An Era of Great Loss: U.S. Government Anti-Indian Policymaking and Neglect (Part 1)

Part one of this series of historical articles will introduce readers to a few key events in Myaamia history from 1890 to 1940 in which the U.S. pushed our tribal government to the brink of non-existence. Understanding this period is essential because it eventually ended in reinvigorated tribal sovereignty, which has led us to where we are today. Future installments will expand on the importance of these events and people and the role that they have played in shaping our community.

The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma’s (MTO) post-removal era is a continuing story of resiliency and revitalization. The early chapters of this story are filled with solemn recollections of language and cultural loss and punctuated by U.S. governmental neglect. The period from around 1890 to 1940 lacks substantial tribal records and is characterized by increased cultural dormancy.

Beginning with the Dawes Act in 1887, the U.S. government continued its policies to disintegrate tribal unity. The Dawes Act focused on breaking up collective Tribal lands and encouraging Native Americans to take up American practices of agriculture and ownership of their newly assigned allotted lands.¹ It pushed for assimilation by attempting to destroy the social and cultural fabrics that held tribes together. These new policies followed an era where removal and treaties were the focus of the U.S. government, and the next phase of their forced acculturation plans revolved around the destruction of “Indian-ness” within Native Americans. This act was aimed solely at integrating Native Americans and destroying their communal structures however possible.

Map of Oklahoma Territory Before the Dawes Act (General Allotment Act), Oklahoma 1885. National Archives and Records Administration. Records of the General Land Office, Record Group 49

The decades following the Dawes Act changed everything for Myaamiaki in Indian Territory (Oklahoma gained statehood in 1907). Tribal leadership in the late 19th and early 20th century was not only tasked with combating the legal and governmental challenges from U.S. policymaking but also with keeping tribal sovereignty intact. Disregarding the needs expressed by tribal leadership along with the continued taking of children for forced assimilation in boarding schools, the U.S. government was attempting to neglect Myaamiaki into nonexistence. Due to BIA neglect, dissociation, and population decline within the tribe, Myaamia leadership had to maintain tribal structure and focus on survival. 

In the early 20th century, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma consisted of under two hundred citizens.² Many of our citizens intermarried with people from neighboring tribes and had experienced the brutality of boarding schools firsthand, thus resulting in stunted growth of the tribal population.³ Census records of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma from the late 19th century until the 1930s show very little population growth and demonstrate the effects of assimilation policies and emigration (out of state) of many Myaamiaki from the core community. This stagnancy in population growth is due to many factors, some of which are also modern causes of emigration, such as perceived economic opportunity. Many removed tribes began to move towards the path of termination through language and cultural practices and increased assimilation of economic and social norms. This also meant decreased interaction with the U.S. government. Assimilation decreased tribal populations and caused a massive loss of cultural knowledge and social practices.⁴ Myaamiaki faced a reality where their interactions with government officials became increasingly rare due to the threat the U.S. government posed to their inherent sovereign rights.

Census Index, Western Miami, 1901-1920 (Page 5).
https://kaakisitoonkia.org/digital-heritage/census-index-western-miami-1901-1920-page-5

Myaamia leadership began to reduce contact with U.S. government officials as fading government support and boarding schools continued to take a toll on the community.  Beginning during the leadership of Chief Thomas F. Richardville (1891-1910), tribal citizens communicated multiple times their desire to reduce or potentially eliminate their relationship with the U.S. government.⁵ Seeing the slow destruction done to their community and having children regularly removed to boarding schools, leadership seemed to have predicted that the only way to keep our community intact was to reduce reliance and the overall relationship with the U.S. government. The Miami Tribe became ever more distant from the BIA during the term of Chief Richardville and the first half of Chief Harley Palmer’s term (1910-1939). Records of Myaamia contact with the U.S. government decreased significantly from 1910 to 1934. However, during this period, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma was an operating tribal government and functioned as a sovereign Nation, as it always has. In part due to the loss of an entire book of Tribal Council records, we currently lack sufficient documentation to detail all the decisions and actions taken by tribal leadership and citizens during that period.⁶

Image: John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, with two unidentified Native American men, ca.1935. (National Archives Identifier 519179)

