowa was too difficult to break with their hoes.

Another faction headed by Keokuk yielded to government demands and agreed to move west across the Mississippi into Iowa. As a result, the U.S. recognized Keokuk as the de facto chief of the Sauk/Meskwaki.

In his book, "The Upper Mississippi Valley: How the Landscape Shaped our Heritage," historian William Burke explained "The fraud of the 1804 treaty with the Sac and Fox led to the Black Hawk War in 1832." The war had a significant impact on the Iowa territory even though the battles were fought in what is now Illinois and Wisconsin.

Patrick J. Jung summarized the impact in his book, "The Black Hawk War of 1832." He noted, "The cost of the four month Black Hawk War to the United States has been estimated at $8 million in 1990 dollars. (For 2015 that figure would increase to roughly $14.2 million according to westegg.com/inflation website.) The causalities included 72 whites and an estimated 450 to 600 Sac. Less than 1,000 Indians battled against 12,000 U.S. Army regulars and the Illinois militia ... This was the last major uprising by Indians east of the Mississippi River."

Following the war, Gen. Winfield Scott forced the Sauk/Meskwaki headed by Keokuk to sign a treaty known as the Black Hawk Purchase on Sept. 21, 1832, across the river from Fort Armstrong, near where Davenport is located. One provision required Sauk/Meskwaki to give up the eastern third of Iowa for their failure to restrain Black Hawk from going to war. The area ranged from the Mississippi River to Elkader on the north, Fort Madison to the south and Iowa City to the west.

The U.S. agreed to pay the Sauk/Meskwaki $20,000 for the next 30 years for the territory. They also provided them with additional blacksmith and gunsmith shops and gave them a yearly allowance of 40 kegs of tobacco, 40 barrels of pork, 50 barrels of flour and 6,000 bushels of corn to prevent starvation.

Black Hawk was imprisoned and his supporters were prevented from serving as tribal leaders. Keokuk was awarded 400 sections of land along the Iowa River for his refusal to go to war and the area was known as Keokuk's Reserve.

However, Keokuk's gift was short lived. In 1836, another treaty was signed that forced the Sauk/Meskwaki to give back the land to the U.S. as American Indians were not permitted to live in the area after Nov. 1.

For giving up the reserve, the Sauk/Meskwaki received an annuity of $10,000 for 10 years, plus $30,000. It amounted to about 75 cents per acre. Two years later, the same land was sold to white settlers for $3 per acre.

In 1837, government officials met with Keokuk and a few of his followers in Washington, D.C., to negotiate another treaty. Keokuk soon agreed to relinquish 1.25 million acres of land immediately to the west of the Black Hawk purchase.

For this cession the Sauk/Meskwaki received a $10,000 annuity and $100,000 of their trading debts were forgiven. They also received an additional $67,000 and the funds were used to build mills and provide farming assistance to Sac and Fox remaining in Iowa. The treaty stipulated that all American Indians had to vacate the area within eight months of the treaty date.

According to historian William Hagan, some tribal members felt so betrayed by the treaty that they published a notice in an Iowa newspaper that people should not accept the signature of Keokuk as an "authorized representative of the Indians," as reported in Hagan's 1958 book, "The Sac and Fox Indians."

Perhaps the most unusual Iowa treaty involved moving American Indians into the state temporarily. In the early 1800s, tribes living in Iowa frequently fought against each other. They involved Sioux sub groups (such as Lakota, Nakota and Dakota) opposing the Sauk/Meskwaki in an attempt to control the area. More than 130 tribal leaders from the upper Midwest met at Prairie Du Chien, Wis., on Aug. 19, 1825, and signed a document designed to prevent future tribal conflicts. U.S. representatives headed by William Clark, who had earlier explored the Louisiana Purchase territory for Thomas Jefferson, conducted the council.

Clark told the American Indians that their wars resulted from not having boundaries that defined their territorial rights. Article Two of the 1825 Treaty established the neutral line in the Iowa territory to separate Sioux territory from the area occupied by the Sac and Fox. It ran from northeast Iowa at the Mississippi River and southwest to the Missouri River. The work on the project was completed by the U.S. Deputy Surveyor Captain Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone.

