Charles Cornelius Coffin Painter (1833–89), clergyman turned reformer, was one of the foremost advocates and activists in the late-nineteenth-century movement to reform U.S. Indian policy. Very few individuals possessed the influence Painter wielded in the movement, and Painter himself published numerous pamphlets for the Indian Rights Association (IRA) on the Southern Utes, Eastern Cherokees, California Indians, and other Native peoples. Yet this is the first book to fully consider his unique role and substantial contribution. Born in Virginia, Painter spent most of his life in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, commuting to New York City and Washington, D.C., initially as an agent of the American Missionary Association (AMA), later as an appointed member of the Board of Indian Commissions (BIC), and, most significant, as the Indian Rights Association’s D.C. agent. In these capacities he lobbied presidents and Congress for reform, conducted extensive investigations on reservations, and shaped deliberations in such reform bodies as the BIC and the influential Lake Mohonk conferences. Mining an extraordinary wealth of archival material, Valerie Sherer Mathes crafts a compelling account of Painter as a skilled negotiator with Indians and policymakers and as a tireless investigator who traveled to far-flung reservations, corresponded with countless Indian agents, and drafted scrupulously researched reports on his findings. Recounted in detail, his many adventures and behind-the-scenes activities—promoting education, striving to prevent the removal of the Southern Utes from Colorado, investigating reservation fraud, working to save the Piegans of Montana from starvation—afford a clear picture of Painter’s importance to the overall reform effort to incorporate Native Americans into the fabric of American life. No other book so effectively captures the day-to-day and exhausting work of a single individual on the front lines of reform. Like most of his fellow advocates, Painter was an unapologetic assimilationist, a man of his times whose story is a key chapter in the history of the Indian reform movement.

Inseparable from the history of the Indians of Southern California is the role of the Indian agent—a government functionary whose chief duty was, according to the Office of Indian Affairs, to “induce his Indian to labor in civilized pursuits.” Offering a portrait of the Mission Indian agents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Reservations, Removal, and Reform reveals how individual agents interpreted this charge, and how their actions and attitudes affected the lives of the Mission Indians of Southern California. This book tells the story of the government agents, both special and regular, who served the Mission Indians from 1850 to 1903, with an emphasis on seven regular agents who served from 1878 to 1903. Relying on the agents’ reports and correspondence as well as newspaper articles and court records, authors Valerie Sherer Mathes and Phil Brigandi create a vivid picture of how each man—each a political appointee tasked with implementing ever-changing policies crafted in far-off Washington, D.C.—engaged with the issues and events confronting the Mission Indians, from land tenure and water rights to education, law enforcement, and health care. Providing a balanced, comprehensive view of the world these agents temporarily inhabited and the people they were called to serve, Reservations, Removal, and Reform deepens and broadens our understanding of the lives and history of the Indians of Southern California.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.