Tribalism and the American Indian

Tribalism andtheAmericanIndian Brian W.Dippie. The VanishingAmerican: White Attitudes and U.S.Indian Policy. Middletown. Conn.: WesleyanUniversity Press. 1982. 432+ xviipp. Charles Hudson,ed. Black Drink: ANa/ll'e American Tea.Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979.175+ vii pp. Daniel F.Littlefield.Jr.Africans and Creeks: F,omtheColonialPeriod to the Cfril Wa,: Westport. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.286 + xiiipp. William K.Powers.OglalaReligion. Lincoln: Uni\ersity of NebraskaPress, 1977.233 + xxi pp. Graham D.Taylor.The New Deal and Ame1ica11 Indian Tribalism.Lincoln: University of NebraskaPress, 1980.203 + xii pp. Walter D.Williams.ed. Southeastern Indians: Since Remm•al. Athens: Universityof Georgia Press, 1979.253 + xvi pp. Burton M. Smith For the past two hundred years, American society has recognized the existence of Indian tribes as a political fact of life, while ignoring for the most part the cultural aspects of Indian tribalism. At the center of this paradox and outweighing all other considerations, has been the issue of Indianlands. From earliest settlements, Indians were forced off desired land, eitherphysically or by attrition, but the effect was the same. By the beginning ofthe nineteenth century, public attitudes were fixed and few believed that Indian tribes had any right or title to the land. President Andrew Jackson inhisAnnual Message to Congress reflected popular opinion when he asked rhetorically: ..What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns and prosperous farms ... and filled with the blessings of liberty,civilization and religion?" (1830). The soundness of these comments appeared to be self-evident when one considered that the Nation had developed during Jackson's lifetime from a thin band of states clustered along the eastern seaboard to include the RockyMountains and shared occupancy of the Pacific Northwest. By midcentury , the relentless pressure of expansion brought the United States into control of approximately its present boundaries. Accustomed to unprecedented success in national development and burdened with an overly heavy senseof history, Americans came to believe that greater things were possible. CanadianReviewof American Studies, Volume 15,Number 2, Summer 1984,185-198 186 Burton M.Smith Guided by entrepreneurial impulses, individual and national greatness were inextricably linked to the use of and unlimited access to the nation's resources, Capitalists and capitalism could not tolerate unused and nonproductive land or the existence of unregulated bands of people. Indian policy critic and Colorado Congressman James Belford reflected this attitude when heargued that "an idle and thriftless race of savages cannot be permitted to guardthe treasure vaults of the nation" (1880). The official policy of the federal government toward Indian tribes appears, superficially at least, to be one of rash and disjointed ventures aimed simply at separating Indians from their lands. There is, however imprecise, another side to government Indian policy. James Axtell suggests in The European and the Indian (1981)that from the beginning of colonial settlement, whenever Europeans tried to come to terms with Indian tribalism, they committed themselves to a policy of "reducing" the Indian from "savagery to civility" (p. 45). What this meant was that tribalism was diametrically opposite towhat white society would tolerate. To make the Indian acceptable, those aspects of tribalism that were most offensive-religion, language, the lack of civil authority and order, the lack of personal industry, and the general lackof permanence in their life style- had to be changed. The solution, it was widely held, would come only when the Indian could be transformed froma nomad to a property owning farmer. Ironically then, while whites wanted free access to Indian lands, the future acceptable existence of the Indian also depended upon his successful use of that land. While throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Indian appeared superficially at least to be a dying race, the mounting tempo of change in the latter century heightened the sense of urgency about the future of Indian tribes. As Senator Henry Dawes wrote of the General Allotment Act (1887), "It was born of sheer necessity. In as much as the Indian refused to fade out, but multiplied ... there was but one alternative: either he must be endured as a lawless savage, constant...