Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Shaved Heads and Stolen Lands

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Richard Pratt’s boarding schools for Native American children didn’t just materialize out of thin air. The idea that it was the job of the government to try to assimilate Native Americans into European settler culture had been around since the first Europeans stepped foot onto North American soil. So today, let’s jump back in time and connect the dots from the Constitution to forced education. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, and KariMarisa Anton Thank you to our guest K. Tsiannina Lomawaima and some of the music in this episode was composed by indigenous composer R. Carlos Nakai. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to Episode 2 of our series, Taken, Native Boarding Schools in America. In our last episode, we discussed one of the mottos of the founder of the Carlisle Indian School, Richard Henry Pratt, kill the Indian and save the man. And this statement speaks right to the heart of the matter. The dominant view was that an Indian was not a man and that he could only become a man by ridding himself of his natural identity. So how did we get here? How did we get to the first federally funded boarding school? Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. The children who arrived by train to Carlisle Indian School were photographed in a series of

before and after images, images that were widely disseminated and seen by the American public. They show children in the clothing of their communities and ancestors, and then after having their hair cut and their traditional dress taken from them, they show the child remade in the image of the military-minded Europeans who ran the school. One Mohawk boy, Maurice Kenney, later wrote a poem about his grandfather's experience that read in part, Who is this boy? Hair cut, tongue cut, whose youthful warrior braids lay heaped on the barber's floor, spine straightened by General Pratt's rules of order? Who is this teenage lad with eyes cold in utter fear, mouth viced and shut of prayer and song, whose thin legs tremble within army trousers, arms quiver in dread of the unexpected? He stands before the photographers,

He stands before the photographers, amalgamated in uniform and shaved head. Who is this lad? He has no name, no land, no nation. This photograph, a reminder of this nameless boy. Who is he? My grandfather. The idea that the federal government should give Richard Pratt money to found an off-reservation boarding school, the idea that children would be taken from their families, have their hair cut and forced to wear military-style uniforms, the idea that it was the job of the government to try to assimilate Native Americans into European settler culture that didn't just spring from thin air.

So let me fly you backwards in time quickly to provide a little context to how we got to this point in the late 19th century. in the late 19th century. As soon as Europeans arrived in North America, their interactions with the indigenous people began. In some cases, it was a trade relationship with people like the French voyageurs looking for pelts that fashionable people in Europe were hungry for. In other cases, it was a conflict relationship with Europeans trying to lay claim to the ancestral homelands of indigenous tribes. In other cases, diplomatic relationships were formed, and the settlers and indigenous people tried, albeit hesitantly, to coexist. Contagious illness was rampant among the Europeans, even Europeans who had been living

in communities together for their entire lives. If the Europeans weren't immune to it, neither were the Native Americans, who experienced decimation from the viruses and bacteria that were introduced. Historians estimate that by the year 1700, the Indian population of Tidewater, Virginia was only 10% of what it had been less than 100 years prior. The Constitution did not regard Native Americans as U.S. citizens. They were separate sovereigns. And so when the U.S. government wanted the ancestral land of the indigenous groups, they generally tried one of two tactics. They either fought the Native group or they tried to get them to sign a treaty giving up their land. groups, they generally tried one of two tactics. They either fought the native group, or they tried to get them to sign a treaty giving up their land.

In The Indian World of George Washington, historian Colin Calloway describes how in the early United States, I'm talking the 1790s, Indian delegations frequently visited George Washington and they ate dinner together. This isn't to say that George Washington's dealings with indigenous groups was always benevolent and honorable, but I mention it to make a point. They were welcome into Washington's home because they were viewed as the leaders of separate sovereign nations. He was having them over like someone would have over the minister of France to establish and maintain diplomatic relations. Calloway says, from cradle to grave, Washington inhabited a world built on the labor of African people and on the land of dispossessed Indian people. Indian people and Indian country loomed large in Washington's world. His life intersected constantly with them, and events in Native America shaped the direction

his life took, even if they occurred offstage. Indian land dominated his thinking and his vision for the future. Indian nations challenged the growth of his nation. A thick Indian strand runs through the life of George Washington as surely as it runs through the history of early America. I have read a number of biographies of George Washington, and almost none of them mention his relationship with Native Americans. We learn about how Washington handled the conflict between Jefferson and Hamilton, how he beat the British in the Revolutionary War, even how he dealt with smallpox in his ragtag volunteer army in Native's shower. But we learn nothing about something that occupied a large portion of his life. It can't be a coincidence that this history has been largely forgotten and erased by people outside of Native tribes. Until now. The notion that the solution to the quote-unquote Indian problem was to civilize them, kill them,