The Sioux were to remain north of the boundary line and the Sauk/Meskwaki were to stay to the south, but the fighting between them continued, which led to the development of the Neutral Ground Treaty signed on July 15, 1830.

An agent who represented the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) tribe, Joseph M. Street, proposed a new approach for the treaty. He suggested moving the Ho-Chunk from what is now southwestern Wisconsin. White farmers and lead miners had rights to purchase and settle lands in this area as a result of an 1804 treaty. Because of this, Street believed the Ho-Chunk could not remain in Wisconsin. He also felt there would be continuing conflict between the Sioux and the Sauk/Meskwaki.

To solve the problem, Street proposed that the U.S. create a neutral zone by purchasing a 20-mile wide section of land along the 200-mile neutral boundary line from both the Sioux and the Sauk/Meskwaki and Fox. He suggested that the Ho-Chunk could be relocated from Wisconsin into this 40 mile wide neutral zone and that they would serve as a buffer between the Sioux and the Sauk/Meskwaki. Even though the Ho-Chunk had maintained peaceful relations with both of these tribes, they were not eager to live between them.

The government agreed to implement Street's plan and the 40-mile wide neutral zone ran from the Mississippi River to the Des Moines River, or about 200 miles. The Sioux retained their land to the north and south of the neutral ground. The Sauk/Meskwaki received $6,500 and the Sioux $5,000 in annuities for 10 years for the use of their lands.

For giving up their holdings east of the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, the Ho-Chunk received an annuity payment of $20,000 per year. Some of the funds were used to build a school.

But like so many other treaties, the neutral zone arrangement was short lived. The Ho-Chunk were forced to sign another treaty in 1837 to give up the first 20 miles of the neutral ground west of the Mississippi. In 1840, Fort Atkinson was built in northeast Iowa to keep peace between the Sioux and Sac and Fox and to monitor the Ho-Chunk in keeping them from returning to Wisconsin.

When Iowa became a state in 1846, the Ho-Chunk lost their remaining area in the neutral zone. They were relocated to what is now southwestern Minnesota. Officials estimated the cost to the U.S. for implementing the neutral zone was $370,000.

The final treaty with the Sauk/Meskwaki took place in October 1842. This one ceded to the U.S. all Iowa territory between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers held by Sauk/Meskwaki. Their leaders received an annual annuity worth five percent of $800,000 and the U.S. paid tribal trading debts of $258,566.

Two more treaties were negotiated with different tribal groups. The first was with the Potawatomi. It was signed near Council Bluffs in June of 1846. The Potawatomi sold all lands they held in the Iowa territory for $850,000, which ran from the Missouri River to Carroll and north and south from the Minnesota territory border to the Missouri line. The U.S. paid $50,000 for tribal debts and home loss compensation. An additional $70,000 was paid for moving costs and one year's food subsistence.

The final treaty negotiated with American Indians still living in Iowa was with the Sioux. It was completed at an agency in the Minnesota Territory and became effective on Feb. 24, 1853, years after Iowa had gained statehood in 1846.

The Sioux ceded all lands they owned in northwest Iowa and the Minnesota territory in return for $1.6 million. Deducted from this total was $275,000 given to the chiefs to settle their affairs, including expenses for the removal process, which had to be completed within two years. There was also subsistence funding for one year and $30,000 was to be used to break and fence land, establish farms, build mills and construct blacksmith shops. The balance of $1.3 million remained in a Sioux trust account that generated a five percent payout for 50 years.

Burke notes that the total cost to the U.S. for buying all the territory making up what is now Iowa was nearly $2.9 million, which amounted to about 8 cents per acre. It compares with a price of 3.5 cents per acre the U.S. paid for land in the Louisiana Purchase. As a result, one could argue the U.S. treated American Indians better than the French government did.

However, the story of land transfer between the government and American Indians who lived in Iowa does not end there.

In the early 1850s, a contingent of Sauk/Meskwaki Indians returned to Iowa from Kansas. They reunited with some tribal members who had never left the state and decided to attempt to buy back some of the land they once occupied. By working with local citizens, the governor and state legislators, they were able to purchase an 80 acre settlement in Tama County along the Iowa River. In 1856, the Iowa General Assembly approved legislation allowing the Meskwaki to own this land and they urged the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs to recognize the purchase and to continue their annuity payments.

