E. The White Advance

3022. Cook, Sherburne F. The conflict between the California Indian and white civilization. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1943. 4 v. (Ibero–Americana 21–24) A43–411 F1401.I22, no. 21–24 E78.C15C69

Includes bibliographies.

CONTENTS.—1. The Indian versus the Spanish mission.—2. The physical and demographic reaction of the nonmission Indians in colonial and provincial California.—3. The American invasion, 1848–1870.—4. Trends in marriage and divorce since 1850.

"The present work consists of an examination of the reaction of a primitive human population to a new and disturbing environment. As such it constitutes a study in human ecology … In particular, those factors are considered which lend themselves to at least semiquantitative treatment … The effect of racial impact and competition was here unusually complete. It resulted in the substantial disappearance of the primitive population and the utter extinction of its civilization." The basic fact is a decline of the native population from 133,500 in 1770 to 20,500 in 1880. An interesting conclusion is that Indians who remained outside the missions maintained themselves better than did the mission Indians, in spite of warfare, disease, and forced removal. "The racial fiber of the native decayed morally and culturally in the missions, … confinement, labor, punishment, inadequate diet, homesickness, sex anomalies, and other social or cultural forces, sapped his collective strength and his will to resistance and survival."

3023. Dale, Edward Everett. The Indians of the Southwest; a century of development under the United States. Norman, Published in cooperation with the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif., by the University of Oklahoma Press, 1949. xvi, 283 p. (The Civilization of the American Indian [series]) 49–10762 E78.S7D28. Bibliography: p. 261–271.

In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the United States a vast territory whose scanty population consisted of a few thousand whites and a variety of Indian tribes whose numbers are variouslyestimated at from 125,000 to 200,000. Such white influence as they had undergone came from Spanish colonial culture and the Catholic Church. They were of two great classes: peaceful, sedentary, and agricultural tribes such as the pueblo dwellers of New Mexico and the Mission Indians of California, and "the wilder and more warlike tribes of the deserts and mountains." The author aims at "a broad general survey of the more important aspects of Indian administration in the Southwest, with special emphasis on those activities which have proved of permanent value." Developments during the 19th century are treated in chronological chapters for the three areas of California, Arizona and New Mexico, and Utah and Nevada, and conditions since 1900 in topical chapters with special attention to education and public health. In both centuries the crucial role of the Indian agent is emphasized.

3024. Debo, Angie. The rise and fall of the Choctaw Republic. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1934. xvi, 314 p. (The Civilization of the American Indian [series]) 34–18340 E99.CSD4. Bibliography: p. 219–299.

3025. Debo, Angie. And still the waters run. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1940. 417 p. 41–3348 E78.I5D4. Bibliography: p. [396]–402.

Miss Angle Debo (b. 1890) is a homegrown Oklahoma historian who has been the most productive disciple of Grant Foreman; the present volumes supplement and continue his own listed below. The Rise and Fall is a history of the Choctaws as a "domestic dependent nation," which emphasizes the period after removal to the Indian Territory, and especially the years from the close of the Civil War to the dissolution of tribal interests after "the surrender to the United States" in the Atoka Agreement of 1898. Topical chapters treat economic development, public finance, political institutions, crime and justice, and society. The Road to Disappearance (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1941. 399 p.) performs the same task for the more conservative Creek nation. The Creeks were disheartened and impoverished by the Civil War; their subsequent "attempt to replace their group loyalties with the white man’s individualism brought a spiritual collapse from which they never fully recovered." And Still the Waters Run is a grim narrative of developments after the Five Civilized Tribes had surrendered their tribal organization at the beginning of this century. "The orgy of exploitation that resulted is almost beyond belief. Within a generation these Indians, who had owned and governed a region greater in area and potential wealth than many an American state, were almost stripped of their holdings, and were rescued from starvation only through public charity." The Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma; Report on Social and Economic Conditions ([Philadelphia] Indian Rights Association, 1951. 35 p.) is a somber report on a survey conducted in the summer of 1949. "Appalling poverty" was still the prevailing condition among all but the oil-enriched Seminoles.

