Where higher learning meets faithful service.
Teaching human DigniTy
he ssimilation, emoval,
and limination of
ative mericans
an experT guiDe by jessica keaTing
Copyright © 2020 McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame.
Content created by Jessica Keating.
Jessica Keating directs the Notre Dame Office of Life and Human
Dignity in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. In her role, she
leads the Institute’s research, education, and outreach efforts on
the nature and dignity of the human person and contemporary
threats to the sanctity of life. Jessica also collaborates with
schools and dioceses to develop innovative educational content
and strategies to integrate a pedagogy of life across the academic
disciplines.
Jessica originally hails from the Maryland suburbs of Washington,
D.C. She completed her undergraduate degree in Philosophy
and Sociology from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA.
She earned her Masters of Divinity from the University of Notre
Dame in 2013. In addition to her work with the Institute, she is
pursuing her Ph.D. in Systematic eology at Notre Dame.
Between her undergraduate and Masters degrees, Jessica taught
high school theology for five years at Red Cloud Indian School
on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Jessica’s writing has appeared in popular publications such as,
America Magazine, Aleteia, e Imaginative Conservative, and the
Catholic Catalogue, as well as a in the volume of essays, Dante,
Mercy, and the Beauty of the Human Person.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans3
able of Contents
An Overview of Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination ......................................................4
Assimilation ..........................................................................................................................6
Conditions of Boarding Schools ............................................................................................7
Removal ................................................................................................................................9
Elimination:
Destruction of the Buffalo ..............................................................................................11
Massacres .......................................................................................................................12
e Impact of Native American Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination ............................13
Intersection of Native American Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination
with Human Dignity ..........................................................................................................14
References and Recommended Resources ............................................................................15
An Overview of
Assimilation, Removal,
and Elimination
N
ative peoples encountered non-native groups,
including the Spanish, French, and Norse,
as early as the 16th century. Although colloquially
Americans tend to refer to indigenous groups as
“Native Americans” or “Indians,” there existed
and still exists tremendous diversity among Native
peoples. When the first European settlers encountered
Native groups in what is present-day United States,
they encountered diverse peoples and tribes, ranging
in size and organization, and with distinct cultures
and ways of life. In other words, there is no such thing
as a “generic” Native American. Likewise, the Native
experience of European settlement and expansion
was not monolithic as some over-simplified histories
tend to imply; rather, it varied greatly across time and
indigenous groups. For example, some Native groups
engaged in lively trade with European traders-- the fur
trade with the French, is just one example--and Jesuit
priests, known as “Black Robes” learned the Lakota
language and lived with tribal communities, from the
late 16th- to early 19th-century. However, alongside
this history of economic and intercultural encounters
between Native peoples and Euro-Americans, is a
long history of systematic policies of assimilation,
removal, and even elimination, particularly during
the sixty year period between 1830-1890. ough
Native tribes did not all have the same experiences
with US government officials or its policies, it is
possible to form a general picture of how these policies
impacted various Native peoples. e government’s
programs of assimilation, removal, and, when
necessary, elimination, wrought profound and lasting
effects on Native American tribes and communities.
According to the Enlightenment ideal of progress that
characterized the 19th century, many white Americans
believed that Native peoples were not only capable
of radically changing their cultures and lifestyles,
but that Native people would even view assimilative
measures of advancement as preferable over their
own culture. e government advanced assimilative
"ey made us many promises, more than I
can remember, but they never kept but one;
they promised to take our land, and they
took it."
1
—CHIEF RED CLOUD
1
Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York: Henry Holt & co. 2000 [1970]), 449.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans4
Prior to the 1960s and 70s, the words “savages” and “redskins” were common in letters and
government documents. Even today, history textbooks still use the word, “savage” to describe Native
people in general and the term “squaw,” a slur directed toward indigenous women. Some of these
slurs come directly from government propaganda campaigns that have tried to portray Native people
as “uncivilized.” e remnants of such derogatory propaganda is still evident in the names and
mascots of various sports teams.
policies in several ways, including stipulations laid
out in treaties. For instance, treaties with the Plains
tribes, such as the Crow, Sioux, and Cheyenne, often
required that they give up the traditional ways of life,
including the practice of traditional religion, and
stop harassing the westward flow of white settlers in
exchange for food and other goods, the promise of
land, as well as protection against white encroachment
on their lands. e government repeatedly broke these
treaties when they impeded access to desirable land
or gold. Assimilation was also advanced through
education. More progressive government officials and
ecclesial groups, some of whom considered themselves
friends of the Native Americans, created schools
and institutions which aimed to assimilate Native
peoples into Euro-Americans culture and values.
