Indian Peace Commission

The Indian Peace Commission was a group formed by an act of Congress on July 20, 1867, in order "to establish peace with certain hostile Indian tribes." It was composed of four civilians and initially three, later four military leaders. Throughout 1867 and 1868 they negotiated with a number of peoples, including the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyenne, Lakota, Navajo, Snake, and Bannock. The treaties that resulted were designed to move the tribes to reservations, civilize and assimilate native peoples, and transition their societies from a nomadic to an agricultural existence.

If the savage resists, civilization, with the ten commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination.

Quotes

• I will sign, and if there is anything wrong afterwards I will watch the commissioners, and they will be the first one that I will whip.
  • American Horse to Harney and Sanborn at Fort Laramie, in Gump, James O. (2016). The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux, Second Edition. University of Nebraska Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-8032-8455-5. Retrieved on 19 June 2018. 
• You must have the protection of the President of the United States and his white soldiers or disappear, from the earth...We have not been making war with you. You are at war with us. We have not commenced yet.
  • Commissioner William S. Harney, in Germain, Jill St. (1 June 2009). Broken Treaties: United States and Canadian Relations with the Lakotas and the Plains Cree, 1868-1885. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 34-35. ISBN 0-8032-2445-1. 
• [A]griculture and manufactures should be introduced among them as rapidly as possible; schools should be established which children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialects should be blotted out and the English language substituted.
  • Indian Peace Commission, in their January 1878 report, full text available at Wikisource
• If the savage resists, civilization, with the ten commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination.
  • Indian Peace Commission, in their January 1878 report, full text available at Wikisource
• If it be said that because they are savages they should be exterminated, we answer that, aside from the humanity of the suggestion, it will prove exceedingly difficult, and if money considerations are permitted to weigh, it costs less to civilize than to kill.
  • Indian Peace Commission, in their January 1878 report, full text available at Wikisource
• The object of greatest solicitude should be to break down the prejudices of tribe among the Indians; to blot out the boundary lines which divide them into distinct nations, and fuse them into one homogeneous mass. Uniformity of language will do this -- nothing else will.
  • Indian Peace Commission, in their January 1878 report, full text available at Wikisource

This building of homes for us is all nonsense. We don’t want you to build any for us. We would all die. My country is small enough already. If you build us houses, the land will be smaller. Why do you insist on this?

• I believe, however, religiously, that the only ultimate solutions of this whole question is, that the Indian shall take his place among other men and accept the march of civilization, as he must ultimately, or there is nothing except his destiny that awaits him, which is extinction.
  • Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy, in The Beginning of the End: The Indian Peace Commission of 1867~1868. Great Plains Quarterly.
• [You] must understand that if peace is not now made all efforts on our part to make it are at an end.
  • Commissioner John B. Sanborn in, Germain, Jill St. (1 June 2009). Broken Treaties: United States and Canadian Relations with the Lakotas and the Plains Cree, 1868-1885. U of Nebraska Press. p. 35. ISBN 0-8032-2445-1. 
• This building of homes for us is all nonsense. We don’t want you to build any for us. We would all die. My country is small enough already. If you build us houses, the land will be smaller. Why do you insist on this?
  • Kiowa Chief Satanta, in The Beginning of the End: The Indian Peace Commission of 1867~1868. Great Plains Quarterly.
• Of course I don’t believe in such things for commissions cannot come into contact with the fighting Indians, and to talk with the old ones is the same old senseless twaddle. It may be that we had better dally along this year and hurry up the railroad, and try to be better prepared next year.
  • Commissioner William Tecumseh Sherman, in Cozzens, Peter (2017). The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West. Vintage Books. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-307-94818-2. 
• One thing is demonstrated, either the Indians must give way or we must abandon all west of the Missouri River and confess as you say that forty millions of whites are cowed by a few thousand savages.
  • Commissioner William Tecumseh Sherman, in Marszalek, John F. (8 November 2007). Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 391. ISBN 978-0-8093-8762-5. Retrieved on 14 June 2018. 
• If you follow it, it will bring you herds of cattle and horses, instead of buffalo and antelope, good houses instead of tepees, and lead you to civilization and Christianity, instead of a wild, roving life; you will have confortable homes, and instead of want and misery you will enjoy peace and happiness. We therefore offer you two homes—one on the Missouri, and the other below the Arkansas
  • Commissioner Nathaniel Green Taylor, in The Indian Peace Commission. The New York Times (September 29, 1867). Retrieved on 15 June 2018.
• There is one thing which is not good in your speeches; that is , building us medicine houses. We don’t want any. I want to live and die as I was brought up. I love the open prairie, and I wish you would not insist on putting us on a reservation.
  • Comanche Chief Ten Bears, in Calloway, Colin G. (30 May 2013). Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty Making in American Indian History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-991730-3.