Date of Award
2-9-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
History, MA
First Advisor
Justin Castro
Committee Members
Gary Edwards; Joseph Key
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2023 B76
Abstract
The history of John Jasper Methvin, James Mooney, and their connections to Southern Plains indigenous communities represents a nuanced complexity in the historiography of Native America and the United States. Both figures were a part US expansion and imperialism, but their differences in motivation and worldview demonstrate that Indian assimilation was not a monolithic process. Methvin and Mooney were the spearheads of “civilization” at the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache (KCA) reservation in the late nineteenth century, and the two sought to mold the Southern Plains communities around them as the region shifted toward US society. But while Methvin favored a total cultural assimilation of Southern Plains societies, Mooney wanted to preserve those cultures as he saw them, and the two fought vociferously to impose their respective designs on the reservation. Although both men claimed to be “friends of the Indian,” debates over Southern Plains religions and cultural practices saw Indians on both sides of the argument, and Methvin and Mooney’s efforts were ultimately subject to the desires of Southern Plains societies. This work is not a defense of these two figures, but an examination in the ways that US influence penetrated the KCA reservation in a way that is muddled, complex, and contradictory to bird’s-eye-view narratives of Indian assimilation and colonialism.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Brown, Zane, "Methvin, Mooney, And Southern Plains Societies: A Study of Missionaries and Anthropologists in the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache Reservation" (2024). Student Theses and Dissertations. 123.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/123
