The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

In the 1870s, US troops mounted attacks against Indigenous tribes throughout the West, killing hundreds of people, including members of the Blackfeet and Nez Perce tribes. The Ponca tribe, meanwhile, walked back from where they were relocated in Indian Territory to their ancestral home on the southern South Dakota border, led by Chief Standing Bear. The Ponca had never been a large tribe, “but by the time Lewis and Clark passed through in 1807, their numbers had been reduced to around two hundred by a smallpox epidemic” (122). After the Ponca recovered, they began to plant crops and hunted bison. The hunting forced them to confront the Oglala Brulé Lakota, who were more numerous.

Things worsened for the Ponca when White settlers flooded into their territory in the 1850s. Unable to access bison due to the Lakota, the Ponca signed a treaty in 1858, giving up much of their land. In exchange, the US government promised them food, schools, and protection from other tribes. None of these provisions arrived, however, and the Ponca began to starve on their meager plot. In 1865, they signed a new treaty that gave them “more land and more freedoms in most of their old range” (122). Unfortunately, this was around the time when the Lakota chief Red Cloud meted out a resounding defeat against the US Army, forcing troops back to Fort Laramie. Due to their unwillingness to upset the Lakota, the United States gave them the Poncas’ land and moved the latter tribe to Indian Territory in 1877. The land was non-arable, causing the Poncas to move again in winter, westward to the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River without supplies. By spring, one-third of the tribe had died of starvation.

Among those who starved to death was Chief Standing Bear’s son, Bear Shield. Standing Bear insisted on fulfilling his promise to his son, made just before his death, that Standing Bear would bury him in the ancestral homelands to the north, along the Niobrara River. The Omaha tribe, which occupied what is now Nebraska, welcomed them. General George Crook, a notorious fighter of Indigenous tribes, was sent to arrest the Ponca. He imprisoned them at Fort Omaha. However, Crook had a change of heart and let the Ponca stay at Fort Omaha to rest instead of returning them to Indian Territory. He then contacted Thomas Tibbles—a journalist who could draw the public’s attention on behalf of the Ponca. Tibbles wrote several editorials. Finally, two Omaha attorneys agreed to represent Standing Bear in court in the case that became known as United States ex rel. Standing Bear v. Crook. Judge Elmer Scipio Dundy presided over the case and delivered the verdict on May 12, 1879. Dundy ruled that Indigenous people are legally defined persons according to the law, with the right to sue in federal court, and have the same rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as Whites (128).

Alas, Standing Bear and his followers continued their journey “to their village site on the Niobrara River” (128), where he intended to bury his son’s bones. Standing Bear’s argument before the court, however, had lasting significance. It challenged the Fourteenth Amendment’s assertion that all people born in the United States were American citizens except for Indigenous peoples. Additionally, there was recognition, by the 1880s, that the US government’s attempts to administer to the Indigenous had failed. During this decade, “an Indian rights movement began to grow” (129).

In 1882, two reformers in organized the Indian Rights Association in Philadelphia, and the organization later opened offices in Washington, DC, and Boston. These “Friends of the Indian” met yearly at Lake Mohonk in New York starting in 1883. Clinton B. Fisk, who had founded Fisk University, chaired the conference. He linked “slavery, Indians, and reform” (130), arguing that, while Black people couldn’t be fit for freedom until made free, the Indigenous had to be made citizens to be fit for citizenship. These friends saw themselves as “guardians of Indian interests” and were auditors of the Office of Indian Affairs (131), overseeing agents and writing reports both to commissioners and to Congress.

The first Indian boarding school was opened in 1879 by US Army officer Richard Henry Pratt in a former army barracks in Pennsylvania. Pratt opened the school with the intention of civilizing Indigenous people. As part of his mission, in addition to teaching them standard subjects, such as English, art, and mechanical studies, he forbade his students from speaking in their native languages and used corporal punishment to ensure obedience. Other punishments included “having one’s mouth washed out with lye soap” (138), beatings, and being locked inside of a guardhouse with only bread and water to eat. Additionally, students were forced to wear “clothing that felt cumbersome and awkward” (134), and their hair was cut. For the Lakota, having one’s hair cut was a custom only when in mourning.

