Reconstruction, Expansion, and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism 15Stealing Land and Culture
But the government did not just use force to subdue and control Indians.
Whites also attacked Indian culture. White patrols used alcohol to manipu-
late Indians into giving up land; they caused starvation through the continued
destruction of buffalo; they spread more diseases to which the Indians were
not immune; and they created the idea that Indians were “savages” and
Whites were civilized, and popularized “Wild West” novels to spread that
idea. But the most potent attack was on the Natives’ conception of land.
Indians held land in common; they did not “own” a piece of property but
used it for farming, ranching, or hunting. As Sitting Bull said, “the White man
knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.”
Whites believed in the concept of private property, that “civilized” people
owned and controlled land and used it to produce goods or make a profit.
So even as they forced Indians onto reservations, the government and White
culture wanted to break down the Indians even more and divide their reser-
vations into lots which they would give to them in “severalty,” meaning that
Indians would be treated as “several” or separate individuals, rather than as
sovereign tribes with common interests. To formalize this idea, congress in
1887 passed the Dawes Severalty Act to break up the reservation system.
Reservations were divided into smaller areas and Indians willing to abandon
their communal ways and adopt the “habits of civilized life” would be given
160 acres each. The law also granted the government the right to sell res-
ervation land to White settlers–and continued to give Congress the right to
give railroad and telegraph companies grants to Indian lands. In 1887, the
year of the Dawes Act, Indians held 138 million acres. By 1900, it was down
to 78 million, most of which was unsuitable for the agricultural life the gov-
ernment tried to force onto the Natives. And by 1930, Indians held less than
50 million acres.
Not only did the government kill and take Indian land, it set out to elim-
inate their cultural habits. Young Indians were sent to boarding schools to
learn to speak, dress, and act like White youth, even getting their hair cut to
match the short styles of the White kids. The U.S. government banned cer-
emonies such as the Ghost Dance, a ritual that would pay homage to dead
ancestors and, as the Sioux intended it, make Whites disappear so that the
Indians could gain their land back. The Bureau of Indian Affairs wanted them