The Indian West: The West as Home

Question for Discussion: According to Limerick,
how can we use the history of White-Indian
relations in the West to better understand
ourselves and the place of Indians in the
"American West"?

Reading: Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, pp. 188-200,
214-221; Lewis, "Still Native"; Iverson, "We are
Restored" ; Wilkinson, "Indian Country"

Video: The West, Episode 8; In the White Man's Image;
500 Nations DVD: The Struggle Today

Looking at Indians in Modern American Society

Looking at White and Indian Cultures
What is Ethnocentrism?
Are Indians Americans?
Chief Joseph's view of the Indian Problem
President Jackson and the Indians
American Indians and Western Settlement
American Indians in the 21st Century
Lewis, Still Native
Iverson, We are Restored
Wilkinson, Indian Country
Practicing Participatory Research in
American Indian Communities

Geography of Western Settlement

American Indian Tribes, 1600 (in-class)
Nativeweb: Indians on the Web
Louisiana Purchase : 1800-1803 (in-class)
Territorial Growth 1830 (in-class)
Territorial Growth 1850 (in-class)
Territorial Growth 1870 (in-class)
Territorial Growth 1900 (in-class)
Territorial Growth 1920 (in-class)
United States: 1990
Map of Indian Reservations (in-class)
Sovereign Indian Tribal Lands in the West (in-class)
Indian Water Rights in the West (in-class)

American Indians and Western
Settlement

Timeline of U.S. Indian Policy Bibliography
Extinction Clause in the Indian Removal Act
(in-class)
U.S. Supreme Court, The Cherokee Nation
v The State of Georgia (1831)
Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

American Indian Policy and the
Turner thesis

American Indian History Sites

American Indians in the 21st Century

Indian Reservations in the U.S. (in-class)
Native American Sites (in-class)
Contact Information on U.S. Indian Tribes
by States

Native American Populations by State
(1999) (in-class)
Indian Country Today (in-class)

Anzaldua, The Southwest as Borderland (in-class)
Anzaldua's diagram of the West as
La Frontera (in-class)
La frontera: The Idea of the West
as Borderland (in-class)
Born in East LA (1987) : Internet Movie Database
Projected Population of the U.S. in 2050 (in-class)
Geography of Western Settlement (in-class)
American Indians in the 21st Century (in-class)
Iverson: Significance of Indians in the West
(in-class)
Wilkinson, Indian Country (in-class)
Looking at White and Indian Cultures (in-class)
Louisiana Purchase : 1800-1803 (in-class)
The Indian Removal Act (1830) (in-class)
The Extinction of Indians clause in
the Indian Removal Act (in-class)
What is Ethnocentrism? (in-class)
Are Indians Americans? (in-class)
Chief Joseph's view of the Indian Problem (in-class)
President Jackson and the Indians (in-class)
The Cherokee Response to President Jackson
(in-class)
Map of Indian Reservations (in-class)
Tribes-by-States Map Index (in-class)
Indian Water Rights in the West (in-class)
Lewis, Still Native (in-class)
Iverson, We are Restored (in-class)
The Black Civil Rights Movement
helps re-define what America is
Practicing Participatory Research in
American Indian Communities

Looking at White and Indian Cultures

"Our Great Father will forbear no longer. He has tried to reclaim them, and they grow worse. He is resolved to sweep them from the face of the earth....If they cannot be made good they must be killed."
............Government Agent speaking to the Sac and Fox Indians in the 1830s (Zinn, p. 130)

"Considered from this anthropological distance, white people are really quite interesting--and not simply creatures of economic self-interest, servants of the expanding world market, or cogs in a commercial system. Indian history inspired the development of ethnohistory, which places actions and events in a carefullly explored context of culture and worldview. Ethnohistory reaches it peak when its techniques are applied across the board, when white people as well as Indians are cast as actors in complex cultural worlds, and when no point of view is taken for granted.
....................Patricia Limerick (221)

