C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa makes a straightforward and important point in this book: Indian policy has a history of contestation. Not only have Native Americans challenged policies crafted by non-Indians, but the latter also disagreed among themselves on goals and methods. Historians, however, usually present the post-Civil War period in particular as a time of national unanimity regarding Indians: acquire their land and encourage assimilation as the only alternative to extinction.Footnote ¹ According to the standard interpretations, politicians, bureaucrats, and reformers who fashioned themselves “Friends of the Indian” all agreed to divide reservations into allotments or homesteads, encourage citizenship and education, eviscerate any meaningful form of tribal sovereignty and political power, and keep the Office of Indian Affairs jobs out of the hands of political hacks and army officers. In short, both speedy conquest and forced acculturation became the order of the day. From the 1880s until the 1930s, these ideas and aims prevailed.

Genetin-Pilawa argues that some fought this approach. Not only did many Native Americans object to these policy goals, so too did some non-Indians. Things could have turned out differently, if only individuals such as Tonawanda Seneca Ely Parker and Anglo reformers Thomas and Cora Brand had prevailed. These people agreed that Indians would eventually assimilate, if the process proceeded slowly, gradually, and with Native American consent. But they opposed coercive allotment, efforts to undermine Indian cultural and political practices and values, and insistence on participation in the market economy. Or to restate their position in more positive terms: they favored tribal land ownership for those who did not want allotments, perpetuation of tribal sovereignty, and the opportunity for individual Indians to voluntarily embrace an education that would lead to work in industry and agriculture.

Parker wanted to use the military to enforce existing treaties. On the other hand, he advocated discontinuing the treaty-making process in the future and favored western expansion. For Parker these issues were deeply personal. He came to political maturity in the context of his own tribe's fight to sustain its land and sovereignty in the 1840s and 1850s. The Tonawanda Seneca lost much land, but received permanent title to a remnant and effectively slowed the deterioration of political power. In the course of their struggle, they found Anglo allies in the Democratic Party and among middle-class Whigs who shared their fear of large landholders and speculators. Intellectuals such as Lewis Henry Morgan and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft supported Seneca resistance as well. Parker understood that whites did not represent an anti-Indian monolith. He also knew that Native people had the capability of assimilating and believed they would eventually do so, on their own terms and time frame. What made Parker especially important, of course, was his position as commissioner of Indian affairs during the U.S. Grant administration. For a brief time (1869–71) Parker applied his vision to Indian policy.

Thomas Bland and his wife Cora founded the National Indian Defense Association (NIDA). Bland was a midwestern farmer-turned-physician with special interest in herbal treatments. His wife taught and practiced medicine. The couple supported a cluster of progressive goals including the eight-hour workday, woman suffrage, and creation of an income tax. They also believed the federal government had a moral obligation to protect Indian communities, governments, and land bases. They feared allotment would do more harm than good. The Blands advocated that the government provide secure patents for tribal lands and insisted upon Native participation in shaping Indian policy.

In the end, the greatest political enemies of Parker and the Blands turned out to be not western settlers and others who hungered for access to Indian resources, but rather their fellow reformers. Herbert Welsh and the Indian Rights Association (IRA) worried that Parker, Bland, and the NIDA posed genuine threats to their plans regarding forced and fast acculturation without Indian consent. They worked successfully to remove Parker from his commissionership and then discredited the Blands and the NIDA through a smear campaign in newspapers and pamphlets. Historians disagree about whether the NIDA ever seriously challenged the IRA. Genetin-Pilawa believes they did, although the evidence is not exactly overwhelming. But the author's larger point is absolutely convincing: the IRA clearly feared the NIDA and so expended considerable energy to destroy both its and the Blands' influence.

It is important to acknowledge that the movement toward land allotment and forced acculturation was not a smooth one. It was, to use Genetin-Pilawa's words, a “crooked path.” Indians and non-Indian allies tried to slow it down, soften its most destructive aspects, and acknowledge the legitimacy of Indian cultures and values. Yet they failed, and the policies adopted caused a great deal of suffering for decades to come. So, does it matter that some non-Indians fought these policies? If they lost, who cares? Here is where the book falls a bit short. The author makes a nod to John Collier's “revolutionary” Indian New Deal, which resembled some of the goals and ideas of Parker and the Blands, although realized in a dramatically different political climate. But he does not explore the cultural and political ties that other historians have charted regarding champions of Indian landholding, political and religious rights, and culture between the Blands' day and Collier's.Footnote ² This minority view never disappeared. It maintained a life throughout the allotment era and even more importantly, the basic sensibilities at its core eventually prevailed—became the dominant view—not only in the 1930s but from the late twentieth century to the present. Nor does the author make connections with the national critics of the pre-Civil War removal policies. Genetin-Pilawa's deep research into the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Dawes Act is splendid. But by staying so closely tied to that era, he misses an opportunity to make larger connections and a broader point about the long history of contestation regarding Indian policy in this nation.