American Indian Culture and Research Journal

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1882, former-Indian-superintendent-turned-reformer Colonel Alfred B. Meacham related a recent premonition of death to his friend Dr. Thomas A. Bland. Believing his earthly mission nearly fulfilled, Meacham implored Bland to continue publication of his monthly periodical devoted to Indian reform, The Council Fire. Two days later, Meacham died at his editorial table, and Bland became editor of the journal. Bland used The Council Five and the National Indian Defence Association, which he founded in 1885, as vehicles for his particular philosophy of Indian reform. Bland largely accepted the goal of Indian assimilation as outlined by humanitarian reformers of his generation. However, in his view, proponents of coercive allotment of reservation land had mistaken the end for the means. He insisted that successful assimilation demanded a gradual and voluntary conversion and not compulsion. Convinced that sudden change was detrimental, Bland began a crusade to protect tribal institutions and property rights. As a critic of forced assimilation, he clashed with reformers in the Women’s National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association, the Board of Indian Commissioners, and the Lake Mohonk Conference of ”Friends of the Indians,” who campaigned vigorously to make severalty compulsory. Indeed, Bland’s outlook and struggle against rapid assimilation provides significant insight into a critical era of reform. Clearly, Bland was not a sentimental romantic who simply exalted the qualities of the “noble savage”; nor does the evidence suggest that he represented early notions of cultural pluralism or relativism. Yet his position as champion of Indian self-determination during this period was certainly unusual. He represented not only the most persistent but perhaps the only voice crying for retention of Indian rights against an onslaught of allotment advocates. This paper seeks to explicate Bland’s considerable efforts to block measures that forced rapid assimilation on the tribes.