The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy

by Brian W. Dippie

Overview

Not long after the white man stepped ashore in North America he began killing Indians and pushing those that survived farther and farther west. And what of his conscience? Well, he invented a convenient explanation: Indians are a vanishing race, doomed to extinction anyway.

That belief not only persisted, writes historian Brian Dippie, but it also spread throughout American culture. Soon the "vanishing Indian" appeared in science, literature, art, popular culture, and, most importantly, federal policy.

"The assumption that the Indians are a vanishing race has about it the quality of self-fulfilling prophecy," Dippie writes. In this classic study, first published in 1982, he traces the origins of this assumption and documents its insidious effects on U.S. policy toward Indians from the beginning of the nation's history through the Indian New Deal of the 1930s. He describes its role in early attempts at civilization and education, segregation of Indians west of the Mississippi, post-Civil War reform, the Dawes Act and allotment, the gradualism of early twentieth-century policy, the reform movement of the 1920s, John Collier's Indian Reorganization Act, and into the 1970s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700605071
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	10/25/1991
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	446
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Note on Numbers

Part I. And Then There Were None: A “Bold, but Wasting Race” of Men

1. Their Power Has Been Broken: The Indian After the War of 1812

2. The Anatomy of the Vanishing American

3. The Pathology of the Vanishing American

Part II. Isolation: Indian Policy Before the Civil War

4. Making Good Neighbors: Segregation in Indian Policy

5. A Magnanimous Act of Interposition: Indian Removal

Part III. The Non-vanishing American

6. Red, White, and Black

7. Can He Be Saved? Environmentalism and Evolution

8. He Can Be Saved: Agriculture and Education

9. The Convenient Extinction Doctrine: A Crusade Against the Vanishing American

Part IV. Assimilation: Indian Policy Through World War I

10. In Search of the One True Answer: Indian Policy After the Civil War

11. A New Order of Things: The General Allotment Act

12. A Matter of Administration: Indian Policy’s Confident Years

Part V. And Then There Were None: A Superseded Race

13. We Have Come to the Day of Audit: The Vanishing American Returns

14. Now or Never Is the Time: Cultural Extinction and the Conservationist Impulse

15. There Will Be No “Later” For the Indian: Amalgamation and the Vanishing Race

Part VI. Choice: Indian Policy Through World War II

16. To Each Age Its Own Indian: The 1920s and the Changing Indian

17. To Plow Up the Indian Soul: The Indian Reorganization Act

18. It Is Only Well Begun: The New Deal Legacy

Epilogue: We Live Again

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Totally absorbing. . . . I had to put this book down frequently, so fascinating were the insights which demanded that I mull them over before proceeding."—American Indian Quarterly

"A model study in the history of American ideas. A distinguished contribution to American History."—Pacific Historian

"The unifying theme is the notion that the Native American is doomed, by racial constitution, by historical necessity, by the realities of Indian-white relations, to disappear from the face of the earth. Dippie is surely right in seeing the importance of this idea from the late eighteenth century on. He makes a convincing case that it was crucial in every intellectual and policy development in the succeeding decades."—New Mexico Historical Review

"The best study of American cultural attitudes regarding the Indian produced to date. Dippie writes with precision and economy about a very imprecise and amorphous subject, and does so in a clear and enjoyable style."—Canadian Review of American Studies

"A remarkably fine book. Enlightening and delightful."—American Historical Review

"Should be on the reading list of every course on the history of the American Indian."—Pacific Historical Review

"Deserves a place on the shelves of anyone concerned with the status of Indians today."—Books of the Southwest

From the Publisher

Totally absorbing.

American Indian Quarterly

A model study in the history of American ideas. A distinguished contribution to American History.

Pacific Historian

The best study of American cultural attitudes regarding the Indian produced to date. Written in a clear and enjoyable style.

Canadian Review of American Studies

A remarkably fine book. Enlightening and delightful.

American Historical Review

Should be on the reading list of every course on the history of the American Indian.

Pacific Historical Review

Deserves a place on the shelves of anyone concerned with the status of Indians today.

Books of the Southwest

Reprint of the respected Wesleyan University Press edition of 1982. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews