Thunder and Lightning.

The Original 13 Rules of Basketball
James Naismith created basketball rules that survive today

By Mary Bellis

Inventions Expert

Updated on July 27, 2020

Basketball is an original American game invented by Dr. James Naismith in 1891. When designing it, Naismith focused on creating a non-contact sport to be played indoors. He developed the rules and published them in January 1892 in The Triangle, the school newspaper of Springfield College.

The initial rules of basketball laid out by Naismith are familiar enough that those who enjoy basketball today—over 100 years later—will recognize it as the same sport. While there are other, newer rules, these original 13 still form the heart of the game.

Original 13 Rules of Basketball by James Naismith

The following list shows the original 13 rules of basketball as defined by Naismith in 1892. Modern rules are added, so you can see how the game has changed over time—and how it's remained the same.

The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.
Current Rule: This rule still applies, with the exception that now a team is not allowed to pass the ball back over the midcourt line once they have taken it over that line.
The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands (never with the fist).
Current Rule: This rule still applies.
A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man who catches the ball running at a good speed if he tries to stop.
Current Rule: Players can dribble the ball with one hand as they run or pass, but they cannot run with the ball when catching a pass.
The ball must be held in or between the hands; the arms or body must not be used for holding it.
Current Rule: This rule still applies. Doing so would be a traveling violation.
No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed; the first infringement of this rule by any player shall count as a foul, the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made, or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game, no substitute allowed.
Current Rule: These actions are fouls. A player may be disqualified with five or six fouls, or get an ejection or suspension with a flagrant foul.
A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violations of Rules 3, 4, and such as described in Rule 5.
Current Rule: This rule still applies.
If either side makes three consecutive fouls, it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul).
Current Rule: Instead of an automatic goal, sufficient team fouls (five in a quarter for NBA play) now award bonus free throw attempts to the opposing team.
A goal shall be made when the ball is thrown or batted from the grounds into the basket and stays there, providing those defending the goal do no touch or disturb the goal. If the ball rests on the edges, and the opponent moves the basket, it shall count as a goal.
Current Rule: This rule no longer applies as basketball is now played with a hoop and net, not the original basket. It has evolved into goaltending and defense pass interference rules, including that defenders cannot touch the rim of the hoop once the ball has been shot.
When the ball goes out of bounds, it shall be thrown into the field of play by the person first touching it. In case of dispute, the umpire shall throw it straight into the field. The thrower-in is allowed five seconds; if he holds it longer, it shall go to the opponent. If any side persists in delaying the game, the umpire shall call a foul on that side.
Current Rule: The ball is now thrown in by a player from the opposite team of the player who last touched it before it went out of bounds. The five-second rule still applies.
The umpire shall be the judge of the men and shall note the fouls and notify the referee when three consecutive fouls have been made. He shall have power to disqualify men according to Rule 5.
Current Rule: In NBA basketball, there are three referees.
The referee shall be the judge of the ball and shall decide when the ball is in play, in bounds, to which side it belongs, and shall keep the time. He shall decide when a goal has been made, and keep account of the goals with any other duties that are usually performed by a referee.
Current Rule: The referee still determines ball possession, but timekeepers and scorekeepers now do some of these tasks.
The time shall be two 15-minute halves, with five minutes' rest between.
Current Rule: This varies by the level of play, such as high school versus collegiate formats. In the NBA, there are four quarters—each 12 minutes long—with a 15-minute halftime break.
The side making the most goals in that time shall be declared the winner. In the case of a draw, the game may, by agreement of the captains, be continued until another goal is made.
Current Rule: The winner is now decided by points (which does not equate goals made). In the NBA, five-minute overtime periods are played in case of a tie at the end of the fourth quarter, with the point total at the end determining the winner. If still tied, teams play another overtime period.
More: The History of Basketball and Dr. James Naismith

Power in Comancheria: Analysis of Hamalainen's Comanche Empire

Pekka Hamalainen’s The Comanche Empire serves as a well-written account that embodies the trend in Native American history to discard Euro-American biases of past scholarship and to place Indian agency at the center of the historical process. Hamalainen demonstrates how the Comanche accommodated to outside pressures in order to survive as coherent cultural entities, but goes further by showing how they not only adapted to new political and economic realities wrought by various imperial projects but also competed with and bested European and Euro-American powers in controlling the heartland of the North American Continent. In doing so. Hamalainen tells the story of expansion with a reversal of usual historical roles, in which Indians expand, dictate and prosper, and European colonists resist, retreat and struggle to survive. This ambition leads Hamalainen to reveal that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Comanche turned the Southwest into a boundless resistant indigenous empire. This paper is intended to portray how the Comanche’s ecological base, monopoly of trade, ability to adapt to Western technologies and flexible social structure allowed them to invert projected colonial trajectory and bring much of the colonial Southwest under their sway and at the same time explain the failures of Spanish and Mexican colonialism and the nature and course of United States conquest.

