Much Ado about the "Doolittle Report"
The Replies of Brigadier General James H. Carleton to Questions Posed by the Joint Special Committee of the Two Houses of Congress Directing an Inquiry into the Condition of the Indian Tribes and their Treatment by the Civil and Military Authorities of the United States (1867)
Spend a few moments browsing the "People" navigation pane of Readex's American Indian Wars, 1830-1898, and you'll likely be taken by the romance and novelty of the names of Indians included there: "Alligator Warrior (Seminole);" "Cloud Chief (Cheyenne);" "Diving Bear (Kiowa);" "Cut Nose (Arapaho)." Indian names are often evocative of the perceived spirit of their possessors or underscore some dramatic feature or experience relating to them. Perhaps "Double Vision (Kiowa)" was the recipient of personal enlightenment—twice. Or maybe he would have benefited from a pair of eyeglasses.
In this light, the entry for "Doolittle, James Rood (1815-1897)" is surely a misnomer, for as a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and the Chairman of the above-named Joint Special Committee he accomplished a great deal. The Doolittle Report took nearly two years to produce and ran to over five hundred pages. The report was structured around the answers to twenty-three questions posed by the committee to numerous military and civil authorities on Indian affairs in 1865.
Among the respondents to those questions was Brigadier General James H. Carleton, then commanding the Military Department of New Mexico. Carleton was well-positioned to comment on the wisdom and folly of U.S. Indian policy at that time. His department included ancestral lands of the Apache, Comanche, Navajo, and Hopi Indians just to name a few of the more prominent tribes. The Department of New Mexico shared a border with Mexico and extended into present-day Texas and Arizona. It was a wild, remote place given to extremes of climate and terrain. It was difficult to live there in any circumstances let alone as the head of an occupying force. Carleton was a busy man, yet he found time to respond at length to the committee's questions.
After establishing his bona fides in Question 1, in answer to Question 2 Carleton speculated as to the reasons for the Indians' decline. In his list of overt causes, he noted warfare and various medical maladies but also included the influence of Divine Providence. One could argue that he slighted both God and the Indians in that much.
5... The causes which the Almighty originates when in their appointed time, he wills that one race of men—as in races of the lower animals—shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place to another race, and so on in the Great Cycle traced out by himself, which may be seen but has reasons too deep to be fathomed by us. The races of the Mammoths and Mastodons, and the Great Sloths, came and passed away; the Red man of America is passing away!
This uncharitable justification of a national policy verging on genocide was not uncommon, but Carleton was more evenhanded in ascribing blame to the colonial instruments of God's apparent will in his answer to the fourth question, concerning the alleged Indian penchant towards alcoholism.
Question 4th. To what extent does intoxication prevail among them, and what legislation or practical regulation by the Department do you suggest to prevent or mitigate the evil?
Answer. Amongst Indians living near the settlements, intoxication prevails very generally. If it does not, it is because from poverty on the part of the Indians, or scarcity of liquor on the part of the whites, there is nothing to get drunk upon. Very stringent laws, faithfully executed, might mitigate, but can never stop the evil. Your whiskey-seller will be found on the top of the Wind River mountains, if your troops go there and have money, or your Indian goes there with his beaver-skin, his buffalo robe, his buckskin, his pony, or his squaw. Some one of these articles of trade will be sure to draw the liquor forward, in spite of your laws to hold it back. This is true and should be looked squarely in the face.
He was less generous in his answer to the fifth question, regarding the extent to which prostitution contributed to the decline of Indian populations. He praised the Pimas, Apaches, Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Creeks, and Comanches as being "really virtuous," but viewed the members of several other tribes as "more or less erotic" and promiscuous.
The Pimas, Apaches, Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Creeks, and Comanches are really virtuous as a rule so far as promiscuous commerce between the sexes may go.
This cannot be said of the Cherokees, Seminoles, Pottawattamies, Pawnees, the Sioux, Arrapahoes, Cheyennes, Kioways. They are all more or less erotic in their temperament and habits, and in proportion as they are so, their offspring are more or less enfeebled.
In his answer to the sixth question, Carleton doubled down on a moralistic attitude towards education as a curative to the presumed decadence of the Indians despite his assumption of their eventual racial extinction.
Question 6th. State any other fact bearing upon the causes of their decay, and what, if any, is the best practical remedy?
