History of American Indians and the United States

Playing Indian

Dr. Kane

mkane2@albany.edu Humanities 109 | MWF 9:20 - 10:15 AM

Office Hrs: M 10:20 - 11:20 & F 1:30 - 3:30

Social Science 60S

Wednesday, September 27

coming up

• EC: tomorrow! 11:30 Campus Center West Charlottesville roundtable
• Midterm in class Monday October 2
• material in Ch6 is NOT on the midterm
• Locations paper October 16
• History honors society

today's class

• the authenticity problem
• powwows & authenticity
• what is "traditional"?
• scouting & academic anthropology

where are we?

Allottment & Assimilation era 1887-1940
• Dawes Allotment Act - 1887
• Wounded Knee - 1890
• Indian Citizenship Act - 1924

the authenticity problem

stereotyping & playing Indian

scouting - 1850s-present

scouting - 1850s-present

• cities dangerous to health
• need for boys trained with skills for colonial wars
• health of white workers
• anti-child labor activism
• military uniforms for discipline (Carlisle)
• constructs universal “Americanness” for immigrant whites, Hispanic and African Americans

Lewis Henry Morgan & anthropology

• upstate NY, 1830s-1860s
• Ely Parker's bro
• "Tammany Indians" - secret fraternal organizations
• Indians are disappearing and their virtues must be saved
• virtuous whites can embody the best characteristics of the "original Americans"

Ely Parker

Caroline Parker

Franz Boas & salvage ethnography

• Columbia University, 1880s
• reaction to the violence of the Plains Wars
• federal government requiring assimilation: need to preserve Indian cultures before they're gone
• stadial evolution and primitive universalism

how does this all make sense?

• Americans play Indian to become "truly American"
• playing Indian gives symbolic claim to land, stewardship, positive stereotypes
• allows Americans to make a distinction between "good Indians" and "bad Indians"
• good Indians disappear; bad Indians are violently removed
• land is therefore free for settlement
• justifies and erases colonial violence