Native Americans

Kill the Indian, Christianize The Man

May 12, 2019 Sacred Liberty

The efforts to help Native Americans include the campaign to ban their spiritual practices and convert their children to Christianity. Adapted from Sacred Liberty In 1866, the “good guys” were the Christians who merely wanted to annihilate the Native Americans’ religion. It was a strange turning point in white America’s relationship with the Indians. The Native Americans had been pushed farther west. Disease and war had dramatically reduced their numbers. The buffalo population had been so decimated that the Indian…

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Christianizing the Indian Children

February 14, 2019 Sacred Liberty

After the Civil War, some wanted to exterminate the Indians. The “reformers” thought it would instead be wise to “Christianize” them. A key weapon: boarding schools that would purge Indian culture. “Education cuts the cord that binds [Indians] to a Pagan life, places the Bible in their hands, substitutes the true God for the false one, Christianity in place of idolatry … cleanliness in place of filth, industry in place of idleness, self-respect in place of servility, and, in a…

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Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

U.S. Supreme Court 1990 In Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court had said that under some circumstances the government could not impose laws that burdened religion — even if that harm was incidental or accidental. This issue reappeared thanks to the case of a man named Al Smith, who was definitely no relation to the Catholic New York governor but had other remarkable connections to earlier themes in religious history. Smith was a Native American who had been sent to…

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Indian Religious Freedom and Indian Culture, Bureau of Indian Affairs Circular no. 2970

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

John Collier, Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs January 3, 1934. Circular No. 2970—Indian Religious Freedom and Indian Culture, 1934 Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, Washington, January 3, 1934. To Superintendents: On trips to jurisdictions, and through correspondence occasionally received at the Washington office, I have discovered that some Indian Service officals and employees, some missionaries, and many Indians are not clearly advised as to the policy of this office toward Indian religious expression and toward ceremonial…

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Witnessing Wovoka

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Fast Thunder January 17, 1891 Fast Thunder, a Christian who performed the Ghost Dance, recounts his experience visiting with Wovoka, an Indian prophet: “As I looked upon his fair countenance, I wept, for there were nail prints in his hands and feet, where the cruel white men had fastened him to a large cross. There was a small wound in his side also, but as he kept his side covered with a beautiful blanket of feathers, this wound could only…

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Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1886

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1886 “[…] Everything in the way of persuasion and argument having failed, it became necessary to visit the camps unexpectedly with a detachment of police, and seize such children as were proper and take them away to school, willing or unwilling. Some hurried their children off to the mountains or hid them away in camp, and the police had to chase and capture them like so many wild rabbits. This unusual proceeding created quite an outcry….

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My Life by Sioux writer Zitkála-Šá

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Zitkála-Šá Sioux writer Zitkála-Šá recalls hiding under a bed while attending Carlisle Indian Industrial School to avoid having her braids cut off. “I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while, until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids….

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Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1887

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1887 […] Ample provision ought to be made to accommodate these 186 Indian children. We are told that the stability of the Government depends upon tho virtue and intelligence of the people, and that these are only the product of a healthful and intelligent education of the youth of the country. But higher results accrue to the lndian race by educating their children. Education cuts the cord which binds them to a pagan life, places the…

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Kill the Indian, and Save the Man

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Capt. Richard Henry Pratt 1892 Richard Henry Pratt was one of the leading advocates of immersion education for Native Americans. He created the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be…

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Spanish Requerimiento of 1513

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

Juan López de Palacios Rubios 1513 […] Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors…

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