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THE AMERICAN YAWP READER

A Documentary Companion to the

American Yawp

Volume II

[http://www.americanyawp.com/reader.html]

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Table of Contents

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7

16. Capital and Labor …………………………………………………………………………………………. 9

William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca.1880s) ………………………………………10

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Selections (1879)………………………………………………12

Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth (June 1889) ………………………………………………..14

Grover Cleveland’s Veto of the Texas Seed Bill (February 16, 1887) …………………………16

The “Omaha Platform” of the People’s Party (1892) …………………………………………….18

Dispatch from a Mississippi Colored Farmers’ Alliance (1889) ………………………………..23

The Tournament of Today – A Set-To Between Labor and Monopoly ……………………..27

Lawrence Textile Strike (1912) ………………………………………………………………………….28

17. The West ……………………………………………………………………………………………………29

Chief Joseph on Indian Affairs (1877, 1879) ………………………………………………………..30

William T. Hornady on the Extermination of the American Bison (1889) ………………….32

Chester A. Arthur on American Indian Policy (1881) …………………………………………….35

Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893) ….37

Turning Hawk and American Horse on the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890/1891) …….39

Laura C. Kellogg on Indian Education (1913)………………………………………………………41

Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor (1881) …………………………………………..43

Tom Torlino (1882, 1885) ……………………………………………………………………………….45

Frances Densmore and Mountain Chief (1916) ……………………………………………………46

18. Life in Industrial America ………………………………………………………………………………47

Andrew Carnegie on “The Triumph of America” (1885) ………………………………………..48

Henry Grady on the New South (1886) ………………………………………………………………50

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America” (1900) …………………………………………..52

Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918) ………………………………………….54

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913)………………………55

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890) ……………………………………………………….57

Mulberry Street, New York City (ca. 1900) ………………………………………………………….61

Luna Park …………………………………………………………………………………………………….62

19. American Empire …………………………………………………………………………………………63

William McKinley on American Expansionism (1903) …………………………………………..64

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) …………………………………………….65

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James D. Phelan, “Why the Chinese Should Be Excluded” (1901) ……………………………67

William James on “The Philippine Question” (1903) …………………………………………….69

Mark Twain, “The War Prayer” (ca.1904-5) …………………………………………………………70

Chinese Immigrants Confront Anti-Chinese Prejudice (1885, 1903) …………………………72

African Americans Debate Enlistment (1898) ………………………………………………………75

“School Begins,” Puck, January 25, 1899. ……………………………………………………………76

“Declined With Thanks” (1900)………………………………………………………………………..77

20. The Progressive Era ……………………………………………………………………………………..78

Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. DuBois on Black Progress (1895, 1903) …………………79

Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892) ……………………82

Eugene Debs, “How I Became a Socialist” (April, 1902) ………………………………………..84

Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) ………………………………86

Alice Stone Blackwell, Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage (1917) ………………..88

Woodrow Wilson on the New Freedom (1912) ……………………………………………………91

Theodore Roosevelt on “The New Nationalism” (1910) ………………………………………..93

“Next!” (1904) ………………………………………………………………………………………………95

College Day on the Picket Line …………………………………………………………………………96

21. World War I & Its Aftermath………………………………………………………………………….97

Woodrow Wilson Requests War (April 2, 1917)……………………………………………………98

Alan Seeger on World War I (1914; 1916) ………………………………………………………… 101

The Sedition Act of 1918 (1918) …………………………………………………………………….. 103

Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917) ……………………………………………………. 105

W.E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919) ……………………………………………… 106

Lutiant Van Wert describes the 1918 Flu Pandemic (1918) …………………………………… 108

Manuel Quezon calls for Filipino Independence (1919) ………………………………………. 110

Boy Scout Charge (1917) ………………………………………………………………………………. 112

Uncle Sam …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 113

22. The New Era ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 114

Warren G. Harding and the “Return to Normalcy” (1920) …………………………………… 115

Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin” (1920) …………………………………………………. 117

Marcus Garvey, Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement

Association (1921) ………………………………………………………………………………………. 120

Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926) ………………………….. 122

Herbert Hoover, “Principles and Ideals of the United States Government” (1928) ……. 124

Ellen Welles Page, “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (1922) ………………………………….. 128

Alain Locke on the “New Negro” (1925) …………………………………………………………. 130

Advertisements (1924) …………………………………………………………………………………. 132

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Klan Gathering (ca. 1920s) ……………………………………………………………………………. 133

23. The Great Depression ………………………………………………………………………………… 134

Herbert Hoover on the New Deal (1932) …………………………………………………………. 135

Huey P. Long, “Every Man a King” and “Share our Wealth” (1934) ………………………. 137

Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936) …………………………… 142

Second Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1937)………………………………….. 145

Lester Hunter, “I’d Rather Not Be on Relief” (1938) ………………………………………….. 147

Bertha McCall on America’s “Moving People” (1940) …………………………………………. 150

Dorothy West, “Amateur Night in Harlem” (1938)…………………………………………….. 152

Family Walking on Highway 1936 …………………………………………………………………… 154

“Bonus Army Routed” (1932) ……………………………………………………………………….. 155

24. World War II ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 156

Charles A. Lindbergh, “America First” (1941) …………………………………………………… 157

A Phillip Randolph and Franklin Roosevelt on Racial Discrimination in the Defense

Industry (1941) …………………………………………………………………………………………… 159

The Atlantic Charter (1941) …………………………………………………………………………… 161

FDR, Executive Order No. 9066 (1942) …………………………………………………………… 163

Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment (1942/1994) ………………………………. 165

Harry Truman Announcing the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima (1945) ………………….. 168

Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945) ………….. 171

Tuskegee Airmen (1941) ………………………………………………………………………………. 174

WWII Posters …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 175

25. The Cold War …………………………………………………………………………………………… 176

The Truman Doctrine (1947) ………………………………………………………………………… 177

NSC-68 (1950) ……………………………………………………………………………………………. 179

Joseph McCarthy on Communism (1950)…………………………………………………………. 182

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace” (1953) …………………………………………….. 184

Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” (1950) …………………….. 187

Lillian Hellman Refuses to Name Names (1952) ………………………………………………… 190

Paul Robeson’s Appearance Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 192

Atomic Energy Lab 1951-1952 ………………………………………………………………………. 195

Duck and Cover (1951) ………………………………………………………………………………… 196

26. The Affluent Society …………………………………………………………………………………… 197

Juanita Garcia on Migrant Labor (1952) …………………………………………………………… 198

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Hernandez v. Texas (1954) ……………………………………………………………………………. 200

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) ………………………………………………… 203

Richard Nixon on the American Standard of Living (1959) ………………………………….. 205

John F. Kennedy on the Separation of Church and State (1960) ……………………………. 208

Congressman Arthur L. Miller Gives “the Putrid Facts” About Homosexuality” (1950)

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 210

Rosa Parks on Life in Montgomery, Alabama (1956-1958) …………………………………… 212

1959 Little Rock Rally ………………………………………………………………………………….. 215

“In the Suburbs” (1957) ……………………………………………………………………………….. 216

27. The Sixties ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 217

Barry Goldwater, Republican Nomination Acceptance Speech (1964) ……………………. 218

Lyndon Johnson on Voting Rights and the American Promise (1965) ……………………. 220

Lyndon Johnson, Howard University Commencement Address (1965) …………………… 223

National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966) ………………………. 225

George M. Garcia, Vietnam Veteran, Oral Interview (1969/2012) …………………………. 228

The Port Huron Statement (1962) ………………………………………………………………….. 232

Fannie Lou Hamer: Testimony at the Democratic National Convention 1964 ………….. 235

