F. P. PRUCHA. Indian Policy in the United States. Historical Essays. Lincoln (Nebr.). 1981- IX+ 272 p.; R. DRINNON. Facing West. The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. N. Y. 1980. XX+ 571 p.

The historiography of the United States has been supplemented in recent years by a significant number of works on government policy towards the indigenous population of America .1 At the same time , as Soviet historians2 have already noted, two trends have emerged. Some historians reveal the racist nature of this policy, while others try to portray it as civilizing and highly moral.

The second trend is clearly visible in the book of F. Pruchi 3 . He reproaches many American historians for writing too much about the Indian wars, but leaving out government programs that purport to protect the rights of Indians and take care of their welfare. This, according to the author, created the opinion that the goal of the United States was the military conquest of the Indians (p. VII). Prucha, in particular, criticizes the conclusion of R. Horsman 4 that the policy of the American authorities was based on the belief in the "innately low qualities of aboriginals" 5 . He claims that the main state documents that formulated this policy in the nineteenth century were imbued with" religious feeling "and" a spirit of humanity "(p.21-22) and" completely contradict this assessment " (p. 153).

The forced relocation of Native American tribes across the Mississippi River during the presidency of E. Jackson is considered by most American historians as a crime, and Jackson himself is characterized as a hater of Indians, a zealous supporter of expropriation of their lands .6 Prucha, on the other hand, declares this view simplistic and praises Jackson, who allegedly sought to ensure the well-being of the Indian population by speeding up its transition to civilization (pp. 142, 139). Prucha conscious-

1 Jennings F. The Invasion of America. Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest. N. Y. 1976; Indian-White Relations. Washington. 1976; Miner H. C. The Corporation and the Indian. Tribal Sovereignty, and Industrial Civilization in Indian Territory, 1865 - 1907. Columbia (Missouri). 1976; Berkhofer R. F. The White Man's Indian. N. Y. 1978; Nichols D. A. Lincoln and the Indians. Civil War Policy and Politics. Columbia (Missouri). 1978; etc.

2 See: Averkieva Yu. V. On the history of studying Indians in the USA. V kN.: Major problems of American history in American historiography. M. 1971; M. V. international Contemporary American historiography on U.S. policy toward the Indians. Voprosy istorii, 1982, No. 3.

3 Prusha F. P. Indian Policy in the United States. Lincoln. 1981.

4 Discussion between F. Pruchey and the author of a number of works on the problems of Indian politics, R. Horsman, continue for a number of years.

5 Horsman R. Scientific Racism and the American Indian in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. - American Quarterly, 27 M.ay, 1975.

6 William Т. Н., Current R. N.. Freidel F. A. History of the United States. 2 vol. N. Y. 1964; Bailey F. A. The American Pageant. A History of the Republic. Boston. 1966, p. 269; Van Every D. Desinherited: The Lost Birthright of the American Indian. N. Y. 1966, p. 103; Handlin O. The History of the United States. 2 vol. N. Y. 1967 - 1968; etc.

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but he is silent about the dastardly tricks and frauds used by government representatives in signing resettlement agreements with the Indians. Contrary to the facts, he seeks to prove that the obligations of the government were supposedly so beneficial to the Indians that their leaders willingly agreed to the relocation of their tribes (p.149).

Prucha, however, cannot completely ignore the fact of expropriation of Indian lands. But in order to disguise Jackson's predatory aims, he claims that the president sought both to provide land for white settlers and to help the Indians move to settled agriculture and civilization (p. 146). Serious historians have been critical of this conclusion before. Prucha himself admits that at a meeting of the Organization of American Historians (April 1966), the researcher of "Jacksonian democracy" E. Pessen stated that such statements cannot be considered otherwise than satire (p.138). Prucha had to agree that the promise to keep the tribes ' lands beyond the Mississippi River forever had already been broken in the second half of the 1840s during the mass migration of whites.

As an argument in the polemic with Horsman, Prucha uses the thesis about the alleged humanism of the US rulers. The thinking of T. Jefferson and his entourage, he declares, was based on the ideology of the Enlightenment, in which "there was no place for the idea of racial inferiority" (p. 184), and the humanistic essence of the ideology of US leaders "was not shaken by the replacement of enlightenment thinking by evangelical - Christian thinking in the 1820s and 1840s" (p. 184).. This is how he attests to the period of forced displacement of tribes beyond the Mississippi-the "road of tears"and other bloody events, a time marked by the ruin and death of thousands of" favored " Indians by the government. Horsman showed that the racist policy of the United States towards Indians was based on the theory of their biological inferiority. Prucha claims that the US administration did not share these racist concepts and enthusiastically promoted programs of Indian education and civilization (pp. 195-196).

And after the Civil War, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs was headed by priests, the tribes were imprisoned on reservations, where they fell under the power of the famous "Indian ring" (the businessmen who were part of it got drunk and shamelessly robbed the Indians). In those years, the implementation of the Dawes Act of 1887 on the allocation of plots of communal land to individual ownership was made a monstrous plunder of Indian lands.