or move them off the land people wanted via the treaty process began even before Washington, but as the first president, he was certainly at the forefront of treaties and public thought during this time. Unsurprisingly, most tribes were quite happy with their chosen lives, but a few tribes went along with some of what early Americans were proposing. went along with some of what early Americans were proposing. Assimilate into our culture, and you can stay here. We won't kill you. These tribes, which American leaders called the, quote,

five civilized tribes, end quote, were made up of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek, who lived on land in what is now Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. It was land that was nutrient-rich, had plenty of water access, and was some of the best farming ground on the continent, which, shocker, white settlers decided they wanted to cultivate. Andrew Jackson, recently famous as a military general in the War of 1812, was all too happy to facilitate treaty negotiations that favored European settlers. Through the treaties, he managed to trick,

bribe, and cajole tribal leaders into giving up almost 50 million acres of their land. After treaties were signed and tribes moved farther off their ancestral homelands, violent skirmishes sometimes broke out across the contested parts of the territories. It's one thing to settle on a border on a map, and it's another to keep people on both sides from crossing those boundaries on a daily basis. And if a Creek or Seminole tribe was accused of breaking the boundary or attacking a white settlement that encroached on their territory, Jackson would often order the entire village and the people in it to be destroyed. settlers who took the land for themselves, and they used it to farm and grow crops for profit. The more cotton or tobacco you could harvest, the richer you could get. But to do that, you needed a cheap workforce. When white settlers took American Indian ancestral lands, it led directly

to an increase in the trade of enslaved Africans. Let me give you an example of exactly the kind of conflict we're talking about. In 1811, the Creek tribe was organized under a leader named Tecumseh, who inspired them to fight back against the white settlers who sought to claim Creek land they felt was open for the taking. The clashes between the Creek and the settlers escalated quickly and grew more and more violent. settlers escalated quickly and grew more and more violent. On August 30, 1813, a faction of the Creek tribe attacked a U.S. fort, Fort Mims, in the Mississippi Territory, which resulted in the deaths of 250 people who lived there, including both white settlers and Creeks of different factions. In retaliation for the killings at Fort Mims, General Andrew Jackson was ordered to go to war against them. That November, General Jackson and his second-in-command, General John Coffey, led an attack on a Creek village. They arrived at dawn, and the Creek villagers were completely unprepared. Davy Crockett fought under Jackson

in that battle and later reported that the men were drawn out of the village and killed. When several warriors took refuge in a home, Coffey's troops set it on fire and later claimed that the deaths of the women and children that were also inside the home were unintentional. The village's entire population was massacred or taken prisoner except for one baby boy who was found still clinging to his dead mother. General Jackson picked up the child and took him to his tent, feeding him from his own rations for the next month until he was able to arrange transportation for the baby boy back to his homestead outside of Nashville. In the Jackson home, the family called the Creek child

Lincoia, and accounts show that he had status over that of the Jackson's enslaved people. He was probably well cared for. The Jacksons sometimes referred to him as their son, but his status fell short of Jackson's two other adopted sons who had been completely folded into the family structure. We know that Lincoya was given an education, and that Lincoya apprenticed as a saddle maker, but he tragically died of tuberculosis when he was only 16. Lincoya was buried in an unmarked grave, which some historians point out is a pretty good indication that what Jackson may have liked most about Lincoya was the spin of the story that he got to tell. And Lincoya was not the only American Indian that Jackson had a complicated relationship with. Jackson had no

qualms about turning on his allies. Between 1816 and 1817, he coerced the Cherokee into signing treaties that sold large tracts of their land to the United States, more than three million acres at just 20 cents an acre. Jackson had previously fought alongside Cherokee groups, and when some protested, Jackson calmly threatened them by saying, look around and recollect what happened to our brothers, the Creeks. On a roll in 1818, Jackson negotiated another major land purchase, this one about seven million acres from the Chickasaw in what is now western Kentucky and Tennessee. This Jackson purchase was authorized by Congress quickly at under 5 cents an acre, costing a total of $300,000. $300,000 for 7 million acres of land.