Civil Rights Images (1964, 1965) …………………………………………………………………….. 238

Women’s Liberation March (1970) ………………………………………………………………….. 240

28. The Unraveling …………………………………………………………………………………………. 241

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968) ………………… 242

Statement by John Kerry of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (1971) …………………… 245

Nixon Announcement of China Visit (1971) …………………………………………………….. 247

Barbara Jordan, 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address (1976) …….. 249

Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” (1979) …………………………………………………….. 251

Gloria Steinem on Equal Rights for Women (1970) ……………………………………………. 254

Native Americans Occupy Alcatraz (1969) ……………………………………………………….. 257

New York City Subway (1973) ……………………………………………………………………….. 260

“Stop ERA” Protest (1977) …………………………………………………………………………… 261

29. The Triumph of the Right……………………………………………………………………………. 262

First Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan (1981) ………………………………………………. 263

Jerry Falwell on the “Homosexual Revolution” (1981) ………………………………………… 265

Statements of AIDS Patients (1983) ………………………………………………………………… 267

Statements from The Parents Music Resource Center (1985) ……………………………….. 270

Pat Buchanan on the Culture War (1992) …………………………………………………………. 272

Phyllis Schlafly on Women’s Responsibility for Sexual Harassment (1981) ………………. 275

Jesse Jackson on the Rainbow Coalition (1984) …………………………………………………. 278

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Satellites Imagined in Orbit (1981) ………………………………………………………………….. 280

Ronald Reagan and the American Flag (1982) …………………………………………………… 281

30. The Recent Past ………………………………………………………………………………………… 282

Bill Clinton on Free Trade and Financial Deregulation (1993-2000) ……………………….. 283

The 9/11 Commission Report, “Reflecting On A Generational Challenge” (2004) ……. 286

George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002) ……………………………………………….. 289

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) ………………………………………………………………………….. 292

Pedro Lopez on His Mother’s Deportation (2008/2015) ……………………………………… 295

Chelsea Manning Petitions for a Pardon (2013) …………………………………………………. 297

Emily Doe (Chanel Miller), Victim Impact Statement (2015) ………………………………… 299

Ground Zero (2001) ……………………………………………………………………………………. 301

Barack Obama and a Young Boy (2009) …………………………………………………………… 302

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Introduction

Civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 1965. Via Library of Congress.

Primary sources are the raw materials of history: written accounts, physical objects, and

visual material allow historians to build narratives and construct arguments. Letters, diaries,

written publications, laws, artwork, buildings, skeletal remains, environmental data, and even

oral histories can all provide the first-hand evidence that historians need to make convincing

arguments about the past and to properly evaluate the historical arguments made by others.

Historians work primary sources into secondary and even tertiary sources: the books and

textbooks assigned to students. They all rely, one way or another, on primary sources.

Students of history must know how to analyze and critically evaluate primary sources, for

primary sources can distort as much as they reveal. The voice of slaves, for instance, can be

drowned out by the letters and journals of slaveholders. We can produce more honest

histories by interrogating our sources, asking questions such as, Who created this source?

Who was their audience? How might their beliefs and perspectives have influenced their

understanding? In the case of slavery, for instance, a critical eye is often needed to read

between the lines and uncover forgotten histories hidden within the materials available to us.

Historians must make the most of the sources they have. But while some eras and some

topics lack abundant primary sources, others have almost too many, often more than any

single historian can read and analyze. Under such conditions it can be tempting to cherry

pick sources and create a narrative of one’s own choosing, but good historians must read

widely and maintain an open but critical mind to discover patterns and produce historical

insights.

Just as historians must approach their sources with a critical eye, so too must they be aware

of their own preconceptions and biases–their own place in history. “The past is a foreign

country,” novelist L.P. Harltey wrote, “they do things differently there.” We must be critical

of ourselves. We cannot expect individuals in the past to know what we know or to behave

as we behave. They had their own ideas and their own dreams. They viewed the world

differently than we do. So if we are to understand the past, we must begin by recognizing the

present. The more we study the past, the more we come to understand ourselves.

Learning to ask good questions is an important historical skill, yet we will often not know

which questions to ask until we have steeped ourselves in primary sources. You may already

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have questions in mind as you read and evaluate the sources in this reader, but you should

also pay attention to any thoughts, emotions, and historical questions that they may provoke.

History is a conversation between the past and present, and, by reading the following

sources and thinking critically about them, we hope that you will bring bring your own

curiosity and creativity to the conversation.

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16. Capital and Labor Introduction

Industrialization remade the United States. At the turn of the twentieth century, powerful

capitalists, middle class managers, and industrial and agricultural labors confronted a new

world of work and labor in the United States. While many benefited from the material gains

of technological progress, others found themselves trapped in cycles of poverty and

hopelessness and strikes, protests, and political warfare rocked American life as workers

adjusted themselves to a new industrial order. The following sources explore the mindsets of

American suddenly confronted with a new world of concentrated capital and industrial

labor.

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William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism

(ca.1880s)

William Graham Sumner, a sociologist at Yale University, penned several pieces associated with the

philosophy of Social Darwinism. In the following, Sumner explains his vision of nature and liberty in a just

society.

The struggle for existence is aimed against nature. It is from her niggardly hand that we have

to wrest the satisfaction for our needs, but our fellow-men are our competitors for the

meager supply. Competition, therefore, is a law of nature. Nature is entirely neutral; she

submits to him who most energetically and resolutely assails her. She grants her rewards to

the fittest, therefore, without regard to other considerations of any kind. If, then, there be

liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are

just in proportion to their being and their doing. Such is the system of nature. If we do not

like it, and if we try to amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it. We can take

from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the penalties of those who have done

ill and throw them on those who have done better. We can take the rewards from those who

have done better and give them to those who have done worse. We shall thus lessen the

inequalities. We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and we shall accomplish this by

destroying liberty. Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative; liberty,

inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former

carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards

and favors all its worst members.

For three hundred years now men have been trying to understand and realize liberty. …

What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and this means the guarantees

of law that a man shall not be interfered with while using his own powers for his own

welfare. It is, therefore, a civil and political status; and that nation has the freest institutions

in which the guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the capitalist are the highest.

Liberty, therefore, does not by any means do away with the struggle for existence. We might

as well try to do away with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same

thing. What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and

brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the

acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and

other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done

away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and

doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who

gains the highest reward. It is impossible that the man with capital and the man without

capital should be equal. To affirm that they are equal would be to say that a man who has no

tool can get as much food out of the ground as the man who has a spade or a plough; or that

the man who has no weapon can defend himself as well against hostile beasts or hostile men

as the man who has a weapon. If that were so, none of us would work any more. We work

and deny ourselves to get capital just because, other things being equal, the man who has it is

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superior, for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has it not. Considering the

eagerness with which we all seek capital and the estimate we put upon it, either in cherishing

it if we have it, or envying others who have it while we have it not, it is very strange what

platitudes pass current about it in our society so soon as we begin to generalize about it. If

our young people really believed some of the teachings they hear, it would not be amiss to

preach them a sermon once in a while to reassure them, setting forth that it is not wicked to

be rich, nay even, that it is not wicked to be richer than your neighbor.

