Book title: Restoring Hope (Native American Romance Series Book 1)

Author: Ruth Ann Nordin

Book Description:
Fleeing from a marriage she didn’t want, Woape is caught by a Sioux Indian who abuses her. One night, she manages to escape and nearly loses her life when Gary Milton shows up and rescues her.

Not knowing where else to go, she follows him home. In their time together, she falls in love with him and is determined that he will be her husband. But the Sioux Indian is not far behind, and he’s going to claim her as his, even if he has to kill Gary to get her.

Books in the Native American Romance Series include:
Restoring Hope (Book 1)
Brave Beginnings (Book 2)
Bound by Honor, Bound by Love (Book 3) due out Summer 2012
A Chance In Time (novella)–main characters show up in Restoring Hope and Bound by Honor, Bound by Love

Source: Amazon

Book title: Native American Flute DECODED

Author: Dick Claassen

Book Description:
PLAY THAT FLUTE! Suppose you are at a craft show and you happen to see a booth where Native American flutes are sold. Hot dog, you think, you’re gonna buy one! The flute builder has the flutes nicely displayed, and you choose the biggest flute with the most beautiful finish festooned with the most extraordinarily tasteful leather binding, beads, and feathers. You lay down your money, the flute builder smiles, wraps it up for you, gives you a few instructions, and you take it home. When you get home your heart hammers with anticipation as you take the flute out of the package. With trembling fingers you pick up the flute, put it to your lips…and blow…and no sound comes out! What! Oh, yeah, now you remember. The builder gave you printed instructions that showed you how to adjust the totem, that sliding button already tied onto the flute. You find the folded up instructions in the package, unfold and study them, and then move the totem to the approximate position shown on the diagram. The builder had adjusted the totem for you, but he warned that the totem might slide out of adjustment when he wrapped it up. It had, but you’re sure you have it back in place now. You remember one more thing you must do — you remember that the builder told you to tightly tie the totem down with its leather thongs so it wouldn’t shift out of adjustment the next time you take out your flute to play it. You do that now. The tension is killing you, so without further fussing you put the flute to your lips and blow again. SQUAWK! Oh, no! What have you done! The flute sounds like a barking seal! Don’t worry. You most likely got that awful squawk because you blew too hard. Unlike a trumpet where you have to blow fairly hard to get a good tone, the Native American flute requires almost no wind at all. Quickly realizing this, you blow more gently (all the holes are open as you blow), and you are instantly rewarded with a beautiful high tone. Encouraged, this time you close all the holes and blow again. Another squawk! Too hard, too hard, you think frantically! You blow again, only this time much, much more gently. An ethereal low tone groans deliciously from the barrel. You’re so thrilled you swear you can feel the bottom of your feet vibrating! What do you do next? Surely, you think, you must have had some experience back in your past with playing some kind of instrument like this. How hard can this be?

And so begins many a beginner’s exploration of the Native American flute. The Native American flute is easy to play, but it plays differently than probably any flute or whistle you might have played before. Many would-be flute musicians become discouraged quickly, and this book is meant to save you from that frustration. What kind of flute should you buy? How can you find a good flute builder who will meet your special needs? Do you need a music background before taking up the flute? Will you have to learn to read notes? Will it take you years to learn? Where can you find music for the Native American flute? Can you play any kind of music on the flute? Can you really play the blues? Folk? Classical? Children’s ditties? Romantic tunes? Meditative tunes? All these questions are answered plus many more.

Source: Amazon

Native American Stories – Tecumseh

“The Native American Story of Tecumseh
America First—One Hundred Stories from Our Own History, by Lawton B. Evans”

Tecumseh was probably the greatest American Indian that race has ever produced. He was the most eloquent orator ever known among the Indian tribes. When he spoke, his voice was deep and full, like an organ, his face shone with emotion, and his words were remarkable for their poetic beauty.

His father was a Shawnee warrior, and was killed in battle with white settlers, when Tecumseh was a mere child. This impressed him with a great resolve to keep the white men out of the Indian lands, and to fight them whenever he could.

He possessed a sensitive dignity, as is shown by the following incident. Upon one occasion, when he came with his warriors to hold a conference with General Harrison, he looked around, after he had finished his address, to find a seat. Seeing that none had been reserved for him, he appeared offended.

A white man, seated near General Harrison, arose and offered him his seat, saying, “Your father wishes you to sit by his side.”

“The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother. I shall sit in his light and rest on her bosom,” said Tecumseh. Whereupon, he sat down on the ground, in the full light of the sun.

Tecumseh was a noble soldier, and never allowed any prisoners to be tortured. He promised General Harrison that, in case of war between the Indians and the whites, he would not permit his warriors to massacre women and children. He faithfully kept his word. At the siege of Fort Meigs, the Indians began murdering their prisoners. Tecumseh ran in, and, brandishing his tomahawk, bade them stop at once. Turning to General Procter, who stood looking on, he cried out,

“Why do you permit this outrage? Why did you not stop those men, and save those wretched prisoners?”

Procter replied that the Indians could not be restrained, and that he could not prevent the massacre.

Tecumseh was furious at this, and said, “Begone, you coward. You are not fit to command men. Go and put on a petticoat, and sit with the women, where you belong.”

Procter was not a brave soldier, and, at one time, burned his stores and abandoned his fort, even though he had a thousand men and three thousand Indian allies. Tecumseh was so disgusted with his cowardice, that he compared him to a fat dog, who barked and held his tail high, when there was no danger, but who howled, and dropped his tail between his legs and ran, whenever any one attacked him.

When Tecumseh went to Alabama to stir up the Creek Indians against the whites of that section, he found them unwilling to rise against their neighbors and friends. All his eloquence failed to move them, and, to all his appeals and threats, they merely shook their heads. Finally, in a burst of anger, he cried out,

“Your blood is white, and no longer runs red like the rising sun. You do not fight because you are cowards and are afraid to fight. You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me, but you shall believe it. I am going back to Detroit. It will take me many days, but when I reach there, I shall tell the Great Spirit, and I shall stamp my foot on the ground, and shake every house in your village.”

So saying, he left, and journeyed northward. The Indians counted the days until he should reach home. Strangely enough, about the time he was due there, an earthquake shook the village. The Indians rushed wildly for their dwellings, crying out,

“Tecumseh has arrived in Detroit; he has told the Great Spirit; we feel the stamping of his foot!”

The last battle in which this warrior was engaged was that of the Thames. The Americans had been pursuing the British and their Indian allies for some time, until Tecumseh was tired of the disgraceful state of affairs, and told the British officer, Procter, that he would retreat no longer. “We will stand here and give battle,” said he. “I and my warriors were not made for running away from our enemies.”

The result was the battle of the Thames. At the opening of the conflict, Tecumseh turned to his friends, and said,

“Brother warriors, I shall never come out of this battle alive. I go there to die, but I go. My body will remain on the field, I know it will be so.

He unbuckled his sword, and handed it to one of his Chiefs, and said, “When my son becomes a great warrior, give him this sword, and tell him his father died like a brave Chief and a hero. Tell my people I died for their rights.” With that, he also took off the British uniform, which he had been wearing, and put on his own savage dress and war-paint.

The battle raged for a while with fury. Procter at last fled through the swamps and wilderness, escaping with a few followers. Tecumseh, however, brandishing his club, rushed upon his pursuers, and fell, pierced with many wounds.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

Native American actress Misty Upham never dream she would be walking the red carpet at Cannes to showcase a film shot on her reservation.

Upham features in “Jimmy P. Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian”, focused on the relationship between World War Two veteran Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot, and Georges Devereux, his psychoanalyst.

Upham said like Picard, played by Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro, she is Blackfeet, the largest tribe in Montana state. She said she was a direct descendant of the last chief and grew up on the reservation where much of the movie was filmed.

“I had no dreams and no way to make a dream. I had to leave the reservation,” Upham, 30, told a news conference on Saturday ahead of the premiere of the film’s premiere by French director Arnaud Desplechin.
“So 18 years later (I am) coming a full circle to the reservation I left to fulfil my dream.”

Upham says and another “Jimmy P.” actress, Michelle Thrush, a Cree from Canada, are the first Native American women in the official selection at Cannes, although organisers of the festival, now in its 66th year, were unable to confirm it.

One of 20 films competing for the main prize at the 12-day event on the French Riviera, the movie was inspired by a true story in Devereux’s 1951 book “Reality And Dream”.

Set in 1948, the film follows Jimmy as he checks into a military hospital in Topeka, Kansas, that specialises in mental illness for war veterans to be treated for numerous symptoms, including temporary blindness, hearing loss and dizzy spells.

The doctors are baffled by his psychological problems and decide to call in anthropologist and psychoanalyst Devereux (Mathieu Amalric) a specialist in Native American culture who spent two years living with the Mojave Native Americans.

Del Toro, who won the best actor award at Cannes in 2008 for “Che”, said it was important for him to understand the history of Native Americans to get to grips with his character.

The oppression of Native Americans remains a stain on the history of the United States following the seizure of land, removal of children from families, and violation of treaties.

