President Ulysses S. Grant sympathized with the plight of Native Americans and believed that the original occupants of the land were worthy of study. Grant's Inauguration Address set the tone for the Grant administration Native American Peace policy. The Board of Indian Commissioners was created to make reforms in Native policy and to ensure Native tribes received federal help. Grant lobbied the United States Congress to ensure that Native peoples would receive adequate funding. The hallmark of Grant's Peace policy was the incorporation of religious groups that served on Native agencies, which were dispersed throughout the United States.
Grant was the first President of the United States to appoint a Native American, Ely S. Parker, as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. After the Piegan massacre, in 1870, military officers were barred from holding elected or appointed offices. During Grant's first term, American Indian Wars decreased. By the end of his second term, his Peace policy fell apart. Settlers demanded to invade Native land to get access to gold in the Black Hills. The Modoc War (1872–1873) and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), were detrimental to Grant's goal of enforced Native assimilation to European American culture and society.
Historians admire Grant's sincere efforts to improve Native relations in the United States but remain critical of the destruction of buffalo herds, which served as a tribal food supply. Native American culture was destroyed in order to engineer the cultural assimilation of Native Americans into citizenship, and European American culture and government. Detrimental to his Peace policy was religious agency infighting in addition to Parker's resignation in 1871. Grant's intentions of peacefully "civilizing" Natives were often in conflict with the nation's westward settlement, the pursuit of gold, the Long Depression (1873-1896), financial corruption, racism, and ranchers. The driving force behind the Peace policy and Native land displacement, was the American ideal of Manifest Destiny. The primary goal of Grant's Indian policy was to have Native Americans assimilated into white culture, education, language, religion, and citizenship, that was designed to break Indian reliance on their own tribal, nomadic, hunting, and religious lifestyles. Some Grant biographers argue that Grant’s Indian policies were well-intentioned, while others argue his assimilationist policies were rooted in destroying Native American culture in the fulfilment of Manifest Destiny.
Grant's early contact with Native Americans (1850s)
During his 1850s military service in the Pacific Northwest, Grant served in the Fourth Infantry stationed at Columbia Barracks, afterwards renamed Fort Vancouver (July, 1853), in the Oregon Territory. Grant told his wife Julia, who feared violence from the Native Americans, that they were a "harmless" people. Sympathetic with the plight of Native Americans, Grant believed they would remain peaceful had they not been "put upon" by whites. In this way Grant sympathized with the Native groups, which were being devastated by small pox spread by white settlers.
First term (1869–1873)
President Grant declared in his March 4, 1869, Inaugural Address:
Grant believed that the Native practice of free roam hunting and gathering was over. During Grant's presidency the "civilization" of Indians was a controversial issue. Grant was the first President to advocate the cause of Native Americans in an Inaugural Address. Grant was well aware that Americans were generally hostile to Native peoples.
Grant's promise to reform the nation's Native American policy surprised the nation. Three weeks into his administration, Grant met with religious leaders and philanthropists to discuss his new program. Grant said he desired to create a "humane and Christianizing policy towards the Indians." The New York Herald said that Grant planned "to make a radical change in the Indian policy of the government." Wendell Phillips, a civil rights advocate, thanked Grant for launching a new Native policy.
The Leavenworth Bulletin, hostile to Grant's Peace initiative, said: "If more men are to be scalped and their hearts boiled, we hope to God that it may be some of our Quaker Indian Agents." Unlike many of his military subordinates, Grant blamed frontier Native violence on the white settlement, and supported a Peace Commission rather than wage a "campaign against Indians."
Soon after Grant took office, he met with tribal chiefs of the Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Chickasaw nations who expressed interest to teach "wild" Natives outside their own settled districts farming skills. Grant told the Native chiefs that American settlement would lead to inevitable conflict, but that the "march to civilization" would lead to pacification.
At the core of the Peace Policy was to put the western reservations under the control of religious denominations. During his first term, the implementation of the policy involved the allotting of Indian reservations to religious organizations as exclusive religious domains. Of the 73 agencies assigned, the Methodists received fourteen; the Orthodox Friends ten; the Presbyterians nine; the Episcopalians eight; the Roman Catholics seven; the Hicksite Friends six; the Baptists five; the Dutch Reformed five; the Congregationalists three; Christians two; Unitarians two; American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions one; and Lutherans one. Infighting between competitive missionary groups over the distribution of agencies was detrimental to Grant's Peace Policy. The selection criteria were vague and some critics saw the Peace Policy as violating Native American freedom of religion.Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900 (2014) pp. 30–71.
