The Wild Frontier (48 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
Minutes before the trial concerning the bureau’s alleged failures concerning the land accounts started in June 1999, the government admitted that it “does not adequately control the receipts and disbursements of account holders.”
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Also in June, a court-appointed investigator found inappropriate storage of bureau records, which were kept in 108 different offices. Records were kept in wooden sheds; files were spilled loosely around and were stuffed in unmarked boxes strewn among truck tires. Many had been lost or ruined over the years.
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Babbitt announced that the government was installing a new $60 million computer system to try to help the situation, but he added that because of the poor condition of some records, “the new computer system will not be totally accurate.”
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When this current litigation is concluded, we should know more about the bureau and its impact on the Indians.
CHAPTER 11
Where We Are and Where We May Go
T
he relations between the settlers and the Indians during the war were understandably hostile in view of the fact that each side was often trying to kill the other. After wars have been over for a period of time, however, there is usually a tendency to let bygones be bygones. One need only recall that after World War II our two major opponents, Germany and Japan, became our friends, and our old Cold War enemy, the former USSR, now has fairly cordial relations with us. This has not been true of settler-Indian relations, even though the war was ended more than a century ago. Some Indians today are frustrated, unhappy, and even bitter toward the descendants of the settlers. What accounts for this?
We know that most of the Indian tribes loved war. They were defeated in this war, and that defeat no doubt led to frustration that less warlike peoples might have more easily tolerated. We also know that after the war was ended, the Indians were victims of settlers who grabbed Indian-occupied lands, of the government’s inconsistent Indian policies, and of misconduct on the part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs that continues to the present time. The low state of Indian health and economic status also continues. Unhappiness and bitterness resulted from all these things.
Bitterness and unrealistic expectations also came about from the doctrine
of historical revisionism, or false history. Products of the doctrine mislead instead of inform, thereby impairing resolution of disputes. Arthur M. Schlesinger repeated this concept. He said, “Honest history is the weapon of freedom,” then added that we can’t allow our history to be dictated by pressure groups such as Indian advocates:
Our schools and colleges have a responsibility to teach history for its own sake—as part of the intellectual equipment of civilized persons—and not to degrade history by allowing its contents to be dictated by pressure groups, whether political, economic, religious, or ethnic. The past may sometimes give offense to one or another minority; that is no reason for rewriting history.
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Lincoln said it first and said it better: “History is not history unless it is the truth.”
2
Apparently in an attempt to romanticize Indians and make them and their advocates feel better, in 1970 the Dee Brown book
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
was published. Admittedly, it was a history of the American West from the Indian point of view. The
New Statesman
said the book was “a deliberately revisionist history.”
The New York Review of Books
noted that Brown’s reason for writing the book was his belief that settlers “have for long had the exclusive use of history and that it is now time to present, with sympathy rather than critically, the red side of the story.”
3
John M. Coward in
The Newspaper Indian
called
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
“polemical literature.”
4
Brown said, “The culture and civilization of the American Indian was destroyed” between 1860 and 1890.
5
Indian culture and civilization are not destroyed as one can see just by looking at the wealth of Indian cultural events available today. Brown also said that one of the most warlike tribes of all, the Iroquois, “strove in vain for peace.”
6
Finally,
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
praised Little Crow and Cochise as “perhaps the most heroic of all Americans.”
7
But among the highlights of Cochise’s career was his vow to exterminate all whites in Arizona and his brutal murder of 14 prisoners. Little Crow led the Santee Sioux Uprising, where some 700 settlers were murdered and 100 soldiers killed. These multiple murderers are surely not heroic to present-day Indians.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
is history that often leads us away from the truth so that it is more difficult to solve Indian problems. Terrorists such as Cochise and Little Crow have never been heroes in mainstream American history.
The Earth Shall Weep
by James Wilson also relied heavily on revisionist history. Reviewer C. B. Delaney on Amazon.com accurately said
that Wilson was “attempting to view the Indian-European encounter through their [Indian] eyes.”
Kirkus Reviews
, February 15, 1999, noted, “He [Wilson] relies heavily on the work of revisionist historians.” Wilson, an Englishman, seems to have a distorted view of America. He said we are a “racist, immoral society” where (speaking of Indian casinos) the “ultimate accolade of success [is] Mafia involvement.”
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We do have some racist, some immoral, and some Mafia people here, but that does not make America a racist, immoral, or Mafia society.
It has not been demonstrated that rewriting history helps the groups for which it is rewritten. Arthur M. Schlesinger said,
Even if history is sanitized in order to make people feel good, there is no evidence that feel-good history promotes ethnic self-esteem and equips students to grapple with their lives.
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Schlesinger also quoted the Czechoslovakian Vaclav Havel, who pointed out one of the effects of historical revisionism:
He who fears facing his own past must necessarily fear what lies before him…. Lying can never save us from the lie. Falsifiers of history do not safeguard freedom but imperil it.
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Those who falsify Indian history with the best of intentions, hoping to improve the Indian condition, will of course harm the Indians, not help them. To paraphrase Schlesinger, historical revisionism clouds the Indians’ view (and that of all others as well) of where they have been and where they are going, and this is to their detriment. The rich cultural history of the many tribes is well worth preserving and presenting, but falsification of certain aspects of Indian life is not.
P
ARADOXICALLY, THE
invasion of the settlers benefited the Indians in some important ways. The impact of white culture was most notable among eastern tribes. With their metal tools and weapons, the Indians were able to support themselves more easily, leaving more time for religion, war, and recreation. Old crafts declined. Some crafts reached new levels of excellence.
