During the First World War, 12,000 Native American people were conscripted or volunteered to join the US Army. This is considered a time of note regarding the changing white perspective on Native Americans at the time, due to their service and loyalty to the nation prompting subsequent legislation around their right to citizenship. More specifically, there was a movement to demonstrate gratitude though institutional reform in tangible response to their lobbying and efforts. With regards to the nature of this service in particular, Native Americans generally served in segregated units, some of which specialised in communication between allied trenches, by utilizing variations on their traditional languages which were unintelligible to the enemy. This was first observed in the 141st and 142nd Infantry Regiments of the US Army with the introduction of the Choctaw Telephone Squad in 1917, arguably the most significant alteration in communication techniques for the Allied forces during the war. This is seen in the ensuing victories at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne and in others across France. From the perspective of many white Americans, to see the service of Native Americans with soldiers of their own race brought momentum to the campaign to grant citizenship to the veterans, in a tangible response to their involvement under the united flag of the US. Nevertheless, bigotry and obstacles continued to hinder the gaining of full rights for native Americans, and the nature of this reluctance to grant them equality will be explored in the essay below.
To astutely analyse the impacts of the First World War on Native Americans, it is a necessity that the state of their rights before this event is understood. With regards to citizenship, Native Americans were subject to somewhat of a faux sovereignty, being citizens of a ‘Tribal Nation’ which would often govern with a mixture of federal and traditional laws. Their tribal ‘nations’ were subject to administration and control from the central body of the ‘Bureau of Indian Affairs’, a highly corrupt department of government which continually impinged upon the historic agreements between the government and tribes from the previous two centuries. This included turning a blind eye to white prospectors on designated reservation or sovereign land, particularly following the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871, which ended the independence of the tribes and designed a new system of relations and administration between the government and tribes; further communication and limitation to their rights was to be carried out through statutes rather than acts. This move by the government also forced the expansion of the government’s legal rights in these areas, allowing the corruption of particularly sacred land through mining and drilling for oil which previously would not have been permitted (see ‘Johnson v. M'Intosh’ case in 1823, which maintained the right of Native American complainants who held a federal land patent). Following the Act of 1871 was the formidable ‘Dawes Act’ in 1887, which authorised the survey of tribal land by the government and subsequent allotment to individual Native Americans. In return for compliance with this legislation, Native Americans could be granted the right to a citizenship, arguably in the vein of attempting to ‘civilise’ non-white Americans. This notion resonated in the overarching efforts of the Bureau to force them into a relationship that could be controlled by white society, an evidently racially and religiously motivated agenda against the original rights of Native Americans. This resounded in the infamous boarding schools, which aimed to ‘Kill the Indian, keep the man’, through extreme regimes of banning traditional languages and traditions to Westernise the native peoples. From these issues in the background of the First Wold War, the continued efforts of the white Americans to limit the human rights Native Americans are clear, through modus operandi which together were part of a long-standing pattern of ignorance and disregard of ancient traditions, causing the American state to be in dire need of reform for non-white residents.
One avenue through which the rights of Native Americans could be furthered was with regard to their citizenship status, as the majority lacked this basic necessity for safe travel and commerce across the US. In the First Article of the American Constitution, the basis for citizenship is described, however it that the ‘Indians not taxed’ are exempt from censuses, and as a result do not have citizenship. This was followed by further legislation such as the 14th Amendment, which clarified in 1870 that though those ‘born and naturalised’ in the US were citizens, Native Americans were excluded from this. As only 8% of the Native population at the time counted as ‘taxed’, some sought alternatives to gain this right, such as entering the agreements in the ‘Dawes Act’ of land re-assignment, or marrying white citizens, which granted most Native American women who had married white Americans, citizenship after 1888. This illustrates the precarious situation for many Native Americans of this time, who found themselves in a country they could not even symbolically call their own, nor benefit from citizenship as their white counterparts did.
The focus of this essay, however, is the impact of WW1 on the rights of Native Americans, and specifically its impacts on legislation following the conflict. More directly, the involvement of Native Americans in the First World War catalysed the ‘Indian Citizenship Act’ of 1924, which granted all Native Americans who were not yet citizens citizenship, almost primarily branded as a reward for their service. This impacted 125,000 to 300,000 Native Americans and gave them the privileges of voting in the majority of states, in addition to the unassailable right to work and reside in the US without the danger or fear of removal. Despite the historic abuse of Native Americans by white people up to this point, almost ironically it was on account of white lobby groups that this change was secured: the primary group, ‘The Friends of the Indian’, played a pivotal role in bringing about this act, and largely marketed it as a reaction to the roles of Native Americans in WW1. This is a piece of legislation with great magnitude, symbolic of the campaign of the time to provide some inalienable rights to Native Americans whose history had been so full of oppression and the theft of rights. This field of thought contributes to the interpretation that the First World War was a divisive factor in the advancement of Native American rights, as it triggered the moves from lobby groups to push for reform of this nature, and was demonstrative of the emotion of many whites of the time, that Native Americans should be assimilated into their culture and encouraged to accept the unity of the states of America (though by forcible infringement of their historic and natural tribal rights).
