Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786–2021

Paternalism to Partnership provides a biographical sketch of each head of Indian affairs between 1786 and 2021 in context with each commissioner’s political philosophy. These administrators have been responsible for enforcing an Indian policy as directed by the president and/or the Congress but also influenced by their own political and social philosophy. From 1786-1848, authority was delegated to a superintendent of Indian affairs, a superintendent of the Indian trading houses, a superintendent of the Office of Indian Trade, a chief clerk, and a commissioner of Indian affairs, all of whom reported to the secretary of War. Since 1849, the commissioner of Indian affairs, and after 1977, the assistant secretary for Indian affairs have reported to the secretary of the Interior. Today, the BIA is administered by the assistant secretary for Indian affairs—all of whom have been Native Americans. Previous studies focused on the commissioners, completely overlooking the superintendents that preceded them and the colonial and early American antecedents. David DeJong’s documentary edition is the first to provide an understanding of the political philosophy of each head of the Indian bureau through the emphasis of policy.

Once bitten, twice shy: A French traveller and go-between in Mughal India, 1648–67

This article examines the materials around François le Gouz de la Boullaye, a French gentilhomme (gentleman or minor aristocrat) from the Anjou Province of western France, who visited India twice, once in the late 1640s, and again in the mid-1660s. The result of his first visit, in which he mostly spent time in Surat and Goa, was an extended travel-narrative, the Voyages et Observations, of which two editions appeared in 1653 and 1657. On this basis, Boullaye became a fairly well-known ‘expert’ on Islamic and Indian affairs in Louis XIV’s France. Because of his reputation, he was then chosen as a member of an embassy sent to open trading relations with Safavid Iran and Mughal India in 1664 on behalf of the French Compagnie des Indes. This second visit was not a great success on account of misconceptions regarding diplomatic protocols and because of deep rivalries and divisions amongst rival French actors, including celebrated travellers like Bernier and Tavernier.

Epilogue

Three federal systems coalesced from the ad hoc practices of governance in the Northwest and Southwest Territories—over land, Indian affairs, and the territories themselves. The foundations for the federal land system laid in these early struggles persisted and survived through the Civil War and beyond, as federal adjudication of land rights expanded. The federal government also codified its earlier experiments in compensation, formalizing its payments to Natives and whites even as it also continued to pay for brutal, even genocidal violence against Native peoples from the federal treasury. Finally, even Congress continued to use conditional admission to try to control newly admitted states, the territorial system entrenched the expectation that the plural sovereignty and ownership of the borderlands was temporary; statehood represented the moment when these preexisting claims supposedly passed away. Statehood also helped doom the flawed vision that the federal government would serve as a neutral arbiter between Natives and whites. Rather, statehood gave the former territories perhaps the most effective way yet to make claims on the federal government. As these new states increasingly became the federal government—in Congress, in the cabinet, and in the presidency—they turned their goals into federal law. This result occurred within the federal lands, where states successfully bent federal land policy to serve their expansionist aims, and in Indian affairs, where state representatives successfully persuaded the federal government to back their assertions of sovereignty against the compelling sovereignty claims of the Cherokee and Native Nations in the struggle known as Removal. This effectiveness at exploiting federal power allowed these former territories to rapidly remake these former borderlands to satisfy their long-standing settler colonial aspirations.

Marie Baldwin, Racism, and the Society of American Indians

The French/Ojibwa lawyer, activist, and Office of Indian Affairs employee, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin (1863–1952), often receives mention in scholarly works on the Society of American Indians (SAI). Very few, however, have examined her contributions in detail. Only one article focusing exclusively on Baldwin has ever been published. Cathleen D. Cahill’s flattering portrait depicts Baldwin as a devoted suffragette and leading SAI figure who, in her roles as cofounder and treasurer, promoted the cause of Indian rights and her own Ojibwa values concerning women’s equality. Cahill explains Baldwin’s sudden exit from the SAI as a result of attacks by male, anti-Indian Office “radicals” who condemned her as disloyal for holding a government post, such as Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai) and Philip Gordon (Ojibwa). Closer inspection of the SAI’s conference proceedings and epistolary record reveals a very different story. In providing the first full account of Baldwin’s involvement in intertribal activism, this essay counters Cahill’s inaccurate interpretation of Baldwin’s withdrawal from the society, and, more importantly, examines Baldwin’s underreported, yet openly racist campaign among key SAI members to ban African Americans from the Indian Service. Baldwin’s incendiary statements on race offers a point of departure for further study of how the Society of American Indians viewed African Americans during the Progressive era’s intense segregation and prevailing social Darwinist theories of race.

The Politics of Inclusion/Exclusion in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands during the Mexican Period

This chapter is an examination of Indigenous responses to changes in the administration of Indian affairs in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands during the Mexican period. This period was characterized by steady erosion of the mission system, the rupturing of the colonial pact, and the eventual Jesuit Expulsion. While Hopis had minimal contacts with independent Mexico, Yaquis once again revolted in defence of political autonomy, this time under the complicated leadership of Juan Banderas. O’odhams endured chaotic decades of drought, frontier warfare, and administrative changes that resulted in significant mission depopulation and the decline of the town electoral model, although not its complete disappearance. This chapter demonstrates that these three Indigenous nations confronted the electoral-political upheavals of the Mexican period in distinct ways that ensured their survival as sovereign peoples.