Answer. This question seems to be answered as far as I know by what I have already stated. The best practical remedy must be in teaching the people the evils to which their course of life tends, and in educating them up to that point, when, from moral principles, that can be taught them, they will of themselves do right. Now they do many acts of wrong from their ignorance of the moral and physical consequences. The natural decay incident to their race must find its remedy in a power above that of mortals.
Carleton was more objective when commenting on terrestrial matters, as in the seventh question. Bear in mind that the Army had tried and failed numerous times to defend Indian territorial sovereignty; it just wasn't politically feasible to kill settlers/citizens, whereas much of the training and activity of the U.S. Army was devoted to killing & segregating Indians, frequently for simple property crimes such as cattle rustling or lingering too close to a post or settlement. The demise of the Indians was viewed as collateral damage to realize the benefits of Manifest Destiny.
Question 7th. Which in your opinion, is the best policy, as white settlements advance and surround Indian Reservations, to maintain the Indians upon them and endeavor to resist the encroachments, or to remove them to new reserves, remote from settlements?
Answer. Maintain the Indians upon such Reservations and resist the encroachments of the whites. It must come to this sooner or later; because from the rapid spread over the unoccupied lands, of the tidal wave, or 'bore' of the great and advancing ocean of palefaces, you will soon have no places suited by climate and extent, to which to remove them, so that they can be remote from the settlements. Therefore place them upon Reservations now, and hold those Reservations inviolate. In the great and rising sea here prefigured, these Reservations, will be Islands; and as time elapses and the race dies out, these Islands, may become less and less, until, finally, the great sea will ingulph them one after another until they become known only in history, and at length are blotted out, of even that, forever.
In answer to the eighth question, he came down in favor of allowing Indians (and Blacks) to own land, although recognized in the ninth question that many unscrupulous persons would dispossess them of their real property.
Question 8th. Is it best that their lands should be held in common or in severalty?
Answer. In my opinion, the lands should be held in severalty. Surveys should be carefully made, and each family or head of family should have a part allotted to him. The human being white or Red or Black who plants a tree or vine or builds a house, or makes a field or garden, identifies himself with it, his children are born there, and the associations connected with these things constitute and give birth to what we call home love—and home feeling. We have taken quite enough from the Indian. Let them have and keep really a home. If they have rights at all upon earth, that is one of the dearest. Let us not rob them of that.
In the twelfth question, Carleton favored the Roman Catholic Church as offering the most compelling version of "the truth of Christianity." Although he had served in more northern portions of the United States, his choice may have been influenced by the prevalence of Catholic missions in the Southwest where he was then based.
Question 12th. What has been the effect of Christian Missions among them, and what do you recommend upon that subject.
Answer. So far as my observation has gone the Roman Catholic Missionaries are the ones who soonest teach the Indian the truths of Christianity. The solemn pomp and attractive ceremonial of that church seemed to catch soonest and hold most enduringly the attention and thoughts—and finally the belief of the Indian. I pass no judgment on this creed or that. I simply state a fact; and were it left with me, I would have all teachers, male and female, and all clergy for wild and nomadic Indians, of that Church.
Question 13 dealt with the arrangement of Indian sovereign territory. "Indian Territory" was a geographical division from 1834 to 1907, roughly approximated in the map below.
From U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994
What Carleton suggested as Indian territories sounds like what we would recognize as states or provinces; various tribes whose members were compatible would assemble themselves into communities, and then put their civil affairs in order. Indian reservations would perhaps resemble counties and be subject to broader governance.
Question 13th. As to the country called the Indian Territory what do you recommend in relation to that, after its pacification; should it be held by the Tribes, under former treaty stipulations; or under new treaty arrangements; or be organized into a Territorial Government for the civilized Tribes; and if the latter upon what conditions and limitations as to residence, suffrage, eligibility to office, and powers of the separate Tribes therein?
Answer. Let the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles have their separate lands defined if you please, but let their country be erected into a territory. To do this make new treaty stipulations if necessary. The rights of suffrage, I think should be uniform, and such as Congress in its wisdom may devise. This is a matter upon which any opinion of mine would be of but little value. The tribes thus united would soon become homogeneous. Their Territorial Governor, Judges, &c, at first, and until those Indians became educated to this new step towards civilization and towards taking their place in the family of states, should be appointed from Americans.
