In this post, I will examine the prevailing narrative with regard to the history of the US with regard to Native Americans, and a corresponding countervailing narrative. As I go through these, be on the lookout for implication vectors running the wrong direction, carefully chosen omissions from history, and simply incorrect facts. To simplify the discussion that follows, I will refer to all indigenous people as “Native” and all people of non-indigenous descent as “European” even though that may not strictly speaking be correct in every case (after a certain point, nearly everyone involved was born on this continent).
TL;DR (quite understandable)
The prevailing narrative is a simplistic “Native good, white bad” sort of affair that owes a lot to Zinn. The countervailing narrative includes the facts (at least the correct ones) that contribute to the prevailing narrative, but adds additional factual balance to arrive at a story that, while much more complicated and messy, has the advantage of not being actively misleading. See here for the take-home message.
Prevailing Narrative
Pre-Columbian
Edenic, idyllic Utopia with Native peoples living in harmony with Nature and each other.
Columbus and the Conquistadores
A time of atrocities, slavery and gold lust. The Europeans brought nothing but violence and the innocent Native peoples were unprepared for the onslaught.
Early North American settlers (17th century)
Early European settlers were completely unprepared for life on this continent, and lived in a parasitical fashion with their Native neighbors. The Europeans brought nothing but disease and their helpful Native neighbors were overwhelmed by these novel plagues.
Later North American settlers (18th century)
As the population of European settlers grew, they brought more disease. They stole sacred, ancestral land from the Native peoples by fraud and violence, causing conflict in which they used biological warfare (such as smallpox blankets) to exterminate Native peoples in the beginning of the North American genocide.
Indian Wars (19th century)
European land theft, violence and genocide expands. Native attempts at peace are thwarted as the US government repeatedly breaks treaties and corrupt Indian Agents exploit the Native population. Typical events of the century include the Trail of Tears. The wars finally end with the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
Modern times (20th and 21st centuries)
Declining Native population restricted to reservations and mired in hopelessness, alcoholism and poverty.
Countervailing Narrative
Pre-Columbian
The Native peoples at this time were principally civilizations that in Old World history would be called Stone Age hunter/gatherer civilizations. In many areas, agriculture was practiced, but with significant differences from Old World agriculture, principally caused by the lack of domestic animals (thus they never went through the “pasturage” stage of subsistence [see here and here for background on the “stages of subsistence”] – in particular, they neither built fences nor had large-scale tillage).
They certainly passed on a rather pantheistic ideology of “harmony with the land” but also used, for example, forest burns to concentrate game for hunting, so it’s unclear how much that ideology influenced their actual practices.
The archaeological evidence we have indicates that they were otherwise fairly typical of Stone Age civilizations in their level of violence and conquest (that is, a quite high level of violence). Many tribes are only known through archaeological evidence, indicating that they became extinct in place from either conquest/enslavement or disease/famine.
General estimates of the North American population in 1492 generally run at around 3-4 million (without Mexico, which probably had around 17 million). For the US/Canada region, this gives around 2.4 square miles per inhabitant, which certainly accounts for the “empty” appearance presented to the Europeans in the early days of exploration.
Columbus and the Conquistadores
The atrocities attributed to this era almost certainly happened, but the descriptions of them given today are rather misleading, at least as to who is responsible for them. We know about them because early writers saw them, deplored them and wrote back home to try and gain authority and means to stop them. There is no evidence that Columbus took part in any of them (though he appears to have been a singularly ineffective governor in many ways) and most of the extant descriptions of them either come from his own writings to the Spanish Court trying to get them stopped, or from the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican priest, staunch defender of the Native peoples of Hispaniola, and an admirer of Columbus. Columbus may have enslaved some Native people during his time as governor, but it’s also possible that he took them as POWs in a retaliatory war, then released them afterwards. Certainly many terrible things happened on Hispaniola after he was long gone, but the focus on Columbus personally seems always to involve uncritical reliance on the writings of his principal rival Francisco de Bobadilla, Columbus’ successor as governor of Hispaniola who was also unable to stop the ill-treatment of the Natives.
