Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Myth of Open Wilderness and the Outlines of Big Government
- 2 Managed Expansion in the Early Republic
- 3 Tippecanoe and Treaties, Too: Executive Leadership, Organization, and Effectiveness in the Years of the Factory System
- 4 The Key to Success and the Illusion of Failure
- 5 Big Government Jacksonians
- 6 Tragically Effective: The Administration of Indian Removal
- 7 Public Administration, Politics, and Indian Removal: Perpetuating the Illusion of Failure
- 8 Clearing the Indian Barrier: Indian Affairs at the Center of National Expansion
- 9 Containment and the Weakening of Indian Resistance: The Effectiveness of Reservation Administration
- 10 What's an Administrator To Do? Reservations and Politics
- Conclusion: The Myth of Limited Government
- References
- Index
9 - Containment and the Weakening of Indian Resistance: The Effectiveness of Reservation Administration
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Myth of Open Wilderness and the Outlines of Big Government
- 2 Managed Expansion in the Early Republic
- 3 Tippecanoe and Treaties, Too: Executive Leadership, Organization, and Effectiveness in the Years of the Factory System
- 4 The Key to Success and the Illusion of Failure
- 5 Big Government Jacksonians
- 6 Tragically Effective: The Administration of Indian Removal
- 7 Public Administration, Politics, and Indian Removal: Perpetuating the Illusion of Failure
- 8 Clearing the Indian Barrier: Indian Affairs at the Center of National Expansion
- 9 Containment and the Weakening of Indian Resistance: The Effectiveness of Reservation Administration
- 10 What's an Administrator To Do? Reservations and Politics
- Conclusion: The Myth of Limited Government
- References
- Index
Summary
Indian reservations of one sort or another have been a part of Indian affairs since the colonial days. In the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded west, an evolving reservation system developed from an ad hoc assortment of temporary measures in the territories into a continental system for neutralizing “the Indian problem” by isolating and containing native populations. The reservation system evolved steadily from the 1840s, through the Civil War, and into the 1880s and 1890s. A vision of a permanent Indian country – the vision that had justified many of the arguments for removal – collapsed as the United States absorbed Western areas through the 1840s. Commissioner William Medill's vision of two giant reservations in the West, with settlements and railroads to the West Coast running between, drove much of the government's efforts in the late 1840s and 1850s. But even that plan rapidly had to be revised, as administrators in diverse contexts from the Indian Territory, to the Dakota Plains, to Texas, California, and Oregon confronted different environments and unique populations.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs steadily maintained its status as the preferred institutional vehicle for administering Indian policy, despite criticisms of the removal policy. The military played an important role, but the nation's officials never committed to a Western policy dominated and run by the military. As in years past, the cost, risk, and violent consequences of military action dissuaded leaders from making the military more than a temporary expedient or a consistent backup to the civilian service.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010