This may have been the first time American Indians were allowed to buy land in the U.S. The price was $12.50 per acre, much higher than the 10 cents per acre the U.S. paid the Sac and Fox for the same land in 1832.

Consequently, the U.S. Government Bureau of Indian Affairs refused to recognize the land sale and they stopped annuity payments. They claimed it was illegal for American Indians to own land in the U.S., but the Sauk/Meskwaki quest for self-governance would continue to move forward and succeed. By 2014, more than 1,000 Meskwaki were living on the 7,800 that they own in Tama County, according to figures on the Meskwaki website.

In "The Worlds Between Two Rivers," Edward Purcell described the Meskwaki land acquisition as the "major story of American Indians in Iowa history ... By purchasing and holding title to land they were able to avoid many of the destructive federal policies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because the lands were private property, the Sauk/Meskwaki were able to construct a cultural and ethnic enclave in the heart of white, agricultural Iowa. As a result, they preserved to a remarkable degree the integrity of their native, cultural, political and social institutions."
TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS STORY AND OTHER FASCINATING STORIES ABOUT IOWA HISTORY, subscribe to Iowa History Journal. You can also purchase back issues at the store.

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Tracing the treaties: How they affected American Indians and Iowa -

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By Bill Sherman Before white settlers transformed a wilderness prairie into a state that would become the argicultural capital of the United States, it belonged to American Indian tribes like the Sac and Fox, often called the Sauk and ... Continue reading →

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8. Iowa Law to "Allow Meskwaki to Purchase Land and Live in Tama, Iowa," July 15, 1856

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8. Iowa Law to "Allow Meskwaki to Purchase Land and Live in Tama, Iowa," July 15, 1856

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-In 1830, the federal government passed a law requiring all American Indians to be removed to areas west of Missouri and Arkansas. What does this law allow the Meskwaki to do?
-Who is giving the Meskwaki permission to stay in Iowa?
-Why is that significant?

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*Explore this web page. More specifically, click on the tab labeled: "Native Americans in Iowa 1800-1860"
-What does this document show us about the Louisiana Purchase of 1804?
-What does the following quote teach us about how Native Americans were treated after the creation of the treaties? "As a result new policies were created to remove and relocate Native Americans in an orderly fashion"
-What does the map show us about what Native American tribes occupied Iowa before they were forced out?

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This story map requires JavaScript, but running JavaScript is not currently allowed by your web browser. If you wish to view this story, please enable JavaScript in this browser or try a different browser.

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This story map requires JavaScript, but running JavaScript is not currently allowed by your web browser. If you wish to view this story, please enable JavaScript in this browser or try a different browser.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSBrkJn3NeI

1. How does this book help the reader see how indigenous persons/communities are forced to give up their culture?

2. Why do you think the nun treated Margaret so badly?

3. We have learned about the different ways the U.S. government has stolen from Native Americans. What things were taken from Margaret in this book? (think deeper than just material things)

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11. Twenty First Congress Enactments, 1830

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11. Twenty First Congress Enactments, 1830

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- Based on this document, how does the government interact with Native Americans in regard to land?
- What does the document say that the president will do for tribes who have exchanged land or been removed? Does that seem fair?
- In section 2, it says "lands should revert to the United States, if the Indians become extinct". What does this say about how these people were treating Native Americans?

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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- Based on what you have learned, how do you think the government got this land?
- Who do you think was able to buy this land?
- What do you think happened to the Native Americans who lived there previously?

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At the start of the twentieth century there were approximately 250,000 Native Americans in the USA - just 0.3 per cent of the population - most living on reservations where they exercised a limited degree of self-government. During the course of the nineteenth century they had been deprived of much of their land by forced removal westwards, by a succession of treaties (which were often not honoured by the white authorities) and by military defeat by the USA as it expanded its control over the American West.

In 1831 the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, had attempted to define their status. He declared that Indian tribes were 'domestic dependent nations' whose 'relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian'. Marshall was, in effect, recognising that America's Indians are unique in that, unlike any other minority, they are both separate nations and part of the United States. This helps to explain why relations between the federal government and the Native Americans have been so troubled. A guardian prepares his ward for adult independence, and so Marshall's judgement implies that US policy should aim to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US culture. But a guardian also protects and nurtures a ward until adulthood is achieved, and therefore Marshall also suggests that the federal government has a special obligation to care for its Native American population. As a result, federal policy towards Native Americans has lurched back and forth, sometimes aiming for assimilation and, at other times, recognising its responsibility for assisting Indian development.

