LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
spring 2003
Student Research Project
Toni Sammons
Dr. White
LITR 5731
May 7, 2003
Research Journal
The Five Civilized Tribes
I
first became interested in the Five Civilized Tribes while taking Dr. White’s
Minority Literature class as an undergraduate.
Linda Hogan’s book Mean Spirit
caught my attention because of the atrocities inflicted on the Native Americans
depicted in her novel. The story
takes place in Indian Territory, Oklahoma in the late 1800’s during allotment.
Hogan describes everything from the removal of children from their homes
to cold-blooded murder. I found myself wondering if the fictional incidents described
could really be based on fact.
I
am particularly interested in the plight of Native Americans at the hands of the
dominant culture during the final movement to reservations.
I will research the Trail of Tears, the forced assimilation of Native
American children, and the efforts by the dominant culture to take control of
what little land Native Americans were finally allotted.
I
have discovered that the literature available on this subject can be difficult
to come by and is often written from the perspective of the dominant culture.
There is, however, information being written today by tribes in the
Oklahoma area about not only the efforts made to destroy their culture, but
their efforts to maintain it. In my research, I hope to include both types of literature
because I believe there have been honest efforts made by the dominant culture to
describe the injustices to Native Americans and by Native Americans to describe
what happened and continues to happen to their people.
(Shadowwolf.org is an excellent Cherokee web site.)
Some
of the incidents that trouble me most are those that involve Native American
children. They were taken from their families and placed in government schools.
They were forced to speak only English and not allowed to speak their
native languages in an effort to assimilate them into the dominant culture.
They were forced to give up their Native American clothing for the
clothing of the dominant culture. They
were even forced to change their names.
I
am also interested in the stereotypes of Native Americans as seen through the
eyes of the dominant culture. Indians
are often seen as uneducated alcoholics with no prospects for the future.
They are thought of as lazy and inclined to never leave the reservations.
In short, I want to see if what I have heard can really be true.
Everyday Life Among the American Indians, 1800-1890
Candy Moulton
Moulton
says that the process of Indian removal began the moment Columbus landed on the
North American continent. From that
point on, there was a continual push of Native Americans to the West to provide
more land for the influx of Europeans. The
Southeastern tribes included what became known as the Five Civilized Tribes as
well as thirty-six other smaller tribes. These tribes initially inhabited an area bordered by Kentucky
and Virginia on the North, the Mississippi River on the West, the Gulf of Mexico
on the South, and the Atlantic Ocean on the East.
Official
talk of Indian removal began during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson just
prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Jefferson
knew this purchase of land would provide a place for the Indians to go.
Talk of removal stopped during the presidency of James Monroe and resumed
again when Andrew Jackson took office. Jackson
wanted the Indians sent to what was called “Indian Territory” west of the
Mississippi. Indian land would be
given to whites.
In
the period between 1830 and 1838, the Five Civilized Tribes were subjected to
the official removal called for by the United States Government along with the
remainder of the other thirty-six tribes. Moulton
says that by 1800, many of the smaller tribes were already nearly extinct.
We lament the extinction of animals, but it is even more unbearable to
think of a people becoming extinct.
Moulton
says that by 1850 more than half of North American Indians had been displaced by
white settlers. By 1870, all of
them had been moved from their original homelands to either reservations or
different tracts of land. In all
cases, the amount of land left to them was minute in comparison to what they
originally held. The civilized
Indians were removed to be replaced by often far less civilized whites.
Probably the most civilized of the Native American tribes was the Cherokee. They had their own written language, a tribal newspaper (The Cherokee Phoenix), schools for their children, and sixty-four organized towns. According to Moulton, “The women owned the land—the garden plots where they raised crops for their families—and in this matrilineal society, they had great power, including the right to vote on tribal issues” (19). The Cherokee designed a tribal constitution that they modeled after that of the United States. When the Indian Removal Act was signed by Jackson in 1830, the Cherokee resisted relocation through legal means, but Jackson wanted them gone.
The Choctaws left first and thirty-five hundred of their people died along the way. The Creeks followed and lost approximately the same number. The Chickasaws lost fewer people because they lived closer to Indian Territory. Many of the Seminoles remained in Florida after a forced move there, but many also went to Indian Territory. The Cherokees resisted the longest and suffered the most when forced to move. The first group went by boat during warm weather and fared well. The remainder were forced to walk eight hundred miles (twelve hundred by some accounts), often during the winter months, and lost four thousand of their number along the way. “The Cherokee Removal became known as the ‘Trail of Tears.’” This term now applies to all of the tribes who suffered removal, but was first associated with the Cherokee.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of
Native America
Chapter 10-Kill the Indian to Save the Man
James Wilson
Wilson
says that Indians were purportedly placed on reservations to protect them until
they were sufficiently “civilized” to live among the white man. The only alternatives seen by the dominant culture were to
civilize them or exterminate them. The
Indians were pretty much exterminated anyway.
