to claim free land. Through the Donation Land
Act, each male settler is entitled to 320 acres. Soon
more than 2 million acres of fertile farmland in
western Oregon Territory will be granted to these
homesteaders.
None of this land, however, has been ceded to
the U.S. government by the Indian peoples who
occupy it. As the settlers move onto their territory,
they will force the Indians to leave, often through
violence. Tribes such as the Tillamook and Lucki-
amute will be left both landless and impoverished.
1851Henry Rowe Schoolcraft begins publishing
Indian Tribes of the United States.
Ethnologist and former Indian agent Henry Rowe
Schoolcraft publishes the first volume of his Histori-
cal and Statistical Information Respecting the History,
Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the
United States (1851–57). The six-volume work
will be the first major ethnological study of the
American Indian tribes. Since 1822 Schoolcraft
has traveled extensively among Indian groups, with
his most important research conducted among the
Ojibway. His work will provide source material for
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem
Song of Hiawatha (see entry for 1855).
The Dakota Sioux cede 24 million acres in
the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.
After decades of conflict with the Ojibway (see entry
for 1825), the Dakota Sioux surrender 24 million
acres of contested land during treaty negotiations at
Traverse des Sioux. In return, they are granted two
reservations along the Upper Missouri River. To en-
courage the Dakota’s assimilation, the government
also promises to build mills, blacksmith shops, and
manual labor schools for the tribe. The treaty plants
the seeds of disaster; as the Dakota’s displeasure with
reservation conditions and resistance to assimilation
will erupt into violence 12 years later during the
Minnesota Uprising (see entry for AUGUST 18 TO
SEPTEMBER 23, 1862).
Lewis Henry Morgan’s League of the
Ho-de-no-sau-nee is published.
Lewis Henry Morgan compiles the results of years
of research as a manuscript titled League of the
Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. A lawyer born near
Aurora, New York, Morgan, long fascinated with
the Iroquois Indians of the region, is the founder of
the Grand Order of the Iroquois, a men’s social club
of elite white men with similar interests. Morgan’s
participation in the group led to a cursory study
of the Iroquois tribes, but a chance meeting with
Ely S. Parker (see entry for 1869), a young Seneca
man who served as translator for his tribe, brought
a new sophistication to Morgan’s efforts. Parker in-
troduced Morgan to Seneca leaders and elders, who
in time came so to trust the white man that in 1846
they adopted him as a tribal member.
Although Morgan’s history romanticizes pre-
contact Iroquois life, the book is the first account
of a tribe’s culture that attempts to present the In-
dians’ beliefs and ways in their own terms. It also
represents one of the earliest close collaborations
between a white researcher and an Indian infor-
mant. Morgan himself acknowledges Parker’s vital
contribution by dedicating the book to his Seneca
friend and identifying the work as the “fruit of our
joint researches.”The Oatman family is attacked by
Yavapai Indians.
Traveling by covered wagon from Illinois to Cali-
fornia, Royce and Mary Ann Oatman and their
seven children are set upon by Yavapai Indians
about 80 miles west of Fort Yuma in present-day
Arizona. The parents and four children are killed.
Two girls, Olive and Mary Ann, are taken captive,
and one boy, Lorenzo, is wounded and left for dead.
The Yavapai sell the girls to the Mojave as slaves,
and Mary Ann soon dies.
Olive Oatman will remain with the Mojave for
five years before she is rescued and reunited with
Lorenzo. The story of her ordeal, published as Life
among the Indians (1857), will become the most
popular captivity narrative since Mary Rowland-
son’s account of her capture by the Wampanoag (see
entry for 1682).