Reservation life had many drawbacks. Some tribes were forcibly removed from their historic lands to live on land not suited to agriculture. Many Native Americans were not farmers and did not know how to sow, create irrigation systems, or even what to grow. Nomadic tribes used to wandering were penned up in a defined area.
Salish men on the Flathead (Montana) reservation in 1903
The federal government made attempts to make Native American children more like white children. Native American children were forced to dress like Americans, they had their names changed, and often they were required to disregard their tribal language, customs, and belief systems.
As of 2017, there are 326 reservations in the United States.
Lakota leaders with U.S. Peace Commissioners during the negotiation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie
In 1867 the federal government appointed the Indian Peace Commission to develop a policy toward Native Americans. The commission recommended moving the Native Americans to a few large reservations—tracts of land set aside for them. Moving Native Americans to reservations was not a new policy, and the government now increased its efforts in that direction.
One large reservation was in Oklahoma, the “Indian Territory” that Congress had created in the 1830s for Native Americans relocated from the Southeast. Another one, meant for the Sioux people, was in the Dakota Territory. Managing the reservations would be the job of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Government agents often used trickery to persuade Native American nations to move to the reservations. Many reservations were located on poor land. In addition, the government often failed to deliver promised food and supplies, and the goods that were delivered were of poor quality.
A great many Native Americans accepted the reservation policy at first. Many southern Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho agreed to stay on the Oklahoma reservation. Thousands of Sioux agreed to move onto the Dakota reservation in the North. Pockets of resistance remained, however. Some Native Americans refused to make the move, and some who tried reservation life abandoned it.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Chief Joseph at the Nez Percé Lapwai Reservation in Idaho, where Fletcher arrived in 1889 to implement the Dawes Act. The man on one knee is James Stuart, Alice Fletcher's interpreter. According to Jane Gay in "With the Nez Perces" (University of Nebraska Press, 1981), Stuart customarily kneeled in this way when he felt anxious. Photograph provided by Jane Gay. (Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropological Archives [MS4558].)
Despite much conflict, many tribes found themselves under the control of the American government and their lives changed. Many things contributed to changing the traditional way of life of Native Americans—the movement of whites onto their lands, the slaughter of the buffalo, United States Army attacks, and the reservation policy. More change came from well-meaning reformers who wanted to abolish reservations and absorb the Native Americans into white American culture. American reformers such as Helen Hunt Jackson were horrified by the massacres of Native Americans and by the cruelty of the reservation system. Congress changed government policy with the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887. The law aimed to eliminate what Americans regarded as the two weaknesses of Native American life: the lack of private property and the nomadic tradition.
The Dawes Act proposed to break up the reservations and to end identification with a tribal group. Each Native American would receive a plot of reservation land. The goal was to encourage native peoples to become farmers and, eventually, American citizens. Native American children would be sent to white-run boarding schools. Some of the reservation lands would be sold to support this schooling. Over the next 50 years, the government divided up the reservations. Speculators acquired most of the valuable land. Native Americans often received dry, gravelly plots that were not suited to farming.
An 1891 print by Frederic Remington depicts the opening of the fight at Wounded Knee.
The Dawes Act changed forever the Native American way of life and weakened their cultural traditions. In their despair the Sioux turned in 1890 to Wovoka, a prophet. Wovoka claimed that the Sioux could regain their former greatness if they performed a ritual known as the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dance was a way for the Sioux to express their culture that was being destroyed. As the ritual spread, reservation officials became alarmed and decided to ban the dance. Believing that their chief, Sitting Bull, was the leader of the movement, police went to his camp to arrest him.
Chief Sitting Bull
During a scuffle, they shot Sitting Bull. Several hundred Lakota Sioux fled in fear after Sitting Bull’s death. They gathered at a creek called Wounded Knee in southwestern South Dakota. On December 29, 1890, the army went there to collect the Sioux’s weapons. No one knows how the fighting started, but when a pistol shot rang out, the army responded with fire. More than 200 Sioux and 25 soldiers were killed. Wounded Knee marked the end of armed conflict between whites and Native Americans. The Native Americans had lost their long struggle.