The 2010 census found 5.2 million people in the United States identified themselves as American Indians and Alaska Natives, while government figures this year showed they had the highest poverty rate in the country, at 27 percent, from 2007 through 2011.

Upham, who plays the mother of Jimmy’s daughter, said the film recognised the different approach needed to treat psychological illness among Native Americans.

“We believe in spirits. We believe in ghosts. We believe in shape shifting. We believe in medicine and curses. We are very spiritual people,” said the actress, best known for the 2008 film “Frozen River”.

“What somebody else would call delusional, to us it is normal. That is why they had to create a new way to see what is going on in our minds without confusing the spirituality.”

“Jimmy P.” is Desplechin’s fourth film selected for the main competition at Cannes, with the prestigious Palme D’Or for best picture to be awarded on the festival’s final day, May 26.

Source: brecorder

Book title: Native American Recipes

Author: Mary Ruth Hughes

Illustrator: Gina Cruz-Rider

Book Description:
Thirty North American Indian tribes are represented in this compilation of unusual native recipes. Traditional, as well as, modern versions are preserved in this cookbook.

Source: Amazon

Mary Ruth Hughes

The Missouri Indians were part of the Southern Sioux tribes who lived along the Missouri River near the present-day border of Missouri and Nebraska. They were buffalo-hunters and farmers who lived in oven-shaped, earth-covered houses grouped into towns.

Smallpox had depleted their numbers, so the surviving Missouri Indians lived with the neighboring Oto Indians. Combined, these bands included about 250 people.

Many of the Missouris and Otos were away hunting buffalo when the Lewis and Clark expedition encountered their towns in July 1804. The Corps sent out two men to search for the Indians but came up empty. The captains decided to proceed up the river.

On August 2, a small group of Missouris and Otos arrived at the Corps’ camp site, which Clark had named Council Bluff – across and downriver from what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa. The leading chiefs were still away hunting, but Lewis and Clark invited six or seven lesser chiefs to a council the next morning.

On August 3, with great ceremony, Lewis and Clark held the first formal meeting between representatives of the United States and western Indians. The Indians observed as the soldiers marched in full regalia and demonstrated their skills with weaponry. The Corps’ show of decorum and military strength would establish the routine for subsequent councils.

During the council, the Indians were told they were the “children” of a new “great father” who would provide them with trade and protection in place of their unreliable commerce with the French and the Spanish. It was a speech Lewis would deliver to numerous tribes throughout the journey.

The Missouris were advised to make peace with other Indian tribes in order to bring the trade Lewis promised. He also urged the chiefs to send a delegation east to visit President Jefferson. When Lewis concluded, each chief received gifts including a peace medal and face paint.

On August 18, the leading Missouri chief, Big Horse, and main Oto chief, Little Thief, met with the Corps. Lewis gave his speech, but Big Horse responded with pointed requests for goods and whiskey. The Corps gave them tobacco, paint and beads, but the Missouri warriors were not satisfied and went away unhappy. Before departing, Little Thief indicated he would go to Washington in the spring.

In March 1805, a delegation including one Missouri chief and Little Thief met in Washington, D.C., with President Jefferson, who promised trade goods and told them he hoped for peace.

Source: pbs

Book title: The Native American Flute: Understanding the Gift

Author: John Vames

Book Description:
A comprehensive step by step guide for learning how to play Native American Flute as well as the “basics” of making music. Interactive with 39 track audio CD demonstrating all instruction. You will learn: Proper finger and breath control, how to ornament melodies, how to understand Pitch and Rhythms, How to practice successfully, How to creat your own songs, Useful scales to develop technique and How to read printed music and Nakai Flute Tablature

Source: Amazon

Native American Stories – Canonchet

“The Native American Story of Canonchet
Boy’s Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin”

The Narragansetts were a large and warlike people, and hard fighters. Their country covered nearly all present Rhode Island; the city of Providence was founded in their midst, when the great preacher Roger Williams sought refuge among them. They conquered other tribes to the north and west. When King Philip rose in 1675 they numbered, of themselves, five thousand people, and could put into the field two thousand warriors.

In the beginning, under their noble sachem Can-oni-cus, they were friendly to the English colonists. While Roger Williams lived among them they stayed friendly. They agreed to a peace with Sachem Massasoit’s Pokanokets, who occupied the rest of Rhode Island, east across Narragansett Bay. They marched with the English and the Mohegans to wipe out the hostile Pequots.

Canonicus died, and Mi-an-to-no-mah, his nephew, who had helped him rule, became chief sachem. Miantonomah was famed in council and in war. The colonies suspected him, as they did Alexander, son of Massasoit. They favored the Mohegans of the crafty sachem Uncas. When Miantonomah had been taken prisoner by Uncas, at the battle of Sachem’s Plain in Connecticut, 1643, the United Colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Plymouth directed that the Mohegans put him to death, as a treaty breaker.

Accordingly Uncas ordered him killed by the hatchet, and ate a piece of his shoulder.

Possibly Miantonomah deserved to die, but the hearts of the Narragansetts grew very sore.

It is scarcely to be wondered at that they favored the Pokanokets rather than the English, when King Philip, who also had suffered, called upon them to aid in cleaning the land of the white enemy. “Brothers, we must be as one, as the English are, or we shall soon all be destroyed,” had said Miantonomah, in a speech to a distant tribe; and that looked to be so.

Ca-non-chet, whose name in Indian was Qua-non-chet (pronounced the same), and Nan-un-to-noo, was son of the celebrated Miantonomah. He was now chief sachem of the Narragansetts, and the friend of King Philip.

He was a tall, strongly built man, and accused by the English of being haughty and insolent. Why not? He was of proud Narragansett blood, from the veins of a long line of great chiefs, and the English had given his father into the eager hands of the enemy.

Presently, he was asked to sign treaties that would make him false to the memory of Miantonomah and double-hearted toward the hopeful King Philip.

The papers engaged the Narragansetts not to harbor any of King Philip’s people, nor to help them in any way against the English, nor to enter a war without the permission of the English. He was to deliver the Philip and Wetamoo people, when they came to him.

Canonchet was not that kind of a man. He had no idea of betraying people who may have fled to him for shelter from a common enemy. A few of his men feared. It was suggested to him that he yield to the colonies, lest the Narragansetts be swallowed up by the English. He replied like a chief, and the son of Miantonomah.

“Deliver the Indians of Philip? Never! Not a Wampanoag will I ever give up! No! Not the paring of a Wampanoag’s nail!”

The venerable Roger Williams, his friend, the friend of his father and the friend of the long-dead Canonicus, had advised him to stay out of the war.

“Massachusetts,” said Roger Williams, “can raise thousands of men at this moment; and if you kill them, the king of England will supply their place as fast as they fall.”

“It is well,” replied Canonchet. “Let them come. We are ready for them. But as for you, Brother Williams, you are a good man; you have been kind to us many years. We shall burn the English in their houses, but not a hair of your head shall be touched.”

The colonies did not wait for Canonchet to surrender the King Philip people. The treaty had been signed on October 28, and on November 2 an army from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Plymouth was ordered out, to march against the Narragansetts, and seize King Philip and Queen Wetamoo, and punish Canonchet.

It was known that Queen Wetamoo was with Canonchet, but not certainly that King Philip had “kenneled” there. At any rate, down marched the English, their Mohegan and Pequot allies, all piloted by one Peter who might have been the husband of Wetamoo herself, but who probably was a Narragansett traitor.

Canonchet stood firm. To his notion, he was not obliged to surrender anybody, while the English held his brother and three other Narragansetts. Besides—”Deliver the Indians of Philip? No! Not the paring of a Wampanoag’s nail!”

On the afternoon of December 19, this year 1675, the bold English and their allies struck the great fortified village at Sunke-Squaw. Out from the heat and Smudge of the blazing wigwams fled Philip and Wetamoo and Canonchet, with their shrieking people, into the wintry swamp where the snowy branches of the cedars and hemlocks were their only refuge. Canonchet had lost a third of his nation; large numbers surrendered to the English; but, like his friend Philip, with his warriors who remained true he carried the war to the English themselves. And a terrible war it was.

In March Captain William Peirse was sent out with seventy stout men to march from Plymouth and head off the raging Narragansetts. Plymouth had heard that the haughty young sachem Canonchet was on his way to Plymouth, at the van of three hundred warriors.

Captain Peirse made his will and marched southward, to the Pawtucket River not far above Providence. Canonchet ‘s spies had marked him, and Canonchet was ready.

On March 26, which was a Sunday, Captain Peirse saw upon the other side of the river a party of Indians limping as if worn out and trying to get away. Therefore he crossed, near the Pawtucket Falls, in glad pursuit—and “no sooner was he upon the western side, than the warriors of Nanuntenoo, like an avalanche from a mountain, rushed down upon him; nor striving for coverts from which to fight, more than their foes, fought them face to face with the most determined bravery!”

There were Narragansetts still upon the east side of the river, also, to cut off retreat. The captain, fighting desperately, with his men ranged in two ranks back to back, sent a runner to Providence, only six or eight miles, for assistance; but so quickly was the work done, by Canonchet, that of all the English force, only one Englishman escaped, and not above a dozen of the scouts.