There was a belief that Indians were disappearing.
When their numbers started to level off and then increase, some whites
were not happy.
The
underlying objective behind every broken white promise was to obtain more Indian
land. Treaties did not need to be
taken seriously because they were, after all, being made with savages who were
too ignorant to know they were being robbed.
Indians were considered “helpless and ignorant” dependents of the
United States who were not capable of making long lasting contracts.
It is interesting that the government made the contracts anyway.
The Indian was not considered a “person” by Constitutional
interpretation. The original owners
of the land were not entitled to the rights of human beings.
Red
Cloud said the land he once owned could not be ridden across in a week on his
fastest pony and now he must beg for food.
The government enforced its will by withholding rations. Even reservations were not considered Indian land.
They were part of the “public domain” for the protection of these
wards of the government. Government agents took the money designated for the Indians
and left the Indians to starve.
Many civilized white people felt the treatment of the Indians would
“cast a permanent shadow over its claim to the moral leadership of mankind.” They felt that the debt owed to the Indians could only be
paid by civilizing them. The idea
was that Indians should be given prosperity and happiness by making them
discontent and selfish. According
to Dawes, the Indians had gone as far as they could go toward becoming civilized
because they owned their land in common. Apparently
it was not only owned in common, but there was far too much of it.
Dawes’ idea was to give each family 160 acres and sell the rest to
whites.
In
the 1880’s, Indians still had land that was equal to one and a half times the
size of California. Whites wanted
it, thus forced assimilation. In
1887, the Allotment or Dawes Act passed. In
thirteen years, the government forced 33,000 allotments and released 28,500,000
acres of “surplus” land. The Indians appealed allotment and tried to get the
government to keep their treaties, but nothing worked.
Before allotment, the Five Civilized Tribes owned 19.5 million acres.
It was farmland, pine forests, coal mines, and untapped oil reserves.
In 1898, The Curtis Act terminated the government of the Five Civilized
Tribes and began allotment of their land. Indians
were auctioned off to grafters who helped them pick their allotments and then
made them sign fraudulent contracts to lease or sell their land.
Capable Indians could be declared incompetent so their land could be
stolen. There were twenty-four
unsolved murders of adults between 1921 and 1925.
After
allotment, forced assimilation continued. Indian
children were removed from their homes and taken away from what was considered
the bad influence of their parents. They
were placed in government or mission schools.
The children were forced to change their names by choosing a name from a
list on a blackboard. The hair of the boys was cut short. They believed that only practicing homosexuals had short
hair. Their clothing, and anything
they held sacred, was confiscated and burned on a bonfire. The children were forced to dress like whites.
Their cultures were considered worthless relics from an earlier age and
had to be destroyed. Their diets were totally changed. Many of the children died in the schools, some from unknown
causes. Their parents believed they
died from loneliness.
Indian land was said to have been given to them in perpetuity. By 1948, they still owned only 1.6 percent of it.
Native American Testimony
Edited by Peter Nabotow
Nabotow
reiterates in brief what Wilson had to say.
Nabotow refers to allotment in severalty, the 1860’s plan to divide
Indian land. Parcels of land were
to be given to individual Indian families in homesteads of 160 acres
(interesting how they plan to give the Indians a little piece of their own
land). Allotment was considered by
the dominant culture to be the fastest way for Indians to become part of the
dominant culture. The idea,
according to Nabotow, was for the Indian to become imbued with the exalting
egotism of American civilization so that he will say “I” instead of
“we,” and “This is mine” instead of “This is ours.”
Nabotow
says that for the Indians this idea was frightening. For Indians, the individual came last, the tribe first.
Now they were to be divided to make it on their own.
The majority of Indians were barely making it with government issued food
and blankets. They were suffering,
but at least they were suffering together and sharing the land as they had
always done. Now they were to be
divided to suffer alone. Indian
families did not do well on the small parcels of land.
It was not enough land to farm or to raise livestock.
Their sacred lands were taken from them.
In 1871, Congress stopped making treaties with the Indians. In 1924, Indians were finally allowed to become American citizens. It is doubtful that Native Americans saw this as a blessing.
A History of the Indians in the United States
Chapter 10-The White Man’s War Affects the Frontiers
Angie Debo
Many
Native Americans from the Five Civilized Tribes participated in the Civil War.
Surprisingly, many were slaveholders who needed the slaves to work their
land. Once the war was over, there
was need for reconstruction. The
Creeks, Cherokees, and Seminoles had each lost about twenty-four percent of
their populations. Mixed bloods who
had been slave owners now hired workers to work their crops.
They rebuilt their homes and planted new crops.
They had range cattle and they became quite wealthy.
