Mary Lou Reker:
Hello, can you hear me in the back?  Okay.

My name is Mary Lou Reker, and on behalf of the Kluge Center and the Office of Scholarly Programs of the Library of Congress, I want to welcome you to today's talk by Dr. Claudia Haake.  And it is entitled "Breaking the Bonds of People and Land: Native American Removal in the United States and Mexico." 

The recipient of numerous fellowships, Dr. Claudia Haake received her M.A. in history from Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. from the Universitat Bielefeld near Hanover, Germany.  She has contributed chapters to five different books, written in both English and German, on matters related to forced land removal of native American peoples, and her own book, The State Removal and Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico, 1620 to 2000 was published by Rutledge [spelled phonetically] Press in 2007.  During her stay at the Library, she's completed the revisions to her -- or put the final touches -- on her book, scheduled for publication in spring 2009 by Oxford University Press, and I don't have that title with me, so I'll let you tell us about that.  The majority of the time she has spent here, doing research for her third book -- she's used the collections for the Serial Publications Division, as well as the general collections.  She's also done a lot of reading in the microfilm reading room, and has mentioned to me she's particularly grateful for the assistance of Jay Sweeney [spelled phonetically] who is our Native American subject librarian.  

I must tell you that it has been quite a process getting Dr. Haake here to the Library of Congress.  She was born in Germany, traveling on a German passport.  When we awarded her fellowship, she was a lecturer at the University of York in England, and before we were able to issue the forms she needed, she was already moving to her current position of lecturer in history at La Trobe University in Australia, in Melbourne.  So, we were trying to keep up with her, in order to make sure the documents she needed to get into the United States were appropriate.  I am happy to say we were successful at that, and I can proudly present to you, Dr. Claudia Haake.

[applause]

Claudia Haake:
Thanks, Mary Lou, for the kind introduction.  The forms were chasing me around the globe.  I'm sure some still haven't caught up with me.

Well, thanks so much for the kind introduction, and hello, and thanks for coming to every one of you.  I'm always pleased when there is an audience because some of the countries I've lived in, Native American history was not something that would attract an audience.  In Australia, where I now live, there is a tradition -- at least, among people working in indigenous history -- and this is to acknowledge the aboriginal owners of the land we're currently in, and on, and I'd like to start with that.  I think it's a very fitting thing to do, especially given the topic of removal, to remember that this used to be native land.

What I'm presenting today is, actually, not the project I've worked on during most of my time here as a Kluge Fellow, although it did occupy me sometime early in my stay, and some of my colleagues heard me moan and groan about this.  The topic I'm going to talk about forms a link between my last project -- Mary Lou kindly mentioned the name of the book - and the current one, the one I've worked on as a Kluge Fellow.  And a longer version of what I'm going to talk about today will be published early next year.  In a shameless attempt at pushing the book, there, you have the details.  It sounded really great when Mary Lou was talking about the second and third book.  This is not just mine, and it's only an edited collection, so my input has been rather minimal, I have to say.

I want to thank the Kluge Center, and everyone here, for enabling me to work on these projects, this and the other one.  My time here has been incredibly productive, and that has been thanks to the wonderful conditions I found here.  You know, I absolutely love having books delivered to my desk.  So, I want to thank everyone at the Kluge Center, staff and fellows, very, very much, but actually I have no time for thanks, or to name all the people who deserve it -- it would be a really, really long list, let me tell you -- because what I'm presenting are the results of a comparative investigation, and I need literally every second of the time allotted to me.  

I really think, given that it's comparative, and I'm talking about Mexico and the U.S., I should have doubled the time.  But don't worry.  I didn't lock any doors, so I'm not going to force you to stay for two hours.  More specifically, I will talk about Native American removal in Mexico and the United States, and I just want to, very briefly, talk about the term "removal," as some of you may not have come across it before, given that there's quite a mix of people in the room today.

The term removal comes from U.S. history, specifically from the 1830 Indian Removal Act, though the phenomenon is, unfortunately, an international one, and also not just limited to native peoples.  I'll try to stay in front of the microphone while still talking about this.  The intent of the removal policy was to draw a line between -- oops, well, imagine that's the course of the Mississippi River -- so to draw a line between White and Red, if you will, and to move all Native Americans to the West of the Mississippi, and thus clear large areas of land for White settlement.  So, the two cases which I will present in very, very broad strokes today, are those of the Yaquis and the Delawares.  

Those of you less familiar with Native history may have come across the Yaquis and -- dare I say, it's the writings of Carlos Castenada, sort of New-Agey things -- and the Delawares.  The Delawares achieved some exposure quite earlier, prior to Castenada, through James Fennimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales.  If you remember reading those books, Ungas, the son of Chingachgook -- so if you will, the sort of second-to-last Mohican -- in one of the tales, turns out to be Delaware royalty.  I'm not going to comment any further on that.  

So, removals.  I'm sorry, but I think that all the maps, or all the slides, have been slightly stretched, because I didn't really think of the flat screen -- the long format of the TV's here.  I hope you'll still be able to make things out.  

Scholars of Native American studies have asserted that, even if the United States has rarely fulfilled the spirit of the law, it has, nevertheless, done better by its native people than other countries.  These other countries would include its often over-shadowed neighbor to the south, Mexico.  And opinions like this, largely based on legal texts, have led to the belief that the United States have comparatively good records in their dealings with Native Americans, while Mexico, supposedly, has done much worse.  Specifically considering the problem of removal, the -- admittedly very rare -- scholarship considering both these countries has concluded that removal in Mexico was intended to break up tribes, while in the United States, it was meant to preserve them.  

