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. in our minds i think this we kind of separate westward expansion and the civil war from one another. but for the people who lived through that, i don't think they would have separated it in their minds. they would have seen a lot of connections between those things. so we're going to try to get into that mind-set today. when we think about the term "reconstruction," we usually conventionally use it to describe a series of policies and developments in the south between like 1863 and 1877. these were policies that were designed to integrate freed slaves into a mainstream population and readmit seceded states back into the union. welcome, everyone.

>> realize george mason had three student union, did you? >> freed peoples themselves took a really active role in reconstruction. so former slaves took a really active role in the reconstruction process. but there are big questions. this is just at the aftermath, at the end of the civil war. and there are big questions that the nation as a whole faced. would reconstruction result in a kind of revolution? would this be a second revolution that was resulting in an entirely new nation? or would it preserve the old republic somehow, right? these questions weren't decided right at the moment that the civil war ended. and for the people who lived through the war and sacrificed so much, these were hugely important questions. people didn't want to believe that they would have made the sacrifices they did over the previous years, and then come out of it at the other end without some major change, right, some positive good.

again, we oftentimes think about this in relationship to freed slaves and reconstruction. but native people played a role in this too. and the west played a role in this too. that's kind of what i want us to think about here, connecting the south and the west and federal indian policy in this time period. but i want to do something -- well, i want to do something in one second. but i want to suggest a different way of thinking about reconstruction. and that is thinking of reconstruction more broadly. not just focused on the south, but thinking about the west and how what we might call indian country was reconstructed at the same time. lived in the mid 19th century as i said wouldn't have separated events in the south from other events going on. if you look at newspapers from the time, for example, newspapers were covering johnson's impeachment and columns right next to it had to do with the native communities in the west. so these things were intimately tied together with one another. these events were all part of one moment. and we can learn a lot about the

larger nation by think about native american history in this time period. so that's what we're going to do. but i want to start with a short sort of excerpt, a couple of images. and some of you have seen these images before. and i apologize for the resolution here. so this is april 9th, 1865. wilmer mclean's parlor, appomattox courthouse. this is a drawing by alfred waud. do your best with the contrast and resolution here. but what do you see? what is going on? and obviously knowing the date and the context. what's going on here? eleanor, what do you see? >> i see robert e.-lee in the chair in the front. >> yep, robert e. lee here in the sort of lighter uniform, the lighter colored. [ inaudible ] >> nope. this is u.s. grant next to --

sorry, again the resolution. what's going on in this picture? what's happening? yeah, in the back, dan? >> surrender at appomattox courthouse. >> yeah, this is the surrender of that ultimately would end the war a few months later completely. a hugely important moment. a hugely tense historic moment. and eleanor kind of tipped us off, because i know she has seen this image before that ely parker, who you guys are a little familiar with is in this picture too. can anybody pick out ely parker? again, it's hard because of the contrast. but he is standing on the right side. he is like the third person in. there is one person that looks a little darker, maybe a little tawnier than the others. right in front of him is the actual drafting of the surrender agreement on the table. so if you look up from the

table, the guy standing over the right shoulder of the man writing is ely parker. who is ely parker? we talked about him. you read about him whom. was he? >> he was the chief that led the ttonawanda indians. >> which he was able to with the help of several others conclude successfully a sense in 1857 by helping the tonawanda secure title to part of their homeland in western new york. fast forward to a few years later. he has become friends with u.s. grant. great requests him and his assistance at vicksburg, and he serves the rest of the war as part of grant's inner circle,

ultimately becoming his personal military secretary and later aide-de-camp. he was at appomattox courthouse and in wilmer mclean's piarlor. this isn't is quite correct. it was parker who 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 if it's sort of an apocryphal story. it certainly gets retold quite frequently. but that is grant and his men were at mclean's parlor there is a really interesting story about mclean too, that the war started in his backyard and ended in his front parlor. he moved between manassas and appomattox courthouse during the war. ken burns talks about it in his civil war series. but grant is there with his men, and they're sort of

mud-splattered and fatigued. lee comes in. and grant introduces him to his men. they shake hands. and then he gets to ely parker. and the story goes, and robert todd lincoln was one of the people who told this story was that when lee came to parker, he kind of like -- he didn't really take a step back, but he kind of reacted. and there was some people believe people who were in the room that maybe he thought that parker was african american or potentially mixed raced. and there was a tense moment, you know. this was a really tense moment. lee composed himself, put his hand out the shake parker's hand and said i'm glad to see there is at least one real american here today. and the story goes parker grasped his hand and said sir, today we're all americans. again, it's a pretty nice story. i don't know if it actually

happened. but it sounds really good. so this is a story of inclusion. this is a native person being included in an incredibly tense and hugely important historic moment. and he is right at the center of the action, right, playing a key role. the reason he ended up drafting it is because one of grant's other men, i believe it was john rollins was trying to write out the terms as lee and grant talked them through. but he was so nervous that he kept spilling ink and a sort of couldn't get it under control. so parker was the more calm one. parker was the most literal of any of grant's inner circle as well. so this is 1865. it's a story of -- it tells the story of inclusion, right? like i said, this is -- would you agree with me on that? that there is a native man right at the center, right at the heart of this key historic