In addition to assimilative policies, the government also
seized Native lands. e rise of the doctrine of Manifest
Destiny, with its emphasis on the Enlightenment ideal
of progress, purportedly justified westward expansion
across the entire continental United States as the
divinely ordained destiny of the American project,
and with it, the invasions and appropriation of Native
lands. As the US government and white settlers saw it,
the advancement of the “American project” sanctioned
the systematic and forcible removal of Native groups.
For instance, in his first speech to Congress in 1829,
newly elected president, Andrew Jackson, known as
Sharp Knife among Native peoples, proposed the
establishment of a “permanent Indian frontier.” He
recommended the removal of all Native tribes in the
eastern United States to the “ample district west of
the Mississippi” where they would be left undisturbed
by whites.
2
Many remnant tribes in what was by that
time the eastern United States, including Hurons,
Miamis, Shawnees, and Ottawas, along with the
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, and Creeks gave
up their ancestral lands and made their way West.
Others, such as the Cherokee, were forcibly removed
from their homelands, and were herded like cattle
hundreds of miles to the westward to government
designated territories. Among the most infamous
of these forced removals is the Trail of Tears, during
which one in every four Cherokees died from disease,
exposure, or starvation.
4
e Trail of Tears is perhaps
the best known instance of forced relocation, but the
government also implemented many other forced
removals, including the infamous Navajo Long Walk.
2
Brown, 5.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans5
Assimilation
Different groups had different motives for promoting
boarding schools. e US government saw them as
a way to eliminate the “Indian problem,”
5
and thus
clear the way for cultural and economic advancement
(i.e., mining and agriculture). Ecclesial groups, both
Protestant and Catholic, along with some government
officials, primarily saw themselves as attempting to aid
Native people through a program of moral, religious,
and cultural reformation. A common view at the time
held that Native groups were dying breeds, doomed to
extinction if they could not learn to read, write, and
assimilate to the European way of life. Richard Pratt,
for instance, the founder of the first federally-run
native boarding school, seemed to believe that Native
peoples were equal to white Americans. Native peoples
simply had to be trained in the ways of “civilization”
(i.e., white Americans) while abandoning their old
ways. Indeed, some schools were even opened at the
behest of Native leaders. In 1877, Chief Red Cloud, a
Lakota war chief and a shrewd statesman, petitioned
the US government to allow the Jesuits to open a
school on the newly-established Pine Ridge Agency
for the very practical purpose of teaching Native
children how to read and write, skills he believed they
needed in order to survive in the white world.
ough ecclesial and religious actors had different aims
(i.e. evangelization) than those of the government
(i.e., economic growth, land appropriation, and
“pacification”), many of their methods of assimilation
overlapped. As part of this effort, children were
systematically removed from their homes and
communities, where their native dress was replaced by
Euro-American dress. Children were also forbidden
to speak their native language and practice native
customs, including religion. In fact, many traditional
indigenous ceremonies, rites, and rituals remained
illegal until the passage of the American Indian
Religious Freedom Act in 1978. In this way, most
schools advanced some version of the sentiment often
attributed to the founder of the notorious Carlisle
Indian School, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” In
other words, assimilation was elimination by other
means. Boarding schools not only separated students
from their homes and families, but also placed them
in an environment which they could not comprehend,
let alone navigate. Boarding schools required children
to learn a foreign culture and fundamentally alter
their identities in ways that ranged from language to
3
eda Perdue, "Civilization and Removal," in e Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, 76.
4
Brown, 7.
5
In one sense assimilation and elimination may be viewed as two approaches to the same question -- how to solve the “Indian” problem, the
problem of their very existence which was an impediment to westward expansion. See Robert M. Utley, e Lance and the Shield: e Life and Times
of Sitting Bull (New York: Ballentine, 1993), 38-42. Utley writes of the westward expansion through Lakota country: “Conquest of the wilderness
meant destruction of the Indians. About the means of destruction, however there was disagreement. ey could be either destroyed outright by
killing or, consistent with the tenets of progress, elevated from savagery to civilization. In either event, since the generic Indian (live savagery and
civilization) was a white conception, they ceased to exist” (42).