An Indian Governor or Judge taken from any one of their tribes, at first would be an object of dislike on the part of the Indians belonging to other tribes than his own. The delegate could be elected, and at first taken from the tribes in rotation. Equality of powers and rights of the separate tribes in such a territory should be a sine qua non.
Northward, by and by, you can doubtless place the Delawares, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Sacs and Foxes, Senecas, Wyandottes, Caddoes, and the scattering Mohawks, contiguous to each other, and erect them into a Territory. They are all more or less of the old Algonquin stock. They would not be apt to fraternize readily with the Indians who came from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Perhaps in after years, you could get the Sioux and Chippewas to come into such an arrangement. Then your Territorial Government for Indians would end. The remaining Indians should be gotten upon Reservations there to fulfill their destinies as before set forth.
Carleton then embarked upon a series of brief answers to questions relating to Indian annuities—periodical payments in cash or goods in satisfaction of treaty obligations on behalf of the federal government. He was not in favor of them. Why?
Question 15th. What proportion actually reaches the hands of the Indians?
Answer. A very small proportion.
Question 16th. What proportion is received by the trader for goods and supplies already advanced?
Answer. A very large proportion.
Carleton recognized that frontier traders nearly had a monopoly on Indian trade and that the Indians themselves were not well informed as to what the goods they bought and sold were worth outside their local markets; traders could ask whatever prices they thought they could get, or resort to fraud or outright coercion.
The government also played fast and loose with Indian goods and funds. Bureaucrats sometimes decided that treaty obligations could be fulfilled through the provision of pins, combs, mirrors, and other incidental items of little benefit to transient communities in rural areas. Nomadic tribes might be aspirationally supplied with agricultural implements that they would never use.
The government would procure inferior goods and charge astronomical amounts of money to transport those goods across the country. Tribes might wait weeks or months for goods to arrive, thereby losing valuable time and traveling out of their way. They were always prey to the exactions of the lowest bidder.
Government rations might be inadequate, distasteful, spoiled, or unhealthy. Whereas such items as the Indians truly wanted and needed—especially firearms and ammunition—would be tightly controlled, for obvious reasons. Indian funds were often placed in trust and debited to cover any number of assessments. An entire tribe's annuity could be diminished to pay for depredation claims brought on by the real or imputed actions of a few individuals.
Question 20 raised the very large and important issue as to whether a military or a civil department could most fairly and economically administer Indian affairs. Specifically, was the Department of the Interior or the War Department better suited to act in the best interests of the Indians?
Question 20th. Under what Department of the Government, the War Department or the Interior, should the Bureau of Indian Affairs be placed, to secure the best and most economical administration of it? State your opinion and reasons.
Unsurprisingly, Carleton thought that authority should rest with the military, but it's worthwhile to follow his reasoning.
Answer. In my opinion the Indian Bureau should be placed under the War Department, as it was before the Department of the Interior was created and organized. My reasons for this are: when under the War Department, which also controls the forces operating in Indian countries, there would be no conflicts of opinion about what should be done in a given case; for as the fountain whence might emanate instructions, whether to Commanders, Superintendents or Agents would be one, so the different streams of authority and regulations descending through these subordinates would be of the same character. In my opinion the office of Commissioner of Indian Affairs should be abolished if it be incompatible with the law to have an officer of the Army to fill it ex officio. Contemplating the placing of the Indian Bureau under the direction of the War Department, and organizing it systematically so that its operations should harmonize with those of the troops, and the two run together as parts of the same machine, with no cogs mismatching, no jarrings, no belts loose, &c, it would be next to impossible to find a citizen who would understand Indian Affairs, Indians, Indian countries, Indian wants &c and at the same time understand military affairs. But it is easy to find many an officer in the United States Army who from long service in Indian countries understands all these matters. If it be more an object to have the business between the government and Indians managed by fixed rules, and without uncertainty and confusion and delay, than to have the place and patronage of the Indian Bureau exist, irrespective of these considerations, the plan here suggested seems in my mind to meet that object. For I would have not only the head of the Indian Bureau an officer of the Army, but each Commander of a Military Department should be ex officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs for all the Indians in that Department, and the commander of one post nearest any one tribe of Indians in that Department should be the Agent ex officio for that tribe.