"The attempt to reconcile American ideals of fair and humane treatment of other humans with American impulses to acquire more land and get on with progress made Indian policy...an ongoing struggle--on the part of white Americans -- with the fact that conquest left a troubling legacy and that no end to the frontier could do away with the legacy."
...Limerick (195)

David Lewis, Still Native

"When Frederick Jackson Turner re-imagined American history in 1893, he considered Native Americans to be of little significance. He demonstrated more interest in the process of heroic, white yeomen hewing out a corridor of civilization in an environment that all but overwhelmed them, transforming them from immigrants into Americans. Indians were Indians, part of that wild frontier environment. They posed "a common danger" and served as " a consolidating agent in our history," faceless obstacles to be overcome and subdued in the process of westering."

"Yet one hundred years later, there are those who voice essentially the same attitudes: that modern Indians are unimportant in the larger picture; that they are obstacles in the development of the American West; that they must assimilate or disappear; and that the answer to the "Indian Problem" again lies in abrogating their special relationship with the federal government. James Watt, secretary of the interior during Ronald Reagan's presi dency, was only the most visible of those lamenting reservations and Indians as examples of the "failure of socialism," as stumbling blocks in the development of the West."

Persistence

"The first significance of Native Americans in the twentieth-century American West is their physical and cultural persistence as identifiable ethnic individuals and communities in the face of overwhelming odds--the odds by which Turner's contemporaries viewed them as increasingly insignificant. Five hundred years of disease and conquest, removal and reservation, reduced the native population of the continental United States from a conservatively estimated 2 to 5 million people to only 228,000 survivors by 1890."

"But Native Americans did not disappear and, in fact, staged an impressive comeback, demonstrating cultural resilience and experimentation in the face of the policy pendulum of allotment, reorganization, termination, self-determination, and the recent threat of fiscal termination disguised as Reagan's New Federalism." 5

"The urbanization of Indian peoples parallels the urbanization of the West. In 1980, 77 percent of all American Indians lived west of the Mississippi River, and over half lived in urban areas -- Los Angeles, Tulsa, Phoenix, and a host of other cities, all with their own recognizable Indian communities and cultural centers. In 1990, one hundred years after their population nadir, there were almost 2 million American Indians (0.8 percent of the total U.S. population), representing 314 recognized tribes, 197 Alaskan native villages, and many more groups awaiting federal recognition."

"That the people demonstrated a genius for enduring, for surviving the descendants of Columbus, is undeniable. Whether or not they continue to do so is up to the next generation. Many suggest Indian persistence depends on educating young people in their own language and customs while training them to meet the needs of the tribal group in an increasingly technological world. Most tribes are working with state school districts to add cultural heritage units to the curricula while others are creating their own schools."

Land

"A second significance of Native Americans in the twentieth-century West is their control of land and valuable natural resources. Placed on unwanted and apparently worthless reservations in the nineteenth century, Indians and neighboring whites later discovered that these lands were often resource rich."

"Second, Native Americans recognize the importance of land as a place for community and continuity in the twentieth century. Their land base holds them together physically and culturally as identifiable groups, separate and safe from a national mainstream that has swept along other ethnic groups. "Everything is tied to our homeland," said the Flathead writer and historian D'Arcy McNickle. "Our language, religion, songs, beliefs--everything. Without our homeland, we are nothing."2

"Today American Indians control over 90 million acres in the United States (including 56.2 million acres in federal trust)--a sizable chunk but still less than 3 percent of their aboriginal estate. From the 16-million-acre Navajo Reservation, which bridges three states, to the tiny California mission rancherias like Jamul Village, with 6.03 acres, Indian-controlled lands provide modern Indian peoples a source for identity and the ability to practice meaningful self-determination."

Economic Development

"A third and related significance of Native Americans is the nature of reservation economic development and its impact on local and regional economies in the American West."