I will consider these two examples, based in -- then, again, you know, U.S. Delawares originally from up here ended up in Oklahoma, and Yaquis from Sonora, just across the border of Arizona ending up down here, in the general Cancun area.  So, I will consider these two examples in order to challenge this verdict on Native history in Mexico and the United States.  These two case studies, I believe, indicated ultimately, both countries, through indigenous removal, pursued very similar goals, and foremost among them was the acquisition of Native lands.  And I will start with the Delawares.

I'm not going to comment much more on this treaty, just to point out that the Delawares were the first-ever tribe to sign a treaty with the United States, as well as one of the last to be removed under the 1830 Removal Act.  They originally lived along the banks of the Delaware River, and its tributaries, but today are based in Oklahoma.  This is just one article from that very first treaty.  If you read it, it will give you an idea of how important the Delaware tribe was at the time that this was concluded.  

The history was essentially one of almost continuous removals, as even prior to 1830, they were displaced repeatedly.  I'm going to switch to a map -- all the areas highlighted in darker grey are ones that saw groupings of Delawares passing through in their long, long trek to Oklahoma.  What I'm going to talk about mostly, today, is the final step of removal, the one that's based on the Removal Act which took them from, I think, right around here, to down here, Lawrence, Kansas to Northern Oklahoma.  Sometimes, those Delawares were simply pushed back, and crowded out by force.  At other times, this was done by means of treaty.  This process saw them leaving their original homes along the Delaware River to go to Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas.  Their last removal, which falls within the official removal area, took place in the late 1860s and saw the tribe being transplanted from Kansas to the newly created Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, where they had to settle among the Cherokees.  

Four treaties between 1854 and 1866 removed the Delawares to Indian Territory, Oklahoma.  They had repeatedly looked at lands available to them, and had eventually decided to relocate to within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.  This was not an easy decision, also not a truly voluntary one, but rather, one borne out of necessity as the situation in Kansas had become intolerable.  Their agent reported that the entire tribe had discussed the issue of moving in a number of council meetings, and had concluded that they would remain no longer in this country if they could find anywhere else, a country anything as good as this.  

The effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 affected the tribe deeply, and White harassment had increased to unbearable levels.  But the tribe was long-divided over where they should go, some favoring the West, where they hoped to maintain their traditional lifestyle, and others feeling more inclined to go to Indian Territory, where they hoped to modernize their way of life.  The ruptures introduced by this difficult decision aggravated seemingly pre-existing tensions between these groupings, which might very, very tentatively be referred to as Modernists and Traditionalists, even though they were by no means uniform in their opinion, and their membership was not fixed.  While both groups sought to preserve the tribe, the latter saw their only chance to do so in an insistence on their traditional ways, while the former group favored an adoption of modern and white ways.  

A treaty between the Cherokee Nation and the USA, signed shortly after the Delaware Treaty of 1866, allowed the U.S. to settle civilized Indians, friendly with the Cherokees, on their territory.  But in order to be able to do so, the Delawares had to make another compact, this time with the Cherokee Nation.  After much discussion, on April 8, 1867, the two tribes entered into an agreement.  According to this document, the Cherokees sold the Delawares 160 acres of land for every man, woman and child on the enrollment list the agent drew up for their removal.  Yet, when the time came to sign this final version of the agreement, the Delawares discovered that a few terms had been changed from the version the two parties had previously agreed on.  For instance, the new wording spoke of incorporation of the Delawares into the Cherokee Nation, possibly suggesting the dissolution of Delaware tribal ties.  

The Delaware delegates, whom you see here, sent to sign an agreement, did so in spite of it having been modified from the agreed upon version, and probably, at least partly, due to pressure from the government officials present.  From the very beginning of the negotiations, the Delawares had expressed a firm wish "...to remain Indians, and to preserve our Nation.  It was a Nation from the earliest times," as Captain Fall Leaf put it in a letter to the commissioner of Indian Affairs.  Members of the tribe furthermore impressed upon the United States that "...before the government of the United States was formed, we were a Nation, and for time to come, so far as the human mind can conceive, we wish to be a Nation."

Clearly, they were not inclined to compromise on the central issue.  After all, everyone who had chosen to remove had done so specifically to preserve tribal ties, instead of accepting the treaty option to stay on in Kansas as United States citizens, which only very, very few Delawares elected to do.  Yet after the 1867 Agreement had been signed, there was no way out of it, in spite of some very obvious legal problems with the document.  The wording in the new document was very ambiguous.  It conflated both options contained in Article 15 of the Cherokee treaty, which described ways to surrender, as well as to maintain a separate tribal organization.  It is not clear how these new terms entered the agreement, or who exactly was responsible for them.  

Whatever the true reasons for the agreement's new terms, it seems likely that United States officials wanted to have this already drawn out and unusually complicated matter settled as quickly as possible, and the Delawares removed from Kansas to Cherokee lands in Indian Territory.  They're not overly concerned about the terms, or about the Delawares, as long as the latter signed the agreement and vacated their lands.  So, the ambiguous terms of the agreement most likely stemmed from a mixture of factors, including local misinterpretations of official United States Indian policy and a genuine confusion about the terms, as well as a clash of interests between the Delawares and the Cherokees.  But still, the United States government appeared determined to hold the tribes to the terms, and especially to remove the Delawares as quickly as possible, in spite of all their protests.  