“Captain Peirse was slain, and forty and nine English with him, and eight (or more) Indians who did assist the English.”

Canonchet lost one hundred and forty, but it was a great victory, well planned and well executed. Captain Peirse had been a leader in the storming of the Narragansett fort at Sunke-Squaw, the last winter; that is one reason why the Canonchet warriors fought so ravenously, to take revenge.

On the day after the dreadful battle, from Connecticut, southwest, there marched a larger force of English and friendly Indians, to close the red trail of the Sachem Canonchet. He was feared as much as King Philip was feared.

Canonchet did not proceed against Plymouth. With thirty volunteers he had set out south for the Mount Hope region itself, in order to gather seed corn. The abandoned fields of the English along the Connecticut River waited. They ought to be planted to Indian corn.

On his way back to the Connecticut River with his seed corn, near the close of the first week in April he made camp almost upon the very battle ground above Providence, where yet the soil was stained by the blood of March 26.

He did not know that now the enemy were upon his trail indeed; but at the moment a company of fifty English under Captain George Denison of Southerton, Connecticut, and eighty Indians—the Mohegans led by Chief Oneka, son of Uncas, the Pequots by Cas-sasin-na-mon, the Niantics (formerly allies of the Narragansetts) by Cat-a-pa-zet—were drawing near.

Three other companies were in the neighborhood.

This day Canonchet was lying in his blanket, telling to a party of seven warriors the story of the battle-ground. The other warriors were scattered through the forest. Two sentries had been placed upon a hill.

Not far away the Captain Denison party already had killed one warrior, and had seized two old squaws. The squaws confessed that Nanuntenoo was yonder, the Indian scouts picked up the fresh trail, the Denison men hastened at best speed.

In the midst of his story, Canonchet saw his two sentinels dash headlong past the wigwam, “as if they wanted for time to tell what they had seen.” At once he sent a third man, to report upon what was the matter. This third man likewise suddenly made off at full pace, without a word. Then two more he sent; of these, one, returning breathless, paused long enough to say that “all the English army was upon him!”

“Whereupon, having no time to consult, and but little time to attempt an escape, and no means to defend himself, he began to fly with all speed. Running with great swiftness around the hill, to get out of sight upon the opposite side, he was distinguished by his wary pursuers,” and they were hot after him.

In fact, running hard around the hill, Canonchet wellnigh ran into the Niantics of Chief Catapazet, who were coming down right over the hill. He swerved, at the view-halloo, and lengthened his stride. Some of the English had joined the chase. Canonchet tore like a deer for the river.

They had not recognized him, for he was wearing his blanket. But so hotly they pressed him, that he needs must cast aside his blanket. This revealed to them his fine lace-embroidered coat, which had been given to him as a bribe, at Boston last October. Now they knew that he was a chief, and a personage, and they yelled louder, and ran faster.

Presently Canonchet stripped off his lacy coat, and dropped it. And soon loosening his belt of wampum, he droppcd that also. By this chief’s belt they knew that he was the great Canonchet, and faster still they ran.

However, he was out-footing all except one Indian. That Indian was a Pequot named Monopoide—the best runner of all, and better than Canonchet himself.

With only a single pursuer to be feared, Canonchet turned sharply and leaped into the river, to cross by a strange trail. As he splashed through, wading and plunging, seeing escape close before him if he could gain the opposite bank, he stumbled upon a stone. Falling forward he not only lost valuable time but soused his gun.

“At that accident,” he afterward said, “my heart and bowels turned within me so that I became like a rotten stick, void of strength.”

Before he might stand straight and fib his useless gun, with a whoop of triumph the lucky Pequot, Monopoide, was upon him; grabbed him by his shoulder within thirty rods of the shore.

The Pequot was not a large man, nor a strong warrior. Canonchet was both, and might yet have fought loose, to liberty. But he had made up his mind to quit. He offered no trouble; the guns of the pursuing party were covering him again, and he obeyed the orders.

He did not break his silence until young Robert Staunton, first of the English to reach him, asked him questions. This was contrary to Indian usage. Canonchet looked upon him disdainfully.

“You much child. No understand matters of war. Let your brother or chief come; him I will answer.”

Robert’s brother, John Staunton, was captain of one of the Connecticut companies that had been sent out to find the Narragansetts; but Canonchet was now turned over to Captain Denison.

He was offered his life if he would help the English. This brought from him a glare of rebuke.

He was offered his life if he would send orders to his people to make peace.

“Say no more about that,” he replied. “I will not talk of peace. I do not care to talk at all. I was born a sachem. If sachems come to speak with me, I will answer; but none present being such, I am obliged, in honor to myself, to hold my tongue.”

“If you do not accept the terms offered to you, you will be put to death.”

“Killing me will not end the war. There are two thousand men who will revenge me.”

“You richly deserve death. You can expect no mercy. You have said that you would burn the English in their houses. You have boasted that you would not deliver up a single Wampanoag, nor the paring of a Wampanoag’s nail.”

“I desire to hear no more about it,” replied Canonchet. “Others were as eager in the war as myself, and many will be found of the same mind. Have not the English burned my people in their houses? Did you ever deliver up to the Narragansetts any of the Narragansetts’ enemies? Why then should I deliver up to them the Wampanoags? I would rather die than remain prisoner. You have one of equal rank here with myself. He is Oneka, son of Uncas. His father killed my father. Let Oneka kill me. He is a sachem.”

“You must die.”

“I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything of which Canonchet shall be ashamed.”

Even his enemies admired him. The English compared him to some old Roman.

He was not killed here. Forty-three of his people, men and women, had been taken by the troops and scouts; a number of these were given over to death by the scout Indians. But Canonchet was borne in triumph to Stonington, Connecticut.

In order to reward the friendly Indians, the Pequots were permitted to shoot him, the Mohegans to behead and to quarter him, the Niantics to burn him. As a return favor, the Indians presented the head of Canonchet, or Nanuntenoo, to the English council at Hartford, Connecticut.

In the above fashion perished, without a plea, “in the prime of his manhood,” Canonchet of the Big Heart, last Grand Sachem of the Narragansetts. Presently only the name of his nation remained.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

“The Scioues Camps are handsom of a Conic form Covered with Buffalow Roabs Painted different colours and all compact & handsomly arranged,” wrote William Clark in his journal on August 29, 1804. He was describing a teepee-populated village. Teepees, conical tents constructed out of painted buffalo skins, were a common sight near the mouth of the James River. The mouth of the James, located in present-day southern South Dakota, was in the territory of the Yankton Sioux.

When they met the expedition at the end of August 1804, the Yanktons were ready to open a trade relationship with the United States. The Yanktons had already entertained British and French traders, and were aware that the world and their place in it was changing. Moreover, the tribe lacked firearms and ammunition, and many of its women and children were destitute. Yankton chiefs wanted to preserve their nation, and believed that the Corps of Discovery could help make that possible.

The first council between the Yanktons and the expedition took place with a good deal of pomp on August 30, 1804. Some 70 Yanktons journeyed to the Corps’ camp, all proceeded by musicians. During the meeting, the Yankton chief Weuche explained his people’s poverty to Lewis and Clark, as well as their need for a reliable trading partner. Afterward, Yankton braves demonstrated their proficiency with one of the weapons of their people – the bow and arrow – and then performed a series of ceremonial dances.

On the whole, the Yanktons’ talks with Lewis and Clark were not particularly successful. The Yanktons wanted rifles, ammunition and possibly whiskey from the Americans, but they were to get none of these. Instead, they received and accepted an invitation to send a delegation to Washington D.C., where they might begin trade discussions with President Jefferson.

Source: pbs

Book title: Native Blood

Author: Mark Reps

Book Description:
Small town sheriff: Big time problems In rural Arizona the murder of two children, one Apache and one White, seven years apart brings clashing cultures into closer view. Sheriff Zeb Hanks calls on his mentors former Sheriff Jake Dablo and Apache Medicine Man Jimmy Song Bird, who are the grandfathers of the dead children, to help him solve the crime. Beliefs, customs and even right and wrong are viewed in many differing lights as the men work together and separately to solve the crime and exorcise their personal demons.

Source: Amazon

The Walla Wallas and their chief Yelleppit encountered Lewis and Clark for the first time in early October of 1805. At the time, the expedition was rushing to reach the Pacific Ocean, and refused Yelleppit’s offer to stay with his people. However, the Walla Walla chief did manage to exact a promise from the captains to return to his village on their way back. When the Corps of Discovery re-entered Walla Walla territory at the end of April 1806, Yelleppit again asked the Americans to stop, and they did.

The Walla Wallas lived about 12 miles from the junction of the Snake and Columbia rivers in present-day southern Washington. Some 15 lodges comprised Yelleppit’s village, and the Walla Wallas, at their chief’s instruction, welcomed the Americans warmly. Relations between the two groups were simplified by the presence of a Shoshone woman who the Walla Wallas had captured. She translated Walla Walla to Shoshone for Sacagawea, opening the translation chain for the Corps’ interpreters.