He then shifted to a logistical argument in favor of keeping Indian affairs under military control. He's not wrong to favor the military supply chain at this point in the development of the frontier. But as noted above, Army procurement was simply the least worst solution to the perennial problem of linking buyers with sellers. Banking was improvised outside of major cities. This was an era when roads and bridges west of the Mississippi River were rudimentary and informal where they existed at all. The transcontinental railroad was just getting started.
The military quartermasters hired private teamsters to haul goods using draft animals. Weather was changeable. Lodging was hard to come by. Animals died from lack of food and water. Supply trains were often attacked by Indians and outlaws alike, which necessitated the use of military escorts for protection. This entailed having military posts at regular intervals, which in turn needed supplies and transportation for themselves.
It was frequently all the Army could do to get food and equipment to its posts and to keep its animals alive, quite apart from supplying thousands of Indians with the essentials of life. It would be a century before the Interstate Highway System, begun under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, would expedite American transportation.
To bolster his argument, he deferred to Lieutenant Colonel Nelson H. Davis, Inspector General in the Department of New Mexico, for a second opinion. The Inspector General reviews the practices and circumstances of every military post within his administrative control and ensures that the posts are operating efficiently according to regulations. If he found problems, he had the authority to set things right. Davis was detail-oriented and very good at his job. He agreed with Carleton that the War Department was best suited to manage Indian affairs. Then he laid out a litany of corruption and misrule to illustrate just how bad things could get.
The misapplication of money, goods &c appropriated by Congress for our Indians, much of which has gone to enrich appointees of the Indian Bureau and their friends—the deceptions often practiced to secure their annuities and induce them to cede away their lands, as was the case in Minnesota, where certain bands were persuaded and coerced to cede away lands belonging to the Yanktonais which was one of the principal causes of the late Indian War there and the massacre of over two thousand (2000) people, with the destruction of much valuable property—the interference in their social relations by the not infrequent taking and prostitution of their squaws, forcibly or with their own consent and with the introduction of illicit trade among them by lawless frontiersmen particularly in intoxicating liquors destroying their domestic peace and happiness and inciting them to acts of hostility upon the white inhabitants—the unauthorized and makeshift promises, too often made them to gratify the cupidity and desires of the appointees of the Indian Department and others, or to shield them temporarily from anticipated violence or attacks from Indians and the variable course pursued by different Indian Superintendents and Agents for the management of our Indian tribes, due to their ignorance of the character and wants of the Indians, or a desire to promote selfish interests, sufficiently proves, I think, that the present system for their government is not a just, honest and consistent one.
To the above causes and aggressions of white men upon our Indians, many of our Indian wars had their inception, and in illustration of which may be cited those in California and Oregon in 1850 and 1851, the massacres in Minnesota and of Spirit Lake, as well as much of the Indian trouble and hostilities which for years have occurred West of the Missouri River on the plains and elsewhere—Tribes that were friendly in the early emigration to California in 1849 and 1850 were excited to hostility by the unprovoked and outrageous shooting of their people by emigrants. Some tribes, no doubt, have ever been treacherous and hostile to the white race.
Davis also touches on the placement of Indian children in white families. He's in favor of it though he qualified the term "orphans" in de facto recognition that for various reasons many Indian children did not have the benefit of regular family relations although their parents might well be alive. This can be investigated further in the context of "peonage," essentially the systematic kidnapping and enslavement of Indian children by white settlers and Mexicans in the border region. This practice was widespread despite efforts by military authorities to prevent it.
In the final part of his reply to the Doolittle Committee, Carleton described the government's practice of concluding treaties with Indian tribes as "a mockery" not through bad faith on the part of the Indians, but "because the government is determined to have matters its own way anyhow." That's a very forceful position for a military officer to express, and might well apply to America's observance of treaties generally.
Question 21st. In setting apart Reserves, is it advisable to do so by treaty with the tribes, or to do so by law, or by Regulation of the Department, enforcing the same by arms.
Answer. As a rule, especially for all wild tribes, have Reservations set apart by law and enforce the same by arms. I would not make treaties at all with such Indians period to go through the forms of making a treaty with a party when the Government is determined to have matters its own way anyhow is a mockery beneath the dignity of the United States. We can do right without resorting to any theatricals simply for effect.
In marking out primitive roads in desolate areas, the U.S. Army would often create cairns along the route so the traveler would always have reliable reference points. Let Readex do the heavy lifting to keep your research on track.
References from American Indian Wars, 1830-1898 and the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994