“
“Convinced that ‘savage’ Indians could
not survive in close proximity to ‘civilized’
Americans, they concluded that there
were only two future alternatives for
Native people. ey would either remain
‘uncivilized,’ die out, and become
extinct, or, preferably, they would become
‘civilized,’ thrive, and enter American
society.”
3
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans6
economics to religion. To make matters worse, children
suffered malnutrition in unsanitary conditions
that were rife with physical and verbal abuse.
Whatever the intention of boarding schools, they
had many negative effects, resulting in the personal
and social trauma of many indigenous peoples.
e boarding school project began with day schools
on native reservations. However, government officials
in the Bureau of Indian Affairs soon realized that the
schools were ineffective at making native students
conform to western standards of living. Because of
this, they implemented residential boarding schools
on or near the reservations. Yet, large numbers of
students fled these schools and returned home to their
families. us, began the rise of the off-reservation
boarding school, like Carlisle Indian School, where
students lived hundreds of miles from their families
and where school officials forcibly divested them
of their language, religion, and culture. With new
inventions such as the steam engine train, it became
easier to separate children from their families at
schools hundreds of miles away.
Officials in charge of implementing the boarding
schools often believed that the schools were good for
native people, and certainly thought them a boon
for American society at large. Some of the schools
included work programs in which Native students
apprenticed with a craftsman to learn the skills of a
marketable trade, benefiting both the student and
the economy. Students also learned skills, such as
reading and writing and values necessary to survive
within American society. However, values such as
individualism and ideas of strong private property
rights undermined long-standing traditions of
community and interconnectivity prevalent in many
Native groups.
The Conditions of Boarding Schools
Students removed from their homes and sent to
boarding schools encountered an overwhelming
plethora of enforced change. When students first
arrived they were often given new English names and
their long hair was cut in the European fashion. e
shorning of one’s hair was particularly traumatic since
hair holds spiritual significance among many tribes.
Dorothy Peche, a member of the Shoshone tribe, who
attended a federal boarding school, later described the
day when school officials cut her hair, saying it was
as though they “cut [her] throat.”
6
Old clothes were
confiscated and replaced with new school uniforms,
which were sometimes old military uniforms. Most
devastatingly, perhaps, school officials banned
students from speaking their Native languages and
forced them to speak only English.
Not only did students have to adjust to white
conceptions of space and organization, they were
also forced to adhere to white conceptions of time
and order. Day-to-day operations of the school were
highly regimented, even militaristic in order to instill
order and discipline in the students. School staff
often inflicted severe, corporal punishment for minor
infractions, such as speaking in one’s Native language.
Students who refused to assimilate were often beaten
or given other cruel punishments. e teachers
and staff of the schools were often underqualified.
6
Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays, ed. Albert Hurtado, et al. (Samford: Cengage Learning, 2015), 371-3.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans7
Many who taught at or staffed boarding schools
did so because they could not otherwise obtain
employment at schools back East or had been fired
from previous jobs. Many were former military
members who were not qualified for their positions.
Boarding schools were overcrowded and rampant with
disease, and students suffered physical or emotional
abuse in addition to malnourishment. Dorothy Peche,
recalled the utter disregard school officials showed for
the unsanitary conditions of the school. For instance,
she described officials forcing as many students as
possible to wash at the same time in the school’s only
tub. She also recalled that the school had a jail in
the basement where students who disobeyed school
policies, such as speaking their Native language,
were detained for long periods of time. While in this
windowless room, students were forced to sit in the
dark and subsist on bread and water.
7
Students also
endured abuse during their work programs. Some
white families who participated in the apprenticeship
programs worked children for long hours in poor
conditions.
