NATIVE WAYS

A Birthplace of Native Americans

2012-02-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

Studying DNA, at least one major birthplace of Native Americans appears to be in the Altay Region, Southern Siberia, just west of Mongolia:

Is This Russian Landscape the Birthplace of Native Americans?

The Kayapo in Pictures

2011-12-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

Pictures: Amazon Belo Monte Dam and the Kayapo People

Uncontacted Trribes of the Amazon Rainforest

2011-09-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

BBC News - First film footage of remote Amazon rainforest tribe

Nanti Indians, Peru

2011-02-08T09:29:00.000-08:00

First Ever Aerial Footage of Members of the Nanti, an Uncontacted Amazon Tribe

released 4 February 2011

Extraordinary film footage narrated by movie star Gillian Anderson has launched Survival International’s new campaign to protect some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes:

New film footage released today shows uncontacted Indians on the Brazil-Peru border in never-seen-before detail. It is the first-ever aerial footage of this uncontacted community.

Ms Anderson said today, ‘What comes across very powerfully from this amazing footage is how healthy and confident these people appear. I hope they can be left alone – but that will only happen if the loggers are stopped.’

The footage was filmed by the BBC in collaboration with the Brazilian government, for the new BBC 1 ‘Human Planet’ series (broadcast 3 Feb). The Brazilian government has authorized Survival to use the footage as part of its campaign. Photos of the tribe were published worldwide by Survival earlier this week.

Global coverage of the story has already pushed the Peruvian authorities into action – they have announced they will work with Brazil’s Indian Affairs department (FUNAI) to protect the area more effectively.

The Indians’ survival is in jeopardy as an influx of illegal loggers invades the Peru side of the border. Brazilian authorities believe the influx of loggers is pushing isolated Indians from Peru into Brazil, and the two groups are likely to come into conflict.

Survival Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘The very dangerous future for uncontacted tribal peoples should be of worldwide concern. Gillian Anderson’s help here will draw more attention to it – vital if the world is finally going to call a real halt to the centuries of destruction.’

Ask Peru's president to protect uncontacted tribes including the Nanti Indians. Sign the petition at the end of the video or go to the bottom of the page at Survival International: Uncontacted Tribes

Oil workers and illegal loggers are invading the lands of uncontacted tribes in Peru. They risk introducing infectious diseases which could wipe the Indians out. They won’t survive unless the invasions stop. The petition reads:

"President Garcia: Oil drilling and logging in uncontacted tribes' territories could wipe the Indians out. Please protect these peoples' right to live in peace and security – stop the loggers and oil companies from entering their land."

California Geoglyphs Endangered

2010-08-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

An old friend of mine, Mike Boyd, recently wrote: :I have also been working on a project with wife Patty [who is a archeologist by profession] on a huge native cultural complex located next to and including Blythe California. Blythe was named after an Englishman who was a carpet bagger who stole the land from the Indians who lived there. Our friend Alfredo Figueroa has found the location of the Cradle of Aztlan and we are trying to protect it from destruction by carpet baggers; this time by solar thermal energy developers who want to pave over the whole area."

La Cuna de Aztlán (With Updated Comments By Chemehuevi Tribal Chairman, Charles Wood. from Robert Lundahl on Vimeo.

"The video is posted here: http://www.vimeo.com/13650564 . It has comments from Chemehuevi Tribal Chairman Charles Wood at the end. Very appropriate to the subject and the presentation. Cinematography for both videos is by Robert Lundahl, Advocacy Films, www.advocacyfilms.com 415.205.348--Direct"

Additional Resources:

Geoglyphs (Mysteries of the Ancient World)

Pre-Columbian Geoglyphs, Norte Grande, Arica, Chile, South America Photographic Poster Print by Ken Gillham, 12x16

Geoglyph the Very Best of

Locations in Aztec Mythology: Mictlan, Popocatépetl, Tlalocan, Iztaccíhuatl, Tlillan-Tlapallan, Tamoanchan, Aztlán, Culhuacan, Chicomoztoc

Tsenacommacah

2010-05-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

Tsenacommacah is the native name for the land around and of which Jamestown, Virginia, is a part. Here are two reviews of books written in recent times about this area and its history:

Natalie A. Zacek - The Newest New World - Reviews in American History 34:2

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The Newest New World

by Natalie A. Zacek, in "Reviews in American History," 34.2 (2006) 150-155, John Hopkins Press

Books Reviewed:

Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, eds. Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. xi + 368 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $59.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

James Horn. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper)

It is easy to imagine that many American historians will feel an urge either to shrug their shoulders or to roll their eyes when hearing of the publication of two new books with "Jamestown" in their titles. Over the past few years, the place which John Smith called "a misery, a ruine, a death, a hell" has seemed inescapable. In March 2004, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture sponsored a four-day conference on the subject of "The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624," at which no fewer than sixty-five scholars presented papers, nearly all of which dealt at least in part with Jamestown. Historical and tourism organizations throughout coastal Virginia have committed to an ambitious program of events to celebrate "America's 400th Anniversary," and state residents can apply for commemorative license plates, spend state quarters featuring an image of the three ships of the initial English expedition, and reap the benefits of transit improvements around the newly named "Jamestown corridor." Even the local multiplex has jumped upon this bandwagon, with heartthrob actor Colin Farrell donning John Smith's doublet and boots in Terrence Malick's The New World. But it would be a considerable shame should historians of colonial America and the Atlantic choose to pass by either of these volumes, as both rise far beyond quadricentennial hype and provide a host of insights, not only about the Jamestown venture itself but also about the wider political, social, and cultural world in which that venture was carried out.

James Horn seizes the reader's attention within the opening lines of A Land as God Made It. Rather than beginning his account of the colony with the all-too-familiar narrative of the arrival in 1607 of the Susan Constant, the [End Page 150] Godspeed, and the Discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, or with a discussion of the "lost colony" of Roanoke, Horn announces that "the English were not the first Europeans to discover Virginia" (p. 1). In the summer of 1561, a Spanish ship was driven by storms into the Bay. Proceeding inland, the Spaniards anchored along a river in order to gather supplies and repair their vessel, and there, on the banks of what may have been the Chickahominy, they encountered a small group of Indians, two of whom apparently agreed to board the ship and sail back to Europe with its crew. One of these two, Paquiqueneo, was given the name of Don Luis de Velasco, under which title he was presented at Philip II's court in Madrid. Anxious to return to his homeland, Don Luis sailed to Mexico, where he accepted the Christian faith and spent several years living amongst Dominican friars. Expressing a desire to establish a mission among his own people, Don Luis gained the support of the governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and in 1570, accompanied by dozen Jesuits, he at last returned to his home. Once resettled among his people, Don Luis soon turned his back upon the missionaries, who struggled to survive a harsh winter, and in February 1571 the apostate and his supporters attacked the mission, killing all but one of its residents. An enraged Menendez dispatched an expedition against his former comrade; unable to find Don Luis, he settled for unleashing a "chastisement" upon the Indians before returning to Florida. But although the Spanish mission met a quick and brutal end, in Horn's view it cast a long shadow over future relations between Europeans and Virginia Indians. Menendez's attack acquainted the Indians with the fearsome nature of European warfare, and simultaneously served as a warning to rival European powers that Spain had laid its claims to North American territories as well as those to the south. Perhaps more importantly, this moment of contact gave rise to tantalizing tales of the alleged wealth of this land, which Spanish mariners claimed was filled with easily accessible lodes of jewels and precious metals. All of these results were to have significant impact upon the next century's English colonial endeavors.

From this arresting opening, Horn moves on to examine the principal players and events that led to and followed the arrival of the small English fleet in 1607. He analyzes the statecraft of Wahunsonacock (whom the English knew as Powhatan) and Opechancanough, the pre-eminent leaders of the region that the Powhatans called Tsenacommacah and he provocatively argues that Opechancanough may have been none other than Don Luis/Paquiquineo and lauds the skill by which these two brothers gained control of "great and spacious Dominions" (p. 20). The book's central chapters present a detailed and convincing picture of the many challenges faced by Christopher Newport's initial colonizing venture, which included not only an unfamiliar landscape and an indigenous people whose leaders appeared alternately as friend or foe to the English but also vituperative disagreements between the leaders [End Page 151] of the expedition. For the English, "survival depended on a deadly game of keeping one step ahead of their enemies," and the only man who succeeded in this game was Captain John Smith, who was scorned and hated by many of his fellow colonists because of what they considered to be his low birth and his refusal to accept the decisions and policies of his alleged betters, both in Jamestown and at the Virginia Company's headquarters in London (p. 75). Horn does not accept Smith at their valuation, nor at his own, aware as he of Smith's penchant for viewing and portraying himself as an English hero, "acutely aware of the epic proportions of [his] voyages," but he lets the reader understand how important Smith was to the survival of the settlement, due not only to the military and cartographic skills that he had acquired though his youthful exploits as a soldier of fortune but also to his ability to keep Wahunsonacock, Opechancanough, and their people guessing about the abilities and aims of the newcomers (p. 86). The balance of power shifted continually between the English and the Indians, and these changes were simultaneously the cause and the result of the ever-changing balance of power between Smith and his opponents in both Jamestown and London.

Horn is at his strongest when narrating and analyzing the course of diplomacy and hostility between the Indians and the English, and the ways through which each group came to understand—or misunderstand—the other. But A Land as God Made It has more to offer, in particular a nuanced and persuasive account of the motivations and actions of the Virginia Company in the years following the first expedition. Although the Company was determined to keep the struggling settlement alive and to fend off potential Spanish incursions in the Chesapeake, throughout the 1610s it was far from clear what the investors hoped to gain from the colony. In the absence of mineral wealth, what profit might Jamestown generate for its investors? And what was the ideal relationship between the English and the Indians, mutuality and respect or hostility and eventual English dominance? Of course, the answers to these questions are familiar; by the early 1620s, the English settlers would have begun to produce tobacco, survived a devastating attack by Opechancanough and his allies, and taken the first steps towards the development of the political and economic institutions through which, in Edmund Morgan's words, "the rise of liberty and equality in America [were] accompanied by the rise of slavery."1 What is noteworthy in Horn's depiction is his ability to make this well-known and much-analyzed material new, and to allow the reader to comprehend the fragility, randomness, and contingency of these much-studied events

There are some small ways in which this book might have been made still more valuable. The illustrations, particularly the several maps, are well-chosen, with a high quality of reproduction, but readers would have been well served by the inclusion of a list of principal actors, particularly among the ranks of the colonists and the Virginia Company officials. Horn reserves some of his [End Page 152] most original ideas for the epilogue, but including them in the introductory chapters might have allowed the reader to better understand some of his aims before plunging deeply into complex narratives. Nonetheless, A Land as God Made It immediately earns its place upon the shelf of essential accounts not only of Jamestown, but also of colonial British America.

An article extracted from Horn's book is the first essay in Robert Appelbaum and John Sweet's Envisioning an English Empire, and it is easy to imagine Horn vigorously agreeing with Karen Ordahl Kupperman's contention in her introduction that "the history of Jamestown and the beginnings of English settlement in America is better served when we view it in an Atlantic frame" (p. xi). As Sweet states in his perceptive introduction, "the purpose of this volume is to better understand the various visions that shaped early Virginia," and to do so by enlisting both historians and literary scholars in this endeavour (p. 2). To accomplish this laudably ambitious goal, Appelbaum and Sweet adopt a three-part perspective, one that emphasizes first the early encounters between Indians and English in Virginia, then the international relations that influenced English imperial ideology and practice, and finally the ways in which settlers' and natives' visions of Virginia altered over the course of the seventeenth century.

The first section, "Reading Encounters," covers the material most obviously linked to the Jamestown settlement. Alden T. Vaughan's "Powhatans Abroad: Virginia Indians in England" provides a lively and intellectually stimulating account of the Virginia Indians, most famously Pocahontas, who served as "cultural intermediaries" between colony and metropole, and Horn's "The Conquest of Eden: Possession and Dominion in Early Virginia" shows how the English and the Powhatans' consistent misunderstanding of each other's ideas of sovereignty rendered "a bloody struggle for possession . . . inevitable" (pp. 51, 48). In "John Smith Maps Virginia: Knowledge, Rhetoric, and Politics," Lisa Blansett applies textual strategies to a cartographic source, in a manner much influenced by the work of Richard Helgerson and Tom Conley, while Emily Rose's "The Politics of Pathos: Richard Frethorne's Letters Home" sheds light upon the production and dissemination of the heartrending letters through which indentured servant Frethorne described the miseries of his experiences in 1620s Virginia.2

The second section, "The World Stage," locates early Virginia within the wider world of Elizabethan and Jacobean international politics and contains some of the most insightful and provocative pieces. In "The Specter of Spain in John Smith's Colonial Writing," Eric Griffin delineates the "conflicted attitude toward Spain that pervades much of the colonial writing" of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England (p. 112). Griffin propounds a convincing argument that John Smith's writing betrays an "intense Anglo-Hispanic identification" by which Smith "construct[s] himself as the model English conquistador" [End Page 153] (p. 133). Pompa Banerjee's piece on "Turkey and Virginia in John Smith's True Travels" not only "point[s] to the rhetorical function of Turkey as a resonant subtext" to Smith's account of his Virginia adventures, but also reads both texts and images circulated by Smith to posit his existence as a "white Othello," a picaresque figure who charmed his readers, particularly women, with his tales of romantic and military endeavors (p. 135). Susan Iwanisziw's "England, Morocco, and Global Geopolitical Upheaval" discusses what she sees as a triangular diplomatic and imperial relationship between Protestant England, Catholic Spain, and Islamic Morocco, and Andrew Hadfield's "Irish Colonies and America" offers a spirited critique of those scholars, such as David B. Quinn and Nicholas Canny, whom he believes are too quick to view the relationship between English colonial activities in Ireland and America as "part of the same process, with the one leading to another" (p. 174).

The final section's title, "American Metamorphosis," is vague, and perhaps intentionally so, as the essays therein are less clearly connected to one another than those in the previous sections. Robert Appelbaum's "Hunger in Early Virginia" could as easily have been placed in the first group, dealing as it does with the nature of English and Indian understandings of the presence and absence of food in human society. But regardless of its textual location, Appelbaum's essay is one of the two or three best in the volume; it expertly blends historical, literary, and anthropological analysis of texts and images depicting surfeit and dearth, and would be an excellent reading selection for an undergraduate seminar on European-Indian encounters. Jess Edwards's "Between 'Plain Wilderness' and 'Goodly Corn Fields': Representing Land Use in Early Virginia" historicizes seventeenth-century English rhetoric about appropriate forms of land use and dovetails neatly with Peter C. Herman's " 'We All Smoke Here': Behn's The Widdow Ranter and the Invention of American Identity," which centers upon the creation of new forms of cultural practice in late-seventeenth-century Virginia. One might wonder how much more there might be to say on the much-debated topic of the origins of African slavery in Virginia, but Michael J. Guasco's "Settling with Slavery: Human Bondage in the Early Anglo-Atlantic World" yields interesting and valuable insights into seventeenth-century English understandings of states of unfreedom, including villeinage, servitude, and the enslavement of captive English mariners in North Africa.

As is so often true in volumes of this nature, some of the essays seem better suited than others to the putative subject of the collection, and many readers may opt to pass over individual pieces due to their lack of interest in specific topics or particular methodologies. But, as we see from Constance Jordan's conclusion (an unusual but most welcome practice in edited collection), these dozen highly diverse essays allow open-minded readers to reconceptualize Jamestown as a "world…neither new nor old but both at once," one which [End Page 154] was the product both of very historically and culturally specific negotiations between small groups of Indians and English and of a much wider-ranging series of histories, theories, and encounters (p. 288). In company with A Land as God Made It, Envisioning an English Empire shows just how much more we can learn about "the birth of America," and how new the New World can still be to scholars and students alike.

Natalie Zacek, lecturer in history and American studies, University of Manchester, is completing a monograph on the development of white societies in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English West Indies.

Endnotes

1. Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975), 4.

2. See Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (1992); and Tom Conley, The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France (1997).

Looking for Co-Author(s)

2010-01-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

Friends,

The NATIVE AMERICAN WISDOM website has existed since 2004 with what I feel has been a high degree of quality information on American Indian history, culture and -- yes, wisdom.

During its most popular period, this site averaged over 200 unique visitors a day. That number has fallen to about 80 unique visitors a day, mostly due to my inability to spend the time necessary to add new content.

So, rather than let the website just wither away, I am seeking a co-author who could work with me to keep adding important educational, historical, cultural and spiritual material particular to Native American Peoples.

My co-author would have a high level of independence. Coding and specific technological expertise is not necessary. I can help with that. The person (or persons) I am looking for should really only have a desire to share Native American Wisdom to the Earth, at large, and have the time to regularly post to the website.

If you are interested in becoming a co-author, please email me at malcolm @ legendarysurfers.com -- I have stretched the email out to thwart the spammers, but I'm sure you can figure out what the real address is. I look forward to hearing from you!

( Ko'o'shup, Chumash cave painting site about an hour's drive away )

Thanksgiving Origins & Menu

2009-11-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

To learn more about Thanksgiving Day, please go to:

Teaching About Thanksgiving

Where Did Thanksgiving Come From?

American Indian peoples, Europeans, and other cultures around the world often celebrated the harvest season with feasts to offer thanks to higher powers for their sustenance and survival.

In 1541 Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his troops celebrated a "Thanksgiving" while searching for New World gold in what is now the Texas Panhandle.

Later such feasts were held by French Huguenot colonists in present-day Jacksonville, Florida (1564), by English colonists and Abnaki Indians at Maine's Kennebec River (1607), and in Jamestown, Virginia (1610), when the arrival of a food-laden ship ended a brutal famine.

(Related: "Four Hundred-Year-Old Seeds, Spear Change Perceptions of Jamestown Colony.")

But it's the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that's linked to the birth of our modern holiday. The truth is the first "real" Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.

Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621, Monac said.

It had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s, she added.

In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow's brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing it the "First Thanksgiving."

In Winslow's "short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn't even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration."

But after its mid-1800s century appearance, Young's designation caught on—to say the least.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. He was probably swayed in part by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale—the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—who had suggested Thanksgiving become a holiday, historians say.

In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November.

What Was on the First Thanksgiving Menu?

Little is known about the first Thanksgiving dinner in the Plimoth (also spelled Plymouth) Colony in October 1621, attended by some 50 English colonists and about 90 native Wampanoag men in what is now Massachusetts.

We do know that the Wampanoag killed five deer for the feast, and that the colonists shot wild fowl—which may have been geese, ducks, or turkey. Some form, or forms, of Indian corn were also served.

But Jennifer Monac, spokesperson for the living-history museum Plimoth Plantation said the feasters likely supplemented their venison and birds with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, and wheat flour, as well as vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, carrots, and peas.

"They ate seasonally," Monac said, "and this was the time of the year when they were really feasting. There were lots of vegetables around, because the harvest had been brought in."

Traditional Thanksgiving fare that certainly wasn't on the table: potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.

If you want to eat like a Pilgrim yourself, try some of the Plimoth Plantation's recipes, including stewed pompion (pumpkin) or traditional Wampanoag succotash.

[ The above from National Geographic: Thanksgiving Facts

Ancient Mounds of Ohio

2009-10-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

A website detailing the Newark, Ohio, earthworks is excellent: ancientohiotrail.org

[ From: "Ancient Ohio Trail - Travel overland or via the Web to the historic places of south-central Ohio" By Stephanie Woodard, Indian Country Today correspondent, Jul 14, 2009 ]

A new Web site, ancientohiotrail.org, offers a 21st century way to discover little-known historic places in the wooded hills and lush farmland of south-central Ohio: Hundreds of Native American earthworks ranging in age from 550 to 3,000 years old. Hidden in plain sight in cities, towns, fields and even backyards are solitary mounds, or artificial hills; animal forms sculpted into hilltops; and monumental earthen-walled complexes in the form of precisely sculpted circles, octagons, squares and free-form shapes enclosing scores, or even hundreds, of acres.

“Native people quietly visit these sacred places with prayers, sage, and tobacco to honor the ancients who built them, and to let the spirits know they are not forgotten.” -Marti L. Chaatsmith, Comanche/Choctaw and program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center

The Web site provides maps, photographs, links to tourism information, a free travel brochure, and videos you can watch on a computer (choose MP4 format) or download to your cell phone. The electronic Ancient Ohio Trail was put together by a consortium, including University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Historical and Archaeological Sites, Ohio State University’s Newark Earthworks Center, and Ohio Historical Society. The easy-to-use site is worth a visit; junior high and high school teachers will find it an attractive, informative, respectfully written classroom tool.

It’s important to get information about these sites to the public, according to Carol Welsh, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and executive director of Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio. “Native people can take pride in them, and they show non-Native people the richness and complexity of our heritage.” She and her husband, Mark Welsh, Ihanktonwan Dakota and NAICCO program director, are part of a team assembled by the Newark Earthworks Center to give tours of sites in Newark, Ohio.

“It may not be widely understood that Ohio was once a center of Indian country,” said Marti L. Chaatsmith, Comanche/Choctaw and program coordinator of the Newark Earthworks Center. “Indigenous people lived here long before 2000 BCE and built earthworks into the landscape to mark the progression of the moon or the sun with ceremony.”

At once massive modifications of the land and masterpieces of subtlety, the grass-covered forms rise gently from their surroundings. Some of the best-known – the Newark Earthworks, Serpent Mound, Fort Ancient and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park/Mound City, all in south-central Ohio – are being considered for inclusion in UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, where they would join the Great Wall of China, Chartres Cathedral and other notable places.

The ancient Ohioans’ imagination encompassed not just architecture and astronomy, but also the adornment of their personal and ritual lives. They made shirts and dresses of hide and woven plant fibers and embroidered them with thousands of freshwater pearls and shells. They also fabricated stone statuary and pipes, copper jewelry and headdresses, trumpets and other musical instruments, pottery and ghostly open hands made from sheets of translucent mica. Though the ancients left no written language to let us know what they called themselves or how they thought of their vast and varied material culture, they survive in the oral histories of contemporary Native communities.

“Native people who recognize their blood connection with the ancients quietly visit these sacred places with prayers, sage, and tobacco to honor the ancients who built them, and to let the spirits know they are not forgotten,” Chaatsmith said.

Here’s a quick look at what you’ll find on the Ancient Ohio Trail. Recent budget cuts have meant that open hours have been curtailed; before you go, check current days and times:

Newark Earthworks: The Octagon

For two millenia, the Octagon has framed a view of the lunar standstill: The moment when the moon rises at the northernmost point of its 18.61-year cycle. In 2006, I watched this moment with a small group organized by the Newark Earthworks Center. Surrounded by the hulking walls, we faced the opening in the Octagon through which the moon would appear. Behind us was the flat-topped mound where the ancients likely stood to watch this event. Just after midnight, a brilliant white crescent soared into the velvet-black sky. This experience has, however, been clouded by contention since 1910, when a country club leased the site and began building a golf course on top of the earthworks. The course remains in use to this day, to the consternation of many. (125 North 33rd St.; Newark, Ohio 43055; (740) 364-9584; earthworks@osu.edu)

Newark Earthworks: The Great Circle

Inside this immense walled enclosure, you feel far from the modern world, though you’re in the middle of a busy city. The Octagon and the Great Circle were once part of the world’s largest set of geometric earthworks. The grouping covered four square miles and encompassed many other forms, now mostly gone, including parallel walls that were likely ceremonial passageways. Native people tend to agree with archaeologist Bradley Lepper, who believes that one of the passages extended 64 miles to connect with earthworks in Chillicothe. Recently archaeologist William Romaine reported that on the summer solstice this passage matches the path of the Milky Way. (455 Hebron Road, State Route 79, Heath, Ohio, 43056; (740) 364-9584; earthworks@osu.edu)

Serpent Mound

This 1,000-year-old, 1,330-foot-long snake is the largest effigy earthwork in the world. Sculpted into a grassy hilltop, its gently rounded coils are about 20 feet wide and three feet high and align with various celestial events. A footpath leads you along its body to the head, which overlooks gently rolling hills and aligns with the summer solstice sunset. Once at the head, you’ll see that the snake’s open mouth is swallowing something oval. (3580 Route 73; Peebles, Ohio 45660; (937) 587-2796; www.ohiohistory.org)

Fort Ancient

Around 2,000 years ago, using deer shoulder blades and other tools, this place’s builders sliced the top off an hourglass-shaped 125-acre bluff. Using the resulting 553,000 cubic yards of dirt, they enclosed the space – one basket-load at a time over several centuries – with 18,000 feet of undulating earthen walls. Today, as in ancient times, you enter via a gateway at the site’s north end, proceed through the northern lobe of the hourglass, traverse a narrow, walled-in land bridge, and finally arrive at the southern lobe. There the site opens up to a glorious, panoramic view of the wooded river valley below. (6123 State Route 350; Oregonia, Ohio 45054; (513) 932-4421 or (800) 283-8904; www.ohiohistory.org).

Mannahatta

2009-09-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Mannahatta -- Manhattan -- before the Europeans arrived (1609 A.D.).:

Mannahatta, 1609 A.D.

Earth Family

2009-05-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

"It's not a resource. It's a family."

Native American Statehood

2009-01-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

A great idea... Let's dream big:

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[From: "A state for Native Americans?" by Andy Harvey - Jan. 16, 2009, 12 News, Phoenix, Arizona - see video on page, also. ]

Could the United States get a 51st state? That's what a Northern Arizona man is proposing. While living on the Navajo Indian reservation, Mark Charles came up with the idea.

"It was very striking to me how here we were in the middle of the United States, technology, community, government all around us and yet it felt like the country had no idea we were there,” Charles said.

And when the presidential candidates were campaigning, Charles said they didn’t pay attention to the Native American vote, especially since tribes have a unique relationship with the federal government through treaties unlike other minority groups. So that’s when the Navajo man started asking questions on what can be done to give Native Americans a stronger presence in Washington D.C.

"What can we do to take a place at the table where we can make decisions about our own lands and people and history and communities?" Charles said.

He came up with the idea to establish a Native American state.

"It would be a state for people who are enrolled members of tribes," Charles said.

The state would be virtual and wouldn’t involve rearranging any land. It would represent members from over 500 federally recognized tribes. According to the U.S. Census, nearly 4 million people claim to be Native American.

"That would put us, that population in ranking of order of a state somewhere in between 25 and 35 with 1 being the largest," Charles said.

The state would also get electoral votes and congressional leaders.

"Who could go and be a part of congress to have the ability to introduce bills and have the ability to object when things are brought up and funding is being cut from Native American programs," Charles said.

However, creating a new state is a long shot according to ASU law professor Robert Clinton.

"Essentially the state can't be carved out of existing states and all of the Indian reservations now are in existing states," Clinton said.

Clinton, who’s worked with several Native American tribes, said the idea isn’t new. Back in the 19th century, there were talks about establishing such a state by the federal government.

"There were proposals for an Indian state in the Indian territory, but that never happened," Clinton said.

Today, it would take approval of state lawmakers to allow such a state to be formed, but Clinton thinks this would never happen.

"This is one of those ideas that was a terrific idea before the states were admitted. Once they were admitted because of that provision it becomes constitutionally almost impossible to accomplish," Clinton said.

Still, Charles wants to start a dialogue. The Fort Defiance resident plans to travel to different reservations and talk to community members and tribal leaders about his idea. He said he’s already been contact by different members from across the country.

"I want us to think creatively outside the box. What can we do to give ourselves a voice?" he said.

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Reservations map can be viewed and/or downloaded. Large file, give it time to load:

Reservations Map

146th Annniversary of Mass Hanging

2008-12-25T10:54:00.000-08:00

... about 50 Native Americans... [have ridden] horseback into the Mankato area... Their arrival will mark the end of a nearly 300 mile trip to mark the 146th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Photo courtesy of MPR

Minnisota Public Radio has images from the ride, an audio broadcast and blog post about:

The 300 mile of reconciliation over the mass hanging of Dakota people in 1862.

'The group has endured blizzards and long stretches of below zero temperatures in their journey from the Missouri River to the Minnesota River.

'They saddled up again this morning in southwest Minnesota for one of the last legs of what they call a ride of reconciliation.

'St. Paul, Minn. — About two inches of overnight snow was waiting for the riders as they assembled on the wacipi, or powwow grounds, of the Lower Sioux Community. Trailers, pickup trucks and dozens of people were on hand to help feed, water and brush the horses.

'One of the people saddling up is Jim Miller. Miller lives on the Pine Ridge reservation in western South Dakota. He says despite the rough weather, the riders enthusiasm is undiminished.

'Jim Miller: "I'm amazed at the young guys," Miller says. "They're up and ready to go. We as the elders, we kind of have to talk them down, you know? They wanted to ride in the blizzard, they're just game."

'Miller says he started the ride in 2005 after dreaming about a riderless horse and other symbols he linked to the mass execution in Mankato. An ancestor of his was among those executed.

'The hangings followed the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862 which began just a couple miles away from where Miller stands. On Dec. 26, 1862, victorious federal officials hanged 38 Dakota men as punishment for a war that took hundreds of lives.

'Miller says the pain of that conflict still linger among families on both sides of the war.

'"I want to make a statement that we're the first to apologize, for our part in the war," Miller says. "What the federal government and what the state does is up to them. And we're here on one condition, and that's love for all people. We have to share this planet together and let's do it with love."

'Miller's message of reconciliation is what the event is all about -- bridging gaps between cultures. Miller says when a blizzard stranded the riders for two days in Howard, S.D., the residents he calls non-natives helped out, providing extra feed for the horses.

'In southwest Minnesota, Theresa Welu says her family agreed to put the riders up for a night on their farm near the town of Milroy.

'Theresa Welu: "They were so set on making something better," Welu says. "And their message of peace and hope and strength and trying to help their people reconcile with everyone else, it was just a wonderful thing and we were so glad to play a small part in their ride through here."

'Back on the Lower Sioux, the riders are leaving the powwow grounds, ready to travel county roads on the day's planned 18-mile trip.

'The area was the homeland for the Dakota before the 1862 war. The war started after the U.S. government failed to meet its treaty obligations.

'After the war, the Dakota were driven out of Minnesota, resettling mainly in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Canada.

'Yvonne Wynde's family was among those forced out. Today, her grandson's are among the riders. She says she hopes they learn a little history on the journey.

'Yvonne Wynde: "To see all these names, Lac Qui Parle, Birch Coulee, Wood Lake; what happened here? Really want to become better educated in terms of the American public educational system and the Dakota educational system that I think happens more in the homes than in the schools," says Wynde.

'Wynde says the effects of the 1862 war still linger today, not only in the displacement of the Dakota people, but also in the poverty that followed.

'Once the riders are on the road through Lower Sioux, the history Wynde is interested in is all around.

'They pass by the warehouse where the fighting started in 1862. They'll spend the night at Fort Ridgely, scene of a major battle in the war. Then it's on to Mankato. The group will hold a ceremony there Friday near the execution site.

'More than a decade ago the city renamed the location Reconciliation Park.'

Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dance

2008-12-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

A video documentary on Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dance:

Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dance

Prophesies 1

2008-12-05T09:53:00.000-08:00

"Time evolves and comes to a place where it renews again. There is first a purification time. Then there is renewal time. We are getting really close to this time now. We were told, we would see America come and go. In a sense America is dying, from within. Because we forgot the instructions on how to live on earth..."

"... Time evolves and comes to a place where it renews again. There is first a purification time. Then there is renewal time. We are getting really close to this time now. We were told, we would see America come and go. In a sense America is dying, from within. Because we forgot the instructions on how to live on earth.

"Everything is coming to a time where prophesy and man's inability to live on earth in a spiritual way will come to a crossroad of great problems. It's the Hopi belief, it's our belief that if you are not spiritually connected to the earth, understand the spiritual reality on how to live on the earth, it's likely you will not make it.

"When Columbus came that began what we term as the first world war. Because along with him came everybody from Europe. By the end of the second world war, we were in America only 800,000 from 60 million to 800,000. We were almost exterminated in America.

"Everything is spiritual. Everything has a spirit. Everything is brought to you by a Creator. One Creator. Some people call Him God, some people call Him Buddha, some people call Him Allah, some people call Him other names. We call Him Grandfather.

"We're here on earth only a few winters, then we go to the spirit world. The spirit world is more real than most of us believe. The spirit world is everything. Over 95% of our bodies is water. In order to stay healthy, you have to drink good water. When the European first came here, Columbus, we could drink out of any river. If the Europeans had lived the Indian way when they came here, we would still be drinking the water. Why? Because water is sacred. The air is sacred.

"Our DNA is made of the same DNA as the tree. The tree breathes what we exhale. When the tree exhales, we need what the tree exhales. So, we have a common destiny with the tree. We are all from the earth. When the earth, the water, the atmosphere is corrupted, then it will create its own reaction. Mother is reacting. In the Hopi prophesy they say the storms and floods will become greater.

"To me it's not a negative thing to know that there will be great changes. It's not negative. It's evolution. When you look at it as evolution, it's time. Nothing stays the same.

"You should learn how to plant something, that's the first connection. You should treat all things as spirit and realize that we are ONE family. It's never something like the end. It's like life, there is no end to life."

Making Peace with Thanksgiving

2008-11-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

[ From Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Making peace with Thanksgiving," by Kery Murakami, November 17, 2008 ]

( Wampanoag home block cut image courtesy of http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t45/maggie6138/nativehouse.jpg )

James Rasmussen [ director of the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center] was matter-of-fact... when asked how he plans to celebrate Thanksgiving.

"Just like anybody else," he said.

But he knew the question implied more, because he is a member of the Duwamish, and he was helping build the tribe's new longhouse in West Seattle.

After all, Thanksgiving may be a day for turkey and football for many, but it marks the beginning of the end and more than a twinge of betrayal for early Native Americans who helped the Pilgrims survive.

Rasmussen knew there was a political facet to the question, he said. "But on the scale of things that bother me, like (the Duwamish) not being federally recognized, Thanksgiving is pretty low on the list."

Certainly, there will be some Native Americans who boycott the holiday, as Elliott Wolfe, a descendant of the Sioux and Chippewa tribes, said he once considered.

He was in high school and was trying to learn about his heritage.

"I started looking into the history and the negative stuff. You learn how much back stabbing there was, and you hear about all the horrible, horrible things that happened, and it just got a little depressing," said Wolfe, now a junior studying construction management at the University of Washington.

