the indian problem essay

Site Navigation

The "indian problem", object details.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Trail of Tears

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 26, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. But by the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk hundreds of miles to a specially designated “Indian Territory” across the Mississippi River. This difficult and oftentimes  deadly journey is known as the Trail of Tears.

The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington , believed that the best way to solve this “Indian problem” was to simply “civilize” the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity , learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people adopted these customs and became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.”

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans’ land, located in parts of Georgia , Alabama , North Carolina , Florida and Tennessee , was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder ; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations “in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force.”

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would “[fall]…still born.” Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called “Indian removal.” As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida–campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act , which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the “Indian colonization zone” that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase . This “Indian territory” was located in present-day Oklahoma .

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some “bound in chains and marched double file,” one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a “trail of tears and death.”

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

How Native Americans Struggled to Survive on the Trail of Tears

Severe exposure, starvation and disease ravaged tribes during their forced migration to present‑day Oklahoma.

At Least 3,000 Native Americans Died on the Trail of Tears

Check out seven facts about this infamous chapter in American history.

Why the War of 1812 Was a Turning Point for Native Americans

The conflict was their last, best chance for outside military help to protect their homelands from westward expansion.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government’s determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi — roughly 7 million acres — for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

“The instrument in question is not the act of our nation,” wrote the nation’s principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. “We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people.” Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross’s petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, “Indian Country” shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation .

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands — only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears — actually a network of different routes — is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov . Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian . The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources . The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine . Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press . Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press . 

HISTORY Vault: Native American History

From Comanche warriors to Navajo code talkers, learn more about Indigenous history.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

• Get Started

Learning Lab Collections

• Collections
• Assignments

Delete Resource - The "Indian Problem"

Restore archived - the "indian problem", debug score breakdown for the "indian problem", my learning lab:, forgot my password.

Please provide your account's email address and we will e-mail you instructions to reset your password. For assistance changing the password for a child account, please contact us

You are about to leave Smithsonian Learning Lab.

Your browser is not compatible with site. do you still want to continue.

• Online Resources

The "Indian Problem"

• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Get New Issue Alerts
• American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences

Reclaiming Representations & Interrupting the Cycle of Bias Against Native Americans

The most widely accessible ideas and representations of Native Americans are largely negative, antiquated, and limiting. In this essay, we examine how the prevalence of such representations and a comparative lack of positive contemporary representations foster a cycle of bias that perpetuates disparities among Native Americans and other populations. By focusing on three institutions – the legal system, the media, and education – we illustrate how the same process that creates disparate outcomes can be leveraged to promote positive contemporary ideas and representations of Native Americans, thereby creating more equitable outcomes. We also highlight the actions some contemporary Native Americans have taken to reclaim their Native American identity and create accurate ideas and representations of who Native Americans are and what they can become. These actions provide a blueprint for leveraging cultural change to interrupt the cycle of bias and to reduce the disparities Native Americans face in society.

ARIANNE E. EASON is a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at the University of Washington. Her interests lie at the intersection of social and developmental psychology, specifically how children and adults process environmental information related to race and interracial interactions. Her research has been published in  Developmental Psychology, Current Directions in Psychological Science , and  Infancy .

LAURA M. BRADY is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. She has published in such journals as  Current Opinion in Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , and  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

STEPHANIE A. FRYBERG is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. Her work on representations of Native Americans has appeared in  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Social Issues, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology , and  Journal of Applied Social Psychology , among other publications.

What white people see when they look at you is not visible. What they do see when they do look at you is what they have invested you with. . . . To survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and recreate yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. –James Baldwin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations 1

When you think about the most accessible representations of Native Americans in the United States, what comes to mind? You might conjure historical representations of buckskin-wearing, teepee-dwelling people with feathers, or contemporary images of impoverished, drug-abusing, uneducated people. 2  Such negative, limiting, and inaccurate representations are widely accessible in the United States. Now, take a moment to think about what it means to be successful. You might think of someone who is highly educated, with a lucrative career in law, entertainment, education, or some other field. Do the aforementioned representations of Native Americans align with this image of success? How do you think these representations affect the way Native Americans are viewed and treated in consequential domains such as the legal system, the media, and education?

Social scientists largely agree that being human is a social project; people are shaped by the individuals around them and the cultural context in which they live. 3  The dominant culture provides ideas, beliefs, and assumptions about what it means to be a person or a member of a group and, as such, offers a schema for understanding both oneself and others. 4  For Native Americans, the most widely accessible ideas about their group, as well as the representations that stem from them, are not harmless misunderstandings or overgeneralizations. As Baldwin’s quote highlights, White American institutions and individuals have overwhelmingly created and defined prevalent representations of racial minority groups, including Native peoples. 5  The resulting representations reflect negative, inaccurate ideas about Native Americans while ignoring positive, accurate ideas. Consequently, biased understandings of how contemporary Native Americans look, sound, and behave permeate U.S. society. We contend that biased ideas and representations of Native Americans – particularly the scarcity of positive, accurate, and contemporary ideas and representations – constitute the modern form of bias against Native Americans and perpetuate a recursive cycle of low expectations, prejudice, and discrimination that reinforces disparities in domains from public health to education.

Breaking this cycle, as Baldwin contends, requires that new ideas and representations defined by Native American people accurately reflect who and what Native people are, not who others imagine them to be. We draw upon the culture cycle framework to describe how ideas and representations of Native Americans become embedded in the social fabric (that is, within institutions, interactions, and individuals) and provide a roadmap for change. First, we highlight how widely accessible ideas and representations about Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and create disparate outcomes, specifically in the legal system, the media, and education. Second, we call attention to actions of Native American tribes and individuals that have reshaped U.S. culture and promoted more equitable outcomes for contemporary and future Native people. We end with a discussion of how both Native and non-Native people can leverage cultural change to break the cycle of bias against Native peoples.

The  culture cycle  describes the relation between the surrounding cultural context and individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Four levels of culture –  ideas, institutions, interactions , and  individuals  – work together in a mutually constitutive manner to shape and reinforce social and cultural outcomes. 6  The highest level of the culture cycle includes  ideas , such as social, political, and economic histories, assumptions, and norms. These ideas include understandings of how to be a “good” or “moral” individual, stereotypes that shape expectations of group members, and the value placed on different ways of knowing or engaging with the world.  Institutions  include the legal system, the media, and the education system. The practices, policies, structures, and products of institutions reflect prevalent cultural ideas. For example, the legal system sanctions individuals who violate ideas about “good” and “moral” behavior, and the media produces movies, books, and news reports that reflect and reify cultural ideas. Institutional practices and policies in turn provide scripts and norms that shape everyday  interactions  among people, institutions, and cultural products. Finally, ideas, institutions, and interactions all shape the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of  individuals.  When individual behavior aligns with cultural influences, it reinforces the culture cycle; when behavior does not align, it pushes back in subtle and not-so-subtle ways against the dominant cultural ideas and reconstitutes the culture cycle.

While conversations about disparities focus on how individuals’ characteristics – such as race, gender, or social class – relate to outcomes, the culture cycle framework highlights the importance of considering the role of the entire cultural system in perpetuating and alleviating disparate outcomes for Native Americans. In the next three sections, we highlight the mutual constitution of cultural ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals by focusing on the legal system, the media, and education. These institutions reflect and foster a core set of negative and limited ideas about Native people that can lead influential individuals – for example, politicians, judges, lawyers, and educators – to lower expectations and ultimately bring about the exact same disparate outcomes society has come to expect of this group. Finally, we discuss the steps Native American individuals and communities have taken to create more accurate and positive cultural ideas of their groups, and how these actions reverberate throughout the culture cycle to promote more equitable outcomes, both today and in the future.