What complicates the story further is that (again, unlike other minorities seeking recognition of their civil rights) Indians have possessed some valuable reservation land and resources over which white Americans have cast envious eyes. Much of this was subsequently lost and, as a result, the history of Native Americans is often presented as a morality tale. White Americans, headed by the federal government, were the 'bad guys', cheating Indians out of their land and resources. Native Americans were the 'good guys', attempting to maintain a traditional way of life much more in harmony with nature and the environment than the rampant capitalism of white America, but powerless to defend their interests. Only twice, according to this narrative, did the federal government redeem itself: firstly during the Indian New Deal from 1933 to 1945, and secondly in the final decades of the century when Congress belatedly attempted to redress some Native American grievances.

There is a lot of truth in this summary, but it is also simplistic. There is no doubt that Native Americans suffered enormously at the hands of white Americans, but federal Indian policy was shaped as much by paternalism, however misguided, as by white greed. Nor were Indians simply passive victims of white Americans' actions. Their responses to federal policies, white Americans' actions and the fundamental economic, social and political changes of the twentieth century were varied and divisive. These tensions and cross-currents are clearly evident in the history of the Indian New Deal and the policy of termination that replaced it in the late 1940s and 1950s. Native American history in the mid-twentieth century was much more than a simple story of good and evil, and it raises important questions (still unanswered today) about the status of Native Americans in modern US society.

The Dawes Act

Between 1887 and 1933, US government policy aimed to assimilate Indians into mainstream American society. Although to modern observers this policy looks both patronising and racist, the white elite that dominated US society saw it as a civilising mission, comparable to the work of European missionaries in Africa. As one US philanthropist put it in 1886, the Indians were to be 'safely guided from the night of barbarism into the fair dawn of Christian civilisation'. In practice, this meant requiring them to become as much like white Americans as possible: converting to Christianity, speaking English, wearing western clothes and hair styles, and living as selfsufficient, independent Americans.

Federal policy was enshrined in the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 which decreed that Indian Reservation land was to be divided into plots and allocated to individual Native Americans. These plots could not be sold for 25 years, but reservation land left over after the distribution of allotments could be sold to outsiders. This meant that the Act became, in practice, an opportunity for land-hungry white Americans to acquire Indian land, a process accelerated by the 1903 Supreme Court decision in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock that Congress could dispose of Indian land without gaining the consent of the Indians involved. Not surprisingly, the amount of Indian land shrank from 154 million acres in 1887 to a mere 48 million half a century later.

The Dawes Act also promised US citizenship to Native Americans who took advantage of the allotment policy and 'adopted the habits of civilized life'. This meant that the education of Native American children - many in boarding schools away from the influence of their parents - was considered an essential part of the civilising process. The principal of the best-known school for Indian children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania boasted that his aim for each child was to 'kill the Indian in him and save the man'.

John Collier and the Indian New Deal

The 1924 Citizenship Act granted US citizenship to all Native Americans who had not already acquired it. In theory, this recognised the success of the assimilation policy, but the reality was different. Indians were denied the vote in many Western states by much the same methods as African-Americans were disenfranchised in the South. The Meriam Report, published in 1928, showed that most Indians lived in extreme poverty, suffering from a poor diet, inadequate housing and limited health care. Schools were overcrowded and badly resourced. The Meriam Report, while accepting that government policy should continue to enable Indians to 'merge into the social and economic life of the prevailing civilization as adopted by the whites', rejected 'the disastrous attempt to force individual Indians or groups of Indians to be what they do not want to be, to break their pride in themselves and their Indian race, or to deprive them of their Indian culture'.

This new approach to Native Americans was enthusiastically endorsed by John Collier, who became Commissioner for Indian Affairs in 1933. Collier, a white American, believed that Native American community life and respect for the environment had much to teach American materialism, and he became passionately determined to preserve as much of the traditional Indian way of life as possible. In particular, he wanted Native American reservations to be permanent, sovereign homelands. The centrepiece of his new policy was the 1934 Indian Reorganisation Act (IRA) which ended the policy of allotment, banned the further sale of Indian land and decreed that any unallotted land not yet sold should be returned to tribal control. It also granted Indian communities a measure of governmental and judicial autonomy.