The power of the Comanche cannot be understood without first playing on the importance of their ecological system of the horse, grass and bison complex. The abundant grasslands present in the environment they lived in made Comanche monopoly on horses and bison hunting possible. The horses’ ability to convert plant life into muscle power tapped into the seemingly inexhaustible pool of thermodynamic energy stored in the grasses. This in turn, led the Comanche to use horses as hunting tools to harness the enormous biomass stored in the bison herds.[ii] The horse served to both simplify and expand Comanche economy. The effectiveness of mounted hunting allowed the Comanche’s to dismiss their gathering system and switch to specialized bison hunting and horse herding. This resulted in a dual economy of hunting and pastoralism. Using this new economic system, the Comanche reared horses for part of the year, while following the bison herds the rest of the year. The semi-nomadic way they lived made it possible to control and exploit the environment of the Great Plains. The effective hunting of bison also insured both an adequate food supply consisting of protein and materials to make clothing and other essential needs. Through horses serving as both vehicles for travel and as commodities to be traded, the Comanche’s dominated long-distance trade networks and extended their raiding spheres far beyond their core area. This enabled Comanche’s to eliminate Spain’s edge on colonial expansion. By controlling trade, the Comanche’s dictated where resources were allocated, thus in effect brought Spanish colonialism under their control. It is also important to note that frequent raids deep into Spanish territory weakened the Spanish military that were ineffective in protecting Spanish settlements and Indian encroachment. The thinly colonized Hispanic lands had no way of halting Indian raiding parties that extracted their horses, and thus the Spanish submitted to becoming tributary subjects of the Comanche. The Hispanic peoples gave the Comanche gifts in return for leaving their herds alone. This tributary gift giving weakened the treasury of Spain and Mexico and forced them as subjects of the Comanche Empire.

As eluded to earlier, the Comanche ecological system enabled them to effectively form a monopoly on trade in the Southwest, which greatly expanded their power. Their horse economy also supported a thriving exchange economy. This exchange economy gave access to vegetables and grains as well as guns, gunpowder and metals.[iii]. Vegetables and cereals were collected through massive trade networks, which linked tribes of the east within the network of the Comanche empire. By allying with neighboring native groups, the Comanche’s ensured a system of trade and at the same time created a buffer between them and the expansionist Euro-American forces of the East. Comanche power in horse trade also enabled them to become strong trade partners with the expanding United States. In return for horses, the Comanche amassed expansive quantities of both guns and gunpowder. In a sense, it can be understood that United States trade with the Comanche played a major role in weakening Spanish power. Through the guns and firepower supplied by the United States, the Comanche successfully kept the Spanish at their will. Another major component in Comanche trade was their monopoly on the slave trade. While they raided Spanish lands for cattle, they did also for human capital. The Comanche used their slaves as trade collateral and also used them to work in their growing dualist economy. Slaves mainly worked in horse rearing and domestic chores and were sometimes adopted into the family. The taking of slaves both frightened and terrified Spanish settlers. The constant fear and ineffective way in dealing with them prompted many Spanish settlers to give up their lands and return to areas away from Comanche aggression.

Another way the Comanche’s maintained power in the interior of the United States, was the way the adapted to Western technologies, especially weapons, diplomacy and disease. With the use of the horse and adapting to western guns and firepower the Comanche were able to exert control over the Southwest. Western weaponry allowed the Comanche to not only mount a strong military force, but it also allowed for the efficiency of bison hunting. The horse and gun allowed efficient killing, reducing both time and effort.

