go our separate ways. you may be wondering why are speakers did -- why our speakers did not question each other. last week, they spent a few hours together hashing this out. peaceful reached a conclusion to their talks. we will be summarizing their findings from that conversation. we hope to have that available online and in print within the next few weeks. those of you who are registered he automatically getting an electronic version and i hope you will be able to read that and continued the conversation. i want to thank our three speakers for joining us and i want to thank you all. thank you for coming. [applause]

announcer: you are watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on c-span3. forow us on twitter information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. masoncer: at george university professor joseph genetin-pilawa argues during the reconstruction era, native americans frequently worked directly with the u.s. government but the advance of to the west was an overwhelming force that still cost native americans ttheir land. his classes about an hour and 15 minutes. mr. genetin-pilawa: today, we are going to pick up with u.s. federal tribal relationships. although you will notice and i did warn you we are jumping

forward slightly. last class, we were speaking about removal and the establishment of reservations in the 1830's, 1840's. early 1850's. we are going to jump forward a bit into the civil war and after. one of the things i want to try and do is think about the ways that native history and the development of the west were directly connected to the civil war and reconstruction even though we don't always think of those things as related to one another. i think we kind of separate westward expansion and the civil war from one another but what the people who lived through that, i don't think they would have separated it. we are going to try to get into that mindset today.

when we think about the term reconstruction, we usually use it to describe a series of policies and developments in the south between 1863 and 1877. these were policies that were designed to integrate free slaves into a mainstream population and readmit the ceded states back into the union. welcome, everyone. >> [inaudible] prof. genetin-pilawa: free

people themselves took an active role in reconstruction. former slaves took an active role in the reconstruction process but there are big questions. this is just at the end of the civil war and their big questions of the nation of a whole faith. would reconstruction result in a kind of revolution? would this be a second revolution resulting in an entirely different new nation or would it preserve the old republic somehow? these questions are not decided at the moment the civil war ended. for the people live through the war and sacrificed so much, these were important questions. people didn't want to believe they had made the sacrifices they did and then come out of it at the other end without some major change, some positive change. we often times think about this in relationship to free slaves and reconstruction but native people played a role in this also. that is kind of what i want us to think about, connecting the south and west and federal indian policy. i want to suggest a different way of thinking about reconstruction and that's thinking about reconstruction more broadly. thinking about the west and how we might call indian country was reconstructed at the same time. the people who lived in the mid-19th century wouldn't have

separated events in the south other events going on. if you look at newspapers from the time, they were covering johnson's impeachment. these things were intimately tied together. these events were all part of one moment in we can learn a lot about the larger nation by thinking about native american history in this time. i want to start with a short exercise. i want to look at a couple of images. some of you have seen these images before. i apologize for the resolution. this is april 9, 1865. this is a drawing.

kind of do your best with the contrast and resolution here but what do you see? what is going on? knowing the date and the context, what is going on here? eleanor, what do you see? >> robert e. lee in the chair in the front. >> robert e lee in the later uniform. >> [inaudible] >> this is ulysses s. grant. what is going on in this picture. what is happening? this is a surrender of the army of the potomac. they are going to set forth a series of events that would end the war a few month later completely. a hugely important moment. a huge, historic moment.

and ely parker, who you are a bit familiar with, is in this picture also. can anyone pick out eelie parker? he's standing on the right side. the third person in. right in front of him there is the actual drafting of the surrender agreement on the table. the guy standing over the right shoulder of the men writing. who is parker? you read a bit about him. who was he? >> he was the chief of the indians -- he led the indians in their fight against new york state. mr. genetin-pilawa: he was leading a resistant campaign against removal. he was leading a fight against the armed and land company in new york state -- augden land company in new york state. he helped them secure a title to part of their homeland in new york.

a few years later, he became friends with u.s. grant. grant requests him at vicksburg and e serves to the rest of grants and or circled, ultimately becoming a military secretary. he was at appomattox courthouse. this image isn't quite accurate because it was parker who drafted the surrender agreement. it was parker who actually wrote out the surrender agreement that would be the beginning of the end of the civil war. and there is a story about this moment. i'm not sure -- it certainly gets retold quite frequently but that is grant and his men were at the parlor. there's an interesting story about mclean.