But he went to Thanksgiving dinner that year anyway. "Just because I felt bitter about the holiday didn't mean I wanted to ruin it for everybody."

For all the negative associations, Wolfe and other Native Americans say they've forged their own memories and their own meaning for Thanksgiving -- and none of it has to do with Pilgrims.

"We usually go to my aunt's house or my parents' house," he said. "We all get together and share stories. Me and my cousins usually get into mischief. We have a big dinner. There's so many of us, we can't fit at any one table."

Wolfe said: "I think for most American Indians, it's just a time to spend with family. But you have that thought in the back of your mind. You like getting together but you almost wish there was another reason."

There was another reason to go to the dinner -- at some point, he had to move on or be lost in bitterness. Eventually, he stopped being part of a study group with other Native American students.

"I was catching myself with pessimistic attitudes and negative thoughts. There was nothing I could do about mainstream society whitewashing the history. I could complain about how technically my family should own hundreds of acres in the Midwest. But I could get a good job and buy some of that land back."

But although Native Americans have tried to find meaning in Thanksgiving, the day and the way it's taught in schools still can be a sore spot...

Marty Bluewater, executive director of the United Indians for All Tribes, which offers social services and runs the Native American Daybreak Star Cultural Center in Discovery Park... said United Indians tries to focus on the broader idea of Thanksgiving: sharing...

On Thanksgiving, Bluewater, who is Shawnee and Choctaw, will be with his mother and his nephews. They will barbecue a turkey. And they'll say a few Native prayers. "I'll try to take the good parts and make it a time for sharing," he said.

---------------------------

Further resources:

Teaching About Thanksgiving
http://ehighlights.hsd401.org/node/282

NEA Booklist

2008-11-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

To mark the 13th anniversary of Native American Heritage Month (November), the National Education Aassociation has released a recommended reading list for students in public schools that they call the "Native American Booklist." It is organized by grade level and includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry:

Grades K-4

* Baby Rattlesnake by Te Ata. Illustrated by Lynn Moroney. Children's Press (1991).
* A Boy Called Slow: The True Story of Sitting Bull by Joseph Bruchac. Putnam (1994)
* Crazy Horse's Vision by Joseph Bruchac. Illustrated by S.D. Nelson. Lee and Low Books (2000)
* The Boy Who Dreamed of an Acorn by Leigh Casler. Illustrated by Shonto Begay. Putnam Books (1994).
* Drumbeat?Heartbeat: A Celebration of the Powwow by Susan Braine. Lerner Publications (1995).
* Earth Daughter: Alicia of Acoma Pueblo by George Ancona. Macmillan (1995).
* Enduring Wisdom by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneave. Illustrated by Synthia St. James. Holiday House (2003).
* Full Moon Stories by Eagle Walking Turtle. Hyperion (1997).
* The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses by Paul Goble. Bradbury (1978).
* Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message by Jake Swamp and Erwin Printup. Lee and Low Books (1995).
* The Good Luck Cat by Joy Harjo. Illustrated by Paul Lee. Harcourt (2000).
* Grandmother's Dreamcatcher by Becky Ray McCain. Albert Whitman and Company (1998).
* Grandmother's Pigeon by Louise Erdrich. Hyperion Books (1996).
* Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith. Illustrated by Cornelius Wright. HarperCollins (2000).
* Knots on a Counting Rope by John Archambault. Illustrated by Ted Rand. Owlet (1997).
* The Legend of the White Buffalo Woman by Paul Goble. Illustrated by Paul Goble. National Geographic (1998).
* Less Than Half, More Than Whole by Kathleen LaCapa. Illustrated by Michael LaCapa. Northland Press (1994).
* The Magic Hummingbird translated by Ekkehart Malotki, narrated by Michael Lomatuway'Ma. Illustrated by Michael Lacapa. Kiva (1996).
* Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joose. Illustrated by Barbara LaVallee. Chronicle Books (1998).
* A Man Called Raven by Richard Van Camp. Illustrated by George Littlechild. Children's Book Press (1997).
* Many Nations: An Alphabet of Native America by Joseph Bruchac. Illustrated by Robert F. Goetzi. Northland Publishers (1996).
* My Arctic 1,2,3 by Michael Kusagak. Illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka. Annick Press (1996).
* Powwow by George Ancona. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1993).
* Return of the Buffaloes by Paul Goble. Illustrated by Paul Goble. National Geographic (1996).
* Sing Down the Rain by Judi Moreillon. Illustrated by Michael Chiago. Kiva Publishing (1997).
* Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina by Maria Tallchief. Viking Press (1999).
* This Land is Your Land by George Littlechild. Children's Press (1993).
* What's the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses? by Richard Van Camp. Illustrated by George Littlechild. Children's Book Press (1998).
* When the Rain Sings by the National Museum of the American Indian. Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers (1999).

Grades 5-8

* Arctic Memories by Normee Ekoomiak. Holt (1988).
* Arrow Over the Door by Joseph Bruchac. Dial (1998).
* The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. Harper (1999).
* Children of the Sun: Stories by and About Indian Kids by Beverly Hungry Wolf. William Morrow (1998).
* Did You Hear Wind Sing Your Name? An Oneida Song of Spring by Sandra DeCoteau. Walker & Company (1995).
* Dancing Teepees: Poems of American Indian Youth by Virginia Driving Hawk Sneave. Holiday House (1988).
* Four Seasons of Corn: A Winnebago Tradition by Sally M. Hunter. Lerner (1997).
* Indian Shoes by Cynthia Leitich Smith. HarperCollins (2002).
* Navajo: Visions and Voices Across the Mesa by Shonto Begay. Illustrated by Shonto Begay. Scholastic (1995).
* Northern Lights: The Soccer Trails by Michael Kusugak. Illustrated by Vladyana Krykorka. Annick Press (1993).
* The Path of the Quiet Elk by Virginia Stroud. Dial Books (1999).
* Pushing Up the Sky by Joseph Bruchac. Dial Books for Young Readers (2000).
* Rain is Not My Indian Name by Cynthia Leitich Smith. HarperCollins (2001).
* Soul Would Have No Rainbow If the Eyes Had No Tears and Other Native American Proverbs by Guy A. Zona. Touchstone Books (1994).
* The Ways of My Grandmothers Beverly Hungry Wolf. William Morrow (1998).
* Wonderful Sky Boat and Other Native American Tales of the Southeast by Jane Louise Curry. Illustrated by James Watts. Margaret McElderry Books (2001).

Grades 9 and Up

* After and Before the Lightening by Simon Ortiz. University of Arizona Press (1994).
* Bloodlines: Odyssey of a Native Daughter by Janet Campbell Hale. University of Arizona Press (1993).
* Encyclopedia of American Indian Civil Rights by James Stuart Olson (editor), Mark Baxter (editor), Darren Pierson (editor), and Jason M. Tetzloff (editor). Greenwood (1997).
* Food and Spirits by Beth Brant. Oyate (1991).
* Full Moon on the Reservation by Gloria Bird. Greenfield Review Press (1998).
* A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection of North American Indian Women edited by Beth Brant. Firebrand Books (1989).
* Ghost Dance: New and Selected Poems by Dorise Seale. Oyate (2001).
* Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Bantam (1993).
* Here First: Autobiographical Essays by Native American Writers edited by Arnold Krupet. Modern Library (2001).
* House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday. University of Arizona Press (1966).
* The Joe Leaphorn Series by Tony Hillerman. HarperCollins. (1989-2002).
* Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie. HarperPerennial (1994).
* Power by Linda Hogan. W.W. Norton and Company (1999).
* Skeleton Man by Joseph Bruchac. HarperCollins (2001).
* Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing by Simon Ortiz. University of Arizona Press (1998).
* The Woman Who Watches the World by Linda Hogan. W.W. Norton and Company (2001).

Columbus, Cabot & Vespucci

2008-10-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

To be honest with you, Columbus Day is an anti-holiday for me. I still cannot believe that this
day is celebrated. It remains a very dark day for the world, on many levels.

Author David Boyle discussed his new book, "Toward the Setting Sun: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and the Race for America" in an expansive NPR interview at:

Talking Columbus On Columbus Day : NPR

Miccosukee & Everglades Restoration

2008-10-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

In Southern Florida, there's a battle over a restoration plan for the Everglades. On one side: environmental groups, public officials, and sugar industry executives. On the other side: the Miccosukee, a small group of native Americans that actually live there.

NPR Audio | U.S. Sugar Tastes Sour To Everglades Tribe

Paquiqueneo

2008-10-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

James Horn. A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America. New York: Basic Books, 2005. xi + 289 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper)

Horn announces that "the English were not the first Europeans to discover Virginia" (p. 1). In the summer of 1561, a Spanish ship was driven by storms into the Bay.

Proceeding inland, the Spaniards anchored along a river in order to gather supplies and repair their vessel, and there, on the banks of what may have been the Chickahominy, they encountered a small group of Indians, two of whom apparently "agreed" to board the ship and sail back to Europe with its crew.

One of these two, Paquiqueneo, was given the name of Don Luis de Velasco, under which title he was presented at Philip II's court in Madrid. Anxious to return to his homeland, Don Luis sailed to Mexico, where he accepted the Christian faith and spent several years living amongst Dominican friars.

Expressing a desire to establish a mission among his own people, Don Luis gained the support of the governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and in 1570, accompanied by dozen Jesuits, he at last returned to his home. Once resettled among his people, Don Luis soon turned his back upon the missionaries, who struggled to survive a harsh winter, and in February 1571 the apostate and his supporters attacked the mission, killing all but one of its residents.

An enraged Menendez dispatched an expedition against his former comrade; unable to find Don Luis, he settled for unleashing a "chastisement" upon the Indians before returning to Florida.

Although the Spanish mission met a quick and brutal end, in Horn's view it cast a long shadow over future relations between Europeans and Virginia Indians. Menendez's attack acquainted the Indians with the fearsome nature of European warfare, and simultaneously served as a warning to rival European powers that Spain had laid its claims to North American territories as well as those to the south.

Perhaps more importantly, this moment of contact gave rise to tantalizing tales of the alleged wealth of this land, which Spanish mariners claimed was filled with easily accessible lodes of jewels and precious metals. All of these results were to have significant impact upon the next century's English colonial endeavors.

From this arresting opening, Horn moves on to examine the principal players and events that led to and followed the arrival of the small English fleet in 1607. He analyzes the statecraft of Wahunsonacock (whom the English knew as Powhatan) and Opechancanough, the pre-eminent leaders of the region that the Powhatans called Tsenacommacah and he provocatively argues that Opechancanough may have been none other than Don Luis/Paquiquineo (!) and lauds the skill by which these two brothers gained control of "great and spacious Dominions" (p. 20).

Malcolm's Recommendations

2008-02-02T10:09:00.002-08:00

I've added a link to Amazon.com that I will be updating periodically. The recommendations I make are based on 38 years of reading and traveling the Red Road. Pleas go to:

NATIVE AMERICAN WAYS @ Amazon.com

Tsenacommacah People

2008-01-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

This posting begins a series on people from Tenakomakah (Tsenacommacah), that area that included Powhatan country between what is now known as the James and York Rivers, which may have also been known by the Spanish as Ajacan, during the time of initial European contact.

"The sundry Marks of the Chief Men of Virginia"
By Theodore de Bry [probably after John White]
Engraving from book page
Plate 23 from "America," Part 1 (1st ed., Frankfurt, 1590–1607)
Image courtesy of www.vahistorical.org

No extant John White painting corresponds to this print. The caption explains the symbols as marks worn by men to show their affiliation: "whereby it may be known what Prince's subjects they be, or of what place they have their origin."

[The following is an excerpt from:]

Re-‘Interpreting’ the Role of the Cultural Broker in the Conquest of La Florida, 1513 - 1600

Considering the important part played by interpreters in facilitating contact, communication, cultural exchange, and conflict resolution in the early colonial period, there have been surprisingly few individual or collective historical biographies of these influential individuals.[1]Although a few anthropologists and historians recently have taken up the cause of these “conduits” of the colonial frontiers, many of their monographs tend to depict these individuals either as “victims”--“weathercocks buffeted by the shifting political winds in one or both cultures,” or as “heroes”--“master mediators” who had been “culturally-enlarged” into “150% men.”[2]While there is some truth to both of these views, neither characterization does justice to the colorful lives, complex roles, and checkered careers of the diverse peoples that ethnohistorians have begun to lump together under the generic label of“cultural brokers.”[3]To date, only one historian, Eugene Lyon, has directly addressed (if briefly) this important subject in the context of the Spanish borderlands frontier as this paper will endeavor to do in a more comprehensive manner.[4]

In examining the culturally ambiguous characters that served as interpreters in La Florida’s early contact period, it is not possible to construct a single composite portrait that would sufficiently represent the diversity of their motives, choices, and life experiences.On the other hand, at least six distinct types of interpreters may be identified: abducted Amerindians, captured and redeemed Castilian castaways, foreign prisoners, youthful catechists and missionaries, acculturated Indian caciques and cacicas, and Spanish garrison soldiers.As often as not, these individuals did not choose the career of cultural broker, but were kidnapped, enslaved, or compelled to assume the role of interpreter or intermediary by Spanish conquistadores and Indian caciques.Since the interpreter figured prominently in the negotiation of truces and peace-settlements, conquistadores and caciques had to be prepared either to win the go-betweens’ loyalty with generous gifts and kindnesses, or to coerce their cooperation with threats of punishment.Although the linguistic skills of these “middlemen” may have made them more sensitive to the cultural values of both parties, it is important to remember that the extraordinary individuals acting as mediators were ordinary men and women in pursuit of their own self-interest.Collectively, however, their individual actions and “personal dramas influenced, changed, and sometimes even dictated the course of colonial development.”[5]

------------------

[1].Many of the older generation of “patrician” historians writing about the conquest of the Americas extolled the virtues and trumpeted the accomplishments of a few “great white men” to the exclusion of all other voices and traditions.The histories they and their “consensus school” successors wrote considered only the deeds of the European “discoverers,” explorers, conquistadores, colonial founders, and missionaries as worthy of their pens and ignored or marginalized the more culturally ambiguous men and women of the borderlands frontier.Not surprisingly, the only full-length historical biographies written in this period about interpreters focused on European diplomats: Paul A. W. Wallace, Conrad Weiser, 1696-1760, Friend of Colonist and Mohawk (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945) and Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan: Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C.: 1959).Only in the last year has any historian compared and contrasted the experiences of European and Native American interpreters in a single work.See James Hart Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999).

[2].Anthropologist Malcom McFee was the first to argue that the bi-cultural individual had more options and less constraints in his article, “The 150% man: a product of Blackfoot acculturation,” American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 1096-1107; historian J. Frederick Fausz took the opposite view, depicting these individuals as “marginal men” in his article, “‘Middlemen in peace and war’: Virginia’s earliest Indian interpreters, 1608-1632,” published in the Journal of American History 75 (June 1988): 41-64.Anthropologist James A. Clifton quickly counter-attacked, debunking the “older popular stereotype” that “culturally marginalized people became psychologically diminished,” and arguing instead that as masters of two (or more) cultures, interpreters actually became “culturally enlarged.”See the introduction to his Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1989), 28-29.Other historians have chosen--much like their “cultural broker” subjects--to straddle the fence between the warring camps, rather than take one side over the other.See, for example, Nancy L. Hagedorn and Alan Taylor’s characterization of a Stockbridge Mohican mediator, respectively published as “‘A friend to go between them’”: the interpreter as cultural broker during Anglo-Iroquois councils, 1740-1770,” Ethnohistory 35 (Winter 1988) and “Captain Hendrick Aupaumut: the dilemmas of an intercultural broker,” Ethnohistory 43:3 (Summer 1996).

[3].Historian Margaret Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: the Cultural Broker (Norman: London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), and linguist Frances Karttunen, ed. Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides, and Survivors (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, c.1994) wisely ignored the debate altogether, and as a result have produced more informative and complex look at the varied lives, survival strategies, and experiences of the interpreters included in their studies.

[4].See “The captives of Florida,” and “Cultural brokers in sixteenth-century Spanish Florida,” in Eugene Lyon, ed., Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (New York: London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), 171-190, 329-336.

[5].See the editors’ introduction in David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash, ed., Struggle and Survival in Colonial America (Berkeley: University of California Press, c.1981), 1-13.

Ward Churchill

2007-06-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

Regents to vote on firing Ward Churchill. It's time to speak out.

In the next few weeks, the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado (CU) will vote on the dismissal of Professor Ward Churchill. This is the final opportunity for public input in this process.

Over the past two and a half years, many of you have opposed CU's attempts to fire Ward. Ward and I have engaged in this struggle not for the sake of his job (he will always write, speak and teach), nor because we enjoy battling bureaucracy, but because it has become emblematic of contemporary efforts to silence those who insist on discussing uncomfortable truths.

Since February 2005, CU administrators have been under intense political and financial pressure to fire Ward for his statements about the 9/11 attacks. To avoid blatantly violating the First Amendment, they have resorted to a pretextual investigation of his scholarship.

After combing through a media barrage of unfounded allegations and his more than 20 books, 100 articles, and over 12,000 footnotes, CU has settled for firing Ward Churchill, a tenured full professor, for six instances of alleged improper footnoting or author attribution (see details below).

Predictably, this has provided sufficient excuse for those who wish to distance themselves from this "controversy" and still believe they support academic freedom. For organizations like Lynne Cheney's neoconservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), it is a major victory for the corporatization of higher education.

However, those who look beyond the headlines and CU's self-serving pronouncements have recognized it as a charade.

First, the evidence has established that all of the charges investigated were solicited or invented by University administrators. None were filed by the allegedly aggrieved parties.

The specific charges against Ward have been debunked. Recently, fifteen professors and two attorneys filed two sets of formal research misconduct allegations against the investigative committee which wrote the report used to justify sanctions. These illustrate that the committee members were so determined to convict Ward that they engaged in falsification and fabrication of evidence, twisting the facts to fit their conclusions. In addition, CU Professor Tom Mayer has exposed the pretextual nature of the so-called plagiarism charges.

More generally, Indigenous scholar/activists and their allies have recognized that this is an attack on those who challenge mainstream "truths" about U.S. history, as well as an attempt to eliminate ethnic and gender studies. Public intellectuals including Derrick Bell, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Howard Zinn, and Immanuel Wallerstein published an open letter in the NY Review of Books denouncing CU's actions as part of the repressive post-9/11 "militarist reflex." A petition opposing Ward's dismissal was signed by nearly 500 scholars and activists with Teachers for a Democratic Society. Many other groups have submitted letters and petitions denouncing CU's tactics and calling for Ward's reinstatement.

What has meant the most to us, however, has been the support of elders like Carrie Dann of the Western Shoshone and Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama, young people who are searching for a way to cope with an uncertain future, and regular people on the street - parking lot attendants, baggage handlers, homeless people - who consistently express their appreciation that Ward refuses to be silenced. They know this is not about footnotes.

I hope you will take the time to e-mail the CU Regents and urge them not to fire Ward Churchill. They can be reached c/o Millie.Cortez@cu.edu , or individually at

Steve.Ludwig@cu.edu, Cindy.Carlisle@cu.edu, Patricia.Hayes@cu.edu, Michael.Carrigan@cu.edu, Tom.Lucero@cu.edu, Steve.Bosley@cu.edu, Kyle.Hybl@cu.edu, Paul.Schauer@cu.edu, Tillie.Bishop@cu.edu

(For maximum effectiveness, please cc: wcsn@gmail.com.)

We have no illusions that the Regents will suddenly wake up and decide to take academic freedom seriously. However, the resistance they encounter in firing Ward Churchill will determine how readily others will be subjected to similar treatment. Resistance is never futile, for it defines the terms of the next struggle.

In solidarity,

Natsu Taylor Saito

Boulder, Colorado

June 20, 2007

p.s. A brief outline of key facts and links follows. See also www.wardchurchill.net and www.defendcriticalthinking.org.

Key Facts in the Ward Churchill Case

The Charges :

CU's grounds for dismissal now consist solely of the charges that Prof. Churchill:

(1) failed to provide sufficient evidence that in the 1837 smallpox epidemic

(a) infected blankets were obtained from an infirmary;

(b) an Army doctor or post surgeon told the Mandans to scatter; and

(c) 400,000 people, as opposed to possibly 300,000, ultimately died;

(2) cited to material he has consistently acknowledged as ghostwritten;

(3) published an article in Z Magazine in which the editors, without telling him, deleted his attribution of co-authorship to "Dam the Dams;" and

(4) copyedited a piece in a book edited by a third party which, unbeknownst to him, plagiarized Fay Cohen.

The invalidity of each charge has been shown demonstrated by Prof. Churchill and numerous other scholars. But even if they were true, they illustrate the pretextual nature of the process. No prolific scholar could withstand such fine-tooth combing of his or her work.

The Bottom Line :

Recognizing that they could not fire Prof. Churchill directly for his political speech, CU administrators created a pretext to do so by soliciting/inventing "research misconduct" allegations. A biased investigation generated a handful of technical charges which the University has falsely labeled "plagiarism" or "fabrication of evidence." To date, external political and financial pressures have trumped the First Amendment and the principle of academic freedom at the University of Colorado.

Key Developments:

Feb. 2, 2005: then-Colorado Governor Bill Owens demands that Professor Ward Churchill be fired for his 2001 op-ed web posting on the 9/11 attacks.

Feb. 3, 2005: The Regents denounce Ward Churchill's statements and authorize then-Interim Chancellor Philip DiStefano to investigate "every word" he has published. Though billed as a public meeting, two people are arrested and prosecuted for attempting to speak in support of Prof. Churchill.

Mar. 3, 2005: Then-President Betsy Hoffman warns the Boulder Faculty Assembly of a "new McCarthyism," pointing out that there is "no question that there's a real danger that the group of people [who] went after Prof. Churchill now feel empowered." Within 5 days Pres. Hoffman announces her resignation.

Mar. 24, 2005: Interim Chancellor DiStefano, who has never bothered to inform Prof. Churchill of the investigation, publicly announces that although all of Prof. Churchill's writings and speeches are protected by the First Amendment, the University has received other allegations which require investigation. Subsequently it comes out that all of the allegations actually investigated were either created or solicited by University administrators.

Spring 2005: The University feeds the media frenzy, holding press conferences to announce each step of the "investigation" in direct violation of confidentiality rules. In turn, news coverage is submitted for investigation by Interim Chancellor DiStefano as "complainant."

Fall 2005: An Investigative Committee is appointed, chaired by CU law professor Mimi Wesson. Prof. Churchill is not informed that Prof. Wesson had circulated a memo in Feb. 2005 comparing Prof. Churchill to "charismatic male celebrity wrongdoers" like OJ Simpson, Bill Clinton, and Michael Jackson. The Committee includes no American Indians and no one specializing in American Indian or Indigenous Studies.

May 9, 2006: The Investigative Committee holds a press conference to release its Report, claiming to have found 7 instances of research misconduct. One committee member recommends termination, four recommend suspension.

June 16, 2006: Interim Chancellor DiStefano, the "complainant," now becomes sentencing judge, recommending dismissal.

May 3, 2007: An internal faculty appeal panel finds the University has not met its burden of proof on some charges, but upholds others (documentation of the 1837 smallpox epidemic and questions of author attribution). Two members of the panel support dismissal; three recommend a 1-year suspension.

Prof. Churchill requests that CU President Hank Brown recuse himself from the dismissal process, based upon Brown's biases, including his close ties to ACTA, which has consistently denounced Prof. Churchill (see ACTA's How Many Ward Churchills?).

May 10 and 28, 2007: Two groups of professors and attorneys file research misconduct charges against the Investigative Committee for falsifying and fabricating evidence against Prof. Churchill in their Report . The governing board of the Colorado Conference of AAUP chapters calls on the University not to take action against Prof. Churchill until the legitimacy and objectivity of the Report has been investigated.

June 7, 2007: CU President Hank Brown refuses to recuse himself or delay action, and overrides the majority of both the Investigative Committee and the faculty appeal panel to recommend that the Regents fire Prof. Churchill.

July/Aug 2007: The CU Regents will vote on dismissing Prof. Churchill.

Quick links :

Two sets of research misconduct charges filed against CU Investigative Committee:

http://wardchurchill.net/files/misconduct_charges_letter_and_supporting_docs.doc

http://wardchurchill.net/files/rm_indig_sch_052807.pdf

Debunking plagiarism charges: http://wardchurchill.net/files/mayer_on_plagiarism_charges_0607.pdf

The ACTA connection: http://wardchurchill.net/files/cu_acta_ad.pdf

Indigenous Studies: http://wardchurchill.net/files/indig_conf_resol_020307.pdf

NY Review of Books Open Letter: http://wardchurchill.net/files/open_letter_for_nyrb.pdf

Teachers for a Democratic Society petition: http://www.teachersfordemocracy.org/?q=node/19

Eskiminzin (1828-1895)

2007-04-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

April 28, 1871: Either convinced that Eskiminzin's Apache are responsible for raids near Tucson, or just looking for an excuse to attack the Aravaipas, William Oury sets out with 140 armed whites and Indians for the Apache camp near Camp Grant.

April 30 1871: William Oury, a veteran Indian fighter from Tucson, and 140 men, including 92 Papago Indians, find the unarmed camp of Eskiminzin's Aravaipa Apaches living near Camp Grant. Believing them to be raiders of San Xavier Mission on April 10th, over 50 miles away near Tucson, the group attacks the unsuspecting village. 144 Indians will be killed during the massacre. Twenty-seven children will survive, they will all be sold into slavery in Mexico by the Papagos. Lt. Royal Whitman, of Camp Grant hears of the expedition against the Indians, but his message of warning, will arrive a few hours after the fighting begins. Lt. Whitman, believing the Aravaipas to be innocent, eventually gets the Tucson men brought to trial in Tucson. Many Army members testify that the Aravaipas could not possibly have been involved in the raids, but after the five-day trail, and a deliberation of lest than half an hour, the Tucson men are acquitted.

From http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/april/stories/campgrant1.html

Arizona's Camp Grant Massacre
by Howard Sheldon

In the pre-dawn hours of April 30, 1871, eight men and 110 women and children were brutally murdered in the brief span of 30 minutes. In addition, 28 Arivaipa Apache papoose were kidnapped from the grisly scene for sale in the child slave trade. The corpses left to rot in the morning sun of Arivaipa Canyon were a macabre sight to Dr. Conant B. Briesly the first white man to chronicle the sight when he arrived at half past seven the same morning. By eight o'clock that morning, the mongrel band responsible for the gruesome massacre was breakfasting and celebrating their victory over an Indian tribe of defenseless, sleeping victims. What prompted 148 Arizonans -- comprised of 6 Anglos, 94 San Xavier Papagos and 48 Mexicans -- to commit such an atrocity?

April 30, 1998, marks the 127th anniversary of this dark page in Arizona's Territorial diary, written in Arivaipa Apache blood. There will be no recognition of this day by the white man. There is no physical marker to locate the site. However, this day has not been forgotten by the relatives of those slain, the Arivaipa Apaches. This attempt at genocide is known as the Camp Grant Massacre.

The events that led up to and culminated in the Camp Grant Massacre were the severe depredations of humans and livestock in the first four months of 1871. Atrocities were committed by both the white man and the native Indians. The immigrants, white-eyed enemies or pindah-lickoyee as the Indians called them, were moving in by the thousands and exhausting the native food and water resources. The Arivaipa Apaches relied on game and native plants -- primarily mescal -- as their primary food sources. With these problems and a host of others, which included new diseases introduced by the white man, it is easier to understand why the native peoples were unwilling to share their home with these new uninvited guests. Much to the chagrin of the settlers, government representatives were unavailable to protect the white citizenry. Unable to see any relief in sight, six white pioneers, a mixed company of San Xavier Papagos and Mexican's, took matters into their own hands, vigilante style.

Introducing The Key Players

William S. Oury, organizer of the raid on Camp Grant's Apache Indians, was a hot-tempered Virginian who fought in the Texas War for independence. He was a soldier in the US/Mexican War and served at the Alamo. Known for his violent temper, he killed two men in separate duels in Tucson.

Eskiminzin was then Chief of the Arivaipa Indians. His name means "Men Stand in Line for Him". In February of 1871, Eskiminzin was tired of the warpath. He sent five old Apache women to inquire at Camp Grant about peace and protection. Lt. Whitman received the women courteously and worked out an appointed time for a peace talk with their leader. On subsequent meetings, it was arranged for the Indians to stay in wickiups east of Camp Grant. In exchange for the protection and food, the Indians were employed in farming, gathering hay and working for nearby ranches. This worked out well for both the Apaches and the U.S. military. Eskiminzin had a reputation that caused much fear among the whites. An account states that about a month after the Camp Grant incident, Eskiminizin wanted to show his fellow Arivaipas that there could be no friendship with the white man. Eskiminzin had a close white friend of many years, a rancher named Charles McKinney. Eskiminzin shared an evening meal with McKinney, and at the conclusion of the meal, the two smoked a cigarette together. Upon finishing, Eskiminzin stood up, pulled a revolver from his pants and shot the man at point-blank range, killing him. When Eskiminzin was later asked about the incident, he was quoted as saying, "Any coward can kill his enemy, but it takes a brave man to kill his friend."

Events leading up to the massacre

March 10, 1871. A baggage train was attacked by Indians. Two men were brutally murdered and 16 mules were stolen.

March 20, 1871. Tubac rancher L.B. Wooster was attacked and killed. A Mexican woman was kidnapped from a town south of Tucson.

March 22, 1871. A meeting of angry Tucson residents assembled and a Committee on Public Safety was formed. One item on the agenda was to send a delegation to General Stoneman to request military protection. General Stoneman reiterated the government's policy on pacification and objected to the request, calling it criticism. Oury then concluded that the residents were on their own. Lt. Royal Whitman assured Tucson's residents that the Apaches under his control never left the Camp Grant compound.

March 25, 1871. An editorial in Tucson's Arizona Citizen fanned the flames of Indian hatred by asking, "Will the Department Commander any longer permit the murderers to be fed by the supplies purchased with the people's money?" April 10, 1871. Indians plundered a farm and carried off 19 head of cattle. News of this reached Tucson via the Papagos, and a posse was dispatched which gave chase for 50 miles. It caught up with a straggling Indian, killed him and identified him as an Arivaipa Apache from Camp Grant. During the chase, three more white settlers were killed. The incident was reported in Arizona Citizen. Three days later, in a community 30 miles from Camp Grant, a farmer was murdered.

Arizona Citizen Editor John Wasson had obtained General Stoneman's 1870 annual report. The report recommended that seven of 15 military posts be closed. The report also bragged about Stoneman's "much to be praised" new roads and construction projects.

April 28, 1871. Anglos and Mexicans left Tucson a few at a time -- to avoid suspicion -- and headed towards Camp Grant, where they were positive the problem existed.

April 30, 1871. After two days of traveling only at night, the vigilantes arrived at Camp Grant under the cover of darkness while the Arivaipa Indians slept. The mongrel band of Papagos, with clubs and lances in hand, and Mexicans and Anglos armed to the teeth with rifles and six-shooters, stealthily approached the sleeping, defenseless people. In a brief 30 minutes they laid to waste every man, woman and child. Upon leaving, they took 28 children as captives.

April 30, 1871, 7:30 a.m. That morning, a harried messenger arrived at Camp Grant from Fort Lowell interrupting Lt. Whitman's breakfast with an urgent message. It stated that armed citizenry from Tucson were planning a massacre of the Lieutenant's prisoners of war, the Apaches. The Lieutenant immediately dispatched two interpreters to warn the Indians and have them come to the post directly for protection.

But by the time the interpreters arrived, the camp was completely decimated. Post surgeon, Conant B. Briesly, along with 12 men, were immediately dispatched to render aid to the injured. However, the massacre was so thorough, only one woman survived. She was so emotionally paralyzed that she would not come back to the post.

*****

>From http://www.geocities.com/~zybt/warriors.htm

ESKIMINZIN

.... one of the most misunderstood and maligned (Apache leaders) was the great leader of the Aravaipa Apaches, Eskiminzin.

Eskiminzin was born about 1828, probably near the Pinal Mountains. He was actually a Pinal Apache, but married into the Aravaipas (south of the Pinals). His father-in-law was Santos, chief of the Aravaipas. Eskiminzin was nearly always in very difficult positions trying to save his people. When he felt they had to fight to survive, he was unafraid to do so. When it was better for his people to accept peace terms, he did so. He always had the welfare of his people in mind. It was Eskiminzin who finally negotiated the terms by which the great San Carlos Apache Reservation was established. (See my page on the Apache Wars). However, after the reservation was established he experienced real tragedy.

In the summer of 1873 conditions on the reservation reached crisis proportions. Eskiminzin felt it was best that he should flee. Consequently, he was later captured and put in chains. When John Clum arrived, he ordered him released, because Clum felt he had been treated shamefully. Eskiminzin even visited Washington, D.C., with Clum in 1876. Slowly, Eskiminzin began to feel that peace was beginning to pay off.

However, in 1887 his son-in-law, the Apache Kid, was arrested for the murder of a rival on the San Carlos Reservation. When the Kid finally escaped, it was believed that Eskiminzin would aid him from time to time. Therefore, Eskiminzin was arrested in April or May 1891 and sent to Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, with 40 other supposed sympathizers with the Kid. They were forced to join the Chiricahuas who were then at Mt. Vernon, Alabama (before their removal to Oklahoma). Eskiminzin and his San Carlos braves were not exactly on friendly terms with the Chiricahuas, and they found their situation to be very difficult.

Finally, a white friend, Hugh Lennox Scott, convinced authorities that Eskiminzin should be released. He arrived back in San Carlos on 23 November 1894. A year later Eskiminzin died. His life had been truly tragic in the extreme.

There are still many descendants of Eskiminzin on the San Carlos Reservation. His legacy is revered, but the hurt of what happened to this man is still deeply felt.

----------------------

For more information on Eskiminzin, read: Browning, Sinclair. Enju. Introduction by Morris K. Udall. Flagstaff: Northland Press, 1982. Schellie, Don. Vast Domain of Blood. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1968. An important article is: Marion, Jeannie. "As Long as the Stone Lasts: General O. O. Howard's 1872 Conference." Journal of Arizona History 35 (Summer 1994): 109-140. (Marion is supposed to have a book forthcoming on Eskiminzin.)

