End of an Era: Native
Concessions to the Closing of the Frontier
By KG
[ KG is an undergraduate at ETSU who grew up in East Tennessee. ]
for
English 3040 Literary
Nonfiction, December 2, 2003
Dr. Kevin O’Donnell
East
Tennessee State University
I. A
Dream of Brotherhood
In 1893, America
invited the world to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’
1492 discovery of the New World at the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. However, a small part of the nation saw no
cause for celebration. Still stinging
from the final battles of the Indian Wars during the last half of the 19th
century, the Native American population mourned the arrival of the
Europeans. Columbus’
landing had begun a long process of battles that resulted in the decimation of
the Natives’ buffalo herds, their tribal members, and ultimately their heritage
and culture. Renowned author, William
Dean Howells proclaimed the Columbian Exposition “a glorious dream of universal
brotherhood” (American Promise II 683).
Many of the Natives perceived the white man’s “dream of brotherhood” as
a nightmare in which the European interlopers’ dedicated attempts at
extermination, followed by policies of forced assimilation, robbed them of
their economic, political, cultural, and spiritual foundations.
II. The White City
In The Devil
in the White City, Erik Larson addresses the competitive atmosphere that
engulfed the Exposition coordinators (33).
Many people agreed that the managers of the fair had reached their goal
of overshadowing any other similar event in history when Chicago
welcomed the world to its “White City.” According to Larson, British editor, William
Stead, claimed that, “nothing he had seen in Paris,
Rome, or London
was as perfect as the Court of Honor” at Chicago’s
Exposition (333). The gleaming white
classical architecture, innovative electric lights brilliantly reflecting off
water, and the surrounding landscape evoked a level of sophistication and
pristine elegance intended to demonstrate America’s
worthiness as a leading nation to the world.
The Gilded Age had arrived and the nation looked forward to prosperity,
industrialization, and globalization.
III. Closing of the Frontier
World Columbian
Exposition
Chicago,
Illinois
12 July 1893
Frederick Jackson Turner was one of
many noteworthy speakers engaged to address those attending the fair. Born in Portage,
Wisconsin in 1861, Turner later graduated
from the University of Wisconsin
and Johns Hopkins
University. He taught at the University
of Wisconsin from 1889-1910 and at
Harvard from 1910-1924 (Encarta). On the
sweltering afternoon of July 12, Turner met with the American Historical
Society in a stifling tent on the fairgrounds and presented his thesis, The Significance of the Frontier in American
History. Turner referred to the
“elastic” frontier, which lies at the gate to free land:
…The meeting point between
savagery and civilization…the existence of an area of free land, its continuous
recession and the advance of America’s settlement westward explains American
development…and now four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of
a 100 years under the constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going
has closed the first period of American history (Turner).
America
had lost its claim to Manifest Destiny, the belief that God had bestowed upon
the white race the right to overtake the continent (American Promise I
493). With the closing of the frontier,
there existed neither people to conquer, nor “free
land” to be taken. While the nation
grieved its loss, the Native people suffered far more by comparison. The ending of the era had cost them
everything; from Columbus’ landing,
through the last battles of the Indian Wars, they endured countless brutal
massacres as the invaders made their final advance to destroy the Native
population.
Starting with the colonial era, the
federal government set out to extinguish the Native population. From 1778 through 1871, Congress enacted
approximately 370 treaties with the Native Americans, treating the tribes as
sovereign nations while taking their land (Encarta). Yet, the government’s goal of extermination
failed, so they enacted plans to civilize the Natives and force assimilation
into the white culture.
IV. Native Assimilation
Lake
Mohonk Conference of the Friends of
the Indians
New Paltz,
New York
30 October, 1883
In his article, “The Lake Mohonk Conferences of Friends of
the Indians,” William T. Hagan, history professor at State
University College
in Fredonia, New York,
focuses on the efforts of influential social reformers to improve conditions of
the Native Americans. The first
“Conference of Friends” met in New York
on October 30, 1883, at
the Lake Mohonk Mountain House, founded by Albert K. Smiley, who served on the
Board of Directors. The meetings
continued annually through 1916, and set what would become U.S.
policy toward Native Americans over the next generation. Over time, the participants included three
presidents, Rutherford B. Hayes, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt,
as well James S. Sherman, who later served as vice-president of the United
States, and various commissioners of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although the
Friends meant well, many of their policies ultimately did more damage than
good. The Conference members supported
the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act, which resulted in the elimination of tribal
reservations in favor of individual land ownership. Eventually white men took much of the land
allotted to the Natives under the Dawes Act (Hagan).
In 1879, former Army Captain
Richard Pratt opened the Carlisle Indian
School in Pennsylvania
using funds donated in part by the “Friends.”