In regards to diplomacy, the Comanche effectively exploited it to meet their needs. The Comanche were adept at drawing native nations into its sphere of commercialization. The movement west of native tribes because of encroaching American settlement and pressures of Indian groups caused an influx of people upon Comancheria territory. While a clash was inevitable and immediate, the Comanche soon invited the removed Indians to become middlemen who facilitated the movement of goods among the centers of wealth around them. By adapting other native tribes into their commercial realm, the Comanche refigured trade to distant markets but also surrounded Comancheria with important buffer zones against white setllement. These Indian alignments halted the encroachment of United States and Texas settlers who feared a massive joint tribal retaliation. Another aspect of the alliances with native tribes is that it opened Comancheria to open commercial trade with American markets. Thus, in abstract, the thriving trade zone of eastern Comancheria meant the removal of indigenous nations from the east Indian territory to the west could continue. Another way the Comanche used diplomacy in their favor was the fact that they did not recognize national boundary lines and legal obligations. Even though the Spanish and later Americans established boundaries denoting their territory. Comanche’s did not follow them. In their eyes, all land was free and available to whoever had the ability to use it. Thus they raided deep into Spanish territory. Likewise, even though the Comanche’s agreed to formal trade relations with the Spanish, the Comanche did not see the trade partnership in the same way. Comanche’s traded and dealt with whoever they could gain the most from and make the most profit. Trade agreements meant nothing to them and the Comanche a lot of the time doubled dealt with both the Spanish and Americans.

The Comanche also successfully adapted to diseases brought by western settlers. While the humid temperatures of the coast brought the indigenous there terrific population loss from western diseases, the dry air of the Southwest and Great Plains halted the spread of disease to an effect not as dramatic as other parts of North America. Another, more exploitative way the Comanche dealt with diseases was the practice of marrying and fornicating with western women. By fornicating with western women, the Comanche successfully produced offspring who were tolerant to western diseases. And while disease decimated the Comanche at first, over time they became tolerant of western diseases due to the increased numbers of racially mixed offspring.

One more basis of Comanche power can be understood through their flexible and adaptive social structure. Comanche society was very hierarchical. While the men hunted bison, went on raiding missions and controlled the household, the women and children reared horses and did domestic work. However, not just Comanche men enjoyed power. Slave men, also had the ability to rise up in the ranks and become warriors and hunters. Most male slaves taken by the Comanche were young boys, who could be raised and nurtured in Comanche ideals. Older men proved too much of a risk as they would likely never repel western ways which they have learned. As a society, the Comanche were also very mobile. Their hunting and pastoralist economy was unfit to foster large permanent settlements and thus they lived in a semi-nomadic way migrating in different times of the year to follow the bison herds and the fresh grasses to raise their horses. The lack of permanent settlement proved it difficult for another power to launch an attack on the Comanche that would cripple them. Because members of Comanche society were always separated and never cloistered, it was only possible to attack a portion of the empire and never inflict massive losses. The semi-nomadic structure of the Comanche thus made it difficult for the Spanish and United States to amount successful control over the Comanche Empire.

Politically, the Comanche Empire was distant but unified. All Comanche units or households lived distantly from each other. The semi-nomadic ways and need to raise horses allowed the Comanche unit to live fairly independently, with each unit or family containing a male that held power. Usually the most powerful male was the one that had multiple wives and could produce the most goods. While the Comanche were so distant from each other, in times of toil they could easily unite. All the heads of family would join together in a great joint meeting and discuss the problem at hand. All the males had equal power in the assemblies, and thus made decisions as a single polity or unified empire. This ability of the Comanche to unify and amass great forces greatly halted American and Spanish expansion, as they feared conflict with a massive Comanche force.

Lastly, while the systems, which constituted Comanche power made them, a superpower in the Great Plain and Southwest, they also led to the collapse of the Comanche Empire in the 1870’s-1880’s. The center of Comanche power caved in with the sharp declines of bison herds. The Comanche had exploited the land beyond its sef-sustaining ecological stability. There had simply been too many Comanches and their allies raising too many horses and hunting too many bison on too small a land base. The Comanche could not move to other lands because there whole economy relied on the grasslands. The Comanche ability to adapt and incorporate other groups into their empire eventually led to their demise. The incorporation of removed Indian groups, facilitated American expansion and led to increased competition over bison on which they ultimately were being killed faster than they could reproduce. When the bison fell, so did the Comanche Empire. The Comanche trade networks collapsed because they had no bison meat to trade and their whole lifestyle became unglued. Powerless with the collapse of trade, Comanche’s were placed in reservations by the fast encroaching Americans. There, the Comanche were forced to live permanently and could not continue to live the way they had for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Comanche’s rapid decline, tells a great deal about the nature of their power system. They were not a tightly structured, self-sustaining entity but rather a system based on networks of power.[iv] The lack of centrality in Comanche Empire therefore allowed the decline to move rapidly and forcefully.

“Kill the Indian, and Save the Man”: Capt. Richard H. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans

A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.