In historic and contemporary legal policy and practice, Native Americans have been represented as “uncivilized,” incapable of behaving according to mainstream American norms. 7  For example, until the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act was passed, federal policies treated Native Americans as “wards of the government” and prevented Native American communities from making their own decisions about health care, education, and governance. Similarly, federal laws have restricted tribes’ control over policing Native American communities; and federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have failed to provide adequate funding to keep Native communities safe. 8  On one hand, restricting tribal control over law enforcement reifies the notion that Native Americans are incapable of policing their own communities. 9  On the other hand, federal and state governments’ failure to provide sufficient resources to Native communities causes the negative outcomes expected to arise from Native Americans’ supposed inability to police themselves, thus reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

Biased institutional understandings of Native people also impact law enforcement officers’ interactions with Native people and, ultimately, Native peoples' outcomes within the legal system. For example, interactions with law enforcement are more likely to end in the use of deadly force for Native Americans than for any other racial group relative to population size. 10  A study of Native American individuals from seven states and eight tribal nations revealed that even when interactions with police do not lead to violence, police often use racial slurs or derogatory language. 11  Courtroom interactions are similarly biased; for example, Native youth are 30 percent more likely than White youth to be referred to juvenile court rather than having their charges dropped. 12  Given these outcomes, Native Americans report being reluctant to turn to the legal system when they need help because they believe that law enforcement will not take their complaints seriously or intervene when they are in danger. 13  Interactions between Native Americans and the legal system not only perpetuate distrust, but also promote racial disparities that undermine Native peoples’ well-being and livelihood. 14

Construing Native people through a negative and limiting lens – as unable to govern themselves or as “uncivilized” – further justifies the perpetuation of disparate outcomes for Native Americans interacting with the legal system. The underlying assumption of these negative and limiting ideas is that anything non-Native legal institutions do on behalf of Native Americans is better than what Native people could have done on their own. According to this logic, in spite of Native Americans’ disparate outcomes in the legal system relative to other groups, changes do not need to occur because Native people are still better off than they would be if they were governing themselves. Yet such a biased and inaccurate view of Native people in the legal system obscures the fact that Native people have long governed themselves and worked to alleviate the disparate outcomes they face in the American legal system. According to the National American Indian Court Judge Association, 93 percent of federally and state-recognized tribes have their own tribal justice systems. 15  Furthermore, Native American individuals and communities have long utilized Indian law to advocate for their well-being and to challenge federal and state laws. Two such examples include the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

ICWA, which passed in 1978, gives Native American tribes jurisdiction over child welfare cases involving Native children. From 1969–1974, the U.S. government separated 25–35 percent of all Native children from their families and placed them in foster homes, adoptive homes, or institutions. A majority (85 percent) of these children were placed in non-Native homes even when Native homes were available, reflecting the bias that Native Americans are incapable of raising their own children. 16  The Association on American Indian Affairs conducted surveys in states with large Native American populations to understand why so many Native children were removed. These surveys revealed that many children were removed not because of abuse or neglect, but because their families practiced communal childrearing. Communal childrearing is normative in Native American communities, but it conflicts with the nuclear family model of childrearing that prevails in White, middle-class contexts. 17  Thus, the research affirmed that the removal of Native children was fueled by cultural bias against Native ways of being.

By giving tribes control over child welfare cases, ICWA directly challenged negative beliefs about Natives’ ability to care for their own children and changed how the U.S. government intervened in these cases. Following ICWA, the number of Native children placed in foster care or adoption between 1978 and 1986 decreased significantly. 18  ICWA’s passage set the stage for Native tribes nationwide to build child welfare agencies that keep Native families and communities together. 19 By challenging biased understandings of Native families and ways of being, ICWA and the Native individuals, organizations, and communities that were essential to its passing improved both disparate child welfare outcomes and relationships among tribal governments, Native parents, Native children, and federal and state governments.

Just as ICWA was a direct response to the disproportionate removal of Native American children from their families, the 2013 reauthorization of VAWA came as a direct response to the disproportionate rates of violence experienced by Native women at the hands of non-Native men. Approximately 56 percent of Native American women report experiencing sexual violence in their lifetime, and 96 percent of these women report sexual assault by a non-Native man. 20  Native women are the only ethnic group more likely to be assaulted by a male of a different ethnicity than by a male of the same ethnicity. 21  Prior to VAWA, federal and/or state governments had jurisdiction over cases involving non-Native men assaulting Native women on reservations. Despite this jurisdiction, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors failed to investigate or litigate many cases involving non-Native individuals, leaving perpetrators free to reoffend and victims without justice. 22  While rates of reporting and litigating against sexual assault perpetrators are low regardless of victim demographics, people of color, and Native American women in particular, face additional barriers rooted in racial bias. 23  Like many people of color, Native women are perceived as less worthy of protection than White women: 24  as recently as 1968, a federal appellate court upheld a statute that reduced sentencing for rape cases involving Native American women. 25  Furthermore, prosecutors often take Native women’s sexual assault claims less seriously, assuming that Native victims were under the influence (in accordance with the stereotype of Native Americans as drunks), making it less likely that litigation will proceed. 26   In 2015, after a decade of Native American grassroots efforts and advocacy, Congress added a provision to VAWA granting tribes jurisdiction over cases of intimate partner violence involving non-Native individuals on reservations. Once VAWA passed, a pilot project gave three tribes early jurisdiction. In the span of seventeen months, these tribes charged a total of twenty-six offenders. 27  While advocates are seeking to expand VAWA protections to other types of violence, this legislation stands as an example of Native communities working to address the needs of their people and improving their outcomes by assuming control over their own legal processes.

ICWA and VAWA demonstrate how Native tribes have pushed back against biased legal policies and practices to better protect and serve their communities, thereby improving their lives in contemporary society. In particular, there is a direct relationship between the number of self-determining actions a tribal community takes and the community’s mental health. Specifically, First Nations bands (the Native people of Canada) who enacted more self-determining practices that reflected their cultural histories and values, such as making claims to traditional lands or taking community control over education and health services, had lower suicide rates than bands who enacted fewer self-determining practices. 28  The legal system’s biased understanding and paternalistic treatment of Native Americans undermines equitable outcomes for Native American individuals and communities. Importantly, these outcomes are not predetermined or rooted in Native Americans’ “inadequacies”; when Natives challenge biased legislation and self-govern, Native communities flourish.

The institution most responsible for creating and transmitting biased representations is the media. Psychologist Peter Leavitt and colleagues, for example, examined the content that emerged from search engine queries for the terms “Native American” or “American Indian.” 29  Ninety-five percent of Google results and 99 percent of Bing results included antiquated portraits of Native American people in traditional clothing and feathers; contemporary images of Native Americans were scant. Although inaccurate, these antiquated images remain prevalent because people continue to consume them, so search engine algorithms continue to present them as valid representations of Native Americans. 30  Biased and inaccurate representations of Native Americans also persist in television, film, and advertising. While contemporary members of other racial groups are by and large represented, Native Americans are largely omitted. 31  From 1987–2008, only three Native American characters were featured on primetime television (out of 2,336 characters). 32  On the rare occasion that Native Americans are represented in mainstream media, they often appear in stereotypical roles (such as the casino Indian, “Indian Princess,” or drunken Indian) or in secondary roles lacking character development. 33  Individuals responsible for creating new media representations, such as casting agents or directors, often reify the invisibility of contemporary Native peoples by passing over Native actors for roles that are “unrealistic” based on stereotypes about Native Americans (for example, by not casting Native people as doctors or lawyers). 34  While there is great variability in how Native Americans look, speak, and act, Natives who do not fit a narrow, prototypical image of a Native American are often excluded from roles intended for Natives. 35  The lack of positive and accurate contemporary representations denies Native Americans’ continued existence and literally and figuratively writes them out of contemporary life.

Widely available media representations of Native Americans carry significant consequences, as they undermine Native Americans’ psychological well-being and hopes for future success. For example, Stephanie Fryberg and colleagues demonstrated through multiple studies that negative stereotypes of Native Americans and sports mascots such as the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo depressed Native Americans’ self-esteem, decreased perceptions of their Native community’s worth, and made them less likely to envision successful futures (such as earning good grades, finding a job, or completing a degree). 36  Such representations set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy that renders Native American accomplishments invisible, hindering Native people from imagining and pursuing their own successful futures. 37  While harmful for Native Americans, these biased representations have a positive impact on White individuals, which may exacerbate intergroup tensions and disparate outcomes. After exposure to widely available representations of Native people, European American participants reported boosts in self-esteem and greater feelings of connection to their racial group. Both the negative effects of Native Americans and the positive effects for Whites at the expense of Native Americans suggest that it is critical to promote positive, contemporary representations of Native Americans that accurately reflect who Native people are and what they are capable of achieving. Breaking the cycle of discrimination and disparities in resources and achievement requires taking control of how Native people are portrayed both to the outside world and within Native communities themselves.

Although non-Native individuals created many of the prevalent representations of Native Americans, Native people are working to recreate representations that accurately reflect contemporary Native Americans. For example, in 2012, Matika Wilbur, a Swinomish and Tulalip photographer, launched Project 562, which aims to photograph members of all 562 federally recognized tribes. To date, Wilbur has photographed members of four hundred tribes. Wilbur’s photos depict Native people of all ages in both urban and rural settings, wearing contemporary Western and tribally appropriate traditional clothing. Unlike twentieth-century photographer Edward Curtis, who is responsible for many of the antiquated images of Native Americans that prevail today, Wilbur collaborates with her Native American subjects. She presents contemporary Native Americans in positive, contemporary ways that counter the systemic exclusion that characterizes the modern form of bias against Native people. 38

Similar video campaigns (including Buzzfeed’s “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ and Arizona State University’s “Native 101”) and websites ( WeRNative.org ) showcase Native Americans resisting negative cultural ideas and offering more positive contemporary representations of Native people. 39  Native-defined representations offer accurate, nuanced understandings of Native Americans that have always existed but have been obscured by biased portrayals created by non-Natives. As accurate images of Native Americans take hold, they have the power to challenge harmful stereotypes and ideas about Native Americans and illustrate what is possible for them, breaking the cycle of bias and disparate outcomes.

