American Indian Policies During The Progressive Era: Issues And Responses

The Progressive Era in American history is often touted as a period of “great” reform. It was during this period that the great monopolies of American industry were disbanded (with the enactment of antitrust laws). Political corruption was also minimized due to the institutionalization of important legislative and executive oversight functions. Furthermore, it was also during this period that the federal government experimented on welfare reform. However, when viewed from Native American history, this was a period of great confusion and awakening. The federal government expected the Indian nations to simply disappear. Aggressive expansionist policies brought the country into a series of wars against Indian nations from 1830 to the late 1880s.

Following the defeat of the last “renegade” Indian nation, the federal government apportioned land to individual Native Americans in order to encourage them to farm and send their children to boarding schools where they would be indoctrinated and taught the rubrics of the English language and “white etiquette. ” It was widely expected that such policies would assimilate Native Americans into mainstream society within a generation or two. Efforts to decimate Indian culture ended in failure, and many Native Americans refused to assimilate into mainstream society. As such, their group identity has remained intact to the present day. Native Americans “corrected” many of the flaws in US Indian policy and shaped the public’s thinking about Indian culture by effectively maintaining their sense of identity and peoplehood (which was in essence a deliberate refusal to assimilate) through art, spirituality, culture, and religious practices. Despite their status as semi-colonial subjects, Native Americans were able to preserve their sacred history and resist assimilationist policies. This convinced American policymakers that policies of the sort were outmoded and thus, had to be reformed. The fact that there are more than 500 tribes recognized in the United States today is a clear indication that Native American efforts to correct flaws in US Indian policy during the Progressive Era were successful.

There is this standing myth in American history that encapsulates the dynamics of Native American culture. Aggressive American expansionist drives westward obliterated the Indians, “defining them forever as people of the past” (Hoxie 11). This story is often buttressed by exceedingly potent artistic imageries: photographs of once-powerful Indian chiefs, paintings of warriors battling the American cavalry, and Indian handicrafts relentlessly marketed as “artifacts of a lost world” (Hoxie 11). Indian nations did suffer during this period. Entire tribes were forced out of their homes. Epidemics wiped out entire villages, and American troops sometimes killed with impunity. By 1890, it was estimated that there were fewer than 300,000 Native Americans in the US (Hoxie 11). However, this is not a story of defeat. The Indian nations were neither obliterated nor assimilated into mainstream American society. In fact, by the end of the 20th century, Native American population stood at 2 million.

It was never a question of defeat anyway. Two decades since the defeat of the last “renegade” Indian nation, many Native Americans began to re-examine their roots. Contact between tribal communities increased with regularity; the incentive to organize became all the more alluring because of the government’s aggressive assimilation policies. It was during the Progressive Era that they began to talk back to mainstream American society, rejecting the “self-serving nationalism they heard from missionaries and bureaucrats” (Hoxie 12). At any rate, they rejected the notion that American Indians were savages and thus were in need of educating. They further rejected the notion that white culture was superior to Native American culture.

There were many attempts to correct flaws in US Indian policy and shape the public’s thinking about Indian culture during the Progressive Era. Some of these attempts were direct, thought-provoking and straightforward. Consider for example Simon Pokagon’s “The Red Man’s Greeting” at Chicago’s World Fair in 1893. The Fair was organized to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage to America. Pokagon was invited to address the American public in the event. In the opening paragraph of his speech, he candidly addressed the public as “the pale-faced race that has usurped our lands and homes,” declaring his unwillingness to participate in the event (Pokagon 87). He forcefully argued that the republic (referring to the American nation) was built on the blood of a once happy nation; in its foundation once stood the red man’s wigwams and “forests of untold centuries” (Pokagon 90). In the same speech, he made a sharp contrast between the “civilized” West (which was predisposed toward destruction and violence) and the Indian nations (which destroyed none save for food and dress). This was the same approach utilized by Francis La Flesche in his boarding school memoir. He narrated many of the misconceptions of Indian life and character that white people make. According to him, many aspects of Indian life have always been strange to the white man, and this strangeness has been deliberately magnified by prejudice, racial bias, and “conflicts of interests between the two races” (La Flesche 110). Perhaps, La Flesche was referring to the role of education in pacifying the Indian nations. To the white man, education had one goal: to assimilate the red man into mainstream white culture.

Correcting flaws in US Indian policy also meant highlighting the uniqueness of Indian culture. In the realm of culture, morality, and religion, defenders of Indian rights underscored the relative zeal and spirituality of Indian culture. In her defense of paganism, Zitkala Sa, for example, called Indian paganism the epitome of the power and spirituality of nature. This was in sharp contrast to the empty piety of many church-goers which she attributed to their lack of natural spirituality. In the same manner, she regarded racial lines as nothing more than “marking out a living mosaic of human beings” (Sa 167-168). Clearly implied in her defense of Indian paganism was the red man’s right to practice his own religion free from the vagaries and anxieties of modern life (which she found to be distasteful). Charles Eastman’s approach was more direct and structured (Eastman was also an Indian). In his essay comparing the morality of Indians and modern Christians, Eastman argued that modern organized religion was a machine-made religion, organized for the purpose of collecting and showing money (Eastman 117). As a missionary, Eastman observed that many Indians were not intrinsically opposed to the person of Christ, Whom they viewed as an exemplar human being (120). What many Indians were fretfully opposed to was the materialistic nature of modern organized religion. This was in sharp contrast to Indian spirituality which emphasized civility, simplicity, and compassionate living – akin to what Christ has taught two millennia ago.

Of course, rejecting assimilationist policies also required political action. Thus, a number of prominent Indian leaders (many of whom were educated) earnestly attacked the government for what they saw as unbridled authoritarianism and paternalism of American administrators. In his essay arguing for the abolition of the Indian Office, Carlos Montezuma, for example, claimed that Indian communities should be freed from authoritarian control and encouraged to develop their own unique talents and abilities. He saw the Indian Office as a prime example of both failure and incompetence. He called reservations prisons where “our people are kept to live and die, where equal possibilities, equal education and equal responsibilities are unknown” (Montezuma 209). He lamented the plight of the modern-day Indian, who would be transferred from one reservation to another, deprived of his land, and asked to defray expenses on his behalf. The Indian Office had commercialized everything, from the rivers where Indians used to fish to the woodlands where they used to gather firewood for winter. It was therefore necessary, according to Montezuma, to abolish the said office in order for the Indian to regain his dignity and preserve his heritage. This was the same approach employed by Arthur C. Parker in his essay indicting the government, albeit in a less diplomatic way. Although Parker did not share Montezuma’s conviction that the Indian Office should be abolished, he did in fact condemn many of the failed Indian policies of the government. According to him, the whole idea of creating a vast organization to cater to the needs and aspirations of the Indian race was based on the preposterous idea that the Indian was perverse, naturally inclined to degradation, and thus, in need of “civilizing” (Parker 215). Indeed, for this reason alone, the United States had robbed the American Indian his intellectual life, his social organization, his freedom, his economic independence, and his own voice.

Were these efforts successful? The answer is a resounding yes. Despite the assimilationist policies of the government, many Native Americans were able to preserve their sacred history and resist assimilationist policies. The public began to take a keen interest on Native American history, culture, and religion. Activists (both Indian and non-Indian) also began calling for reforms intended to improve the plight of Indian communities across the country.