Despite the boarding schools’ flagrant dismissal of Indigenous people’s customs and preference, many Indigenous leaders supported the schools, believing that assimilation was the only way to ensure the survival of future generations. A decade after Pratt’s school opened, 20 more were erected, run by the Office of Indian Affairs. There were also numerous agency schools placed near Indian agencies nationwide and dozens of religious boarding schools, usually operated by Catholics. The federal government increased spending on Indigenous education to around two million dollars by 1894. Boarding schools remained open in the United States until the late 1930s.

In some instances, Indigenous parents who could not afford to care for their children begged the boarding schools to take them. In many other instances, Indigenous parents did not like the idea of being separated from their children, though the Office of Indian Affairs and Indian agents often coerced them. There were dangers at the boarding schools, in addition to the excessive punishments. At one school, a nine-year-old girl was raped in her bed in the middle of the night. It was difficult to communicate to those back home how dire conditions were, as many Indigenous people could not read or write English and the children began to forget their native languages.

In Canada, the boarding school system lasted until the 1996, when the final school closed. The purpose of the schools, according to Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John Macdonald, was to give the Indigenous students industrial training and to help them “acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men” (139). Many boarding schools had graveyards on their grounds where the children who never returned to their parents or their tribes were buried.

In 1928, the government conducted an investigation of Indigenous “administration, health, and education” entitled the Meriam Report—an 800-page document filled with statistical analysis (140). The report found that boarding schools often hired underqualified or altogether unqualified staff members who were paid poorly. Also, the schools ran on child labor, and many of the children were malnourished. Clothes were often passed down until they were threadbare. At one school, a pair of pants had been worn by 12 different boys. Conditions in the buildings were also found to be substandard. There was poor ventilation, overcrowding, and nonoperational plumbing.

In the 1880s, Herbert Welsh, one of the founders of the Indian Rights Association, traveled throughout the Plains and the Southwest, observing the living conditions of Indigenous tribes. He found that many lived in poverty and squalid conditions. He also believed that the reservation system discouraged any motivation to improve their lot. He concluded that the only solution was to end the reservation system. The government, at this time, agreed. The solution, many White reformers believed, was to encourage property ownership.

In 1887, Senator Henry Dawes helped pass the General Allotment Act, also known as the Indian Severalty Act or the Dawes Act. The bill, which allotted reservation lands to Indigenous people according to age and family status, was passed without any consultation with Indigenous tribes or their leaders. The purposes of the bill were to break up tribes, encourage private enterprise through farming, reduce expenditures toward Indian administration, fund Indian boarding schools, and “provide a land base for white settlement” (145).

The Dawes Act, as it is popularly known, made racialized determinations about who could officially be regarded as Indigenous. The tribes, on the other hand, recognized their members through not only descent, but also marriage, language, and residence.

In 1906, the Dawes Act was amended into what was passed as the Burke Act. This legislation created a competency test based on how much “white blood” one had in relation to Indigenous blood. Those with a sufficient amount of the former were regarded as “smart and civilized enough to understand private ownership and the sale of property” (146). Phrenologists were sent into Indigenous territories to determine this worthiness. Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller was against the Dawes Act, which he believed was merely a ruse to acquire Indigenous lands and open them up for settlement. However, he was also opposed to Indigenous people’s autonomy, arguing that their cultural practices, particularly their dances, were “heathenish” and “calculated to stimulate the warlike passions of the young warriors of the tribe” (153). He also disliked the influence of medicine men.

The passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 put an end to the allotment system, but it retained the fiction of “blood quantum.” Worse, White federal employees completed censuses and determined allotments on the basis of European lineage. They were inclined to give good land to Indigenous people who supported their policies. In other instances, prime allotments were given to White people, many of whom paid off Indian agents. As a result, Whites own much of the lakeshore on some of Minnesota’s best lakes and have the richest farmland in Nebraska, Montana, and South Dakota.

The General Allotment was further amended in the 1890s. The Nelson Act concerned only tribes in Minnesota. The legislation sought to dismantle all Minnesota reservations and remove the Ojibwe people from there and parts of North Dakota to the new White Earth Reservation in west-central Minnesota. This was a ruse to allow business interests access to the ample timber found in northern Minnesota. Some Ojibwe were so furious when they found out about the plan that they burned down “the old-growth pine on their homelands” (147).