moment. i want to jump a couple of years and look at another famous image from that time. this is a painting by john gast, american progress, 1872. so it's an image of manifest destiny. what do you see? what can you see in this picture? and again, i apologize for the resolution. but what can you see? thomas? [ inaudible ] >> like he had this issue. >> there is this giant angelic woman sort of floating across the landscape, right. she represents columbia, which is kind of the physical manifestation of america prior to uncle sam. all right. so she is floating over the

landscape. what is she bringing with her? what is she carrying? >> telegraph wire. >> she is carrying a telegraph wire. she carrying a telegraph wire from the east to the west. literally connecting the east to the west. what else do you see? go ahead, macy. >> the train also connecting the east to the west. >> yeah, there is a couple of three different trains there. so there is sort of industrialization taking place, transportation development taking place. again, these are all facing westward. they're all moving westward. jonathan? >> toward the left of the picture you see the indians in fear look up at all this coming at them. >> yeah. so down here you see like about four native people kind of looking back over their shoulder, exiting stage left. what are some other elements of

this picture? >> dark and columbia is bringing the light of civilization westward. >> yeah. the whole right side or east side of this painting of this image is bright, right? it's literally bringing light. bringing the light of civilization to the west. okay. what else? janie, did you have your hand up? that was what you were going to say. anything else? there are some covered wagons, stagecoaches. so settlers moving west. can you see these guys down here? they're carrying pickax. looks like they might be miners. you really can't see it in this picture. but this the back right-hand corner, there is some bridges. and ships there is shipping going on. again, sort of illustrating like industry. >> is that the mississippi? >> i'm not sure if it's any particular river. but it looks like it has kind of

a big horseshoe-shaped bend it in. so probably. no dawn? [ inaudible ] >> so it looks like everything -- it likes the landscape is clear. here you can see some buffalo. but somebody mentioned the indians down here. and it looks like you said that it looks like they're fearful. if we're able to see the picture better, it kind of doesn't look like they're fearful. in fact, they look like they're placid. they look very calm. the only real sort of movement there, there is not a lot of movement there. it kind of looks -- it looks calm. it's benign. there is not any violence going on in this image, there? native people are moving out of the way for civilization's march west. there is one -- i've looked at this painting over and over again there is one creature that

actually seems kind of angry that this is all happening there is a bear looking over his shoulder and growling you. can't see the bear. but that's the only creature that is actually kind of angry that this whole thing is happening. so these are two images separated by about seven years, right. both kind of around the end of the civil war. and i wonder how'd we can understand these two images together. one is about including native people. ely parker is right at the center of the action. he is actually doing the thing that is going to be hugely significant, which is drafting the agreement that begins to end the civil war. a couple years later, very famous image is native people sort of benignly exiting out of the way. for civilization. so what i want to suggest as we talk today is there is kind of two different ideas that are emerging about native communities and their position in the post civil war united

states. on the one hand, there were people, reformer, people who had worked on anti-slavery and abolition who believed that native people who could and should be part of a reconstructed america. of course they had a caveat, right, that they had to do so in ways that mainstream americans could understand and appreciate. but these reformers were optimistic that given the right opportunities, native people would want to do this on their own. on the other hand, on the other hand some believed that native people had to be shoved out of the way. violently if necessary, that their only hope for salvation is if they were forced to assimilate as fast as possible. in very similar ways to the african american experience during reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of the war, this time period represented a moment of optimism, right, for

native communities. but like the legacy of reconstruction itself, that was a pretty fleeting moment. and we almost see this transition over the course of seven or eight years. what were you going the say, mike? >> i'm surprised that anybody was optimistic, especially if you read the cherokee removal book. if you look at the start of the book in the early 1800s, 1820s, the cherokees were basically becoming farmers like george washington wanted them to. >> sure. >> and they were becoming successful farmers. >> sure. >> and they basically get thrown off their land because somebody else wants it. >> uh-huh. uh-huh. >> so why would anybody at this point this time be optimistic that everything was going to work out? >> sure. i think we have to put ourselves in the context of the immediate post war moment. again, think about the sacrifice. think about the lives lost. think about the amount of investment that people had, particularly, you know, northern reformers and those sorts of people. they had to believe that a new

world was possible. they certainly did so. they certainly believed that with the right opportunities and the right sort of programs, like the freed man's bureau, there would be opportunity for former slaves. i think it's fair to say that there was one school of thought that was optimistic about this at the end of the civil war for native people. in order to understand how and why, though, native american issues played an important role in the middle and late 19th century, i think we have to go back a little ways. maybe not quite as far as the independent beyond removal act and the cherokee as michael was suggesting, but i think it's important to look at some of the events in indian country that were overshadowed. what we might call the hidden indian history of the civil war. native issues received little attention during the presidency of abraham lincoln.

it was clear that lincoln was interested in tribal communities and in reforming the office of indian affairs. he looked at the office of indian affairs as being corrupt and mismanaged. and he did believe that it needed to be restructured, that it needed new personnel. and he clearly wanted to do that. but the events of the civil war monopolized his time. most people believed at the time that the office of indian affairs was corrupt office. it was a place where political appointees made themselves filthy rich at the expense of native people. in particular, through fraudulent land treaties and mismanagement of rations and annuities for reservations. all those things characterized this era. we did have a little experience reading about and thinking about sort of the ways in which treaties could be fraudulent and thinking about the treaty of buffalo creek and the compromised treaty a few years later.

