A strange but revealing exchange took place on the floor of the Senate in February 1871. During a debate on the Indian Appropriations Bill, senators from the North, South, and West engaged in a heated discussion of the following question: Which group had the United States dealt with more dishonorably, Indian tribes or African slaves? Part partisan posturing and part struggle over resources, the senators’ arguments grew beyond the immediate issue — a supplemental payment of $15,000 to the Chippewa of Lake Superior for instruction in the “arts of civilization” — and became a debate over the direction of federal...

On the evening of 10 October 1890, the “Friends of the Indian” gathered for the closing session of that year’s Lake Mohonk Conference. The three-day event had been deemed a great success, with attendees listening to various presentations that included “The Capacity of the Indian to Be Educated,” “The Choice of Industries in Indian Education,” and “Indian Agents.” They also had heard reports from the Women’s National Indian Association and various missionary societies about their work on the reservations. In between sessions, they had enjoyed the beauty of the hotel grounds, strolling through its formal gardens, relaxing on its shady...

In Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1901, a family disagreement became entangled in national governance. One can almost imagine the stoic resolve, or more likely the exasperated sigh, with which Minnie Braithwaite’s mother met her daughter’s announcement that she wanted to join the Indian Service. Earlier, Mrs. Braithwaite had been relieved to find that Minnie’s plan to go to China as a medical missionary had been derailed by the College of William and Mary’s refusal to train women as doctors. But now Minnie seemed determined to go west and teach the Indians.¹ Mrs. Braithwaite decided to use political influence to foil her...

When prospective employees opened their letters of appointment from the commissioner of Indian affairs, they learned which position they had been offered, where it was located, and the date they were expected to report for duty. Many letters also included brief directions to their new post. But the three or four concise sentences typed out on the page rarely prepared them for the actual journey. The first leg usually involved a train ride, during which they might carefully ration a basket of food meant to see them through their long trip. Some might transfer to a smaller rail line that...

In the second decade of the twentieth century, Yavapai Apache activist Carlos Montezuma, a veteran of the Indian Service, accused Native people who worked for the government of being “Indians, but heartless of an Indian’s heart. Their souls are stupid and their hearts asleep.”¹ Montezuma argued that while the problems faced by Native people were principally the fault of the government, Indian employees also deserved part of the blame. “The Indian Bureau is hanging by a thread of 6,000 employees, interwoven with whom are Indian employees,” he editorialized in his newspaper,Wassaja. “Indians have always been used by the Government...

Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis Leupp clearly enjoyed holding forth in his annual reports to the secretary of the interior. In somewhat bombastic prose, he energetically described the Indian Office’s work for the year, punctuating the paragraphs with confident assertions of his many opinions on the matters at hand. But even he found it difficult to enliven the statistical discussion of educational programs in the 1906 report. After slogging through almost twenty pages enumerating the kinds of Indian schools under his supervision — their capacity, enrollment, and average attendance; the funds appropriated for each; and the employees who were appointed...

The Office of Indian Affairs administered scores of reservations across the country, attempting to force them along a single path toward assimilation, but each of these local places had its own history, context, and culture(s) that complicated the Indian Service’s efforts. Understanding the ways many Native people used Indian Service employment in order to navigate larger economic transformations requires a close look at the local context of individual reservations. The last few chapters have offered a bird’s-eye view of the system of agencies and schools that were tied together by the Indian Office bureaucracy and the movement of employees through...

At the turn of the century, policy makers and others concerned with Indian affairs took stock of their progress. The tensions we saw in the last several chapters — the reality of Indian Service personnel who worked at a distance from, at cross purposes with, or even in opposition to the policies formulated in Washington, D.C. — were increasingly drawing notice at the national level. This, combined with widespread Indigenous resistance to cultural assimilation, led to a period of “great confusion in Indian Affairs.”¹

Some observers of Indian policy believed that it offered a successful model for the nation’s other...

The increased emphasis on professionalization and expertise by the Office of Indian Affairs in the early twentieth century created new expectations for employee qualifications. Administrators’ definition of what prepared someone to be a good Indian Service employee had changed. The new Progressive faith in training, expertise, and education clashed with the values of loyalty, mission, and self-sacrifice upon which the Indian Service had been built. This also reflected the shift between the personalized approach of the Gilded Age and the professionalized ethic of the Progressive Era. The split often occurred along generational lines and affected older employees, who were viewed...