Американские индейцы
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All of the American Native cultures had in common a deep spiritual
relationship with the land and the life forms it supported. According to
First Nations spiritual beliefs, human beings are participants in a world
of interrelated spiritual forms. First Nations maintain great respect for
all living things. With the arrival of European newcomers, this delicate
balance of life forms was disrupted. In the 18th and 19th centuries,
contact with Europeans began to change traditional ways of life forever.
Native americans and the newcomers
The formulation of public policy toward the Indians was of concern to
the major European colonizing powers.
Colonization
The Spanish tried assiduously to Christianize the natives and to
remake their living patterns. Orders were issued to congregate scattered
Indian villages in orderly, well-placed centers, assuring the Indians at
the same time that by moving to such centers they would not lose their
outlying lands. This was the first attempt to create Indian reservations.
The promise failed to protect Indian land, according to the Franciscan monk
and historian of Mexico, Juan Torquemada, who reported about 1599 that
there was hardly "a palm of land" that the Spaniards had not taken. Many
Indians who did not join the congregations for fear of losing what they
owned fled to mountain places and lost their lands anyway.
The Russians never seriously undertook colonization in the New World.
When Peter I the Great sent Vitus Jonassen Bering into the northern sea
that bears his name, interest was in scientific discovery, not overseas
territory. Later, when the problem of protecting and perhaps expanding
Russian occupation was placed before Catherine II the Great, she declared
(1769): It is for traders to traffic where they please. I will furnish
neither men, nor ships, nor money, and I renounce forever all lands and
possessions in the East Indies and in America.
The Swedish and Dutch attempts at colonization were so brief that
neither left a strong imprint on New World practices. The Dutch government,
however, was probably the first (1645) of the European powers to enter into
a formal treaty with an Indian tribe, the Mohawk. Thus began a
relationship, inherited by the British, that contributed to the ascendancy
of the English over the French in North America.
France handicapped its colonial venture by transporting to the New
World a modified feudal system of land tenure that discouraged permanent
settlement. Throughout the period of French occupation, emphasis was on
trade rather than on land acquisition and development, and thus French
administrators, in dealing with the various tribes, tried primarily only to
establish trade relations with them. The French instituted the custom of
inviting the headmen of all tribes with which they carried on trade to come
once a year to Montreal, where the governor of Canada gave out presents and
talked of friendship. The governor of Louisiana met southern Indians at
Mobile.
The English, reluctantly, found themselves competing on the same basis
with annual gifts. Still later, United States peace commissioners were to
offer permanent annuities in exchange for tribal concessions of land or
other interests. In contrast to the French, the English were primarily
interested in land and permanent settlements; beginning quite early in
their occupation, they felt an obligation to bargain with the Indians and
to conclude formal agreements with compensation to presumed Indian
landowners. The Plymouth settlers, coming without royal sanction, thought
it incumbent upon them to make terms with the Massachuset Indians. Cecilius
Calvert (the 2nd Baron Baltimore) and William Penn, while possessing royal
grants in Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively, nevertheless took pains
to purchase occupancy rights from the Indians. It became the practice of
most of the colonies to prohibit indiscriminate and unauthorized
appropriation of Indian land. The usual requirement was that purchases
could be consummated only by agreement with the tribal headman, followed by
approval of the governor or other official of the colony. At an early date
also, specific areas were set aside for exclusive Indian use. Virginia in
1656 and commissioners for the United Colonies of New England in 1658
agreed to the creation of such reserved areas. Plymouth Colony in 1685
designated for individual Indians separate tracts that could not be
alienated without their consent.
In spite of these official efforts to protect Indian lands,
unauthorized entry and use caused constant friction through the colonial
period. Rivalry with the French, who lost no opportunity to point out to
the Indians how their lands were being encroached upon by the English; the
activity of land speculators, who succeeded in obtaining large grants
beyond the settled frontiers; and, finally, the startling success of the
Ottawa chief Pontiac in capturing English strongholds in the old Northwest
(the Great Lakes region) as a protest against this westward movement,
together prompted King George III's ministers to issue a proclamation
(1763) that formalized the concept of Indian land titles for the first time
in the history of European colonization in the New World. The document
prohibited issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the
Indian title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty. The
proclamation reserved for the use of the tribes "all the Lands and
Territories lying to the Westward of the sources of the Rivers which fall
into the Sea from the West and Northwest. ”Land west of the Appalachians
might not be purchased or entered upon by private persons, but purchases
might be made in the name of the king or one of the colonies at a council
meeting of the Indians”.
This policy continued up to the termination of British rule and was
adopted by the United States. The Appalachian barrier was soon passed -
thousands of settlers crossed the mountains during the American Revolution
- but both the Articles of Confederation and the federal Constitution
reserved either to the president or to Congress sole authority in Indian
affairs, including authority to extinguish Indian title by treaty. When
French dominion in Canada capitulated in 1760, the English announced that
"the Savages or Indian Allies of his most Christian Majesty, shall be
maintained in the lands they inhabit, if they choose to remain there."
Thereafter, the proclamation of 1763 applied in Canada and was embodied in
the practices of the dominion government. (The British North America Act of
1867, which created modern Canada, provided that the parliament of Canada
should have exclusive legislative authority with respect to "Indians, and
lands reserved for the Indians." Thus, both North American countries made
control over Indian matters a national concern.)
