Abstract
This article proposes to replace the thought of a major American historical actor in Native policies, Henry Laurens Dawes, in its proper conceptual framework. Individualism and liberal axiology are inherent to the American experience. Territorial expansion is also foundational. Its justification is founded in great part in John Locke’s philosophy. The assimilation of the Native American is central to such a process, since through it is created the possibility of opening the territory to colonization. Previous studies have been mostly centered on Dawes’ concrete policies without digging up their philosophical roots, albeit in a very superficial way. Where in Lockean theory are Dawes’ ideas on Native assimilation and allotment situated? We think that Dawes’ approach to “civilizing” the Indian is founded both on John Locke’s theory of property and on his educational philosophy. Scholarship needs such an analysis to truly understand the conceptual roots of his ideas and policies towards Native Americans—tribes and individuals. We think that for Dawes, Locke’s second of three economic stages, centered on basic subsistence agriculture, is an epistemological process and a pedagogical regime permitting the Indian to “westernize” in values and ways of life, being thus able to fully integrate American society.
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Notes
- 1.
Louis Balthasar, “Les fondements de la culture politique,” in Edmond Orban and Michel Fortmann (eds.), Le système politique américain (Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2001), pp. 13–16 and 23.
- 2.
Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism. A Double-Edged Sword (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), pp. 19–64; Katherine Fierlbeck, Political Thought in Canada: an intellectual history (Peterborough, Broadview Press, 2006), pp. 57–58.
- 3.
Edward M. Morgan, “Self-Government and the Constitution: a Comparative Look at Native Canadians and American Indians,” American Indian Law Review, vol. 12 (1984), p. 41, note 11.
- 4.
Joseph S. Lucas, “Civilization or Extinction: Citizens and Indians in the Early United States,” The Journal of the Historical Society, vol. 6, no. 2 (June 2006), p. 235.
- 5.
Sam W. Haynes, “Breaking the “Iron Hoop”: U.S. Fears of British Encirclement and the War against Mexico,” in Pierre Lagayette (ed.), La «Destinée Manifeste» des États-Unis au XIXe siècle. Aspects politiques et idéologiques (Paris, Ellipses, 1999), p. 20; Annick Foucrier, “Le contexte politique et idéologique de l’annexion du Texas et de la Californie,” in ibid., pp. 37–46.
- 6.
Philippe Jacquin, “La conceptualisation de l’Indien, les origines scientifiques et culturelles de l’idéologie expansionniste au XIXe siècle,” in ibid., pp. 124–125. Scott Richard Lyons, “The Science of the Indian”, in Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors (eds.), A New Literary History of America (Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 317–321.
- 7.
Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Albert E. Bergh (ed.), Washington, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1907), vol. 10, pp. 362–364.
- 8.
Jacquin, “La conceptualisation de l’Indien,” pp. 126–128; Salwa Nacouzi, “La «destinée manifeste» chez John Fiske,” in Lagayette (ed.), La «Destinée Manifeste» , pp. 183–189.
- 9.
More biographical details will follow in the next section.
- 10.
D. S. Otis, The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), p. 19 for the quotation, and generally for the preceding content.
- 11.
Speech of Dawes at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1890, quoted in Otis, The Dawes Act, p. 109.
- 12.
We will cite only a few important works for the Native theme, since the literature is quite voluminous. For Dawes himself: Fred Nicklason, The Early Career of Henry L. Dawes, 1816–1871 (Ann Arbor, University Microfilms, Inc., 1967); idem, “The Shaping of Values in Nineteenth Century Massachusetts: The Case of Henry L. Dawes,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts, vol. 11, no. 1 (January 1983), pp. 35–44; Steven J. Arcanti, “To Secure the Party: Henry L. Dawes and the Politics of Reconstruction,” Historical Journal of Western Massachusetts, vol. 5, no. 2 (Spring 1977), pp. 33–45. A very brief apercu of titles for the Native theme: Howard W. Paulson, “The Allotment of Land in Severalty to the Dakota Indians before the Dawes Act,” South Dakota History, vol. 1, no. 2 (Spring 1971), pp. 132–154; Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989); Mark J. Swetland, “‘Make-Believe White-Man’ and the Omaha Land Allotments of 1871–1900,” Great Plains Research, vol. 4, no. 2 (August 1994), pp. 201–236; Kent Carter, The Dawes Commission and the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893–1914 (Orem, Ancestry.com Incorporated, 1999); Richard E. Hart, “The Dawes Act and the Permanency of Executive Order Reservations,” Western Legal History, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 1999), pp. 11–47; Emily Greenwald, Reconfiguring the Reservation. The Nez Percés, Jicarilla Apaches, and the Dawes Act (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2002); Andrew Denson, “A Few Unreasonable Proposals,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, vol. 84, no. 4 (Winter 2006/2007), pp. 426–443; Cathleen D. Cahill, Federal Fathers & Mothers. A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Rose Stremlau, Sustaining the Cherokee Family. Kinship and the Allotment of an Indigenous Nation (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Katherine Ellinghaus, Blood Will Tell. Native Americans and Assimilation Policy (Lincoln, The University of Nebraska Press, 2017). A recent study on Dawes of greater philosophical depth, albeit staying mostly at the “level” of Locke’s theory of property, would be the eight chapter of: David Bergeron, Philosophies, cultures politiques et représentations de l’Autochtone aux États-Unis et au Canada, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Saint-Denis, Edilivre, 2018), Tome II, pp. 83–131.
- 13.
Grande refers specifically to Locke, quoting short passages of the fifth chapter of the Second Treaty, titled “Of Property,” and paragraph 41 in its entirety, before quoting Dawes’ own words on the centrality of private property, competition and even selfishness to civilization—noting the Natives’ lack thereof. Sandy Grande, Red Pedagogy. Native American Social and Political Thought (Toronto, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), pp. 41–42.
- 14.
Senate Debate on Bill to Provide Lands in Severalty (1881), in Wilcombe E. Washburn (ed.), The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History (New York, Random House, 1973), vol. III, p. 1786.
- 15.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (Stilwell, Digireads.com Publishing, 2005), T. II, Sections 44, 123 and 173. *The treatises are abbreviated as T. I and T. II, and the Letter as LT.
- 16.
Ibid., T. II, Section 35.
- 17.
For these notions, see Horacio Spector, “Four Conceptions of Freedom,” Political Theory, vol. 38, no. 6 (2010), pp. 780–808; Stanley C. Brubaker, “Coming into One’s Own: John Locke’s Theory of Property, God and Politics,” The Review of Politics, vol. 74, no. 2 (2012), pp. 207–232.
- 18.
Both are pivotal years for allotment policy. First, the year of a report on a possible future bill of allotment: House Committee on Indian Affairs, “Minority Report on Land in Severalty Bill” (1880), in Francis Paul Prucha (ed.), Americanizing the American Indians. Writings by the “Friends of the Indians” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 122–129; then the year of the passage of the General Allotment Act (1887), the product of Dawes himself. It is the crux of his career. For the “Dawes Act,” consult Washburn (ed.), The American Indian, vol. III, pp. 2188–2193.
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Bergeron, D. (2020). Introduction. In: Philosophy and Allotment : John Locke's influence on Henry L. Dawes. SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38174-5_1
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