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Native Americans in the United States, also known as First Americans, Indigenous Americans, American Indians, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the United States, including Hawaii, Alaska, and territories of the United States.
"Native Americans" (as defined by the United States Census) are Indigenous tribes that are originally from the contiguous United States, along with Alaska Natives. There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations. Indigenous peoples of the United States who are not American Indian or Alaska Native include Native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Chamorros, the US Census groups these peoples as "Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander".
- When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.
But there is one thing which is beyond the reach of this perversity and that is the tremendous verdict of history. And history will surely judge us. But do we care? What kind of moral schizophrenia is it that allows us to shout at the top of our national voice for all the world to hear that we live up to our commitment when every page of history and when all the thirsty, starving, humiliating days and nights of the last 100 years in the lives of the American Indian contradict that voice?- Marlon Brando, Undelivered speech for the Academy Awards written by Brando as it appeared in The New York Times (March 30, 1973)
- [T]he motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds be-come injured in ways we can never know.
- Marlon Brando, Undelivered speech for the Academy Awards written by Brando as it appeared in The New York Times (March 30, 1973)
- “If tribes can balance all the potential social issues, it could be a really huge opportunity,” Broadman said.
But those social issues are monumental.
“Indian tribes have been decimated by drug use,” Broadman said. “Tribal regulations of pot are going to have to dovetail with tribal values, making sure marijuana isn’t a scourge like alcohol or tobacco.”- Anthony Broadman as quoted in “American Indian tribes free to grow and sell pot – as long as they follow federal laws”, by Associated Press, The Guardian, (12 Dec 2014)
- In the 150 years or so leading up to the establishment of Brothertown, Northeastern tribes had developed a complex web of relationships with the British Crown. Sometimes diplomacy was a matter of straightforward treaty-making, sovereign to sovereign. Occasionally, tribes affirmed allegiance to Great Britain, but this was almost always done provisionally: “upon condition of His Majesties’ royal protection, and righting us of what wrong[s] us, or may be done unto us,” as one Narragansett declaration from 1643 put it. The advantage of acknowledging the jurisdiction of a distant monarch was that it gave the tribes legal standing equal to (or better than) that of colonists. Being “subjects unto the same King” in the years before the American Revolution, as the historian Jenny Hale Pulsipher has shown, was typically better than squaring off directly against colonial greed and malice. From this point of view, the Revolution was a disaster for Native people, because it deprived them of one of their most effective legal strategies.
Even so, the tribes of the Northeastern Seaboard expressed little nostalgia for the British after their defeat. Although Brothertown’s parent tribes sometimes benefited from the protection of the British sovereign, they never aspired to full participation in the commonwealth. Nor did they see themselves as bound by “social contracts” of the kind theorized by European philosophers. Among tribal nations, political allegiances were fluid. A sachem (an Algonquian term for “chief”) who betrayed the interest of his tribe could easily find himself rejected by his people.- Ryan O. Carr, “A Native American Declaration of Independence”, The Atlantic, (July 4th 2024)
- Historians are finally beginning to confront the hard fact that the U.S. Constitution rules over Native nations as a kind of imperial law. This is ironic, given the “anti-colonial” ambitions of the U.S. rebels against British rule. Arguably, however, the “constitution of American colonialism” (to borrow a phrase from the legal scholar Maggie Blackhawk) has more in common with the imperial law of ancient Rome than that of early modern Britain. Like Roman imperial law, U.S. law since the 1970s has allowed for the flourishing of multiple “sub-political groups,” each with its own national culture, under its sovereign jurisdiction. Like Rome, too, the U.S. has turned the determination of Native nationhood into a question of imperial administration. Today, the BIA, a division of the Department of the Interior within the executive branch, gets to decide which Native tribes are “sovereign” from the perspective of federal law—regardless, in many cases, of what tribes say about themselves.
- Ryan O. Carr, “A Native American Declaration of Independence”, The Atlantic, (July 4th 2024)
- The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country. . . . Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away. . . . Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing."
