North American Indian Lives 0893261017, 9780893261016

Citation preview

Nancy Oestreich Lurie 1985

NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE

THOMAS J. BATA LIBRARY TRENT UNIVERSITY

Indian Lives

Milwaukee Public Museum

© 1985 Milwaukee Public Museum ISBN 0-89326-101-7

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lurie, Nancy Oestreieh. North American Indian lives. Includes bibliographies. 1. Indians of North America — Biography. I. Title. E89.L87 1985 970.004’97022 [B] 84-20566 ISBN 0-89326-101-7

Design Gregory Raab Photographic research Claudia Jacobson Typography Parnau Graphics Printing Inland Press Distribution University of Washington Press

Cover: “Meets His Squaw” ledger drawing from a book found at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, January 8, 1891 by Capt. R. Miller. Most of the drawings were done by Red Hawk, a Sioux. It was common practice for cavalrymen and others stationed at the western forts to give empty ledger books to Indians for drawing. Scenes depict war exploits, courtship and other subjects.

Contents

Introduction 1

Opechancanough

Powhatan

5

Weetamoo

Wampanoag

11

Pope

San Juan Pueblo

15

Pontiac

Ottawa

19

Handsome Lake

Seneca

23

Tecumseh

Shawnee

27

Black Hawk

Sauk

31

Saeajawea

Shoshone

37

Osceola

Seminole

41

Sequoyah

Cherokee

45

Chief Joseph

Nez Perce

49

Geronimo

Chiricahua Apache

55

Wovoka

Northern Paiute

61

Sitting Bull

Teton Sioux

67

Louis Riel

Ojibwe-Cree Metis

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/indianlivesOOOOIuri

Introduction The Europeans' arrival in North America posed a challenge that produced many Indian leaders who either tried to stem the tide of white advance or work out suitable ways of life for their people to co-exist with the newcomers. Besides having to cope with increasing numbers of Europeans and suffering population loss through armed conflict, the Indians faced an even deadlier enemy; diseases to which the Europeans had become relatively immune were utterly devastating when carried to the native peoples of the Americas. By 1900, the Indian population of North America had dwindled to less than 500,000 but it is only since about 1960 that scholars have begun to appreciate the enormous extent of population decrease. Until that time it was generally believed that in 1492 only 1,000,000 people inhabited the area north of Mexico to the Arctic coast. Now the most conservative estimates place the pre-Columbian population of the present United States and Canada at 10,000,000 and some researchers speculate that further study will show it to have been two, three or more times that number. The population statistics are being revised on the basis of various sources-, archeological excavations of sites which must have housed large concentrations of people, particularly in the Southeast and along the Atlantic coast; reassessments of population figures in historical documents relating to the earliest contacts between Indians and Europeans; and comparative studies of death rates among modern populations lacking immunity to newly introduced diseases. The wonder is that the native peoples offered any resistance to the Europen invaders in the face of wholesale loss ol life to strange maladies which often moved inland from tribe to tribe ahead ol the actual appearance of Europeans. Yet, fight they did, and they managed to obstruct and delay white expansion. The whole stoiy, however, entails more than simple Indian-white conflicts. England, France, Spain and eventually the United States and Mexico competed for control of territory in North America. Different groups of Indians allied themselves with one side or another as they believed their own interests would be served in the white nations

v

conflicts which went on intermittently from the 16th century to well into the 19th century. Some tribes had been at enmity before the Europeans arrived and tended to line up against each other accordingly as allies of different European powers. The Indians were interested in obtaining trade goods while trying to avoid domination by any nation with which they dealt. As long as whites struggled with each other, the tribes held a balance of power in choosing to identity with one white nation or another so none got the upper hand. In most cases, initial Indian-white contacts were amicable and mutually bene¬ ficial. Indian cultures were enriched by trade goods of all kinds which the tribes adapted to their own lifestyles. The Europeans were obliged to treat the tribes with respect if they wanted them as trading partners and military allies. Repeatedly, however, as the frontier advanced and settlers appropriated the tribes’ lands one after another, Indian leaders arose who saw the logic of putting aside old inter-tribal animosities to present a united front to preserve the Indian homeland in general. Many of those leaders tried to negotiate terms of co-existence with the whites before resorting to war to oppose white encroachment. The effectiveness of Indian resistance despite eventual defeat con¬ vinced the whites very early in the contact period that it would be cheaper in money and lives to enter into treaties to buy Indian land rather than tiy to annihilate the Indians. This approach was tempered by humanitarian considerations, of course, but the actual terms of many treaties, particularly in the late 18th and 19th centuries, re¬ flected the inability of the Americans and Canadians to estimate the Indians’ staying power. In order to “pacify” the tribes and get on with treaty business, the white treaty commissioners often made promises they did not expect to honor for veiy long because they believed the Indians were doomed to vanish as a people. About 1910, however, the decline of Indian population leveled off and began to show a steady increase which still continues. The present population of native North Americans is about 1,500,000. Consequently, the struggle for justice remains an Indian concern. Professionally trained Indian people,

sometimes wryly styling themselves “briefcase warriors,” work through the political and legal systems to deal with recurrent threats to tribal lands, resources and rights which were guaranteed in treaties and agreements the tribes made with the United States and Canada. Even when the Indian population was decreasing, the United States government became apprehensive about the binding force of treaties and in 1871 unilaterally decided to make no more Indian treaties although existing treaties were to remain in effect. Further negotia¬ tions were called agreements and were so much like treaties that many tribes were not immediately aware that they did not have the same legal stature as treaties. White settlement progressed more slowly in Canada, particularly in the northern regions, and Canada continued making treaties with Indian tribes until the 1920s. The following sketches begin with notable Indian people of the early 1600s and end with those whose lives extended into the 20th century. This collection by no means exhausts the list of people who might be included. The selections were made to give an overview of developments across the country. Most of the people described were war leaders and if the list were expanded the proportion of war leaders would be about the same. It is important to remember that fame was bestowed on these people by white writers of history who must depend on records kept by white contemporaries of the Indians in years past. Thinkers, religious leaders, artistic innovators and others who worked within their tribal systems and might have enjoyed fame among their own people usually escaped notice by white observers. We have reliable information on only a few individuals who were not war leaders such as Sequoyah, Handsome Lake and Wovoka. Wovoka probably would have remained an obscure footnote to history if the basically peaceful message of this Paiute visionary had not been carried to the Plains where it figured importantly in the final conflicts oi the Sioux. We know little about notable Indian women because most of the historical records were made by white men — missionaries, traders, government envoys and military personnel. They seldom perceived

vii

Wampum belts such as this Mahican example included symbols to help recall ceremonial information and important historical events among the northeastern tribes. The beads of the quahogclam shell were made with stone tools by the Indians and later with metal tools by the early Dutch and English colonists for the Indian trade. Wampum was used as “money” only by the whites because of a shortage of coins for small change in the colonies.

viii

the important roles played and the authority exercised by women in the social, political, economic, religious and esthetic aspects of tribal life. Even where there is documentary evidence concerning Indian women, historians long tended to disregard it except in connection with the lives of famous men. Pocahontas, for example, enjoys fame quite out of proportion to her historical importance because she al¬ legedly saved the life of Captain John Smith. Later, when she married John Rolfe, she was presented at the Court of St. James as a “princess” because the English translated her father’s title of leadership, weroance, as “king” in the European sense of the word. What is not generally known is that there were actual women chiefs who, as far as can be determined from available records, enjoyed the same pre¬ rogatives as their male counterparts among the member tribes of the confederacy presided over by Pocahontas’s father, Powhatan. Consid¬ ering the fact that Jamestown was settled in 1607, only four years after the death of Elizabeth I, it is curious that these female leaders evoked so little attention (and much of that concentrated on their manner of dress) in the narratives of Smith and his followers. There also were women chiefs among New England tribes and while records from that area, compared to Virginia, contain more references to specific women engaged in political leadership as well as trade and other activities which were exclusively male concerns among Europeans, this information received little scholarly attention until very recently. Weetamoo, whose story is told here, was one ol a number of women leaders among the New England tribes, and we have some interesting descriptive information about her thanks to the narrative of Mary Rowlandson who ended up as a captive servant in Weetamoo’s household during King Phillip’s War, 1675-1676. Un¬ aware that Weetamoo was a chief, Rowlandson wrote acerbically, “A severe and proud Dame she was, bestowing every day in diessing herself neat as much time as any ol the Gentry ol the land: powdering her hair, and painting her face, going with Neck-laces, with Jewels in her ears, and Bracelets upon her hands.

IX

Shortly after Rowlandson was ransomed and returned to her hus¬ band, she wrote her narrative as a record only for her family, but her survival among “the heathen” appeared to be such clear testimony to the intervention of divine providence that she was prevailed upon to publish it in 1682. Little wonder that Rowlandson could not com¬ prehend the independence of action of Indian women from the per¬ spective of her own culture. A lengthy introduction to her narrative by a male writer excused her for what was ordinarily unacceptable behavior for a woman: “ . . . this Gentlewomans modesty would not thrust it into the Press, yet her gratitude unto God made her not hardly perswadable to let it pass, that God might have his due glory ... I hope by this time none will cast any reflection upon this Gentlewoman, on the score of this publication of her affliction and deliverance.” The only other woman whose life is presented here is Sacajawea. Her name is familiar to most people and she too has a legitimate claim to enduring fame insofar as she helped guide the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806, but she did not come to historical notice until long after her death. Serious scholars are still trying to unravel the real facts of her life from the fictional nonsense spun about her when she finally attracted public attention. The following accounts are intended only as an introduction to the Indian side of frontier history. They deal with selected cases and can do no more than suggest the enormously complicated sweep of events as Europeans invaded and claimed the North American conti¬ nent. Indian persons we know by name and masses of now anonymous tribesfolk were caught in a struggle for survival and pursued courses of action that seemed logical from their perspective. Like all peoples in all times, they included some who put the larger interests of their societies ahead of personal advantage and some who concluded it was wiser to look out for themselves first as the larger interest would take care of itself or was already lost and not worth fighting for.

x

The quotations are drawn from “Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” in Lincoln, Charles H., ed. Narratives of the Indian Wars. 1675-1699, Barnes and Noble, Inc., New York, pp. 109-167. Suggested reading regarding recent research on Indian women: Grumet, Robert S. Sunksquaws, Shamans and Tradeswomen: Mid¬ dle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women During the 17th and 18th Centuries, in M. Etienne and E. Leacock, eds. Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, Praeger, New York, 1980, pp. 43-62. Albers, Patricia and Beatrice Medicine, eds. The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women, University Press of America, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1980. Actual statements by some of the individuals whose life stories are given here as well as statements by other notable American Indian people were compiled by W. C. Vanderwerth in Indian Ora tory, Famous Speeches by Noted Indian Chieftains, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1971.

XI

Mapof the Powhatan confederacy (shaded), early 17th century.