These are just a few examples of the hundreds of treaties the US government signed with the sovereign native nations, many of which they ignored or coerced tribes into renegotiating. Over just a handful of decades, Indians had been dispossessed of the vast majority of their land east of the Mississippi and moved into Indian territory or

Indian country, far away from the lands that white settlers wanted. But the U.S. government persisted in their belief that Native Americans needed to be civilized. And in 1819, Congress passed the Indian Civilization Fund Act or ICFA. In plain terms, the federal government funded and partnered with various missionary groups and charities to run schools in the newly established Indian territories, with the overarching idea being that the schools would facilitate the replacement of tribal customs with civilized Christian European practices. So while the government officially began the federal process of civilizing tribal communities under ICFA, a report by the Department of the Interior released in 2022 points out that the earliest known Indian boarding school is documented as being run in 1801,

almost two decades before ICFA was passed. What the act did for these schools that were already in operation was send federal dollars to the religious and private entities that ran them. From 1819 to 1969, around 50% of the residential boarding schools had some kind of affiliation with a religious group. And no, I did not misspeak just now when I said 1819 to 1969. As we'll learn through this series, Native American boarding schools were active in the United States until well into the 1970s. until well into the 1970s. By 1824, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established under the Department of the Interior. The Bureau was tasked with managing the Indian Civilization Fund and implementing new programs designed to civilize tribal populations. And importantly, and notably, in 1828, Andrew Jackson won the presidential election by a landslide.

Jackson's supporters used tales of his war battle heroism to propel him to victory. Despite the fact that by this time he was a wealthy landowner who enslaved hundreds of people, he marketed himself as a humble, everyday kind of guy. who enslaved hundreds of people, he marketed himself as a humble, everyday kind of guy. He hadn't come from good breeding or money. He had made a name for himself all on his own. And this idea resonated with voters, especially voters in the southern states. When Jackson took office in March of 1829, he declared removing tribes from east of the Mississippi was one of his top priorities. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the president to grant new lands to various tribes who voluntarily relocated from their ancestral lands in the east and south to west of the Mississippi River. Voluntarily is the key word because it didn't stay that way for very long

over the following decade. Native Indian people were forced from their homes and made to walk west into Indian country, territory the U.S. government had decided to allocate to them. And although we don't often hear about it, there were legislators and activists at the time who grew alarmed at the injustice of the proposed Indian Removal Act and who fought against its passage. Catherine Beecher, a well-known educator and writer, organized a letter-writing campaign. She had hoped that if a large number of women submitted their opposition to the Removal Act to Congress, it would persuade them that Americans were against the action. Born in New York in 1800, Catherine Beecher was educated in Connecticut during an

era when most young women received no formal education. When Catherine's mother died, she took over the household role of managing her siblings. And this included Catherine's younger sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who would grow up and author the anti-enslavement novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. By the 1820s, Catherine had quite a lot of influence as a reformer promoting education for women and girls, abolition, and the godliness of domestic economy. In other words, the life of a housewife. But by the end of the decade, she dove headfirst into the belief that women should not speak in public. After that, she depended completely on her writing for one of her brothers to speak for her. Because, for religious reasons, Catherine believed it was wrong for women to speak in public,

she instead called for a women's letter-writing campaign. In 1829, newspapers and circulars around the country published Catherine's letter entitled, Addressed to Benevolent Ladies of the United States. The letter begins, the present crisis in the affairs of the Indian nations in the United States demands the immediate and interested attention of all who make any claim to benevolence or humanity. The calamities now hanging over them threaten not only these relics of an interesting race, but if there is a being who avenges the wrongs of the oppressed, are causes of alarm to our whole country. Over 1,400 women signed petitions and wrote letters against the Indian Removal Act.

It was the first time in U.S. history that women joined forces to petition the federal government. Engaging politically was so unusual for women who had no voting rights and viewed as so unseemly that some of the letters that women wrote to the federal government used it as part of their arguments. They wrote that the situation must be really bad if even the women were getting involved. Right as these letters were being written and mailed, gold was discovered by white settlers in the Appalachian Mountains in Georgia on Cherokee land. in Georgia, on Cherokee land. Cherokee had discovered it hundreds of years before, and it sat pretty much untouched until word got out among their European-American neighbors.