The
tribes reopened their schools. Many
of the children had been without schooling for five years. Education was believed to be one of the best ways for them to
defend themselves against the white man. Each
tribe had its own government and elected officials.
Two
significant events took place in the years just after the Civil War.
The railroad came through Indian Territory and oil was found on Native
American land. With the railroad
came corrupt white men with their focus on obtaining Indian land. Educated
Indians fought for a decade to stop it, but the greed for their land was too
great.
Native Americans killed buffalo to eat and to sell the hides to white traders. Buffalo were being killed to feed the railroad building crews. There were enormous herds of buffalo that were undaunted by this regular hunting. After the railroad went through, however, the wholesale killing of buffalo began. Many were killed for their hides. In 1873 alone, approximately five million of them were killed. The railroads soon began bringing passengers whose sole purpose was to shoot buffalo from the trains. Rotting carcasses were left where they fell. The Indians depended on the buffalo for their entire economic well-being. “Food, lodging, bedding, tools, household utensils-and even the basis of their religion” began to disappear with the buffalo.
And Still the Waters Run
Chapter VII-Protection by the State
Angie Debo
After allotment, the battle for Indian land continued. Some land buyers concentrated their efforts on Blacks (freed Indian slaves who were allotted parcels of land) and mixed blood adults. The buyers would wine and dine the land owners until they turned over their deeds. In some cases, the deeds were post-dated until the Dawes Act passed. Only two out of thirty Blacks living in cabins on land on the Muskogee retained ownership of their property by 1913. Not one in ten mixed-blood Indians retained any large portion of their land.
Legalized robbery of children was allowed through the probate courts. Approximately sixty thousand minors had land valued at $130,000,000.00. Guardians and attorneys for children took the majority of the income from their property, leaving them in poverty. Supporters of judges were granted guardianship appointments allowing them to legally steal from the children. Some minors were kidnapped just before they reached the age of maturity and could sign over their deeds. Sometimes, even the parents of children sold their children’s land for money. The children most exploited were those of Black, mixed Indian and white, or mixed Indian blood.
Married minors could be taken advantage of by their new spouses. A man or woman could be called upon to marry a minor and, immediately after the marriage, the child’s deed would be signed over to the devious spouse. The spouse would then leave with the deed and never be seen again. Many of these marriages took place in real estate offices.
Even murder became common. A case was reported of two Black children being dynamited. There were many cases of Indians dying under strange circumstances after drawing up wills leaving their money to white men. Carbolic acid and ground glass were often found near where the deaths occurred.
Five Civilized Tribes
http://www.shadowwolf.org./five_civlized_tribes.html
The Five Civilized Tribes are the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole. They were described as civilized because they adopted many of the white man’s ways through the influence of early European missionaries. They became farmers, raised cattle, built houses like those of the white men, and wore clothing like theirs. They formed their own governments, started their own schools, and built Christian churches. Subsistence depended on the farming of maize, fishing, hunting, and foraging. They lived in villages with extended families living under the same roof. They lived primarily east of the Mississippi until they were forced to settle in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) after the Indian Removal Act of 1830.
In 1859, the Five Civilized Tribes formed a “loose confederation.” Each tribe picked up where it had left off before relocation and designed its own government based on that of the United States. They established courts and made their own laws. They built schools and Christian churches. The Cherokee had already established an alphabet and a system of writing. The other tribes followed their example.
After the Civil War, the United States “instituted a policy of detribalization,” taking control of Indian lands. When Oklahoma became a State in 1907, Indian land was opened for white settlement, significantly reducing the land of Native Americans. Many descendents of the Five Civilized Tribes still live in Oklahoma today.
Brief History of The Trail of Tears
Source: Cherokee Nation
http://www.shadowwolf.org/history_trail_of_tears.html
The Cherokee Nation once inhabited a large portion of what is now the southeastern United States. Their first contact with Europeans was in 1500 and for many years relations were good. In 1710, The Cherokee began trade with whites that involved giving up land in exchange for products they wanted from Europe. There was intermarriage between them and the Cherokee began to model their government and society after the “civilized” Europeans.
The Cherokee Nation began to move further west in the 1800’s because the white settlers were moving further and further into their lands. Once gold was discovered in what is now Georgia, the desire for gold and more land caused white resentment of Cherokee landholders. The United States Government decided it was time to force the Cherokee to move and leave everything they had behind. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the Cherokee removal.
To justify Indian removal, the government cited the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. One hundred Cherokees had effectively signed away Indian lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for land in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). They were also promised money, animals, and supplies. The Cherokee had passed laws of their own that pronounced a death sentence on any Cherokee who sold Indian land to whites. Most of those who signed the treaty were later killed.
In the summer of 1838, about 3,000 Cherokees were sent by boat to Indian Territory. Others were held captive in prisons until winter, when approximately 14,000 of them began a march of 1,200 miles toward Indian Territory. Of that number, 4,000 are thought to have died from “hunger, exposure and disease.” The journey is now called the Trail of Tears.