well compared that to the treaty of new achota which we're going to be talking about again and those sort of things. when we think about events involving native people during the war, we usually focus on things that happen far from the front lines. but that's not entirely accurate. native people engaged in the larger struggle in a variety of ways. for example, some cherokee and indian territory, many of whom had on the other hand slaves, had been plantation owners signed treaties with the confederate states of america, because they believed that they would receive fairer treatment than they had with the united states. they fought in both the eastern and western theaters of the war. in the east, an adopted cherokee man named william thomas led the thomas legion as it was called in engagements against union forces in tennessee and 1862 in north carolina, and ultimately in virginia in 1864 and '65.

in fact, thomas's legion fought with the army of the potomac and fought with general lee. some of these men were at appomattox courthouse, although not in wilmer mclean's parlor, but were at appomattox courthouse in 1865 in april. out to the west, stan waity became another confederate general. he led the first indian brigade of the army of the mississippi. he had the distinction of officially being the last confederate general to surrender when he did so after the battle of 40 tosin in june of 1865. the most well-known native unit in the army was company k of the first michigan sharpshooters. this was made up of ottawa, delaware, huron, oneida,

potawatamie and ojibwa people. i meant amy of northern virginia. i apologize. they fought at the battle of the wilderness. they fought at spotsylvania, they fought in petersberg and were well decorated. although there were little interest paid to the events of indian events during the war, there are a couple of flash point moments that did garner a lot of public attention. and one of those happened in 1862. it's been called various different things. but i prefer to call it the united states dakota war. this is the united states dakota war in minnesota. in 18 62. and this thrust indian affairs into the public eye. so in august and september of 1862, there were starving dak

code that community members who moved out and attacked local white settlers around the lower sioux agency which was near st. paul in minnesota. now the attack resulted from the failure of the federal government to provide rations that they'd agreed to in a series of treaties starting in 1851. so the federal government had agreed to provide treaty rations and annuities to help the dakota community as they ceded land to the united states to the minnesota territory. now this is directly connected to the wartime economy. as the union diverted funding to the war effort, things like treaty annuities or the tribal communities were cut or were unable to be followed up with. the failure intensified a situation that was already kind of volatile in the aftermath of dispossession in minnesota and nonnative settlements. so there are already sort of

tensions between settlers and native american people there and this exacerbated all of that. the dakota warriors seeking to procure food and supplies for their families attacked local home steds, killed settlers, as well as men, women and children, people who intermarried into their community. estimates place the death toll at approximately 500 nonnative people along with an unknown number of native people. roughly 270 white and mixed race captives were held captive by the dakota warriors as well. the united states military gained control of the situation by the end of december 1862 and tried and convicted 303 of the 393 dakota quote/unquote host styles or dakota soldiers.

then on -- okay, i'm sorry. the tribunal convicted and condemned all 303 men to execution, but abraham lincoln as commander in chief pardoned 264 of them. on december 26th, 1862, only a few days prior to issuing the emancipation proclamation, which would be january 1, 1863, the united states military hanged 38 dakotas in 2 largest mass execution in its history. so i want you to think about that for a minute. and i'm not -- i'm still not sure, even though i've thought about this and a talked about this in different contexts over the years, one calendar week separates abraham lincoln issuingprodu proclamation. these happened within the same

calendar week. politically for lincoln, it was a difficult situation. he did pardon more than 200 of the dakota soldiers. people in minnesota thought that 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, the commenters in minnesota believed that the military and the militia had been right. some of them criticized lincoln for being too lenient. other outspoken critics looked at this and took this as an opportunity to argue for the need to reform indian policy and reform the office of indian affairs. the commissioner of indian affairs at the time, a guy named william dole arced that the problems in minnesota emerged from the inability to control nonnative settlers. it was because of the tensions of the settlers with nonnative people that led to the

intensification. and as wisconsin ward expansion would continue, that these kinds of tensions of nonnative settlers engaging with native people and vice versa would get worse. in a lot of way, he was prophetic there. and we're going to get to that when we talk about the 18 shiern -- 1870s here in a few minutes. two years later, here is 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 mankato, income inequality. a couple years later there was another major event in november 29th, 1864. a colonel named john shivington led more than 700 volunteer u.s. soldiers into a village of

peaceful cheyenne and arapahoe indians in southeastern colorado. >> this was not the u.s. army. this was like the colorado national guard. >> this was the colorado militia. although when we talk about mid 19th century or 19th century military, we didn't really is a standing army. we had militias. militias that volunteered in a time of war. we had essentially no standing peacetime army. and so for all intents and purposes, these were the men who made up the u.s. army, although in this instance, we could call them the colorado militia. the cheyenne and arapahoe, and that is outside of eads, colorado were led by a number of men. but one of them was blackettle. they assembled along sand creek to distinguish themselves from other indians in the region who had been actively involved in military engagements with the u.s.

so they set up essentially what was a camp that was a peace camp, right. and in fact they flew two flags over their camp. one was the united states flag. the other was a white flag. this is what they -- this is what distinguished their community. attacking at dawn, shivington and his volunteers flushed the volunteers from their village. and as i said, even though blackettle was a proponent of peace and had a white surrender flag over his lodge, the soldiers relentlessly pursued the fleeing cheyenne and arapahoe. they pinned them in a dry stream bed, an area maybe several hundred yard wise. it was very sandy, mucky soil. so hard to move through. and it was there that noncombatant women, children and elderly, the weak struggled but

could not escape the soldiers' small arms and howitzer fire. and more than 150 people lost their lives on the nonnative side 9 people were killed. the massacre brought about, again, the ineffectiveness of federal indian policy. brought it into the public eye. and coupled with the earlier events from minnesota, inspired reformers and journalists across the nation. according to one scholar of american indian history said this is to be a never forgotten symbol of what was wrong with the united states' treatment of indians which reformers would never let fade from view. so michael, to go back to your question about optimism, maybe these events didn't inspire optimism, but certainly inspired action, right. and inspired work. motivated reformers to think in this way. >> -- hostile indians? >> this was not entirely uncommon in american history.

