Native people information by name

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DELORIA, ELLA (ANPETU WASTE)
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(1889-1971)

(Yankton Sioux linguist and author.)
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A member of a prominent Sioux family, Ella Deloria was one of the first truly bilingual bicultural figures in American anthropology. She translated thousands of pages of ethnographic texts written in the Sioux language, wrote both the Lakota and Dakota dialects herself, and compiled a Lakota grammar and dictionary. These activities helped insure the survival and continued strength of the Sioux language.
———The familial nature of Deloria's biculturalism can be traced to her grandfather, François Des Lauriers, who served the Yankton Sioux both as a traditional spiritual leader and as a political intermediary in negotiations with the federal government. Her father, reverend Philip Deloria, and her brother, the Reverend Vine Deloria, Sr., were native clergymen who between them brought thousands of Sioux Indians into the Episcopal Church. Her nephews Vine Deloria, jr., and Philip S. Deloria have also played prominent roles in Indian affairs since the 1960s.
———Ella Deloria was born on January 31, 1889, in the White Swan district of Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. The following year the family moved from Yankton to the St. Elizabeth's mission at Wakpala, on the Standing Rock Reservation. Between home and mission, Deloria grew up speaking all three of her languages's dialects — Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota variations — and possessing a fluent knowledge of the subtleties of Sioux culture. Deloria proved equally adept at her non-Indian, religious education. She excelled at both the St. Elizabeth's mission school and, beginning in 1902, the All Saint's School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where she performed well enough to win a scholarship to Oberlin College. After two years at Oberlin, Deloria transferred to Columbia University in New York, where in 1914 she graduated with a B.A. in education.
———While at Columbia, Deloria gave public lectures on Indian subjects, demonstrating Dakota dances, and worked with school and campfire girls groups to develop a wider appreciation of native cultures. Equally important, she began working for the anthropologist Franz Boas, translating the manuscripts of George Bushotter, a Lakota who had collaborated with the anthropologist James Dorsey in 1887 and 1888 and who had left behind over a thousand pages of material written in the Lakota dialect. In 1914 Deloria returned as a teacher to the All Saint's School while her sister Susan finished her studies. Two years later, with their mother seriously ill, the two returned home to Wakpala. Their mother died shortly thereafter, and the sisters remained at home in order to assist their father. Although Deloria had become comfortable in the non-Indian world of New York City, she plotted her life in terms of her Dakota kinship obligations to her family.
———In 1923, at age thirty-five, Deloria embarked upon her own careers, becoming a physical-education instructor at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas. Working conditions at Haskell proved to be less than satisfactory, however, and when Boas contacted her in 1927 about continuing the translation of the Bushotter materials, she moved back to New York. Over the next decade Boas and Deloria established a close professional relationship, wit Deloria working in the field — collecting language materials and ethnographic information in South Dakota — and then traveling to New York for the more collaborative work of translation and synthesis. In 1932 she published Dakota Texts, which consists of sixty-four oral narratives recorded in Dakota with both literal and free English translations.
———Deloria found working for Boas teetered on the brink of economic disaster, frequently having to plead for more work and better compensation. She had skill and practical experience equal to that of any of Boas's famous protégés, but she barely received a research assistant's wage. At one point she and her sister lived out of a car while gathering material for Boas. Deloria's obligations to her father, who had suffered a series of strokes, complicated matters still further. Funding for her research was always sporadic, and in 1938 it dried up almost completely. She patched together periods of employment with a private group studying Navajo affairs, with the Episcopal Church, and, in 1940 with the Farm Security Administration.
———Deloria's diminishing economic reliance on Boas (who died in 1942) forced her to assert herself as a scholar in her own right. In 1943 and 1944 she received research grants from the American Philosophical Society that allowed her to begin an ethnographic study of the Dakotas Camp Circle Society. In 1944 she published a popular book, Speaking of Indians, and in 1948 she received a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to continue her research. During this period she also completed the manuscript of Waterlily, an "ethnographic novel" that paints a precontact Dakota world through the eyes of native women.
———The same sense of obligation — part Dakota kinship, part Christian religious training — that had led her to tend her parents at the expense of her career reemerged in 1955 when she reluctantly agreed to take over the school at her father's mission. In 1958, however, she vowed to devote more time to Camp Circle Society, and again pieced together part-time museum and lecture work. In 1961 Deloria was appointed assistant director of the W. H. Over Museum at the University of South Dakota at Vermillion, where she began assembling a lexicon of Siouan language material. The following year, at age seventy-three, Deloria and the university's Institute for Indian Studies received a large National Science Foundation grant to compile a SIoux dictionary. This long-awaited triumph was tempered, however, by the death in 1963 of her sister and lifelong companion, Susan.
———After months of grieving, Deloria returned to the dictionary, the project having been continued (although without additional funds) through 1968. In 1966 and again in 1968, Deloria spent two months of the year teaching Sioux language and culture at St. Mary's Indian School for Girls in Springfield, South Dakota. She remained active in the late 1960s, conducting workshops for the Nebraska Teacher Corps and working for six months on a claims report for the Yankton tribe. Ella Deloria continued working on her dictionary, publishing articles, and giving lectures until shortly before her death on February 12, 1971.
———Deloria overcame numerous difficulties — her lack of an advanced degree, constant economic hardship, and race, gender, and age biases — to produce an astonishing body of work. The Bushotter manuscript and others by George Sword and Jack Frazier, which make up a significant part of the corpus of Lakota-Dakota ethnography, owe their existence in English translation to Ella Deloria, as do numerous other documents. The Deloria-Boas grammar has become a standard source in Lakota linguistics, and the Deloria dictionary is being reworked for publication. In addition, through her practice of teaching and writing in Siouan dialects and encouraging teachers to use their native tongue, Deloria not only protected the language but, as the author Julian Rice has recently argued, protected a native language literature decades before a readership if bridging the two cultures. Deloria's literary and anthropological legacy is only now beginning to find a wider audience — both Indian and non-Indian — through publication, republication, and critical analysis.
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PHILIP J. DELORIA (Lakota ancestry)
University of Colorado at Boulder

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DELORIA, VINE, SR
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(1901-90)

