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Richard Whittington

Richard Whittington (c. 1354 – March 1423) of the parish of St Michael Paternoster Royal, City of London, was an English merchant and a politician of the late medieval period. He is also the real-life inspiration for the English folk tale Dick Whittington and His Cat. He was four times (appointed once, elected three times) Lord Mayor of London, a member of parliament and a Sheriff of London. In his lifetime he financed a number of public projects, such as drainage systems in poor areas of medieval London, and a hospital ward for unmarried mothers. He bequeathed his fortune to form the Charity of Sir Richard Whittington which, nearly 600 years later, continues to assist people in need.

Origins
He was born, in around 1354, into an ancient and wealthy Gloucestershire gentry family, the 3rd son of Sir William Whittington (d.1358) of Pauntley, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, a Member of Parliament, by his wife Joan Maunsell, a daughter of William Maunsell (or Mansel), MP for Gloucestershire, Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1313. His elder brothers were Robert Whittington (d.1423/4), six times a Member of Parliament for Gloucestershire, and William Whittington, MP, the eldest brother.

Early life
As a younger son, under the system of primogeniture he would not expect to inherit his father's estate, and thus was sent to the City of London to learn the trade of mercer through an apprenticeship. He was a contemporary of John Abbot who was the first Mercer to leave property to the Company to support a school. He became a successful merchant, dealing in valuable imports such as silks and velvets, both luxury fabrics, much of which he sold to royalty and nobility from about 1388. There is indirect evidence that he was also a major exporter to Europe of much sought after English woollen cloth such as broadcloth. From 1392 to 1394 he sold goods to King Richard II worth £3,500. He also began money-lending in 1388, preferring this to outward shows of wealth such as buying property. By 1397 he was also lending large sums of money to the king.

In 1384 Whittington had become a Councilman of the City of London. In 1392 he was one of the City's delegation to the king at Nottingham at which the king seized the City of London's lands because of alleged misgovernment. By 1393, he had become an alderman and was appointed Sheriff of the City of London by the incumbent mayor, William Staundone, as well as becoming a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Two days after the death of Adam Bamme in June 1397, Whittington was imposed on the City by the king as his replacement as Lord Mayor of London. Within days Whittington had negotiated with the king a deal in which the City bought back its liberties for £10,000. He was formally elected as mayor by a grateful populace on 13 October 1397.

The deposition of King Richard II in 1399 did not affect Whittington and it is thought that he merely acquiesced in the coup led by Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV, whom Whittington had long supplied with merchandise. He also lent the new king substantial amounts of money. He was elected mayor again in 1406 and 1419 and during 1407 served as mayor of The Staple at Calais, representing that town's merchants. In 1416 he became a Member of Parliament for the City of London. He was also influential with King Henry V, Henry IV's son and successor, whom he lent large amounts of money and for whom he served on several Royal Commissions of oyer and terminer. For example, Henry V employed him to supervise the expenditure to complete Westminster Abbey. Despite being a moneylender himself he was sufficiently trusted and respected to sit as a judge in usury trials in 1421. Whittington also collected revenues and import duties. A long dispute with the Worshipful Company of Brewers over standard prices and measures of ale was won by Whittington.

Marriage
In 1402, at the age of 48, he married Alice FitzWaryn (d.1411), but she died without producing any children. She was one of the two daughters and joint heiresses of Sir Ivo FitzWaryn (1347–1414), of Caundle Haddon in Dorset, and of Wantage then in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) (whose monumental brass survives in Wantage Church). As a Member of Parliament variously for the county seats of Dorset, Devon, and Somerset; a son of Sir William FitzWaryn, Knight of the Garter, of Whittington Castle in Shropshire, who was probably a son of Fulk FitzWarin, 3rd Baron FitzWarin (c.1315–1349), also of Whittington Castle in Shropshire and of Wantage, who were of an ancient and powerful family of Marcher Lords. A portrait of Richard Whittington circa 1590 by Reginald Elstrack shows his paternal heraldic arms and also for his wife a differenced version of the usual arms of Baron FitzWarin with ermine in the 1st and 4th quarters in place of argent, which variant was also used by Wiliam FitzWarin, a member of the Shropshire family, as depicted in the Gelre Armorial, c.1370–1414.

The last in the male line was Fulk FitzWarin, 7th Baron FitzWarin (1406–1420), whose eventual successor (via a female line) was William Bourchier, 9th Baron FitzWarin, second son of William Bourchier, 1st Count of Eu (1386–1420,) one of the wealthy noblemen to whom Richard Whittington lent money.

Benefactions
In his lifetime Whittington donated much of his profit to the city and left further endowments by his will. He financed:
 * the rebuilding of the Guildhall
 * a ward for unmarried mothers at St Thomas' Hospital
 * drainage systems for areas around Billingsgate and Cripplegate
 * the rebuilding of his parish church, St Michael Paternoster Royal
 * a public toilet seating 128 called Whittington's Longhouse in the parish of St Martin Vintry that was cleansed by the River Thames at high tide
 * most of Greyfriars library

He also provided accommodation for his apprentices in his own house. He passed a law prohibiting the washing of animal skins by apprentices in the River Thames in cold, wet weather because many young boys had died through hypothermia or drowning in the strong river currents.

Death and burial
Whittington died in March 1423, aged around 68 or 69, and was buried in the church of St Michael Paternoster Royal, to which he had donated large sums during his lifetime. The tomb is now lost, and the mummified cat found in the church tower in 1949 during a search for its location probably dates to the time of the Wren restoration.

Bequests
Having died childless, Whittington left £7,000 in his will to charity, in those days a large sum,. Some of this was used to: The almshouses were relocated in 1966 to Felbridge near East Grinstead. Sixty elderly women and a few married couples currently live in them. The Whittington Charity also disburses money each year to the needy through the Mercers' Company.
 * rebuild Newgate Prison and Newgate and accommodation in it for the Sheriffs and Recorder which is the forerunner of that in the Old Bailey
 * build the first library in Guildhall (the ancestor of the modern Guildhall Library)
 * repair St Bartholomew's Hospital
 * the creation of his 'college' i.e. almshouse and hospital originally at St Michael's
 * install some of the first public drinking fountains

To mark his bequests, the Whittington hospital at Archway in the London Borough of Islington was named after him on its establishment in 1948.

Dick Whittington—stage character
The gifts left in Whittington's will made him well known and he became a character in an English story that was adapted for the stage as a play, The History of Richard Whittington, of his lowe byrth, his great fortune, in February 1604. In the 19th century this became popular as a pantomime called Dick Whittington and His Cat, very loosely based on Richard Whittington. There are several versions of the traditional story, which tells how Dick, a boy from a poor Gloucestershire family, sets out for London to make his fortune, accompanied by, or later acquiring, his cat. At first he meets with little success, and is tempted to return home. However, on his way out of the city, whilst climbing Highgate Hill from modern-day Archway, he hears the Bow Bells of London ringing, and believes they are sending him a message. There is now a large hospital on Highgate Hill, named the Whittington Hospital, after this supposed episode. A traditional rhyme associated with this tale is:

"Turn again, Whittington, Once Lord Mayor of London! Turn again, Whittington, Twice Lord Mayor of London! Turn again, Whittington, Thrice Lord Mayor of London!"