United States policy: the late 18th and 19th centuries
The first full declaration of U.S. policy was embodied in the
Northwest Ordinance (1787): The utmost good faith shall always be
observed toward the Indians, their lands and property shall never be
taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and
liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and
lawful wars authorized by congress; but laws founded in justice and
humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being
done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.This
doctrine was embodied in the act of August 7, 1789, as one of the first
declarations of the U.S. Congress under the Constitution.The final
shaping of the legal and political rights of the Indian tribes is found
in the opinions of Chief Justice John Marshall, notably in decision in
the case of Worcester v. Georgia: The Indian nations had always been
considered as distinct, independent, political communities, retaining
their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the land,
from time immemorial. . . . The settled doctrine of the law of nations
is, that a weaker power does not surrender its independence - its right
to self-government - by associating with a stronger, and taking its
protection. A weak state, in order to provide for its safety, may place
itself under the protection of one more powerful, without stripping
itself of the right of government, and ceasing to be a state.The first
major departure from the policy of respecting Indian rights came with the
Indian Removal Act of 1830. For the first time the United States resorted
to coercion, particularly in the cases of the Cherokee and Seminole
tribes, as a means of securing compliance. The Removal Act was not in
itself coercive, since it authorized the president only to negotiate with
tribes east of the Mississippi on a basis of payment for their lands; it
called for improvements in the east and a grant of land west of the
river, to which perpetual title would be attached. In carrying out the
law, however, resistance was met with military force. In the decade
following, almost the entire population of perhaps 100,000 Indians was
moved westward. The episode moved Alexis de Tocqueville to remark in
1831: The Europeans continued to surround [the Indians] on every side,
and to confine them within narrower limits . . . and the Indians have
been ruined by a competition which they had not the means of sustaining.
They were isolated in their own country, and their race only constituted
a little colony of troublesome strangers in the midst of a numerous and
dominant people.
The territory west of the Mississippi, it turned out, was not so
remote as had been supposed. The discovery of gold in California (1848)
started a new sequence of treaties, designed to extinguish Indian title
to lands lying in the path of the overland routes to the Pacific. The
sudden surge of thousands of wagon trains through the last of the Indian
country and the consequent slaughtering of prairie and mountain game that
provided subsistence for the Indians brought on the most serious Indian
wars the country had experienced. For three decades, beginning in the
1850s, raids and sporadic pitched fighting took place up and down the
western Plains, highlighted by such incidents as the Custer massacre by
Sioux and Cheyenne Indians (1876), the Nez Perce chief Joseph's running
battle in 1877 against superior U.S. army forces, and the Chiricahua
Geronimo's long duel with authorities in the Southwest, resulting in his
capture and imprisonment in 1886. Toward the close of that period, the
Ghost Dance religion, arising out of the dream revelations of a young
Paiute Indian, Wovoka, promised the Indians a return to the old life and
reunion with their departed kinsmen. The songs and ceremonies born of
this revelation swept across the northern Plains. The movement came to an
abrupt end December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.
Believing that the Ghost Dance was disturbing an uneasy peace, government
agents moved to arrest ringleaders. Sitting Bull was killed (December 15)
while being taken into custody, and two weeks later units of the U.S. 7th
Cavalry at Wounded Knee massacred more than 200 men, women, and children
who had already agreed to return to their homes. A further major shift of
policy had occurred in 1871 after congressional discussions lasting
several years. U.S. presidents, with the advice and consent of the
Senate, had continued to make treaties with the Indian tribes and commit
the United States to the payment of sums of money. The House of
Representatives protested, since a number of congressmen had come to the
view that treaties with Indian tribes were an absurdity (a view earlier
held by Andrew Jackson). The Senate yielded, and the act of March 3,
1871, declared that "hereafter no Indian nation or tribe" would be
recognized "as an independent power with whom the United States may
contract by treaty." Indian affairs were brought under the legislative
control of the Congress to an extent that had not been attempted
previously. Tribal authority with respect to criminal offenses committed
by members within the tribe was reduced to the extent that murder and
other major crimes were placed under the jurisdiction of the federal
courts. The most radical undertaking of the new legislative policy was
the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887. By that time the Indian tribes
had been moved out of the mainstreams of traffic and were settled on
lands that they had chosen out of the larger areas that they had formerly
occupied. Their choice in most cases had been confirmed by treaty,
agreement, act of Congress, or executive order of the president. The
tribes that lived by hunting over wide areas found reservation
confinement a threat to their existence. Generally, they had insisted on
annuity payments or rations, or both, and the U.S. peace commissioners
had been willing to offer such a price in return for important land
cessions. In time the view came to be held that reservation life fostered
indolence and perpetuated customs and attitudes that held Indians back
from assimilation. The strategy offered by proponents of this theory was
the Allotment Act authorizing the president to divide the reservations
into individual parcels and to give every Indian, whether he wanted it or
not, a particular piece of the tribally owned land. In order not to make
the transition too abrupt, the land would be held in trust for a period
of 25 years, after which ownership would devolve upon the individual.
With it would go all the rights and duties of citizenship. Reservation
land remaining after all living members of the tribes had been provided
with allotments was declared surplus, and the president was authorized to
open it for entry by non-Indian homesteaders, the Indians being paid the
homestead price. A total of 118 reservations was allotted in this manner,
but the result was not what had been anticipated. Through the alienation
of surplus lands (making no allowance for children yet unborn) and
through patenting of individual holdings, the Indians lost 86,000,000
acres (34,800,000 hectares), or 62 percent, of a total of 138,000,000
acres in Indian ownership prior to 1887. A generation of landless Indians
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