TABLE OF CONTENTS

OVERVIEW
BACKGROUND
DISEASE
INDIAN REMOVAL
ASSIMILATION
THE NEW DEAL
TERMINATION
SELF DETERMINATION
VANISHING RACE

OVERVIEW

In the early summer of 1804 the Lewis and Clark expedition departed St. Louis in order to chart new territories. The expedition leaving that day was called the "Corp Of Discovery." Of course the exploits of the Corp of Discovery are well documented and the courage and bravery of the explorers are widely acclaimed, and deservedly so. But there is another story to be told; for, in fact, the Corp Of Discovery "discovered" nothing. Every inch of the territory explored by the expedition had already been discovered. For untold centuries Native Americans had inhabited the land the Corp was "discovering." There was probably no one person who knew all of the land between St. Louis and the Pacific, but collectively the "First Americans" knew of it, and without their aid Lewis and Clark could never have accomplished what they did. All who left a record of that historic journey acknowledged their debt to the various tribes who provided directions, guidance, horses, and supplies.

Records indicate the expedition encountered more than fifty different tribes during their two-year trek. A number of tribes were encountering Europeans for the first time; while others had already had extensive contact with them. Some tribes welcomed the expedition; while others were less than friendly, and in one instance, blood was shed. The Corp of Discovery was the first official delegation representing the new U S Government to "treat" with tribes west of the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark were hoping to open up new lands for 'white" settlement. Their strategy was to give the same message to each tribe and to get each to make peace with their neighbors and with settlers who would be entering this new land. One reason for the differing reaction of the tribes was that this "one message fits all" strategy failed to take into account a set of relations among the tribes far more complex than they could possibly have imagined. Nor could the Native Americans have possibly comprehended the enormous impact on their future that contact with the Corp of Discovery portended.

Ken Burns's documentary on the exploits of the Corp Of Discovery shown on PBS in October of 1998 has rekindled interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition. As a follow-up PBS has devoted a portion of their web site (http://www.pbs.org) to the subject. A portion of that project is devoted to a brief description of those peoples with whom the expedition came into significant contact. That documentation provides a brief snapshot of political. social, and economic conditions existing at that time. But what has happened since? Did friendliness or hostility toward the expedition make a difference in the eventual fate of the peoples? Was the "one tribe fits all" strategy successful? How have the tribes adjusted to the new world forced upon them be the newcomers? How are the surviving tribes making their way near the close of the 20'th century? The purpose of this site is to shed some light on these questions. Our effort will take up where the PBS site leaves off. We shall consider "milestones" in the lives of various peoples who encountered the Corp of Discovery. For reasons explained below we shall emphasize water rights and fishing rights in our analysis. Come join this "Corp of Discovery" as we explore THE LEGACY OF LEWIS AND CLARK.

BACKGROUND

Contrary to popular belief, the treaty conveying the Louisiana Territory to the United States did not involve an outright transfer of title to the land; rather, it conveyed the right to negotiate with the Indians for said title. Thus one purpose of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was to lay down the groundwork by which vast tracts of land would eventually be opened to "white" settlement. Each tribe Lewis and Clark encountered was given essentially the same message. They were told that they had a new father who lived far to the east; that their new father wanted them to live in peace with each other and with settlers who might enter their territory. Their new father would offer trade and protection should they agree to his terms, but dire consequences should they refuse to do so. "White" history books say little about whether or not the tribes were suitably impressed by what Lewis and Clark had to say, but it is safe to say that in general the message has a significantly lesser impact than was intended.

Many historians will argue that for the first few decades after Lewis and Clark the changes in the lives of Native Americans wrought by "white" incursion were "gradual" and "subtle." Increased dependence on trade stuffs provided by Europeans, particularly guns, powder, livestock and cookware would influence internal tribal matters and inter-tribal relations; but aside from contact with trappers, traders, and occasionally soldiers, Native Americans were generally free to live their lives free of "white" domination. There is at least one major exception to this notion of gradual change, however, and that is the utterly devastating impact of European disease, namely small pox and measles.

