Displacing Indigenous Peoples

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT History Class XI (Themes in World History), Chapter 6.

A court said yes, and the army still marched

In 1832 the highest court in the United States ruled that the Cherokee nation was a distinct community on its own land, where the laws of the state of Georgia did not apply. Six years later, in 1838, about 15,000 Cherokees were marched out of their homes towards the "Great American Desert" in the west. More than a quarter of them died on the way. That march is remembered as the Trail of Tears.

How can a court win and a people still lose? That question is the whole chapter. It is the story of how settlers from Europe took over North America and Australia between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and how the original inhabitants were pushed off their land, and then, much later, began to win back some recognition.

Three kinds of colonialism

The chapter sits inside a section on how the modern world was made. Two forces turned "subjects" into "citizens" in this age: the Industrial Revolution and a series of political revolutions (the American Revolution of 1776–81 and the French Revolution of 1789–94). Alongside them, European powers built empires of three different kinds. CUET likes to ask you to match each kind to its example.

This chapter is about the first kind. In a settler colony the settlers wanted the land itself, which is why the natives were in the way.

Why it matters. Because the same word, "colonialism", covers three very different situations, exam options often swap the examples. Remember the test: did the foreigners come to stay and take the land (settler), rule people who stayed (direct control) or share out influence over a state that still existed (semi-colony)?

The first Americans and the first Australians

The earliest people of North America came from Asia more than 30,000 years ago, crossing a land bridge where the Bering Straits are today. The oldest artefact found there is an arrow point about 11,000 years old, and the population began to rise only about 5,000 years ago, when the climate became stable. In Australia the aborigines came from New Guinea (then joined to Australia by land) more than 40,000 years ago, though their own tradition says they were always there and calls the long past the Dreamtime.

How the North American natives lived. They lived in bands, in villages along river valleys. They hunted, took only what they needed and did not farm on a large scale, so they produced little surplus and never built kingdoms or empires like those of Central and South America. After treaties, different groups exchanged wampum belts, strips of coloured shells sewn together. From the seventeenth century they could hunt the bison more easily because they began riding horses bought from Spanish settlers.

Pause and predict: the Spanish colonies of South America and the United States both held many native people at the start. In 1800 Spanish America had about 7.5 million natives in a population of about 16.9 million. In 1820 the United States had about 9.0 million whites in a population of 11.6 million. What does this contrast suggest about how the two colonial worlds treated the natives?

Check your answer: In Spanish America natives remained the largest group of the population, because colonisers lived off their labour. In the United States settlers came in large numbers to farm the land, and the native share shrank fast. That is the settler-colony pattern.

Who is who: the naming box. Exams love the terms, so learn them once.

The place names have stories too: America comes from Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512), Canada from kanata, the Huron-Iroquois word for "village" that Jacques Cartier heard in 1535, Australia from Latin austral, meaning "south", and New Zealand from the Dutch explorer Tasman, who reached it in 1642.

How the Europeans saw the natives

Eighteenth-century western Europeans measured a "civilised" people by three things: literacy, organised religion and cities. By that test the natives looked "uncivilised", and this belief was used to justify taking their land. Not every writer thought so in the same way. Rousseau praised natives as the "noble savage", admirable because they were untouched by the corruptions of civilisation. The poet Wordsworth, who had never met a native, wrote about their lives as limited in imagination. Washington Irving, who had actually met them, said the white men treated them as little better than animals.

Two views. For the exam: Europeans of the time saw native peoples either as primitive and "uncivilised" or as a "noble savage"; both views came from outside observers. Another reading: The writer Daniel Paul (2000) cited Thomas Paine's claim that the Native Americans, by their example, had sown the seeds for the long movement towards democracy among the people of Europe. Seen this way, natives were not backward but a source of political ideas.

How the USA grew, and the natives were pushed back

The United States and Canada existed by the end of the eighteenth century, but they covered only a fraction of today's territory. The USA grew by purchase (Louisiana from France in 1803, Alaska from Russia) and by war (much of the south from Mexico). As the western "frontier" moved, the natives were pushed back with it. The map in words: the original thirteen colonies lay along the Atlantic coast; Louisiana opened the huge middle of the continent; California and the south-west came from Mexico; and Alaska lay in the far north-west.

Cause → effect: from judgment to Trail of Tears. In 1832 Chief Justice John Marshall held that the Cherokees were a distinct community, occupying their own territory, in which Georgia's laws had no force. President Andrew Jackson refused to honour the ruling and ordered the US army to evict the Cherokees to the Great American Desert. Of the 15,000 who were forced to go in 1838, more than a quarter died. The court could give a judgment, but only the President could use the army, and he chose not to.

Pause and predict: the 1830 Indian Removal Act gave the legal cover for removing natives. Which two later events turned that law into the Trail of Tears?

