Indian Affairs Quotes
Not all Indians resented the coming of the white man. Several of the more peaceable tribes benefiting by interactions with the United States and some even sought affiliation—especially the military weaker tribes which would be protected by an alliance with the Americans.
While some of the Indian agents were dishonest and stole as much as they could, others like Street, meant well but had no experience or preparation for the job.
President Thomas Jefferson and the Congress worked at making a workable set of relationships with the Indians. Here Congress gave Jefferson a fund so that he could invite influential Indian leaders to Washington and give them presents. The hope was that the Indian leaders would see the achievements of white society and then work to transform their people to this more desirable way of life. While this was a good strategy with a few Indian nations, the reaction of most Indian leaders was being very impressed but not really wanting to trade their existing lifestyle, customs and values for the undeniable advantages that American society could bring. Both the white and Indian leadership miscalculated, Jefferson believed that as soon as the Indian leaders could examine the two alternative societies, they would clearly choose to change. The Indians were so impressed with the sincerity, reasonableness, and friendliness that the white leadership exhibited, that the Indians did not realize that a large part of white society was different from the leadership and that the leaders spoke for and could control the other whites.
By 1887 the government behavior towards Indians had come far from the Andrew Jackson days of Indian Removal and the government and reformers were trying to do better with Indian policy. This law was very well intended, and yet angered some Indians and tribes Where there was good agricultural or grazing land, the law required that the land be divided amongst the individual Indians who would thereafter own the deed and control the land. The problem had been that there was no concept of individual land ownership in most tribes. There were no deeds and whites would buy land unknowingly (and sometime knowingly who claimed to (or did) speak for the tribe. With this law, farm and grazing land would pass to the ownership of individual Indians. There are over 500 different Indian tribes—nations in America and they are very diverse. This law was good for some tribes and negative for others. With no communal say in the use of the land, the reservation was like a white farming community where the individual was dominant and not the town, group or culture. It minimized the dependency that Indians had on each other and the group. Within individual tribes there were often those Indians who preferred collective ownership and those who preferred individual ownership as provided in this legislation.
