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Rare Exceptions: Some University Professors and the Teaching of Native American History, 1900–1970

Steven Crum
University of California, Davis

FROM 1900 TO 1970, only eight United States historians established courses on Native American history in history departments at the college and university level. This made them rare exceptions in an academic world that placed overwhelming emphasis on mainstream Euro-American history, with extremely limited attention to race and ethnicity. Except to a small degree, these professors did not introduce Indian or Native American history because of inspirational forces coming from their respective campuses. Instead, and as will be argued in this paper, they were influenced primarily by larger societal trends that surfaced off-campus.1 After examining why historians did not introduce Native American history courses before 1930 this paper will look at the rare exceptions themselves and the off-campus external factors that motivated a few of them to offer Native American history at the higher education level. These contributing elements include the Meriam Report of 1928, the Indian Reform Movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the Indian claims research of the 1950s, and the political climate of the 1960s, each of which will be discussed. 1
      A major reason why United States historians did not teach specialized courses on the history of Native Americans in the opening years of the 20th century was that mainstream society, which included the academic world, considered Indians to be a "vanishing race." The public viewed Indians as disappearing physically because the tribal population had reached an all-time low of only 237,196 by 1900.2 The dominant society also viewed Indians as disappearing culturally because their lifestyles, considered "primitive" by Euro-Americans, seemed unable to hold their own against the tide of what Americans perceived as "civilization" and "progress." The so-called dying Indian image, which turned out to be a myth, was the reason photographer Edward S. Curtis titled one of his 1906 photographs the "Vanishing Race" and why artist James Earle Fraser entitled his well-known sculpture of 1915 "The End of the Trail."3 Such popular images further enforced the false notion of inevitable native extinction. 2
      Based on the above attitude, the "Progressive Historians" of the early 20th century had little if any interest in offering specialized courses about Native Americans. As historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has stated, "the progressive historians tended to emphasize progress as the underlying motif of American history."4 To these historians, Indians symbolized the antithesis of progress. One of the best known progressive historians, Frederick Jackson Turner, viewed Indians as a negative factor in United States history: Indians represented backwardness and savagery, whereas white America represented civilization. In his well-known Frontier Thesis of 1893, Turner labeled tribal people as a "barrier" to white progress in the 19th century. Turner's generation thus offered no courses on Native American history. On occasion, some historians, including Turner himself, did include lectures about Indians in either mainstream history courses or specialized Western American history courses. But their discussion of native history was superficial.5 3
      In marked contrast to historians, anthropologists developed a much stronger interest in studying tribal peoples, primarily because of their focus on culture. Like the historians, however, the anthropologists also viewed Indians as a vanishing race whose cultures were becoming extinct. This explains why noted anthropologist Franz Boas developed "salvage ethnography" in an effort to "record as much information as possible about Native North American cultures before they were 'lost' through assimilation by the expanding Euro-American cultures."6 Unlike history departments, anthropology offered specialized courses about Native Americans. But in studying native peoples, they developed a static image of their subjects. Anthropologists portrayed indigenous peoples as "frozen in time and space," with a focus on so-called pure Indian cultures of decades earlier, before they had become bastardized by change.7 Other disciplines bought into the frozen image made popular by anthropologists. Consequently, there seemed no reason why early 20th century historians would want to write about a race of people who didn't fit into American progress. 4
      It was no surprise that those who suggested the establishment of specialized courses dealing with Indian history in the first three decades of the 20th century were a few non-historians. Fayette McKenzie, a sociologist at Ohio State University, asserted in October 1912 that because "few white colleges pay any attention to Indian history," a special course on Indian history, along with other Indian-oriented courses, could best be introduced in a special Indian college, not a mainstream post-secondary institution.8 In light of the general academic neglect of Indian history he believed that such a course would benefit both Indians and non-Indians.9 Arthur C. Parker, a Native American archaeologist from the Seneca tribe in New York, endorsed McKenzie's ideas. Both were members of the Society of American Indians, a reformist organization that recommended reforms to help Native American people. The two opposed the American government's assimilation policy for Indians and favored a policy of cultural pluralism. But their ideas went nowhere because of heavy opposition from influential white Americans who wanted Indians to assimilate into mainstream society at this time.10 5
      Not until 1930, approximately thirty years after the rise of Western American history as a subfield in United States history, did a historian introduce a course on Native American history. This first rare exception was Edward E. Dale, professor and chair of the history department at the University of Oklahoma.11 Entitled "The American Indian," Dale's course was a one-semester general survey which focused on Indian-white relations. He covered five major topics: the first was a general survey of Indian history in the United States; the second explored interactions between Indians and the European colonists up to 1775; the third reviewed Indian-white relations up to the Civil War; the fourth covered United States policies towards Indians from the end of the Civil War up to 1906; and the last examined reservation life and schooling for Indians from the mid-19th century onward. Because of a lack of general history books about Native Americans, Dale used two textbooks written by non-historians: anthropologist Clark Wissler's The American Indian (1922) and Christian missionary J.E.E. Lindquest's The Red Man in the United States (1923).12 6
      Professor Dale introduced Native American history only after he was deeply affected by an off-campus experience. In 1926 the Secretary of the Interior selected Dale and nine other individuals to investigate the federally-run Office of Indian Affairs (today's BIA). After two years of fieldwork and study, the Meriam team released its publication entitled The Problem of Indian Administration (1928), better known as the Meriam Report. This lengthy reform study identified a number of serious negative policies associated with the Indian Bureau, including serious health problems and the inferior schooling Indian students received in the numerous federally-operated BIA Indian schools.13 But the Meriam team also made some positive recommendations about how the Bureau could be improved. One way was to mute the BIA's age-old assimilationist policy by encouraging the introduction of Indian-oriented courses into the curriculum of the Indian schools. The team favored "Indian history [both] as a means of understanding other history and for its own importance in helping Indians understand the past and future of their own people."14 Dale took this recommendation so seriously that he even applied it to his own history department on the University of Oklahoma campus two years after the release of the Meriam report. His inspiration thus came from his direct involvement in an off-campus reform initiative. 7