See also NAW posting for Eskiminzin at:
NAW: Eskiminzin

Ottawa Chief Pontiac (1720-1769)

2007-04-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

April 27, 1763: Today, Pontiac will hold a council with a large group of Ottawa, Wyandot and Potawotami indians. He will tell them of his plans to attack Fort Detroit. He will extol the virtues of returning to the old Indian ways, before the coming of the Europeans.

( Image courtesy of www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com )

( The following is from http://www.chiefpontiac.org/ )

Ottawa Chief Pontiac (1720 - 1769)

PONTIAC, chief of the Ottawas, born on Ottawa river about 1720; died in Cahokia, Ill., in 1769. He was the son of an Ojibway woman, and, as the Ottawas were in alliance with the Ojibways and Potawotamies, he became the principal chief of the three tribes.

In 1746, with his warriors, he defended the French at Detroit against an attack by some of the northern tribes, and in 1755 he is believed to have led the Ottawas at Braddock's defeat. After the surrender of Quebec, Major Robert Rogers, of New Hampshire, was sent to take possession of the western forts, under the treaty of Paris, but in November, 1760, while encamped at the place where the city of Cleveland now stands, he was visited by Pontiac, who objected to his further invasion of the territory. Finding, however, that the French had been driven from Canada, he acquiesced in the surrender of Detroit, and persuaded 400 Detroit Indians, who were lying in ambush, to relinquish their design of cutting off the English. While this action was doubtless in good faith, still he hated the English and soon began to plan their extermination.

In 1762 he sent messengers with a red stained tomahawk and a wampum war belt, who visited every tribe between the Ottawa and the lower Mississippi, all of whom joined in the conspiracy The end of May was determined upon as the time when each tribe was to dispose of the garrison of the nearest fort, and then all were to attack the settlements. A great council was held near Detroit on 27 April, 1763, when Pontiac delivered an oration, in which the wrongs and indignities that the Indians had suffered at the hands of the English were recounted, and their own extermination was prophesied. He also told them of a tradition, which he could hardly have invented, that a Delaware Indian had been admitted into the presence of the Great Spirit, who told him his race must return to the customs and weapons of their ancestors, throw away the implements they had acquired from the white man, abstain from whiskey, and take up the hatchet against the English, "these dogs dressed in red, who have come to rob you of your hunting grounds and drive away the game."

The taking of Detroit was to be his special task, and the 7th of May was appointed for the attack ; but the plot was disclosed to the commander of the post by an Indian girl, and in consequence Pontiac found the garrison prepared. Foiled in his original intention, on 12 May he surrounded Detroit with his Indians; but he was unable to keep a close siege, and the garrison received food from the Canadian settlers. The latter likewise supplied the Indians, in return for which they received promissory notes drawn on birch bark and signed with the figure of an otter, all of which it is said were subsequently redeemed. Supplies and reinforcements were sent to Detroit by way of Lake Erie, in schooners ; but these were captured by the Indians, who compelled the prisoners to row them to Detroit in hope of taking the garrison by stratagem, but the Indians, concealed in the bottom of the boat, were discovered before a landing could be effected. Subsequently another schooner, filled with supplies and ammunition, succeeded in reaching the fort, and this vessel the Indians repeatedly tried to destroy by means of fire rafts.

The English now believed themselves sufficiently strong to make an attack upon the Indian camp, and 250 men, on the night of 31 July, set out for that purpose; but Pontiac had been advised of this intention by the Canadians, and, waiting until the English had advanced sufficiently, opened fire on them from all sides. In this fight, which is known as that of Bloody Bridge, 59 of the English were killed or wounded. A desultory warfare continued until 12 Oct., when the siege was raised and Pontiac retired into the country that borders Maumee river, where he vainly endeavored to organize another movement. Although Pontiac failed in the most important action of the conspiracy, still Fort Sandusky, Fort St. Joseph, Fort Miami, Fort Ouatanon, Mackinaw, Presque Isle, Fort Le Bceuf, and Fort Venango were taken and their garrisons were massacred, while unsuccessful attacks were made elsewhere. The English soon sent troops against the Indians, and succeeded in pacifying most of the tribes, so that, during the summer of 1766, a meeting of Indian chiefs, including Pontiac, was held in Oswego, where a treaty was concluded with Sir William Johnson. Although Pontiac's conspiracy failed in its grand object, still it had resulted in the capture and destruction of eight out of the twelve fortified posts that were attacked, generally by the massacre of their garrisons, it had destroyed several costly English expeditions, and had carried terror and desolation into some of the most fertile valleys on the frontiers of civilization. In 1769 a Kaskaskia Indian, being bribed with a barrel of liquor and promise of additional reward, followed Pontiac into the forest and there murdered him.

----------------

See Francis Parkman's "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac and the War of the North American Tribes against the English Colonies after the Conquest of Canada" (Boston, 1851), also Franklin B. Hough's "Diary of the Siege of Detroit in the War with Pontiac" (Albany, 1860). -- Edited Appleton's Cyclopedia American Biography

*****

( The following is From http://members.aol.com/wicaho/two.htm )

"You Must Lift the Hatchet Against Them"

A Delaware Indian conceived an eager desire to learn wisdom from the Master of Life; but, being ignorant where to find him, he had recourse to fasting, dreaming, and magical incantations. By these means, it was revealed to him, that, by moving forward in a straight, undeviating course, he would reach the abode of the Great Spirit. He told his purpose to no one, and having provided the equipment's of a bunter-gun, powder horn, ammunition, and a kettle for preparing his food-he set out on his errand. For some time, he journeyed on in high hope and confidence. On the evening of the eighth day, he stopped by the side of a brook at the edge of a meadow, where he began to make ready his evening meal, when, looking up, he saw three large openings in the woods before him, and three well-beaten paths which entered them. He was much surprised; but his wonder increased, when, after it had grown dark, the three paths were more clearly visible than ever. Remembering the important object of his journey, he could neither rest nor sleep; and, leaving his fire, he crossed the meadow, and entered the largest of the three openings. He had advanced but a short distance into the forest, when a bright flame sprang out of the ground before him, and arrested his steps. In great amazement, he turned back, and entered the second path, where the same wonderful phenomenon again encountered him; and now, in terror and bewilderment, yet still resolved to persevere, he took the last of the three paths. On this he journeyed a whole day without interruption, when at length, emerging from the forest, he saw before him a vast mountain, of dazzling whiteness. So precipitous was the ascent that the Indian thought it hopeless to go farther, and looked around him in despair; at that moment, he saw, seated at some distance above, the figure of a beautiful woman arrayed in white, who arose as he looked upon her, and thus accosted him:

"How can you hope, encumbered as you are, to succeed in your design? Go down to the foot of the mountain, throw away your gun, your ammunition, your provisions, and your clothing; wash yourself in the stream which flows there, and you will then be prepared to stand before the Master of Life."

The Indian obeyed, and again began to ascend among the rocks, while the woman, seeing him still discouraged, laughed at his faintness of heart, and told him that, if he wished for success, he must climb by the aid of one hand and one foot only. After great toil and suffering, he at length found himself at the summit. The woman had disappeared, and he was left alone. A rich and beautiful plain lay before him, and at a little distance, he saw three great villages, far superior to the squalid wigwams of the Delaware's. As he approached the largest, and stood hesitating whether he should enter, a man gorgeously attired stepped forth, and, taking him by the hand, welcomed him to the celestial abode. He then conducted him into the presence of the Great Spirit, where the Indian stood confounded at the unspeakable splendor which surrounded him. The Great Spirit bade him be seated, and thus addressed him:

"I am the Maker of heaven and earth, the trees, lakes, rivers, and all things else. I am the Maker of mankind; and because I love you, you must do my will. The land on which you live I have made for you, and not for others. Why do you suffer the white men to dwell among you? My children, you have forgotten the customs and traditions of your forefathers. Why do you not clothe yourselves in skins, as they did, and use the bows and arrows, and the stone-pointed lances, which they used? You have bought guns, knives, kettles, and blankets, from the white men, until you can no longer do without them; and, what is worse, you have drunk the poison firewater, which turns you into fools. Fling all these things away; live as your wise forefathers lived before you. And as for these English-these dogs dressed in red, who have come to rob you of your hunting grounds, and drive away the game-you must lift the hatchet against them. Wipe them from the face of the earth, and then you will win my favor back again, and once more be happy and prosperous. The children of your great father, the King of France, are not like the English. Never forget that they are your brethren. They are very dear to me, for they love the red men, and understand the true mode of worshipping me."

Pipestone National Monument

2007-04-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

April 19, 1858: The Yankton Sioux sign a treaty today. Article 8 provides for the Indians to retain access and use of the red pipestone quarry in southwestern Minnesota.

(Catlin image courtesy of NPS)

An account of the origin of the pipestone, as recorded by George Catlin, 1836:

At an ancient time the Great Spirit, in the form of a large bird, stood upon the wall of rock and called all the tribes around him, and breaking out a piece of the red stone formed it into a pipe and smoked it, the smoke rolling over the whole multitude. He then told his red children that this red stone was their flesh, that they were made from it, that they must all smoke to him through it, that they must use it for nothing but pipes: and as it belonged alike to all tribes, the ground was sacred, and no weapons must be used or brought upon it.

(Image courtesy of www.traveleze.com)

(The following is from www.pipestoneminnesota.com/museum/history2.htm)

According to geologists, pipestone was formed when a stream system deposited layer upon layer of sand and other sediment. The sand was eventually compressed into sandstone, and the red clay under it into clay stone. Some sediment was removed by one of the four glaciers which traveled through the area and scraped the land down to the sandstone. Under the weight of the glaciers and with extremely high temperatures, the sandstone became quartzite and the red clay sediment turned into pipestone.

The vein of pipestone is sandwiched between two layers of hard quartzite, four to twelve feet below the earth's surface.

Outcroppings of pipestone are also found in Montana, Arizona, Kansas, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Ohio. Pieces of pipestone from Minnesota's quarry have been found in burial mounds in many different sections of North America, leading historians to believe that various tribes journeyed thousands of miles to quarry here. During the summer, tribal bands would divide into groups, each with its own task to complete. While some parties hunted buffalo, others would travel to the quarry to get pipestone.

.... Philander Prescott, who worked for the North American Fur Company, was probably the first white man to see the quarry and document his visit. In 1831 he wrote, "Indians have labored here very hard with hoes and axes, the only tools except large stones...we found a six pound cannon ball that the Indians have brought there from the Missouri to break the rock."

Joseph Nicollet, a French scientist on a U.S. government-sponsored exhibition to map the upper Mississippi area, explored the quarry in 1838. Nicollet and his party left their initials on the northern end of the quartzite ledge, where they are still visible today.

... In an effort to gain control of more territory, the U.S. government, through the general Indian Appropriations bill of 1851, negotiated a treaty for the title to all of their Minnesota lands, which was most of southern Minnesota. The Sisseton and Wahpeton bands ceded their lands, including the pipestone quarry, in a treaty signed at Traverse des Sioux in 1851. However, the Yankton tribe was not part of the treaty and objected to losing the quarry. They tried to gain compensation by demanding a part of the revenue given to the Sisseton and Wahpetons, but were unsuccessful.

Seven years later, the Yanktons ceded eleven million acres of their land and were guaranteed "free and unrestricted use of the red pipestone quarry...to visit and procure stone for pipes so long as they shall desire." A 650-acre reservation was created around the quarry.

This by no means settled the conflict between the Native Americans and white people. With the coming of settlers Pipestone City was planned, and by 1881 a large quartzite building-stone quarry was opened by a white settler. Two years later white pioneers including the mayor, C.C. Goodnow, settled on the reservation, filed claims and began to build homes. They refused to leave until four years later when a corps of ten enlisted men sent from South Dakota ordered the settlers to move.

An act of Congress provided for the establishment of Indian Industrial Training Schools in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. The government took possession of the Pipestone reservation when the school was established there in1892. Some tribal members wanted compensation for land, others wanted to retain the quarry altogether. A vote was taken of the male tribal members and by a narrow majority title to the reservation was ceded for $100,000; the government agreed to preserve the quarry as a national park. But this bill was never ratified by Congress.

Over the next few decades, the Yanktons fought to retrieve the money for their land through the U.S. Court system. Finally the Supreme Court ruled that the government was liable to compensate the Yanktons when it took possession of the entire reservation for the training school.

A total of $328,558 in principle plus interest was awarded in 1929. With the payment of this judgement title to the land passed to the United States, and all treaty rights of the Yanktons were at an end. Pipestone National Monument was signed into legislation in 1937.

Today, only Native Americans are allowed to quarry pipestone. It may take up to three to six weeks to complete the quarrying process, which usually occurs from late may to late October. Only hand tools, such as sledge hammers, chisels, wedges and shovels can be used.

The quarrier sets a wedge into visible cracks in the quartzite and drives it in with a sledge hammer. Large chunks of quartzite loosened and pried away from the quartzite wall until the pipestone layer is exposed. Although the layer of pipestone may be fourteen to eighteen inches thick, only two inches of it are suitable for carving pipes.

(Map courtesy of www.uwsp.edu)

Isimanica, Comanche

2007-03-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

March 28, 1840: After hearing of the fight in San Antonio on March 19, 1840, the remaining Comanches are outraged. Today, Chief Isimanica, and 300 Comanches ride up to San Antonio. Isimanica, and one warrior, ride into the central square and challenge anyone to a fight. The civilians decline, but tell him that the Army is at the San Jose Mission.

BACKGROUND:

From http://jack0204.tripod.com/gen/Heskew/council.htm

On March 28, Chief Isimanica (Hears the Wolf, Howard calls him Isamini) and about 300 Comanches appeared at the edge of San Antonio. Accompanied by one brave, Chief Isimanica, almost naked and painted for war, rode into the square, circled it, and rode down and back up Commerce Street, shouting insults and challenging any one to fight. At Black's Saloon, he stopped, stood in the stirrups, and shouted his defiance. An interpreter told him that the soldiers were at San Jose Mission, to go there and find Colonel Fisher if he wanted a fight.

Chief Isimanica and his Comanches then went to San Jose There they challenged Colonel Fisher, sick in bed, and Captain Read, next in command, to a fight. The captain explained that a twelve-day truce had been made to exchange prisoners and would not be broken. If the Comanches wished to remain three days, when the truce was over, they would furnish them a fight. The chief voiced his insults and then left. The soldiers could hardly be restrained and some were ordered into the mission church to keep them from starting a fight with the Comanches.

Hearing of this, Captain Lysander Wells called Captain Read a coward. The result was a duel in which both men were shot and killed. Read died immediately and Wells, in great pain, died after some days.

*****

>From http://www.sanjacinto-museum.org/kemp/v677.html

On March 28th between two hundred and fifty and three hundred Comanches under a dashing young chief, Isimanica, cane close to the edge of the town where the main body halted and Chief Isimanica with another warrior rode daringly into the public square and circled around it, then rode some distance down Commerce Street and back, shouting all the while, offering fight and heaping abuse and insults upon the Americans. Isimanica was in full war paint, and almost naked. He stopped longest in Black's saloon, at the north east corner of the square; he shouted defiance, he rose in his stirrups, shook his clenched fist, raved and foamed at the mouth. The citizens, through an interpreter, told him the soldiers were all down the river at Mission San Jose and if he went there Colonel (William S.) Fisher wood give him fight enough.

Isimanica took his braves to San Jose and with fearless daring bantered the soldiers for a fight. colonel Fisher was lying on a sick bed and Captain Redd, the next in rank, was in command. He said to the chief: "We have made a twelve day truce with your people in order to exchange prisoners. My country's honor is pledged, as well as my own, to keep the truce, and I will not break it. Remain here three days or return in three days and the truce will be over. We burn to fight you." Isimanica called him liar, coward and other opprobrious names, and hung around for sometime, but at last the Indians left and did not return. Captain Redd remained. calm and unmoved, but his men could with the greatest difficulty be restrained and in fact some of them were ordered into the Mission church and the door guarded.

hist0328b

Cherokee Chief Tahchee (Tatsi)

2007-03-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

Throughout his life, Cherokee Chief Tahchee, also known as Captain William Dutch, was known as a fearless warrior. Tahchee was one of the original groups of Cherokees to move west of the Mississippi river. He became a major political force in the "old settler party". He fought many fights with the Osage Indians who leaved near the Cherokees. Eventually, he would become a scout for the U.S. Army, where he reached the rank of Captain. Tahchee died on March 12, 1848, in Indian Territory.

(image courtesy of www.philaprintshop.com)

BACKGROUND: From http://space.tin.it/io/vminerva/dutch.htm

The life story of this Cherokee chief (Tatsi is probably the correct spelling) is typical of an Indian who was born shortly after the Revolution and lived in the first part of the nineteenth century. His days were occupied with war, raids, horse stealing, scouting and hunting.

Dutch, as he is known to frontier history, was a child when his family joined the first Cherokee removal from the big Indian village called Turkey Town on the Coosa River in what is now Alabama to the St.Francis River in Arkansas, west of the Mississippi. It was a wild country that had not known the white man's presence.

The casual life of the hunter appealed to him, and at about the age of twelve he joined one of those incredible Indian hunting parties that roamed the prairies for as long as three years.

It was a life of feast or famine. The hunter's constant enemy was the weather. Weary hours were spent on horseback, but the hardships were forgotten in the excitement of the hunt and the occasional clash with other tribes.

Dutch roamed beyond the Mississippi and explored the Red River country. Years later a white man asked him how many buffalo he had killed and Dutch answered, "So many I cannot number them."

He lived with other tribes to study the techniques of their hunters, even the Osage, the traditional foe of the Cherokee, and was among the few of his nation who knew the Osage dialect. He became a legend on the plains and the prairies, a lone hunter with three large dogs running on both sides of his horse's flanks. He explored the Arkansas River to the south of the Grand, or Neosho, River, then traveled on foot for hundreds of miles to the Missouri. When he returned downriver his canoe was almost swamped by beaver skins.

The treaty the Cherokee made with the United States in 1828 so infuriated Dutch that he led several families to the Red River country. They were constantly at war with those superbs horsemen of the Texas plains, the Comanche. To keep the frontier peaceful, the army ordered both nations to stop their raids, an order Dutch refused to recognize. He was finally declared an outlaw, and the army's wanted poster offered five hundred dollars for him dead or alive.

Dutch fought a one-man war with the army for years, even boldly scalping a Comanche [an Osage, according to other sources] in the shadow of Fort Gibson. Both sides finally grew weary of the hound and hare game. The commander, a shrewd man, hired Dutch to form a group of Indian scouts in the army's campaign against the Comanche. Before he retired to his ranch on the Canadian River, Dutch was known throughout the early Indian fighting army as a tireless tracker and "a man to be relied on".

Catlin who met Dutch in 1834 called him "a guide and hunter for the regiment of dragoons.... The history of this man's life has been very curious and surprising; and I sincerely hope that someone, with more leisure and more talent than myself, will take it up, and do it justice. I promise that the life of this man furnishes the best materials for a popular tale, that are now to be procured on the Western frontier."

Oldest Solar Observatory in Americas

2007-03-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

NPR has a report on the oldest solar observatory known in the Americas, at Chankillo, Peru. It's dated 2,000 years before the Incas:

Archeologists may have uncovered what they say is by far the oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas: a series of towers near a temple in coastal Peru, built in the fourth century B.C.

The towers at Chankillo mark the sun's progress across the sky, according to a new study in Science. This suggests the sun may have played an important role in religious and political life long before the appearance of the famous Inca sun cult.

Mysterious Towers

In the 19th century, explorers in the area observed the 13 stubby towers dotting a long ridge close to an ancient fortress. The explorers suggested that the towers had to do with the movement of the moon, and left it at that.

A few years ago, Ivan Ghezzi at long last drummed up enough funding to excavate the Chankillo site, and uncover its secrets.

Ghezzi is at the Catholic University of Peru and the national director of archeology. He quickly realized the towers had nothing to do with the moon, but everything to do with the sun. The key was viewing the sky from either of two structures that stood nearby.

"You could actually watch the sunrise align with the northernmost tower during the June solstice," he says. "And with the opposite tower... you could see the sunrise at the December solstice. So we realized that here we had an astronomical device that was designed to keep track of the movement of the sun and therefore keep track of time."

Built 2,300 years ago, the towers are by far the earliest example of an observatory in the Americas.

Sun Worshipers

Ghezzi knows frustratingly little about the people who built the towers and the fortifications at Chankillo.

It is unclear whether they were in any way forerunners of the Incas, the famous sun worshipers who appeared on the scene many centuries after these structures were built.

"We know that the Incas made powerful political statements based on the relationship between the sun and the king," Ghezzi says. "The Inca claimed to be the offspring of the sun. But now we have a society that is 1,800 years before the Inca that is clearly using the sun as a way to make a political, social and ideological statement."

It is clear that the towers were more than just a fancy sundial. For one thing, the fortifications nearby appear to protect a temple.

Anthony Aveni, an archeoastronomer at Colgate University, agrees with Ghezzi's interpretation that the site is of great cultural, religious and political significance, in addition to its practical use for timing plantings and harvests.

The priests who controlled the temple would have used their knowledge of astronomy as part of their mystique and power.

Ancient Astronomy

The question, as always in a situation like this, is whether the towers were really built with an astronomical purpose, or if the layout turns out to be a happy coincidence. Aveni, for one, is convinced this observatory was designed to track solar events.

"It does work, and it works in a way that makes sense given what we know about Andean calendars," he says.

The towers also help mark other solar events and count out a 10-day week used by Andean cultures.

Ivan Gehzzi is working to turn the well-preserved ruins of Chankillo into a major tourist destination.

Oldest Solar Observatory in Americas

"Apocalypto"

2007-03-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

If you did not get to see it in the movie theatres, I recommend you experience "Apocalypto" when it comes out on DVD.

Here is one of the first reviews written about the movie:

The Passion of the Maya

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: December 8, 2006, NEW YORK TIMES

“I’m going to peel off his skin and make him watch me wear it.” This grisly threat is delivered by one of the main bad guys in Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto.” The promised flaying never takes place, but viewers who share this director’s apparently limitless appetite for gore will not be disappointed, since not much else in the way of bodily torment has been left to the imagination. There are plenty of disembowelings, impalings, clubbings and beheadings. Hearts are torn, still beating, from slashed-open chests. A man’s face is chewed off by a jaguar. Another’s neck is pierced by darts tipped with frog venom. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the sight of hundreds of corpses haphazardly layered in an open pit: a provocative and ill-advised excursion into Holocaust imagery on this director’s part.

Violence has become the central axiom in Mr. Gibson’s practice as a filmmaker, his major theme and also his chief aesthetic interest. The brutality in “Apocalypto” is so relentless and extreme that it sometimes moves beyond horror into a kind of grotesque comedy, but to dismiss it as excessive or gratuitous would be to underestimate Mr. Gibson’s seriousness. And say what you will about him — about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews — he is a serious filmmaker.

Which is not to say that “Apocalypto” is a great film, or even that it can be taken quite as seriously as it wants to be. Mr. Gibson’s technical command has never been surer; for most of its 2-hour 18-minute running time, “Apocalypto,” written by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia, is a model of narrative economy, moving nimbly forward and telling its tale with clarity and force. It is, above all, a muscular and kinetic action movie, a drama of rescue and revenge with very little organic relation to its historical setting. Yes, the dialogue is in various Mayan dialects, which will sound at least as strange to American ears as the Latin and Aramaic of “The Passion of the Christ,” but the film’s real language is Hollywood’s, and Mr. Gibson’s, native tongue.

When I first heard about this project, and later when I saw the early trailers, I halfway hoped that Mr. Gibson might turn out to be an American (or half-Australian) version of Werner Herzog, setting out into the jungle to explore the dark and tangled regions of human nature. Once you get past the costumes and the subtitles, though, the most striking thing about “Apocalypto” is how comfortably it sits within the conventions of mainstream moviemaking. It is not an obsessive opera like Mr. Herzog’s “Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” but rather a pop period epic in the manner of “Gladiator” or “Braveheart,” and as such less interested in historical or cultural authenticity than in imposing an accessible scheme on a faraway time and place.

The setting is Central America before the arrival of the Spanish, when the Maya empire, in Mr. Gibson’s version, was already in the process of collapsing from within. The basic moral conflict — as it was in “Braveheart,” directed by and starring Mr. Gibson, and in “The Patriot,” a vehicle for him directed by Roland Emmerich — is between a small group of people trying to live simple, decent, traditional lives and a larger, more powerful political entity driven by bloodlust and greed. This kind of conservative anti-imperialism runs consistently through Mr. Gibson’s work; whether the empire in question is Roman, British or Mesoamerican, and whatever its political resonance might be, it allows the viewer to root for an unambiguously virtuous underdog.

“Apocalypto” begins with a group of young men out on a hunt and lingers for a while in their happy, earthy village, a place that might double as a nostalgic vision of small-town America were it not for the loin cloths, the tattooed buttocks and the facial piercings. Blunted (Jonathan Brewer) is nagged by his mother-in-law and teased by his buddies because he hasn’t yet made his wife pregnant, but he accepts his humiliation in good humor, like the jolly fat kid on a family sitcom.

Meanwhile Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), whose father (Morris Birdyellowhead) is an admired hunter and warrior, snuggles down with his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and their young son, Turtle Run (Carlos Emilio Baez). There’s fresh tapir meat on the grill and an old-timer telling stories by the fire. Life is good.

Needless to say, this pastoral idyll cannot last. The ominous strains of James Horner’s score indicate as much. Before long the village is set upon by fearsome marauders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), who rape, burn and kill with ruthless discipline and undisguised glee. The locals resist valiantly, but the survivors are led away to an uncertain fate. Seven and Turtle Run stay behind, hidden in a hole in the ground.

Jaguar Paw’s mission will be to rescue them and also to avenge his friends and kin. First, though, he will accompany us on a Cecil B. DeMille tour of the decadent imperial capital, a place of misery, luxury and corruption, where priests and nobles try to keep famine and pestilence at bay with round-the-clock human sacrifices.

Neither Mr. Gibson’s fans nor his detractors are likely to accuse him of excessive subtlety, and the effectiveness of “Apocalypto” is inseparable from its crudity. But the blunt characterizations and the emphatic emotional cues are also evidence of the director’s skill.

Perhaps because he is aiming for an audience wary of subtitles, Mr. Gibson rarely uses dialogue as a means of exposition, and he proves himself to be an able, if not always terribly original, visual storyteller. He is not afraid of clichés — the slow-motion, head-on sprint toward the camera; the leap from the waterfall into the river below — but he executes them with a showman’s maniacal relish.

And it is, all in all, a pretty good show. There is a tendency, at least among journalists, to take Mr. Gibson as either a monster or a genius, a false choice that he frequently seems intent on encouraging. Is he a madman or a visionary? Should he be shunned or embraced? Censured or forgiven?

These are the wrong questions, but their persistence reveals the truth about this shrewd and bloody-minded filmmaker. He is an entertainer. He will be publicized, and he will be paid.

----------------------------------

“Apocalypto” is rated R (Under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian).

Directed by Mel Gibson; written (in Maya, with English subtitles) by Mr. Gibson and Farhad Safinia; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by John Wright; music by James Horner; production designer, Tom Sanders; produced by Mr. Gibson and Bruce Davey; released by Touchstone Pictures. Running time: 138 minutes.

WITH: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernandez (Seven), Jonathan Brewer (Blunted), Raoul Trujillo (Zero Wolf), Gerardo Taracena (Middle Eye), Rodolfo Palacios (Snake Ink), Fernando Hernandez (High Priest), Maria Isidra Hoil and Aquetzali Garcia (Oracle Girls) and Abel Woolrich (Laughing Man).

William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805)

2007-01-17T08:17:00.000-08:00

January 16, 1792: Leading a force of 300 Creek and Seminole warriors, Willaim Augusts Bowles has surrounded St.Marks, Florida. After holding out for several weeks, the Spanish will surrender to Bowles today. They will seize the supplies and will be forced out by a Spanish force in a few months. Bowles will conquer the fort again on May 19, 1800.

BACKGROUND: From http://users.erols.com/candidus/wbowles.htm

William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805)

Born in Frederick, Maryland in 1763, William Augustus Bowles represented one of the very few loyalists west of the Chesapeake Bay to join the British cause.

As a young teenager, he was commissioned with the rank of ensign in the First Battalion of Maryland Loyalists in the spring of 1778. He followed the regiment to Pensacola and resigned, only to return more than a year later. After the British surrender at Fort George, he returned with his regiment to New York where he performed in several theatre productions with British officers.

After the war, he returned to Florida to live with his friends, the Creek Indians. He became their leader of sorts and kept the United States terrified of Indian uprisings in the Florida territory. Bowles married a Creek woman and adopted the Creek ways. He routinely visited London in his native Indian garb, attracting considerable attention. Eventually, however, his old enemies, the Spanish, caught up with him and he was imprisoned in Cuba where he died in 1805.

Mandan Buffalo Dance

2007-01-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

January 5th, 1805: Lewis and Clark describe buffalo dance.

( George Catlin image courtesy of dorgan.senate.gov )

( The following from http://dorgan.senate.gov/lewis_and_clark/dance.html )

Dance with the Mandans

Members of the Corps of Discovery celebrated the New Year by joining the Mandans in their village for music and dancing. The dances continued each day through January 5th, the Mandans believing that the buffalo dance would attract herds to be hunted. Within days a herd of buffalo showed up. Of the dance, Sergeant John Ordway wrote:

"January 1st, 1805 - We...went up to the 1st village of Mandans to dance as it had been their request. carried with us a fiddle & a Tambereen & a Sounden horn. as we arived at the entrence of the vil[lage] we fired one round. then the music played. loaded again. then marched to the center of the village [and] fired again. then commenced dancing. a frenchman danced on his head and all danced round him for a short time, then went in to a lodge & danced a while, which pleased them verry much. they then brought vectules from different lodges...& Some buffalow Robes which they made us a present off. So we danced in different lodges untill late in the afternoon. then a part of the men returned to the fort. The remainder stayed all night in the village."

( Close-up of Catlin painting courtesy of www.artlex.com )

( The following from http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6558/mandan1.html )

Their (Mandan) religion ... incorporates three primary ceremonies. The first, held annually, is the celebration of the subsiding of the great flood. The second is the buffalo dance that is performed as a prayer to the Great Spirit in supplication to send the buffalo. And lastly is the bull dance, used to conduct all the young men of the tribe into manhood by testing their endurance and discipline through deprivation and self-inflicted torture. After going without food for several days, the skin of the initiate is pierced, thongs were attached and weighted buffalo skulls were tied to these thongs, with the entire village joined in communal singing, initiates danced around a "medicine pole" erected in the center of the village, until the skulls have pulled loose from their flesh. There were many other festivals and ceremonies celebrated by the Mandan, all of which focused around the great medicine lodge which stood in the center of the village and was the domain of the "mystery men" who were the holy men of the Mandan. Beyond these three primary ceremonies, and perhaps central to all ceremonies, is the Mandan's use of the Sacred Pipe ...

( The following from http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/ )

The Buffalo Dance (Mandan)

The most exciting event of the year's festival was the Buffalo Dance. Eight men participated, wearing buffalo skins on their backs and painting themselves black, red, and white. Dancers endeavoured to imitate the buffalo on the prairie.

Each dancer held a rattle in his right hand, and in his left a six-foot rod. On his head, he wore a bunch of green willow boughs. The season for the return of the buffalo coincided with the willow trees in full leaf. Another dance required only four tribesmen, representing the four main directions of the compass from which the buffalo might come. With a canoe in the centre, two dancers, dressed as grizzly bears who might attack the hunters, took their places on each side. They growled and threatened to spring upon anyone who might interfere with the ceremony.

Onlookers tried to appease the grizzlies by tossing food to them. The two dancers would pounce upon the food, carrying it away to the prairie as possible lures for the coming of the buffaloes.

During the ceremony, the old men of the tribe beat upon drums and chanted prayers for successful buffalo hunting.

By the end of the fourth day of the Buffalo Dance, a man entered the camp disguised as the evil spirit of famine. Immediately he was driven away by shouts and stone-throwing from the younger Mandans, who waited excitedly to participate in the ceremony.

When the demon of famine was successfully driven away, the entire tribe joined in the bountiful thanksgiving feast, symbolic of the early return of buffalo to the Mandan hunting-grounds.

THANKSGIVING

2006-11-22T10:27:00.000-08:00

Again, I bring your attention to the very excellent work done on:

T E A C H I N G A B O U T T H A N K S G I V I N G

... by Dr. Frank B. Brouillet
Superintendent of Public Instruction
State of Washington

Cheryl Chow
Assistant Superintendent
Division of Instructional Programs and Services

Warren H. Burton
Director
Office for Multicultural and Equity Education

Dr. Willard E. Bill
Supervisor of Indian Education

Originally written and developed by
Cathy Ross, Mary Robertson, Chuck Larsen, and Roger Fernandes
Indian Education, Highline School District

With an introduction by:
Chuck Larsen
Tacoma School District

Printed: September, 1986...

Please go to:
NAW: Thanksgiving

(Wampanoag wigwam courtesy of www.mayflowerhistory.com)

Bear Tooth

2006-11-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

November 9, 1867: The peace commissioners who met on September 19, 1867 at Platte City, Nebraska, arrived at Fort Laramie in southeastern Wyoming on this day. Commissioners Sherman, Taylor, Harney, Sanborn, Henderson, Tappan and Terry sought Red Cloud, but he had said he would not come to the fort until all of the soldiers had left the Powder River area. The Commissioners were given a lecture by Crow Indian, Bear Tooth, on the ecological disaster they were spreading across Indian Lands. Making no headway, the Commissioners eventually left without an agreement or substantial negotiations.