Opechancanough Ca. 1565-1645 The Virginian Indians were already familiar with Europeans when an English party of 105 men in three small sailing ships landed some distance up the James River in May of 1607 to begin building Fort James, later called Jamestown. Spanish and French ships had made brief landfalls along the Atlantic coast since the early 1500s and by 1565 Spain had begun the process of setting up permanent garrisons and mission stations in Florida. Twenty years later, the British tried to establish a colony on an island off the northern shore of what is now North Carolina just south of Virginia. The Roanoke colony had disappeared by 1686 and its fate remains a mystery but it is unlikely that the Virginia Indians were ignorant of this settlement. The Indian tribes that lived along the James and other rivers which drain from the Appalachian mountain chain into the Atlantic Ocean had substantial towns with complex social and religious institu¬ tions and extensive gardens. In 1607, the chief of the Pamunkey tribe, Powhatan, also was the paramount chief over five other allied tribes and was in the process of bringing about two dozen other Algonkian speaking tribes in the region into a confederacy in united opposition to incursions from more westerly tribes. The confederacy also was designed to create a network of tribute and trade for the distribution among the tideland and inland towns of the varied abundance of food from the sea, rivers and forests. When a small exploring party under Captain John Smith sailed upriver the Englishmen were treated hos¬ pitably at the Indian towns, including that of Powhatan. The chief was interested in trading with the whites, particularly for copper. By the spring of 1608, malnutrition, illness, accidents and Indian hostilities had reduced the number of colonists to less than forty men. Powhatan had returned force with force when the English tried to seize food rather than submit to his sharp bargaining. He was particu¬ larly outraged when the English tried to undermine his power and gain control over the region by conniving with tribes not yet tully committed to his confederacy. Yet, he saved the colonists from starving when he might have wiped them out — perhaps in the interests ol

1

trade and perhaps because he wanted these strangers with powerful new weapons as allies in his resistance to attacks by tribes from the west. As more settlers arrived, uneasy truces and trading were punctuated by occasional conflict until 1613 when the now numerous white colonists kidnapped Powhatan’s favorite daughter, Pocahontas, and held her hostage to assure peace on the part of her father. Pocahontas subsequently married John Rolfe, bore one son and died in England in 1617. Powhatan died the following year and was succeeded by his brother, Opechancanough. Meanwhile, the English settlers were beginning to appropriate more and more Indian land to grow tobacco, the colony's major export crop. Initially, the English government had tried to suppress the use of tobacco but it proved so popular in England that the government reassessed the situation and encouraged tobacco production, ap¬ preciating it could be a lucrative source of tax revenues and provide the colonists with cash to buy goods manufactured in England. Iron¬ ically, John Rolfe, whose marriage to Pocahontas was considered a means of maintaining amicable Indian-white relations through family ties, was a major promoter of tobacco growing which spurred the Indian-white conflict over land. Any tribes whose loyalty to Powhatan had been uncertain now accepted Opechancanough’s leadership as they recognized the need for unified action to stop white encroach¬ ment. The colonists were totally unprepared for Opechancanough’s sudden, carefully coordinated attack on all their scattered settlements and farms in the spring of 1622 when over 350 whites were killed. The colonists retaliated with unremitting attacks on the Indian towns for more than two years by which time the Indians appeared to be completely defeated. Opechancanough, nevertheless, had succeeded in forcing the whites to cluster along the coast for defense, leaving the interior land to the Indians. Eventually, the settlers again began to drift inland, ignoring In¬ dian protests to the colonial authorities, and again Opechancanough made secret plans. In the spring of 1644, he unleashed another mas-

2

sive, surprise attack in which nearly 500 whites were killed. The colonists regrouped and fell upon the Indians with the same l'uiy that followed the outbreak of 1622. The end of the hostilities in 1646 was marked by treaty negotiations which were to become a model for white policy regarding Indians for more than two centuries. The aged Opechancanough had died by this time and remaining chiefs of the dispersed confederacy signed a treaty with colonial officials who agreed to set aside certain areas as perpetual Indian homelands, the first reservations. In return, the Indians pledged peace with the colonists and alliance with them in the event of attack by Indian or white enemies. The Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes absorbed most of the remaining members of the confederacy, reduced from more than 10,000 people in 1607 to a few hundred by 1646. Their descendants still reside in Virginia on these old reservations, while other Indian enclaves persist in non-reservation communities, enduring legacies of Opechancanough's resistance.

Suggested reading: Smith, James Morton, ed., Seventeenth Century America, Univer¬ sity of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1959; esp. Wilcomb E. Washburn’s chapter, “The Moral and Legal Justifications for Disposses¬ sing the Indians,” pp. 15-32, and Nancy Oestreich Lurie’s chapter, “Indian Cultural Adjustment to European Civilization,” pp. 33-60.

3

Map of the Wampanoag confederated villages and neighboring groups, early 17th century.

4

Weetamoo 1638-1676 When the Pilgrims established their colony at Plymouth, Mas¬ sachusetts, in 1620 they were befriended by Massasoit, head sachem or chief of the confederated Wampanoag tribes. The New England Indians, like the tribes of the Powhatan confederacy, were Algonkian speaking villagers who subsisted on garden produce and a wide variety of natural resources from the rivers and woods. They were matrilineal, tracing descent through the female line, and matrilocal, that is, hus¬ bands moved into their wives' households. Groups of villages made up tribes which were allied in confederacies. There was a hierarchy of leadership from village to confederacy chiefs. Chieftanship was hereditary but the office went to the most able among those eligible to hold it, including women. Chiefs did not have dictatorial powers but won followers and maintained their loyalty by wisdom, ability to resolve disputes and exemplifying admirable traits of character. As anthropologist Robert Grumet explains, authority rested on “the power of persuasion rather than the persuasion of power.” Marriages between members of chiefly families helped to cement alliances between villages, tribes and even confederacies. Male leaders could have more than one wife but the first was always from a prom¬ inent family of another tribe to establish inter-group ties. Others could come from within his own group. He divided his time among the wives’ separate households which were maintained in their respective tribal villages. These tribes, like those of Virginia, wrere familiar with Europeans prior to the arrival of actual settlers. The Pilgrims were greeted in English by Squanto, an Indian who had been taken captive when a ship had stopped briefly in the area. lie spent some time in England before managing to board a ship to return home. As Massasoit s in¬ terpreter, Squanto told the Pilgrims they were welcome to settle in the country where they had landed because the tribal inhabitants had all died four years earlier — the result of an epidemic which we now know was of European origin. The Indians provided lood lor the Pilgrims to survive their first year and taught them how to raise corn,

beans and squash. In the interests of peace and trade, Massasoit gave up parcels of land as more colonists arrived from England. Massasoit died in 1662 and was succeeded by his first son, Wamsutta, whose wife, Weetamoo, was a sachem in her own right ol the Pocasset tribe of the Wampanoag Confederacy. Wamsutta died about a year later and Weetamoo subsequently married Quinnapin, the son of Ninigret, chief of the Niantic tribe of Wampanoags. The fact that she married a Niantic and that Quinnapin had two other waves did not diminish her status as the Pocasset leader. Ninigret’s sister, Quaiapan, was married to the son of a Narragansett tribal chief and was herself the leader of a village known as Queen's Fort north of the main Nairagansett village in Rhode Island. Another sister of Ninigret, Awashonks, was sachem of the Sakonnet Wampanoags. Wamsutta was succeeded by his brother, Metacom, who was married to Weetamoo’s sister. Metacom is better known by the name bestowed on him by the English, King Phillip. Relations between the Indians and the English were already be¬ coming strained toward the end of Massasoit’s life. The colonists had begun to grow European grains as well as Indian corn and were raising cattle which required extensive pasturage. As white pressure for land increased, conflict with the Indians was inevitable. Over the years the English had formed competitive colonies across Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. They began to make a point of paying Indians for land, only because these “deeds” could be used as evidence in court as the colonies expanded their territories and got into boundary disputes. The problem with the “deed game,” as the historian Francis Jennings terms it, was that the same or dif¬ ferent Indians sold the same land to people from different colonies. This created such confusion that laws were enacted stipulating that Indians had to be paid for their land to extinguish their title legally, at least from the English point of view, and that such transactions could only be carried out between representatives of the British crown and recognized tribal leaders. Much later, after American Indepen-

6

women sachems (chiefs)

Ni.s

Na.s

Niantic sachem

Canonicus

dence, this colonial procedure was incorporated into the American Constitution. Dealings with Indian tribes in regard to land are re¬ stricted to the federal government and not permitted to states or individuals. When Phillip became paramount sachem of the Wampanoags, he pursued a course of diplomacy and threats to oppose both further white expansion into Indian land and repressive Puritan laws which sought to confine Indians on reservations, convert them to Christianity as “praying Indians” and “civilize” them into a state of virtual serfdom to the colonists. He also tried to ally all the tribes in the region with the Wampanoag Confederacy in unified and, if necessary, hostile resis¬ tance to the colonists. Traditional enemy tribes held back but he won the support of the powerful Nip mucks of interior Massachusetts and the Narragansett Confederacy of Rhode Island whose head chief Canonchet played as important a role as Metacom in the hostilities known today as “King Phillip’s War.” Some of the Wampanoag chiefs distrusted Phillip’s leadership, however, and undertook coordinated hostilities before Phillip’s strategy was fully developed. Nor were all the Wampanoag convinced of the wisdom of engaging in hostilities. Awashonks tried to remain neutral but her people suffered at the hands ol the English and by the end of 1675, their desire for revenge lorced her to join Phillip’s cause. Weetamoo was among the Wam¬ panoag leaders who accepted Phillip’s strategy at the start and re¬ mained loyal to him. Colonial land speculators fanned the flames of war to justify rid¬ ding territory they coveted of Indian occupants. This spurred Phillip to action and during 1675 and the first months of 1676, his forces appeared to be gaining the upper hand, attacking fifty-two of the ninety white settlements and totally destroying twelve of them. In the spring ol 1676, Canonchet died and Quaiapin was killed while com¬ manding her 300 warriors from Queen’s Fort. Those losses marked the beginning of reverses for Phillip. The colonists enlisted traditional tribal enemies ol the Wampanoags and as the tide turned against

8

Phillip some allies of the Wampanoags defected as did some of the Wampanoag groups who decided their only hope of survival was to help the English overcome Phillip. Awashonks was among those who joined the English and thereby saved her followers the fate of captives who had remained loyal to Phillip, deportation into slavery in the West Indies. The colonists had gained an enormous advantage in managing to destroy most of the hostile Indians’ standing and stored crops. Without adequate supplies of food, Phillip's campaign was doomed. By the time Phillip and his remaining followers had withdrawn into hiding in his old home territory in the swamps east of the Taunton River in Massachusetts, his wife and child had been captured and sent to the West Indies. Traitorous Wampanoags led the colonial forces to Phillip’s camp where the final battle took place on August 12,1676, and Phillip was killed by a Wampanoag named Alderman. Weetamoo supported Phillip to the end, her force.of about 300 warriors reduced to thirty. She drowned in the Taunton Riveras she and her followers attempted to escape the English. Her head, like Phillip’s was brought back to Plymouth to be exhibited on a pole as a warning to any Indian leader contemplating rebellion against the English. In the following years, the colonists made little distinction be¬ tween former allies and enemies in King Phillip’s war as they forced the tribes to part with their remaining lands. Many of the surviving Indians moved farther west, fragments of former tribes regrouping as new tribes or becoming incorporated into other tribes, but little en¬ claves remained along the eastern seaboard, virtually forgotten by the whites. Racially mixed and adapted to the cultural patterns ot their white neighbors they, nevertheless, retain a strong sense ot commu¬ nity and tribal ancestry. In recent years, these groups have become increasingly visible, bringing old grievances about land losses before the courts. Since the 1960s, many of these groups have begun to assert their Indian identity among themselves and before the white public by holding powwows where costumes, dance and music borrow heavily

9

from the long established powwows of the Great Lakes and Plains tribes. The word powwow, however, came to the western tribes from these tribes of the eastern seaboard. Originally, it meant a religious leader, particularly a healer, but the whites also applied it to the ceremonies conducted by the powwow and the term passed into gen¬ eral English and Indian usage to mean a public performance of Indian song and dance. Suggested reading: Etienne, Mona and Eleanor Leacock, eds. Women and Coloniza¬ tion, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1980, examines the effects of European contact on women’s roles in native societies in various parts of the world, including a number of North American Indian groups, among them the New England tribes discussed in Robert Grumet’s article, “Sunksquaws, Shamans and Tradeswomen: Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian Women during the 17th and 18th centuries,” pp. 43-62. Jennings, Francis The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant ol Conquest, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975, is a very readable account of 17th century New England, including King Phillip's War, and is an important contribu¬ tion in the reassessment of native population statistics from that area.

10

?