Pratt served as administrator of the first of many schools designed to
assimilate Native Americans into white man’s society (“Carlisle”). The “religious and moral themes” of Pratt’s
lectures to the students reflected his motto, “God helps those who help
themselves” (“Carlisle”). Pratt’s idea was simple: “Kill the Indian in him and save the man,”
documented by Pratt in “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing
the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” (Pratt).
The Carlisle
School proudly displayed the
converted Natives in an exhibition at Chicago’s
Columbian Exposition in an effort to convince the white race that Natives could
be civilized (Bird).
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), a Dakota Sioux, wrote her
account of assimilation at an Indiana
school similar to Carlisle. Her essays deal with the suffering endured
while receiving her education. In
“Impressions of an Indian Childhood,” she tells of the missionaries who tempted
her in their recruitment for the school, comparing her seduction and her quest
for knowledge, at the age of eight, with the downfall of Adam and Eve (Andrews
430-1). In “The School Days of an Indian
Girl,” Zitkala-Sa recounts the degradation she suffered at the rigid
school. After three years of white man’s
edification, “I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the touch or voice
of human aid…Even nature seemed to have no place for me…neither a wild Indian
nor a tame one” (Andrews 443-4).
Stripped of familiar clothes, language, and ultimately their Native
identity, the students found themselves unable to fit into white society or
their Native culture.
V. The Great Compromise
Chicago
Day
Columbian Exposition
Chicago,
Illinois
29 October 1893
In 1893, during the same period
Zitkala-Sa received her indoctrination into white society, many Natives
complained of their lack of representation at the Columbian Exposition. Not fully incorporated into mainstream
culture, and excluded from planning their participation, Native Americans
lamented their omission. Chief Simon
Pokagon, a prominent member of the Potawatomi tribe, expressed his regret as he
spoke to the fairgoers on Chicago Day.
Identified by his people as a kind man, Simon Pokagon possessed a
cheerful spirit. He was a small man who
loved to read and spent much time meditating and writing. He attended Notre Dame, Oberlin
College, and then Twinsburg
Institute in Ohio. Fluent in English, Latin, and Greek, and
celebrated as the best-educated full-blooded Native in North America,
Pokagon was known as “the Redskin Bard,” and “Longfellow of his race”
(Filstrup). Elizabeth M. Filstrup
reprints passages cited from Simon Pokagon’s, “The Future of the Red Man,” in
the St. Joseph-Benton Harbor, Michigan daily newspaper, The Herald-Palladium.
Sixty years earlier, Pokagon’s father, Chief Leopold
Pokagon, had signed the Treaty of Chicago on September 26, 1833, which deeded a massive quantity of
land to the federal government for three cents per acre, part of which was
included in the fairgrounds. Forty-one
years after the treaty, in 1874, Simon Pokagon made his third trip to Washington,
calling on President Grant to collect the balance due. Grant questioned the claim, and government
later lost a court battle before rendering payment (Filstrup).
Nevertheless, at Chicago Day, Simon
Pokagon rang the Liberty Bell, and presented Mayor Harrison with a duplicate
copy of the deed his father had presented to the city, as he addressed over
500,000 fairgoers. His remarks remain
well documented today as a testament to his dedication to exist in harmony with
the white man. He urged the Natives not
to harbor bitterness, “Let us not crucify ourselves by going over the bloody
trails we have trod in other days; but rather let us look up and rejoice in
thankfulness in the present…we see helping hands stretched out to aid and
strengthen us…the war-path leads but to the grave.” He advocated giving up the fight, and
learning to farm and live as white men (Filstrup).
Pokagon further stated, “I was pained to learn that some who
should have been interested in our people discouraged our coming to the Fair,
claiming openly that we are heartless, soulless, and godless.” He urged those
attending to pray to the Great Spirit so the white men would recognize them as
human beings, while justifying Native retaliation and noting the savagery of a Christian people who supposedly followed
Jesus’ teachings. “The self-same freedom
you [the white race] adore, bade us defend our violated shore.” Pokagon made it clear that he did not want or
advocate assimilation with the white race, but saw it as certain to happen. “…Generations yet unborn will read in history
of the red men of the forest, and inquire, ‘Where are they?’” (Filstrup).
VI. Paradise Lost
The Columbian Exposition
represented a broad spectrum of American voices. The white race intended the fair to be a
celebration; however, with the so-called closing of the frontier, Native
Americans grieved the loss of their culture.
When Columbus landed in
1492, he set in
motion the events that would culminate in the annihilation
of an ancient civilization. The result
was a decrease in population of approximately 25 million North American Natives
at the time of Columbus’ arrival, to a quarter of a million in 1890 (American
Promise II 684). The anniversary
celebration at the Columbian Exposition reminded the Native people that it had
only taken 400 years to wipe out an empire that was at least 12,000 years old
(American Promise I 8). Columbus’
Indians had no choice but to concede.
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