The IRA was vitally important in arresting the loss of Indian resources, and Collier, by directing New Deal funds towards the regeneration of Indian reservations, successfully encouraged a renewed respect for Native American culture and traditions. Not surprisingly, some historians sympathetic to Native Americans have placed him and the IRA on a pedestal. Vine Deloria Jnr described the IRA as 'perhaps the only bright spot in all of Indian-Congressional relations' and Angie Debo praised Collier as 'aggressive, fearless, dedicated ... an almost fanatical admirer of the Indian spirit'.

Other historians, however, have argued that the IRA was highly controversial and, in many respects, unsuccessful. The Act assumed that most Native Americans wanted to remain on their reservations, and so it was vigorously opposed by those Indians who wanted to assimilate into white society and who resented the paternalism of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). These Indians criticised the IRA as a regressive 'backto- the-blanket' policy that aimed to turn them into living museum exhibits. Although the IRA was accepted by 174 out of a total of 252 Indian tribes, a number of the larger tribes were among those who rejected it. Historian Lawrence Kelly tells us that 'of approximately 97,000 Indians who were declared eligible to vote, only 38,000 actually voted in favour of the Act. Those who voted against it totalled almost 24,000.' Nor did the electoral rules add to its credibility. Peter Iverson has pointed out that 'the practice of counting no vote at all as a vote in favour of the measure helped swing close elections, especially on smaller reservations. The Santa Ysabel reservation in California was counted as giving the Act a 71- 43 margin of approval, but only nine persons there actually voted for [the IRA].'

Moreover, Collier's policies, through no fault of his own, failed in the most crucial areas of all. The erosion of Indian land as a result of allotment had created a class of 100,000 landless Indians, adding to the problems of the reservations whose best land had been sold off since 1887. Few could become selfsustaining economically and Collier succeeded in adding only four million acres to their land base. Furthermore, the annual budget of the BIA was not large enough to cope with the demands of economic development for the reservations, let alone provide adequate educational and health facilities.

The Impact of the Second World War

The Second World War further damaged the Indian New Deal. The BIA office was moved from Washington to Chicago in 1942 and its budget was cut as federal resources were devoted to more urgent war-related activities. The reservations lost a further million acres of land, including 400,000 acres for a gunnery range and some for the housing of Japanese-American internees.

The experience of war also transformed the lives and attitudes of many Native Americans. There were approximately 350,000 Native Americans in the USA in 1941, of whom 25,000 served in the armed forces. This was a higher proportion than from any other ethnic minority. Recent films have celebrated some of their best-known contributions. Clint Eastwood's 2006 film Flags of our Fathers explored the tragic life of Ira Hayes, one of the men featured in the famous photograph of six Marines raising the US flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. The 2002 film Windtalkers dealt with a group of Navajo whose language provided the US military with an indecipherable code.

A further 40,000 Native Americans worked in war-related industries. For many, this involved a permanent relocation to the cities and a willingness to assimilate into mainstream white culture. Collier himself recognised that the federal government would need to change its Native American policy fundamentally as a result of the war. In 1941 he pointed out that, 'with resources inadequate to meet the needs of those already [on the reservations], the problem of providing employment opportunities and a means of livelihood for each of the returning soldiers and workers will prove a staggering task'. The following year he even hinted at a return to the policy of assimilation. 'Should economic conditions after the war continue to offer employment opportunities in industry, many Indians will undoubtedly choose to continue to work away from the reservations. Never before have they been so well prepared to take their places among the general citizenry and to become assimilated into the white population.'

The Genesis of the Policy of Termination

The Second World War profoundly changed the ideological climate in the United States. The nation had just fought a major war to destroy one collectivist ideology - Nazism - and the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s made most Americans worried about the power and ambitions of another - Communism. Americans began stridently trumpeting the virtues of individual freedom against the collective ideology of the USSR. Collier's policies were regarded with intense suspicion, and the IRA came to be seen as a domestic version of socialism, or even communism. Many conservative Congressmen had never liked it because they believed that the autonomy it granted to Native American communities gave them special privileges. Furthermore, Collier's policies seemed to perpetuate the status of Native Americans as wards of the federal government who would require continued supervision and economic support from the BIA, which, to conservative Congressmen, was an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy funded by white taxpayers. The IRA was also criticised by the National Council of Churches for the support it gave to Native American religions. In January 1945 Collier, worn down by the growing hostility to his policies, resigned as Commissioner.