It follows from what we have observed that it is the utmost folly to denounce capital. To do

so is to under- mine civilization, for capital is the first requisite of every social gain,

educational, ecclesiastical, political, aesthetic, or other.

Source: William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, edited by Albert Galloway

Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914).

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Henry George, Progress and

Poverty, Selections (1879)

In 1879, the economist Henry George penned a massive bestseller exploring the contradictory rise of both

rapid economic growth and crippling poverty.

This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times. It is the central

fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world, and

with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. From it come the

clouds that overhang the future of the most progressive and self-reliant nations. It is the

riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be

destroyed. So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to

build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House

of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction

must come. The tower leans from its foundations, and every new story but hastens the final

catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them

restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which

men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.

…

… the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming

more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but

tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on

the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep

us back into barbarism by the road every previous civilization has trod. But it also shows that

these evils are not imposed by natural laws; that they spring solely from social mal-

adjustments which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving an

enormous impetus to progress.

…

Equality of political rights will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty

of nature. Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population

increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for employment at starvation

wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. And so there come beggars in our streets and

tramps on our roads; and poverty enslaves men whom we boast are political sovereigns; and

want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten; and citizens vote as their masters

dictate; and the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman; and gold weighs in the scales of

justice; and in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue even the compliment of

hypocrisy; and the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under an

increasing strain.

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We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we

have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her demands. She will have no half

service!

Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty

means Justice, and Justice is the natural law—the law of health and symmetry and strength,

of fraternity and co-operation.

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when she has abolished

hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who think of her as having no further

relations to the every-day affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur—to them the poets

who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of

life, as well as of light; as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support all growth,

supply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be a cold and inert mass, all the

infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to mankind. It is not for an abstraction

that men have toiled and died; that in every age the witnesses of Liberty have stood forth,

and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.

…

The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers born of progress,

forces have entered the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us,

as nation after nation, as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is

the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which the

civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between

democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict.

Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising. We cannot go on

permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and

girls in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We

cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying the inalienable right

to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and

elemental forces gather for the strife!

Source: Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of

Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy (1879).

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Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth (June

1889)

Andrew Carnegie, the American steel titan, explains his vision for the proper role of wealth in American

society.

The problem of our age is the administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may

still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human

life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In

former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of

the chief and those of his retainers. . . . The contrast between the palace of the millionaire

and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with

civilization.

This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well,

nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all

that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization,

rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor.

Without wealth there can be no Maecenas. The “good old times” were not good old

times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to day. A relapse to old

conditions would be disastrous to both-not the least so to him who serves-and would sweep

away civilization with it. …

…

The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap

comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still, for it

is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved

conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of

the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade

it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the

individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every

department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must

accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business,

industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these,

as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. …

…

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: … becoming the mere agent and

trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience,

and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.

…

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The laws of accumulation should be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will

continue. But the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for a season with a

part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far

better than it did, or would have done, of itself. The best in minds will thus have reached a

stage in the development of the race in which it is clearly seen that there is no mode of

disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men into whose hands it

flows save by using it year-by-year for the general good. This day already dawns.

Source: Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review 148 (June, 1889), 653–665.

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Grover Cleveland’s Veto of the Texas Seed Bill

(February 16, 1887)

Amid a crushing drought that devastated many Texas farmers, Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill designed to

help farmers recover by supplying them with seed. In his veto message, Cleveland explained his vision of

proper government.

…

It is represented that a long-continued and extensive drought has existed in certain portions

of the State of Texas, resulting in a failure of crops and consequent distress and destitution.

Though there has been some difference in statements concerning the extent of the people’s

needs in the localities thus affected, there seems to be no doubt that there has existed a

condition calling for relief; and I am willing to believe that, notwithstanding the aid already

furnished, a donation of seed grain to the farmers located in this region, to enable them to

put in new crops, would serve to avert a continuance or return of an unfortunate blight.

And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to

indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for

that purpose.

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that

the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of

individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A

prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think,

be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though

the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their

fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated.

Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the

Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the

indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the

bonds of a common brotherhood.

It is within my personal knowledge that individual aid has to some extent already been

extended to the sufferers mentioned in this bill. The failure of the proposed appropriation of

$10,000 additional to meet their remaining wants will not necessarily result in continued

distress if the emergency is fully made known to the people of the country.

It is here suggested that the Commissioner of Agriculture is annually directed to expend a

large sum of money for the purchase, propagation, and distribution of seeds and other things

of this description, two-thirds of which are, upon the request of Senators, Representatives,

and Delegates in Congress, supplied to them for distribution among their constituents.

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The appropriation of the current year for this purpose is $100,000, and it will probably be no

less in the appropriation for the ensuing year. I understand that a large quantity of grain is

furnished for such distribution, and it is supposed that this free apportionment among their

neighbors is a privilege which may be waived by our Senators and Representatives.

If sufficient of them should request the Commissioner of Agriculture to send their shares of

the grain thus allowed them to the suffering farmers of Texas, they might be enabled to sow

their crops, the constituents for whom in theory this grain is intended could well bear the

temporary deprivation, and the donors would experience the satisfaction attending deeds of

charity.

Source: Journal of the House of Representatives, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing

Office, 1886), 634-635.

The Miller Center

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The “Omaha Platform” of the People’s Party

(1892)

In 1892, the People’s, or Populist, Party crafted a platform that indicted the corruptions of the Gilded Age

and promised government policies to aid “the people.”

PREAMBLE

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a

nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the

ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The

people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the

polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely

subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with

mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The

urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized

labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is

established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European

conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes

for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn,

despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental

injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public

debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby

adding millions to the burdens of the people.

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to

add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well

as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt

enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on

two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown

at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the

establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great

political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the

suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties

have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent

or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed

together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the

outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that

capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of

silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice

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our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to

secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the

grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the

government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it

originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National

Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,

provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of

liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the

love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together

by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out

of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood

of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the

history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in

value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars’ worth

of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly

inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines

and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given

power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance

with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be

expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an

intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression,

injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.

While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition

which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate, we nevertheless regard

these questions, important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for

solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity but the very existence of free

institutions depend; and we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have

a republic to administer before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be

administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move

forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges securely

established for all the men and women of this country.

PLATFORM

We declare, therefore—

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First.—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall

be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the

Republic and the uplifting of mankind.

Second.—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without

an equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” The interests of rural

and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own

the people or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the

work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the

Constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a

civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power

of the national administration by the use of such additional government employes.

FINANCE.—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the

general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without

the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct

to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent. per annum, to be provided as set forth in the

sub-treasury plan of the Farmers’ Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge

of its obligations for public improvements.

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio

of l6 to 1.

2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not

less than $50 per capita.

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the

hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues

shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and

honestly administered.

5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the

safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity,

the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The

telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of

news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

LAND.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people,

and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land

should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of

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their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government

and held for actual settlers only.

EXPRESSION OF SENTIMENTS

Your Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the

following:

Whereas, Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the

following, not as a part of the Platform of the People’s Party, but as resolutions expressive

of the sentiment of this Convention.

1. RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and

pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention,

through the adoption by the States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot

system.

2. RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be

applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic

industries of this country.

3. RESOLVED, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union

soldiers and sailors.

4. RESOLVED, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the

present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the

world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we denounce the present ineffective

laws against contract labor, and demand the further restriction of undesirable

emigration.

5. RESOLVED, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized

workingmen to shorten the hours of labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the

existing eight-hour law on Government work, and ask that a penalty clause be

added to the said law.

6. RESOLVED, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of

mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton system, as a menace to our liberties, and we

demand its abolition. . . .

7. RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and

the reform press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.

8. RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of

President and Vice-President to one term, and providing for the election of

Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.

9. RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private

corporation for any purpose.

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10. RESOLVED, That this convention sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and

their righteous contest with the tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of

Rochester, and declare it to be a duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to

refuse to purchase the goods made by the said manufacturers, or to patronize any

merchants who sell such goods.

Source: Edward McPherson, A Handbook of Politics for 1892 (Washington D.C.: James J.

Chapman, 1892), 269-271.

Via Google Books

23

Dispatch from a Mississippi Colored Farmers’

Alliance (1889)

The Colored Farmers’ Alliance, an African American alternative to the whites-only Southern Farmers’

Alliance, organized as many as a million Black southerners against the injustices of the predominately cotton-

based, southern agricultural economy. Black Populists, however, were always more vulnerable to the violence of

white southern conservatives than their white counterparts. Here, the publication The Forum publishes an

account of violence against Black Populists in Mississippi.

Some Knights of Labor in Louisiana ventured to ask their employers for a larger share of the

plantation crops; they were called rioters, and shot down in cold blood. Such occurrences

have taken place in various sections. Take, for instance, the case of the suppression of the

Farmers’ Alliances at Minter City, Mississippi. Minter City is in the rich, cotton-growing

region of Tallahatchie County. White lecturers of the Farmers’ Alliances went there and

organized Alliance stores. Colored people joined the organizations. The Alliance at Durant,

on the Illinois Central Railroad, advanced supplies. The farmers began to patronize these

stores, instead of the local traders, who had charged them enormous profits, swallowing up

their little earnings. These local traders determined that the Alliances should be broken up.

The annexed extracts from the St. Louis “Globe-Democrat,” in a dispatch dated December

2, 1889, tell how it was done.

“Of all the’ Nigger killings’ charged up to Mississippi, the recent campaign in the

Tallahatchie country was the worst. The smallest estimate of the number shot is 20. The

largest return of casualties is 200 dead. Probably 40 Negroes were murdered before the work

ceased. The sole offense which called for such a terrible lesson was the organization of a

Colored Farmers’ Alliance, and the attempt to put in practice the plan of patronizing an

Alliance store. Against the right of the Negro to enjoy the benefits of the Farmers’ Alliance

organization, the white store-keepers and planters of the Tallahatchie country banded

themselves together. They began by exiling Cromwell, the agent of the commercial company.

The usual reports now went out that the Negroes were organizing and arming for a race

conflict. Then the killing began. … There was no battle. There was no resistance by the

Negroes. The white store-keepers and planters, armed with Winchesters, rode through the

country picking out their victims. … The condemned man was made to stand facing a tree,

and a volley was fired at his back. Then the white store-keepers and planters rode on to the

next place. It is known that at least 20 Negroes were killed in this way. … The outline of

facts comes from white men and Democrats. … When the white store-keepers and planters

had concluded their work they met and adopted the following resolutions:

“Whereas, it is the sense of this meeting that the organization known here as the Colored

Farmers’ Alliance is being diverted from its original or supposed purpose,

“Resolved, that we, the planters and citizens of Tallahatchie River, hereby request the

Durant Commercial Company to desist from selling goods or loaning money to said

organization … and we hereby serve notice that goods or other things shipped to the

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secretaries or managers of said Alliance shall not be delivered. …We do not intend to, and

we will not submit to, a combination subversive of our fortunes, our lives, and our property.

“Resolved, that the secretary of this meeting be required to notify the editor of the Colored

Farmers’ ‘Alliance Advocate,’ published at Valden, Miss., that the issuance of copies of his

paper to subscribers at the Shell Mound, McNutt, Sunnyside, Minter City, Graball, and

Sharkey post offices shall be stopped, and to notify him further that a disregard of this

notice will be treated as it should deserve by a united and outraged community.

“Resolved, that the members of this meeting pledge themselves individually and collectively

to carry out these resolutions in letter and spirit.

“Resolved, that the Secretary forward a copy of the proceedings of this meeting to said

Durant Commercial Company and the editor of the Colored Farmers’ ‘Alliance Advocate,’

by mail.”

The local Tallahatchie county paper says:

“These resolutions look harsh and arbitrary, but when the fearful ignorance and prejudice of

the Negroes are taken into account, it is indisputable that a combination of any kind among

them is dangerous and needs more or less surveillance. They frequently prostitute their

churches and benevolent orders to wrongful purposes.”

In view of the incidents and purposes of the foregoing brutal and bloody Minter City

tragedy, well does the “Globe-Democrat” ask: “What will the National Farmers’ Alliance do

about this?” On the other hand, what, may we ask, will not the southern Democrats do

when the southern Farmers’ Alliances not only organize co-operative stores, but also

undertake to elect members of the Farmers’ Alliances as State officers and congressmen?

We give the answer: they will not be allowed a free canvass or an honest count. They will be

trampled under foot by reckless southern Democrats. Free politics does not exist at the

South. Freedom is there a mockery to the black man; suffrage is a sham to all Republicans.

All that a national law can accomplish toward fair elections at the South, both for the

Republican and Farmers’ Alliance candidates, should be done. But more than that is needed.

When southern Democrats like Senator Pugh openly proclaim that national laws,

constitutionally enacted, are to be resisted at the South unto bloodshed, there should be

aroused everywhere at the North a sentiment of indignation; and this, growing stronger each

day, should at last resemble that northern uprising of former days, which, overcoming

commercial cowardice and dough-faced subserviency, first thrust slavery back to its gloomy

lair, and next, on due provocation, invaded its precincts and destroyed the monster forever.’

Source: The Forum, vol. 9 (New York: Forum Publishing Company, 1889), 716-717. Available

online via Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=S3cXAQAAIAAJ).

25

Lucy Parsons on Women and Revolutionary Socialism (1905)

Lucy Parsons was born into slavery in Texas, married a white radical, Albert Parsons, and moved to

Chicago where they both worked on behalf of radical causes. After Albert Parsons was executed for

conspiracy in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing, Lucy Parsons emerged as a major American radical

and vocal advocate of anarchism. In 1905, she spoke before the founding convention of the Industrial

Workers of the World (IWW).

I wish to state to you that I have taken the floor because no other woman has responded,

and I feel that it would not be out of place for me to say in my poor way a few words about

this movement. We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it,

and the only way that we can be represented is to take a man to represent us. You men have

made such a mess of it in representing us that we have not much confidence in asking you;

and I for one feel very backward in asking the men to represent me. We have no ballot, but

we have our labor. I think it is August Bebel, in his Woman in the Past, Present and Future—a

book that should be read by every woman that works for wages—Bebel says that men have

been slaves throughout all the ages, but that woman’s condition has been worse, for she has

been the slave of a slave.