Check your answer: First Marshall's 1832 judgment was set aside by Jackson's refusal to enforce it. Then the army carried out the eviction in 1838. Remember: the Act is 1830, the court case is 1832 and the march is 1838.

Reservations and resistance. The natives were pushed onto reservations, often on land with which they had no earlier connection. When they fought back, the US army crushed the rebellions between 1865 and 1890. In Canada the Metis rose in revolt between 1869 and 1885 and then gave up.

Gold, railways and the end of the bison. The California Gold Rush of 1849 started the building of railways across the continent, employing thousands of Chinese workers. The USA's line was done by 1870 and Canada's by 1885. In 1860 the USA had been an undeveloped economy; by 1890 it was the world's leading industrial power. By then the bison, on which the plains peoples depended, had nearly disappeared. By 1892 continental expansion was complete, and the USA was setting up its own colonies, in Hawaii and the Philippines.

Slavery and rights. Plantation owners in the south imported African slaves after the enslaved natives of Spanish America died in large numbers. The Civil War of 1861–65 ended slavery, but desegregation of schools and public transport came only in the twentieth century. In the early years, the right to vote and the right to own property were open only to white men.

Two views. For the exam: In 1892 the American frontier "ended", meaning the settlers had filled the continent. Another reading: The historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued in 1893 that the frontier shaped American democracy and character. Later historians objected that his story treated the west as empty and left out the native peoples who already lived there.

Chief Seattle's 1854 letter. The letter written in the name of Chief Seattle to the US President asks how anyone can buy or sell the sky or the warmth of the land, and says every part of the earth is sacred to his people. It is the best known statement of the native view that land is shared and not owned.

Winds of change in the USA and Canada. The 1928 Meriam survey, The Problem of Indian Administration, exposed grim conditions in the reservations. The Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934 gave natives in reservations the right to buy land and take loans. In 1954 a "Declaration of Indian Rights" accepted US citizenship on condition that the reservations and the native traditions be preserved. In Canada the Constitution Act of 1982 accepted existing aboriginal and treaty rights.

Australia: the land that "belonged to nobody"

In the late eighteenth century there were 350 to 750 native communities, each with its own language, and about 200 of those languages are still spoken. Together with the Torres Strait Islanders the aborigines made up 2.4 per cent of Australia's population in 2005.

Cause → effect: settlement to loss. The first European settlers were British convicts who were deported and could live free in Australia on condition that they never returned to Britain. Settlement took land, brought disease and led to battles with the natives. About 90 per cent of the natives later died from exposure to germs, loss of land and fighting. Cook was killed by a native in Hawaii, and that single incident was used to justify later violence.

Terra nullius. The settlers treated the land as terra nullius, "belonging to nobody". Under that idea the native peoples had no legal claim to the land at all, which is why the doctrine mattered until it was struck down in 1992.

Two views. For the exam: About 90 per cent of the natives died from germs, loss of land and battles after the settlers came. Another reading: In Australia's "history wars", scholars such as Henry Reynolds stressed frontier conflict and dispossession, while Keith Windschuttle argued that the extent of killing had been exaggerated. Historians agree that disease, loss of land and violence all played a part and disagree about how much weight each deserves.

Winds of change in Australia. In 1968 the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner called historians' silence about the aborigines "The Great Australian Silence", and Henry Reynolds later asked in a book why Australians had not been told. Until 1974 a government policy kept "non-white" people out; from 1974 "multiculturalism" became official policy. In 1995 a National Enquiry looked into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. On 26 May 1999 the country observed a "National Sorry Day" to apologise for the forced separation of mixed-blood children from their native relatives between the 1820s and the 1970s.

The Mabo case, 1992. The Australian High Court ruled that terra nullius was legally invalid and recognised native claims to land from before 1770, when Cook arrived. It is the single most tested Australian date in this chapter.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: The Mabo case of 1992 is the year terra nullius was struck down. In reality: the case was brought by Eddie Koiki Mabo and other Meriam people of the Torres Strait Islands, who claimed rights over their home island. The ruling did not hand back all the land that had been taken, but it opened the way for native title claims on land where the link with the people had never been broken.

Pause and predict: if the doctrine of terra nullius had been true, why would the settlers have signed no treaties with the Australian natives?

Check your answer: If the land belonged to nobody, there was nobody to make a treaty with. That is why the Mabo ruling of 1992, by declaring the doctrine invalid, changed the legal position of native peoples so deeply.

Key places

Key people and terms

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Next: Paths to Modernisation shows how Japan and China, which were never settler colonies, answered the same pressure from the West.
• Earlier ideas: Changing Cultural Traditions explains the European humanist thinking behind the older idea of who counts as "civilised".