Leaders of federal boarding schools allowed very little
contact between students and their families. In fact,
administrators even forged replies to parents’ letters
to make it seem as though the students were thriving
at the school. Some students attempted to run away,
with varied success. e distance from a school to one’s
home could span from just a few miles to hundreds
of miles, which often meant students died in their
attempt to escape the schools. Between the deaths of
these students and those who died from malnutrition
and poor living conditions, diseases like tuberculosis,
measles, and pneumonia, and other causes, the
mortality rate was high. Some school superintendents
falsified the number of deaths in official reports
sent to the federal government to make it appear as
though numbers were lower than they actually were.
For this reason, it is difficult to establish the death
rate. However, some early reports suggest that up to
20% of students died either at school or shortly after
returning home.
8
7
Hurtado, 371-3.
8
David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928 (Wichita: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 97-
135, esp. 124-131.
Tom Torlino - Navajo
Images taken by John N. Choate,
commissioned by Captain Richard Henry
Pratt, of the same student at the Carlisle
Indian School as evidence of assimilation into
white culture.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans8
Removal
roughout the 19th century, white settlers continued
to push West, as the US government sought to expand
its political and economic reach. Westward expansion
required the appropriation of Native peoples’ land.
e government took several different approaches
acquiring the land of tribal nations, including direct
treaty-making with Native Americans, legislative
action, the decimation of food supplies, and forcible
removal. In the East, many Native tribes were wiped
out from diseases that European settlers brought to the
continent. Of those that remained, some smaller tribes
were able to negotiate with the government; however,
by and large, the US government sought to remove
Native peoples to “Indian country.” Andrew Jackson,
who believed that Native tribes and whites could not
live together peacefully, promoted the establishment
of a “permanent Indian frontier,” to run from the
Mississippi River to the 95th meridian (though even
this boundary would change before the law went
into effect because of white encroachment into the
proposed territory).
9
Some tribes signed the Indian
Removal Treaty, choosing to move westward to live in
peace away from the growing white population, while
others acceded to giving up large swaths of land and
remaining on smaller reservations. e Chichasaw
nation, for example, sold their land and used the
money to purchase supplies, including livestock and
slaves for the move. Other tribal nations refused to
sign such treaties, which often resulted in the threat of
military violence and land theft. One such example is
the Cherokee Nation, which refused to sign the Indian
Removal Treaty. e Cherokee Nation resorted to
the law, appealing twice to the U.S. Supreme Court,
first in 1830 and again in 1831. e Cherokee won
their second appeal in Worcester v. Georgia in 1831.
e Court ruled that the state of Georgia could not
appropriate the land of the sovereign Cherokee Nation
and was beyond its rights in distributing said land as
part of statewide land lottery allotments.
10
Despite
the Cherokee success in the highest Court of the US
government, both the state of Georgia and President
Jackson refused to enforce the Court’s ruling. A
Native tribe had appealed to the highest court of the
US government and triumphed, yet to no avail. e
Cherokee were forcibly removed from their homeland
in 1838 in what is now known as “e Trail of Tears.”
e Cherokees’ forced removal was preceded by a
period of internment. Many of the deaths counted
among the Trail of Tears actually occurred prior to the
walk while the Cherokee languished in these camps.
11
Both at the state and federal levels, legislators passed
laws which made it nearly impossible for Native
peoples to protect their land rights. e Dawes Act in
1887 is perhaps the most well-known land allotment
program. It strove to divest Native peoples of their land
by breaking up traditional practices of land tenure and
converting tribally held land into allotments of private
property. Prior to the Dawes Act, federal and state
governments made efforts to remove Native peoples
9
Brown, 5-6.
10
Within its lottery system, the state of Georgia did include laws that allowed the Cherokee to make claims to their land against lottery winners,
but the law was so convoluted and difficult to understand the Cherokee were unable to successfully protect their land. See Perdue, 95-96.
11
e “Long Walk” of the Navajo is another example of forced removal. "References and Recommended Resources" for more information on the
"Long Walk."
“
“A Native tribe had appealed to the highest court of
the US government and triumphed, yet to no avail.
e Cherokee were forcibly removed from their
homeland in 1838 in what is now known as “e
Trail of Tears.”
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans9
from their land. States, such as Georgia, Mississippi,
and Tennessee, passed legislation to delegitimize
the sovereignty of tribal nations and deny them the
benefits and protections of a state citizen. Native
peoples were not allowed to participate in the state
government and could not be a witness in a court
of law. is last measure essentially legalized theft of
the Native peoples by white Americans as the Native
peoples could not testify against those who stole from
them. White Americans could go so far as to walk
into the home of a Native person, take something of
value and leave with no recourse to the Native person.
