Could the US have a policy that didn't expel the native Americans but instead force them to be compact (in as compact as they are bound to land limitations as U.S. settlers) in exchange for allowing them to stay and citizenship? Could this have worked for some tribes and would the U.S. have pursued this policy?
AHC: US Native Americans Aren't Expelled Amidst Settler Colonization
- Thread starter TickTock The Witch's Dead
- Start date
This is so incredibly vague of a question, could you be a bit more specific? By the time of Jackson the process of the Americans disposing the land rights of Indigenous nations is already well in place.
Generaloberst
Banned
I'd argue by the time that the United States came about, Indian evictions across what would become the United States, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, were a matter of when and not if. You'd want a POD back to the first settlers, and I don't know how you'd manage that. The fact is, they were sitting on land that the settlers wanted for themselves.
Generaloberst
Banned
As I said, by then, the attitude wasn't going to change, and that was with tribes that were, for the lack of a better term, docile. I doubt the Plains Tribes will take the suggestion of land limitations seriously considering they fought against basically exactly that.
usertron2020
Donor
I'm NO expert on Native-American History, God knows. But AIUI in all of the USA the only tribes that even had a sliver of their original land left to them were the Navahoes and Hopis. The former based on what the White Man saw as the worthlessness of their land and the latter on their being so pacifistic.
The very nature of Slavery existing throughout the USA at one time or another promoted a level of White racism not seen elsewhere outside of White-ruled portions of Africa and Latin America (until the races of Hispanics, Natives, and ex-Slaves began to meld, as in Brazil). So, from the Whites' POV, their treatment of Natives was actually "more benevolent"
than the horrors suffered by African Slaves enduring the raids on Africa, the Middle Passage, and all the terrible crimes committed against the Black Race in the USA.That said, Roger Taney's ruling that ANY colored person had no rights any White person was bound to respect was still etched in stone in many White minds long after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments had supposedly overturned Scott. So giving Native-Americans a decent covenant with White settlers is giving our White ancestors far more credit than they ever would deserve. Just look at the major military campaign launched against the Nez Perce Tribe, to expel them from their lands and force them onto reservations.
Lands that AFAIK today are inhabited by about 40 families.
To get a good sense of the White thinking at the time, one only has to go back 60 years to Charles Shultz' Lucy Van Pelt: "Mine! Mine! Everythings' Mine!" She takes all the toys for herself, and almost as an afterthought tosses a rubber band to her baby brother to play with. Until she notices he was having too much fun with it, so she took that too.
Overall, by the Declaration of Independence, it was too late to really alter the way things went down. There could be some minor exceptions but these require very specific scenarios and lots of luck going toward the Natives; and I don't have the time to get into them.
Honestly, you would need a POD back in the early days of colonization to really change how things went down.
This was tried, the Trail of Tears and later the boarding schools were the result.
Honestly, you would need a POD back in the early days of colonization to really change how things went down.
This was tried, the Trail of Tears and later the boarding schools were the result.
Okay then, yeah maybe an earlier POD helps.
Maybe alliances that lead to close relations and more intermarriage helps?
You would need good settler and Indian leaders in the early days of colonization I think, but yes, with an early PoD I think it could be done. The hard truth is though, that the Indians will largely have to roll over and either surrender their land or assimilate completely. Part of the problem IOTL was that it took a while for the Indians and settlers to fully grasp the differences between their two cultures.
I'm not sure if this would fulfil the OP's conditions, but might it be possible to keep the reservations but butterfly away the Indian removals policy? In that case, the process would essentially be one of making the tribes hand over territory to the settlers rather than deporting them entirely.
Gross simplification alert: European colonization in the New World tended to follow one of two general approaches: (1) Latin American assimilation of native peoples and (2) Anglo-American exclusion of native people.
Under (1) Natives became subjects of the Spanish Crown (later "citizens" of the post-independent republic) and were generally not forced to abandon their lands and towns but were forced to assimilate to the dominant hispanic culture, often as a servile underclass. In Mexico native "nations" have no separate legal identity.
Under (2) Natives were considered separate nations. For the most part individual natives were not recognized as legal subjects of the British Crown in the same way Anglo-settlers were, and they did not become citizens of the US upon independence. Assimilation was not the goal...exclusion was. The advantage to natives was that they tended to retain their original languages and native national identify longer...the disadvantage was that they did not have any of the legal rights that US citizens did.
I think you'd need a PoD well before US independence for native nations to be treated in a different way.
Under (1) Natives became subjects of the Spanish Crown (later "citizens" of the post-independent republic) and were generally not forced to abandon their lands and towns but were forced to assimilate to the dominant hispanic culture, often as a servile underclass. In Mexico native "nations" have no separate legal identity.
