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Abstract Annie Heloise Abel (1873–1947) was one of only thirty American women to earn a PhD in history prior to the First World War. She was the first academically trained historian in the United States to consider the development of Indian–white relations and, although her focus was narrowly political and her methodology almost entirely archival-based, in this she was a pioneer. Raised in the bucolic atmosphere of a late-Victorian Sussex village, at the age of twelve she became an actual pioneer when her parents moved to the Kansas frontier in the 1880s. She was the third child and eldest daughter among seven remarkable siblings, children of a Scottish gardener, each of whom obtained a college education and fulfilled the American dream of financial stability and status. Annie Abel’s academic career was one of rare success for a woman of the period and she studied at Kansas, Cornell, Yale, and Johns Hopkins universities. She was the first woman to win a Bulkley scholarship to Yale, where her doctoral thesis won her an American Historical Association award and was published in its annual report. As well as college teaching, for a short time she was historian at the Office (now Bureau) of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC, and was also involved in women’s suffrage issues. She reached the peak of her academic teaching career as a history professor at Smith College in Massachusetts, one of the country’s most prestigious women’s institutions of higher learning. She combined her teaching with research and wrote some minor pieces prior to her major work, a three-volume political history of the Indian Territory during the American Civil War, which was published between 1915 and 1925. Her life took an unexpected turn while on a research sabbatical in Australia when, aged nearly fifty, she found romance and then experienced a disastrous, short-lived marriage. Undeterred, she returned to America and continued to pursue her primary professional interest as an independent researcher, winning grants that took her to England and Canada, until her retirement to Aberdeen, Washington, in the 1930s. During this latter period of her life Annie Abel-Henderson (as she now styled herself) produced no original works but continued to publish editions of historically important manuscripts, work she had begun early in her career. Her research interests also covered early North American exploration narratives and, as an extension of her work on Indian–white relations, she had planned an ambitious, comparative study of United States and British Dominion policy towards colonised peoples. As a reviewer, her historical expertise was long sought by the leading academic history journals of the day. Before her death at seventy four from carcinoma, her final years were busy with war relief work and occasional writing. No full-length work has yet appeared on this pioneer historian and this dissertation seeks to evaluate Annie Heloise Abel’s work by a close reading of her textual legacy—original, editorial and commentarial—and to assess her importance in American historiography.

This case study examines the land tenure histories of the Grand Portage and Leech Lake Bands of Ojibwe to determine how historical events inform their contemporary land acquisition strategies. The standardized federal Indian policy time periods frames this effort to track the amount of reservation land held in Ojibwe trust ownership over time while analyzing the local impact of those policies upon land tenure and acquisition. The Grand Portage and Leech Lake Bands are members of the confederated Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and this Band-level unit of analysis illuminates variations in land tenure patterns and acquisition strategies experienced within a common tribal identity. The Grand Portage Band has been remarkably successful and over 80% of that territory is under Ojibwe trust ownership, while only 5% of the Leech Lake Reservation is in Ojibwe trust ownership. The Grand Portage Band has utilized conventional and creative strategies for land acquisition. For example, the Band secured an expansion of their reservation boundary in 1982, and later acquired the Grand Portage State Park. The Leech Lake Band has experienced a harsher land tenure history as their reservation lands have been, and remain, a much more contested territory. The Chippewa National Forest was superimposed upon that reservation territory, which has effectively created a federal monopoly on land ownership and which serves as a major obstacle to effective land acquisition by the Leech Lake Band today. Other obstacles include bureaucratic inertia and state and local opposition.The emergent tribal land acquisition strategies are land purchases, as well as the purchase of fractionated trust ownership interests, negotiations with local and state governments for land exchanges, the transfer of federal "surplus lands," and pursuit of special legislation or executive orders. Furthermore, Indian land tenure and acquisition remains an important aspect of the contemporary federal trust responsibility, although weakened in practice. The federal trust responsibility must be revitalized in order to become an effective method for tribal land acquisition. The Indian land tenure reality today is that most tribes endure insufficient and inadequate tribal territories as a result of federal Indian policies, which has prompted many to prioritize land acquisition.

This thesis examines the history of the Indian policy of the United States government from 1609 to the 1950's.

In 1969 the Government of Canada announced a new Indian policy statement(1) which is an attempt to solve what has been called the "Indian Problem". One interpretation of the Indian Problem is presented in this statement(2). The Indians have struggled against control and oppression which they may term as a "Bureaucratic Problem" or an "Indian Act Problem". Whichever view is taken, Indian or otherwise, the problem is the same.<p> Until recently, the general public was unaware of the Indians and of the problems they encountered by policy changes. The policies were often implemented for the sake of expediency, without sufficient reference to what had happened in the past and without sound consultations with the Indian people. The policy controlling the education of Indians has been, and is, held by federal authorities to be the key which will solve past issues, but educational problems have arisen due to unenlightened practices impressed upon the culture of the Indian people. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the significant patterns and the resulting difficulties which have evolved in the education of Indians. <p>(1) Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969. Presented to the First Session of the Twenty-eighth Parliament by the Honourable Jean Chretian, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1969.<p> (2) See Appendix A.<p> Statement of the Problem<p> The purpose of this historical study is to examine the development and effect of educational policies that established, supported, and closed Industrial Schools for Indians and, in particular, the Battleford Industrial School which existed in the North-West Territories from 1883 to 1905 and continued in the Province of Saskatchewan to 1914.