Of course, the “permanent Indian frontier” that
President Jackson touted in 1829 did not hold for
long, as white settlers continued to press westward.
West of the Mississippi the government continued
to make and break treaties with Native tribes. Treaty
negotiations were often dubious. e government
sometimes negotiated with tribal members who did
not have authority or authorization to represent their
tribes, and who, on occasion, were subsequently
killed by their own tribe in retribution. US officials
also capitalized on intratribal factionalism among
tribal chiefs who did not agree among themselves on
the best course of action. Perhaps the most infamous
broken treaty is the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868,
which designated the entire western half of what is
today South Dakota and part Nebraska as the Great
Sioux Reservation, and acknowledged large swathes of
Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, and North Dakota as
unceded territory. Any change to the treaty stipulations
required a signatory majority of three-fourths of all
Lakota men. Upon the discovery of gold in the Black
Hills, however, and after failed negotiations to acquire
the territory,
12
the US government determined to take
it by force, contriving reasons to instigate a war with
the Lakota (also known as the Sioux). In the course of
the war for the Black Hills, Sioux warriors delivered
the US army a crushing defeat at the Battle of the
Greasy Grass in 1876 (also called the Battle of Little
Bighorn). is, however, was not enough to deter
the federal government, which assumed military
occupation of all the reservations in Lakota country
and passed legislation requiring the tribe to give up
all claims to the Black Hills. To this day, the Lakota
people refuse to recognize the US claim to the Black
Hills as anything other than land theft. In fact, the
US Supreme Court agreed, and in the 1980 case, the
United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, ruled that
the federal government had illegally seized the Black
Hills and ordered the government to remunerate
the tribe in the amount of $106 million dollars. e
Lakota Nation refuses to accept this payment, which,
with interest now tops 1 billion dollars.
12
Government negotiators offered the Lakota only $6,000,000 for the Black Hills, though annual mining profits topped $8,000,000. See
Brown, 273-313 for a detailed account of the War for the Black Hills.
13
Perdue, 94.
“
“e army simply began to round up Creek
people, dragging them from their homes,
and put them on the road...overland and by
riverboat, freezing, starving, and drowning,
about fifteen thousand people were
‘drove off like dogs’ to the West.”
13
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans10
Elimination
Elimination did not necessarily mean physical death;
it also meant cultural and psychological death--the
total destruction of a way of life. e two primary
means by which the federal government sought to
eliminate the “Indian problem” were assimilation and
land divestment, which constituted death by other
means. However, alongside cultural elimination, and
intersecting with it, elimination also included the
physical deaths of millions of Native peoples. Some
forms of elimination were indirect such as disease,
malnutrition, and the decimation of food supplies.
Others were direct, such as massacres.
DESTRUCTION OF THE BUFFALO: In the mid-19th century somewhere between 30-60 million
buffalo roamed freely across the western plains. By the end of the 19th-century there were approximately
300 buffalo remaining. e destruction of the North American Bison (known commonly as buffalo)
to near extinction was the result of several factors, including the construction of the Northern Pacific
Railway, which cut through migration routes, the commercial sale of buffalo hides, and a concerted effort
on the part of the US government to coerce remaining bands of Native tribes to move to reservations.
Although there is still some debate among scholars as to the
American frontier army’s official military policy regarding
the destruction of the buffalo, there seems to be sufficient
evidence to, at the least, recognize the army’s overarching
participation and complicity in the decimation of the
buffalo. As the army saw it, Native American tribes were
not staying on the government assigned reservations. One
way to compel Native peoples, such as the Sioux, the Crow,
and the Cheyenne, to comply with government policy (i.e.
remain within the boundaries of the reservation), was to
destroy their traditional food source. e frontier army was
far more successful in attacking and killing the buffalo herds than they were in direct combat with the
Native Americans, who maneuvered more quickly and widely spread than the army. e army led groups on
party hunting trips, providing guns, ammunition, and protection as they hunted great numbers of buffalo
for sport, usually keeping only the tongue and sometimes humps for food and leaving the carcass to rot. A
group of businessmen visiting Fort McPherson were escorted by the Fifth Calvary on a hunting party that
killed over six hundred buffalo.
