The settlement of America by Europeans was a turning point in the world’s history. The colonization of the land by various countries and the subsequent foundation of the United States of America, Canada, and other nations changed the world as we know it. However, an often-overlooked aspect of the colonization is its impact on the indigenous population. While the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans was framed as a war when it happened, the sides were uneven regarding resources and technological abilities. As such, more recent studies sometimes describe the treatment of the indigenous population as genocide. The goal of this research is to study contemporary sources as well as scholarly discussion on the matter.
Primary Source Study
To understand the condition of the Native Americans during the colonization of America, it is necessary to know what the documents and research of that time say about the process. This paper focuses on two primary sources: the collection of treaties between the United States and the Native Americans assembled by the Yale Law School’s Avalon Project (“Treaties Between the United States and Native Americans”) and the diary titled “Camping with the Sioux” (Fletcher) and describing the author’s experience of living with the tribe for six weeks in 1881. These provide valuable insight into the progress of the oppression of Native Americans as well as the smaller, day-to-day details of their lives.
Treaties Between the United States and the Native Americans
In studying the pacts signed by the United States and the various tribes of Native Americans (“Treaties Between the United States and Native Americans”), it is possible to see the progressively more aggressive position of the United States. While initially declaring their friendship and lack of territorial claims, they would soon establish new documents, which ceded more and more of the Native American territory to the settlers. In the end, the tribal communities would be confined within reservations, not having the permission to settle outside their area.
A series of treaties made between the colonists and the Six Nations is of interest, as they were one of the first tribes to sign diplomatic documents with the United States. The first treaty, made in 1784, described a border line and declared the lands east and north of it the possession of the natives. However, just ten years later another treaty was signed, one that used the term “reservation” and defined the territory owned by the Six Nations as contained within a border, with everything outside it belonging to the United States. Furthermore, the settlers would have the right of free passage through the Six Nations lands as well as the ability to purchase them should the natives be willing to sell.
Another tribe of interest is the Chickasaw, a weak tribe that chose not to make enemies with the United States and engaged in trade with them. As a result, the 1805 treaty between the tribe and the nation mentions: “the Chickasaw nation of Indians have been for some time embarrassed by heavy debts due to their merchants and traders.” The contents of the treaty involved the ceding of some of the tribe’s land to the United States in exchange for the payment of the debts and twenty thousand dollars. The 1816 and 1818 pacts, as well as the unratified 1830 document, have similar contents.
The final treaties in the collection present a particularly striking picture. Article 1 of the 1852 agreement with the Apache declares that “Said nation or tribe of Indians through their authorized Chiefs aforesaid do hereby acknowledge and declare that they are lawfully and exclusively under the laws, jurisdiction, and government of the United States of America, and to its power and authority they do hereby submit”. The United States chose not to grant them a separate area, instead forcing them to settle in the reservation given to the Comanche and Kiowa tribes with the 1867 treaty.
Camping with the Sioux
The journal written by Alice Cunningham Fletcher describes the six weeks she spent with the Sioux tribe in 1881, after the signing of the last treaty with Native Americans. The journal shows the harsh conditions of the lives of Native Americans and relates the stories the author heard from the tribe about their various mistreatments by white people. Fletcher would return from the expedition resolved to assist the indigenous people in becoming full-fledged citizens and contribute significantly to that cause. As such, it is possible that her viewpoint was biased, but as she often limits her account to descriptions of things that happened on the journey without expressing her opinion of them, the diary is likely trustworthy.
The October 24th entry mentions an incident where “The Indian women were surrounded as men surround game and the soldiers shot at them, aiming at their foreheads as game are aimed at. Many of these women were killed. The Poncas rose to avenge their death but were with difficulty prevailed upon to let the insult pass.” Another similar incident of unwarranted violence is described underneath this, as well as several other stories in the other parts of the diary.
Scholarly Discussion
Scholars generally accept that the Native Americans have been severely mistreated by the European settlers. However, there is disagreement over the degree of the harm, with some declaring that what took place must be described as a genocide and others calling that into question. This research investigates three works related to the topic and the authors’ stances on the matter.
According to Ostler (12), genocide is defined as killing or harming members of a group, deliberately inflicting conditions designed to bring about its physical destruction, implementing measures to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring the children of the group to another group. Pal (196) examines the novel My Name is Seepeetza as an example of the last part of the definition. Native American children were taken away from their families to study in schools, which removed them from their home culture and attempted to imprint a European identity on their minds.
The creation of reservations is often claimed to be a measure meant to bring about the slow death of the Native American Tribes. According to Ostler (11), the population of the Crows, a clan that allied itself with the United States in the 1860s, declined by over a third between 1880 and 1903. This decrease is indicative of a trend where the population of Native Americans fell all over the country, hitting a low point of about 250,000 around 1900.
There is, however, no clear precedent for measures aimed at preventing births in the history of American colonialism. Woolford et al. (192) describe the debate over whether the removal of indigenous children from their families to indoctrinate them into another culture satisfies this criterion. The main argument for it is that the children of people thus re-educated would belong to the colonial culture, therefore not being born to the native group. The case against the assertion is that the process does not constitute biological genocide, which is required by the definition, and should, therefore, be classified as cultural assimilation.
The afterword of the book by Woolford et al. (325) questions the general applicability of the word “genocide” to what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of the colonists. It points out the close link between the term and the Holocaust, stating that broadening the use of “genocide” to include less strict definitions would devalue its impact. Furthermore, it declares that using the word might obscure the actual issues faced by the Native American community. Genocide is strongly associated with outbursts of mass murder, which does not correspond with the experience of the indigenous American people, which heavily involved racism and structural violence.
Conclusion
The actions of the European colonists towards the Native American inhabitants of the land were heinous and inhumane. However, that does not necessarily mean they can be labeled as genocide. Not only does the term have severe implications that make it mandatory that the definition is strictly met, bu t it may also obscure other issues prevalent in the Native American community. Ultimately, the topic warrants further research to identify the exact causes and results of the politics regarding the indigenous people and learn from them.
Works Cited
Fletcher, Alice Cunningham. Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher. National Museum of Natural History, Archives of the Smithsonian Institution.
Ostler, Jeffrey. Genocide and American Indian History. American History: Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 2015.
Pal, Virender. “Unlearning at White Settlers’ School; Erasure of Identity and Shepherding the Indian into Christian fold: A Study of Shirley Sterling’s My Name is Seepeetza.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, vol. 9, no. 1, 2017, pp. 195-205.
“Treaties Between the United States and Native Americans.” The Avalon Project. Web.
Woolford, Andrew, et al. Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America. London, Duke University Press, 2014.