I can just show you, this gentleman back here.  Can you see that?  Okay, I'll do it.  There we go.  This is actually the only white man in the party.  This is the agent, who was very, very interested in having the Delawares leave Kansas, and move to Indian Territory.  

The majority of the Delawares immediately protested against incorporation and consolidation.  They specifically pointed to the 1866 treaty, in which there was no mention of having to give up their tribal organizations.  There was little they could do, apart from petitioning and protesting, however.  The so-called Traditionalists among them were especially reluctant to remove under the modified terms of the Cherokee-Delaware Agreement.  As an official involved in the matter reported in February 1868, three-quarters of the Delawares, whom he called full-bloods, were averse to locating among the Cherokees.  He realized that their nationality was dearer to them than anything else.  The superintendent in charge of the Delawares removal was probably correct, when he mentioned later that fear of the loss of national organization, name, and power were the principal reasons for the Delawares delaying their removal.  Just an idea of the many things they said to oppose this.

Seven hundred and twelve tribal members, about two-thirds of the Delawares, signed a petition stating that, in council and with a majority of the tribe present, it was agreed unanimously that the Delawares will never give up their nationality and become merged in the Cherokee Nation.  Furthermore, the Delawares reminded the commissioner of the treaty of 1866, which had specified that they were to go in a body to a distinct reservation, and of the United States' duty as a guardian, but all protests and petitions were to no avail.  

The movement to Oklahoma began in December of 1867, and continued during the spring and summer of 1868, thirty-five years after the removal of the Choctaws -- they had been the first to suffer removal on the basis of the 1830 Indian Removal Act.  Each family had to make its own preparations and arrangements, though sometimes several families traveled together.  They had to cover a distance of 180 to 200 miles, until they arrived in Indian Territory.  They were not accompanied and supervised by the Army.  

There was no particular reason for this removal except land-hunger and favoritism towards the railroad, the main beneficiaries of two of the four treaties leading up to the Delawares' removal.  Unlike many other tribes, the Delawares had given the federal government no reason to remove them.  They had stayed loyal to the Union during the Civil War, and a very large percentage of them had served in the Union forces.  Yet the land itself provided sufficient incentive for their removal.  

Now, turning to the Yaquis.  Land was also the driving force behind the removal of the Yaquis, from Sonora to Yucatan, around the turn of the century.  This ever-troublesome tribe -- and I selected these photos, so you can see.  This is one of the leaders, and you can see the cartridge belt, and the gun.  This is very symptomatic of the resistance the tribe put up for the longest time -- very successful resistance.  

So, this ever-troublesome tribe, which had managed to retain large portions of ancestral lands throughout Spanish and Mexican rule, had been involved in what was essentially a defensive war against the Mexican government, which kept intruding upon their fertile lands, which it sought in order to settle non-native colonists on them.  The Yaquis were so successful in their struggle that, after recurring bouts of warfare, the government turned to a policy of removal, to finally undermine and eliminate the resistance.  

The policy of physical removal was new to the Yaquis.  Before the mass deportation started in 1902, there had been occasional relocations, but only on an individual basis, and for active rebels.  So, if you were a troublemaker chances are, if they caught you, they might ship you some place.  The dislocation beginning in 1902 was directed at the entire tribe: men, women and children.  The Diaz government tried to drain the rebellion by taking away the peaceful people clandestinely supporting it, especially since the line between them had become increasingly hazy, making it difficult, if not impossible to deport only active rebels, as sooner or later almost every male Yaqui could be counted among the active rebel group.  

The excuse for the full-on adoption of this measure was the guerilla warfare that the Yaquis quite successfully employed against the Mexicans.  Eliminating the social base seemed to be the only means to bring an end to this guerilla movement.  After all, earlier measures, such as drawing up registers, and designating special camps to the peaceful part of the population, had not had the desired effects.  There was also the growing interest of outsiders, Mexicans and Americans, in the fertile lands of the Yaqui Valley, and in Sonora in general, partly caused by its proximity to Arizona.  It was, to some degree, the commercial interests by investors from the United States that inspired the Mexican government to finally rid itself of the "Yaqui nuisance," as they were known, and to open the way for the commercial agricultural development of the area, while at the same time helping the Yucatecan plantation owners out, who wanted to obtain cheap labor for their plantations.  

Prior to the henequen boom, the government had largely agreed to tolerate Yaqui activities in Sonora, so as not to lose their valuable labor.  Henequen, sisal -- henequen is a plant from which the sisal fibers are derived, and there was really a boom at the time that all of this was happening.  Now, however, the government could have both.  They were able to deport the Yaquis, and could, at the same time, satisfy labor needs.  At this point, there was nothing they could do to avoid removal.  Even the option of joining the Mexican mainstream society, by then, was closed to them.  

In 1904, after two years of deportations, and in spite of the draconian measures generally employed against the Yaquis, the government had to acknowledge that some Yaquis still, somehow, managed to carry on with their resistance.  This made President Diaz encourage the state government to renew its efforts and, as a result, sealed the fate of the entire Yaqui population.  From then on, many times, no distinction at all between peaceful workers and rebels was made.  