In 1933, John Collier, an American social reformer and advocate for the protection and advancement of Native American tribes, was appointed as the Commissioner for the Bureau of Indian Affairs by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Collier’s appointment signified a significant shift in the U.S. government’s approach to Native American policies and a changing ideological view within the government. Collier, who served from 1933 until 1945, was a crucial influence in reinstating tribal reservations, widening economic opportunities available to Native Americans, closing boarding schools, and the emphasizing of self-determination of Native Americans by introducing the Indian Reorganization Act (Wheeler-Howard Act) in 1934.⁷

A brief but critical moment in MTO history is the meeting between John Collier and the Miami Tribe in 1934. At this point, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma had been operating without much interaction with the BIA and with little federal financial support. Chief Harley Palmer and less than 200 tribal citizens living in Ottawa County kept the tribe together during this period. After many decades of neglect from the BIA, the Miami Tribe, although still recognized as a nation with a functioning government, was widely referred to as “extinct” by government officials.⁸ When Collier met with Myaamiaki in 1934, he was meeting people who, for decades, had been treated as wards of the U.S. government, experienced the destruction of their families due to boarding schools, and had been neglected into perceived non-existence by the BIA.⁹ Collier meeting Myaamiaki was the beginning of the end of a period of darkness for us. As part of a new age of progressive government officials, Collier’s mission was to change the course of U.S.-Native American Tribe relations. He wanted to reverse the fortunes of tribes by changing from their previously subservient and government-reliant roles within the U.S. social structure to roles of self-governance and increased sovereignty.

Following the impact of Collier and the Indian New Deal, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and many other Native American tribes were supported by the U.S. government in their efforts to rebuild. In future articles, we will focus on the impacts of the Dawes and Wheeler-Howard Acts, John Collier’s interaction with Myaamiaki, what we can learn from his records, and the men who led our tribe during this era of difficulty for our people.

For more information regarding the era of boarding schools and the impact of these “institutions of genocide,” click here to read Cam Shriver’s piece detailing Myaamia history with boarding schools.

1. Tim Alan Garrison. The Legal Ideology of Removal: The Southern Judiciary and The Sovereignty of Native American Nations. Page 242. ↩︎
2. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs 1915-1917.
   Census Index, Western Miami, 1901-1920, kaakisitoonkia.org. 155 citizens in 1914 BC Report to Quapaw Agency ↩︎
3. Ned Blackhawk. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Page 353. “The goal, as Pratt famously quipped, was to “kill the Indian, and save the man.” as he also suggested, “all the Indian there is in there is in the race should be dead.” His perspective was echoed by Dawes, reservation agents, and social reformers, many of whom advocated for humane forms of cultural erasure.” ↩︎
4. Tribal wardship under the BIA destroyed the independence of many nations and created a system of reliance and eventual assimilation of Native Americans. The end goal of U.S. policy making. ↩︎
5. Excerpt, National Council Books, 1902. Petition of the Business Committee opposing the admission of the Oklahoma Territory as a state of the union. The nation expresses interest in final settlements with the U.S. government and to become citizens with full rights. This petition was signed by a small contingent of tribal citizens, some of which were tribal leaders. This was never acted upon by the BIA and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma continued to suffer from continued negligence of government officials. ↩︎
6. As was confirmed by Chief Palmer in his meeting with BIA Commissioner Collier in 1934 and later in personal correspondence records, census data and council books containing records of tribal business were lost in a fire, rumored to have been at a bank where the records were held in a safety deposit box. ↩︎
7. David H. DeJong. Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786-2021. pages 273-282 ↩︎
8. Letter to Haskell Indian School from Chief Clerk Lamotte at Quapaw Agency. In 1915, all Miami, although enrolled under this agency, were dropped from Quapaw Agency census records by choice of the agency. RG 75, Miami Indian Agency, Box 4, September 1928. Folder from September 1 to September 30, 1928. ↩︎
9. October 1934, recorded field meeting between Commissioner Collier and Miami people, led by Harley Palmer. Collier refers to the Miami and Peoria as “forgotten tribes” and acknowledges that once the U.S. government lifted restrictions on allotments, that they also gave up “responsibility for your (Miami and Peoria) welfare.” ↩︎