Men descended on Georgia by the thousands to seek their fortunes in the middle of the Cherokee nation. They set up gold rush towns and trampled the area with pans and shovels looking for nuggets. Amidst this gold rush boom, and with barely a glance at Catherine Beecher's letter-writing opposition, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in May 1830. What became known as the Trail of Tears soon followed. of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is Steve Carell in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our

friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. By the end of Jackson's presidency, he had signed into law nearly 70 treaties that displaced around 50,000 Native Americans who lived on the eastern side of the United States.

who lived on the eastern side of the United States. Altogether, over 100,000 indigenous people were moved west to Indian Territory. Many were coerced, and many more were forced. While President Andrew Jackson initiated the removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi, his agenda was carried out through his presidential successor. After serving two terms, Jackson opted to retire to his home, the Hermitage, and threw his support behind his then-Vice President Martin Van Buren, who won the 1836 presidential election. Van Buren opted to double down on the policies designed to remove American Indian tribes from their rich, fertile lands. Van Buren supported Jackson's Indian removal plan in 1830 and then expanded upon it as president. He did this in a few different ways.

First, he defined the boundaries of Indian country and set deadlines for when removal should be completed. He also put the military in charge of removal, which had fatal consequences. The military decided to contract out many of the forced migrations on the Trails of Tears. And in order to save money, tribes forced from their homes were mistreated and not given enough food or water. These private contractors were in business to make money, and they cut corners to increase their profits. They spent as little as possible on food and supplies for the people who were literally, in some cases, walking to their deaths. And yes, I did say trails of tears, which we'll hear more about in a moment. I want to share a firsthand account of what many historians refer to as a death march. This is from

Josephine Pennington. Her story was recorded decades later by a researcher, and you're going to hear in this account about the first part of her community's journey where soldiers were in charge and then how things changed after the chief begged the soldiers to let them be in charge of how they moved west. She says, until they could get them moving. All over the Cherokee country they went, bringing in all of them, old and young, male and female, and their babes, the sick, the lame, and the halt. They hunted them down like hunting wild beasts, and when they found them, they drove them under threats and blows like cattle to these stockades. These stockades were overcrowded. Disease broke out among them, and many of them died with dysentery. Poor food and poor water, no doctors and no medicine. In due time, parties were started west under the charge of soldiers. These parties were

driven through like cattle. The sick and weak walked until they fell exhausted and then were loaded in wagons or left behind to die. When streams were to be crossed, if not too deep, all were compelled to wade. The water oftentimes was to the chins of the men and women and the little children were carried high over their heads. If the water was over their heads, they would build rafts and cross on them. Chief Ross and the council begged the government to let them take over the moving after a few parties had been moved by the soldiers, and this was agreed upon. They began to establish camps and their health got better. It was only a short time until Chief Ross had worked out the details for the removal and he moved his people in groups through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and then into the Indian Territory. This journey

was called the Trail of Tears. Unlike the moving by the army, arrangements were made whereby the old, sick, and afflicted, and the babies rode on the wagons hauling provisions and household goods. The others walked or rode horseback. These wagons hauling provisions were government property. Even with these arrangements, many died on account of cold and hunger and rout, and were buried in unmarked graves. Those who survived the hardships of the long trek finally came to meet the Cherokees west. After they arrived here, all that they possessed were a saw, an axe, a very little bedding, and a big-eyed hoe, and a small amount of corn,

enough possibly to plant an acre of ground. Josephine's journey was indicative of what life was like for Native communities who were forced to abandon their ancestral homelands and head to Indian country. In the case of the Cherokee, roughly one in four died on the forced march. Most of us were taught that there was one singular trail of tears, and it was the Cherokee who were affected. The truth is there were 29 other trails and other tribes who were forcibly relocated, including those we've talked about today, the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Although the majority walked, wagons, horses, steamboats, and barges were also used to move over 100,000 people. The weather often made the forced migration unbearable. For the Choctaw who

traveled in winter, constant exposure contributed to pneumonia, which killed hundreds. Then as the temperature warmed in the spring of 1832, a cholera epidemic broke out and killed many more. By the time the men, women, and children of the Choctaw tribe made it to the banks of the Mississippi River, some 7,000 crippled by hunger, grief, and malnutrition refused to walk any farther. Two weeks after President Van Buren issued the order to send troops into Cherokee Nation, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an open letter to the president. This is what he had to say about the removal of the Cherokee from their lands. the president. This is what he had to say about the removal of the Cherokee from their lands.

