The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Abridged Edition) [Abridged] [Paperback]

The amount of detail and research that went into this book is amazing--I keep thinking I've learned the whole field and then I turn to the book and discover something new. The book is long but very readable, full of fascinating illustrative quotes, and is based on truly thorough knowledge of the primary sources. By the way, this paperback has the same pagination and material as the entire two volume hardcover. Be careful not to get the abridged version by mistake--it deletes footnotes which are key to using the book as a starting point for your own research.

Francis P. Prucha's The Great Father is a comprehensive study of the permanence of a paternalistic attitude and the continuing notion of cultural superiority in white/Indian relations in the United States over two hundred years. His survey of the federal government's motives, policies, and results is a neutral account of the events; he makes no ground breaking assumption or thesis. He methodically details the efforts of government agencies, private efforts, and religious groups in the shaping of official policy within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The result was a "determination to do what was best for the Indians according to white norms, which translated into protection, subsistence of the destitute, punishment of the unruly, and eventually taking the Indians by the hand and leading them along the path to white civilization and Christianity."
Prucha picks 1880 as the dividing line in official policy because it marks a shift from acculturation efforts backed by the military into a reform movement era centered on assimilation. Paternalism in the Colonial period is centered on protection, a child like image of the tribes existed and they needed to be saved from the lying, manipulative British/French/Spanish. George Washington began a long standing tradition of passing out peace medals at delegation meetings to secure trust with the tribes in negotiations. This traditional exchange became a necessary tradition because an image of the president (The Great Father) was usually on one side and an image of shaking hands or similar image was on the other. The peace medal played a dualistic role being a propaganda item and also a valuable gift. When the Indian Office took over increased duties once performed by the President, symbolic items like the peace medal became rare and the bureaucratic system grew and grew.
In the 1830's President Jackson and his heavy handed policy of removal was the culmination of efforts since the Louisiana Purchase to expand white settlement to the Eastern shores of the Mississippi River. The Indians suffered dearly in this era, but Prucha tends to minimize the hardships and gloss over the forced marches performed by many tribes in this decade. He describes them, but in such a neutral voice, it almost seems like a disregard for the suffering. The stampede of Christian reformers began in the 1840's and continued long after the Civil War. The first sign (to the outside world) of a need for major reforms was the massacre at Sandcreek in 1864. Despite a white flag, prominently displayed Black Kettle's band was gunned down by General Chivington. Prucha feels Sandcreek was never forgotten and became a symbol of the erroneous official Indian Policy before 1880.
After 1880 the Military played a much smaller role in the management and control of reservations; they were no longer needed because the Plains Tribes way of life and the buffalo were gone forever. The reservation and assimilation era culminated around education according to Prucha. Independent groups like the Women's National Indian Association and the Indian Rights Association now could lobby on behalf of the tribes and successfully helped gain the issue national attention. The reformers sought to Americanize the Indians. It was felt the process of owning private property (the Dawes Act 1887) would transform them and wash away the Indianess. Their children became more American at schools, learning academics half the day and an industrial skill in the afternoons. Prucha explains how tribes in America became wards of the state, dependent (in his mind) on Federal funds to survive. He feels the efforts to assimilate tribes failed and the government continues to act in a paternalistic fashion.

I bought this book because I was doing a research paper for a college class and was finding very little information on Native Americans during the periods of George Washington leading up until Andrew Jackson. This book gave me nearly everything I needed. It was a gold mind!!!

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