      Likewise, Dale was influenced by an on-campus individual, but outside his department. This person was Joseph Brandt, editor of the university press. From its beginnings, the OU press published books about Native Americans under a special series called "The Civilization of the American Indians."15 Brandt's interest in Indians, however, went beyond the publication of books. As early as 1929, he wanted his university to build a special institute with its own building. This facility would not only house an Indian archive, but would sponsor conferences about tribal people and faculty who would teach various Indian-oriented courses, including "Indian history." Brandt used this argument: if California colleges and universities offered courses about Chinese and Japanese peoples, why couldn't OU, in a state with the largest Indian population, offer courses about Native Americans? 8
      Without the Meriam Report and to a smaller degree editor Brant, professor Dale probably would not have introduced Indian history in 1930 even though he had a long time interest in Native Americans. This interest derived from the fact that, in 1892, his parents had moved to southwestern Oklahoma near the homes of the Comanche and Kiowas. In reminiscing about this experience, Dale wrote: "Here I became acquainted with many Indians of these tribes; rode with them, hunted with them, visited them in their lodges."16 Owing to this experience, Dale wrote Tales of the Tepee (1920), a book of Indian stories intended for children. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1922 in the period when Turner, propounder of the "frontier thesis," taught there.17 Yet, all the above factors were not enough to inspire him to introduce Indian history before 1930, even though he had been on the faculty at OU since 1924. 9
      Some eight years later, another Oklahoma-based post-secondary institution, Bacone College in Muskogee, also introduced Indian history. Established in 1880, this small Baptist-run college was first called Indian University and offered its students bachelor's and master's degrees. The college was intended to train Indians as missionaries in Indian Territory before the area became known as Oklahoma. But with the American government's campaign to assimilate Indians, and with the end of Indian Territory in 1907, the college lost its prominence. The officials eliminated the university name Indian University in 1910 and renamed the campus Bacone College, dropped the college curriculum, and made the college a high school for Indian students. However, in 1927 the Baptists reintroduced post-secondary education and made Bacone into a two-year college, its present status.18 10
      In the fall semester of 1938, Marc J. Smith, Bacone's acting dean and social science instructor in the history department, introduced a two-semester course entitled "American Indian History." Smith started with a discussion of precontact native societies, moved to the Spanish, English, and French colonial periods, and then dealt with Indian-white relations within the United States, covering topics such as Indian leadership and government policies towards Native American peoples.19 There were several reasons why he favored Indian history. Smith wanted an "Indian slant to Indian history," or to "re-tell the history of the Indian people from their point of view." Furthermore, he believed, a course such as his would highlight Indian achievements and make Indians feel proud of their past.20 As early as February 1937, Smith decided to write a general textbook on Indian history since one did not exist. To carry out this proposed task, he took a one year leave-of-absence to start a Ph.D. program in history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.21 11
      Smith could not have established his course without the support of college president Benjamin Weeks. As head of Bacone for some twenty years, Weeks looked for ways to make the college grow. One way was to accept new ideas. Beginning in 1937, Weeks held serious talks with Smith about Indian history. Weeks maintained that the study of this history needed to be improved because it had been told from the "white man's point of view." White historians had advanced two generalized views of Indians: the cruel savage and the noble savage. An appropriate Indian history, according to Weeks, needed "to be written accurately and importantly from the Indian's as well as from the white man's point of view," or as a synthesis of both, to present a more balanced account. Moreover, Indian history needed to be offered because it "helps to explain much of our national development" since Indians had impacted the larger United States society in the areas of agriculture, language, and literature.22 In full support of Smith, Weeks secured $4,500 from the Rockefeller Foundation through the Baptist Home Mission Society to create a Chair of Indian History as well as to establish a Department of American Indian History in 1938. Of course, Marc Smith became that new chair after returning to Bacone from Wisconsin.23 12
      One wonders why a small Baptist-run college located in the Bible belt of Oklahoma took Indian history seriously in the late 1930s. Obviously, Bacone College was an Indian college in a state with the largest Indian population in the nation. But this factor was not the driving force behind the college's decision. Instead, the key factor, with its roots off campus, was the national "Indian reform movement" that slowly emerged in the 1920s and bloomed in the 30s.24 The Indian Reform Movement was in response to the federal government's age-old drive to assimilate Native Americans into the larger dominant society. This policy required the suppression and prohibition of indigenous cultural practices and the drive to make English-speaking individuals out of the Indians. By the 1920s, however, some individuals, both Indian and non-Indian, began to question and challenge this overall policy. One of the first influential challengers was non-Indian reformer John Collier who created the American Indian Defense Association in 1924 to encourage religious freedom for Indians and also to foster their native arts. The Meriam report of 1928 was also an aspect of this emerging reform movement.25 13
      By the early 1930s, the Indian Bureau began to change its ways in response to criticism. In 1932, it added the teaching of Indian art to the curriculum of its Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico.26 In 1933, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected Collier to head the Bureau or BIA. Collier in turn introduced a new policy of cultural pluralism and muted the older assimilation policy.27 One of the larger BIA schools, Chilocco in Oklahoma, introduced a course on Indian history in 1936.28 Another school, Stewart near Carson City, Nevada, introduced an art course to teach students how to make Hopi kachina dolls.29 These kinds of courses did not exist before the 1930s owing to the earlier assimilation policy. 14