Pope - 1688

The conquest of Mexico under the leadership of Hernan Cortez in 1519-1521 brought enormous wealth to Spain along with fortunes and titles to Spanish adventurers. Tales of yet more rich land and pagan Indians north of the Rio Grande River lured a succession of explorers and Franciscan missionaries. Although they returned empty-handed, the tales of gold persisted which prompted the Spanish crown to authorize Juan de Onate to establish a colony in New Mexico in 1598. Leading a retinue of several hundred people, including Spanish and hispanicized Mexican Indian settlers, soldiers and Fran¬ ciscan friars with their carts, goods, horses and cattle, Onate intro¬ duced Spanish rule and Roman Catholicism to the dozen or so Indian groups occupying some seventy villages, pueblos in Spanish, along the upper Rio Grande and to the Acoma, Zuni and Hopi pueblos farther west. Although the villages of clustered adobe dwellings resembled each other and shared broad cultural commonalities, the various pueblo societies operated quite independently with different forms of social organization. They also spoke different languages — Tanoan or Keresan dialects in the eastern pueblos, the unique Zuni language at Zuni, and Uto-Aztecan related to the Aztec language of Mexico at Hopi. When the Spanish invaders found only dusty, peaceful villages instead of gold, they sought to wrest wealth from Indian labor, forcing the agricultural pueblo peoples to produce food and crafts for local use and sale in the markets of Mexico. The Indians worked on large Spanish estates called encomiendas. The Franciscans built churches and often renamed pueblos after saints to which local churches were dedicated — San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso . . . Although the missionaries were opposed to the sometimes excessive brutality of the encomienda system they depended on Spanish soldiery to enforce acceptance of Christianity. In 1660 a serious drought brought more suffering to the Indians and at this time Pope, a religious leader and visionary of San Juan Pueblo, came into prominence. While preaching resistance to Spanish

11

rule and religion, the native leader attributed the Indians’ misfortune to the wrath of neglected gods. As Pope’s message won increasing Indian support, the Spanish rounded up and flogged Pope and nearly 50 other traditional leaders and then imprisoned them. Their release was won in an angry confrontation with the Spanish governor in Santa Fe on the part of a delegation of Christian Indians who, despite their conversion, were outraged at the Spanish treatment of their respected elders. The Spaniards’ apparent fear of open revolt strengthened Pope’s hand. Ironically, it was the Indians’ widespread learning of Spanish as a second language to deal with colonial authorities which facilitated the dissemination of Pope’s message among the linguistically diverse pueblos. Pope was shrewd and ruthless in ridding his ranks of traitors as he planned a simultaneous attack on all the Spanish settlements and missions. The Indians struck on August 11, 1680, killing over 400 colonists while the rest, about 2,000, lied to the safety of the Mexican border near El Paso. The horses abandoned by the fleeing Spanish were to have significant consequences for Indian peoples far beyond the pueblo area. A tough breed evolved in the wild to supply mounts for the southwestern Indians who traded them or lost them in raids to more northerly tribes on the Plains. Little is known about Pope except that he was past middle age at the time of the revolt and had died before the Spanish succeeded in reoccupying the area under the leadership of Diego de Vargas in 1692. Indian reports obtained by the Spanish indicate that Pope had tried but failed to keep the pueblos under his control by methods reminis¬ cent of the Spanish overlords. The uprising of 1680 at least taught the Spaniards the folly of coercive measures when they again established sovereignty over the area. The encomienda system was abandoned and the church's power was curtailed. After some initial hostilities, peaceful coexistence pre¬ vailed between the Spanish and pueblo Indians by the 18th century because they needed each other in common defense against Apache

12

raiders. The pueblos incorporated many Spanish items into their ma¬ terial culture and evolved various combinations of native and Spanish forms into their government and religious practices. When AngloAmericans gained control of the Southwest after 1847, the pueblo groups accepted further innovations from these newcomers while continuing to maintain their social integrity as they had under Spanish rule. For further information on the pueblo groups and Pueblo Revolt:

Ortiz, Alfonso, ed. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 9, Southwest, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1979. Ortiz, Alfonso. “Popay’s Leadership: A Pueblo Perspective.” El Palacio, Magazine of the Museum of New Mexico, Vol. 86, pp. 18-22. Folsom, Franklin. Red Power on the Rio Grande, Follett Publish¬ ing Co., Chicago, 1974.

In 1980 the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Great Pueblo Revolt. This poster by Parker Boyiddle commemorates that heritage.

GREAT PUEBLO REVOLT TRI-CENTENNIAL !

13

Silver ornaments and medals were common symbols of alliance given by European govern¬ ments to Indian dignitaries. The crescent-shaped gorget was adapted from military insignia. As the fur trade increased so did the use of silver ornaments as a commodity and silver brooches became very popular.

14

Pontiac 1720-1769 While the English were settling the eastern seaboard in the 17th century, French explorers moved quickly to claim the interior of the continent, employing skill in diplomacy to win the Indians’ loyalty against British interests in the western Great Lakes and along the Mississippi Valley. French traders married into the tribes, reinforcing Indian allegiance to the French with ties of kinship. The French gradu¬ ally built forts throughout the territory they claimed and encouraged friendly tribes to relocate near them to help resist hostilities from the Leaque of the Iroquois and westward expansion of the British fur trade. By the time Pontiac was born in 1720 at an Ottawa village near Fort Detroit, the Great Lakes tribes had experienced nearly a century of European contact and depended on trade with the whites for weapons and many domestic and decorative goods. Most of the tribes friendly to the French were Algonkian speakers — Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Miami, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo and others, but also included the Huron and other Iroquoian groups not allied with the League of the Iroquois and Siouan speakers such as the Win¬ nebago. Both the French and British tried to win Indian allies and trading partners by extending credit to Indian trappers and giving quantities of goods to tribal leaders to distribute to their tribesfolk. The latter practice tended to invest chiefs with more power than they traditionally exercised prior to European contact. Organized conflict between France and England in North America, the so-called French and Indian Wars, paralleled a sporadic series of four wars fought simultaneously in Europe between 1689 and 1763. Territorial gains in the New World often were bargained away at treaty negotiations in which European affairs were the paramount concern. From the Indian perspective, French and British claims to sovereignty in North America remained unchanged after each set of hostilities. The Indians had little reason to think it would be otherwise in the ensuing final conflict, the Seven Years War which actually lasted from 1754 until 1763. The Anglo-Franco struggle ended in North America in 1760 with England the victor under the leadership of Sir Jeffrey

15

Amherst. Amherst despised the Indians and saw no need to continue curiying their favor when the French were no longer a threat. He decreed that credit be severely limited and gift giving abolished. The Indians suffered material hardships from these edicts and, further¬ more, resented British arrogance. The tribes listened with intrigued interest to French traders who continued in business under the En¬ glish and spread rumors that France was preparing to move troops up the Mississippi from the territory it still held in Louisiana. Meanwhile, an Indian known today only as the Delaware Prophet was exhorting the tribes to put aside their differences and unite against all whites. The prophet’s message influenced Pontiac who interpreted its meaning to ally with the French against the British. Pontiac appears to have held no traditional chiefly title but by 1760 had won wide inter-tribal support through his oratorical skills and reputation as a courageous warrior in the recently terminated contlicts. By mid-May of 1763, eighteen tribes from Lake Ontario to the Mississippi had responded to Pontiac’s call for warriors and by June 21 had defeated the British garrisons in seven former French forts with the remaining two, Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit, under siege. Sieges were not the Indian style of fighting, thereby enabling the British to break the stalemate at Fort Pitt by August. At Detroit, however, Pontiac himself was in charge and proved to be a determined strategist. When he and his warriors had been unable to take the fort by the ruse of a supposedly friendly visit, lie then decided on a siege and maintained it through the summer and fall. The Ottawa leader managed to hold his increas¬ ingly reluctant forces together by stressing his expectations that the French would send reinforcements. Finally, on October 23, a French officer from Louisiana persuaded Pontiac that the French king wished to end the war. Pontiac lifted the siege but when his message to talk about peace with the fort commander was ignored, he left Detroit and spent the next two years attempting without success to stir up the tribes south of the Ohio Valley against the British. Realizing that his own followers were so in

16

need ol manufactured goods that they had begun trading with the British, Pontiac formally declared peace in 1765. Although Pontiac kept his word, the whites still feared him, prompting Amherst’s far shrewder successor, Sir Thomas Gage, to treat Pontiac with such favoritism as to incite jealousy among his former allies and completely discredit him as a leader. Pontiac took up residence in the Illinois country and in 1769 was murdered by a Peoria Indian for undeter¬ mined reasons at the small French community of Cahokia on the Mississippi River. Historians disagree whether Pontiac was the mastermind of a far Hung tribal conspiracy or whether the widespread attacks of 1763 were more a reflection of simultaneous, localized Indian dissatisfac¬ tions with the British. These different interpretations can be compared in: Parkman, Francis History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, Boston, 1868, and Peckham, Howard H. Pontiac and the Indian Uprising, Princeton, 1947.

17

The Iroquois used wampum belts and other devices such as this carved stick to help remember historic events, stories and prayers.

18

Handsome Lake 1749-1815 Handsome Lake’s stoiy typifies Iroquois history in which prophets appear to guide the people through critical times. The first was Hiawatha whose name is familiar because H. W. Longfellow took poetic liberties in using it for a very different character based on legends of Algonkian, not Iroquoian, speaking peoples. He is properly called Winneboujou, Manabus, Manabozlio or other variants depending on the Algonkian dialect. The true Hiawatha, prior to the arrival of Europeans, was directed bv a spirit, Dekanawida, to persuade the Iroquoian speak¬ ing tribes to give up war among themselves and unite in a League of Peace. Five tribes located east to west along the St. Lawrence River heeded Hiawatha — the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. They likened their confederacy to a long house, the traditional Iroquois dwelling occupied by daughters’ families. Among the Iroquois, descent is reckoned through the maternal line. Each tribe, like each household in a long house, was fairly inde¬ pendent but had duties to the League as a whole and was represented at League deliberations by specified numbers of male chiefs who were appointed by their female elders. These women also could depose them for cause. Women owned the products of their extensive fields of corn, beans and squash and participated in political decision mak¬ ing, including the initiation and termination of wars. First armed by Dutch traders in New York and later by the English, the League began expanding its territory in 1642 in an effort to control the fur trade as far as the Western Great Lakes. The League fought both Algonkian and non-League Iroquoian tribes allied with the French. In 1653, the League extended its campaigns too far from its food supply and was finally beaten back by a combined force of its enemies, but the Iroquois incursions resulted in permanent shifts of location of many Ohio Valley and Great Lakes tribes. From about 1687 until 1763, France and Britain fought intermit¬ tently for control of North America. Both nations sought trading and military alliances with the League Iroquois who, contrary to popular interpretations that they always sided with the English, exercised

19

great skill in maintaining a balance of power in the Europeans’ wars. When Britain finally prevailed over France and was then soon faced with rebellious American colonists, League chiefs favored neutrality in what they considered a family squabble among the English. War leaders who were not League chiefs thought otherwise, however, and broke the rule of unanimity in League decisions. Handsome Lake, born in 1749, witnessed the growing dissension among the League tribes. The Mohawk sided with the British under the leadership of Thayendanegea, also called Joseph Brant, who was English educated, the brother-in-law of the British Indian Superintendent, Sir William Johnson, and a colonel in the British army. The Tuscarora, an Iroquoian tribe from the South and the last admitted member into the League in 1715, and the Oneida allied with the Americans. Al¬ though the remaining tribes remained officially neutral, individuals from all six tribes fought on the British side. When the American Revolution ended, the Mohawk and other Iroquois loyal to the British fled to reservations provided for them in Canada. Those Iroquois who remained in their homelands in what became the United States soon faced pressure from the Americans to part with large amounts of territory. To the Americans it made no difference if the people had fought on their side or remained neutral. With the power of the League broken, the Iroquois experienced a period of extreme political disorganization, poverty and general de¬ moralization. Handsome Lake, a Seneca whose name was really a League chief title, lived among those who had fallen into despair. In 1799 he fell seriously ill and experienced the first of several visions in which spirits directed him to reunite the Iroquois. He preached that the Iroquois should lead sober and moral lives, return to the faithful practice of their old religion and reaffirm their commitment to the League. In order for the Iroquois to survive under changed cir¬ cumstances, he also preached the need to learn new skills from the whites to replace the lost roles of trappers, traders and warriors. He

20

found eager followers and when he died in 1815, they codified and continued to spread his message, the Gaiwiio or “Good Word,” revitaliz¬ ing Iroquois society to cope with misfortunes while maintaining Iroquois values and identity. Today, of the more than 20,000 Iroquois in the United States and Canada, about a quarter are regidar practitioners of the Long House Religion, much of it based on the ancient beliefs and rituals long antedating Handsome Lake. Many other Iroquois who are members of Christian denominations also attend Long House ceremonies and accept the Gaiwiio as part of their religious philosophy. The sense of League identity is maintained as members of the League tribes attend one another’s ceremonies. For a fascinating account of Handsome Lake and an overview of Iroquois history and culture, see: Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1970.