- Edward Everett, Speeches on the Passage of the Bill for the Removal of the Indians Delivered in the Congress of the United States (Boston, 1830), 299, in Native American Voices: A History and Anthology, 114; "Statements from the Debate on Indian Removal". Columbia University.
- After the Ghost Dance spread across the Rockies to the Plains tribes it ran amok. ...The fervor attacked the Plains tribes virulently, particularly the Sioux, who were at that time the largest and the most intransigent of them all. The Sioux had been forced to submit to a series of land grabs and to indignities that are almost unbelievable when read about today. ...they were being systematically starved into submission—by the White Bureaucracy—on the little that was left of their reservation in South Dakota. ...From Rosebud, the Ghost Dance spread like prairie fire to the Pine Ridge Sioux and finally to Sitting Bull's people at Standing Rock. The Sioux rebelled; the result was the death of Sitting Bull and the massacre of the Indians (despite their ghost shirts) at Wounded Knee in 1890.
- Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968).
- To aid in identifying Tribal name changes and corrections, the Tribe’s previously listed or former name is included in parentheses after the correct current Tribal name. We will continue to list the Tribe’s former or previously listed name for several years before dropping the former or previously listed name from the list.
The listed Indian entities are acknowledged to have the immunities and privileges available to federally recognized Indian Tribes by virtue of their government-to-government relationship with the United States as well as the responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations of such Tribes. We have continued the practice of listing the Alaska Native entities separately for the purpose of facilitating identification of them.- Federal Register / Vol. 85, No. 20 / Thursday, January 30, 2020 / Notices, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, “Bureau of Indian Affairs Indian Entities Recognized by and Eligible To Receive Services From the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs”, p.1
- I think it's hard to make the case, which implicitly the left makes, that somehow the world would have been better off if the Europeans had stayed home. It certainly doesn't work for north America, that's for sure. I mean, I'm sure the Apache and the Navajo had all sorts of admirable traits. In the absence of literacy we don't know what they were because they didn't write them down. We do know they killed a hell of a lot of bison. But had they been left to their own devices, I don't think we'd have anything remotely resembling the civilisation we've had in north America.
- Niall Ferguson, "Niall Ferguson: 'Westerners don't understand how vulnerable freedom is'", The Guardian, February 20, 2011.
- Article XI. A perpetual alliance offensive and defensive is to be entered into as soon as may be with the Six Nations; their Limits to be ascertained and secured to them; their Land not to be encroached on, nor any private or Colony Purchases made of them hereafter to be held good, nor any Contract for Lands to be made but between the Great Council of the Indians at Onondaga and the General Congress. The Boundaries and Lands of all the other Indians shall also be ascertained and secured to them in the same manner; and Persons appointed to reside among them in proper Districts, who shall take care to prevent Injustice in the Trade with them, and be enabled at our general Expense by occasional small Supplies, to relieve their personal Wants and Distresses. And all Purchases from them shall be by the Congress for the General Advantage and Benefit of the United Colonies.
- Benjamin Franklin, "Proposed Articles of Confederation" presented to the Continental Congress on May 10, 1775; "Journals of the Continental Congress – Franklin's Articles of Confederation; July 21, 1775". The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. New Haven, CT: Yale University, Lillian Goldman Law Library. Cited is a digital version of the Journals of the Continental Congress 1774–1779, Vol. II, pp. 195–199, as edited from original records in the Library of Congress by Worthington Chauncey Ford.
- I remember watching 7th and 8th grade kids improve in reading. Their "lives" depended on it.
The reaction of the faculty at the school was not so positive. I heard from Paul that we needed to eliminate any negative references to Native Americans. Since my generation had grown up on TV cowboy shows, my first reaction was that we were denying a piece of our own history. But upon reconsidering, I realized how powerful this game was in terms of immersing students into history. If any students of Native American ancestry played the game (and I'm sure there were plenty), they would be put in the position of constantly battling themselves. So we replaced "Indians ahead" with "riders ahead." Also, we replaced "tomahawked" with "knifed."- Bill Heineman as quoted by, Wong, Kevin (2017-02-15). "The Forgotten History of 'The Oregon Trail,' As Told By Its Creators". Motherboard. Vice. Archived from the original on 2018-09-01. Retrieved 2018-08-31.