"To provide jobs and economic opportunities for growing reservation populations, western tribes turned to their greatest asset--land and natural resources. This shift parallels that of the larger American West; it marks a retreat from small-scale agriculture and a move toward growing dependence on natural resources and the boom-and-bust cycles of extractive industries. Currently, Indians control approximately 30 percent of the coal west of the Mississippi River, over 40 percent of uranium sources, 4 percent of known oil and gas reserves, and other mineral resources of indeterminate value. They own millions of acres of forest land and the rights to an unquantified amount of water..."

"As of June 1993, tribes operated 209 legal gaming establishments, an estimated $6 billion annual industry creating needed jobs and cash flow for both Indian and non-Indian commu nities. Tribes have used gaming revenues to fund a variety of development projects including housing, health and education facilities, land acquisition, and reservation industries, as well as to replace lost federal dollars for services and entitlement programs."

Political Sovereignty

"A Fourth significance of Native Americans in the history of the twentieth-century West is their political sovereignty and emerging voice in regional politics. "

"Although the rhetoric, if not the reality, of Indian political power increased with the self-determination and "government-to-government" policy agendas of the 1970s and 1980s, the problem of finding an acceptable balance between federal trust and true tribal autonomy remains." 33

"Perhaps the greatest source of political clout western tribes have today is water, which gives them a powerful voice in the politics and development of the West. Although Indians were unable to halt the damming of the Columbia and Missouri Rivers in the first half of the twentieth century--damming that had disastrous effects on tribal communities and economies--they have played a more prominent role in determining the nature and construction of new water projects. "

"The significance of tribal politics and Indian political power will continue to increase in the American West. Already state and national governments, corporations, and individuals can no longer run roughshod over Indian rights and desires without at least a protracted fight, and the record of Indian litigation in the courts is becoming more impressive."

Significance of the People

"To tell the history of the twentieth-century American West without including Native Americans is like looking through a stereoscope with one eye closed -- the image remains but the depth disappears. Indians did not disappear or remain static nineteenth-century caricatures but grew in numbers, in political and economic power, and in the diversity of their experiences. Increasingly urban and increasingly sophisticated in their approach to the larger world, Native Americans command serious attention."

Iverson, We Are Restored

"The Indian West ends neither at the forty-ninth parallel nor at the Rio Grande. The Blackfeet and the Tohono O'odham have known this fact for some time. Inclusion of western Canada, Alaska, and northern Mexico not only verifies the transnational status of a number of native communities but also recognizes the historical connections among Athapaskan-speaking
peoples and others who are linked through time and territory across thousands of miles."

"Families matter. For those of us whose choices and opportunities have taken us far from relatives, it is useful to recall the words of an Indian woman who defined wealth as being able to see her grandchildren every day. Janine Pease Pretty on Top, the president of Little Bighorn College, understands. She and other Crows have decided to stay or return home. They may make less money and live in less fancy houses, but family, community, and the land more than compensate."

"My research about Indian cowboys and ranch ers has taught me that the old symbols of cowboys and Indians are misleading at best. Non-Indian cattle ranchers in this century have become increasingly like the Indians of old, surrounded by a society that does not understand them and has other priorities for their land. Indians on many western reservations turned to cattle ranching not only as an appropriate economic activity but also as an activity that could reinforce priorities within Indian society."

"Even if they stay within the general contours of the reservation, many rural Indians have moved to town in the past generation. That urban movement within Indian country is one of the most crucial and most ignored components of the recent past. It is an understandable movement. The location of schools and jobs has altered how families work. Many people have also moved to reservation bordertown communities or to the city itself."

"Here symbols come into play as well. As Loretta Fowler has observed, symbols of identity tell us a great deal about the nature of Indian communities. Pow wows and language are two cases in point. There are others. We look not only to the writing of Indian people but as well to their weaving, their basketry, their silverwork, their music, and their painting."