21

This engraving of Tecumseh is based on a pencil sketch done ca. 1808 by a French trader, Pierre Le Dru, at Vincennes. Note the peace medal. The French, British and American governments gave medals to Indian leaders to signify peace and friendship and commemorate important occasions.

Tecumseh

1768-1813 According to all accounts, Tecumseh was an extraodinary man — intellectual, humane, a brilliant orator, not lacking in a sense of humor, physically attractive and a shrewd military strategist. Ilis de¬ feat was due more to his Indian associates' impatience and his British allies' incompetence than it was to his enemies’ prowess in war. Tecumseh was born at the Shawnee town of Old Piqua near modern Dayton, Ohio. He grew up and gained distinction as a warrior in the tumultuous times when the United States attempted to take actual control over the Old Northwest it had won from England in the Amer¬ ican Revolution — the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi¬ gan and Wisconsin. Land speculators and settlers poured into the region, provoking Indian hostilities by ignoring the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which called for first extinguishing Indian title by purchase. The United States sent military units to quell frontier disturbances and were defeated in several large scale engagements, including the greatest victory ever scored by the Indians. Under the leadership ol the Miami chief Little Turtle, well over 600 men commanded by General Arthur St. Clair were slain on the upper Wabash River in 1791. Finally, in 1794, General Anthony Wayne won a decisive victory over the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio. The following summer, after two months of discussion, threats, bargaining and bribery, the Treaty ol Greenville was signed by malle¬ able leaders of twelve tribes who ceded much of Ohio, a large segment of Indiana and the sites of Detroit, Chicago, Peoria and Toledo for less than $30,000. Tecumseh rejected the treaty, realizing that the United States intended to wear down tribe after tribe to sell land until it all would be gone and the Indians would be swept away. His call for unified resistance, however, went far beyond similar efforts by Pontiac and others both in philosophy and long range objectives. The land, Tecumseh argued, could no more be sold in parcels than the aii, the clouds and the great sea.” Inspired by the League of the Iroquois and the formation of the United States itself, Tecumseh envisioned an

23

Indian nation, the political equivalent of the United States. With his brother, Tenskwatawa, known as the Shawnee Prophet, and other dedicated followers, Tecumseh spread this message not only throughout the Old Northwest but as far south as the Gulf of Mexico and across the Mississippi. The tribes were urged to forget old enmities, refuse to sign treaties, remain resolute in the face of material tempta¬ tions and be prepared to fight if necessary. Although there were doubters among the tribes who rebuffed Tecumseh and more treaties were signed, his arguments won broad acceptance. Warriors were told to begin assembling at Prophet’s Town on the Tippecanoe River in Indiana. The plan was to concentrate a show of force to prevent surveyors from entering the recently ceded land and tiy to negotiate. The Indians were to hold their fire for a coordinated battle plan if war was the only alternative. While Tecumseh was away seeking more reinforcements, his brother ignored his wisdom and allowed the assembled warriors to be drawn into firing on troops stationed near Prophet’s Town by William Heniy Harrison on November 6, 1811. The Indians were routed. Tecumseh returned in March ot 1812 to find Prophet's Town destroyed and the whole territory erupting into the kind of unplanned retaliatory attacks by Indians which he had tried to avoid, including what he most abhorred, the torture and lulling of prisoners. Harrison believed the Indians were instigated by the British but it was Tecumseh who appealed to the British for help at Fort Malden across the Detroit River in Canada when his original plans were dis¬ rupted and the United States and England were entering their final conflict for control of the Old Northwest. In the War of 1812, Tecumseh found a friend and astute colleague in arms in Isaac Brock, Lt. Gover¬ nor of Canada. Their combined Canadian and Indian forces won a series of stunning victories, including the surrender of Detroit. In the meantime, Tecumseh’s allies had taken forts throughout the North¬ west while south of the Ohio Rivera large faction of the Creek Indians, known as Red Sticks, who were hostile to the Americans also joined

24

his cause. Brock was killed in battle in the Niagara area and was replaced by General Henry Proctor, a foolish and weak man whose bungling and cowardice soon destroyed all that Brock and Tecumseh had achieved as the Americans carried the war into Canada. Tecumseh’s cause was already lost when he fell, still fighting, at the Battle of the Thames River north of Lake Erie on October 5,1813, but his message that the land belonged to all Indians and could not be divided and sold was reiterated, albeit futilely, at treaty parlays for decades to come. A recent well-written work is R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh, Bos¬ ton, Little, Brown, 1983.

The pipe tomahawk is one of the most enduring symbols of the American Indian. Of European manufacture, they were common trade items but also important for presentations. This one is believed to have been given to Tecumseh from Col. Proctor in 1812.

This portrait of Black Hawk is one of the famous lithographs from Indian Tribes of North America, 1836-44 by McKenney and Hall.

26

Black Hawk 1767-1838 In 1804, a delegation of Sank and Fox leaders journeyed to St. Louis to make reparations for a recent hostile incident. Historical evidence makes clear that they had no idea that the document they signed was a treaty ceding most of western Illinois, the southwest corner of Wisconsin and a strip along the Mississippi in Missouri. Black Hawk’s initially peaceful efforts to challenge the legality of this land sale led to a bitter and bloody conflict in 1832. Black Hawk was born in 1767 at the large Sauk village of Saukenuk on the Rock River, the present site of Rock Island, Illinois. He won war honors in his youth and later responded to Tecumseli’s call to arms. When the War of 1812 ended, a rising Sauk leader, Keokuk, renounced his loyalty to the British and, with American support, became head chief of the allied Sauk and Fox tribes. He counseled his people to accept the questionable treaty of 1804 to avoid bloodshed and move permanently to their hunting grounds in Iowa. Black Hawk rejected Keokuk’s leadership and with his “British Band” returned each spring to live and plant gardens at Saukenuk. In 1831, he finally agreed to relinquish his claim to the Saukenuk area on the govern¬ ment’s promise of corn to see his band through the coming winter in Iowa because settlers had prevented the Indians from planting their gardens in Illinois. When the promised corn was not delivered and his people suf¬ fered, Black Hawk felt he was no longer bound by the agreement. The following spring, he again led his band of about 2,000 people including several hundred mounted warriors, across the Mississippi. His second in command, Neapope, and a prophet, White Cloud, of mixed Sauk and Winnebago ancestiy, encouraged Black Hawk with wishful fabri¬ cations that Winnebago and Potawatomi bands upstream on the Rock River would help him and that the English were again preparing to fight the Americans. Upon receiving word that troops were ready to oppose him, Black Hawk bypassed Saukenuk and moved up the Rock River where he soon realized that he had been misled by Neapope and White Cloud.

27

Learning that soldiers were nearby, he sent a delegation under a white flag to negotiate a peaceful return of his band to Iowa. Nervous volunteers under Major Isaiah Stillman fired on the delegation and attempted to storm the Sauk band. Black Hawk hastily formed an ambush and routed the whites in the “Battle of Stillman s Run.” This unexpected victory inspired little independent parties of Pbtawatomi, Winnebago, Sauk and Fox to attack isolated settlers. With the frontier suddenly in an uproar, an enormous military campaign was mounted against Black Hawk who led his band in a circuitous retreat in an attempt to reach and cross the Mississippi. After an inconclusive en¬ gagement on the Wisconsin River near the present city of Madison, Wisconsin, where Black Hawk’s efforts to surrender were not heeded, some of the band separated off to escape downstream but were cut off near Prairie du Chien. The rest continued with Black Hawk, guided by friendly Winnebago through what was their territory. Leaving a trail of belongings and exhausted dead along the way, the band finally reached the mouth of the Bad Axe River north of Prairie du Chien. When the steamboat Warrior appeared, Black Hawk again tried to surrender but his words were not understood. He then advised his followers to retreat north and inland but the majority attempted to cross the Mississippi. Cut off by the Warrior in midstream and with troops behind them, most of these people perished. On the west bank, a waiting band of Sioux, traditional enemies of the Sauk, killed or captured virtually all of the Sauk who had made it across the river. Black Hawk found safety among the Winnebago who pro¬ vided him with an escort to Fort Crawford at Prairie du Chien where he surrendered. He was imprisoned briefly and then taken on a tour of eastern cities to see the futility of opposing the Americans' power. Properly impressed, he returned to Iowa but he had the last word. In 1833, he decided to dictate his autobiography to a government interpreter, An¬ toine Le Claire. A newspaperman, John B. Patterson, improved on Le Claire s grammar and published the account. For many years it was

28

discredited as a hoax because the white public would not believe an uneducated Indian could tell such an eloquent stoiy of his fight for justice. Later research, however, has established from various details that it must be Black Hawk's own narrative. For Black Hawk’s stoiy with historical verifications, see: Jackson, Donald, ed. The Autobiography of Black Hawk, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1964.

These sauk bags are typical of the containers used by the Woodland tribes to hold food, clothing, medicines and religious paraphernalia. They are netted with a continuous weft rather than woven on a loom. The materials include a variety of natural plant fibers and buffalo hair yarn. Later bags were made with wool yam obtained from traders.

29

The Cascades of the Columbia River were a major obstacle for the Lewis and Clark Expedition and one of the most hazardous they maneuvered. Once past these waterfalls and rapids they were able to see the Pacific Ocean, and as Clark said, . . the object of all our labors, the regard of all our anxieties.”