- I will follow the white man's trail. I will make him my friend, but I will not bend my back to his burdens. I will be cunning as a coyote. I will ask him to help me understand his ways, then I will prepare the way for my children, and their children. The Great Spirit has shown me—a day will come when they will outrun the white man in his own shoes.
- Many Horses, also known as Rising Wolf, a holy man of the Oglala Lakota tribe who organized a Ghost Dance ritual at Standing Rock Reservation in 1890. "Rising Wolf -- Ghost Dancer" by Hamlin Garland. McClure's, 1899.
- Would the people of Maine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government within their state? And unless they did would it not be the duty of the general government to support them in resisting such a measure? Would the people of New York permit each remnant of the six nations within her borders to declare itself an independent people under the protection of the United States? Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of their reservations in Ohio? And if they were so disposed would it be the duty of this government to protect them in the attempt? If the principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this government are reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying the states which it was established to protect.
- Andrew Jackson, "First Annual Message to Congress", (December 8, 1829); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new states, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced. A state can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those states and of every state, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the states, to preserve this much-injured race.
- Andrew Jackson, "First Annual Message to Congress", (December 8, 1829); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- The emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that if they remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as individuals they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their industry. But it seems to me visionary to suppose that in this state of things claims can be allowed on tracts of country on which they have neither dwelt nor made improvements, merely because they have seen them from the mountain or passed them in the chase. Submitting to the laws of the states, and receiving, like other citizens, protection in their persons and property, they will ere long become merged in the mass of our population.
- Andrew Jackson, "First Annual Message to Congress", (December 8, 1829); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.
- Andrew Jackson, “Second Annual Message to Congress”; (December 6, 1830); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. I have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the general government in relation to the state authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the states within the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their acts, but as a government we have as little right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.
- Andrew Jackson, “Second Annual Message to Congress”; (December 6, 1830); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country and philanthropy has long been busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth... But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another... In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes… Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?
- Andrew Jackson, “Second Annual Message to Congress”; (December 6, 1830); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- The present policy of the Government is but a continuation of the same progressive change by a milder process. The tribes which occupied the countries now constituting the Eastern States were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward, and we now propose to acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West by a fair exchange, and, at the expense of the United States, to send them to land where their existence may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing?
- Andrew Jackson, “Second Annual Message to Congress”; (December 6, 1830); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the General Government toward the red man is not only liberal, but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the States and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the General Government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.
- Andrew Jackson, “Second Annual Message to Congress”; (December 6, 1830); millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
- Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people. The decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to agriculture, to spinning and weaving. The latter branches they take up with great readiness, because they fall to women, who gain by quitting the labors of the field for those which are exercised within doors. When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. At our trading houses, too, we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and charges, so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital. This is what private traders cannot do, for they must gain; they will consequently retire from the competition, and we shall thus get clear of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians. In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.
- Thomas Jefferson (1803). "President Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory". February 27, 1803; Francis Paul Prucha (2000). Documents of United States Indian Policy. U of Nebraska Press. p. 22.
- With our Indian neighbors the public peace has been steadily maintained ... And, generally, from a conviction that we consider them as part of ourselves, and cherish with sincerity their rights and interests, the attachment of the Indian tribes is gaining strength daily... and will amply requite us for the justice and friendship practiced towards them ... [O]ne of the two great divisions of the Cherokee nation have now under consideration to solicit the citizenship of the United States, and to be identified with us in-laws and government, in such progressive manner as we shall think best.
- Thomas Jefferson eighth annual message to Congress on November 8, 1808; "Eighth Annual Message (November 8, 1808) Thomas Jefferson". millercenter.org. University of Virginia. December 28, 2016.