"And, as David Lewis, Edward Spicer, and others have said, the ultimate symbol for many Indians is the land itself, invested with sacred and social meaning. This is where we belong, the stories say. This is where we will be. 'Anything that matters is here," wrote Joy Harjo in Secrets from the Center of the World. "

Wilkinson, Indian Country

"Indian tribes own roughly a fifth of the Interior West and increasingly control those lands with reduced federal interference, managing their natural resources, steadily re-acquiring lost tribal lands, and governing their reservations through tribal legislatures and courts. They also control resources off the reservations: salmon in the Columbia River and water in nearby streams. Most legal interpretations of treaties between the tribes and the U.S. government suggest that they can legitimately claim significantly more water and wildlife resources in the West. This resurgence of Indian political power and cultural identity has become a significant characteristic of the New West."

"Add a tincture of higher education, law degrees, and an increasingly sympathetic white America, and the modem Indian resurgence gained strength. Treaty violations were challenged; access to natural resources like water and salmon were renewed; and, closest of all to Indian heart and culture, use of sacred sites, many on public lands, was
re-established. The practice of displaying Indian bones and artefacts as national history and prehistory was questioned, and museums began, some grudgingly, to repatriate Indian property. "

"The Indians had barely survived. Despite much treachery, Euro-American policy in the 1800s officially treated Native Americans as sovereigns-signing treaties and ceding reservations rather than totally annihilating them. Once subdued, the logic of the times suggested, they could be absorbed, treaties broken, and white destiny on the continent completed. But the treaties and reservations were the taproot for future political power, and provided the legal firepower for claims to land and water. Indian culture remains a powerful part of Western geography, both on and off the reservations."

Are Indians Americans?

(See James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me

The larger question facing both Indians and European setters from the very beginning of contact between these two peoples was this: Can Indians and Europeans live together in America despite their different cultures, religions, languages, customs and traditions? This larger question quickly posed two very different questions for American Indians:

1) Could Indians be a part of White American society and culture, and under whose terms--Indians or White?

2) Was there a future for Indians as part of White American society? That is, were White Americans willing to share American society and resources with Indians?

Chief Joseph's view of the Indian Problem

To begin to see how both Indians and White Americans answered these questions, we can look at Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians. In the "Chief Joseph's Story" (1879) handout, Chief Joseph is speaking before Congress, pleading on behalf of his defeated and imprisoned Indian people. For Joseph, the so-called "Indian problem" was not caused by Indians, but by Whites refusal to accept Indians as a part of their larger American society. In order to understand Joseph's argument, we need to first understand the history of the Nez Perce Indian people. The Nez Perce had lived in what is now the border between Oregon and Washington state for hundreds of years. They hunted, farmed and traded with nearby Indian tribes. Upon reaching the Nez Perce Indian people on their journey to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark were welcomed by them and given supplies. They made friends with Lewis and Clark and the American expedition. However, this friendship didn't last very long.

White settlers and missionaries began swarming into Oregon and Washington in the 1840s and 1850s. Believing that they were settling a "new land," many of these settlers failed to recognize or accept the Indians rights to their land, culture, and way of life. The settlers acted and believed that the Indians were now a part of the larger American society. If the Indians didn't accept the settlers right to settle on their land and develop the wilderness, then the settlers would demand that the Federal government push them aside to make room for progress and development. The Indians were thus faced with a choice: They either allow white settlement and the economic development of their lands, or they be pushed aside onto reservations under the strict control of the Federal government and the military.

Whites did not accept the rights of Indians to continue to own and control their land, to continue their way of life and separate culture and societies, and practice their religion and way of life. By the 1860s and 1870s White settlers' demands to settle on the Nez Perce Indian land created a real dilemma for both the Indians and the Federal Government. In the early 1870s, the Federal government decided that in order to appease the growing demands of White settlers to settle on Indian land that it would remove the Nez Perce Indians from the majority of their land and place them on a reservation, separate and isolated from White society.