(Image courtesy of www.shebbyleetours.com)

BACKGROUND: From "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown, Section "Red Cloud's War", p.144. Random House (Publishers), ISBN No 0 09 952640 9

On November 9, when the commissioners arrived at Fort Laramie, they found only a few Crow chiefs waiting to meet with them. The Crows were friendly, but one of them - Bear Tooth - made a surprising speech in which he condemned all white men for their reckless destruction of wildlife and the natural environment: "Fathers, fathers, fathers, hear me well. Call back your young men from the mountains of the bighorn sheep. They have run over our country; they have destroyed the growing wood and the green grass; they have set fire to our lands. Fathers, your young men have devastated the country and killed my animals, the elk, the deer, the antelope, my buffalo. They do not kill them to eat them; they leave them to rot where they fall. Fathers, if I went into your country to kill your animals, what would you say? Should I not be wrong, and would you not make war on me?"

(Map section courtesy of www.pbs.org)

hist1109

Rain In The Face

2006-10-31T08:48:00.000-08:00

October 31, 1880: Spotted Eagle and Rain in the Face surrender at Ft.Keogh.

(Image courtesy of www.gypsyhavenmorgans.com)

BACKGROUND:

Rain-in-the-Face as remembered by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman)

The noted Sioux warrior, Rain-in-the-Face, whose name once carried terror to every part of the frontier, died at his home on the Standing Rock reserve in North Dakota on September 14, 1905. About two months before his death I went to see him for the last time, where he lay upon the bed of sickness from which he never rose again, and drew from him his life-history.

It had been my experience that you cannot induce an Indian to tell a story, or even his own name, by asking him directly.

"Friend," I said, "even if a man is on a hot trail, he stops for a smoke! In the good old days, before the charge there was a smoke. At home, by the fireside, when the old men were asked to tell their brave deeds, again the pipe was passed. So come, let us smoke now to the memory of the old days!" He took of my tobacco and filled his long pipe, and we smoked. Then I told an old mirthful story to get him in the humor of relating his own history. The old man lay upon an iron bedstead, covered by a red blanket, in a corner of the little log cabin. He was all alone that day; only an old dog lay silent and watchful at his master's feet.

Finally he looked up and said with a pleasant smile:

"True, friend; it is the old custom to retrace one's trail before leaving it forever! I know that I am at the door of the spirit home.

"I was born near the forks of the Cheyenne River, about seventy years ago. My father was not a chief; my grandfather was not a chief, but a good hunter and a feast-maker. On my mother's side I had some noted ancestors, but they left me no chieftainship. I had to work for my reputation.

"When I was a boy, I loved to fight," he continued. "In all our boyish games I had the name of being hard to handle, and I took much pride in the fact. "I was about ten years old when we encountered a band of Cheyennes. They were on friendly terms with us, but we boys always indulged in sham fights on such occasions, and this time I got in an honest fight with a Cheyenne boy older than I. I got the best of the boy, but he hit me hard in the face several times, and my face was all spattered with blood and streaked where the paint had been washed away. The Sioux boys whooped and yelled: "'His enemy is down, and his face is spattered as if with rain! Rain-in-the-Face! His name shall be Rain-in-the-Face!'

"Afterwards, when I was a young man, we went on a warpath against the Gros Ventres. We stole some of their horses, but were overtaken and had to abandon the horses and fight for our lives. I had wished my face to represent the sun when partly covered with darkness, so I painted it half black, half red. We fought all day in the rain, and my face was partly washed and streaked with red and black: so again I was christened Rain-in-the-Face. We considered it an honorable name.

"I had been on many warpaths, but was not especially successful until about the time the Sioux began to fight with the white man. One of the most daring attacks that we ever made was at Fort Totten, North Dakota, in the summer of 1866.

"Hohay, the Assiniboine captive of Sitting Bull, was the leader in this raid. Wapaypay, the Fearless Bear, who was afterward hanged at Yankton, was the bravest man among us. He dared Hohay to make the charge. Hohay accepted the challenge, and in turn dared the other to ride with him through the agency and right under the walls of the fort, which was well garrisoned and strong.

"Wapaypay and I in those days called each other 'brother-friend.' It was a life-and-death vow. What one does the other must do; and that meant that I must be in the forefront of the charge, and if he is killed, I must fight until I die also!

"I prepared for death. I painted as usual like an eclipse of the sun, half black and half red."

His eyes gleamed and his face lighted up remarkably as he talked, pushing his black hair back from his forehead with a nervous gesture.

"Now the signal for the charge was given! I started even with Wapaypay, but his horse was faster than mine, so he left me a little behind as we neared the fort. This was bad for me, for by that time the soldiers had somewhat recovered from the surprise and were aiming better.

"Their big gun talked very loud, but my Wapaypay was leading on, leaning forward on his fleet pony like a flying squirrel on a smooth log! He held his rawhide shield on the right side, a little to the front, and so did I. Our warwhoop was like the coyotes singing in the evening, when they smell blood!

"The soldiers' guns talked fast, but few were hurt. Their big gun was like a toothless old dog, who only makes himself hotter the more noise he makes," he remarked with some humor.

"How much harm we did I do not know, but we made things lively for a time; and the white men acted as people do when a swarm of angry bees get into camp. We made a successful retreat, but some of the reservation Indians followed us yelling, until Hohay told them that he did not wish to fight with the captives of the white man, for there would be no honor in that. There was blood running down my leg, and I found that both my horse and I were slightly wounded.

"Some two years later we attacked a fort west of the Black Hills [Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming]. It was there we killed one hundred soldiers." [The military reports say eighty men, under the command of Captain Fetterman -- not one left alive to tell the tale!] "Nearly every band of the Sioux nation was represented in that fight -- Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Big Foot, and all our great chiefs were there. Of course such men as I were then comparatively unknown. However, there were many noted young warriors, among them Sword, the younger Young-Man-Afraid, American Horse [afterward chief], Crow King, and others.

"This was the plan decided upon after many councils. The main war party lay in ambush, and a few of the bravest young men were appointed to attack the woodchoppers who were cutting logs to complete the building of the fort. We were told not to kill these men, but to chase them into the fort and retreat slowly, defying the white men; and if the soldiers should follow, we were to lead them into the ambush. They took our bait exactly as we had hoped! It was a matter of a very few minutes, for every soldier lay dead in a shorter time than it takes to annihilate a small herd of buffalo.

"This attack was hastened because most of the Sioux on the Missouri River and eastward had begun to talk of suing for peace. But even this did not stop the peace movement. The very next year a treaty was signed at Fort Rice, Dakota Territory, by nearly all the Sioux chiefs, in which it was agreed on the part of the Great Father in Washington that all the country north of the Republican River in Nebraska, including the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains, was to be always Sioux country, and no white man should intrude upon it without our permission. Even with this agreement Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were not satisfied, and they would not sign. "Up to this time I had fought in some important battles, but had achieved no great deed. I was ambitious to make a name for myself. I joined war parties against the Crows, Mandans, Gros Ventres, and Pawnees, and gained some little distinction.

"It was when the white men found the yellow metal in our country, and came in great numbers, driving away our game, that we took up arms against them for the last time. I must say here that the chiefs who were loudest for war were among the first to submit and accept reservation life. Spotted Tail was a great warrior, yet he was one of the first to yield, because he was promised by the Chief Soldiers that they would make him chief of all the Sioux. Ugh! he would have stayed with Sitting Bull to the last had it not been for his ambition.

"About this time we young warriors began to watch the trails of the white men into the Black Hills, and when we saw a wagon coming we would hide at the crossing and kill them all without much trouble. We did this to discourage the whites from coming into our country without our permission. It was the duty of our Great Father at Washington, by the agreement of 1868, to keep his white children away.

"During the troublesome time after this treaty, which no one seemed to respect, either white or Indian [but the whites broke it first], I was like many other young men -- much on the warpath, but with little honor. I had not yet become noted for any great deed. Finally, Wapaypay and I waylaid and killed a white soldier on his way from the fort to his home in the east.

"There were a few Indians who were liars, and never on the warpath, playing 'good Indian' with the Indian agents and the war chiefs at the forts. Some of this faithless set betrayed me, and told more than I ever did. I was seized and taken to the fort near Bismarck, North Dakota [Fort Abraham Lincoln], by a brother [Tom Custer] of the Long-Haired War Chief, and imprisoned there. These same lying Indians, who were selling their services as scouts to the white man, told me that I was to be shot to death, or else hanged upon a tree. I answered that I was not afraid to die.

"However, there was an old soldier who used to bring my food and stand guard over me -- he was a white man, it is true, but he had an Indian heart! He came to me one day and unfastened the iron chain and ball with which they had locked my leg, saying by signs and what little Sioux he could muster: "'Go, friend! take the chain and ball with you. I shall shoot, but the voice of the gun will lie.'

"When he had made me understand, you may guess that I ran my best! I was almost over the bank when he fired his piece at me several times, but I had already gained cover and was safe. I have never told this before, and would not, lest it should do him an injury, but he was an old man then, and I am sure he must be dead long since. That old soldier taught me that some of the white people have hearts," he added, quite seriously.

"I went back to Standing Rock in the night, and I had to hide for several days in the woods, where food was brought to me by my relatives. The Indian police were ordered to retake me, and they pretended to hunt for me, but really they did not, for if they had found me I would have died with one or two of them, and they knew it! In a few days I departed with several others, and we rejoined the hostile camp on the Powder River and made some trouble for the men who were building the great iron track north of us [Northern Pacific].

"In the spring the hostile Sioux got together again upon the Tongue River. It was one of the greatest camps of the Sioux that I ever saw. There were some Northern Cheyennes with us, under Two Moon, and a few Santee Sioux, renegades from Canada, under Inkpaduta, who had killed white people in Iowa long before. We had decided to fight the white soldiers until no warrior should be left."

At this point Rain-in-the-Face took up his tobacco pouch and began again to fill his pipe.

"Of course the younger warriors were delighted with the prospect of a great fight! Our scouts had discovered piles of oats for horses and other supplies near the Missouri River. They had been brought by the white man's fire-boats. Presently they reported a great army about a day's travel to the south, with Shoshone and Crow scouts.

"There was excitement among the people, and a great council was held. Many spoke. I was asked the condition of those Indians who had gone upon the reservation, and I told them truly that they were nothing more than prisoners. It was decided to go out and meet Three Stars [General Crook] at a safe distance from our camp.

"We met him on the Little Rosebud. I believe that if we had waited and allowed him to make the attack, he would have fared no better than Custer. He was too strongly fortified where he was, and I think, too, that he was saved partly by his Indian allies, for the scouts discovered us first and fought us first, thus giving him time to make his preparations. I think he was more wise than brave! After we had left that neighborhood he might have pushed on and connected with the Long-Haired Chief. That would have saved Custer and perhaps won the day.

"When we crossed from Tongue River to the Little Big Horn, on account of the scarcity of game, we did not anticipate any more trouble. Our runners had discovered that Crook had retraced his trail to Goose Creek, and we did not suppose that the white men would care to follow us farther into the rough country.

"Suddenly the Long-Haired Chief appeared with his men! It was a surprise." "What part of the camp were you in when the soldiers attacked the lower end?" I asked.

"I had been invited to a feast at one of the young men's lodges [a sort of club]. There was a certain warrior who was making preparations to go against the Crows, and I had decided to go also," he said.

"While I was eating my meat we heard the war cry! We all rushed out, and saw a warrior riding at top speed from the lower camp, giving the warning as he came. Then we heard the reports of the soldiers' guns, which sounded differently from the guns fired by our people in battle.

"I ran to my teepee and seized my gun, a bow, and a quiver full of arrows. I already had my stone war club, for you know we usually carry those by way of ornament. Just as I was about to set out to meet Reno, a body of soldiers appeared nearly opposite us, at the edge of a long line of cliffs across the river.

"All of us who were mounted and ready immediately started down the stream toward the ford. There were Ogallalas, Minneconjous, Cheyennes, and some Unkpapas, and those around me seemed to be nearly all very young men. "'Behold, there is among us a young woman!' I shouted. 'Let no young man hide behind her garment!' I knew that would make those young men brave. "The woman was Tashenamani, or Moving Robe, whose brother had just been killed in the fight with Three Stars. Holding her brother's war staff over her head, and leaning forward upon her charger, she looked as pretty as a bird. Always when there is a woman in the charge, it causes the warriors to vie with one another in displaying their valor," he added.

"The foremost warriors had almost surrounded the white men, and more were continually crossing the stream. The soldiers had dismounted, and were firing into the camp from the top of the cliff."

"My friend, was Sitting Bull in this fight?" I inquired.

"I did not see him there, but I learned afterward that he was among those who met Reno, and that was three or four of the white man's miles from Custer's position. Later he joined the attack upon Custer, but was not among the foremost.

"When the troops were surrounded on two sides, with the river on the third, the order came to charge! There were many very young men, some of whom had only a war staff or a stone war club in hand, who plunged into the column, knocking the men over and stampeding their horses.

"The soldiers had mounted and started back, but when the onset came they dismounted again and separated into several divisions, facing different ways. They fired as fast as they could load their guns, while we used chiefly arrows and war clubs. There seemed to be two distinct movements among the Indians. One body moved continually in a circle, while the other rode directly into and through the troops.

"Presently some of the soldiers remounted and fled along the ridge toward Reno's position; but they were followed by our warriors, like hundreds of blackbirds after a hawk. A larger body remained together at the upper end of a little ravine, and fought bravely until they were cut to pieces. I had always thought that white men were cowards, but I had a great respect for them after this day.

"It is generally said that a young man with nothing but a war staff in his hand broke through the column and knocked down the leader very early in the fight. We supposed him to be the leader, because he stood up in full view, swinging his big knife [sword] over his head, and talking loud. Some one unknown afterwards shot the chief, and he was probably killed also; for if not, he would have told of the deed, and called others to witness it. So it is that no one knows who killed the Long-Haired Chief [General Custer]. "After the first rush was over, coups were counted as usual on the bodies of the slain. You know four coups [or blows] can be counted on the body of an enemy, and whoever counts the first one [touches it for the first time] is entitled to the 'first feather.'

"There was an Indian here called Appearing Elk, who died a short time ago. He was slightly wounded in the charge. He had some of the weapons of the Long-Haired Chief, and the Indians used to say jokingly after we came upon the reservation that Appearing Elk must have killed the Chief, because he had his sword! However, the scramble for plunder did not begin until all were dead. I do not think he killed Custer, and if he had, the time to claim the honor was immediately after the fight.

"Many lies have been told of me. Some say that I killed the Chief, and others that I cut out the heart of his brother [Tom Custer], because he had caused me to be imprisoned. Why, in that fight the excitement was so great that we scarcely recognized our nearest friends! Everything was done like lightning. After the battle we young men were chasing horses all over the prairie, while the old men and women plundered the bodies; and if any mutilating was done, it was by the old men.

"I have lived peaceably ever since we came upon the reservation. No one can say that Rain-in-the-Face has broken the rules of the Great Father. I fought for my people and my country. When we were conquered I remained silent, as a warrior should. Rain-in-the-Face was killed when he put down his weapons before the Great Father. His spirit was gone then; only his poor body lived on, but now it is almost ready to lie down for the last time. Ho, hechetu! [It is well.]"

hist1031

Satanta (1830-1878)

2006-10-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

October 11, 1874: Satanta has become despondent about his life-term in the Huntsville, Texas, prison. He has slashed his wrists trying to kill himself, but he is unsuccessful. He will be admitted to the prison hospital. Today, Satanta will jump from a second floor balcony. He will land head first, and die.

(Image courtesy of www.kshs.org)

Background From http://www.axel-jacob.de/

Satanta (Set-T'ainte), 1830-1878

Born on the Northern Plains, Satanta ("White Bear Person") was the son of Red Tepee, who was the keeper of the Tai-me, the Kiowa medicine bundles. During his boyhood, he was known as Guaton-bain or "Big Ribs". He was a young man when a prominent warrior, Black Horse, presented him with a war shield that he used while raiding in Texas and Mexico. During the early days of the Civil War, he conducted many raids along the Santa Fe Trail. He would later become a principal chief in the Kiowa Wars of the 1860s-1870s and was known as "The Orator of the Plains."

When Little Mountain died in 1866, Satanta became the leader of the war faction of the Kiowas. His rival was Kicking Bird of the peace faction. As a result of his rivalry, Lone Wolf became the compromise choice for the position of principal chief. Meanwhile, Satanta and his warriors continued raiding in Texas.

Famed for his eloquence, Satanta spoke at the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867 where the Kiowas ceded their lands in the valleys of the Canadian and Arkansas Rivers and agreed to settle on a reservation within Indian Territory. However, some of the Kiowas were slow to move onto their lands in Indian Territory. When Satanta came under a flag of truce to tell the U.S. Army that he had not been with Black Kettle at the Battle of the Washita, General Philip H. Sheridan held him and several other leaders as hostages until their bands had relocated to Indian Territory. In May 1871, Satanta was in a war party that attacked the Warren wagon train with Satank, Big Tree and Mamanti.

Later Big Tree, Satank and Satanta were seized for trial after bragging openly about their exploits. Satank tried to escape on the road to Texas; he was fatally shot. Big Tree and Satanta went to trial and were sentenced to death. Indian rights groups objected to the harsh penalties, however. The Bureau of Indian Affairs even contended that they should be released because their actions were associated with war and not murder. In 1873, they were paroled on a pledge of good behavior for themselves and the entire Kiowa tribe. However, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho war parties renewed their raids on white settlers under the Comanche leader Quanah Parker. These actions started the Red River War of 1874-1875. Satanta tried to prove to army officials that he was not a party to the raids. In September 1874, Big Tree appeared at the Cheyenne Agency at Darlington to state that Satanta wished to surrender peacefully.

True to his word, Satanta surrendered the next month. Although it appears that he had not violated the terms of his parole, Satanta was taken into custody and then imprisoned at Huntsville, Texas. On October 11, 1878, sick, tired, and despairing that he would ever be released, Satanta jumped off the upper floor of the prison hospital and committed suicide. The proud and dignified warrior was buried in Texas. His grandson, James Auchiah, received permission in 1963 to bring Satanta's remains to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, so that he could be interred with other Kiowa chiefs.

*****

From: http://rebelcherokee.tripod.com/satanta.html

SET-T'AINTE (Satanta, White Bear)

In April, 1864, a government physician was sent out among the tribes to vaccinate them as a protection from small pox which had recently decimated them. He found them all apparently friendly and spent some time in the camp of Set-T'ainte (Satanta).

At this time, the civil war was going on and Texas was fighting the general govenrment, which confirmed the Indians in their belief that Texans and Americans were two distinct and hostile Nations.

In 1871, a large raiding party killed seven white men in Texas and captured a number of mules. Upon their return, the leaders bragged about their deeds in the presence of the agent and General Sherman, who promptly arrested the the 3 most prominent, Set-angya (Santank, Setting Bear), Set-t'ainte, (Satanta, White Bear) and Ado-eette (Big Tree). They were to be taken to Texas for trial and punishment. Set-angya resisted and was killed. The other two were sent to Texas, tried and sent to prison.

Satanta and Big Tree were finally released by the governor of Texas in October 1873. In 1874, reports of raids started coming in and by Novemeber, Satanta was captured and sent back to prison in Texas. In 1878, 4 years after his caprure, Satanta committed suicide by jumping from the upper story of the prison. His death removed one of the most prominent chiefs in Kiowa history, the most daring and succesful Warrior. While in authority, he was second only to Lone Wolf. His eloquence and expression in his native language earned him the title "Orator of the Plains."

Information from "The Ten Grandmothers" by Alice Marriott, published by University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1945; and "Calender History of the Kiowa Indians" by James Mooney, published by Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. from reports, 1895-1896. Copyright, 1998-2001

NOTICE: Ethel Taylor grants that this information and data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, for personal and genealogical research. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit, can not be copied over to other sites, linked to, or other presentation without written permission of Ethel Taylor.

hist1011

Red Cloud

2006-09-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

September 20, 1822: Red Cloud was born on this date.

(Image courtesy of http://www.danielnpaul.com)

Words Spoken - Red Cloud

"When we first made treaties with the Government, this was our position: Our old life and our old customs were about to end; the game upon which we lived was disappearing; the whites were closing around us, and nothing remained for us but to adopt their ways and have the same rights with them if we wished to save ourselves."

*****

Excerpt from: Red Cloud, As remembered by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman)

Red Cloud was born about 1819 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and courteous in everyday life. This last trait, together with a singularly musical and agreeable voice, has always been characteristic of the man ...

... I once asked Red Cloud if he could recall having ever been afraid, and in reply he told me this story. He was about sixteen years old and had already been once or twice upon the warpath, when one fall his people were hunting in the Big Horn country, where they might expect trouble at any moment with the hostile Crows or Shoshones. Red Cloud had followed a single buffalo bull into the Bad Lands and was out of sight and hearing of his companions. When he had brought down his game, he noted carefully every feature of his surroundings so that he might at once detect anything unusual, and tied his horse with a long lariat to the horn of the dead bison, while skinning and cutting up the meat so as to pack it to camp. Every few minutes he paused in his work to scrutinize the landscape, for he had a feeling that danger was not far off.

Suddenly, almost over his head, as it seemed, he heard a tremendous war whoop, and glancing sidewise, thought he beheld the charge of an overwhelming number of warriors. He tried desperately to give the usual undaunted war whoop in reply, but instead a yell of terror burst from his lips, his legs gave way under him, and he fell in a heap. When he realized, the next instant, that the war whoop was merely the sudden loud whinnying of his own horse, and the charging army a band of fleeing elk, he was so ashamed of himself that he never forgot the incident, although up to that time he had never mentioned it. His subsequent career would indicate that the lesson was well learned.

The future leader was still a very young man when he joined a war party against the Utes. Having pushed eagerly forward on the trail, he found himself far in advance of his companions as night came on, and at the same time rain began to fall heavily. Among the scattered scrub pines, the lone warrior found a natural cave, and after a hasty examination, he decided to shelter there for the night.

Scarcely had he rolled himself in his blanket when he heard a slight rustling at the entrance, as if some creature were preparing to share his retreat. It was pitch dark. He could see nothing, but judged that it must be either a man or a grizzly. There was not room to draw a bow. It must be between knife and knife, or between knife and claws, he said to himself. The intruder made no search but quietly lay down in the opposite corner of the cave. Red Cloud remained perfectly still, scarcely breathing, his hand upon his knife. Hour after hour he lay broad awake, while many thoughts passed through his brain. Suddenly, without warning, he sneezed, and instantly a strong man sprang to a sitting posture opposite. The first gray of morning was creeping into their rocky den, and behold! a Ute hunter sat before him.

Desperate as the situation appeared, it was not without a grim humor. Neither could afford to take his eyes from the other's; the tension was great, till at last a smile wavered over the expressionless face of the Ute. Red Cloud answered the smile, and in that instant a treaty of peace was born between them.

"Put your knife in its sheath. I shall do so also, and we will smoke together," signed Red Cloud. The other assented gladly, and they ratified thus the truce which assured to each a safe return to his friends. Having finished their smoke, they shook hands and separated. Neither had given the other any information. Red Cloud returned to his party and told his story, adding that he had divulged nothing and had nothing to report. Some were inclined to censure him for not fighting, but he was sustained by a majority of the warriors, who commended his self-restraint. In a day or two they discovered the main camp of the enemy and fought a remarkable battle, in which Red Cloud especially distinguished himself .

The Sioux were now entering upon the most stormy period of their history. The old things were fast giving place to new. The young men, for the first time engaging in serious and destructive warfare with the neighboring tribes, armed with the deadly weapons furnished by the white man, began to realize that they must soon enter upon a desperate struggle for their ancestral hunting grounds. The old men had been innocently cultivating the friendship of the stranger, saying among themselves, "Surely there is land enough for all!"

Red Cloud was a modest and little known man of about twenty-eight years, when General Harney called all the western bands of Sioux together at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, for the purpose of securing an agreement and right of way through their territory. The Ogalalas held aloof from this proposal, but Bear Bull, an Ogalala chief, after having been plied with whisky, undertook to dictate submission to the rest of the clan. Enraged by failure, he fired upon a group of his own tribesmen, and Red Cloud's father and brother fell dead. According to Indian custom, it fell to him to avenge the deed. Calmly, without uttering a word, he faced old Bear Bull and his son, who attempted to defend his father, and shot them both. He did what he believed to be his duty, and the whole band sustained him. Indeed, the tragedy gave the young man at once a certain standing, as one who not only defended his people against enemies from without, but against injustice and aggression within the tribe. From this time on he was a recognized leader.

Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse, then head chief of the Ogalalas, took council with Red Cloud in all important matters, and the young warrior rapidly advanced in authority and influence. In 1854, when he was barely thirty-five years old, the various bands were again encamped near Fort Laramie. A Mormon emigrant train, moving westward, left a footsore cow behind, and the young men killed her for food. The next day, to their astonishment, an officer with thirty men appeared at the Indian camp and demanded of old Conquering Bear that they be given up. The chief in vain protested that it was all a mistake and offered to make reparation. It would seem that either the officer was under the influence of liquor, or else had a mind to bully the Indians, for he would accept neither explanation nor payment, but demanded point-blank that the young men who had killed the cow be delivered up to summary punishment. The old chief refused to be intimidated and was shot dead on the spot. Not one soldier ever reached the gate of Fort Laramie! Here Red Cloud led the young Ogallalas, and so intense was the feeling that they even killed the half-breed interpreter.

Curiously enough, there was no attempt at retaliation on the part of the army, and no serious break until 1860, when the Sioux were involved in troubles with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. In 1862, a grave outbreak was precipitated by the eastern Sioux in Minnesota under Little Crow, in which the western bands took no part. Yet this event ushered in a new period for their race. The surveyors of the Union Pacific were laying out the proposed road through the heart of the southern buffalo country, the rendezvous of Ogallalas, Brules, Arapahoes, Comanches, and Pawnees, who followed the buffalo as a means of livelihood. To be sure, most of these tribes were at war with one another, yet during the summer months they met often to proclaim a truce and hold joint councils and festivities, which were now largely turned into discussions of the common enemy. It became evident, however, that some of the smaller and weaker tribes were inclined to welcome the new order of things, recognizing that it was the policy of the government to put an end to tribal warfare.

Red Cloud's position was uncompromisingly against submission. He made some noted speeches in this line, one of which was repeated to me by an old man who had heard and remembered it with the remarkable verbal memory of an Indian.

"Friends," said Red Cloud, "it has been our misfortune to welcome the white man. We have been deceived. He brought with him some shining things that pleased our eyes; he brought weapons more effective than our own: above all, he brought the spirit water that makes one forget for a time old age, weakness, and sorrow. But I wish to say to you that if you would possess these things for yourselves, you must begin anew and put away the wisdom of your fathers. You must lay up food, and forget the hungry. When your house is built, your storeroom filled, then look around for a neighbor whom you can take at a disadvantage, and seize all that he has! Give away only what you do not want; or rather, do not part with any of your possessions unless in exchange for another's.

"My countrymen, shall the glittering trinkets of this rich man, his deceitful drink that overcomes the mind, shall these things tempt us to give up our homes, our hunting grounds, and the honorable teaching of our old men? Shall we permit ourselves to be driven to and fro -- to be herded like the cattle of the white man?"

His next speech that has been remembered was made in 1866, just before the attack on Fort Phil Kearny. The tension of feeling against the invaders had now reached its height. There was no dissenting voice in the council upon the Powder River, when it was decided to oppose to the uttermost the evident purpose of the government. Red Cloud was not altogether ignorant of the numerical strength and the resourcefulness of the white man, but he was determined to face any odds rather than submit.

"Hear ye, Dakotas!" he exclaimed. "When the Great Father at Washington sent us his chief soldier [General Harney] to ask for a path through our hunting grounds, a way for his iron road to the mountains and the western sea, we were told that they wished merely to pass through our country, not to tarry among us, but to seek for gold in the far west. Our old chiefs thought to show their friendship and good will, when they allowed this dangerous snake in our midst. They promised to protect the wayfarers.

"Yet before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. You have heard the sound of the white soldier's ax upon the Little Piney. His presence here is an insult and a threat. It is an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war!"

In less than a week after this speech, the Sioux advanced upon Fort Phil Kearny, the new sentinel that had just taken her place upon the farthest frontier, guarding the Oregon Trail. Every detail of the attack had been planned with care, though not without heated discussion, and nearly every well-known Sioux chief had agreed in striking the blow. The brilliant young war leader, Crazy Horse, was appointed to lead the charge. His lieutenants were Sword, Hump, and Dull Knife, with Little Chief of the Cheyennes, while the older men acted as councilors. Their success was instantaneous. In less than half an hour, they had cut down nearly a hundred men under Captain Fetterman, whom they drew out of the fort by a ruse and then annihilated.

Instead of sending troops to punish, the government sent a commission to treat with the Sioux. The result was the famous treaty of 1868, which Red Cloud was the last to sign, having refused to do so until all of the forts within their territory should be vacated. All of his demands were acceded to, the new road abandoned, the garrisons withdrawn, and in the new treaty it was distinctly stated that the Black Hills and the Big Horn were Indian country, set apart for their perpetual occupancy, and that no white man should enter that region without the consent of the Sioux.

Scarcely was this treaty signed, however, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and the popular cry was: "Remove the Indians!" This was easier said than done. That very territory had just been solemnly guaranteed to them forever: yet how stem the irresistible rush for gold? The government, at first, entered some small protest, just enough to "save its face" as the saying is; but there was no serious attempt to prevent the wholesale violation of the treaty. It was this state of affairs that led to the last great speech made by Red Cloud, at a gathering upon the Little Rosebud River. It is brief, and touches upon the hopelessness of their future as a race. He seems at about this time to have reached the conclusion that resistance could not last much longer; in fact, the greater part of the Sioux nation was already under government control.

"We are told," said he, "that Spotted Tail has consented to be the Beggars' Chief. Those Indians who go over to the white man can be nothing but beggars, for he respects only riches, and how can an Indian be a rich man? He cannot without ceasing to be an Indian. As for me, I have listened patiently to the promises of the Great Father, but his memory is short. I am now done with him. This is all I have to say."

The wilder bands separated soon after this council, to follow the drift of the buffalo, some in the vicinity of the Black Hills and others in the Big Horn region. Small war parties came down from time to time upon stray travelers, who received no mercy at their hands, or made dashes upon neighboring forts. Red Cloud claimed the right to guard and hold by force, if need be, all this territory which had been conceded to his people by the treaty of 1868. The land became a very nest of outlawry. Aside from organized parties of prospectors, there were bands of white horse thieves and desperadoes who took advantage of the situation to plunder immigrants and Indians alike.

An attempt was made by means of military camps to establish control and force all the Indians upon reservations, and another commission was sent to negotiate their removal to Indian Territory, but met with an absolute refusal. After much guerrilla warfare, an important military campaign against the Sioux was set on foot in 1876, ending in Custer's signal defeat upon the Little Big Horn.

In this notable battle, Red Cloud did not participate in person, nor in the earlier one with Crook upon the Little Rosebud, but he had a son in both fights. He was now a councilor rather than a warrior, but his young men were constantly in the field, while Spotted Tail had definitely surrendered and was in close touch with representatives of the government. But the inevitable end was near. One morning in the fall of 1876 Red Cloud was surrounded by United States troops under the command of Colonel McKenzie, who disarmed his people and brought them into Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Thence they were removed to the Pine Ridge agency, where he lived for more than thirty years as a "reservation Indian." In order to humiliate him further, government authorities proclaimed the more tractable Spotted Tail head chief of the Sioux. Of course, Red Cloud's own people never recognized any other chief.

In 1880 he appealed to Professor Marsh, of Yale, head of a scientific expedition to the Bad Lands, charging certain frauds at the agency and apparently proving his case; at any rate the matter was considered worthy of official investigation. In 1890-1891, during the "Ghost Dance craze" and the difficulties that followed, he was suspected of collusion with the hostiles, but he did not join them openly, and nothing could be proved against him. He was already an old man, and became almost entirely blind before his death in 1909 in his ninetieth year.

His private life was exemplary. He was faithful to one wife all his days, and was a devoted father to his children. He was ambitious for his only son, known as Jack Red Cloud, and much desired him to be a great warrior. He started him on the warpath at the age of fifteen, not then realizing that the days of Indian warfare were well-nigh at an end.

Among latter-day chiefs, Red Cloud was notable as a quiet man, simple and direct in speech, courageous in action, an ardent lover of his country, and possessed in a marked degree of the manly qualities characteristic of the American Indian in his best days.

(Image courtesy of http://www.forumuniversitaire.com)

hist0920

Leonard Peltier's 62

2006-09-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

A Special Message from Leonard Peltier:

----------------------------------------

Greetings Sisters, Brothers, Friends and Supporters!

Well here it is another year. Another birthday. This one makes me 62 years old. Also this makes it my thirty plus years in prison. I believe it was right after I was illegally convicted in Fargo, North Dokota when I wrote a statement telling everyone that my freedom would only come after the masses had demanded it. But first we would have to unite and organize, to reach them.

So far we have been unable to do so. Yes we have reached millions who have signed my petitions we have circulated throughout the world asking for my release. True most of those good peoples are from Europe, but we have also made a lot of gains here in the United States. At one time we had fifty five (55) members of Congress sign a letter for a new trial or my release. Fifty-five members is historical. No other prisoner in history has ever been able to accomplish this, nor has anyone else, individually I mean, and there are other accomplishments we have made and won here in the United States. Still I sit in prison not because I am guilty of the alleged crime I was illegally convicted of but because we still are unable to reach the masses here in America. The reason for this is not because the American people do not care or want to help, but because we have been unable to reach them. Personally I believe the majority of them do care and want to help. We sense this from the ones we are able to reach. We are moving forward very slowly in this freedom campaign of mine. The reason is we just do not have the financial resources to move forward at the pace we would like to be. This is the real and only reason that we have not been able to reach the people in the United States. Nothing is free here in America, not justice or the media. So although there is still no light at the end of the tunnel for me or my freedom, we continue struggling forward. I continue to search for the hope and strength I need to survive. I continue to pray and hope that one day I will get the support I need from the American people and one day I will still be able to walk out of prison. So my hopes and spirits are still high at my 62 years of age. I continue on this continued struggle. We are still finding bits and pieces of new evidence to file new appeals on. Those of you who have followed my case closely I can imagine are thinking How can this be, as there has been so many constitutional violations already. But the same old problem exists. The courts continue to cover up the continued criminal acts of my conviction committed by my prosecutors.

Your help is needed, Give what you can.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Tasunka Witko

2006-09-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

September 6, 1877: Crazy Horse died (Army records show night of September 7th.)