In 1969 the Government of Canada announced a new Indian policy statement(1) which is an attempt to solve what has been called the "Indian Problem". One interpretation of the Indian Problem is presented in this statement(2). The Indians have struggled against control and oppression which they may term as a "Bureaucratic Problem" or an "Indian Act Problem". Whichever view is taken, Indian or otherwise, the problem is the same.<p> Until recently, the general public was unaware of the Indians and of the problems they encountered by policy changes. The policies were often implemented for the sake of expediency, without sufficient reference to what had happened in the past and without sound consultations with the Indian people. The policy controlling the education of Indians has been, and is, held by federal authorities to be the key which will solve past issues, but educational problems have arisen due to unenlightened practices impressed upon the culture of the Indian people. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the significant patterns and the resulting difficulties which have evolved in the education of Indians. <p>(1) Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969. Presented to the First Session of the Twenty-eighth Parliament by the Honourable Jean Chretian, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1969.<p> (2) See Appendix A.<p> Statement of the Problem<p> The purpose of this historical study is to examine the development and effect of educational policies that established, supported, and closed Industrial Schools for Indians and, in particular, the Battleford Industrial School which existed in the North-West Territories from 1883 to 1905 and continued in the Province of Saskatchewan to 1914.

Native American communities are continually impacted by Federal Indian policy. Over one-half of all Native American nations function politically under the provisions of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). There are claims that many of these Native American communities experience intra-tribal conflict due to the lack of congruence between the tribal governments formed under the IRA and cultural traditions of governance. This claim was investigated via a comparative trend analysis of the Santa Clara Pueblo, operating politically under the IRA provisions, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, operating under a constitutional form of governance outside of IRA provisions. After an historical analysis, an evaluation of tribal constitutions, and an examination of news media coverage for the period of 1991 – 2000, the project concluded that the legacies of the IRA are not the primary causal agent of intra-tribal conflict. / Master of Arts

This study identifies the historical factors that impacted Pima agriculture, water use and water rights in south-central Arizona between 1848 and 1921. Federal land and resource policies, especially federal Indian policies, impacted the dynamics of Pima agriculture and water use during these crucial years when the federal government utilized economic liberalism to open the West to homesteading and facilitate the development of the region's vast resources.As an agricultural people, the Pima did not passively accept these policies and events. Rather, they proved adaptive, demonstrating their resourcefulness in important ways. In response to water deprivation and infringement of their water rights, the Pima reduced the amount of land they cultivated. While before 1880 they had increased their cultivated acreage and expanded their trade networks, in the years after they creatively found ways to keep land in production despite water shortages. As the water crisis deepened, the Pima abandoned their least productive lands. In the midst of great deprivation, they relocated (or abandoned) a number of villages and scores of fields in an attempt against great odds to maintain their agricultural economy. To make the most of their diminishing water resources, the Pima adapted by growing small grains such as wheat and barley, even when these crops no longer proved to be economically viable in Arizona. While not new to their crop rotation, the Pima relied almost exclusively upon these crops by the 1910s since they required considerably less water than others.Because the Pima had prior and paramount rights to the water and were wrongfully deprived of their rights to the use of water, their water rights struggle raised a metaphorical Damoclean sword above the heads of those non-Indian farmers who used the water. This study, therefore, focuses on the history of water use and agricultural production among the Pima Indians between 1848 and 1921 and argues that without infringement of their rights to water, the Pima would have equaled and perhaps surpassed the local agricultural economy.

This thesis is an attempt to portray the part the forts of the Southwest had in developing the Federal Indian Policy in that region from 1865 to 1885.

This study explores the varied Citizen Potawatomi responses to federal assimilation and land policies from 1861 to 1891. The professed intention for these laws and treaties was to acculturate Native Americans into American society, but there was a clear ulterior motive to drastically reduce the land base of tribes in the West. The outcomes of policies that arranged for allotment and citizenship were mixed. The federal government successfully dispossessed the Citizen Potawatomi of large quantities of land and virtually every tribal member became a U.S. citizen, but few individuals became successful farmers or businessmen. The government's efforts also unintentionally resulted in fostering a stronger tribal identity and better tribal organization to argue for the collective and individual rights of Citizen Potawatomi tribal members. As the United States became embroiled in a devastating civil war and thousands of Americans flooded west in search of opportunity, the Citizen Potawatomi entered into a treaty agreement to allot their lands and become U.S. citizens. The Citizen Potawatomi treaty of 1861 forced tribal members to abandon the practice of holding land in common by stipulating that they must accept allotments and become U.S. citizens. Unintended consequences of the flaws in the government's plan were the near-complete loss of lands allotted to the Citizen Potawatomi, and a muddying of their legal status. Within a decade a large percentage of tribal members were landless and sought a new home in Indian Territory. By 1872 the Citizen Potawatomi better understood how to use non-Indian methods to fight for favorable allotments and full enfranchisement in the extralegal condition that characterized both their new home and themselves. Two decades later, when the federal government opened thousands of acres of Citizen Potawatomi lands to non-Indian settlement, tribal members had learned a painful, but strengthening lesson. To salvage a distinct tribal identity and political independence, the Citizen Potawatomi took command of their relationship with the federal government by demonstrating knowledge of the legislation that defined their legal rights and manipulating the inconsistent application of those policies. / text