Federal Fathers and Mothers

A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933

Cathleen D. Cahill

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781469606811, 9780807834725
• eBook ISBN: 9780807877739
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Established in 1824, the United States Indian Service (USIS), now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was the agency responsible for carrying out U.S. treaty and trust obligations to American Indians, but it also sought to “civilize” and assimilate them. In Federal Fathers and Mothers, Cathleen Cahill offers the first in-depth social history of the agency during the height of its assimilation efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cahill shows how the USIS pursued a strategy of intimate colonialism, using employees as surrogate parents and model families in order to shift Native Americans' allegiances from tribal kinship networks to Euro-American familial structures and, ultimately, the U.S. government.

Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations

• Abe, Ida (Yurok), 185, 186
• Abner, Annie (Laguna Pueblo), 117–18, 132
• Abner, Joseph (Oneida), 152
• Abolitionism, 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 32
• Abolitionist Legacy, The (McPherson), 26, 272 (nn. 45, 53)
• Adams, David Wallace, 273 (n. 69), 274 (n. 21), 315 (nn. 65, 74)
• Adult education, 44–47
• African Americans, 114, 163;
  • emancipation of, 11, 26;
  • Freedmen's Bureau and, 18, 27, 31, 43, 210, 262;
  • Native policy and, 26–31, 32, 163, 225, 262;
  • poor treatment of, 15, 16, 17, 24. See also Abolitionism;
  • Slavery
• Agriculture. See Farming
• Ahern, Wilbert, 109, 291 (n. 106), 296 (n. 94)
• Albuquerque Indian School, 78, 95, 117, 132, 138, 152
• Allen, Paula Gunn, 152
• Allen, Walter, 28–29
• Allotment Act, 32, 96. See also Dawes Act of 1887
• Allotment policy, 31, 51;
  • assimilation and, 41–42, 45–46;
  • contemporary class-action suit and, 265–66;
  • discontinuation of, 5;
  • at Hoopa Reservation, 194;
  • reform of, 228–29;
  • reservations and, 5. See also Dawes Act of 1887
• American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 87
• American Federation of Labor, 240
• American Freedmen's Union Commission, 27, 28
• American Horse, Chief (Cheyenne), 100, 148
• American Indian Defense Association, 324 (n. 2)
• American Indian Magazine, 231
• American Indian Movement, 1
• American Missionary Association, 27, 28, 43
• Ammon, Laura, 183
• Anderson, C. S., 152
• Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 112, 180
• Anthropology, 32, 37, 176, 197, 199
• Apache (tribe), 18, 24, 317 (n. 101)
• “Appeal for the Indians, An” (Child), 24
• Arcata, 174–75, 179, 185, 186
• Archiquette, Martin (Oneida), 229
• Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 29, 42, 155;
  • Native education and, 25, 31, 66
• Arnold, Mary Ellicott, 69, 75–76, 141, 175
• Aron, Cindy, 86, 87
• Asbury, Superintendent, 190
• Assimilatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Federal Fathers & Mothers
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations, Maps, Figure, & Table
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. FROM CIVIL WAR TO CIVIL SERVICE
• II. THE WOMEN AND MEN OF THE INDIAN SERVICE
• III. THE PROGRESSIVE STATE AND THE INDIAN SERVICE
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index