14
Army officers were known to have contests between them to see who could
kill the most buffalo. Furthermore, the army killed, using guns and even cannons, hundreds of buffalo that
came near the forts built along traditional buffalo trails. ere were some that were opposed to the slaughter
of the buffalo. ey saw this tactic as wasteful, a means of provoking hostility with the Native tribes, and
a poor reflection on the abilities of the army who they believed could easily “pacify” Native peoples.
14
David D. Smits, “e Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 315.
15
John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army (New York: e Century Co., 1897), 428.
"With my calvary and carbined artillery
encamped in front, I wanted no other
occupation in life than to ward off the
savage and kill off his food until there
should no longer be an Indian frontier in
our beautiful country."
15
—LTG. JOHN M. SCHOFIELD
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans11
In 1871, a Pennsylvania tannery created a method of converting the buffalo hide into commercial
leather, which led to a widespread hunt of buffalo by the hide hunters. e destruction of the buffalo
by hide hunters was further expanded with the construction of the railroad lines. e Northern
Pacific line reached the Dakota-Montana border in 1880 and conveyed thousands of hides across the
country to St. Louis. As the hide hunters destroyed the buffalo population they ventured onto lands
that were protected by treaties for hunting only by Native tribes. e US government once again
failed to adhere to agreements. ey did not protect the buffalo and the lands from the aggressive
hunting of the white Americans, allowing and even supporting the hunters in their economic pursuit.
While soldiers did use some buffalo meat for food and hide for clothing and shoes, the total devastation of
the buffalo, full or almost full carcasses left to rot, and the cavalier writings left behind about the importance
of destroying the food source of the Native Americans leaves little doubt about the motivations of many of
the ranking officials in the US government. General Nelson A. Miles recalled the elimination of the buffalo:
For Native peoples, such as the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Crow, and Lakota, the destruction of the buffalo was
the decisive blow to their way of life. e Crow Chief, Plenty Coups describes it in terms of death: “When
the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again.
After this nothing happened.”
17
MASSACRES: Native peoples and whites frequently clashed, and both inflicted terrible acts of violence upon
one another. Native tribes understood their actions as protecting their land, while the US Army saw its role
as protecting white settlers. However, if one steps back for a moment from assigning personal guilt and
assessing the individual moral implications of such killing, one sees that at the systemic level, massacres of
Native peoples fit into an overall program of elimination. roughout the second half of the 19th century,
the US Army massacred hundreds of Indians, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Among the most
famous are the Sand Creek Massacre and the Wounded Knee Massacre. In 1864, Colonel John Chivington
and his regiment of 700 men killed and mutilated nearly 150 unarmed members of the Cheyenne and
16
Nelson A. Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles (Chicago: Werner Co., 1987), 135.
17
Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge: Harvard, 2006), 2.
"is might seem like cruelty and wasteful extravagance but the buffalo, like the Indian, stood in
the way of civilization and in the path of progress, and the decree had gone forth that they must
both give way...e same territory which a quarter of a century ago was supporting those vast
herds of wild game, is now covered with domestic animals which afford the food supply for
hundreds of millions of people in civilized countries."
16
—GENERAL NELSON A. MILES
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans12
18
Nicholas Black Elk and John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (Albany: SUNY, 2008 [1931]), 219.
Arapaho tribes at Sand Creek. Nearly all those killed were women and children. Twenty-six years later,
on December 29, 1890, the US Army’s Seventh Cavalry massacred somewhere between 150-200 Sioux,
many of them women and children, though some estimates range as high as 300. e dead were buried
in a mass grave, and President Benjamin Harrison later awarded 20 members of the Seventh Cavalry the
Medal of Honor. ough there is some dispute about how the shooting began, Lakota Holy Man, Black
Elk later recalled:
“When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children
lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.
And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s
dream died there.”
18
The Impact of Native American
Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination
It is difficult to say how many Native Americans died
during the 19th century in the continental United
States, but we do know that populations declined
precipitously. Some estimates suggest there were
anywhere between 5 million and 15 million Native
people at the outset of the 19th century. By its close,
there were little over 200,000. Most people died from
disease, but many deaths were the result of more
systematic efforts to solve the “Indian problem.”