Leaving aside the odd focus on Columbus personally, slavery certainly happened, but this was nothing new either in nature or scale – that is, nothing peculiar to the Columbian Exchange. In addition, some (most?) of the conquistadores were certainly seized by gold lust, but the Aztecs, Incas and Mayas (and possibly Teotihuacanos before them) had all extracted gold from the Native peoples that they conquered, long before any Europeans got into the act. “But we stole it first!” is hardly a compelling defense.
The 16th century was a violent time in the Americas, both for the Native peoples in conflict with the Europeans AND for those in conflict with stronger Native empires. In fact, Cortes allied with a number of Native tribes who saw him as a liberator in fighting against the Aztec empire. It’s only our current myopic focus on skin color that has us uniformly pitting the “white” Europeans against the “brown” Native peoples. In any event, Europeans certainly didn’t bring violence to the New World, even if their technological advantages changed its nature sharply.
Furthermore, it’s breathtakingly ignorant to gloss over the fact that the Europeans brought with them domestic animals (specifically, horses and, to a lesser extent, cattle) that enabled many Native peoples (principally the Plains tribes) to completely revolutionize their way of life in a sustainable way. By 1700, an opinion poll of Mesoamerican or Caribbean Native peoples would likely have shown sharp disapproval of the Columbian Exchange, but the same poll among the Lakota or Comanche would have produced a very different result!
Early North American settlers (17th century)
At this point, where we shift our focus from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to North America, it’s worth pointing out that the Spanish system that enabled and encouraged taking Native peoples as slaves, the encomienda, was never really in operation in the land that became the U.S. (except for some small spots in Florida and a few in northern parts of Mexico that later became the American Southwest). Thus, while wholesale enslavement of the Natives certainly happened, it’s not directly relevant to U.S. history (other than isolated incidents like the capture of Squanto and his comrades, which is properly regarded as piracy).
On with the narrative: it’s certainly true that the North American settlers, that is, those who came with the explicit goal of founding permanent settlements, were ill-prepared for life on this continent. The British settlements in Virginia and Newfoundland, as well as the Puritan settlements in New England either failed completely or barely survived their early years. On the other hand, the French fur traders, beginning even earlier in the 1530s with the expeditions of Cartier and greatly expanded in 1608 with the founding of Quebec by Champlain, were essentially successful from the outset. These Europeans were involved in conflict with some Native peoples (specifically the Iroquois) but this was because the Iroquois were themselves in conflict with the Native peoples who were the allies and trading partners of the French (the Algonquin, Huron, Montagnais, et al.). Certainly European weaponry increased the level of casualties in the wars among the Native tribes in the area, but the Europeans didn’t start those wars. Furthermore, the other European goods traded (tools, cloth, brass kettles, etc.) were greatly prized (and widely used) by the Native peoples. Trade (the French approach in North America) seems to have been a much better basis for dealing with the indigenous population than either the encomienda system Spain used in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean (and, for that matter, the similar approach the French used there) or the (apparently) intended British approach of just ignoring the indigenous population and hoping there was enough room for everyone (for excellent information on the history of this era, I heartily recommend the publications of the Museum of the Fur Trade).
The prevailing narrative, as applied to the preparedness level of the British settlers in Virginia and New England is mostly correct – it is truly astonishing that any of the settlements survived. It’s also correct that most early settlements that did survive their first winter or two, did so mostly because of the largess of their Native neighbors. This did not continue in perpetuity, however, and after the first year or so, they did manage to limp along, mostly doing subsistence level farming combined with enough commercial farming (in Virginia) and Native fur trade (in New England) to send sufficient produce back to Europe to actually discharge some of their debts.
Relations between early settlements and their Native neighbors were a decidedly mixed bag, including the formation of important alliances (with, for example, the Powhatans in Virginia and the Pokanoket in Plymouth) and huge missteps (like Standish’s raid on Wessagusset).