      Bacone College thus joined ranks with the larger Indian reform movement in the 1930s. Campus officials revamped the college curriculum and introduced Indian-oriented courses in 1932. Some of the new subject matter included Indian art, music, and a course entitled "Capturing and Recording Indian Culture" which included oral history and oral interviewing.30 Finally in 1938, as has been noted, the college introduced Indian history taught by Marc Smith, who became the second rare exception of an historian teaching Native American history before 1970. All the above Indian courses represented a watershed in the history of Bacone, for the college had never offered native courses before the 1930s. It must be remembered that the college came into existence in the 1880s not to advance Indianness, but to make Christian missionaries out of Indians. Preserving Indian culture earlier played no role in this process. 15
      Marc Smith of Bacone was also influenced by another off-campus reform initiative of the 1930s. In 1937 the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a short-lived agency established under Roosevelt's larger New Deal of the 1930s, channeled funds to the Oklahoma Historical Society so it could initiate the "Indian-Pioneer History" project. This project enabled the historical society to select roughly one-hundred individuals to conduct oral interviews with older Oklahomans, including Native Americans, who experienced life in Indian Territory before the region became Oklahoma in 1907. The society and the WPA workers eventually transcribed and compiled the WPA interviews which are now indexed and housed in the historical society in Oklahoma City.31 The collection included historical information about Bacone College from its beginnings in 1880. 16
      Thus, the first two courses on Indian history came into existence in Oklahoma primarily as a result of external factors rooted outside the campuses. But if the subject of Indian history showed some small promise in the 1930s, the picture completely changed in the following decade. The nation's involvement in World War II (1941–45) created an atmosphere of uniformity and nationalism with little room for the treatment of cultural differences within the classroom.32 The handful of historians who had earlier included limited discussion of Indian history in mainstream courses dropped the subject of Indians completely. Robert Cotterill of Florida State University had included a lecture on the "Indians of the Great Plains" in his American Frontier course in the 1930s, but he dropped the Indians by the 1940s.33 Noted historians also dropped the Indians from United States history publications. A classic example was Arthur M. Schlesinger, who in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Age of Jackson (1945), completely excluded the all-important Indian Removal Act of 1830 and its subsequent impact on Native Americans.34 More importantly for this study, Bacone College dropped its Indian history course during the war years. Professor Marc Smith no longer held the title of chair of Indian history by 1945 and was designated only as college dean. He left Bacone in August 1945.35 17
      The rise of the Cold War in 1945 further reinforced the notion of homogeneity and uniformity. Out of this postwar atmosphere arose "consensus" history in which historians de-emphasized the role of conflict in United States history.36 Indian history, which included the Indian-white wars of the 19th century, did not fare well in these years. When various individuals brought forth the topic of Indian history in the mid and late 1940s, it was not taken seriously. Such was the case in November 1945 when Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes wrote nearly identical letters to twenty-one college and university presidents. In them he called for the creation of a "chair in the history of the American Indian." He argued that such a position would allow the chair holder to give "appropriate attention to the history of the American Indian." Ickes had in mind the holder of the chair offering a special Indian history course to carry out the following objectives: providing Indian views and perspectives of history; showing that Indians were proud people with various positive attributes, including their practice of generosity and living in harmony with nature; showing that Indians had an impact on this nation's historical development while admitting that the United States had a past history of subjugating the Indians, and demonstrating that the nation could learn from its past to develop healthy relations with weaker twentieth century nations.37 18
      None of the twenty-one colleges and universities to which Ickes wrote established chairs in Indian history, nor did they institute Indian history courses. However, at least two university presidents asked their history department chairs to respond to Ickes's letter. John Krout of Columbia University asserted that his department had no plans "to organize either instruction or research in such a way as to make the history and culture of the American Indian a central theme."38 Krout noted further, but provided no proof, that aspects of Indian history were already incorporated into at least five mainstream history courses at Columbia. Therefore, there was no need to offer a specialized Indian history course. Krout concluded his response by stating: "I think that much which he [the Secretary of the Interior] desires could be done within our present arrangement—certainly without creating a special chair in this particular field."39 19
      Frederick Paxson, history chair at the University of California, Berkeley, echoed Krout's words, indicating that various aspects of Indian history already existed in four history courses. But Paxson went further than Krout by asserting that Indian history belonged to the fields of sociology and anthropology rather than history. To him, Indian history lacked written documents because Indians came from non-literate societies in which information was based on oral traditions. In order to construct Indian history, scholars needed to interview Indians, and this approach was the domain of anthropology and ethnology, not history. Paxson therefore did not favor a chair or a course in Indian history. In response to Ickes's letter, he concluded: "We have at present no data upon which to base an opinion on the drawing power of the History of the American Indian in the crowded curricula to which we are tied. I suspect that our historians would tell me that such a course would at best be highly unilateral because it would be built upon the documentation of the white man and only hearsay and anthropological testimony upon the side of the Indians."40 20
      By taking the above position, Paxson wrote off Indian history because Indians did not have written records, libraries, and archives similar to those of white Americans. Although current-day anthropologist Robert Bieder never read Paxson's letter, his statement of later times certainly sums up Paxson's stance of the mid-1940s: "History depended upon written documents, and since Indians did not write, they could provide little that could be considered history. They were regarded as primitive people who lived outside history."41 Or to use the phrase made popular by anthropologist Eric Wolf, Indians were "people without history."42 At any rate, with the kind of opinion held by Paxson and others, Ickes's ideas went nowhere in late 1945, although some university presidents in theory liked the idea of a chair in Indian history. 21
