Американские индейцы

in a canoe raised upon posts, while cave burial reappeared among the Aleut

of Alaska, and earth burial among the Eskimo. The dread of mentioning the

name of the dead was as universal as destroying the property of the

deceased, even to the killing of his horse or dog, while the custom of

placing food near the grave for the spirit during the journey to the other

world was almost as common, Laceration of the body, cutting off of the

hair, general neglect of the person, and ceremonial wailing, morning and

evening, sometimes for weeks, were also parts of their funeral customs.

Beyond the directly inherited traditional Native American religions, a

wide body of modified sects abounds.The Native American Church claims a

membership of 250,000, which would constitute the largest of the Native

America religious organizations. Though the church traces the sacramental

use ofthe peyote cactus back ten thousand years, the Native American Сhurch

was only founded in 1918. Well into the reservation era, this organization

was achieved with the help of a Smithsonian Institute anthropologist. The

church incorporates generic Native American religious rites, Christianity,

and the use of the peyote plant. The modern peyote ritual is comprised of

four parts: praying, singing, eating peyote, and quietly contemplating.

The Native American Church, or Peyote Church illustrates a trend of

modifying and manipulating traditional Native American spirituality. The

Native American Church incorporates Christianity, as well as moving away

from tribal specific religion. Christianity has routinely penetrated Native

American spirituality in the last century. And in the last few decades, New

Age spirituality has continued the trend.

***

All of the American Native cultures had in common a deep spiritual

relationship with the land and the life forms it supported. According to

First Nations spiritual beliefs, human beings are participants in a world

of interrelated spiritual forms. First Nations maintain great respect for

all living things. With the arrival of European newcomers, this delicate

balance of life forms was disrupted. In the 18th and 19th centuries,

contact with Europeans began to change traditional ways of life forever.

Native americans and the newcomers

The formulation of public policy toward the Indians was of concern to

the major European colonizing powers.

Colonization

The Spanish tried assiduously to Christianize the natives and to

remake their living patterns. Orders were issued to congregate scattered

Indian villages in orderly, well-placed centers, assuring the Indians at

the same time that by moving to such centers they would not lose their

outlying lands. This was the first attempt to create Indian reservations.

The promise failed to protect Indian land, according to the Franciscan monk

and historian of Mexico, Juan Torquemada, who reported about 1599 that

there was hardly "a palm of land" that the Spaniards had not taken. Many

Indians who did not join the congregations for fear of losing what they

owned fled to mountain places and lost their lands anyway.

The Russians never seriously undertook colonization in the New World.

When Peter I the Great sent Vitus Jonassen Bering into the northern sea

that bears his name, interest was in scientific discovery, not overseas

territory. Later, when the problem of protecting and perhaps expanding

Russian occupation was placed before Catherine II the Great, she declared

(1769): It is for traders to traffic where they please. I will furnish

neither men, nor ships, nor money, and I renounce forever all lands and

possessions in the East Indies and in America.

The Swedish and Dutch attempts at colonization were so brief that

neither left a strong imprint on New World practices. The Dutch government,

however, was probably the first (1645) of the European powers to enter into

a formal treaty with an Indian tribe, the Mohawk. Thus began a

relationship, inherited by the British, that contributed to the ascendancy

of the English over the French in North America.

France handicapped its colonial venture by transporting to the New

World a modified feudal system of land tenure that discouraged permanent

settlement. Throughout the period of French occupation, emphasis was on

trade rather than on land acquisition and development, and thus French

administrators, in dealing with the various tribes, tried primarily only to

establish trade relations with them. The French instituted the custom of

inviting the headmen of all tribes with which they carried on trade to come

once a year to Montreal, where the governor of Canada gave out presents and

talked of friendship. The governor of Louisiana met southern Indians at

Mobile.

The English, reluctantly, found themselves competing on the same basis

with annual gifts. Still later, United States peace commissioners were to

offer permanent annuities in exchange for tribal concessions of land or

other interests. In contrast to the French, the English were primarily

interested in land and permanent settlements; beginning quite early in

their occupation, they felt an obligation to bargain with the Indians and

to conclude formal agreements with compensation to presumed Indian

landowners. The Plymouth settlers, coming without royal sanction, thought

it incumbent upon them to make terms with the Massachuset Indians. Cecilius

Calvert (the 2nd Baron Baltimore) and William Penn, while possessing royal

grants in Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively, nevertheless took pains

to purchase occupancy rights from the Indians. It became the practice of

most of the colonies to prohibit indiscriminate and unauthorized

appropriation of Indian land. The usual requirement was that purchases

could be consummated only by agreement with the tribal headman, followed by

approval of the governor or other official of the colony. At an early date

also, specific areas were set aside for exclusive Indian use. Virginia in

1656 and commissioners for the United Colonies of New England in 1658

agreed to the creation of such reserved areas. Plymouth Colony in 1685

designated for individual Indians separate tracts that could not be

alienated without their consent.