DISEASE

Public health officials write of the devastating impact of the "Swine Flu Pandemic of 1918" which took the lives of a million people. History books are ripe with accounts of the almost unimaginable social and economic upheaval spawned by "the Black Death" which reduced the population of Europe by one-third. But the havoc wreaked on Native Americans whose immune systems could not protect them from "white diseases" was more devastating yet. For example, a small pox epidemic sometime during the 1780's killed eight of every ten Arikara, and another outbreak in 1837 would do even more damage. When Lewis and Clark sailed up the Columbia in 1805, more than fifty-thousand people lived along the banks of the river. When the Washington Territory was created in 1851, only about ten-thousand remained. Not all tribes were effected equally. Agricultural tribes were more vulnerable than the hunter tribes who tended to live in smaller bands. "Chiefs" and their families tended to fare better than their followers, and male children seemed more vulnerable than their sisters. But no tribe and no family would live unscathed.

Raw numbers fail to tell the complete story. There is a personal side to these tragedies. Recently the Disney Corporation released an animated story of the Powhatan Princess, Pocahontas, the story of a brave and beautiful princess who saved the life of John Smith and later adopted English ways. Of course this happy story doesn't say that less than three years after she married an Englishman this brave and beautiful princess would die a miserable death far away from her homeland. Lewis and Clark encouraged the Arikara to send a chief to converse with the "Great White Father" in Washington D.C. An honored Chief, Ankedoucharo, was chosen to serve as emissary from the Arikara. Ankedoucharo died while on this mission. Is there any reason why the Arikara, described by Lewis and Clark as "most friendly & happy to see us," became a "dangerous" and "unpredictable" tribe? And what school child has not heard of the brave Sakakawea, the Indian woman whose strength and fortitude saved the Lewis and Clark expedition from eminent disaster on more than one occasion? Few know that before she saw her twenty-fifth summer she would lie dying of a "white man's" fever in a "white man's' fort. (Some historians do not agree with this account, arguing that she returned to her Shoshone home land and lived till 1884.)

Obviously Lewis and Clark did not "cause" this devastation. The ravages of new diseases would appear well in advance of the Corp of Discovery and would remain long after the Corp returned to St. Louis. The point here is that attempts of survivors to cope with the death and destruction wrought be these diseases are central to an understanding of the legacy of Lewis and Clark.

INDIAN REMOVAL

White settlement began in earnest in the mid 1840's. Changes confronting Native Americans would be profound and rapid. Whites used the cry of "manifest destiny" to justify what they did. "Manifest destiny" meant that God required good Americans to spread their civilization "from sea to shining sea." Indians, and the "Indian way of life," stood in the way of God's commanded "progress"; therefore, they (the Indians) must be confined to areas away from white settlements. This task would be accomplished by treaty, if possible, and by force, if necessary. Official government policy was to confine each tribe or band to tracts of land with definite and fixed boundaries; though a number of the original treaties did not provide for fixed boundaries. Such a policy would open land to White settlement and make it easier to exercise military control over the Indians. While no tribal story is exactly the same, a general pattern of events would be repeated time and time again. One by one the tribes and bands (smaller groups of related peoples), would be "settled," some with benefit and promises of a ratified treaty, others, notably in California, without. All too often, Indians would find their new homes to consist of lesser desirable land. But then gold, or some other mineral, would be discovered on Indian land. Settlers would be lured to the west with promises of farmable land, only to find the land they desired was inhabited by Indians. The net result was that many reservations would be overrun by white settlers and the U S military would do little or nothing to protect tribal lands. In fact, to many "First Americans it appeared the military was doing just the opposite. "Red Cloud's War" (1867), involved an attempt of the Oglala Sioux to protect their land from White incursion, as settlers traveled the Bozeman Trail, often under military escort. And George Armstrong Custer's 1874 foray into the sacred Black Hills foreshadowed a massive trespass of White gold seekers onto Sioux lands (in clear violation of the Second Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Sioux attempts to protect their land resulted in the Great Sioux War of 1876 and 1877.Promises would be broken. Game would be destroyed; (the buffalo, so essential to the "way of life" of the plains Indians would be gone by 1890.) Fishing tribes would be forced to compete on an unlevel playing field with "whites" for the bounty of the rivers" Tribes would be forced to "cede" millions of acres of "reservation" land to the government, only to see it opened up to white settlement. Today, there is not a single reservation west of the Mississippi that hasn't been significantly reduced in size since the original treaties were struck.