Prucha argues that historians who criticize U.S. policy toward Indians make the mistake of viewing it in the "light of the emotions of the late twentieth century," when Americans were "full of hope for cultural pluralism," which allegedly led historians "to be tempted to denounce the actions of the white population against the Indians" (p.VII). But what kind of" cultural pluralism " - "recognition of the equality of races and ethnic groups" - that supposedly dominates the United States today, when it is well known that the US rulers inculcate racism, that racial conflicts systematically shake the country, and that the racist myth of" manifest destiny", in which racism is combined with rampant expansionism, is a very serious problem? the basis of US foreign policy, which has earned the hatred of all peoples fighting for independence and social progress. Prucha encourages historians to view past events only from the point of view of their contemporaries. It is quite obvious that this approach distorts the idea of these events, blurs the question of their meaning and consequences.

Prucha leaves in the shade the contradictions that have arisen on the problems of US policy towards Indians. His statements about the alleged "consensus" on Indian politics are completely untrue .7 By insistently emphasizing the" humanistic " nature of the ideas that supposedly guided the rulers of the United States (p. 21, 182), Prucha conceals the true basis of their policy, which consisted in the development of American capitalism "in breadth", accompanied by the expropriation of Indian lands. He does not bother to argue at all, limiting himself to references to speeches and letters of Jackson and other political figures. It is not uncommon for the book to draw unsubstantiated conclusions from the author's premises. An example is the claim that Jackson

7 For more information, see: Demikhovsky M. V. Policy of the ruling circles of the USA in relation to the Indian population. - Voprosy istorii, 1965, N 2.

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as if he was not a racist (p. 143), although the author himself admits that the president repeatedly threatened the Indians with merciless extermination and burning of their villages. Pruchi's book is a blatant apology for the racist policy of the US ruling circles towards the Indian population.

R.'s work is of a different nature. Drinnon. Considerable attention is paid to highlighting the racist concepts of American historiography and identifying the relationship of the policy of the US ruling circles towards Indians with expansionist foreign policy ambitions and actions of American imperialism. The author claims that the atrocities committed against the Native American population were the result of contempt and hatred for them, a form of Western racism that reduced all non-whites to a despised caste. This racism, Drinnon notes, is characterized by hatred of all non-white residents of the United States (Blacks, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) and of non-white populations in foreign countries (p. XVI-XVII). Ideologists of racism have used the term "native", which defines all people of non-European origin as biologically inferior (p. 539).

Since the Louisiana purchase, racists, especially writers associated with the slave-owning aristocracy of the South (W. Simms, J. Paulding, etc.), have insisted on the need to move the Indians as far away from the white population as possible (p.189). The ideology of racism was supposed to "justify the right of the United States" to oust the Indians and help the colonizers " wrest the continent from the indigenous population, becoming an instrument of conquest, like a gun and a bible (p.XVIII).

Drinnon debunks the legend of Jefferson's fair treatment of the Indians. He cites documents showing that this president, while solemnly assuring the Indians of their lands, simultaneously developed plans for their expulsion from the eastern states and sent recommendations to the governors on measures that could be taken to get the tribes to "consent" to the relocation (pp. 86-87). Drinnon is equally critical of the myth of Colonel T. McKinney's "humanism." 8 He refers to his speeches threatening recalcitrant tribes to exterminate women and children, to documents showing that McKinney authorized the taking of hostages, bribing leaders, etc. (pp. 176-178, 181, 195). Nothing less could have been expected from this Quaker who held a high position in the war department - "the center of a network of robbing and exterminating Aborigines" (p. 178).

American historians of the apologetic direction pay great attention to finding out the reasons for the alleged transition of McKinney from philanthropy to support the policy of Indian resettlement across the Mississippi in the late 1820s. Various versions of this "dramatic shift"are being put forward. Drinnon, on the basis of reliable facts, shows the inconsistency of claims about any "shift" in McKinney's political thinking and proves that from the first days of his work in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he agreed with President J. P. Morgan's proposal. Monroe's plan to expel Indians from the eastern states and continued to support this policy when it was enforced by the Jackson Government (p. 181).

The book analyzes the concepts that dominated American historiography in the 19th century. Drinnon, in particular, shows that the notorious racist J. Fiske used the theory of "social Darwinism", quotes the misogynistic tirade of under-voice Fiske, a businessman Ch. Adams, who wrote: "The knife and the gun were in their relations with the lower races more convincing tools than the principles of liberty or the products of the Bible society" (pp. 309-310). Speaking about the concept of the "mobile border" by F. J. Turner, Drinnon notes that, according to the latter, the advance of the "border" occurred as a result of victories over "hostile Indians and an unyielding desert." The Indians appear in Turner as a kind of" addition to the wilderness", which should be removed from the path of the"irresistible march of the country to the west." By praising D. Boone and other Indian-exterminating Western conquerors as "pathfinders of civilization," Turner, Drinnon states, "added a monumental chapter to the national philosophy of Indian hatred "(pp. 462-463).