Today, many Native peoples suffer the effects of
historical and cultural trauma. Many, though
not all reservations, have high rates of poverty,
unemployment, and alcoholism. ere is also
widespread violence against women. According to the
Indian Law Resource Center, 4 in 5 Native women
have experienced violence, and according to the
Department of Justice, on some reservations Native
women are 10 times as likely to be murdered as non-
native women. In addition, infant mortality rates are
nearly double that of non-native populations.
Alongside these bleak realities, however, many Native
tribes have begun to reclaim their cultural heritage,
including preserving their language, which for some
had been on the brink of extinction. Native peoples
also continue to advocate for land and sovereignty
rights, and for environmental protections, such as
access to safe water and the preservation of sacred
sites.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans13
Timeline
8th-15th Century: Leif Ericson and other Norse peoples, possibly some Asian
groups, make contact with indigineous peoples in what today is known as
North and South America.
15th-to Early 19th Century: e French, Spanish, English, Portegese, Dutch
colonize the continent; many indigeninous groups are wiped out from diesease
or pressed into slavery; missionaries, such as Jesuit priests, evangelize indigenous
peoples; there is extensive trade between Native peoples and Eurpean traders.
19th century: e rise of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny; programs of
removal, assimilation, and elimination begin or intensify.
1831-1877: Trail of Tears
1848: Gold Rush begins, intensifying westward expansion through Indian
Country
1864: Navajo Long Walk
1868: Fort Laramie Treaty
1876: US Army suffers its worst defeat against Native American in the Battle
of the Greasy Grass/Little Bighorn.
1879: e first federally run native boarding school, Carlisle Indian School,
opens.
1887: e Dawes Act is passed, separating tribal reservations into individual
allotments to remove native people from their tribes. Native people who
accepted allotments were granted citizenship.
1890: Massacre at Wounded Knee, when over 150 Lakota people, many
unarmed women, children, and elders, were killed.
1930s: e Livestock Reduction Program decimates the Navajo livestock
supply and economic livelihood.
1956: e Indian Relocation Act is passed, encouraging native peoples to leave
their reservations and traditional lands and assimilate into urban populations.
1973: Wounded Knee Occupation, when the American Indian Movement
(AIM) occupied the 1890 massacre site for 71 days.
1978: American Indian Religious Freedom Act passed, giving Native peoples
the legal right to practice traditional rituals and ceremonies.
Intersection of
Native American
Assimilation,
Removal, and
Elimination with
Human Dignity
At best, government policies toward
Native Americans demonstrate the
near-universal 19th century view that
Native American culture and values
were “uncivilized,” and therefore inferior
to Euro-American culture and values;
thus, Native Americans needed to be
“civilized,” or assimilated. To say that
Euro-Americans and Native peoples
did not understand one another is an
understatement. Federal and state policies
reflect this lack of recognition and the
naive view that a person’s culture and way
of life could simply be erased and replaced
with a foreign culture and its values. In
fact, culture and values are an expression
of one’s community, membership within
that community, and intrinsically tied
to one’s very sense of self. Assimilative
policies left many Native tribes bereft of
the cultural concepts to make sense of the
world, going as far as changing people’s
very names. e US government’s policies
and practices prioritized political power
and economic growth over fidelity to
treaties, the rule of law, and the value of
people’s lives and flourishing. Many of the
actions undertaken by the government,
army, and individuals completely
disregarded the humanity of Native
peoples, and because they were seen as an
obstacle to expansion, they were treated
as expendable, if they could not or would
not adapt to Euro-American values.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans14
References and
Recommended Resources
Online
Choate, John N., Tom Torlino - Navajo, 1882, Carlisle Indian School, Digital Resource Center, http://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/
teach/analyzing-and-after-photographs-exploring-student-files.
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. (2014) “Peoples of the Mesa Verde Region: e Long Walk.” Accessed May 11, 2020. http://
www.crowcanyon.org/educationproducts/peoples_mesa_verde/historic_long_walk.asp.
Editorial Board. “An Epidemic of Violence Against Native American Women.” Bloomberg Opinion, February 12, 2019. https://www.
bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-12/savanna-s-act-and-the-epidemic-of-violence-against-native-women.