The notion that it was time to terminate the wardship status of Native Americans and wind up federal responsibility for their welfare became increasingly popular in Washington in the postwar years. This would mean that BIA could be abolished, the reservations broken up, Indian resources sold off and the profits divided among tribal members. Indians would become just like any other Americans - responsible as individuals for their own destiny.

In this context, Collier's critics could blame his policies, rather than inadequate federal funding, for the economic backwardness of the reservations. The IRA, by returning the land to communal ownership and making it inalienable, had limited the property rights of individual Indians. In the words of historian Kenneth Philp, 'this well-intentioned [IRA] policy threatened perpetual government supervision over many competent individuals, made it difficult to secure loans from private sources, and discouraged Indians from developing their land resources'. Furthermore, the wartime migration of many Indians to the cities appeared to suggest that what many Native Americans themselves wanted was participation in America's booming postwar industrial economy rather than a life of rural squalor on the economically deprived reservations.

Relocation, 1948-61

In 1948 William Brophy, Collier's successor as Commissioner, began a policy of relocating Indians - initially from two tribes - to the cities where the job opportunities were better than on the reservations. This programme was gradually expanded and by 1960 nearly 30 per cent of Native Americans lived in cities, as opposed to just 8 per cent in 1940. Although the BIA provided some financial support and advice for relocating Indians, it reported as early as 1953 that many Native Americans had 'found the adjustment to new working and living conditions more difficult than anticipated'. Securing housing, coping with prejudice and even understanding the everyday features of urban life such as traffic lights, lifts, telephones and clocks made the experience traumatic for many Indians. Not surprisingly, many suffered unemployment, slum living and alcoholism. Federal funding for the relocation project was never sufficient to assist Native Americans to cope with these problems, and many drifted back to the reservations.

The Indian Claims Commission

The first step towards terminating the reservations came in 1946 when Congress, in part to reward Native Americans for their contribution to the war effort, set up the Indian Claims Commission to hear Indian claims for any lands stolen from them since the creation of the USA in 1776. The Commission was initially supported by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), a pressure group formed in 1944, because they welcomed a federal initiative to deal with long-standing grievances. However, it was clear that the Commission would provide only financial compensation and not return any land. The federal government regarded the Commission as the first step to 'getting out of the Indian business'. This was clearly how President Truman saw it: 'With the final settlement of all outstanding claims which this measure ensures, Indians can take their place without special handicaps or special advantages in the economic life of our nation and share fully in its progress.' The original intention was for the Commission to sit for five years, but there were so many claims that it remained in existence until 1978.

The Termination of the Reservations

In August 1953, Congress endorsed House Concurrent Resolution 108 which is widely regarded as the principal statement of the termination policy:

It is the policy of Congress, as rapidly as possible, to make the Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, to end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.

In the same month Congress passed Public Law 280 which, in California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin, transferred criminal jurisdiction from the Indians to the state authorities, except on certain specified reservations. Congress also repealed the laws banning the sale of alcohol and guns to Indians. These measures could be justified as merely bringing Indians into line with other US citizens but, as one historian has observed, 'the states were not as eager to control the reservations as the advocates of termination had expected'. In some Indian areas law and order disappeared altogether.

Many Native Americans were alarmed about the termination policy. One Blackfoot tribal chairman pointed out that, 'in our language the only trans-lation for termination is to "wipe out" or "kill off"'. But in Washington, it was seen in terms of freedom and opportunity. Senator Arthur Watkins of Utah, the principal Congressional advocate of termination, claimed in a 1957 article that it could be compared to the abolition of slavery: 'Following in the footsteps of the Emancipation Proclamation of 94 years ago, I see the following words emblazoned in letters of fire above the heads of the Indians - THESE PEOPLE SHALL BE FREE!'

