Provisions For Assimilating Native Americans
Similarly to countless other land purchasing treaties between Native American nations and the U.S., The Treaty of Mendota holds evidence of the ongoing Americanization of Native Americans. In Article 4 of this treaty, the U.S. forced the allocation of certain sums of the overall payment to the Native Americans for such purposes as setting up types of educational and economic with the specific argument that it causes prosperity and happiness. Anthropological and historical perspectives have since shown, of course, that much of the focus of these types of provisions was twofold: to "de-barbarize" the Native Americans, and also to try to encourage the Native American's to contribute back to the American economy in the future, if not immediately.
In article 7, de facto sovereignty of the Sioux People affected by this treaty is very much shifted towards the President of the United States and his judgement. No explicit language is used to grant the Native Americans sovereignty over their reservation land.
Furthermore, article 6 prohibits the sale of alcohol in the region. This is seen as a precursor to the 1897 amendment to the Indian Appropriations Act which banned the sale of alcohol to Native Americans. This part of the law was ultimately struck down in the 1916 court decision United States v. Nice.
Read more about this topic: Treaty Of Mendota
Famous quotes containing the words native americans, provisions, native and/or americans:
“There can be no more ancient and traditional American value than ignorance. English-only speakers brought it with them to this country three centuries ago, and they quickly imposed it on the Africans—who were not allowed to learn to read and write—and on the Native Americans, who were simply not allowed.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Drinking tents were full, glasses began to clink in carriages, hampers to be unpacked, tempting provisions to be set forth, knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, and pickpockets to count their gains during the last heat. The attention so recently strained on one object of interest, was now divided among a hundred; and, look where you would, there was a motley assemblage of feasting, talking, begging, gambling and mummery.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other. In the progress of degradation the distinction of races is soon lost.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)