It is here where Joseph's story really begins. In the mid-1870s, the Federal government sent General Howard to order the Nez Perce chiefs to prepare themselves to be moved onto reservations. General Howard told the Nez Perce that "the country belongs to the Government, and I intend to make you go upon the reservation." But Joseph and the Nez Perce were puzzled by this demand. How could the Federal government believe it had the right to take the majority of Nez Perce tribal land and put them on a small, isolated reservation? Where did the government get the authority to remove them from the land that they believed "the Great Spirit" gave them to live on. But General Howard wasn't willing to argue this point with the Indians. Believing he had the authority and right to remove the Indians, he warned them: "If you are not here in that time, I shall consider that you want to fight, and will send my soldiers to drive you on."After trying to meet Howard's deadline to move, and finding it impossible to do so, Chief Joseph and the rest of the Nez Perce chiefs decided to attempt a daring escape to Canada, trying to flee the control and domination of the Federal government. But the government refused to allow the Indians to escape. It send thousands of troops to prevent the Nez Perce from escaping into Canada. Federal troops captured the Indians within 60 miles of the Canadian border.

The Federal government had decided not to allow the Nez Perce to escape their control, fearing that other Indians would follow the example they set. Upon surrendering, General Miles promised Joseph that he and his people would be granted a small reservation in Washington. But after they surrendered the Secretary of War and other military leaders reneged on this promise and ordered the Nez Perce to be sent to prisons in Oklahoma. Representing his people, Chief Joseph asked to speak before Congress and be allowed to plead his defeated peoples' case. Chief Joseph begins his speech by declaring his view of the larger conflict between Indians and Whites:
"I want the white people to understand my people. Some of you think that an Indian is a wild animal. This is a great mistake. I will tell you about our people, and then you can judge whether an Indian is a man or not." For Joseph the central cause of this conflict is that Whites do not recognize and respect the rights of Indians a human beings and as Americans. Joseph gives a major example of this when he observes that whites "stole a great many horses from us, and we could not get them back because we were Indian." Chief Joseph must know that the penalty for White Americans stealing horses from other Whites is death. But Whites don't grant the same enforcement of this law to Indians.

Recognizing their defeat and the loss of their land, their horses and cattle, and the Nez Perce suffering and loss of life during this conflict, Joseph pleads with Congress to help his people: "I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men." Joseph is asking Congress to recognize Indians and men and as Americans with rights. He says: "Let me be a free man--free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, freed to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself...." Joseph concludes his speech by promising that if White Americans "treat the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall all be alike." But, tragically, White Americans refused to treat Indians like Whites, to recognize Indians as equal member of a larger American society.

President Jackson and the Indians

We can see this same dilemma in President Andrew Jackson's "Second Annual Message" in 1830. In the 1820 and 1830s, Southern States were pressuring the Federal government to remove the remaining Indians tribe from their land in the South and put them on reservations in Oklahoma, which the government called "Indian Territory." The Southern states and white settlers and slaveholders wanted the Indians' land and resources to expand slavery and the Southern economy. They didn't recognize the right of Indians to remain on their land, to hold onto their culture and religion, and to live as Indians within the larger American society. Facing this pressure from White Americans, President Jackson came up with an policy supporting Indian removal that he thought was best for Indians and White Americans. In his "Second Annual Message," President Jackson argues that removing the Indians in the Southern states to reservations in Oklahoma is good for the Indians, White settlers, and good for the Southern states. Jackson argues that removing the Indians will "place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters"...."and enable those States to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power." In addition to helping the States and white settlers, removal will separate "the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites"...."which will retard the progress of decay which is lessening their numbers."

Jackson now argues that Indians will survive only if they are removed out of the path of white settlement. If Indians aren't isolated from whites, and protected on reservations, Jackson warns, they will face the same fate as the Indians in the Eastern states--they "were annihilated or melted away." Isolated from whites, safe from annihilation or extermination, the Federal government can help the Indians "cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community." In addition to helping the Indians survive, removing the Indians will help America create an "extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or Industry can execute." If the white settlers can leave the homes of their ancestors to settle the wilderness, Jackson argues, then Indians should also be able to leave their homes and go to reservations. Jackson seems to think that sending Indians to reservations is comparable to white settlers settling in the West.

