An LAS 284 Seminar Blog

Takaki – Chapter 9 summary

In Chapter 4, “Towards the Stony Mountains”, Takaki established the fact that “instituted by President Thomas Jefferson, the land-allotment program became the principal strategy for taking territory away from the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctows.” (88) Acts and treaty’s were being created every which way to take land away from the Natives. “The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek provided that the Choctows cede all of their 10,423,130 acres to the federal government and migrate to lands west of the Mississippi River.” (90) These three groups were not the only ones being raped of their rights’ the Cherokee, Cheyenne, Arapado, Kiowa, Sioux, and Pawnee all took their turn with the long, hard arm of the law. These treaties and “the land allotment program unleashed white expansion: speculators, farmers, and planters proceeded to take Indian lands ‘legally,’ while absolving themselves from responsibility for Indian removal.” (91)

Starting chapter 9, Takaki starts with the sad and tragic story of the massacre at Wounded Knee. A group of Indians, specifically the Sioux, began a form of spirit dancing known as ghost dancing. It was a religious ceremony thought to bring back their dead relatives with the hope that they will come back and all white people will perish. Wovoka, an Indian prophet, had a vision, asking him to take the message to all Indian tribes that performing the Ghost Dance would bring back the earth, the buffalo, and their dead family would live again “Wovoka’s vision of a world without whites spread like prairie fire through the Indian country. Ghost dancing became the rage, seizing Indian imagination and mobilizing frustrations.” (229)

The government, out of fear, “quickly identified the Ghost Dance ‘fronteners of disturbances’ and ordered the army to arrest them.” (229) The army eventually caught up with the dancers and ordered them to hand over their weapons. A search was ordered, and some of the weapons were collected. A shot was fired within the crowd prompting the soldiers to fire. Men, woman, and children- most unarmed- were brutally killed. The aftermath of the massacre was brutal. “For Indian America, Wounded knee violently symbolized the end of the frontier.” (231)

White expansionism “was bringing an end to the frontier and the Indian way of life. For people everywhere “the ‘Indian Question’ had become urgent: what should be done to ensure the survival of the Plains Indians?” (232) Francis Amasa Walker, commissioner of Indian affairs tried vigorously to answer that question. He believed that “since industrial ‘progress’ had cut them off from their traditional means of livelihood, Indians should be given temporary support to help them make the necessary adjustment for entering civilization.” His plans called for Indian Reservations, where the “ultimate goal was the eventual assimilation of Indians.” (233) Indians would be taught the “American way” of life. They would be trained to work hard, self-improve themselves, and educate themselves. Walker hoped that these reservations would make decent “civilized” men of the Indians.

“Other white reformers had a different solution to the ‘Indian Question,’ however. Regarding themselves as ‘friends’ of the Indians, they believed that the reservations only served to segregate native peoples from white society and postpone their assimilation.” (234) Thus, from their thinking and movement the Dawes Act was created. The Acts, “hailed by the reformers as the ‘Indian Emancipation Act,’ the law reversed Walker’s strategy, seeking instead to break up the reservations and accelerate the transformation of Indians into property owners and U.S. citizens.” (234) This train of thought asserted that the destruction of Indian tribal systems and customs would convert them into civilized landowners and citizens.

As always, there were people who went against both acts and opposed Indian citizenship. Land allotment became an issue again and the tragic usurping of Indian land became a reality again. A “new Deal” was being offered. “The allotment program was suddenly halted in 1934 by the Indian reorganization Act, a policy devised by John Collier.” (238) White assimilation was destroying the Indian. “In Collier’s view, allotment was destroying the Indian communal way of life… Collier proposed the Abolition of allotment and the establishment of Indian self-government as well as the preservation of ‘Indian civilization,’ including their arts, crafts, and traditions.

Some Indians liked his ideas yet others opposed them. This “Indian Question” that was brought up after the end of the frontier was had many answers, some better than others. But in the end, they all had one thing in common and Takaki put it best, to the Indians “Collier belonged to a tradition reaching back to Jefferson and Walker: though he was articulation a philosophy of Indian autonomy, Collier seemed to be telling the [Indians] what was good for them.” The Indians would never be happy with the answer to this “Indian Question” simply because they were never asked nor given a right to speak, the white man’s answer was always, always forced upon them.