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Colonized Labor: Apaches and Pawnees as Army Workers
JANNE LAHTI
This essay discusses the Apaches and Pawnees who joined the post-Civil War U. S. Army as workers and argues that they functioned and were used as colonized labor, a special race-based colonial labor system characterized by constant negotiation and tension between integration and exclusion, valuing and othering, and indigenous freedom and colonial control.
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"A WHOLE BUNCH OF US WENT ... to San Carlos to try to enlist," Tlodilhil, ("black rope," also known as John Rope) said as he remembered his journey in the mid-1870s, when he and his brother rode double on the only horse they managed to obtain to reach the agency on the White Mountain Reservation of Arizona. Rope did not hurry for any social celebration, or to join a raiding or war party, but, tired of reservation poverty, he came to find work in the United States Army. Following a physical examination, white army officers hired forty new workers. Many were left out, but Rope proved lucky. Leaving the reservation the next day as part of the multiracial army workforce marked the beginning of a decade of periodic employment as colonized labor for Rope.1 |
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Across the West in the Indian Territory, a large gathering of visibly excited Pawnee men rushed to surround a farmhouse occupied by federal officials. On the brink of starvation, short on blankets and clothing, and some in poor health, the Pawnees did not approach the house to confront the colonizers. They came searching for work in the army. "Every able-bodied man in the tribe, and many who were not able-bodied, tried to get their names on the muster roll. Each man, at any cost, sought to get away from the suffering of his present life; from the fever that made him quake, the chill that caused him to shiver, and above all from the deadly monotony of the reservation life," one observer of Pawnee life wrote. To the regret of the majority of the estimated 300–400 applicants only 100 were hired. To ensure their jobs, many men remained all night around the very farmhouse where the military recruiters slept. Other hopefuls tried to attach themselves to the departing military party the next day, although they were repeatedly told that they could not come.2 |
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For Apaches and Pawnees, marginalized and dispossessed by indigenous and United States expansions, military recruitment offered a day of possibilities in a world terribly short of them. Like many indigenous peoples in the Dutch, British, and French empires, Apaches and Pawnees were hired as soldiers because the colonial power needed their expertise to gain the monopoly of violence and secure control over the colonial terrain.3 Labeled "scouts" in army discourses, indigenous men worked as soldiers although they were never institutionally incorporated nor accepted by white army personnel as full members of the army community.4 Pawnee and Apache soldiers performed much the same tasks as white or black soldiers, but were used also for special labor roles. They received equal wages, but, as a second-class racialized workforce, their job security was uncertain at best. Their only alternatives for army work were reservation captivity or war with the U. S. regime. Yet, Apaches and Pawnees proved able to use the fluid and even paradoxical labor system for negotiating the impacts of colonialism on their lives. Army work brought economic security and temporary freedom, certain latitude to pursue goals that would otherwise have been impossible because of colonizer control. Some managed to build considerable army careers, although others disliked permanent employment outside their indigenous communities. Army work could also bring strife and divisions within the indigenous communities. This complex web, where there was constant tension and negotiation between integration and exclusion, between valuing and othering, and between indigenous freedom and colonial control was the colonized labor system. Men from many indigenous groups worked in the army during the post-civil-war U. S.-indigenous conflicts. However, the diversity of tasks, the length of the labor experiment, and the army's dependence on indigenous laborers' performance made the Apaches and Pawnees the most comprehensive examples of this kind of labor recruiting. |
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