- Scholars have exposed how the discourse of the vanishing Indian was an ideology that made declining Indigenous American populations seem to be an inevitable consequence of natural processes and so allowed Americans to evade moral responsibility for their destructive choices.
- Ostler, Jeffrey, Surviving genocide: native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas, (28 May 2019).
- A singular focus on Jackson obscures the fact that he did not invent the idea of removal…Months after the passage of the Removal Act, Jackson described the legislation as the 'happy consummation' of a policy 'pursued for nearly 30 years'
- Ostler, Jeffrey, Surviving genocide: native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas, (28 May 2019).
- These people were of all races, colors, and creeds. French were in the north and in the Carolinas. Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State. Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia. Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia. Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures. Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves. Also they were intermarried with the American Indians.
- Rose Wilder Lane, §1 of "The Third Attempt," ch. V of Pt. Two of The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (New York: The John Day Company, 1943), pp. 153–154.
- "People were making money off of that racism of the Hollywood Indian. Of course, they're going to boo. They don't want their evening interrupted."
Littlefeather said she was escorted offstage at the Oscars by a team of security guards. She said that for years Hollywood boycotted her, calling it being red listed.- Sacheen Littlefeather as quoted by NPR, “Sacheen Littlefeather, who gave Marlon Brando's Oscar rejection speech, dies at 75”, NPR, (October 3, 2022)
- Being deeply impressed with the opinion that the removal of the Indian tribes from the lands which they now occupy within the limits of the several states and Territories . . . is of very high importance to our Union, and may be accomplished on conditions and in a manner to promote the interest and happiness of those tribes, the attention of the Government has been long drawn with great solicitude to the object. For the removal of the tribes within the limits of the State of Georgia the motive has been peculiarly strong, arising from the compact with that State whereby the United States are bound to extinguish the Indian title to the lands within it whenever it may be done peaceably and on reasonable conditions. . . . The removal of the tribes from the territory which they now inhabit . . . would not only shield them from impending ruin, but promote their welfare and happiness. Experience has clearly demonstrated that in their present state it is impossible to incorporate them in such masses, in any form whatever, into our system. It has also demonstrated with equal certainty that without a timely anticipation of and provision against the dangers to which they are exposed, under causes which it will be difficult, if not impossible to control, their degradation and extermination will be inevitable.
- James Monroe, in an 1825 message to Congress, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 2, in Native American Voices: A History and Anthology, ed. Steven Mintz (St. James, New York: Brandywine P, 1995) 111-112; "Statements from the Debate on Indian Removal". Columbia University.
- It’s estimated that four out of five Native women experience some form of violence in their lifetime. Native women also face murder rates more than 10 times the national average. Despite efforts to raise awareness, of the 5,712 cases of MMIWG in the United States, only 116 were included in the Department of Justice database.
- National Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Program team, “Today is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls”, VA.gov, (May 5, 2023)
- After millennia of Native history, and centuries of displacement and dispossession, acknowledging original Indigenous inhabitants is complex. Many places in the Americas have been home to different Native Nations over time, and many Indigenous people no longer live on lands to which they have ancestral ties. Even so, Native Nations, communities, families, and individuals today sustain their sense of belonging to ancestral homelands and protect these connections through Indigenous languages, oral traditions, ceremonies, and other forms of cultural expression.
- Many Native Americans do not live on the tribal lands or reservations (only 22%) and many frequent a lifestyle of transience between tribal and state lands. This presents a variety of crucial issues involving reporting policies, jurisdictional complications, and communication and coordination problems between agencies.
Native Americans residing in urban areas have few resources linked to their culture and tribal community. Many Urban Indians, people living in cities, fall into a “pipeline of vulnerability”: people of color, people experiencing poverty, people coming out of the foster care system, people lacking resources or family, people isolated emotionally, physically or psychologically. According to Janeen Comenote, executive director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, “poverty remains one of the most challenging aspects to contemporary urban Indian life. While I do recognize that a sizable chunk of our population[s] is solidly middle class, every Native person I know has either experienced poverty or has a family member who is. Housing and homelessness remain at the top-of-the-list of challenges.- “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)”, Native Hope. (n.d.)