------------------------------------

Words Spoken: Tasunka Witko (Crazy Horse):

"A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky. I was hostile to the white man...we preferred hunting to a life of idleness on our reservations. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to hunt. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone. Soldiers came and destroyed our villages. Then Long Hair (Custer) came...They say we massacred him, but he would have done the same to us. Our first impulse was to escape but we were so hemmed in we had to fight."

( There is no known photograph of Tasunka Witko; this is the earliest drawing of him. )

*****

>From http://historymatters.gmu.edu/text/427-kills.html , and at this website there is audio version of the discussion with George Kills In Sight.

George Kills in Sight: Crazy Horse is sort of related to my grandmother on my father's side. My father's mother is cousin to Crazy Horse. Of course now everybody seems to claim relation to Crazy Horse, but it used to be the fact that my grandmother is cousin to Crazy Horse. And my grandfather was along in northern part of the state where, now known as the Cheyenne River Reservation. Him and others were up on the hunt scouting around when they come back they were told. In the meantime Pine Ridge, members of the Pine Ridge Indians, went up there and told Crazy Horse that he's wanted down to ...

Joseph Cash: Fort Robinson?

Kills in Sight: Someplace where, yeah, Fort Robertson. So ah . . . he kind of hesitated but finally they talked him into it, so they left. When that hunting party -- my grandfather's Big Crow -- when they come back they were told. So right away they didn't waste no time, they, they followed them -- which is about almost a day ahead of them. But they traveled during nights too, and just as the, the party got to Fort Robertson, they caught up to them. They caught up to them and ah, my grandfather, Big Crow, he had a six-shooter with a holster along with cartridges. He told him, he said, ?Brother-in law,? he said, ?put this on,? he said. ?You might need it 'cause something is going to be happening.? So he put it on his waist and then they, they didn't go in with him, but they stand so far and the guards stopped them, and they turn over to the . . . those Pine Ridge members that went after him escorted him to, to the . . . instead of taking him to the Army officer, they take him to . . . right straight to the jail. So there's two guards on each side of the gate. And this Pine Ridge, members of the Pine Ridge, that escorted him, they told him that was a jail -- in Indian. So he turned around, and this guard -- he was a white soldier -- just run his bayonet through, through the guts. He didn't shoot him or anything, just ...

Cash: Bayoneted him?

Kills in Sight: Killed him there. They just let him lay there, and of course he was dead. So, my grandfather and his bunch, they was from Cheyenne. They went up there and they claimed the body. He . . . the mistake that the Army did was they should be turned over and taken to the Army officer . . . and then later he probably could be thrown in jail maybe. But still . . . just taken back to the jail, without proving no questions about why he was wanted.

Cash: Yeah. And what happened to the body then?

Kills in Sight: My grandfather and his, his bunch claimed the body and they took it. They told them to just to take it out so . . . They made a travois and brought it, brought him home. And they brought him home to the, to the camp where the Northern Cheyenne Siouxs are and his father and mother took it over. And then they bound him up in, in buffalo robe -- tied with rawhide rope -- and wherever they go. . . they took him along. They didn't bury him. And the way they told . . . they had him almost a month. I don't know how they could tell but the change of the moon or they . . . he kept. But he wasn't spoiled; the body was preserved.

So finally the leaders got together and on the Pine Ridge Reservation -- now known as, as Medicine -- right around in that pines, in the breaks or someplace, they camped. And they asked the father of Crazy Horse to bury his son. So he agreed to it, that he's going bury his son but under one condition: he has to fill his pipe, and those that would not tell -- ever tell where he was going to be buried -- will smoke the pipe with him. Just like that: they pledged themselves not to tell the place he was to go and be buried. So ah, but those that's gonna tell, they might as well leave because he's not gonna bury him. So those big crowd thin out, just a few stayed and smoked the pipe.

So they dug a hole in a kind of washout, like a ravine, close up to a ridge. They dug that under there, a kind of stone. So they dug way under there and they left the body in there. They laid the body in there, and then put rocks just tight, you know, and put dirt on there, and fixed it so that nobody ever think there was a grave there. So, that's why when they fixed that monument they wanted to know where he was buried but nobody will tell. Those that were present at the time will never tell.

Courtesy of the Institute of American Indian Studies, South Dakota Oral History Center, University of South Dakota.

*****

>From Glenn Welker's site: http://www.indians.org/

While Sitting Bull was pursued into Canada, Crazy Horse and the Cheyennes wandered about, comparatively undisturbed, during the rest of that year, until in the winter the army surprised the Cheyennes, but did not do them much harm, possibly because they knew that Crazy Horse was not far off. His name was held in wholesome respect. From time to time, delegations of friendly Indians were sent to him, to urge him to come in to the reservation, promising a full hearing and fair treatment.

For some time he held out, but the rapid disappearance of the buffalo, their only means of support, probably weighed with him more than any other influence. In July, 1877, he was finally prevailed upon to come in to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, with several thousand Indians, most of them Ogallala and Minneconwoju Sioux, on the distinct understanding that the government would hear and adjust their grievances.

At this juncture General Crook proclaimed Spotted Tail, who had rendered much valuable service to the army, head chief of the Sioux, which was resented by many. The attention paid Crazy Horse was offensive to Spotted Tail and the Indian scouts, who planned a conspiracy against him. They reported to General Crook that the young chief would murder him at the next council, and stampede the Sioux into another war. He was urged not to attend the council and did not, but sent another officer to represent him. Meanwhile the friends of Crazy Horse discovered the plot and told him of it. His reply was, "Only cowards are murderers."

His wife was critically ill at the time, and he decided to take her to her parents at Spotted Tail agency, whereupon his enemies circulated the story that he had fled, and a party of scouts was sent after him. They overtook him riding with his wife and one other but did not undertake to arrest him, and after he had left the sick woman with her people he went to call on Captain Lea, the agent for the Brules, accompanied by all the warriors of the Minneconwoju band. This volunteer escort made an imposing appearance on horseback, shouting and singing, and in the words of Captain Lea himself and the missionary, the Reverend Mr. Cleveland, the situation was extremely critical. Indeed, the scouts who had followed Crazy Horse from Red Cloud agency were advised not to show themselves, as some of the warriors had urged that they be taken out and horsewhipped publicly. Under these circumstances Crazy Horse again showed his masterful spirit by holding these young men in check. He said to them in his quiet way: "It is well to be brave in the field of battle; it is cowardly to display bravery against one's own tribesmen. These scouts have been compelled to do what they did; they are no better than servants of the white officers. I came here on a peaceful errand."

The captain urged him to report at army headquarters to explain himself and correct false rumors, and on his giving consent, furnished him with a wagon and escort. It has been said that he went back under arrest, but this is untrue. Indians have boasted that they had a hand in bringing him in, but their stories are without foundation. He went of his own accord, either suspecting no treachery or determined to defy it.

When he reached the military camp, Little Big Man walked arm-in-arm with him, and his cousin and friend, Touch-the-Cloud, was just in advance. After they passed the sentinel, an officer approached them and walked on his other side. He was unarmed but for the knife which is carried for ordinary uses by women as well as men. Unsuspectingly he walked toward the guardhouse, when Touch-the-Cloud suddenly turned back exclaiming: "Cousin, they will put you in prison!" "Another white man's trick! Let me go! Let me die fighting!" cried Crazy Horse. He stopped and tried to free himself and draw his knife, but both arms were held fast by Little Big Man and the officer. While he struggled thus, a soldier thrust him through with his bayonet from behind. The wound was mortal, and he died in the course of that night, his old father singing the death song over him and afterward carrying away the body, which they said must not be further polluted by the touch of a white man. They hid it somewhere in the Bad Lands, his resting place to this day.

Thus died one of the ablest and truest American Indians. His life was ideal; his record clean. He was never involved in any of the numerous massacres on the trail, but was a leader in practically every open fight. Such characters as those of Crazy Horse and Chief Joseph are not easily found among so-called civilized people. The reputation of great men is apt to be shadowed by questionable motives and policies, but here are two pure patriots, as worthy of honor as any who ever breathed God's air in the wide spaces of a new world.

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)

2006-08-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

"Our wise men are called Fathers, and they truly sustain that character. Do you call yourselves Christians? Does the religion of Him who you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not.

It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease then to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease too to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they.

No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthwhile action, but the consciousness of having served his nation.

I bow to no man for I am considered a prince among my own people. But I will gladly shake your hand."

Joseph Brant to King George III

The Story of Joseph Brant
by Tom Penick

The Mohawk Indian chief Joseph Brant served as a spokesman for his people, a Christian missionary of the Anglican church, and a British military officer during the U.S. War of Independence. He is remembered for his efforts in unifying upper New York Indian tribes and leading them in terrorizing raids against patriot communities in support of Great Britian's efforts to repress the rebellion. He is also credited for the establishment of the Indian reservation on the Grand River in Canada where the neighboring town of Brantford, Ontario, bears his name.

Brant was born in 1742 on the banks of the Ohio River and given the Indian name of Thayendanegea, meaning "he places two bets." He inherited the status of Mohawk chief from his father. He attended Moor's Charity School for Indians in Lebanon, Connecticut, where he learned to speak English and studied Western history and literature. He became an interpreter for an Anglican Missionary, the Reverend John Stuart, and together they translated the prayer book and the Gospel of Mark into Mohawk. Molly Brant, Joseph's sister, married General Sir William Johnson who was the British superintendent for northern Indian affairs. Sir William was called to duty during the last French and Indian War of 1754-1763. Joseph followed Sir William into battle at the age of 13, along with the other Indian braves at the school.

Following this frightening experience, Joseph returned to school for a short period. Sir William had need of an interpreter and aid in his business with the Indians and employed Joseph in this prestigious position. In his work with Sir William, Joseph discovered a trading company that was buying discarded guns from the Army, filling cracks in the barrels with lead, and then selling them to Indians. The guns would explode when fired, often injuring the owner. Joseph was able to prove this in court and the trading company's license was revoked.

It was the custom for young men not to marry until they had made their mark, and Joseph was now prepared to choose a wife. Around 1768 he married Christine, the daughter of an Oneida chief, whom he had met in school. They had both Indian and Anglican wedding ceremonies and lived on a farm which Joseph had inherited. Christine died of tuberculosis around 1771, leaving Joseph with a son and a daughter. During this time, Joseph resumed his religous work, translating the Acts of the Apostles into the Mohawk language. In 1773, he married Susannah, sister of his first wife. Susannah died a few months later, also of tuberculosis. In 1774 he was appointed secretary to Sir William's successor, Guy Johnson. In 1775 he received a captain's commission and was sent to England to assess whether the British would or would not help the Mohawk recover their lands. He met with the King on two occasions and a dinner was held in his honor.

While in England, Brant attended a performance of Romeo and Juliet. Lady Ossory, a member of a famous Irish family, asked him, "What do you think of that kind of love-making, Captain Brant?" He replied, "There is too much of it, your ladyship." "Why do you say that?', and Joseph answered quickly, "Because, your ladyship, no lover worth a lady's while would waste his time and breath in all that speech-making. If my people were to make love in that way our race would be extinct in two generations." [Monture, p. 36]

On his return to the colonies, he saw action in the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. He led four of the six nations of the Iroquois League in attacks against colonial outposts on the New York frontier. The Iroquois League was a confederation of upper New York State Indian tribes formed between 1570 and 1600 who called themselves "the people of the long house." Initially it was composed of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After the Tuscarora joined in 1722, the league became known to the English as the Six Nations and was recognized as such in Albany, New York, in 1722. They were better organized and more effective, especially in warfare, than other Indian confederacies in the region. As the longevity of this union would suggest, these Indians were more advanced socially than is often thought. Benjamin Franklin even cited their success in his argument for the unification of the colonies. They lived in comfortable homes, often better than those of the colonists, raised crops, and sent hunters to Ohio to supply meat for those living back in New York. These hunters were usually young braves or young married couples, as was the case with Joseph Brant's parents.

During the U.S. War of Independence a split developed in the Iroquois league, with the Oneida and Tuscarora favoring the American cause while the others fought for the British under the leadership of Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant. A few of the leaders favored a neutral stance, preferring to let the white men kill each other rather than become involved. Brant feared that the Indians would lose their lands if the colonists achieved independence. Basic to animosities between Indians and whites was the difference in views over land ownership. The Indians felt that the land was for the use of everyone and so initially saw no reason to not welcome the Europeans. The colonists, on the other hand, were well acquainted with the priviledges of ownership (or lack thereof) and were eager to acquire land of their own.

Brant commanded the Indians in the Battle of Oriskany on August 6, 1777. In early 1778 he gathered a force of Indians from the villages of Unadilla and Oquaga on the Susquehanna River. On September 17, 1778 they destroyed German Flats near Herkimer, New York. The patriots retalliated under the leadership of Col. William Butler and destroyed Unadilla and Oquaga on October 8th and 10th. Brant's forces, along with loyalists under Capt. Walter N. Butler, then set out to destroy the town and fort at Cherry Valley. There were 200-300 men stationed at the fort but they were unprepared for the attack on August 11, 1778. The attackers killed some 30 men, women, and children, burned houses, and took 71 prisoners. They killed 16 soldiers at the fort but withdrew the following day when 200 patriot reinforcements arrived. The settlement was abandoned and the event came to be known as the "Cherry Valley Massacre." Brant won a formidable reputation after this raid and in cooperation with loyalists and British regulars, he brought fear and destruction to the entire Mohawk Valley, southern New York, and northern Pennsylvania. He thwarted the attempts of a rival chief, Red Jacket, to persuade the Iroquois to make peace with the revolutionaries. In 1779, U.S. Major General John Sullivan led a retaliatory expedition of 3700 men against the Iroquois, destroying fields, orchards, granaries, and their morale. The Iroquois were defeated near present-day Elmira, N.Y. In spite of this, Indian raids persisted until the end of the war and many homesteads had to abandoned. The Iroquois League came to an end after admitting defeat in the Second Treaty of Ft. Stanwix in 1784.

Around 1782, Brant married his third wife, Catherine Croghan, daughter of an Irishman and a Mohawk. With the war over, and the British having surrendered lands to the colonists and not to the Indians, Brant was faced with finding a new home for himself and his people. He discouraged further Indian warfare and helped the U.S. commissioners to secure peace treaties with the Miamis and other tribes. He retained his commission in the British Army and was awarded a grant of land on the Grand River in Ontario by Govenor Sir Frederick Haldimand of Canada in 1784. The tract of 675,000 acres encompassed the Grand River from its mouth to its source, six miles deep on either side. Brant led 1843 Iroquois Loyalists from New York State to this site where they settled and established the Grand River Reservation for the Mohawk. The party included members of all six tribes, but primarily Mohawk and Cayugas, as well as a few Delaware, Nanticoke, Tutelo, Creek, and Cherokee, who had lived with the Iroquois before the war. They settled in small tribal villages along the river. Sir Haldimand had hurriedly pushed through the land agreement before his term of office expired and was unable to provide the Indians with legal title to the property. For this reason, Brant again traveled to England in 1785. He succeeded in obtaining compensation for Mohawk losses in the U.S. War for Independence and received funds for the first Episcopal Church in Upper Canada, but failed to obtain firm title to the Grand River reservation. The legality of the transfer remains under question today.

Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks was built in 1785 at the order of King George III. The simple wooden structure survives today as the oldest Protestant church in Ontario and is the only church outside the United Kingdom with the status of Chapel Royal. The church contains some lavish appointments including a silver service and bible dating from 1712 when Queen Anne had a church erected for the Mohawk on the Mohawk River in New York. Also erected for the Indians in 1785 was a saw and grist mill and a school.

Brant continued with his missionary work. He felt that his followers could learn much from observing the ways of the white man and made a number of land sales of reservation property to white settlers to this end, despite the unsettled ownership. He tried unsuccessfully to arrange a settlement between the Iroquois and the United States. He traveled in the American West promoting an all-Indian confederacy to resist land cessions. Late in his life, he continued the work he had begun as a young man of translating the Creed and important passages of the Old and New Testament into the Mohawk language. He was a man who studied and was able to internalize the better qualities of the white man while always remaining loyal and devoted to his people. Joseph Brant died on the reservation on August 24, 1807.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography

1. "Brant, Joseph," Dictionary of American Biography, 1927.

2. "Brant, Joseph," The Encyclopedia Americana, 1992.

3. "Brant, Joseph," The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1991.

4. "Brantford," The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1991.

5. "Cherry Valley Massacre," The Encyclopedia Americana, 1992.

6. Flick, A.C., "The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779," History of the State of New York, 1933-1937.

7. Green, Evarts Boutell, The Revolutionary Generation 1763-1790, 1943.

8. "Iroquois League," The new Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991.

9. Mathews, R. V., "In Defense of Joseph Brant," Conservationist, 31:41, March 1977.

10. Mitchell, Lt.Col. Joseph B., Discipline & Bayonets, 1967.

1. Monture, Ethel Brant, Famous Indians, 1960.

12. Van Steen, M., "Brantford's Royal Chapel," Canadian Geographical Journal, 57:136-41, October 1958.

13. Weaver, Sally M., "Six Nations of the Grand River, Ontario," Handbook North American Indians, 1978.

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk

Pueblo Revolt, 1680

2006-08-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

August 10, 1680: The Pueblo Rebellion takes place in New Mexico under the leadership of a Tewa named Popé. Popé has arranged for an attack on as many of the Spanish missions as possible to all take place on the same day. Some sources say this happens on August 11th.

(BACKGROUND: From Glenn Welker's website)

Pope, c.1630-c.1690, a celebrated medicine man of the Tewa PUEBLO Indians at San Juan, N. Mex., instigated a successful rebellion against the Spaniards in 1680. Preaching resistance to the Spanish and restoration of the traditional Pueblo culture and religion, Pope led his people in an attempt to obliterate all Spanish influence. On Aug. 10, 1680, the Indians under his leadership killed about 400 missionaries and colonists and drove the other Spaniards south to El Paso, Tex. Pope and his followers then proceeded to destroy Christian churches and other evidences of the Spanish presence in Pueblo territory. Thereafter, as the head of several Tewa villages, Pope exerted what many considered increasingly harsh rule. Dissension arose, weakening Pueblo unity, and in 1692, two years after Pope's death, the Spaniards regained control.

*****

>From http://www.cia-g.com/~rockets/nmnavajo.pueblorebel.htm

Pueblo Rebellion

Life for the Pueblo Indians during the 1600s was hard. The Spaniards had settled on their lands and Spanish towns and ranches were built throughout the Rio Grande Valley. Soldiers and priests were living in the Pueblo villages. The Spanish priest outlawed traditional Pueblo ceremonies and forced the Indians to worship the Spanish god. If any Indian refused, he was beaten, jailed, or killed. The Pueblos knew that if they tried to fight against Spaniards at the mission, soldiers from Santa Fe might come and destroy their village.

Strange diseases brought by the settlers from Europe also swept through the Pueblo towns. The illnesses killed hundreds of people and left many villages empty. Before Onate and his colonists had come, the Pueblos had always prepared for dry times by storing extra food for their villages. When the Spaniards conquered the Pueblos, they forced them to surrender the stored good as taxes. When dry times came, there was no food and hundreds of Pueblos died from starvation. The people began to abandon their villages to get away from diseases, hunger, and the Spaniards. Some joined their Navajo friends living near Dinétah. Others joined the Zunis or the Hopis who lived far to the west. Some Pueblos moved onto the plains to escape the Spaniards. When Onate first entered New Mexico in 1598, there were over one hundred Pueblo Indian villages in the Rio Grande valley. By 1680, only forty-three pueblo villages were occupied.

By 1680, many Pueblo chiefs had decided something had to be done about the Spaniards. The Pueblo way of life was ending. A San Juan Pueblo leader named Pope held a secret meeting with other pueblo leaders. He knew that if a single Pueblo village fought against the Spaniards, the army could easily destroy that pueblo. His plan was to have all the pueblo villages attack the Spaniards. The Spaniards could not fight all the pueblos at one time.

Pope outlined his plans to the chiefs and chose a day in August of 1680 for the rebellion. On that day, Pueblo warriors from all villages would storm into the churches and kill all the priests and soldiers. Not one Spaniards should escape to warn the governor and soldiers in Santa Fe. When the priest and soldiers were dead, the warriors would join together to form a huge Pueblo army. Next, they would march into Santa Fe and drive the Spaniards out of New Mexico.

How would the villages know when to attack? Pope told the leaders that each day he would send messengers to each village chief. Each messenger would carry a knotted rope. The numbers of knots on the rope told how many days were left. Each day the village chief received the rope, he would untie one knot. If seven knots were left, that means there would be seven days left. When all the knots had been untied, the Pueblos would attack. The chiefs agreed with Pope's plan and returned home to their villages to get ready. Pope left for the northern pueblo of Taos where he could direct the rebellion in secret.

At first, Pope's plan went well. Then, four days before the rebellion, he discovered that someone had informed the Spaniards about it. He knew that the pueblos had to strike quickly before the soldiers could attack them. He immediately sent out messengers to all the pueblos. He told them to attack immediately.

On October 9, 1680, the Pueblos rebelled. Pueblo warriors killed every priest and soldier they could find and then joined together in a huge army and marched towards Santa Fe. The surviving colonists retreated into Santa Fe. The governor, Antonio de Otermin, knew he could not protect the settlers. The Pueblo army surrounded Santa Fe and cut off all supplies to the town. After a week, Otermin knew his people could not survive much longer.

He ordered his soldiers and colonists to abandon Santa Fe. The governor and nearly two thousand Spaniards fled to friendly Isleta Pueblo for protection. Then they marched down the Rio Grande Valley towards Mexico. At last they reached the Spanish settlement at El Paso in what is now known as Texas.

The Spaniards had escaped, but they lost the war. Over three hundred colonists had been killed. They had lost their homes, ranches, missions and most of their belongings. Not one Spaniard was left in New Mexico. Pope's rebellion had worked. The Pueblos celebrated and tore down Spanish buildings and burned the churches. They destroyed much of Santa Fe. The Pueblo Indians were sure the Spaniards would never come back.

Ten years passed. The Pueblo warriors returned to their villages and returned to their traditional way of life. Medicine men resumed their traditional ceremonies without fear. Pueblo villages began trading freely with each other and with the Navajos.

The Pueblos had many problems. Navajos raided Pueblo villages as they had done before. This time the Spaniards were not there to protect them. Mounted Navajo attacks increased. Apache and Ute horsemen raided the pueblos too. Some Pueblo villages even fought with each other. During this time, the Spaniards made three unsuccessful attempts at reconquesting the Rio Grande Valley. Many Pueblo villages were so busy fighting with each among themselves and with their traditional enemies that they hardly noticed any Spanish soldiers in their area.

Spanish leaders in Mexico had not forgotten the Pueblos or New Mexico. Don Diego de Vargas was selected as the new governor o New Mexico. He was to go to El Paso and form an army to reconquer New Mexico for Spain.

Vargas arrived in El Paso in 1691. He immediately made plans to invade the Rio Grande Valley. He learned from spies that Pope's army had fallen apart. He also knew that the Pueblos were fighting with their enemies and among themselves. Vargas spent a year in El Paso getting his army ready for the reconquest of New Mexico.

In 1692, Vargas and his men marched out of El Paso and entered New Mexico. They caught one of the Pueblo villages by surprise. Soon Governor Vargas' men had taken Santa Fe. One by one the Pueblo villages were defeated. Pope had died before the reconquest. However, soldiers caught and killed other leaders of the Pueblo Rebellion. Most people surrender, but many ran away. After four years of war, Vargas and his men had reconquered all of the Pueblos. The Spaniards were back to stay in New Mexico.

hist0810c

Mayan King "Casper," 422 A.D.

2006-08-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

August 8, 422: Maya King Casper is born, according to some sources. Eventually, he rules over Palenque, Mexico.

For the resemblance to the "friendly ghost," and because his real name could not be read, the second ruler of Palenque was given the nickname "Casper" by Floyd Lounsbury at the First Palenque Round Table. There is still controversy about the reading, so the undignified nickname remains. In his catalog of Maya hieroglyphics, Eric Thompson called this main sign "Xipe", for its resemblance to the flayed human skin associated with the Aztec deity Xipe Totec. Alfonso Morales Cleveland and Merle Greene Robertson have suggested a resemblance to a manatee. The prefix to the left of the main sign is clearly ch'a, but the main sign itself will never be read until a phonetic substitution is found (where the logogram is spelled syllabically). Casper has also been referred to as 11 Rabbit (by David Kelley, because his birth date, 11 Lamat, correlates with the day "rabbit" of Highland Mexican calendars).

*****

>From http://www.sacredsites.com/2nd56/106.html

Vast, mysterious and enchanting, the ruined city of Palenque is considered to be the most beautifully conceived of the Mayan city-states and one of the loveliest archaeological sites in the world. Its geographic setting is splendid beyond words. Nestled amidst steep and thickly forested hills, the ruins are frequently shrouded in lacy mists. A rushing brook meanders through the city center and from the temple summits there are stupendous views over an immense coastal plain. Here and there, piercing the dark green forests, soar great pyramids, towers and sprawling temple complexes. In its period of cultural florescence however, Palenque was even more beautiful, for then its limestone buildings were coated with white plaster and painted in a rainbow of pastel hues. These fabulous ruins were so hidden in the jungles that their existence was unknown until 1773. Even then, Palenque was discovered and lost several times until 1841 when the explorers Stephens and Catherwood arrived and described it in detail. Scattered pottery shards show that the site was occupied from as early as 300 BC, but most of the buildings were constructed between the 7th and 10th centuries AD. Then, mysteriously, the great city was abandoned and reclaimed by the inexorable claws of the jungle. Even the Mayan name of the city was lost, and the ruins received their current name from the nearby village of Santo Domingo de Palenque. While the ruins have received some of the most extensive excavation and reconstruction efforts of any of the Mayan sites, only 34 structures have been opened of an estimated 500 that are scattered around the area. As one wanders through the ruins or gazes from atop the tall buildings, small hills are seen everywhere about the site. These are not hills however, but Mayan structures long overgrown with jungle. ... the so-called Temple of the Inscriptions, erected in 692 AD, was originally an eight storey platform later converted into a three-tier pyramid. In 1952 an amazing discovery was made inside this pyramid. Beneath the slab floor of an inner room was found a stairway leading down to a funerary crypt 80 feet (24 m) below. The crypt contained a coffin with a skeleton covered with jade ornaments and other precious jewels. Inscriptions reveal the burial to have been of the great priest/king Pacal Votan who ruled the city from 615-683 AD. It is interesting to note that since the coffin is too large to maneuver down the staircase, the crypt must have been constructed prior to the pyramid that now covers it. This fascinating structure, both temple and tomb, was the primary sacred site in Palenque and one of the most visited pilgrimage shrines in the vast Mayan territories.

hist0808b

Nana

2006-07-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

July 19, 1881: Nana, leading thirteen of the remnants of Victorio's Apache warriors, fights with Lt.John Guilfoyle, and his ninth cavalry troopers, and Indian scouts, near the Arena Blanca River. The Indians manage to escape.

( image courtesy of www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/ )

Chief Nana
(b.1810)

Nana was a Warm Springs Apache under Victorio but was always close to the Bendonkohe Apache. After Victorio's death at the Tres Castillos massacre in 1880, it was Nana who guided the remains of the tribe into safety. For more than two months he and his group of 40 warriors eluded 1400 troops in a thousand-mile campaign. He later joined forces with Geronimo and Juh, but they never managed to make a common stand against the whites.

Nana was a wise and clever man with the uncanny ability of locating hidden caches of ammunition, food and clothing on the Apache trail. After Victorio's death Nana followed the women and children back to the reservation, but he did not remain with them; he went on with Geronimo.

Nana could outride and outlast any warrior in the saddle, and even in old age he showed no signs of weakness. It is said that Nana's desire to revenge Victorio's death drove him to kill more white men than Victorio had done in his lifetime. It is known that Nana challenged any white man who stood in his way; he brooked no nonsense. Nana, as well as Victorio's sister Lozen, were with Geronimo in their final battle for freedom. When Geronimo surrendered to General Crook in 1886 Nana was given to the Cavalry as a token of good faith that they were truly ready to surrender.

Nana died of old age, and lived his last years on the reservation. He remembered his final days of freedom as something he should never have let go of. In many ways he envied Victorio his fate; to die in combat for his people would have been the ultimate satisfaction for Nana.

*****

Excerpt from "In The Days of Victorio" - Eve Ball, University of Arizona Press, 1970:

"Why do they hunt us?"

"They have orders to kill every Apache, man, woman, or child, found off the reservation."

"But this is our reservation."

"It is no longer ours. The land Ussen created and gave to the Apache, is no longer ours. This, the land promised to Victorio by the Great Nantan in Washington, has been taken from us. He promised it to our Chief and our people forever. And only two summers ago! Perhaps the gold for which the White Eyes grovel in the earth has been found in our mountains. Because of that the word of the Great White Chief means nothing. He has ordered that we go to San Carlos, the worst place in all Apachería, the vast land of our people. I have been to that place when Victorio took his people there. So many died that we fled from it and returned to Warm Springs. You, too, went, but you were too small to remember. Not many babies lived to return.

"Victorio will die fighting before he will permit the Warm Springs Apaches to be forced back to San Carlos again. Instead we go to the Great River where we meet those of us who escape. Grandfather Nana will go to the three chiefs of the Mescaleros, our brothers, and ask for refuge on their reservation. He is to meet us at the river with horses and ammunition."

See also: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/VV/fvi3.html

Ball, Eve: Indeh, an Apache Odyssey. University of Oklahoma Press, 1980

hist0719

Tropical Stonehenge

2006-06-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Tropical Stonehenge may have been found
By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jun 27, 5:54 PM ET

A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory — a find archaeologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed.

The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter.

On the shortest day of the year — Dec. 21 — the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it.

"It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads us to believe the site was once an astronomical observatory," said Mariana Petry Cabral, an archaeologist at the Amapa State Scientific and Technical Research Institute. "We may be also looking at the remnants of a sophisticated culture."

Anthropologists have long known that local indigenous populations were acute observers of the stars and sun. But the discovery of a physical structure that appears to incorporate this knowledge suggests pre-Columbian Indians in the Amazon rainforest may have been more sophisticated than previously suspected.

"Transforming this kind of knowledge into a monument; the transformation of something ephemeral into something concrete, could indicate the existence of a larger population and of a more complex social organization," Cabral said.

Cabral has been studying the site, near the village of Calcoene, just north of the equator in Amapa state in far northern Brazil, since last year. She believes it was once inhabited by the ancestors of the Palikur Indians, and while the blocks have not yet been submitted to carbon dating, she says pottery shards near the site indicate they are pre-Columbian and maybe older — as much as 2,000 years old.

Last month, archaeologists working on a hillside north of Lima, Peru, announced the discovery of the oldest astronomical observatory in the Western Hemisphere — giant stone carvings, apparently 4,200 years old, that align with sunrise and sunset on Dec. 21.

While the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs built large cities and huge rock structures, pre-Columbian Amazon societies built smaller settlements of wood and clay that quickly deteriorated in the hot, humid Amazon climate, disappearing centuries ago, archaeologists say.

Farmers and fishermen in the region around the Amazon site have long known about it, and the local press has dubbed it the "tropical Stonehenge." Archeologists got involved last year after geographers and geologists did a socio-economic survey of the area, by foot and helicopter, and noticed "the unique circular structure on top of the hill," Cabral said.

Scientists not involved in the discovery said it could prove valuable to understanding pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon.

"No one has ever described something like this before. This is an extremely novel find — a one of a kind type of thing," said Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida's Department of Anthropology.

He said that while carbon dating and further excavation must be carried out, the find adds to a growing body of thought among archaeologists that prehistory in the Amazon region was more varied than had been believed.

"Given that astronomical objects, stars, constellations etc., have a major importance in much of Amazonian mythology and cosmology, it does not in any way surprise me that such an observatory exists," said Richard Callaghan, a professor of geography, anthropology and archaeology at the University of Calgary.

Brazilian archaeologists will return in August, when the rainy season ends, to carry out carbon dating and further excavations.

"The traditional image is that some time thousands of years ago small groups of tropical forest horticulturists arrived in the area and they never changed — (that) what we see today is just like it was 3,000 years ago," Heckenberger said. "This is one more thing that suggests that through the past thousands of years, societies have changed quite a lot."

Tropical Stonehenge may have been found - Yahoo! News

Ward Churchill: 9/11

2006-06-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Looks like the University of Colorado will fire Ward Churchill for his comment made several years back about some people in the World Trade Center being "little Eichmann's." As pointed out, "the whole point of churchill calling them little eichmans or technocrats of the empire is comparing them to the pencil pushers of the nazi death camps, as the wtc folks were the pencil pushers for the american empire."

So much for freedom of speech and academic freedom. The UC will dismiss him on some other trumped-up charges, but this is what it's all about; this and Ward bringing people's attention to the negative side of the American Empire.

Infoshop News - Chancellor says he'll fire Churchill over 9/11 comment

"As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire, the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved and they did so both willingly and knowingly."

— Ward Churchill , Some People Push Back

"If you want to avoid September 11s, if you want security in some actual form, then it's almost a biblical framing, you have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As long as you're doing what the U.S. is doing in the world, you can anticipate a natural and inevitable response of the sort that occurred on 9/11. If you don't get the message out of 9/11, you're going to have to change, first of all, your perception of the value of those others who are consigned to domains, semantic domains like collateral damage, then you've really got no complaint when the rules you've imposed come back on you."

— Ward Churchill , Statement to Democracy Now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_9/11_essay_controversy

Yeah, guys saying stuff like this is the kind we don't want teaching in our institutions of higher learning...

Dennis Banks

2006-06-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

[ The following courtesy of the Herald-Review, Grand Rapids, Minnesota, June 14, 2006 ]

"The American Indian Movement brought to life"

By Britta Arendt

“You’re only here on Earth for a short period of time, maybe 100 years, but when you’re dead you’re gone forever. What the Creator gave you, you have an obligation for future destiny; to bring others into the world—think about it.”

This was a special message Leech Lake Ojibwe leader Dennis Banks gave to students at Northern Lights Community School during a warm spring day in early June. Seated in a circle in the grass behind their school under a bright mid-day sun, a small group of students studying Ojibwe this year attentively listened to the illustrious activist’s life story and the lessons learned from it.

