By 1870 there was a growing awareness that government policies regarding American Indians had not really worked and might be regarded as failures. The administration of Indian affairs was notoriously corrupt and driven not by concern for Indians but by the greed of non-Indians. To correct some of these problems, President Grant had appointed an Indian, Ely Parker (Seneca), as Commissioner of Indian Affairs and was in the process of turning the administration of Indian reservations over to Christian missionary groups.
President Grant
In his message to Congress, President Ulysses Grant explained that, with regard to the administration of Indian reservations, he has
“determined to give all the agencies to such religious denominations as had heretofore established missionaries among the Indians, and perhaps to some other denominations who would undertake the work on the same terms – i.e. as missionary work.”
Theocracy for the Reservations
In accordance with President Ulysses Grant’s Peace Policy, the Secretary of the Interior allocated 80 reservations among 13 Christian denominations. Catholic historian James White, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, reports:
“By the terms stated in Grant’s policy, namely that missions should be allocated among the missionaries already at work there, Catholic officials expected to receive thirty-eight missions; instead they were accorded only eight, all of them in either the Rio Grande valley or the Pacific Northwest.”
Subsequently, Catholic missionaries began to be ordered off certain reservations. According to James White:
“Under the terms of the Peace Policy, a single religious group had a franchise over the evangelizing efforts on each reservation.”
Citizenship
The Senate Judicial Committee inquired into the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment on Indian tribes. The Committee declared that the Amendment was intended to eliminate the phrase “three-fifths of all other persons" which had described slaves in the Constitution and therefore did not change the status of Indians. The Committee concludes:
“To maintain that the United States intended, by a change of its fundamental law, which was not ratified by these tribes, and to which they were neither requested nor permitted to assent, to annual treaties then existing between the United States as one party, and the Indian tribes as the other parties respectively, would be to charge upon the United States repudiation of national obligations, repudiation doubly infamous from the fact that the parties whose claims were thus annulled are too weak to enforce their just rights, and were enjoying the voluntarily assumed guardianship and protection of this Government.”
Reservations
In the debate of appropriations for the Indian Office (later known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs), Republican Senator Thomas Tipton from Nebraska stated that the only wise Indian policy involved placing Indians on
“reservations guarded around by bayonets; reservations over the limits of which the Indians shall not pass … reservations with walls as high as necessary, and with pitfalls as deep as necessary.”
Congress passed a law which forced the Osage to sell their land holdings in Kansas (about 5 million acres). The proceeds from the sale were to be used to purchase a new reservation for the tribe in Oklahoma.
Indian Delegations Travel to Washington, D.C.
A delegation of 40 Indians from the southern Plains met with President Ulysses Grant who lectured them on the merits of giving up the nomadic life and settling down as farmers. Like most Americans, Grant was blissfully ignorant of the fact that many of these Indian nations had been farming for thousands of years.
Two Sioux delegations from South Dakota—one under the leadership of Spotted Tail and the other under the leadership of Red Cloud—traveled to Washington, D.C. where they met with the Secretary of the Interior and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely S. Parker (Seneca). To show the difference between Americans and Indians, Red Cloud sat on the floor.
When Red Cloud questioned the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, the Americans brought out a copy of the treaty and went over it line by line. Historian Jeffrey Ostler, in his book The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, writes:
“For the first time, it became clear to him and the other Lakotas that the treaty allowed the United States to build additional roads through their territory, to keep existing forts (including Fort Fetterman), and to locate their agencies on the Missouri.”
According to Jeffrey Ostler:
“The Lakotas left this meeting deeply demoralized, and it was only with great reluctance that they resumed discussions the next day.”
The Americans made a concession by agreeing to establish an agency for the Oglalas on the upper Cheyenne River, west of the Black Hills. Spotted Tail secured an agreement to locate the Brulé agency on the upper White River in northwestern Nebraska.
In Oklahoma, the Cherokee and the Choctaw sent delegates to Washington, D.C. to meet with the Board of Indian Commissioners. William P. Adair was the Cherokee delegate and Peter Pitchlynn was the Choctaw delegate.
Termination
In Oklahoma, tribal leaders were disturbed by proposed Congressional legislation which would absorb the Indian nations into the United States and extinguish their titles to tribal lands. An emergency meeting of the Intertribal Council was called and Cherokee Will Ross drafted a constitution for a unified Indian Territory. Congress, however, was unwilling to accept it.
Indian Education
Congress authorized an annual appropriation of $100,000 for Indian schools.
Census
The United States Census made another attempt to include Indians in its count of the population. However, most of the Indian data in the census was based on estimates of Indian population rather than an actual count.
Indians 101
Twice each week, Indians 101 explores various American Indian topics. More about nineteenth-century histories from this series:
Indians 101: American Indian court cases 150 years ago, 1870
Indians 101: American Indian Nations 150 years ago, 1870
Indians 101: Imposing Laws on the Nez Perce
Indians 101: Breaking Treaties
Indians 101: Manifest Destiny Begins
Indians 101: The Stevens Treaties in Washington Territory
Indians 101: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Indians 101: The Russians and the Tlingit