On returning to London, Dick embarks on a series of adventures. In one version of the tale, he travels abroad on a ship, and wins many friends as a result of the rat-catching activities of his cat; in another he sends his cat and it is sold to make his fortune. Eventually he does become prosperous, marries his master's daughter Alice Fitzwarren (the name of the real Whittington's wife), and is made Lord Mayor of London three times. The common belief that he served three rather than four times as Lord Mayor stems from the City's records 'Liber Albus' compiled at his request by the City Clerk John Carpenter wherein his name appears only three times as the remainder term of his deceased predecessor Adam Bamme and his own consequent term immediately afterwards appear as one entry for 1397.

As the son of gentry Whittington was never very poor and there is no evidence that he kept a cat. Whittington may have become associated with a thirteenth-century Persian folktale about an orphan who gained a fortune through his cat, the tale was common throughout Europe at that time. Folklorists have suggested that the most popular legends about Whittington—that his fortunes were founded on the sale of his cat, who was sent on a merchant vessel to a rat-beset Eastern emperor—originated in a popular 17th-century engraving by Renold Elstracke in which his hand rested on a cat, but the picture only reflects a story already in wide circulation. Elstracke's oddly-shaped cat was in fact a later replacement by printseller Peter Stent for what had been a skull in the original, with the change being made to conform to the story already in existence, to increase sales.

There was also known to be a painted portrait of Whittington shown with a cat, hanging at Mercer Hall, but it was reported that the painting had been trimmed down to smaller size, and the date "1572" that appears there was something painted after the cropping, which raises doubt as to the authenticity of the date, though Malcolm who witnessed it c. early 1800s felt the date should be taken in good faith. The print published in The New Wonderful Museum (vol. III, 1805, pictured above) is presumably a replica of this painting.

title: Richard Whittington


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Hatch Act (disambiguation)

The Hatch Act (1939) is US federal legislation prohibiting some political activities for employees in the executive branch.

Hatch Act may also refer to:

 * Hatch Act of 1887, US federal legislation that created agricultural experiment stations

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Hatch Act (disambiguation)


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Sherman Silver Purchase Act

The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was a United States federal law enacted on July 14, 1890.

The measure did not authorize the free and unlimited coinage of silver that the Free Silver supporters wanted. It increased the amount of silver the government was required to purchase on a recurrent monthly basis to 4.5 million ounces. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act had been passed in response to the growing complaints of farmers' and miners' interests. Farmers had immense debts that could not be paid off due to deflation, and they urged the government to pass the Sherman Silver Purchase Act to boost the economy and cause inflation, allowing them to pay their debts with cheaper dollars. Mining companies, meanwhile, had extracted vast quantities of silver from western mines. The resulting oversupply drove down the price of their product, often to below the point at which the silver could be profitably extracted. They hoped to enlist the government to increase the demand for silver.

Originally, the bill was simply known as the Silver Purchase Act of 1890. Only after the bill was signed into law did it become the "Sherman Silver Purchase Act." Senator John Sherman, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was not the author of the bill, but once both houses of Congress had passed the Act and the Act had been sent to a Senate/House conference committee to settle differences between the Senate and House versions of the Act. Sherman was instrumental in getting the conference committee to reach agreement on a final draft of the Act. Nonetheless, once agreement on the final version was reached in the conference committee, Sherman found that he disagreed with many sections of the act. So tepid was Sherman's support that when he was asked his opinion of the act by President Benjamin Harrison, Sherman ventured only that the bill was "safe" and would cause no harm if the President signed it.

The act was enacted in tandem with the McKinley Tariff of 1890. William McKinley, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, worked with John Sherman to create a package that could both pass the Senate and receive the President's approval.

Under the Act, the federal government purchased millions of ounces of silver, with issues of paper currency. It became the second-largest buyer in the world, after the British Crown in India, where the Indian rupee was backed by silver rather than gold. Instead of the US$2 million to US$4 million that had been required by the Bland–Allison Act of 1878, the US government was now required to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion every month. The law required the Treasury to buy the silver with a special issue of Treasury (Coin) Notes that could be redeemed for either silver or gold. The result was the substantial expansion in the volume of circulating dollars without a proportionate growth in the gold stock. The crash in the silver dollar's bullion value in the 1890s from 80 cents to approximately 50 cents increased public anxiety on their continued ability to convert silver dollars and banknotes into gold. The result was a run on the Treasury's gold stock and the onset of the Panic of 1893. President Grover Cleveland summoned an emergency session of Congress on August 7, 1893, for the repeal of the act to prevent the further depletion of the government's gold reserves.

In 1890, the price of silver dipped to US$1.16 per ounce. By the end of the year, it had fallen to US$0.69. By December 1894, the price had dropped to US$0.60. On November 1, 1895, US mints halted production of silver coins, and the government closed the Carson City Mint. Banks discouraged the use of silver dollars. The years 1893–95 had the lowest productions of Morgan dollars for the entire series, creating several scarce coins.

title: Sherman Silver Purchase Act


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Pantomime (disambiguation)

Pantomime is a type of musical comedy stage production, developed in England and designed for family entertainment, mostly performed during Christmas and New Year season.

Pantomime may also refer to:
 * Acting or performance such as that performed by a mime artist, using silent gestures
 * American pantomime, a North American variant of the English theatrical genre
 * Charades, a party game sometimes called "pantomime"
 * Pantomime (The Pillows EP), by The Pillows (also the title of its first track)
 * Pantomime (Polara EP), by Polara (also the title of its first track)
 * "Pantomime", a song by Incubus from the album Alive at Red Rocks
 * "Pantomime", a song by Imagine Dragons from the EP It's Time
 * "Pantomime", a song by Orgy from the album Candyass
 * Pantomime (novel), a 2013 novel by Laura Lam

title: Pantomime (disambiguation)


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McKinley Tariff

The Tariff Act of 1890, commonly called the McKinley Tariff, was an act of the United States Congress, framed by then Representative William McKinley, that became law on October 1, 1890. The tariff raised the average duty on imports to almost 50%, an increase designed to protect domestic industries and workers from foreign competition, as promised in the Republican platform. It represented protectionism, a policy supported by Republicans and denounced by Democrats. It was a major topic of fierce debate in the 1890 Congressional elections, which gave a Democratic landslide.

Democrats replaced the McKinley Tariff with the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act in 1894, which lowered tariff rates.

Description
After 450 amendments, the Tariff Act of 1890 was passed and increased average duties across all imports from 38% to 49.5%. McKinley was known as the "Napoleon of Protection," and rates were raised on some goods and lowered on others, always in an attempt to protect American manufacturing interests. Changes in duties for specific products such as tinplates and wool were the most controversial ones and were emblematic of the spirit of the Tariff of 1890.

The Act eliminated tariffs altogether on certain items, with the threat of reinstatement as an enticement to get other countries to lower their tariffs on items imported from the US.

Eliminated tariffs
The Act removed tariffs on sugar, molasses, tea, coffee, and hides but authorized the President to reinstate the tariffs if the items were exported from countries that treated U.S. exports in a "reciprocally unequal and unreasonable" fashion. The idea was "to secure reciprocal trade" by allowing the executive branch to use the threat of reimposing tariffs as a means to get other countries to lower their tariffs on U.S. exports. Although this delegation of power had the appearance of being an unconstitutional violation of the nondelegation doctrine, it was upheld by the Supreme Court in Field v. Clark in 1892, as authorizing the executive to act merely as an "agent" of Congress, rather than as a lawmaker itself. The President did not use the delegated power to re-impose tariffs on the five types of imported goods, but he used the threat of doing so to pass 10 treaties in which other countries reduced their tariffs on U.S. goods.