While the Yaquis still continued their resistance, these measures were taking a toll on them.  In 1904, the Nueve Capitanes -- nine Yaqui captains -- in a letter to the governor of Sonora, stated that the rebellion was taking place only at the river -- Yaqui River -- and not in the countryside, presumably to convince the military, the army, to spare those not at this time actively involved in the fight, but who were still crucial to the rebellion.  They generally expressed concern for the Yaquis working outside the territory.  Apparently, many of them feared the relentless persecution by the government forces, and hanging, in particular.  The men who referred to themselves as the Nine Captains also expressed their concern for the Sonoran harvest, which, they claimed, was going to be lost without Yaqui labor.  This argument was also used in a letter to Mexican citizens on the same day, probably echoing and feeding fears the hacendados had anyway, while at the same time proving the Yaquis awareness of their main advantage.  They asked for santa paz, a holy peace, yet their pleas were to no avail, and the campaign against them continued.

By 1907, the government had stopped its efforts at disguising the war against the tribe, and openly tried to clear all Yaquis from Sonora.  It attempted to pass off and justify this removal as a benevolent act, because they permitted the Yaquis to live, instead of resorting to killing them outright to solve the problem they posed.  

So, just to give you an idea of what exactly was going on; the Yaquis were apprehended anywhere in this area, some even across the border in Arizona -- there was some cooperation -- and then taken, either to Hermosillo, or to Guaymas, and then eventually shipped -- put on to ships -- shipped -- hopefully in a more straight line -- to this general area -- there are different ways -- and then marched across the width of Mexico, mostly to Vera Cruz, where they waited around for a while, and then -- this first leg was usually on war ships, and this second shipment, they seem to have mostly traveled as cargo on boats running anyway.  So, whenever there was room on boats, they were shipped over here to the harbor of Progreso where they were put into camps, sometimes vaccinated and then distributed, mostly to the Yucatecan part of the peninsula, but some also to Campeche and Quintana Roo, down here.

In view of the rebels' success in eluding apprehension and castigation, or removal, by 1907 the government's step to adopt removal as the official policy becomes almost logical, and even understandable from the official point of view.  It was a measure, in part, borne out of desperation, but also a cunning business decision by Sonoran and Yucatecan officials involved.  It appears that certain government officials used, or abused, their positions for some kind of semi-private business enterprise, making money by providing laborers for Yucatan.  To the federal government, the officials could justify the deportations as a necessary clean-up program in response to the Yaqui rebellion, while at the same time, they themselves stood to benefit financially from sending the Yaquis to a Yucatan starved for labor.  Money changing hands like this would have contributed to the rumors of the Yaquis being outrightly sold into slavery.  Greed and private profits seemed to have been crucial in the semi-commercial enterprise that was removal.

The massive shipments of Yaquis abruptly stopped at the end of July 1908, but smaller numbers continued to be deported.  This was probably, at least partly, due to a slump in the henequen market, which made removal less lucrative.  Yet, the government still had prices on the heads of Yaquis, and to avoid more attacks by the few remaining rebels, threats were made that each would be avenged by more deportations.  

The exact numbers of Yaquis deported remain unknown, but estimates for the period between 1902 and 1908 run as high as 15,000.  Even assuming a population of around 30,000 Yaquis on the eve of removal, which is probably too high, this would still mean that the tribe lost between one-fourth and one-half of their entire Sonoran population, and these calculations do not even include those Yaquis who escaped over the border into the United States, or the ones who were killed.  

When, after several failed attempts to do so, most, though not all Yaquis, in 1909, finally agreed to make peace with the Mexican government, it was under harsh conditions.  The government would attend to, and sustain, all those who surrendered, and all but 60 would be disarmed.   The Yaquis were allowed to occupy vacant lands on the Yaqui River, but were not to resettle the original eight pueblos.  They would be given work in other parts of the state, and transportation to their new location would be provided.   In spite of the many requests of the Sonoran Yaquis, the deportees remained unmentioned.  

Once in Yucatan, the Yaquis who had been deported served as workers on the henequen plantations, and seem to have largely ceased their famed resistance, even though it carried on among those who managed to avoid removal and remained in the traditional territory in Sonora.  This is just a photograph of one of these henequen plantations.  That's henequen plants, sisal plants, in the foreground, and this is, today, towards the traction, [spelled phonetically] actually.  

Those Yaquis who still carried on the fight in Sonora demanded the return of their traditional territory, as well as the return of the deportees.  Only the Mexican Revolution alleviated the pressure on the last remaining rebels, and set the deported Yaquis free, and enabled some of them to return to their homeland.  

Mexico and the United States did not remove Indians because they were Indians, but because they were Indians, others, holding a precious resource, their lands.  At times, the state would temporarily, and to a certain extent, let the indigenous community speak.  This was the case when, or while, the Indians had been pushed away far enough not to disturb the aims of the ruling elite, and generally only if the natives did not control any resources considered valuable by the state.  Yet this constituted indifference more than tolerance, and should some unfortunate tribes find themselves, quite literally, in the way, they soon were being treated accordingly, as both the Delawares and the Yaquis found out.  

The nation-state determined who belonged, and what had to be done in order to belong, as well as who would control the resources within its borders.  Anything outside that mold could generally not be tolerated, especially not since both Mexico and the United States, during this period in question, found themselves in difficult political situations that required all their strength.  Even those individuals who were willing to conform had no guarantee of acceptance, especially not if they held valuable resources desired by other members of the state.  Particularly, in such cases, there was a reluctance to work out alternative ways to incorporate native societies, unless they had something valuable to offer in return, and thus could make it worth the effort.  The Delawares never really could make such an offer, at least not after the end of the fur trade, long, long before, and Yaquis were only in a position to do so for a while, until their sought after labor could be put to better use in Yucatan than in Sonora.  