3026. Foreman, Grant. Indian removal; the emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1953. 415 p. (The Civilization of the American Indian [series]) 53–7431 E78.I5F8 1953

First published in 1932.

Bibliography: p. [387]–394.

3027. Foreman, Grant. The Five Civilized Tribes. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1934. 455 p. (The Civilization of the American Indian [series]) 34–38511 E78.O45F6. Bibliography: p. 427–431.

Grant Foreman (1869–1953) was an Oklahoma lawyer who, after serving with the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes in 1899–1903, became an indefatigable student of the history of Oklahoma and of the Indian tribes within it, and was a pioneer in the intensive utilization of Federal archives and other little-known sources for these purposes. His histories are not remarkable for their arrangement and are by no means easy reading, but each is a thorough piece of research, with the primary sources quoted at length. Indian Removal covers the transfer of Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles from their original homes to the Indian Territory, during 1830–1843. Over 60,000 Indians were thus forcibly uprooted. "Inadequate preparation by the government and the appointment of a horde of political incompetents to posts of authority, resulted in woeful mismanagement and cruel and unnecessary suffering by the emigrants." The Five Civilized Tribes covers their first three decades (1832–1860) in their new homes, and describes "the rehabilitation and reconstruction of these immigrants after the demoralization and impoverishment caused by their forcible removal"—a period of remarkable development and progress. Other works by Mr. Foreman dealing with Indian history are Indians and Pioneers; The Story of the American Southwest before 1830, rev. ed. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1936); Advancing the Frontier, 1830–1860 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1933); Sequoyah (University of Oklahoma Press, 1938); and The Last Trek of theIndians (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1946).

3028. Harmon, George Dewey. Sixty years of Indian affairs, political, economic, and diplomatic, 1789–1850. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1941. 428 p. A42–2412 E93.H274 1941a

Bibliography: p. [383]–414.

Thesis (Ph. D.)—University of Pennsylvania, 1930.

A review of the political, diplomatic, economic, and especially the financial aspects of Federal Indian policy during the first six decades under the Constitution. Throughout the period the primary objective of the Government was the acquisition of legal title to their lands and the transfer of the Indians themselves to reservations in the remote West. This aim, the employment of more direct coercion after 1825, and the unsuitable method of proceeding by treaties appropriate only to negotiations between two genuine sovereigns, all gave Federal policy an inconsistent and arbitrary appearance. It had, nevertheless, a more humane side evidenced in the donation of agricultural equipment, the establishment of schools, the setting up of trust funds, and the payment of annuities. The intentions of the Government were regularly good, and the higher officials concerned were honest. A History of the United States Indian Factory System, 1795–1822, by Ora B. Peake (Denver, Sage Books, 1954. 340 p.), describes this "first attempt of the United States Government to enter business in competition with private industry" in great detail from the original records in the National Archives, and emphasizes its economic failure.

3029. Kinney, Jay P. A continent lost—a civilization won; Indian land tenure in America. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1937. xv, 366 p. 37–2999 E93.K56. Bibliography: p. 345–349.

A very detailed history of the Federal policy concerning Indian land tenure, written by a staff member with 25 years’ service in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, chiefly from Government documents and to a lesser degree from unpublished files of the Bureau. His central theme is the allotment policy, of which he traces the early indications following the War of 1812, and the experimental applications following the large-scale Indian removals of Jackson’s second administration. The policy itself, as adopted in 1887, was defeated in its main purpose by subsequent enactments. That of 1891 permitted the lease of allotment lands and produced "a tendency to stop farming and eke out an existence from rentals." That of 1902 permitted heirs of a deceased Indian to sell an inherited allotment notwithstanding prior restrictions upon its alienation. The hundred million acres held by Indians in 1900 had shrunk to fifty million, of which only about thirty million had productive value, by 1933. The book’s title and optimistic conclusion seem to have small relation to the facts presented.

