Books by Justin Gage
In the 1860s and 1870s, the United States government forced most western Native Americans to sett... more In the 1860s and 1870s, the United States government forced most western Native Americans to settle on reservations. These ever-shrinking pieces of land were meant to relocate, contain, and separate these Native peoples, isolating them from one another and from the white populations coursing through the plains. We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us tells the story of how Native Americans resisted this effort by building vast intertribal networks of communication, threaded together by letter writing and off-reservation visiting.
Faced with the consequences of U.S. colonialism—the constraints, population loss, and destitution—Native Americans, far from passively accepting their fate, mobilized to control their own sources of information, spread and reinforce ideas, and collectively discuss and mount resistance against onerous government policies. Justin Gage traces these efforts, drawing on extensive new evidence, including more than one hundred letters written by nineteenth-century Native Americans. His work shows how Lakotas, Cheyennes, Utes, Shoshones, Kiowas, and dozens of other western tribal nations shrewdly used the U.S. government’s repressive education system and mechanisms of American settler colonialism, notably the railroads and the Postal Service, to achieve their own ends. Thus Natives used literacy, a primary tool of assimilation for U.S. policymakers, to decolonize their lives much earlier than historians have noted.
Whereas previous histories have assumed that the Ghost Dance itself was responsible for the creation of brand-new networks among western tribes, this book suggests that the intertribal networks formed in the 1870s and 1880s actually facilitated the rapid dissemination of the Ghost Dance in 1889 and 1890. Documenting the evolution and operation of intertribal networking, Gage demonstrates its effectiveness—and recognizes for the first time how, through Native activism, long-distance, intercultural communication persisted in the colonized American West.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Dissertation by Justin Gage
During the 1880s, western Native Americans created networks of communication threaded together th... more During the 1880s, western Native Americans created networks of communication threaded together through postal correspondence and intertribal visitation among reservations. Through this network native groups cultivated intertribal relationships and exchanged ideas despite attempts by the United States government to separate, contain, and Americanize them. Frequent visits to other reservations, often over long distances, gave men and women a chance to share news and information, exchange religious and cultural traditions, and forge new intertribal bonds. Many Indians also used letter-writing to communicate with the world outside of their reserves in ways unanticipated by government policy makers. Thousands of Native Americans learned to read and write during the 1880s and then used this literacy, meant as a tool of assimilation, to strengthen their own cultures, preserve a measure of sovereignty, and express their thoughts outside of white control.
In 1889 and 1890 these intertribal connections facilitated the spread of the ghost dance, a Native American religious movement, among dozens of tribes scattered across 800,000 square miles. Visitations and correspondence brought news of the dance out of the Great Basin, through the Rocky Mountains, and into northern and southern plains reservations. Tribes sent investigators, often on railroads, to determine the truth, and some proponents of the movement wrote or traveled to spread the news. Others wrote simply to inform their friends or relatives of what they knew about it all. Government officials tried to slow the dissemination of the movement by tightening visitation, arresting those traveling without permission, and eventually by censoring the mail, but communications and the spread of the movement continued. Following the massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, communication among tribes continued, partly as a continuing effort to assess the ghost dance and partly to evaluate Indians' place in the new arrangement of power.
By examining in detail these emerging systems of communication and exchange, this dissertation reveals the beginnings of a Pan-Indian sense of common concerns as well as the shrewd use of both government programs, notably education, and the mechanisms of modernization, notably the railroads and postal system, to protect and preserve basic elements of traditional life.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Master's Thesis by Justin Gage
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Published Papers by Justin Gage
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Justin Gage
ON OCTOBER 20, 1928, AN ADVERTISEMENT in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat informed readers that Wa... more ON OCTOBER 20, 1928, AN ADVERTISEMENT in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat informed readers that Washington County, Arkansas's most prominent clergyman, Rev. H. K. Morehead, had failed to pay his poll tax, rendering him ineligible to vote in that year's election. The ad crowed, "After weeks of labor in an effort to persuade Southern Democrats to desert the party of their fathers and join hands with the most corrupt political machine the world has ever known, it develops that the Reverend Gentlemen . . . is unable to vote." Paid for by the Smith-Robinson Club of Washington County, the ad suggested, "A man unwilling to contribute ONE DOLLAR to the common school fund for a poll tax, has no right to advise Democrats how to vote."1 The advertisement clearly illustrates not only Democrats' fears that white southerners would shrug off their traditional allegiances in the 1928 presidential election but also the complex collision of church and state that occurred that year in Arkansas. Many Protestant leaders around the country voiced their disapproval of Democratic presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith because of his perceived hostility to prohibition and his Catholicism. But Reverend Morehead and other Arkansas ministers were immersed in another controversy mixing religion and politics. In that same election, the state's voters would determine the fate of Initiated Act No. 1, which would ban the teaching of evolution in tax-supported schools. Numerous ministers around the state had been campaigning to remove evolution from schools' curriculum since 1926. Religious elements in the presidential campaign compounded the controversy, creating complex fractures in longstanding party and religious allegiances. Washington County was one of many Arkansas counties where evolution and Al Smith were public, fiercely contested issues that brought the church into the political realm. Local Protestant leaders urged both the passage of Initiated Act No. 1 and the election of Smith's Republican opponent Herbert Hoover. They might appear to have made their case, since similar proportions of voters backed Hoover and voted to ban the teaching of evolution. Despite the county's longstanding loyalty to the Democratic party, the Republican presidential candidate received 56 percent of its votes, a twenty-point increase from the 1924 election. By contrast, Hoover topped the 1924 totals by just ten points statewide. Washington County, the home of the state's flagship university, passed