Under (2) Natives were considered separate nations. For the most part individual natives were not recognized as legal subjects of the British Crown in the same way Anglo-settlers were, and they did not become citizens of the US upon independence. Assimilation was not the goal...exclusion was. The advantage to natives was that they tended to retain their original languages and native national identify longer...the disadvantage was that they did not have any of the legal rights that US citizens did.
I think you'd need a PoD well before US independence for native nations to be treated in a different way.
Just last week found out what the mortality rates were like in those schools.... I went to college in Carlisle, and didn't really give the Indian school a second thought. Ugh.
Yeah, I agree with the common sentiment; you need fundamental change that eventually extends to things like demographics, otherwise you're not going to fundamentally alter the outcome.
You need to eliminate Protestantism.
Like almost every poisonous social meme within American life, our treatment of the natives comes almost directly from the attitudes of our Puritan and other-Proddy forebears. These Protestants, lacking in the insititutional heritage, traditionalism, bureaucracy and Jesuits of the Catholic Church, turned instead to the Old Testament for inspiration.
This turn towards the Old Testament was not just a phenomenon in the US; South African Boers, themselves Calvinists, had the same religiously motivated rhetoric towards the animist tribes as we did towards natives.
These hardscrabble settlers on the frontier, of all denominations, found an easy theology in the story of Israel. All the land they were finding was given to them by God, and the Israelites had to clear the Canaanites out of the land of Israel. Thusly, the various native tribes were made into Amalekites, savages, ungodly peoples meant to be destroyed in God's name. Add to this the typical economic arguments--settlers need good land, full settlements vs. semi-nomadic life, and you have a very volatile situation. Add in the fact that these settlers had long memories of the earliest Indian wars, which were in their time existential conflicts for the early colonies (King Philips War, the Powhatan War... all could have gone south for the colonists, and we could have seen these settlements exterminated themselves) and you have the perfect mix of motives, history, fear and God to engineer within the settlers a call to exterminate the native.
Even the European immigrants inherited this mindset; I don't recall too many Catholics out in the Midwest, but I do recall a lot of Protestants...
Now, Catholics on the ground could be just as bad; the slave raids into the Brazilian jungle, the destruction of Mesoamerica, the encomiendas, etc. What Catholicism had was the institutional control to at least have some Jesuit missions (like those in Paraguay), Jesuit conversions, and, at least on paper, laws against slavery and mistreatment of the Indians (which were totally ignored in the New World; materialism trumps whatever New Laws de las Casas lobbied for).
Other Protestant memes include literalism--which is why all these modern fundies quote Leviticus on homosexuality rather than Christ--and the Protestant work ethic, which itself tied into the idea that settlers, if they worked hard enough, would be given this God-sanctioned land, which they needed to clear of settlers.
The more "conscientious" argued for boarding schools to assimilate people. These were run terribly, and so we had even more of a death toll. Now, I don't see America being able to coexist well with semi-nomadic native tribes, or even with settled tribes (the Cherokee), but if we could have more Sequoyahs willing to settle down--and a SCOTUS case or two recognizing some land rights--we might be able to prevent the worst of the abuses. I really don't see the settlers up and becoming decent towards the natives, but there is room to make them better than they were.
Like almost every poisonous social meme within American life, our treatment of the natives comes almost directly from the attitudes of our Puritan and other-Proddy forebears. These Protestants, lacking in the insititutional heritage, traditionalism, bureaucracy and Jesuits of the Catholic Church, turned instead to the Old Testament for inspiration.
This turn towards the Old Testament was not just a phenomenon in the US; South African Boers, themselves Calvinists, had the same religiously motivated rhetoric towards the animist tribes as we did towards natives.
These hardscrabble settlers on the frontier, of all denominations, found an easy theology in the story of Israel. All the land they were finding was given to them by God, and the Israelites had to clear the Canaanites out of the land of Israel. Thusly, the various native tribes were made into Amalekites, savages, ungodly peoples meant to be destroyed in God's name. Add to this the typical economic arguments--settlers need good land, full settlements vs. semi-nomadic life, and you have a very volatile situation. Add in the fact that these settlers had long memories of the earliest Indian wars, which were in their time existential conflicts for the early colonies (King Philips War, the Powhatan War... all could have gone south for the colonists, and we could have seen these settlements exterminated themselves) and you have the perfect mix of motives, history, fear and God to engineer within the settlers a call to exterminate the native.
Even the European immigrants inherited this mindset; I don't recall too many Catholics out in the Midwest, but I do recall a lot of Protestants...
Now, Catholics on the ground could be just as bad; the slave raids into the Brazilian jungle, the destruction of Mesoamerica, the encomiendas, etc. What Catholicism had was the institutional control to at least have some Jesuit missions (like those in Paraguay), Jesuit conversions, and, at least on paper, laws against slavery and mistreatment of the Indians (which were totally ignored in the New World; materialism trumps whatever New Laws de las Casas lobbied for).
