“A Century of Dishonour”

“A dream of land where men (and women) , of all races , all nationalities , all creeds can

live together as brothers (and sisters)” famously quoted by Martin Luther King Jr’s aspiration

for the United States of America, remains “a dream yet unfulfilled” . During his last pastoral

visit to United States, the late Pope John Paul II issued a clarion call for Catholics and all people

of good will to confront the tragic and enduring social evils of racial injustice and inequality .

Obviously , these words indeed mark that the United States might have fell short of curbing

social malpractices in its land .Racial discrimination , in both its individual and institutional

forms , is a cause of poverty and at the same time an additional barrier for people of color

seeking to escape poverty . We are convinced that without a conscious and proactive struggle

against racism , our efforts to reduce the plague of social injustice will be in vain . But

unfortunately , this was quite contradictory learning the past events that occurred in the history of

United States . The advent of social injustice began right in the early 19th century, which was

considered to be a “A Century of Dishonor ” considering a series of shameful events and tactful

government’s policies adopted by the government towards people of the Native Americans and

minority . Some of the most disgraceful policies adopted then by the government included the

“Indian Removal Act” ,the “ Dawes Act” , the “system of the Indian Boarding School” following

with a series of slaughtering events like ’Trail of Tears’ , the “Ghost Dance” and “the wounded

Knee” .

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous people from North

America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska and the

island state of Hawaii. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups,
many of which survive as intact political communities. As the 19th century began, land-hungry

Americans poured into the backcountry of the coastal South and began moving toward and into

what would later become the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Since Indian tribes living there

appeared to be the main obstacle to westward expansion, white settlers petitioned the federal

government to remove them . To achieve his purpose, Andrew Jackson , the commander of U.S

military forces ,encouraged Congress to adopt the Removal Act of 1830. The Act established a

process whereby the President could grant land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes that

agreed to give up their homelands. As incentives, the law allowed the Indians financial and

material assistance to travel to their new locations and start new lives and guaranteed that the

Indians would live on their new property under the protection of the United States Government

forever. With the Act in place, Jackson and his followers were free to persuade, bribe, and

threaten tribes into signing removal treaties and leaving the Southeast. This marked the first

major discontentment among the Native Americans who felt they were deceived by tactful

policies adopted by the U.S Government . In cases where this failed, the government sometimes

violated both treaties and Supreme Court rulings to facilitate the spread of European Americans

westward across the continent.

In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee

nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in

present-day Oklahoma. In one of the saddest episodes of history, men, women, and children

were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, then

forced to march a thousand miles(Some made part of the trip by boat in equally horrible

conditions). Under the generally indifferent army commanders, human losses for the first groups

of Cherokee removed were extremely high. About 4000 Cherokee died as a result of the
removal. The route they traversed and the journey itself became known as “Trail of tears ” as a

black mark in the history of U.S . The Government being ignorant just turned a blind eye

towards the pathetic conditions of the Native American . They left the remaining homeless

without any supply of food in freezing weather conditions .

Similar incident of mass killing occurred what came to know as ‘The wounded

Knee.’ A regrettable and tragic clash of arms, occurring  December 29, 1890, was the last

significant engagement between Indians and soldiers on the North American Continent, ending

nearly four centuries of warfare between westward-bound Americans and the indigenous

peoples. Of the 230 Indian women and children and 120 men at the camp, 153 were counted

dead and 44 wounded, but many of the wounded probably escaped and relatives quickly

removed a large number of the dead. Army casualties were 25 dead and 39 wounded. The total

casualties were probably the highest in Plains Indian warfare except for the Battle of the Little

Bighorn. Following the massacre, the soldiers left the wounded Native Americans to die in a

three day blizzard that followed and later hired civilians to remove the bodies and bury them in a

mass grave. Afterwards, the soldiers lined up and had their picture taken beside the mass grave.

Twenty medals of honor were later given to honor the U.S. soldiers who participated in the

massacre.

Joseph the Elder was one of the first Nez Percé converts to Christianity and an active

supporter of the tribe's longstanding peace with whites. In 1855 he even helped Washington's

territorial governor set up a Nez Percé reservation that stretched from Oregon into Idaho. But in

1863, following a gold rush into Nez Percé territory, the federal government took back almost

six million acres of this land, restricting the Nez Percé to a reservation in Idaho that was only one

tenth its prior size. Feeling himself betrayed, Joseph the Elder denounced the United States,
destroyed his American flag and his Bible, and refused to move his band from the Wallowa

Valley or sign the treaty that would make the new reservation boundaries official.

The Indian boarding schools were founded in the late 19th century aftermath of the Civil

War and the Indian wars, when many Native Americans had been removed to reservations. The

schools represented a mixture of American ideals and arrogance; the founders thought the

American Indians needed to adapt to majority culture to survive. The Carlisle School was a

model for the founding of 26 Indian boarding schools across the country by the federal

government by 1902. The belief was that Native American children needed to assimilate to the

majority culture in order to survive, and they were forced to give up much of what they knew.

Ideas about education have since changed drastically. Late 20th century appraisal has led to

criticism like this: "The boys and girls at Carlisle Indian School were trained to be cannon fodder

in American wars, to serve as domestics and farm hands, and to leave off all ideas or beliefs that

came to them from their Native communities, including and particularly their belief that they

were entitled to land, life, liberty, and dignity....separated from all that is familiar; stripped,

shorn, robbed of their very self; renamed."

In a series of such new treaties the U.S. government forced Native Americans to give

up their land and move to reservations in exchange for protection from attacks by white settlers.

In addition, the Indians were given a yearly payment that would include money in addition to

food, livestock, household goods and farming tools.  These reservations were created in an

attempt to clear the way for increased U.S. expansion and involvement in the West, as well as to

keep the Native Americans separate from the whites in order to reduce the potential for conflict.

Between 1850 and 1900, life for Native Americans changed drastically. Through U.S.

government policies, American Indians were forced from their homes as their native lands were
parceled out.  The Plains, which they had previously roamed alone, were now filled with white

settlers.  Over these years the Indians had been cheated out of their land, food and way of life, as

the federal government’s Indian policies forced them onto reservations and attempted to

“Americanize” them.  Many American Indian groups did not survive relocation, assimilation and

military defeat; by 1890 the Native American population was reduced to fewer than 250,000

people.  Due to decades of discriminatory and corrupt policies instituted by the United States

government between 1850 and 1900, life for the American Indians was changed forever.

Many more historical examples can be cited .These suffice in demonstrating how

evil treatment was meted out towards the Native Americans , and unjust policies deliberately

created and often state-sanctioned .It also resulted in “unjust impoverishment” for groups of

color and “unjust enrichment” for white Americans . The 19th century was indeed a “A century of

Dishonour” with a serious dent on the democracy of America , and a serious obligation to repair

the economic injuries and material deprivation that has been inflicted upon communities of

color .

REFERENCES
(1) Schmitz, Neil (2001). White Robe's Dilemma: Tribal History in American Literature, p. 88.

University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1558492917

(2) http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dwe/16338.htm

(3) Kehoe, Alice Beck. The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization. Long Grove, IL:

Waveland Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-57766-453-6.

(4) Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. Boston:

Mariner, 1997, p 428-429.

(5) http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/events/02-08