Standing Rock Sioux (Fort Yates) priest and leader.
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The Deloria family has produced several distinguished religious leaders. The family name is derived from the name of a French trapper, Des Lauriers, who had been taken into the tribe sometime in the eighteenth century. Vine Deloria, Sr.'s paternal grandfather, Saswe or François, was a Yankton subchief and medicine man who underwent a conversion to Christianity in the 1860s, an event one writer has called "legendary," and the story of which is still told and discussed among the Sioux. An enthusiastic Christian François welcomed the missionaries who took up residence on the Yankton reservation and sent his children to their school. His son Philip Deloria was a particularly good student. He attended both local and off-reservation boarding schools and was ordained as a priest in 1892. He remained in charge of the Standing Rock Mission until 1925. Philip Deloria was one of the first Sioux Indians to become an Episcopal priest. While he was in charge of the North Dakota Episcopal Mission, he supervised the construction of St. Elizabeth's School.
———Vine Deloria, Sr.'s mother, Marry Sully, was the granddaughter of an army-post marriage between General Alfred Sully and a Yankton woman during the 1860s. Vine Victor was the youngest child of Philip and Mary Sully Deloria. He was born on October 6, 1901, in the village of Wakpala, on the Standing Rock reservation.
———Vine Deloria's birth occurred eleven years after the massacre at Wounded Knee and less than a decade later Frederick Jackson Turner announced the close of the American frontier. Deloria grew up in the Standing Rock vicarage, but he was familiar with life on a variety of Dakota reservations. His childhood took place during a time of momentous transition as the Sioux adjusted to the end of buffalo hunting and the onset of assimilation. Tribespeople reeled under the multiple impacts of allotment, the scale of reservation lands, the suppression of traditional culture, and the shattered dreams of a failed tribal cattle industry.
———When his mother died in 1915, Deloria entered Kearney (Nebraska) Military Academy, an Episcopal educational institution. Although he could not speak English and had never before had a long-term stay away from home, he did well in school. In 1921 he graduated as a cadet major. He enrolled in St. Stephen's College, a predecessor of Bard College, in Annandale, New York. Deloria was a renowned college athlete, and in 1922 Walter Camp named him an honorable mention all-American back. He graduated from St. Stephen's in liberal arts in 1926.
———For brief periods, Deloria worked as boy's athlete advisor at the Fort Sill (Oklahoma) federal Indian boarding school and then as a Colorado coal miner before acceding to his father's wishes and entering General Theological Seminary in New York City in 1928. He returned to South Dakota in late April 1931 to be ordained as an Episcopal deacon in his father's church. Shortly thereafter his father died. Deloria returned to the seminary and graduated. His first assignment was at the Pine Ridge Mission, where he served under the well-known pioneer Episcopal missionary Father Neville Joyner. In 1932 Deloria married Barbara Sloat Eastburn of New York. That May he was ordained as a priest. They had three children: a daughter, Barbara Sanchez, and sons Vine, Jr., and Sam.
———In the 1870s Philip Deloria had been one of the three founders of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, formerly called the Planting Society. An interdenominational Christian fellowship, it is the oldest continuous all-Indian organization in the United States. When Vine Deloria entered the ministry, he worked diligently in the BCU, serving frequently as an elected officer. He served with distinction during forty active years, seeing ministerial duty on all South Dakota reservations before spending 1951-53 in Dennison, Iowa. He ministered to reservation and urban Indians, mixed congregations, and white parishioners. Because he was fluent in all three Sioux dialects, he preached in the native tongue of his congregations, as well as in English. He served a church in Durant, Iowa, beginning in 1958, and then returned to South Dakota in 1961 to be archdeacon of the Niobara Convocation, encompassing the Sioux, who made up the largest single ethnic minority within the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. From 1954 to 1958 he worked at the national headquarters of the Episcopal Church as executive secretary for Indian work; he was the first American Indian to be appointed to a major national church position. From 1965 to 1967 he was the vice-chair of that church's National Advisory Committee on Indian Work. His efforts paved the way for the formation two years later of the Chur's National Committee on Indian Work. During his retirement in South Dakota, Deloria worked with the BCU, taught and provided ministerial assistance when needed.
———Because both of his parents had been previously married and widowed, Deloria had several half-brothers and -sisters. Among the elder children of Mary and Philip, however, was Ella Deloria (1889-1971), who graduated from Columbia University in 1914, later studying anthropology with Franz Boas. Among her publications are Dakota Texts (1932) and Speaking of Indians (1944). Following gradually declining health, Vine Deloria, Sr., died on February 26, 1990, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of eighty-eight. His years of service, his devotion, and his example of selfless giving were honored with addresses, the presentation of gifts to guests, and a memorial dinner at the 118th annual meeting of the Niobrara Convocation in June that year.
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C. B. CLARK (Muskogee)
Oklahoma City University

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GENERAL, ALEXANDER "JACK" (DESKAHE "MORE THAN ELEVEN"; SHAO-HYOWA "GREAT SKY")
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(1889-1963)