      But the consensus phase of United States history of the 1940s and 1950s did not stop some scholars from pursuing the study of Native American history. In the decade of the 1950s, one historian and three anthropologists established Indian history courses. As had been the case before, these scholars were motivated by an external factor outside their respective universities, and that agent was the subject of Indian claims rooted in the Congressional Indian Claims Commission (ICC) Act of 1946. This act allowed the Indian tribes of the United States to file claims against the American government for past injustices committed against Native Americans, including unkept treaty promises of the 19th century and the illegal seizure of land by land-hungry American pioneers. The claims attorneys who represented the tribes sought the services of scholars who could conduct ethnological and historical research to show that tribal groups had legitimate claims arising from aboriginal occupancy of particular tribal domains before those lands were taken by the white Americans. Once the cases were settled, tribes which had established successful claims were to be compensated with money for past injustices.43 Doing Indian claims research in various archives in the late 1940s and 1950s stimulated some scholars to establish Indian history courses. 22
      In 1952 anthropologists Omer Stewart and Gordon Winant Hewes at the University of Colorado, Boulder, introduced a two-semester course entitled the "American Indian and White Contact" (later renamed "American Indian Acculturation"). The description of the course read: "review of the domination of Indian areas and cultures by Europeans, and the resulting modification of Indian culture."44 Although under the anthropology department, this course was actually a history course, for it focused on Indian-white relations and also on how Indian culture changed as a result of Euroamerican contact. It included lectures on how the Peyote religion had incorporated some elements of Christianity. What Stewart and Hewes had created—whether or not they were aware of it at the time—was the first Native American ethnohistory course (ethnohistory brings together anthropological methods and historical approaches to present a kind of cultural history of Native American people).45 The year they created the course, Stewart had been hired by the Wilkinson, Cragun, and Barker law firm to conduct historical research on the Western Shoshones to prove their aboriginal occupancy of millions of acres of land in the Great Basin region. Before doing Shoshone research, Stewart had served as an expert witness on the Uintah Ute claims case before the ICC. He later became known for his ethnohistorical scholarship on the Peyote religion or the Native American Church.46 23
      Without doubt, Stewart co-established the course in 1952 because of his involvement in Indian claims research. He could have established such a course years earlier since his interest in Native Americans extended back to the 1930s when he first wrote about Native Americans. His doctoral dissertation was a study of the Peyote religion among various tribal groups, and he wrote more than one article about Indians in the 1940s. Stewart became an anthropology professor in 1945.47 But not until 1952, while doing claims research, did he introduce the above course. 24
      There was also another off-campus factor, at least for the University of Colorado, that influenced Stewart to study Native American history. Having written his doctoral dissertation on the Peyote religion in the 1930s, he was deeply affected by the rising tide of acculturation studies that emerged in anthropology. Well-known anthropologist Ralph Linton defined acculturation as the "phenomena which results when groups of different cultures are brought into contact."48 Linton went on to note that "far from dying out," the native population of the United States was actually increasing. Having broken from the earlier Boasian interpretation of the static Indian, the anthropology profession of the post-1930 period had rejected the vanishing Indian image and now looked upon changing Indian culture as a viable field of study. In doing acculturation studies, Stewart and others started producing a form of history with the focus on cultural change over time among Native Americans. 25
      A year after Stewart introduced his course, S. Lyman Tyler, a historian at Brigham Young University, established "The Indian in American History" in 1953. This made him the third rare exception among professionally-trained historians to introduce Indian history. Like Stewart, Tyler had also served as a research consultant on the Northern Ute claims case in Utah in the early 1950s, and Indian claims research became the force behind his creation of the course.49 Additionally, besides the external factor of Indian claims, Tyler was also affected by an on-campus internal development Two years before he introduced his course, BYU hired a new university president, Ernest L. Wilkinson. Before taking this administrative assignment, Wilkinson had served as a claims lawyer for several Indian tribes going back to the 1930s. Wilkinson had also coauthored the ICC act of 1946 and helped found the well-known Wilkinson, Cragun, and Barker law firm that represented numerous tribes before the ICC. Upon becoming president in 1951, Wilkinson discovered that his university had largely ignored Native American students, for only one had earned a degree up to that time. His administration therefore inaugurated a massive recruitment effort, and this explains why 385 Indian students earned degrees from BYU from 1951 to 1983.50 During this period of Indian recruitment, Tyler found it easy to introduce his course on Indian history. 26
      The last scholar to introduce Native American history in the 1950s was Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, an anthropologist at Indiana University. She entered Indiana as a visiting lecturer in the anthropology department and later became a professor in the history department because there was a close relationship between the two departments in those years. In 1957, Voegelin introduced into the history department "History of the North American Indian I–II."51 Her course became the second Native American ethnohistory course. Like the other scholars of the 1950s, Voegelin was also inspired by her involvement in Indian claims research. From 1953 to 1955 she was associate director of the Great Lakes/Ohio Valley Indian Research Project, whose home base was on the Indiana University campus. The project received its funding from the United States Department of Justice. Voegelin and her staff had the task of determining if the tribes of the upper mid-west had aboriginal occupancy of particular areas at the time when the federal government negotiated treaties with those tribes in the 19th century.52 This effort, of course, included archival research into the history of the tribes of the mid-west. 27
      In short, doing Indian claims research stimulated one historian and three anthropologists to introduce Native American history courses. Even more, claims research motivated Voegelin and other scholars to form their own ethnohistorical network. This effort started in November 1953 when they held the Ohio Valley Historic Indian Conference. Born from this meeting was the American Society of Ethnohistory and its journal Ethnohistory, both of which still exist today. Most of the participants in the early years were anthropologists.53 28
      What becomes apparent is that more anthropologists were interested in Native American history than historians in the postwar period, especially in the 1950s. This explains why only one professionally-trained historian introduced the subject matter in the consensus years of American historical writing. Those few historians who wrote articles and books about Native Americans, including Loring Priest of Lycoming College and Randolph Downes at the University of Toledo, made no effort to introduce such courses. However, some historians realized that their discipline had given little attention to tribal people. In addressing this limited interest in 1952, eminent journalist-historian Bernard De Voto, who won the Pulitzer Prize in History in the late 1940s, observed: "American historians have made shockingly little effort to understand the life, the societies, the cultures, the thinking, and the feeling of the Indians."54 Perhaps current-day Native American historian R. David Edmunds (Cherokee) said it best: "The middle decades of the twentieth century brought few changes. Native Americans remained marginalized in American history, and many academic historians considered Native American history to be 'popular history' or 'cowboys and Indians,' not worthy of serious research."55 29
