BUREAUCRACY VS INDIANS

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BUREAUCRACY VS INDIANS

• The Reservation System Under the Bureau of Indian
  Affairs (BIA)

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Early BIA

• Initially, Federal control over reservations was
  very limited
• Single "Indian Agent" assigned to a reservation,
  or to multiple reservations, with responsibility
  for distributing food commodities to the Indians,
  but with relatively little responsibility beyond
  that.
• The entire BIA, initially called the Office of
  Indian Affairs, only had 108 employees in 1852
• By 1888, 1,725 employees in the Bureau.
• Called on the military in the case of any
  disorder or if any Indians left the reservation
  without permission.

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Apache Chiefs with Indian Agent
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Reservation Life Rosebud Reservation Indians and
Agent
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Pine Ridge Reservation, late 1880s
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Sioux at Pine Ridge Waiting for Food
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Commodity Distribution
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Cattle Killed at a Beef Issue
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Skinning Beef at a Beef Issue
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Blackfoot Woman Drying Meat, 1920
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Early BIA Functions

• Small number of agents still meant BIA was not
  able to do much beyond distribute commodities
• Over time scope of activities and power expanded
  as the bureau grew
• 1911 6,000 employees and 1934 12,000
• Early reservation Indians relatively free to
  establish their own institutions and economic
  activities
• Dominant economic activity throughout the country
  at the time, and especially in the parts of the
  country where most reservations were established,
  was agriculture,
• Most reservation land was suitable for growing
  crops or grazing livestock.

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Agriculture and Property Rights Issues

• To pursue agriculture, Indians had to allocate
  land
• Recall, systems of property rights in land varied
  considerably among American Indians depending on
  whether they were hunter-gatherers,
  agriculturists, or some combination of the two
• Once a tribe was confined to a reservation,
  generally encompassing a much smaller area than
  had previously been claimed and in many cases, in
  a totally different geographic area and physical
  environment than the tribe had controlled before,
  it had to develop a system of property rights
  suitable to the new conditions.

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Where Agriculture was Attractive, Usufruct
Evolved

• Government's Agent and the members of the tribe
  recognized an individual's property rights to
  animals, and where farming was practiced, a
  family's claim to the land it worked was
  recognized
• More land could be claimed by an individual or
  family by bringing it under cultivation (Locke)
• Essentially adopted on all of the reservations
  where farming was feasible,
• Similar to the system of rights that had existed
  among agricultural tribes before they were placed
  on reservations.
• Had sufficient legal status so that when land was
  taken for some reason, (e.g., right-of -way for a
  railroad) owners would be compensated.

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Development of Reservation Agriculture (Ag)

• Indians previously involved in Ag moved quickly
  to reestablish Ag on reservations
• 5 Civilized tribes in Oklahoma in the 1830s and
  40s, were the first to establish subsistence
  farming
• In 1877 they were producing about 70 percent of
  the wheat being produced on reservations, over 80
  percent of the corn, and almost 45 percent of the
  vegetables

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Ag Development (Cont. 1)

• Other traditional ag tribes also adopted quickly.
  
• Couer d'Alene in Idaho had practiced Ag before
  being confined to a reservation. The 1900 Census
  reported
• "Agriculture is their principle occupation, and
  with few exceptions, their farms are well
  supplied with buildings and implements. Material
  progress is being made from year to year in the
  improvements of the farms, and new land is being
  broken each year. Many of the Indian farms at
  Couer d'Alene would compare favorably with those
  of neighboring white men in the number of acres
  under cultivation."
• Some Couer d'Alene became quite prosperous

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Ag Development, (Cont. 2)

• Couer d'Alene achieved their Ag success with
  almost no supervision or guidance from government
  agents (agent assigned to the reservation also
  served another one)
• Point made in part because agents often claimed
  credit for the development of agriculture of the
  reservations that they supervised (discussed
  below)
• Traditional non-Ag tribes were slower to adopt ag
  technology, as long as hunting remained feasible
• buffalo were gone from the plains by early 1870s,
  and populations of other food sources for hunters
  (deer, elk, and antelope) were also severely
  reduced by Indians, white settlers, trappers, and
  army troops
• As hunting opportunities disappeared, these
  tribes also began to shift into Ag

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Selling Hay to the Cavalry
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Yankton Reservation in South Dakota Provides a
Useful Case

• Shows how Indian property rights evolved before
  Congress and the bureaucratic apparatus began to
  assert their own vision about how land should be
  allocated
• Reservation established by treaty with the
  Yankton Dakota (Sioux), in the late 1850s
• Buffalo had largely vanished from that part of
  the Plains by the 1860s, so government agents
  increased their efforts to promote Indian farming
• Started agency farms as demonstration projects
• Hired white farmers to work the agency farm.

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Yankton, Continued

• According to Department of Interior, Office of
  Indian Affairs publications, the demonstration
  project and other activities to encourage farming
  resulted in a substantial growth of small scale
  farming
• by1878 farming was conducted "by each man on his
  own plot of ground
• actual impact of these government efforts to
  encourage farming is unclear since the Indians
  themselves faced increasingly strong incentives
  to farm as hunting options disappeared.
• Cultivated farming plots only ranged from 5 to 15
  acres in size, but by 1888, according to an
  Indian Affairs publication, many individuals had
  land claims that had been recognized and
  maintained for as long as 20 years

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Teaching Agriculture to Indian Boys Tulalip
Reservation
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Yankton, Continued

• The tribe certainly was not self-sufficient in
  Ag, so it continued to require food and other
  commodities from the government,
• Members also clearly were not unwilling to get
  involved in ag activities, even though this was
  not a tribe that had been involved in Ag before
  they were placed on the reservation
• Same ownership patterns emerged on a large number
  of other reservations, often with much larger
  individual land holdings, even for tribes that
  had never had any experience with ag (e.g.,
  Yakima in Washington and the Flathead in Montana,
  both of which had very fertile farm land on
  reservations).
• Frequently cited hypothesis that Indian culture
  prevented development of Ag is not valid

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Trends in Indian Ag

• Acres cultivated by reservation tribes excluding
  the 5 civilized tribes
• 117,267 in 1875, up to 369,974 by 1896
• Reservation grain production grew by an average
  of 5.5 per year from 1875 to 1895, from about
  1.1M bushels in the mid 1870s to about 3.2M
  bushels in 1895
• Census of Agriculture 19,910 Indian farms in
  1899
• One farm for every 12 Indians on reservations
• Given family sizes, a large portion of the
  reservation Indians in areas where ag was
  feasible were actively pursuing farming.