Chief Yelleppit enjoyed the prestige of hosting his foreign visitors, yet also sought to trade for the expedition’s goods, especially items like kettles. To establish goodwill with the Corps, Yelleppit awarded Clark with a white horse, and supplied the rest of the expedition with firewood and roasted fish. In exchange, Yelleppit received Clark’s sword, 100 rounds of ammunition and some trade items.

When the Corps made their plans to depart known on their second day with the Walla Wallas, Yelleppit enticed them to stay one additional night. In return for their presence, the chief gave them horses, food, canoes and valuable information for reaching their next destination, the camp of the Nez Perces. That evening, a large party of Yakima Indians joined the Walla Wallas, and together, with the Corps of Discovery, the Indians threw a rousing celebration. Altogether, the attendants numbered in the hundreds, and all danced to the rhythms played on the Walla Wallas’ hide drums and rattles.

Source: pbs

Native American Stories – Catharine the Ojibwa

“The Native American Story of Catharine the Ojibwa
Boy’s Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin”

Old Fort Detroit was a stockade twenty feet high, in the form of a square about two-thirds of a mile around. It enclosed a church and eighty or one hundred houses, mainly of French settlers with a sprinkling of English traders. In the block-houses at the corners and protecting the gates, light cannon were mounted. The garrison consisted of only one hundred and twenty men of the Eightieth Foot. In the village there were perhaps forty other men.

On both sides of the river lay the fertile farms of the French settlers. Back of the farms on the east or Canadian side, and about five miles from Detroit, was the teeming village of Pontiac’s Ottawas. Potawatomis and Wyandots also lived near. At Pontiac’s call there waited more than a thousand warriors.

The set time approached. On May 1 Pontiac and forty chiefs and warriors entered the fort, and danced the calumet, a peace dance, for the pleasure of the officers. Pontiac said to Major Gladwyn that he would return, at the change of the moon, May 7, or in one week, to hold a council with him, and “brighten the chain of peace with the English.”

The major agreed. He was a very foolish man, for a chief. Having returned to his village, Pontiac called a different kind of a council, there—a war council of one hundred chiefs. They were to have their people cut off the ends of muskets that should be carried concealed under the blankets. Sixty chiefs and warriors should go with him into the council chamber at the fort; the others should linger in the streets of the town and at the fort gates.

He would speak to the major with a belt, white on the one side, green on the other. When he turned the belt and presented it wrong end first, let every warrior kill an English soldier, beginning with the officers. At the sound let every warrior outside the council use gun and hatchet.

On May 5 a French settler’s wife crossed the river to buy maple-sugar and deer-meat at the Ottawa village. She saw the warriors busy filing at their gun-barrels—shortening the guns to scarce a yard of length. This was a curious thing to do. When she went back to the post she spoke about it.

“That,” said the blacksmith, “explains why those fellows have been borrowing all my files and hack-saws. They wouldn’t tell me what for. Something’s brewing.”

When Major Gladwyn was informed, still he would not believe. But the fur-traders at the post insisted that when an Indian shortened his gun, he meant mischief. The opinion of fur-traders carried no weight with Major Gladwyn, the British officer.

The next evening Catharine, a pretty Ojibwa girl who lived with the Potawatomis, came to see him in his quarters. She was his favorite. She had agreed to make him a pair of handsome moccasins, from an elk hide. Now she brought the moccasins, and the rest of the hide.

Usually she had been much pleased to look upon and talk with the handsome young major in the red clothes. This time her face was clouded, she hung her head, and spoke hardly at all. Her eager girlishness had vanished. The major’s delight with the moccasins failed to cheer her up.

Trying to win her smiles, he told her the moccasins were so beautiful that he wished to give them to a friend. Would she take the elk-hide away with her, and make another pair of moccasins for himself?

She finally left, with strangely slow step, and backward glances. At sunset, when the gates of the fort were to be closed, the guard found her still inside. As she would not go, the sergeant took word to the major.

“She won’t talk with me, sir,” he reported.

“Send her in and I will talk with her,” ordered the major.

Catharine came, downcast, silent, and timid.

“Why have you not gone before the gates are shut, Catharine?”

She hesitated.

“I did not wish to take away the skin that is yours.”

“But you did take it away, as far as the gate.”

She hesitated more.

“Yes, that is so. But if I take it outside I can never return it.”

“Why not?”

“I cannot tell. I am afraid.”

“You can talk freely. Nothing that you say shall go to other ears. If you bring me news of value you will be well rewarded, and no one shall know.”

Catharine loved the major. Presently she told him of the mind of Pontiac, and the deed planned for to-morrow morning.

A cold fear clutched the heart of Major Gladwyn. He recalled the shortened guns, he recalled the Bloody Belt, he recalled the date made with him for a big council on the morrow. At last he rather believed.

So he sent away the trembling Catharine, that she might go to her village. He held a council with his officers.

Here they were, with only one hundred and twenty soldiers, and less than three weeks’ provisions, cut off by one thousand, two thousand, three thousand merciless Indian warriors, and by the French settlers and traders who probably would be glad to have the English killed.

“The English are to be struck down, but no Frenchman is to be harmed,” had said Catharine.

That looked bad indeed.

This night guards were doubled along the parapets, and in the block-houses. The major himself walked guard most of the night. From the distant villages of the Ottawas, the Wyandots, and the Potawatomis drifted the clamor of dances—an ugly sound, full of meaning, now.

Precisely at ten o’clock in the morning a host of bark canoes from the Ottawa side of the Detroit River slanted across the current, and made landing. Pontiac approached at the head of a long file of thirty chiefs and as many warriors. They walked with measured, stately tread. Every man was closely wrapped in a gay blanket.

They were admitted through the gate of the fort, but it was closed against the mass of warriors, women and children who pressed after.

As Pontiac, with his escort, stalked for the council room, his quick glances saw that the soldiers were formed, under arms, and moving from spot to spot, and that a double rank had been stationed around the headquarters.

In the council chamber he noted, too, that each officer wore his sword, and two pistols!

“Why,” asked Pontiac, of Major Gladwyn, “do I see so many of my father’s young men standing in the street with their guns?”

“It is best that my young men be exercised as soldiers, or they will grow lazy and forget,” answered the major.

Ha! Pontiac knew. Somehow his plans had been betrayed; his game was up, unless he chose an open fight.

His chiefs and warriors sat uneasily. They all feared death. By Indian law they ought to be killed for having intended to shed blood in a calumet council.

Pontiac started his talk. He acted confused, as though he was not certain what course to pursue.

Once he did seem about to offer the belt wrong end first, as the signal—and Major Gladwyn, still sitting, slightly raised his hand. Instantly from outside the door sounded the clash of arms and the quick roll of a drum, to show that the garrison was on the alert. The officers half drew their swords.

Pontiac flushed yet darker. He stammered, and offering the belt right end first, closed his talk, and sat down again.

Major Gladwyn made a short reply. He said that the English were glad to be friends, as long as their red brothers deserved it; but any act of war would be severely punished.

That was all. The major let the Indians file out again. Pontiac knew.

He was too great a leader, in the Indian way, to be balked by one defeat. He actually proposed another council; he actually persuaded the foolish major to send out to him two officers, for a peace talk. One of the officers barely escaped from captivity, the other never came back.

Then Pontiac boldly besieged Detroit, in white race fashion—the closest, longest siege ever laid by Indians against any fort on American soil.

His two thousand Indians swarmed in the forest, held the fences and walls and buildings of the fields, peppered the palisade with bullets and arrows, shot fire into the town; captured a supply fleet in the river, ambushed sallying parties, cut to pieces a column of reinforcements.

The siege lasted six months. The orders to attack went out. On May 16 Fort Sandusky, at Lake Erie in northern Ohio, was seized by the Wyandots and Ottawas, during a council.

On May 25, Fort St. Joseph of St. Joseph, Michigan, on Lake Michigan across the state from Detroit, was seized in like manner by the Potawatomis. On May 27, Fort Miami, near present Fort Wayne of Indiana, commanded by Ensign Holmes who had discovered the Bloody Belt, was forced to surrender to the Wyandots. Ensign Holmes himself was decoyed into the open, and killed.

On June 4, populous Michilimackinac of northern Michigan was pillaged. The Chippewas and Sacs celebrated the King’s Birthday, in honor of the English, with a great game of lacrosse in front of the post. Michilimackinac did not know that Detroit was being besieged! The gates were left open, the officers gathered to witness the game. The ball was knocked inside the palisades, the players rushed after—and that was the end of Michilimackinac.

On June 15 the little fort of Presq’ Isle, near the modern city of Erie on the Lake Erie shore of northern Pennsylvania, was attacked. It was captured in two days, by the Ottawas and Potawatomis from Detroit.

On June 18, Fort Le Boeuf, twelve miles south of it, was burned. Just when Fort Venango, farther south, fell to the Senecas, no word says, for not a man of it remained alive. June 1, Fort Ouatanon, below Lafayette on the Wabash River in west central Indiana, had surrendered.

