Indian Slave Life

Leave a reply

Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, 1889, courtesy NY Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Indian-owned slaves worked hard, but under somewhat different conditions than slaves in the South. Black families were often allowed to live together even if they had different masters, and were seldom broken up. They were allowed to learn to read and write, and slaves who could speak English were valued as interpreters. Though they were clearly owned by their masters, slaves under Indian control were not dehumanized or treated cruelly as a matter of course.

Slavery was still slavery, however, and Indian-owned slaves rebelled against their masters just as they did in the South. Slaves of the Cherokee Nation tried to escape to Mexico in 1842, though they were not successful. In 1850,  a band of about 300 Seminoles and black Seminoles were successful in establishing a small free settlement in Mexico that attracted other runaway slaves. Some of the Seminole Indians went back to the U.S., but the black Seminoles remained in Mexico until after the Civil War. By the 1870s, the U.S. Cavalry in Texas accepted black Seminoles into their ranks as Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.

Black Seminole Army Scouts along Mexican Border, circa 1900, courtesy University of Texas, San Antonio

Lt. John Bullis, Commander Seminole Negro Indian Scouts at Ft. Clark, Texas, courtesy Ft. John L. Bullis

________________________________________________________________________

Indians and Slaves

Leave a reply

The Five Civilized Tribes

Indian Territory may have seemed a world away from the slave-holding South, but slavery was introduced there in 1830. Some of the slaves who ran away from southern slave states were received as free people by tribes in the Territory. However, all tribes except the Seminole eventually began to buy slaves. In the 1830s, about 3,000 African-Americans lived in Indian Territory. Most of them were slaves.

Indian farmers used slaves to help them cultivate their crops. Some masters had large tracts of land, but most Indians were subsistence farmers who worked as hard as their slaves. In the 1830s and 1840s, slaves came with Indians who were removed from the their eastern lands. The Cherokee held about 1,500 slaves, the Chickasaw Nation about 1,200, and the Creek Nation about 300. There were about 8,000 slaves held by Indians by the time of the Civil War. After the war, tribes abolished slavery.

Slaves of Indians, 1893, courtesy Library of Congress

John Taylor (African-American) and Dick Charlie (Ute), 1880-1910?, courtesy Library of Congress

________________________________________________________________________

The Curtis Act

Leave a reply

Representative Charles Curtis, center

Whenever Indian land became valuable, whites found a way to get it. After the Dawes Act (see last post) freed up former Indian land for settlement, the Curtis Act further weakened Indian control.  A mixed-blood Kansa Indian and Kansas congressman, Charles Curtis, sponsored a law that abolished tribal courts in Indian Territory. This gave the federal government even more power over Indian affairs, since everyone in the Territory now came under federal law. The Act passed in 1898; any tribal legislation after that had to be approved by the president of the United States.

Senator Curtis was born in 1860, a descendant of Kansa chief White Plume. He attended an Indian mission school on the Kaw reservation, but later attended Topeka High School. He was admitted to the bar in 1881 and ran as a Republican in Shawnee County, Kansas. He was elected to Congress in 1892 and held office in the House of Representatives for eight terms. He was elected a senator in 1907.

Indians on Kaw Reservation

Kansa Indian Bark House, courtesy Oklahoma State University

________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Protection That Hurt

Leave a reply

Senator Henry L. Dawes

Legislation on behalf of the federal government’s Indian wards often served an individual congressman’s own agenda or sensibility, rather than the best interests of Indians. Several pieces of legislation  had particularly dire consequences, and the next posts will look at a few of these harmful laws or acts.

Congressman Henry Dawes of Massachusetts sponsored  the 1887 General Allotment Act (The Dawes Severalty Act), in which each head of a family received 160 acres of land (or 320 acres of grazing land). Most reservations held land well over the amount needed for allotments, so the surplus reservation land was sold to outsiders.

The allotted land held by Indians could not be sold for 25 years, and after that period, the Indian landholders would become American citizens. Like much legislation of the period, it did not work out well for Indians, who were usually relegated to unprofitable land that couldn’t sustain them. They fell into poverty, sold or were cheated out of their land, and never became the prosperous small farmers that Congress had envisioned.

From 1887 to 1934, 90 million acres of Indian reservation land were transferred to non-Indian ownership and control.

Opening of the Uintah Reservation to Homestead Claims, courtesy Utah State University

Klamath Indians Waiting for Allotment Drawing, 1908

________________________________________________________________________

Oil Money

2 Replies

Camp Modoc, Indian Territory, between 1888 and 1890, courtesy Library of Congress

Unscrupulous profiteers were never shy about trying to benefit from something Native Americans possessed. When petroleum was discovered in Oklahoma (see last post), the lands occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes became a magnet for exploitation.

Early in the nineteenth century, the United States gave the Five Civilized Tribes  all the land in Indian Territory. Congress later decided to divide the land into small acreages, called allotments. These allotments were given to Indian families, but were controlled and (nominally) protected by the federal government on their behalf.

In 1908, federal protection was lifted, and unscrupulous whites moved in to take advantage of the riches on the Oklahoma land. Many Indians could not read or write, or really understand the unfamiliar laws and practices involved in land ownership. Congress gave control of Indian lands to the county courts in Oklahoma, and the ravaging began. Hundreds of Indian families lost their land and the wealth they might have enjoyed. Within 30 years, Oklahoma Indians retained only one fifteenth of their original allotments.

