Wild West PODs- better US treatment of Indians

After just watching THE MISSING, I'm wondering what POD/s would be required to facilitate the US govt's better treatment of Indians who'd surrendered and been put on reservations, and how much of an effect would've arisen on race relations. How could such terrible injustices as the neglectful starvation of some Plains tribes, such as the Blackfoot in Montana, on the part of unscrupulous white traders and officials who didn't give a fig about the Indians they were supposed to be providing for, and the deportation from Arizona and New Mexico of all Apaches both hostile and friendly to Florida prison camps (and consequent poor conditions resulting in large nos. dying of malaria and other diseases), have been avoided ?

Undoubtedly the easiest, but most unrealistic, way (at least from the POV of the 20th/21st century individual - probably not from that of the 19th century) would be for each and every indian to finally say "I'm giving up on my traditions and way of life and whole heartedly embracing the way of the White Man." The majority of indians get up and leave the reservations and enter mainstream American life, those that don't eventually end up in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.

The interaction between White Man and Red Man on the Plains and further west, at least from the opinion of a friend, was directly shaped by American-Indian relations East of the Mississippi. There is also the question of race, tho I think it more of the Protestant view point versus the Native American, how one applies themselves, the use of the land, etc. These two societies are so very different in regards 'dominion over the earth' and 'living with Mother Earth'. Also the influx of settlers into what settlers would consider the 'empty' lands of the nomad is something to consider.

too many of the problems of the Indians on the reservations were because of unscrupulous Indian Agents who either sold off supplies intended for the Indians or didn't bother to get them. Many of the reasons why they left the reservations and got into conflicts with the US were simply because they were starving. This, at a time when the US was hardly short of food or beef. So, the best answer to the problem is obviously to have better agents. Perhaps draw them from some of the various churches in the US? To be sure, this would mean that the natives would be slowly eroded from their native cultures and religions, but they would be treated much better physically anyway....

Both Davids' responses do a good job of hitting the "big picture culture conflict" side (Poepoe) and the "little picture fix" side (Howery) I was basically going to say the same general things, but lean toward the agent issue as a realistic improvement which might have actually done a lot of good. Howery's observation about the churches is also astute. There was often considerable conflict between the government agents and missionaries operating on the reservations, and based on my profesional research the missionaries were invariably much more interested in the physical and cultural well-being of the people on the reservations than the Indian Agents. For most low-level US government bureaucrats, getting assigned as an Indian Agent out west was like going to Siberia - it typically only attracted the laziest and most corrupt people.

A broader problem is that the US government never fully decided what it wanted from its reservation system. At first (in the early-mid 19th century) reservations in the west (although they weren't always called that at the time) were established just to relocate Indians who had become "inconvenient" in their original homes. The reservations were large and typically contained enough resources to sustain the tribes' aboriginal farming or hunting/gathering practices. There was really no concerted US government policy to acculturate them as there was no thought they would ever become US Citizens. After the Civil War, and thru the late 19th century, as conflicts arose between settlers and western tribes, reservations became essentially prisons where the policy shifted to forced acculturation. Traditional subsistence patterns were banned and most children were put in government run boarding schools to be taught English and "white" culture. Church run boarding schools were also tolerated on reservations, but many were closed because the missonaries proved to willing to tolerate and support traditional language and cultural traditions. Yet, Reservation Indians as a unit were still not considered US citizens. Although not deliberate "genocide" , it was expected that Native populations would gradually disappear from a combination of low birth rates, adoption of Indian children by whites, intermarriage, and acculturation ("The Vanishing American"). However, Indians neither vanished nor was the US government really willing to spend the effort to fully and affcetively acculturate them. It wasn't until the 1920's that all indians became US citizens (and citizens of the states within which they reside). Also in the early 20th century, most tribes lost all formally recognized self-government. In the 1970's the trend has reversed, and most tribes are again recognized as dependent sovereign nations within the US, creating the fascinating mix of overlapping state, tribal, and federal laws we in the west deal with on a regular basis. Many Indians I know are proud of both their tribal and US citizenship (Indians have a tremendous record in the US military, for instance), but are much less willing to recognize State authority.

Actually, one of the enticements to get the natives onto reservations was the promise of lots of free beef... which often didn't appear, almost always because of the Indian Agents. When the natives were given their promised beef, they were usually happy on the reservations (slaughtering cattle is a heck of a lot easier and more dependable than native farming or hunter/gathering). Still, even if well fed, it's likely the natives would have lost their cultures, and become assimilated into white cultures. That's still a better fate than what actually happened to them...