Cayuga-Oneida political and religious leader.
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During Alexander "Jack" General's lifetime, his community the Six Nations, of the Grand River Reserve in southern Ontario, underwent tremendous social and political change. In 1889 the Six Nations Reserve was a multination farming community with a population of about thirty-five hundred. The forty-five-thousand-acre reserve appeared to the casual visitor to resemble the surrounding rural agricultural settlements. But a closer examination of the community revealed a rich Iroquoian history and culture that set it apart from its nonaborigional neighbors.
———Alexander General was the youngest of eight children born into a traditional Iroquois family. His parents Lydia and William General, followed a conservative lifestyle as devout adherents of the Longhouse religion and raised their children to accept Iroquois cultural values. The family farmed and often supplemented their income by seasonal agricultural work off-reserve. They attended the annual cycle of Longhouse ceremonies, maintained their language, followed the matrilineal descent for clan affiliation, and supported the governing authority of the Iroquois Confederacy Council. As a child Alexander was given the clan name Shao-hyowa (Great Sky) by his mother's sister. He attended day school on the reserve, where he learned English and the three R's, but because of ill health and family moves off-reserve to participate in seasonal labor, Alexander's formal education was limited. His father died in a tragic gun accident in 1899, and following his mother's death several years later he became responsible for the family farm.
———The Longhouse religion of the Iroquois is based on oral tradition, and it involves a great deal of speechmaking. Each speech follows a prescribed format, but each speaker brings a unique addresses, speeches, prayers, and invocations involved is considered a gift from the Creator. Young people with this talent come under the guidance of qualified candidates for this role. Alexander regularly attended Sour Spring Longhouse and listened to the speeches. His keen interest was coupled with a natural speaking ability, and at about the age of eighteen he began to practice the Longhouse speeches in private. He memorized them, and the main speaker at Sour Springs encouraged him to train for the role. Throughout his life General was one of the principal speakers at Sour Springs Longhouse.
———In 1918 an influenza epidemic spread through the reserve. General survived with the aid of Indian herbal medicine, but his Christian fiancée died. Over the years General's family continued to rely on traditional health systems and maintained membership in several medicine societies. General's political career had begun a year earlier when, at the age of twenty-eight he was appointed an assistant to his brother Levi, who had been selected to serve as Deskahe ("More Than Eleven"). This Cayuga title signifies that its holder is one of the fifty hereditary chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy Council. Levi General (born 1873) was a devoted defender of Iroquois sovereignty. Levi's oratorical skill was recognized as outstanding, and he was appointed to the position of deputy speaker of the council in 1918 and official speaker in 1922.
———The speaker played a powerful role in the daily administration of Confederacy Council business. Levi General took on international diplomacy as well when he traveled to Europe as the confederacy's representative, presenting the sovereignty case in London in 1921 and to the League of Nations in Geneva in 1923. The Confederacy Council had hired a lawyer to document the Iroquois position against the Canadian government's 1920 amendment to the Indian Act, which forced enfranchisement on Canadian Indians. The Confederacy Council maintained the position that the council was a sovereign entity exempt from Canada's laws, but the foreign governments Levi General met with failed to recognize that claim.
———While Levi was overseas in October 1924, the Canadian government, with the support of a minority of Six Nations Reserve residents, imposed a new form of local government on the reserve. The Confederacy Council was abolished in favor of a democratically elected band council, and the chiefs were ousted from their council house at Ohsweken. Levi was unable to return to the Six Nations Reserve, and ill health kept him in hospital and at the home of friends in New York State. Alexander visited his brother and sought the assistance of traditional healers. On some occasions, however, his visits were prevented by border officials who chose not to recognize the Jay Treaty of 1794, which allowed North American Indians free passage between Canada and the United States. In spite of his failing physical condition, Levi made one last impassioned radio speech from Rochester, during which he told the listening audience about the right of the Six Nations to live under their own laws and to worship the Creator in their own way. Levi died three months later, in June 1925.
———Alexander General was installed as Deskahe in December 1925 and immediately set to work reinstating the Confederacy Council as the legislative government of the reserve. Although the chiefs had continued to meet, the day-to-day administration of the community was now under the control of the elected band council. At every opportunity General spoke out on behalf of the Confederacy and its role in the historical development of North America. The confederacy chiefs and their Christian supporters, the Mohawk Workers, raised funds for legal assistance and for diplomatic trips to Ottawa and overseas. In 1930 General was delegated to go to England and on behalf of the confederacy to seek justice from the king. The chiefs believed that their historical ties to Great Britain remained in force because of the treaties signed between the Six Nations and the British monarch. The British government, however, viewed the matter as an internal Canadian dispute and refused to acknowledge the Iroquois claim of sovereignty. The only victory the Six Nations were able to claim from the trip was the fact that General traveled to England on a confederacy-issued passport.
———Following his brother's death, Alexander General became a guiding influence in a newly formed Indian-rights organization, the Indian Defense League of America. Chief Clinton Rickard, a family friend from the Tuscarora Reservation in New York State, had founded the league with a group of like-minded people from reserves on both sides of the international boundary. The group demanded that the Jay Treaty be honored, and in 1928 in achieved its goal after taking the case to Washington. As a reminder to the public and the U.S. government, the league organized its annual Border Crossing Celebration at Niagara Falls to promote the right to cross the border. Throughout his life General actively supported the Indian Defense League and regularly participated in the Border Crossing events.
———In 1949 a chapter of Indian Defense League established an annual theatrical pageant at the Six Nations Reserve that depicted on an outdoor stage the dramatic history of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. General played an influential role as historical adviser and, on occasion, as production manager, director, and actor. The organization brought the history of the Six Nations alive for the volunteer cast as well as for the audience. Those reserve residents who participated as actors and stagehands were able to learn from General about the richness of Iroquois culture and history.
———General made a conscious effort to promote the understanding of Iroquois culture and religion both on and off the reserve. From the 1930s until his death, he assisted the many anthropologists who visited the Six Nations Reserve on field trips, eagerly sharing his knowledge with them. As a fluent speaker of Cayuga and English he was able to explain the meanings of the complex speeches and ceremonies of the visiting scholars.
———In 1932 a University of Pennsylvania professor of anthropology, Frank Speck, began a collaboration with Alexander on a study of the religious ceremonies at Sour Springs Longhouse. Working together until 1947, they produced the book Midwinter Rites of the Cayuga Longhouse in 1949. In the book the anthropologist gave the religious leader an opportunity to explain many of the complexities of traditional Iroquois ceremonies and in so doing promoted a greater awareness of his colleague's religious philosophy. General, recognizing the value of their work, allowed his voice to be preserved on tape and in written form. Not only did he assist anthropologists in their search for knowledge, he often allowed the local press to attend Longhouse functions at Sour Springs. The reporters were eager to write about the ceremonies, and the explanations General gave were often quoted at length. The media gave General the opportunity to promote the Confederacy Council as the rightful government at the Six Nation Reserve.
———Despite his hospitalization for tuberculosis at the Branford Sanatorium in 1955, General continued his duties as a religious leader. He shared his knowledge of Iroquois culture with everyone, information that was preserved in the writings of anthropologists, one of whom acknowledged General as "one of the most able interpreters of Iroquois ceremonial and ideology." General died at Brantford General Hospital in September 1965. The local newspaper reported that he was "one of the best known and respected residents of the Six Nation Reserve" and that he was "a progressive farmer and prominent in district affairs." He was buried at the Sour Springs Longhouse.
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SHEILA STAATS (Mohawk)
Woodland Cultural Center
Brandford, Ontario
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HARJO, CHITTO "CRAZE SNAKE"
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(1846-1909?)
Creek farmer, micco of the Crazy Snakes
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Chitto Harjo is symbolic of resistance and opposition to assimilation among members of the Muskogee Nation. His leadership is legendary among his people, his mystique heightened by his tragic, mysterious death. The name Chitto (pronounced Chit-toe) is a form of the Creek word meaning "snake." Harjo (pronounced ha-cho) is a common second name among the Creeks. It means "reckless brave" or "brave beyond discretion." The English equivalent is "crazy." Consequently, among whites Chitto Harjo was renowned as Crazy Snake and is followers were called the Crazy Snakes, or simply Snakes.
———The Crazy Snake movement (1900-1909) marked a significant transition in Native American history. A minority of Creek Indians, mostly full bloods, ardently opposed the allotment of tribal lands during the first decade of the twentieth century. The sought to preserve their culture by demanding that their tribal government and the United States enforce the removal treaty of 1832 and abandon efforts to dissolve the Creak Nation. The Crazy Snakes resistance to allotment resulted in the use of federal troops in 1901 and the Oklahoma National Guard in 1909, marking one of the last times the United States resorted to military force to resolve an Indian conflict.