One of the most influential persons in recent American Indian history and, at one time, one of America’s Most Wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Banks has made it his mission in life to protect the rights of his people. In 1968, he co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) and since then he has participated in some of the most infamous protests of the 20th century.

Born near Federal Dam on the Leech Lake Reservation, Banks was raised by his grandfather. When he was 4-years-old, the government removed Banks and his brother from their home and sent them to a military boarding school 300 miles away. For seven years, Banks said, he was not allowed to see his family.

“Back then, the government had a policy to separate parents and children to deculturize them,” explained Banks, now nearly 70 years old. “It happened to thousands of kids.”
Although some close friendships were formed among the children at the military schools, Banks said they were never allowed to speak their native languages and punished for speaking in anything but English. He said the Native children also were required to attend Catholic or Lutheran religious services.

“They tried to make Christians out of us—all this, to take the Indian out of us.”
Banks explained how he tried to escape from military school several times only to be caught and sent back. Because he did not know where he lived or how to get home, he said, most times, he would get hungry and confused and hoped he would be found.

“I knew I needed to head north; no one ever told me but I knew my home was north.”
After school, Banks spent eight years in the United States Air Force and served in Tokyo for three years. During the French occupation of Vietnam, Banks remembered understanding why the Vietnamese people were so determined.

“After 12 years, the French couldn’t win against the Vietnamese mainly because the Vietnamese were on their own land,” Banks told the students. “It’s hard to beat native people who fight on their own land because you’re coming to take their land.”
As anti-war demonstrations became common throughout the U.S. in the 1960s, Banks said discrimination toward American Indians became prevalent as well. Police brutality against American Indians coupled with high unemployment and insufficient housing among the American Indian population became driving forces for founding AIM. Established to protect the traditional ways of American Indian people and to engage in legal cases protecting treaty rights of American Indians, AIM became successful in bringing American Indian issues to the public.

“Because of the discriminatory policies in this country, that had roots hundreds of years ago, eventually something had to happen,” continued Banks. “If the community school here wants to make Tuesday a holiday, why would someone in Grand Forks care? Why could you be trampled on because of what you believe in? AIM was formed to bring about change. We didn’t realize how far they would go to try and stop us; put us in jail.”

In the early years of AIM, Banks participated in the occupation of Alcatraz Island demanding that all federal surplus land be returned to American Indian control. In 1972, Banks helped organize the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” walking 3,600 miles from California to Washington D.C., gathering attention and support in a petition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to defeat bills that threatened to abolish certain treaties between the government and the American Indian people.

“The walk took five and a half months,” Banks remembered. “We started with 200 people and ended with 14,000; it was a big moment for us.”

Under Banks’ leadership, AIM also spearheaded a protest on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation against government corruption which led to the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee which attracted national attention. Banks is said to have been the principle negotiator and leader of the Wounded Knee forces.

“We set up road blocks and allowed no one to enter without permission,” Banks explained. “The government said we took over Wounded Knee but we didn’t, it was our land. Then they started shooting at us. They built bunkers and we built bunkers.”

According to Banks, U.S. soldiers surrounded Wounded Knee with machine guns, armored personnel carriers and snipers. Thousands of rounds of ammunition was fired from both sides throughout the entire 71 days, resulting in the deaths on both sides, until the government agreed to look into AIM’s claims of corruption.

Arrested for felony to commit murder, Banks faced 250 years in jail plus a life sentence. His $250,000 bail was put up by American Indian supporter and actor Marlon Brando and he received amnesty in California by then Governor Jerry Brown who refused to extradite him to South Dakota.

Banks talked about the seven-month trial that resulted in his acquittal. After it was discovered that the prosecution’s primary witness lied about being at Wounded Knee at the time of the occupation and the U.S. military was charged with wasting millions of rounds of ammunition in the fight, Banks said the judge scolded the FBI for the dangerous way the situation was handled.

While in California, Banks earned an associate’s degree from the University of California and taught at Deganawida Quetzecoatl University where he became the first American Indian chancellor. He worked as a drug and alcohol counselor on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and established the first spiritual run as well as the Great Jim Thorpe Longest Run from New York to Los Angeles. Banks has continued his involvement in AIM and is an active member of his Leech Lake community, including Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School.
Banks encouraged the NLCS students to learn more about the Ojibwe culture and ceremonies, “Here we have Fond du Luth and Leech Lake reservations and why you haven’t been in a sweat lodge, I don’t know—I’ve been in a few churches.”

Herald-Review - Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Cochise (1812-1874)

2006-06-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

June 8, 1874: Cochise passed on.

BACKGROUND:

Words Spoken: Cochise ("Hardwood") - c 1812-June 8, 1874

"When God made the world he gave one part to the white man and another to the Apache. Why was it? Why did they come together?. The white people have looked for me long. I am here! What do they want? They have looked for me long; why am I worth so much?"

--------

"You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts. Speak Americans.. I will not lie to you; do not lie to me."

-------

"When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west, and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it. How is it?

We were once a large people covering these mountains. We lived well: we were at peace. One day my best friend was seized by an officer of the white men and treacherously killed. At last your soldiers did me a very great wrong, and I and my people went to war with them.

The worst place of all is Apache Pass. There my brother and nephews were murdered. Their bodies were hung up and kept there till they were skeletons. Now Americans and Mexicans kill an Apache on sight. I have retaliated with all my might.

My people have killed Americans and Mexicans and taken their property. Their losses have been greater than mine. I have killed ten white men for every Indian slain, but I know that the whites are many and the Indians are few. Apaches are growing less every day.

Why is it that the Apaches wait to die -- That they carry their lives on their fingernails? They roam over the hills and plains and want the heavens to fall on them. The Apaches were once a great nation; they are now but few, and because of this they want to die and so carry their lives on their fingernails.

I am alone in the world. I want to live in these mountains; I do not want to go to Tularosa. That is a long way off. I have drunk of the waters of the Dragoon Mountains and they have cooled me: I do not want to leave here.

Nobody wants peace more than I do. Why shut me up on a reservation? We will make peace; we will keep it faithfully. But let us go around free as Americans do. Let us go wherever we please."

*************************************

>From http://www.desertusa.com/magfeb98/feb_pap/du_apache.html

Cochise had long worked as a woodcutter at the Apache Pass stagecoach station of the Butterfield Overland line until 1861, when a raiding party drove off cattle belonging to a white rancher and abducted the child of a ranch hand. An inexperienced Army officer, Lt. George Bascom, arrived and ordered Cochise and five other Apaches to appear for questioning. When they denied guilt or complicity, Bascom ordered his men to seize and arrest the Apaches. (Their claims of innocence were later substantiated.)

In the ensuing struggle, soldiers killed one Apache and subdued four others, but Cochise, suffering three bullet wounds, escaped by cutting through the side of a tent. He soon abducted a number of whites to exchange for the Apache captives, but Bascom retaliated by hanging six Apaches, including relatives of Cochise. This sequence of events is usually referred to as "The Bascom Affair."

Avenging these deaths, Cochise took to the warpath with his uncle, Mangas Coloradas. During the following year, warfare by Apache bands was so fierce that troops, settlers and traders all withdrew from the region. And upon the recall of army forces to fight in the U.S. Civil War in 1861, Arizona was practically abandoned to the Apaches.

In 1862, an army of 3,000 California volunteers under Gen. James Carleton marched to Apache Pass to prevent Confederate attacks and put the Apaches to flight with their Howitzers. Although Mangas Coloradas was captured and killed the following year, Cochise and 200 followers eluded capture for more than ten years by hiding out in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona, from which they continued their raids, always fading back into their mountain strongholds.

In 1871, command of the Department of Arizona was assumed by Gen. George Crook, who succeeded in winning the allegiance of a number of Apaches as scouts and bringing many others onto reservations. Cochise surrendered in September, but, resisting the transfer of his people to the Tularosa Reservation in New Mexico, escaped in the spring of 1872. He surrendered again when the Chiricahua Reservation was established that summer, and there he died (Ed's Note: of natural causes) on June 8, 1874. Today, the southeastern most county of Arizona bears his name; it includes Tombstone, Douglas and Bisbee, the county seat.

*************************************

>From http://homepages.tesco.net/~richard.alonzo/People/Cochise.htm (Ed's Note: Many hyperlinks leading to background information embedded in this webpage)

Cochise was the leader of the Chock!onen band of Chiricahua Apache's. He was originally one of the least hostile Apache leaders allowing overland stages to run through his peoples territory. He also supplied the stage station at Apache Pass with firewood and permitted their use of the vital spring in the pass to water both livestock and personnel.

However the the Bascom affair (in 1861) turned Cochise into an unforgiving enemy of the Americans or as he himself put it "your soldiers did me a very great wrong and I and my people went to war with them..."

Driven from Apache Pass during the Apache wars Cochise established a hidden stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains of South-west Arizona. General George Crook's Cavalry combed the mountains without success engaging Cochise's warriors in a protracted guerrilla war.

In 1872 Tom Jeffords, a stage driver and prospector, who was also a personal friend of Cochise brought General Oliver O. Howard to Cochise's stronghold for peace talks. The terminally ill Cochise secured from him a promise that his people would be allowed to return to live in peace at Apache Pass in returning for laying down their weapons. Detesting the white mans lies to which the Apache had been subjected he warned General Howard "We want nothing but to live in peace, but I warn you if you try to move us again there will be war once more; it will be a war without end."

Howard agreed to Cochise's demands, but the generals promise died with Cochise in 1874 and the Apache were never allowed to reclaim Apache Pass. Following his death Taza, Cochise's son, assumed the leadership of the tribe, but it would be the man known to the white's as Geronimo who would lead the continuing Apache resistance.

hist0608

Numaga, Paiute Chief

2006-05-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

May 12, 1860: A battle in the Paiute War takes place in Nevada at Big Bend in the valley of the Truckee River. Major William Ormsby's Nevada militia are attacked by Paiutes under war Chief Numaga.

The following is from:
http://www.nevadamagazine.com/departments/99mj_heroes.html

Numaga (1830-1871):

Although he counseled peace, Numaga is most remembered as the leader of the Paiute forces during the Battles of Pyramid Lake in 1860.

Numaga, also known as Young Winnemucca, is believed to have been born near Pyramid Lake in 1830. Although there is some confusion as to his relationship with Chief Winnemucca, one of the leaders of the Paiutes from about 1847 to 1882, most historians conclude that Numaga was probably the chief's son.

In 1860, white settlers began pouring into Western Nevada because of the discovery of silver in Virginia City. The newcomers began cutting down pinon-pine forests for firewood, thus eliminating an important food source, pine nuts, of the Paiutes.

Additionally, as settlers established towns and ranches, they forced the Indians off their ancestral lands. Tensions mounted in May 1860, when two Indian girls were held against their will at William Station, near the present-day site of Lahontan Reservoir.

The kidnappers were killed and the trading post burned. In response, more than 100 white volunteers marched on the Paiutes near Pyramid Lake.

Under the leadership of Numaga, who initially opposed war, the Paiute warriors defeated the ill-prepared company, killing 75 of the 105 volunteers. Hostilities ceased after a second battle in June, during which a company of 800 trained soldiers from California broke the Paiute forces.

Numaga, who survived both battles, negotiated a peace treaty on behalf of his people. He died of tuberculosis on November 5, 1871. Numaga was buried in the hills near Wadsworth, but the location of his grave site has been lost.

------------------------------------------------

The following is
>From http://www.emayzine.com/lectures/mojave.htm

PAIUTE

The Paiutes of the Great Basin, ranging within or just beyond the borders of Nevada, consisted of two major subgroups, the Northern and the Southern Paiutes.

Both sets of peoples resented white intrusion into their territory, beginning in the 1850s with the influx of gold-seekers, and both were involved in conflicts with white troops.

The Northern Paiutes included a number of bands. The northernmost among them, ranging into Oregon and Idaho as well as Nevada, were the Walpapi and Yahuskin, also known collectively as the Snake Indians. Some of these Indians played a prominent role in the Coeur d'Alene War of 1858 and the Bannock War 20 years later. But they also were the principal players in a war to which they gave one of their own names, the Snake War of 1866-68.

During the Civil War, with most federal troops drawn from the region, the rugged Paiutes had had a relatively free hand in their raids on miners and mining camps, stagecoaches and stage stations, ranches and farms, and freight caravans, especially in the drainage areas of the Malheur, John Day, and Owyhee rivers. Oregon and Nevada volunteers proved unequal to the task of taming them; in 1865, post-Civil War regulars were assigned to Fort Boise, Idaho, and other posts in the region.

The anti-Paiute campaign began unpromisingly for the army, with warriors under chiefs Pauline and Old Weawa outmaneuvering patrols and suffering few casualities. But when Colonel George Crook took command of the operations in 1866, the tide turned.

Crook began a relentless series of small tracking patrols that kept the insurgents on the run for a year and a half, forcing them into about 40 skirmishes in which, it is estimated, some 330 Paiutes were killed and 225 taken prisoner. Chief Pauline was killed in April 1867. In June the following year, Old Weawa surrendered to Crook with about 800 followers.

The Paiutes remained in the region, drawing rations from Fort Harney. Some were later settled on the Malheur reservation in Oregon, and they became caught up in the Bannock War of 1878; others were settled on the Klamath reservation, also in Oregon.

Meanwhile, the Northern Paiutes of western Nevada had also engaged white forces in a conflict generally referred to as the Paiute War (also called the Pyramid Lake War) of 1860, the last major western Indian war before the Civil War.

Two trading posts - Williams and Buckland - were situated in the Carson Valley, a relatively hospitable stretch of the California Trail running south of Pyramid Lake, and they served as Central Overland Mail and Pony Express stations.

War broke out with the Southern Paiutes when two Indian girls were abducted and raped by traders at Williams Station. Warriors attacked and burned the station, rescuing the girls and killing five whites. Miners at Carson City, Virginia City, Gold Hill, and Genoa organized 105 Nevada volunteers under Major William M. Ormsby. In May, the force marched northward towards Pyramid Lake. Numaga, a Paiute chief, had fasted for peace but, in view of the recent occurrences, foresaw the inevitable; he set a trap at the Big Bend of the Truckee River Valley, his warriors hiding behind sagebrush on both sides of the pass. In the original ambush and panicked retreat through the Indian gauntlet, as many as 46 miners lost their lives.

Reinforcements out of California came to Carson Valley, as did a number of regulars, bringing the force to 800. A former Texas Ranger, Colonel Jack Hays, was given the command. At the beginning of June, the force encountered the Paiutes near the site of Ormsby's defeat. After an initial indecisive skirmish, Hays's men pursued the Indians to Pinnacle Mountain. Twenty-five warriors died in the fighting and survivors scattered into the hills.

That summer, the army established Fort Churchill near Buckland Station to patrol the valley and keep the trail open.

Three decades later, a Paiute by the name of Wovoka, the founder of the Ghost Dance Religion, played an indirect role in the tragedy on the Plains that brought the Wars for the West to an end at Wounded Knee.

----------------------------------------

For more information on the Paiute, please click on the following links:

http://www.harneycounty.com/1Paiute.htm

www.dced.state.ut.us/indian/Today/paiute.html

hist0512b

Opechancanough, 1644

2006-04-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

April 18, 1644: Forces under 99 year old Opechancanough, a leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, attacks the English along the Pamunkey and York rivers, 22 years after his first attack at Jamestown. His followers will kill almost 400 Virginia colonists.

BACKGROUND: Excerpted from Jordan Dill's website at http://www.dickshovel.com/500.html

The initial English (and Dutch) settlers began the process of purchasing land, supplemented as always with armed force against vulnerable Indigenous nations (such as those decimated by disease or already engaged in wars with more powerful First Nations).

It remains unclear as to what the First Nations understood of the local purchasing process, but some points are clear; there was no practise of private ownership of land, nor of selling land, among or between the Peoples prior to the arrival of the colonialists; there were however agreements and pacts between First Nations in regards to access to hunting or fishing areas. This would indicate treaties were most likely understood as agreements between First Nations and settler communities over use of certain areas of land, as well as non-aggressiveness pacts. In either case, where First Nations remained powerful enough to deter initial settler outrages the treaties were of little effect if they turned out to be less than honourable, and there was enough duplicity, fraud, and theft contained in the treaties that they could not be considered binding. Practises such as orally translating one version of a treaty and signing another on paper were frequent, as was taking European proposals in negotiations and claiming that these had been agreed upon by all -- when in fact they were being negotiated. As well, violations of treaty agreements by settlers was commonplace, particularly as, for example, the Virginia colony discovered the profitability of growing tobacco (introduced to the settlers by Native peoples) and began expanding on their initial land base.

Gradually, First Nations along the Atlantic found themselves dispossessed of their lands and victims of settler depredations. One of the first conflicts that seriously threatened to drive the colonialist forces back into the sea broke out in 1622, when the Powhatan Confederacy, led by Opechancanough, attacked the Jamestown colony. Clashes continued until 1644, when Opechancanough was captured and killed.

********************************

>From http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/nae/chapter_1/001_002_1.27.txt

Opechancanough, uncle to Pocahontas, was considered a master tactician. He led the Pamunkey tribe for twenty-five years, following the death of his brother, Powhatan. For the first six months following Powhatan's death, Opechancanough reassured the settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, of their safety. However, Opechancanough saw that the settlers were beginning to encroach on his tribe's hunting grounds by clearing the trees to make tobacco fields and driving away the game. He saw a pattern building which he wanted to stop. In 1622, on Good Friday, the Indians struck, killing nearly 350 settlers and destroying the town's iron works. Opechancanough was captured during a peace council with the colonists, but managed to escape soon afterward. The attack had so effectively curtailed the community's growth that Opechancanough did not attack again until 1644. Soon after this assault, the chief was taken prisoner for the last time.

***********************************

>From http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog02/transcript/page02.html

In 1600, the forests of the Chesapeake Bay area were the home of Algonquin-speaking tribes who belonged to a powerful confederation ruled by a single chief, Powhatan. The Powhatans were warlike, recklessly courageous, and suspicious of strangers. For them, the most humiliating defeat was not death in battle, but the loss of their ancestral lands.

Into these lands, in 1607, came three small ships carrying 104 Englishmen, all of them men. They were employees of the London Company, a joint stock enterprise created to find gold and other riches in the American Eden. English America began as a business proposition.

The strangers sailed up a broad river and landed on a small peninsula they named Jamestown. It was a perfect place for defense, but it turned out to be a death trap. The mixture of salt water and fresh water in this mosquito-infested swamp became filthy from the settlers' waste matter, and this triggered raging epidemics of typhoid, dysentery, and salt poisoning. The Englishmen died like flies.

They also died because they wouldn't work. The company had sent over a collection of colonists that was a disaster about to happen--lazy gentlemen who'd never worked; London street urchins too worn down to work; craftsmen whose skills were pathetically unsuited to pioneering: goldsmiths and jewelers, barbers and glassblowers. So in bountiful Virginia, with the forests and rivers filled with game, they starved. Only 38 were alive, 9 months later.

Indian Relations

They might all have died had it not been for John Smith. The son of a yeoman farmer, Smith had left England at an early age, in the pattern of De Soto, to fight the Moors in Hungary. He was captured in battle and made a slave in Turkey, but escaped to Russia and found his way back to London just in time to sail with the first ships bound for Virginia.

Smith was too low born to command the respect of the rich lay-abouts who governed Virginia. But in desperation, the company made him virtual dictator. Smith divided the settlers, including a few women who had arrived, into labor gangs and ordered them to work or starve. Then he took over negotiations with the Indians.

He and Powhatan settled into an uneasy relationship based on mutual self-interest. Powhatan wanted English iron goods and guns; Smith wanted Indian corn, the only thing that kept the colonists alive. But there was always tension. On one occasion, when trade negotiations broke down, Smith grabbed the chief's brother, Opechancanough, pushed a pistol into his chest, and threatened to kill him unless he got his corn quota.

Not long after this, Smith was injured in a gunpowder accident and had to return to England. That winter the 500 colonists ran out of food and began dying again. Some turned to cannibalism. One man chopped up his wife and salted down the pieces. Another dug up fresh graves to feed on the corpses.

When summer arrived, the 60 survivors boarded several ships and headed up the James River, abandoning Virginia. But on reaching the mouth of the river they ran into a relief ship from England and were ordered to turn back. For a time, things got better. More colonists were brought in, and what looked like a permanent truce with the Indians was reached when a settler named John Rolfe married Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, and took her back to England to meet the king.

But when Pocahontas and her father died within a year of one another, Opechancanough led a surprise attack on the colony, slaughtering almost a third of its population. In retaliation, parties were sent out on Indian-exterminating missions. At one bogus peace parley, the English negotiators served poisoned wine, killing over 200 Indians.

Opechancanough struck back again 22 years later, in one final, furious effort to wipe out the colony. He was captured and killed, however, and his defeated people were expelled to the Virginia frontier. By this time, the London Company had gone bankrupt and Virginia had been taken over, in 1625, by the Crown. Death rates remained appallingly high, but the colonists had found a lucrative crop.

hist0418

Matoaka = Pocahontas

2006-04-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

On this day in history, April 14, 1614, Englishman John Rolfe married Pocahontas. Why this is important is because it is one of the roots of the real Pocahontas story:

BACKGROUND:

From http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html

In 1995, Roy Disney decided to release an animated movie about a Powhatan woman known as "Pocahontas". In answer to a complaint by the Powhatan Nation, he claims the film is "responsible, accurate, and respectful."

We of the Powhatan Nation disagree. The film distorts history beyond recognition. Our offers to assist Disney with cultural and historical accuracy were rejected. Our efforts urging him to reconsider his misguided mission were spurred.

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. The legend is that she saved a heroic John Smith from being clubbed to death by her father in 1607 - she would have been about 10 or 11 at the time. The truth is that Smith's fellow colonists described him as an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier.

Of all of Powhatan's children, only "Pocahontas" is known, primarily because she became the hero of Euro-Americans as the "good Indian", one who saved the life of a white man. Not only is the "good Indian/bad Indian theme" inevitably given new life by Disney, but the history, as recorded by the English themselves, is badly falsified in the name of "entertainment".

The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney. Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.

The true Pocahontas story has a sad ending. In 1612, at the age of 17, Pocahontas was treacherously taken prisoner by the English while she was on a social visit, and was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year.

During her captivity, a 28-year-old widower named John Rolfe took a "special interest" in the attractive young prisoner. As a condition of her release, she agreed to marry Rolfe, who the world can thank for commercializing tobacco. Thus, in April 1614, Matoaka, also known as "Pocahontas", daughter of Chief Powhatan, became "Rebecca Rolfe". Shortly after, they had a son, whom they named Thomas Rolfe. The descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe were known as the "Red Rolfes."

Two years later on the spring of 1616, Rolfe took her to England where the Virginia Company of London used her in their propaganda campaign to support the colony. She was wined and dined and taken to theaters. It was recorded that on one occasion when she encountered John Smith (who was also in London at the time), she was so furious with him that she turned her back to him, hid her face, and went off by herself for several hours. Later, in a second encounter, she called him a liar and showed him the door.

Rolfe, his young wife, and their son set off for Virginia in March of 1617, but "Rebecca" had to be taken off the ship at Gravesend. She died there on March 21, 1617, at the age of 21. She was buried at Gravesend, but the grave was destroyed in a reconstruction of the church. It was only after her death and her fame in London society that Smith found it convenient to invent the yarn that she had rescued him.

History tells the rest. Chief Powhatan died the following spring of 1618. The people of Smith and Rolfe turned upon the people who had shared their resources with them and had shown them friendship. During Pocahontas' generation, Powhatan's people were decimated and dispersed and their lands were taken over. A clear pattern had been set which would soon spread across the American continent.

Chief Roy Crazy Horse

hist0414

Black Sparrow Hawk

2006-04-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

(Painting by George Catlin, 1832, courtesy of the Smithsonian)

April 5, 1832: After being removed from Illinois in 1831, Black Hawk, and his Sac followers lived in Iowa. Wanting to return to their old home land, today, Black Hawk and almost 1000 of his tribe will cross the Mississippi River back into Illinois. Not much later, they will be attacked by the whites.

BACKGROUND:

From http://www.riverroads.com/grr/blackhawk.html

Chief Blackhawk and the Blackhawk War

Black Hawk, who's full name was Black Sparrow Hawk, was born in 1767, at Saukenauk an area three to five miles north of where the Rock River in Illinois meets the Mississippi River located near present day Rock Island, Illinois. . This location is near present-day Rock Island, Illinois. In his native tongue, his name was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak. Contrary to popular belief, Black Hawk was never a chief. He was a warrior and a recognized leader among the Sauk and Mesquakie (Fox) nations, but he never achieved the rank of chief. Black Hawk was married to a woman named Singing Bird. Together they had two daughters and three sons. Among Black Hawk's descendants was legendary athlete Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was Black Hawk's great-grandson.

In the early 1800s the Sauk and Fox Indians lived along the Mississippi River from northwestern Illinois to southwestern Wisconsin. Black Hawk fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. He and his followers, known as the British Band, were responsible for the victories at Campbell's Island and Credit Island. Black Hawk had done his best to force American settlers off the western frontier.

In 1830, seeking to make way for settlers moving into Illinois, the United States required the Sauk to move and accept new lands in present-day Iowa. There they struggled to prepare enough acreage for their crops. The winter of 1831-1832 was extremely difficult. In April 1832, Black Hawk led about one thousand Sauk and Fox people back to northern Illinois. Black Hawk hoped to forge a military alliance with the Winnebago and other tribes. They intended to plant corn on their ancestral farmland were they had been forcibly removed to the year before. Fearing the Sauk, Illinois settlers promptly organized a militia.

Observing the military forces organizing against him, Black Hawk reconsidered his actions and decided to surrender. Yet an undisciplined militia ignored a peace flag and attacked the Sauk. The Indian warriors promptly returned fire. The militia retreated in a panic, many forgetting their firearms. The Sauk collected the weapons and retreated northward along the Rock River into Wisconsin. The Black Hawk War had just begun.

*****

>From http://members.tripod.com/~RFester/bhawk.html

Words Spoken - Blackhawk: "Blackhawk is an Indian. He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to feel ashamed."

*****

In the year 1767, in the village of Saukenuk, located a few miles north of the confluence of the Rock River with the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois, a child was born. This was Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, which means "Black Sparrow Hawk" in the Algonquin language of the Sauk. Whites would later call him Black Hawk. He would become one of the most fearsome yet respected Native American warriors to be born in what is now the state of Illinois.

At the age of just fifteen, Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak joined a raid against the Osage. He succeeded in killing and scalping an enemy warrior, which entitled him upon return to Saukenuk to join in the scalp dance. At this early age, Black Hawk had become a Sauk warrior. A short time later, he led seven Sauk warriors in an attack against an encampment of 100 Osages. Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak killed an enemy, then escaped without losing a man. In a very short time, he became one of the most influential warriors in the Nation.

THE SAUK NATION

Sometime in early historic times, the Sauk, feeling pressure from the French and Chippewa, migrated southward out of central Wisconsin, into southwestern Wisconsin, Northwestern Illinois, and northeastern Iowa. Some settled at the rapids of the Mississippi, near what is today Keokuk, Iowa. Another group settled near the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois. A third group settled on the Osage and Missouri Rivers in the late 1700s. The Sauk were allied with the Meskwaki (known to whites as the Fox) and often lived among them and vice versa. Principal native enemies of the Sauk included the Minnesota Sioux (Santee Dakota and Yankton Nakota), Osage, and Chippewa.

http://nativenewsonline.org/history/hist0405.html

Soul of The Indian # 3

2006-03-21T14:17:00.000-08:00

II. THE FAMILY ALTAR

Pre-natal Influence. Early Religious Teaching. The Function of the Aged. Woman, Marriage and the Family. Loyalty, Hospitality, Friendship.

THE American Indian was an individualist in religion as in war. He had neither a national army nor an organized church. There was no priest to assume responsibility for another's soul. That is, we believed, the supreme duty of the parent, who only was permitted to claim in some degree the priestly office and function, since it is his creative and protectingpower which alone approaches the solemn function of Deity.

The Indian was a religious man from his mother's womb. From the moment of her recognition of the fact of conception to the end of the second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother's spiritual influence counted for most. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such as to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the "Great Mystery" and a sense of brotherhood with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother. She wanders prayerful in the stillness of great woods, or on the bosom of the untrodden prairie, and to her poetic mind the immanent birth of her child prefigures the advent of a master-man -- a hero, or the mother of heroes -- a thought conceived in the virgin breast of primeval nature, and dreamed out in a hush that is only broken by the sighing of the pine tree or the thrilling orchestra of a distant waterfall.

And when the day of days in her life dawns -- the day in which there is to be a new life, the miracle of whose making has been intrusted to her, she seeks no human aid. She has been trained and prepared in body and mind for this her holiest duty, ever since she can remember. The ordeal is best met alone, where no curious or pitying eyes embarrass her; where all nature says to her spirit: "'Tis love! 'tis love! the fulfilling of life!" When a sacred voice comes to her out of the silence, and a pair of eyes open upon her in the wilderness, she knows with joy that she has borne well her part in the great song of creation!

Presently she returns to the camp, carrying the mysterious, the holy, the dearest bundle! She feels the endearing warmth of it and hears its soft breathing. It is still a part of herself, since both are nourished by the same mouthful, and no look of a lover could be sweeter than its deep, trusting gaze.

She continues her spiritual teaching, at first silently -- a mere pointing of the index finger to nature; then in whispered songs, bird-like, at morning and evening. To her and to the child the birds are real people, who live very close to the "Great Mystery"; the murmuring trees breathe His presence; the falling waters chant His praise.

If the child should chance to be fretful, the mother raises her hand. "Hush! hush!" she cautions it tenderly, "the spirits may be disturbed!" She bids it be still and listen to the silver voice of the aspen, or the clashing cymbals of the birch; and at night she points to the heavenly, blazed trail, through nature's galaxy of splendor to nature's God. Silence, love, reverence, -- this is the trinity of first lessons; and to these she later adds generosity, courage, and chastity.

In the old days, our mothers were single-eyed to the trust imposed upon them; and as a noted chief of our people was wont to say: "Men may slay one another, but they can never overcome the woman, for in the quietude of her lap lies the child! You may destroy him once and again, but he issues as often from that same gentle lap -- a gift of the Great Good to the race, in which man is only an accomplice!"

This wild mother has not only the experience of her mother and grandmother, and the accepted rules of her people for a guide, but she humbly seeks to learn a lesson from ants, bees, spiders, beavers, and badgers. She studies the family life of the birds, so exquisite in its emotional intensity and its patient devotion, until she seems to feel the universal mother-heart beating in her own breast. In due time the child takes of his own accord the attitude of prayer, and speaks reverently of the Powers. He thinks that he is a blood brother to all living creatures, and the storm wind is to him a messenger of the "Great Mystery."

At the age of about eight years, if he is a boy, she turns him over to his father for more Spartan training. If a girl, she is from this time much under the guardianship of her grandmother, who is considered the most dignified protector for the maiden. Indeed, the distinctive work of both grandparents is that of acquainting the youth with the national traditions and beliefs. It is reserved for them to repeat the time-hallowed tales with dignity and authority, so as to lead him into his inheritance in the stored-up wisdom and experience the race. The old are dedicated to the service of the young, as their teachers and advisers, and the young in turn regard them with love and reverence.

Our old age was in some respects the happiest period of life. Advancing years brought with them much freedom, not only from the burden of laborious and dangerous tasks, but from those restrictions of custom and etiquette which were religiously observed by all others. No one who is at all acquainted with the Indian in his home can deny that we are a polite people. As a rule, the warrior who inspired the greatest terror in the hearts of his enemies was a man of the most exemplary gentleness, and almost feminine refinement, among his family and friends. A soft, low voice was considered an excellent thing in man, as well as in woman! Indeed, the enforced intimacy of tent life would soon become intolerable, were it not for these instinctive reserves and delicacies, this unfailing respect for the established place and possessions of every other member of the family circle, this habitual quiet, order, and decorum.

Our people, though capable of strong and durable feeling, were not demonstrative in their affection at any time, least of all in the presence of guests or strangers. Only to the aged, who have journeyed far, and are in a manner exempt from ordinary rules, are permitted some playful familiarities with children and grandchildren, some plain speaking, even to harshness and objurgation, from which the others must rigidly refrain. In short, the old men and women are privileged to say what they please and how they please, without contradiction, while the hardships and bodily infirmities that of necessity fall to their lot are softened so far as may be by universal consideration and attention.

There was no religious ceremony connected with marriage among us, while on the other hand the relation between man and woman was regarded as in itself mysterious and holy. It appears that where marriage is solemnized by the church and blessed by the priest, it may at the same time be surrounded with customs and ideas of a frivolous, superficial, and even prurient character. We believed that two who love should be united in secret, before the public acknowledgment of their union, and should taste their apotheosis with nature. The betrothal might or might not be discussed and approved by the parents, but in either case it was customary for the young pair to disappear into the wilderness, there to pass some days or weeks in perfect seclusion and dual solitude, afterward returning to the village as man and wife. An exchange of presents and entertainments betweens the two families usually followed, but the nuptial blessing was given by the High Priest of God, the most reverend and holy Nature.

The family was not only the social unit, but also the unit of government clan is nothing more than a larger family, with its patriarchal chief as the natural head, and the union of several clans by inter-marriage and voluntary connection constitutes the tribe. The very name of our tribe, Dakota, means Allied People. The remoter degrees of kinship were fully recognized, and that not as a matter of form only: first cousins were known as brothers and sisters; the name of "cousin" constituted binding claim, and our rigid morality forbade marriage between cousins in any known degree, or in other words within the clan.

The household proper consisted of a man with one or more wives and their children, all of whom dwelt amicably together, often under one roof, although some men of rank and position provided a separate lodge for each wife. There were, indeed, few plural marriages except among the older and leading men, and plural wives were usually, though not necessarily, sisters. A marriage might honorably be dissolved for cause, but there was very little infidelity or immorality, either open or secret.

It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood. The wife did not take the name of her husband nor enter his clan, and the children belonged to the clan of the mother. All of the family property was held by her, descent was traced in the maternal line, and the honor of the house was in her hands. Modesty was her chief adornment; hence the younger women were usually silent and retiring: but a woman who had attained to ripeness of years and wisdom, or who had displayed notable courage in some emergency, was sometimes invited to a seat in the council.