Tin-plates
Tin-plates were a major import for the United States. Tens of millions of dollars in these goods entered the country each year. In the preceding 20 years, tariff rates had been raised and dropped multiple times on tin-plates with no change in import levels, and domestic production had remained inconsequential. In a last attempt to stimulate the infant domestic tin-plate industry, the Act raised the duty level from 30% to 70%. It also included a unique provision that stated tin-plates should be admitted free of any duty after 1897 unless domestic production in any year reached one-third of the imports in that year. The goal was for the duty to be protective or not to exist at all.

Wool
The new tariff provisions for wool and woolen goods were exceedingly protectionist. Wool was previously taxed based on a schedule: more valuable wool was taxed at a higher rate. Through a multitude of complicated tariff schedule revisions, the Act made almost all woolen goods subject to the maximum duty rate.

The Act also increased the tariff on carpet wool, a wool of very low quality not produced in the US. The government wanted to ensure that importers were not declaring higher-quality wool as carpet wool to evade the tariff.

Reactions
The tariff was not well received by Americans who suffered a steep increase in prices. In the 1890 election, Republicans lost their majority in the House with the number of seats they won reduced by nearly half, from 171 to 88. Also, in the 1892 presidential election, Harrison was soundly defeated by Grover Cleveland, and the Senate, House, and Presidency were all under Democratic control. Lawmakers immediately started drafting new tariff legislation, and in 1894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff passed, which lowered US tariff averages.

The 1890 tariff was also poorly received abroad. Protectionists in the British Empire used it to argue for tariff retaliation and imperial trade preference. The McKinley Tariff had the effect of raising the bilateral American tariff toward Britain from 35% in 1890 to 43% in 1891, whereas the average American tariff actually fell on account of the McKinley Tariff placing a number of tropical commodities on the free list.

Background
Tariffs (taxes on foreign goods entering a country) served two purposes for the United States in the late 19th century. One was to raise revenue for the federal government, and the other was to protect domestic manufacturers and workers from foreign competition, known as protectionism.

In December 1887, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, devoted his entire State of the Union Address to the issue of the tariff and called emphatically for the reduction of duties and the abolition of duties on raw materials. The speech succeeded in making the tariff and the idea of protectionism a true party matter. In the 1888 election, the Republicans were victorious with the election of Benjamin Harrison and majorities in both the Senate and the House. For the sake of holding the party line, the Republicans felt obligated to pass stronger tariff legislation.

William McKinley, of Ohio, was defeated by Thomas Brackett Reed to be Speaker of the House after the 1888 elections. McKinley instead became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and was responsible for framing a new tariff bill. He believed that a protectionist tariff had been mandated by the people through the election and that it was necessary for America's wealth and prosperity.

In addition to the protectionist debate, politicians were also concerned about the high revenue accruing from tariffs. After the American Civil War, tariffs remained elevated to raise revenue and to cover the high costs of the war. However, in the early 1880s, the federal government was running a large surplus. Both parties agreed that the surplus needed to lessen but disagreed about whether to raise or lower tariffs to accomplish the same goal.

The Democrats' hypothesis stated that tariff revenue could be reduced by reducing the tariff rate. Conversely, the Republicans' belief was that by increasing the tariff, imports would be lessened, and total tariff revenue would drop. The debate would be known as the Great Tariff Debate of 1888.

Effects
Douglas Irwin's 1998 paper examines the validity of the opposite tariff hypotheses posed by the Republicans and Democrats in 1890. Irwin examined historical data to estimate import demand elasticities and export supply elasticities for the US in the years before 1888. He then calculated that tariffs had not reached the maximum revenue rate and that a reduction, not a raise, in the tariff would have reduced revenue and the federal surplus. That confirmed the Democrats' hypothesis and refuted the Republicans'.

After he examined the actual tariff revenue data, he concluded that revenue decreased by about 4% from $225 million to $215 million, after the Tariff of 1890 increased rates. Irwin explains that to be due to a provision for raw sugar be moved to the duty-free list. Sugar was then the item that raised the most tariff revenue and so making it duty-free reduced revenue. If sugar is excluded from import calculations, the tariff revenue increased by 7.8%, from $170 million to $183 million.

Irwin concluded that the tariff hastened the development of domestic tinplate production by about a decade but also that the benefit to the industry was outweighed by the cost to consumers.

International impact

 * Grey, Earl. The Commercial Policy of the British Colonies and the McKinley Tariff (London: Macmillan, 1892). online
 * Lawder, Robert H. Commerce between the United States & Canada, Observations on Reciprocity and the McKinley Tariff (Toronto: Monetary Times Printing, 1892). online
 * Palen, Marc-William. "Protection, federation and union: The global impact of the McKinley tariff upon the British Empire, 1890–94." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38.3 (2010): 395–418 online.
 * Rioux, Hubert. "Canada First vs. America First: Economic Nationalism and the Evolution of Canada–US Trade Relations." European Review of International Studies 6.3 (2019): 30–56. online

title: McKinley Tariff


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Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act

The Revenue Act or Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 (ch. 349, §73,, August 27, 1894) slightly reduced the United States tariff rates from the numbers set in the 1890 McKinley tariff and imposed a 2% tax on income over $4,000. It is named for William L. Wilson, Representative from West Virginia, chair of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Arthur P. Gorman of Maryland, both Democrats.

Supported by pro-free trade members of the Democratic Party, this attempt at tariff reform imposed the first peacetime income tax (2% on income over $4,000, or $88,100 in 2010 dollars, which meant fewer than 1% of households would pay any). The purpose of the income tax was to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. The democrats under the Grover Cleveland administration wanted to move away from the protectionism proposed by the McKinley tariff while Cleveland was still in office. By coincidence, $4,000 ($88,100 in 2010 dollars) would be the exemption for married couples when the Revenue Act of (October) 1913 was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, as a result of the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in February 1913.

The bill introduced by Wilson and passed by the House significantly lowered tariff rates, in accordance with Democratic platform promises, and dropped the tariff to zero on iron ore, coal, lumber and wool, which angered American producers. With Senator Gorman operating behind the scenes, protectionists in the Senate added more than 600 amendments that nullified most of the reforms and raised rates again. The "Sugar Trust" in particular made changes that favored itself at the expense of the foreign competitors.

President Grover Cleveland, who had campaigned on lowering the tariff and supported Wilson's version of the bill, was devastated that his program had been ruined. He denounced the revised measure as a disgraceful product of "party perfidy and party dishonor," but still allowed it to become law without his signature, believing that it was better than nothing and was at the least an improvement over the McKinley tariff.

Income Tax Amendment
The New York Times reported that many Democrats in the East "prefer to take the income tax, odious as it is, and unpopular as it is bound to be with their constituents" to defeating the Wilson tariff bill. Democratic Representative Johnson of Ohio supported the income tax as the lesser of two evils: "he was for an income tax as against a tariff tax; but he believed, that it was un-Democratic, inquisitorial, and wrong in principle."