30

Sacajawea ca. 1787-1812 When Napoleon sold the vast, vaguely defined Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was already making plans to explore the area. He hoped to counter the influence of British traders among the western tribes because American traders soon would need new sources of peltry as the Old Northwest became settled. The expedition leaders. Captains Meriwether Lewis and Will¬ iam Clark, were to find the source of the Missouri River, locate a route from there to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River, collect speci¬ mens of all kinds for later scientific study and kike detailed notes about the Indian tribes, geography, plants, animals and other matters of importance in the nations's new domain. Besides keeping their own journals, Levis and Clark encouraged any literate members of their party to keep diaries to insure as complete a record as possible if any of their own notes were lost in the arduous undertaking. The two leaders were well informed about their route on the lower Missouri and lower Columbia Rivers through study of maps and jour¬ nals from French, British and Spanish sources. The big unknown concerned the terrain and tribes between the eastward and westward flowing rivers, the continental divide. Lewis and Clark and a crew of forty frontiersmen, including one Black man, York, set out by boat on the Missouri River from St. Louis on May 14, 1804. In late October the party finally reached the Mandan villages of dome shaped earth lodges in western North Dakota where they spent the winter. There they met Sacajawea, a young Shoshone woman who a few years earlier, at about the age of fourteen, had been captured by the Hidatsas, allies of the Mandans. Her tribe lived in the very area for which the explorers had no information. To procure her help, however, Lewis and Clark also had to take along her recently born son, Jean-Baptiste, nicknamed Pomp, and her husband, a “Mon¬ trealer” named Toussaint Charbonneau. He was of some use as an interpreter with the Missouri River tribes but his general ineptness and sense of self importance made him something of a dead weight on the work of the expedition. Charbonneau’s domestic arrangements

31

also contributed to later historical questions about Sacajawea’s years after the expedition. Besides Sacajawea, he had another Shoshone wife, Otter Woman, who remained among the Mandan. The polygam¬ ous family was reunited when the expedition returned to the Mandans and they did not complete the final leg of the journey. When the rest of the party arrived in triumph at St. Louis on September 23, 1806, and Lewis and Clark then went on to report to President Jefferson, the maps and scientific discoveries of the journey received great attention. The daily journals, however, were virtually forgotten and with them, Sacajawea. The scattered manuscripts finally were assembled, edited and published as a centennial observance of the expedition. Since that time Sacajawea has emerged as something of a national heroine, depicted in statuary and paintings as artists imagined her appearance since no real likeness of her exists. As the subject of sensationalized historical fiction and romanticized history, her role as guide and interpreter has been glorified arrd exaggerated in accounts that also depict her lot in life in terms of white stereotypes of the misused, overworked “squaw.” What can be reconstructed of the reality ol Sacajawea shows her to have been very competent in ways which mattered among Indian people. She was highly observant and self-sufficient and knew how to live off the land. Where she played a crucial role, as Lewis arrd Clark had hoped would be the case, was irr being able to recognize landmarks irr country she had not seen since she was little more than a child. She carr be credited with the success of the expedition irr knowing the terrain and speaking the language of the people irr the overland segment of the journey. Through her personal contacts irr the Shoshone band over which her brother had become the chief and through her instruc¬ tion ol the whites irr the niceties of Shoshone etiquette, the expedition was able to procure horses trot only for transport but for “portable soup” where game was sparse in the uplands. Sacajawea’s Shoshone kin provided a guide to the Nez Perce country farther west. There the exhausted party received hospitable care during an extended stay

The Shoshone, Sacajawea’s people, played an important role as a center for the trading and distribution of horses to other tribes. Saddlebags such as these were either thrown over the saddle and sat upon or tied behind the saddle.

33

while they built dug-outs to proceed down the Clearwater River to the Columbia and thence to its mouth on the Pacific coast. They arrived early in November of 1805 and built cabins to spend the winter, calling their camp Fort Clatsop after the local Indian tribe. The party began the return journey on March 23, 1806, retracing their route to just west of the present site of Bozeman, Montana. At that point, the leaders decided to separate into two parties in the interests of expanding their explorations and would reunite at the juncture of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Lewis and his men took a northerly route along the Missouri and Clark and his men and Sacajawea followed an overland, more southerly route. Despite her long absence from the area, Sacajawea quickly recognized country where she had gone with her people to gather camas roots, a staple food plant. In his journal, Clark acknowledged her enormous help as a guide, particularly in leading the party through a mountain pass now known as the Bozeman Pass, which eased the rigors of travel in rugged terrain. Sacajawea shared the dangers, deprivations, hardships and azards ot an epic journey. The exploring partv benefited from her survival skills as a knowledgeable and capable Indian woman Her very presence, a woman with a small child, probably contributed to the expedition’s safety by giving credence to the leaders’ statements to tribes along the way that they came in peace. Sacajawea’s activities after the expedition are unknown until 1811 when she and Charbonneau brought Pomp to St, Louis where Clark was the regional superintendent of Indian affairs. Clark had become veiy fond ot Pomp, “the dancing boy,” during the journey. He had offered to see to Pomp’s education and his parents had decided to take up ins offer which he fulfilled. A notation in Clark s papers accerrt^that’sa n0t lon* after thls visit Most historians accep that Sacajawea died young, but another version of her storv is old

SnG ret™.ed to the Shoshone and was nearly one hundred yeLs w en she died. The problem centers around Charbonneau’s two

34

Shoshone wives. Those who favor the view that Sacajawea lived a long time argue that Otter Woman died young and Clark possibly was in¬ formed only to the effect that Charbonneau's wife had died and as¬ sumed this meant Sacajawea. Accounts of people wiio allegedly knew Sacajawea in her old age are marshalled to support this view and perhaps they are true, but it is difficult to imagine Clark making such a mistake. We knowr Sacajawea only from sparse and scattered refer¬ ences in the various journals of the expedition and most of these, certainly the most informative, were made by Clark. Clark’s continuing responsibility for Pomp would also suggest that he would have ascer¬ tained that it was the boy’s own mother who had died rather than Charbonneau's other Shoshone wife. A useful study which draws together references to Sacajawea in the Lewis and Clark papers can be found in : Harold, Howard Sac¬ ajawea, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1971. An argument for Sacajawea’s long life, including use of a variant spelling of her name: Clark, Ella E. and Margot Edmonds Sacaja wea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1979.

35

Osceola portrait by George Catlin. Osceola is wearing military-style gorgets and a “big shirt,” a traditional garment of Seminole men.

36

Osceola 1804?-1838 European incursions in North America led to shifts of residence for many tribes and the creation of new tribal entities from remnants of other tribes. A case in point is the Seminoles whose name comes from the Spanish word cimarron meaning undomesticated or runa¬ way. The native tribes of Florida, already greatly reduced in numbers by European diseases, were virtually annihilated in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by settlers from the Carolinas aided by Creek Indian allies. During that period, some of the Creeks began moving into the depopulated area from their homeland in Georgia and Alabama. They absorbed the remaining Florida natives and estab¬ lished new settlements on the Creek pattern of central town squares. Before the end of the 18th century these relocated Creeks were already designated Seminoles by the whites. By this time, the rest of the Creeks had formed a loose confederacy of southeastern tribes speaking a number of closely related Muskogean dialects. They maintained their tradition of matrilineal descent in inheritance generally and in succession to leadership which included some people of more white than Indian ancestry because only the female, Indian line mattered. The fact of white kin, however, meant that in time the Creek Confederacy was strongly influenced by Euro¬ pean concepts of government and material culture. The Confederacy was rent apart by the War of 1812. The Upper or northern Creeks, called Red Sticks, were persuaded by Tecumseh to ally with the British while the Lower or White Stick Creeks fought on the side of the Americans. At the end of the war, many Red Sticks, including Osceola’s people whose homeland was in Alabama, joined the Seminoles in Florida. Besides being a haven for Red Stick Creeks, Spanish-held Florida had long been a refuge for runaway American slaves. While usually allied with the Indians and sometimes serving as interpreters, these Black people generally maintained their own communities. An ostens¬ ible American effort to recover escaped slaves and halt Indian raids on the Florida-Georgia border gave rise to the First Seminole War in

37

1817 and resulted in the United States wresting Florida from Spain two years later which had been the real reason for the hostilities in the first place. In 1823, the scattered Seminole groups representing two distinct Muskogean languages signed a treaty with the United States ceding all of Florida except for a large reservation in the south central portion comprising the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp where they all agreed to settle. Hostilities persisted, however, as the Indians retaliated against white settlers who raided the reservation for escaped slaves and made no distinction between them, freed Blacks, Blacks purch¬ ased as slaves by the Indians and the Indians themselves. When President Andrew Jackson initiated his policy to move all eastern Indians west of the Mississippi River, some Seminole leaders, weaiy of the situation in Florida, signed a treaty in 1832 providing for their emigration to Oklahoma. The treaty was not acceptable to all the Seminoles and many were unwilling to share land in Oklahoma with their former enemies, the White Sticks. Osceola, who held no official chiefly position, came into prominence at this time as the leader of the Seminoles opposed to removal. He became a central figure in the Second Seminole War which lasted from 1835 until 1842. This war cost the United States over $50,000,000 and the lives of more than 2,000 soldiers and failed to rid Florida of the Seminoles. There is no solid documentary proof of the famous story that in 1834 Osceola defiantly plunged his dagger through a treaty agreeing to removal to Oklahoma, but there is irrefutable evidence that a des¬ perate American general, Thomas Jesup, captured Osceola when he appeared under a flag of truce in 1837 to hold a conference near St. Augustine. There were many white Americans who disapproved of the government policy of Indian removal and Osceola’s seizure in disregard ol the white flag brought widespread criticism in the press and evoked many literary outpourings sympathetic to Osceola’s cause. Osceola was imprisoned at Fort Marion and then was sent with other Seminole captives to Fort Moultrie near Charleston, South

38

Carolina. He was seriously ill at the time ol liis capture and his health continued to deteriorate rapidly. The artist, George Catlin, came to Fort Moultrie and painted Osceola’s portrait shortly before his death on January 30, 1838. In 1842, the government officially terminated the war after man¬ aging to remove over 4,000 Seminoles to Oklahoma. Fewer than 300 held out in the fastnesses of the Everglades and though a few of them were rounded up and deported in the Third Seminole War of 18551859, over 200 again eluded capture. After 1870, the government set aside four small reservations in Florida for these determined people but some of the agreements relating to Seminole lands did not become final until the 1960s and took cognizance of the fact that the nearly 1,500 Seminoles still comprised two distinct dialect groups, the Mikasukes in eastern Florida and the Seminoles proper in the central area. For an account of Seminole history see: Sturtevant, William C., “Creek into Seminole,” in Leacock, Eleanor B. and Nancy Oestreich Lurie, eds., North American Indians in Historical Perspective, Random House, New York, 1971, and Josephy, Alvin M. The Patriot Chiefs, The Viking Press, New York, 1971, pp. 175-208, for a more extensive biog¬ raphy of Osceola.

39

This portrait shows Sequoyah wearing a peace medal and syllabary. The source for this lithograph is believed to be a painting done in 1828 by C.B. King.

40

Sequoyah 1760?-1843 Although North American Indians conveyed information with pic¬ tures, they did not have true writing in which an arbitrary symbol stands for a sound. Sequoyah’s fame rests on the fact that he developed an original system for writing an Indian language. His people, the Cherokees, were one of four major tribes which dominated the South¬ east in the 18tli century. Cherokee territory included most of the Carolinas and parts of Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. To the west were tribes of the Creek Confederacy and beyond them the Choctaws and Chickasaws, all speaking Muskogean languages in contrast to Cherokee which is distantly related to Iroquoian. All four groups were matrilineal, tracing family and tribal membership and the succession of leadership through the female line, and were similar in village organization, religion and material traits. For all that, the groups often were at enmity with each other and not always internally united as tribes when negotiating military and trading alliances with the British, Spanish, French and, later, the Americans. As the Americans gained control in the Southeast, the Indian tribes were deprived of the power to play off competing white nations to their own advantage. After 1790, some of the Cherokee recognized the precariousness of their position and began a voluntary migration to Arkansas, but most of the southeastern groups sought to coexist with the Americans and accommodate to American culture while maintaining their tribal identities. The Cherokee attempted to join the union as a state and developed a constitutional form of govern¬ ment, courts, schools, improved roads and other appropriate institu¬ tions. The only way they could keep records was through the use of English writing by educated bilinguals, although most of the people did not speak English. About 1809, Sequoyah, also known as George Guess, conceived the idea of writing Cherokee. He grasped the principle that symbol equals sound but, speaking only Cherokee, he was not influenced by the English alphabet which had evolved over several centuries in the eastern Mediterranean area and slowly spread into Europe where it

