"The Problem of Indian Administration"

Interior cover of "The Problem of Indian Administration," a report commissioned by Hubert Work.

In June of 1926, the Meriam Commission of the Institute for Government Research was charged by Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work to investigate the affairs of Indians in the United States.  In a June 1926 letter to the director of the Institute, Work wrote that the study “should embrace the educational, industrial, social and medical activities maintained among the Indians, their property rights and their general economic conditions. It should be conducted by persons selected because of their impartiality and special qualifications who will command the confidence of those concerned, the government officials, the Indians and the general public.”¹  On February 21, 1928, an 847-page report was submitted to Work entitled The Problem of Indian Administration; it was very critical of the United States government’s treatment of Native Americans and “(painted) a discouraging picture of the Indian.”²  

In Chapter 4, entitled “A general policy for Indian affairs,” the report stated “The history of the relationship between the whites and the Indians contains much to which the whites cannot point with pride. No attempt will be made in this report to discuss some of these darker pages in American history: They are reasonably well known to every student of American history and nothing is to be gained by reviewing them here. They are mentioned because the nation has at present the opportunity, if it will, to write the closing chapters in the history of the treatment of the Indians by the government of the United States. To really patriotic citizens who love and admire their country and who like to view with pride its achievements, it would be something of an atonement and a worthwhile accomplishment if these closing chapters should disclose the national government giving to the Indians the highest quality of expert service to make them capable and efficient citizens of the nation, able to take care of themselves and to contribute to the nation from the best of their own original American culture.”³

Henry Roe Cloud, pictured in 1931

The Meriam Commission was led by Lewis Meriam and his team of nine handpicked specialists.  One of these specialists was Henry Roe Cloud, who served as the Indian adviser.  In April 1927, Cloud visited the Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma to tell students about the report.  Student William Kekahbah wrote in The Indian School Journal that “the survey is to embrace the educational, social and medical activities maintained among the Indians, their personal and civil rights, and their economic conditions.”⁴  Kekahbah wrote of Cloud’s visit, and that “we were very fortunate, as a student body, to have a member of our own race talk to us and the employees of the school.”⁵

In a New York Times article entitled “The Plight of the Listless American Indians,” the report was summarized for the public shortly after its release.  The study was largely financed by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in order to maintain unbiased standards.⁶  The report found that government-run hospitals, schools, reservations, and other facilities were “devastating.”  Because the government had forced Native Americans to depend upon the government’s resources, they were “‘bewildered by the crumpling of their old world, (and) they are not able to adapt themselves to the new.’”⁷  

Mt. Pleasant Indian Industrial School in Michigan, c. 1910.

SCHOOLS

Several Indian schools were described as “‘more or less permanent shacks.’”⁸  Sanitary facilities were lacking, and students were “undernourished, the funds available for the maintenance of these schools are inadequate…both tuberculosis and trachoma are prevalent in these schools, and the survey asserts that undernourishment is largely responsible for both diseases.”⁹  It was difficult to retain staff because of the remote locations of many of the schools, low pay, and “the difficulty of “transforming the aboriginal child, with slight background in civilized living, into citizenship and the ability to make his own way.”¹⁰  The report recommended recruiting better-trained personnel.

It was noted that students who returned to their reservations after schooling usually regressed, as their new “civilized” ways weren’t accepted by their tribes.  This was especially true for young Native American women, with the report finding that even if she tried to leave the reservation to find employment, there was “nobody to hire any of her kind.”¹¹  In his 1924 article in The Saturday Evening Post, four years before this report was published, Hubert Work also noted this trend among Native American girls.  He said they were more subject to retrogression when they returned to their tribes and that social work was needed on the reservations to continue contact with civilizing influences.¹²  Native American intelligence was often questioned, but the report found that “‘the Indian is quite capable of being educated.  Intelligence tests of Indian children show them to be but 10 to 15 percent inferior to white children.’”¹³  Hubert Work also believed that white people were of superior intelligence, as evidenced by comments made in his Post article.  Several of Work’s notes perpetuated the stereotype of the poor, downtrodden Indian, and he said white Americans should help them because “after all, the Indian problem is a human one and should be treated from the human viewpoint, in the reservation.”¹⁴ 

Tuberculosis Is a "House Disease," distributed by the National Child Welfare Association: Co-operating with Natl. Assn. for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, around 1923.