Legacy
The income tax provision was struck down in 1895 by the U.S. Supreme Court case Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.,. In 1913, the 16th Amendment permitted a federal income tax.

The tariff provisions of Wilson-Gorman were superseded by the Dingley Tariff of 1897.

title: Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act


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Dawes Act

The Dawes Act of 1887 (also known as the General Allotment Act or the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 ) regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, it authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. This would convert traditional systems of land tenure into a government-imposed system of private property by forcing Native Americans to "assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property" that did not previously exist in their cultures. Before private property could be dispensed, the government had to determine which Indians were eligible for allotments, which propelled an official search for a federal definition of "Indian-ness".

Although the act was passed in 1887, the federal government implemented the Dawes Act on a tribe-by-tribe basis thereafter. For example, in 1895, Congress passed the Hunter Act, which administered the Dawes Act among the Southern Ute. The nominal purpose of the act was to protect the property of the natives as well as to compel "their absorption into the American mainstream".

Native peoples who were deemed to be mixed-blood were granted U.S. citizenship, while others were "detribalized". Between 1887 and 1934, Native Americans ceded control of about 100 million acres of land (as of 2019 the United States has a total 1.9 billion acres of land ) or about "two-thirds of the land base they held in 1887" as a result of the act. The loss of land ownership and the break-up of traditional leadership of tribes produced potentially negative cultural and social effects that have since prompted some scholars to consider the act as one of the most destructive U.S. policies for Native Americans in history.

The "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole) in Indian Territory were initially exempt from the Dawes Act. The Dawes Commission was established in 1893 as a delegation to register members of tribes for allotment of lands. They came to define tribal belonging in terms of blood-quantum. But, because there was no method of determining precise bloodlines, commission members often assigned "full-blood status" to Native Americans who were perceived as "poorly-assimilated" or "legally incompetent", and "mixed-blood status" to Native Americans who "most resembled whites", regardless of how they identified culturally.

The Curtis Act of 1898 extended the provisions of the Dawes Act to the "Five Civilized Tribes", required the abolition of their governments and dissolution of tribal courts, allotment of communal lands to individuals registered as tribal members, and sale of lands declared surplus. This law was "an outgrowth of the land rush of 1889, and completed the extinction of Indian land claims in the territory. This violated the promise of the United States that the Indian territory would remain Indian land in perpetuity," completed the obliteration of tribal land titles in Indian Territory, and prepared for admission of the territory land to the Union as the state of Oklahoma.

The Dawes Act was amended again in 1906 under the Burke Act.

During the Great Depression, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration passed the US Indian Reorganization Act (also known as the Wheeler-Howard Law) on June 18, 1934. It prohibited any further land allotment and created a "New Deal" for Native Americans, which renewed their rights to reorganize and form self-governments in order to "rebuild an adequate land base."

Creation of reservations and assimilation
During the early 1800s, the United States federal government attempted to address what it referred to as the "Indian Problem." Numerous European immigrants were settling on the eastern border of the Indian territories (where most of the Native American tribes had been relocated). Conflicts between the groups increased as they competed for resources and operated according to different cultural systems. Searching for a quick solution to their problem, Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Medill proposed establishing "colonies" or "reservations" that would be exclusively for the natives, similar to those which some native tribes had created for themselves in the east. It was a form of relocation whereby the US government would offer a transfer of the natives from current locations to areas in the region beyond the Mississippi River. This would enable settlement by European Americans in the Southeast, where there was a growing demand for access to new lands.

The new policy intended to concentrate Native Americans in areas away from the new settlers. During the later nineteenth century, Native American tribes resisted the imposition of the reservation system and engaged with the United States Army (in what were called the Indian Wars in the West) for decades. Finally defeated by the U.S. military force and continuing waves of new settlers, the tribes negotiated agreements to resettle on reservations. Native Americans ended up with a total of over 155 e6acre of land, ranging from arid deserts to prime agricultural land.

The Reservation system, while compulsory for Native Americans, allotted each tribe a claim to their new lands, protection over their territories, and the right to govern themselves. With the U.S. Senate to be involved only for negotiation and ratification of treaties, the Native Americans adjusted their ways of life and tried to maintain their traditions. The traditional tribal organization, a defining characteristic of Native Americans as a social unit, became apparent to the non-native communities of the United States. The tribe was viewed as a highly cohesive group, led by a hereditary, chosen chief, who exercised power and influence among the members of the tribe by aging traditions.

By the end of the 1880s, some U.S. stakeholders felt that the assimilation of Native Americans into American culture was a top priority and was needed for the peoples' very survival. This was the belief among people who "admired" them, as well as people who thought they needed to leave behind their tribal landholding, reservations, traditions, and, ultimately, their Indian identities. Senator Henry Dawes launched a campaign to "rid the nation of tribalism through the virtues of private property, allotting land parcels to Indian heads of family."

On February 8, 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed the Dawes Allotment Act into law. Responsible for enacting the allotment of the tribal reservations into plots of land for individual households, the Dawes Act was intended by reformers to achieve six goals:
 * breaking up of tribes as a social unit,
 * encouraging individual initiatives,
 * furthering the progress of native farmers,
 * reducing the cost of native administration,
 * securing parts of the reservations as Indian land, and
 * opening the remainder of the land to White settlers for profit.

The Act facilitated assimilation; they would become more "Americanized" as the government allotted the reservations and the Indians adapted to subsistence farming, the primary model at the time. Native Americans held specific ideologies pertaining to tribal land. Some natives began to adapt to the culture. They adopted the values of the dominant society and saw land as real estate to be bought and developed; they learned how to use their land effectively to become prosperous farmers. As they were inducted as citizens of the country, they would shed those of their discourses and ideologies presumed to be uncivilized and exchange them for ones that allowed them to become industrious, self-supporting citizens, and finally rid themselves of their need for government supervision.

Provisions of the Dawes Act
The important provisions of the Dawes Act were:
 * 1) A head of family would receive a grant of 160 acre, a single person or orphan over 18 years of age would receive a grant of 80 acre, and persons under the age of 18 would receive 40 acre each;
 * 2) the allotments would be held in trust by the U.S. Government for 25 years;
 * 3) Eligible Native Americans had four years to select their land; afterward the selection would be made for them by the Secretary of the Interior.

Every member of the bands or tribes receiving a land allotment is subject to laws of the state or territory in which they reside. Every Native American who receives a land allotment "and has adopted the habits of civilized life" (lived separate and apart from the tribe) is bestowed with United States citizenship "without in any manner impairing or otherwise affecting the right of any such Indian to tribal or other property".

The Secretary of the Interior could issue rules to assure equal distribution of water for irrigation among the tribes, and provided that "no other appropriation or grant of water by any riparian proprietor shall be authorized or permitted to the damage of any other riparian proprietor."

The Dawes Act did not apply to the territory of the:
 * Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Miami, and Peoria in Indian Territory
 * Osage and Sac and Fox in the Oklahoma Territory
 * any of the reservations of the Seneca Nation of New York, or
 * a strip of territory in the State of Nebraska adjoining the Sioux Nation
 * Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation
 * The Osage Tribe of Oklahoma

Provisions were later extended to the Wea, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankeshaw, and Western Miami tribes by act of 1889. Allotment of the lands of these tribes was mandated by the Act of 1891, which amplified the provisions of the Dawes Act.