Board of Indian Commissioners (1869) On April 10, 1869, Grant signed into law the Board of Indian Commissioners. There was resistance toward its passage because Congressional patronage power over appointments would be reduced. The act gave President Grant the power to create a board of Commissioners "eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy." Grant was determined to put in public service-minded men, not subject to being influenced by patronage, that had previously plagued the Indian Bureau. Grant secured $2,000,000 more in the annual appropriation to make sure that Board would be funded adequately and be successful. Grant invited Protestant religious groups that included Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Quakers to nominate agents to work with the Native tribes. To bypass legal concerns regarding the separation between church and state, Grant refused to ask his Attorney General Hoar for a legal opinion on the matter.
On May 27, 1869, representatives of religious denominations met with Grant and approved of his Board appointments, who were mandated by the law to inspect Indian Bureau records, to personally visit tribes, evaluate the treaty system, and to supervise Indian purchases.
On July 3, 1869, Grant authorized by executive order the Indian Board to "have full power to inspect in person or by a subcommittee, the various Indian Superintendencies, and Agencies in the Indian Country." The Grant Board was given extensive joint-power to supervise the Bureau of Indian Affairs and "civilize" Native Americans. No Natives were appointed to the committee, whose members were all white. The commission monitored purchases and began to inspect Native agencies. It attributed much of the Native wars to the encroachment of whites into Native lands. The board, however, approved of the destruction of Native culture to be replaced by European American culture. The Natives were to be instructed in Christianity, agriculture, representative government, and assimilated on reservations.
In December 1869, Grant gave his first annual message to Congress, and he mentioned findings and recommendations of the new Indian Commissioners board. Concerning Native wars, Grant said that he "did not hold, either legislation or the conduct of the whites who come most in contact with the Indian, blameless for these hostilities." Grant thought that the extinction of the Natives would be horrible. Grant said that a policy "which looks to the extinction of a race is too abhorant [sic] for a Nation to indulge in without entailing upon the wrath of all civilized Christendom." There was an edgy sense of optimism in Grant's outlook for Native Americans.
Appointment of Parker (1869)
On April 13, 1869, in a bold step, Grant appointed his aide General Ely S. Parker, Donehogawa, the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Parker was Grant's military secretary during the Civil War. Parker, who was a full Seneca Native, received racial prejudice opposition in the Senate to his nomination. However, Grant's Attorney General Hoar said Parker was legally able to hold office. Grant believed that the Native Americans, when educated, could work within white society in modern America, and Parker served as Grant's role model. The Senate confirmed Parker by a vote of 36 to 12. During Parker's tenure Native wars dropped by 43 from 101 in 1869 to 58 in 1870. Plains Indians found it difficult to believe a literate "red man" be appointed to "Little Father" that always had gone to a white man.Brown (1970), p. 179
The management of Native affairs was delegated by Grant to the Secretary of Interior Jacob D. Cox and Parker. Parker authorized the Indian Board Commissioners to meet with Native peoples and their agents during the summer and fall. The Bureau under Parker employed more than six hundred workers. A total of seventy agents were under the control of fifteen superintendents.
William Welsh, a prominent merchant, and former chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners launched a personal campaign against Commissioner of Indian Affairs Parker to remove him from office, possibly motivated by racial animus. Welsh was allowed by Congress to prosecute the Bureau in a Congressional investigation over alleged Bureau malfeasance. Although Parker was exonerated, legislation passed Congress that authorized the board to approve goods and services payments by vouchers from the Bureau. Parker refused to abide by the voucher legislation and resigned office in 1871. Parker viewed the new law made the office of Commissioner a "clerk" to the board. Grant replaced Parker with reformer Francis A. Walker.
Piegan massacre (1870) On January 23, 1870, the Grant administration's Peace Policy had a major setback when Major Edward M. Baker senselessly slaughtered 173 Piegan members, mostly women, and children. General Sheridan had ordered Baker to attack the Piegan warriors who raided European American settlements. In response, Baker attacked a Native village in Northern Montana on the Marias River. Gruesome details slowly emerged of the carnage: 30 Native warriors and 140 women and children were butchered outright. Philanthropist newspapers decried the violence. The New York Times said Baker's war was a "sickening slaughter," while the New York Tribune said the attack was a "national disgrace." Worse yet, the National Anti-Slavery Society blamed one of Grant's top generals, Sheridan, for starting the fight.
Additionally, public outcry increased when General Sheridan defended Baker's actions. In response, on July 15, 1870, Grant signed Congressional legislation that barred military officers from holding either elected or appointed office or suffer dismissal from the Army. In December 1870, Grant submitted to Congress the names of the new appointees, most of whom were confirmed by the Senate.Utley 1984a, pp. 127–133.Prucha 1984, pp. 501–503.
Appropriations Acts (1870, 1871)