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Chapter 2. The End of the Trail
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inconvenient Indian, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Mythology
Racism and Systemic Oppression
Land
Sovereignty
Summary
Analysis
King establishes three types of Indian present in the North American cultural imagination: Dead Indians, Live Indians, and Legal Indians. Dead Indian doesn’t only refer to Indians who are “deceased.” The Dead Indian is a composite image of America’s “collective imaginings and fears.” They’re comparable to the Indians portrayed in old Western films and are a common image in American culture. King references Sacheen Littlefeather, who refused the Best Actor Award on behalf of Marlon Brando at the 1973 Academy Awards, as an example of a Dead Indian. King describes Dead Indians as America’s “only antiquity,” and he compares them to Europe’s Ancient Greeks or Russia’s Cossacks.
King departs from an analysis of Indians that exist in film and shows how America overgeneralizes Indians that exist in real life, as well. These distinctions are important in building King’s case that Indian-White relations are so fraught because Whites fail to truly see Indians, instead focusing too much on a romanticized version of Indian culture. Sacheen Littlefeather appeared at the Academy Awards in 1973 on behalf of the actor Marlon Brando, who had sent her in his place to refuse the Best Actor award—a statement he wanted to make about the unfair treatment of Native Americans in the film industry. King’s point is that Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in authentic dress because Americans don’t pay attention to Indians unless they fit into the stereotypical and outdated North American vision of Indian culture.
Themes
Most importantly, the Dead Indian is a nonthreatening image for Whites. King quotes General Phil Sheridan, who supposedly stated, “The only good Indian I ever saw was a dead one.” In a speech he gave in 1886, years before his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt admitted that while not all Indians are better dead, nine out of ten are.
The Dead Indian isn’t a threat to Whites because he doesn’t have the ability to try to threaten their Euro-centric, Christian culture with his own. Americans love the romanticized Indians of film because they evoke a danger that the Western world fought and defeated. They pose no real threats to contemporary life, and this is why they’re entertaining to consume.
Themes
Next, King lists a number of geographic features across the U.S., “Dead Indian Meadows,” and “Dead Indian Peak” and “Dead Warrior Lake.” He also cites a number of products bearing Dead Indian imagery, such as Calumet Baking Powder, Crazy Horse Malt Liquor, and Land O’ Lakes butter. King sees the use of Indian imagery in advertising as an extension of the medicine shows that toured the West in the 18th and 19th Centuries, which would purport to sell “Dead Indian elixirs” to treat an array of maladies. Today, the Dead Indian is present in alternate health practices, such as cleansing psychotherapy sessions in sweat lodges. New Age enthusiasts meld Buddhism, Taoism, and plain fiction together to craft a “Dead Indian” narrative of spirituality.
King’s list of geographic features sarcastically criticizes the surplus of natural features named after deceased Indians or Indian-adjacent cultural ideas. For example: the surplus of products that use Indian imagery to sell their goods further builds on America’s racist treatment of Indians, their objectification, and the belief that they are not humans but objects to be used as Americans see fit.
Themes
The target audience for Dead Indian advertising is never Indians, though. King explains how Whites created the Dead Indian as a more comfortable alternative to the Live Indian, which persisted into the 20th century, despite years of conflict, disease, and supposed “divine” sanction diminishing their population. The mainstream U.S. culture believed that the shrinking Indian population was evidence of “natural law” favoring the strong over the weak. American art and literature support this premise. Longfellow’s poem Song of Hiawatha, for example, romantically espouses the notion that Indians had “underst[ood] their noble but inferior nature” and “willingly gifted” the U.S. to the Whites.
Dead Indians are comfortable to Whites because they rid Whites of responsibility for past atrocities the country as a whole committed against Native peoples. They are a nostalgic nod to the past, not the disadvantaged population that exists today, despite being ravaged by centuries of conflict, disease, and land theft. The idea of “natural law” also enables Whites to eschew responsibility for their role in disenfranchising Native peoples, since it suggests that Whites were merely following divine orders rather than acting out of personal agency.
Themes
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However, Live Indians didn’t die out entirely. This was a problem for U.S. culture, which had already erected Dead Indian imagery to replace them. So, the U.S. government relegated Live Indians to reservations and reserves “in the rural backwaters” of the U.S. and Canada. “Out of sight, out of mind,” muses King. In his seminal 1969 work Custer Died for Your Sins, Lakota scholar Vine Deloria describes Live Indians as “transparent,” referring to how visibly apparent it is what Indians want and what help they need. King sees this as evidence of Indians’ “invisib[ility],” positing that North Americans “don’t see contemporary Native people […] as Indians.”