For President Jackson, just like most Americans in the 1830s, the Indians as Indians could not live and be a part of American society. Either the Indians gave up their culture, religion, language, and way of life and disappeared into White society or they would be annihilated. Jackson's policy mirrors the larger Federal government's Indian policy from 1870 to 1920, which can be summarized in a phrase: "Kill the Indian to save the Man." If Indians did not give up their Indian ways and disappear into White culture and society, they would die out, because Indians as Indians could not survive in White American society in the 1800s.

The Cherokee Response to Jackson

In response to President Jackson's argument for Indian removal, John Ross and the leaders of the Cherokee Indian nation that was threatened with removal tried to argue their case before Congress and the American people for Indian's rights to their land, culture, and way of life. In "Memorial and Protest of the Cherokee Nation," Cherokee leader John Ross argues that Indians as a distinct people, deserving basic rights and freedoms, should be allowed to remain on their land and practice their culture and way of life, free from White American domination and control. Like Chief Joseph, John Ross believes that the conflicts between Indians and Whites are caused by the White's refusal to recognize Indians as peoples with inalienable rights and freedoms. Ross argues that the Indians are farmers, Christians, and are improving and developing their lands and resources. In fact, the White settlers and Southern state governments are stealing the Indian land that has been improved and developed. Given the Cherokee's efforts to become a part of the larger White American society, the United States should and must recognize the rights, dignity, and equality of Indians in American society.

But the Federal government and most White Americans refused to accept Ross's arguments. And the Cherokee were removed from their ancestral land and march to a reservation in Oklahoma. On this march, known as the "Trail of Tears" over one-third of the Cherokee people die due to cold, disease, and starvation. This tragedy symbolizes the larger White American society's refusal to accept Indians as part of their larger society.

In order to understand the White American refusal to accept Indians as a part of their society, we must look back at the assumptions made by the first European explorers and settlers who came to America. For many Americans, Columbus has come to symbolize the progress and good will that Europeans brought to the Americas. But as, Loewen argues, Columbus was, in fact, one of the models for the behavior of future explorers and settlers in America. When Columbus first landed on the island of Hispanola, present-day Haiti, he claimed all the land and resources for the Spanish King and Queen. He even commented that the peoples would make "good slaves." On his return to Spain, Columbus brought a few of the Indians back to Spain as slaves. On his previous expeditions to the Hispanola and the Bahamas, Columbus brutalized the Indians, capturing them as slaves, forcing them to find gold for Spain, and using violence and terrorism to control the Indians. As a result of the massive violence Columbus and his men used against the Indians, tens of thousands of Indians died. Loewen argues that "the Spanish in Haiti is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history. But the wealth and power created by Columbus and later Spanish expeditions convinced other European nations that they, too, had to get in on the scramble for wealth in America. If the Spanish could amass vast wealth by exploiting the Indians, then the French, the English, the Portuguese, and the Dutch could as well. Loewen argues that in the scramble for wealth in the Americas "these other European nations were at least as brutal as Spain. The British, for example, unlike the Spanish, did not colonize by making use of Indian labor but simply forced the Indians out of the way."(p. 66)But our textbooks do not describe the settling of the Americas as a scramble for wealth and the brutal exploitation of Indians and Africans. Instead we celebrate Columbus, as President Bush did in 1989, "as a role model for the nation." (p. 69) High school textbooks do not describe the refusal of Europeans to recognize and respect the rights of Indians who had already settled and lived in America, who were themselves the First Americans.

There is thus a major contradiction between our history of European settlement and the reality of the brutal dispossession of Indian land and culture from 1492 to the present. Loewen argues that in order to avoid this contradiction, Americans forget the brutal reality of Indian-White conflict and accept the myth of the "empty continent" peopled by a few wandering savages, who were very quickly pushed aside by the progress of civilization across the American continent. Loewen refers to this process of denial as cognitive dissonance. Because humans can't hold two mutually incompatible beliefs at the same time, we tend to deny or forget one of those beliefs in order to make one of them reasonable and acceptable. Thus, in order to celebrate the victory of progress, the movement of white settlers across the continent, and the triumph of American democracy and civilization, Americans forget that in order to settle the continent that they had to brutally deny Indians their rights and culture.