that the war started in his backyard and ended in his front parlor. grant is there with his men and their sort of mud splattered and fatigued. lee comes in and grant introduces into his men. they shake hands and then he gets to parker and the story goes -- robert todd lincoln was one of the people who told this story. when lee came to parker, he didn't really take a step back but kind of reacted. some people believe that maybe he thought parker was african-american or potentially

mixed race. there was a tense moment. this was a really tense moment. lee composed himself, put his hand out to shake parker's hand and said i'm glad to see there's at least one real american here today. the story goes parker's graphs -- grasped his hand and said "today, we are all americans." it's a nice story. i don't know if it actually happened but it sounds good, right? this is a story of inclusion. this is a native person being included in an incredibly tense and hugely historic moment. he is right in the middle of the action. the reason he ended up dropping was because one of grants other men was trying to write out the terms as lee and grant talk them through but he was so nervous that he kept spilling ink and couldn't get it under control so parker was the more calm one in the most literate of grants inter-circle. this is 1865.

it tells a story of inclusion. right? mean, would you agree with me on that? man right atican the center, the heart of this historic moment. i want to jump a couple years and look at another famous image from that time. this is a painting. from 1872. it's an image of manifest destiny. what do you see? what can you see in this picture apologize for the resolution.

see?hat can you >> [inaudible] mr. genetin-pilawa: there is this a giant, angelic woman floating across the landscape. she represents colombia, which is kind of the physical manifestation of america prior to uncle sam. she is floating over the landscape. what is she bringing with her? she's carrying a telegraph wire from the east to the west. literally connecting the east to the west. what else do you see? >> the terrain also connecting east to west. mr. genetin-pilawa: there are like three different trains there. the industrialization taking place. transportation development taking place.

these are all facing westward, moving westward. >> you also see the indians basically sort of in fear looking at this coming at them. mr. genetin-pilawa: down here, you see about four native people kind of looking back over their shoulder, exiting stage left. what are some other elements of this picture? >> columbia is like bringing the light of civilization westward. mr. genetin-pilawa: the east side of this image is bright. literally bringing the light of civilization to the west. what else? anything else? some covered wagons, stagecoaches. the settlers are moving west. you see these guys down here kind of carrying pickaxes. they might be miners. bauer some bridges and ships. it illustrates industry. i'm not sure if it's any particular river but it looks like it has printed a big horseshoe shaped bend in it. john.

>> [inaudible] mr. genetin-pilawa: it looks like the landscape is clear. you can see maybe some buffalo. someone mentioned the indians down here and you said it looks like they are fearful. we are able to see the picture better and it kind of doesn't look like they are fearful. they look very calm. the only real sort of movement there -- there is not a lot of movement there. it looks calm. there's not any violence going on in this image. the native people are sort of moving out of the way.

i have looked at this painting over and over again. there is one creature that seems kind of angry that this is happening. there is a bear looking over his shoulder but that's the only creature that is actually kind of angry that this is happening. these are two images separated by about seven years. right? both kind of around the end of the civil war. i wonder how we can understand these images together. one is about including native people.

ely parker is right at the center of the action, doing the thing that will be hugely significant, drafting the agreement that begins to end the civil war. a couple years later, a very famous image. native people exiting out of the way benignly. for civilization. so, what i want to suggest as we state today is their kind of two different ideas emerging about native communities and their position in the post-civil war united states. on the one hand, there were people, reformers who had worked in anti-slavery and abolition who believe that native people could and should be part of a broader american nation. put in should be part of a reconstructed america. they had a caveat. they had to do so in ways that mainstream america could understand and appreciate. but these reformers were optimistic. opportunity,e