Dawes Act 1891 Amendments
In 1891 the Dawes Act was amended:
 * Allowed for pro-rata distribution when the reservation did not have enough land for each individual to receive allotments in original quantities, and provided that when land is only suitable for grazing purposes, such land be allotted in double quantities
 * Established criteria for inheritance
 * Does not apply to Cherokee Outlet

Provisions of the Curtis Act
The Curtis Act of 1898 extended the provisions of the Dawes Act to the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory. It did away with their self-government, including tribal courts. In addition to providing for allotment of lands to tribal members, it authorized the Dawes Commission to make determinations of members when registering tribal members.

Provisions of the Burke Act
The Burke Act of 1906 amended the sections of the Dawes Act dealing with US Citizenship (Section 6) and the mechanism for issuing allotments. The Secretary of Interior could force the Native American Allottee to accept title for land. U.S. Citizenship was granted unconditionally upon receipt of land allotment (the individual did not need to move off the reservation to receive citizenship). Land allotted to Native Americans was taken out of Trust and subject to taxation. The Burke Act did not apply to any Native Americans in Indian Territory.

Identity and detribalization
The effects of the Dawes Act were destructive on Native American sovereignty, culture, and identity since it empowered the U.S. government to:

 * 1) legally preempt the sovereign right of Indians to define themselves
 * 2) implement the specious notion of blood-quantum as the legal criteria for defining Indians
 * 3) institutionalize divisions between "full-bloods" and "mixed-bloods"
 * 4) "detribalize" a sizeable segment of the Indian population
 * 5) legally appropriate vast tracts of Indian land

The federal government initially viewed the Dawes Act as such a successful democratic experiment that they decided to further explore the use of blood-quantum laws and the notion of federal recognition as the qualifying means for "dispensing other resources and services such as health care and educational funding" to Native Americans long after its passage. Under Dawes, land parcels were dispersed in accordance with perceived blood quanta. Indigenous people labeled "full-blooded" were allocated "relatively small parcels of land deeded with trust patents over which the government retained complete control for a minimum of twenty-five years." Those who were labeled "mixed-blood" were "deeded larger and better tracts of land, with 'patents in fee simple' (complete control), but were also forced to accept U.S. citizenship and relinquish tribal status."

Additionally, Native Americans who did not "meet the established criteria" as being either "full-blood" or "mixed-blood" were effectively "detribalized", being "deposed of their American Indian identity and displaced from their homelands, discarded into the nebula of American otherness." While the Dawes Act is "typically recognized" as the "primary instigation of divisions between tribal and detribalized Indians," the history of detribalization in the United States "actually precedes Dawes."

Land loss
The Dawes Act ended Native American communal holding of property (with cropland often being privately owned by families or clans ), by which they had ensured that everyone had a home and a place in the tribe. The act "was the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to development by railroads." Land owned by Native Americans decreased from 138 e6acre in 1887 to 48 e6acre in 1934.

Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado was one of the most outspoken opponents of allotment. In 1881, he said that allotment was a policy "to despoil the Indians of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth." Teller also said,

"the real aim [of allotment] was to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement. The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indians are but the pretext to get at his lands and occupy them. ... If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity ... is infinitely worse."

In 1890, Dawes himself remarked about the incidence of Native Americans losing their land allotments to settlers: "I never knew a White man to get his foot on an Indian's land who ever took it off." The amount of land in native hands rapidly depleted from some 150 e6acre to 78 e6acre by 1900. The remainder of the land, once allotted to appointed natives, was declared surplus and sold to non-native settlers as well as railroad and other large corporations; other sections were converted into federal parks and military compounds.

Most allottees given land on the Great Plains were not successful at achieving economic viability via farming. Division of land among heirs upon the allottees' deaths quickly led to land fractionalization. Most allotment land, which could be sold after a statutory period of 25 years, was eventually sold to non-Native buyers at bargain prices. Additionally, land deemed to be surplus beyond what was needed for allotment was opened to White settlers, though the profits from the sales of these lands were often invested in programs meant to aid the Native Americans. Over the 47 years of the Act's life, Native Americans lost about 90 e6acre of treaty land, or about two-thirds of the 1887 land base. About 90,000 Native Americans were made landless.

Culture and gender roles
The Dawes Act compelled Native Americans to adopt European American culture by prohibiting Indigenous cultural practices and encouraging settler cultural practices and ideologies into Native American families and children. By transferring communally-owned Native land into private property, the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) "hoped to transform Native Americans into yeoman farmers and farm wives through the assignment of individual land holdings known as allotments." In an attempt to fulfill this objective, the Dawes Act "outlawed Native American culture and established a code of Indian offenses regulating individual behavior according to Euro-American norms of conduct." Any violations of this code were to be "tried in a Court of Indian Offenses on each reservation." Included with the Dawes Act were "funds to instruct Native Americans in Euro-American patterns of thought and behavior through Indian Service schools."

With the seizure of many Native American land holdings, indigenous structures of domestic life, gender roles, and tribal identity were critically altered in order to meld with society. For instance, "an important objective of the Dawes Act was to restructure Native American gender roles." White settlers who encountered Native American societies in the latter half of the nineteenth century "judged women's work [in Native societies] as lower in status than that of men" and assumed it was a sign of indigenous women's "disempowerment and drudgery". As a result, "in evolutionary terms, Whites saw women's performance of what seemed to be male tasks – farming, home building, and supply gathering – as a corruption of gender roles and an impediment to progress." In theory, the gendered tasks "accorded many indigenous women esteem and even rewards and status within their tribes."

By dividing reservation lands into privately owned parcels, legislators hoped to complete the assimilation process by forcing Native Americans to adopt individual households and strengthen the nuclear family and values of economic dependency strictly within this small household unit. The Dawes Act was thus implemented to destroy "native cultural patterns" by drawing "on theories, common to both ethnologists and material feminists, that saw environmental change as a way to effect social change." Although private property ownership was the cornerstone of the act, reformers "believed that civilization could only be effected by concomitant changes to social life" in indigenous communities. As a result, "they promoted Christian marriages among indigenous people, forced families to regroup under male heads (a tactic often enforced by renaming), and trained men in wage-earning occupations while encouraging women to support them at home through domestic activities."

Reduction of sovereignty
In 1906, the Burke Act (also known as the Forced Patenting Act) amended the GAA to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to issue allottees a patent in fee simple to people classified "competent and capable". The criteria for this determination is unclear but it meant that allottees deemed "competent" by the Secretary of the Interior would have their land taken out of trust status, subject to taxation, and could be sold by the allottee. The allotted lands of Native Americans determined to be incompetent by the Secretary of the Interior were automatically leased out by the federal government. The act reads: "... the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is hereby authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Native American allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed."

The use of competence opens up the categorization, making it much more subjective and thus increasing the exclusionary power of the Secretary of Interior. Although this act gave power to the allottee to decide whether to keep or sell the land, given the harsh economic reality of the time, and lack of access to credit and markets, liquidation of Indian lands was almost inevitable. It was known by the Department of Interior that virtually 95% of fee-patented land would eventually be sold to whites.

In 1926, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work commissioned a study of the federal administration of Indian policy and the condition of Native American people. Completed in 1928, The Problem of Indian Administration – commonly known as the Meriam Report after the study's director, Lewis Meriam – documented fraud and misappropriation by government agents. In particular, the Meriam Report claimed that the General Allotment Act had been used to illegally deprive Native Americans of their land rights.