Thus she ruled undisputed within her own domain, and was to us a tower of moral and spiritual strength, until the coming of the border white man, the soldier and trader, who with strong drink overthrew the honor of the man, and through his power over a worthless husband purchased the virtue of his wife or his daughter. When she fell, the whole race fell with her.

Before this calamity came upon us, you could not find anywhere a happier home than that created by the Indian woman. There was nothing of the artificial about her person, and very little disingenuousness in her character. Her early and consistent training, the definiteness of her vocation, and, above all, her profoundly religious attitude gave her a strength and poise that could not be overcome by any ordinary misfortune.

Indian names were either characteristic nicknames given in a playful spirit, deed names, birth names, or such as have a religious and symbolic meaning . It has been said that when a child is born, some accident or unusual appearance determines his name. This is sometimes the case, but is not the rule. A man of forcible character, with a fine war record, usually bears the name of the buffalo or bear, lightning or some dread natural force. Another of more peaceful nature may be called Swift Bird or Blue Sky. A woman's name usually suggested something about the home, often with the adjective "pretty" or "good," and a feminine termination. Names of any dignity or importance must be conferred by the old men, and especially so if they have any spiritual significance; as Sacred Cloud, Mysterious Night, Spirit Woman, and the like. Such a name was sometimes borne by three generations, but each individual must prove that he is worthy of it.

In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty, -- the duty of prayer -- the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. His daily devotions were more necessary to him than daily food. He wakes at daybreak, puts on his moccasins and steps down to the water's edge. Here he throws handfuls of clear, cold water into his face, or plunges in bodily. After the bath, he stands erect before the advancing dawn, facing the sun as it dances upon the horizon, and offers his unspoken orison. His mate may precede or follow him in his devotions, but never accompanies him. Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!

Whenever, in the course of the daily hunt, the red hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful and sublime -- a black thunder-cloud with the rainbow's glowing arch above the mountain; a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge; a vast prairie tinged with the blood-red of sunset -- he pauses for an instant in the attitude of worship. He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, since to him all days are God's.

Every act of his life is, in a very real sense, a religious act. He recognizes the spirit in all creation, and believes that he draws from it spiritual power. His respect for the immortal part of the animal, his brother, often leads him so far as to lay out the body of his game in state and decorate the head with symbolic paint or feathers. Then he stands before it in the prayer attitude, holding up the filled pipe, in token that he has freed with honor the spirit of his brother, whose body his need compelled him to take to sustain his own life.

When food is taken, the woman murmurs a "grace" as she lowers the kettle; an act so softly and unobtrusively performed that one who does not know the custom usually fails to catch the whisper: "Spirit, partake!" As her husband receives the bowl or plate, he likewise murmurs his invocation to the spirit. When he becomes an old man, he loves to make a notable effort to prove his gratitude. He cuts off the choicest morsel of the meat and casts it into the fire -- the purest and most ethereal element.

The hospitality of the wigwam is only limited by the institution of war. Yet, if an enemy should honor us with a call, his trust will not be misplaced, and he will go away convinced that he has met with a royal host! Our honor is the guarantee for his safety, so long as he is within the camp.

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to family and clan, whose blood is in our own veins. Love between man and woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend, and to be true under any and all trials, is the mark of a man!

The highest type of friendship is the relation of "brother-friend" or "life-and-death friend." This bond is between man and man, is usually formed in early youth, and can only be broken by death. It is the essence of comradeship and fraternal love, without thought of pleasure or gain, but rather for moral support and inspiration. Each is vowed to die for the other, if need be, and nothing denied the brother-friend, but neither is anything required that is not in accord with the highest conceptions of the Indian mind.

Samoset

2006-03-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

March 15, 1621: Samoset meets the Pilgrims.

From http://members.aol.com/calebj/samoset.html

Samoset was the first Indian to make contact with the Pilgrims. He was an Abnaki, an Algonquin-speaking people that resided in south-east Maine. He was a sagamore of his tribe, and was visiting Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag--having been there for about eight months. He had learned some broken English from the English fisherman that came to fish off the coast of southeast Maine. The Pilgrims described Samoset: "He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage . . . He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all." Samoset returned shortly thereafter to his homeland in Maine.

*****************************************************

From http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/samoset.htm

Beginning on Friday 16/26 of February 1621, the Plymouth colonists became increasingly aware of Indians in their proximity. On that day an unidentified Pilgrim had gone out fouling and, near a creek about a mile and a half from the plantation, twelve Indians passed near the place he was hiding. He rushed back to Plymouth and raised the alarm. Myles Standish and Francis Cooke, who had been working in the woods when the alarm went out, rushed back to the little community, leaving their tools behind them.

The colonists armed themselves and went back to the place where the Indians had been seen, but found none. In the evening, the men built a great fire near the place where the Indians had been seen.

The next day a meeting was called to establish military orders under the command of Myles Standish. While they were in consultation, two Indians appeared on a hill about half a mile from the colony. The colonists armed themselves and sent Myles Standish and Stephen Hopkins to meet them, but the Indians rushed away and the men heard the noise of a great many more behind the hill.

Alarmed by the presence of Indians and not knowing their intent, Master Jones came ashore with a number of his mariners, bringing one of their great guns (called a minion) and pulled it up the hill to the gun platform. They also took up another gun which had been resting on the shore and several smaller pieces of ordnance. Feeling a little more secure, the colonist went about the business of providing food and planting some of their garden seed.

On Friday, March 16/26, 1621, while the men were meeting to conclude the military orders, they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Samoset in the village, which caused an alarm. Winslow reports "...he came all alone and along the houses straight to the Randevous, where we intercepted him, not suffering him to goe in, as undoubtedly he would, out of his boldnesse, he saluted us in English, and bad us well come, for he had learned some broken English amongst the English men that came to fish at Monchiggon, and he knew by name the most of the Captaines, Commanders, & Masters, that usually come, he was a man free in speech, so farre as he could expresse his mind, and of a seemely carriage. . .He said he was not of these parts, but of Moratiggon, and one of the Sagamores, or Lords thereof, and had been 8 moneths in these parts, it lying hence a dayes sayle with a great wind, and five dayes by land."

Samoset was an Abknaki who had come to Cape Cod from his tribal area in what is now southeastern Maine. The Abnaki were an Algonquin-speaking people as were all of the New England tribes. Therefore he was easily understood by the Nauset and Wampanoag people.

Samoset told the Pilgrims the Nausets were 100 strong, which was later confirmed by Winslow when a group of men went to Nauset territory in search of the lost John Billington.

These were the natives which the Pilgrims had encountered on one of their explorations of Cape Cod. Samoset reported: "They were much incensed against the English, and about eight moneths agoe slew three Englishmen and two more hardly escaped by flight to Monhiggon; they were Sir Ferdinando Gorge his men." The Nausets were "ill-affected towards English, by reason of one Hunt, a master of a ship, who deceived the people, and got them under colour of trucking with them, twentie out of this place where we inhabit [Plymouth], and seaven men from Nausites, and carried them away, and sold them for slaves, like a wretched man (for 20 pound a man) that cares not what he does for his profit."

Samoset was the first to tell the Pilgrims that their settlement of Plymouth was on the spot that the Indians once called Patuxet. He told them that a few years before, this tribe--along with several others--was swept away by a great plague "until in the whole Pokanoket country there were but five hundred Indians remaining alive."

After much questioning of Samoset Winslow continued: ". . .the wind beginning to rise a little, we cast a horseman's coat about him, for he was starke naked, onely a leather about his wast, with a fringe about a span long, or little more; he had a bow & 2 arrowes, the one headed, and the other unheaded; he was a tall straight man, the haire of his head blacke, long behind, onely short before, none on his face at all."

It was not until Samoset's third visit on 22 March 1621 that he brought along a friend--the last surviving native of Pautuxet--and introduced Squanto to the Pilgrim colonists.

Following these early entries, Samoset disappears from the records and nothing more has been learned about him.

hist0315

Soul of The Indian # 2

2006-03-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

C h a p t e r 1

I. THE GREAT MYSTERY
Solitary Worship. The Savage Philosopher. The Dual Mind. Spiritual Gifts versus Material Progress. The Paradox of "Christian Civilization."

THE original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the "Great Mystery" that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life.

The worship of the "Great Mystery" was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas -- He needs no lesser cathedral!

That solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life is partly described in the word bambeday, literally "mysterious feeling," which has been variously translated "fasting" and "dreaming." It may better be interpreted as "consciousness of the divine."

The first bambeday, or religious retreat, marked an epoch in the life of the youth, which may be compared to that of confirmation or conversion in Christian experience. Having first prepared himself by means of the purifying vapor-bath, and cast off as far as possible all human fleshly influences, the young man sought out the noblest height, the most commanding summit in all the surrounding region. Knowing that God sets no value upon material things, he took with him no offerings or sacrifices other than symbolic objects, such as paints and tobacco. Wishing to appear before Him in all humility, he wore no clothing save his moccasins and breech-clout. At the solemn hour of sunrise or sunset took up his position, overlooking the glories of earth and facing the "Great Mystery," and there he remained, naked, erect, silent, and motionless, exposed to the elements and forces of His arming, for a night and a day to two days and nights, but rarely longer. Sometimes he would chant a hymn without words, or offer the ceremonial "filled pipe." In this holy trance or ecstasy the Indian mystic found his highest happiness and the motive power of his existence.

When he returned to the camp, he must remain at a distance until he had again entered the vapor-bath and prepared himself for intercourse with his fellows. Of the vision or sign vouchsafed to him he did not speak, unless it had included some commission which must be publicly fulfilled. Sometimes an old man, standing upon the brink of eternity, might reveal to a chosen few the oracle of his long-past youth.

The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success his less fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree -- a matter profoundly important to him.

It was not, then, wholly from ignorance or improvidence that he failed to establish permanent towns and to develop a material civilization. To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one's fellow-men. All who have lived much out of doors know that there is a magnetic and nervous force that accumulates in solitude and that is quickly dissipated life in a crowd; and even his enemies have recognized the fact that for a certain innate power and self-poise, wholly independent of circumstances, the American Indian is unsurpassed among men.

The red man divided mind into two parts, -- the spiritual mind and the physical mind. The first is pure spirit, concerned only with the essence of things, and it was this he sought to strengthen by spiritual prayer, during which the body is subdued by fasting and hardship. In this type of prayer there was no beseeching favor or help. All matters of personal or selfish concern, as success in hunting or warfare, relief from sickness, or the sparing of a beloved life, were definitely relegated to the plane of the lower or material mind, and all ceremonies, charms, or incantations designed to secure a benefit or to avert a danger, were recognized as emanating from the physical self

The rites of this physical worship, again, were wholly symbolic, and the Indian no more worshiped the Sun than the Christian adores the Cross. The Sun and the Earth, by an obvious parable, holding scarcely more of poetic metaphor than of scientific truth, were in his view the parents of all organic life. From the Sun, as the universal father, proceeds the quickening principle in nature, and in the patient and fruitful womb of our mother, the Earth, are hidden embryos of plants and men. Therefore our reverence and love for them was really an imaginative extension of our love for our immediate parents, and with this sentiment of filial piety was joined a willingness to appeal to them, as to a father, for such good gifts as we may desire. This is the material or physical prayer.

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character. We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such an object of reverence.

The Indian loved to come into sympathy and spiritual communion with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had for him something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage to their spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees. The Indian was a logical and clear thinker upon matters within the scope of his understanding, but he had not yet charted the vast field of nature or expressed her wonders in terms of science. With his limited knowledge of cause and effect, he saw miracles on every hand, -- the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of death in lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the marvelous could astonish him; as that a beast should speak, or the sun stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes excite more wonder than the harvest that springs from a single ear of corn.

Who may condemn his superstition? Surely not the devout Catholic even Protestant missionary, who teaches Bible miracles as literal fact! The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old. If we are of the modern type of mind, that sees in natural law a majesty and grandeur far more impressive than any solitary infraction of it could possibly be, let us not forget that, after all, science has not explained everything. We have still to face the ultimate miracle, -- the origin and principle of life! Here is the supreme mystery that is the essence of worship, without which there can be no religion, and in the presence of this mystery our attitude cannot be very unlike that of the natural philosopher, who beholds with awe the Divine in all creation.

It is simple truth that the Indian did not, so long as his native philosophy held sway over his mind, either envy or desire to imitate the splendid achievements of the white man. In his own thought he rose superior to them! He scorned them, even as a lofty spirit absorbed in its stern task rejects the soft beds, the luxurious food, the pleasure-worshiping dalliance of a rich neighbor was clear to him that virtue and happiness are independent of these things, if not incompatible with them.

There was undoubtedly much in primitive Christianity to appeal to this man, and Jesus' hard sayings to the rich and about the rich would have been entirely comprehensible to him. Yet the religion that is preached in our churches and practiced by our congregations, with its element of display and self-aggrandizement, its active proselytism, and its open contempt of all religions but its own, was for a long time extremely repellent. To his simple mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying, and it was not until his spirit was broken and his moral and physical constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon him. Strange as it may seem, it is true that the proud pagan in his secret soul despised the good men who came to convert and to enlighten him!

Nor were its publicity and its Phariseeism the only elements in the alien religion that offended the red man. To him, it appeared shocking and almost incredible that there were among this people who claimed superiority many irreligious, who did not even pretend to profess the national. Not only did they not profess it, but they stooped so low as to insult their God with profane and sacrilegious speech! In our own tongue His name was not spoken aloud, even with utmost reverence, much less lightly or irreverently.

More than this, even in those white men who professed religion we found much inconsistency of conduct. They spoke much of spiritual things, while seeking only the material. They bought and sold everything, labor, personal independence, the love of woman, and even the ministrations of their holy faith! The lust for money, power, and conquest so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race did not escape moral condemnation at the hands of his untutored judge, nor did he fail to contrast this conspicuous trait of the dominant race with the spirit of the meek and lowly Jesus.

He might in time come to recognize that the drunkards and licentious among white men, with whom he too frequently came in contact, were condemned by the white man's religion as well, and must not be held to discredit it. But it was not so easy to overlook or to excuse national bad faith. When distinguished emissaries from the Father at Washington, some of them ministers of the gospel and even bishops, came to the Indian nations, and pledged to them in solemn treaty the national honor, with prayer and mention of their God; and when such treaties, so made, were promptly and shamelessly broken, is it strange that the action should arouse not only anger, but contempt? The historians of the white race admit that the Indian was never the first to repudiate his oath.

It is my personal belief, after thirty-five years' experience of it, that there is no such thing as "Christian Civilization." I believe that Christianity and modern civilization are opposed and irreconcilable, and that the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same.

Soul of The Indian #1

2006-03-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

An Interpretation

BY
CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN
(OHIYESA)

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, Lincoln
Online copy: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/EasSoul.html

Copyright, 1911, by Charles Alexander Eastman
All rights reserved
First Bison Book Printing: 1980 Most recent printing indicated by first digit below: 7 8 9 10
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Eastman, Charles Alexander, 1858-1939. The soul of the Indian.
Reprint of the ed. published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston. I. Indians of North America -- Religion and mythology. I. Title.
[E98.R3E15 1980] 299'.7 79-26355 ISBN 0-8032-1802-8 ISBN 0-8032-6701-0 pbk.
Published by arrangement with Eleanor Eastman Mensel and Virginia Eastman Whitbeck
Manufactured in the United States of America

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TO MY WIFE
ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HER
EVER-INSPIRING COMPANIONSHIP
IN THOUGHT AND WORK
AND IN LOVE OF HER MOST
INDIAN-LIKE VIRTUES
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

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I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
-- SIDNEY LANIER.

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But there's a dome of nobler span,
A temple given
Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban --
Its space is heaven!
It's roof star-pictured Nature's ceiling,
Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling,
And God Himself to man revealing,
Th' harmonious spheres
Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears!
-- THOMAS CAMPBELL.

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God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements,
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise! . . .
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD!
-- COLERIDGE.

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FOREWORD

"WE also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us their children. It teaches us to be thankful, to be united, and to love one another! We never quarrel about religion."

Thus spoke the great Seneca orator, Red Jacket, in his superb reply to Missionary Cram more than a century ago, and I have often heard the same thought expressed by my countrymen.

I have attempted to paint the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man. I have long wished to do this, because I cannot find that it has ever been seriously, adequately, and sincerely done. The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race will ever understand.

First, the Indian does not speak of these deep matters so long as he believes in them, and when he has ceased to believe he speaks incaccurately and slightingly.

Second, even if he can be induced to speak, the racial and religious prejudice of the other stands in the way of his sympathetic comprehension.

Third, practically all existing studies on this subject have been made during the transition period, when the original beliefs and philosophy of the native American were already undergoing rapid disintegration.

There are to be found here and there superficial accounts of strange customs and ceremonies, of which the symbolism or inner meaning was largely hidden from the observer; and there has been a great deal of material collected in recent years which is without value because it is modern and hybrid, inextricably mixed with Biblical legend and Cau-casian philosophy. Some of it has even been invented for commercial purposes. Give a reservation Indian a present, and he will possibly provide you with sacred songs, a mythology, and folk-lore to order!

My little book does not pretend to be a scientific treatise. It is as true as I can make it to my childhood teaching and ancestral ideals, but from the human, not the ethnological standpoint. I have not cared to pile up more dry bones, but to clothe them with flesh and blood. So much as has been written by strangers of our ancient faith and worship treats it chiefly as mat-ter of curiosity. I should like to emphasize its universal quality, its personal appeal!

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The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith.

We of the twentieth century know better! We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and one goal. We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and the barbarian, is after all the same God; and, like Peter, we perceive that He is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to Him.

CHARLES A. EASTMAN (OHIYESA)

Asiyahola (Oceola)

2006-01-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

January 30, 1838:

Seminole Chief Osceola dies today at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston, South Carolina. It is believe he has some sort of throat disease, others will say malaria, other say of a broken heart..

BACKGROUND: From http://www.seminoletribe.com/history/osceola_abiaka.shtml

Osceola

... Elegant in dress, handsome of face, passionate in nature and giant of ego, Osceola masterminded successful battles against five baffled U.S. generals, murdered the United States' Indian agent, took punitive action against any who cooperated with the white man and stood as a national manifestation of the Seminoles' strong reputation for non-surrender.

Osceola was not a chief with the heritage of a Micanopy or Jumper, but his skill as an orator and his bravado in conflict earned him great influence over Seminole war actions. Osceola's capture, under a controversial flag of truce offered by Gen. Thomas Jessup, remains today one of the blackest marks in American military history.

A larger-than-life character, Osceola is the subject of numerous myths; his 1838 death in a Charleston, S.C. prison was noted on front pages around the world. At the time of his death, Osceola was the most famous American Indian.

******************************************

Osceola (Asi-Yahola, Bill Powell, Talcy), Seminole c.1803-1838.

Osceola, whose name was derived from 'asiyahola' (meaning "Black Drink Crier"), was born on the Talapoosa River near the border of Alabama and Georgia. His mother was Polly Copinger, a Creek woman; she married William Powell, a white man. As the result of his mother's marriage to Powell, Osceola was sometimes called Bill Powell, but he considered Powell his stepfather and asserted that he was full-blood.

As a boy, Osceola moved with his mother to Florida and took up residence along the Apalachicola River about 1814. As a young man, he is believed to have fought in the first Seminole War of 1817-1818. Indeed, some reports during the war assert that he was captured in 1818 along the Enconfino River by troops under General Andrew Jackson and then released because of his youth.

In 1823, Seminole leaders such as Neamathla agreed to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, which ceded tribal lands and created reservations for the Seminoles. Later, as a result of the U.S. removal policies, the Treaty of Payne's Landing of 1832 required all Seminoles to leave Florida within three years for Indian Terretory. According to the treaty, Seminoles with African American blood were to be sold into slavery. In 1833, seven Seminole chiefs, including Charley Emathla and Foke Luste Hajo, endorsed the Treaty of Fort Gibson, which created a homeland in Oklahoma near the Creeks. However, most Seminoles did not comply readily with the requirements of the treaty. At this time Osceola became a noted antiremoval leader. He urged various bands to remain in Florida.

At Fort King in April 1835, Wiley Thompson, the Indian agent, dictated a new treaty with the Seminoles, forcing their removal to Oklahoma. Several chiefs declined to endorse the treaty or to deal with white officials. Seminole tradition has it that Osceola angrily slashed the treaty with his knife. Subsequently, Osceola was seized and jailed. Although he continued to protest, in the end he agreed to the terms of the treaty. After his release, however, he slipped into the marshes with many Seminole people following him.

During preparation for removal, Osceola ambushed Charley Emathla. Osceola allegedly threw the money the whites gave Emathla on his dead body. Osceola attacked and killed Wiley Thompson on December 28, 1835. On the same day, Alligator, Micanopy and Jumper, with about three hundred men, attacked Major Francis Longhorne Dade's detachment of 108 soldiers and killed all but three soldiers.

On New Year's Eve 1835, Osceola's men won a battle against General Duncan Lamont Clinch's force of 800 men on the Withlacoochee River. Four infantrymen were killed and only three Indians died. Osceola was injured but eluded capture. While waging a guerilla war for two years, Osceola devastated the countryside. Finally Micanopy and other rebel chiefs stopped fighting in the spring of 1837. Osceola forced Micanopy to flee with him into the swamps, but Micanopy stopped fighting again later in the year. In October 1837, General Thomas Jesup seized Osceola through subterfuge. Under a flag of truce, Osceola attended a peace council at Fort Augustine in fall 1837. Despite the flag of truce, Osceola was captured, bound, and incarcerated at Fort Moultrie outside of Charleston, South Carolina. There are varying accounts of Osceola's demise: poisoning, malaria, or abuse in prison may have been the causes. In any case, the whites were excoriated by public opinion for their treachery and his tragic death.

On January 30, 1838, Osceola died at Fort Moultrie in full battle regalia. Even in death, Osceola did not escape white exploitation. Dr. Frederick Weedon, the military surgeon, kept his head in a medical museum until it was destroyed by a fire in 1866. In spite of the death of their renowned leader, many Seminoles continued to resist removal to Oklahoma for many years, using the Florida swamps as a base for their operations.

**********************************************8

>From http://www.npg.si.edu/col/native/osceola.htm

Osceola ("Black Drink") (circa 1804-1838) Seminole leader

Although neither a hereditary nor an elected chief, Osceola was the defiant young leader of the Seminole in their resistance to Indian emigration. In 1835 he plunged his knife into the treaty he was asked to sign that would move his people from their swamplands in the Southeast to the unoccupied territory west of the Mississippi. This action precipitated the Second Seminole War--a seven-year game of cat-and-mouse in the Florida swamps against federal troops.

Tricked into talking peace, Osceola was captured in 1837 while carrying a white flag of truce and was imprisoned in Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. This treachery so outraged George Catlin that he went immediately to the prison. He and Osceola became friends, and Osceola willingly posed for his portrait. "This gallant fellow," wrote Catlin, "is grieving with a broken spirit, and ready to die, cursing the white man, no doubt to the end of his breath." Soon after this portrait was completed, Osceola died of malaria. Osceola's name was derived from the Indian term "Asiyahola," the cry given by those taking the ceremonial black drink that was supposed to cleanse the body and spirit.

hist0130

Mangas Coloradas

2006-01-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

January 17, 1863: Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves) was camped near the Mimbres River when he was sent a message from California volunteers Captain Edmond Shirland requesting a truce and a parley. Against the advise of his APACHE followers, Mangas agrees to a meeting. Mangas enters the soldiers' camp, near present day Silver City, in southwestern New Mexico, under a white flag, but he is seized immediately. He will be transferred to old Fort McLane, in southwest New Mexico, and then killed.

From http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/samples/sam428.htm

Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves), 1797-1863

Mangas Colorado was at least six feet tall, with a powerful body and an enormous head. Anglo Americans regarded him as the greatest Apache leader of the mid nineteenth century ... He was a war chief, diplomat, and consummate strategist - one who, according to legend, married one daughter to Cochise, another to a Navajo chief, and a third to a leader of the Western Apaches. In a kin-based society, Mangas Coloradas wove a web of obligations that extended from central Arizona to Chihuahua.

His life spanned three chaotic epochs in Southwestern history. He was born in the early 1790s at a time when Spanish soldiers were scouring the Apacheria from Tucson to Texas. As a child he must have visited or perhaps even lived in the Apache peace camp near the presidio of Janos in northwestern Chihuahua, but he spent his adult years taking advantage of Mexican decline and decay. From his strongholds in the mountains of western New Mexico, he raided as far south as Durango in north central Mexico.

During the Mexican War, Mangas Coloradas welcomed the Anglo American soldiers and urged General Stephen Watts Kearny to join with the Apaches and conquer northern Mexico once and for all. Over the next fifteen years, however, friendship degenerated into wariness and war. In 1861, Mangas Coloradas tried to persuade miners in southwestern New Mexico to leave Chiricahua territory. The miners allegedly tied him to a tree and whipped him, so he and his warriors drove them out with fire and blood. The next year, he and his son-in-law Cochise ambushed troops from General James H. Carleton's California Column in Apache Pass between the Dos Cabezas and Chiricahua Mountains. The soldiers repulsed the ambush with howitzers, and Mangas Coloradas slipped away to nurse his wounds.

Finally, in January 1863 members of mountain man Joseph Walker's party of gold seekers lured the old chief into the deserted mining camp of Pinos Altos to talk peace. Instead, they seized him and delivered him to General Joseph R. West, who had orders from Carleton to "punish the Gila Apaches, under that notorious robber, Mangus Colorado." That evening, West placed Mangas Coloradas under the guard of two soldiers. According to Daniel Ellis Conner, a member of the Walker party, "About 9 o'clock I noticed that the soldiers were doing something to Mangas, but quit when I returned to the fire and stopped to get warm. Watchmg them from my beat in the outer darkness, I discovered that they were heating their bayonets and burning Mangas's feet and legs. This they continued to do [until] Mangas rose upon his left elbow, angrily protesting that he was no child to be played with. Thereupon the two soldiers, without removing their bayonets from their Minie muskets each quickly fired into the chief, following with two shots each from their navy six-shooters. Mangas fell back into the same position . . . and never moved."

hist0117

Kintpuash, Modoc

2006-01-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

January 13, 1873:

Captain Jack (Kintpuash or Keintpoos) and his Modocs are hiding in the northeastern California lava beds. This day, his sentries spot an Army scouting party approaching their stronghold. The sentries send a few shots in the Army's direction. The scouting party withdraws.

Kintpuash ("Captain Jack"), Modoc

BACKGROUND:

Lost River (1852)

The so-called Modoc War begins in 1852, although the army will say that it begins years later, in 1873. Good relations with Americans are scarred by an unprovoked attack by miners, followed by subsequent Modoc retaliation on an immigrant train. In these days of the California gold rush, no Indian nation is safe. Indian hunters under Ben Wright advance toward the Modoc camp along Lost River, calling for peace talks. The Modoc are glad. On the morning of the proposed conference, Captain Jack's father, leader of the Modoc, walks unarmed into Wright's camp. He is gunned down and the slaughter begins.

"Ben Wright...told them he would like to hunt Indians...so [he] got some men that liked to hunt Indians to go with him. When they all got together they numbered over one hundred men... They all left Yreka...to hunt down the Modoc Indians.... Wright traveled all through the Klamath Indian country, killing Klamath Indians wherever he could find them. He went through Goose Lake country, killed Paiute Indians wherever he got a chance....On the south bank of Lost River...Ben Wright looks along his gun barrel; he turns slowly around to his men and says...'Boys, don't spare the squaws; get them all!' ...The whites shot them down so fast on the south bank, they jumped in the river....When they got about half way across, the whites on the north bank opened fire on them. Only five escaped....the citizens [of Yreka] gave Wright a big dance. He was...the mighty Indian Hunter, Savage Civilizer, Peace Maker, etc."

Frank Riddle, Modoc

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The Lava Beds (1873)

From the cinder caves of the lava beds, Captain Jack surveys Canby's army encamped below. His only crime has been to lead his people away from the Klamath Reservation. they have tried to live peacefully at the Yainax agency, but there is no food. the Modoc have chosen to go home.

Their number is swelled by Hooker Jim's band of Modoc, who find refuge with Jack after murdered settlers in retaliation for the deliberate firing into an unarmed Modoc camp,killing women and babies. Now Captain Jack is hunted like a deer. He tells General Canby that he can guarantee peace if allowed a home where his people will be protected from the settlements. all he asks is a reservation among the lava beds,where whites will never want to go. This is denied. His own people urge him to war. When he resists,he is knocked off his feet by a jeering crowd of Modoc and threatened with death unless he makes a stand. Hooker Jim vows to kill any Modoc who surrender to Canby.

At the peace talks, Captain Jack sadly offers Canby a final chance to agree to a reservation in the lava beds. Canby is belligerent; the military offers only ultimatums. There are no negotiations. Again, Jack urges for peaceful resolution, and again Canby offers the Modoc no quarter. Captain Jack draws a revolver, and Canby is dead. The Modoc escape from the lava beds. Hooker Jim has drawn the entire nation into war. Now he blames Jack for their condition and leaves him. Jack has thirty-seven men; the army coming after him numbers more than a thousand. the same Hooker Jim who has forced Jack to kill Canby now leads the army to Jack's location. In a cell at Fort Klamath,cold shackles around his legs, Captain Jack awaits a "trial" whose verdict has been reached long ago. Hooker Jim testifies against Jack and walks free.

"...the Indians were compelled to slaughter their horses for food on the Klamath reservation to keep from starving, and when they had no more horses to slaughter they were then forced by hunger to seek their fishing grounds on Lost River, a tract of land set apart and given to them by the Hon. E. Steele, late superintendent of Indian affairs for California. The land is valuable. Land speculators desired it and sought to have the Indians removed. The Indians say there was but one of two deaths left to them, by starvation on the reservation, or a speedier death by the bullet in the lava-beds. They chose the latter."

J K Luttrell, United States.

hist0113

Victorio

2006-01-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

January 12, 1880:

Major Albert Morrow and elements of the Ninth Cavalry find and attack Victorio and his Warm Springs Apaches near the source of the Puerco River, in southern New Mexico. The fighting lasts for about four hours, until sunset, when the Indians escape...

BACKGROUND From: www.uapress.arizona.edu/samples/sam23.htm

Excerpt from the book
"In the Days of Victorio Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache"
by Eve Ball
James Kaywaykla, narrator
(0-8165-0401-6)

... I was awakened by shots and I knew that it had come. Screams! More shots!

Entangled in my blanket I struggled to my feet. Grandmother lifted me to her shoulders and ran from our brush arbor on the east slope of the mountain. Above us a wickiup burst into flames as she ran toward the spring.

People on foot raced past us. A horse almost ran us down. There were flashes of fire and the whine of bullets. Grandmother stumbled across a body but regained her footing.

"Tight, tight, Torres,"she muttered as she stooped to fill partially her water jug. Then she followed the soft thud of moccasins up the steep slope of the mesa. It seemed a long time before she reached the rim. Trembling with exhaustion she put me down and took my hand. We ran toward a clump of vegetation, and there she stopped to fold and arrange the blankets. She set out for another clump of mesquite; and from one to another we went.

As I trotted beside her I could see the faint glow of dawn before us. I tried hard to keep the pace. When I fell behind she lifted me again and did not stop until she reached the bank of a dry arroyo. She dropped me into the arroyo and we lay flat until we could breathe easily. Then she set out, crawling on hands and knees, up the watercourse. I followed, moving when she did, stopping when she stopped. Creep and freeze! Creep and freeze! She'd taught me that game, and I'd played it with other children at Ojo Caliente [Warm Springs]. My hands touched damp sand, and I knew that some of the water had been spilled from the jug.

The arroyo bent sharply to the east and Grandmother stopped to listen before rounding the turn. I heard the hoofs of horses-shod horses-coming close. Then came the jingle of metal and the sound of harsh voices-White Eye voices. I lay still and held my breath. A horse snorted-he had smelled us! There was a long silence. Then I heard them plunge into the arroyo and scramble up the east bank. The sounds gradually died away, but we lay still for a long time.

Daylight was upon us before Grandmother resumed her crawling. She did not risk raising her head to look after the cavalry until we reached a place where the bank vas well screened with cactus. The Blue Coats were still riding toward the Rio Bravo [Rio Grande]. She let me drink from the jug, and she gave me a handful of dried venison from the buckskin bag attacled to her belt.

I, too, had a food bag, a small one containing mesquite bean meal. For months no Apache child had been without his emergency rations, nor had he slept without an admonition not to remove it, and not to abandon his blanket in cafe of attack. My food bag had never left me, day nor night.

"You're a good boy; you kept your blanket."

"Where's Siki?"* I asked.

"She left the village before we did. I had given her instructions long ago as to where to stop so that we can find her. I hope she remembers. If she obeys, the soldiers will not capture her."

"Why do they hunt us?"

"They have orders to kill every Apache, man, woman, or child, found off the reservation."

"But this is our reservation."

"It is no longer ours. The land Ussen created and gave to the Apache, is no longer ours. This, the land promised to Victorio by the Great Nantan in Washington, has been taken from us. He promised it to our Chief and our people forever. And only two summers ago! Perhaps the gold for which the White Eyes grovel in the earth has been found in our mountains. Because of that the word of the Great White Chief means nothing. He has ordered that we go to San Carlos, the worst place in all Apachería, the vast land of our people. I have been to that place when Victorio took his people there. So many died that we fled from it and returned to Warm Springs. You, too, went, but you were too small to remember. Not many babies lived to return.

"Victorio will die fighting before he will permit the Warm Springs Apaches to be forced back to San Carlos again. Instead we go to the Great River where we meet those of us who escape.¹ Grandfather Nana will go to the three chiefs of the Mescaleros, our brothers, and ask for refuge on their reservation. He is to meet us at the river with horses and ammunition."

"Is it far to the river?"

"Not if we could stand and walk. Moving as we do it is perhaps three days."

I think it may have been mid-afternoon before we reached the head of the arroyo. We had a bare ridge to cross, one with little cover except occasional clumps of bear grass and scattered stones. We lay flat and wriggled from one cover to another until well over the crest. Several times Grandmother spied moving dots, and each time we lay motionless until she felt sure that the soldiers were still riding toward the east. She knew that with field glasses they might see us.