Niagara in the east was threatened; Fort Legonier, forty miles southeast of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, was attacked by the Delawares and Shawnees, but held out; the strong Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg), with garrison of over three hundred soldiers and woodsmen, was besieged by the united Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingo Iroquois.

A second Bloody Belt had been dispatched by Pontiac from Detroit; as fast as it arrived, the allies struck hard. Of twelve fortified English posts, eight fell. Not only that, but the fiery spirit of Pontiac had aroused twenty-two tribes extending from Canada to Virginia, and from New York to the Illinois. A hundred English traders were murdered in camp, and on the trail. A thousand English are supposed to have been killed. Five hundred families of northern Virginia and of western Maryland fled for their lives.

While this work was going on, and the frontier settlements shuddered, and feared the morrow, Pontiac was sternly sticking to his siege of Fort Detroit.

The French around there complained to him that his men were robbing them of provisions, and injuring the corn-fields.

“You must stand that,” rebuked Pontiac. “I am fighting your battles against the English.”

He gave out receipts, for the supplies as taken. These receipts were pieces of bark, pictured with the kind of supplies taken, and signed with the figure of an otter—the totem of the Ottawas. After the war every receipt was honored, by payment.

Only his Ottawas were still fighting Detroit, when on October 30, this 1763, there arrived, from the French commander on the lower Mississippi, a peace belt and a messenger for Pontiac.

He had been told that peace had been declared between the French and the English, but he had not believed. Now he was told again, by word direct, that the king of France and the king of England had signed peace papers; the country was English, his father the king of France could not help him. He must stop his war, and “take the English by the hand.”

Weeks before this, the Indians to the south had withdrawn; his other allies were fading into the forest. So, sullen and disappointed, he, too, withdrew. His sun had set, but he tried to follow it southwestward.

Before he gave his hand to the English he did attempt another war. The tribes of the Illinois hesitated, in council.

“If you do not join my people,” thundered Pontiac, “I will consume you as the fire eats the dry grass of the prairies!”

The plot failed, but the Illinois did not forget his insulting words. In April, 1769, while leaving a council with the Illinois beside the Mississippi River, and wearing a blue-and-silver uniform coat given to him years before by the brave General Montcalm of the French, he was murdered by a Kaskaskia of the Illinois nation, in the forest which became East St. Louis.

The Kaskaskia had been bribed by an English trader, with a barrel of whiskey, to do the deed. There died Pontiac. He was buried, it is said, on the site of the present Southern Hotel in St. Louis City.

The Illinois suffered from this foul crime. All of Pontiac’s loyal people—the Ottawas, the Potawatomis, the Sacs, the Foxes, the Chippewas—rose against them and swept them from the face of the earth.

Now what of Catharine, who saved Detroit from Pontiac? She saved Detroit, but Fort Detroit did not save her. Pontiac was no fool; he very quickly had suspected her. He well knew that Major Gladwyn was her friend, and that she had taken the moccasins in to him.

She was seized by the chief, beaten almost lifeless with a lacrosse racquet, and condemned to the meanest of labor. After the siege, Major Gladwyn made no effort to rescue her or reward her. At last, when an old and miserable woman, she fell into a kettle of boiling maple sap, and died.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

Book title: American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays

Editor: Anne Waters

Book Description:
This book brings together a diverse group of American Indian thinkers to discuss traditional and contemporary philosophies and philosophical issues.

Source: Amazon

In the early 18th century, from spring through fall, an almost unlimited amount of salmon was available in the 12-mile stretch of the Columbia River later known as the Dalles. Control of this fertile section of the Columbia was shared by the Wasco Indians, who lived on the south bank, and the Wishrams, who occupied the north side.

Nixluidix, meaning “trading place,” was a Wishram village and a primary center of the area’s trade. When Lewis and Clark came to Nixluidix in October 1805, they discovered 20 large wooden houses, each home to three Wishram families. The expedition also found it had arrived near the end of an intense trading period that had started in mid-April. From April through mid-October, salmon made their upstream journey toward their spawning grounds, literally providing the Wishram with mountains of fish. In his journal, Clark recorded a total of 107 stacks of salmon, and estimated their total weight at over 10,000 pounds.

Indian tribes, among them the nearby Yakimas and more distant Walla Wallas and Nez Perces, made their way to Nixluidix to trade goods for the bounty of Wishram salmon. Locals brought meat, roots and berries, while tribes like the Nez Perces traded animal skins, horses and buffalo meat. In return, the Wishram gave their visitors dried salmon, which would keep for a long period of time and was an excellent source of winter food. Interestingly, the Nixluidix trade meetings were also a venue for intertribal socializing, gambling and meeting members of the opposite sex.

Lewis and Clark stayed with the Wishram for a short time, and Patrick Gass, the former carpenter, thought enough of the Wishram houses to note them positively in his journal. The expedition did what it could to promote peace among the various Indian tribes in the area, carrying out its ritual of presenting medals and gifts. Before departing, the captains negotiated a peace agreement between the Nez Perces and Wishram, a settlement that was celebrated that same evening in music and dance.

Source: pbs

Book title: Native American Songs and Poems: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions)

Editor: Brian Swann

Book Description:
Wonderful collection of authentic traditional songs and contemporary Indian verse composed by Seminole, Hopi, Navajo, Pima, Arapaho, Paiute, Nootka, other Indian writers and poets. Topics include nature’s beauty and rhythms, themes of tradition and continuity, the Indian in contemporary society, much more.

Source: Amazon

Book title: History Pockets: Native Americans, Grades 1-3

Author: Evan-Moor Educational Publishers

Book Description:
History Pockets-Native Americans, Grades 1-3, contains nine memorable discovery pockets. The introduction pocket gives an overview of the tribes in North America that are featured. The other pockets focus on food, clothing, shelter, and family life of eight Native American tribes. Each of the pockets contains: * a reproducible pocket label * three dictionary words and pictures, plus a shelter stamp * a fact sheet of background information for the teacher * a reproducible students information booklet complete with illustrations * arts and crafts projects * writing activities Evaluation forms are provided at the end of the book to give students a chance to reflect on all they have learned. The book includes the following pockets: * Introduction to Native Americans * The Inuit of the Arctic * The Tlingit of the Northwest * The Nez Perce of the Plateau * The Maidu of California * The Sioux of the Plains * The Navajo of the Southwest * The Iroquois of the Northeast * The Seminole of the Southeast

Source: Amazon

Native American Stories – Wijunjon

“The Native American Story of Wijunjon
Boy’s Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin”

The Assiniboins are of the great Sioux family. Today there are in the United States about one thousand of them. But when they were a free and powerful people they numbered as high as ten thousand, and ranged far from the Missouri River in northern North Dakota and northern Montana clear into Canada, above.

This cold, high country of vast plains made them hardy and roaming. In their proud bearing and good size they resembled the Dakota Sioux, but with the Sioux they had little to do, except in war. They were at war with the Mandans also, and other nations to the south. In the north they mingled with the Ojibwas or Chippewa people who had journeyed westward into Canada. The 0jibwas had given them their name, As-si-i-bo-in, meaning “They-cook-with-stones.”

The Assiniboins were horse Indians and buffalo hunters. They had two peculiar customs. They did cook their meat with stones, just as the Chippewas said. Instead of using kettles, they used holes. They dug a hole about the size of a large kettle; then they pressed a square of raw buffalo-hide into it, for a lining. This they filled with water; they put their meat in, and heating stones, dropped them in, too, until the water was boiling.

Their other peculiarity lay in their style of hair. The longer the hair, the better. They divided it into strands, and plastered the strands with a paste of red earth and hoof glue, in sections of an inch or two.

When the hair did not grow long enough to suit, they spliced it by gluing on other hair, sometimes horse-hair, until it reached the ground.

In the year 1831 Wi-jun-jon, or Pigeon’s-egg Bead, was a leading young warrior among the long-haired Assiniboins. It was a custom of those days to have chiefs and warriors from the various Indian tribes sent to Washington, to talk with their White Father and see how the Americans lived.

This was supposed to teach the Indians the value of white man’s ways, and to show them how useless was war with the white race.

The Assiniboins were still a wild people. They were located so far from St. Louis that they knew nothing about white man ways, except such as they noticed at the fur-trading posts—and here the ways were mixed with Indian ways.

So in the fall of this year Major J. F. A. Sanborn, the Indian agent at the American. Fur Company’s trading-post of Fort Union, where on the border between North Dakota and Montana the Yellowstone River empties into the Missouri River, decided to take a party of Indians to Washington.

The Assiniboins, the Cheyennes, the Blackfeet, the Crows—they all came to Fort Union, to trade their furs for powder, lead, sugar and blankets.

Major Sanborn asked the Assiniboins for a warrior. They appointed Wijunjon and another.

Now, this was to be a long journey, among strangers. To be sure, from the Mandans down-river, old Shaha-ka, or White Head, had made the trip, in 1806, when the Red Head Chief and the Long Knife Chief were bound home from the salty water; and he had returned unharmed. Others had gone since, from the upper Missouri, and others had died; Sha-ha-ka himself had almost been killed by the Sioux.