41

was adapted to a variety of languages. Sequoyah took a unique ap¬ proach and invented a syllabary rather than an alphabet. He deter¬ mined that Cherokee consists of eighty-seven distinctive clusters of sounds, combinations of vowels and consonants. These syllables, standing alone or strung together, form all the words of the Cherokee language. He copied a few English letters from an old spelling book, facing some of them backwards or upside down, but most of the symbols were of his own design. His achievement is the only known case of a single individual creating a completely new system of writing. He became so obsessed with his work during the twelve years it took him to perfect his syllabary that his friends and even members of his family thought he was crazy or accused him of witchcraft. Only his young daughter, Aliyokah, shared his dream and learned the syl¬ labary. In 1821, Sequoyah held a public test, asking a group of Cherokee leaders to dictate any phrases they wished. His daughter, who had not been present, was then called in and immediately read aloud what her father had written. The demonstration was so dramatic that within about three months practically every Cherokee had learned the syllabary. In 1828, Sequoyah's symbols were cast in metal type and the tribe began publishing a newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix. Sequoyah joined the Arkansas Cherokees to teach them the syl¬ labary and then journeyed to Mexico where other Cherokees were supposed to have migrated. This information was incorrect and Sequoyah died in Mexico in 1843 in the course of his search. He was at least spared the tragedy that overtook his people in the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy. Despite the efforts oi the Cherokee and similar though less formalized endeavors by the Muskogean speakers to adapt to American ways, living much like their white neighbors with farms and livestock, all, as well as Seminoles in Florida, were forced from their homelands to settle in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. The removal, called the “Trail of Tears” by the Cherokees, entailed extreme hardships and the loss of many lives. Some Cherokees hid out in the mountains of North Carolina and with

42

the help of white sympathizers finally obtained a reservation there. Small segments of other southeastern tribes also managed to elude removal, but most of the Clierokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles ended up in Oklahoma where they put aside old en¬ mities and formed a federation based on American governmental pat¬ terns. By 1859 they were known as “The Five Civilized Tribes.” They had signed treaties under duress but tried to make the best of their situation on land guaranteed to them in Oklahoma. By 1889, even this promise was broken when much of the Indian Territory was thrown open to white settlement. During the 1960s, Indian groups across the country began taking positive political and legal action to stop the erosion of their right to self-determination as tribes. A significant symbol of the Indian rights movement for the Cherokees was the revival of The Cherokee Phoenix which had suspended publication in 1835. For a detailed account of Sequoyah, see: Foreman, Grant Sequoyah, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1938. Another book by the same author and press provides further background: Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians, 1956. King, Duane E., Editor, The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1983

43

Many historic photos were taken of delegations of important Indians who were brought to Washington, D.C. From left to right are Ahlakat (Chief Joseph’s brother), Chief Joseph and Peo-peo-a-lakt. Photo taken by DeLancey Gill in February^, 1903. The costumes are a combination of Nez Perce, Plains and trade items.

44

Chief Joseph 1840-1904 In 1871, Joseph became chief of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce, generally pronounced “nez purse” rather than the proper French form, “nay pursay.” The French words mean pierced nose, although members of this tribe did not customarily wear nose orna¬ ments. The Nez Perce was one of the tribes of the Plateau, the region between the mountain chains making up the Cascades and northern Rockies. The area abounded in river salmon, game, berries and a host of other wild plant foods of which the most important was the bulb of the camas plant. When horses were introduced in the 1730s, the Plateau tribes became horse breeders and the Nez Perce are credited with developing the famous, dapple-rumped Appaloosa horse. Upon acquiring guns shortly after 1800, the Plateau peoples began to make forays east across the Rockies to hunt buffalo where they adapted many Plains traits although sometimes they had to fight off Plains tribes who resented their presence. During the 1830s, the Plateau groups welcomed Catholic and Protestant missionaries who set up stations among different tribes and taught them farming and cattle raising. The Plateau tribes placed great value on peace and had developed diplomacy and rules of hos¬ pitality to a fine art to allow inter-tribal sharing of localized resources in season. The peaceful Plateau peoples fought fiercely in self defense, however, when land hungry settlers followed the missionaries and tried to drive off the Indians, but the Nez Perce remained at peace even during the Cavuse War of 1847-1850 although many othc i Plateau groups allied with the Cayuse. The government negotiated a number of treaties in the Plateau area in 1855 and the Nez Perce obtained a reservation encompassing most of their homeland in the boundary region of what are now Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The discovery of gold prompted another treaty in 1863 which lopped off the western three-fourths of the reservation, including the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. The treaty was signed only by chiefs whose bands had always lived in Idaho where the western bands were then supposed to move.

45

By the 1870s Joseph had become the major spokesman for the western bands but his logical, legalistic arguments about not having signed the treaty were disregarded by General 0. 0. Howard who pre¬ pared to move the “non-treaty bands” by force. Joseph and other leaders finally agreed to go to Idaho to avoid bloodshed. The Indians began rounding up their livestock in the spring of 1877, losing many animals in crossing flood swollen rivers and to whites who took the opportunity to run off many of their horses. The deadline to reach the reservation was mid-June. On June 11, as the bands rendezvoused for the last leg of their migration, three young men stole away and killed four notoriously vicious settlers which set off other clashes in the area. The non-treaty bands withdrew to Whitebird Canyon south of the reservation where Joseph hoped to negotiate for the peaceful majority, but the situation was beyond re¬ pair. When soldiers fired on an Indian delegation under a flag of truce, the Indians quickly regrouped, set up an ambush and came out easy victors, picking up a supply of guns and ammunition from fallen soldiers before moving on. Joseph was a peace chief but his forces included such seasoned veterans of Plains warfare as his brother Ollokot, Toohoolhoolzote, Five Wounds and Looking Glass. Looking Glass and his band had joined Joseph when a detachment of troops made a completely unjus¬ tified attack on his peaceful village on the reservation. Joseph's band numbered about 200 and the total number of “hostiles” did not exceed 550 of which at least 400 were women, children and elderly people. The Whitebird engagement was the first in a series of encounters along a 1,300 mile trek east and north across Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Vastly outnumbered and hampered by non-combatants, the Indians outwitted, out-fought and eluded regular and volunteer army units throughout the summer and fall of 1877. Cut off in their initial plan to escape to the Plains, they tried to seek sanctuary in Canada. Since Joseph was already known as a spokesman, war correspondents telegraphed stories to their papers praising his brilliant military strat-

46

egy, but the remarkable retreat was carried out by a council of war leaders. Widespread white sympathy for Joseph was shared even in the Plateau area because the Indians took no scalps and between battles peacefully entered unprotected settlements to buy supplies. Passing through the newly created Yellowstone Park, the Indians captured a party of tourists. Well treated and soon released, they also became champions of Joseph's cause. The end came at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana, where the rem¬ nants of the now tattered and starving band were under siege less than 50 miles from the Canadian border. Most of the war leaders were dead. Looking Glass was killed by a stray bullet as peace negotiations got under way. On October 5,1877, Joseph surrendered in a tragically eloquent speech which ended, “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” Although General Nelson Miles wanted to let the Indians go back to the Idaho reservation, the government sent them to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma where many died of malaria and other diseases. In 1885, the survivors were moved to the Colville Reservation in Washington where Joseph died in 1904, hoping to the last to return to Wallowa Valley.

For further information about Joseph and his people see: Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of

the Northwest, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1965.

47

This photo by C.S. Fly of Tombstone, Arizona, shows Geronimo, Chief Naiche (Natches), and Fun. It was taken some time before 1886.

48

Geronimo 182?-1909 The several Apache tribes and the Navajos are descendants of Athapaskan speaking people from northern Canada who entered the American Southwest a few centuries prior to European contact. Spanish slaving expeditions in the 17th century drove the Apaches into rugged, mountainous areas where they achieved an almost legen¬ dary reputation for endurance, elusiveness and predatory raiding. Geronimo’s tribe, the Bedonkohe Apaches, lived in what is now east central Arizona where he was born in the early 1820s. The Bedonkolies’ eastern neighbors were the Mimbrenos, led in Geronimo’s time by Mangas Coloradas, and the Warm Springs, led by Victorio. The Chokonens, led by Cochise, lived south of the Bedonkohes, and south of them, extending into Mexico, were the Nednais whose leader was Juli. These five allied tribes were known collectively as the Chiricahua Apaches. To their west were the San Carlos and other Apache tribes the Chiricahuas looked upon with contempt as “brainless,” but they maintained friendly contacts with the Mescalero Apaches who lived to their east in New Mexico. When Americans began arriving in the Southwest and in 1846 went to war with Mexico, the Apaches considered them natural allies against their traditional enemies. This relationship was soon strained when lawless Americans made unprovoked attacks on the Apaches, including the murder of Mangas Coloradas in 1863. Consequently, the Apaches began raiding American and Mexican settlements in turn, escaping both countries’ troops with impunity because the 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo prevented the military of either nation from crossing the international border. The Apache tribes, nevertheless, wanted peace with the Americans and negotiated for reservations in territories of their own choosing. By 1875, they had settled down and showed particular aptitude for cattle raising. The United States govern¬ ment then touched off another decade of hostilities by attempting to concentrate all the Apache groups on the San Carlos Reservation to free up the other Apaches’ lands for settlement and mining. The Bedonkohes, Nednais and Chokonen had settled on a reser-

49

vation in Chokonen country. Cochise’s death in 1874 made -Juh the senior leader but because he stuttered, Geronimo acted as his spokes¬ man. Although these groups were not the only Apaches who scattered and resumed raiding in defiance of the concentration policy, Geronimo was somehow singled out by the whites as the instigator of every real or rumored Apache attack. His group was with Victorio at Warm Springs when this reservation was abolished in 1876. The people were forced to move to San Carlos and Geronimo, who was considered a special trouble maker, was transported in shackles. Al¬ though Victorio and his band soon fled the reservation, Geronimo farmed there peacefully until 1878 when he and Juh led their people to raid for supplies in Mexico but returned voluntarily in 1879. Vic¬ torio, still at large, was killed in a fight with American troops the following year. Government meddling in Apache domestic affairs on the reserva¬ tion in 1881 prompted another flight to Mexico where Juh died of natural causes and Geronimo succeeded him as leader. By this time, the American and Mexican governments had joined forces against the Apaches. Geronimo met with General George Crook in 1883 and agreed to return to San Carlos, showing up there in January of 1884 with a large herd of cattle he had managed to smuggle out of Mexico in order to set himself up as a rancher. To Geronimo’s disgust, Crook did not appreciate his spirit of free enterprise and sent the cows back. Geronimo’s final and most famous break-out occurred in 18851886 because he believed there was a plot to have him killed. Knowing Geronimo would return if assured of his life and guarantees that he and his people would not be penalized, Crook enlisted friendly Apaches as scouts who could trail and overtake Geronimo and the handful of people who had left the reservation with him. When ordered to get Geronimo’s unconditional surrender, Crook resigned his command and took another post. His successor, General Nelson Miles, disdain¬ fully disbanded the scouts only to have his army regulars suffer ex¬ treme hardship in terrain the fleeing Apaches traversed with ease.

50

This Apache buckskin blouse was acquired at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, around 1900. It is believed to have belonged to Geronimo’s daughter.

51

Unable to take Geronimo, Miles “captured” the Chiricahuas, including the scouts, who had remained on the reservation. Miles’s subordinates managed to contact Geronimo anti persuade him that his surrender would not carry penalties but Miles then sent Geronimo and all the Chiricahuas by box car as prisoners to Fort Marion near St. Augustine, Florida. They were subsequently imprisoned at Fort Pickens near Pensacola and then at Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama. In 1894, they were resettled near FortSill, Oklahoma, still officially prisoners. Always hard working and with an eye to business opportunities, Geronimo supported his family by gardening and obtaining permis¬ sion to attend fairs under guard to sell handcrafts and autographed copies of his photograph. In 1905, he rode on horseback in President Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. Toward the end of his life, Geronimo dictated his memoirs to a government employee in which he expressed approval of education for young Apaches to make their way in the white world. At one point in his life he briefly tried but abandoned the “Jesus Road.” The Chiricahuas finally were released from custody in 1912, three years after Geronimo’s death at Fort Sill. Some remained in Oklahoma while the rest accepted the option of going to the Mescalero Reserva¬ tion in New Mexico. Still considered dangerous “hostiles” in their Arizona homeland, the Chiricahuas’ return there was opposed by the local white population. An excellent account of Geronimo drawing upon his memoirs, recollections of his family, Chiricahua associates and historical docu¬ ments: Debo, Angie Geronimo University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1976.

