The Inconvenient Indian: Chapter 5. We Are Sorry Summary & Analysis

King identifies two “impulses” of Indian-White relations in North America: extermination and assimilation. North America didn’t view extermination as “genocide.” Instead, it saw the mass deaths of Indians as a natural consequence of “manifest destiny,” a concept derived from Aristotle’s notion of “natural law” that the U.S. used to justify war with Mexico. Typically, extermination occurred in battle or via the spreading of diseases.

Assimilation, the second impulse, and that which King gives the nickname “Plan B,” involved “salvation and improvement.” King connects the question of assimilation back to the assertion the 16th-century Spanish cleric Bartolomé de las Casas made that Indians had souls and should be treated as equals to the Europeans. De las Casas’s position contradicted Juan de Sepúlveda, who claimed that Indians were soulless and, therefore, “natural slaves.” English and French settlers took a different approach, reasoning that Indians were human, albeit less evolved and civilized than their European counterparts. Therefore, they believed that Indians could be saved and civilized through assimilation

If extermination was the impulse that dominated early Indian-White interactions and assimilation marked the later interactions, these two impulses converged in the 19th century, when settlers used “force of arms, deception, and coercion” to conduct forced assimilation of Native peoples into White culture. It was often missionaries (Jesuits, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, for instance) who undertook the task of assimilation. King describes this type of missionary work as “war.

North America’s desire to assimilate Indians into White culture was grounded in the belief that Indians could be productive citizens of White North America if adequately educated in the customs of their superior, Eurocentric, Christian culture. King notes that such assimilation offered no room for compromise and required the complete relinquishment of Native culture for White culture.

King turns to 17th-century Quebec and 17th-century New England to begin his in-depth analysis of assimilation in North America. Sometime around 1637, Jesuit priest Father Le Jeune built a Catholic Indian village near Saguenay for Indians who wished to convert to Catholicism, abandon their “nomadic” lifestyle, and take up farming. The village was named Sillery after its primary benefactor, a Knight of Malta named Noël Brûlart de Sillery. Although Sillery never attracted as many converts as the Jesuits hoped, they continued to construct similar villages, which Indians used for temporary shelter and protection against enemy tribes. 

Meanwhile, in the U.S., John Eliot, the “Indian Apostle,” came to Boston in 1631 and constructed “praying towns” on the outskirts of Puritan settlements. These “praying towns” were “halfway houses” for Indians who wished to convert to Christianity. However, because praying towns were located on the outskirts of town, they were targeted by enemy tribes wishing to destabilize colonists and colonists who couldn’t differentiate between the “friendly Indians” who lived there and their enemies. As a result, praying towns were attacked by colonists and Indians alike during the 1675 King Philip War.

Even though neither the Jesuit villages of Quebec nor the praying towns of New England were particularly successful, they nonetheless provided effective models for future assimilation. Although the “Indian Problem” had been mainly solved in North America by the late 19th century, with tribes hidden away on reservations and reserves, and large numbers dying from disease and starvation, Indian culture persisted. 

King describes the 1892 address by Richard Pratt, a U.S. Army captain, to the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction. Pratt used his address to advocate for education as a “more humane and effective” method of assimilation. Pratt’s plan was to “Kill the Indian […] and save the man.” Pratt believed that the biggest obstacle that stood in the way of Indian assimilation into Western society was their environment. To counteract this obstacle, in 1879, Pratt opened the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, one of the first Indian boarding schools, in Pennsylvania.

The first Indian schools were day schools located on reserves and reservations, which enabled children to keep in touch with their families and cultures. However, these schools were deemed ineffective and gradually replaced by a second group of schools, mostly day and residential schools located off but near reservations. The church believed that limited access to “old, unimproved people” increased Indian children's ability to assimilate and created this second group of schools to drive a wedge between children, their families, and their cultures.

This paved the way for Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which opened in 1879. The Carlisle model required schools to be located far away from reservations and limited (or eliminated) students’ contact with family. In addition, children weren’t allowed to speak their language or engage in cultural practices. Instead, they had to learn English and undertake traditional European customs such as farming, baking, and housekeeping. By 1909, there were over 20 schools operating according to the Carlisle model, along with hundreds of on-reservation boarding schools and day schools.

King recalls his own experience at a Catholic boarding school run by the Christian Brothers in Sacramento, California, where his mother sent him after a series of misbehaviors. There were many rules to follow at the school, and King was beaten for minor infractions. What King remembers most about his two years there was an overwhelming sense of loneliness and “abandonment,” though he knew his mother had meant well in sending him there, believing he would receive a good education. He also knows that his experiences paled in comparison to the experiences he researched to write this book.

