For Native Americans, the century following the independence of the United States brought even greater changes than the previous century of war. No Native American, European, or U.S. leader could have predicted that in the century following independence, the United States would control its own empire from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The United States was founded as a land of liberty, where individuals had inherent rights and could participate in a democracy. Such rights, however, did not extend to all of the nation’s peoples, including Native Americans, who were not viewed by the U.S. government as citizens, and often not even as human beings.
Early leaders, such as Thomas Jefferson, generally saw Native Americans in two contrasting ways. Native Americans could either assimilate and choose to live within the United States like “civilized” Americans or the government would remove them to the recently established Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. There was essentially no option for Native Americans to continue to live in their homelands as distinct peoples. As the United States expanded, the opportunities for Native Americans to live autonomous and independent lives declined ever further.
Indian removal became a death knell for both native and nonnative peoples committed to peaceful coexistence. In regions such as the Ohio River Valley and Great Lakes where Native Americans and Europeans had lived together for generations, U.S. policies now called for Indian families to leave their homelands. When nations such as the Sac (Sauk) under Black Hawk resisted in the 1830s, the U.S. Army fought them to defeat.
President Jackson even went so far as to ignore Marshall’s rulings, in direct violation of the Constitution, which states that the Supreme Court can override presidential and congressional power. He refused to use federal power to prevent states from removing Native Americans from their lands. The federal government then used the army to remove thousands of Cherokee, who were marched at gunpoint about 1,285 km (about 800 mi) from Georgia to the Indian Territory during 1838 and 1839 along what became known as the Trail of Tears. Thousands died along the way due to malnutrition, disease, and violence.
Since Native Americans were unwilling to leave their homelands, the government developed new policies for resolving conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans. Whereas early 19th-century treaties aimed primarily at removing Native Americans from their lands in the East, in the West Army officials negotiated so-called peace treaties that attempted to ensure peaceful relations between Native Americans and whites by creating bounded Native American territories called reservations from which white settlers were prohibited. As in the first part of the century, however, the government repeatedly dishonored and violated these agreements. From Minnesota to Arizona, Native Americans committed to treaties they believed would ensure their survival and protection. When whites violated these agreements, Native Americans retaliated.
In 1890 U.S. Cavalry forces exacted revenge for Custer’s defeat at
Wounded Knee, killing more than 300 Sioux men, women, and children, the great majority of whom were unarmed bystanders.
For many Native Americans, such cultural attacks were as painful and difficult as the previous generations of war. Native American communities lost their children, who were sent to U.S. boarding schools and Canadian
residential schools where families were prohibited from visiting and children were punished for speaking their languages.
Recognizing its failure, the U.S. government slowly abandoned its assimilation policies and granted universal citizenship to Native Americans in 1924. It also instituted dramatic political reforms in the 1930s under BIA Commissioner John Collier. Known as the Indian New Deal, these reforms included several landmark policies, particularly the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934.
Such attention and concerted effort brought dramatic results. Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. government rescinded termination and passed a series of reforms, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975). This act embraced the notion of Native American self-government and created mechanisms for returning political autonomy to tribal governments. The government also passed similar reforms allowing more Native American control in Indian education and health services, among other areas.
That same year, Mohawk activists seized control of the roads and bridges into their two reserves outside of Montréal during the dramatic Oka Crisis. The Mohawk were protesting the construction of a golf course on land that they claimed. Thousands of Canadian soldiers were deployed against the Mohawk for nearly three months. Such actions generated increased national resolve for settling indigenous land claims disputes. Throughout the 1990s indigenous groups won important land settlements, including the establishment of new reserves and even a northern Inuit territory, Nunavut, which was created in 1999.
Despite their resiliency, however, Native Americans faced serious economic, health, and educational problems at the beginning of the 21st century. Many U.S. and Canadian indigenous peoples lived in poverty. Unemployment and school dropout rates were high, and rates of alcoholism and suicide for Native Americans were far above those for the general population in both countries. But as a testament to the cultural and economic renewal taking place, many indigenous peoples were leaving cities and returning to their homelands. They went back for jobs, to attend tribal colleges, or to participate in long-dormant ceremonies.