      If the state of Native American history at the college and university level looked bleak up to the late 1950s, the scene changed completely in the decade of the 1960s with the emergence of five new courses. In 1963 anthropologist Bernard Fontana introduced the "History of the Indians of North America" in the University of Arizona's anthropology department. Like the anthropologists of the 1950s, his course also focused on ethnohistory. Then, from 1966 to 1969, four historians established Indian history courses in their respective history departments. In 1966, Jack D. Forbes (Powhatan/Delaware-Lenape) introduced "The Native in North American History" at the University of Nevada, Reno. He gave attention to previously ignored topics, including mixed blood populations, Indian relations with African Americans, and Canadian and Mexican governmental policies towards native peoples. In the same year, William Hagan introduced "The American Indian" at the State University of New York at Fredonia. His course focused primarily on how American governmental policies had impacted the Indians of the United States over time. One year later, in 1967, S. Lyman Tyler, who had left BYU, introduced "The Indian in American History" at the University of Utah. Like Hagan, his course also focused upon a history of Indian policy. Lastly, in 1969, Wilbur Jacobs introduced "The Indian and the American Frontier: Ideas and Interpretations" at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Besides addressing Indian policy, his course took the study one step further by examining mainstream white American attitudes towards Indians and how those mindsets influenced government policies towards Indians.56 In terms of Native American history, these courses of the 1960s surpassed what existed earlier. 30
      What motivated the one anthropologist and four historians to introduce Native American history in the sixties was national developments that surfaced outside their campuses in the first half of the decade. The first of these was evolving political protest. In February 1960 four young Black college students at the North Carolina A & T staged a "sit-in" to protest the racist and segregationist practices of the South. This action paved the way for other sit-ins in the region, and gave the larger Civil Rights Movement a huge boost in the early 60s.57 The second was the socioeconomic reforms of presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, also in the first half of the '60s. In 1961, the Kennedy administration inaugurated the "war against poverty." Congress passed the Area Redevelopment Act and the Public Housing Act in 1961 to help improve poverty-stricken communities across the nation. After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Johnson continued the reform effort by implementing the Great Society in 1964. The Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) became a visible aspect of this effort.58 31
      The political protest and the socioeconomic reforms of the first half of the 1960s had a profound impact on Native Americans. In 1961 some young Indians created the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) to let the public know that Indians had serious grievances about how the tribes had been treated by the larger dominant society over the years.59 Three years later, in 1964, some tribes of the Pacific Northwest staged "fish-ins" to protest state fish and game regulations that restricted Indian fishing. These Indians argued that 19th century treaty rights gave them the right to fish at traditional places, and that this right could not be infringed upon by state laws. Some well-known non-Indians, including movie actor Marlon Brando and Black comedian Dick Gregory, joined the fish-ins.60 Also, in the same year, a small group of urban Indians in San Francisco briefly took over Alcatraz Island. They wanted the creation of an Indian university, which was an indication that they were dissatisfied with mainstream higher education.61 Besides the protests, Native Americans were also affected by the War On Poverty and the Great Society reforms. The Department of Housing and Urban Development built new "self help" houses on many reservations across the nation. These structures later became known as HUD houses. Indians also became recipients of the OEO programs, including Headstart and Upward Bound. These preschool and higher education motivation programs surfaced on many reservations.62 32
      Clearly, the climate of the 1960s, explains why the five scholars just noted introduced Native American history. Although each had a deep interest in the subject going back several years, this factor alone was not enough to make them introduce their courses earlier. An examination of these historians proves this point. Forbes was the author of two books and had taught at San Fernando Valley College for three years before moving to Nevada in 1964. Hagan was the author of four books and taught a course on the American West going back to 1952. Wilbur Jacobs wrote two major books and had taught a course on the American West since 1950 at UC Santa Barbara.63 Yet, despite their impressive publication records, and their years of teaching, they offered no specialized Indian history courses before the mid-'60s. Only Tyler had taught Native American history before 1960. 33
      The climate of the 1960s thus had a marked impact on the academic world, including the historical profession. Historian Ellen Fitzpatrick labels the 1960s "tumultuous political" times characterized by the rise of feminism, the civil rights movement, and the focus on economic inequality, as well as other significant developments and movements. The times made historians look differently at the larger society, and some scholars looked at the disinherited and the common people. The decade, according to Fitzpatrick, led to the "new history."64 Of course, this new history included Native American history by the mid and late 1960s. For example, when asked why he established his course in 1966, Hagan said, "my motivation was my interest in the field, coupled with the growing popularity of the subject [emphasis added]. That I was chairman and had more latitude, also undoubtedly contributed to the timing of my first offering of the course."65 In reflecting upon the 1960s, historian R. David Edmunds, who was a Ph.D. candidate in that decade, wrote that "many historians abandoned the 'consensus' interpretations," and the academic world developed an "increased awareness of the contributions of minority groups to the historical development of the United States."66 34
      As a result of the new interest in Native American history, sparked by the climate of the '60s, the Doris Duke Foundation in New York channeled thousands of dollars in 1966 to four universities—the University of New Mexico, the University of Oklahoma, the University of South Dakota, and the University of Utah—so that historians and other scholars could interview Indians and record their oral histories. This was a radical shift from the position held by Frederick Paxson and his generation some twenty years earlier, cited in Paxon's response to Secretary Ickes. The overall purpose was to secure the "Indian view of history." Each university received an initial grant of $66,000 to conduct and then transcribe the interviews. Special entities on the campuses had the task of carrying out the work. The staff of the American West Center on the Utah campus conducted the interviews for the Intermontane West region. The Institute for Indian Studies at South Dakota did the interviews for the Great Plains area. The end result was hundreds of transcribed interviews which became known as the Doris Duke Indian Oral History Project.67 35