There was never a greater truth uttered. We are the slaves of the slaves. We are exploited

more ruthlessly than men. Wherever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women

to reduce them …

… It is a bread and butter question, an economic issue, upon which the fight must be made.

Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist? We mean that the land shall

belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers. Now, let us

analyze that for just a moment, before you applaud me. First, the land belongs to the

landless. Is there a single land owner in this country who owns his land by the constitutional

rights given by the constitution of the United States who will allow you to vote it away from

him? I am not such a fool as to believe it. We say, “The tools belong to the toiler.” They are

owned by the capitalist class. Do you believe they will allow you to go into the halls of the

legislature and simply say, “Be it enacted that on and after a certain day the capitalist shall no

longer own the tools and the factories and the places of industry, the ships that plow the

ocean and our lakes?”

Do you believe that they will submit? I do not. We say, “The product belongs to the

producers.” It belongs to the capitalist class as their legal property. Do you think that they

will allow you to vote them away from them by passing a law and saying, “Be it enacted that

on and after a certain day Mr. Capitalist shall be dispossessed?” You may, but I do not

believe it. Hence, when you roll under your tongue the expression that you are

revolutionists, remember what that word means. It means a revolution that shall turn all

these things over where they belong—to the wealth producers.

Now, how shall the wealth-producers come into possession of them? I believe that if every

man and every woman who works, or who toils in the mines, the mills, the workshops, the

fields, the factories and the farms in our broad America should decide in their minds that

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they shall have that which of right belongs to them, and that no idler shall live upon their

toil, and when your new organization, your economic organization, shall declare as man to

man and woman to woman, as brothers and sisters, that you are determined that you will

possess these things, then there is no army that is large enough to overcome you, for you

yourselves constitute the army. Now, when you have decided that you will take possession of

these things, there will not need to be one gun fired or one scaffold erected.

You will simply come into your own, by your own independence and your own manhood,

and by asserting your own individuality, and not sending any man to any legislature in any

State of the American Union to enact a law that you shall have what is your own; yours by

nature and by your manhood and by your very presence upon this Earth. Nature has been

lavish to her children. She has placed in this Earth all the material of wealth that is necessary

to make men and women happy. She has given us brains to go into her storehouse and bring

from its recesses all that is necessary. She has given us these two hands and these brains to

manufacture them on a parallel with all other civilizations.

… Now, I thank you for the time that I have taken up of yours. I hope that we will meet

again some time, you and I, in some hall where we can meet and organize the wage workers

of America, the men and women, so that the children may not go into the factories, nor the

women into the factories, unless they go under proper conditions.

I hope even now to live to see the day when the first dawn of the new era will have arisen,

when capitalism will be a thing of the past, and the new industrial republic, the

commonwealth of labor, shall be in operation. I thank you.

Source:International Workers of the World, Proceedings of The First Convention of the Industrial

Workers of the World (New York: New York Labor News Company, 1905), 167-172. Available

online via Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=ifRQAQAAMAAJ).

27

The Tournament of Today – A Set-To Between

Labor and Monopoly

• Friedrich Graetz, “The Tournament of Today – A Set-To Between Labor and Monopoly.” August 1,

1883. Print shows a jousting tournament between an oversized knight riding horse-shaped armor labeled

“Monopoly” over a locomotive, with a long plume labeled “Arrogance”, and carrying a shield labeled

“Corruption of the Legislature” and a lance labeled “Subsidized Press”, and a barefoot man labeled

“Labor” riding an emaciated horse labeled “Poverty”, and carrying a sledgehammer labeled “Strike”. On the

left is seating “Reserved for Capitalists” where Cyrus W. Field, William H. Vanderbilt, John Roach, Jay

Gould, and Russell Sage are sitting. On the right, behind the labor section, are telegraph lines flying

monopoly banners that are labeled “Wall St., W.U.T. Co., [and] N.Y.C. RR”. Via Library of Congress

(LC-DIG-ppmsca-28412).

28

Lawrence Textile Strike (1912)

Lawrence Textile Strike, 1912. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-23725.

29

17. The West Introduction

Native Americans long dominated the vastness of the American West. Indigenous

Americans had lived in North America for over ten millennia and, into the late-nineteenth

century, perhaps as many as 250,000 natives still inhabited the American West. But then

unending waves of American settlers, the American military, and the unstoppable onrush of

American capital conquered all. The United States removed native groups to ever-shrinking

reservations, incorporated the West first as territories and then as states, and, for the first

time in its history, controlled the enormity of land between the two oceans. The history of

the late-nineteenth-century West is many-sided. Tragedy for some, triumph for others, the

many intertwined histories of the American West marked a pivotal transformation in the

history of the United States. The following sources explore the long American “conquest” of

the West.

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Chief Joseph on Indian Affairs (1877, 1879)

A branch of the Nez Perce tribe, from the Pacific Northwest, refused to be moved to a reservation and

attempted to flee to Canada but were pursued by the U.S. Cavalry, attacked, and forced to return. The

following is a transcript of Chief Joseph’s surrender, as recorded by Lieutenant Wood, Twenty-first Infantry,

acting aide-de-camp and acting adjutant-general to General Oliver O. Howard, in 1877.

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Too-hul-hul-sote is

dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the

young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to

death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food;

no one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for

my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I

will fight no more forever.

In 1879, Chief Joseph was invited to Washington D.C. He made the following report.

I am glad I came [to Washington D.C.]. I have shaken hands with a good many friends, but

there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain. I cannot

understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and

then breaks his word. Such a government has something wrong about it. I cannot

understand why so many chiefs are allowed to talk so many different ways, and promise so

many different things. I have seen the Great Father Chief [President Hayes]; the Next Great

Chief [Secretary of the Interior]; the Commissioner Chief [Commissioner of Indian Affairs];

the Law Chief [General Butler]; and many other law chiefs [Congressmen] and they all say

they are my friends, and that I shall have justice, but while all their mouths talk right I do not

understand why nothing is done for my people. I have heard talk and talk but nothing is

done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for

my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not

protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not

give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief,

General Miles. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and

take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick

when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much

talking by men who had no right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; too

many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white

man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no

trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live

and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The

earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might

as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be

contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake,

do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel

him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some

31

of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall

stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.

…

When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as

outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.

I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are.

We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We

ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by

the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose,

free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think

and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no

more wars. We shall be all alike — brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us

and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who

rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by

brothers’ hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and

praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the

Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.

In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat has spoken for his people.

Sources: Report of the Secretary Of War, Being Part Of The Message And Documents Communicated To

The Two Houses Of Congress, Beginning Of The Second Session Of The Forty-Fifth Congress. Volume I

(Washington: Government Printing Office 1877), 630; Joseph, “An Indian’s View of Indian Affairs,”

The North American Review.

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William T. Hornady on the Extermination of

the American Bison (1889)

William T. Hornady, Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, wrote a detailed account of the near-

extinction of the American bison in the late-nineteenth century.

Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, probably no other species has ever

marshaled such innumerable hosts as those of the American bison. It would have been as

easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of

buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species previous to 1870. Even in

South Central Africa, which has always been exceedingly prolific in great herds of game, it is

probable that all its quadrupeds taken together on an equal area would never have more than

equaled the total number of buffalo in this country forty years ago.