King suggests that Whites tend to keep Dead Indian imagery around because it comforts or benefits them. On the other hand, North Americans exile Live Indians to reservations. Whereas Whites don’t need anything from Live Indians, King suggests, Live Indians do need things from Whites: the return of their land, government assistance, and sovereignty. But these are all things that the broader American culture isn’t willing to reckon with. To that end, Deloria insinuates that Whites see Indians but remain ignorant to their needs as actual people.
Themes
King provides several examples that depict the Live Indian’s characteristic invisibility. He describes a photographic series by Mandan photographer Zig Jackson called “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation,” in which Jackson photographed himself around San Francisco wearing a feathered headdress, capturing the shocked expressions of non-Natives as they encountered a “Dead Indian come to life.”
Jackson’s photo series is so disconcerting because it breathes life into an image America has come to associate with a past that no longer exists.
Themes
For Live Indians, claims King, being “inauthentic” is even worse than being invisible. Yet, North America seems to have decided that, in order to perpetuate the myth of the Dead Indian, Live Indians “cannot be genuine Indians.” He connects this logic to the Christian idea of original sin, comparing Dead Indians to “garden of Eden-variety Indians” who are innocent of sin and authentic. Live Indians, in contrast, are “fallen Indians” by virtue of their assimilation into modern society. Many Native people try to prove authenticity by claiming to belong to a particular tribe—Blackfoot or Navajo, for example. Yet, North America will not accept this, choosing instead to group all tribes together under blanket terms like “Indian,” or “Aboriginal,” or “First Nations.” For North Americans, Dead Indians reaffirm a glorified myth, but Live Indians are merely “unruly” and “disappointing.”
Live Indians don’t conform to the nostalgic Wild West imagery Whites typically associate with Indians. It’s ironic that America demonizes Live Indians for having assimilated into Western culture, as that’s what centuries of colonization have coerced them to do. King’s remarks about America grouping disparate Native tribes together under one broader identity of “Indian” or “Aboriginal” further underscores Whites’ disregard for Native life and culture. They are only concerned with indigenous people insofar as indigenous people affect their own lives and ability to develop land or practice Christianity and other euro-centric practices.
Themes
King references a scene from a Tony Hillerman Novel, Sacred Clowns, in which tourists look on as a Navajo community undertake a Tano ceremony. He muses how, for White tourists, traditional ceremonies like the Tano ceremony represent “Dead Indians com[ing] to life.” But when Live Indians dance at powwows, they aren’t doing it for North America’s entertainment. Rather, these events bring Live Indians together and remind them of their familial and cultural traditions, and their “relationship with the Earth.” King expands on this latter point, framing Indians’ connection to the Earth as another cultural belief that has been coopted by White North American culture.
This scene from Hillerman’s novel is similar to the previously mentioned photographic series by Zig Jackson. Both evoke a “com[ing] to life” of Dead Indians. Again, King suggests that a large contributing factor to the tensions that plague Indian-White relations is Whites’ misguided belief that Indians exist for them: that their powwows are on display for entertainment, that their traditions may be repurposed for white usage through cultural appropriation.
Themes
King moves on to address the third category of Indians: Legal Indians, or “Status Indians” in Canada, who are registered as Indians under the terms outlined in the Indian Act. According to the 2006 census, there are 565,000 Status Indians living in Canada, though the total number of Native peoples was closer to 1.2 million. In the U.S., “Status” is granted to tribes rather than individuals. In 2009, the federal government recognized 564 tribes with members eligible to receive federal assistance. There are around 950,000 individuals who fall into this category, though the total number of Indians living in the U.S. is closer to 2.4 million.
The sharp distinction between the number of legally recognized Indians and the number of Native peoples who actually exist shows how federal policy actively tries to eliminate or severely diminish the Native population. The passage of laws that create stricter requirements for legal recognition as an authentic Indian means the government has to pay out less federal assistance. King implies that policy is the modern way of kicking Native people off their land and forcing assimilation: by robbing them of a legal claim to their identity.
Themes
King considers the Legal Indian to be a lapse in judgment on North America’s part, and an error it has tried to correct for nearly two centuries. The Legal Indian came about as a consequence of the treaties the U.S. and Canada signed with Native nations. The treaties entitled Legal Indians to certain rights. While many people in North America view treaty rights as an act of generosity on the federal government’s part, in reality, King argues, Native people have more than paid for these rights.