      The Doris Duke Foundation also funded a two-day conference held on the University of California, Los Angeles campus in May 1967. The participants came from the Smithsonian Institution, the Southwest Museum, the four universities doing the interviews, and history professors from ten universities. The list of professors included three who had introduced Indian history in the second half of the '60s, Hagan, Jacobs, and Tyler. The participants acknowledged that the discipline of history in the United States still largely ignored Indians, observing that in "history departments a course on Indian history is rare. The topic is incidental in courses on the United States, but gets somewhat more attention in courses on state and local history or on the American West."68 John Caughey, professor of history at UCLA, urged that "there ought to be more courses on American Indian history" and "more Indian history injected into the courses on the United States history."69 36
      Influenced by the ongoing oral history projects, the conference participants agreed that Native American history needed stimulation, and that one way to do this was with oral history. Oral history, based on the interviews, would present the "Indian's perspective," the "Indians' conception of history," and of course the "Indian side of American history."70 Oral history would also fill the void of written documents and could also tell a good part of the broader history of the 20th century. Topics would include the Native American Church, the relocation of Indians to urban areas in the 1950s, Indian involvement in 20th century intertribal movements, Indians in the rodeos, and Indian views of various federal government policies, including the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.71 37
      Ironically, the Doris Duke initiatives were controlled by white historians and white scholars even though their overall goal was to secure Indian input and obtain the Indian's side of the story. No Indians had been invited to the UCLA conference. The four participating universities hired primarily white scholars to interview Indians. Only a few Indians were hired to interview other Indians. Indian interviewers included Beatrice Medicine (Lakota) and Martin Seneca (Seneca), both educated in colleges in the late 1960s. Medicine worked for the South Dakota project for only one year.72 In spite of this, one good thing that came out of Doris Duke input was the acceptance of oral history by a group of historians teaching Native American history at the postsecondary level. 38
      As for the vast majority of real living Native Americans of the 1960s, they remained outside the boundaries of academic history. However, they continued to make themselves more visible by the establishment of organizations, by their continued protests, and by the sponsorship of their own conferences. In 1967, tribal leaders from California formed an organization called the California Indian Education Association (CIEA). One of its major purposes was to persuade educational institutions, including the postsecondary sector, to introduce the teaching of native culture and history in the classroom. CIEA found an outlet for its concerns while Congress was conducting nationwide hearings on Indian education in 1967 and 1968. CIEA presented its testimony and recommended that California colleges and universities needed to introduce courses on "California Indian history and culture." Congress included this information in its well-known Kennedy Report of 1969.73 39
      Additionally, in 1970, several Native American scholars came together on the Princeton University campus and held the "First Convocation of American Indian Scholars." Sponsored by the American Indian Historical Society which had been founded in San Francisco in 1964, this gathering gave grassroots as well as college-educated Indians the opportunity to voice their own concerns about current and historical realities. It also enabled them to criticize the academic community, including historians and the discipline of history. Jeannette Henry (Cherokee), cofounder of the Historical Society, presented a paper entitled "The American Indian in American History." She examined the history profession over the last eighty years and blasted it. These were some of her thoughts:
Instead, the historians have on the one hand exhibited racism, and on the other have denied the role of the Indian in our history. ...Among those historians who entirely ignore the role of the Indian in our history are Charles Beard, Lincoln Steffens, Carl Becker, to name only a few. A recent book by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 'The Age of Jackson,' ignores the Indian. ...The Turner Thesis influenced historians from then on. ...Thus the concept of Indian land as 'free land,' 'unoccupied land,' was woven into the philosophy of historic interpretation. In this way it was denied that the Native American had rights to his land...there is the historian Ray Allen Billington, who describes the taking of Indian land as an element of the 'continual rebirth of society.' Billington is a supporter of the Turner Thesis. His references abound with phrases of 'free, unoccupied land.'"74
 Native American students attending the conference agreed with Henry's assessments. They also pointed out that the high schools and universities they attended did not offer Native American history. Rosalie Nichols (Miwok) asserted that "at the university which I am attending, there is no Indian history taught as part of American history...somehow we have to infiltrate the history department and get our history into it."75 One thing became certain at this point in time; both Indians and non-Indians were now calling for the establishment of Indian history courses.		 40
      The emerging nationwide Native American assertions and protests, coupled with the ongoing Doris Duke initiative, led two additional historians to introduce Native American history in 1970: Joseph Cash at the University of South Dakota and Richard Ellis at the University of New Mexico.76 Thus, up to 1970, excluding the anthropologists, eight historians in history departments had introduced courses in Indian history. This made them rare exceptions in a discipline that for the most part continued to ignore tribal people in the larger scope of United States history. 41
      What must be emphasized, however, is that some of the courses in Native American history had disappeared by 1970. As already noted, the one at Bacone College had ended in the 1940s. The course at the University of Nevada at Reno lasted only one year and was eliminated in 1967 after Forbes left that campus. Some of the other courses, including the one at the University of Oklahoma, were offered irregularly in the years after they were created. It was as if Indian history did not exist on some of these campuses even though the courses were listed in the university catalogues. 42
      The year 1970 is a good point to end this study, because it stands as the dividing line between the period of rare exceptions and the period of rising popularity of Native American history. As noted by historian David Edmunds, "by the early 1970s Indians were 'in,' and everyone was jumping on the buckskin bandwagon."77 With the slowly emerging recognition of gender, ethnicity, and race in United States history, dozens of historians in history departments began to offer courses in Indian history. 43