- Native Americans today face some extraordinary challenges. These statistics from the Urban Indian Health Institute were compiled from a survey of 71 U.S. cities in 2016. The numbers speak for themselves: Native American women make up a significant portion of the missing and murdered cases. Not only is the murder rate ten times higher than the national average for women living on reservations but murder is the third leading cause of death for Native women.
- “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW)”, Native Hope. (n.d.)
- Abortion was frequently practiced in North America during the period from 1600 to 1900. Many tribal societies knew how to induce abortions...
- When reading old accounts Rawitsch was surprised by just how often Native tribes intervened to offer assistance to travelers that were struggling along the trail. This was something he hoped he could insert into the game to combat the negative stereotypes that were prevalent at the time in other media.
“We were very concerned about the way Native Americans were portrayed, because the schools that we taught in had significant populations of Native American students. In the diaries I read I probably should admit to being surprised by how often people wrote about the help they received from Native Americans who helped them understand where the trail was, where it went, what kind of food along the way was edible and which would make you ill.”
This manifested itself in the game as a new event that could occur when players were struggling. Native Americans would approach the party and offer help by sharing food or supplies with the settlers.- Dan Rawitsh as quoted by Yarwood, Jack (2015-10-22). "The Making of The Oregon Trail: An Interview with Don Rawitsch". Paste. Wolfgang's. Archived from the original on 2018-09-01. Retrieved 2018-08-31.
- When the white man landed on the shores of the New World, an eclipse, blacker than any that ever darkened the sun, blighted the hopes and happiness of the native people, races then living in tranquility upon their own soil.
- Eli S. Ricker, Voices of the American West, page xi
- While growing up on an Indian reservation in the Midwestern United States, I observed that fellow Indians loved western movies and paperbacks. Subsequently, I observed this phenomenon on Indian reservations in Oregon and North Dakota, as well as among Indians who lived off the reservations.
- JoEllen Shively, “Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of Western Films Among American Indians and Anglos”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 6 (Dec., 1992), pp. 725
- I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon … shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.
- Sitting Bull, recorded by the Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet after a council with Sitting Bull on June 19,1868. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 79-80.
- Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows.
- Sitting Bull, quoted in Vine Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2003, cited to Virginia Armstrong, I have spoken; American history through the voices of the Indians. Chicago, Sage Books, 1971.
- The whites have driven us from the sea to the lakes. We can go no further... unless every tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the ambition and avarice of the whites they will soon conquer us apart and disunited and we will be driven from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind.
- Tecumseh, quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada.
- The white men aren't friends to the Indians... At first they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds from the rising to the setting sun.
- Tecumseh, quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada.
- The fate of North American Indian tribes frequently resembled that of the Australian Aborigines. European settlers arrived on their native territories and claimed the land for their own. When the Indians resisted, the settlers, supported by their colonial governments, or their national, state, and local governments, were quick to drive out or kill the Indians and their families or to force them onto reservations to live out their lives in alien surroundings. As in the case of the Aborigines, children were taken from Indian families, women were kidnapped and raped, promises of peace were made and broken, and claims of racial and civilizational superiority were used by the settlers to justify their land grabbing and their killing. North American native peoples, like the Aborigines, were highly susceptible to the diseases brought to their homelands by the settlers and prone to the abuse of alcohol, which the settlers purposely employed to undermine their ability to resist. Those settlers who raised livestock, primarily cows and sheep, tended to have the sharpest conlicts with the Indians, provoking massacres and outright warfare between Indian tribes and government and militia formations. The tendency of the North American settlers to see the Indians as hopelessly primitive and incapable of marshaling the resources of the land gave them “reason” to deprive those Indians of the most desirable lands and territories.