Other Protestant memes include literalism--which is why all these modern fundies quote Leviticus on homosexuality rather than Christ--and the Protestant work ethic, which itself tied into the idea that settlers, if they worked hard enough, would be given this God-sanctioned land, which they needed to clear of settlers.
The more "conscientious" argued for boarding schools to assimilate people. These were run terribly, and so we had even more of a death toll. Now, I don't see America being able to coexist well with semi-nomadic native tribes, or even with settled tribes (the Cherokee), but if we could have more Sequoyahs willing to settle down--and a SCOTUS case or two recognizing some land rights--we might be able to prevent the worst of the abuses. I really don't see the settlers up and becoming decent towards the natives, but there is room to make them better than they were.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Wow, that is a real challenge. I mean, a real question and a real issue. I'd like to think there's enough Protestants, like the Robert Duvall character in the movie The Apostle, who work the love and redemption side of the street, and not so much the sin and condemnation side. And/or preachers who take the view, it's not our job to make a judgment on someone else's eternal destiny, all we can do is to honestly share what works for us.
People who have been mistreated can go one of two ways, (1) we want to be on top, or (2) we want to change the system so that no one is mistreated. Throughout human history, the first seems more common, but the second is not entirely unheard of.
Assimilation is impossible under a Protestant mindset. In every case, "assimilation" ITTL really meant "do everything humanly possible to make sure they won't be allowed to assimilate, then blame them for the failure".
Whether a minority group is allowed to assimilate is ALWAYS determined, solely and completely and without exception, by the dominant group and its institutions. There is absolutely NOTHING a visible minority group can do to assimilate itself; it always, and I mean always, has to be allowed to assimilate. And the Protestant mindset - the "clearing the savages" and the idea that failure is always due to laziness theories especially - makes assimilation impossible.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
1) More mild forms of smallpox and measles come to the Americas first, giving the natives some immunity for when the more serious strains come. This is a matter of blind luck, and yet it's an absolute necessity.
2) Things are somewhat better in Europe so the religious settlers don't so much have to leave.
3) The settlers are bigger into fishing and smaller into farming. Now, someone raised the very good point, if fishing is a more stable food source as you think, won't that just make the population pressures more? Yes and no. The Europeans will hug the coastline more.
4) The natives also take up fishing. Afterall, they are fairly open to new ideas which work.
5) Large swaths of land are left for hunting and for homesteads of natives.
6) Disagreements on intensive vs. casual agriculture do come. But they come later when the natives and settlers have more of a history of working together.
2) Things are somewhat better in Europe so the religious settlers don't so much have to leave.
3) The settlers are bigger into fishing and smaller into farming. Now, someone raised the very good point, if fishing is a more stable food source as you think, won't that just make the population pressures more? Yes and no. The Europeans will hug the coastline more.
4) The natives also take up fishing. Afterall, they are fairly open to new ideas which work.
5) Large swaths of land are left for hunting and for homesteads of natives.
6) Disagreements on intensive vs. casual agriculture do come. But they come later when the natives and settlers have more of a history of working together.
You are certainly more optimistic re: the basic decency of people than I am. The problem with America is that it is hard to produce the second group from among the Protestants; pluralism and anti-Catholic (pro-Protestant) bias helped them out, and once America is independent they are the ones on top, so there is less need to compromise (and before America is independent, well... the Puritan colonies kept expelling people who they disagreed with, and all of them were largely left alone until the end of salutary neglect).
Now, it is of course not impossible--the Caribbean colony of Eleuthera, I believe, was originally set up as a Puritan theocracy; when that failed, they established freedom of (Protestant) religion. But when it comes to natives, who aren't Christian and who critically lack the same economic lifestyle, I see cooperation being much harder to create. You have your "civilized" tribes, but even special status and assimilation couldn't save the Cherokee, who moreso than any other North American native group adapted to white man's economics.
I think the "live and let live" with non-Protestants largely came in the 20th century; the 19th century saw religious social justice, yes, but it also saw missionary schools and reservations. The Second Great Awakening will be hard to overcome--and its easier to sell genteel American society on banning liquor or freeing slaves or helping out women, etc. than it is on "treating those savages equally". Especially with the native raids--every attack by the natives was treated like Cawnpore in the press, and the exoticization of the Indian made things even worse.
And this is a society that had problems with accepting Catholics and Jews, let alone native peoples who come from vastly different cultural, religious and socioeconomic circumstances. And if you can surmount all that, you run into the quandary that Bartolome de las Casas, greatest humanist of all time and ex-encomendado, ran into:
The unquenchable greed of human beings. If the natives are sitting on any land that could serve any purpose--rail, gold, farming, cattle, towns, etc--there is going to be significant public pressure from Capital to seize the land. Take Hawaii--Sanford Dole and the pineapple lobby basically got us to annex Hawaii. Manifest destiny was a nice little rhetorical flourish, but America's industrial economy wanted more land, more resources, more trade, etc.