Oil Workers Playing Dominoes, St. Louis, Oklahoma (1939), courtesy Library of Congress

Oil Derrick with Waste Oil in Stream, 1939, courtesy Library of Congress

________________________________________________________________________

BIA Supervision

3 Replies

Cato Sells

The Bureau of Indian Affairs expanded over time, as many other government offices did. In its 1913 report to Congress, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Cato Sells) noted that the Indian Office had received 77,000 letters in 1902 and employed 132  people, but had received 209,000 letters and had employed 227 people by 1911. The commissioner presented his office in the most positive light as he highlighted the strides and failures of the past few years.

He specifically discussed the discovery of petroleum in Indian Territory. In a special report about petroleum in 1902, the Census Bureau had barely noted the existence of 13 wells there. The land was occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes, though the Secretary of the Interior had authority over it through the Curtis Act of 1898. By 1912, Oklahoma was second among oil-producing states, and pumped out almost one-fifth of all the petroleum produced in the U.S.

The wealth represented by Oklahoma’s oil consequently focused greedy attention on the Indians who were supposed to benefit from it. The next post will continue this topic.

Hoy Oil Field on Black Bear Creek near Enid, Oklahoma, circa 1917, courtesy Library of Congress

Oil Wells in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

________________________________________________________________________

Asylum Showcases

Leave a reply

Boston Lunatic Asylum

Superintendents and staff were proud of their facilities and generally welcomed the public. Often, model patients would be allowed to congregate around visiting areas so that visitors would get a positive impression of the facility. The best wards were usually the easiest to get to, for the same reason. What were often called “back wards” were for the more difficult patients, and casual visitors seldom went there. These policies usually worked, and most visitors were favorably impressed. When Charles Dickens visited Boston Lunatic Hospital in 1842, he said:

“Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day with a knife and fork; and in the midst of them sits the gentleman whose manner of dealing with his charges I have just described. At every meal, moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them from cutting the throats of the rest.”

It is not likely that this calmness prevailed throughout the building or at all meals, but the asylum certainly looked good at first glance.

Patients' Dining Room, West Virginia Hospital for the Insane 1912

________________________________________________________________________

Patients Work Hard

Leave a reply

Charity Hospital in New Orleans

Most asylums used work therapy both to save labor costs and as occupational therapy for patients. Patients typically cleaned/straightened their rooms, worked in the gardens, sewed, and performed other ordinary chores involved in running a large, self-sustaining establishment. Some institutions went a little further.

In Louisiana before the Civil War, several dozen insane patients were cared for in the Charity Hospital in New Orleans. When the legislature finally established a separate asylum for them (East Louisiana Hospital for the Insane in Jackson), it appropriated only $10,000 per year to support the entire institution and the 85 patients transferred to it in 1848.

Patients began their chores there, and some of the men worked in the brick yard for six to seven hours a day. By 1879, patients had made 225,000 bricks at a cost of $2/thousand. The bricks were used for additional buildings, which were required as increasing numbers of patients from Louisiana and surrounding states were admitted. Before the turn of the century, patients had made 2,200,000 bricks.

Brickmaking Around the Turn of the Century

East Louisiana Hospital for the Insane

________________________________________________________________________

The Foreign Insane

Leave a reply

Refuge for the Insane, Canton, China

Medical and government personnel wanted to know exactly who was insane in the U.S., and compiled statistics that let them track the number of insane in a variety of categories. The Bureau of Indian Affairs kept up with the number of insane Indians, but the government’s 1890 census also provided a focused snapshot concerning other groups:

“As of the year 1890, the total number of Chinese insane reported was 196. Of the 196 Chinese insane, 188 were males and 8 were females. The proportion of insane among the Chinese is small, when it is taken into consideration that the Chinese population consists mainly of adults.

“The total number of Japanese insane reported in 1890 was 3, all males.”

Twenty years later, the 1910 census did not break down groups in the same way, but showed that of the 187,791 insane in the U.S., 491 persons, “mostly, if not entirely Chinese and Japanese,” were insane.

Chinese Flower Vendor, San Francisco, before 1910, courtesy Library of Congress

Group of Chinese Men, circa 1890-1910, courtesy Library of Congress

________________________________________________________________________

Newspapers And Local Mention

Leave a reply

Many early newspapers had society columns which detailed the entertainments and travels of prominent people. Small-town newspapers often had their counterpart, and reported on anything of interest which the town’s citizens might be doing. Here are entries in The Sioux Valley News‘ Local Mention column for Dec 4, 1903:

First Thanksgiving, (photo circa 1900-1920) courtesy Library of Congress

— Tom and Mrs. Stinson entertained a number of friends on Thanksgiving day.

— Oliver Carpenter’s many friends in this city will be pleased to learn that he has been promoted to the law department of the bureau of commerce at a salary of $1,200 a year.

— Mrs. C. M. Seely and Mrs. Dr. Turner gave a very pleasant dinner party to a few of their lady friends Monday afternoon at the Indian asylum.

— The Flandreau Indians scalped the Canton boys in foot ball Thanksgiving day by a score of 11 to 10. As this is Canton’s only defeat this year, the boys are quite happy. The game deserves an extended write-up but lack of space prevents.

Genoa Indian School Baseball Team, courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society

________________________________________________________________________