King suggests that conventional history frames the rights afforded to registered tribes as an overly generous gift the government has bestowed upon Natives. Rhetoric like this underlies contemporary arguments against supplying more aid to reservations or halting energy operations (fracking) that pollute water on tribal lands. In reality, King suggests, the federal aid Native people receive is the bare minimum, considering the violation of agency and cultural freedom Natives have endured over the years. In other words, the history of Indian-White relations has been skewed toward a more favorable view of White generosity and away from the role Whites played in disenfranchising Indians in the first place.
Themes
In Canada, a Legal Indian is defined in the Indian Act of 1876. Beyond defining the designation, the act also outlines how to control the lives of Legal Indians. For example, an 1881 amendment to the act prohibited Legal Indians in prairie provinces from selling agriculture in order to keep them from becoming competitors to White farmers. A subsequent 1914 amendment required Legal Indians to gain permission to appear in traditional costume in advance of shows, dances, or exhibitions. Until 1968, the Canadian government could “enfranchise” Legal Indians: take away their Legal Indian status and replace it with Canadian citizenship.
Barring Legal Indians from selling agriculture is another attempt of the government to assimilate Native people into Western culture for Whites’ benefit while leaving Indians with no benefits of their own. Once more, Indians are treated not like a group of people with cultural significance and legitimate needs, but like an inconvenience White American society must deal with. The framing of “enfranchise[ing]” Legal Indians but giving them Canadian citizenship as a generous gesture on the part of the Canadian government is another instance of history being spun to present Whites in a positive light while obscuring their oppressive actions.
Themes
In the U.S., Legal Indians are enrolled in federally recognized tribes. Eligibility is controlled by tribes and varies, though most determine eligibility by “blood quantum,” that is, by the percentage of Native blood in one’s ancestry. In 1950, the U.S. began “enfranchising” whole tribes, removing them from the federal registry and taking away millions of acres of Legal Indian land from tribes and selling them to non-Natives. In this way, the government reduces Legal Indians to Live Indians.
The U.S.’s legal strategy of “enfranchising” entire tribes mirrors Canada’s strategy. Both nations purport to be helping Natives integrate into Western society when in reality they are robbing tribes of sovereignty (the right to self-governance) and weaponizing enfranchisement to encourage cultural erasure.
Themes
The desire to get rid of Legal Indians has been around for years and is motivated by the government’s desire to absorb Live Indians into the predominant, non-Native culture. In 1953, the U.S. Congress passed the Termination Act and the Relocation Act. Termination gave the federal government the right to terminate federal relationship with tribes, and Relocation incentivized Indians to leave reservations and relocate to more urban areas. The Canadian government attempted to pass a similar law in 1969. Then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau argued that Indians weren’t entitled to land or Native rights and that it would be in Natives’ best interest to assimilate into Canadian society. Nearly every Indian organization opposed the plan.
Adopting termination and relocation as national policy was the U.S.’s way of eradicating Native culture through absorption into mainstream society. The thought was that in robbing tribes of sovereignty and taking back rights to reservation land, tribal communities would disperse, live in less culturally homogenous areas, and be absorbed into white Western culture. Prior to termination, legally recognized Indians and tribes weren’t subject to federal or state taxes and laws. Termination changed this, attempting to force Native people to abandon cultural practices and, for their own good, assimilate into the modern, more civilized ways of modern society
Themes
King argues that the “Dead Indian” is the only Indian North America is interested in, evidenced by the vast array of “Indian” clubs and social organizations that exist across the continent. It was Canadian Ernest Thompson Seton who created the modern experience of “summer camp” and founded the Boy Scouts. Seton was interested in Native culture and founded the League of Woodcraft Indians in 1902, an organization that offered outdoor activities and “Indian culture” to non-Indian children. King views such organizations as opportunities for non-Native people to “transform” temporarily into Dead Indians: to participate in sweats and pipe ceremonies and assume names like “Howling Wolf.” King cynically suggests that it would be beneficial to these clubs if Live and Legal Indians ceased to exist, since having the “original” around infringes on their ability “to sell the counterfeit.”
King identifies the hypocrisy of America appropriating and engaging in the same indigenous cultural practices that the government has prohibited actual indigenous people from practicing. America loves “Indian culture” for non-Indians but abhors it in authentic Indians. America’s fixation with Indian culture also reaffirms the cultural preference for the “Dead Indian” over the “Live Indian.” Americans participate in Indian culture to relish in what they see as a past way of life while ignoring the fact that these practices belong to a culture that is still alive, despite America’s best efforts to eradicate the people to whom those cultural practices initially belonged.
Themes