Focusing more on the comparative element of Mexico and the United States; if one accepts the rhetoric of the United States government that removal as a policy was intended to give Native Americans more time to gradually assimilate into mainstream society, then removal did not succeed, and would have to be considered a failure as a policy.  Removal did not erase native, tribal, and ethnic identity, did not turn Indians into Americans.  On the contrary, by transplanting entire tribes, many attributes rhetoric claimed need to be destroyed were actually maintained.  For example, United States' Indian policy, in general, built up an administrative apparatus to organize Indians, usually as tribes, and therefore reinforced tribal boundaries, and thus their sense of themselves as members of a tribal group.  

In the case of the Delawares, removal, while doubtlessly a stressful and traumatic event for the tribe, eventually served to overcome the internal differences it had previously aggravated.  In other words, instead of destroying tribal ties and tribal identities in accordance with what, supposedly, was its agenda, removal in the Delawares ended up strengthening these very ties and identities.  After a hard period of adjustment, this enabled the Delawares to meet most of the challenges posed by future policies, and by life among the Cherokees.  The tribal unity even survived the difficult first period of lost federal recognition in the 20th century.  However, I will argue shortly that removal in the United States was at least, initially, a success, when it came to its covert agenda of economic gains for the nation-state and its white citizens.

For the Yaquis in Mexico, matters present themselves somewhat differently.  The Diaz government had wanted to clear Yaqui lands without losing Yaqui labor, and it was well underway of achieving this aim, when the Revolution put a stop to the program.  It had sought assimilation only in as much as it wanted Yaqui deportees to become subservient workers on Yucatan.  Removal, as such, was not intended to turn them into Mexicans.  Instead, as I've suggested, the removal had been borne out of something like desperation, a means the government turned to because all other attempts to deal with the so-called Yaqui menace had failed.  Much less reflection, both ethical and legal, had been put into the planning of the removal of the Yaqui tribe than had been invested in the policy in the United States.  

Unlike in the U.S., removal of the Yaquis was geared to achieve maximum economic exploitation and was specifically tailored for them.  It was probably the way the tribe was broken up through deportations, as well as the forced exile, that made removal such a destructive force for the Yaquis.  Not the tribe was transplanted, but individual workers.  Because the agenda was clear-cut and overt, and the policy tailored to the specific situation, Mexico came much closer to achieving the goals of removal than the United States did.  

I believe land appropriations to have been the true driving force behind removal in the United States, and in this respect the U.S. was much more successful than in the overt aim of the policy, which was assimilation.  While it was no secret that Indians would lose lands through the application of the policy, this fact was, at the most, portrayed as a side effect.  This covert agenda, which was not really all that covert, contributed considerably to the failure of the apparent goal of the policy of assimilation.  The United States proclaimed its intent to destroy tribal communities, and to assimilate Indians into American society as individuals.  Removal, it claimed, would give natives more time to assimilate, something that was considered beneficial for them.  Yet, removal as a policy failed to truly pursue its stated objectives, and to meet its own moral standards.  

In the United States, a mix of intentions permitted the covert agenda of land acquisition to dominate the official one of assimilation, and was probably the main course for the only half-hearted, incomplete, and abortive attempts to assimilate the Indians.  Thus, while the removal policy at the time was very successful economically for the settler society, it enabled tribal survival, and this ultimately foiled both goals -- assimilation and land acquisition -- as the survival of tribal structures this day stands in the way of completely accomplishing the agenda of land acquisition.  The desire to maintain an air of benevolence and legality while taking the natives lands ultimately helped to enable natives to keep some of their lands.  

Matters were both easier, and more complicated, in Mexico, as removal was not a nation-wide program that was supposed to apply to all Indians, but instead a measure that was just applied to the Yaquis, though it had been used before.  The state did not perceive a need for the sweeping rhetoric and legal framework that was used in the United States.  Only partway through the campaign was removal passed off as a benevolent treatment of the tribe.  The government wanted control over the Yaquis lands, and to open them up to non-native settlers.  It also aimed to destroy the Yaqui's community, which was held to be responsible for the continued resistance the tribe kept up in the face of attempts to take their land.  While initially, and for a time only, the Yaquis had been encouraged, albeit in a not pronounced way, to become something like subservient Mexicans, the option of blending with Mexican society was closed to them as soon as removal started, suggesting that land ranked higher on the government's agenda than assimilation did.  

However, in contrast to the situation in the United States, in Mexico another factor entered the equation, and that was the exploitation of native labor, which was especially significant in the case of the Yaquis, who were valued very highly as laborers.  While this for the longest time had been a factor staving off removal, and thus helping the Yaquis to hold on to their land, it eventually turned into a disadvantage when the labor could be more usefully exploited on Yucatan, which also meant that the Yaquis land in Sonora would become available.  

I believe that the fact that the exploitation of native labor ranked high on the government's agenda, next to land acquisition, is largely accountable for how close Mexico came to achieving a lesser goal, the breaking up of a tribal community.  Instead of transplanting an entire tribe, as happened in the U.S. with the Delawares, the Sonoran state government, with federal help and, in some instances, like a semi-private business venture, exported groups of workers who ended up in isolated communities and forced exile, thereby seriously affecting the ties that made them so successful in matters of survival pre-removal.  Because Mexico was not torn over the reasons it pursued removal, it was much more successful in achieving the goals of its policy.  