ILLNESS 

The Meriam Report also found that illnesses like tuberculosis and trachoma devastated not only schools, but the reservations.  The report said, “‘In Arizona, the Indians say that in the beginning the Indian had the land and the white man had tuberculosis, but that now the Indian has tuberculosis and the white man has the land.’”¹⁵  

As a doctor, Hubert Work often wrote from a medical standpoint.  In an October 1924 article that appeared in The Military Surgeon, Work cited the two above illnesses, pneumonia, infant mortality, and gastrointestinal tract disorders as the greatest problems facing the Indian Medical Service.¹⁶  The fact that Native Americans were subject to the same diseases as white people was repeated throughout the four-page article, as if a certain audience had to be convinced.  Work noted that Native Americans seemed to experience tuberculosis and trachoma at a higher rate than “other races of our country” and “there are no medical or surgical diseases that are peculiar to the Indian race, but on account of the conditions under which they live, and because of their faulty diet, and their general dietary habits and housing conditions, they suffer from certain diseases…to a greater extent.”¹⁷  Work also said that the traditional medicine man believed in white medicine, and as “strange as it may seem the very medicine men whose influence is gradually being lessened by the work of the (reservation) hospitals are the best patrons of surgery on the reservation, particularly when they themselves fall sick, and are frequently found in the surgical wards as patients.”¹⁸  Work praised the efforts of the doctors, presumably white, at these reservation hospitals, as “civilization is following the physician in foreign fields. He and the missionary are its pioneers among the American Indians.”¹⁹

Relating to Work’s comparison of white doctors as missionaries, the Meriam Report also addressed the work of missionaries, devoting an entire chapter to the topic.  Their main finding, the final paragraph of the 847-page report, is as follows: “The processes of education and the scientific interpretation of nature should be the missionary's reliance for the eradication of the elements of superstition in Indian religions. Superstition gives way before scientific knowledge. Once the Hopi is reasonably supplied with water by the government engineers, as he will be some day, the Hopi rain god, the Snake, will depart to return no more. Great (advances) in sanitation and hygiene and in the elimination of malnutrition by economic improvement and proper dietary habits will demonstrate to the Indians that the medicine man is a useless adjunct our Indian society.”²⁰  Although the authors of the Meriam Report called out the government on its failures regarding Native Americans, they didn’t always show support for the culture of many Native Americans.  It is interesting, however, that another section of the report, perhaps written by a different author, argues that individual Indians should be able to decide whether they want to retain their culture or assimilate into white culture.  This was written early in the report, with the recommendation being that “he who wishes to merge into the social and economic life of the prevailing civilization of this country should be given all practicable aid and advice in making the necessary adjustments. He who wants to remain an Indian and live according to his old culture should be aided in doing so.”²¹  It was also emphasized that “The survey staff has great sympathy.  It would not recommend the disastrous attempt to force individual Indians to be what they do not want to be, to break their pride in themselves and their Indian race, or to deprive them of their Indian culture,” even if they also recognized that white culture and society were now dominant, and the hands of the clock couldn’t be turned back.²²

Hubert Work outside the White House, 1922.

A CONTINUING PROBLEM

Many of the problems and solutions outlined in the report were also noted in Hubert Work’s The Saturday Evening Post and The Military Surgeon articles, although they were published in February 1928, May 1924, and October 1924, respectively.  This is curious for many reasons, but it shows that significant problems were continuously identified, acknowledged, and left unaddressed.  Although the ICA of 1924 was Work’s primary legislative contribution to Native American issues, he often addressed their struggles in his official communications through his five-year tenure as Secretary of the Interior.  Although his opinions, ideas, and language were all generally less progressive than modern audiences would like to see, he often acknowledged that the government had failed Native Americans in many ways.  In his Post article, Work wrote that although “the Government (is) landlord, banker, commissariat and doctor for the Indians, (it) has failed to attain for them a place in our social system they are constituted to occupy” and that “the Government may have many times failed in its obligations to the red man.”²³  He was a visionary man and wanted the government to learn from its past mistakes, writing “precedent may be good or bad, may lend itself to evolution or to involution, but new precedents must be established for new visions.”²⁴  After Work’s time as Secretary of the Interior, no major legislation relating to Native Americans was enacted until the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, also known as the Indian New Deal.²⁵