BIA map of reservations in the United States.

Tribal sovereignty: Map of the United States, with non-reservation land highlighted.

There are about 310 Indian reservations in the United States, meaning not all of the country's 550-plus recognized tribes have a reservation ? some tribes have more than one reservation, others have none. In addition, because of past land sales and allotments, discussed below, some reservations are severely fragmented. Each piece of tribal, trust, and privately held land is a separate enclave. This random mixing of private and public real estate can create significant administrative difficulties.

The collective geographical area of all reservations is 55.7 million acres (225,410 km˛), representing 2.3% of the area of the United States (2,379,400,204 acres; 9,629,091 km˛).

There are twelve Indian reservations that are larger than the state of Rhode Island (776,960 acres; 3,144 km˛) and nine reservations larger than Delaware (1,316,480 acres; 5,327 km˛). Reservations are unevenly distributed throughout the country with some states having none. Notably, according to the map to the side, Missouri and Arkansas are the only two states that are a part of the contiguous 48 states that are west of the Mississippi without Indian reservations.

The tribal council, not the local or federal government, has jurisdiction over reservations. Different reservations have different systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. Some Indian reservations were laid out by the federal government; others were outlined by the states.

At the present time, a slight majority of Native Americans and Alaska Natives live somewhere other than the reservations, often in big western cities such as Phoenix and Los Angeles.

History

Reservation beginnings

In 1851, the United States Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which authorized the creation of Indian reservations in modern day Oklahoma. Relations between settlers and natives had grown increasingly worse as the settlers encroached on territory and natural resources in the West.

President Ulysses S. Grant pursued a stated "Peace Policy" as a possible solution to the conflict. The policy included a reorganization of the Indian Service, with the goal of relocating various tribes from their ancestral homes to parcels of lands established specifically for their inhabitation. The policy called for the replacement of government officials by religious men, nominated by churches, to oversee the Indian agencies on reservations in order to teach Christianity to the native tribes. The Quakers were especially active in this policy on reservations. The "civilization" policy was aimed at eventually preparing the tribes for citizenship.

In many cases the lands granted to tribes were hostile to agricultural cultivation, leaving many tribes who accepted the policy in a state bordering on starvation.

Reservation treaties sometimes included stipend agreements, in which the federal government would grant a certain amount of goods to a tribe yearly. The implementation of the policy was erratic, however, and in many cases the stipend goods were not delivered.

Controversy

The policy was controversial from the start. Reservations were generally established by executive order. In many cases, white settlers objected to the size of land parcels, which were subsequently reduced. A report submitted to Congress in 1868 found widespread corruption among the federal Native American agencies and generally poor conditions among the relocated tribes.

Many tribes ignored the relocation orders at first and were forced onto their new limited land parcels. Enforcement of the policy required the United States Army to restrict the movements of various tribes. The pursuit of tribes in order to force them back onto reservations led to a number of Native American Wars. The most well known conflict was the Sioux War on the northern Great Plains, between 1876 and 1881, which included the Battle of Little Bighorn. Other famous wars in this regard included the Nez Perce War.

By the late 1870s, the policy established by President Grant was regarded as a failure, primarily because it had resulted in some of the bloodiest wars between Native Americans and the United States. By 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes began phasing out the policy, and by 1882 all religious organizations had relinquished their authority to the federal Indian agency.

Most Indian reservations, like the Laguna Indian reservation in New Mexico (pictured 1943), are in the western United States, often in arid regions unsuitable for agriculture.

In 1887, Congress undertook a significant change in reservation policy by the passage of the Dawes Act, or General Allotment (Severalty) Act. The act ended the general policy of granting land parcels to tribes as-a-whole by granting small parcels of land to individual tribe members. In some cases, for example the Umatilla Indian Reservation, after the individual parcels were granted out of reservation land, the reservation area was reduced by giving the excess land to white settlers. The individual allotment policy continued until 1934, when it was terminated by the Indian Reorganization Act.

The Indian New Deal

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, also known as the Howard-Wheeler Act, was sometimes called the Indian New Deal. It laid out new rights for Native Americans, reversed some of the earlier privatization of their common holdings, and encouraged self-government and land management by tribes. The act slowed the assignment of tribal lands to individual members, and reduced the assignment of 'extra' holdings to nonmembers.

For the following twenty years, the U.S. government invested in infrastructure, health care, and education on the reservations, and over two million acres (8,000 km˛) of land were returned to various tribes. The Indian Reorganization Act also provided for termination and relocation of certain tribes. This eventually resulted in the legal dismantling of 61 tribal nations.

Life and culture

Many Native Americans who live on reservations deal with the federal government through two agencies: the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.

Life qualities in some reservations are comparable to the quality of life in the developing world. For example, Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, is routinely described as one of the poorest counties in the nation.

Gambling

In 1979, the Seminole tribe in Florida opened a high-stakes bingo operation on its reservation in Florida. The state attempted to close the operation down but was stopped in the courts. In the 1980s, the case of California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians established the right of reservations to operate other forms of gambling operations. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act which recognized the right of Native American tribes to establish gambling and gaming facilities on their reservations as long as the states in which they are located have some form of legalized gambling. Today, many Native American Casinos are used as tourist attractions to draw visitors and revenue to reservations.

See also

• Canada: Indian reserve

References

External links

• BIA full-size map of Indian reservations in the continental United States
• BIA index to map of Indian reservations in the continental United States
• FEMA: Federally recognized Indian reservations
• Tribal Leaders Directory
• Gambling on the reservation April 2004 Christian Science Monitor article with links to other Monitor articles on the topic.
• Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) 1934
• Native American Technical Corrections Act of 2003
• Chapter 5: American Indian and Alaska Native Areas, U.S. Census Bureau, Geographic Areas Reference manual (PDF)

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