INDIAN ASSIMILATION (1887 -1934)

By the early 1870's First Americans were well aware of the power of European goods, germs, and guns. Soon they would become even more aware of the power of the pen. The U S Government now changed its policy toward the Indians. Relations would be conducted by Congressional Act or by Executive Order, rather than by treaty. All Indians would be dealt with as individual wards of the state. It would be some time before Indians were recognized as "persons" under the law. Perhaps it was easier on the conscience to alter executive orders than to break treaties. Some Easterners were beginning to question the propriety of U S policy toward Indians, especially after Chief Joseph's eloquent representation of his people's cause. Talk of a "vanishing race" became fashionable. Indeed the Census of 1890 reported that the Indian population had dwindled to about 250,000. While these figures probably significantly underestimated the actual Indian population, there could be no doubt that guns and germs had taken a significant toll. Assimilation was seen as the only to prevent the extinction of the First Americans. Thus the age of "Kill the Indian and save the man!" came to be.

The linchpin of this policy was The Dawes (or Severalty) Act of 1887. This legislation mandated the division of reservation land into "allotments" owned by individuals and families. The actual allotment process varied somewhat from reservation to reservation, but the general rule of thumb was that families would be allotted 160 acre plots. Authorities were required to provide each family with land suitable for agriculture. This requirement was often ignored, however. Any "surplus" lands (and somehow there always seemed to be plenty of good surplus land,) would be opened to White settlement. Doubtless there were some with honorable intentions who thought they were "saving the Indian" with this policy; but all too often allotment served simply as a tool by which huge tracts of land could be wrested from Indians with little or no compensation.

Here, a brief case study may shed some light on what happened to the Indians. The Nez Perce, so admired by Lewis and Clark, hunted, fished, and raised their livestock in eastern Oregon, western Idaho and parts of Washington and Montana. In 1855 fifty six Nez Perce leaders entered into a treaty with Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens. The terms of this treaty allocated ten thousand square miles of land to the Nez Perce. The Government promised to protect Nez Perce lands from trespass by Whites or other Indians. Unfortunately for the Nez Perce gold was discovered in the area. In 1863 a new treaty was signed with a number of the "mountain bands" limiting the reservation to but a thousand square miles. Many bands, especially those whose lands were forfeit, refused to sign the treaty, but were forced onto the reservation anyway. Then came allotment. Though the government administrator was an honest person and did her best to see the Indians dealt with fairly, allotment proved a disaster to the Nez Perce.
The Indians were never allowed sufficient money to make improvements on their land. Furthermore, because the allotments were of a fixed size, when they were passed to the next generation the individual plots were smaller. This process continued until many plots became economically unviable. Even if individual Indians had the money to buy additional land, they had to obtain approval from Indian Agency authorities to do so, something which almost never happened. By 1900 Whites owned 90% of the cattle on the reservation. Today only 13% of reservation land, less than 100,000 acres is owned by the 4000+ Nez Perce on the reservation, either individually or communally.

Of course allotment was not the only assault on "tribalism." Missionaries attempted to "Christianize the Indian" with a new fervor. Some individuals and tribes accepted Christianity for the most part. Others rejected entirely "the road to salvation." Still others took parts of Christian teachings and adapted then to fit the teachings of their traditional religion. One example of the latter strategy is the formation of the Native American Church, sometimes referred to (rightly or wrongly) as the "Peyote Religion." Reformers also sought to "Americanize" Indian children through massive doses of White education. Forced relocation of children to distant boarding schools became commonplace in Indian Country. For example, barely two years after the defeat of the Lakota, eighty Lakota children were among the first to be transported to the newly created Carlyle Indian School in Pennsylvania. As was the case with other assimilation strategies, the extensive use of boarding schools resulted in some unanticipated consequences. At any rate, in 1924 the government considered Indians sufficiently assimilated to grant U S citizenship to all Indians. Not all of the new citizens greeted this act with happiness.