- Norman Naimark, Genocide: A World History (2017)
- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
- United States Declaration of Independence, (Created June–July 1776; Ratified July 4, 1776)
- In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
- I cannot dismiss the subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier, and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians; without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory. To enable, by competent rewards, the employment of qualified and trusty persons to reside among them, as agents, would also contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighbourhood. If, in addition to these expedients, an eligible plan could be devised for promoting civilization among the friendly tribes, and for carrying on trade with them, upon a scale equal to their wants, and under regulations calculated to protect them from imposition and extortion, its influence in cementing their interests with our's could not but be considerable.
- George Washington, "Fourth Annual Message to Congress (November 6, 1792)"; millercenter.org. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia.
“Report on Indians taxed and Indians not taxed in the United States (except Alaska)” (1894)
Bureau of the Census (1894). “Report on Indians taxed and Indians not taxed in the United States (except Alaska)”
Adding the expense of the civil administration $259,944,082.34, we have an estimated cost of the Indians to the United States from July 4, 1776 to June 30, 1890, of $1,067,017,740.68 aside from the amount reimbursed to states for their expenses in war with Indians and aside from pensions.
- Almost the entire area of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, and also that of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other western states, were the scenes of numerous individual combats with the Indians by Boone, Kenton, Weitzel, Poe, Zane, and others, now known as middle state pioneers, whose names ornament history, and who long preceded Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Beekwrth, Meek, Slim Jennings, and other noted hunters, scouts, and Indian fighters to the west of the Mississippi river. It has been estimated that since 1775 more than 5,000 white men, women and children have been killed in individual affairs with Indians, and more than 8,500 Indians. History, in general, notes but few of these combats.
The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians. The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the number given, as they conceal, where possible, their actual loss in battle, and carry their killed and wounded off and secrete them. The number given above is of those found by the whites. Fifty per cent additional would be a safe estimate to add to the numbers given.- pp.637–38.
- Since the advent of the European in the present United States there have been almost constant wars between whites and Indians, outbreaks, or massacres, beginning on the Pacific side in in 1539 and on the Atlantic side after 1600. The wars and outbreaks arose from various causes: from resistance by the Indian to the white man’s occupation of his land; from the white man’s murder of Indians; from the Indian’s murderous disposition; from national neglect and failure to keep treaties and solemn promises; from starvation, and so on. Within the past 100 years the Indians’ chief complaint was against the acts of individuals; when the reservation system became general the complaints changes from charges against settlers to charges of breach of faith against the United States, many of which in the past 20 years have been confirmed by investigation.
The authorities as to these wars are numerous and much scattered; so much so that it would require years to collect the data to make a history of Indian wars. No such history has been written, and probably none will be. Prior to the organization of the government of the United States in 1789 individual companies of adventurers, various European governments, and the colonies were engaged in almost constant bloodshed with the Indians. War seems to have been a normal condition of a great portion of the American race; whether for good or conquest, it matters not. By their owns statements made to Europeans at their first coming war was one of the occupations of the Indians, if not their chief occupation. Indian tribal wars must have been bloody, as they seldom took prisoners; at least this was the rule in several nations.- p.641
- Indian tribal wars in the United States continued up to 1808. The efforts of the early Europeans were directed toward the stopping of these tribal wars, although European governments, when at war within the United States, did not hesitate to employ Indians against the whites.
- p.642
- In the many Indian wars the causes an provocations have not always come from the Indian. While the nation at times supplied the Indian with firearms, ammunition, and scalping knives, it did not employ him against white foes, except in the War of the rebellion, when Indians were enlisted as soldiers on both sides. Indian soldiers and scouts have been employed against Indians, but never, with the exception noted, against whites.
