Conservatives backed the claims bill to force Tribal assimilation.

Evidence

In the spring of 1945, almost a century later, Congress held hearings on legislation that would enable Tribal Nations to have their claims against the US government heard due to their being formerly “denied equal access to the courts.” Many conservative members of Congress supported the bill because they thought it would hasten Tribal assimilation into white American culture. It was well known that the adjective often used to describe Tribal members was savages. In the Supreme Court decision announcing the new “discovery” rule, Chief Justice John Marshall stated in his opinion that “the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war…. To leave them in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness; to govern them as a distinct people, was impossible, because they were as brave and high spirited as they were fierce, and were ready to repel by arms every attempt on their independence” (emphasis added). — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 149

Categorization

• XREF: The assimilation motive for compensation parallels the ‘righting the harm by erasing the group’ logic that Brown critiques in US reparations debates.