Notes

1. For a similar or parallel argument, see David John Frank, Evan Schofer, and John Charles Torres, "Rethinking History: Change in the University Curriculum, 1910–90," Sociology of Education 67 (October 1994): 231–242.

2. Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Abridged (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 404.

3. Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 93, 101; Alan Trachtenberg, Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880–1930 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), pp. 4, 171–176, 244–246.

4. Ellen Fitzpatrick, History's Memory: Writing America's Past, 1880–1980 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 5.

5. George Rogers Taylor, The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History, 3rd ed. (Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1972), pp. 3–4; Allen G. Bogue, Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), p. 202; David A. Nichols, "Civilization over Savage: Frederick Jackson Turner and the Indian," South Dakota History. Vol. 2, No. 4 (Fall 1972): 385–386.

6. Paul A. Erickson and Liam D. Murphy, A History of Anthropological Theory, 2nd ed. (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 2003), p. 75.

7. I borrow the quote "frozen in time and space" from Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise, pp. 115–116.

8. Fayette Avery McKenzie, "The American Indian of Today and Tomorrow," The Journal of Race Development, Vol. 3, No. 2 (October 1912), p. 151.

9. McKenzie.

10. Arthur C. Parker, "Progress for the Indian," The Southern Workman, Vol. 41, Vol. 11 (November 1912), p. 634; Hazel W. Hertzberg, The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1971).

11. David J. Murrah, "Edward Everett Dale," in John R. Wunder, Historians of the American Frontier: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 228–230.

12. "History 391: The American Indian," E.E. Dale, Folder 22, Box 175, Western History Collections (WHC), University of Oklahoma (OU).

13. The Problem of Indian Administration (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), pp. 3–4, 11–14; Donald T. Critchlow, "Lewis Meriam, Expertise and Indian Reform," The Historian, Vol. 43 (May 1981): 325–344.

14. The Problem of Indian Administration, p. 372.

15. "Civilization of the American Indian Series," Journal of American Indian Education, Vol. 3, No. 2 (January 1964): 5–9.

16. Quoted in Murrah, "Edward Everett Dale," p. 230.

17. Murrah, pp. 229–230.

18. John Williams and Howard L. Meredith, Bacone Indian University: A History (Oklahoma City: Western Heritage Books, Inc., 1980).

19. Bacone College Bulletin, 1938–40, p. 40.

20. M.J. Smith to E.E. Dale, November 1, 1938, E.E. Dale, Folder 10, Box 63, WHC, OU.

21. M.J. Smith to History Chair, UWM, February 8, 1937, File 2596, University Archives, UWM.

22. B.D. Weeks to Leo M. Farrot, April 20, 1937, Folder 4160, Box 396, Rockefeller Archives Center, New York.

23. W.W. Brierley to Charles S. Detweiler, May 26, 1938, Folder 4160, Box 396, RAC; Marc Jack Smith to J.D. Hicks, May 17, 1939, File 2596, UWM.

24. Kenneth R. Philp, John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920–1954 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1977), pp. 26–91.

25. Philp.

26. Winona Garnhausen, History of Indian Arts Education in Santa Fe: The Institute of American Indian Arts with Historical Background (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1988), p. 47.

27. Philp, pp. 113–186.

28. Indian School Journal, December 18, 1936, p. 3.

29. Interview with Earl Crum (Western Shoshone) who attended the Stewart Indian School from 1928 to 1942.

30. Bacone College Bulletin, Annual Catalogue, 1932–1933, pp. 33, 35–36.

31. Angie Debo, "Major Indian Record Collections in Oklahoma," in Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, eds., Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1981), pp. 115–116; Theda Perdue, Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1865–1907 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 1–5.

32. Robert Allen Skotheim, The Historian and the Climate of Opinion (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 59, 97; Richard Nelson Current, Arguing with Historians: Essays on the Historical and Unhistorical (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), pp. 162–163; Roger W. Lotchin, "The Historians' War or the Home Front's War? Some Thoughts for Western Historians," Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 1995): 187–189.

33. Burt Altman, FSU librarian, to author, April 4, 1991.

34. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1945, 1953), pp. 36, 141, 350.