Certainly some diseases were introduced at this point to which the Native peoples had little resistance (notably a smallpox outbreak in Massachusetts around 1633 which also killed 20 of the settlers, and the 1634 smallpox and measles outbreak among the Wyandot [Huron], a major trading partner of the French). These were the first of many such outbreaks during the time of early settlement, but it should also be noted that several New England tribes were decimated by a series of plagues in 1616-1619 of unknown origin (smallpox, measles, yellow fever, and leptospirosis are all candidates for the culprit) that predates the settlements there (though there had certainly been some European contact by this point). Recall in addition that there are many tribes of Native peoples whom we know only from archaeological evidence – depopulation through disease did not start with the Columbian Exchange.
Depopulation through disease was certainly higher than normal during this era, and it certainly affected the Native peoples disproportionately. The question is often asked, “why weren’t there also diseases passed to the Europeans to which they had no immunity?” It’s possible (though far from certain) that syphilis is an example of this, but a better answer to the question is that crowded, urban environments with urban livestock (i.e., the history of Europe at this point) are a pretty optimal breeding ground for disease, especially compared with low-density hunter-gatherer and light agrarian environments. Thus, one would not really expect the same level of immunity to develop in the two societies. Paleopathology studies have indicated that as pre-Columbian Native peoples were gradually moving from hunter/gatherer to agricultural land use, infectious diseases were increasing (particularly among women), likely due to increased population density and sedentary behavior. These studies also indicate that, while infectious plagues seem rare, there was considerable (and increasing) disease and malnutrition (particularly iron deficiency) leading to high (and increasing) overall mortality. The disease patterns they experienced were quite different from European patterns, but there is an underlying reason that the population of the present U.S. and Canada was likely less than 4 million (on 7.2 million square miles, versus Europe’s estimated 70 million population on 3.9 million square miles – see here for a very well-done video on European population history). There were clearly health-related reasons that the North American Native population never approached the carrying capacity of the land (by contemporary European standards).
On the other hand, there was nothing intentional (or even foreseeable, given the level of scientific knowledge at the time) about any of this. Oh, there were some Europeans (like Increase Mather) who retroactively described the diseases as God’s solution to their problems with the Native peoples, but as reprehensible (and unbiblical) as this is, it doesn’t implicate the North American settlement effort in any sort of genocide (as it’s been described), because the disease transmission itself was unintentional, of unknown (at the time) cause, and inevitable – contact between the two hemispheres is certain to have happened eventually, anyway.
It’s also worth remarking that Europe itself had been on the receiving end of a few plagues brought in from neighbors, like the series of pandemics known as the First Plague (roughly 50 million deaths; came in from Africa and Southern Arabia) and the Black Death related series of pandemics known as the Second Plague (roughly 200 million deaths; came in from Central Asia or the Crimea). Europe has suffered mightily under imported disease as well!
Later North American settlers (18th century)
As above, disease is an inevitable effect of first contact of two separated cultures. The group that has the lightest history with infectious disease will almost always get hammered worse.
Regarding the land lost by the Native peoples, I highly recommend the now-standard 2005 academic work on the subject, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier, by Stuart Banner at UCLA Law. The short version is, “it’s complicated – anything you can think of happened at some point, and a few things you can’t imagine happened as well.” Most of the land, certainly, was transferred from a Native “seller” to a European “buyer” with varying degrees of fraud, free will and coercion, good faith and bad faith. Government policies vacillated in all directions – some policies were designed to help the Native peoples and did, some were designed to help the Native peoples but hurt them instead, some were designed to help the settlers and land speculators and did, some were designed to help the settlers and land speculators but hurt them instead. Misapprehensions as to what a “sale” of Native land really means were ubiquitous; misapprehensions as to who was authorized to “sell” (or buy, for that matter) Native land were ubiquitous. One of the central sources of confusion was the distinction between “land ownership” and “land sovereignty.”*
Largely, though, one gets the sense that a common progression ran roughly like this:
- Native peoples attempted to get something useful in exchange for some land that they felt they could spare (or possibly some land rights: they thought in some cases that the purchaser might farm the land, but they could still hunt it, for example).
- Some settlers tried to cheat them if they could by fraudulent surveys, misrepresentations, alcohol, etc.
- The Native peoples became more sophisticated and demanded better prices with better, clearer terms and clearer surveys.
- At some stage in any given area, trade happened that was generally advantageous to both – settlers/speculators got the land they wanted, Native peoples got tools and other goods that they found very useful.