However, there are evidently other factors which contributed to the move to formulate the 1924 Act, the most significant being the general efforts of the federal government to ‘civilise’ and integrate Native Americans into white society. This was seen most prominently in the ‘Dawes Act’ previous to the 1924 legislation, which involved the theft of previously semi-sovereign land from tribes to be redistributed in land packages of 160 acres to families willing to purchase it from the Bureau. This led to abject poverty, as the land was generally too small or infertile for profitable farming and resulted in the breaking of traditional social structures by the physical separation of tribal members. Hence it is clear that previous legislation such as this exemplifies the overwhelming efforts of the federal government to reallocate and break down the sense of tribal identity for Native Americans. Thus, one interpretation could manifest that the reform for Native Americans was not by virtue of the generosity and debt of white Americans following WW1, but rather part of a longer-term effort to combat indigenous selfhood and independence from the American state, which the 1924 Act clearly did. Moreover, from one’s understanding of the Native Americans’ response to the Act, it is clear that this is not a young notion. This is to be observed in the refusal of some tribes, such as the Onondaga Nation, who continue to proclaim the illegitimacy of their citizenship, as they maintain their independence from the federal state. Furthermore, this view is cemented in the knowledge that the main lobbying groups for the Act consisted of white Americans, many of whom were wealthy prospectors who had played roles in other efforts of forced assimilation, such as into boarding schools and other regimes. These were designed to end the traditional consciousness of Native Americans, such as at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, known for its thorough efforts to shift the cultural identity of the pupils through banning the traditional languages and practices. It is also clear that at this time, the move to gain citizenship was resented even by some tribal groups, as it was thought it would lessen their cultural independence; the Onondaga Nation is one tribe who has done and continues to condemn the act as it was a keystone in forced assimilation and the federal assumption of plenary power after WW1. From this perspective, it is evident that there were other major factors involved in the decision to pass the 1924 Act. These stemmed from the deep cultural disparity between the European and Native cultures of the period, and the seemingly unrelenting efforts of the American state to integrate Native Americans into white society, with the method of forcing limited rights onto Native Americans under the almost obnoxiously false premise of repaying them for their sacrifices as a people in the First World War.
Another argument against the statement is that the Citizenship Act of 1924 did not necessarily improve conditions for Native Americans. One of the major hindrances to any progress following the act was the existence of discrepancies between the Federal and State governments, the loopholes through which the states could avoid active administration of it. This is evidenced in the 7 states which continued to refuse the enactment of the motion by 1938, and by the fact that all states were only forced to accept it in 1948. This also followed decades of further discrimination which harkened to that experienced by African Americans at the same time, such as the Poll Tax and literacy tests. Indeed, it was not until 1962 that all states guaranteed the right to vote, and only in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act that they were given full suffrage without these limitations. This was due to the additional issue that the 1924 Act omitted the term ‘full citizenship’, causing confusion about their right to vote. Furthermore, the act did not directly aid Native Americans in tribal settlements to any great extent, as many did not benefit from the right to citizenship as they were either too poor to travel or were already living on ancestral land that they had no reason to relocate from. What is more, this arguably simply symbolic act did not improve the conditions on the reserves to a notable extent: abject poverty remained a continuing struggle in these areas, where infant mortality was twice the national rate and the populations were seven times more likely to die of tuberculosis than the US average. Economic conditions were also objectively low, with 96 percent earning below $200 per year (as shown in the Meriam Report 1928). These notable arguments suggest without ambiguity that the conditions for Native Americans were not necessarily improved by the legislation following the First World War, and that arguably it was the white government’s manipulation of the law and discrepancies between the state and federal units that caused the poor conditions to continue.
In conclusion, it is evident that the First World War was not a successful avenue for civil rights change for Native Americans, nor was it the primary motivation for any change which took place in the 1920s. Rather, legislation was encouraged in the same vein of forced assimilation pre-WW1, with the overarching motivation of limiting the tribal sovereignty and cultural identity of Native Americans to ‘civilise’ them and imbue them with Anglo-European ‘values’ – those of a new, disturbing white America. Moreover, any legislation attributed to Native American service in the First World War did not have a direct and focussed positive impact; due to inevitable shortcomings of the federal government, states were able to evade the new guidance and subjected the native people to humiliating deprivation of suffrage and right to protect land from prospectors. However, it must be conceded that the First World War changed the popular perception of Native American people: to fight in the same war in this way did feed a sense of unity between white and aboriginal soldiers, perhaps causing legislation to come from a more benign place for some white lobbyists. This was due to the bridges and bods made in the First World War, which saw Native Americans viewed less as the enemy and more as Americans. Nevertheless, from the arguments given above, it is clear that on a deep level there were shortcomings in the legislation and superseding negative attributes to the campaign for ‘equal rights’ post-WW1, which undermine the validity of the statement.
Theo Horch, Wilson's School, first written for a Historical Association GCSE prize.