(Philip Sheridan M.).

We are just now making a great pretence of anxiety to civilize the Indians. I use the word “pretence” purposely, and mean it to have all the significance it can possibly carry. Washington believed that commerce freely entered into between us and the Indians would bring about their civilization, and Washington was right. He was followed by Jefferson, who inaugurated the reservation plan. Jefferson’s reservation was to be the country west of the Mississippi; and he issued instructions to those controlling Indian matters to get the Indians there, and let the Great River be the line between them and the whites. Any method of securing removal - persuasion, purchase, or force - was authorized.

Jefferson’s plan became the permanent policy. The removals have generally been accomplished by purchase, and the evils of this are greater than those of all the others combined. . . .

It is a sad day for the Indians when they fall under the assaults of our troops, as in the Piegan massacre, the massacre of Old Black Kettle and his Cheyennes at what is termed “the battle of the Washita,” and hundreds of other like places in the history of our dealings with them; but a far sadder day is it for them when they fall under the baneful influences of a treaty agreement with the United States whereby they are to receive large annuities, and to be protected on reservations, and held apart from all association with the best of our civilization. The destruction is not so speedy, but it is far more general. The history of the Miamis and Osages is only the true picture of all other tribes.

“Put yourself in his place” is as good a guide to a proper conception of the Indian and his cause as it is to help us to right conclusions in our relations with other men. For many years we greatly oppressed the black man, but the germ of human liberty remained among us and grew, until, in spite of our irregularities, there came from the lowest savagery into intelligent manhood and freedom among us more than seven millions of our population, who are to-day an element of industrial value with which we could not well dispense. However great this victory has been for us, we have not yet fully learned our lesson nor completed our work; nor will we have done so until there is throughout all of our communities the most unequivocal and complete acceptance of our own doctrines, both national and religious. Not until there shall be in every locality throughout the nation a supremacy of the Bible principle of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, and full obedience to the doctrine of our Declaration that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created free and equal, with certain inalienable rights,” and of the clause in our Constitution which forbids that there shall be “any abridgment of the rights of citizens on account of race, color, or previous condition.” I leave off the last two words “of servitude,” because I want to be entirely and consistently American.

Inscrutable are the ways of Providence. Horrible as were the experiences of its introduction, and of slavery itself, there was concealed in them the greatest blessing that ever came to the Negro race—seven millions of blacks from cannibalism in darkest Africa to citizenship in free and enlightened America; not full, not complete citizenship, but possible—probable—citizenship, and on the highway and near to it.

There is a great lesson in this. The schools did not make them citizens, the schools did not teach them the language, nor make them industrious and self-supporting. Denied the right of schools, they became English-speaking and industrious through the influences of association. Scattered here and there, under the care and authority of individuals of the higher race, they learned self-support and something of citizenship, and so reached their present place. No other influence or force would have so speedily accomplished such a result. Left in Africa, surrounded by their fellow-savages, our seven millions of industrious black fellow-citizens would still be savages. Transferred into these new surroundings and experiences, behold the result. They became English-speaking and civilized, because forced into association with English-speaking and civilized people; became healthy and multiplied, because they were property; and industrious, because industry, which brings contentment and health, was a necessary quality to increase their value.

The Indians under our care remained savage, because forced back upon themselves and away from association with English-speaking and civilized people, and because of our savage example and treatment of them. . . .

We have never made any attempt to civilize them with the idea of taking them into the nation, and all of our policies have been against citizenizing and absorbing them. Although some of the policies now prominent are advertised to carry them into citizenship and consequent association and competition with other masses of the nation, they are not, in reality, calculated to do this.

We are after the facts. Let us take the Land in Severalty Bill. Land in severalty, as administered, is in the way of the individualizing and civilization of the Indians, and is a means of holding the tribes together. Land in severalty is given to individuals adjoining each other on their present reservations. And experience shows that in some cases, after the allotments have been made, the Indians have entered into a compact among themselves to continue to hold their lands in common as a reservation. The inducement of the bill is in this direction. The Indians are not only invited to remain separate tribes and communities, but are practically compelled to remain so. The Indian must either cling to his tribe and its locality, or take great chances of losing his rights and property.

The day on which the Land in Severalty Bill was signed was announced to be the emancipation day for the Indians. The fallacy of that idea is so entirely demonstrated that the emancipation assumption is now withdrawn.

We shall have to go elsewhere, and seek for other means besides land in severalty to release these people from their tribal relations and to bring them individually into the capacity and freedom of citizens.