These remarks were, of course, selfinterested. Termination would open up yet more valuable Indian land and resources to white purchasers. This explains why, in the Congressional committee hearings on termination, there was considerable controversy over the future of the first reservations selected, especially those of the Menominee of Wisconsin and the Klamath of Oregon who had large land holdings and valuable forestry and timber resources.

Termination proved very hard to resist. Opponents who stressed the backwardness of the reservations and the inability of individual Indians to cope without continued federal support only confirmed the Congressmen in their conviction that the IRA had failed and that a new policy was necessary. Even the lack of adequate facilities for Native Americans could be used as evidence that termination was necessary. When a Congressman from Texas tried to argue against the termination of the small reservation in his district, he had to admit that the federally-maintained Indian school attended by the Native American children was over 500 miles from their homes, and that it made more sense for them to be educated locally alongside white children.

The NCAI was also in difficulties because many Native Americans favoured termination. These were mostly the half-blood Indians who had moved to the cities and, in many cases, adopted the values and lifestyles of the white majority. They stood to gain financially if the valuable land on their reservations was sold and the money divided among tribal members. As Helen Peterson, a member of the Oglala Sioux and a former director of the NCAI, later recalled:

In the NCAI office we did all we could to support, encourage, and back up those people who dared to question termination, but it was pretty much a losing battle. The NCAI was in a tough spot. We were deeply committed to respecting the sovereignty of a tribe. Did the NCAI want to oppose termination even when the people involved wanted it? We never really came to a final answer on that question.

The NCAI was able to prevent the termination of some tribes, including the Turtle Mountain Chippewa, but not the resource-rich Menominee and Klamath. However, the pace of termination slowed in the mid-1950s as it became clear that many Indians had not been properly consulted and few fully understood its implications. In 1958 the Secretary of the Interior, Fred Seaton, declared that 'it is absolutely unthinkable ... that consideration would be given to forcing upon an Indian tribe a so-called termination plan which did not have the understanding and acceptance of a clear majority of the members affected'. In the 1960s the policy was abandoned.

Conclusion: the Impact of Termination

Judged by numbers alone, the impact of termination was small. It affected just over 13,000 out of a total Indian population of 400,000. Only about 3 per cent of reservation land was lost. But it caused huge anxiety amongst Native Americans and had the ironic result of stimulating the formation of the 'Red Power' protest movement of the 1960s. It remains an emotive issue among historians sympathetic to Native Americans. Angie Debo called it 'the most concerted drive against Indian property and Indian survival' since the 1830s. Jake Page concluded that it had been 'an utter betrayal of trust responsibilities by the federal government', and Edward Valandra has claimed that 'termination increasingly resembled extermination'. However, it is difficult to see what policy, in the context of the early Cold War, could have replaced it. Even today, neither the Native American tribes themselves, nor the federal government, have successfully resolved exactly what the status and identity of the original inhabitants of the north American continent should be.
Issues to Debate

How successful was the Indian New Deal?

How important was the Second World War in transforming the lives and status of Native Americans?

Was the Termination policy merely an excuse to plunder Native American land and resources?

How similar was the Native American struggle for their rights to the African American civil rights campaign?

Further Reading

Angie Debo, History of the Indians of the United States (Norman, Oklahoma, 1970)

Albert L. Hurtado and Peter Iverson (eds.), Major Problems in American Indian History (Lexington, Mass, 1994)

Peter Iverson, 'We Are Still Here': American Indians in the Twentieth Century (Wheeling, Illinois, 1998)

Jake Page, In the Hands of the Great Spirit:The 20,000-Year History of American Indians (NewYork, 2003)

Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father:The United States Government and the American Indians, Abridged Edition (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1986)

Francis Paul Prucha (ed), Documents of United States Indian Policy, 3rd Edition (Lincoln, Nebraska, 2000)

Edward Charles Valandra, Not Without Our Consent: Lakota Resistance to Termination, 1950-59 (Chicago, Illinois, 2006)

Andrew Boxer was for many years Director of Studies and Head of History at Eastbourne College. He is an A-level examiner for OCR and the author of a number of textbooks on aspects of modern British and European history.

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Native Americans and the Federal Government

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At the start of the twentieth century there were approximately 250,000 Native Americans in the USA - just 0.3 per cent of the population - most living on reservations where they exercised a limited degree of self-government.