and we can go all the way back to the 1600s in the virginia colony of peaceful or allied indians being attacked, either out of ignorance or out of anger or sort of misplaced aggression. al those sorts of things. >> i just don't think this was part of u.s. policy. i think this was one man's racism. >> uh-huh, uh-huh. but it's still remarkably similar to a dozen and a half other actions that happened around this time within ten years. so i don't know how -- i don't know how to separate this one out as something different from those others. it seems remarkably similar. in fact we ogo up as far as wounded knee in 1890 and seems pretty similar. go ahead, ian.

>> so there isn't documentation from the volunteer forces as to their motivations? it's simply that they -- >> they were commanded to do this. some of them stood down. some of them wouldn't do it. some of them 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. reformers were outraged by this kind of treatment, especially those who had worked in abolition and anti-slavery, right? from their perspective, from their perspective, obviously, this is something that would need to be dealt with as they were working through the issues of emancipation and freedom. one second, lauren. but, again, the west was going to become really important after the civil war. policymakers would look to the

west as an outlet for north-south tensions. just because the war ends in 1865 doesn't mean that all of the sudden northerners and southerners don't still kind of want to kill each other, right? settling the west, developing the west, manifest destiny, all of these ideas become a kind of rallying cry to sort of unite sections of the country with a shared interest, right, a shared goal. what were you going to ask? >> i was just going to comment that it seems to me we could learn about whether this was policy or one man's racism by since it got so much press and was commonly known, was there prosecutions against the people who caused the actions or not? it seems to me if there wasn't, then it speaks to it being, you know, more policy than a person's out of hand action. >> yeah, yeah. again, so there were.

>> there were? >> but again, i don't know if i can make that distinction. i understand you guys driving at this. i don't know if i could make the distinction. >> i wasn't driving anywhere. i guess i was curious as to whether there were prosecutions, and there were. >> yeah. yeah. so one of the reasons that we know that policymakers saw the west as an outlet, as a place for a shared goal for the country is that during the war, congress actually moved to set in motion a series of policies that would help that to happen. a key one of those in 1862, congress passed the homestead act, right. this would hopefully encourage settlers to move west. under the homestead act, a petitioner could claim 160 acres of land for free as long as they lived on the land and farmed for five years. as long as they made improvements to the land you could get up to 160 acres free from the federal government under the homestead act. there were other policies that

went along with this, the pacific railroad act and others that were also passed in 1862 to encourage westward development. so again, think about this. there is this tension going on here where reformers are looking at these events and saying, look, we have to do something about this. and the language that they used the next great evil after slavery is indian affairs. this will be our goal after emancipation. this will be a goal once reconstruction is taking place. so reformers and philanthropists wanted native people to be treated humanely and fairly, something they believed had not happened. but at the same time policy make. >> landless citizens and even nonnative western settlers simply wanted native people out of the way and to develop the land. >> previously they had all these lotteries and land companies and stuff like that. why did they go to the homestead act? >> yeah, i think, again, it was to streamline and clarify land development.

if you looked at what happened with the squatters and preemption rights, it was a real mess. what we would think of today as a very liberal and progressive congress in 1862 as a way to sort of start to pass policies to develop the -- use the government in a way to develop the nation in a way that they saw fit. we do see a real change over to a more activist government during the civil war. and this is part of that. so i want to think about. i want to come back and think about something here for a second. and when i've talked about this and other audience -- with other audiences, i sort of pose a question of what does home mean to you. what sorts of images, sights, sounds, smells, what kinds of things are conjured up? we're all about to head off here and really soon actually for a fall break. we're probably all going to our

version of home in one way or another. so we can talk about the kinds of images and thoughts and associations that we have. and then i would ask, but can home and homeland mean something more. you know, could we think of something as a virtual home or a place of belonging. what if you understood your home as the center of the world? because you guys have read keith basso's "wisdom sits in places" maybe you could say something about that. what does keith basso say about what home and what land and landscape mean for the western apache? what i'm driving at here is a difference in the understandings of home and listened. what does keith basso tell us about land and community? >> it's hard for native americans to have history without the places where that history occurred. >> okay. so among the western apache,

places on the landscape become place holders for story and cultural knowledge that can then be transferred from older generations to younger generations either by visiting those place, pointing out those place, telling those stories. right? so there is symbolic significance. of sacred topography. >> it acts in one way as their conscience. the stories being attached to certain places often with a moral lesson attached to them. >> yeah. >> so that whenever they pass certain places, they're reminded of those stories and so reminded of the lesson. >> yes, yes. not only are certain places on the landscape like become place holders for story, but stories that actually convey knowledge about how one should act within that community. how one should behave, how one should carry themselves, how one should respect the members of