- The Native peoples then became dependent on the goods (which they were unable to repair or replenish) and were offered more goods on credit**
- The Native peoples then sold more land than they really wanted to, in order to pay their debts (including some “selling” of land that the rest of the tribe didn’t know was being sold).
- Conflict ensued in a huge variety of ways!
- Governments tried to keep the peace, while satisfying the desires of settlers/speculators for more land to expand into, but truly had no idea what would work. They tried lots of things that didn’t work, though, including treaties that they weren’t authorized to negotiate, treaties that they didn’t intend to honor, etc.
This is still an oversimplification, of course, but this basic drama played out in many different situations over the years. The prevailing narrative of “stolen land” is much too simplistic to even approximate the truth. Certainly there were Europeans (and Natives) who were acting in bad faith, but most were likely trying to make a free voluntary trade that benefited both sides (especially at the point where neither side had the numbers to easily coerce the other). Communication and understanding, however, were in short supply from the outset.
One quick example of the results of these misunderstandings: from the beginning of the European settlement in North America, there were prominent Europeans (like John Locke) who believed that, although all lands belong to their natives, this only applies to “enclosed land” – that is, land that has been set apart to be worked in some intensive agricultural, residential or commercial enterprise. Since the land of North America was not enclosed and subdivided, they believed that no one owned it. This view has been criticized harshly in modern times, but I’m not sure that all the criticism is fully deserved. Banner recalls that Europeans were accustomed to land use in the “stages of subsistence” framework in which land use proceeds from hunting to pasturage to farming to commerce, and that Locke (and others) placed the notion of “land ownership” after the hunting stage. That is, at the point where specific plots of land are worked and improved. This is also the stage at which the land is enclosed for confinement of livestock. The Native peoples, though, had no livestock to speak of, so did not go through the pasturage stage and had no need of fences. This led Locke (and others) to believe that they did no farming and had no notion of ownership of individual plots of land, but this was incorrect – they just didn’t enclose them with fences! This misapprehension about Native land use caused tremendous misunderstanding throughout the years of European settlement.
One other point about land – the assertion that the particular land lost by any particular Native tribe was “sacred, ancestral” land is often false. As scholarship proceeds, we are learning more about tribal migrations and inter-tribal conflicts, as well as the propensity to invent “ancestral legends” to give support to current land claims. As one example, the (lovely and fascinating) Lakota creation myth describes the Lakota people (and bison, as well) as emerging onto the earth through Maka Oniye – the present-day natural opening to Wind Cave in South Dakota; this story is often recounted to Wind Cave visitors by Park Rangers today. However, the Lakota migrated from the Great Lakes region to the east bank of the Missouri River in the late 17th century under pressure from the French and the Algonquian tribes in that area. It was not until a 1770s smallpox epidemic decimated the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes (today called the MHA Nation or the Three Affiliated Tribes, who controlled the region west of the Missouri) that the Lakota were able to take over the region where Wind Cave sits, driving out the Cheyenne in the process. Furthermore, bison hunting wasn’t a significant portion of their activity until they were introduced to horses in the 1730s as a result of their contact with the Cheyenne. So, this Lakota creation myth is certainly younger than, say, the US Declaration of Independence, and was clearly invented to give legitimacy to the Lakota claim to the (sacred, ancestral) Black Hills as over against the older claims of the Cheyenne and the MHA Nation (though not the Europeans, as they were only rarely present in the Dakotas at the time).
As to the claim of “smallpox blankets,” this appears to be essentially a myth. A few military commanders discussed doing this in the midst of battle (as at Fort Pitt in 1763), but there’s really no direct evidence that they did (only evidence they intended to). Furthermore, it almost certainly wouldn’t have worked (and, in the Fort Pitt case, the particular people who received the items, if they were transmitted, are known to have survived for years following the incident). We now know that fomite transmission of smallpox is extremely unlikely (for transmission, the virus must be aerosolized and this must happen before the shed scabs have dried; the only known case(s) where this might have happened is in conjunction with laundry workers working with bedding freshly taken from an active smallpox patient). Instead, it appears that many of the smallpox outbreaks that occurred in the middle of battles arose from Native attacks on smallpox hospitals in which patients were killed or scalped (as, for example, at Fort William Henry in 1757).
