Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and Agrarian Change

255 Pages·1994·17.76 MB·English

by  David Rich Lewis

NEITHER WOLF
NOR DOG
This page intentionally left blank
NEITHER WOLF
NOR DOG
American Indians, Environment,
and Agrarian Change
DAVID RICH LEWIS
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1994
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1994 by David Rich Lewis
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, David Rich.
Neither wolf nor dog : American Indians, environment,
and agrarian change /
David Rich Lewis.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-506297-3
1. Indians of North America—West (U.S.)—Cultural assimilation.
2. Indians of North America—-West (U.S.)—Agriculture.
3. Utc Indians—History.
4. Hupa Indians—History.
5. Tohono O'Odham Indians- History.
6. Social change—Case studies.
I. Title. E78.W5L48 1994
978'.00497—dc20 93-40828
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid free paper
"I do not wish to be shut up in a corral. It is bad for young men to be fed by an
agent. It makes them lazy and drunken. All agency Indians I have seen were
worthless. They are neither red warriors nor white farmers. They are neither
wolf nor dog."
—Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa, 1881
"The Whites were always trying to make the Indians give up their life and live
like white men—go to farming, work hard and do as they did—and the Indian
did not know how to do that, and did not want to anyway. It seemed too
sudden to make such a change. If the Indians had tried to make whites live like
them, the whites would have resisted, and it was the same with many Indians."
—Big Eagle, Santee, 1862
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE
Scholarly histories tend to grow out of and benefit from the questions
generated by previous works and scholars. This study is no exception. In
some ways this study is an elaboration of the themes set forward by
Richard White in his path-breaking work The Roots of Dependency, for it
takes up the issues of environment, subsistence, and social change where
he leaves off—during the longer period of directed culture change and
peripheral dependency. It is also a response to calls, by both anthropolo-
gists and historians, for comparative studies of the subsistence systems
of Native Americans, of the processes and nature of subsistence change,
and of the practical application of agrarian policies on the reservation
level. As such, it is part of a small but growing body of scholarship on
Native Americans and agriculture.1 Finally, it is a work in ethnohistory,
an interdisciplinary method combining the diachronic sources and per-
spectives of history with the synchronic sensitivity of ethnology and
ethnography "to gain knowledge of the nature and causes of change in a
culture defined by ethnological concepts and categories."2
Chapter One begins with an outline of the intellectual milieu that
shaped the agrarian bent of American Indian policy, followed by a
general description of how those policies took shape. Three case studies
follow, each consisting of two chapters. The first provides ethnographic
and environmental background for the second, which describes each
group's experiences with and responses to settled reservation and al-
lotted agriculture. Each of these chapters stands by itself, but they are
better read as paired units. Ethnographic and environmental infor-
mation discussed in the first will be referred to in the second without
extended discussion. The chronological narrative of native culture and
environmental change cannot be understood without a knowledge of
the precontact status. This is particularly important for understanding
native responses and the reproduction of cultural features.
Case studies can be subject-specific or stand as synedoche, the bit
that reveals the universe, but there is always the question of typicality.
viii Preface
Comparative case studies mitigate this shortcoming to a degree by pro-
viding a wider base for analysis and generalization. I chose to study the
Northern Utes, Hupas, and Tohono O'odhams for their mix of same-
ness and difference. First, all are western tribal groups. Each came
under federal supervision at roughly the same time and experienced
some form of imposed agrarian settlement in that sub-humid region
beyond the hundredth meridian. Second, each group inhabited disparate
environments and possessed different cultural and subsistence traditions.
This diversity is important. Since cultural structures and environment
delimit to some extent a people's response to change, each of these three
groups become paradigmatic of a range of native behaviors and responses
to the same directed change. Finally, I chose these peoples in hopes of
broadening the representation of native groups in the literature. While all
are well known, they have received less attention than some others. Each
tribe's experience is exceptional but, I believe, broadly representative of
the range of Native American experiences with agriculture. Ultimately
the reader will determine just how representative.
Two final notes. First, the government compiled and continues to
collect statistical information on Indian farming, making for what ap-
pears to be an excellent data base for quantification. But when one really
digs into the narrative records, it becomes apparent how unreliable these
statistics are. In the nineteenth century, agents regularly over-reported
Indian farm production to impress the Bureau with their personal ad-
ministrative success. Agents submitted annual reports with production
figures prior to harvest. Discrepancies between estimates and actual har-
vests, and natural disasters between report and harvest, show up regu-
larly in the correspondence. Also, the statistics do not always clearly
identify variations in actual Indian farming—white agency farmers
working land for Indians, whites leasing Indian fields, or "cultivated"
versus actual "planted" acreage. Educated estimates on Indian farming
can be made from the flow of correspondence and oral histories, but ab-
solute reliance on government statistics is misleading. Therefore, I have
used the most reliable statistics I could find, more as an indication of ac-
tivity and the direction of change rather than as an absolute.'
Second, a word on the orthography used in this study. I am not a
linguist, nor have I found a single orthographic system in which to
render all of the native words I include in this study. Instead, I present
native terms in italics as they appear in the ethnographic sources I
consulted.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people and institutions need to be recognized for their contribu-
tions to this project—many more than I can remember or readily ac-
knowledge. I would like to thank the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the
History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, Chicago, for a
Pre-doctoral Fellowship (1985-86); Floyd A. O'Neil and the Ameri-
can West Center, University of Utah, for a year as a Visiting Scholar
(1986-87); the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-
Madison for a travel grant (1988); the office of the Vice President for Re-
search, Utah State University, for a faculty research grant (1989-90);
and the Department of History and College of Humanities, Arts, and
Social Sciences, Utah State University, for subsidizing the cost of maps
and photographs. Thanks also to the staff members of the numerous li-
braries and archives I visited for their help; to Winston P. Erickson for his
work on the maps; to Fritz Scholder for his art and generosity; and to my
editors at Oxford—Sheldon Meyer, Karen Wolny, and Joellyn M.
Ausanka—for their interest and tremendous patience.
I want to thank just a few of the many people who shared their time,
knowledge, and good humor with me: John Aubry, Steve Boyden,
Richard H. Brown, Larry Burt, Anne M. Butler, Colin Galloway, Lester
Chapoose, Carter Blue Clark, Wilfred Colegrove, Forest Cuch, Lee
Davis, Eric Halpern and Beth Landau, Frederick E. Hoxie, Peter Iver-
son, Steve Kretzmann, Kathryn L. MacKay, Daniel J. Mclnerney, Jay
Miller, Clyde A. Milner II, Josiah Moore, George Byron Nelson, Sr.,
Byron Nelson, Jr., and his family, Richard Sattler, Bernard Siquieros,
Rose Summers, Helen H. Tanner, Gregory C. Thompson, Wilma
Thompson, S. Lyman Tyler, Richard White, Patrick Wyaskett and his
family, the UTOTs, and my colleagues in the Department of History,
Utah State University. Robert Brightman deserves special recognition
for helping a historian think like an ethnohistorian. Special thanks to
Floyd A. O'Neil and Alan G. Bogue for their mentoring and continuing
friendship. Anyone who knows these two men will understand why