For a final example of how negative cultural ideas and representations of Native Americans perpetuate a cycle of bias and disparities, we turn to the education system. In the United States, education is often viewed as the key to upward social mobility and “a better life.” Yet, just as in the legal system and the media, biased ideas about and representations of Native Americans limit Native students’ opportunities and outcomes. For centuries, Native Americans have been portrayed as intellectually inferior and Native ways of knowing have been viewed as incorrect and incompatible with mainstream U.S. education. Federal boarding schools, in which Native children were forcibly enrolled throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aimed to eliminate Native cultures and languages and acculturate Native children into White society. Although this explicitly assimilationist agenda has faded, many of its ideas prevail within the education system today. Research reveals, for example, that Native students are often perceived to struggle or to be “problem” students. 40  School curricula also fail to incorporate – and sometimes actively exclude – Native Americans’ cultural history and practices from the learning environment, as these histories and practices are deemed irrelevant to the goals of mainstream education. 41

Negative and limiting ideas and representations influence interactions between educators and Native students and contribute to Natives’ disparate outcomes. For example, compared with White students with equivalent test scores and grades, teachers are less likely to recommend Native students for advanced coursework. 42  Native students are also suspended at more than twice the rate of White students. 43  These inaccurate and biased understandings of what is possible for Native students systematically deprive them of the ability to engage with and succeed within a system intended to foster opportunities for upward mobility.

Changing the way Native students are understood and treated within educational institutions can break the cycle of bias and alleviate educational disparities. For example, Stephanie Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob Burack describe an intervention in a predominantly Native American school that resulted in an 18 percent increase in the number of Native students who met state performance standards. 44  Teachers were taught about Native cultural ways of being, and school guidelines and routines were created to validate Native American cultures. Each school day began with a welcome assembly that included a tribal song and dance and a culturally relevant welcome message. When the intervention began, the school ranked in the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state, and much like the state and national pattern for the past forty years, there were no notable positive changes among Native students. 45  However, during the intervention, Native students improved immensely, showing growth on the Measures of Academic Progress (map) test at a rate of 1 to 1.5 years’ advancement in half a school year. This intervention revealed that school culture was the problem, not Native students: Native students thrive when their ways of knowing and being are validated in educational contexts and when they are seen as having potential. Creating more accurate representations – and thus understandings – of Native students paved the way for their success.

The culture cycle framework demonstrates the power of cultural ideas and representations in shaping Native Americans’ experiences. Prevailing harmful and limiting ideas and representations of Native Americans fuel a cycle of bias and reinforce disparate outcomes for Native people. These ideas and representations shape the policies and practices of consequential social institutions, promote low expectations for Native people that influence their interactions with non-Natives, and limit what both Native and non-Native individuals believe is possible for Native Americans. In addition to the prevalence of harmful and antiquated ideas and representations about their group, Native Americans  also  contend with the systematic exclusion of positive, contemporary ideas and representations. Consequently, Native Americans are effectively written out of contemporary existence, which creates barriers to their well-being and success. Hence, the modern form of bias against Native Americans includes not only negative ideas and representations, but also the omission of positive, multidimensional ideas and representations of their group. 46

Breaking this cycle requires challenging derogatory ideas and representations and also, as James Baldwin suggests, infusing the broader cultural context with more accurate contemporary representations defined by Native people themselves. The culture cycle framework can be leveraged to reclaim what it means to be Native American and promote equity. Indeed, Native people and communities have already begun harnessing this power for change. As we have shown, their actions in key institutions have brought light to positive, nuanced understandings of Native Americans as they live today and have challenged antiquated, biased representations. As Native Americans and their allies continue fighting systemic exclusion and bias, we must ensure that targeted action is implemented at each level of the culture cycle. The ideas and representations put forth must reflect Native Americans’ knowledge of who they are and what they are capable of achieving.

While it is essential for Native individuals and communities to have a voice in creating accurate representations of Native Americans, the onus for changing the culture cycle does not rest solely on Native Americans. Non-Native individuals and institutions must also actively foster cultural change. For White individuals specifically, this responsibility necessitates acknowledging the legacy of building and benefiting from a cultural system that has intentionally misunderstood and devalued Native people and ways of life and attempted to thwart Natives’ well-being and, in many respects, their very existence. As such, the dominant institutions must ensure that their practices, policies, and products set the stage for positive and equitable interactions with Native American individuals and communities. More generally, this responsibility hinges on a commitment to building a more equitable system that uplifts people from all backgrounds and allows all people to understand and recognize the needs, voices, and contributions of communities of color.

As the opening quote suggests, Native Americans are living within a cultural system that was constructed neither for nor by them. By understanding cultural influences on institutions and individuals, and by taking strategic, targeted action to change biased cultural ideas and representations, we can reconstitute the culture cycle to reflect accurate understandings of who Native people are and what they can become. Ultimately, these actions will produce more equitable outcomes for Native peoples both in the present and in the future.