Regarding the claim of “genocide” – actual genocide as defined in international law requires intent. It is certainly the case that there are specific Native tribes that have largely or totally vanished (though total numbers are higher now than in 1492); it is equally true that much of the ill treatment the Native peoples encountered was intentional on the part of many individuals, but I’m not aware of anyone who intended the reduction of numbers that happened or directly caused such reduction of numbers, principally because nearly all of it was due to “new contact” infections.
The destruction of tribes that occurred during these years seems not to be significantly out of the range that was experienced in intertribal conflict before European contact – the level of casualties in armed conflicts was higher because of more effective European weaponry, but this was a difference of technology, not will.
Indian Wars (19th century)
I have previously dealt with the claim of land theft, violence and genocide. Land transfer issues were exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s Johnson v. M’Intosh decision (which held that only governmental fee simple titles were to be recognized, thus potentially invalidating titles representing individual purchases directly from Native tribes). As the population of the US grew rapidly, more and more Eastern tribes moved (either voluntarily or involuntarily) to the West, where (it was believed) there would be plenty of land. Unfortunately, westward settler migration was increasing rapidly as well, so this had the effect of actually increasing the level of violence by moving the clashes away from solid military jurisdiction.
Let us move next to the “corrupt Indian agents.” In researching specifics for this essay, I already knew of several Indian agents whose position in history is that of a solid advocate and (often) a competent administrator for the Native peoples under their jurisdiction: Valentine McGillycuddy, Kit Carson, John Clum, Robert Alden (semi-fictionalized as Rev. Alden in the Little House on the Prairie books), Douglas Cooper, “Yellowstone” Kelly, James McLaughlin, and others. These are always portrayed as the exception to the rule of prevailing corruption. Given the overall reputation of Indian agents as a whole, I assumed it would be easy to find a much longer list of notorious examples of corruption. It’s not! My guess is that these individuals are lost to history because of a sort of intentional neglect (and perhaps migrations and pseudonyms), but specific examples are surprisingly hard to come by.
Perhaps the most famous of these bad examples (though still surprisingly obscure) is Joseph C. Tiffany (cousin of Charles L. Tiffany, the New York jeweler), who was in charge of the San Carlos Agency (principally Apache) in Arizona from 1880-1882. An investigation, after his departure, of the disasters that occurred during his administration was reported to have concluded that Tiffany’s conduct was “a disgrace to the civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national escutcheon.” More recent scholarship (independently by John Bret Harte and John C. Dibbern), however, has re-examined primary sources and concluded that the investigation of Tiffany’s administration was carried out entirely by his successor (who was not present during the events in question), and consisted mostly of giving complete credence to anyone in the area who would say anything negative about his predecessor, Tiffany. In fact, Dibbern’s research seems to further indicate that Tiffany made local enemies (who were then relied on in the investigation) by consistently advocating for the Native peoples, and that he likely was a stronger advocate for them than his predecessor, John Clum, who has a reputation as an exemplary Indian Agent.
The reputation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs representatives is so dismal, though, that I am certain that a great deal of corruption must have happened. My guess is that there is little evidence of specific wrongdoing now for the same reason that it was fairly widespread then: supervision of the Agents was far, far away in D.C. and evidence was easy to hide. On the other hand, we do have clear evidence of quite a few Indian agents who were trying to do right by the Native peoples in their jurisdictions.
Let’s consider now the issue of broken treaties. Treaties were absolutely made and broken – there is no question about that. However, the narrative that the Natives wanted peace and the US government broke the treaties is largely incorrect (though there are clear examples of exactly that, it’s not the only thing that happened).
The first consideration is “were these valid treaties?” That is, were both parties authorized to negotiate them, did they agree on terms, and were they then ratified as appropriate for each party. The best answer is, “Maybe. Sometimes.” On the US side, some treaties were negotiated and signed but not ratified, leading to significant unresolved land issues (the linked article is about a series of 18 unratified treaties from the 1850’s in California which were finally dealt with in the 1900s, others are apparently described in the difficult-to-find Documents of American Indian Diplomacy, which I have not as yet located). It is far from clear, however, that all treaties (whether Senate-ratified or not) were negotiated within the scope of authority given to the negotiator.
