Native American Education

In February 1876 Reverend George Ainslie, Presbyterian missionary to the Nez Percés, wrote a letter to Professor F.V. Hayden, renowned leader of explorations in the West and Southwest, requesting Government assistance in providing copies of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostle’s Creed in all the Indian languages. That letter is featured in this article.

Viewed from the context of Supreme Court decisions since the 1940s, this request is a clear breach of the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state. At the time the letter was written, however, the U.S. Government and church-sponsored missionary boards were joined in a partnership for the "civilizing" of Native Americans. Since colonial times, the missionary responsibility to convert and moralize Native Americans with government support was a clear and accepted policy of both church and government. Missionary programs were interrupted by the Revolutionary War and again by the Civil War, but from the close of the Revolution, past the turn of the century, and throughout most of the 19th century, missionary developments expanded and gained support and power. At no time was the program stronger than during President Ulysses Grant’s administration, when a full partnership between the Government and the missions was set forth under the Peace Policy of 1868. Grant, however, strongly opposed public funds for sectarian schools and supported the Blaine amendment prohibiting the teaching of religion in public schools.

Grant’s Peace Policy was established following a congressional investigation into the state of Indian affairs. The objectives of the policy, according to historian Pierce Beaver, were "the pacification of the Indians through just and fair dealing, the appointment of able and honest Indian agents devoted to Indian improvement and nominated by the religious societies, settlement of the tribes on reservations and within Indian Territory as far as possible, fostering their progress in ’civilization’ through education, and thus neutralizing them as an obstacle to white settlement of the western country." Grant’s ultimate goal was citizenship for the Indians.

The establishment and maintenance of schools were an important part of the efforts to "civilize" the Indians. Generally, public education has been a state-controlled institution, but a principal exception was the education of reservation Indians who were "wards of the Government" rather than citizens. Schools, therefore, along with other Indian affairs, fell under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, the agency Reverend Ainslie appeals to in his letter.

Though the Constitution gives control of Indian affairs to Congress, the administration of those affairs has been delegated to the President by legislation that divided Indian territory into two districts, each with a superintendent who reported to the Secretary of War. Later, as Indian affairs became more complex, other provisions allowed the President to appoint agents, promote civilization, and secure friendship. Legislation of 1818 defined the procedure by which superintendents and agents were to be nominated by the President and appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. In the meantime, the Department of the Interior, which was created in 1849, assumed responsibility for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, whereby the bureau passed from military to civilian control. The argument for the transfer was expressed by Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker in his annual report to Congress:

The duties now performed by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs are most numerous and important, and must be vastly increased with the great number of tribes scattered over Texas, Oregon, New Mexico, and California, and with the interesting progress of so many of the tribes in Christianity, knowledge, and civilization. The duties do not necessarily appertain to war, but to peace, and to our domestic relations with those tribes placed by the Constitution under the charge of this Government.

Except for a short period when Army officers served as agents, Indian agencies have been served by appointees from civilian life. Indian agents were notorious for cheating Indians, diverting goods and appropriations for their own advancement. Representative James A. Garfield described the problem in 1869 as follows: "No branch of the national government is so spotted with fraud, so tainted with corruption, so utterly unworthy of a free and enlightened government, as this Indian Bureau."

In an attempt to improve the appointments during Grant’s administration, links between religious denominations and the Government strengthened. Agents were selected upon the recommendation of religious denominations with a certain number of agencies being assigned to each denomination. According to a special report issued by the Bureau of Education in 1888, "The intent of this distribution of agencies was to enlist the active sympathy of the several religious organizations in the Indian work, and to obtain men specially qualified by disposition and character for the peculiar service desired."

Reports from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs during this time include tables of statistics with such categories as numbers of schools, scholars, and teachers; denomination in charge of schools; amount contributed by religious society; and numbers of missionaries, school buildings, church buildings, Indians brought immediately under the civilizing influence of the agency, and Indians who have learned to read. The schools included day schools and boarding schools in Indian country and board

ing schools in communities outside the Indian reservations. The general policy of the Government schools was to teach Indian children to speak, read, and write the English language and to instruct them in arithmetic, geography, U.S. history, farming and trades for the boys, and housekeeping for the girls. In addition, religious training was required.

