Advances in the History of Rhetoric Jan 2009

Plenary Rhetoric in Indian Country: The<i>Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock</i>Case and the Codification of a Weakened Native Character

Jason Edward Black

Abstract

AbstractThe U.S. Congress passed the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 as a part of its assimilationist plan to remake American Indians in the image of the U.S. nation. The act helped constitute a changed Native identity as it contracted reservation lines and forced an agricultural economy onto Native reservations. The Supreme Court case Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903) resulted from American Indian protests of the Dawes Act, including the argument that the assimilationist plan had been implemented against Natives' will. The resulting decision granted Congress the ultimate “plenary” power to abrogate treaties without any limits because American Indians were wards. Through an analysis of the case and Indian Commissioner reports addressing plenary power, I argue that the Lone Wolf holding served as an imperial discourse that maligned American Indian identities through a parent-child relationship. This denigration manifested through Lone Wolf's construction of American Indians as cultural wards, its reduction of Native property to commodity through a westernized economic plan, and its assimilation of Native communities into dominant U.S. culture. In addition, I contend that the Lone Wolf case solidified a wider U.S. nationalism by emboldening federal power over indigenous communities through a familial rhetorical strategy.

Journal
Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published
2009-01-01
DOI
10.1080/15362426.2009.10597380
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Topics
writing across the curriculum multimodality race and writing

Citation Context

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Also cites 11 works outside this index ↓
  1. Black (2005)
    “Authoritarian Fatherhood: Andrew Jackson's Early Familial Lectures to America's ‘Red Chi…
    Journal of Family History  ↗
  2. Charland (1987)
    “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois.“
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  3. Frickey (1993)
    “Marshalling Past and Present: Colonialism, Constitutionalism, and Interpretation in Fede…
    Harvard Law Review  ↗
  4. Garroutte (2003)
    Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America
     ↗
  5. Horseman (1981)
    Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
     ↗
  6. Jarding (2004)
    “Tribal-State Relations Involving Land and Resources in the Self-Determination Era.”
    Political Research Quarterly  ↗
  7. Miller (1999)
    “Indians, Braves and Redskins: A Performance Struggle for Control of an Image.”
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  8. Morris (1997)
    “Educating Savages.”
    Quarterly Journal of Speech  ↗
  9. Ono (2001)
    “Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpackaging the Commodification of an American Indian Woman.”
    Critical Studies in Media Communication  ↗
  10. Stuckey (2001)
    “By Any Other Name: Rhetorical Colonialism in North America.”
    American Indian Culture and Research Journal  ↗
  11. Wilkins (1997)
    American Indian Sovereignty and the Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →

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