• 1 James Baldwin, James Baldwin: The Last Interview and other Conversations (New York: Melville House, 2014), 4–5.
• 2 Walter C. Fleming, “Myths and Stereotypes about Native Americans,” Phi Delta Kappan 88 (3) (November 2006): 213–217.
• 3 Hazel R. Markus and Maryam G. Hamedani, “Sociocultural Psychology,” in  Handbook of Cultural Psychology , ed. Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen (New York: Guilford, 2010).
• 4 Serge Moscovici, “The Phenomenon of Social Representations,” in  Social Representations , ed. R. M. Farr and S. Moscovici (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 3–69; and Serge Moscovici, “Notes Towards a Description of Social Representations,”  European Journal of Social Psychology  18 (3) (1988): 211–250.
• 5 In the case of Native Americans, see Robert F. Berkhofer,  The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present  (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 96.
• 6 Hazel R. Markus and Alana Conner,  Clash! 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are  (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2013).
• 7 Devon Abbott Mihesuah,  American Indians: Stereotypes & Realities  (Gardena, Calif.: SCB Distributors, 2013).
• 8 Stewart Wakeling, Miriam Jorgensen, Susan Michaelson, and Manley Begay,  Policing on American Indian Reservations  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001); and United States Commission on Civil Rights, Office of Civil Rights Evaluation,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003).
• 9 Rosemary M. Maxey, “Who Can Sit at The Lord’s Table? The Experience of Indigenous People,” in  Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada , ed. James Treat (New York: Routledge, 2012), 38–50.
• 10 Mike Males, “Who Are Police Killing?” Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, August 26, 2014,  http://www.cjcj.org/news/8113 .
• 11 Barbara Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them! Under- and Over-policing Native American Communities,”  Critical Criminology  14 (4) (November 2006): 411–444; and Robynne Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement: Community Perspectives on Police Response,” in  Interrogating Social Justice: Politics, Culture and Identity , ed. Marilyn Corsianos and Kelly A. Train (Toronto: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 1999), 247–269.
• 12 Christopher Hartney,  Native American Youth and the Juvenile Justice System  (Washington, D.C.: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 2008).
• 13 See Perry, “Nobody Trusts Them !”; and Neugebauer, “First Nations People and Law Enforcement.”
• 14 Barbara Perry, “Impacts of Disparate Policing in Indian Country,”  Policing & Society  19 (3) (2009): 263–281.
• 15 “National Directory of Tribal Justice Systems,” National American Indian Court Judges Association,  http://directory.naicja.org/directory  (accessed September 15, 2017).
• 16 Claire Palmiste, “From the Indian Adoption Project to the Indian Child Welfare Act: The Resistance of Native American Communities,”  Indigenous Policy Journal  22 (1) (2011): 1–4.
• 17 H.R. Rep. No. 95–1386, at 10 (1978); and Steven Unger, ed.,  The Destruction of American Indian Families  (New York: Association on American Indian Affairs, Inc., 1977).
• 18 Ann E. MacEachron, Nora S. Gustavsson, Suzanne Cross, and Allison Lewis, “The Effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978,”  Social Service Review  70 (3) (September 1996): 451–463.
• 19 Lakota People’s Law Project, “5 Sioux Tribes Applied to Fund Their Own Foster Care Programs,”  Indian Country Today , June 26, 2014,  https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/health-wellness/5-sioux-tribes-applied-to-fund-their-own-foster-care-programs/ .
• 20 André B. Rosay,  Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey  (Washington D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 2016).
• 21 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA  (New York: Amnesty International USA, 2007).
• 23 Ibid.; International Indigenous Women’s Forum,  Mairin Iwanka Raya: Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence. A Companion Report to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Women  (Lima, Peru: FIMI, 2006); and Sarah Deer, “Toward an Indigenous Jurisprudence of Rape,”  Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy  14 (2004): 121–154.
• 25 Gray v. U.S. , 394 F.2d 96, 98 (9th Cir. 1968).
• 26 Amnesty International,  Maze of Injustice.
• 27 Jennifer Bendery, “At Last, Violence Against Women Act Lets Tribes Prosecute Non-Native Domestic Abusers,”  Huffington Post , March 6, 2015,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/vawa-native-americans_n_6819526.html .
• 28 Michael J. Chandler and Christopher Lalonde, “Cultural Continuity as a Hedge against Suicide in Canada’s First Nations,”  Transcultural Psychiatry  35 (2) (1998): 191–219.
• 29 Peter A. Leavitt, Rebecca Covarrubias, Yvonne A. Perez, and Stephanie A. Fryberg, “‘Frozen in Time’: The Impact of Native American Media Representations on Identity and Self-Understanding,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 39–53.
• 30 Rand Fishkin, “The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics,” March 17, 2017,  https://moz.com/blog/state-of-searcher-behavior-revealed .
• 31 Dana E. Mastro and Susannah R. Stern, “Representations of Race in Television Commercials: A Content Analysis of Prime-Time Advertising,”  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media  47 (4) (December 2003): 638–647; Russell K. Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,”  California Law Review  95 (1) (February 2007): 1–73; and Riva Tukachinsky, Dana Mastro, and Moran Yarchi, “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television over a 20-Year Span and Their Association with National-Level Racial/Ethnic Attitudes,”  Journal of Social Issues  71 (1) (March 2015): 17–38.
• 32 Tukachinsky et al., “Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television.”
• 33 Casey R. Kelly, “Representations of Native Americans in the Mass Media,”  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication  (February 2017),  http://communication.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-142#acrefore-9780190228613-e-142-div2-5 , doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.142; and Robinson, “Casting and Casteing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms,” 1–73.
• 35 Hilary N. Weaver, “What Color is Red? Exploring the Implications of Phenotype for Native Americans,” in  The Melanin Millennium: Skin Color as 21st-Century International Discourse , ed. Ronald E. Hall (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2013), 287–299.
• 36 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Hazel R. Markus, Daphna Oyserman, and Joseph M. Stone, “Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots,”  Basic and Applied Social Psychology  30 (3) (July 2008): 208–218.
• 37 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Sarah S. M. Townsend, “The Psychology of Invisibility,” in  Commemorating Brown: The Social Psychology of Racism and Discrimination , ed. Glenn Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, Christian S. Crandall, and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2008), 173–193.
• 38 Hilal Isler, “One Woman’s Mission to Photograph every Native American Tribe in the U.S.,”  The Guardian , September 7, 2015,  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/07/native-american-photographs-matika-wilbur-project-562 ; Whitney Richardson, “Rejecting Stereotypes, Photographing ‘Real’ Indians,”  Lens , February 19, 2014,  https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/rejecting-stereotypes-photographing-real-indians/?mcubz=1 ; and Matika Wilbur, Project 562,  http://www.project562.com .
• 39 Chris Lam, “I’m Native, but I’m Not … “ Buzzfeed, February 3, 2016,  https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrislam/im-native-but-im-not?utm_term=.yvERRZyBPe#.py9JJKLdl8 ; Deanna Dent, “Native 101,”  ASU Now , November 29, 2016,  https://asunow.asu.edu/20161129-sun-devil-life-native-101-asu-students-faculty-bust-stereotypes ; and WeRNative,  http://www.WeRNative.org .
• 40 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Peter A. Leavitt, “A Sociocultural Analysis of High-Risk Native American Children in Schools,” in  Cultural and Contextual Perspectives on Developmental Risk and Well-Being , ed. Jacob A. Burack and Louis A. Schmidt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 57–80; and Katie Johnston-Goodstar and Ross VeLure Roholt, “‘Our Kids Aren’t Dropping Out; They’re Being Pushed Out’: Native American Students and Racial Microaggressions in Schools,”  Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work  26 (1–2) (January 2017): 30–47.
• 41 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2003).
• 42 Claudia Rowe, “Gifted Programs across Washington Leave Out Black and Latino Students – But Federal Way is One Model for Change,”  The Seattle Times , April 2, 2017,  http://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/gifted-programs-across-washington-leave-out-black-and-latino-students-except-in-federal-way/ .
• 43 Rebecca Clarren, “How America is Failing Native American Students,”  The Nation , July 24, 2017,  https://www.thenation.com/article/left-behind/ ; and U.S. Department of Education,  Civil Rights Data Collection 2011–12  (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2014),  https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/data.html .
• 44 Stephanie A. Fryberg, Rebecca Covarrubias, and Jacob A. Burack, “The Ongoing Psychological Colonization of North American Indigenous People: Using Social Psychological Theories to Promote Social Justice,” in  The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice , ed. Phillip L. Hammack Jr. (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), doi:10.1093/oxford hb/9780199938735.013.35.
• 45 Kim Burgess, “‘Stagnant’ Test Scores for Native American Students,”  Albuquerque Journal , April 10, 2017,  https://www.abqjournal.com/985310/stagnant-test-scores-for-native-american-kids.html .
• 46 Stephanie A. Fryberg and Arianne E. Eason, “Making the Invisible Visible: Acts of Commission and Omission,”  Current Directions in Psychological Science  26 (6) (2017): 554–559.

• All Articles
• Books & Reviews
• Anthologies
• Audio Content
• Author Directory
• This Day in History
• War in Ukraine
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Artificial Intelligence
• Climate Change
• Biden Administration
• Geopolitics
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Vladimir Putin
• Volodymyr Zelensky
• Nationalism
• Authoritarianism
• Propaganda & Disinformation
• West Africa
• North Korea
• Middle East
• United States
• View All Regions

Article Types

• Capsule Reviews
• Review Essays
• Ask the Experts
• Reading Lists
• Newsletters
• Customer Service
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Subscriber Resources
• Group Subscriptions
• Gift a Subscription

Browse book reviews by:

• Magazine Issue

The Indian Problem

Reviewed by robert gale woolbert, by r. coupland.

The author is Beit Professor of Colonial History at the University of Oxford, and his book is the result of an investigation which he undertook for Nuffield College. The volume consists of three parts, of which the first is a good review of Indian political history 1833-1935, and the second is a more detailed study of the Indian Problem from 1936 to 1942. In the third part Professor Coupland canvasses current proposals for getting out of the Indian impasse, and makes several constructive suggstions of his own. This is one of the best informed and most realistic books on India.

• More By Robert Gale Woolbert

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

• How did Andrew Jackson become well-known in the United States?
• What were Andrew Jackson’s accomplishments?

Indian Removal Act

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Khan Academy - Indian Removal
• Spartacus Educational - Indian Removal Act
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas - Indian Removal
• Library of Congress - Indian Removal Act
• The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History - Indian Removal
• HistoryNet - Indian Removal Act
• Indian Removal Act - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Indian Removal Act , (May 28, 1830), first major legislative departure from the U.S. policy of officially respecting the legal and political rights of the American Indians . The act authorized the president to grant Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their desirable territories within state borders (especially in the Southeast), from which the tribes would be removed. The rapid settlement of land east of the Mississippi River made it clear by the mid-1820s that the white man would not tolerate the presence of even peaceful Indians there. Pres. Andrew Jackson (1829–37) vigorously promoted this new policy, which became incorporated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the bill provided only for the negotiation with tribes east of the Mississippi on the basis of payment for their lands, trouble arose when the United States resorted to force to gain the Indians’ compliance with its demand that they accept the land exchange and move west.

A number of northern tribes were peacefully resettled in western lands considered undesirable for the white man. The problem lay in the Southeast, where members of what were known as the Five Civilized Tribes ( Chickasaw , Choctaw , Seminole , Cherokee , and Creek ) refused to trade their cultivated farms for the promise of strange land in the Indian Territory with a so-called permanent title to that land. Many of these Indians had homes, representative government, children in missionary schools, and trades other than farming. Some 100,000 tribesmen were forced to march westward under U.S. military coercion in the 1830s; up to 25 percent of the Indians, many in manacles, perished en route. The trek of the Cherokee in 1838–39 became known as the infamous “ Trail of Tears .” Even more reluctant to leave their native lands were the Florida Indians, who fought resettlement for seven years (1835–42) in the second of the Seminole Wars .

The frontier began to be pushed aggressively westward in the years that followed, upsetting the “guaranteed” titles of the displaced tribes and further reducing their relocated holdings.

• Student Opportunities

About Hoover

Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nation’s preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance. 