Education and religious training were fostered by funds from the Native Americans themselves, from church funds, and from Government appropriations. The major church-related missions were the American Missionary Association (Congregational), which was the first national foreign missionary society, as well as Catholic, Presbyterian, Friends, Protestant Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Moravian, Reformed Dutch, Christian, Lutheran, and Unitarian. Reports of the operations of the Government and missionary societies under the Indian peace policy describe the "civilizing" progress in terms of literary accomplishments, church attendance, "citizens’ dress," house accommodations, and extent of farming and stock raising. The Cherokees were the most successful farmers and stockraisers. All of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes-the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles-established a republican government, set up school systems, and made rapid progress in literacy and agriculture, thus proving to most leaders of the time that Indians could be conditioned to "live as white men." It was also commonly believed that civilization followed conversion to Christianity.

Overt control of agent appointments by missionary societies ended when Secretary of the Interior H.M. Teller under President Chester Arthur excluded mission boards from administering the agencies. Secretary Teller announced in 1882 that he would not consult the religious organizations because "I know no reason why government officials should be selected for one class of government employment by religious bodies and not by all."

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By 1889 a majority of the schools were controlled and operated by the Indian Bureau. Only four boarding schools remained by contract in the hands of religious societies, although they received Government assistance in the form of supplies and clothing. A contract school was one wherein the Government paid a stated sum for each pupil, and the religious society provided the teachers, the building, and other expenses. Gradually the church-state partnership decreased in the administration of Indian education, but some entanglements of tribal funding and mission land and buildings persisted. Although Commissioner of Indian Affairs Gen. Thomas J. Morgan was himself a Baptist minister, he promoted a comprehensive, compulsory, nonsectarian education program conforming to the laws of the several States in his 1889 annual report. It was not until the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, however, that the Government policy was dramatically changed, returning control to tribal governments and ending compulsory attendance of Indian children at Christian classes and worship services.

It is not surprising that in 1876 Rev. George Ainslie believed that the Department of the Interior would be amenable to translating religious literature into various Indian languages. His request is addressed to geologist Ferdinand V Hayden, who led several significant expeditions to the Dakota Badlands, Yellowstone, and Colorado’s Mesa Verde as a scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey.

In his letter, Ainslie mentions James Reuben, a Nez Percé youth, who according to Ainslie was "quite gifted and master of English to a remarkable degree" and a good candidate for writing a history of his tribe. He also mentions several religious writings that he and fellow missionary Henry S. Spalding translated into the Nez Percé language. Ainslie was a student of the Nez Percé language and wrote a grammar for it.

The original Ainslie letter is located in the Records of the U.S. Geological Survey, Record Group 57, Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (Hayden Survey), Letters Received 1867-1879, vol. A-B.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

Document Analysis

1. Ask students to read the document closely and answer the following questions:

a. Who wrote the letter?
b. To whom was the letter written?
c. When was the letter written?
d. Why, according to the author, was the letter written?
e. What is the tone of the letter?
f. What request does the author make?
g. Given Supreme Court decisions since 1948, how is his request a breach of the First Amendment separation of church and state?
h. Why do you suppose the author expects the Department of Interior to accommodate his request?

Lead a class discussion of the student responses.

Analysis of Grant’s Peace Policy

2. Using the information in the article and other research sources, students should answer these questions:

a. What was the purpose of the policy?
b. How did it work?
c. How was it a violation of the separation of church and state?
d. Why was it enacted?
e. What were its accomplishments and its failures?
f. How did it conflict with Grant’s policy for common schools?

Map Work

3. Ask students to mark the location of the various Indian reservations on a blank map of the United States. Instruct them to plot the missions that conducted schools on the reservations. Ask students to present oral reports on the history of Indian mission schools and Government support. Assign segments of time to several students to cover the developments by the colonial companies in Virginia and New England, by Secretary of War Henry Knox and President James Monroe after the Revolution, by the Five Civilized Tribes, by Presidents Grant and Rutherford Hayes after the Civil War, by the Dawes Act of 1887, and by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Storytelling

4. Ask students to study the personality and events in the lives of F.V. Hayden, U.S. Grant, Chief Joseph, Jeremiah Evarts, and T.J. Morgan. In a role-playing exercise, students should assume the personality of each man and tell the story of the Indians, education, and the Federal Government from his view point.

Position Paper

S. Assign students to write a position paper in response to the following question: Had Native Americans been given a reasonable amount of land and adequate subsidies and allowed to maintain their way of life, might they have accepted the reservation policy and ceased hostility?

Research Options

6. For further research, students might examine these related topics: the plight of the Nez Percés, the friction between church and Government over the removal of the Cherokees, Native American cultural history, Native American religion, the Constitution and the Indians, Indian citizenship, the Blaine amendment to prohibit teaching of religion in public schools and using public funds for sectarian schools, the Hampton and Carlisle Indian Schools, the Protestant-Roman Catholic conflict over Indian schools, and major church-state issues that are currently affecting public and private schools.