In spite of these official efforts to protect Indian lands,

unauthorized entry and use caused constant friction through the colonial

period. Rivalry with the French, who lost no opportunity to point out to

the Indians how their lands were being encroached upon by the English; the

activity of land speculators, who succeeded in obtaining large grants

beyond the settled frontiers; and, finally, the startling success of the

Ottawa chief Pontiac in capturing English strongholds in the old Northwest

(the Great Lakes region) as a protest against this westward movement,

together prompted King George III's ministers to issue a proclamation

(1763) that formalized the concept of Indian land titles for the first time

in the history of European colonization in the New World. The document

prohibited issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the

Indian title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty. The

proclamation reserved for the use of the tribes "all the Lands and

Territories lying to the Westward of the sources of the Rivers which fall

into the Sea from the West and Northwest. ”Land west of the Appalachians

might not be purchased or entered upon by private persons, but purchases

might be made in the name of the king or one of the colonies at a council

meeting of the Indians”.

This policy continued up to the termination of British rule and was

adopted by the United States. The Appalachian barrier was soon passed -

thousands of settlers crossed the mountains during the American Revolution

- but both the Articles of Confederation and the federal Constitution

reserved either to the president or to Congress sole authority in Indian

affairs, including authority to extinguish Indian title by treaty. When

French dominion in Canada capitulated in 1760, the English announced that

"the Savages or Indian Allies of his most Christian Majesty, shall be

maintained in the lands they inhabit, if they choose to remain there."

Thereafter, the proclamation of 1763 applied in Canada and was embodied in

the practices of the dominion government. (The British North America Act of

1867, which created modern Canada, provided that the parliament of Canada

should have exclusive legislative authority with respect to "Indians, and

lands reserved for the Indians." Thus, both North American countries made

control over Indian matters a national concern.)

United States policy: the late 18th and 19th centuries

The first full declaration of U.S. policy was embodied in the

Northwest Ordinance (1787): The utmost good faith shall always be

observed toward the Indians, their lands and property shall never be

taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and

liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and

lawful wars authorized by congress; but laws founded in justice and

humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being

done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.This

doctrine was embodied in the act of August 7, 1789, as one of the first

declarations of the U.S. Congress under the Constitution.The final

shaping of the legal and political rights of the Indian tribes is found

in the opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall, notably in decision in

the case of Worcester v. Georgia: The Indian nations had always been

considered as distinct, independent, political communities, retaining

their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the land,

from time immemorial. . . . The settled doctrine of the law of nations

is, that a weaker power does not surrender its independence - its right

to self-government - by associating with a stronger, and taking its

protection. A weak state, in order to provide for its safety, may place

itself under the protection of one more powerful, without stripping

itself of the right of government, and ceasing to be a state.The first

major departure from the policy of respecting Indian rights came with the

Indian Removal Act of 1830. For the first time the United States resorted

to coercion, particularly in the cases of the Cherokee and Seminole

tribes, as a means of securing compliance. The Removal Act was not in

itself coercive, since it authorized the president only to negotiate with

tribes east of the Mississippi on a basis of payment for their lands; it

called for improvements in the east and a grant of land west of the

river, to which perpetual title would be attached. In carrying out the

law, however, resistance was met with military force. In the decade

following, almost the entire population of perhaps 100,000 Indians was

moved westward. The episode moved Alexis de Tocqueville to remark in

1831: The Europeans continued to surround [the Indians] on every side,

and to confine them within narrower limits . . . and the Indians have

been ruined by a competition which they had not the means of sustaining.

They were isolated in their own country, and their race only constituted

a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of a numerous and

dominant people.

The territory west of the Mississippi, it turned out, was not so

remote as had been supposed. The discovery of gold in California (1848)

started a new sequence of treaties, designed to extinguish Indian title

to lands lying in the path of the overland routes to the Pacific. The

sudden surge of thousands of wagon trains through the last of the Indian

country and the consequent slaughtering of prairie and mountain game that

provided subsistence for the Indians brought on the most serious Indian

wars the country had experienced. For three decades, beginning in the

1850s, raids and sporadic pitched fighting took place up and down the

western Plains, highlighted by such incidents as the Custer massacre by

Sioux and Cheyenne Indians (1876), the Nez Perce chief Joseph's running

battle in 1877 against superior U.S. army forces, and the Chiricahua

Geronimo's long duel with authorities in the Southwest, resulting in his

capture and imprisonment in 1886. Toward the close of that period, the

Ghost Dance religion, arising out of the dream revelations of a young

Paiute Indian, Wovoka, promised the Indians a return to the old life and

reunion with their departed kinsmen. The songs and ceremonies born of

this revelation swept across the northern Plains. The movement came to an

abrupt end December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.