native americans would want to do this on their own. on the other hand, some believe that native people had to be shoved out of the way, violently if necessary. their only hope for salvation if they were forced to assimilate as fast as possible. in similar ways, the african-american experience in reconstruction, this time represented a moment of optimism for native communities but like the legacy of the construction itself, that was a fleeting moment and we can almost do this transition over the coursef seven or eight years. >> i was surprised anyone was optimistic, especially including the cherokee a movable -- removal. if you look at the start of the book, the cherokees were basically a coming farmers like george washington wanted them to and successful. and they get thrown off their land because of somebody else

why would anybody at this point in time be optimistic that everything was going to work out? mr. genetin-pilawa: i think we have to put ourselves in that context of the immediate postwar movement. think about the lives lost, the amount of investment that people had, particularly northern reformers. they had to believe a new world was possible. they certainly believed that with the right opportunities and the right sort of programs that it would be able to happen for former slaves. freedman'she bureau. so, i think it is fair to say they were optimistic. to know how american issues played a role, we have to go back a little way. maybe not as wide as far as the indian removal act but i think it's important to look at some

of the event in indian country overshadowed by events of the civil war and i want to think about what we might call the head in indian history of the -- hidden indian history of the civil war. issues received little attention during the presidency of abraham lincoln. it was clear that abraham tribal was interested in reforming thed in office of indian affairs. the office of at

being corrupt as and mismanaged. he did believe that it needed to be restructured, needed new personnel. he clearly wanted to do that but the events of the civil war monopolizes time. most people believe the office of indian affairs was a corrupt office, a place where political appointees made themselves felt the rich at the expense of native people. in particular through fraudulent land treaties and the mismanagement of rations and annuities. we compare that to the treaty, which we will be talking more about again. when we think about event involving native people during the war, we usually focus on some things that happened far rom the front lines. but that is not ture. american people engaged in a larger struggle and a variety of ways. some cherokee and indian territories, many of whom had owned slaves, been plantation owners, signed treaties with the

confederate states of america because they believed they would receive more fair treatment than they had with the u.s. they fought in the eastern western parts of the war. in the east, william thomas led the thomas legion as it was called in engagements against union forces in tennessee in 1862, north carolina, and and 1865. 1864 in fact, thomas's legion fought with the army of the potomac with generally. some of these men were at appomattox courthouse lower at appomattox courthouse in 1865 in april. to the west, another cherokee man became a confederate general. he led the first indian brigade the battle in mississippi.

he had the distinction of officially being the last confederate general to surrender when he did so after the battle in june 1865. the most well-known native units in the union army was company k of the first michigan sharpshooters. this was made up of ottawa, delaware and other people. they fought with the grant when grant assumes command of the army of the potomac. i realized earlier i referred to lee's army as the potomac but i meant the army of northern virginia. they fought in petersburg. appomattox,n battle of -- they were well decorated. although there was little interest paid to the interest during the civil war, there are a couple flashpoint moments that did garner a lot of public

attention and one happened in 1862. it has been called various different things but i prefer to call it the u.s. dakota war in minnesota in 1862. this kind of thrust indian affairs into the public eye. through august and september of 1862, there were starving dakota community members who moved out and attacked a local white intlers near st. paul minnesota. from thek resulted failure of the federal government to provide rations they had agreed to in a series of treaties starting in 1851. the federal government agreed to provide rations to help the community as they ceded land to

treaty. as part of the this is directly connected to the wartime economy. it intensified a situation that was already kind of volatile in the aftermath. there were already tensions between native people in this sort of exacerbated all of that. the dakota warriors seeking to procure food and supplies for their families attacked local farms and homesteads. they killed settlers. --they captured others. the death toll at approximately 500 non-native people along with an unknown number of native people.