• The Hoover Story
• Hoover Timeline & History
• Mission Statement
• Vision of the Institution Today
• Key Focus Areas
• About our Fellows
• Research Programs
• Annual Reports
• Hoover in DC
• Fellowship Opportunities
• Visit Hoover
• David and Joan Traitel Building & Rental Information
• Newsletter Subscriptions
• Connect With Us

Hoover scholars form the Institution’s core and create breakthrough ideas aligned with our mission and ideals. What sets Hoover apart from all other policy organizations is its status as a center of scholarly excellence, its locus as a forum of scholarly discussion of public policy, and its ability to bring the conclusions of this scholarship to a public audience.

• Russell A. Berman
• Robert Service
• Arun Majumdar
• H.R. McMaster
• Justin Grimmer
• China's Global Sharp Power Project
• Economic Policy Group
• History Working Group
• Hoover Education Success Initiative
• National Security Task Force
• National Security, Technology & Law Working Group
• Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group
• Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group
• Renewing Indigenous Economies Project
• State & Local Governance
• Strengthening US-India Relations
• Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group
• Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region

Books by Hoover Fellows

Economics Working Papers

Hoover Education Success Initiative | The Papers

• Hoover Fellows Program
• National Fellows Program
• Student Fellowship Program
• Veteran Fellowship Program
• Congressional Fellowship Program
• Media Fellowship Program
• Silas Palmer Fellowship
• Economic Fellowship Program

Throughout our over one-hundred-year history, our work has directly led to policies that have produced greater freedom, democracy, and opportunity in the United States and the world.

• Determining America’s Role in the World
• Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
• Empowering State and Local Governance
• Revitalizing History
• Confronting and Competing with China
• Revitalizing American Institutions
• Reforming K-12 Education
• Understanding Public Opinion
• Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
• Energy & Environment
• Health Care
• Immigration
• International Affairs
• Key Countries / Regions
• Law & Policy
• Politics & Public Opinion
• Science & Technology
• Security & Defense
• State & Local
• Books by Fellows
• Published Works by Fellows
• Working Papers
• Congressional Testimony
• Hoover Press
• PERIODICALS
• The Caravan
• China's Global Sharp Power
• Economic Policy
• History Lab
• Hoover Education
• Global Policy & Strategy
• Middle East and the Islamic World
• Military History & Contemporary Conflict
• Renewing Indigenous Economies
• State and Local Governance
• Technology, Economics, and Governance

Hoover scholars offer analysis of current policy challenges and provide solutions on how America can advance freedom, peace, and prosperity.

• China Global Sharp Power Weekly Alert
• Email newsletters
• Hoover Daily Report
• Subscription to Email Alerts
• Periodicals
• California on Your Mind
• Defining Ideas
• Hoover Digest
• Video Series
• Uncommon Knowledge
• Battlegrounds
• GoodFellows
• Hoover Events
• Capital Conversations
• Hoover Book Club
• AUDIO PODCASTS
• Matters of Policy & Politics
• Economics, Applied
• Free Speech Unmuted
• Secrets of Statecraft
• Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century
• Libertarian
• Library & Archives

Support Hoover

Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoover’s mission and values.

What is MyHoover?

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at  Hoover.org . In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests.

Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover.

Log In to MyHoover

Forgot Password

Don't have an account? Sign up

Have questions? Contact us

• Support the Mission of the Hoover Institution
• Subscribe to the Hoover Daily Report
• Follow Hoover on Social Media

Make a Gift

Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society.

• About Hoover Institution
• Meet Our Fellows
• Focus Areas
• Research Teams
• Library & Archives

Library & archives

Events, news & press, lessons from the indian wars.

The U.S. government won when it decided to

B eginning with the 1778 Treaty with the Delawares, the United States engaged in some 375 treaties with Native Americans. While many were concluded hopefully, even earnestly, none ended well for Indian tribes. From George Washington forward, American presidents were confronted with the problem of Americans coveting and taking Indian land. Moreover, from the time of the French and Indian War in 1754 , what would become the American army was fighting Indians.

Subjugating those Indians was a challenge of enormous magnitude: Only 5,000 soldiers patrolled a million square miles that was home to 200,000 to 300,000 Indians. And the Indians were generally more proficient at warfare. Soldiers fighting successive tribes of Indians as white settlers moved south and west to occupy the continent were mostly militia, with little prior experience of warfare. By contrast, most Indian tribes fought as their profession. As S. C. Gwynne emphasizes in Empire of the Summer Moon , “American Indians were warlike by nature, and they were warlike for centuries before Columbus stumbled upon them.”

Yet the United States had innumerable advantages it could bring to bear against the Indians: wealth, numbers, technology, industrial organization. Why did it take so long — over a hundred years — to do so? The answer is a complicated story, interweaving policy and military failures, failures of understanding and execution, and throughout it all an obdurate unwillingness of Americans on the frontier to uphold their government’s policy. The Indian Wars were finally won with the combination of simplified objectives, ruthless prosecution by both military and economic means, and international cooperation to preclude sanctuaries from which tribes could operate. But the lessons, and especially the military lessons, were there from the start.

These lessons are immediately relevant to the war we are fighting in Afghanistan. Nor are the lessons of the Indian Wars solely applicable to countering insurgencies. When asked by George Marshall in 1942 how the Army should train for pivoting from the war in Europe to the Pacific, the commander of the Marines on Guadalcanal answered “go back to the tactics of the French and Indian days . . . study their tactics and fit in our modern weapons, and you have a solution.” Many would now prefer to consider this kind of war a narrow subset of the spectrum of conflict; the Defense Department’s 2012  strategic guidance concludes the United States will no longer engage in large-scale counterinsurgencies.

Yet the impediments to winning the Indian Wars will be impediments to winning any kind of war. They have to do with an unwillingness by political leaders to acknowledge the scope and contradictory nature of their strategic objectives; an enormous gap between the campaign’s objectives and the resources political leaders are willing to put toward the effort; dramatic overestimation of the capacity of our government to effectively carry out a sophisticated policy with political, economic, and military elements; corruption delegitimizing the idealistic components of the policy designed to win support of “reconcileables”; military gains far outpacing civilian agencies’ ability to capitalize on them; existence of safe havens because of our inability to bring border states into cooperation; insularity in Washington against the consequences of the policy’s failures, which are principally borne by others; a military hesitant to credit their adversaries with superior tactics and even strategy; a cost-exchange ratio significantly favoring the enemy and therefore making our strategy episodically followed and their strategy more sustainable over time; ideological unwillingness to adjust the strategy to one more in line with conditions and resources. In fact, these are the same impediments preventing us winning the Afghan war.

In the beginning

W ashington and his Virginians were beaten back from Ft. Duquesne in 1755 by Ottawa and Potawatomie ( 600 of the 800  French-led troops were Indian). In the aftermath, Washington reflected on “this kind of fighting,” and the importance of individual judgment when armies are dispersed. British General John Forbes, Washington’s commander, went even further, concluding “wee must comply and learn the Art of Warr, from Enemy Indians, or anything else who have seen the Country and Warr carried on in it.”

Once a tribe was forced to cede its land, however, the militia typically disbanded and returned to their farming and ranching. Even the last four decades of the 19 th century, the period we tend to think of as the closing of the American West, nearly all battles were fought by small detachments of infantry and cavalry. The army did not carry lessons from one Indian War over into the next by, so instead of one war, the Indian campaigns are more properly thought of as a sequence of wars in which previous iterations were little studied.

Yet the Indian Wars were constant. From 1768 through 1889 , according to R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy’s The Encyclopedia of Military History , the army fought “ 943 actions in twelve separate campaigns and numerous local incidents.” And as Fairfax Downey notes in his Indian Fighting Army , “from 1866 to 1892  there was not a year, and hardly a three months, in which there was not some expedition against the Indians in the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and between the Canadian and Mexican borders.” That the army chose not to study and learn from its experience is a terrible institutional indictment; that it succeeded anyway is a marvelous tribute to the inventiveness of the soldiers who fought these wars. That the wars were ultimately won only when effective military operations were integrated into a broader political and economic campaign is a lesson we seem always in need of relearning, as our current military success and strategic failure in Afghanistan makes clear.

Theodore Roosevelt gave a typically clear-eyed summary of the Indian wars in his book The Winning of the West :

The frontier was pushed westward, not because the leading statesmen of America, or the bulk of the American people, foresaw the continental greatness of this country or strove for such greatness; but because the bordermen of the West, and the adventurous land-speculators of the East, were personally interested in acquiring new territory, and because, against their will, the governmental representatives of the nation were finally forced to make the interests of the Westerners their own.

That is an essential, and essentially American, truth: The federal government was too far removed from local concerns to craft workable solutions. Throughout the Indian Wars there was an enormous gap between the policy of the American government and the views of those Americans living in Indian territory. Settlements generally preceded forts, and government policy foundered on settler refusal to comply with government policy. From the capital, the government crafted a grand strategy it was incapable of implementing.