We made our way southeast until we reached the head of another dry stream bed leading to Cuchillo Canyon. We slipped between its protecting banks and worked our way south. There was a Mexican village in the canyon but Grandmother knew we had little to fear from it. The arroyo gradually became deep enough that Grandmother could stand and walk without fear of being seen. Toward dark we reached an overhanging rock. The encircling walls formed a sort of cave, open only on one side. She stopped and called softly. In the darkness something moved. She called again-a quail whistle-and a shadow stole toward us.

"Siki?" "Yes, Grandmother, I waited as you told me."

"Enjuh! [Good!] I was afraid you might not find the place."

"I had no trouble. Grandmother, I'm hungry."

"So am I. So is Torres, but he has not asked for food. You had a bag. Where is it?"

"I took it from my belt to sleep."

"Torres did not. He obeyed. To obey is to live. And your blanket?"

"I was frightened-"

"So was 1. So was Torres; but he held on to his blanket."

"I'm sorry, Grandmother."

"You're sorry! You know it is everyone for himself."

Siki crept from under the rock. "I'II go, Grandmother."

"You will not. Go back and sit down."

She took a handful of dried venison from her bag and mesquite meal from mine. She handed it to Siki. Then she filled my hand and took a small portion for herself. We ate. She bade Siki lie next to the wall, and me beside her. She spread both blankets over us and crept under the edge of them with her face to the open side. Knife in hand she slept.

Before dawn she had us on our way across a gentle slope toward another arroyo. Once within its banks we walked until Grandmother stopped to examine a trail sign. It was a row of little stones with a slightly larger one at the south end.

"A woman and children-seven in all. Too many! They should have separated so that each group might have a chance to live."

An hour or so later she found another message. Four had turned east; the rest kept on south.

"Enjuh!"

"Why?"

"The older children have struck out east to the river."

Until almost evening we moved cautiously. I was very thirsty but knew better than to ask for water. The jug was empty but Grandmother continued to carry it, for it requires much time and labor to weave a wicker jug and coat it with pinon gum so it will not leak.

We were nearing the Cuchillo. The arroyo was deep, with much vegetation along its banks, and we did not leave its shelter until dark. We walked cautiously, stopping often to listen and to sniff the air. I think I caught the tantalizing odor of meat as soon as Grandmother. Burning wood, too! I was cold as well as hungry. And thirsty! Grandmother murmured an order, and Siki and I sank to the ground. She was gone some time before we heard the quail call. Siki touched me. We waited for a second call before answering. Grandmother came with water and we drank.

"A sheep herder's camp, not a Mexican, but a White Eye. He has gone to Cuchillo, but it is not far. He may be back soon. Come!"

Flames flickered before the queer square tepee. The meat was suspended above them instead of being laid on coals in the proper manner. I dropped near the welcome fire while Grandmother and Siki went into the tent. In a very short time they returned with bundles wrapped in white cloth. Siki had a blanket and a knife. They cut the meat and each carried a piece.

In the shelter of the next arroyo we ate the partially cooked food. Grandmother cut long strips of meat. Mine she cut into small chunks, but she and Siki placed the ends in their mouths and deftly severed the bits with their knives. I was so hungry that I crammed two at a time into my mouth and chewed greedily. "Not so fast, Torres. You must eat like a chief, for you come from a long line of them. You can never be one unless you practice self-control. A chief must have good manners."

I know that Nana never acted as though he were hungry, though he must often have been. I ate more slowly, enjoying every morsel of the good food. Then I stretched out on the ground and must have slept almost instantly. I awoke when Grandmother touched me.

"We must walk. Before day we must cross the big trail of the White Eyes in their journeys up and down the river.'

"Are we close to the river?"

"About halfway between it and Cuchillo."

"Why does Grandfather say that Cuchillo Negro is name?"

"It is the name of Black Knife, a chief and our relative. And a black knife is not easily seen; that is why we darken the handles with clay."

Apaches do not like to travel by night, but Grandmother had no choice in the matter. When I became too weary to keep up she or Siki carried me. I did not know when they reached the river. I awoke in a mesquite thicket where a little group of our people was huddled. Siki rolled up in her blanket and slept, but Grandmother went among them to check for the missing.

The next time I awoke Grandfather sat beside me rubbing his lame foot. His face was wrinkled and thin. His body was wrinkled and thin. He was tall, almost as tall as Naiche, who was the tallest of the Apaches. Nana was old, how old he did not know. In our tongue he was called Broken Foot, but never in his presence. It was rude to name one in his hearing; and when necessary to refer to him, it was customary to call him Nantan or leader. To tell the story, however, I call my people by name; it was not our custom to do so. Nor did anyone mention Grandfather's infirmity in his presence. He asked no odds because of either age or lameness; and frail though he was, Nana was universally feared and respected for his fighting ability.

When I looked into his shrewd old eyes he smiled and drew me into the embrace that is the greeting between men of our tribe. Then strong hands lifted me and I was enfolded in the arms of my father. My mother, Gouyan [Wise Woman], next embraced but did not kiss me, for that was an intimacy abhorrent to Apaches.

I had seen little of my parents, for my father was a brave warrior, and my mother's place was at his side. She prepared food, dressed wounds, and when necessary fought beside him as bravely as any man. She, like all Apache wives, spaced her children about four years apart, and as soon as a baby could be separated from her, turned it over to the care of its grandmother.

I asked for my grandmother. Mother smiled and reminded me that she could not come to us because of my father's presence. I saw her standing some distance away, with her back to us. "I want Grandmother," I said.

"Then go to her," replied Mother. "It is natural that you love her best of the family. She has taken care of you since you were a baby."

"Gouyan, your name fits you well. You are intelligent with reason. You understand why the boy loves his grandmother," said my father.

Riders with many horses were entering the thicket. My parents joined them as they dismounted. My father led two mounts apart and Grandmother obeyed his summons to join him.

"You came by the camp from which we fled?"

"Yes, my sister. We buried the dead; fortunately there were few: the Lame One, two women, and the entire family camped on the hill above you. They camped apart for protection of the larger group and gave their lives that you might escape. We recovered many of the horses stampeded by the cavalry. And we captured many of theirs-enough, I think, to mount all who made it here. The river is rising rapidly and in a short time it may be impossible to cross. Prepare to ride."

>From the stores brought in by the warriors, people hastily filled their individual food bags. They divided ammunition, rolled blankets, and tied them to saddles. My grandmother mounted a cavalry horse and Nana lifted me to a seat behind her. He took a buckskin thong and tied my belt firmly to hers. He saw that the blankets were secure and turned the horse to the water's edge. Siki, astride another, followed.

"Where's Mother?" I asked.

"She rides with your father and Nana on another raid."

The long line of horses faced the current. The women began to sing the Prayer to the Great River. It was accompanied by the ululating sound produced by tapping the hand over the open mouth. This prayer had long been used by my people to secure a safe crossing when the river was in flood. As the singing ended I saw flashes of turquoise as pieces were tossed into the angry water. That was the signal to plunge into the stream, but nobody moved. Then Blanco, my father's brother, rode along the line urging first one and then another to ride into the torrent. He was a medicine man, with great Power, but they did not obey. I heard him chide them: "When there is no danger you forget Ussen, but when you fear for your lives you pray to Him. You pay little heed when I tell you how to live; but when you face death you remember your religion. Songs and prayers avail little to those who have not lived according to the will of Ussen. You are in much greater danger from the cavalry on your trail than from the river. Is there no brave woman who will take the lead?"

Grandmother urged her mount to the brink and tried to force him to take the plunge. There was a commotion and the long line parted to let a rider through. I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful black horse-Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen, the woman warrior!² High above her head she held her rifle. There was a glitter as her right foot lifted and struck the shoulder of her horse. He reared, then plunged into the torrent. She turned his head upstream, and he began swimming.

Grandmother called to Siki to follow as cold water splashed into my face. She bent forward, and so did I. Water tugged at my feet and then my waist. When it washed over my shoulders I clung to Grandmother. My head went under, and then lifted above the water. The horse swam steadily across the broad stream until he found footing. His forelegs lifted and he scrambled onto a hidden ledge and waded ashore. I kept my seat until he began shaking himself; then I began slipping until Grandmother pushed me back in place. Horses were floundering in the shallow water and coming ashore. One had washed down stream with its rider until Lozen overtook it and got it up the bank. When Lozen joined us, people had dismounted and begun to wring the water out of clothing and blankets.

Lozen came straight to Grandmother.

"You take charge now. I must return to the warriors. Head for the Sacred Mountain in the San Andres, and permit only short stops until you reach it. Camp near the spring and wait there until Nana comes. We can spare no men, but the young boys will obey your orders. Nana has told them that you are in charge. Get the people mounted and start. I go to join my brother."

Grandmother told the half-grown lads that theirs was the most dangerous of all positions, that of rear guard.

Then she led the way, with the long line following.

hist0112

The Mandans

2006-01-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

January 6, 1975: The last full-blooded Mandan dies today in Twin Buttes, North Dakota. She was Mattie Grinnell, and she lived to be 108 years old.

Recreated Mandan Lodge

BACKGROUND:
From http://www.mhanation.com/history/Mandan.shtml

THE MANDAN

The first known account of the Mandan is that of the French trader, Sieur de la La Verendrye, in the fall of 1738. McKenzie visited the Mandan in 1772. Written accounts came from Lewis and Clark who arrived among the Mandan in the fall of 1804. They furnish only the location and early condition of the archaeological remains both of the Mandan and Arikara. Alexander Henry, a trader for the Northwest Company, came to trade fur with the Mandan in 1806. After Henry Brackenridge and Bradbury came to the area together in 1810. They wrote additional information about the Mandan, but mostly about the Arikara. The next visitor was the artist, George Catlin, who visited in the spring of 1833. Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, spent the winter months of 1833-34 among the Mandan. Maximilian may be recognized as the best of the various authorities. (Will, Spinden, pp. 86-88).

According to McKenzie and Sieur de la La Verendrye, the nine villages they visited in 1738 and 1772, were the oldest villages. Verendrye described the Mandan as being in full power and prosperity. The Mandan had not yet suffered the losses by disease and war, which caused them to leave these villages.

Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals on March 10,1805, "The Mandan's formerly lived in six large villages at and above the mouth of the Heart River. " Maximilian says, "After the first alliance with the Hidatsa, the Mandan's lived in eight or nine villages at and above the Heart River." These villages were abandoned between 1772 and 1804. (Will, Spinden, p.90).

The Mandan had a origin narrative of coming out of the earth. In relating their story to Maximilian, they came from the east out of the earth and entered the Missouri at the White Earth River in South Dakota.

The eastern origin corresponds with that of the rest of the Siouxan stock to which the Mandan's, both linguistically, and to a considerable extent, culturally belong. The Ohio valley would seem to have served as a point of dispersal where the Plains members of the Siouxan stock are supposed to have moved in four successive migrations. The earliest group to leave consisted apparently of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow, and of these the Mandan were probably a number of years ahead of the other tribes. The Mandan's have vivid recollections of the coming of the Hidatsa many years later and established fixed villages on the Heart River. They describe the Hidatsa as a wild wandering people whom they taught to build stationary villages and to raise corn, pumpkins and other vegetables, and who soon moved up to the Knife River. (Will, Spinden, p. 97).

In the earliest historical accounts the Mandan were firmly established in stationary villages in the neighborhood of the Heart River. Verendrye says they were a large and powerful nation and feared none of their neighbors. Their manufactures were almost necessities among the other tribes, and in trade they were able to dictate their own terms. Their forts were well fortified. The smallest village he visited had one hundred and thirty houses. Verendrye's son visited one of the larger villages, declared that it was twice as large. There were at least one thousand houses in several villages. Lewis and Clark declared that in the two villages of one hundred huts there were three hundred and fifty warriors. At this rate there should have been at least fifteen thousand Mandan in 1738 dwelling prosperously in large and well-fortified towns. (Will, Spinden, p. 99).

The Mandan had created an focal point of trade on the Missouri River. All of the plains tribes came to barter for agricultural good and products. Called the "Marketplace of the Central Plains", the Mandan established what was to be the forerunner of trading posts that came later to the area.

There is little information for the next sixty-six years. The Mandan prospered and grew powerful up to 1772. Their remaining history is summed up in their own tradition as related to Lewis and Clark and Maximilian.

Formerly they lived happily and prosperously in nine large villages on the Missouri near the mouth of the Heart River. Six or seven of these villages were on the west side and two or three were on the east side of the river. For a great many years they lived there when one day the smallpox came to those on the east side of the river. The survivors then proceeded up the river some forty miles where they settled in one large village. After the smallpox reduced the villages on the west to five, the five went up to where the others were, in the neighborhood of some Arikara, and settle in two villages. A great many Mandan had died and they were no longer strong and fearless. They made an alliance with the Arikara against the Sioux.

All this happened before 1796 and is chronicled in Henry and Schoolcraft. Lewis and Clark found the two villages one on each side and about fifteen miles below the Knife River. Both villages consisted of forty to fifty lodges and united could raise about three hundred and fifty men. Lewis and Clark describe them as having united with the Hidatsa and engaging in continual warfare against the Arikara and the Sioux. The description given by Lewis and Clark agrees with the conditions two years later when Henry visited them.

In 1837, smallpox attacked them again, raged for many weeks and left only one hundred and twenty-five survivors. The Mandan's were taken in by the Arikara, with whom they intermarried. They separated, again forming a small village of their own at Fort Berthold. In 1850 there were three hundred and eighty- five Mandan, largely of mixed blood, living. There are only a few of the full-blooded Mandan left. The culture has changed, the language has changed, and as a nation the Mandan are practically extinct. (Will, Spinden, p. 101).

In 1700, the entire section of the Missouri from the Cannonball to the mouth of the Yellowstone was occupied by groups of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow. The largest villages were near the mouth of Heart River. The Nuptadi and Nuitadi bands were living on both banks of the Missouri. The Awigaxa band of Mandan and the Awaxawiband of Hidatsa lived further upstream at the Painted Woods. All these bands practiced agriculture and were less nomadic than the Awatixa band of Hidatsa and the Crow. These groups moved little until the close of the 18th century, when their populations were sharply reduced by smallpox and other epidemics.

Each village had an economic unit, hunting and protection for older remaining people, and each had a garden section. The Mandan were divided into bands while living at the Heart River. The bands were Is' tope, meaning "those who tattooed themselves"; Nup'tadi (does not translate), which was the largest linguistic group; Ma'nana'r "those who quarreled"; Nu' itadi "our people"; and Awi' ka-xa (does not translate). These groups combined as the tribe was decimated with each smallpox epidemic. (Bowers, 1950).

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Excerpted from http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6558/mandan1.html

The Mandan, according to their own accounts, originated somewhere near the Great Lakes. During the 17th century, as Amerindian groups were pushed further west by Euroamericans, the Mandan moved into what is now Ohio. From there they moved first to the mouth of the White River where it empties into the Missouri River in what is now South Dakota, then to the Moraue River. Eventually the Mandan built nine settlements along the Heart and Missouri Rivers where they were discovered by Varendrye in 1738. By 1776, the nine principle villages of the Mandan had merged into two and settled on the Missouri River at the mouth of the Knife River, approximately 1800 miles west of St. Louis, where Lewis and Clark found them in 1803 (Swanton 1952: 277; Catlin 1989: 73).

A smallpox epidemic reduced the Mandan from an estimated population of between 1600 and 2000 to a mere 31 in 1837. They joined with the Hidasta and moved to Fort Berthold in South Dakota where they continue to reside with the Hidasta at the present time (Swanton 1952: 277; Catlin 1989: 73). The Mandan are of the Siouan linguistic family but are more closely related to the Winnebago and Tutelo. They were known by many names. The Hidasta called them the Arachbocu; to the Crow they were the Asakashi. There are other names by which they were known to various American Indian groups and Swanton notes that most of these coincided with translated names of their villages. The Mandan called themselves the Numaka , meaning simply "people," until the smallpox epidemic of 1837 when they changed their name to match that of their single remaining village, Metutahanke (Swanton 1952: 276). However, George Catlin who lived with the Mandan for some time and is probably the most reliable Western source of information on this group, notes that the Mandan also called themselves "Seepohskahnumahkahkee" that literally translates to People of the Pheasant (Catlin 1989: 73)....

... Their clothing was considered to be the most beautiful of the plains peoples. The men wore long shirts made of buckskin or mountain goat hide in addition to a breechcloth, leggings and moccasins, all of which were profusely decorated with beads, quills, hair locks and paint. The women wore long dresses of the same material that were likewise decorated. Head coverings of the men, according to Catlin and Mails, were elaborate and varied. They incorporated feathers to build the familiar "War Bonnet," or might use other materials such as buffalo horn, mounted so that the horns protruded from the side of the hat. Their headwear, like other facets of their culture, was often an exception in the region (Catlin 1989: 89-91; Mails 1991: 356). The appearance of Mandan villages was likewise uncommon for the northern plains.

The houses of the Mandan were most often circular, set in the ground and of heavy timber construction. This frame was then covered with earth and the roof was often used as a place of relaxation. These dwellings ranged in size from single family structures of 20 feet in diameter to large extended family dwellings that reached 60 feet across. Catlin noted that although outwardly the houses appeared to be filthy, he was impressed with the openness and cleanliness of the interior. The floor was packed hard enough to be swept clean and, according to Catlin, held an almost polished appearance. In the center of the dwelling was the fire place, the smoke of which escaped through a 5 foot hole in the roof. Around the room was hung buffalo and elk hides that were decorated with pictographic accounts of the owners exploits. Against the wall were beds made of wood frames and mattressed with buffalo robes that were made private by arranging decorative curtains of the afore-mentioned painted buffalo skins. Nearer the center was an area carpeted with buffalo skins that was used as a communal place for the dwellings inhabitants. Here the children and adults alike gathered to talk and play (Catlin 1989: 74-77)

The houses that made up the village were surrounded by a palisade for protection. The logs used for this defensive work averaged 18 inches in diameter and were set well into the ground leaving about 20 feet of wall. The logs were spaced to allow weapons to be fired between them and the work was lined on the inside with a trench that afforded cover for the warriors in time of attack. Catlin also said that although the houses were spaced close together, there was little chance of fire being a threat due to the earthen covering and that the village in its entirety was built for comfort as well as defense (Catlin 1989: 74-81; Clark 1992: 174-181).

The Mandan, like most groups on the prairie, were buffalo hunters. However, they were horticulturists as well, growing maize and squash as their primary food crops. The maize that was grown was of a small variety, adapted to the climate of the area. In addition to these food crops the Mandan grew a quality tobacco. They produced enough to trade the surplus to surrounding groups that gave them a reputation and functionality as a well defended trade center. The Crow and Hidasta were common sites in Mandan villages and the tobacco for which Crow were famous was acquired from these villages. Although the primary source of sustenance was the buffalo, closely supported by crops, the Mandan also collected a kind of wild turnip that was reported by Catlin to be quite prolific and tasty (Catlin 1989: 124-125; Mails 1994: 4).

Catlin gives no definitive description of political organization. However, from his accounts together with those of the Lewis and Clark expedition it may be inferred that political organization in the village centered around a council of chiefs that were the headmen of family groups. Decisions involving the entire nation were decided by a council of chiefs who were lead by principle chiefs selected from the various towns, some of whom may serve as war-party chiefs in time of conflict. Next in rank were the medicine men. These were actually either religious leaders or medicinal healers who, although carried no actual authority, did possess the ability to affect or sway council decisions. As with many of the plains peoples, there was no absolute authority and a chief's position could be challenged, his real power lying in the amount of popular support from the people as a whole. Peacekeeping within the village was achieved and maintained through warrior societies whose tasks would range from observing fights between young boys to disputes over property. There is little mention of the need for such police in any of the primary sources (Clark 1992: 174-181; Catlin 1989: 103-104, 151-166; Mails 1991: 80-85).

The Mandan myth of origin is recorded by Catlin in detail. It relates how the Mandan were the first people created by the Great Spirit and lived inside the earth where they grew many vines. One of these vines grew up through a hole in the earth and a young man climbed it to see what was above. When he viewed the parry he was impressed with its beauty and climbed back down to tell the people what he had seen. When the people herd this some of them ascended the vine, including two virgin women who were favorites of the Chiefs, and verified what the young man had seen. At once a fat woman, against the will of the chiefs, began to climb the vine. The vine broke, sending the woman to an injurious fall. She was admonished, not for ignoring the chiefs, but for bringing calamity among her people as those who remained in the earth were now trapped there, separated from those above. The first Mandan village was built where this had occurred and those who remained behind were believed to still live in the earth (Catlin 1989: 178-179) It is doubtful that this is the true Mandan myth of origin since it directly counteracts the oral tradition of their travels from the land of great lakes. This tale appears to be more in line with teaching members of the society that their actions affect all the people. ...

... The Pipe was considered to be symbolic representation of the power of the Great Spirit. However, it was treated and used as though the Pipe itself contained that power. It was used as a focal point for the most grandiose of Mandan ceremonies as well as being simply smoked between two people casually talking in their private quarters. Wherever and however the Pipe was used, it reminded those around it that the Creator was continually in their midst (Catlin 1989: 160-163). The records that Catlin as a first-hand observer kept on Mandan ceremony are quite extensive and the confines of this paper preclude their inclusion. Marriage and family life together with the sacred ceremonies served as the "center" of Mandan life.

Women were chosen at 12 to 14 years of age as wives, their value as such being determined by their good virtues and beauty. A man could choose more than one wife with the understanding that he could provide sustenance for the entire household. The women's primary function in everyday living consisted of the usual domestic chores such as cooking, processing food, and processing materials used for clothing and other utilitarian needs. The man was usually responsible for peace-keeping chores within the village, defending the village against aggressors and providing meat, usually buffalo, which was no easy task given the size and tenacity of this creature. It should also be pointed out that the women, although performing the labor, owned and operated the maize and tobacco fields upon which the external economics of the village depended. It should in no way be construed that women were considered a lower class than men as they both provided essential components to the well-being of the community (Catlin 1989: 123-130 et al). There is no doubt, as their prosperity indicates, that the Mandan were a hard-working people, but this by no means prevented them from possessing extensive quantities of leisure time.

In examining the games of the Mandan, once again there rises a mark of uniqueness among the Plains people, that set the Mandan apart from their neighbors. Although they participated in the usual games of the plains, such as ball plays, horse racing and archery competitions, they also played a game recognized as being a hallmark of the Mississippian Period and later the Natchez known as Tchung-Kee. This game was played on a large area covered in clay that had been packed to the consistency of a hard pavement.

Two champions who were representative of a family or faction would collect bets and would hand their Tchung-Kee stakes to a chief or other social elite. The two men would then begin to trot abreast of each other and one of them would roll in advance of themselves a discoidal Tchung-Kee stone. As the discoidal rolled along, the player launches one of his Tchung-Kee sticks so that it slides along the ground attempting to time the throw to coincide with the Tchung-Kee stone falling over and landing on the stick. This game appears to have been a favorite among the Mandan and was the source of much gambling and factional-spiritedness (Catlin 1989: 134-135).

The Mandan were like any society or culture, a group of people with many varied and complex facets. The intimate information provided to the modern scholar mainly through George Catlin's letters and paintings, indicate that the Mandan were a highly-evolved in civilized society. Throughout the large quantity of material, provided by Catlin, the scholar observes time and again that the Mandan were an exception to the rule as a Plains people. There remains to be solved a certain enigma where the Mandan are contemplated by the contemporary anthropologist.

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Sources Cited:

Catlin, George
1989. Peter Matthiessen editor. North American Indians. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Clark, William and Meriwether Lewis.
1893, reprinted 1992. Elliot Coues editor. The History of the Lewis
and Clark Expedition, vol. I, II, & III, pp. 1299 vol. 3. Dover, NY.

Kennedy, Roger G.
1994. Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North
American Civilization. New York: The Free Press.

Mails, Thomas E.
1991. The Mystic Warriors of the Plains. New York, NY: Mallard
Press.

Swanton, John R.
1952 "The Indian Tribes of North America." Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 145. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

hist0106

Eskiminzin

2006-01-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

January 4th, 1874: Eskiminzin of the Aravaipa Apache, survivor of Camp Grant massacre and arrested as a "military precaution", escapes from San Carlos with many of his band. He will return in four months because most of his people are sick and hungry.

ESKIMINZIN Quote:

"If it had not been for the massacre, there would have been a great many more people here now; but after the massacre, who could have stood it? When I made peace with Lieutenant Whitman my heart was very big and happy. The people of Tucson and San Xavier must be crazy. They acted as though they had neither heads nor hearts..they must have a thirst for our blood ..These Tucson people write for the papers and tell their own story. The Apaches have no-one to tell their story."

Pinal Mountains, Apache Land

From http://www.geocities.com/~zybt/warriors.htm

I think one of the most misunderstood and maligned (Apache leaders) was the great leader of the Aravaipa Apaches, Eskiminzin.

Eskiminzin was born about 1828, probably near the Pinal Mountains. He was actually a Pinal Apache, but married into the Aravaipas (south of the Pinals). His father-in-law was Santos, chief of the Aravaipas. Eskiminzin was nearly always in very difficult positions trying to save his people. When he felt they had to fight to survive, he was unafraid to do so. When it was better for his people to accept peace terms, he did so. He always had the welfare of his people in mind. It was Eskiminzin who finally negotiated the terms by which the great San Carlos Apache Reservation was established. (See www.geocities.com/~zybt/). However, after the reservation was established he experienced real tragedy.

In the summer of 1873 conditions on the reservation reached crisis proportions. Eskiminzin felt it was best that he should flee. Consequently, he was later captured and put in chains. When John Clum arrived, he ordered him released, because Clum felt he had been treated shamefully. Eskiminzin even visited Washington, D.C., with Clum in 1876. Slowly, Eskiminzin began to feel that peace was beginning to pay off.

However, in 1887 his son-in-law, the Apache Kid, was arrested for the murder of a rival on the San Carlos Reservation. When the Kid finally escaped, it was believed that Eskiminzin would aid him from time to time. Therefore, Eskiminzin was arrested in April or May 1891 and sent to Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, with 40 other supposed sympathizers with the Kid. They were forced to join the Chiricahuas who were then at Mt. Vernon, Alabama (before their removal to Oklahoma). Eskiminzin and his San Carlos braves were not exactly on friendly terms with the Chiricahuas, and they found their situation to be very difficult.

Finally, a white friend, Hugh Lennox Scott, convinced authorities that Eskiminzin should be released. He arrived back in San Carlos on 23 November 1894. A year later Eskiminzin died. His life had been truly tragic in the extreme.

There are still many descendants of Eskiminzin on the San Carlos Reservation. His legacy is revered, but the hurt of what happened to this man is still deeply felt.

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>From http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/april/stories/campgrant1.html

Eskiminzin was then Chief of the Arivaipa Indians. His name means "Men Stand in Line for Him". In February of 1871, Eskiminzin was tired of the warpath. He sent five old Apache women to inquire at Camp Grant about peace and protection. Lt. Whitman received the women courteously and worked out an appointed time for a peace talk with their leader. On subsequent meetings, it was arranged for the Indians to stay in wickiups east of Camp Grant. In exchange for the protection and food, the Indians were employed in farming, gathering hay and working for nearby ranches. This worked out well for both the Apaches and the U.S. military. Eskiminzin had a reputation that caused much fear among the whites. An account states that about a month after the Camp Grant incident, Eskiminizin wanted to show his fellow Arivaipas that there could be no friendship with the white man. Eskiminzin had a close white friend of many years, a rancher named Charles McKinney. Eskiminzin shared an evening meal with McKinney, and at the conclusion of the meal, the two smoked a cigarette together. Upon finishing, Eskiminzin stood up, pulled a revolver from his pants and shot the man at point-blank range, killing him. When Eskiminzin was later asked about the incident, he was quoted as saying, "Any coward can kill his enemy, but it takes a brave man to kill his friend."

Native American History- hist0104

Canonchet

2005-12-19T08:53:00.000-08:00

December 19, 1675: Narragansetts under Chief Canonchet battle with Plymouth Governor Josiah Winslow with 970 men from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth. Statistics of the fight are: colonists lose 70-80 men, 150 wounded, Indians lose 600 dead, half of them warriors.

BACKGROUND:

From one of Lee Sultzman's many magnificently detailed tribal histories, this one, on the Narrangansett, at http://www.dickshovel.com/Narra.html

Threatened with war by the English in 1654, the Narragansett conquest of the Metoac was incomplete. Canonicus died in 1647 and was succeeded by his grandson Canonchet (Nanuntemo). Despite their bad experiences with the Puritan colonists, the Narragansett still loved and trusted Roger Williams. Canonicus had sold him additional land during 1643, and this friendship continued under Canonchet.

In the years after the death of the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit in 1661, relations between the New England colonists and tribes took a dangerous turn. Philip (Metacom) eventually succeeded as the grand sachem of the Wampanoag in 1662, but unlike his father, he saw clearly that the English were taking over everything. Not only the land, but their missionaries were converting his people to Christianity and undermining the traditional authority of the Wampanoag sachems. Other tribes shared these misgivings, and Philip found many ears willing to listen as he began to secretly organize an alliance in preparation for a general uprising. Unfortunately, his secret plans were not that much of a secret. A network of informers kept the English aware that something was about to happen. They just were not certain where or when. Philip was summoned several times to explain his actions and sign treaties of peace and friendship.

He explained, signed, and then left to resume the plotting. By 1674 Philip, over the strong objections of the aging Roger Williams, had convinced the Narragansett to join him. Canonchet, however, personally assured Williams that the Narragansett would not harm one hair on his head when war came ...a promise which was faithfully kept. By 1674 the colonists in New England outnumbered the natives two to one, and if there was to be any chance of success, Philip needed the Narragansett. However, he was forced to wait until they could accumulate enough guns and ammunition. It appears the uprising was planned originally for the summer of 1676, but the murder of John Sassamon, a Praying Indian spy, in January of 1675 forced his hand. Three Wampanoag were arrested, convicted, and hung, after which rumors flew that the English intended to arrest Philip. With Philip no longer able to restrain them, Wampanoag warriors attacked Swansea, Massachusetts in June and started the King Philip's War (1675-76).

The English immediately forced the Narragansett to sign another treaty agreeing to remain neutral. With war all around them, the Narragansett gathered together into a single, large fortified village in a swamp near Kingston, Rhode Island. Throughout the summer, Philip eluded the English soldiers and attacked settlements throughout New England. However, to protect his women and children, he had left them at the Narragansett fort. In the late fall of 1675, Philip returned and took most of his people with him to western Massachusetts. The English, however, considered this a violation of their treaty with the Narragansett, and in December, a 1,000-man colonial army with 150 Mohegan scouts arrived and laid siege to the Narragansett fort. After Canonchet refused demands to surrender the Wampanoag in his village and join the English against Philip, they attacked. Remembered as the Great Swamp Fight, the Narragansett were literally destroyed in this battle losing more than 600 warriors and 20 sachems. Canonchet, however, escaped and led a large group of Narragansett west to join Philip in western Massachusetts where they gave a good account of themselves for the remainder of the war.

For more about the Narragansett:

hist1219

Lewis & Clark

2005-12-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Lewis & Clark - Dirty, Rotten Explorers?

Monday, December 5, 2005
By JUSTIN CARINCI, Columbian staff writer

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/12052005news52131.cfm

If much of the United States thought of Lewis and Clark as the gallant
leaders of a daring expedition two centuries ago, American Indian groups had
several different ways to see them.

Some had little interest in the pair, noting that they didn't have anything
worth trading for. Others debated killing them and their whole party.
Many found them repulsive, American Indian historian Pat Courtney Gold of
Scappoose, Ore., said Sunday at the Tent of Many Voices, part of the Corps of
Discovery II commemoration in Vancouver.

"Chinook women said, 'Who are those dirty men in those rotten clothes?' "
Gold said. "They didn't want to talk with them."

Gold recounted histories she said had been passed down from her ancestors in the Wasco tribe, a branch of the Chinook tribe. Whereas some tribes came for miles to see the new visitors, the Chinook had less interest, Gold said.
"They didn't impress us at all," she said.

The savvy river traders were instead impressed by the natty uniforms and
fancy ships of their European visitors. So when Lewis and Clark's party came by in crude canoes and tattered clothing, "They didn't do anything for us," Gold said.

The groups that did trade with Lewis and Clark found their tastes a bit odd,
Gold said. "They would ignore the sacred salmon we offered, and they would
point at our pets and say 'I want him, him and him.'

"We didn't realize that was breakfast, lunch and dinner."

Hearing no reaction from the two dozen or so in attendance Sunday, Gold said, "You must be dog owners; you don't find that funny."

Lewis and Clark's party left more behind than is typically acknowledged, Gold
said. "Lewis and Clark were the first deadbeat fathers," she said.

"What I find disturbing was the men didn't mind leaving these kids behind and
never coming back to check on them."

In their other relations, Lewis and Clark's inability to understand local
customs led to misunderstandings that have become legendary among Indians, Gold said. Typically, when Indian groups traveled across other tribes' land, the visitors laid out gifts for the host tribe on a deerskin.
The host tribe would help itself to gifts and offer the visitors food, Gold
said.

Lewis and Clark's party laid out its belongings for a different reason.
Because their canoes often capsized, members frequently needed to dry their
goods. From their writings, it was clear Lewis and Clark didn't consider it a
friendly exchange when the Indians gathered the "offerings," Gold said. "They
were constantly complaining about the conniving Indians, the thieving Indians," she said.

Which, Gold said, was too bad for Lewis and Clark. Had the explorers taken
cues from the groups they came across, they could have kept their party
healthy, warm and dry throughout their journey...

Although the arrival of Lewis and Clark signaled the start of a tragic era
for local Indian groups, Gold said, the journey's bicentennial offers an
educational opportunity. "No matter what happened to us as Columbia River
people, we're still here."

"We still have our culture, we still make our baskets, and we commemorate
Lewis and Clark in our own way."

NatNews : Message: Lewis & Clark - Dirty, Rotten Explorers?

Aurora Over Mandan

2005-12-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

Simply Awesome!

APOD: 2005 November 20 - Rays from an Unexpected Aurora