The basic contradiction is this: Can America celebrate itself as a democratic society based on the recognition of individual rights and freedoms while at the same recognizing that very democratic society denied the basic rights and freedoms of Indian peoples. This is the basic contradiction is Chief Joseph examines in his speech before Congress.

The best example of what Loewen means by cognitive dissonance in Indian-White relations can be seen in Frederick Jackson Turner's famous 1893 history, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." This speech and Turner's larger argument is one of the most influential arguments in American history. Turner's point of view about Western settlement dominated the way American understood the history of American settlement up until the 1960s. Turner argues that the best way to understand American history is to study the settlement of the continent: "Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West." He argues that American democratic institutions and values such as individualism, independence, self-reliance, and mistrust of government can be traced to the American settlement of the West. By facing and conquering the challenge of settling the frontier, Americans became who and what they are -- they became Americans. For Turner, settlers contact with "free land" and the struggle to conquer the wilderness transformed them into Americans. But Turner does not mention anywhere the role of the Indians, who had lived and settled in the West. If settling the West made Americans who they are, why weren't Indians transformed and made into Americans already. The only time Turner mentions Indians is when he notes that the settler "fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails." But what happened to the Indians who made these trails and clearings?

If Turner recognized the existence and prior settlement of America by Indians, his entire argument would fall apart. White settlers can't be celebrated as democratic heroes, settling and developing a continent, and in the process creating a democratic society, while at the same time denying Indians the very democratic rights America celebrates. As Loewen argues, Americans would rather have the myth than face the complex realities created by the massive contradictions between American democratic ideals and the reality of the brutal denial of Indians rights and place in American society.

Recognizing the larger contradictions in Indian-White relations and in American history, Luther Standing Bear argues that the Indian is America, that because Indians lived and settled in America for hundreds of years that they came to know and understand the land and America. Standing Bear argues that "the white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America." White's refusal to recognize and respect Indian rights, Standing Bear argues, only hurt the larger American society. When Whites come to "look upon the Indian world as a human world; then let him see to it that human rights be accorded to the Indians. And this for the purpose of retaining for his own order of society a measure of humanity."

For Standing Bear, Chief Joseph, and John Ross, White America's refusal to accept Indians as human beings and as Americans has hurt both Indians and White Americans. Unlike Columbus and later White settlers, these American Indians believe that America can be and is a society that can include both Whites and Indians, that can allow both Whites and Indians to hold onto and celebrate their own culture, religion, and way of life. The refusal to accept such a larger multiracial and multicultural society has created racial divisions and tensions that have dominated American history and still threaten American society today.

Is Loewen's and the Indians' argument simply Columbus- and White American-bashing? Are we suppose to now recognize the goodness of Indians and the brutality and greed of Whites? No, not al all. Loewen argues: "I am not proposing the breast-beating alternative: that Columbus was bad and so are we. On the contrary, textbooks should show that neither morality nor immorality can simply be conferred upon us by history. Merely being part of the United States, without regard to our own acts and ideas, does not make us moral or immoral beings. History is more complicated than that."

I agree with Loewen that just because White Americans acted badly and selfishly toward the Indians does not mean that we today are directly responsible for their actions. One of my colleagues, an American Indian, argued that "she doesn't blame White Americans today, or hold them responsible, for what Whites did to Indians in the part. She does, however, hold White Americans responsible for how they treat Indians and people of color today. She believes that our knowledge of the past can help us overcome racial division and wounds created by our past. We aren't responsible directly for our past, but we are responsible for how we use our knowledge of that past and our actual history to shape the present and the future. Because we can't go back and undo history we can't be directly responsible for the past, but we can and are responsible for how the past and our own lives shape and affect American society and its future.
..........Chris H. Lewis