To sum up the crucial points, the investigation of these two cases, as well as of the more general policies of the two nations, leads me to a number of conclusions.  First, the ways the policies of removal were decided and carried out in Mexico and the United States were, at times, very dissimilar.  For instance, in Mexico, removal was not a nation-wide policy, but instead paired with economic exploitation of the deportees.  Yet still, the basic intention behind those policies was the same in both countries.  Both nation-states aimed at breaking up the native American societies within their borders.  

Especially in Mexico, the removal program came close to achieving its destructive goal, as it left the Yaquis and the deportees, in particular, very few practical options.  The United States, where the avenue of joining the mainstream society was still nominally available to the natives, and where the official agenda of benevolence conflicted with the dominant agenda of land acquisition, left the Delawares more room to maneuver.  

And finally, the impact which removal from tribal lands had on the identity of these indigenous peoples was undoubtedly of the gravest nature.  In Mexico, where the state's power was applied, and removal was furthermore paired with the exploitation of the natives' labor, the Yaqui's tribal identity came close to being eradicated.  In the United States, finding themselves in a doubly hostile environment, after having been forced to live among the Cherokees, the Delawares were able to overcome the divisions introduced or aggravated by removal, and so were left in relative peace for a few years after the event.  Even so, the recent loss of federal recognition can be counted among the long-term consequences of removal.

These examples suggest that it was primarily, though not exclusively, greed and land hunger at the bottom of indigenous forced migration in the United States and Mexico, a fact that has been somewhat disguised by some variations in method and circumstances.  As, for instance, the legal differences as the Delaware tribe was, or is, a so-called "domestic dependent nation" while the Yaquis were, at least nominally, Mexican citizens.  Yet in both cases, removal was a product of colonialism, and affected indigenous peoples, as the original proprietors of the lands were forced from their homelands.  

Equally, the rise of the nation-state -- and especially periods of nation building, or re-building -- seem to have been instrumental in bringing about removal in both countries.  And both Mexico and the United States, at the time of removal of Yaquis and Delawares, were advancing technologically.  The improvement in communications and transport contributed to the successful removal of the two tribes in a number of ways.  However, from the investigation of these two cases, it would seem to me that an increasing awareness, that land was becoming scarcer, was perhaps the determining factor in bringing about forced migration.  So, undoubtedly, the bonds between people and land were affected by forced migration, as can be seen especially in later days, but the main driving force behind the policy, and attack on these bonds, was only a means to an end.

Thank you.

[applause]

Yes.

Male Speaker:
I don't know if you're prepared to answer this question, but in your new residence, in Australia, how would you see the Australian policies to native peoples, comparing or contrasting with you experience here?

Claudia Haake:
Yes.  How would I see the Australian -- I'm sorry, I decided to repeat the questions for the microphone, for the camera.

How would the Australian policies compare and contrast with the ones I've just examined?

Yes, you're right.  I'm not quite sure I can answer that question, or that I'm ready for that.  I guess, one difference is that Australia started a lot later so, you know, some of what was going on in the rest of the world, where people had a, sort of, head start in abuse, as well as in recognizing their abuse, filtered down to Australia and may have influenced policies there.  Johnson versus McIntosh, one of the groundbreaking decisions in Native American law, for instance, has been cited in Australian decisions affecting native peoples.  I think Australia was every bit as bad, actually, and I'm not quite sure I can go beyond that in an answer, at least not while I'm being taped.  We might have a little chat about this later on.

I think you were first.

Male Speaker:
I've always had the impression that the Yaqui Indians were miners by trade or profession, or was this something that had been forced upon them?

Claudia Haake:
Were the Yaquis miners by trade or profession?  Actually, a lot of Yaquis worked in the mining industry, in Sonora.  There was a mining boom at some point in time, and the Yaquis had always, throughout their history, after wide contact, the Yaquis had always sought employment outside of the territory, even while they're still under Jesuit supervision.  They were driving the Jesuits crazy, because they kept leaving, working, brought back money, or came back to evade the debts which had accumulated, and most of the time that work was either in the mines, or on the big plantations of the area, and later on, also for the railroad.  So, yes, quite a number of them were in the mining industry.

Male Speaker:
What type of mines were these?

Claudia Haake:
I think mostly silver.

Male Speaker:
Silver, and does their history, the Yaqui history, go back to fighting the Spanish Conquistadors?

Claudia Haake:
Yes.

Male Speaker:
It goes back that far.

Claudia Haake:
Yes, yes, yes.  The Yaquis were relatively -- I could go back to a map, but it's probably not quite worthwhile.  You know, it took a while for the Spaniards to get to that area and then -- [break in audio] -- very successful at that.  But for the longest time they were left alone, because at that point in time, people didn't know about the silver mines.  Now, this was desert.  Why would you fight to wrest the desert out of the hands of the natives?  You know, as far as the Spaniards were concerned, for a long time they're quite happy to have the Yaquis have that land.

I think you were next.

Male Speaker:
I was wondering if the fact that the Cherokees had to some extent been Confederate sympathizers had any role in what was going on.

Claudia Haake:
Yes.  The involvement of the Cherokees in the Confederacy, yes, that was actually a crucial point because this was -- even though it was only a part of the Cherokees that fought on the side of the Confederates -- this was, if you will, the excuse the U.S. government, after the end of the Civil War, used to pressure the Cherokees into a new treaty, and that new treaty, predictably enough, involved more land cessions. And this was also the treaty, which said, "Well, you now have to let other tribes settle on your land," other tribes "friendly to the Cherokees," whatever that may mean.  And this is how the Delawares ended up on Cherokee land.  Yes.