their family or their elders or their siblings or whoever. these stories help to convey that cultural knowledge. macy? >> i was going to say that. it watches you grow. the land watches you become like the type of person you should be. it kind of dictates your character a little bit. and it -- not that it grows with you. >> yeah. >> but the land watches you grow to become the person that you should be. >> yeah. >> in your community and outside of it. >> yeah, yeah, great. good. yeah, ian. >> the one thing that took out about it to me was his mentor, his apache mentor said something along the lines that the land not only watches, but also acts upon the individuals. >> yeah. >> and influences the way they see the world. >> yeah. so by hearing those stories, by knowing, by gaining that knowledge from story tellers and elders, younger people then are reminded of those parts of their

culture and how they're supposed to carry themselves. by seeing those places or saying the place names, right? so this gets us out of and away from just the materialistic understanding of land as a resource. this is more than land as a material resource. this is land as a cultural resource. this is land as a sacred resource. does that make sense? so to many native people, homelands represented more than just a place to live. here is this map shows the black hills and present day south dakota. and this serves as a good example. the lakota believed that this land is their spiritual home. it represents the place where they emerged out of the earth as a people. the hills contain sacred power. many lakota refer to it and the word in lakota translates to "the heart of everything that is." so the words describing the black hills roughly translate into the heart of everything that is.

and many lakota, traditional lakota believe that the health of the world, even the entire universe relies on their ability to conduct certain ceremonies within this region at certain times throughout the year. i would give another example now of keith basso and the western apache. but you all have read this. so i'll just summarize it really quickly. the western apache in what is now arizona home and place had other function. they believe that wisdom sits in places. in other words, homelands provide a way for cultural knowledge to be transferred from one generation to another to another. an outsider might look as an outcropping or creek, to the apache the landmarks make up cultural geography. elders use the markers to tell stories about the past and pass on important elements of cultural understanding to younger people. so if you no longer live in this homeland, right, to western apache, they would no longer be

able to pass on this knowledge in the same way. it would represent a loss of culture knowledge. as settlers flooded west after the civil war, the united states government sought to build a road from fort laramie in present day wyoming to the gold fields in what is now montana. red cloud, lakota chief, along with his warriors and their cheyenne and arapahoe allies fought the military to a stand still between 1866 and 1868. so right after the war ends. this is known as red cloud's war. the resulting treaty was not only very controversial one, but also laid the groundwork for additional violence. in the treaty, which is the treaty of fort laramie of 1868, the u.s. government established the great sioux reservation in the western part of what is now south dakota. the lakota would get to keep the black hills forever under this treaty without whiten crocement. they also maintain rights to

hunting grounds, but in return allowed the government to build roads and railroads through the territory. so that's the agreement. unfortunately for the lakota, gold was discovered in the black hills. and through military excursions and treaty violations in the 1870s, the lakota lost this land and were confined to an increase leg smaller and smaller land base. it was this development that would also lead to the battle of little bighorn or greasy grass and the ghost knee movement and the wounded knee massacre. all of this tension combined at the end of the 1860s to change the direction of independent beyond-white affairs. when u.s. grant was elected president in 1868, he vowed to do just that. he first looked to one of his close friends and now a person we know quite a bit more about, ely parker. he pointed parker to bring the first commissioner of indian affairs in 1869689 but remember the images at the beginning of the lecture.

at the same time there are still the two conflicting images about the position of indian people. two conflicting images. one of including native people in ways that they had not before been included. the other is pushing them out of the way for western expansion and development. so let's think about what happens, then. so here is some images and pictures of ely parker there he is as a youth at the top, in the middle. there he is as grant's military secretary. on the top right he is at grant's headquarters in 1864. it's actually in 1864 that lincoln meets with parker. they have a sit-down meeting in city point, virginia for quite a while. parker was pretty well-known in anthropology because he worked with lewis henry morgan, on lewis henry morgan's league of the mashoni.

there is some question to how much of that book parker actually wrote himself there is some belief that parker wrote quite a bit on his own. so parker was wound of the architects that the government would look to for indian affairs after the war. this is kind of analogous to reconstruction which is why i wanted us to start with thinking about the west and the south together at one time. i want to give you a little bit more background on ely parker here. but go ahead, eleanor. >> was there more than one commissioner? was he part of a group. >> no. there is one commissioner, the head of the office of indian affairs, and he was that person from 1869 to 1871. and we'll talk about why it's such a short tenure in just a minute. >> did this become the bia? >> yes. it was the bia. it was just referred to as the office of indian affairs until the 20th century when it became known as the bureau of indian affairs. so this is the same agency.

so parker was born in new york state in 1828. he belonged to the wolf clan which was the same clan as red jacket. as a youth he had studied at several nonnative communities in new york. he studied at a baptist mission school. he went to the yates and cayuga academies. when he was a teenager he began to serve as an interpreter and spokesperson for the tonawanda community and their dispute against the ogden land. he helped in the creation of his book which is the beginning of americanist anthropology. the same year the seneca raised him to the position of sachem and bestowing upon him open door. he pursued a career in law. he studied for the bar. he was denied access, though, because he was not a citizen. as we talked about previously, it wouldn't be until 1924 that

citizenship would be universally bestowed on native people, they'll there were some previously that could become citizens of the united states. parker found success and adulation as a civil engineer. he actually worked for the treasury department. first in new york he worked on canals. then he spent some time in detroit. and ultimately in galena, illinois where he met ulysses s. grant. he also fought in the civil war alongside grant from vicksburg through an a mappomattox. when the war ended the general appointed parker commissioner of indian affairs. when parker began his career if there federal government, he did so with decades of experience of working with indian communities. he had worked for his own tribal community as a spokesperson and negotiator. he had spent time in albany working with state legislators, advocating for the tonawanda seneca. he spent time in washington, quite a bit of time actually working with legislators there.