…

Between the Rocky Mountains and the States lying along the Mississippi River on the west,

from Minnesota to Louisiana, the whole country was one vast buffalo range, inhabited by

millions of buffaloes. One could fill a volume with the records of plainsmen and pioneers

who penetrated or crossed that vast region between 1800 and 1870, and were in turn

surprised, astounded, and frequently dismayed by the tens of thousands of buffaloes they

observed, avoided, or escaped from. They lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever

have, in great multitudes, like grand armies in review, covering scores of square miles at

once. They were so numerous they frequently stopped boats in the rivers, threatened to

overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed locomotives and cars, until

railway engineers learned by experience the wisdom of stopping their trains whenever there

were buffaloes crossing the track. …

…

No wonder that the men of the West of those days, both white and red, thought it would be

impossible to exterminate such a mighty multitude. The Indians of some tribes believed that

the buffaloes issued from the earth continually, and that the supply was necessarily

inexhaustible. And yet, in four short years the southern herd was almost totally annihilated.

…

It will be doubly deplorable if the remorseless slaughter we have witnessed during the last

twenty years carries with it no lessons for the future. A continuation of the record we have

lately made as wholesome game butchers will justify posterity in dating us back with the

mound-builders and cave-dwellers, when man’s only known function was to slay and eat.

The primary cause of the buffalo’s extermination, and the one which embraced all

others, was the descent of civilization, with all its elements of destructiveness, upon the

whole of the country inhabited by that animal. From the Great Slave Lake to the Rio Grande

the home of the buffalo was everywhere overrun by the man with a gun; and, as has ever

33

been the case, the wild creatures were gradually swept away, the largest and most

conspicuous forms being the first to go.

The secondary causes of the extermination of the buffalo may be catalogued as follows:

(1) Man’s reckless greed, his wanton destructiveness, and improvidence in not husbanding

such resources as come to him from the hand of nature ready made.

(2) The total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures and agencies on the part

of the National Government and of the Western States and Territories.

(3) The fatal preference on the part of hunters generally, both white and red, for the robe

and flesh of the cow over that furnished by the bull.

(4) The phenomenal stupidity of the animals themselves, and their indifference to man.

(5) The perfection of modern breech-loading rifles and other sporting fire-arms in general.

Each of these causes acted against the buffalo with its full force, to offset which there

was not even one restraining or preserving influence, and it is not to be wondered at that the

species went down before them. Had any one of these conditions been eliminated the result

would have been reached far less quickly. Had the buffalo, for example, possessed one-half

the fighting qualities of the grizzly bear he would have fared very differently, but his

inoffensiveness and lack of courage almost leads one to doubt the wisdom of the economy

of nature so far as it relates to him.

…

The buffalo supplied the Indian with food, clothing, shelter, bedding, saddles, ropes, shields,

and innumerable smaller articles of use and ornament. In the United States a paternal

government takes the place of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it

costs several millions of dollars annually to accomplish the task.

…

The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving and freezing, for the

reason that the United States Government supplies them regularly with beef and blankets in

lieu of buffalo. Does any one imagine that the Government could not have regulated the

killing of buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it now costs to

feed and clothe those 54,758 Indians?

…

There is reason to fear that unless the United States Government takes the matter in hand

and makes a special effort to prevent it, the pure-blood bison will be lost irretrievably….

34

Source: Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1889).

35

Chester A. Arthur on American Indian Policy

(1881)

The following is extracted from President Chester A. Arthur’s First Annual Message to Congress, delivered

December 6, 1881.

Prominent among the matters which challenge the attention of Congress at its present

session is the management of our Indian affairs. While this question has been a cause of

trouble and embarrassment from the infancy of the Government, it is but recently that any

effort has been made for its solution at once serious, determined, consistent, and promising

success.

It has been easier to resort to convenient makeshifts for tiding over temporary difficulties

than to grapple with the great permanent problem, and accordingly the easier course has

almost invariably been pursued.

It was natural, at a time when the national territory seemed almost illimitable and contained

many millions of acres far outside the bounds of civilized settlements, that a policy should

have been initiated which more than aught else has been the fruitful source of our Indian

complications.

I refer, of course, to the policy of dealing with the various Indian tribes as separate

nationalities, of relegating them by treaty stipulations to the occupancy of immense

reservations in the West, and of encouraging them to live a savage life, undisturbed by any

earnest and well-directed efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization.

The unsatisfactory results which have sprung from this policy are becoming apparent to all.

As the white settlements have crowded the borders of the reservations, the Indians,

sometimes contentedly and sometimes against their will, have been transferred to other

hunting grounds, from which they have again been dislodged whenever their new-found

homes have been desired by the adventurous settlers.

These removals and the frontier collisions by which they have often been preceded have led

to frequent and disastrous conflicts between the races.

It is profitless to discuss here which of them has been chiefly responsible for the

disturbances whose recital occupies so large a space upon the pages of our history.

We have to deal with the appalling fact that though thousands of lives have been sacrificed

and hundreds of millions of dollars expended in the attempt to solve the Indian problem, it

has until within the past few years seemed scarcely nearer a solution than it was half a

century ago. But the Government has of late been cautiously but steadily feeling its way to

the adoption of a policy which has already produced gratifying results, and which, in my

judgment, is likely, if Congress and the Executive accord in its support, to relieve us ere long

from the difficulties which have hitherto beset us.

36

For the success of the efforts now making to introduce among the Indians the customs and

pursuits of civilized life and gradually to absorb them into the mass of our citizens, sharing

their rights and holden to their responsibilities, there is imperative need for legislative action.

My suggestions in that regard will be chiefly such as have been already called to the attention

of Congress and have received to some extent its consideration.

First. I recommend the passage of an act making the laws of the various States and

Territories applicable to the Indian reservations within their borders and extending the laws

of the State of Arkansas to the portion of the Indian Territory not occupied by the Five

Civilized Tribes.

The Indian should receive the protection of the law. He should be allowed to maintain in

court his rights of person and property. He has repeatedly begged for this privilege. Its

exercise would be very valuable to him in his progress toward civilization.

Second. Of even greater importance is a measure which has been frequently recommended

by my predecessors in office, and in furtherance of which several bills have been from time

to time introduced in both Houses of Congress. The enactment of a general law permitting

the allotment in severalty, to such Indians, at least, as desire it, of a reasonable quantity of

land secured to them by patent, and for their own protection made inalienable for twenty or

twenty-five years, is demanded for their present welfare and their permanent advancement.

In return for such considerate action on the part of the Government, there is reason to

believe that the Indians in large numbers would be persuaded to sever their tribal relations

and to engage at once in agricultural pursuits. Many of them realize the fact that their

hunting days are over and that it is now for their best interests to conform their manner of

life to the new order of things. By no greater inducement than the assurance of permanent

title to the soil can they be led to engage in the occupation of tilling it.

The well-attested reports of their increasing interest in husbandry justify the hope and belief

that the enactment of such a statute as I recommend would be at once attended with

gratifying results. A resort to the allotment system would have a direct and powerful

influence in dissolving the tribal bond, which is so prominent a feature of savage life, and

which tends so strongly to perpetuate it.