———Chitto Harjo was born in 1846 in Arbeka-Deep Fork, Indian Territory. His father, Aharlock Harjo, raised the boy to be a farmer. Harjo's influence began in 1899 when he was selected heneha (orator) of the town of Hickory Ground by its micco, Lahtah Micco. The Muskogee Nation valued oratory, and each town's micco (chief) delegated someone to make speeches on his behalf. When illness stranded Lahtah Micco in Washington D.C., in 1900, Harjo assumed leadership of Hickory Ground and did not relinquish it until he was fatally wounded in 1909.
———Hickory Ground Creeks adamantly refused to participate in the allotment process because it promised to break up the tribal dominion, thereby violating the treaty of 1832. As far as the Hickory Ground Creeks were concerned, this was the only legal treaty between the Muskogee Nation and the United States. Throughout the summer of 1900, Harjo circulated among the seasonal stomp dances seeking pledges to oppose allotment. By the fall of 1900 he had united a group of Creeks who were willing to do battle against the allotment of their tribal land.
———Disappointed that the Muskogee National Council was determined to proceed with allotment, the Hickory Ground Creeks, by then known as Crazy Snakes or Snakes, established their own government in the fall of 1900. The lighthorse, or police, enforced newly adopted Snake laws. Snake emissaries were sent to recruit members from other tribes. Dissident Choctaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles joined them. Afraid that Hickory Ground crusade held the seeds of a revolutionary movement, Pleasant Porter, principal chief of the Muskogee Nation, turned to U.S. marshal Leo Mennett for help. Bennett warned federal officials that the Snakes were organizing a growing intertribal movement opposed to allotment. In January 1901, in a letter to President McKinley, the Snakes formally announced their campaign to stop allotment.
———On January 23, 1901, Troop A of the English U.S. Calvary was sent from Fort Reno to arrest Snake leaders and disband the Snake movement. Commanded by Lieutenant H. B. Dixon, this force of sixty-five soldiers encamped near Henryetta. Two days later, U.S. deputy marshal Grant Johnson and interpreter Bernie McIntosh arrested the Snake leader at his home without resistance.
———Nearly one hundred Snakes were arrested and transported to Muskogee, where they appeared in federal court before Judge John R. Thomas. They agreed to plead guilty to four charges in exchange for a suspension of fines and prison sentences. Thomas released them with a warning to cease their activities, but Harjo and some of the others resumed their resistance soon after they were freed. One year later, in February 1902, U.S. marshals rearrested Harjo and nine other Snakes, who were transferred to the federal penitentiary at Levenworth, Kansas, to complete the remainder of their original two-year sentences.
———The imprisonment of Harjo from March to November 1902 forced the Snake movement to change its tactics. The Snakes began to challenge allotment and other policies through political structures rather than militant demands. Snakes ran for Creek tribal political offices, circulated petitions, retained lobbyists in Washington, and corresponded with federal officials. In 1905, Harjo traveled to Washington to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt. The meeting was brief, and neither men had the language skills to make his points understood the the other. Harjo left Washington feeling confused about Roosevelt's position regarding allotment.
———Prompted by Snake grievances, the U.S. Senate launched an investigation into matters related to the final disposition of the affairs to the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. On November 23, 1906, Chitto Harjo testified in Tulsa before a Senate select committee, eloquently petitioning the committee to recognize the treaty of 1832. His speech was a poignant plea for justice. Listeners characterized him as a "warrior-statesman," "a patriot like George Washington," "a man of strong magnetism," and "the most wonderful speaker I ever heard." However, despite his oratorical skills, the committee rejected Harjo's appeal. Disappointed, he then devised a plan to move his people to Mexico, but soon found that they had no interest in leaving their homes.
———Although some whites praised Harjo for his stand against allotment, most continued to fear him and his followers. This fear erupted into deadly violence in the early spring of 1909. Harjo and other Snakes had given sanctuary to former black slaves who had been expelled from Henryetta once they were freed from their Creek owners. A few of the freedmen resorted to stealing farm goods in order to feed their families. Local peace officers found a posse and set out for Hickory Ground to arrest the thieves. A shootout erupted, resulting in the deaths of an estimated fifteen men and the arrest of forty-two, including some Snakes. Harjo was at his home some twenty miles from the tent encampment of the freed men, but Sheriff William L. Odum of Checotah blamed the leader for the battle. Even though testimony from neighbors exonerated Harjo from any involvement in the battle, Odum soon sent four U.S. deputy marshals to Harjo's home to arrest him.
———At sundown on March 27, the officers approached Harjo's cabin. As posted sentinels ran toward the cabin to sound the alarm, the officers opened fire. The sentinels returned fire, killing two of the marshals. The surviving officers gathered the dead and returned to Checotah, where a large posse was organized to arrest Harjo. Unknown to them, Harjo had been wounded in the gunfire, most likely fatally, and had fled. The posse returned to Harjo's cabin only to find he had disappeared. Frustrated, the posse looted his home and burned all buildings to the ground.
———Harjo's death remains shrouded in mystery. A persistent story maintains that he fled to Mexico, where he lived to be an old man. Another story asserts that he was burned to death in his cabin when the posse's rage erupted in a fiery blaze of revenge. Another account claims that Harjo was hanged in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in 1910. Still another account has Harjo shot and drowned in the Canadian river. But documentation for all of these accounts is inadequate. According to the testimony of family and friends, what probably happened is that harjo died from the gunshot wound at the home of a Choctaw friend, Daniel Bob, in the Kiamichi Mountains soon after the attack on his home.
———Following Harjo's disappearance, Eufaula Harjo (no relation) infused the Snake movement with a new spirit of cooperation. During the summer of 1909, Eufaula Harjo forged the Snake movement into an official intertribal organization called the Four Mothers Nation. Recognizing that full bloods around the state shared common concerns and aims, the organization expanded to represent all full bloods under the coalition name the Indian Bureau. Political commonalties took precedence over religious, linguistic, and cultural differences. The spirit of intertribal advocacy and activism has continued throughout the twentieth century through numerous Indian organizations. The Crazy Snake movement continued until World War I, but its influence waned as the Indian Bureau organized collective political activism across Oklahoma.
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KENNETH W. MCINTOSH (Muskogee)
University of Tulsa
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HIDATSA
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The Hidatsas, or Nuxbaaga ("Original People" as they call themselves) of the main division of the Hidatsas, trace their origins from the point of their emergence from what is now called Devil's Lake in eastern North Dakota. The archaeological record indicates that the Hidatsas had established settlements on the Knife River at its confluence with the Missouri by the early 1600s. The early semisedentary culture of these farmers and bison hunters rested on the cultivation of corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. These commodities marked the Hidatsa villages as major indigenous trading centers of the Great Plains. The first written accounts of Hidatsa life by nonnatives began with the geographer David Thompson's 1797 narratives, which were written after the Hidatsa "River Crows" split from the "Mountain Crows" of present-day Montana.
———By 1804, the year Lewis and Clark visited the earth-lodge villages on the Upper Missouri, the Hidatsas distinguished among three independent groups: the Awatixas, the Awaxawis, and the Hidatsas proper. Of these, the Hidatsas proper occupied the largest village site on the Knife River; the Awatixas lived in a smaller settlement on the opposite of the river. The Awaxawis, the smallest Hidatsa group, maintained an independent village several miles sough of the other two groups. Distinction among these autonomous groups had implications for exogamous social arrangements and trade relations. After population losses following an 1834 attack by the Dakota and a smallpox epidemic in 1837, the three Hidatsa groups merged with the Mandans at Like-A-Fishook Village in 1845. The Arikaras joined them in 1856.
———The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 described the boundaries of Hidatsa territory as reaching from the Missouri River as far west as the Yellowstone. By 1910, subsequent treaty abrogations reduced this land base to 640,000 acres. The Fort Berthold reservation was established by executive order in 1891, but it was not until the provisions of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act that the mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras incorporated as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Despite particular features of shared history, there remain distinct linguistic and cultural differences among the three tribes.
———Hidatsa society is matrilineal. Hidatsas say that a person comes into the world through his or her mother's clan, and leaves through the father's clan. By this they mean that the mother's clan bestows membership and belonging, whereas the father's clan confers differential rights and responsibilities. In general, clan relations structure ceremonial and social behavior by prescribing individual participation in life-cycle events, such as naming ceremonies, funerals, and the War Bonnet Dances which involve selected clan children each spring.
———Hidatsa kinship shares features with Mandan social organization; Hidatsa and Mandan clans belong to one or two remaining divisions, the Three Clan (Naginawi) and the Four Clan (Nagitopa). Hidatsas generally agree that the Three Clan comprises the Knife, Alkali Lodge, and Low Cap clans and that the Four Clan is made up of the Waterbuster, Prairie Chicken, Wide Ridge (extinct), and Dirt or Mud Dripping clans. This system, described at length by the anthropologist Alfred Bowers, appears to be what remains a moeity system that operated in the late eighteenth century as the tirteen-clan system of the Awatixas and the seven-clan system of the Awaxawis and Hidatsas proper. While Mandan assimilation with Hidatsa forms a social organization allows a treatment of the two divisions as a unitary system, tribal members distinguish between "Mandan" and "Hidatsa" cultural identity.