Nobody had gone yet, from as far away as the Assiniboin country; therefore young Wijunjon feared, but was brave. He bade his wife, Chin-cha-pee, or Fire-bug-that-creeps, and his little children goodby, and with the other Assiniboin and chiefs from the Blackfeet and Crows, set out on a fur company flat-boat under protection of Major Sanborn. The Assiniboin women on the shore wept and wailed. His people scarcely expected to see him again.

It was one thousand miles by river through the enemies of his nation, thence on to the great village of St. Louis; but he passed in safety. And when he began to see the first smaller villages of the Americans in Missouri, Wijunjon started in to count the houses, so that he might tell his people.

He had promised to report everything.

He commenced to count by making notches in his pipe stem—one notch for every lodge. The cabins became thicker, along the river banks, and his comrade needs must call off the lodges while he made the notches. Soon there was no more space on the pipe stem, and Wijunjon changed to his war club. Speedily he had filled this also.

Luckily, the barge tied up at the shore, while dinner was cooked. This gave him chance to cut a long willow stick, which surely would be enough.

In fact, so certain he was that the end of the white man’s lodges must be close before them, that he worked hard to recut the pipe stem notches and the war club notches, in his willow stick, to have all together. But this very day he had filled the willow stick, and the lodges before them seemed more numerous than those behind!

Ere they arrived in sight of St. Louis itself, he and his comrade had an arm-load of willow sticks—all filled with notches. And here was St. Louis! How many people? Fifteen thou and! How many lodges? Thousands of lodges!

Pigeon’s-egg Head pitched the bundle of willow sticks over-board. His knife was worn out, and his hand and brain were tired.

At St. Louis he stood for his portrait, painted by the same Artist Catlin who the next year, in the Mandan towns, listened to the hero tales of Mah-to-toh-pa. He was a great man at painting Indians, this Artist Catlin.

Wijunjon was somewhat confused by so many sounds and sights, but he made a fine figure of a chief—in his mountain-goat skin leggins and shirt, decorated with porcupine quills, and with scalp locks from his enemies; his long plaited hair, which reached to the ground; his war bonnet of eagles’ plumes; his buffalo-hide robe, painted with the battles of his career; his beautiful moccasins; and his quiver and bow and bull-neck shield.

Having had his portrait painted, he continued on the long trail, of two thousand more miles by water and by stage, to Washington. And as every mile of it was amidst still more lodges of the white man, he soon saw that all the willow sticks of the Missouri River could not have counted their numbers.

This winter Wijunjon and his companions had a wonderful time among the white men. The Pigeon’s-egg Head was the foremost. He was the first to shake the hand of the Great White Father. He declined nothing. The sights of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York—he inspected them all. He scarcely rested, night or day. He learned so much that when, in the spring of 1832, he turned homeward, he was filled to bursting.

At St. Louis the first “through” steamboat, the Yellowstone, was waiting to ascend to Fort Union and the Assiniboin country. Artist Catlin was aboard. This was to be his first trip, also.

The steamboat Yellowstone made a huge sensation, as it ploughed the thick muddy current of the Missouri, frightening the Indians and buffalo along the shores. It moved without sweeps—it nosed for the deepest channels—and the Indians called it “Big-medicine canoe-with-eyes.” It spoke with its guns, and belched much smoke—and they called it “Big Thunder-canoe.”

But Wijunjon feared not at all. He was used to thunder-canoes, now; and he had seen many great sights, back there in the villages of the white men. In fact, he was a sight, himself, for on the way up he had changed his clothes, that his people might know him for a wide traveler.

Gone were his fringed and quilled goat-skin legging and shirt; gone his war bonnet and painted robe and handsome moccasins, his bow and quiver and shield.

Instead, he wore a badly fitting colonel’s uniform, of the United States Army, given to him by the Great White Father: wrinkled trousers and coat of bright blue, with gilt epaulets upon the shoulders, and a stiff collar that reached above his ears. Atop his long painted hair there was settled, to the coat collar, a stove-pipe hat, with a silver-braid band and a red wool plume two feet high. His feet were squeezed into high-heeled military boots of shiny leather. Around his neck was a tight black stock, or collar. Around his waist was a red sash. Upon his hands were loose white cotton gloves. Upon his chest, and the ruffles of a white shirt, dangled a silver medal, on a blue ribbon. Hung by a belt across one shoulder, at his leg dangled a huge broad-sword. In one hand he carried a blue umbrella, in the other a fan, and in his arms a keg of rum.

Thus Wijunjon, the big brave, proudly strode the deck of the steamer Yellowstone, and impatiently looked forward to the moment when he might step off, among his people.

The moment came. Two thousand Indians had gathered on the prairie at Fort Union, to greet the thunder-canoe and the returning travelers. Wijunjon led the procession down the gang-plank.

It was not Indian etiquet to make an ado over the return. Wijunjon was roundly eyed, but nobody spoke to him. His wife, the Fire-bug-that-creeps, was here; so were his children, who scarcely knew him; so were his old parents. He felt that he was admired and that his family and friends were glad to see him; but they let him alone and he only stalked about in his glory, whistling the American war-cry of “Yankee Doodle.”

After due time, of course they all loosened up. This night in his lodge in the Assiniboin village he commenced to tell his stories. But he could not tell one tenth—and yet, with the very first, several of the old men and chiefs arose and went out.

They said that this Wijunjon was a liar, and that they would not listen to him. The white people were known to be great liars, and he had learned from them!

In vain, the next day, and the next day, the Pigeon’s-egg Head tried to make himself popular.

First, he let his wife cut off the tails of his frock coat, to fashion herself a pair of nice blue leggins. His silver-lace hat-band she took for garters. The rest of his coat he gave to his brother; and now he wore his white shirt with the tails outside.

He gave away his boots—which hurt his feet. He gave away the tails of his shirt, also his brass studs and sleeve-buttons. And with his keg of rum, and his broad-sword dragging and tripping him, he paid visits from lodge to lodge, and whistled “Yankee Doodle.”

Pretty soon he had nothing left but his blue umbrella. That was the only thing he kept. Even his hat was gone; his sword was used by his wife, as a meat chopper. And still he was not popular.

Each night men and women gathered from near and far, to hear him talk, in his lodge. They sat silent and critical, while he told them the honest truth.

He worked very hard. He labored to describe the long journey, and the marvelous number of white man’s lodges, and villages, and the stage coaches, and the railroads; the forts, and the ships-of-many-big-guns, and the tremendous “council-house” at Washington; and the patent office (great-medicine-place, filled with curious machines); and the war parade of American soldiers, and the balloon—a huge ball which carried a man to the Great Spirit in the sky; and the beautiful white squaws with red cheeks.

The people listened; and when they went out they said among themselves: “Those things are not true. The Pigeon’s-egg Head is the greatest liar in the world. The other nations will laugh at the Assiniboins.”

Wijunjon did not despair. He was so full of words that he simply must talk, or burst. He wished that he might bring forward the other Assiniboin who had been with him and who knew that all these stories were true; but the other Assiniboin had died on the way home. That was too bad.

However, he stuck to his stories, for he knew that he was right. His people had sent him to see, and he had seen, and he spoke only true words.

After a while, the Assiniboins took a different view of Wijunjon. Any person who had such stories in his brain was certainly great medicine. No common liar could invent these stories about impossible wonders.

Yes, Wijunjon was doubtless taught by a spirit. He had dreamed.

Now the Assiniboin people looked upon Wijunjon with awe and fear. A person equipped with such power might be very dangerous. They decided that he ought to be killed.

Meanwhile Wijunjon went right on telling his stories. He still had hopes—and besides, it was pleasant to be the center of a gaping circle, and to walk around with folks gazing so at him.

There was a young man who agreed to rid the Assiniboins of this wizard. Beyond question, Wijunjon was too great medicine to be killed by an ordinary bullet; another way should be found.

This young man, also, was a dreamer. And in his dreams he was told, he said, how to kill Wijunjon. The wizard must be shot with an iron pot handle! Nothing else would do the work.

Accordingly, the young man appointed to kill Wijunjon for being bad medicine, found an iron pot handle, and spent a whole day filing it down to fit into the muzzle of his gun. Then from behind he shot the terrible Pigeon’s-egg Head and scattered his lying brains about, and the wizard fell dead.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

At the time of Lewis and Clark, the land on the northwest Oregon coast was home to the Tillamook Indians. The Tillamooks lived in a series of towns starting at the mouth of the Necanicum River and continuing southward to Tillamook Bay. As it turned out, the Tillamook village of Necost would be the southernmost point reached by the Corps of Discovery on the Oregon coast.

The Tillamooks’ primary encounter with the expedition came in January 1806. A large whale washed ashore on the beach near Necost, and the Tillamooks were quick to make use of the creature. They sliced off chunks of blubber, piled them in a wooden trough, and cooked out the oil, saving it for later. The blubber was kept for food.

After the Corps heard about the whale, Clark led a party south from the expedition’s winter residence at Fort Clatsop to trade for blubber. Thirty-five miles and two days later, when Clark reached the beach, he found that the Tillamooks had stripped the whale to the bones. The Indians bargained with him for the blubber, and in exchange for 300 pounds and some oil, the Tillamooks received some trade goods.