the anti-evolution act with a 61 percent majority, close to the 63 percent majority statewide. But the seeming closeness of the Hoover and antievolution vote masked deep differences within the county. Only 30 percent of voters in the county seat of Fayetteville favored the act, making evident the conflict that emerged between church leaders and the university community. University president John C. Futrall and much of his faculty were among the state's most vocal opponents of the teaching ban. Other communities in the county showed considerable variation in their voting against the wet Catholic Smith and for the ban on the teaching of evolution, making clear that different sets of people were responsible for the Hoover and anti-evolution majorities. The county was not moving in lockstep with its ministers. Al Smith received only 41 percent of the popular vote in 1928 and lost the electoral vote, 444 to 87.2 Republicans carried four southern states-Texas, Virginia, Florida, and North Carolina-for the first time since Reconstruction, as well as Tennessee and Kentucky. Historians disagree on the reasons for Republican success, but most cite Smith's Catholicism, Democrats' more lenient prohibition platform, and the country's economic prosperity. Some also cite Smith's urban, immigrant roots and his connection with New York City's Tammany Hall machine. Most southern Democrats could have found several reasons not to vote for Smith, as many were dry Protestants who might be suspicious of Catholicism and urbanites. …
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Western Historical Quarterly
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books by Justin Gage
Faced with the consequences of U.S. colonialism—the constraints, population loss, and destitution—Native Americans, far from passively accepting their fate, mobilized to control their own sources of information, spread and reinforce ideas, and collectively discuss and mount resistance against onerous government policies. Justin Gage traces these efforts, drawing on extensive new evidence, including more than one hundred letters written by nineteenth-century Native Americans. His work shows how Lakotas, Cheyennes, Utes, Shoshones, Kiowas, and dozens of other western tribal nations shrewdly used the U.S. government’s repressive education system and mechanisms of American settler colonialism, notably the railroads and the Postal Service, to achieve their own ends. Thus Natives used literacy, a primary tool of assimilation for U.S. policymakers, to decolonize their lives much earlier than historians have noted.
Whereas previous histories have assumed that the Ghost Dance itself was responsible for the creation of brand-new networks among western tribes, this book suggests that the intertribal networks formed in the 1870s and 1880s actually facilitated the rapid dissemination of the Ghost Dance in 1889 and 1890. Documenting the evolution and operation of intertribal networking, Gage demonstrates its effectiveness—and recognizes for the first time how, through Native activism, long-distance, intercultural communication persisted in the colonized American West.
Dissertation by Justin Gage
In 1889 and 1890 these intertribal connections facilitated the spread of the ghost dance, a Native American religious movement, among dozens of tribes scattered across 800,000 square miles. Visitations and correspondence brought news of the dance out of the Great Basin, through the Rocky Mountains, and into northern and southern plains reservations. Tribes sent investigators, often on railroads, to determine the truth, and some proponents of the movement wrote or traveled to spread the news. Others wrote simply to inform their friends or relatives of what they knew about it all. Government officials tried to slow the dissemination of the movement by tightening visitation, arresting those traveling without permission, and eventually by censoring the mail, but communications and the spread of the movement continued. Following the massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, communication among tribes continued, partly as a continuing effort to assess the ghost dance and partly to evaluate Indians' place in the new arrangement of power.
By examining in detail these emerging systems of communication and exchange, this dissertation reveals the beginnings of a Pan-Indian sense of common concerns as well as the shrewd use of both government programs, notably education, and the mechanisms of modernization, notably the railroads and postal system, to protect and preserve basic elements of traditional life.
Master's Thesis by Justin Gage
Published Papers by Justin Gage
Papers by Justin Gage
Faced with the consequences of U.S. colonialism—the constraints, population loss, and destitution—Native Americans, far from passively accepting their fate, mobilized to control their own sources of information, spread and reinforce ideas, and collectively discuss and mount resistance against onerous government policies. Justin Gage traces these efforts, drawing on extensive new evidence, including more than one hundred letters written by nineteenth-century Native Americans. His work shows how Lakotas, Cheyennes, Utes, Shoshones, Kiowas, and dozens of other western tribal nations shrewdly used the U.S. government’s repressive education system and mechanisms of American settler colonialism, notably the railroads and the Postal Service, to achieve their own ends. Thus Natives used literacy, a primary tool of assimilation for U.S. policymakers, to decolonize their lives much earlier than historians have noted.
Whereas previous histories have assumed that the Ghost Dance itself was responsible for the creation of brand-new networks among western tribes, this book suggests that the intertribal networks formed in the 1870s and 1880s actually facilitated the rapid dissemination of the Ghost Dance in 1889 and 1890. Documenting the evolution and operation of intertribal networking, Gage demonstrates its effectiveness—and recognizes for the first time how, through Native activism, long-distance, intercultural communication persisted in the colonized American West.
In 1889 and 1890 these intertribal connections facilitated the spread of the ghost dance, a Native American religious movement, among dozens of tribes scattered across 800,000 square miles. Visitations and correspondence brought news of the dance out of the Great Basin, through the Rocky Mountains, and into northern and southern plains reservations. Tribes sent investigators, often on railroads, to determine the truth, and some proponents of the movement wrote or traveled to spread the news. Others wrote simply to inform their friends or relatives of what they knew about it all. Government officials tried to slow the dissemination of the movement by tightening visitation, arresting those traveling without permission, and eventually by censoring the mail, but communications and the spread of the movement continued. Following the massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, communication among tribes continued, partly as a continuing effort to assess the ghost dance and partly to evaluate Indians' place in the new arrangement of power.
By examining in detail these emerging systems of communication and exchange, this dissertation reveals the beginnings of a Pan-Indian sense of common concerns as well as the shrewd use of both government programs, notably education, and the mechanisms of modernization, notably the railroads and postal system, to protect and preserve basic elements of traditional life.