270 white and mixed race men, children were held captive by the dakota warriors as well. the u.s. military can control of the situation and they established a military tribunal. they tried and convicted 300 -- 303 of the 390 so-called hostile soldiers. convicted all of them commander-in-chief, lincolon, pardoned 264 of them. on december 26, 1862, two days prior to issuing the emancipation proclamation, the

u.s. military hanged more people history. before in its one calendar week separates abraham lincoln issuing the emancipation proclamation providing over the largest mass execution of people of color in the army's history as commander in chief. these things happen within week.me calendar for lincoln, it was a difficult situation. he did pardon more than 200 of the soldiers. people in minnesota thought he had been too lenient, that they all should have been executed. the events of the u.s.-dakota war received some public attention. like i said, commenters in minnesota believe that the

military and the militia had been right, some of them criticized lincoln for being too lenient. other outspoken critics took this as an opportunity to argue for the need to reform indian policy. it was because of the tensions that ultimately led to this intensification. as westward expansion would continue, these kinds of tensions with non-native settlers engaging with native peoples would get worse. in a lot of ways, he was prophetic. we will get to that when we talk about the 1870's in a few minutes. two years later -- here's some information from the time as well as a sketch of the execution. and the military prison camp. at fort snelling.

this all happened in present-day minnesota. a couple years later, another major event. 1864, a militia led more than 100 u.s. volunteers into a village of peaceful indian arapaho's. >> this is like the colorado national guard. mr. genetin-pilawa: this is the colorado militia. although when we talk about mid-19th century or 19th-century military, we really didn't have a standing army. we had militias that volunteered in time of war. we had essentially no standing peacetime army.

purposes,tents and made upre the men who the u.s. army. this is outside of colorado. the indians were led by a number of men but one of them was black kettle. they assembled along the creek to distinguish themselves from other indians in the region who had been actively involved in military engagements with the u.s. they set up essentially what was a camp that was a peace camp and in fact, they flew two flags over their camp. flag and the. other was a white flag.

this is what distinguished their community. attacking at dawn, the indians were flushed from their village. even though black kettle was a proponent of peace and had a surrender flag over his large, the soldiers pursued the native americans and pinned them in an area several hundred yards wide. it was very sandy soil so hard it was very sandy soil so hard to move through. it was there that noncombatant women, children, elderly struggled but could not escape the soldiers small arms and fire and more than 150 people lost their lives. on the non-native side, nine people were killed. the massacre brought about the ineffectiveness of federal indian policy right into the public eye and coupled with the earlier events from minnesota, inspired reformers and journalists across the nation. according to one scholar, this is a never to be forgotten symbol of what was wrong with the u.s. treatment of indians, which reformers would never let fade from view. may be these events didn't

inspire optimism but certainly inspired action. they motivated reformers to think of it this way. >> [inaudible] mr. genetin-pilawa: this was not entirely uncommon in american indian history. we can go all the way back to the 1600s. peaceful indians being attacked either because it's out of ignorance or out of anger or sort of a misplaced aggression. all of those sorts of things. >> i just think this was part of u.s. policy. i think this was one man's racism. mr. genetin-pilawa: it's remarkably similar to a dozen other actions that happened around this time within 10 years. i don't know how to separate this one as something different from the others.

it seems remarkably similar. we could go as far as wounded knee in 1890 and it seems pretty similar. go ahead. >> isn't documentation from the volunteers -- mr. genetin-pilawa: they were commanded to do this. some of them stood down. some laid their weapons down. there were a couple of federal commissions that looked into these events and they were roundly condemned for being a massacre. performers were outraged by this kind of treatment. especially those who had worked in abolition and anti-slavery. from their perspective, this is

something that would need to be dealt with as they were working through the issues of emancipation and freedom. again, the west would become really important after the civil war. policymakers would look to the west as an outlet for attention. just because the or ends doesn't mean that the northerners and seven others don't kind of want to kill each other. developing the west come all of these ideas become a rallying cry and a way to unite the country with a shared interest. >> i was going to comment it seems to me we could learn about whether this was policy or one man's racism by -- since this got so much press and was commonly known, or their prosecutions against the people who caused the actions or not? if there wasn't, it speaks to it

being more policy than a persons out of hand actions. there were. again, i don't know if i can make that distinction. i understand you driving at this. >> i guess i was curious as to whether there were prosecutions and there were. mr. genetin-pilawa: yeah. one of the reasons we know the policymakers saw the west as an outlet, a place for a shared goal for the country is that during the war, congress moved to set in motion a series of policies that would help that to happen. a key one of those, congress passed the homestead act in 1862. this would hopefully encourage