Bill Cody, awarded the medal of honor for his scouting with the army, said “every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government.” Many in the professional army agreed with that view; more often than not, they blamed settlers for causing massacres through their own recklessness. The army was throughout the Indian wars generally unsupportive of the policies of state and territorial governments and hesitant to enforce them or cooperate with militia engaged in them. As late as 1871 , General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the army, rejected settler demands for army protection on the Texas frontier, saying, “they expose women and children singly on the road and in cabins far off from others, as though they were safe in Illinois . . . such actions are more significant than words.”

From George Washington forward, with only the exception of Andrew Jackson, American presidents attempted to reconcile southward and westward expansion with preservation of Indian settlements, even if dislocating Indians from their tribal lands. Washington was unequivocal: “Indians being the prior occupants possess the right of the soil . . . to dispossess them . . . would be a gross violation”; confiscation would “stain the character of the nation.” Yet he could not prevent settlers doing so, and was pulled into defending them in the Northwest Indian War.

A nation divided

A ndrew jackson’s more  aggressive dispossession of land from Indians, not surprisingly, coincides with the rise of populism in American politics. It also traces the fault line between those Americans living in safety and those settling the frontier; the removal policy was deeply unpopular in New England, supported where people were exposed to Indians. And the political power of the frontier was rising with the admission of new states and continued expansion.

The separation of federal and state powers further aggravated the schism between presidential policies and local attitudes, as very often federal treaties promised land that states refused to hand over to Indian control. The policy cleaved along another uniquely American fault line during the Jackson administration, with the president declining to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision that Georgia must comply with federal treaties governing relations with the Cherokee.

After Jackson, though, the previous policy equilibrium was restored, in part because the attention of the nation was riven by conflict over slavery and the gathering storm of civil war. Secession of the southern states removed federal troops from the West and increased competition for skilled soldiers and militia. Before the Civil War, the professional army was spread across the nation; with the advent of war, all troops were recalled eastand states required to raise volunteers to protect emigrant trails and delivery of mail. America’s best soldiers were fighting each other, not Indians.

The last state militia were relieved by federal troops — professionals — only in 1866 . The diluting of talented soldiery was especially felt in the southwest, where plains tribes pushed the frontier back more than a hundred miles. After the war, the federal government refused to allow former Confederate states to raise militia, even in response to brutal raiding by Apache and Comanche. In 1871  the line of settlement had not yet returned as far west as before secession.

The Army’s deficiencies

M ilitia may have been less capable soldiers, but even the professional army was not serious about the undertaking of fighting Indians. As late as 1871 , General C.C. Augur had to issue an order that “henceforth officers would be expected to make a vigorous effort, even to the extent of privation, to overtake and punish marauders.” Indeed, life on the frontier for officers and their families was often glamorous amidst the danger and deprivation. Most officers, Custer included, picnicked and hunted significantly more than they trained. In the Battle of Rosebud in 1876 , General Crook’s troops fired 250 rounds per Indian casualty, an appallingly low level of marksmanship. One observer of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, quoted in Nathaniel Philbrick’s Last Stand , before Little Big Horn reported that “sending raw recruits and untrained horses to fight mounted Indians is simply sending soldiers to be slaughtered without the power of defending themselves.”

Lack of wherewithal further impeded progress. The War Department was continually hobbled for funds, and chose policies for efficiency rather than effectiveness. It long held the belief that “if the Indians could be induced to keep the peace, forts and war would be unnecessary.”

While weapons technology advanced significantly during that time period, the fiercest of the Indians had access to the best weapons — in many instances they were better armed than the American soldiers they were fighting. Soldiers were provided with single shot muskets, mostly front-loading, making nearly impossible any reloading while on horseback (a distinct disadvantage in Indian country). As an economy measure, soldiers were also not issued ammunition to practice firing.

An industrial age solution

T he federal government  was finally pushed into “solving the Indian problem” in the second Grant administration. That solution was an overt renunciation of peace policies, development of a more proficient Indian-fighting army, relentless prosecution of a military campaign against the tribes, and decimation of Indian livelihood.

President Grant had initially supported what we would now describe as an ethical and culturally sensitive approach to the Indian problem. He sought to minimize conflict, supporting “any course toward them which tends to their civilization and ultimate citizenship,” ordering military commanders to prevent settler incursions onto Indian land, accepting responsibility for Indian welfare on reservations, establishing educational and medical programs — even symbolizing the policy by appointment of the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs. What in contemporary parlance we call “whole of government operations” were also in vogue for managing the Indian problem. Military commanders were subordinated to “Indian Agents,” government civilians purportedly caring for Indian interests.

The more nuanced strategy did not, however, reduce spectacular incidents of violence that changed public attitudes even in the cosseted east. The Modoc War on the California-Oregon border resulted in the killing (during peace negotiations, no less) of the only general officer during a hundred years of Indian warring. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was massacred at Little Big Horn. Grant considered Little Big Horn Custer’s own fault; but the public would not be assuaged.

The “peace policy” was discredited as much by failure of the Indian agencies as by violence. The magnitude of corruption experienced throughout the Indian agencies has seldom been equaled; its revelation was devastating to liberal reformers’ hopes for a humane resettlement of Indians. Faced with collapse of more sophisticated strategies than enforcing compliance, and the public outcry after Custer’s massacre, Grant changed course, subordinating the Indian agencies under military control and ordering the military “to subdue all Indians who offered resistance.”

This instruction finally got the army serious about the Indian Wars. They brought men battle-hardened from our first industrial-age warfare; the change from the dashing romanticism of the frontier to its conquest is epitomized by the transition from Custer, with his long golden hair and buckskins writing memoirs of life on the plains, to Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, a severe, unpopular commander who defeated the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Sioux, Ute, and Apache with a fearsome mix of intellect and determination.

The intellectual revolution

M ackenzie graduated from West Point in 1862 , was wounded six times during his Civil War service, and seven times breveted (given field promotions). In the space of three years, he was promoted from second lieutenant to major general; Ulysses Grant characterized him in his memoirs as “the most promising officer in the army.” Other commanders were better supplied, had more forces and less daunting enemies; none matched Mackenzie’s victories. The key to his success was understanding: He thought differently about the problem than his contemporaries.

Mackenzie set about to demonstrate seriousness to his own soldiers, eliminating sport hunting, drilling them relentlessly, and enforcing strict discipline. Like George Washington, he was at first unsuccessful fighting Indians — Comanche Quanah Parker stole his horses on his first campaign, and being unhorsed in Indian country was often a fatal error. Mackenzie made numerous other early mistakes: His scouting was deficient, winter provisions inadequate, he nearly got his men killed encamping between buffalo and water, and was outsmarted by both Kiowa and Comanche.

But he learned from his mistakes, developing the tactical proficiency that would turn the tide. With hardened troops and logistical experience from the Civil War he began to operate at great distances from supply lines. He learned to utilize Indian scouts (which required understanding the enmities between tribes) and divided spoils among them to reward information; to march with a detachment of cavalry between scouts and infantry as a shock absorber; carry cartridges on their person; to wheel and volley in the face of an attack; and not to divert forces to chase retreating Indians. He campaigned during the winter, when Indians tended to encamp and were therefore easier to find and less mobile. Most importantly, he determined how Indians followed water trails in the desert. He also studied their social structure, learning (as Andrew Jackson earlier had) that an asymmetric grab for Indian families would derail attacks and Indian chiefs would make any concession to ransom their women and children.

Mackenzie also realized, as no other soldier had before him, that mobility was the key to proficiency for the plains Indians: He didn’t have to kill all the Indians, he just had to take their horses. And he did. Mackenzie raided for horses not, as the Indians did, for honor, but to prevent his adversaries utilizing their principal advantage. That higher-level insight, so obvious in retrospect, led to the broader observation that without buffalo to hunt, the Indian way of life would collapse.

While he unrelentingly insisted that military success was required to force Indian compliance, Mackenzie advocated strategies that incorporated military operations with political and economic components. This was most visible in his advocacy of negotiations with the government of Mexico to prevent Indians having sanctuary across the border (and in his violation of the sovereignty of Mexico by attacking Indians inside Mexico until the government agreed to U.S. terms).

In the late stages of the Indian wars, those occurring in the plains and along the southwest border of what is now the United States, the Army suffered losses and depredations, but it eventually won the war. Or, more accurately, won the wars. It won as conditions changed and as adversaries became more accomplished and dangerous. Battlefields shifted to the vast southwest and from infantry skirmishes to mounted warfare. But the pattern is remarkably consistent from George Washington in 1755 to Ranald Mackenzie in 1875 : The American government does not reconcile its policy to its means until forced by the public, and when they do, the Army fights and loses, gains respect for their Indian adversaries and begins to mimic their tactics, brings in the supplies and organizational skills learned in campaigns against armies fighting as we do, which leads to the successful pushing of Indians off their tribal lands. If there can be said to be an American way of war, it is this.