Trails of Tears, American Indians
Driven from Their Lands
Jeanne Williams
In the forward to her book, Jeanne Williams talks about the current status of Native Americans in the United States. She says that the average life expectancy for some tribes is only forty-five years. The income of Native Americans is the lowest of any ethnic group in the nation. Worse yet, “Alcoholism is the leading cause of death and the horror of babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome increases every day. On some reservations, it’s estimated that half the babies come into the world with this permanent brain damage, and many are born to mothers who are themselves victims of the syndrome.”
Native American leaders have called for an investigation into the Bureau of Indian Affairs due to corruption that has gone on for almost two hundred years. Many families refuse to send their children to government schools with only about one tenth of Indian children attending them. The quality of education (in 1991) is dismal. Children are unable to pass government mandated testing and the schools are not maintained.
Williams says there are over seven hundred Native American lawyers who are currently trying to bring about positive change through the courts. Litigation for Indian rights is ongoing. More lawsuits have been filed in the past twenty plus years than ever before in their history.
In spite of Native American hardships, they have continued to thrive. In 1900 there were only 250,000 Native Americans. The population has increased to over 700,000, a figure Williams says is about the number there were when white men first came to North America. She says Native Americans maintain their strength through the ties that bind them together.
Conclusions
Through my research, I have learned that the atrocities committed against Native Americans began the moment the Europeans stepped off their ships and have continued throughout history. Death by disease brought from Europe continued to take the lives of Native Americans as last as the early twentieth century. Wars among Europeans fought on the American continent and the Civil War cost many Native Americans their lives. Destruction of natural resources by European settlers deprived the Indians of their livelihood and, subsequently, their lives. And, worst of all, an entire continent that once belonged to them has been systematically taken from the Native Americans until they are confined to small reservations of land.
Early European settlers started at the East coast and the tide of “progress” spread relentlessly to the West. Indians clearly stood in the way of advancement by simply existing. What began with the early settlers continued with the United States Government. In the early 1800’s, the relocation of Indian tribes to reservations began. This was the era of the Trail of Tears. Many Indians died on the journey from their homelands to reservation land that had been set aside for them in several areas of the existing United States.
The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole Indian tribes were sent to
Oklahoma Territory. I had wondered why they were called the Five Civilized Tribes. This title was given to them because they established tribal governments and recognized the need to educate themselves. With the help of missionaries, they established their own schools. They understood that their only weapon against the oncoming tide of the Untied States Government was to know how to communicate with its emissaries.
In the end, nothing could stop the lust for land that fueled the American dream. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the process of allotment began. It was decided that the only way to “civilize the savages” was to allot each family a 160 acre tract of land and sell the rest of the reservation land that had been promised to Native Americans for perpetuity. The government also decided that Native American children must be assimilated into the dominant culture. Children were taken from their families and made to conform with white lifestyle. Many children died while in government schools.
Once allotment had been achieved, a horde of unscrupulous white men converged on Oklahoma in an effort to steal the allotments from their Indian owners. Indians were assigned guardians to help them pick land, but the guardians stole the titles from them by fraud, forgery, kidnapping, or murder; whatever it took to secure the deeds. Orphan children would be left destitute by guardians who stole the profits paid for mineral rights on the land the children owned. Native American minors were married by adults who left right after the wedding, taking property deeds with them. No effort was spared in stealing the little land Native Americans had left.
Everything I read in Mean Spirit is true and worse. Native Americans were assaulted on every side by white oppression and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Today, they are still confined, for the most part, to reservations. They can, however, accomplish much—within the confines of the dominant culture.
The Children of Indians
N. Stafford a.k.a. Wicked
http:www.shadowwolf.org/children_of_indians.html
I was also one of those:
The children who’d been taken then.
The punishment the white man chose
Was that their parents were forsaken them…
Because they were the children of Indians.
They’d divide us so we wouldn’t fight:
That’s what they supposed back then.
They’d turn our red skin into white
And convert us to their religion…
Because we were the children of Indians.
But listen close and you can hear:
The grumbling – the eruption’s near.
We’ve been silent but now it’s time;
The earth is rumbling – the awaited sign…
For us, the children of the Indians.
The Panther streaks across the sky.
Tecumseh’s footsteps shake the earth.
We now begin to raise the cry
To rise and fight for all we’re worth…
Because we are the children of Indians.
And the Families once divided
Are gathering now to fight.
‘Cause we, the children, have long decided
We’d rather be Indian than white…
Because we are the children of Indians.
So listen close and you can hear
The grumble of the earthquakes here.
He who’s slept now gives the sign:
The rumble begins – it’s now our time…
We are no longer children – We are the Indians!