settlers to move west. a petitioner could claim 160 acres of land for free. as long as they made improvements to the land, you could get 160 acres for free from the federal government. there are other policies that went along with this. others that were also passed in 1862 to encourage westward development. inc. about this. there is this tension going on where reformers are looking at these events and saying we have to do something about this. the language they used is "the next great you act of slavery is indian affairs." this will be a goal once reconstruction is taking place. reformers wanted native people to be treated humanely and fairly. at the same time, policy makers

and non-native western settlers simply wanted native people out of the way. >> previously, they had these lotteries and land companies. why did they go to the homestead act? mr. genetin-pilawa: it was to streamline and clarify land development. if you look at what happened with the squatters and preemption rights, it's a real mess. what we would think of today is a progressive and liberal congress in asia and 62 as a way

to start to pass policies to use the government in a way to develop the nation. we see a change over to change. this is part of that. i want to come back and think about something here for a second. when i spoke about this with other audiences, i sort of pose a question of what does home and mean to you? what's with of images, what kind of things are conjured up? we are about to go off to fall break. what if you understood your home as the center of the world? because you have read, maybe you can say something about that. what does basos say about what home and landscape means for the western apache? it is kind of a difference in the understandings of home and land. what does he tell us about the landscape and community? >> it's hard for native

americans to have history without the places where that history occurred. mr. genetin-pilawa: among the western apache, places on the landscape become placeholders for story and cultural knowledge that can be transferred from older generations to younger generations by visiting those places, telling those stories. there is symbolic significance. >> it acts in one way as their conscience. the stories being attached to certain places often are the moral lesson. whenever they pass certain places, they are reminded of those stories. there are reminded of the lesson. mr. genetin-pilawa: not only are

certain places in the landscape placeholders for stories but stories that actually convey knowledge about how one should act within that community, how one should behave, how one should carry themselves, respect the members of their family or their elders or whomever. these stories help to convey the cultural knowledge. >> the land watches you become the type of person you should be. mr. genetin-pilawa: good. >> the one thing that stuck out about it to me is his mentor said something along the lives of it. it influences the way they see the world. >> by hearing those stories, by gaining that knowledge from

storytellers and elders, younger people are reminded of those parts of their culture and how they are supposed to carry themselves. this gets us out of and away from the materialistic understanding of land as a resource. this is land is a cultural resource, sacred resource. >> to many native people, home lands represented more than a place to live. this map shows present day south dakota. this is a good example. the decoder believe this land is their spiritual home.

it represents where they emerged out of the earth as a people. many refer to it as the heart to everything that is. many believe the health of the world -- i would give another example of the western apache. you all have read this so i will summarize it quickly. the western apache, home and place had other functions. they believe wisdom sits in places. and provides a way for cultural knowledge to be transferred from one generation to another. an outsider might look at a creek and just see it as that. to the apache, these landmarks make up a cultural geography. elders use the markers to tell stories about the past. if you no longer live in this

homeland, he will not be able to pass on this knowledge in the same way. it would represent a loss of cultural knowledge. as settlers headed west, the u.s. thought to build a road from present-day wyoming to what is now montana. red cloud along with his warriors fought the military to a standstill between 1866 and 1868. this is known as red cloud were. this resulting treaty was not only very controversial but laid

the groundwork for additional violence. the u.s. government established a great reservation in the western part of what is now south dakota. decoder would get to keep the black hills forever they also maintained right to hunting grounds that allow the government to build roads and railroads through the territory. unfortunately for the lakota, the military excursions and treaty violations, it lost its land and was confined to an increasingly smaller and smaller land base. all of these tensions combined at the end of the 1860's in a movement to change the direction of indian white affairs. when u.s. grant was elected president, he vowed to do just

that. he first looked at one of his close friends and a person we know much about, parker. he appointed parker to be the first native american commissioner of indian affairs. remember those images from the beginning of this lecture. at the same time, there are these two conflicting images. one of including native people and ways they had not before been included. the other is pushing them out of the way for western expansion development. let's think about what happens. here are some images and pictures of parker.