Canada saw similar schools appear over the second half of the 19th century, and by 1932, it had over 80 schools in operation. The Catholic Church operated most of these schools, and various Protestant denominations operated the remainder. In 1850, enrollment at these schools became mandatory for children between six and 15. Parents who refused to enroll their children faced prison sentences. In the Canadian and U.S. schools, overcrowding led to the spread of disease, and abuse was common.  

By the early 1900s, the mortality rate for Native students was 50 percent in Alberta. Still, Duncan Campbell Scott, the Superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, saw no reason to change the federal policy on the schools and maintained that they were vital to achieving the “final solution” to the nation’s “Indian Problem.” King sarcastically notes that it “would be tactless and unseemly” to suggest that Hitler was quoting Scott in his later remarks about the “Jewish problem.” Besides, King wryly notes, “Scott was advocating assimilation, not extermination.”

In 1919, Scott eliminated the position of Medical Inspector for Indian Agencies. In 1926, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Hubert Work, ordered a report on the condition of Indian life in the U.S. Lewis Meriam, an accomplished lawyer, headed the investigation. Meriam’s findings showed that Indian children in boarding schools received “grossly inadequate” treatment, and that horrific diseases such as tuberculosis were commonplace. Besides this, children received wholly lacking educations at these supposed schools. The Meriam Report was highly critical of the federal government’s handling of Native children and failure to protect Native rights. King sarcastically quips that this negative feedback might be why the U.S. has yet to conduct another survey of this kind.

Canada’s equivalent to the Meriam Report was the Hawthorn Report, which was published in 1966 and 1967. Like the Meriam Report, the Hawthorn Report also presented findings that claimed the Canadian government failed to provide Native children with adequate treatment and resources. The researchers also conveyed their firm belief that Indians should not be required to assimilate into Canadian society to receive assistance from the government. To King’s mind, though, the Hawthorn Report is just another instance of empty rhetoric, since the Canadian government’s actions were repeatedly geared toward coercing Indians into assimilation.   

King shifts his focus to the Hawthorn Report’s emphasis on “the economics of being Indian.” In 1960, for example, the per capita income for Indians was $300, less than a quarter of the per capita income for non-Indians. The report also claimed that while the Sarcee and the Blood in Alberta, for example, had access to many natural resources and an urban center nearby, they failed to take advantage of these opportunities for economic advancement. In addition, the report stated that Indians weren’t suited to the discipline required of a day job. The report used White values and standards to assess the Indian population. It offered a corresponding set of recommendations for improving Indians’ ability to succeed at the level of Whites. The most critical element of this report, though, was that it revealed Canada’s policy toward Indian-White relations as a failure, particularly from an economic perspective.

King suggests that the Hawthorn Report also inadvertently revealed a logical fallacy in North America’s treatment of the Indians: “that all people yearn for the individual freedom to pursue economic goals.” King’s father-in-law, Bernard Hoy, was an inspector for the Catholic Separate School Board in the 1950s and 1960s. What Hoy remembered most about the schools was Indian students in classrooms gazing out the window at the world outdoors. “They didn’t belong there,” Hoy explained

While people typically espouse the merits of education, one ought to view North America’s Native education program as a series of abuses rather than benefits. The first abuse was to position White values as superior to Native values. The second was the inability or unwillingness of the U.S. and Canadian governments to monitor their schools adequately. The third abuse was their failure to act after knowing how overcrowding and disease ravaged their schools. In the end, up to 50 percent of Native children who enrolled in these schools lost their lives there. King compares this to the 1918 Spanish flu, which had a mortality rate of 10-20 percent. King speculates that the government might have taken more actions to improve these schools’ conditions had the enrolled children been White.

In subsequent years, North America has tried to repent for its boarding schools. In 1986, the United Church of Canada issued an official apology to the Native people for the poor treatment of Native children. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI conveyed remorse for the horrific conditions students faced at Catholic-operated schools. King notes, however, that the Pope’s statement was neither an apology nor an admission of guilt. In 2008, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the House of Commons to officially admit that “assimilation was wrong” and has “caused great harm.” On behalf of Canada, he said, “We are sorry.” In 2009, the U.S. Congress passed an apology resolution that President Obama signed into law; however, not much has come of it in subsequent years.

The U.S.’s apology, issued in an amendment in the 2010 Defense Appropriation Act, addresses years of “ill-conceived policies, and the breaking of covenants by the United States Government regarding Indian tribes.” However, King notes, the apology ends with a disclaimer stating that “nothing in this Joint Resolution authorizes any claim against the [U.S.] or serves as a settlement of any claim against the [U.S.],” effectively rendering the U.S. “guilty but not liable,” according to King. King muses how neither Canada’s nor the U.S.’s public apology was all that “sincere,” however, and he criticizes the trend in the political world for apologies to coexist with denials of wrongdoing.