Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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By the early 1870s the fighting that characterized Indian–white relations had subsided, and reformers began to argue that the cost in lives and property was not worth the military effort. Grant’s peace policy called for non-violent coercion by Protestant missionaries who would direct affairs on newly established reservations. These agents would both convert their charges to Christianity while teaching them the value of farming and other rural tasks. By accepting the reservation solution the federal government in effect recognized the Indians as wards of the state—the American form of colonialism.

Yet by the late 1870s the failures of reservation life, characterized by bribery and dishonesty by those who were charged with implementing the Indian policy, and by a ration system that was both inadequate and yet fostered dependency on hand-outs by an impoverished Indian people, led to new reform movement. It was in this context that the off-reservation solution was posed by Pratt and others. If overt military actions and segregation on reservations were not transforming the Indian to a civilized person, perhaps education should be tried. Education might finally detribalize Indian youths, convert them to Christianity, and provide them with the gift of the white man’s civilization.⁸