Just now that land in severalty is being retired as the one all-powerful leverage that is going to emancipate and bring about Indian civilization and citizenship, we have another plan thrust upon us which has received great encomium from its authors, and has secured the favor of Congress to the extent of vastly increasing appropriations. This plan is calculated to arrest public attention, and to temporarily gain concurrence from everybody that it is really the panacea for securing citizenship and equality in the nation for the Indians. In its execution this means purely tribal schools among the Indians; that is, Indian youth must continue to grow up under the pressure of home surroundings. Individuals are not to be encouraged to get out and see and learn and join the nation. They are not to measure their strength with the other inhabitants of the land, and find out what they do not know, and thus be led to aspire to gain in education, experience, and skill,—those things that they must know in order to become equal to the rest of us. A public school system especially for the Indians is a tribal system; and this very fact says to them that we believe them to be incompetent, that they must not attempt to cope with us. Such schools build up tribal pride, tribal purposes, and tribal demands upon the government. They formulate the notion that the government owes them a living and vast sums of money; and by improving their education on these lines, but giving no other experience and leading to no aspirations beyond the tribe, leaves them in their chronic condition of helplessness, so far as reaching the ability to compete with the white race is concerned. It is like attempting to make a man well by always telling him he is sick. We have only to look at the tribes who have been subject to this influence to establish this fact, and it makes no difference where they are located. All the tribes in the State of New York have been trained in tribal schools; and they are still tribes and Indians, with no desire among the masses to be anything else but separate tribes.

The five civilized tribes of the Indian Territory—Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles—have had tribal schools until it is asserted that they are civilized; yet they have no notion of joining us and becoming a part of the United States. Their whole disposition is to prey upon and hatch up claims against the government, and have the same lands purchased and repurchased and purchased again, to meet the recurring wants growing out of their neglect and inability to make use of their large and rich estate. . . .

Indian schools are just as well calculated to keep the Indians intact as Indians as Catholic schools are to keep the Catholics intact. Under our principles we have established the public school system, where people of all races may become unified in every way, and loyal to the government; but we do not gather the people of one nation into schools by themselves, and the people of another nation into schools by themselves, but we invite the youth of all peoples into all schools. We shall not succeed in Americanizing the Indian unless we take him in in exactly the same way. I do not care if abundant schools on the plan of Carlisle are established. If the principle we have always had at Carlisle—of sending them out into families and into the public schools—were left out, the result would be the same, even though such schools were established, as Carlisle is, in the centre of an intelligent and industrious population, and though such schools were, as Carlisle always has been, filled with students from many tribes. Purely Indian schools say to the Indians: “You are Indians, and must remain Indians. You are not of the nation, and cannot become of the nation. We do not want you to become of the nation.”

Before I leave this part of my subject I feel impelled to lay before you the facts, as I have come to look at them, of another influence that has claimed credit, and always has been and is now very dictatorial, in Indian matters; and that is the missionary as a citizenizing influence upon the Indians. The missionary goes to the Indian; he learns the language; he associates with him; he makes the Indian feel he is friendly, and has great desire to help him; he even teaches the Indian English. But the fruits of his labor, by all the examples that I know, have been to strengthen and encourage him to remain separate and apart from the rest of us. Of course, the more advanced, those who have a desire to become civilized, and to live like white men, who would with little encouragement go out into our communities, are the first to join the missionary’s forces. They become his lieutenants to gather in others. The missionary must necessarily hold on to every help he can get to push forward his schemes and plans, so that he may make a good report to his Church; and, in order to enlarge his work and make it a success, he must keep his community together. Consequently, any who care to get out into the nation, and learn from actual experience what it is to be civilized, what is the full length and breadth and height and depth of our civilization, must stay and help the missionary. The operation of this has been disastrous to any individual escape from the tribe, has vastly and unnecessarily prolonged the solution of the question, and has needlessly cost the charitable people of this country large sums of money, to say nothing of the added cost to the government, the delay in accomplishing their civilization, and their destruction caused by such delay.

If, as sometimes happens, the missionary kindly consents to let or helps one go out and get these experiences, it is only for the purpose of making him a preacher or a teacher or help of some kind; and such a one must, as soon as he is fitted, and much sooner in most cases, return to the tribe and help the missionary to save his people. The Indian who goes out has public charitable aid through his school course, forfeits his liberty, and is owned by the missionary. In all my experience of twenty-five years I have known scarcely a single missionary to heartily aid or advocate the disintegration of the tribes and the giving of individual Indians rights and opportunities among civilized people. There is this in addition: that the missionaries have largely assumed to dictate to the government its policy with tribes, and their dictations have always been along the lines of their colonies and church interests, and the government must gauge its actions to suit the purposes of the missionary, or else the missionary influences are at once exerted to defeat the purposes of the government. The government, by paying large sums of money to churches to carry on schools among Indians, only builds for itself opposition to its own interests. . . .