advocating on behalf of his community. and the experiences that he had played a major role in the developments and the ideas that he had for indian policy reform. his ideas focused on several things but become the heart of the peace policy. he wanted public oversight of public policy administration. he wanted both native and nonnative people to be able to oversee the development of native indian policy. he thought this would sort of help with rooting out some of the mismanagement and fraud and things like that. he wanted to establish and protect specific land rights for tribal communities. he saw if sort of the piecemeal chopping away at tribal land bases as leading to much of the strife and tension in the west. so he wanted to protect and maintain specific land titles. if you remember, this was part of his goal with the tonawanda

seneca as they fought against the ogden land company. it was ultimately shoring up and making sure they had rock solid legal title based on your united states legal precedents. he wanted to bureaucracy advertise the office indian affairs. it wasn't particularly professionalized. these are political appointees who maybe had no experience working with tribal communities at all, who had no knowledge of tribal law or anything like that, or federal indian law. what is interesting is his plan to do that, at this point the office of indian affairs had been moved. it was orangefully the war department. it had been moved to the interior department. parker wanted to move it back to the war department. so what some scholars have said that's an indication of wanting to have more war against tribal communities, right. why else would you move the agency that deals with tribal communities into the war

department unless you're envisioning more military engagements. what would be an alternate argument about that? why else might somebody make that argument? >> wanted to make sure the government recognized them as having their own sovereignty? >> okay. >> because they're foreign nations that they're dealing with rather than part of the landscape. >> yeah, okay. so parker, one argument could be that this would be an acknowledgment of sovereignty. okay. so not having this in the interior department would be an acknowledgment of that. okay. what do you think, daniel? >> well, 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 to especially competent commissioners could have helped to alleviate some of the tensions. also, because the military would have been on the frontiers mostly, it would have been more advantageous for them.

>> okay. >> they also would have access to the military logistics so they could provide rations and things. >> cool, yeah, yeah. so somehow work out their relationship between civilian indian agents and military commanders might somehow help with these tension that would be a legitimate argument. bob? >> would now handle mining claims. and therefore, you know, represent what the settlers want in terms of resource. >> yeah, yeah. so that was actually -- that was actually front and center in parker's argument was by putting the office of indian affairs back into the war department, it would protect it from the influence of land speculators and mineral extraction agencies and people who have connections in their hands into the interior department. absolutely. and did you have your hand up? >> yeah, kind of similar to that. all i was going say was by including flit the war

department, you could not only -- it would give you the ability to react easier to hostile conflict, but also allow you to protect the claims and the land titles itself. >> sure, sure. >> from the militia who decides that they want to go kill people. >> yeah, sure. >> we've always signed treaties expecting that these indian nations are separate nations, why doesn't the bureau of indian affairs show up in the state department? >> yeah, and that's a really valid and good question. why doesn't it? i don't have an answer for that. but it's a really good and valid question. >> i think the answer is we're lying through our teeth when we say that. >> sure, sure. parker would make that argument too. in fact, there is this famous quote where i'm going jump forward and come back in just a second. in 1871, as we mentioned previously, the united states government unilaterally decides it would no longer negotiate

treaties with tribal nation, right? it ends the treaty making process unilaterally. parker supports that. and that may seems strange, right. first native american commissioner of indian affairs, a person who has spent his entire life advocating and helping to maintain the sovereignty of his home community and then tribal community across the country. and yet he supports the end of treaty making. he says that negotiating treaties with the united states government for tribal communities looks like a jug with a handle. all of the power and control is on one side. imagine a pitcher. and that the united states has the military power to enforce its side of the treaties, and that for the most part, tribal communities didn't. he said it was an uneven playing field, and that it was a farce to say that tribal communities could negotiate on even footing with the united states. and rather it should -- it needed to rely on the

humanitarian sort of feelings of the united states. so that's an interesting point there is one other point that really, really factored into parker's argument for why he wanted to move the office of indian affairs, and that was he was interested in bureaucracization and efficiency. at the end of the civil war, i don't know the most efficient, but the well developed bureaucracy in the federal government was the war department. they had just carried out a massive war effort. well beyond the scope of my war the united states carried on before. it had become modernized in so many ways. and parker having considerable amounts of experience over the previous four to five years with the u.s. army saw the war department as the most bureaucracytized. and perhaps the most protected against corruption. he also believed in the honability, the honor of

military men. and he believed that they would serve the office of indian affairs more honorably than the civilian agents who had proven themselves to be quite corrupt in the years leading up to this. so does that make sense? this is a point that i argue kind of counter to what most other historians have argued. and that most other historians have argued that this indicates sort of putting the office of indian affairs on a more wartime footing. and i just think that that misses a whole lot of evidence. it misses a whole argument that it's important for us to pay attention. to parker believed that the government should provide money, goods, services, and new opportunities for native people in the form of education because it needed to compensate for a history of dispossession and ongoing colonization. but he also believed that given these opportunities, money, capital for buying farm equipment and developing infrastructure, programs for

education and vocational training and things like that. he believed that native people would choose to assimilate. the native people would see the benefits of these things if given the opportunity and time. parker's timeline is different in this time period what he envisions is different than the people who want to expand to the west. people want to expand to the west. assimilation needs to happen now or native people need to be pushed out of the way. parker says if we give people time, then they will do this on their own. does that make sense? under parker's guidance, the office of indian affairs would develop a series of programs known as the peace policy. so starting really at the end of 1868, but moving into 1869, there is a series of programs that make up what we think of as a peace policy. so here are some of the things it did. defined the role of the reservations.

