Johnston] 



NAVAIIO POPULATION 63 



for eacli group. This was to be accomplished by establishing perma- 

 nent Indian territories west of the Mississippi within whose 

 boundaries tlie several Indian tribes could pursue their traditional 

 folkways unimpeded by White inroads. The policy of "accommoda- 

 tion by segregation" was initiated during the Jackson administration, 

 when Indian tribes formerly located east of the Mississippi were 

 forcibly relocated in the "open" country w^est of that river.^ 



This first policy was doomed to ultimate failure because it did not 

 appreciate the enormous growth potential of the new republic 

 stretched along the Atlantic seaboard. The continued westward ex- 

 pansion of the United States brought no sudden reversal of this policy, 

 but it did render it more and more impracticable. In a long series of 

 "compromises," Indian land holdings west of the Mississippi were 

 progressively reduced until it became impossible for many tribes to 

 sustain themselves without radically altering their traditional modes 

 of livelihood. At the same time, the personal demoralization which 

 generally accompanied the loss of former lands and the continuous 

 encroachment of White settlement tended to further weaken the tribal 

 organization of the Indians most directly affected. 



The impossibility of maintaining coexistent Indian and White so- 

 cieties as mutually independent entities on the North American con- 

 tinent was officially recognized as early as 1853. At this time, the dis- 

 solution of Indian tribes became an official policy, and the Bureau of 

 Indian Affairs began to settle individual Indians on tracts of land 

 under conditions similar to those of White homesteaders. Under this 

 program, the tribal reservation system was eventually to be eliminated 

 through the gradual absorption of Indians into White society as indi- 

 viduals. It was presumed that this process would occur almost un- 

 consciously, as the Indians assumed the folkways and mores of the 

 Whites among whom they would be settled. 



Two fundamental weaknesses doomed this new policy of "assimi- 

 lation by fiat." In the first place, it overlooked the social and psycho- 

 logical unreadiness of many Indians to adopt the ways of White 

 agriculturalists, forgetting or violating their own customs. In the 

 second place, it ignored or underestimated the social and psychological 

 unreadiness of the Whites to undertake social interaction with Indians, 

 much less accept them into their communities as equals. In view of 

 the previous failure of measures for accommodating these two peoples 

 to one another, the failure of these naive efforts at assimilation is hardly 

 surprising. Successful assimilation would have demanded a far 

 greater degree of mutual understanding and acceptance than was 

 implied in mere accommodation. 



3 Young, 1955, p. 128. Young's description of the U.S. Indian Service, on which the 

 present discussion is based, was adapted from Cohen, 1935, chapters 2-4 inclusive, for 

 the period up to 1935. 



