The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian PolicyNot long after the white man stepped ashore in North America he began killing Indians and pushing those that survived farther and farther west. And what of his conscience? Well, he invented a convenient explanation: Indians are a vanishing race, doomed to extinction anyway. That belief not only persisted, writes historian Brian Dippie, but it also spread throughout American culture. Soon the "vanishing Indian" appeared in science, literature, art, popular culture, and, most importantly, federal policy. "The assumption that the Indians are a vanishing race has about it the quality of self-fulfilling prophecy," Dippie writes. In this classic study, first published in 1982, he traces the origins of this assumption and documents its insidious effects on U.S. policy toward Indians from the beginning of the nation's history through the Indian New Deal of the 1930s. He describes its role in early attempts at civilization and education, segregation of Indians west of the Mississippi, post-Civil War reform, the Dawes Act and allotment, the gradualism of early twentieth-century policy, the reform movement of the 1920s, John Collier's Indian Reorganization Act, and into the 1970s. |
Contents
A Bold | 1 |
EighteenthCentury Expectations for the Indian 4 The Impact of the | 9 |
THE PATHOLOGY OF THE VANISHING AMERICAN | 32 |
Indian Policy Before | 45 |
The Concept of Indian Country 48 Indian Civilization and the Act | 53 |
The Case Against Removal 65 The Removal Act | 76 |
CAN HE BE SAVED? ENVIRONMENTALISM | 95 |
Hubert Howe Bancroft on Evolution and the Indian 98 Lewis Henry | 102 |
L H Morgan | 172 |
INDIAN | 177 |
CULTURAL | 222 |
Salvage Ethnography 231 James Mooney on Indian Numbers | 236 |
Indian Policy Through | 271 |
The Bursum Bill Controversy 274 The ConservativeProgressive Clash | 279 |
vanishing American 284 The Vogue of the Desert 289 Lawrence | 292 |
THE INDIAN | 297 |
Agriculture Private Property and the Indian 107 Education and | 111 |
Vanishing American 130 East Versus West on the Indian Question | 132 |
Indian Policy | 139 |
The Doolittle Committee 142 President Grants Peace Policy 144 | 149 |
Francis A Walker and the Case for Concentration 151 The Cheyenne | 156 |
ALLOTMENT ACT | 161 |
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Common terms and phrases
1st sess 2nd sess aboriginal allotment in severalty Anthro anthropology assimilation bill Boston buffalo Bureau Carlisle Catlin century Cherokees civilization Commissioner of Indian Cong Congress cultural D. H. Lawrence Dawes Act Ethnology extinction Francis Franz Boas frontier George George Catlin Helen Hunt Jackson Henry History Ibid Indian Affairs Indian citizenship Indian country Indian education Indian land Indian policy Indian population Indian problem Indian Question Indian Reorganization Act Indian Rights Indian Territory Indian Tribes Interior Jackson James John Collier Leupp Lewis Cass Lewis Henry Morgan live Mooney Morgan nation native nature Navajo Negro noble savage North American Indian numbers Oliver La Farge Philadelphia Powell Pratt President progress Pueblos racial reform removal reservation Roosevelt savagery schools Secretary Senate Sioux social society theory tion tribal United Vanishing American Vanishing Race vols Washington West western white man's wrote York