In her 2011 book Federal
Fathers & Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service,
1869-1933,[1]
Cathleen D. Cahill examines the conceptual framework and objectives around
which the US Indian Service were set, then provides a detailed analysis of how
federal employees actually practiced these goals. She demonstrates that there was a frequent disconnect
between the policy makers intention and the way that the Indian Service was
actually implemented. Cahill divides her text into three sections. In the
first, she shows how the Reconstruction influenced the development of
assimilation policy and how due to concerns about corruption, they
subcontracted management to religious groups. The second, and most detailed
part of her book detail the everyday lives of “The Men and Women of the Indians
Service,”[2]
particularly the impact of hiring workers of each gender, both Native and white
to administer policy. Finally, she explains how the implementation of the
Indian Service for thirty years caused policy changes due to forces both
internal and external to the BIA. Using a variety of sources, particularly personnel
files for employees, Cahill successfully demonstrates how the complicated,
varied, and sometimes contradictory goals and tasks of Indian Services workers
collided with the policy makers assumptions and yielded unintended
consequences.
Cahill begins by discussing how the
post Civil War dealings with former slaves served as a model for Indian policy.
They generally agreed that the Indian population should be treated as “wards”
of the nation rather than full citizens and in order to make up for past
wrongs, the federal government designed programs, implemented at first by
Quakers and then other religious groups, that would give Indians the tools to
become good citizens while avoiding the dangers of dependency. She suggests that this was the first program
of its kind; rather than repaying soldiers, for example with pensions or land,
it instead used national resources to fund social programs aimed at civilizing.
Though this required treaty-breaking, it was believed to be the best way to
assimilate the native population and pull them out of poverty. They focused
most of their educational efforts on idealizing the Western notion of home and
family. They believed that physical homes would incentivize capitalist
tendencies among and that changing the living arrangement of Indians would
alter family relationships, highlighting the necessary gender roles of a white
nuclear family. To do this, they hired farmers, craftsmen, teachers and
administrators and well as seamstresses, cooks and laundresses so that Indian
children and adult males could be educated in English and agriculture and,
keeping in expectations about gender roles, the females in laundry and
housekeeping.
The largest portion of her book
discusses the day to day activities of workers in the Indian Service. She notes
that the Indian Service was unusual due to its large reliance on female workers,
often in leadership positions, who drew larger salaries and had more
independence than any other job. However, hiring women to serve as examples to
the Indian population was paradoxical and represented the little opinion that
the federal government had for Indians.
First, the kind of women, especially single women who were drawn to the
Indian Service were usually not ideal subservient housewives, a quality which
would have never let them receive such a coveted job among sometimes fierce
competition. Additionally, the authority given to these women over Indian men
did not accurately represent the relationship between men and women in normal
middle-class settings. In fact, the authority of many of these women were
routinely challenged and only kept in place due to the threat of violence,
subverting the moral influence that they were supposed to have on Indian women.[3]
Married couples represented a large
number of Indian Service workers. In fact, they were highly valued as they
could provide an example an ideal married couple to Indians. However, this also
led to complications especially as their children were usually not able to
attend school with Native children, and in many cases, political manipulations
were required to keep both spouses stationed together. The Indian service also
drew a large number of Indian workers, usually graduates of either boarding
schools or reservation schools who filled every possible position in the Indian
service though usually in a place subservient to whites. Though frequently
Indians were stationed far from their tribe, they began to identify which each
other as Indians and bond through common experiences. Indians used their
positions within the Indian Service to try to elevate their community and draw
a respectable paycheck without destroying their culture or leaving the Indian
community. Finally, due to large groups of single, educated and similarly
thinking people of both races and gender living and working together in a
fairly close proximity, the Indian Service resulted in a least hundreds of
interracial and inter-tribal marriages, which to both many Indians and whites
were disagreeable.
Cahill concludes with a discussion of
the impact of Progressivism on the Indian Service. While some ideals espoused
by Progressivism could have helped complete assimilation, hardening notions of
race changed the goal of policy makers from creating a voting, land holding
middle class to a racially segregated working class. This resulted in the
closing of several boarding schools, emphasizing vocational training and
limiting opportunities for educational advancement. This had devastating
effects on the entire Native population, especially the thousands of former
students who were well educated even by white standards, but overlooked by the
federal government. When the Indian Service began to issue pensions to former
employees, which created another group of dependent individuals, they
frequently excluded Indian workers from receiving benefits. This was especially
true of Indian women. She finally remarks that although the Indian Service is
characterized by its and ineptitude corruption, which was present in some
cases, most employees were effective and had been trained as much as any public
school teacher. The Indian Service was simply not prepared for the situation
and did not expect many of the consequences of their actions.
Cahills’s book is interesting in
several ways. First, she paints a very human picture of the Indian service and
based on her sources is able to provide a balanced view of all workers, men and
women, Indian and white. She demonstrates that in the case of any social
policy, the ideals of policy makers cannot measure up to the realities on the
ground. She does bite off slightly more than she can chew, with the final
chapters of her book. While the middle is extremely rich and interesting, when
she discusses the end of the Indian service and forces that led to its demise,
it feels rushed and incomplete. But as a social history rather than a political
one, it is an excellent text for anyone interested in nineteenth century
history, womens' or Indian history, or History of the American West.