There is a general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill? We ask triumphantly. Our wise men shake their heads. The journey along the Trail of Tears was often over a thousand miles long. Thousands of Cherokees, from babes in arms to elders, lined up in a caravan of walkers and 645 wagons. At every stop, hasty burials cut into any sort of rest time. General Winfield Scott organized and followed the caravan until he was intercepted in Nashville with orders from Van Buren to travel to keep an eye on a rebellion happening in Canada, close to the American border. Even without the oversight of General Scott, those on the trail marched on, many dying as they walked.

Even decades later, a survivor remembered the trauma and the hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons were stretched upon the ground. In his 1838 address to Congress, President Van Buren reported that it affords sincere pleasure to appraise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measure authorized by Congress at its last session has had the happiest effects. Happy for whom is a question that no one needed to ask. They all knew the answer. I asked Native American boarding school researcher Kay Cianina Lomawema how the American public might have viewed Native Americans who had been dispossessed of their ancestral land.

We know, based on statements made by public officials, like the one I just read you from President Van Buren, that some were happy to have more access to the rich soil they could farm. Some, like Catherine Beecher and Ralph Waldo Emerson, were appalled. Here, she describes the ongoing effects of viewing Native nations as despondent, dispossessed, fragile, and poverty-stricken. There was a side to Native people that referred to Native people as Lo, L-O, Lo the Poor Indian. And if you were a newspaper editor and you wanted your audience to know

this story's about Indians, all you had to put in the title was Lo. Everybody knew that. That's been extremely useful to a U.S. narrative of nation building. That Native people just couldn't deal with modernity. Native people just weren't cut out. That were traumatized by walking in two worlds. This is just hoo-ha. But it's a very useful mythology. And that notion of Native people is just not equipped to survive into the future as victims. That's the slippery slope I see this intergenerational transmission of trauma conversation feeding into. We're not just victims. We're a lot more than victims. That's an important thing because victims have been often pathologized in U.S. society. I mean, that kind of old trope about poverty.

Well, poor people are poor because they're lazy or they lack morals or they're mentally deficient. I mean, the whole eugenics movement in the early 20th century predicated on that ideology. So viewing Native people only as victims is a dangerous thing. It just fits too neatly into a US agenda that's like, oh, well, maybe we really are the superior society. It really was good that we took over all that land

and can put it to such better use because Native people just can't cope. Viewing Indian communities in this way allowed European Americans to view themselves as better. It allowed them to feel vindicated in their belief that tribes needed to be Americanized, Christianized, and civilized. It helped Richard Henry Pratt

solidify his ideas about Indian schooling, ideas that would begin to quickly spread across the country. Carlisle was viewed as a success, and by 1885, with schools opening all over the country, boarding school authorities decided to implement a new strategy of deliberately removing children and relocating them far away from their families and homes. If you're a child forcibly sent from Washington to Texas or from the Plains to the Pacific Northwest, how would you ever be able to find your way home again? This practice did not serve any educational purpose. It was solely intended to sever familial and tribal ties. As the U.S. population increased and moved further west, more schools

were required to quote-unquote tame the indigenous children according to the policy of the federal government. This meant an explosion of openings of boarding schools around 1885, including the Chihuahua School in Oregon, Chiloco in Oklahoma, the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico, Haskell in Kansas, and the Genoa Indian School in Nebraska. Within two years, there were 227 boarding schools housing over 14,000 students. This huge growth led to less oversight, which meant that the original education model used by Richard Henry Pratt at Carlisle fell by the wayside in some places. For example, a 1903 report reveals that at the Mescalero Boarding School, New Mexico,

the Mescalero Apache boys sawed over 70,000 feet of lumber and 40,000 shingles and made upwards of 120,000 bricks. Manual labor became the focal point of so many schools, and the schooling component became a distant second goal. We'll learn more next time. I'll see you then. Thank you to our guest scholar, Kate Cianina Lomawemop, and to composer R. Carlos Nakai, a Native American musician who provided some of the music you heard in today's episode. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. I'm your host, Sharon McMahon. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And this episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reed, and Kari Anton.

Thanks so much for joining us. And if you enjoyed this episode, we would love to have you leave us a rating or review or to share on social media. All of those things help podcasters out so much. We'll see you again soon.