there he is in the middle, and grants military secretary. as a grant headquarters in virginia in 1864. it's in 1864 that lincoln meets with parker. they had a meeting in city point, virginia. parker was also pretty well-known in anthropology because he worked with lewis henry morgan in 1851. he was his lead informant. there are some question as to how much of that book parker actually wrote himself. there is belief parker wrote quite a bit. parker was one of the primary architects of the policy the federal government would look to for indian affairs. this is analogous in some ways to reconstruction. i want to give you a little more background on parker but go ahead. >> was there more than one commissioner? was he part of a group? mr. genetin-pilawa: there was one commissioner, the head of the office of indian affairs.

he was that person from 1869 to 1871. we will speak about why it was such a short tenure. >> did this become the bia? mr. genetin-pilawa: yes. it was referred to as the office of indian affairs before the 20th century. same agency. parker was born in new york state in 1828, belonged to the wolf clan. as a youth, he studied at several non-native academies in new york. he studied at a baptist missions goal. /mission school. he began to serve as an interpreter and spoke person as a teenager. he helped lewis henry morgan and the creation of his book, which is looked at at the beginnings of american anthropology. that same year, the seneca raised him to the position in distilling upon him the

customary name that meant open door. he studied for the bar. he was denied access because he was not a citizen. it would not be until 1924 that citizenship would be universally the stowed upon native people. parker found success and adulation as a civil engineer. he worked for the treasury department. he worked on canals. then he spent some time in detroit and illinois where he met a store clerk named ulysses s. grant. he fought in the civil war alongside grant throughout the maddox and when the war ended, the general after being elected president appointed parker

commissioner of indian affairs. when parker began his career in the federal government, he did so with decades of experience with working with indian communities. he worked for his own tribal community others to express in and spent time in albany working with state legislators, advocating for the seneca. he spent time in washington working with legislators there, advocating on behalf of his community. the experiences he had played a major role in the development of the idea he had for indian policy reform.

's idea of -- his idea focused on several things. he wanted public oversight of policy administration. he wanted native and non-native people to be able to oversee the development of indian policy. he said this would help with rooting out the mismanagement. he wanted to establish and protect specific land rights for tribal communities. he saw the piece mill chopping away at tribal land bases as leading to much of the strife and tension in the west. he wanted to protect and maintain specific land titles. if you are a member, this was art of his goal with the seneca -- part of his goal with the seneca, making sure they had rocksolid legal titles based on u.s. legal precedents. he what to be a rock written

eyes the office of indian affairs. -- he wanted to bureaucratize the office of indian affairs. they maybe had no experience with tribal communities at all or anything like that. what is interesting is his plan to do that -- at this point, the office of indian affairs had been moved. it had been moved to the interior department. parker wanted to move it back to the war department. what some scholars have said is that an indication of wanting to have more war against tribal communities. why else would you move the agency that deals with tribal communities into the war department unless you envision more military engagement? what would be an alternate argument for that? >> he wanted to make sure the government recognized them as having their own sovereignty because this is foreign nations they are dealing with rather than part of the landscape. mr. genetin-pilawa: one argument could be that this would be an

acknowledgment of sovereignty. so not having this in the interior department would be an acknowledgment of that. >> since many of the worst conflicts were between native armed groups and the u.s. military, having indian agents embedded with field commanders could have helped -- especially competent commissioners -- could have helped alleviate some of the tensions and since the military would have been on the front to is mostly, it would have been more advantageous for them. mr. genetin-pilawa: ok. yeah. somehow, working out the relationship between civilian indian agents and military commanders might somehow help with these tensions. that would be a legitimate argument. >> they would handle mining claims and therefore represent what the settlers want in terms of resources. mr. genetin-pilawa: that it was actually front and center in parker's argument was that by

