A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes

Helen Hunt Jackson

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1881

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-7

Part 1, Chapters 8-10

Part 2

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Themes

US Government Lies

Since its inception, the US government has made hundreds of treaties with Indigenous tribes, only to delay implementation or break the treaties altogether. In some cases, the US government’s repeated lies have resulted in the forced removal of tribes from their rightful homes to a distant reservation. Each forced removal has been carried out by US government officials.

Some prominent colonial leaders and early US statesmen insisted on honest dealings; Jackson points to their example as a model of humane policies for US government officials. The Delawares had an honest neighbor in Pennsylvania founder William Penn, as did the Cherokees in Georgia’s founder James Oglethorpe. Jackson quotes Jefferson and George Washington to prove that Georgia in the 1820s had no constitutional authority over the Cherokees. She also quotes John Quincy Adams to demonstrate that early US officials recognized tribal land rights and intended to deal with those tribes accordingly. Some 18th-century treaties even contained language authorizing tribes to punish as they saw fit any settlers who ventured onto their lands.

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Notwithstanding these original intentions, US government dishonesty was rampant. One notorious method of swindling involved making treaties with individuals who had no authorization to sell tribal lands. At his tense meeting with Minnesota Governor Ramsey in 1852, Chief Red Iron reported this as a major Sioux grievance. Other tactics took place in the US Senate: delaying for years the ratification of genuine treaties, or inserting amendments designed to reduce either the size of tribal holdings or the amount of money paid to those tribes. The worst lies of all, however, were often the treaties themselves. Nearly every atrocity and every conflict had its roots in broken treaty promises. When the Georgia legislature wanted Cherokee lands, the US government broke its treaty with the Cherokees. When thousands of miners descended on Nez Perce lands in search of gold, the US government broke its treaty with the Nez Perces. The story repeats from one tribe to the next. Only the names, dates, and places change.

Having lied, cheated, and stolen, the US government used its broken promises as a pretext for forced removal: After US officials disingenuously claimed that they could not protect tribes from advancing European-American settlements, so they had to remove those tribes for protection. The infamous Cherokee removal of 1838 is only the most notorious example. The same thing happened to the Sioux and Winnebagoes in Minnesota, the Poncas in Dakota Territory, and many others.

A Century of Violence

The long history of relations between European-Americans and Indigenous Americans includes many instances of warm relations, but it is also marked by moments of horrific violence. Jackson acknowledges that Indigenous Americans at times have resorted to violence and atrocities, but the dominant narrative in 19th century US too often ignored atrocities perpetrated by frontier vigilantes against Indigenous Americans and condoned the violence committed by individuals acting under the authority of the US government.

Jackson cites multiple instances of atrocities committed by both sides. Atrocities perpetrated against European Americans include the Cayuse massacre of the Whitman missionaries in 1847 and the slaying of hundreds at the outset of the Minnesota Sioux War in 1862, as well as periodic raids on wagon trains and other acts of terror against frontier settlements. Each atrocity committed by Indigenous Americans, however, has its frontier vigilante counterpart. The Paxton Boys murdered more than 20 Conestogas in Pennsylvania in 1763, shattering that colony’s long record of peaceful relations with neighboring tribes. In 1854, a group of miners killed 16 Nasomahs in Oregon Territory. In 1871, vigilantes from Tucson slaughtered a group of Aravapa Apaches, nearly all women and children, who had been living under nominal protection near Fort Grant in Arizona Territory.

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Since the late 18th century, however, the most consistent and most lethal perpetrator of violence was the US government. The 1779 slaughter of nearly one hundred peaceful Moravians at Gnadenhutten in Ohio Territory preceded the formation of the US government under the Constitution, but it was carried out by Pennsylvania militiamen during US General Anthony Wayne’s brutal war against the Delawares and other Ohio tribes in 1794; the attack led to a “winter of suffering and hunger” (44). The conviction and hanging of three innocent Cayuses in 1850, an act of vengeance for the Whitman massacre of three years prior, was instigated by Oregon’s new territorial governor. In 1863, troops from the Seventh Iowa Cavalry murdered a group of Poncas. In November 1864, US troops under the command of Colonel J.M. Chivington perpetrated the notorious Sand Creek Massacre, a wanton slaughter of peaceful Cheyennes. In 1878, US troops killed a group of Northern Cheyennes—men, women, and children—who were attempting to flee Fort Robinson in Nebraska. This litany of official violence does not include Indigenous people who perished during forced removals and other government actions that had unintentionally lethal consequences.

History as Advocacy

Jackson writes her book in hopes of improving conditions for the tribes who have suffered injustices at the hands of the US government. Many individual chapters close with an appeal for a specific tribe. Progressively for her 19th century milieu, Jackson not only cites examples of successful assimilation, but also demands that the US government treat honesty tribes that have not chosen to assimilate.

In 1881, the year of the book’s publication, tribes’ land ownership status remained unsettled. An 1879 report by the Commissioner for Indian Affairs, for instance, claimed that the Cheyennes had no legal right even to the reservation lands they occupied. Elsewhere, white settlers were sizing up the Nez Perces’ Idaho reservation. Since 1863, a single band of Ogallalla Sioux had moved eight different times. Nebraska’s Winnebagoes nervously watched the US government’s war against Sitting Bull and others in the Northern Plains. The Department of the Interior contemplated reducing the size of reservations in Indian Territory. There also remained the much-publicized case of Standing Bear and the beleaguered Poncas, who won a great deal of support among citizens, but whose treaty-based claims to land in Dakota Territory the Secretary of the Interior would not endorse. Jackson used her writing to enumerate these facts, hoping to shame the US government into recognizing Indigenous Americans’ rights to life and property.

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Since a change in US government policy could only come after a groundswell of outraged public opinion, Jackson appealed directly to readers’, building empathy by citing numerous instances of voluntary assimilation by individual bands or entire tribes. This strategy tried to counter 19th century prejudices against Indigenous Americans as somehow primitive or lesser humans—though of course modern readers will bristle at the idea that the best way to demonstrate humanity is to adopt white Americans’ ways of living. Jackson points to agricultural practices to refute the myth of the wandering savage, and praises tribes such as the Nez Perces for embracing Christianity. The Cherokees were the most striking example of assimilation. By the 1820s, Cherokees in the Southeastern United States had adopted not only settled agriculture, but also their own legislature, alphabet, and newspaper, as well as European-American styles of dress.

Jackson assumed that US citizens would pressure their government on behalf of Indigenous Americans that they saw as good citizens. However, she stressed that Indigenous Americans maintained rights to the land they occupied, assimilation or no. Justice alone must dictate the US government’s dealings with these long-suffering tribes.