Third. I advise a liberal appropriation for the support of Indian schools, because of my

confident belief that such a course is consistent with the wisest economy. … They are

doubtless much more potent for good than the day schools upon the reservation, as the

pupils are altogether separated from the surroundings of savage life, and brought into

constant contact with civilization.

Source: Benjamin Perley Poore, editor, Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of

Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1881).

37

Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the

Frontier in American History” (1893)

Perhaps the most influential essay by an American historian, Frederick Jackson Turner’s address to the

American Historical Association on “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” defined for

many Americans the relationship between the frontier and American culture and contemplated what might

follow “the closing of the frontier.”

In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant

words: “Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the

unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly

be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it

can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports.” This brief official

statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American

history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The

existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American

settlement westward, explain American development.

Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that

call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. The peculiarity of

American institutions is, the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the

changes of an expanding people—to the changes involved in crossing a continent,

in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive

economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life. Said

Calhoun in 1817, “We are great, and rapidly—I was about to say fearfully—growing!” So

saying, he touched the distinguishing feature of American life. All peoples show

development; the germ theory of politics has been sufficiently emphasized. In the case of

most nations, however, the development has occurred in a limited area; and if the nation has

expanded, it has met other growing peoples whom it has conquered. But in the case of the

United States we have a different phenomenon. Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast,

we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as

the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments

into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of

labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the

process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus

American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to

primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for

that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the

frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with

its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish

the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this

nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. …

38

In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between

savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of

border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the

historian it has been neglected.

…

From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. The

works of travelers along each frontier from colonial days onward describe certain common

traits, and these traits have, while softening down, still persisted as survivals in the place of

their origin, even when a higher social organization succeeded. The result is that to the

frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength

combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to

find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to

effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for

good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—

these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the

frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World,

America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have

taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even

been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive

character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact,

and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually

demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer

themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is

triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its

imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also

there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed

furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and

freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its

ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the

Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new

experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating

frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more

remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred

years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the

first period of American history.

Source: Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History, 1919.

39

Turning Hawk and American Horse on the

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890/1891)

On February 11, 1891, a Sioux delegation met with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington

D.C. and gave their account of the Wounded Knee Massacre six weeks prior.

Turning Hawk: … These people were coming toward Pine Ridge agency, and when they

were almost on the agency they were met by the soldiers and surrounded and finally taken to

the Wounded Knee creek, and there at a given time their guns were demanded. When they

had delivered them up, the men were separated from their families, from their tipis, and

taken to a certain spot. When the guns were thus taken and the men thus separated, there

was a crazy man, a young man of very bad influence and in fact a nobody, among that bunch

of Indians fired his gun, and of course the firing of a gun must have been the breaking of a

military rule of some sort, because immediately the soldiers returned fire and indiscriminate

killing followed.

…All the men who were in a bunch were killed right there, and those who escaped that first

fire got into the ravine, and as they went along up the ravine for a long distance they were

pursued on both sides by the soldiers and shot down, as the dead bodies showed afterwards.

The women were standing off at a different place from where the men were stationed, and

when the firing began, those of the men who escaped the first onslaught went in one

direction up the ravine, and then the women, who were bunched together at another place,

went entirely in a different direction through an open field, and the women fared the same

fate as the men who went up the deep ravine.

American Horse: The men were separated, as has already been said, from the women, and

they were surrounded by the soldiers. Then came next the village of the Indians and that was

entirely surrounded by the soldiers also. When the firing began, of course the people who

were standing immediately around the young man who fired the first shot were killed right

together, and then they turned their guns, Hotchkiss guns, etc., upon the women who were

in the lodges standing there under a flag of truce, and of course as soon as they were fired

upon they fled, the men fleeing in one direction and the women running in two different

directions. So that there were three general directions in which they took flight.

There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag

of truce, and the women and children of course were strewn all along the circular village

until they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her

infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing, and that especially

was a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together,

shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed. All the

Indians fled in these three directions, and after most all of them had been killed a cry was

made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be

safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as

they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.

40

Of course we all feel very sad about this affair. I stood very loyal to the government all

through those troublesome days, and believing so much in the government and being so

loyal to it, my disappointment was very strong, and I have come to Washington with a very

great blame on my heart. Of course it would have been all right if only the men were killed;

we would feel almost grateful for it. But the fact of the killing of the women, and more

especially the killing of the young boys and girls who are to go to make up the future

strength of the Indian people, is the saddest part of the whole affair and we feel it very

sorely.

I was not there at the time before the burial of the bodies, but I did go there with some of

the police and the Indian doctor and a great many of the people, men from the agency, and

we went through the battlefield and saw where the bodies were from the track of the blood.

Turning Hawk: I had just reached the point where I said that the women were killed. We

heard, besides the killing of the men, of the onslaught also made upon the women and

children, and they were treated as roughly and indiscriminately as the men and boys were.

Of course this affair brought a great deal of distress upon all the people, but especially upon

the minds of those who stood loyal to the government and who did all that they were able to

do in the matter of bringing about peace. They especially have suffere d much distress and

are very much hurt at heart. …

Source: “Account Given by Indians of the Fight at Wounded Knee Creek,” in United States

Department of the Interior. Annual Report of the Department of the Interior, Vol. 2 (Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1892), 179-181. Available online via Google Books

(https://books.google.com/books?id=S2EvAQAAMAAJ).

41

Laura C. Kellogg on Indian Education (1913)

The United States used education to culturally assimilate Native Americans. Laura Cornelius Kellogg, an

Oneida author, performer, and activist who helped found the Society of American Indians (SAI) in 1913,

criticized the cultural chauvinism of American policy. Speaking to the SAI, she challenged her Indian

audience to embrace modern American democracy while maintaining their own identity.

The word education has several meanings to our race, and at the start I wish to clear up in

our minds a common misunderstanding of the term. To some of our Indians at home, going

away to a government school means an education from which we may expect anything and

everything. To some others, anything the Caucasian does is “educated” and anything

“Indian” is not. To those who have gone the whole way of enlightenment, education has

another meaning. With them, there is a proper appreciation of the real values of truth

wherever they may be found, whether in an Indian or Paleface.

…

There are old Indians who have never seen the inside of a class room whom I consider far

more educated than the young Indian with his knowledge of Latin and Algebra. There is

something behind the superb dignity and composure of the old bringing up; there is

something in the discipline of the Red Man which has given him a place in the literature and

art of this country, there to remain separate and distinct in his proud active bearing against

all time, all change.

…

We want education, yes, we want to know all the educated Caucasian knows but we want our

self-respect while we are getting his knowledge. In short, let us discriminate between the

goods and bads of civilization and the goods and bads of his own heritage; weed out as

many of the bads as we can and send him along the way a finer type of citizen than if we

turned him into a very average ‘White man’ just to have him “white” in culture. This is what

I mean by recognizing the real values of truth whether they are to be found in paleface or

the Indian.

…

There are altogether 357 government schools; 70 of these reservation boarding schools, 35

non-reservation boarding schools, and 223 day schools. The enrollment in these schools

totals 24,500 children. Besides these there are 4,300 children in the mission schools and

11,000 in the public. Of the 11,000, the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma have 6,900. The

number of children of the race in school in the country then is 39,800. The last report shows

an increase of nearly 2,000 [in] attendance over the year before. Yet, there are still 9,000

children without school facilities!

