Cathleen Cahill took SMU back into the 19th century in her lecture, Federal Fathers and Mothers: The United States Indian Service (1869-1929), which covered the issue of Native American struggle against American government and society.

The Brown Bag lecture series on Mar. 17 hosted Cahill, who came to SMU as one of this semester’s Clements Fellows. She has been working on a book about gender and race within this time period as it applies to Indian affairs in the United States.

Cahill said that due to the “kaleidoscope” of tribal families among Native Americans, policymakers felt that Native Americans could not fit well into American society. Despite this concern, policymakers began to incorporate them into the community.   

Natives had to acknowledge gender roles as part of the new “civilized” culture; the boys learned to be farmers, while the girls learned to be housewives and mothers. Also, by offering Native Americans jobs, the government could prevent them from returning to their tribe and reverting back to the old culture.

Many teachers expressed displeasure about the school’s administration, Cahill said, because they felt they should have a say on the conditions. To avoid this problem, the government transferred these teachers away from their native reservation.

As a result of relocating the teachers, a new intertribal identity arose. “It begins in boarding school and crystallizes in the Indian Service,” Cahill said. Separated Native Americans found similarities in other tribes. Tribes also became more connected as the number of marriages between tribes grew. Cahill’s lecture was basically a reminder that the governments inability to assimilate these people, because they treated them like a “lower race.”