———Among the Hidatsas, kinship is actively constructed to assert shared group identity and cultural history. Thus the origin stories related to the thirteen-clan system, such as the story of Charred Body, are told as a means of relaying cultural history by establishing ancestral relationships to specific cultural and sacred sites in North Dakota. Society bundles, as representative objects that embody cultural origins, reinforce group identity and symbolically anchor kinship ties by marking and ceremonially activating ritual relationships. Cultural knowledge associated with these collective rites is carefully monitored and guarded.
———In previous times, Hidatsa age-graded societies regulated the transmission of ritual knowledge and in general structured Hidatsa society by prescribing cultural norms. For example, the Black Mouth Society was a male warrior society whose members policed the activities of the village. Womens age-graded societies likewise directed the comportment of girls, who wee inducted into one of the Holy Women societies at appropriate junctions in the life cycle. Contemporary Hidatsas abide by these rules in modified forms, and several societies, such as the Antelope, Kit Fox, and Enemy Women, remain active today.
———The Hidatsas share common historical linkages with the Mandans and Arikaras, including twentieth-century upheavals and adjustments caused by construction of the Garrison Dam. Built in 1951 by the Army Corps of Engineers, this dam had an immense impact on the Three Affiliated Tribes, one nearly equal in severity to the 1837 smallpox epidemic that reduced the Hidatsas to near cultural extinction. In addition to flooding and destroying the three tribes' fertile bottomlands, the dam fractured communities and separated them across wide distances. People who were once neighbors now live surrounded by immense lakes that cut them off from one another. Nonetheless, Hidatsas continue to travel around the water from their communities in Mandaree, Four Bears, Shell Creek, Lucky Mound (Parshall), and New Town.
———Community segments, such as those at Shell Creek and mandaree, maintain distinct orientations as "Hidatsa" sites of residence and cultural history. Community celebrations at Mandaree (West Segment) and Little SHell (North Segment) attest to Hidatsa solidarity. Drum groups, such as the Mandaree Singers, affirm cultural community and innovation. The Hidatsas retain the most tribal members at Fort Berthold and actively speak their native language in the greatest numbers. Elder Hidatsa speakers teach language classes at Fort Berthold Community College, which also sponsors community mentor programs in tribal languages. In addition, the New Town public school offers computer-based Hidatsa language instruction.
———Recent years in the legislative arena have added to a renewed sense of social and cultural revitalization. For example, testimonies given by tribal members as part of the 1986 Joint Tribal Advisory Committee provided evidence for just compensation awards for lands taken from the tribes for the Garrison Dam Project. The 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act made it possible for the Three Affiliated Tribes to open the Four Bears Casino at Fort Berthold in 1992. The revenues generated there are targeted for community-development programs that hold the promise of increasing economic autonomy and tribal sovereignty for the Hidatsa Nation and the Three Affiliated Tribes.
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TERESSA L. BERMAN
Arizona State University West
and National Museum of Natural History
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HOLE-IN-THE-DAY (BUGONAGESHIG)
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(1828?-68)
Minnesota Ojibwa political leader.
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Hole-in-the-Day was probably born at the Ojibwa village of Sandy Lake, in present-day Minnesota, to parents who exemplified the complex nature of Ojibwa political leadership. His mother, Josaphine (?) (her Ojibwa name is not known), was a daughter of Broken Tooth, a Sandy Lake civil leader. His father, Hole-in-the-Day the Elder, was a war leader. The Ojibwas felt that civil leaders and war leaders served complementary functions, but they expected the unruly and confrontational was leaders to remain secondary in influence to the deliberative, responsible, elderly civil leaders.
———Early in his life, Hole-in-the-Day gained an appreciation of the issues confronting Ojibwa when he attended intervillage political meetings with his father in the 1830s and 1840s. These same issues would prove enduring, engaging Hole-in-the-Day's generation twenty years later as well. Relations with the United States preoccupied Ojibwa leaders of both generations. The Ojibwas had enjoyed friendly relations with the earlier French and British populations, based on the mutually satisfactory fur trade. Concerned Ojibwa realized, however, that the United States was committed to sedentary agriculture — a drastically different kind of land use that threatened their ability to retain control of their traditional homelands.
———Ojibwa leaders believed they could avoid subordination to the United States by restructuring their economy to place more reliance on agriculture and less on hunting and trapping. Avoiding economic dependence would protect them from Euro-American pressures to cede additional land or remove themselves from Minnesota altogether. Cultural and political autonomy would flow from this position of economic strength.
———With is father's death in 1847, Hole-in-the-Day emerged as a leader. He firmly supported the plan to restructure the Ojibwa economy and establish his own farm. Very quickly, however, Hole-in-the-Day came to view the U.S. federal Indian policy as misconceived, as creating conditions that sabotaged rather than supported the Ojibwa efforts at self-sufficiency.
———Hole-in-the-Day's evolving thinking was reflected at the negotiations that produced the Treaty of 1855, by which the Ojibwa ceded the majority of their Minnesota lands for the generous-sounding sum of ten thousand dollars plus annual payments of twenty thousand dollars in cash, goods, and services for twenty years. Hole-in-the-Day fought hard for an alternative that he believed would lay the foundations necessary for the Ojibwas to reorient their economy. The Ojibwas, he argued, needed large lump sums that would enable them to build a costly and complex infrastructure of roads, houses, barns, and cleared fields. They needed farming equipment, plus knowledge of agricultural technology and annual husbandry. The government's offer amounted to only four dollars per person per year, a figure clearly inadequate of funding a major economic transformation. Despite his federal arguments, however, Hole-in-the-Day was unable to persuade the Euro-American negotiators to comply.
———The Treaty of 1855 proved disastrous, as Hole-in-the-Day had foreseen. Euro-American settlement destroyed the habitat of game and fur-bearing animals, so the Ojibwas could neither feed themselves nor collect enough pelts to exchange for food. The remaining land base was broken up into small, separate reservations, inadequate for launching a farming revolution. The Ojibwas slid rapidly into poverty.
———The disastrous effect of the 1855 treaty badly eroded Ojibwa confidence in their civil leaders. Hole-in-the-Day, who once observed that he had trouble sleeping because of his distress over the treaty's failure to provide economic security, also reevaluated existing Ojibwa policy. Increasingly, many Ojibwas advocated a more confrontational approach toward the United States; not surprisingly, many warriors supported this approach. In the calls for armed resistance, Hole-in-the-Day saw a strategy that, he hoped, would win for the Ojibwas what their treaties had not. He cultivated the support of the warriors, and began building a new political coalition. Central to his coalition were two influential groups: non-Indian fur traders, and the bicultural, bilingual mixed-blooded (or Métis) population.
———On August 18, 1862, Hole-in-the-Day put is strategy to the test: he declared war on the United States. Ojibwa warriors targeted Euro-American property but avoided taking lives, a situation that distinguished them sharply from the Minnesota Dakotas, who also took up arms in 1862, and spilled American blood. The bloodlessness of the Ojibwa conflict seemingly explains the relatively mild American reaction, especially when contrasted to the vehemence with which they prosecuted Dakotas for alleged war crimes. Hole-in-the-Day's bicultural allies also figured importantly in the war's outcome, acting as liaisons with Euro-American officials, emphasizing Ojibwa forbearance but warning that American intransigence might compel them to follow the Daoitas' example. By this combination of efforts, the militant strategy succeeded. Supported by warriors representing several villages, Hole-in-the-Day negotiated a new treaty in 1864 meant to create the condition the Ojibwas needed to underwrite their economic transformation. His success brought him enmity of many civil leaders, who feared his personal ambitions. More significantly, many Ojibwas besides these civil leaders saw Hole-in-the-Day's warrior-dominated power base as an enormous threat to the very nature of the Ojibwa political order.
———Hole-in-the-Day was assassinated on June 27, 1868, by warriors from the village of the Leech Lake. The assassins' identities were widely known, but they were never prosecuted. Evidently, Hole-n-the-Day's family feared that if they exacted kin revenge, they would touch off a dangerous cycle of retaliatory killings. (No American law at the time applied to Indian-Indian crimes.) Controversy has continued to surround Hole-in-the-Day's death with allegations repeatedly surfacing that he was killed because he could not be bought or controlled.
———Hole-in-the-Day married polygymously, the matches designed to create ties between important families. Four spouses can be identified with certainty; records regarding the children of these unions are contradictory. His first wife's name is unknown, and apparently none of the children of this marriage survived childhood. He also wed Jun-du-way-be-quay, or Mary Isabelle (?); their chidden probably were Isabella, Minogishig (Ignatius), O-be-sau (Ida), and Ke-we-to-be-quay (Lucy). His third wife was O-dun-ew, or nancy, with whom he probably had three children; O-bim-e-ge-shig-o-quay (Louisa), Quod-ance (Julie), and No-din-e-shig-bow-eak (Rosie).
———Hole-in-the-Day's most well-publicized martial alliance occurred in 1867, when he wed Ellen McCarty, a chambermaid at his Washington, D.C. hotel. Euro-Americans questioned the legality of the marriage, privately performed with an unidentified Chicago priest, but Hole-in-the-Day and the Ojibwas regarded the union as legitimate. The couple had one son, Joseph. It further seems likely that Hole-in-the-Day viewed his marriage as a conciliatory political gesture, an effort to reassure Euro-Americans of the basic commitment to amicable relations that underlay his willingness to resort to force of arms.
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REBECCA KUGEL
University of California at Riverside

