Indian reservation

Land in the USA held in trust by the federal or a state government for a specified group (‘tribe’) of American Indians, or ‘Indians’. US reservations range in size from a few acres to the huge Navajo Reservation. Social and economic conditions also vary widely; while poverty and dependence on the federal government has afflicted many, others have prospered from business ventures on the reservations, including logging, mining, oil and gas extraction, tax-free retailing, tourism and recreational development, and, most recently, operation of gambling establishments.

While all US-born Indians, as individuals, are citizens of the country, they are – as members of a tribe and if resident on a reservation – subject to federal and tribal, but not generally to state, laws. The sovereignty of tribes is complex; federal law limits their self-government in various ways determined by treaty or legislation, and they do not, as states do under the US Constitution, retain all powers not specifically delegated to the Federal government. Broadly speaking, they have the power to control membership and land use, raise local taxes, and administer their own legal systems (subject to federal supremacy in regard to some criminal matters). There are over 300 federal reservations in the USA, chiefly in the West, along with some 20 state reservations, mainly in the East. Many reservations are adjoined by additional ‘trust lands’. Another 200 small communities in Alaska are designated as Alaskan villages; they do not have formal boundaries.

History of the reservation system Reservations were allocated to the American Indians from the 1860s. Apart from freeing the Plains Indian's lands for settlement by homesteaders, the reservation system had the advantage of confining its inhabitants to small, easily controlled areas of worthless land. Here their traditional way of life would be unsustainable and they would no longer be a threat to the settlers. The defeated image of the Plains Indian on a reservation is one of the most enduring in the history of the American West. The culture and community of whole groups came close to being destroyed by 1900. In recent decades, however, there has been a major revival in the rights and position of the American Indian in the USA.

Separation of the US and Indian peoples The first appearance of a reservation-type system was the Permanent Indian Frontier policy of 1830, which was linked to the Indian Removal Act of the same year. Under the terms of these acts, all the Indian population of the USA was to live west of the Mississippi River, on the land from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean. The US government did not believe that the USA would ever have any need for the land to the west of the Mississippi as they had so much space in the eastern states. Furthermore, the Plains had been given the name Great American Desert on maps of the region since 1823, and they were assumed to be unsuitable for cultivation. Indians could, therefore, be given this desert region in which to live separately from the citizens of the USA. Although this policy was not reservation policy as it is understood from the 1860s, it was the first time that the US government used the method of separating American Indians and US citizens by forcing them to live in different areas. It can, therefore, be seen as the beginning of the reservation system.

US–Indian confrontation The reservation system of the 1860s came about because of the conflict that had occurred in the 1840s and 1850s when settlers and gold miners travelling to California and Oregon had crossed the Great Plains. These two groups had entered the lands set aside for the American Indians and crossed the lands without any reference to the treaties between the USA and the Indians. In response to the invasion of their hunting grounds or sacred areas, some of the Plains Indians fought back to defend their rights. This led to the US Army being forced to tackle the Plains Indian warriors, at considerable cost to their soldiers and equipment. This was not an experience that either the US government or Army wished to repeat.

Following the passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, offering settlers 65 ha/160 acres for minimal cost if they stayed on the land for five years, homesteaders began to move onto the Plains. With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad by 1869, linking the East and the far West of the USA, the flood of settlers looking for cheap and accessible land accelerated. The supplies of land being given to these new homesteaders had to be taken off the Plains Indians by force and treaty. Once a treaty was signed, such as the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1851, when the Sioux gave up lands in Minnesota, the inhabitants had to move to areas specially chosen by the US government.

Conditions on the reservations Once on the reservations the Plains Indians would find themselves totally dependent on the handouts of the US government. Money, food, shelter, and blankets all came from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government body charged with looking after the Indians. The Bureau of Indian Affairs hired an Indian agent for each reservation, whose job it was to distribute the rations and money promised to the Plains Indians in the treaties that they were forced to sign. Unfortunately, owing to a combination of poor supervision and personal greed, most of the Indian agents withheld these rations and sometimes even stole the money sent by the US government. This led to conditions on the reservations becoming even harsher than they need have been. To make matters worse the US government often failed to send the promised money to the Plains Indians on the reservations, even during food shortages.

By removing them from the wider Plains the Plains Indians were unable to hunt the North American buffalo, or bison, their main source of food and materials for clothes and houses. This made it impossible for the Plains Indians to continue to live their traditional way of life. The kind of area chosen for the reservations would be the least economically viable land, where no homesteaders would want to farm. A typical example was the Sand Creek Reservation in Colorado, scene of the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, when a company of US Army volunteers led by John Chivington conducted an unprovoked attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment. The land at Sand Creek was too infertile to grow crops, and most of the water was poisonous for human consumption, yet Chief Black Kettle's Cheyenne were forced to live there as their territory had been taken by settlers entering Colorado seeking gold and farmland.

Little Crow's War, 1861–62 The events of Little Crow's War, one of a number of Plains Wars, offer an example of the nature of reservation life and the dependent position in which the Plains Indians of the reservations found themselves. Little Crow was the leader of the Santee Sioux on their reservation in Minnesota. When the Sioux crops failed in 1861, they lived on credit from the well-stocked store on the reservation run by the Indian agent Andrew Myrick. However, in the summer of 1862, just as the shortage of food reached its worst point, the annual government allotment of money to the Santee Sioux failed to arrive. At this point the starving and dying Santee Sioux had their supply of food cut off by Myrick. The resulting outburst was a trail of bloodshed and destruction that left 700 settlers and 38 Santee Sioux warriors dead before peace was restored in Minnesota.

US attempts to destroy American Indian culture The reservation policy had another motive for the US government, and that was to ensure the total destruction of the Plains Indians' way of life. By removing their horses and guns, and splitting the ethnic groups up as well as mixing them together, the US government hoped to weaken traditional group structures and eventually remove the Indian problem altogether. To this end Indian children were removed from their parents and sent away to schools off the Plains to be taught how to be like the ‘white man’. This policy became commonplace in the last two decades of the 19th century. At school the children were banned from using their native language and forced to convert to Christianity. The hope was that on returning to the reservation, these new Americanized Indians would further undermine their people's culture.

However, US attempts at assimilation were countered by the growth of American Indian identity. It was on the reservations of the Great Plains that the Ghost Dance spiritual movement of the 1890s took hold. Indians took part in a series of trance-inducing rituals and dancing, believing that they would one day bring back their old way of life and traditions and eliminate the whites. The strength and numbers of the Americans made this a dream unlikely to be fulfilled, but kept the flame of the American Indian culture alive.