as long as native people remained on the reservations, 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 for the movement of the office of indian affairs to the war department it never happens. it goes on for several years. it ever actually happens. so the office of indian affairs stays in the interior department from 1849 to the present day. . the administration of indian affairs would be placed in the hands of religious organizations. this was parker's other idea, if civilian indian agents hadn't proven themselves to be 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 indian agents had been assigned to different religious groups, predominantly protestant, although there were a few catholic indian agencies. another name for this set of policies is the quaker policy. i think it encompasses much more than just this one idea. in 1869, congress established the board of indian commissioners. this is where it might be confusing. parker is the commissioner of indian affairs, but a board is put together to serve as that oversight board that parker wanted previously. you started to raise your hand. is there something -- >> i wanted to know if the missionary agents were more

honest than the others or if they stole from the indians, as well? >> yeah, i mean, again, i think that there are a lot of different things that happened. some of them on the quaker agencies were very good and positive. others less so. so i think it ran the gamete. so congress establishes the board of indian commission. parker wanted a committee that was made up of native people and non-native people, right? he thought this would be sort of like, you know, a watch dog organization to make sure that the board of indian -- the office of indian affairs was receiving good annuities, like when it was sending rations, treaty rations and things, that they weren't sending rotten food and poor quality goods. this was supposed to make sure that the federal government was upholding its responsibilities. so parker wants native people and nonnative people on this

organization. second, i'll show you who actually ends up on this organization. the peace policy allocated money for the establishment of schools and the appointment of teachers, something like $2 million in 1860s money. that was something that parker was really proud of. grant and parker stressed the importance of fulfilling existing treaties with travel communities. again, think about parker's previous experiences, right? sort of dealing with treaties and things like that. this is interesting. so even if the treaties were negotiated under less than legal instances, parker believed the treat yis themselves were legal and they needed to be upheld.

but he also advocated ending the treaty making process in 1871. from that point on, any agreements between the united states and native nations would take the form of executive orders. again, i sort of already explained what parker's thinking was on that, so i'm not going to go back into it. but this is a controversial thing about parker. some scholars look at that as selling out tribal communities. i think we have to look at it from the perspective what it looked like in 1870 and 1871 rather than looking back and saying he was selling out the idea of sovereignty. i think parker was looking at it as a political entrepreneur, somebody who practiced pragmatic politics. he was a pragmatist. [ inaudible question ] >> -- did the native americans become citizens? >> no. as we move forward and talk about the allotment program that

comes out next after the peace policy, we'll talk about how the sort of ironies and confusions of the status really play a key role. >> fulfilling the treaty, i got that. i get it that he trusts grant. but i don't understand the motivations there. he's got to understand that like the power of executive orders. >> yeah. i think, again, he is optimistic in the sense that those executive orders would be done upon -- with humanitarian efforts in mind. remember parker's education came from. this is key. and you guys read about this.

what was the case in western new york when the seneca tribe were being removed, who became their allies? >> neighbors. >> neighbors, right. local white settlers who had a shared enemy in the eastern land speculators and land companies, right? this is going to be so much different than the situation than the trans-mississippi west. parker's education set him up to misunderstand how things would play out. the real tragedy in parker's life isn't that he was a sellout. >> the plains around western indians -- >> sure. yeah.

so the peace policy becomes a not so peaceful policy almost immediately. when parker began his tenure as commissioner of indian affairs, he ran into controversy right away. william welsh, who was an episcopal missionary and the leader of the newly created word of indian commissioners, gained considerable power in 1870, 1871, and used it to advance an alternate kind of policy reform campaign that differed drastically from parker's ideas. i mentioned this was the board of indian commissioners as it was created. and remember, parker was imagining native and non-natives working on this. they ended up with an episcopal

layman, a businessman. look at are involved in. dry goods, blankets, fur trapper, dry goods. these are all people who represent industries that benefit from indian confinement to the reservations. these are all people who are wealthy philanthropists, many of them. very few of them had any direct experience working with tribal communities. all of them stand to benefit personally in one way or another from a continuing process of reservations and confinement. does that make sense? these men involved in mineral extraction, their underlying philosophy was a christian philanthropist in the united states understood the best interest of indian people,

better than indian themselves. and they monitored the appropriations, rations, the purchase of goods and supplies. they also pursued their own reform agenda that causes incredible tension with parker, characterized by a christian coercive civilizing -- they wanted to continue to dispossess indians of their land, hold them on smaller reservations and undermine their sovereignty. so in this crucial moment following the civil war, 1868, 1869, 1870, when the federal government is beginning to experiment with social policy, things like compensatory policy to compensate, this is the kinds of policies that are being developed to help former slaves incorporate themselves into the

larger body of politics. at the same time, there's radical changes going on in the federal government at a time when a radical change in the history of indian-white relations, these men advance a body of suggestions that is differing in most significant ways from the suggestions that had been advocated for generations, right? remove indians, confine indians, force them to assimilate as quickly as possible or die out, right? make sense? sound familiar? >> question. in the reading for this week, there was a lot about whether the condition of indians was due to lack of civilization or to their race. like could they become civilized if they were indians, because their race was inferior.

