An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

civilization and its so-called virtues. The purpose of the essay was to
challenge the idea that there was an “Indian problem.” Similar to the
question that Du Bois asked in The Souls of Black Folk (1903)—“how does
it feel to be a problem?”—Parker modifies the question by jumping right
into the heart of the issue and arguing that the root of the problem was
largely US society.
Parker bemoaned that the US robbed Native people of their inherent
right to being human. The US, he wrote, “robbed a race of men—the
American Indian—of their intellectual life; Robbed the American Indian of
his social organization; Robbed the American Indian of his native freedom;
Robbed the American Indian of his economic independence; Robbed the
American Indian of his moral standards and of his racial ideals; Robbed the
American Indian of his good name among the peoples of the earth; Robbed
the American Indian of a definite civic status.” 10 The supposed inferiority
of Native people wasn’t what explained their current predicament, argued
Parker; it was the fault of US civilization.
Freedom, according to Parker, was the “first and greatest love of the
American Indian. Freedom had been his heritage from time immemorial.”
“By Nature,” Indians, according to Parker, were “independent, proud,” and
“freedom to the red man is no less sweet, no less the condition of life itself
than to other men.” While Parker cited well-known US figures such as
Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, he also cited
Native figures who resisted with warfare, including Metacomet (King
Philip), Red Jacket, Tecumseh, Pontiac, Black Hawk, Osceola, and Red
Cloud. 11
Laura Cornelius Kellogg (Oneida), like Arthur Parker, believed that
Native people had a lot of good to contribute. In her essay “Some Facts and
Figures on Indian Education,” she argued that Indigenous ideas of
education were not inferior than those of white peoples. “To some others
anything the Caucasian does is ‘educated’ and anything ‘Indian’ is not. To
those who have gone the whole way of enlightenment, education has
another meaning,” she wrote. And that meaning was “a proper appreciation
of the real values of truth wherever they may be found whether in an Indian
or Paleface.” 12
She then proceeded to voice a critique of the Indian boarding schools
and an appreciation of Native ways of education. In addition to breaking
down the importance of emotions and feelings in Indigenous ways of