After considerable debate, Congress terminated the allotment process under the Dawes Act by enacting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ("Wheeler-Howard Act"). However, the allotment process in Alaska, under the separate Alaska Native Allotment Act, continued until its revocation in 1971 by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Despite the termination of the allotment process in 1934, the effects of the General Allotment Act continue into the present. For example, one provision of the Act was the establishment of a trust fund, administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to collect and distribute revenues from oil, mineral, timber, and grazing leases on Native American lands. The BIA's alleged improper management of the trust fund resulted in litigation, in particular the case Cobell v. Kempthorne (settled in 2009 for $3.4 billion), to force a proper accounting of revenues.

Fractionation
For over one hundred thirty years, the consequences of federal Indian allotments have developed into the problem of fractionation. As original allottees die, their heirs receive equal, undivided interests in the allottees' lands. In successive generations, smaller undivided interests descend to the next generation. Fractionated interests in individual Native American allotted land continue to expand exponentially with each new generation.

In 2004, Ross Swimmer, Special Trustee for American Indians at the U.S. Department of the Interior, stated that there were "approximately four million owner interests in the 10000000 acre of individually owned trust lands, a situation the magnitude of which makes management of trust assets extremely difficult and costly." "These four million interests could expand to eleven million interests by the year 2030 unless an aggressive approach to fractionation is taken." "There are now single pieces of property with ownership interests that are less than 0.0000001% or 1/9 millionth of the whole interest, which has an estimated value of 0.004 cent."

The economic consequences of fractionation are severe. Some recent appraisal studies suggest that when the number of owners of a tract of land reaches between ten and twenty, the value of that tract drops to zero.

In addition, the fractionation of land and the resultant ballooning number of trust accounts quickly produced an administrative nightmare. Over the past 40 years, the area of trust land has grown by approximately 80000 acre per year. Approximately 357 million dollars is collected annually from all sources of trust asset management, including coal sales, timber harvesting, oil and gas leases and other rights-of-way and lease activity. No single fiduciary institution has ever managed as many trust accounts as the Department of the Interior has managed over the last century.

Interior is involved in "the management of 100,000 leases for individual [Native Americans] and tribes on trust land that encompasses approximately 56000000 acre. Leasing, use permits, sale revenues, and interest of approximately $226 million per year are collected for approximately 230,000 individual Indian money [(IIM)] accounts, and about $530 million per year are collected for approximately 1,400 tribal accounts. In addition, the trust currently manages approximately $2.8 billion in tribal funds and $400 million in individual Native American funds."

"Under current regulations, probates need to be conducted for every account with trust assets, even those with balances between one cent and one dollar. While the average cost for a probate process exceeds $3,000, even a streamlined, expedited process...costing as little as $500 would require almost $10,000,000 to probate the $5,700 in these accounts."

"Unlike most private trusts, the federal government bears the entire cost of administering the Indian trust. As a result, the usual incentives found in the commercial sector for reducing the number of small or inactive accounts do not apply to the Indian trust. Similarly, the United States has not adopted many of the tools that States and local government entities have for ensuring that unclaimed or abandoned property is returned to productive use within the local community."

Fractionation is not a new issue. In the 1920s, the Brookings Institution conducted a major study of the conditions of the Native Americans and included data on the impacts of fractionation. This report, which became known as the Meriam Report, was issued in 1928. Its conclusions and recommendations formed the basis for land reform provisions that were included in what would become the IRA. "The original versions of the IRA included two key titles; one dealing with probate and the other with land consolidation." Because of opposition to many of these provisions in Indian Country, often by the major European-American ranchers and industry who leased land and other private interests, most were removed while Congress was considering the bill. The final version of the IRA included only a few basic land reforms and probate measures. Although Congress enabled major reforms in the structure of tribes through the IRA and stopped the allotment process, it did not meaningfully address fractionation as had been envisioned by John Collier, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, or the Brookings Institution.

"In 1922, the General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted an audit of 12 reservations to determine the severity of fractionation on those reservations. The GAO found that on the 12 reservations for which it compiled data, there were approximately 80,000 discrete owners but, because of fractionation, there were over a million ownership records associated with those owners. The GAO also found that if the land were physically divided by the fractional interests, many of these interests would represent less than one square foot of ground. In early 2002, the Department of the Interior attempted to replicate the audit methodology used by the GAO and to update the GAO report data to assess the continued growth of fractionation." It found that it increased by more than 40% between 1992 and 2002.

"As an example of continuing fractionation, consider a real tract identified in 1987 in Hodel v. Irving, 481 U.S. 704 (1987):

"Tract 1305 is 40 acre and produces $1,080 in income annually. It is valued at $8,000. It has 439 owners, one-third of whom receive less than $.05 in annual rent and two-thirds of whom receive less than $1. The largest interest holder receives $82.85 annually. The common denominator used to compute fractional interests in the property is 3,394,923,840,000. The smallest heir receives $.01 every 177 years. If the tract were sold (assuming the 439 owners could agree) for its estimated $8,000 value, he would be entitled to $.000418. The administrative costs of handling this tract are estimated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs at $17,560 annually."

Today, this tract produces $2,000 in income annually and is valued at $22,000. It now has 505 owners but the common denominator used to compute fractional interests has grown to 220,670,049,600,000. If the tract were sold (assuming the 505 owners could agree) for its estimated $22,000 value, the smallest heir would now be entitled to $.00001824." The administrative costs of handling this tract in 2003 are estimated by the BIA at $42,800."

Fractionation has become significantly worse. As noted above, in some cases the land is so highly fractionated that it can never be made productive. With such small ownership interests, "it is nearly impossible to obtain the level of consent necessary to lease the land." "In addition, to manage highly fractionated parcels of land, the government spends more money probating estates, maintaining title records, leasing the land, and attempting to manage and distribute tiny amounts of income to individual owners than is received in income from the land. In many cases, the costs associated with managing these lands can be significantly more than the value of the underlying asset."

Criticisms
Angie Debo's, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (1940), claimed the allotment policy of the Dawes Act (as later extended to apply to the Five Civilized Tribes through the Dawes Commission and the Curtis Act of 1898) was systematically manipulated to deprive the Native Americans of their lands and resources. Ellen Fitzpatrick claimed that Debo's book "advanced a crushing analysis of the corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that underlay White administration and execution of the allotment policy."

title: Dawes Act


text:
Dingley Act

The Dingley Act of 1897 (ch. 11,, July 24, 1897), introduced by U.S. Representative Nelson Dingley Jr., of Maine, raised tariffs in United States to counteract the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act of 1894, which had lowered rates. The bill came into effect under William McKinley the first year that he was in office. The McKinley administration wanted slowly to bring back the protectionism that was proposed by the Tariff of 1890.

Following the election of 1896, McKinley followed through with his promises for protectionism. Congress imposed duties on wool and hides which had been duty-free since 1872. Rates were increased on woollens, linens, silks, china, and sugar (the tax rates for which doubled). The Dingley Tariff remained in effect for twelve years, making it the longest-lasting tariff in U.S. history. It was also the highest in US history, averaging about 52% in its first year of operation. Over the life of the tariff, the rate averaged at around 47%.