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HOWE, OSCAR
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(1915-83)
Yankton Sioux artist, designer, university professor, and administrator
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At the end of his life, Oscar Howe had become the best-known and most highly respected Sioux artist of the twentieth century. His paintings and other illustrations are represented in the collection of many museums and private individuals throughout the world, and special galleries in the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Oscar Howe Art Center, in Mitchell, South Dakota, feature his work.
———Born in the community of Joe Creek on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota on May 13, 1915, Oscar Howe spent his childhood in preadolescent years faced with poverty, illness, and frustration. The son of full-blood Yanktonai parents, he was sent off to attend the Pierre Indian School, a government boarding school with a strict military regime. He spoke no English when he first went there and, like so many other children, was punished physically to discourage his reliance on his native language and culture. Forced acculturation was the policy of the day. In 1933 physical afflictions — an unidentified skin disease and trachoma — led to his being sent home. He worked determinedly to heal his afflictions and return to school; eventually he transferred to the Santa Fe Indian School and completed his high school education in 1938.
———At Santa Fe Indian School, Howe trained under the art teacher Dorothy Dunn Kramer. At the time of his graduation, several of his paintings were on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum's Gallery for Living Artists and the San Francisco Civic Center, and several of his pieces joined exhibitions in London and Paris. A number of his works were reproduced in magazines.
———Howe returned to the Crow Creek Reservation in 1938, and in the midst of the Great Depression he reevaluated his career. He knew he wanted to be an artist, but he recognized that his choice was not a practical one. In this atmosphere he decided to accept a position as an art instructor at the Pierre Indian School, receiving room and board as his only remuneration. By 1940 he had become associated with the South Dakota Artists Project, and in that year he was assigned to paint the interior dome of the Carnegie Public Library in Mitchell, South Dakota. Subsequently, he was sent to the Indian Art Center at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to take a special course in painting murals, and upon his return he was assigned to paint ten large oil murals about the history of the Missouri River basin on the walls of the new civic auditorium in Mobridge, South Dakota. Just as he started work on this commission he received his notice for military service. The authorities gave him two extra weeks to finish his work.
———During World War II, Oscar Howe spent three and a half years in the U.S. Army and fought as part of the 442n Anti-Aircraft Battalion in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany. In 1945, at the end of his tour of duty, he met Sdelheit Karla Margarete Anna (Heidi) Hampel in her father's clothing store in Beidenkopf, Germany. He soon returned to the United States with the rank of corporal and began his adjustment to civilian life. In 1947 Howe entered one of his paintings, Dakota Duck Hunt, in the second annual National Indian Painting Exhibition at the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and won the grand prize of #350. After several years of correspondence, Howe wrote to Heidi Hampel asking her to "take a chance" on him and be his wife. In July 1947 the two were married in Chicago. Heidi accompanied her new husband back to South Dakota, where she eventually became his business manager, publicity agent, and historian, documenting his works. Shortly after their marriage, Howe was commissioned to supply fifty illustrations for a two-volume work, North American Indian Costumes, published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1952. The project involved both historical research and the production of the final illustrations. In June 1948 Heidi and Oscar's daughter, Inge Dawn, was born.
———In the fall of 1948 Howe was invited to design the Corn Palace Civic Auditorium in Mitchell, South Dakota, and was also admitted to Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, where he was given a special appointment as artist-in-residence and instructor in art. This recognition of and commitment to his potential gave him an institutional base from which to develop his creativity. Three years later he was awarded the Harvey Dunn Medal in Art. Upon his graduation from Dakota Wesleyan he went on leave from his instructional position with the university's art department to pursue graduate training at the University of Oklahoma. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree from Oklahoma in 1954 and returned to Dakota Wesleyan to be the head of the Department of Art. From September 1943 until his appointment as an assistant professor of fine arts at the University of South Dakota in 1957, he was also the director of the art program at the Pierre Indian School. The University of South Dakota was his institutional home from 1957 until the end of his life.
———Besides his universities duties, Oscar Howe devoted time to his art, working vigorously at it in the evenings, during summers, and while on vacation. In 1957 a major exhibition of his art was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His popularity as an artist increased as he incorporated into his style a fusion of Dakota themes and abstract innovations, demonstrating his ability to draw on native philosophies and new artistic techniques to further explore his themes and subjects. His abstract geometric designs continue to be used in the medium of split ears of corn in mosaic like panels of Mitchell's Corn Palace. For a ten-year period Howe designed and supervised the execution of many of the panels, which were changed annually. The Howe designs are occasionally recycled today.
———The intrinsic value of Oscar Howe's art continues to be recognized as his work appears in major surveys of North American Indian art and modern American Art. He made innovative use of cubism, which he considered to be a logical parallel to Native Americans — and, specifically, Dakota — geometric traditions evident in the designers of painted parfleches, robes, and tipi liners as well as in clothing decorations done in painting, quillwork, and beadwork. Howe demythologized a romanticized aboriginal past and created artwork with a continuity and connection from past to present. he wanted his art to be seen and perceived as an informed whole that expressed his aesthetic and reflected his Yanktonai Sioux culture.
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DAVID REED MILLER
Saskatchewan Indian Federated College
University of Regina
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Paul Peter Buffalo