3030. Macleod, William Christie. The American Indian frontier. London, Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York, Knopf, 1928. xxiii, 598 p. (The History of civilization [Historical ethnology]) 28–24819 E58.M17. Bibliography: p. 565–595.

"The first attempt at an analysis of American frontier history made particularly from the viewpoint of the Indian side of the frontier development." It considers the Indians of Latin America as well as those to the north, but since the situation was there stabilized at a relatively early period, winds up this portion of the narrative with Part II. Part IV offers six chapters contrasting the fate of the Indians in the two spheres in such respects as slavery and forced labor, the success of Indian missions in the South and their failure in the North, and the Anglo-American frontiersman’s attitude of hate and policy of extermination, to which nothing in Latin America corresponds. The later narrative summarizes the major conflicts of Indian and white, with emphasis on the multitribal reactions led by Pontiac and, half a century later, by Tecumseh, and on the Indians’ "cry for a saviour" and the several Messiahs who responded in the later 19th century. Attempting a colossal task, the volume is an imperfect synthesis which does achieve some large views of value, if it seldom troubles to be fair to any Anglo-American settler or official. It has hitherto had no competitor.

3031. Pearce, Roy Harvey. The savages of America, a study of the Indian and the idea of civilization. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1953. xv, 252 p. 53–6486 E93.P4

A study of the Indians’ way of life as reflected in American thought and literature from 1609, the year of Robert Johnson’s Nova Britannia (London, S. Macham. 28 p.), to 1851, the year of L. H. Morgan’s League of the Iroquois (no. 3008). Its central concern is what the author calls the idea of savagism, the rise of which he dates from 1777, the year of William Robertson’s History of America (London, W. Strahan. 2 v.). Its acme he finds in the work of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and its death is implicit in Morgan’s great work, which absorbs it "into a universal theory of progress."From the 1770’s Americans abandoned their attempt to see the Indian as a European manqué; he was now recognized as one radically different from their proper selves; bound inextricably in a primitive past, he could only be destroyed by the advance of civilization. The author relates his study to previous explorations of the ideas of primitivism, progress, and manifest destiny conducted at Johns Hopkins. If at times he indulges in artificial schematizations, he supplies the reader with a corrective in his extensive quotations from the sources.

3032. Peckham, Howard H. Captured by Indians; true tales of pioneer survivors. New Brunswick, N. J., Rutgers University Press, 1954. 238 p. 54–11931 E85.P4

Captivities among the Indian tribes adjacent to the advancing frontier were a recurrent feature of pioneer life, and the narratives in which such experiences were described for a fascinated public were a form of American literature once as popular as it is now extinct. Mr. Peckham has made concise summaries of 14 such narratives, from Mary Rowlandson who was taken captive by King Philip’s Narragansetts in 1676, to Fanny Kelly who was taken by the Oglala Sioux in 1864. While his condensations eliminate much extraneous matter, they are somewhat lacking in tension and color.

3033. Peckham, Howard H. Pontiac and the Indian uprising. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1947. xviii, 346 p. 47–11041 E83.76.P4. Bibliography: p. 326–332.

Formally, a life of the Ottawa Chief (ca. 1720–1769), "a warrior of heroic proportions who set in motion the most formidable Indian resistance the English-speaking people had yet faced, or ever would face, on this continent." The author disclaims any attempt to rewrite Parkman’s "monumental history" (included in Chapter VIII), but although he prints all of Pontiac’s surviving speeches and dictated letters, the personal materials are so scanty as to leave the major interest in the dilemma of the Indians after the Peace of 1763, and in the details of the uprising, for which Dr. Peckham has found much fresh material in the manuscripts of his own Clements Library. "Pontiac fought to restore the relative independence enjoyed by the western Indians and to force the British to change their fundamental policy toward peoples of inferior culture. His aims appear to us today just and ethical, even though his savage manner of warfare is revolting and his hope to maintain a primeval wilderness on the edge of civilization was impractical."