Source: pbs

Book title: Native Wisdom for White Minds

Author: Anne Wilson Schaef

Book Description:
You don’t have to be white to have a white mind.

What is a white mind? As Anne Wilson Schaef learned during her travels throughout the world among Native Peoples, anyone raised in modern Western society or by Western culture can have a white mind. White minds are trapped in a closed system of thinking that sees life in black and white, either/or terms; they are hierarchical and mechanistic; they see nature as a force to be tamed and people as objects to be controlled with no regard for the future.

This worldview is not shared by most Native Peoples, and in this provocative book, Anne Wilson Schaef shares the richness poured out to her by Native Americans, Aborigines, Africans, Maoris, and others. In the words of Native Peoples themselves, we come to understand Native ideas about our earth, spirituality, family, work, loneliness, and change. For in every area of our lives we have the capacity to transcend our white minds–we simply need to listen with open hearts and open minds to other voices, other perceptions, other cultures.

Anne Wilson Schaef often heard Elders from a wide variety of Native Peoples say, “Our legends tell us that a time will come when our wisdom and way of living will be necessary to save the planet, and that time is now.” Anyone ready to move from feeling separate to a profound sense of connectedness, from the personal to the global, will find the path in this mind-expanding, deeply spiritual book.

Source: Amazon

Book title: Native American Healing – A Lakota Ritual

Author: Howard P Bad Hand

Book Description:
Grounded in music, this book describes a Lakota ceremony in terms of the music used in each successive element of the ceremony from start to finish. Within this framework, the author, a widely known and respected Lakota singer, ceremonial leader and healer who happens to have been educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, describes and expands upon the formative personal encounters with his Lakota elders on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota that lead him to his current understanding of each part of the ceremony. A unique individual perspective on living well in all the senses of the word, these narratives function much like commentaries on I Ching hexagrams — illumination and explication of practical applications of the natural laws that govern the art of peaceful and productive living.

Source: Amazon

Native American Stories – Samoset and Massasoit

“The American Story of Samoset and Massasoit
American History Stories, Vol. I. (Revised Edition), by Mara L. Pratt”

From the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620, there had been continual trouble with the Indians. The Indians, you remember, were kind to the white men at first; but after the white men began to be cruel and hard to them, they, too, grew hard and cruel, and there seemed nothing too terrible for the Indians to do in revenge.

The newcomers thought that these Indians had very strange ways of carrying on their battles. They never came out and met the enemy face to face in battle array, as the white men were then used to doing, but would skulk around behind trees, in swamps, or in the high grass.

When the white men first used muskets and gunpowder, the Indians were terribly frightened; but it was not long before they, themselves, learned to use them.

One day an old Indian chief begged some gunpowder from a white man and ran away to his wigwam with it.

The white man watched to see what he would do with it. When he reached his wigwam, he called some of his friends about him and, after a long council together, they began to plant the powder. They thought it would grow like corn and beans.

When an Indian killed a white man in battle, he always tried to tear off the skin from the top of the white man’s head. These were called scalps. The more scalps he could get the braver he thought he was. After a battle he would show the scalps, with great pride, to the people of his village.

These Indians were a very wandering people, never staying in one place very long at a time. When they made up their minds to move, the women would take down the tents, strap their babies onto their backs and trudge on the best they could, carrying, on their shoulders, the poles and household wares, the mats and the furs. The men would march on ahead, with nothing but their bows and arrows.

Sometimes the poor women would sink under their heavy loads. Then the men would beat them and kick them until the poor things would rise and struggle on.

When the Indians reached a place which looked pleasant for a camping ground, the men would throw themselves down upon the ground, in a sunny place, and lie there smoking and napping, while the women set up the tents and got the camps in order.

The men treated the women like slaves. They expected them to do all the work, such as planting the corn, building the tents, carrying the baggage; while they did nothing but hunt and fish and smoke and fight.

But, in reading of this life of the Indians, let us judge them not too harshly. They were cruel to the women and girl children, that is true; but it was because they knew no better rather than because they meant to be cruel.

Remember they were rude, rough people, accustomed to war and to fighting. Surrounded on all sides by enemies, they grew to regard physical strength and skill in overcoming an enemy as the highest virtue in the world; and, consequently, they had come to look upon women as of very little account—good enough to do the cooking and the drudgery of wigwam life; but that was all.

They had never learned that men and women, boys and girls, were to be judged and valued by something better and higher than mere brute force.

“Good to squaw!” exclaimed an Indian in surprise, when one of the colonists had rebuked him for his treatment of his wife. “She no fight—no scalp!” and I suppose no argument could have convinced the Indian that he was wrong; or that, since she could neither fight nor scalp, it was worth while to make of her anything better than a slave or a servant.

The Puritans, you will remember, landed at Plymouth one cold December day. A few Indians had been seen on the top of the hill when they first landed, but they had fled at the sight of the white men, and were not seen again for some time.

Glad, indeed, were the white men that they did not again appear until they got their log cabins built, in which their wives and children might be safe from the arrows of these strange red men.

Weeks passed by. At last, one morning in March, when the Puritans were holding a town meeting, in stalked a solitary Indian. The Puritans were not overjoyed to see him, you may be sure.

They waited for him to speak. Solemnly he looked about upon them all, and then cried, “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!”

These were indeed welcome words; for a minute before the white men had stood breathless, wondering whether this stranger was about to declare peace or war upon them.

Samoset—for that was the name of this visitor—was a tall, straight man, with long black hair, and was arrayed in feathers and furs, and colored with bright paints, as was the custom of these savages.

Samoset was so delighted with the manner in which the white men received him, that he speedily declared his intention of staying with them all night. The white men did not relish that; but, not daring to displease him, they made him comfortable for the night in one of the cabins, and kept watch over him until morning.

At sunrise he was ready to return to his home, and the Puritans gladly bade him farewell.

I am afraid Samoset hadn’t very many ideas of what we call etiquette. He did not wait for the Puritans to return his call, but appeared again the very next day, bringing with him five other Indians.

The Puritans were annoyed with this second visit; however, they gave them all food and drink, after which the six Indians danced and sang in a fashion peculiar to themselves.

At night the five Indians went away, but Samoset had made up his mind to stay longer with his new friends.

A few days later, seeing that he had no idea of going home, the Puritans sent him to find Massasoit, who, as Samoset had told them, was the chief of the Indian tribes in that neighborhood—the Wampanoags.

Soon Massasoit, the chief, came, with sixty armed and painted warriors; terrible to look at in their feathers and paint. But Massasoit did not come to fight. He wanted peace between his tribe and the strange people. After a little talk, he sat down with John Carver, the Governor of this little colony, smoked the pipe of peace with him and promised to befriend the colony as long as he should live.

This treaty he always kept, and, as he was a very powerful chief, the Puritans were safe from Indian attack as long as he lived. It was after his death that their real trouble with Indians began.

South of the Plymouth Colony there lived a tribe of Indians who hated Massasoit’s tribe. They also hated white men; therefore, you may know that when they learned that Massasoit was protecting these Puritans, they were doubly angry. For a long time they annoyed the colonists in little ways, but there had been no real trouble.

At last, one day, there marched into the village a huge Indian, covered with his war paint, and carrying in his hand a long snake-skin.

This skin he presented to William Bradford, who was now Governor of the colony, telling him that in the snake-skin was a bundle of arrows.

“And what does that mean?” inquired Bradford.

“War, war, war!” yelled the messenger.

“Very well,” said Bradford, calmly; “you may take this back to your chief.” And as he spoke, he emptied the skin of its arrows and filled it full of shot and gunpowder.

“This means,” said Bradford, “that if your chief comes to us with arrows, we will come to him with gunpowder and shot.”

The messenger understood, and, snatching the skin, he ran out of the village to his home. There was no more trouble with that tribe of Indians.

One day word came to the Puritans that Massasoit was dying, and that he wished to see the white men once more.

Quickly, one of the Puritans, Edward Winslow, who knew considerable about medicine, hastened to Massasoit’s home.

He found the tent, in which Massasoit lay, so full of people that the sick man could hardly breathe. These Indians, both men and women, were howling and dancing around him, trying, so they said, to drive away the bad spirits which were giving him pain.

This was a custom of theirs when an Indian was ill. If the sick man recovered, they believed it was because their noises had scared away the evil spirits; if he did not recover, it was because they had not made a noise great enough.

When Winslow arrived, he set to work to do all he could to relieve the poor chief, who was suffering from high fever.

In two or three days, Massasoit was quite well again. The Indians looked upon the cure as a miracle, and families came from miles and miles around to see the wonderful “medicine man.”

No one was more glad of Massasoit’s recovery than the white man himself; for all knew that if Massasoit died the tribes of Indians on all sides would at once rush upon the white settlements, burn the houses, scalp the men, and carry away the women and children as captives.

