Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Review of Cathleen Cahill's Federal Fathers & Mothers


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.


[1] Cahill, Cathleen D. 2011. Federal fathers & mothers: a social history of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
[2] Ibid  61
[3] Ibid  76

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