Analysis Of After The Frontier: Separation And Absorption In US Indian Policy

“The settler colonial logic of elimination in its crudest form, a violent rejection of all things Indian, was transformed into a paternalistic mode of governmentality which, though still sanctioned by state violence, came to focus on assimilation rather than rejection.” –Patrick Wolfe, After the Frontier: Separation and Absorption in US Indian Policy, 13 Wolfe’s statement illustrates how the US government put more emphasis on legalized absorption of Indians into the White society rather than using forceful and violent methods to acquire the Natives’ land. After the colonization of the westward land and the end of the Frontier era, the US government’s method of assimilation of the Indians started revolving around allotment and blood quanta. With no place to further push the Natives away, the established Bureau of Indian Affairs and the government took action to eliminate the Natives culturally and spiritually instead of physically. The US desired to take away the Indian identity from the Natives and transform them into Whites in which they can be considered part of the growing US nation.

One of the component was allotment in which tribal patrimonies were divided into individually owned lands that can be transferred to Whites through Indian proprietors. Allotments were first used in removal treaties in which few Indians stay behind in portions of tribal lands to become agriculturalists while the rest of the Indians were transferred over to reservations. The goals behind the allotments were not only to acquire the tribal lands, but also to eliminate the sense of unity and wholeness of Indian tribes. Allotments were implemented to divide Indian tribes and to dismantle any form of tribal government in order to make it easier to implement White culture to Indians