"To Hold What the U.S. Has Taken in Conquest:" The United States Army and Colonial Ethnic Forces, 1866-1914

Abstract

The histories of African Americans, Native Americans, and colonial populations during the United States’ national consolidation and imperial expansion after the Civil War have frequently been treated as distinct and separate experiences, a historiographic practice that minimizes the importance of their shared experiences of fighting against, alongside, and within the United States Army. Following the American Civil War, the Army Reorganization Act established permanent Colored Regiments within the United States Army and authorized the formal enlistment of Native Americans as Indian Scouts, eventually organizing several all-Indian companies by the early 1890’s. These units were inspired and sustained by arguments about their unique military capabilities, but more importantly they served as vessels for programs of progressive reform, assimilation, and projections of an emerging American imperial identity. Simultaneously, the soldiers in these segregated formations leveraged their service to obtain practical economic and legal opportunities, as well as to support their arguments for more meaningful social and civic participation. As the United States expanded its power overseas in the wake of the Spanish American War, the methods and ideologies of frontier colonialism informed its administration abroad and shaped the decision to create colonial ethnic forces in the new American colonies, creating opportunities to recast emerging racial-imperial hierarchies that hinged on the military participation of non-white soldiers in the United States military.