okay, that's 40 years before this. >> yeah. >> with somebody like parker being at the head of this organization, are people now feeling that indians could be raised to be the equal of whites or do they still think they're an inferior race? >> the same people who fought for abolition of slavery, who believe the same thing for native american people. that's not everybody, but there are those people that believe that. so on the one side of this is somebody like parker, who is advocating policies that would give resources to traveled people, a kind of compensatory policy that might be similar to the construction policies, to give them time and opportunities to assimilate. on the other hand, you have people like these guys who are looking for more of the same. >> what about grant, does he say i think the indians could be equal or does he say some of my best friends are indians? >> no.

i think that grant supports the peace policy and the kinds of ideas that parker advocates. i want to move to some bit of conclusion here before we run out of time. [ inaudible ] >> they were appointed through the -- they're appointed through the executive branch, yeah. so i started out with this point that this was a moment of optimism, but it's fleeting. so why is it fleeting? how and why was this a period of opportunity lost for native people? all the efforts of reformers to reshape this policy, give native

people opportunities, resources and time to assimilate and develop the west as quickly as possible. those two things can exist simultaneously. the two images from the beginning of the lecture, one showing the conclusion, one showing westward progress, could not co-exist. as settlers moved west, they continued to encroach on native lands. these interactions became increasingly violent throughout the 1870s. in 1874, general custer led a military expedition into the region and verified the reports of gold. gold seekers and settlers flooded into the region, violating the treaties, and fought pitched battles with the la cota. the army ordered all indians to return to reservations, and when they didn't, general crook and general custer attacked.

crook was turned back by crazy house. and custer suffered one of the worst defeats in the united states at the hands of sitting ball at the battle of little bighorn. violence exploded throughout the maybes in the 1870s, and it was often the indians that suffered the worst of the engagements. it looks like there's no peace, native people are resisting aspects of the civilization policies. the indians wanted to maintain their homelands and felt that the united states owed them any opportunities they chose to accept. that they could chose to accept or not to accept whatever they wished. as a result, reformers and policymakers in the late 1870s come to the conclusion that they would have to change the policy once again. they believe that the reservations had failed, because

indians were too community minded. they had no incentive to become individual farmers. they would then work, these reformers, to break apart reservations and divide the land into individual family held plots. this is going to be the allotment policy of the 1880s through the 1930s. this would result in a final land grab in which tribal communities lose about 100 million of the 150 million acres that they held by the end of the 19th century. although this period opened with optimism for native people, with optimism for native inclusion and a firm place in the american nation, by the end of the 1870s, much like the experience of african-americans, needs and goals of main stream society came to overshadow and end this optimistic period.

citizenship for african-american people, former slaves. i want us to think about what citizenship might mean for native american people, because we're going to take up this idea after our break. it's understandable how the 14th amendment and how citizenship and political inclusion are important for african-american communities. particularly in the aftermath of slavery and facing segregation and other things, right? think about what citizenship in the colonizing nation means for colonized people, is that a good thing or not? is that a reward, is that a benefit, something to strive for

or something else? you guys are doing a great job today. i appreciate all the interaction and everything. so thanks and thanks for all being here. appreciate it. >> this week on c-span2, we're featuring political radio programs with national talk show hosts. tuesday morning from 6:00 to 9:00 eastern, politics with a left leaning perspective on "the big press show" live from washington, d.c. on wednesday, also from washington, conservative radio talk show host hue hew hewitt is live. and thursday, tom hartman. and on friday, from 9:00 till noon, a conservative political perspective on the mike gallagher show live from new york city. all this week, live on c-span2. continues all this week with programs and events in

primetime. on tuesday, a look at african-american history. we'll begin at 8:00 p.m. eastern with a discussion how harriet tubman was selected to be on the new $20 bill, replacing president andrew jackson. then we'll visit several historical sites around theite and learn how many are being preserved for future generations. that's tuesday here on c-span3 at 8:00 eastern. ♪ >> i did research information, because -- and this is definitely the case with a lot of pieces that will be done for this competition. but mental illness especially. it's a complicated issue. it's not black and white and it's so multifaceted that i had to research to get a base knowledge of what i wanted to talk about in this piece. and obviously there was a -- it's so complicated that i can't

talk about it all in five to seven minutes. >> it's a broad topic and i thought it would be nice to have a focal point. so before i interviewed my parents and started shooting, i researched this topic extensi extensively. >> i visited my dad's pharmacy and talked to the pharmacists there. i talked to my mom and her colleagues. >> a lot of internet research to find more facts and data and statistics about employment of those with developmental disabilities, to see really what was going on. most of the information that i got off of the internet came from government websites, so that's how i knew most of the information i was getting was legitimate. >> this year's theme, your message to washington, d.c. what is the most urgent issue for the new president and

congress to address in 2017? our competition is open for grades 6 through 12 with $100,000 awarded in cash prizes. students can work alone or in a group of up to three, to produce a documentary. include some c-span programming that often explore opposing opinions. the prizes will be awarded and shared with 150 students and the grand prize of $5,000 will go to the student or the team with the best overall entry. this year's deadline is january 20, 2017. so mark your calendars and help us spread the word. for more information, go to our website, studentcam.org. indian claims commission, a panel created in 1946 for relations between the u.s. government and native american