Drinnon passionately exposes the racist approach to reporting on US politics that is characteristic of a number of modern American media outlets.

8 Colonel McKinney operated the state's Indian trading posts from 1816, and served as its head from the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1824) until his retirement in 1830.

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historians 9 . He writes of these authors: "Although they claim to be more humane than the hunter, mountaineer, or gold-digger who shot the Indian as if he were a wild animal, they show the same inhumanity, except that they use a pen instead of a gun" (p.363).

A large part of the book is devoted to revealing the kinship and inextricable link between racist politics in the Americas and the concept of global expansionism. Drinnon believes that American historians should pay due attention to the connection between the Monroe doctrine and the plans to evict Indians from the eastern states (p. 115). He points out that the myth of "manifest destiny", which became widespread in the mid-1840s, was the embodiment of American nationalism, in which racism is combined with aggression and expansionism (p.275). Indian hatred was, Drinnon claims, the origin of U.S. imperial ambitions. The global expansionist doctrine of the late nineteenth century "included the internationalization of the previously intracontinental use of racist contempt and hatred of Indians" (p.278).

To justify the bloody atrocities committed by American troops at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and in the "dirty war" against the Vietnamese people, US imperialist propaganda used the same arguments that had been used for 100 years against the Indians. The new island dominions adopted the same racist policies as those applied to the continent's Indians (reservations, burning down recalcitrant villages, and using torture to intimidate "savages") (pp. 286-287, 302). "The Indian idea," Drinnon states, referring to the atrocities committed by Lieutenant Kelly's soldiers, " lived in the air of Vietnam"(p. 457). The American press noted that the action of the US troops to destroy vegetation with toxic chemicals in Vietnam was a copy of the extermination of bison in order to deprive the Indians of food (p. 459). Drinnon unequivocally rejects the myths of "civilizing, humanistic mission", "white man's burden" and so on. "The sobering truth," he writes, "is that the white man's burden in conquering the West was a global crime" (p. 465). The author traces how during the conquest of the Indian population there was a seizure of its lands (p. 78, 87, etc.): "The development of industrial capitalism in the New World began on Indian lands that were taken over by forced purchase, fraud, and violence" (p.100).

However, being a prisoner of social Freudianism, Drinnon deduces US policy towards Indians ("the metaphysics of hatred of Indians") from spiritual beginnings, subconscious mental processes. He seeks to reinforce his idealistic scheme with a number of far-fetched constructions. The deep sources of racism, he writes, are rooted in the " Western soul." Immigrants to America inherited from the European Middle Ages a subconscious desire for violence and murder. Intertwined with prejudices about people with dark skin color, which the settlers associated with vice and evil, Western psychology gave rise, according to Drinnon, "to the image of the native, rude, despicable, like an animal" (p. XVII). On the basis of these subconscious processes, fears and prejudices, the author believes, the racist ideology of American nationalism and expansionism has developed.

During the period Drinnon considered, a significant portion of the white population of the United States was undoubtedly hostile to Indians. But racism was by no means a product of subconscious mental processes, as Drinnon claims. It was imposed by the ruling classes of the United States, interested in ousting the Indians and plundering their lands, exterminating the Aborigines. Without denying Drinnon's observation that the racist policy toward Indians is related to the expansionist policy of the United States in the Caribbean and Pacific, we cannot, however, accept that imperialist expansion was born out of racism alone. The real basis of this expansion was the desire of American monopolies to gain new markets, sources of raw materials, and areas of capital application. Drinnon's mistaken worldview leads him to,

9 Drinnon was particularly outraged by the laudatory reviews of H. A. Waugh-en's article "Pickwots and Puritans" (William and Mary Quarterly, April 1964) and his 1965 book "The New England Frontier", which were filled with contempt for the Indians and praise for the "nobility" of the colonialists.

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that the true class basis of US policy, material interests and economic processes remain in the shadows.

Against the background of the Freudian scheme, the author is not surprised by such statements as, for example, that in the history of the United States, in contrast to European countries, "race, not class, plays a primary role in public life" (p.XVII). Drinnon does not notice the clash of two social organisms that took place during the conquest of the North American continent - the developing American capitalism and the primitive communal system of the Indian tribes that was at the stage of decomposition. Drinnon does not distinguish between the American expansion of the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, which was based on the development of "broad-based" capitalism, and the imperialist expansion of the United States in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, caused by the desire of American monopolies and their state to redistribute the already divided world. In his opinion, both of these processes are based on "spiritual beginnings - a subconscious desire for violence" (p. 464).

Yet Drinnon's book stands apart in American historiography of the Indian problem. It passionately exposes racism, reveals the criminal nature of the genocide carried out by the ruling circles of the United States for many decades. The clash of different views on Native American politics reflects the ongoing struggle in the United States between apologists for the ideas of racism, chauvinism and expansionism and historians who expose the monstrous violence against the indigenous population of America.

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