reformers as the only means by which Indians could
hold onto their remaining territory, the Allotment
policy proved to have the opposite effect. Between
1887 and 1934, its implementation would lead In-
dians to lose some 90 million acres of land.
Although the poverty of most Indians rendered
them invisible to the majority of Americans, some In-
dians gained prominence during the early years of the
century. Those with the highest profiles were athletes,
such as baseball player Louis Sockalexis, marathon
runner Tom Longboat, and Olympic champion Jim
Thorpe. A gold-medal winner in the 1912 decath-
lon and pentathlon, Thorpe would go on to play
professional baseball and football in one of the most
spectacular athletic careers in American history. Less
well known today but significant in their time were
Indian authors such as Charles A. Eastman, Mourning
Dove, and John Joseph Mathews. Using non-Indian
literary forms, these writers brought attention to the
plight of Indians to generations of white readers.
Also influential were the many Indians who
came together to resist government policies that were
destroying Indian peoples and cultures. Traditional-
ists—such as the anti-Allotment Creek of the Crazy
Snake movement—launched a number of resistance
movements that openly rejected white customs and
demanded a return to Indian ways. Others united
to create such organizations as the Mission Indian
Foundation and the All-Pueblo Council. While
modeled after non-Indian political institutions,
these and similar organizations provided powerful
tools in the fight to protect Indian rights.
The most important Indian political orga-
nization of the era was the Society of American
Indians (SAI). Founded in 1911, the group brought
together prominent Indian advocates, including
Carlos Montezuma, Gertrude Bonnin, Alfred C.
Parker, and Laura Cornelius Kellogg. Many SAI
members had been educated at boarding schools
operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Beginning
in 1879 with the establishment of the Carlisle In-
dian Industrial Boarding School, these institutions
sought to eliminate tribalism by instructing Indian
children in the ways of white society. But for many
students, their school experience redefined, rather
than destroyed, their “Indianness.” As the SAI bore
witness, the schools produced a new generation ofIndian leaders, whose knowledge of English, white
customs, and mainstream institutions allowed them
to deal effectively with non-Indian leaders and
bureaucrats.
Although the agendas of individual members
varied, the SAI took as its primary goals securing
citizenship for all Indians and abolishing the Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs, the government agency that
had developed the policies largely responsible for
the dispossession and poverty of American Indians.
The group succeeded only in the former. In part as
a reward for the military service of some 16,000 In-
dians during World War I, native-born Indians were
made U.S. citizens in 1924. Citizenship, however,
did little to improve the daily lot of Indian people.
The SAI’s more significant legacy was as a model for
future political groups, such as the Indians of All
Tribes and the American Indian Movement. Like
the SAI, these were multitribal organizations whose
members were willing to put aside tribal differences
to work together to improve the lot of all Indians.
Spurred on by Indian activists and by an alarm-
ing series of Indian murders on the oil-rich Osage
reservation, non-Indian progressives began to push
for a reexamination of Indian policy. An early ef-
fort was the Committee of One Hundred, a group
of Indians and non-Indians brought together by the
Calvin Coolidge administration to discuss Indian
affairs. The committee called for a wide variety of
reforms—from improvements in Indian education
to increased governmental tolerance for traditional
Indian religion—but their recommendations were
largely ignored. Far more significant to federal In-
dian policy was the Meriam Report, which was
published in 1928. The document was the result of
an extensive investigation of the living conditions of
contemporary Indians. The findings were appalling:
Indians were discovered to be the most impoverished
American minority by every measure, including
housing, health care, education, and diet.
By shining a light on Indian poverty, the Meriam
Report revealed to all that Indians had never in fact
vanished. They had merely been hidden from view.
Its revelations would usher in a new era in which
Indians and non-Indians alike would acknowledge
the scope of problems facing modern Indians and
the increasingly urgent need for a remedy.1891 to 1933