Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy by Katherine Ellinghaus

Abstract

Reviewed by: Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy by Katherine Ellinghaus Ryan W. Schmidt Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy. By Katherine Ellinghaus. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. ix + 180 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $40.00 cloth. Since the nineteenth century, Native Americans have been forced to self-identify through various policies imposed by the United States government. The complex question of "Who is an Indian?" has been a struggle to define. In doing so, a major thread centers on blood quantum, a metaphorical and fluid concept easily amenable to quantification. The assimilation process was fraught with the use of blood to define "Indianness." However, few have given consideration to how blood quantum came to be infused with federal policies of who was and was not an "Indian." In Blood Will Tell, Ellinghaus does not attempt to answer "who is an Indian," but rather, she asks "what kinds of Indian identities were in production during a given historical moment?" Emphasis is placed on how "mixed bloods" were treated and how their status rationalized colonialist policy of land theft and redefinition of status. Ellinghaus focuses on the Assimilation Period (1887 to 1934) using diverse case studies pulled from archival sources. Blood, in this context, can be understood as a "trope," or a metaphorical guide to racist colonialist discourse. Three major tropes are discussed: (1) a greater degree of white blood made Indians smarter and more "competent," while full-blood Indians were helpless victims; (2) blood ensured authenticity—any non-Indian blood was seen as contaminating calling into question an individual's status and membership; and (3) the treatment of those with African American ancestry differed significantly from those with European ancestry. Stages are used in the book to convey how blood went from arbitrary to official. In Stage 1 (chapters 1 and 2), the author focuses on the enrollment process among the Anishinaabeg of Minnesota and the "Five Tribes" of the American Southeast, forcibly moved to Oklahoma. In both cases, mixed bloods had difficulties convincing officials of status and tribal membership, and therefore theft of land and tribal rights were commonplace. In Stage 2 (chapter 3), the unofficial policy of "competency" takes center stage, as individuals of mixed descent were targeted in order to release them from a government trust and enable them to sell land, often under duplicitous circumstances, to white settlers. The last stage (chapter 4) came in 1934, when official legislation partly defined Indian status based on their fraction of blood and cemented this folk biology concept in the public's mind and federal Indian policy. The final chapter explores how Virginia disenfranchised Indians due to their African American ancestry. In all cases, Native groups and individuals resisted these policies or attempted to renegotiate the process based on inclusive definitions of identity or sovereignty. Overall, this book makes a significant contribution to how we interpret assumptions about ethnicity, skin color, and cultural behavior—from low-level civil servants to official ideology to indigenous notions of identity. It is a welcome addition to furthering our understanding of blood quantum and Native American policy. [End Page 439] Ryan W. Schmidt School of Archaeology University College, Dublin Copyright © 2018 The Center for Great Plains Studies and The University of Nebraska Press