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The acquisition of rifles allowed some tribes to drive out traditional enemies, which has been described as a “prodigious shifting of tribes.” William T. Hagan has observed that
the Iroquois in the East, the Apaches in the Southwest, and the Crees in the Hudson’s Bay area were among those Indians who acquired metal
weapons and used them with devastating effect on their neighbors, driving them from choice hunting grounds, seizing their property, enslaving and killing them.
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White culture influenced western tribes as well. “Degeneration did not automatically follow tribal associations with the whites,” observed Hagan. “The acquisition of metal tools and utensils, firearms, horses, and sheep simplified life for the Indian.”
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The horse made the greatest impression. It “facilitated a genuine revolution” and “produced a new culture” for the Plains Indians. With the horse, the Indians became mobile and could follow the buffalo herds. As a result, “an entirely new pattern of life developed, complete with a new religious orientation, new dances, and new games.”
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The horse was so important to the Navajo that they claimed there was never a time the 2 did not exist together. “If there were no horses, there were no Navajos.”
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The horse and the gun allowed the Sioux to achieve a “rich and satisfying life.”
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Indeed, “some Indian groups, such as the Plains warriors, achieved their greatest power and fame as a direct result of such trade [with the settlers].”
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The Creeks grew prosperous in dealing with colonial traders.
18
In addition to horses and guns, some tribes (the southern tribes and the Iroquois) began acquiring domestic animals and planting European fruit trees.
19
In the long run, the Indian was changed dramatically by the settlers. Fergus M. Bordewich concluded that
in the course of the past five centuries, Indian life has been utterly transformed by the impact of European horses and firearms, by imported diseases and modern medicine, by missionary zeal and Christian morality, by iron cookware, sheepherding, pickup trucks, rodeos and schools, by rum and welfare offices, and by elections, alphabets, and Jeffersonian ideals as well as by MTV,
Dallas
, and
The Simpsons
and by the rich mingling of native bloodlines with those of Europe, Africa, and the Hispanic Southwest.
20
The invasion of the settlers greatly accelerated Indian material progress. The change was perhaps too rapid for the Indians, but it was arguably a change for the better. The Indian today is able to live more effectively in the modern world in many ways because of the impact of the settler invasion.
In addition to these benefits, starting nearly with the beginning of the United States, Bernard W. Sheehan noted, the Indians have “accepted incontinently a rich assortment of the products of civilized technology.
The list seems endless.”
21
Federal money for Indian programs designed to alleviate their problems annually totalled $120 million by 1960 and was estimated to exceed $2 billion each year by the late 1970s.
22
That sum increased dramatically to about $3 billion each year by the 1990s.
23
Whether or not these payments are well spent has been questioned by columnist Mona Charen:
For years, but particularly since the 1960s and ‘70s when the Indian cause became chic, the U.S. government has lavished freebies on Indian reservations. Hendrik Mills, writing in the November/December
American Enterprise
magazine, described the cornucopia available to reservation Indians: free health care with no co-payments, extra education funds, tribal colleges complete with full scholarships and living expenses, exemptions from many local and state taxes, Head Start, loads of free food, and—of course—welfare.
Mills, who was drawn to the reservation initially by leftist idealism, was appalled to see the unopened packages of food—most with Department of Agriculture stamps—rotting in local dumps.
He was shocked that many Indian parents effectively have made their children orphans by failing to provide the most basic care. And he was disillusioned to discover that many Indians wait for the government check to come each month and then blow it all at the casino.
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Seminole chairman Buffalo Tiger has said that his people live in dependence on the United States government and are in effect living in a welfare state. He hopes, however, in the future to be able to refuse government grants so that his people can “return once again to independence,” according to Peter Matthiessen.
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The chairman clearly recognized that accepting federal money prevents independence.
The Indians have more than adequate room for economic activity. Their reservations in the lower 48 states total about 52,000,000 acres, an area about the size of Minnesota. The Indians in Alaska own an additional 44,000,000 acres there. Although they constitute less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, Indians own nearly 5 percent of the United States.
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A
RE
T
HE
Indians dying out? The answer to this question is yes and no. There are fewer full-blooded Indians all the time, and in that sense the answer is yes. There are more people with some Indian blood all the time, and, to that extent, the answer is no. In 1970, more than 33 percent
of all Indians were married to non-Indians, compared to just 1 percent of all Americans who married outside their race. By 1980, the number had grown to 50 percent, and it continues to climb. A 1986 congressional study estimated the percentage of Indians with one half or more Indian blood would decline from about 87 percent in 1980 to only 8 percent by 2080.
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This mingling of Indian bloodlines obviously has important consequences for Indians and Indian culture.
“It is estimated that one-third to one-half of the Indians now live in cities.”
28
James Wilson has said that figure is now 60 percent.
29
Indians moving to the cities have reduced the Indian population on reservations. The 1990 Census indicates 437,358, or only 22.32 percent, of the Indians live on the reservations.
30
More recent government statistics, however, according to a July 1999 AP press release, indicate that “there are 1.43 million Indians living on or near reservations.”
31
If this is true, the figure for Indians living in cities is much smaller than the estimates stated above.
The Bureau of the Census has published statistics showing Indian education, employment, family income, and poverty figures for 1979 compared with those of the total population. Four years of high school were completed by 56 percent
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of the Indians and by 67 percent of the total population (which, of course, includes Indians). Four years of college or more were completed by 8 percent of the Indians and by 16 percent of the total population. Participation in the labor force was 59 percent
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by Indians and 62 percent by the total population. Median family income was $13,680 for Indians and $19,920 for the total population. Families in poverty (a family of 4 making less than $7,412) were 28 percent for Indians and 12 percent for the total population.
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