We make our greatest mistake in feeding our civilization to the Indians instead of feeding the Indians to our civilization. America has different customs and civilizations from Germany. What would be the result of an attempt to plant American customs and civilization among the Germans in Germany, demanding that they shall become thoroughly American before we admit them to the country? Now, what we have all along attempted to do for and with the Indians is just exactly that, and nothing else. We invite the Germans to come into our country and communities, and share our customs, our civilization, to be of it; and the result is immediate success. Why not try it on the Indians? Why not invite them into experiences in our communities? Why always invite and compel them to remain a people unto themselves?

It is a great mistake to think that the Indian is born an inevitable savage. He is born a blank, like all the rest of us. Left in the surroundings of savagery, he grows to possess a savage language, superstition, and life. We, left in the surroundings of civilization, grow to possess a civilized language, life, and purpose. Transfer the infant white to the savage surroundings, he will grow to possess a savage language, superstition, and habit. Transfer the savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a civilized language and habit. These results have been established over and over again beyond all question; and it is also well established that those advanced in life, even to maturity, of either class, lose already acquired qualities belonging to the side of their birth, and gradually take on those of the side to which they have been transferred.

As we have taken into our national family seven millions of Negroes, and as we receive foreigners at the rate of more than five hundred thousand a year, and assimilate them, it would seem that the time may have arrived when we can very properly make at least the attempt to assimilate our two hundred and fifty thousand Indians, using this proven potent line, and see if that will not end this vexed question and remove them from public attention, where they occupy so much more space than they are entitled to either by numbers or worth.

The school at Carlisle is an attempt on the part of the government to do this. Carlisle has always planted treason to the tribe and loyalty to the nation at large. It has preached against colonizing Indians, and in favor of individualizing them. It has demanded for them the same multiplicity of chances which all others in the country enjoy. Carlisle fills young Indians with the spirit of loyalty to the stars and stripes, and then moves them out into our communities to show by their conduct and ability that the Indian is no different from the white or the colored, that he has the inalienable right to liberty and opportunity that the white and the negro have. Carlisle does not dictate to him what line of life he should fill, so it is an honest one. It says to him that, if he gets his living by the sweat of his brow, and demonstrates to the nation that he is a man, he does more good for his race than hundreds of his fellows who cling to their tribal communistic surroundings. . . .

No evidence is wanting to show that, in our industries, the Indian can become a capable and willing factor if he has the chance. What we need is an Administration which will give him the chance. The Land in Severalty Bill can be made far more useful than it is, but it can be made so only by assigning the land so as to intersperse good, civilized people among them. If, in the distribution, it is so arranged that two or three white families come between two Indian families, then there would necessarily grow up a community of fellowship along all the lines of our American civilization that would help the Indian at once to his feet. Indian schools must, of necessity, be for a time, because the Indian cannot speak the language, and he knows nothing of the habits and forces he has to contend with; but the highest purpose of all Indian schools ought to be only to prepare the young Indian to enter the public and other schools of the country. And immediately he is so prepared, for his own good and the good of the country, he should be forwarded into these other schools, there to temper, test, and stimulate his brain and muscle into the capacity he needs for his struggle for life, in competition with us. The missionary can, if he will, do far greater service in helping the Indians than he has done; but it will only be by practising the doctrine he preaches. As his work is to lift into higher life the people whom he serves, he must not, under any pretence whatsoever, give the lie to what he preaches by discountenancing the right of any individual Indian to go into higher and better surroundings, but, on the contrary, he should help the Indian to do that. If he fails in thus helping and encouraging the Indian, he is false to his own teaching. An examination shows that no Indians within the limits of the United States have acquired any sort of capacity to meet and cope with the whites in civilized pursuits who did not gain that ability by going among the whites and out from the reservations, and that many have gained this ability by so going out.

Theorizing citizenship into people is a slow operation. What a farce it would be to attempt teaching American citizenship to the negroes in Africa. They could not understand it; and, if they did, in the midst of such contrary influences, they could never use it. Neither can the Indians understand or use American citizenship theoretically taught to them on Indian reservations. They must get into the swim of American citizenship. They must feel the touch of it day after day, until they become saturated with the spirit of it, and thus become equal to it.