THE NEW DEAL

In 1928 the Meriam Report was published. This document, in general a scathing indictment of U S policies toward Native Americans and an inventory of the devastating consequences of these policies, served as a catalyst for a reversal in U S policy. Exhorted to do so by John Collier, controversial head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The goal of the IRA was to promote economic self sufficiency among the Indian Peoples. The Dawes Act was terminated. Terms and prodecures were enacted by which Tribes could receive formal recognition as governmental entities. Tribes, with various strings attached, were allowed to develop instruments of self governance, thus creating tribal governments with limited authority over reservation life. Promises were made to help tribes purchase and develop communal lands and engage in economic development projects. The IRA engendered a mixed reaction among the tribes. In all. some 180 tribes adopted constitutions and began functioning under the provisions of the IRA. Others, notably the Lakota, rejected the Act, considering it to be yet another set of empty promises designed to assert White authority over sovereign peoples. Today 500 plus tribes have been formally recognized.

This period also brought new challenges for First Americans. One such challenge was the "two edged sword" of water. On one hand, tribes in the arid west didn't have enough of it to develop a viable agricultural economy; on the other hand, many tribes saw much of their remaining land inundated by large resovoires (created mainly for the benefit of Whites) as the federal Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corp of Engineers engaged in a pell mell race to dam the West. Fishing tribes in the Northwest would see salmon and steelhead runs drastically reduced and their traditional fishing places flooded by dams built to produce cheap hydroelectric power. (See the sections below for a more general account of fishing and water rights.) The extraction of energy resources from reservation lands would also cause economic, social, health, and environmental problems for First Americans.

TERMINATION AND THE "RED AWAKENING"

The post World War II ere witnessed yet another change in U S policy toward First Americans. The 1950's would be labeled "The Era Of Termination." A more conservative Congress sought to end many of the social welfare policies of the New Deal. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was directed to list those tribes who were "competent" to manage their own affairs and to cease all federal aid to these tribes. In the mid 1950's the BIA also instituted a relocation policy. Indians were encouraged to leave the reservations and make their way in America's cities. By the mid 1970's more Indians lived in urban areas than on reservations. But for many relocation meand a life of poverty, degredation, and lonliness. A third of all who were relocated would eventually return to the reservations.

But once again the "vanishing race" didn't vanish. In many ways the relocation and education of Indians had just the opposite effect. A cadre of professional Indians began to use the spoken and written word, and the courts to advocate for Native American rights. Many of those who stayed in urban areas were the source for a "pan Indian" movement that gained momentum in the 1960. New organizations were formed and new tactics were used to fight for Indian rights. These efforts have met with some, though by no means complete, success.

SELF DETERMINATION AND RECONCILIATION

By the early 1970's the policy of termination had been terminated. President Johnson had begun the process in 1968. That year also witnessed the passage of The Indian Bill of Rights, legislation which extended most of the Bill of Rights to "reservation" Indians. Even this seemingly benevolant legislation was not met with universal acclain, however, as many Indians believed this legislation to be yet another attack on tribal sovereignty. What replaced this policy was a renewed effort to assist tribes in becomming economically self sufficient and a limited redress of past grievances. Tribes were beginning to emerge as "limited sovereigns" as opposed to "wards of the government." A number of tribes, particularly the Shoshone and Arapaho living on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming were able to gain real water rights, though not complete control over what to do with their water. The Boldt decision of 1974 and the follow up decision of the U S Supreme Court (Washington V United States) afforded Columbia River Indians the right to take up to half of the fish from that river basin. The Indian Child Welfare Act (1974), and the Indian Grave Protection Act (1990) afforded Tribes and families more control over the lives of their children and the remains of their dead. The Religioes Freedom Act (1978) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) gave Indians some protection from state interference with religious practices. The latter act was overturned by the Unites States Supreme Court in 1997 however. The Indian Gaming Act of 1988 has helped funnel significant revenue into the coffers of a number of tribes. In 1994 revenue from Indian gaming exceeded $2.5 billion. This infusion of revenue has provided a new source of employment for Indians, allowed tribes to provide needed services on reservations, and provides funds by which they can more fully participate in the expensive litigation process. Congress and the Courts now openly acknowledge injustices perpetrated on the First Americans. For example, the U S Supreme Court has issued a scathing indictment of the governments theft of the Black Hills from the Lakota and upheld an award of $112 million in compensation. The Lakota, however, have said the same thing they did in 1887; their Paha Sapa the "heart of everything that is," theirs by right, is not for sale at any price. The trust fund now exceeds $400 million, and still the Lakota have not accepted compensation. The Nez Perce have gained access to some "lost land" in Eastern Oregon where they are major players in a wolf restoration program.