www.d.umn.edu/claweb/faculty/troufs/Buffalo/PB40.html

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Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939)
Native American M.D., Author
Eastman received his medical degree from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1890 and began medical service for the Office of Indian Affairs later that year. Eastman served at Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, and was an eyewitness to both events leading up to and following the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 29, 1890.

Pine Ridge was located only miles above the massacre site, and Eastman treated Native American victims of the United States Army's attack. Eastman continued work at various posts as reservation physician until 1903. He served as president of the Society of American Indians following World War I, then joining Carlos Montezuma in directing a Society campaign to abolish the Office of Indian Affairs. During the 1920s, Eastman served the government as an inspector of reservation conditions. He died on January 8, 1939.

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pictures

Charles A. Eastman, 1897
Photographic reproduction: From collections of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photo no. 3463

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Charles A. Eastman, 1913
Photographic reproduction: From collections of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photo no. 3462-a.

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Graduation announcement of Charles A. Eastman from the Boston University School of Medicine, 1890 [not shown in online exhibition].


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"Perhaps the most important principle underlying the practice of the Indian medicine-man is one which the "quacks" of civilization so largely utilize -- they prey upon the weaknesses and superstitions of the human mind. Many people, even in an age of science, seem willing to risk their lives on treatments unexplainable, mysterious and bordering on superstition. This is the ground upon which the cunning medicine-man based his profession, and more, he did not hesitate to proclaim it openly. However good his medicines might be -- and undoubtedly some of them were efficacious -- he never lost sight of the spiritual side of health and disease. Invariably he began his treatment with an elaborate acknowledgement of the superhuman power which gave him wisdom and the secrets of healing. His technique had much in common with Christian Science and was frequently hypnotic in character.

It is not surprising that the Indians should hold some peculiar and superstitious beliefs in connection with the human body, for they had very little knowledge of physiology and pathology. Their knowledge of anatomy was limited to such animals as they were accustomed to dress for food. They believed that most disease is mental -- that it is caused by an "evil spirit" -- (mental fatigue or depression?) This cannot be cured by drugs alone, therefore they call upon the "Great Mystery" through his creatures to drive away the evil spirit. This idea conveniently served two purposes -- first, its effect upon the mind of the patient, and second, in case the treatment fails, the savage doctor may claim that the spirits are offended and nothing will do."

Source: Charles A. Eastman, "The Medicine Man's Practice," Pharmaceutical Era, vol. 52, 1919, p. 281.


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Susan La Flesche Picotte

Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915)
First Native American Woman M.D.
La Flesche received her medical degree from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1889, graduating at the top of her class. She spent her internship at the Woman's Hospital in Philadelphia. From August of 1889 to October of 1893, she served on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska as physician to her tribe, finally resigning for health reasons.

During this time, she worked for the government's Office of Indian Affairs. From 1891 to 1893 she also served as "medical missionary" for her tribe, so designated by the Women's National Indian Association. This dual workload included travel across the length and breadth of the Omaha Reservation, making house calls in addition to receiving patients in her office. La Flesche married in the summer of 1894 and added her husband's last name, Picotte, to her own.

Throughout the remainder of her life, Picotte worked for improved health conditions of the Omaha tribe. This is born out by her extensive correspondence with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs throughout her career, as well as local newspaper accounts of her community achievements in Walthill, Nebraska. Picotte died on September 18, 1915.

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picture

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www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew/if_you_knew_11.html


House of Susan La Flesche Picotte: Walthill, Nebraska. She resided here from 1908 until 1915, when she died. Photographic reproduction, from collections of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Photo. no. 54,752-A.


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Picotte's obituary:

"DR. SUSAN LA FLESCHE PICOTTE, of Walthill, Neb., died at her home on September 18, aged forty-nine years. She was a daughter of Pierre La Flesche, or Iron Eye, the last of the great chiefs of the Omaha tribe, and had devoted her life to the interests of her tribe, by whom she was regarded as the leader. She was graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in the class of 1889 and was a member of the Nebraska State Medical Society."

Source: Transactions of the Annual Meeting of the Alumnae Association of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, vol. 41, 1916, p. 35.

[END OF EXHIBIT]

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Carlos Montezuma

Carlos Montezuma (1865-1923)
Native American M.D., Author
Montezuma received his medical degree from Northwestern University's Chicago Medical College in 1889. From 1889 until 1896, he worked for the Office of Indian Affairs as a physician at a number of different posts throughout the west. His final post was at the Carlisle Indian School Hospital in Pennsylvania. From 1896 until 1922, he was engaged in private practice in Chicago. During this time, Montezuma also taught courses at medical schools in Chicago.