Male Speaker:
In the legislation of 1830, the Indian Removal Act -- there was debate over the Indian Removal Act, and there were petitions by various citizens' groups in opposition to the Indian Removal Act as well that were submitted to Congress.  Can you shed some light on the nature of the arguments they were making in opposition to the Indian Removal Act of 1830? 

Claudia Haake:
Well, actually, it was a long debate.  It was a, I believe, fierce debate over the Indian Removal Act, and you know, it wasn't passed -- it was passed by a very narrow margin.  So these arguments were taken seriously at the time and, I guess, you know, the benevolent argument was put forward from the opposing side as well, saying, "Just taking these Indians and putting them into a wilderness, away from civilization, in order to civilize them, cannot be the answer.  This can't be right."  

And if you look at the first tribes who were removed, they were, at the time, still known as the Five Civilized Tribes, so why remove the Five Civilized Tribes who made such headway in civilization, whatever this term may mean, into an area where there was not much that, at the time, was not considered civilization.  You know, contemporaries did quite see that this was a bit dodgy as an argument and they did oppose this, and they rather talked about more assimilation, more education, Christianization, all of these were alternative ways that were proposed. But Andrew Jackson, who was incoming or who had just been elected president at the time, this was his baby.  You know, he was very, very much behind this legislation, and he actually enforced it before it officially was passed.  He enforced removal prior to 1830, so chances of the opposition to actually stop this law were, I think, fairly slim, even though they put up a good fight.  I have no idea, which -- yes.

Female Speaker:
I thank you very much for your interesting paper, very interesting paper.  I wanted to ask you a question about the Yaquis and their relationship to the Mexican Revolution, and whether that Mexican territory was where Pancho Villa made his headquarters.

Claudia Haake:
Yaquis and the Mexican Revolution -- Did Pancho Villa make his headquarters on Yaqui territory?  That I don't know, but I can tell you that Yaquis were involved, actively involved, in the Mexican Revolution, ironically, sometimes on opposing sides.  As soon as the revolutionaries turned against one another, after the initial overthrow of Diaz when, you know, things just spiraled into chaos, some Yaquis found themselves literally fighting in the same battles but on opposing sides.  I think this was due because the leaders, revolutionary leaders, came in and tried to recruit Yaquis as fighters for their armies.  You know, they're quite literally the Mexicans with the most fighting experience, so this was a logical step.  Now, they're quite famed, not only as workers, but also as fighters.  

So these leaders would come in and would make promises.  You know, they'd find one group; they'd make promises.  Sometimes they listened and they went with them, and then another person came in and made similar promises to a different group, and then these two generals ended up hating one another, and fighting one another, and that's how the Yaquis ended up on opposing sides.  So, yes, a number of them fought in various revolutionary armies, and I don't think they quite got out of it what they wanted, you know.  Most of them seem to have joined up because of promises that they would have control of their land returned to them.

Female Speaker:
You talked about the rule [spelled phonetically] of native people [inaudible] and I was wondering, can you also ** [unintelligible] resistance since you also intimated that [unintelligible].  Was there any other sort of resistance behind armed resistance [unintelligible].  Was there any sort of, I would call it Indian dialogue, but was there any discussion about the idea of land between the governments of the United States and Mexico and the indigenous people?  Is there a difference in the way that those two governments look at the land?  You know, you said that it's all about getting this land for settlement and agriculture and so on, but was there a difference, not just between the way the native people look at land and the governments do, but between the two governments as well. [Unintelligible].

Claudia Haake:
Three good questions, okay?  Acts of colonialism, and resistance to these acts.  Was there any non-armed resistance? 

The Delawares were petition writers.  I've shown a few of the examples there.  There are actually lots and lots of letters on file.  Before I started this research, I had no idea how active they were. And both groups, the Modernists as well as the so-called Traditionalists, were writing letters to the agents, to the President, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Secretary of the Interior; you name it, they're writing letters to them.  Trying to -- I guess you might call that lobbying for their interests.  Later on, after this had taken place, they also went to court. But during this period, the Delawares did not.  So, those were the non-armed resistance.  

There's also a group of Delawares, which simply refused to leave Kansas.  Most of them did, but one group stayed behind, until they're literally starving.  Their annuities, which were due to them under treaty clauses, were not paid to them.  Commissioner of Indian Affairs decided that they were not going to pay out these annuities until this last group of Delawares had vacated the lands and moved, and left Kansas.  So those are the non-armed resistance bits, as far as the Delawares go.  

You know, the Delawares numbered, pre-removal, just over a thousand, post-removal, 900 something.  So, their chances of putting up armed resistance were never that good, and they knew that.  You could also try to interpret a different kind of armed resistance as opposition to removal for the Delawares.  I think, you know, this massive enlistment during the Civil War, I think this was at least, you know, not exclusively, but in part could have been an attempt to influence the government -- to get on the good books of the government.  "Look, we're fighting for you."  Almost every able-bodied man of fighting age enlisted.  This is actually quite, quite amazing.