There still remain many dark clouds, however. Not all tribes have prospered. For example the average income of Shoshone and Arapaho on the Wind River Reservation is less than $5,000. Federal funding cutbacks during the Reagan years posed severe economic hardship on many tribes. Alcoholism, violence, and extreme poverty are all too common among the First Americans. The suicide rate among Native Americans is higher than that of any other defined ethnic group in the U S. Native Americans are twice as likely to be victimized by violent crime than any other group. Infant mortality rates are also higher among Native Americans than any other group, and life expectancy is shorter. Salmon and Steelhead runs in the Northwest are endangered. Though tribes, either through litigation or negociation, have gained title to millions of acre feet of water, many tribes lack the financial resources to use their water. Nor have they won complete control over uses to which this "wet water" can be put. Resource extraction and the subsequent environmental degredation of tribal land are significant problems. Tribal councils throughout the west are faced with the terrible choice of prodiding economic development, or sometimes mere survival, or destroying the environment. Even the cash cow of gaming is not an unlimited resource. Gaming tribes are fighting for control of their facilities with states, and other large gaming establishments compete for the gamblers dollars. Most forcasters believe that gaming provides a limited window of opportunity for Indian economic development. Though steps have been taken down the road of social justice, that road is long and the destination is not yet in sight.

ANALYSIS: THE VANIHSING RACE, "WON'T"

Decades ago Johnnie Cash produced an album "Bitter Tears,"songs depicting the plight of First Americans and the wrongs done them by White society. Among these moving songs is the haunting melody "Vanishing Race." Though exactly who is an Indian is still a difficult question to answer, the 1990 census reported a Native American population in excess of 2 million. In spite of White germs, guns, and legal manuvering, the lament has not come to pass, the "vanishing race" refuses to vanish. Many changes have occurred in the lives of the First Americans since the days of the Corp of Discovery. More changes will occur as we head into the 21'st century. If the tribes can obtain a degree of ecomonic self sufficiency, and some tribes seem to have done just that, relations between them and the U S and state governments will occur on a more level playing field.

But what of our original querry? Did the tribes who were friendly to Lewis and Clark fare better in the long run than those who were not? The answer must be a qualified "No!" Had they but been able to predict the future the "friendly" might have noticed that the "one approach fits all tribes" policy would be generally characteristic of U S policies toward them. For a time the Shoshone, Nez Perce, and Fort Berthold Tribes appeared to fare much better than the others, but first the Nez Perce, then the Fort Berthold Tribes, and even the Shoshone would suffer the stings of injustice. Still, the common treatment of the tribes may be turned to benefit First Americans. As Indians have come to understand their common plght, new alliances have been forged. For example, twenty eight of the twenty nine tribes living in the Missouri River Basis have formed an alliance to procure and protect their water rights. Also,Columbia River Tribes have joined together in an attempt to thwart the decimation of the salmon ansd steelhead proplation in the river basin. The pan Indian movement of the 1960's is alive and well. Just as many Peoples have adjusted to life in a "white man's world," so too will the Tribes join together when necessary but maintain their unique identity. Perhaps something good will come from contact with the Corp of Discovery after all.