When we cease to teach the Indian that he is less than a man; when we recognize fully that he is capable in all respects as we are, and that he only needs the opportunities and privileges which we possess to enable him to assert his humanity and manhood; when we act consistently towards him in accordance with that recognition; when we cease to fetter him to conditions which keep him in bondage, surrounded by retrogressive influences; when we allow him the freedom of association and the developing influences of social contact—then the Indian will quickly demonstrate that he can be truly civilized, and he himself will solve the question of what to do with the Indian.

Source:

Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271.

We know according to this article(wrote by the historian Jonathan Steinberg) in the british magazine The Economist we know he was the roommate of an American at the university of Göttingen and they were friend

John Motley, an American who was Bismarck's roommate at Göttingen University, saw the will to dominate in his friend when he was only 18 years old. In an 1839 novel Motley thinly disguised him as Otto von Rabenmarck who tells the narrator, a new student at Göttingen: “I intend to lead my companions here, as I intend to lead them in after-life.”

In the year 1832, when, at the age of seventeen, he went as a student to Goettingen, he spoke English fairly well. He apparently wished to have more practice; at least we hear that he celebrated the fourth of July with an American party the same year that he entered.

And according to the historian Kenneth Weisbrod in his book The Atlantic Century Bismarck was pro American

After the Civil War ended, Bismarck sounded out Washington on an alliance.

When Sidney Whitman, the famous English writer, paid a visit to Bismarck after the latter had retired from office as Chancellor to his estate Friedrichsruh, near Hamburg, he was much astonished to find in his study the pictures of Ulysses Grant, Walter Phelps, and George Bancroft, but the picture of only one Englishman—Lord Beaconsfield.

“I gleaned,” writes Whitman in his recollections of Bismarck, “that his personal relations with the Americans whom he had met in the course of his career, had invariably been of a most cordial character. Nearly all of them were attracted to him by the charm of his manner.”

In 1890 a memorial celebration was held at Goettingen in honor of four prominent Americans who had studied there. Bismarck was invited to attend. In his telegram declining the invitation, he said: “Of the four distinguished Americans to be honored by memorial tablets, I have the privilege of counting two among my intimate friends: the late John L. Motley and George Bancroft.”

In summary: We know that Bismarck had American friends and was attracted by the American culture, and we know he tried to seek an alliance with the USA after the Civil war

Sources:

--The Atlantic century, Kenneth Weisbrod
--Bismarck: A Life. By Jonathan Steinberg. Oxford University Press

WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE
A Problem for General Schofield

On December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota, a tangle of events resulted in the deaths of more than 250, and possibly as many as 300, Native Americans. These people were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat. A substantial number were women and children. Most of the victims were members of the Miniconjou band of the Lakota Sioux who had been intercepted by military forces after they fled their reservation in South Dakota for refuge in the Badlands.

The story begins in October 1890, when Daniel F. Royer arrived at Pine Ridge Agency, home of the Oglala Lakotas, to assume responsibility as agent. His selection as agent could not have been worse: he knew nothing about Native Americans and was irrationally fearful of them, and from the time of his arrival the dispatches he sent back to Washington were peppered with warnings of an outbreak similar to the one in Minnesota in 1862 in which hundreds of settlers were killed by Santee Sioux. Royer's appointment was also ill timed. In 1890 drought replaced the bountiful rainfall of the 1880s, resulting in crop failures and economic depression. On their reservations, Native Americans were forced into dependence on the federal government for food and clothing. When Royer took over as agent, there was widespread anxiety among the Oglalas regarding the adequacy of government provisions.

A year earlier, the Ghost Dance had appeared on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Born from the vision of a Paiute named Wovoka (aka Jack Wilson), the Ghost Dance blended the messianic account of Christianity with traditional Native beliefs. This new religion told of the return of the Messiah to relieve the suffering of Native Americans and promised that if they would live righteous lives and perform the Ghost Dance in the prescribed manner, the European American invaders would vanish, the bison would return, and the living and the dead would be reunited in an Edenic world. But in Royer's paranoid mind the Ghost Dance was a war dance that threatened imminent bloodshed. His dispatches to Washington urged that troops be sent to protect citizens from war.