…

42

Another objectionable feature of the boarding school is this matter of health. Where there

are several hundred [students] together and a large percentage of them are afflicted with

trachoma and tuberculosis the means for their segregation is not sufficient, the well children

are open to these dangers. Think of the danger of trachoma. No immigrant can land in New

York who has trachoma, but here we are exposing the youth of the race to an incurable

disease. If this were done by one individual to another, it would be a penitentiary offense. I

hear someone defending the Bureau. Go to the Indian schools and say to the nurses and the

doctors that they shall not lose their positions if they will tell you the truth about the

conditions of the schools and we would soon enough find that the hospital equipment in the

Indian service is nowhere near adequate to the demand.

…

The white child comes from a well-established economic environment. That is, he has a

home where the one idea in the community is to overcome deficits of material well-being.

This child is continually asking of his parents to find a better means of support and

accumulation. It calls for a continual effort toward improvement. The community life is

organized; it produces and has markets, and money is in circulation in it as a natural result….

The Indian child’s environment is the reservation, a world of deficits. The group has really

custodian care. There is no real personal liberty in wardship; there is no incentive in the

community for any special effort; there is no reward for doing the right thing; the social life

is not organized. … There are no markets of their own making and their own responsibility.

There is no money continually in circulation. As Marvin Jack, in his paper last year said,

when money enters the reservation, it loses its elasticity. When rations and annuities come,

they come like spasms. There is nothing being learned by the adult population from

necessity. What they do, they do through their own sense of natural acumen or decency. The

great wonder is not that at they accomplish so little, but that they are not all outlaws.

…

Our future is in the hands of the educational system of today. Those of us who have come

thus far know how our youth have longed reach the summit of the mountain. Let us not

forget our own yearnings and the prayers of our ambitious young for opportunity. Let us

climb the highest mountain, without looking back till we have reached the top.

Source: Laura Cornelius Kellogg, “Some Facts and Figures on Indian Education,” The

Quarterly Journal of the Society of American Indians (April 1913), 36-46. Available online via Hathi

Trust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013515617&view=2up&seq=46).

43

Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor

(1881)

In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor, a history of the injustices visited upon

Native Americans. Exposing the many wrongs perpetrated by her country, she hoped “to redeem the name of

the United States from the stain of a century of dishonor.”

There are within the limits of the United States between two hundred and fifty and three

hundred thousand Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska. The names of the different tribes

and bands, as entered in the statistical tables of the Indian Office Reports, number nearly

three hundred. …

There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one which has not suffered cruelly

at the hands either of the Government or of white settlers. The poorer, the more

insignificant, the more helpless the band, the more certain the cruelty and outrage to which

they have been subjected. This is especially true of the bands on the Pacific slope. These

Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up in the great influx of

gold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a shore are caught up in a tidal wave. There

was not time for the Government to make treaties; not even time for communities to make

laws. The tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the murders of the Pacific-slope Indians in the

last thirty years would be a volume by itself, and is too monstrous to be believed.

It makes little difference, however, where one opens the record of the history of the Indians;

every page and every year has its dark stain. The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied

only by differences of time and place; but neither time nor place makes any difference in the

main facts. Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and Ohio in

1795; and the United States Government breaks promises now as deftly as then, and with an

added ingenuity from long practice.

One of its strongest supports in so doing is the wide-spread sentiment among the people of

dislike to the Indian, of impatience with his presence as a ” barrier to civilization,” and

distrust of it as a possible danger. The old tales of the frontier life, with its horrors of Indian

warfare, have gradually, by two or three generations’ telling, produced in the average mind

something like an hereditary instinct of unquestioning and unreasoning aversion which it is

almost impossible to dislodge or soften.

There are hundreds of pages of unimpeachable testimony on the side of the Indian; but it

goes for nothing, is set down as sentimentalism or partisanship, tossed aside and forgotten.

President after president has appointed commission after commission to inquire into and

report upon Indian affairs, and to make suggestions as to the best methods of managing

them. The reports are filled with eloquent statements of wrongs done to the Indians, of

perfidies on the part of the Government; they counsel, as earnestly as words can, a trial of

the simple and unperplexing expedients of telling truth, keeping promises, making fair

bargains, dealing justly in all ways and all things. These reports are bound up with the

44

Government’s Annual Reports, and that is the end of them. It would probably be no

exaggeration to say that not one American citizen out of ten thousand ever sees them or

knows that they exist, and yet any one of them, circulated throughout the country, read by

the right-thinking, right-feeling men and women of this land, would be of itself a “campaign

document” that would initiate a revolution which would not subside until the Indians’

wrongs were, so far as is now left possible, righted.

…

To assume that it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke of legislative policy possible,

to undo the mischief and hurt of the long past, set the Indian policy of the country right for

the future, and make the Indians at once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and

uninformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more prevalent, that simply

to make all Indians at once citizens of the United States would be a sovereign and

instantaneous panacea for all their ills and all the Government’s perplexities, is a very

inconsiderate one. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden, all round, to all Indians,

barbarous and civilized alike, would be as grotesque a blunder as to dose them all round with

any one medicine, irrespective of the symptoms and needs of their diseases. It would kill

more than it would cure

…

However great perplexity and difficulty there may be in the details of any and every plan

possible for doing at this late day anything like justice to the Indian, however hard it may be

for good statesmen and good men to agree upon the things that ought to be done, there

certainly is, or ought to be, no perplexity whatever, no difficulty whatever, in agreeing upon

certain things that ought not to be done, and which must cease to be done before the first

steps can be taken toward right ng the wrongs, curing the ills, and wiping out the disgrace to

us of the present condition of our Indians.

Cheating, robbing, breaking promises—these three are clearly things which must cease to be

done. One more thing, also, and that is the refusal of the protection of the law to the

Indian’s rights of property, ” of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

When these four things have ceased to be done, time, statesmanship, philanthropy, and

Christianity can slowly and surely do the rest. Till these four things have ceased to be done,

statesmanship and philanthropy alike must work in vain, and even Christianity can reap but

small harvest.

Source: Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s

Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881), 336-342.

Available online via Internet Archive

(https://archive.org/details/centuryofdishono00jackrich).

45

Tom Torlino (1882, 1885)

Source: Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.

Tom Torlino, a member of the Navajo Nation, entered the Carlisle Indian School, a Native

American boarding school founded by the United States government in 1879, on October

21, 1882 and departed on August 28, 1886. Torlino’s student file contained photographs

from 1882 and 1885.

46

Frances Densmore and Mountain Chief (1916)

Source: Library of Congress.

American anthropologist and ethnographer Frances Densmore records the Blackfoot chief

Mountain Chief in 1916 for the Bureau of American Ethnology.

47

18. Life in Industrial America Introduction

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the triumph of American industrialization and

the rise of “big business,” large corporations, run by trained bureaucrats and salaried

managers, doing national and international business. Sweeping changes washed over the

country as new industrial modes of production revolutionized American life. The rise of

cities, the evolution of American immigration, the transformation of American labor, the

further making of a mass culture, the creation of great concentrated wealth, the growth of

vast city slums, the conquest of the West, the emergence of a middle class, the problem

of poverty, the triumph of big business, widening inequalities, battles between capital and

labor, the final destruction of independent farming, breakthrough technologies,

environmental destruction: industrialization created a new America. The following

documents depict some of that radical change.

48