The amount expended in Indian wars from 1776 to June 30, 1890, can only be estimated. The several Indian wars after 1776; including the war of 1812, in the west and the northwest, the Creek, Black Hawk, and Seminole wars, up to 1860 were bloody and costly. Except when engaged in war with great Britain, Mexico, or during the rebellion (1861-1865), the United States army was almost entirely used for the Indian service, and stationed largely in the Indian country or among the frontier. In 1890, 70 per cent of the army was stationed west of the Missouri river, 66 per cent being in the Indian country. It will be fair to estimate, taking out the years of foreign wars with England, namely, 1812-1815, $66,614,912.34, and with Mexico, 1846-1848, $73,941,735.12, and the rebellion, 1861-1865, and reconstruction, 1865-1870, $3,374,359,360.02, that at least, three-fourths of the total expense of the army is chargeable, directly or indirectly, to the Indians. During our foreign wars and the War of the Rebellion many of the Indian tribes were at war with the United States, and others were a constant danger, a large force being necessary to hold them in subjection; but expense on this account is dropped from the eshuate.
The total expense of the army of the United States from March 4, 1789, to June 30, 1890, was $4,725,521,495; deducting $3,514,911,007.48 for foreign wars and the War of the Rebellion, the remainder is $1,210,610,4487.52. Two-thirds of this sum, it is estimated, was expended for Indian wars and for army services incidental to the Indians, namely, $807,073,658.34 (cost of fortifications, posts, and stations being deducted).
Adding the expense of the civil administration $259,944,082.34, we have an estimated cost of the Indians to the United States from July 4, 1776 to June 30, 1890, of $1,067,017,740.68 aside from the amount reimbursed to states for their expenses in war with Indians and aside from pensions.- p.643.
“US citizenship was forced on Native Americans 100 years ago − its promise remains elusive” (July 25, 2024)
Kerri Malloy, “US citizenship was forced on Native Americans 100 years ago − its promise remains elusive”, The Conversation, (July 25, 2024)
- By keeping Native Americans far from towns and cities, the U.S. hoped to maintain the distinct identities of tribes as sovereign nations – and ensure Native peoples remained non-Americans.
As U.S. ambitions for expansion drove the new nation to push farther west, however, the nation began working to assimilate Native people into American society. The U.S. wanted more land, including in the Indian Territory.
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, abrogating treaties that had guaranteed tribes and their citizens reserved lands in perpetuity. It broke up reservation lands into individual family allotments for tribal citizens and allowed non-Natives to buy land in the Indian Territory that remained unallocated.
The aim was to push Native peoples into becoming agrarian farmers. By encouraging them to abandon their traditional lives, lawmakers hoped to integrate Native Americans into the non-Native societies that were surrounding them. - Native Americans were not Americans in the eyes of the U.S. government. They could not vote in U.S. elections, freely sell their land or control their children’s education.
They were, however, eligible to serve in America’s wars. After an estimated 12,000 Native American solders fought in World War I, President Calvin Coolidge, inspired by their service, signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law.
Congress had crafted the legislation over the objections of many tribes. They recognized this unilateral imposition of U.S. citizenship as an infringement on their sovereignty over their citizens. - Most Americans, in addition to their national citizenship, are citizens of a state, a county and a city. Native Americans have all that plus another national citizenship – that of their tribe, which has its own laws and civic responsibilities.
Tribal citizenship is not about race or ethnicity. It confers a political status, one of citizenship in a tribe.
Unlike U.S. citizens, tribal citizens can lose their status.
As sovereign nations, tribes have the right to disenroll members, and they regularly do. About 80 tribes have removed approximately 11,000 tribal citizens from their rolls over the past 25 years over lineage questions, dual enrollment and other disqualifying factors. - The federal government can also terminate tribal membership by terminating tribes. From 1953 to 1970, in what became known as the Termination Era, the U.S. ended its government-to-government relationships with many tribes by withdrawing their federal recognition as sovereign nations.
Officially, this policy ended the tribes’ “status as wards of the United States” in order “to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.”
Effectively, it nullified the existence of thousands of Native Americans. President Richard Nixon ended the Termination Era in 1970, leaving tribes and individuals to seek re-recognition in the courts or via congressional legislation. To date, 29 tribes have gotten their federal recognition restored. - U.S. Census Bureau data shows the median income for Native Americans on reservations is $23,000 a year – 61% below the U.S. average. One in three reservation residents live in poverty, three times higher than the general population. In 2020, Native American students constituted less than 1% of college and university enrollment nationwide.
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