In mid-November 1890 President Benjamin Harrison responded to the fears of an Indian outbreak by ordering troops into the area. Regular troops were sent from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and on November 18, 1890, the Second Nebraska Infantry left Fort Omaha in two special trains. On the train was also a cadre of newspaper reporters. From that point on, the crisis at Pine Ridge was a significant news item in newspapers across the country and around the world.

The trains unloaded their travelers at Rushville, Nebraska, on November 20, 1890, and from there the troops and reporters made their way to Pine Ridge Agency, where they all soon discovered that there was no crisis to be found. Soon a regular fare of rumors and lies began to appear in the national press, fed by merchants who wanted to keep the reporters, and their expense accounts, engaged in the economically strained communities south of the Pine Ridge Reservation. These fantastic stories fed a growing national anxiety about impending war. They also appeared on the reservations, where Lakotas who had been educated in the nation's Indian schools read the reports of troop activities and the rumors of outbreak to other members of their community. In this manner, the press became an important factor in stoking the anxiety both on and off the reservation.

By mid-December 1890 the combination of news reports, governmental reports (particularly those of the panic-stricken Royer), and Ghost Dancing had every nerve in the region on edge. The Lakotas polarized into political camps commonly referred to in the press as "hostiles" and "friendlies," a distinction between those who were opposed and those who were reconciled to reservation life. The Ghost Dancers were generally assigned to the "hostiles" camp. On December 15, 1890, the Hunkpapa holy man and Ghost Dance leader, Sitting Bull, was killed at Standing Rock Agency. Sitting Bull's death was seen by many as the fate that awaited all who failed to accept reservation life. To the south, at Cheyenne River Agency, the Miniconjou Lakotas grew nervous. Their leader, Big Foot, was also engaged in the Ghost Dance, and though not considered a major threat, he was under close observation by the military. In an attempt to quiet the Miniconjous, the military asked a local squatter named John Dunn to persuade them to acquiesce to the military's wishes that they stay in their own village on the reservation. Dunn's tactics are inexplicable: he is reported to have told the Miniconjous that the military planned to take their men prisoner and deport them to an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He apparently advised them to take sanctuary on Pine Ridge Reservation.

On December 23, the Miniconjous left their village in the dead of night and fled south toward the Badlands. Big Foot soon contracted pneumonia, which slowed the escape. Nonetheless, the tribe managed to avoid the military pursuit for five days. But on December 28, the Seventh Cavalry intercepted the ailing Big Foot and his people and ordered them into confinement on Wounded Knee Creek. On the morning of December 29, Col. James W. Forsyth convened a council with the Miniconjous. He demanded that they surrender all their firearms and told them that they would be relocated to a new camp. The order to a new camp was interpreted by the Miniconjous as exile, probably to Indian Territory, a prospect that they found intolerable.

While these discussions proceeded in the Lakota camp, a number of Indians began singing Ghost Dance songs, with some rising to throw handfuls of dirt in the air. The troops who surrounded them perceived the singing and dirt throwing as signals to attack, and at this tense moment the fuse was lit. A man named Black Coyote (sometimes called Black Fox) refused to surrender his rifle to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle it discharged. Immediately the nervous troops began firing, while the Miniconjous retrieved their weapons and returned fire. The military's rifle fire was complemented with cannon rounds from Hotchkiss guns, whose accuracy and exploding shells were formidable. The outnumbered and outgunned Lakotas fled, and for several hours intermittent gunfire continued, with the military in pursuit. Bodies were found as far away as three miles from the camp. Firing ceased, and by midafternoon the troops had gathered up their dead and wounded, as well as Lakota wounded, and returned to Pine Ridge Agency. The fear of a reprisal attack kept troops and civilians entrenched at the agency until January 3, 1891, when a military-escorted civilian burial party proceeded to the site of the massacre. There they buried 146 Lakotas in a single mass grave. Other dead were accounted for later, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas; the Seventh Cavalry lost twenty-five men.

Photographers accompanied the burial detail and made a total of sixteen photographs. A snowstorm that occurred shortly after the massacre added a cold and grim edge to the scene of carnage. The photographs sold well and, together with news stories, carried the story of the massacre at Wounded Knee worldwide. Soon the event developed a meaning that transcended the reality of the tragic loss of life, and Wounded Knee became, and remains, the symbol of the inhumanity of U.S. government policy toward Native Americans.

See also NATIVE AMERICANS: Sitting Bull / RELIGION: Ghost Dance.
-John E. Carter Nebraska State Historical Society
-Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter. Eyewitness at Wounded Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
-Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1896.
-Utley, Robert. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1963.
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