35. Marc Jack Smith to Smith, June 15, 1944, File 2596, UWM; Paul Knaplund to I.L. Baldwin, August 7, 1945, File 2596, UWM

36. Michael Kraus and Davis D. Joyce, The Writings of American History, Revised edition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp. 311–315.

37. Harold L. Ickes to Robert M. Hutchins, November 15, 1945, Office of the Secretary of the Interior, Pt. 15, General, 5–11, Central Classified Files, RG 48, National Archives II. This draft letter identified the names of twenty other university presidents who received Ickes' circular letter; Steven J. Crum, "Harold L. Ickes and His Idea of a Chair in American Indian History, The History Teacher, Vol. 25, No. 1 (November 1991): 20.

38. John A. Krout to Frank D. Fachenthal, December 18, 1945, Columbia University Archives.

39. Krout.

40. Frederic L. Paxson to Robert Gordon Sproul, December 18, 1945, Presidential papers, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

41. Robert E. Bieder, Science Encounters the Indian, 1820–1880 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), p. 206.

42. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

43. James Axtell, The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 4; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father, pp. 431–343.

44. University of Colorado Bulletin, College of Arts and Sciences, 1952–54, p. 47.

45. William N. Fenton, "Ethnohistory and its Problems," Ethnohistory, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter 1962): 2; Bruce G. Trigger, "Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects," Ethnohistory, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1982): 3.

46. Omer C. Stewart, "The Shoshone Claims Case," in Irme Sutton, ed., Irredeemable America: The Indians' Estate and Land Claims (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), p. 197; Larry P. Riggs, "Omer Call Stewart, Ph.D. (1908–1991)," Southwestern Lore, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter 1992): 1–4.

47. Riggs, "Omer Call Stewart," pp. 1–4.

48. Ralph Linton, ed., Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1963), p. vii.

49. BYU General Catalog, 1953–54, p. 223; S. Lyman Tyler to author, May 8, 1990.

50. Ernest L. Wilkinson and Leonard J. Arrington, eds., Brigham Young University: The First One Hundred Years (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1976), pp. 503–516; "BYU Indian Graduates Listed since first in '58," Eagles Eye 15 (April 1983): 4–5.

51. Indiana University Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 10, April 1957, p. 135.

52. Helen Hornbeck Tanner, "Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin (1903–1988)," Ethnohistory, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Winter 1991): 61–65.

53. Francis Jennings, "A Growing Partnership: Historians, Anthropologists, and American Indian History," The History Teacher, Vol. 14, No. 1 (November 1980): 88–89.

54. Quoted in Peter Nabokov, A Forest of Time: American Indian Ways of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 16.

55. R. David Edmunds, "Native Americans, New Voices: American Indian History, 1895–1995," American Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 3 (June 1995): 721.

56. University of Arizona Biennial Catalog, 1963–65; University of Nevada, Reno, Catalog, 1966–67, p. 276; State University of New York, College of Fredonia, 1966–1967, Bulletin, p. 38; Bulletin of the University of Utah, General Catalog Issue, 1967–68, p. 194; UCSB, General Catalog Issue, 1969–70, p. 268.

57. Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 43, 45.

58. Irwin Unger, The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 28, 30, 84; Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Vol. II (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), pp. 1091–1093; Thomas Clarkin, Federal Indian Policy in the Kennedy and Johnson Administration, 1961–1969 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), pp. 67–68, 110.

59. Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, Duane Champagne, American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), pp. 13–14.

60. Fay G. Cohen, Treaties on Trial: The Continuing Controversy over Northwest Indian Fishing Rights (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), pp. 65, 73, 75.

61. "The Indians' New School of Thought on Alcatraz," San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1964, p. 10.

62. Prucha, pp. 1091–1093; Clarkin, pp. 67–110.

63. For the full citations of their books, see Francis Paul Prucha, A Bibliographical Guide to the History of Indian-White Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

64. Fitzpatrick, History's Memory, pp. 1–4, 239–242.

65. William T. Hagen to author, August 12, 1991.

66. R. David Edmunds, "Coming of Age: Some Thoughts upon American Indian History," Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 85 (December 1989): 313.

67. Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1981), pp. 119–122; "Institute Receives Historical Grant," University of South Dakota Bulletin, No. 4 (February 1967), p. 2; C. Gregory Crampton memo to Dean Alfred A. Cave, March 13, 1968, University of Utah Archives.

68. "Opportunities in American Indian History Study," UCLA, 1967, Institute of Indian Studies, American Indian Res. Project, Box 1, University of South Dakota Archives.

69. "American Indian History Project at UCLA, Preliminary Proposal," May 12–13, 1967, John Caughey Papers (MS 998), Box 333, Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA.

70. "American Indian History Conference," May 12–13, 1967, pp. 8, 11, 72, Caughey Papers (MS 998), Box 333, UCLA.

71. "Opportunities in American Indian History Study," p. 9.

72. "American Indian Research Project," The University of South Dakota Bulletin, No. 12 (November 1968), p. 1.

73. Indian Education, Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Indian Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U.S. Senate (90th Cong., 1st/2nd sess.), Pt. I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1969), p. 235.

74. Quoted in Indian Voices: The First Convocation of American Indian Scholars (San Francisco: The Indian Historian Press, 1970), pp. 108–109.

75. Indian Voices., pp. 124–125.

76. The University of New Mexico Bulletin, Catalog Issue, 1970–71, p. 387; The University of South Dakota Bulletin, Series LXX, No. 2, March 1970, p. 95.

77. R. David Edmunds, "Coming of Age," p. 313.

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