In 1898, Congress passed the Curtis Act. Charles Curtis, a Kansas Republican senator who later became vice president under Herbert Hoover and was Indigenous on his mother’s side, wrote the bill. He sought to create legislation that respected tribal customs but also a law that created a pathway to assimilation. As the bill worked its way through the House and the Senate, it was amended five times. In the end, it bore little resemblance to what Curtis had originally authored. The finalized Curtis Act “abolished tribal government, treaty lands, and communal landholdings” (148). Curtis regretted the legislation until the end of his life.

In 1906, a new piece of legislation concerning allotment was passed. The Burke Act introduced “fee-simple patents,” meaning that “competent” Indians could own their own land, rather than having it held in trust by the government (149). However, many Indigenous people were uneducated about property taxes, which accrued immediately on their properties. Thousands of Indigenous property owners owed back taxes, and in some instances, local and state governments foreclosed on their land. Worse, many of the allotments were given out just before the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl—two events that ruined most farmers in the Plains. Within a couple of decades, about 95% of land allotted to Indigenous people was owned by Whites.

During the allotment period (1887-1934), the landholdings of Indigenous people declined from 138 million to 48 million acres. The system is directly responsible for the poverty, disenfranchisement, and breakdown of families that ensued.

In 1878, Congress passed federal legislation to empower Indian agents with hiring police to maintain law and order on reservations. The reservations often held traditional tribal enemies in close quarters. Moreover, there were “shortages of food, clothing, blankets, and shelter” (151).

By 1882, reservations had police forces, but there were no codes or policies that the officers were bound to follow. The following year, a Court of Indian Offenses was set up and funded by Congress with the purpose of trying Indigenous people who were accused of committing crimes. One of the supposed crimes was the practice of the sort of tribal dances and other ceremonies that Secretary Henry M. Teller decried. Those who were found practicing had their rations withheld, were excluded from running tribal affairs, and were threatened with the loss of their property. Meanwhile, the Office of Indian Affairs became more powerful.

In 1885, the National Indian Defense Association (NIDA) was founded by reformers who opposed the paternalistic measures of Congress and the Friends of the Indian and sought to include Indigenous points of view in policies that concerned tribes. Co-founder Thomas A. Bland was a longtime advocate of Indigenous rights. During his many trips to the West, he witnessed what happened when Indigenous people lost their lands. Without their traditional communal land ownership, NIDA believed, Indigenous people would not have the means to civilize themselves. They would also remain vulnerable to “the abuses rampant in the Indian service” (159).

Two years earlier, the US government “sought to reduce the Great Sioux Reservation by half and replace it with five smaller reservations” (159). The remaining territory was opened to White settlers and cattle ranchers for grazing. The supposed agreement resulted from federal negotiators threatening the Lakota. Bland learned that Senator Henry Dawes had a substantial financial interest in the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, which needed access to the land that the Lakota occupied.

In 1863, the Red Lake and Pembina Bands of the Ojibwe tribe had been coerced by Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey into giving up 11 million acres of “prime woodlands and prairie on either side of the Red River” (160-61). The purpose was to open the land for oxcarts and wagon trains going west. In exchange, the Ojibwe bands were to receive the rights to hunt, fish, and travel through the ceded territory. Over the next 30 years, however, the government would work toward dismantling all Ojibwe claims to the land.

The Red Lake Indians, however, rejected the proposal and asserted their right to the land. Two of the chiefs noted all of the “illegal timber cutting” that had occurred on their land as well as the government’s history of dishonest dealings (162). In 1889, after the passage of the Nelson Act, the government tried again to convince the tribe to approve allotment. In the end, the Red Lake Ojibwe gave up millions of acres of land, but they avoided the allotment system. They also decided to keep alcohol off their reservation—a standard they have maintained to date. The Red Lake leaders were steadfast against encroachment and worked together. In 1918, they created the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians to formalize their structure of government. They also retained their traditional religious practices, despite hostility from some legislators.

The Chickasaw, along with other members of the Five Civilized Tribes, had initially been excluded from allotment. However, they, too, fell prey to the federal government. They were subject not only to allotment, but also to “the dissolution of their tribal governments and treaty rights” (167). The Menominee of the western Great Lakes, however, resisted the federal government by working within its laws and values. In 1890, they won the right to harvest their own timber, despite business interests attempts to move them off their own land. They accomplished this with help from Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, who blocked legislation that would have allowed White-owned private timber companies to cut Menominee timber.