The Dingley Act remained in effect until the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909.

title: Dingley Act


text:
Hua Mulan

Hua Mulan is a legendary Chinese folk heroine from the Northern and Southern dynasties era (4th to 6th century CE) of Chinese history. Scholars generally consider Mulan to be a fictional character. Hua Mulan is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.

Overview
According to legend, Mulan took her aged father's place in the conscription for the army by disguising herself as a man. In the story, after prolonged and distinguished military service against nomadic hordes beyond the northern frontier, Mulan is honored by the emperor but declines a position of high office. She retires to her hometown, where she is reunited with her family and, much to the astonishment of her comrades, reveals herself as a woman.

First mentions
The first written record of Mulan is the Ballad of Mulan, a folk song believed to have been composed during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–535 CE) and included in an anthology of books and songs during the Southern Chen dynasty (557–589 CE). While this anthology is itself lost, significant excerpts, including the Ballad of Mulan, survive in the Song dynasty anthology Yuefu Shiji.

The historical setting of the Ballad of Mulan is usually the Northern Wei's military campaigns against the nomadic Rouran. A later adaptation has Mulan active around the founding of the Tang dynasty (c. 620 CE).

The story of Mulan was taken up in a number of later works, including the 17th-century work of historical fiction Romance of Sui and Tang, and many screen and stage adaptations.

Name
The heroine of the poem is given different family names in different versions of her story. The Musical Records of Old and New states Mulan's given name is not known and therefore implies Mulan is her surname. As the Ballad of Mulan is set in the Northern Wei dynasty when northern China was ruled by ethnic Xianbei, a proto-Mongolic people, there is some evidence that Mulan was not ethnic Han Chinese but Xianbei, who had exclusively compound surnames. Mulan may have been the sinified version of the Xianbei word "umran" which means prosperous.

According to later books such as Female Mulan, her family name is Zhu, while the Romance of Sui and Tang says it is Wei. The family name Hua, which was introduced by Xu Wei, has become the most popular in recent years, in part because of its more poetic meaning and association with the given name "Mulan" , which literally means "magnolia".

Historicity
Mulan's name is included in Yan Xiyuan's One Hundred Beauties, which describes a number of women from Chinese folklore. It is still unclear whether Mulan was a historical person or just a legend, as her name does not appear in Exemplary Women, a collection of biographies of women who lived during Northern Wei dynasty.

Although The Ballad of Mulan itself does not expressly indicate the historical setting, the story is commonly attributed to the Northern Wei dynasty due to geographic and cultural references in the ballad. The Northern Wei dynasty was founded by the Tuoba clan of ethnic Xianbei who united northern China in the 4th century CE (Conquest dynasty). The Tuoba Xianbei rulers were themselves nomads from the northern steppes and became sinified as they ruled and settled in northern China. The Tuoba Xianbei took on the Chinese dynasty name "Wei", changed their own surname from "Tuoba" to "Yuan", and moved the capital from Pingcheng, modern-day Datong, Shanxi in the northern periphery of Imperial China, to Luoyang, south of the Yellow River, in the Central Plain, the traditional heartland of China. The emperors of the Northern Wei were known both by the sacred Chinese title, "Son of Heaven", and by "Khagan", the title of the leader of nomadic kingdoms. The Ballad of Mulan refers to the sovereign by both titles. The Northern Wei also adopted the governing institutions of Imperial China, and the office of shangshulang (尚書郎) the Khagan offered Mulan is a ministerial position within the shangshusheng (尚書省), the highest organ of executive power under the emperor. This offering indicates Mulan was trained in the martial arts and literary arts as she was capable of serving as a civilian official charged with issuing and interpreting written government orders.

The Xianbei in China also retained certain nomadic traditions, and Xianbei women were typically skilled horseback riders. Another popular Northern Wei folk poem called "Li Bo's Younger Sister" praises Yong Rong, Li Bo's younger sister, for her riding and archery skills. The Ballad of Mulan may have reflected the gender roles and status of women in nomadic societies.

The Northern Wei was engaged in protracted military conflict with the nomadic Rouran, who frequently raided the northern Chinese frontier to loot and pillage. Northern Wei emperors considered the Rouran to be uncivilized "barbarians" and called them Ruanruan or "wriggling worms". According to the Book of Wei, the dynasty's official history, Emperor Taiwu of Northern Wei launched a military expedition in 429 against the Rouran by advancing on the Black Mountain and then extending northward to the Yanran Mountain. Both locations are cited in The Ballad. The Black Mountain corresponds to Shahu Mountain (殺虎山), located southeast of modern-day Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. Yan Mountain, the shorthand for Yanran Mountain (燕然山), is now known as the Khangai Mountains of central Mongolia.

The Northern Wei sought to protect the frontier by establishing a string of frontier garrison commands across what is today Inner Mongolia.

Ballad of Mulan
Mulan sighs at her loom. The Khagan is mobilizing the military, and her father is named in each of the conscription notices from the emperor. Her father being too old and her younger brother too young, she decides to take her father's place. She buys a fine horse from the eastern market, saddle and stirrup from the western market, bridle and reins from the southern market and a long whip from the northern market.

She bids farewell to her parents in the morning and leaves for the Black Mountain, encamping by the Yellow River in the evening, where she cannot hear the calls of her parents due to the rushing waters; only the sounds of the barbarians' cavalry in the Yan Mountains. She advances ten thousand li to battle as if flying past the mountains. The sound of the sentry gong cuts through the cold night air, and the moonlight reflects off her metal armor. A hundred battles take place, and generals die.

After the ten-year campaign, the veterans return to meet the Son of Heaven (Mandate of Heaven), enthroned in the splendid palace, who confers promotions in rank and prizes of hundreds of thousands. He asks Mulan what she would like. Mulan turns down the high-ranking position of shangshulang in the central government, and asks only for a speedy steed to take her home.

Her parents, upon hearing her return, welcome her outside their hometown. Her elder sister puts on her fine dress. Her younger brother sharpens the knife for the swine and sheep. Mulan returns to her room, changes from her tabard into her old clothes. She combs her hair by the window and, before the mirror, fastens golden yellow flowers. Her comrades are shocked to see her. For twelve years of their enlistment together, they hadn't realized that she was a woman.

In response, Mulan explains. "The male hare has heavy front paws. The female hare tends to squint. But when they are running side-by-side close to the ground, who can tell me which is male or female?"

Romance of Sui and Tang
Chu Renhuo's Romance of the Sui and Tang (c. 1675) provides additional backdrops and plot-twists. Here, Mulan lives under the rule of Heshana Khan of the Western Turkic Khaganate. When the Khan agrees to wage war in alliance with the emergent Tang dynasty, which was poised to conquer all of China, Mulan's father Hua Hu fears he will be conscripted into military service since he only has two daughters and an infant son. Mulan crossdresses as a man and enlists in her father's stead. She is intercepted by the forces of the Xia king Dou Jiande and is brought under questioning by the king's warrior daughter Xianniang, who tries to recruit Mulan as a man. Discovering Mulan to be a fellow female warrior, she is so delighted that they become sworn sisters.