Believing that the Ghost Dance was disturbing an uneasy peace, government

agents moved to arrest ringleaders. Sitting Bull was killed (December 15)

while being taken into custody, and two weeks later units of the U.S. 7th

Cavalry at Wounded Knee massacred more than 200 men, women, and children

who had already agreed to return to their homes. A further major shift of

policy had occurred in 1871 after congressional discussions lasting

several years. U.S. presidents, with the advice and consent of the

Senate, had continued to make treaties with the Indian tribes and commit

the United States to the payment of sums of money. The House of

Representatives protested, since a number of congressmen had come to the

view that treaties with Indian tribes were an absurdity (a view earlier

held by Andrew Jackson). The Senate yielded, and the act of March 3,

1871, declared that "hereafter no Indian nation or tribe" would be

recognized "as an independent power with whom the United States may

contract by treaty." Indian affairs were brought under the legislative

control of the Congress to an extent that had not been attempted

previously. Tribal authority with respect to criminal offenses committed

by members within the tribe was reduced to the extent that murder and

other major crimes were placed under the jurisdiction of the federal

courts. The most radical undertaking of the new legislative policy was

the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. By that time the Indian tribes

had been moved out of the mainstreams of traffic and were settled on

lands that they had chosen out of the larger areas that they had formerly

occupied. Their choice in most cases had been confirmed by treaty,

agreement, act of Congress, or executive order of the president. The

tribes that lived by hunting over wide areas found reservation

confinement a threat to their existence. Generally, they had insisted on

annuity payments or rations, or both, and the U.S. peace commissioners

had been willing to offer such a price in return for important land

cessions. In time the view came to be held that reservation life fostered

indolence and perpetuated customs and attitudes that held Indians back

from assimilation. The strategy offered by proponents of this theory was

the Allotment Act authorizing the president to divide the reservations

into individual parcels and to give every Indian, whether he wanted it or

not, a particular piece of the tribally owned land. In order not to make

the transition too abrupt, the land would be held in trust for a period

of 25 years, after which ownership would devolve upon the individual.

With it would go all the rights and duties of citizenship. Reservation

land remaining after all living members of the tribes had been provided

with allotments was declared surplus, and the president was authorized to

open it for entry by non-Indian homesteaders, the Indians being paid the

homestead price. A total of 118 reservations was allotted in this manner,

but the result was not what had been anticipated. Through the alienation

of surplus lands (making no allowance for children yet unborn) and

through patenting of individual holdings, the Indians lost 86,000,000

acres (34,800,000 hectares), or 62 percent, of a total of 138,000,000

acres in Indian ownership prior to 1887. A generation of landless Indians

resulted, with no vocational training to relieve them of dependence upon

land. The strategy also failed in that ownership of land did not effect

an automatic acculturation in those Indians who received individual

parcels. Through scattering of individuals and families, moreover, social

cohesiveness tended to break down. The result was a weakening of native

institutions and cultural practices with nothing offered in substitution.

What was intended as transition proved to be a blind alley. The Indian

population had been dwindling through the decades after the mid-19th

century. The California Indians alone, it was estimated, dropped from

100,000 in 1853 to not more than 30,000 in 1864 and 19,000 in 1906.

Cholera in the central Plains in 1849 struck the Pawnee. As late as 1870-

71 an epidemic of smallpox brought disaster to the Blackfeet, Assiniboin,

and Cree. These events gave currency to the concept of the Indian as "the

vanishing American." The decision of 1871 to discontinue treaty making

and the passage of the Allotment Act of 1887 were both founded in the

belief that the Indians would not survive, and hence it did not much

matter whether their views were sought in advance of legislation or

whether lands were provided for coming generations. When it became

obvious after about 1920 that the Indians, whose numbers had remained

static for several years, were surely increasing, the United States was

without a policy for advancing the interests of a living people.

20th-century reforms of U.S. policy

A survey in 1926 brought into clear focus the failings of the previous

40 years. The investigators found most Indians "extremely poor," in bad

health, without education, and lacking adjustment to the dominant culture

around them. Under the impetus of these findings and other pressures for

reform, Congress adopted the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which

contemplated an orderly decrease of federal control and a concomitant

increase of Indian self-government and responsibility. The essentials of

the new law were as follows: (1) allotment of tribal lands was prohibited

in the future, but tribes might assign use rights to individuals; (2) so-

called surplus lands not pre-empted by homesteaders might be returned to

the tribes; (3) tribes might adopt written constitutions and charters of

incorporation embodying their continuing inherent powers to manage internal

affairs; and (4) funds were authorized for the establishment of a revolving

credit program, for land purchases, for educational assistance, and for

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