Yaquis non-armed resistance?  I was very glad when I found some Yaqui correspondences at all.  Most of the time, you know, they spoke through actions, not through words, letters, or at least not much that has been recorded, not much in comparison to what's been recorded for the U.S., anyway.  Sometimes they simply withdrew.  They hid.  Other times they would -- I'm not sure this qualifies as non-armed but, you know, for Yaqui standards it was fairly non-aggressive -- they simply held up boats on the Yaqui River, and held them for hostage, or they extracted some money.  So they're more into the armed struggle, not very many petitions, at all.

The idea of land, itself.  The idea of land itself was actually, from the native point of view, is the topic of my current project, which I hope is going to be a book in the foreseeable future, where I will only look at what the natives said of why they wanted to keep their lands.  Not quite happy to talk about that for Yaquis but for Delawares, as you can probably grasp from the few examples that I chose: nationality, tribal community -- land to enable community was a big, big issue for them -- it's one of the main themes -- and agriculture, at least that's what they put forward as their arguments, in their many letters and petitions.

Differences in the perception of land by the government.  I'm not sure.  There's a slight difference, but it's not so much about the land.  The land seems to be a means to an end in this one, but clearly the United States wanted to open up land for settlement by non-Native American U.S. citizens.  So, that was one of the main themes.  These citizens could also vote, so for anyone pushing legislation, this must have been a big factor.  You know, they're benefiting those people who could actually keep them in office or put them in office, whereas the Natives could not do this, so they're sort of -- they didn't count.

In Mexico, it was a tiny bit different, because also these lands were supposed to be opened up for settlement, but what President Diaz wanted was specifically to open these up for settlement by new arrivals to Mexico, immigrants, and he was trying to push immigration from certain countries.  He decided that certain European countries where people -- you know, he liked Germans, for instance -- where people would actually advance the country.  So, he courted immigration from a number of countries and discouraged it from others.  So, it wasn't necessarily that these lands were supposed to be opened up for people who were already Mexican citizens, or had been Mexican citizens for a long time, but they're supposed to go to, if you will, the very white people who are just coming in, so it's a slight difference in nuance there.

I should have said answer your questions.  I don't know who was next.  Can you battle it out?

Male Speaker:
I just want to piggyback on that.

Claudia Haake:
Okay.

Male Speaker:
I'm interested also, not necessarily in the idea of the land, which I think is very important, but it also got very involved in particular case studies, but actually the land itself.  You mentioned that the Sonora area is a desert, and I've been to Lawrence, and the Great Plains are not exactly a fruitful area either, so I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit about the specifics of, what is it about this land that they actually wanted?  And what is it about the land that the Indians were using?  So, like, the real -- I think you mentioned [unintelligible] culture [unintelligible].  Can you just lay it out a little bit more?

Claudia Haake:
Yep.  The specifics of the land itself, why was this land of interest to the governments in charge of these policies?

In Mexico, Sonora is very -- I don't know if anyone's been, or if anyone's been to Arizona -- most of it is very dry.  Exception: along the Yaqui River, where the Yaquis lived.  So, that is one of the most fertile areas. So, this was quite important.  If you wanted to bring in all these foreign settlers, immigrants, and have them work the land, you needed water, access to water. So, the river was, in many ways -- or the riverfront land -- was prime real estate at the time, but people discovered this fairly late.  You know, mines were also important.  It was partially this interest from the U.S., which encouraged all of these policies.  More mines, more haciendas, plantations, all of this was taking off at the time.  But the Yaquis were in the way.  People hadn't seen the riches that were in the country early on, but at this point in time they're beginning to realize what there was.  

In the U.S., I think it's quite an ironic story.  If you look back at the history of the Delawares' removal, where it started out, they had good lands.  They practiced quite a bit of agriculture and hunting at the time.  They're right in the way.  They're also called People of the First Frontier, which I think is a very fitting term for them.  So, people took those lands right away, the wonderful fishing, agricultural land, timber, and progressively they're being pushed on what was perceived poorer lands. And after the Louisiana Purchase, people became aware of this great big area, which was called The Great American Desert.  Again, it doesn't sound like the most wonderful real estate -- not very valuable -- so this idea came up that "Well, what can you do with that land? You can't do very much with it.  Why don't we put the Indians there?" 

And then progressively -- the Natives knew this all along, that no land was worthless, that every bit of land had something going for it, but it took the other people a bit longer.  So, they kept being pushed to poorer and poorer lands, and then whites realized the value of those lands.  You know, Kansas -- Lawrence -- the lands in Kansas were actually, given how many or how few other lands were still available, in comparison to what else was there this was good agricultural land.  I've just been reading sources from the Haudenosaunee Iroquois who were also pushed to, or urged to, settle in Indian Territory, and they also realized this.  They came down to inspect lands and said, "Well, the Delawares got the best land, Cherokees got the most, there's not much left for us."  

Then, the ultimate irony, once they'd been relegated to Oklahoma, the mineral riches were found, so this is, in many ways, the progression.  It was just that as land was getting scarcer, people were becoming more aware of values, which they had until that point overlooked.  Are we out of time?

Mary Lou Reker:
I'm afraid we are out of time.  I see that there's a lot more questions here, but those who do have to leave, I have to say I know Claudia will probably answer a few more questions afterwards --

Claudia Haake:
Yes, happy.

Mary Lou Reker:
-- and for Kluge Fellows, for the usual brown bag lunches, go on upstairs.

Claudia Haake:
Okay.  Thanks ever so much for coming, and I'll be right here if you want to ask more questions.  

[applause]

[music]

[end of transcript]