In the Sui Tang Romance, Mulan comes to a tragic end, a "detail that cannot be found in any previous legends or stories associated Hua Mulan", and believed to have been interpolated by the author Chu Renho. Xianniang's father is vanquished after siding with the enemy of the Tang dynasty, and the two sworn sisters, with knives in their mouths, surrender themselves to be executed in the place of the condemned man. This act of filial piety wins a reprieve from Emperor Taizong of Tang, and the imperial consort, who was birth-mother to the Emperor, bestows money to Mulan to provide for her parents, as well as wedding funds for the princess, who had confessed to having promised herself to general. In reality, Dou Jiande was executed, but in the novel he lives on as a monk.

Mulan is given leave to journey back to her homeland, and once arrangements were made for Mulan's parents to relocate, it is expected that they will all be living in the princess's old capital of Leshou (, modern Xian County, Hebei). Mulan is devastated to discover her father has long died and her mother has remarried. According to the novel, Mulan's mother was surnamed Yuan (袁) and remarried a man named Wei (魏). Even worse, the Khan has summoned her to the palace to become his concubine.

Rather than to suffer this fate, she dies by suicide. But before she dies, she entrusts an errand to her younger sister, Youlan, which was to deliver Xianniang's letter to her fiancé, Luó Chéng. This younger sister dresses as a man to make her delivery, but her disguise is discovered, and it arouses her recipient's amorous attention.

In the novel, Mulan's father was from Hebei during the Northern Wei dynasty while her mother was from the Central Plain of China. But "even a Chinese woman would prefer death by her own hand to serving a foreign ruler," as some commentators have explained this Mulan character's motive for dying by suicide.

Modern adaptations
The story of Hua Mulan has inspired a number of screen and stage adaptations.

Stage

 * Mulan Joins the Army (1917 play) starring Mei Lanfang
 * Mulan Jr., a one-act stage musical based on the 1998 Disney animated film Mulan
 * The Legend of Marissa Inouye (2013 dance production) by the Hong Kong Dance Company
 * ''The Ballad of Mulan" Red Dragonfly Productions, UK

Films

 * Hua Mulan Joins the Army (1927 film) – a silent film released by Tianyi Film Company and directed by Li Pingqian.
 * Mulan Joins the Army (1928 film) – Mingxing Film Company production, directed by Hou Yao. The film was unsuccessful, in part due to the Tianyi film that was released the previous year.

 * Mulan Joins the Army (1939 film) (original English title Hua Mu Lan), – Chinese film made during the Second Sino-Japanese War, directed by Bu Wancang and written by Ouyang Yuqian. The film also created a large spark of popularity, in terms of literature.
 * Lady General Hua Mu-lan (1964 film) – Hong Kong opera film.
 * Saga of Mulan (1994 film) – Film adaptation of the Chinese opera based on the legend.
 * Mulan (1998 film) – A Disney animated feature, and the basis of many derivative works by Disney. The Mulan character, named Fa Mulan, has appeared in other media and promotions, usually as part of the Disney Princess product line.
 * Mulan II (2004 film) – A direct-to-video animated sequel.
 * Mulan (2020 film) – A live action remake.
 * Mulan, Rise of a Warrior (2009 film) – Chinese live action film.
 * Matchless Mulan (无双花木兰) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film.
 * Mulan zhi Jinguo yinghao (木兰之巾帼英豪) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film.
 * Hua Mulan (花木兰) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film starring Liu Chuxian (刘楚玄) as the leading actress.
 * Kung Fu Mulan (木兰：横空出世) (2020 film) – Chinese CGI animation film.
 * Mulan Legend (花木兰之大漠营救) (2020 film) – Chinese live action film.
 * The Legend of Mulan (1998 film) – Dutch animated film.

Television series

 * A Tough Side of a Lady (1998 series) – Hong Kong TVB drama series of Mulan starring Mariane Chan as Hua Mulan.
 * Hua Mu Lan (1999 series) – Taiwan CTV period drama serial starring Anita Yuen as Hua Mulan.
 * Jamie Chung portrays Mulan in the second, third and fifth seasons of the U.S. TV series Once Upon a Time (2012–2013), this iteration is loosely based on the Disney portrayal.
 * Mu Lan (巾幗大將軍) (2012) – China production with Elanne Kong starring as Mu Lan
 * The Legend of Hua Mulan (花木蘭傳奇) (2013) – CCTV production starring Hou Meng Yao, Dylan Kuo, Liu De Kai, Ray Lui, Dai Chunrong and Angel Wang. It consists of forty-nine episodes.
 * Star of Tomorrow (2015) – a Hunan TV children's program which features all-child casts performing classic Chinese tales, produced a two-part adaptation of Hua Mulan in 2017, based largely on the Disney film and featuring Chinese versions of well-known songs from Mulan and other Disney films.
 * Mulan is portrayed in the Rooster Teeth web series RWBY as a young male named Lie Ren. All of the members of his team are based on legendary figures who dressed as the opposite sex in their stories

Literature

 * Maxine Hong Kingston revisited Mulan's tale in her 1975 The Woman Warrior. Kingston's version popularized the story in the West and may have led to the Disney animated feature adaptation.
 * The Legend of Mu Lan: A Heroine of Ancient China was the first English language picture book featuring the character Mulan published in the United States in 1992 by Victory Press.
 * In the fantasy/alternate history novel Throne of Jade (2006), China's aerial corps is described as being composed of all female captains and their dragons due to the precedent set by the legendary woman warrior.
 * Cameron Dokey created 'Wild Orchid' in 2009, a retelling of the Ballad of Mulan as part of the Once Upon A Time series of novels published by Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
 * In the comics, Deadpool Killustrated (2013), Hua Mulan, along with Natty Bumppo and Beowulf, is brought together by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (using H. G. Wells's time machine) to stop Deadpool from killing all beloved literary characters and destroying the literary universe.
 * Reflection by Elizabeth Lim was published in 2018 as an installment in Disney Press' Twisted Tales series. This is an alternate ending to the Disney film in which Mulan must travel to Diyu, the Underworld, to save her captain.
 * In The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas (2019), Mulan has trained in the martial arts since childhood in preparation for a hereditary duel. When she goes to war in her father's stead, she is shocked to discover her team's captain is also her opponent in the duel.
 * Mulan: Before the Sword, written by Grace Lin (2020) and published by Disney Press, is written as a prequel to the Disney live action movie released in the same year.

Children's books

 * Wuloom Family (episode 5) – in Chinese
 * The Ballad of Mulan by Song Nan Zhang (1998) – in English
 * I am Hua Mulan, by Qin Wenjun, illust. Yu Rong (2017) – in Chinese
 * Mulan: The Legend of the Woman Warrior, by Faye-Lynn Wu, illustrated by Joy Ang (2019)

Video games

 * Kingdom Hearts II – Mulan is an optional party member in the Land of Dragons. Note that this is the Disney version of the character.
 * Smite – Mulan is a playable character
 * Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV – Mulan is an unlockable Legendary officer that can be added at the beginning of new scenarios in the game.
 * Civilization VI – Mulan is a summonable hero in the Heroes and Legends game mode
 * Goddess of Genesis – Mulan is a summonable hero through the game's gacha mechanism
 * Mulan – Mulan video game from 1998, based on the Disney iteration, playable on a Game Boy.
 * Mulan is a playable character in the Mobile/PC Game Rise of Kingdoms.

Tribute in astronomy
The Hua Mulan crater on Venus is named for her.

title: Hua Mulan