Federal Fathers & Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933

Description

Established in 1824| the United States Indian Service (USIS)| now known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs| was the agency responsible for carrying out U.S. treaty and trust obligations to American Indians| but it also sought to “civilize” and assimilate them. In “Federal Fathers and Mothers|” Cathleen Cahill offers the first in-depth social history of the agency during the height of its assimilation efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cahill shows how the USIS pursued a strategy of intimate colonialism| using employees as surrogate parents and model families in order to shift Native Americans’ allegiances from tribal kinship networks to Euro-American familial structures and| ultimately| the U.S. government.