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Size of Indian Farms

• Average farm size was 172.5 acres.
• In North central region where the Northern plains
  states are included, most of the reservations
  involve tribes like the Sioux who had
  traditionally not been farmers. Nevertheless,
  there were 4,037 Indian farms in this region in
  1899 with a mean size of 307 acres and a median
  of 135 acres.
• Homestead act allocated 160 acres to
  homesteaders, so many of the Indian farms were
  much larger than the homesteader's farms,
  although most were clearly smaller.

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Another Example Santee Sioux

• Several tribes adapted fairly quickly to Ag
• Santee Sioux, one of the three Eastern sub-tribes
  of the Sioux, were located in Minnesota
• In 1862, the tribe was under considerable stress
  due to the decline in hunting opportunities,
  White encroachment into their territory, and
  broken promises of aid
• War broke out, and although it was relatively
  short it was quite bloody
• Most of the Santee were removed from Minnesota
  and placed on three scattered reservations - the
  Santee reservation in Nebraska, the Sisseton
  Reservation (mostly in South Dakota, but also
  parts of North Dakota and Minnesota, and the
  Devil's Lake Reservation in North Dakota).

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Santee (Cont.)

• Ag began to develop on these reservations
• Considerable strides were made toward
  self-sufficiently through the 1870s and 1880s, as
  individuals developed private farms (not unusual
  similar progress occurred on the Yankton
  Reservation that I mentioned earlier, where, by
  1895 several farmers were raising enough for
  their own subsistence)
• Tribe was not prosperous or even approaching
  self-sufficiency, but they were making steady
  progress toward Ag based economies on
  reservations.
• Case studies suggest similar implications for a
  number of other tribes, and a few, including the
  5 civilized tribes, were doing very well

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Apache Harvest
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Indian Ranching

• Some reservations, particularly in parts of the
  high plains east of the Rockies, and the arid
  lands between the Rockies and the Sierras are not
  well suited for cultivation farming
• Some are more suited for cattle ranching (e.g.
  parts of the Blackfoot Reservation on the high
  plains of Montana).
• For these tribes, as hunting became difficult,
  cattle were acquired, and individual ownership
  of cattle was recognized.
• Private ownership of cattle was so well
  established that when the Federal Government
  replace private herds with tribal herds between
  1910 and 1920 the Indians were very resistant to
  the change

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Jackson Sundown An Indian Cowboy
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Grazing Land was not Broken into Individual
Parcels

• Like the open range ranching system of White
  ranchers
• Methods of dividing cattle into separate herds
  and confining them onto separate lands was not
  technologically feasible
• Water is scarce in these areas so several
  ranchers often had to have access to the same
  water source
• Plains Indians readily adapted to cattle
  ranching had been herding horses for a long
  time, and skill with horses was easily adapted to
  cattle ranching where horsemanship was a valuable
  input
• Several tribes were making considerable progress
  toward success in ranching by the late 1800s

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Some Indian Lands Were too Arid for Ag

• Some reservation Tribes never did develop Ag
• Ute Indians on the Unitah and Ouray reservations
  in Utah provide an example
• Utes had never been involved in Ag before they
  were confined to reservations, and the Indian
  agents contended that it was their cultural
  resistance that prevented them from becoming
  farmers
• Actually, land they were on was clearly not
  suited for Ag
• Very rough and arid terrain
• Crops on experimental agency farms suppose to
  provide examples for Indians consistently failed

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Adapting to New Technology

• A new form of Alfalfa hay was developed that
  provided to be a successful crop on the Ute
  reservations where irrigation was possible. So
  as hunting opportunities declined, many Utes
  began to be involved in agricultural efforts,
• By 1920, 79 of the adult males were cultivating
  land, averaging 42 acres each.
• However, by this time incentives for Indians had
  clearly changed, and more cultivated land on the
  reservation was actually being leased to white
  farmers than was being farmed by Indians.
• After this period the Utes moved out of farming.

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Trends Actually Changed in Mid-1890s

• Mid-1890s was the peak of Indian farming
• Stagnated after that
• Land under cultivation stayed roughly the same
  for the next decade,
• grain output declined to about 2.5 million
  bushels from the high of 3.2 million bushels in
  1895
• Key question Why did this stagnation occur?
• Similarly, several tribes were making very good
  progress towards successful cattle ranching in
  the late 1800s and even into the early 1900s
• Then the U.S. Government induced them to sell off
  their herds and lease their lands to whites

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Why Did Incentives Change?

• Changes mandated by Congress and imposed by the
  BIA.
• A writer quoted by Anderson explained
• "When we hear it said today that Indians do not
  believe in property or in private enterprise, we
  are still hearing the echoes of the struggle
  against Indian agrarian entrepreneurs in the
  1930s, a struggle waged in the name of liberating
  landless Indians from poverty, but which in
  reality returned reservations economics to
  government dependence.
• This struggle actually began earlier, however.