putting the office of indian affairs back in the wood apartment, it would protect it from the influence of land speculators and mineral extraction fees and people who might have their hands in the interior department. did you have your hand up? >> it kind of similar to that. i was going to say by including it in the war department, it would give you the ability to react easier to conflict and allow you to protect the land titles from the militia. >> what is in the bureau show up and the state department? -- why doesn't the bureau of indian affairs show up in the state department? mr. genetin-pilawa: that's a good question. i don't have an answer but it's a valid question. parker would make that argument. there is a famous quote where in 1871, as we mentioned

previously, the u.s. government decided would no longer negotiate treaties with tribal nations. parker supports that. that may seem strange. first, native american commissioner of indian affairs, the person who spent his life maintaining the sovereignty of his own community and tribal communities across the country and yet he support treaty making. he says negotiating treaties with the u.s. government for tribal communities looks like a jug with a handle. all of the power and control is on one side. and that the u.s. has the military power to enforce its side of the treaties and for the

most part, tribal communities didn't. he said it was an uneven playing field and it was a farce. rather, it needed to rely on the humanitarian feelings of the united states. that's an interesting point. one other point that really factored into parker's arguments. he was interested in efficiency. at the end of the civil war, the most well-developed bureaucracy and the government was the war department. they just carried out a massive war effort. it had become modernized in so many ways. parker, have a considerable amounts of experience over the previous years with the u.s.

army, saw the war department as the most bureaucracy. and perhaps the most protected against corruption. he also believed in the honor of military men. he believed they would serve the office of indian affairs more honorably than the civilian agents themselves to be quite corrupt in the years leading up to this. this is a point i argue kind of counter to what most other historians have argued and most others have argued this indicates putting the office of indian affairs in a more wartime footing and i just think that mrs. a whole -- misses and whole argument. parker believed the government should provide money, goods, services, opportunities for

native people in the form of education -- it needed to compensate before -- for a history of ongoing colonization and he believed given these opportunities, money, capital for buying farm equipment and developing infrastructure, programs for education and vocational training, he believed native people would choose to assimilate. native people would see the benefits in these things if given the opportunity and time. parker's timeline is different than what he envisions -- is different than the people who want to expand to the west. to them, assimilation needs to happen now or native people need to push out of the way. parker says if we give people time, they will do this on their own.

make sense? under parker's guidance, the office of indian affairs would develop a series of programs that he comes known as the peace policy. starting at the end of 1868 and moving to 1869, there's a series of programs that make up what we think of as the peace policy. it defined the role of the reservation. as long as native people remained on the reservation, they would be protected by the office of indian affairs. if they left, then the military would have jurisdiction over them. i think it's important to note that although parker advocated for the movement of the office of indian affairs to the war department, it never actually happen. it becomes known as the transfer debate and goes on for several years. the office of indian affairs stays in the interior department from 1849 to the present day. the day-to-day administration of indian affairs would be placed

in the hands of religious organizations. this was parker's other idea and the idea of quaker lobbyists. the civilian indian agents hadn't prove themselves particularly trustworthy and you couldn't install military indian agents, then religious leaders could perhaps be trusted more so than other civilian agents. by 1872, 73 agents had been assigned to different religious groups predominantly protestant although there were a few catholics. predominantly protestant and quaker. another name for this set of policies is the quaker policy. in 1860 nine, congress established the board of indian commissioners. this is where it might be confusing eleanor because you asked whether there might be more commissioners.

there is a boardf indian commissioners put together to serve as the oversight board that parker wanted previously. was there something you wanted -- >> i wanted to know if the missionary agents or more honest than the others or if they stole from the indians as well. mr. genetin-pilawa: again, i think there are a lot of different things that happened. some of them on the quaker agencies was very good and others less. i think it ran the gamut. congress establishes the board of india commissions. parker wanted an oversight committee made of native people and non-native people. he felt of this would sort of be like a watchdog organization to make sure the office of indian affairs was getting good annuities like when it was sending treaty rations and

things that they weren't sending rotten food and thinks like that. this was supposed to make sure the federal government was upholding its responsibility to the treaty agreement. parker once native people and non-native people on this organization.