3034. Priest, Loring Benson. Uncle Sam’s step-children; the reformation of United States Indian policy, 1865–1887. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1942. 310 p. 42–8373 E93.P95

A documented study of two decades of Federal Indian policy which utilizes Indian Office archives supplemented by the Papers of Secretary Carl Schurz and Senator Henry L. Dawes. The close of the Civil War and the accelerated occupation of the West made dear the need for a permanent solution of Indian problems. Down to 1880 the four policies of concentration, transfer, church nomination of Indian officials, and civilian advice through the Board of Indian Commissioners, were tried out and abandoned as failures. Intensive efforts at reform during the next seven years were summed up in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, by which "individual ownership, citizenship, and sale of surplus land were finally accepted as the only possible means of improving American Indian affairs." The change was supported by nearly all the friends of the Indian, but was unacceptable to the great majority of the Indians themselves. It was the decision to dispense with gradualism, and use force in imposing it upon the tribes, rather than any flaw in the ideal of turning the Indian into an independent and self-reliant landowner, that produced the consequences so often deplored.

3035. Seymour, Flora Warren (Smith). Indian agents of the old frontier. New York, Appleton-Century, 1941. 402 p. 41–12500 E93.S45

Indian policy was formulated in Washington, but its application to tribes and individuals usually depended upon "the Major," as even the most unmilitary Indian agent was regularly called. Mrs. Seymour sketches the early stages of the agent’s evolution from "a commercial agent or consul" in an alien sovereignty, to an administrator with nearly complete discretion. Her narrative of the careers of particular agents begins with the changes of 1869–71, when President Grant embarked upon a comprehensive peace policy, and Congress abolished the traditional procedure of making treaties with the tribes. A few of these agents have left memoirs, but the bulk of her materials are drawn from the annual reports of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs. In addition to such agencies as Laurie Tatum among the Kiowa, Thomas J. Jeffords among the Apaches, Father James H. Wilbur among the Yakimas, and William F. N. Arny among the Pueblos, Mrs. Seymour presents the achievements of such army officers as Richard H. Pratt, who founded Carlisle Indian School, and Hugh L. Scott, whose rare knowledge and influence acquired in many frontiermissions made him the War Department’s foremost Indian specialist.

3036. Stewart, Edgar I. Custer’s luck. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1955. xvi, 522 p. 55–6368 E83.866.S85. Bibliography: p. 496–506.

A minute reconstruction of the most famous, and probably the most controversial, episode in two and a half centuries of Indian warfare. On June 25, 1876, at the Little Big Horn, a famous Civil War general (George Armstrong Custer, b. 1839) and five troops of regular cavalry were killed to the last man by some 2500 Sioux and Cheyennes under the famous chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. This outcome is traced to its remoter sources in the Indian policy and the internal politics of the Grant administration. After an exhaustive analysis of Custer’s campaign, the author concludes that he, and especially his two subordinates, Reno and Benteen, allowed the Indians to score a startling success, "not by an overmastering strategy of their own but simply by taking advantage of the mistakes of the soldiers." Some four months later the capacity of the Plains Indians to offer further armed resistance was brought to an end.

3037. Tucker, Glenn. Tecumseh; vision of glory. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1956. 399 p. 56–8618 E99.S35T35

"Bibliographical note": p. 366–367. "Bibliography": p. 368–381.

By September 1812 Tecumseh (1768–1813) dominated a "prairie empire of almost half a million square miles, an area greater than that of the seventeen states of the Federal Union, extending from northern Ohio to the far Dakotas." "The ardent personality and militant patriotism of this Shawnee chief" had brought 32 tribes beneath his battle standard, and seemed about to check or reverse the American occupation of the Northwest. Thirteen months later he died in battle, his cause shattered. There is more evidence for Tecumseh’s career than for any other Indian of comparable historical importance; Mr. Tucker has diligently assembled and sifted it, and has exploited its dramatic qualifies to the full in an outstanding Indian biography. Tecumseh he assesses as exceeding all other Indian leaders, before or since his time, in knowledge and breadth of vision, in sincerity and humanity, in perseverance, racial patriotism, political sagacity, and military ability, and in sheer personal impressiveness.