53

In 1916 during a Milwaukee Public Museum expedition to the Great Basin, Samuel A. Barrett, museum anthropologist, took this photograph of Wovoka.

54

Wovoka 1856-1932 Wovoka was the founder of the Ghost Dance. This religious move¬ ment had a brief but tremendous impact when it was taken up by the Plains tribes east of Wovoka s people, the Northern Paiutes, who live in the Great Basin. This semi-desert region of Utah and Nevada lies between the mountainous spine of California and the Rockies. Most of the Basin peoples, including the Paiutes, speak languages of the Shoshonean family. While the harsh environment precluded large groups from remaining together and creating complex cultural forms, the Basin Indians developed an intimate knowledge of their terrain and many ingenious techniques to utilize sparse resources to survive. Each family foraged widely to collect pinon nuts and over 100 other species of wild plant foods. They ate gophers and other small rodents and obtained fish from the few rivers and lakes in the Basin area. They also ate a variety of nutritious insects which could be taken in large quantities when they swarmed. When rabbits were plentiful, groups of families numbering 100 people or more, would gather to socialize and hold communal hunts. An ever narrowing circle of people drove masses of rabbits into the center and dispatched them quickly with clubs. Rabbits were important not only for food but for fur which was cut into strips and loosely woven for garments. Basin religion, like social organization, was simple with emphasis on shamans called “dreamers” who were skilled healers and could predict where food might be found. White miners and settlers who had encountered the warlike and culturally impressive Plains tribes en route to the Basin, simply ap¬ propriated land and viewed the Basin Indians with scorn. In 18601861, when Wovoka was about four years old, the Northern Paiutes finally rose up in protest. Soon defeated because they were armed mainly with bows agains the whites’ guns, they, nevertheless, com¬ manded new respect in 1860 when they won a notable victory at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, by tricking a group of miners into entering a narrow pass and picking them off. During the 1870s, the government assigned reservations to the

55

Basin Indian groups and Wovoka and his kin were enrolled at the Walker River Reservation in western Nevada, about 100 miles north of his birthplace in what is now Esmeralda County. No longer able to forage freely and with their food resources greatly depleted by white farming and stock raising, the Basin Indians led an even more precari¬ ous life than in aboriginal times. They were willing workers when they could find employment but many were forced into scavenging around the white settlements. Wovoka worked for a white farming and ranching family named Wilson and was treated almost as a family member, even to being called Jack Wilson. Through this association, he attained some knowledge of English and was exposed to Christian doctrine. Although he was always welcome in the Wilson household, he preferred to live with his wife and children in a traditional Paiute wickiup, a cone shaped structure of saplings covered with grass. He had a strong mystic bent and had been deeply iniluenced by a dreamer named Tavibo (also called Wodziwub) who might have been his father as well as his spiritual mentor. Shortly before his death in 1879, Tavibo had a revelation of a new religion, sometimes called “the first Ghost Dance,” whereby certain rituals were supposed to restore the old Indian ways and bring back the dead. Tavibo’s message gained little ground among the Paiutes but it was carried to neighboring Indians in California’s mountain hamlets where it revitalized the local religious practices which had begun to go into decline. Besides the effect of Tavibo’s teachings, Wovoka might have been inspired by the religious movement begun by an Indian named Smohalla who had attracted many followers since 1850 among the Plateau tribes just north of the Basin. Wovoka definitely was influ¬ enced by John Slocum, a Squaxon Indian, who began preaching to his own and other Puget Sound tribes about 1881 and founded an Indian Christian denomination known as Shakers because of the members’ trembling and shaking of bells as part of the service. Like Slocum’s religion, Wovoka’s movement had a clearly Christian found¬ ation.

56

This ghost dance shirt was obtained at Wounded Knee by Capt. R. Miller. The back of the shirt, shown here, depicts a bird which is considered a sacred symbol.

57

Wovoka began to have visions about 1885 when he went into trancelike states and was believed to have died and gone to heaven. There, God made promises similar to those reported by Tavibo and also directed that a special form of the traditional round dance be held periodically for five consecutive days to hasten the coming of a better world where the living Indians would be reunited with their dead kinsfolk and friends. In doing this, they believed they would never again experience misery, sickness or death. Wovoka’s message stressed peace among all Indians and between Indians and whites and emphasized the need to learn new skills and work diligently to prosper in this life. By 1887, dances were being held regularly and some participants also went into trances where they saw the dead and the good life Wovoka had promised. Word soon spread to the Plains and delegations from both north¬ ern and southern Plains tribes visited Wovoka to learn about the new religion. Their deperately poor condition resulting from the loss of buffalo, their powerlessness in the face of increasing numbers of white settlers and an alarming death rate due to disease and malnutrition made them eager to believe Wovoka’s prophesies of a better future. Wovoka claimed to be no more than a prophet but some missionized Plains groups concluded that Wovoka was the Messiah — Jesus re¬ turned to earth as an Indian because his own people killed him on his first visit. Wovoka’s message was expanded upon and elaborated. In some versions the whites would suddenly vanish or be swallowed up in a great hole, leaving behind only those things the Indians wanted from them. New paraphernalia was added to the religion such as muslin “Ghost Shirts” which were supposed to make the wearers impervious to bullets. Although many Indians on the Plains took up the Ghost Dance, others remained skeptical or fell away from the religion when they did not experience visions. Wovoka had set no date tor the promised new order but others did and abandoned the new religion when the whites did not disappear and the Indian dead arise on schedule.

58

The Ghost Dance, which was but one of many similar religions responding to the Indians’ sense of despair, might have been forgotten by most people like the others but it evoked hysterical fear among the whites in the Dakotas who believed that its appearance among the Sioux presaged a new Indian uprising. This over-reaction in 1890 resulted in the death of Sitting Bidl and the slaughter of unarmed Indians at Wounded Knee shortly afterwards. Wovoka was appalled when he learned of the violence attributed to his religion, insisting that he only preached peace. The Ghost Dance faded away and Wovoka lived out his days in relative obscurity. The best account of the Ghost Dance, including interviews with Wovoka and various Plains leaders who embraced his message, re¬ mains: Mooney, James, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Out¬ break of 1890, Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report XIV,

Part2, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1896, pp. 641-1100.

The Paiutes were nomadic people. Dwellings made of tule (reed) or brush were still in use in 1916 when this photograph was taken.

59

This portrait taken by D.F. Barry of Superior, Wisconsin, is perhaps the most famous picture of Sitting Bull.

60

Sitting Bull 1831-1890 When the Sioux chief Sitting Bull was born in what is now north¬ western South Dakota, Plains culture was coming into full ilower. Since the late 1600s, tribes of diverse cultures from east and west moved onto the Plains and developed a new way of life based on the use of horses. The Plains peoples adopted a common pattern of en¬ campments of large skin teepees, developed distinctive tribal embel¬ lishments and maintained their different languages. They moved fre¬ quently to seek buffalo which provided food, clothing, shelter and even fuel in the form of dried “buffalo chips.” In the 1830s, when white traders began establishing posts on the Missouri and other rivers crossing the Plains, the Indians’ lives were enriched with guns, uten¬ sils and a host of decorative goods-. The Sioux were among the new Plains peoples, having extended their domain between 1700 and 1800 from Minnesota to eastern Mon¬ tana and Wyoming. They compromised three linguistic groups from east to west — the Dakota, Nakota and Lakota, each with tribal divisions and subdivisions. The Lakota speakers, also called Tetons, consisted of seven loosely allied tribes; Hunkpapas — Sitting Bull’s tribe, Oglalas, Brules, Minneconjous, Two Kettles, Sans Arcs and Blackfeet. The last should not be confused with the more famous Algonkian speaking Blackfeet of Montana and Saskatchewan with whom the Tetons some¬ times fought. Plains groups vied for territory and raided one another for horses, guns and other booty. Sitting Bull began his career as a warrior at the age of fourteen, winning honors in encounters with the Crows, Shoshones and other tribes before turning his prowess against the whites. Early in life he also won respect for his wisdom and gift of prophesy. Hostilities between whites and Indians began in the late 1840s when increasing numbers of wagon trains crossed the Plains to reach the west coast. In 1851, the government promoted an inter-tri¬ bal treaty at Fort Laramie where, in exchange for money and goods, the Indians pledged peace along the “Oregon Trail” and agreed on their respective boundaries. They did not realize that concentrating

61

the tribes north and south of a central route and marking out their lands was the initial step to buy them off and “civilize” them on small reservations. The policy soon included encouraging the near extermi¬ nation of the buffalo by white hunters to starve the Plains tribes into submission. The Tetons avoided hostilities with whites until 1865 when the government began construction of a road and three forts between Laramie and the mining settlements around Bozeman, Montana. Led by the Oglala chief Red Cloud, the Tetons incessantly harassed the workmen. The government finally called a parlay at Laramie in 1868 and agreed to abandon the proposed Powder River Road, recognizing that the Indians still held title to the area and needed it for hunting. Under the 1868 treaty, the Tetons gave up some land in Nebraska but secured most of their territory by insisting on a large reservation in the western Dakotas, including their sacred Black Hills in the south¬ west corner. With the rapid depletion of the buffalo, life became increasingly difficult for the Indians and the Tetons fell out among themselves. Tin* “Progressives” accepted settled farming on the reservation and the Indian agent appointed chiefs from their numbers. The “Hostiles,” who generally considered Sitting Bull their chief, continued hunting in the still unceded Powder River country. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills and the government made no effort to keep miners off the reservation, even “Progressives” were outraged and the “Hos¬ tiles” took action. Clashes occurred and the situation became so tense that the government violated the terms of the Treaty of 1868 by order¬ ing all hunting parties back on the reservation by February 1, 1876. Considering the season, the “Hostiles” could not have obeyed the order even it they had wanted to, but the military was authorized to round up the off-reservation Tetons. On June 25, Sitting Bull and his people were camped with their allies, the Cheyennes, on the Little Big Horn River in Wyoming. Lt. Colonel George Custer attacked the camp, believing the men were off

62

hunting and he could enhance his campaign record against the fear¬ some Sioux with an easy victoiy. Instead, the 2,500 to 3,000 warriors present wiped out Custer and his whole command of the Seventh Cavalry. Custer’s ignominious defeat spurred the army to such exten¬ sive reprisals that by 1877 Sitting Bull had fled to Canada. His famous companion in arms, the Oglala leader Crazy Horse, attempted to sur¬ render at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and was killed in a scuffle as soldiers tried to disarm him. In 1877, the government also rammed through the purchase of the Powder River and Black Hills areas as retribution for the Little Big Horn affair. Canadian authorities denied Sitting Bull’s request for permanent sanctuary. Promised amnesty by the United States, he recrossed the border in 1881, but he was held in custody until 1883 when he and his band settled near his birthplace on the Grand River. In the summer of 1885 he traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. At the end of the season Cody gave him a horse he admired because it sat down, waved its hoof and did other tricks. Although the Indian agent and “Progressives” did not recognize Sitting Bull as the chief, his authority was still respected by the “Hostiles” when he led the opposition in 1888 to the government’s effort to buy 11,000,000 acres of the reservation and create small reserva¬ tions. He went with the tribal delegation to Washington, D.C. where the offer was raised from .50 to $1.25 an acre, but he continued to oppose the sale. The agreement finally was signed at the reservation by the government appointed chiefs in 1889. Although Sitting Bull was angry, he caused no trouble and turned his attention to stock raising and farming but his personal influence and the fame accorded him by the white population, thanks to Cody, aroused the appointed chiefs’jealousy and exasperated the Indian agent, James McLaughlin. The excuse to humble Sitting Bidl came when the Ghost Dance reached the Sioux reservations in 1890. McLaughlin expected that the Ghost Dance would fade away with its followers’ inevitable disil¬ lusionment. He also knew the Indians were in no condition to go to

63

This painting on muslin depicting Sitting Bull at the Custer battle was drawn by Iron Horse. It was collected by Dr. George Yeakel while stationed at Standing Rock Agency, Dakota Territory, 1878-79. The identity of many of the Indians such as Sitting Bull in the upper left corner, is indicated by a symbol drawn above the head and connected by a line.