On the Native side, it is similarly unclear whether all the signatories to a given treaty were “authorized” to negotiate the terms, and further unclear whether the treaties were correctly translated and understood by the Native signatories. Certainly, other leaders in any given tribe who weren’t present at the signing seem to have believed themselves not to be bound by the agreement of another. It’s also unclear whether or not there was anything like a “ratification” process in any of the Native tribes (that is, a process by which a treaty agreed to by a representative is formally put in force).
Consequently, it is not true that, simply because there was some written agreement containing signatures of negotiators from the US government and Native tribe(s), that both sides considered this to be a valid treaty at that point.
Add to this the fact that a subsequent breach of a treaty by one party (and there were many breaches on both sides) is an allowable reason for abrogation by the other party, and it now becomes even less clear what treaties were actually considered by all sides to be “in force” during the time of the Indian Wars. In any event, by 1871, the effort to use treaties to deal with the issues surrounding conflict between the Native peoples and US settlers was seen to be a complete failure, and was totally abandoned. At around the same time, the Supreme Court began a series of rulings that held that treaties could be abrogated by simple statute. At this point, prior treaties, whether technically in force or not, became essentially moot in terms of practical value.
In parallel with the attempt to deal with Native/US conflict by treaty (much of which occurred in the West), there was another policy at work, focused on Native tribes in the East. This policy had two phases: removal (1820-early 1840s) and reservations (late 1840s-1880). To our ears, “removal” sounds sinister (and in many cases, it was decidedly so in effect), but in the 19th century, “remove” was not only a transitive verb meaning, “to take away by force,” but also an intransitive verb meaning “to depart, to migrate” (as in Shakespeare’s “till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane“). Originally, “removal” was meant in this sense, and all the migrations were (at least ostensibly) voluntary, and represented signed agreements with tribal leaders (though these agreements were certainly made under considerable duress – the tribes at this point had nothing like the numbers needed to stand up against the US military). Banner indicates that the only real difference between the “removals” policy and prior land acquisition was the speed at which the “removals” took place. As to the manner in which they were conducted, though, the “Trail of Tears” migration of the Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma and the earlier Choctaw, Creek and Chickasaw migrations along a similar path are frankly a dark, indefensible stain on our nation’s history.
It must be noted, though, that the records of the debates occurring during this time concerning removal make it clear that many prominent voices (perhaps even a preponderance of the voices in the debate) are seriously attempting to save the Native tribes from certain extinction if they remained in their ancestral (or perhaps simply current) lands. Banner’s book (p. 207ff.) is filled with impassioned statements like:
- “If ever one tribe of Indians has flourished [in close proximity to settlers] we will hope that the like will happen again. But if such an event has never occurred, we may confidently assure ourselves that it never will.” –Isaac McCoy, Baptist missionary
- “Shall we go on quietly with a course, which, judging from the past, threatens their extinction?” –James Barbour, Secretary of War under John Q. Adams
- “We believe if the Indians do not emigrate, and fly the causes, which are fixed in themselves, and which have proved so destructive in the past, they must perish!” –Thomas McKenney, Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
To be sure, there were also pro-removal arguments that were thinly-veiled statements of self-interest and bad faith (and anti-removal arguments that, to us today, seem quite prescient about the difficulties that would be faced in the migration process), but many removal advocates were absolutely convinced of two things: that removal was the only path forward for the Native peoples still in the East, and that the choice nevertheless belonged to the Native peoples themselves.
There’s no question that “removal” was not what any of the Eastern Native peoples would have chosen in the absence of any pressure at all, but many people on all sides believed that it was a preferable choice, given the reality of the circumstances at the time.
The Trail of Tears (and the other migrations) were a travesty in the way they were carried out – I am aware of no one who says otherwise, including observers at the time. Banner (p. 225): “Removal, as a concept, was in part a humanitarian ideal, intended to protect the Indians from being victimized by whites. But removal as a process was a humanitarian disaster.”