Militarily, the Indian Wars follow an evolution in which the Indians first mastered the horse, Americans then countered with the rifle, and then both seized on the other’s strong suit. Both were equally motivated, both societies amazingly enduring of hardship and casualties. They fought, perhaps, for different things, certainly with different approaches; the Indians for personal valor, the Indian-fighting U.S. Army with the brutal arithmetic of industrial age warfare. The difference, ultimately, was that Indians did not continue innovating, whereas the Army did.

In the end, though, it was less the Army than the society that destroyed the Indians. As Mackenzie’s boss, General Philip Sheridan, testified to the Texas legislature in 1873  when the hunters were killing buffalo by the million, decimating herds of the plains,

These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular Army has done in the last 40  years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary. And it is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated.”

Population tables tell the story most succinctly: White settlement in Wise County, Texas, dropped from 3,160 in 1860 to 1,450 in 1870 ; but in 1880 , five years after the end of the Indian Wars, it had surged to 16,601 .

Indian-fighting country

T he myth has grown out of the 20 th century of the United States as a vaunted military power, determined to vanquish its foes. The Jacksonian tradition is credited with imbuing our culture with a commitment to fight until the unconditional surrender of our enemies and a reflexive willingness greater than in most other countries to support military solutions to vexing international problems. It echoes through debates on Iraq and Afghanistan, when advocates of greater commitment attempt to place the judgment of commanders above that of the leaders elected to determine how much national effort to commit.

That approach subverts the proper ordering of civil-military relations: Presidents are responsible for winning or losing wars. It is presidents who set political objectives and are accountable to the public for matching the importance of the war with the resources to attain them. It is presidents who hire and fire military leaders carrying out their campaigns. It is presidents who must sue for peace or determine to fight the enemy to extinction.

And no president has given limitless resources to any war the United States has ever fought. Not the Revolutionary War: Washington, as chief executive of the war effort, constantly harangued the Congress for authorities and resources they would not give him. Not the Civil War; Lincoln had to navigate draft riots and public exhaustion. Not World War II; Roosevelt was constrained by isolationist sentiment and concern about the recovery needs of the American economy.

The United States wins wars when it decides to stop losing wars — when it brings its strategy and resources into alignment and political leaders commit to outcomes within the constraints. In the case of the Indian Wars, that meant “simplifying our objectives” — relinquishing any pretense at justice in our dealings with Indians and fighting a war of imperial consolidation that would win control of the territory in question. It meant acknowledging the failure of our civilian agencies and directing the military to perform the functions necessary for the success of the war effort. It required putting forward military leaders able to understand the enemy and innovate to diminish his advantages. It required compromises and unwelcome commitments and the risk of a wider war with foreign powers to prevent safe havens. It required using our technological and economic advantages to decimate other societies.

In wondering why we don’t win our current wars, we ought perhaps to reflect that we as a society have not wanted that outcome enough to commit ourselves to the gritty and awful business of destruction. We are an incredibly fortunate society in that we have the luxury of choosing whether to win our wars. We ought perhaps to reflect on whether we could have won the wars we chose to win by the means we now consider sufficient and proper to fight them.

View the discussion thread.

Join the Hoover Institution’s community of supporters in ideas advancing freedom.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

Two curiously contrasting articles regarding the British problem in India appeared in THE SUNDAY TIMES yesterday. One was a carefully prepared essay by a native of India, expressing in emphatic language his view of the unrest existing, of the rule of Britain, and of the future of the land. View Full Article in Timesmachine »

• Entertainment
• Life & Style

To enjoy additional benefits

CONNECT WITH US

‘Wildlife terrorism’ major emerging global problem: WCCB officer

At least three extremist groups have been involved in the illegal trade of wildlife and wildlife body parts; the northeast had become a gateway for the “outward smuggling” of wildlife from other parts of india, and the “inward smuggling” of exotic animals, said wildlife department..

Updated - September 09, 2024 08:34 pm IST - GUWAHATI

Representative image. Wildlife crime has taken the shape of terrorism and is emerging as a major global threat, a senior officer of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) | Photo Credit: M.A.SRIRAM

Wildlife crime has taken the shape of terrorism and is emerging as a major global threat, a senior officer of the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) said on Monday (September 9, 2024).

From the Islamist Boko Haram and al-Shabaab to the Maoists in central India and extremists in the northeast, almost all terror groups are increasingly funding their warfare from illegal wildlife trade, WCCB Deputy Director Arvind Kumar Chaurasia said.

“ The National Tiger Conservation Authority’ s report in 2023 mentions that the activities of Maoists are posing a serious threat to the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh. A major part of the funding for the terrorist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front has come from the smuggling of shatoosh , the wool of the endangered chiru or Tibetan antelope banned for trade in India, China, and Nepal,” he said at a function marking the 35 years of Aaranyak, a leading Assam-based biodiversity conservation organisation.

“At least three outfits in the northeast — the Isak-Muivah faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, the [disbanded] Karbi National Liberation Front, and the Zo Revolutionary Army — have been involved in smuggling rhino horns and other wildlife body parts,” Mr. Chaurasia said.

He pointed out that the northeast had become a gateway for the “outward smuggling” of wildlife from other parts of India, and the “inward smuggling” of exotic animals, especially through the Mizoram-Myanmar border. The long, porous border with Bangladesh, China, Bhutan, and Myanmar makes the region particularly vulnerable to illegal wildlife trade, as the neighbouring countries are either destinations or transit points for such crime.

“Affluence in India and the tendency of the rich to show off their possession of exotic animals such as kangaroos, macaws, chimpanzees, and Burmese pythons, is adding to the problems of controlling wildlife crime,” Mr. Chaurasia said.

Integrating data

The WCCB officer said traditional methods of combating wildlife crime have not yielded much results. The conviction rate is 3%-5%, and that too by lower courts, whose verdicts are challenged in the High Courts or the Supreme Court, where the criminals often get acquitted.

One of the reasons has been the tendency to treat wildlife crime as an isolated offence.

Also read : How wildlife trade features in the day-to-day politics of Assam

“The need to look at wildlife crime as financial crime has been long-felt because money laundering is involved. This has led to a plan to integrate data related to the income, property, travel and other expenses of people along the supply chain, from the poacher to those at the top of this chain,” Mr. Chaurasia said.

Governments across the globe have also been trying to harmonise laws dealing with wildlife crime as certain animals or animal body parts banned in one country may not be outlawed in another, he said.

He cited the example of sea cucumbers, trading in which is illegal in India but legal in Sri Lanka.

“India has a long coastline and rich marine wildlife. Fishermen in southern India harvest sea cucumbers illegally and sell them to Sri Lankans who export them legally to the Southeast Asian countries by claiming they are from the waters within their jurisdiction,” he said.

“This is where a piece of legislation like the Stacey Law in the U.S. comes in. This law has a provision that says any species protected under any law in any country will automatically be treated as protected under U.S. laws. Such provisions will go a long way in checking cross-border wildlife crime, and wildlife terrorism in turn,” Mr. Chaurasia said.

Published - September 09, 2024 08:00 pm IST

Related Topics

Assam / wildlife

Top News Today

• Access 10 free stories every month
• Save stories to read later
• Access to comment on every story
• Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
• Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products

Terms & conditions   |   Institutional Subscriber

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

US Edition Change

• US election 2024
• US Politics
• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Rugby Union
• Sports Videos
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Lifestyle Videos
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Inspiration
• City Guides
• Sustainable Travel
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Home & Garden
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Climate 100
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Electric vehicles
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

European satellite Salsa makes fiery plunge into Earth’s atmosphere in first-ever ‘targeted’ re-entry

Satellite’s successful targeted reentry makes it a ‘pioneer’ in mitigating the global space debris problem, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Your support helps us to tell the story

Find out more close.

As your White House correspondent, I ask the tough questions and seek the answers that matter. Your support enables me to be in the room, pressing for transparency and accountability. Without your contributions, we wouldn't have the resources to challenge those in power. Your donation makes it possible for us to keep doing this important work, keeping you informed every step of the way to the November election

Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The European Space Agency ’s (ESA) pioneering Salsa satellite made a fiery descent into the Earth ’s atmosphere on Monday after spending over two decades studying space weather .

Salsa plunged into the atmosphere at about 6.45pm UT, the ESA said in a post on X.

The satellite’s successful targeted reentry makes it a “pioneer” in mitigating the global space debris problem , proving that such manoeuvers can help prevent space probes from contributing to junk in orbit around Earth.