64

war, but the settlers’ unreasonable fears primed the military to order the Indians to turn in their guns and horses. Sitting Bull was as sensibly skeptical about the Ghost Dance as McLaughlin although he saw no reason to interfere with those who believed in it. This permissive attitude was cause for Sitting Bull’s arrest and McLaughlin dispatched Indian policemen to bring him in. They rushed into his cabin as he slept on the night of December 15, 1890. Initially, he agreed to go peacefully and the gray horse from Cody was saddled to take him to the Indian agency, but the police handled him so roughly that his patience gave out and he refused to go. His suppor¬ ters took this as a signal and shooting started. By the time the melee ended at dawn, Sitting Bull, six of his men and seven Indian policemen were dead. A bizarre incident during the bloody carnage was that the noise apparently reminded the old performing horse of the Wild West Show and amidst the whole exchange of fire it remained unharmed as it solemnly went through its repertoire of tricks. News of the shoot-out exacerbated irrational fears of a general Indian uprising and contributed to a final tragedy of 1890. On De¬ cember 29, when chief Big Foot and his tattered, starving band of Minneconjous were camped on Wounded Knee Creek preparatory to turning in their weapons, their presumed dangerousness prompted the army to train Hotchkiss guns on them. The sound of a shot of still undetermined origin set off a mindless slaughter of the unarmed band. The standard biography of Sitting Bull based on interviews with elderly Sioux who kuew him and on historical sources is: Vestal, Stanley Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux, first published in 1932 and reprinted by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1957.

65

Louis Riel, ca. 1873, during his exile in the United States after the Red River uprising.

66

Louis Riel 1844-1885 Although Louis Riel was only one-eighth Indian, his stoiy is ap¬ propriate to an account of North American Indian lives because it is inseparable from the only major Indian uprising on the Canadian frontier and also illustrates significantly different concepts of Indian identity in the United States and Canada. In the United States, people of Indian-white ancestry are identified by themselves and others as socially Indian or socially white. In Canada, a third identification is made in regard to a distinct society, the Metis (maytee). Generally, the Metis trace their origin to French Canadian men and Indian women, particularly of the Ojibwe, Cree and other Algonkian speaking tribes of the northeastern Woodlands. With kin ties to both the Indian and white populations, they became an influential element in the fur trade. In succeeding generations many mixed bloods tended to marry other mixed bloods. As the settlers’ frontier overtook the peltry trap¬ ping country, particularly in the United States, some of the mixed bloods of French and occasionally British ancestry were absorbed into white society while others joined their Indian relatives and moved with them to reservations where they and their descendants are iden¬ tified as Indians. Many Metis, however, continued moving west with the fur trade and by the early 19tli century there was a large colony of Metis located along the upper Red River in settlements extending from Pembina at the juncture of the Minnesota, North Dakota and Canadian borders to St. Boniface — now part of Winnepeg, Manitoba. Their dress and lifestyle, like their genetic background, became a blend of Indian and white elements. They followed the French custom of clustering dwell¬ ings and businesses on the river at the ends of long, narrow “strip farms” which extended inland. French speaking Roman Catholics, the Metis also usually spoke Ojibwe or Cree. The majority of the Ojibwe Indians remained in the woodlands of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and lower Canada where the Cree also were located, but a few bands of both tribes moved west in the late 1700s to take on the lifestyle of the Plains Indians. These Algonkian speaking Plains Indians are some-

67

times referred to collectively as Bungees (hard g). In the spring and fall, men from the Metis settlements joined their Bungee “cousins" on the Plains to hunt buffalo — the Bungees for subsistence and the Metis primarily to obtain hides for sale. Leaders of these cooperative hunts almost always were Metis. The Bungees are distinguished by the fact that they did not adopt the Plains travois of poles attached to a horse to drag their belongings but, like the Metis, used Red River carts — sturdy conveyances with two large wheels and held together with wooden pegs. Louis Riel was born at St. Boniface in 1844 and although his mother was pure French, the family’s identification was thoroughly Metis. His exceptional intelligence prompted the local bishop to send him to the College of Montreal in 1864 in the hope that young Riel would become the first Metis priest. Despite a religious inclination with strong mystical overtones, Riel decided against the priesthood and left college after two years to travel. Eventually returning to the Red River, he found the Metis in a state of great anxiety for their future. The Hudson’s Bay Company owned a vast territory which in¬ cluded the Metis settlements and in 1869 had transferred its title to the Dominion of Canada. The Metis feared that the government in Ottawa, dominated by British Protestants, would favor the increasing numbers of English speaking settlers in the region and they would lose their farms. In 1870, they turned to Riel for leadership. Assisted by Bungees, Riel’s followers prevented surveyors and the new governor from entering the Red River country and seized Fort Garry, the Hud¬ son’s Bay Company post near St. Boniface. They set up a provisional government, dispatched a delegation to plead their cause in Ottawa and fought off two attempts by non-Metis settlers to take Fort Garry. In May of 1870, the Canadian parliament created the Province of Manitoba, issued scrip with which the Metis could purchase land and promised amnesty to the rebels. When it was learned, however, that Riel had permitted the execution of an English speaking captive, the amnesty was revoked and a military force was sent out which recap-

68

tured Fort Garry. The insurgent Metis tied, many finding sanctuary with the Bungees. Riel led a fugitive and harried existence for many years and finally became an American citizen. In 1884, he was teaching school in Montana when a delegation of Metis from the Saskatchewan Territory visited him and requested that he lead them in seeking provincial status. The buffalo were virtually wiped out and the Metis, increasingly dependent on their farms, wanted land guarantees like those of the Manitoba Metis. They also wanted rates reduced by the newly created Canadian Pacific Railroad to get their grain to eastern markets. Riel set out for Saskatchewan in a Red River cart with his Metis wife and child. Arriving at tin1 Metis settlement of Batoche, he again formed a provisional government. During his exile, he had experi¬ enced visions that he was directed by God to set up a new nation of Metis and Canadian and American Indians and that he was to intro¬ duce a reformed version of Catholicism tailored to Metis culture with a French Canadian priest as its pope. He contacted Sitting Bull and other prominent Sioux chiefs as well as chiefs among the Crows, Gros Ventres and Blackfeet but they questioned the validity of his vision of a grand Indian-Metis confederacy. Only chief Poundmaker who led a group of Plains Cree and some allied Assiniboines was interested. Compared to the poor Metis, who at least had a tradition of farming, the Indians were absolutely destitute without buffalo to hunt on their newly assigned reserves, the Canadian term equivalent to reservations. Poundmaker had a reputation of friendliness toward white settlers in the area and initially counseled peace but when the Metis opened hostilities against non-Metis, his young men could not be restrained from entering the fray and he led them in raids on settlements and a successful engagement against a detachment ot 300 soldiers. The Indians’ hostilities were not really coordinated with those ot the Metis but merely inspired by them. Metis skirmishing in the Batoche area netted them some non-Metis hostages which Riel thought would force the Canadians to negotiate,

69

but circumstances had changed since the Red River uprising. Because of the railroad, a large military force could be sent quickly into the field and Riel’s second rebellion was put down in a matter of days. The Indians also were quelled and Poundmaker was arrested, tried and sentenced to a term in prison. Riel surrendered voluntarily, knowing he would be tried for se¬ dition but he believed the trial would publicize the just grievances of the Metis and Indians and win popular support for their cause. His attorney tried to defend him on a plea of insanity which he rejected and he was sentenced to be hanged. Appeals for clemency were denied and the sentence was carried out on November 16,1885. In succeeding years, Riel has become a Canadian folk hero and martyr to different groups for different reasons. The Metis claim him as a defender of their unique society and culture. To many French Catholics he sym¬ bolizes opposition to English, Protestant domination. The Bungees cherish his memory as a leader against white encroachment. For a recent account of Riel’s life which takes special note of the often overlooked visionary aspect of his personality see: Flanagan, Thomas Louis 'David' Riel, Prophet of the New World, University of Toronto Press, 1979.

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Photographic Credits

Cover: Ledger drawing, Sioux, collected January 8, 1891 by Capt. R. Miller. From a book of drawings by Red Hawk. MPM anthropology collections, catalog no. 2063. p. viii Wampum belt, Mahican, collected in 1922 by A.B. Skinner. MPM anthropology collections, catalog no. 30127/7270. p. xii Map of Powhatan confederacy by Gregory Raab, Milwaukee Public Museum. p. 4

Mapof Wampanoag confederacy by Gregory Raab, Milwaukee PublicMuseum.

p. 7

Genealogy chart by Gregory Raab, Milwaukee Public Museum.

p. 13 Poster by Parker Boyiddle, © 1980 Boyiddle-Bahti. p. 14 Trade Silver, Woodland, MPM anthropology collections, catalog nos. 63320/26070, 63319/26070. p. 16 Trade Silver, Woodland Indian, MPM anthropology collections, catalog nos. 63322/26070, 63321/26070. p. 18 Carved stick, Iroquois, collected in 1918 by S.A. Barrett. MPM anthropology collections, catalog no. 24601/6158. p. 22 Tecumseh, copy from Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book ot the War 1812. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution photo no. 770. p. 25 Pipe tomahawks, from American Indian Tomahawks, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, catalog no. MAI/HF:17/6249. p. 26 Black Hawk from Indian Tribes of North America by McKenney and Hall, 1836-44. MPM library collections, negative no. PB-100-G. p. 29 Woven bags, Sauk, collected in 1922 by A.B. Skinner. MPM anthropology collections, catalog nos. 30262/7287, 30263/7287. p. 30 Photo Cascades by R.S. Corwin, Extension Department Expedition, 1929. MPM photo archives, negative no. 144819.

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p. 33 Saddle bags, Shoshone, MPM anthropology collections, catalog no. 313. p. 36 Osceola by George Catlin. National Portrait Gallery, (L/NPG.7.70). p. 39 Seminole in costume, Artcraft photo by E.W. Doyle. MPM anthropology photo archives, negative no. A-664-J-1. p. 40 Sequoya, copy from Indian Tribes of North America by McKenney and Hall, 1836-44. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution photo no. 991A. p. 44 Chief Joseph Delegation, 1903, DeLancev Gill. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, photo no. 2967. p. 48 Geronimo, 1886, C.S. Fly, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution photo no. 43003B. p. 51 Woman’s shirt, Apache, MPM anthropology collections, catalog no. 63323/26070, negative no. A-658-H. p. 52 Apache woman, MPM anthropology photo archives negative no. 665-L-5. p. 54 Wovoka, Paiute, 1916, Shivwits Indian Reservation, Washington Co., Utah. S.A. Barrett, MPM photo archives, negative no. 60075. p. 59 Dwellings, Paiute, 1916, Washo Co., Nevada. S.A. Barrett. MPM photo archives, negative no. 60051. p. 57 Ghost Dance Shirt, Sioux. MPM anthropology collections catalog no. 35, negative no. A-666-A-6. p. 60 Sitting Bull by D.F. Barry. MPM anthropology photo archives, catalog no. 58428/19145. p. 64 Painted muslin, Sioux, MPM anthropology collection, catalog no. 57783/18707. p. 66 Louis Riel, Manitoba Archives, negative no. N5732.

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