Indian Law Resource Center. Accessed May 11, 2020. https://indianlaw.org/content/about-center.
Kelly, Jason. “When the Past Presents Problems.” Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2019. https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/when-the-
past-presents-problems/.
Kent, Jim. “Boarding School memories haunt Lakota man.” SDPB Radio, October 8, 2012. https://listen.sdpb.org/post/boarding-
school-memories-haunt-lakota-man.
Kessell, John L. "General Sherman and the Navajo Treaty of 1868: A Basic and Expedient Misunderstanding." e Western Historical
Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1981): 251-72. doi:10.2307/3556587.
Khan Academy. “e Dawes Act.” Accessed May 11, 2020. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/
american-west/a/the-dawes-act.
King, Gilbert. “Where the Buffalo No Longer Roamed.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 17, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/.
Library of Congress: Research Guides. “Indian Removal Act: Primary Documents in American History.” Accessed May 11, 2020.
https://guides.loc.gov/indian-removal-act.
Little, Becky. “How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ rough Assimilation.” History Stories, November 1, 2018. https://
www.history.com/news/how-boarding-schools-tried-to-kill-the-indian-through-assimilation.
McPherson, Robert S. Navajo Livestock Reduction in Southeastern Utah, 1933-46: History Repeats Itself.” American Indian
Quarterly 22, no. 1/2 (January 1998): 1-18. www.jstor.org/stable/1185104.
Miles, Nelson A. Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles. Chicago: Werner Co., 1987. https://hdl.handle.
net/2027/uc1.31175030736683.
Millich, G. “Survivors of Indian boarding schools tell their stories.” WKAR News, 2020. https://www.wkar.org/post/survivors-
indian-boarding-schools-tell-their-stories#stream/0.
Northern Arizona University. “Indigenous Voices of the Colorado Plateau: Navajo Livestock Reduction.” Accessed May 11, 2020.
https://library.nau.edu/speccoll/exhibits/indigenous_voices/navajo/livestock.html.
Northern Plains Reservation Aid. “History and Culture: Boarding Schools” Accessed May 11, 2020. http://www.nativepartnership.
org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_boardingschools.
PBS Online. “Africans in America: Indian Removal 1814-1858.” Accessed May 11, 2020. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/
part4/4p2959.html.
Perdue, eda and Michael D. Green. “‘Civilization’ and Removal.” In e Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast, 72-
99. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/stable/10.7312/perd11570.
Salam, Maya. “Native American Women Are Facing a Crisis.” e New York Times, April 12, 2019. https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/04/12/us/native-american-women-violence.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article.
Schofield, John M. Forty-Six Years in the Army. New York: e Century Co., 1897.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans15
References and Recommended Resources (Cont.)
Smith, Andrea. Indigenous Peoples and Boarding Schools: A Comparative Study. January 29, 2009. https://www.un.org/esa/socdev/
unpfii/documents/IPS_Boarding_Schools.pdf.
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. “Treaties Still Matter: e Dakota Access Pipeline.” Accessed May 11,
2020. https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-treaties/dapl.
Smits, David D. “e Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883.” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Fall
1994): 313-338. https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/stable/971110.
e National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. “Break the Silence, Begin the Healing. Working for Truth, Healing,
and Reconciliation for Boarding School Survivors and Descendants.” Accessed May 11, 2020. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/.
University of Washington Libraries. “American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection.” Accessed May 11, 2020. https://
content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/index.html.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Healthy. “Infant Health and Mortality.” Accessed May 11,
20202. https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlID=38.
Print
Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928. Wichita: University
of Kansas Press, 1995.
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. 1970. Reprinted with preface by Dee Brown.
New York: Henry Holt & co., 2000.
Elk, Nicholas Black and John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks. 1931. e Premier Edition. Albany: SUNY, 2008.
Hurtado, Albert, and Peter Iverson, eds. Major Problems in American Indian History: Documents and Essays. Samford: Cengage
Learning, 2015.
Lear, Jonathan. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Cambridge: Harvard, 2006.
Utley, Robert M. e Lance and the Shield: e Life and Times of Sitting Bull. New York: Ballentine, 1993.
mcgrath.nd.edue Assimilation, Removal, and Elimination of Native Americans16
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