One of the legal concepts that guided the European invasion of the Americas was the Discovery Doctrine which had been pronounced by Pope Nicholas V in1452. According to the Discovery Doctrine, Christian monarchs have the right, if not the obligation, to rule non-Christian nations. When the United States came into existence in the eighteenth century, it continued to follow this doctrine. As the United States expanded west in the nineteenth century, there was an assumption that, as a Christian nation, the United States had the right to rule the Indian nations within its territory and to bring them the gift of Christianity as a partial payment for their lands. Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States provided some Christian missionary groups with military, financial, and legal support.
In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant instituted a Peace Policy in which the administration of Indian reservations was to be awarded to Christian missionary groups. In his chapter in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, Vine Deloria points out:
“The two protections of the First Amendment were simply not a matter of concern when federal reservation policy was formulated.”
In their chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 11: Great Basin, anthropologists Richard Clemmer and Omer Stewart describe Grant’s policy:
“The purpose of the policy was to de-Indianize the Indians: to make them into rural farmers of Christian faith, literate in English (and preferably speaking no other language), ‘unfettered’ by ancient traditions and customs, and skilled in blue-collar professions that would turn Indian communities into approximations of rural American towns.”
One of the foundations of this policy was to have Christian missions in each community and to implement behavioral codes which would encourage acculturation.
With regard to denomination, the greatest number of Indians were given to the Methodists while the fewest were given to the Lutherans. The tribes were parceled out to different religious groups without any consideration to previous missionary activity on the reservation.
Briefly described below are a few of the events concerning American Indians and Christianity in 1874.
Military
In Oregon and Washington, General Oliver Otis Howard, a Presbyterian, was appointed as the head of the army’s Department of the Columbia. According to Kent Nerburn, in his book Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy:
“Howard understood his task to be the military arm of the Christian peace process to which his denomination had committed itself.”
General George Crook said of General Howard:
“He told me he thought the Creator had placed him on earth to be the Moses of the Negro. Having accomplished that mission, he felt satisfied that his next mission was with the Indian.”
Catholics
Catholic historian James White, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, reports:
“By the terms stated in Grant’s policy, namely that missions should be allocated among the missionaries already at work there, Catholic officials expected to receive thirty-eight missions; instead they were accorded only eight, all of them in either the Rio Grande valley or the Pacific Northwest.”
Subsequently, Catholic missionaries began to be ordered off certain reservations. According to James White:
“Under the terms of the Peace Policy, a single religious group had a franchise over the evangelizing efforts on each reservation.”
The Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions (BCIM) was created in 1874 to protect and advance the missionary work which was being threatened by President Grant’s Peace Policy in which Indian reservations were to be administered by various church groups, primarily Protestants. At this time, there was great discrimination against Catholics within the American government. The headquarters of the BCIM was in Washington, D.C.
In Idaho, the Catholics, under the leadership of the Jesuit priest Joseph M. Cataldo built a mission for the Nez Perce. While the mission was officially called St. Joseph’s Mission, it was generally referred to as the Slickpoo Mission in honor of the Nez Perce leader on whose land the church is built.
In Oklahoma, the Osages petitioned President Ulysses S. Grant asking that a Catholic priest be sent to live with them. They wrote:
“Give us our Catholic Priests for Missionaries, and our children will enter their schools; our young men, who were educated by them, and who still love them, will follow their advice, become industrious and avoid many evils; whereas the last four years of experience have proved that our present missionaries cannot command their respectful obedience.”
In an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, Ray Miles reports:
“Osage leaders were confident that the president could not ignore such an impassioned and just plea.”
When there was no response to their petition, the Osages sent a delegation to Washington, D.C. In Washington, they turned in another petition requesting Catholic missionaries and teachers to the Department of the Interior. The petition said in part:
“Your Government asked our people to embrace your religion and we have done so, and in so doing we have chosen the Catholic religion.”
Under President Grant’s Peace Policy, a permanent Jesuit presence was established among the Blackfoot in Montana. According to R. Pierce Beaver, in his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 4: History of Indian-White Relations:
“The missionaries aimed at making the Indians practicing Catholics and settled farmers. They attacked the traditional culture and religion in almost every particular.”
In Montana, the Catholic boarding school on the Flathead Reservation began receiving money from the federal government. The government provided money for lodging, food, and instruction.
In Oregon, Catholic nuns took charge of the reservation boarding school on the Grand Ronde Reservation.
Protestants
In Oklahoma, the Baptist Convention of Texas sent Creek missionary John McIntosh, the son of Chief Chilly McIntosh, to establish a mission among the Wichitas. He soon found that the culture of the Plains Indians was very different than that of the Creeks.
In Idaho, under pressure from the Presbyterian Indian agent, the council of Nez Perce treaty chiefs deposed Jacob, a non-Christian, as head chief. Lawyer, a Christian chief, unofficially assumed the position.
In Oklahoma, the Quapaws were placed under the jurisdiction of the Quakers. In response, Tallchief and his band left the reservation to live with the Osages who were Catholic.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: American Indians and the federal government 150 years ago, 1873
Indians 101: American Indians and religion 150 years ago, 1873
Indians 101: American Indian religions 150 years ago, 1870
Indians 201: The murder of Walla Walla chief Peopeo Moxmox
Indians 101: American Indians and the creation of Washington Territory in 1853
Indians 101: The 1855 Walla Walla treaty council
Indians 201: The removal of the Flathead Indians
Indians 201: The Hopi Indians and Mormon missionaries
