Native American History - HIST 372 Resource Guide

In conjunction with the civil rights movement, the youth counterculture, and the emerging emphasis on multiculturalism, a pan-Indian movement began to take shape in America during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The development in the culture wars coincided with the emergence of the first generation of Native American academics, scholars who wrote and spoke eloquently of their people’s plight.

Trading houses originally were maintained by the government for the treaty tribes to encourage exclusive commerce with the United States rather than with England or Spain. In 1824 the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created by the War Department to administer the Civilization Fund, created in 1819, and to examine claims arising out of laws regulating relations with the Indians. In 1832 a commissioner of Indian affairs was authorized, and two years later the bureau was made a major agency within the War Department handling all affairs with Indians. In 1849, with the creation of the Interior Department, the bureau came under civilian control and expanded to provide a variety of services to both treaty and nontreaty tribes.

Although American Indian activism conjures images of political protests and calls for red power, it has a long and complex history. In fact, Native Americans have always actively challenged first European and later American colonization. Defense of land and lifeways by local communities and individual Native nations on the battlefield and through treaty negotiations were among the most visible and viable early oppositional strategies.

Indian casinos are legal, multibillion-dollar gambling facilities that operate on the lands of federally recognized, sovereign, Native American nations. Perhaps few developments among Indian tribes in the past century have so divided the American public as the explosive growth of the estimated 410 casinos in 28 states since the late 1980s.

In 1492, on both sides of the Atlantic, concepts of land and sovereignty were primarily sacred. American Indians, Europeans, and Africans, from their different religious perspectives, perceived that the human use of the earth was subordinate to spiritual forces, even if this premise was not always practiced. Spiritual beings were held to be sovereign, the ultimate authorities. However, with regard to the land there was a significant difference between American Indian and European religious conceptions.

Official treatment of Indians by the U.S. federal government.

The relationship between various Indian tribes and white settlers predated the formation of the U.S. government in 1781. Spanish, French, and English settlers followed different policies in relating to native populations: The Spanish advocated an aggressive approach to assimilation; the French sought a middle ground of mutual accommodation; and the English pursued the removal of native peoples from areas of white settlement.

The Indian Removal Act was a federal law that allowed the U.S. president to exchange Native American land east of the Mississippi for land west of the Mississippi. Although President Andrew Jackson and supporters of this law claimed it would be beneficial to the American Indians, in fact, this law caused widespread suffering, death, and poverty for Native American Indians by removing them from their native land and forcing them to travel hundreds of miles, without enough food and water, to new land that was in a different climate than they were used to and that often was unsuitable to the way of life they had developed.

The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) was an attempt, during the Great Depression, to help American Indians to become economically self-sufficient, by encouraging them to hold their tribal lands in common, and by providing them with money to buy land and start or expand businesses.

Indian self-determination is the idea that American Indians ought to have the right and responsibility to govern their own tribes and run their own affairs. After centuries of taking away American Indian homelands, destroying tribal governments, and wiping out native cultures and traditions, starting in the 1970s, the U.S. government made Indian self-determination the official government policy.

Between 1776 and 1900, relations between American Indians and the non-Indian majority in the United States were characterized by a growing imbalance of power between the two peoples, and by considerable misunderstanding. In the postrevolutionary period most Native American people, while cognizant of the growing political and military power of the new United States, remained politically autonomous.

Pawnee lawyer. Echohawk is a cofounder and longtime executive director of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), a law firm based in Boulder, Colorado, which has been at the center of an explosive growth in litigation concerning the rights of Indian people and tribes during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

This article lists some important court cases related to American Indians. Contemporary federal court decisions, statutes, and presidential statements often provide strong support for tribal self-government. According to U.S. judicial doctrine, for example, tribal legal regimes survive as manifestations of indigenous sovereign powers, rather than as creations of federal law. In keeping with this notion, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution does not apply to actions of tribal governments because the first ten amendments to the Constitution bind only the federal government and its agencies, not independent sovereigns such as Indian nations.

The roots of modern Pan-Indian organizations lie in the eighteenth century in the eastern United States in what was still English colonial America. Pontiac, an Ottawa leader, attempted to create an intertribal league to resist the continued invasions of the English. His political and military vision was combined with the religious vision of the Delaware prophet Neolin, who promised the return of Indian lands by supernatural means if native people who joined the league observed a set of ethical standards that represented a mixture of Indian and Christian beliefs.

Termination and relocation were two federal government policies of the 1950s, regarding American Indians. These policies were supposed to relieve Native American poverty by assimilating American Indians into the larger mainstream culture. Instead, the policies caused even more poverty.