“A few minutes ago, the Cluster operations team successfully listened one final time for Salsa via the Estrack ground station in Kourou. Communication with the satellite has now reached its end,” the space agency said.

The pioneering satellite was part of a quartet called Cluster, which also included Rumba, Samba and Tango launched 24 years ago to study space weather events such as solar storms.

Data from the satellite quartet has helped scientists better understand Earth’s powerful magnetic shield , the magnetosphere, which makes the planet a unique habitable world.

“For over two decades, Cluster has shown us time and time again how important the magnetosphere is in shielding us from the solar wind,” Cluster mission manager Philippe Escoubet said.

“It has watched the effects of solar storms to help us better understand and forecast space weather.”

The satellites, launched in 2000, were initially planned only for a two-year mission, but the “impressive and world-changing science” they helped conduct made ESA keep the cluster going.

“It’s an emotional day for the teams that have worked on keeping Cluster going for the last 24 years, lasting way beyond the originally planned mission duration of two years,” ESA noted.

The satellite’s return marks the first-ever “targeted” re-entry for a satellite.

It plunged through the planet’s atmosphere, burning up completely “in under a minute”, at a specific time over a sparsely populated region near Easter Island in the South Pacific, the space agency said.

“Back in January we tweaked Salsa’s orbit to make sure that on 8 September it experiences its final steep drop from an altitude of roughly 110km to 80km,” Cluster operations manager Bruno Sousa said.

“With the reentry complete, we’re hoping to learn more soon about the results of an airborne observation experiment,” the ESA said.

Using data obtained from Salsa, scientists hope to be able to predict even better the time and location of satellite reentries in the future.

“Now that the reentry has taken place, we’re hoping to be able to learn more from the reentry science team about the results of the airborne observation experiment,” the ESA said.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

Summary: The Problem Of Indian Administration

Titled in The Problem of Indian Administration, it was a survey of conditions on Indians reservations among the 26 states. The survey team, found by the Rockefeller Foundation, was made up of ten experts in different fields. It reflected the attempts to reform the American Indian policies that exerted a negative influence on Indians. It was one of few U.S. studies that concerned about the economic, health and living conditions of the Indians for centuries. By pointing out the failure of the federal government in protecting the Indians on various aspects, it played the foundation for the new legislation, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and the succeeding policies in regards to health care, education,

Indian Reorganization Dbq

It wasn’t until 1924 which Native Americans were able to become citizens of the United States. Prior to then, the Natives were underestimated and were not fully granted nor treated the freedom they deserved. The Natives involvement during WWI somehow proved to the federal government that they were capable as being a citizen and thusly, pushed Congress to permit the Meriam Survey. In the report of 1928, it showed the shocking details that the Natives had to live in which became the purpose for reform. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act was established which abolished the Dawes Act and granted them the ability to hold administrative positions within the government; however, was still undermined by many of the states and believed that the Act was in some ways ‘unconstitutional’.

The Passamaquoddy Indians Essay

For several hundred years people have sought answers to the Indian problems, who are the Indians, and what rights do they have? These questions may seem simple, but the answers themselves present a difficult number of further questions and answers. State and Federal governments have tried to provide some order with a number of laws and policies, sometimes resulting in state and federal conflicts. The Federal Government's attempt to deal with Indian tribes can be easily understood by following the history of Federal Indian Policy. Indians all over the United States fought policies which threatened to destroy their familial bonds and traditions. The Passamaquoddy Indian Tribe of Maine, resisted no less

American Indian Movement : Analysis Of Fbi And Bia 's Treatment

This paper will briefly cover how the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) treated the Native Americans, during the American Indian Movement (AIM) focusing more in the 1960s-1970s. What initially helped push for the AIM and the end result of it.

Changes Between Civil War And Reconstruction In Indian Territory

Although the horrors of the American Civil War and Reconstruction within Indian Territory were fresh. Yet, the presence of Indian Territory changed drastically between 1865 and 1889, because of the “Second Trail of Tears”, the unrest of the Southern Plains tribes of western Indian Territory, and the impact of U.S. Polices on Indian Territory.

The Sterilization of Native American Women in the 1970's Essay

• 5 Works Cited

The American Indian Policy Review Commission's report on the health of Native Americans said it best when they stated,"the federal responsibility to provide health services to Indians has its roots in the unique moral, historical, and treaty obligations of the federal government, no court has ever ruled on the precise nature of that legal basis nor defined the specific legal rights for Indians created by those obligations" (DeFine 1997 p.4). Thus, the Indian Health Service has always worked in strange and ambiguous ways.

Native Americans After Reconstruction

The Indians were ridiculed and manipulated because of many different bills passed in the 1800’s and their land was decreasing in size and amount of food sources and land. The effects of the Indian Removal Act, Westward expansion, and the Dawes Act on the Native Americans in the 1800’s were abundant.

Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Wheeler Howard Act or the IRA, had a major impact on the everyday lives of Native American Tribes that were scattered across the United states. The Indian Reorganization Act provided the means and tools for tribes to form their own governments and constitutions. The IRA stopped the general allotment act that was put into effect by the Dawes of 1887. The Indian Reorganization Act granted the Secretary of Interior a tremendous amount of power over Native American affairs ranging from land, livestock, employment, government, etc. According to the reorganization plan, after a tribe or nation voted to accept the IRA, it would draw up a constitution and bylaws, submit it to a referendum,

Allotment And Assimilation Era

American Indians underwent several different eras of federal policy, each one varying on where the government stands when dealing with American Indians. One era of federal policy in particular is referred to as the “Allotment and Assimilation Era”, characterized by the policies regarding allotment of land and the process adapting American Indian children to an Anglo-Saxon society. While both aspects of the Allotment and Assimilation Era had a tremendous effect on American Indians, forcibly enrolling American Indian children into boarding schools, in an effort to “civilise” them, not only had a greater impact on tribal communities at the time, but it also had the most significant lasting legacy.

Indian Act Thesis

Thesis: The Indian Act effectively required Aboriginals to give up large amounts of land and rights followed by moving onto reserves. It negatively changed the lives of many Indian men and women who married non-status Aboriginals and harshly withdrew Aboriginal children from their families and put them into residential schools for the purposes assimilation. The Indian Act was known for creating an atrocious life for Indians.

Native American Cultural Assimilation Essay

Years of violence, forced removal to Indian Territory and forced religious indoctrination had failed to solve what the federal government referred to as “the Indian problem.”[6] the Native Americans may not have flourished in their new land, but they survived and would not go away. As a result, American policy shifted from

Trail Of Tears Essay

I have decided to dive into the depths of the American Indians and the reasoning behind all of the poverty and the oppression of the “white man.” In doing so I came across a couple of questions that I would like to answer. A). How did the Indian Removal Act of 1830 affect Native American culture, financial status, health, and B). Identity and how is life on the reservation oppressive for the Native Americans?

Is The Social Problem The Researchers Are Investigating?

2: The exploration group was welcome to take a shot at the three reservations, and tribal resolutions were acquired before application for financing. Admonitory sheets on every reservation gave oversight and affirmed all polls and methods. Last regards from tribal governments were gotten before meetings started. Composed reports, for example, this one were perused and sanction by consultative sheets preceding being submitted for production. Among the assertions made with the interest tribes was the state of tribal secrecy. A long time of scientist misuse have made suspicion and alert among American Indian countries concerning

Native American Oppression

Power can be viewed as the ability to influence and/or control others. Another flaw about reservations is the fact that they are not totally governed by Native American representatives. The U.S. government actually has tight control over the majority, if not all, reservations (Perry, 2002, p 233). This tight control has left the Native American population powerless in terms of self- regulation. Despite the fact that Native American government do exist,

Indian Health Service Essay

• 11 Works Cited

There have been many acts, treaties and legislation that have been passed which have had a direct impact on the Indian Health Services. I am only going to focus on four of them. I am concentrating on the Snyder Act of 1921, the Transfer Act of 1954, the Indian self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. The Snyder Act was made into a law on 1921 and it states “Congress may from time to time appropriate for the benefit, care, and

Discrimination Against Native Americans

The Indian race was not supposed to own land in America but in regard they were concentrated in slums adjacent to the cities. Here they were exposed to poor housing, lack of clean water and poor man related work that ranged from fishing and hunting thus they were regarded as second class American citizens. In response to these social status inequalities, the Indians staged demonstrations against the vices and afterwards grated accessibility to land and its resources. The land given to them was of low quality the low quality that they were classified as marginal land s that could not support farming. This shows that the American government was in support of the discrimination against these Indians. In support of the racial discrimination strategy, the state even ensured that no white citizen became poor or bankruptcy by buying their land parcels. These lands were then subdivided to the Indians who were later to be killed by the Americans in their efforts to get the land for their mining activities. The sequence of events showed how discrimination was the main agenda of the

Related Topics

• Health economics
• Health insurance
• Health care provider