The removal to the West having been accomplished by the early 1840’s, the next phase of the 19th century land policy commenced: reservations. Having been moved to the West, the new presence of the Eastern tribes exacerbated and complicated the conflicts in the West already in progress (many of which were related to the treaty difficulties already described). To this chaos, add the Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War, and the American Civil War, as well as the sheer size of the American West, and the situation becomes chaotic in the extreme. Native tribal alliances shifted, reservations were established, overrun by settlers at the margins, re-established (sometimes at gunpoint), ignored by both sides, …
The situation from approximately 1842 (when the final part of the East was acquired by the US) to 1890 (Wounded Knee, the end of the large-scale military phase of the Indian Wars) was so messy as to be barely susceptible of any sort of national linear narrative. One can easily list military atrocities (like the completely indefensible Sand Creek, and the massively tragic Wounded Knee) as well as Native atrocities (Kiowa and Comanche, Kiowa, Kiowa, Kiowa or Comanche, Comanche, Apache, Sioux [more details here]) but none of these fit together into any coherent picture, save a picture of the barbarity of 19th century warfare.
Modern times (20th and 21st centuries)
There is no question that the quality of “life on the rez” is quite poor – lack of adequate housing and job opportunities, alcoholism, poverty, etc. However, only 22% of Native Americans live on tribal lands. The population of Native Americans today (finally!) is likely more than twice the size of the population in 1492.
Now, to be sure, these numbers are likely skewed by “pretendians” – race shifters who claim Native American ancestry (in the census or on job applications) without enough evidence to be actually enrolled in a tribe. This is often seen as a threat to tribal sovereignty (and it may be), but I would also posit that it is indicative of a shift in public attitudes in which Native American ancestry is seen as a positive, valuable trait – no one forges a worthless document!
The Moral of Our Story
So, what’s the point of this rambling, murky tale? I think there are three “morals”:
- Tragedy – very often, bad things (even extremely bad things) happen without any particular person (or system) being worthy of blame for it. One can perhaps identify with hindsight actions that might have prevented them (and this is a useful exercise), but that’s not the same thing as moral culpability. In Christian theological terms, we live in a fallen world.
- Universality – cultures that are successful provide the ability and incentive for numerical and economic growth for their populations. The search for space and resources then puts them in friction with other cultures. This has been true for every empire in history, it was true for Native tribes vis-à-vis each other, and it was true in the case described here. The warfare was particularly brutal, but for technological reasons – otherwise, it was not out of range for the time. There is nothing special here about Americans, about the British, about Europeans, or about “white people.” As there is today less and less unsettled land, and firmer, clearer national boundaries (at least until very recently), successful cultures seem now to be mostly growing “up, not out” (that is, increasing their urban population density) but the same cultural friction applies today (gentrification?).
- Complexity – simplistic “good guy/bad guy” narratives may work for isolated events, but any story that stretches over centuries and plays out over millions of square miles involving millions of human beings is going to be complicated and messy. A simplistic narrative involving a story of this sort results from an impulse toward propaganda, not accuracy.
Postscript: here is an essay, written before mine (but, inexplicably, I didn’t see it until later), written by an actual (Dutch) historian (Jeff Fynn-Paul at the University of Leiden), sounding many of the same notes that are sounded here.
* A quick introduction to this concept: I own land that is in the United States. I may sell that land to a French citizen, or even the French government, but nothing I do can make that land part of France. I have land ownership, the US has land sovereignty. My ownership traces back to a “root” fee simple title held (at some level) by the US; only an action on the part of the US could transfer my land to France. Land sovereignty was a long-established notion in European jurisprudence – but who held the land sovereignty for any land in the New World at the time of European contact? The Native peoples certainly had a notion of land ownership and land use (in fact they had what we might call multiple levels of use-based land ownership: exclusive use, exclusive farming use with shared hunting, exclusive use of certain agricultural produce with other use shared, etc.) but most had no notion of land sovereignty (having no system for preserving written title documents).
** Note the cautionary tale here for free-trade fundamentalists. The vast majority of free trade is wealth-generating for both partners, but trade with a (potential) adversary that results in dependency, in an inability to continue economically without that trade is an exception to this (think: US-China, Europe-Russia, et al.).