Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 09:42:39 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: RACE


In message <33E96702.12FB-AT-igc.apc.org>, cdavidson
<cdavidson-AT-igc.apc.org> writes
> My family are mainly from
>the relatively secure sector of the working class today, but part
>of the reason is that my Scots-Irish ancestors came here in the
>1760s, joined in the slaughter of Delaware and Wyandot Indians
>on the Ohio valley frontier, and were rewarded with land deeds
>that, as a matter of law, were for "Whites only." Even free Blacks
>couldn't own them for quite some time to come. Those small
>parcels of land brought successive generations of Davidson's
>through hard times without starving or being thrown on relief.
>The state's role in this kind of "affirmative action for white
>folks" is precisely how this country was build and developed.

I take a differnt view of the question of Native American land rights,
outlined below


Ronald Reagan passed legislation guaranteeing the land rights of Native
Americans that allowed the two surviving Pequod to claim territories in
New England. The Pequod lands are now home to gambling under a legal
loophole - one of the easiest ways for Native Americans to cash in on
their claims. Currently in the courts the claim of that unfortunate
Native American people who intermarried with African slaves in Brooklyn.
Their right to set up casinos in New York is unlikely to be upheld by
the courts.

The willingness of the courts to recognise claims on the basis of
ancient treaties raises the question: what is the basis of the land
rights of Native Americans. For many years that question has been
ignored as a troublesome irritation. More recently there has been a
sense of outrage at the theft of indian lands. The historical record
shows, however, that Native American land rights are far from straight-
forward, and arise more out of the triangular relationship between the
colonial powers (France and Britain), the colonialists (the Americans)
and the indigenous people (the Sioux, Pawnee, Iroquois, Pequod, Mohicans
etc).

Native Americans had no concept of ownership of land, which was alien to
their culture. Any land rights recognised in treaties between the
colonial powers and the Native Americans were rights granted by the
European powers. In fact the French courts and the English Parliament
ennobled Native American leaders as =91Chieftans=92 or Chiefs of their
=91tribes=92 or clans on the model of the fictitious recognition of the land
rights of  the Scottish lairds. Like that artificial nobility, the
Native American chiefs were received in the Court of the Sun King Louis
IV, and throughout European high society.

The purpose of these first treaties was not to assist the Native
Americans, but to frustrate the growing ambitions of the Colonists. As
long as the Colonists were landless labourers they were subordinate to
the Colonial powers. The Englishman William Penn founded Pennsylvania on
vast estates claimed as his Manor. The early Colonists lived in peculiar
subservience, often as indentured servants to their English masters. The
monopoly over the land held by a handful of English lords guaranteed
their servitude and their masters power. A common strategy to escape
servitude was to Go West, claiming new lands for themselves by extending
the frontier, and therefore escape the domination of the English. The
counter strategy of the Colonial Powers was to grant rights to Native
Americans. These land rights were an attempt by the Colonial Powers to
hem the colonists in behind a savage wilderness.

Nor did the European powers balk at arming the Native Americans to hunt
down their runaway servants. France=92s policy of trading guns with the
Iroquois provided a powerful disincentive to aspiring frontiersmen - it
also led to a spectacular disruption of the balance of power between the
Native American Nations, as the Iroquois deployed their new found fire
power to wipe out their competitors.

Clearly the Native Americans - considered as a cultural group - had an
interest in supporting whichever power promised less change in the
region. They were no match for the yankee ingenuity that was growing on
their hinterlands, and could not compete with the new technologies that
were being applied to farming and industry. Their whole way of life was
threatened. Tragically, though, those interests meant that they would
always be on the losing side, backing the most reactionary forces at
work in the new continent.

Time and time again Native Americans supported, and had their claims
=91supported=92 by whichever power was most hostile to change in the region.
First the French attempted to restrict the relation to the new colony to
one of trading only. In the French and Indian Wars absolutist France
enjoined Native Americans to fight alongside them against the English
and the Colonists. The French lost the war, but the Native Americans
lost a great deal more. Later the British Crown tried to rein in the
Colonists, provoking the War of Independence. Rightly sensing that a
victory for the Colonists would mean further expansion East, Native
Americans sided overwhelmingly with England - and again paid a terrible
price. Unerringly the Native Americans gravitated towards the most
conservative side of every conflict. In 1812, when Britain opened
hostilities with the Americans once again, Native Americans rallied
Quixotically to the cause of George IV. Furthermore, conservatives in
America who wished to see an end to frontier populism gravitated towards
the =91rights=92 of the native Americans. When the growing class of East
Coast patricians grew restless at the Eastward expansion of Georgia onto
Cherokee lands, pamphlets romanticised the Noble Savages in familiar
terms.

On the opposite end of the equation, the Colonists had only one outlet
for their aspiration to be free from European domination - to press the
frontier Eastward. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt of black slaves
and white indentured servants against the English governor, imprisoning
him. Bacon=92s rallying cry was an aggressive Indian policy, meaning an
escape East - something which England had to send battalions across the
Atlantic to prevent. The association of popular democracy and an
aggressive Indian policy endured through the War of Independence,
Jacksonism, right up to the closing of the frontier at the end of the
nineteenth century.

What protection was afforded Native Americans by their land rights?

None. In fact these rights were artificially construed to frustrate
Eastward expansion, which meant that they only served to place the
Native Americans directly in the line of fire between the Colonists and
the European powers. They locked Native Americans into a hostile
relation with the Colonists that led to one slaughter after another.

As the New Republic grew, it is important to note, the powers that be
carefully regulated the Eastward expansion by systematically
renegotiating Native American land rights. In keeping with the
fictitious nature of these rights, however, the government did not
negotiate with the Native Americans directly, but appointed =91Indian
Agents=92, like George Armstrong Custer. The reservation policy operated
by the Indian Agents has as its legal basis, the land rights of Native
Americans.

Native Americans were in a trap, but seemed to have little option but to
continue to press their claims as described in the successive treaties
re-negotiated on their behalf by Indian Agents. The final culmination of
the =91land rights=92 came with the Chiliasmic uprising of Sitting Bull=92s
spirit dance, when Native Americans realised that there was nowhere
further West to go and tried to fight. The ensuing slaughter brought an
end to the Native American people as a collective entity.





James Heartfield


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