Montezuma's service at Indian Affairs hospitals in the West influenced his work as an author. From 1916 until his death in 1923, he published his own newspaper, WASSAJA, which called for the abolition of the Office of Indian Affairs. He titled the paper after his Yavapai name, meaning "signal." Montezuma's efforts to abolish the Indian Bureau were joined after World War I by Charles Eastman. Montezuma died on January 31, 1923.

photo

Carlos Montezuma, 1890
Photographic reproduction: From collections of the National Archives and Records Administration

www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew/images.dir/montezuma_1.jpg

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Carlos Montezuma, 1896
Photographic reproduction: From collections of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photo no. 53,534.

www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew/images.dir/montezuma_2.jpg

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Graduation announcement of Carlos Montezuma from the Chicago Medical College of Northwestern University, 1890 [not shown in online exhibition].


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Page from A Souvenir of the Carlisle Indian School, 1902. Montezuma is shown on the porch of the school's hospital, during his tenure at Carlisle.
This item kindly loaned from Dickinson College Library's Special Collections [not shown in online exhibition].


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Annual Announcement of University of Illinois's College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago, 1904-1905: Montezuma's name is on the faculty list [not shown in online exhibition].

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www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/if_you_knew/if_you_knew_10.html

[mdenney]

Alexander Posey (1873-1908)


Alexander Posey recorded his insights into Creek Indian tribal politics and Native American customs in his poetry, journalism, and political satire. He lived through a crucial period in the history of the Creek Nation, when the tribe's land base and political autonomy were threatened by "progressive" reforms intended to force Indians to assimilate to Euro-American culture. The creation of the state of Oklahoma in the early twentieth century also significantly impacted the Creeks: fierce debates raged about whether to admit Oklahoma as a single state or whether to organize part of its territory into a separate Indian state. Posey registered these conflicts in his sharp and often satirical writing, in the process creating a unique record of both Native American politics and Native American literary developments. His interest in accurately representing the dialect and speech patterns of his Creek characters has made his work an important chronicle of his own time and a source of inspiration for subsequent Native American writers.

Posey was born into a bicultural and bilingual family: his mother was a Creek Indian and his father was a white man who had been raised in the Creek community. He grew up learning to appreciate both Native American and Euro-American traditions and benefited from a traditional western education at the Bacone Indian University in Muskogee. It was at Bacone that Posey began composing poetry, most of which is heavily influenced by the British and American Romantic tradition. While some scholars see Posey's poetry as derivative and constrained by European traditions, others point out that the Romantic worldview that pervades his work in some ways coincides with traditional Indian beliefs. Like the Romantics, many Native American cultures are committed to a respect for nature, a belief in the interrelation of all things, and a refusal to impose a sharp division between the material and the spiritual.

After leaving Bacone in 1895, Posey was elected to the lower chamber of the Creek National Council and embarked on a long career of public service as an administrator to tribal schools. In 1902, he also began serving his community as a journalist, establishing the Eufaula Indian Journal, the first daily newspaper published by an Indian. As editor of the paper, Posey composed the works for which he is best known today: the Fus Fixico letters. Narrated by a Creek character named Fus Fixico (which translates as either "Warrior Bird" or "Heartless Bird"), the letters offer humorous political and cultural commentary written from the perspective and in the dialect of Indian speakers. Revolving around the conversations of four men--and usually centering on the monologues of Hotgun Harjo, a medicine man--the letters narrate Indian responses to political issues and lamthingy the corruption that was rampant in Indian Territory. Posey's tendency to parody the names of Euro-American political figures with clever puns--"Rooster Feather" for President Roosevelt, "Itsthingyed" for Secretary of the Interior Ethan Allen Hitchthingy--deflates the power of these public figures and critiques their pretensions to authority. The Fus Fixico letters do not always correspond to Posey's own convictions or political positions; instead, they offer a variety of perspectives on the difficult issues that faced the Creeks in his time. Tragically, Posey died before he was able to completely fulfill the promise of his innovative writing. He drowned at the age of thirty-five when his boat capsized on the North Canadian River.


5168] Russell Lee, Street scene, Muskogee, Oklahoma (1939), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USF33-012332-M3 DLC].

photo
www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/images/5168-author8.jpg


link below-

www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/authors-8.html

www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/authors-8.html

[mdenney]

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) (1876-1938)


Writer, musician, educator, and Indian rights activist, Zitkala-Sa (or Red Bird) was born on the Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. After her white father abandoned the family, she was brought up by her Indian mother in traditional Sioux ways. At the age of eight, Zitkala-Sa's life was transformed when white missionaries came to Pine Ridge and convinced her to enroll in a boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. Part of a movement to "civilize" Indian children by removing them from their native culture and indoctrinating them in Euro-American ways, the school trained Indian pupils in manual labor, Christianity, and the English language. Zitkala-Sa found it a hostile environment and struggled to adapt.

After three years at school, Zitkala-Sa returned to Pine Ridge only to find herself estranged from her traditional culture and from her mother. While she was not completely comfortable with the Euro-American culture she encountered at school, she was also no longer at home with Sioux customs. She returned to school and eventually received scholarships to Earlham College in Indiana and to the New England Conservatory of Music to study violin. After completing her studies she became a music teacher at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Frustrated by her position on the margins of both Indian and white culture and increasingly outraged by the injustices she saw visited on Native Americans, Zitkala-Sa resolved to express her feelings publicly in writing. Her reflective autobiographical essays on her experiences among the Sioux and in white culture appeared in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly in 1900. In these pieces, Zitkala-Sa explored what she called the "problem of her inner self," grappling with the question of her cultural identity and her relationship with her family. She also used the essays as occasions to expose the injustices perpetrated by whites on Native Americans and to critique the insensitivity of white strategies for "civilizing" Indians.

After the publication of the autobiographical essays, Zitkala-Sa composed an Indian opera called "Sun Dance" and compiled collections of traditional Sioux legends and stories that she translated into English. Her outspoken views eventually alienated authorities at the Carlisle School, so she left to work at Standing Rock Reservation. There she met and married Raymond Bonnin, another Sioux activist. Together they became involved in the Society of American Indians, founded the National Council of American Indians, and worked tirelessly on behalf of Native American causes. Zitkala-Sa died in Washington, D.C., and was buried in Arlington Cemetery.

[1801] J. N. Choate, Group of Omaha boys in cadet uniforms, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania (1880), courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration [NWDNS-75-IP-1-10].

photo
www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/images/1801-author10.jpg

www.learner.org/amerpass/unit08/authors-10.html

[mdenney]

War Bonnet

Chief War Bonnet

Pictured here is War Bonnet, a chief of the Cheyenne Indians of Colorado. He was photographed at Mathew Brady's studio in New York City, having traveled there from Colorado for an appearance at P.T. Barnum's American Museum. He died in 1864 at the Sand Creek Massacre, a full-fledged butchering of Cheyenne Indians, including unarmed women and children. That massacre was led by Col. John M. Chivington, who was never punished for his role in the massacre.

photo
www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web08/features/see_it_now/images/MES00190.jpg

link below-

www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web08/features/see_it_now/MES00190.html

[mdenney]

Chief Gall

Here is Chief Gall (otherwise known as Pizi), a Hunkpapa Dakota chief who served under Crazy Horse. He is said to have been the one who killed George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn.

www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web08/features/see_it_now/MES00174.html