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5. "The White Friend": Curtis and Indian Reform
- University of Nebraska Press
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5 Curtis and Indian Reform the indians’ book differed from similar collections of music and folklore in its insistence that it be used as a tool to improve the lives of Native Americans. Curtis desired to encourage the administrators and teachers in the Indian school system to end their relentless attacks on students’ cultures. She wanted government officials to better understand Indians and adapt their approaches to meet real needs, and she hoped that through appreciation for the beauty and charm of Indian songs white readers would support a more benign, less strictly assimilationist federal Indian policy. Curtis went beyond merely writing about the need for reform—she directly involved herself in the movement. She became in many ways a transitional figure in the Indian reform movement, a bridge between the unbending assimilationist policies of the late nineteenth century and the cultural pluralism that blossomed in the 1920s and 1930s. Curtis differed from many of her contemporaries in the fields of anthropology and ethnomusicology in her pursuit of reform. Few students of Indian music and folklore connected their study of 166 Native cultures to critiques of Indian policy as strongly as she did. Many preferred to distance their work as scientists from any overt political context, often relying on government funding to support their work and conforming to notions of objectivity among their peers. Alice Fletcher, who collected music and studied the cultures of a number of Plains tribes, did use her position as an anthropologist to push for reform. Unlike Curtis, however, she supported the assimilationist agenda and helped implement allotment on several reservations.1 Frances Densmore published primarily on Native music, not on bettering Indian conditions or granting Indians fair treatment. Densmore’s desire to be seen as a serious researcher in the field of ethnomusicology prevented her, unlike Curtis, from engaging in work that would not have been deemed “objective” by her male peers. Matilda Coxe Stevenson gained access to Zuni society by befriending some of her informants, but even as she collected cultural artifacts she firmly believed the Zuni, like all primitive people, had no other option but assimilation. Like many other anthropologists she wrote about Zuni culture to salvage it from extinction, not, like Curtis, to improve Indian lives in a transitional stage.2 Curtis made important connections between studying and appreciating Native music and folklore and the pursuit of reform. Music, she argued, provided insights into beliefs and cultures that could improve Indians affairs. Even if through the mediation of a “white friend” like Curtis, Indian voices should be heard and their ideas considered as Indians joined other Americans on the journey into the twentieth century.3 Indian reform, particularly “civilization” and Christianization, had been an object of Europeans from the onset of the invasion. American colonists proselytized among Indians on the East Coast and established missions and schools ostensibly for them, but Indian affairs were not as crucial to British colonization. U.S. missionary organizations, such as the American Board for Foreign Missions, worked among Indians in the antebellum and Civil War years. For [54.174.85.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:07 GMT) 167 many, however, the needs of black slaves and freed people overrode concerns for Native Americans, who by the mid-nineteenth century were psychologically and physically far removed from the majority of reformers. With the demise of Reconstruction and the implementation of a new approach to Indian affairs in the 1870s, the so-called Peace Policy of President Grant, interest in Native American reform grew. The publicity surrounding the plight of a small group of Poncas sparked interest in protecting and uplifting Native peoples. Standing Bear, a Ponca leader arrested (but later released, in the Standing Bear v. Crook decision) for leading a small band out of Indian territory to their homeland along the Niobrara River in Nebraska in early 1879, undertook an extensive tour of cities on the East Coast. Along with the educated Poncas Susette (“Bright Eyes”) and Joseph LaFlesche, Standing Bear presented his case in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. The trip was “carefully orchestrated” by Thomas Henry Tibbles, the editor of the Omaha Herald. The group condemned the current reservation system for its corruption, violence, and abuses and called for constitutional protections for Native Americans. The Poncas offered “Indian citizenship , education and the abolition of the reservation system . . . as solutions for the present injustice.” Tibbles appealed to former abolitionists, people like Natalie’s uncle George William Curtis, for instance, and their...