Indian Giving

I remember when I was a kid. My younger brothers, Jeff and Jim and I used to play cowboys and Indians. There was no understanding of who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy;” that was reserved for when we were playing cops and robbers.

It was sometimes more interesting to play the Indian because then you got to pretend to shoot a bow and arrow instead of a gun. You also had an opportunity to smoke a peace pipe and lift your hand and say, “How” in greeting. In fact, when we played, if you were the Indian, “How” was the only thing you could say that was understood by the cowboy.

I was thinking the other day about the term, “Indian giver.” Growing up, it was a negative term referring to the act of giving something to someone as a gift and then taking it back. When I was a kid, I always thought that it was the Indians who gave gifts only to take them back again.

Now that I’m older and we now refer to Indians as Native Americans, I’ve reconsidered where the term “Indian giver” may have came from. And I think my brothers and I had it all wrong.

I did a little online research on the derivation of the term “Indian giver” and this is what I learned. It is thought (though not everyone agrees) that the term was first used by American frontiersmen/explorers Lewis and Clark, both of European descent. They encountered Native Americans on their journey westward. In several instances, the Native Americans were friendly and offered Lewis and Clark gifts. It was the culture of Native Americans that when they presented someone with a “gift” they expected something of equal value in return. The explorers, unfamiliar with and unaccepting of customs different than their own, viewed the gift-giving culture of the Native Americans as uncouth and extremely rude. They took great offense.

The term “Indian giver” was derogatory but didn’t originally mean that Native Americans gave a gift and then took it back, though the definition evolved to mean this. Lewis and Clark thought they were receiving a gift. The Native Americans saw not a “gift” but a transaction, a trade, a barter.

Now, I’m going to propose to you an alternative theory on the derivation of the term Indian giving. You better hold on because following my logic may prove to be bumpy.

Let me preface my remarks by stating the following: I am not a history scholar, a history teacher, or even a history buff, for that matter. (You’ll find this out soon enough.) You are likely to find many holes in my logic, perhaps even some misinformation. For this, I apologize. I did take a diversity course in college about ten years ago – that I aced, by the way – in which I learned facts about the Federal Government and its dealings with Native Americans, but my recollection of those facts is fuzzy at best. I will, however, use these fuzzy facts to state my case.

Okay, here we go.

We know that Native Americans inhabited the North American continent thousands of years before our European ancestors “discovered” the same land and began settling here. There were some exceptions, but as the United States of America began to form and its population grow, Native Americans were viewed by our Anglican ancestors as “savages.” On the other hand, they considered themselves to be educated, civilized, and more deserving of the land that our Native Americans inhabited.

Throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th and into 19th centuries (400 years!), Native Americans lost some or most of their ancestral land to our Euro-American ancestors. Sometimes this was due to war – the French and Indian War, the Seven Years’ War, the Sioux War – and sometimes by laws established by the U.S. Government – the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Dawes Act of 1887. Even between wars and laws there were massacres and military removals of Native Americans from their land.

As the colonies expanded, the Euro-Americans and Federal Government would sometimes develop treaties with the Native Americans, “reserving” parcels of land for them to inhabit. (Hence the word “reservation.” You learn so much on the Internet!) The Native Americans were often promised money in exchange for their land but promises were broken. In many instances, the Native Americans were forced to leave their homelands under duress.

In my quasi-research online, I learned that the colonists really had it out for the Native Americans after the Native Americans allied with the British during the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, when the British signed the Peace Treaty with the U.S., they didn’t protect or make any provisions for the Native Americans. Another beef the southern colonists had with Native Americans is that some tribes were harboring the colonists’ runaway slaves, their property! So, our Euro-American ancestors wanted these criminals banished from the area, and it was just coincidence that the “area” happened to be prime farming land that they could really use!

So, Native Americans were forced from their ancestral homelands to what the U.S. Government designated as “Indian Territories.” These territories were usually parcels of land in which the colonists and early settlers found little to no value. In my reading on this subject, I formed the impression that the U.S. Government thought they (we, I guess) were being charitable allotting any land to the Native Americans. In other words, we were giving the Native Americans a “gift.”

In some designated territories, after the Native Americans had been relocated, the U.S. Government recognized value in the newly-established territories and decided that they wanted the land back. An example of this is the Black Hills land dispute.

The Federal Government and the Lakota Sioux tribe members signed an 1868 treaty that created the Great Sioux Nation which covered the Black Hills and about half of western South Dakota. Everything was going fine until 1874, when General George Custer discovered gold in them thar hills. The realization that there was money to be made sent a flood of settlers to the area. President Grant ended up using military force to remove the Sioux from the land. After a bunch of rigamarole, Congress passed the Agreement of 1877, that removed the Sioux from the Black Hills, their sacred ground. (The Black Hills dispute remains unresolved.)

We giveth and then we taketh away.

This is how, in my estimation, our European-American ancestors actually became the very first true “Indian givers.” The term should have nothing to do with the giving practices of our Native Americans at all, but of the greed of our country’s early pioneers and government.

I have to tell you that reading up on our Native Americans left me with heartache for them and anger at our European-American ancestors. And to think, that during this same period, all the way into the 19th Century, our forefathers were capturing African Americans, forcibly taking them from their ancestral land, and selling them to other human beings into slavery. It just makes me sad.

Finally, I would like to express my most sincere apology for all the decades, ever since I was a young kid, I assumed our Native Americans had poor giving ethics. ✿