And this did happen within a very few years. After Massasoit’s death, the Indians began to grow jealous of the increasing power of the white men. They were being gradually driven from all their hunting grounds.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Teton Sioux occupied two villages near present-day Pierre, South Dakota. One village was located on the Missouri River itself, while the other was situated off a tributary, the Bad River. Among French and Canadian traders, as well as other neighboring tribes, the Tetons were known for aggressiveness and power. Intent on controlling traffic through their portion of the river, they would demand large gifts from passing merchants. Sometimes, they even used more violent tactics.

Given their reputation, perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of Teton culture concerned the tribe’s relationship with their Arikara neighbors. The Tetons made their military might very clear to the Arikaras, yet the Arikaras had one thing to offer that kept their relationship with the Tetons a good one: corn. The Arikara were great farmers, and their corn crop was essential to the survival of the Tetons. In exchange for clothes, guns and other supplies provided by the Tetons, the Arikaras shared their horses and corn.

There would be no kind of similar relationship between the Tetons and Lewis and Clark, however. At the first council with the leaders of the Teton tribe, the expedition went through its practiced ritual for meeting Indians, parading in uniform and demonstrating an air gun. The display did little to impress the Tetons, who perceived the Americans as competitors for control of trade in the region. Tensions increased between the two sides, nearly resulting in an armed conflict. Fortunately, the Teton chief Black Buffalo intervened and brought things back to a more diplomatic level.

Over the following three days, the Tetons hosted the Corps, though the expedition kept its keelboat anchored almost a mile away. During the Corps’ stay, Clark made detailed notes of Teton culture. In his journal, the Tetons are described as thin, small and generally ill-looking. Teton men wore hawk feathers about their heads and robes over their bodies, while women dressed in buffalo skins and robes. During the expedition’s stay, the Tetons held a number of celebrations – scalp dances – of a recent war victory over the rival Omahas.

A number of confrontations between the Tetons and the expedition brought the Americans visit to an end. No one in the Corps of Discovery spoke Sioux, and the inability of the two groups to communicate effectively played a significant part in several misunderstandings. After another argument between the Tetons and the expedition nearly escalated into fighting, Lewis and Clark continued upriver.

Source: pbs

Book title: The Native Peoples of North America: A History

Author: Bruce Johansen

Book Description:
From the earliest traces of first arrivals to the present, Native Americans represent a diverse and colorful array of cultures. Ranging North America and topics as diverse as archaeological discoveries from thousands of years ago and accounts of reservation life today, this study draws on traditional records as well as oral histories and biographical sketches to bring the history of these varied peoples to life.

Johansen’s account, now available for the first time in one comprehensive volume, tackles the various theories that date Native Americans’ first probable appearance perhaps 30,000 years before Columbus’s arrival. Chapters trace the explosion of westward expansion and include personal sketches of some of those famous for native resistance such as Tecumseh’s six-nation alliance, among many others. The book also explores the new wave of Native American activism that began in the 1960s, reservation life today, the repatriation of artifacts, and the current and widespread revival of native language studies.

Written in a compelling and accessible style, this book not only provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of North American Indians, but also offers an uncommonly rich description of the material and intellectual ways that Native American cultures have influenced the life and institutions of people across the globe.

Source: Amazon

Native American Stories – Standing Bear

“The Native American Story of Standing Bear
Boy’s Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin”

The Ponca Indians were members of the large Siouan family. They had not always been a separate tribe. In the old days they and the Omahas and the Kansas and the Osages had lived together as Omahas, near the mouth of the Osage River in eastern Nebraska. Soon they divided, and held their clan names of Poncas, Omahas, Kansas and Osages. The Poncas and Omahas clung as allies. Finally the Poncas remained by themselves, low down on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska.

When the captains, Lewis and Clark, met some of them, the tribe had been cut by the small-pox to only some two hundred people. They never have been a big people. Their number today, about eight hundred and fifty, is as large as ever in their history.

They and the Omahas warred with the Sioux, but they never warred with the white men. They have always been friendly to the white men, except once; and that once brings up the story of Standing Bear.

Back in 1817 the Poncas made a treaty of friendship with the United States; and in 1825 they made another treaty, allowing white traders to live among them, and agreeing to let their own bad men (if any) be punished by the United States; and in 1859 they made another treaty, selling their hunting grounds to the United States, and keeping a tract on the Niobrara River for their own homes.

None of these treaties did they break. They were at peace with even the Sioux. They had good farms, and were prospering.

But in 1868 the United States laid out a new reservation for the Sioux. By a mistake this took in the Ponca reservation in Nebraska, and the Poncas were not told. The way they found out, was this: The Sioux began to come in and claim the land.

“That is not right,” said the Poncas. “You do not belong here. All this country is ours. Go back. We do not want you.”

So there was fighting, every little while, and the Poncas lost many warriors. This continued for nine years, until, by the raids of the Sioux, one fourth of the Poncas had been killed or captured.

Still they had not been told by the United States that these lands were theirs no longer; but, suddenly, in 1877, they were told that they must get out.

At this time they had three villages, on the lower Niobrara River, and eight bands, each under a chief. The chiefs were Standing Bear, White Eagle, Big Soldier, Traveling Buffalo, Black Crow, Over-the-land, Woodpecker, and Big-Hoofed Buffalo.

The United States informed the eight chiefs that they must remove their people to the Indian Territory, but did not say why.

Standing Bear had been born in 1829, so he was forty-eight years old. He stood high among the Poncas, because of his clan, the Wa-zha-zhe—a clan that could cure rattle-snake bites and work other wonders.

He strongly opposed giving up the Ponca home-land, upon which the tribe had lived for almost one hundred years, and which the United States had agreed, on paper, to give them in exchange for their hunting grounds. The other chiefs thought the same. They could not understand why they all should be thrown off, when they had done nothing wrong.

But the white men paid no attention. One of them, who was the United States Indian Inspector, only answered:

“The President says that you must sell this land. He will buy it and pay you money, and give you new land in the Indian Territory.”

“We do not know your authority,” argued Standing Bear. “You have no right to move us until we have held a council with the President.”

“If you like the new land, then you can see the President and tell him so,” offered the inspector. “If you don’t like it, then you can see him and tell him so.”

So Standing Bear and nine other chiefs went; but they were dubious.

The inspector showed the three pieces of land, and told them to choose. All the pieces were bad pieces. It was a hot country and a bare country, and not suited to the Poncas, who had good corn-fields and houses in their own country of the Niobrara.

Besides, now the white man said that they were to have no pay for their Niobrara land. He told the chiefs, according to Standing Bear:

“If you do not accept what land is offered you here, I will leave you here alone. You are one thousand miles from home. You have no money. You cannot speak the language.”

Then he slammed the door.

“But we do not like this land,” explained Standing Bear. “We could not make a living. The water is bad. Now send us to the President, as you promised.”

The man would not send them. He would not take them home. He would not give them any of the Indian money, for buying food. He would not give them a paper, to show to the people along the way. He would not give them the interpreter, to talk for them. He would not take them to a railroad.

“He left us right here,” said Standing Bear. “It was winter. We started for home on foot. At night we slept in hay-stacks. We barely lived till morning, it was so cold. We had nothing but our blankets. We took the ears of corn that had dried in the fields; we ate it raw. The soles of our moccasins wore out. We were barefoot in the snow. We were nearly dead when we reached the Oto reservation. It had been fifty days.”

Their feet made bloody marks on the Oto reservation. The Otos and the Oto agent treated them kindly. They stayed ten days, to rest; then the Otos gave them each a pony, and in two more weeks they were home.

It had been a cold, hungry journey, of five hundred miles, and their relatives and friends were glad to see them again.

But the United States inspector was waiting for them. He was angry. He said that the Great Father had ordered the Poncas to change homes. It did not seem to matter whether or not they liked the new home. And he called for soldiers, and all the Poncas were bundled out of their villages and taken to the hot country of the south. On the way women and children died. Standing Bear’s daughter died.

Just as Standing Bear and the other chiefs had tried to explain, the new country was not a good country for the Poncas. It was humid and hot; their Niobrara country had been dry and bracing. Within one year a third of them were dead from sickness; the rest were weak and miserable. They pined for the villages that they had built and loved, and that they had lost without any known reason.

After a year and a half Standing Bear’s boy died, as so many others had died; and the heart of Standing Bear was heavy. He did not sleep, by thinking that his son’s bones must lie here in this unfriendly country. His medicine demanded that the boy should rest with their ancestors, in the Ponca ground along the dear Niobrara.

Therefore, in January, 1879, he placed the bones in a sack, and tied the sack to his neck, and taking his people who could travel, he set out to walk to Ponca land.

That was hard work. They made their way as best they could, but had been over three months on it when, in May, they arrived at the reservation of their friends the Omahas, near the Missouri River in northeastern Nebraska.

Chief Standing Bear asked the Omahas if they might rest, and plant a few acres of ground, so as to get food. The Omahas gave them seed and ground. Standing Bear still had the bones of his son, in the bag. When he had started a crop, he was going on with the bones, and bury them at the Niobrara, where the Poncas of happier years had been buried.

Before the crop was in, soldiers appeared, and arrested him and all his party, to take them back to the hot country.

This much alarmed the Omahas. They had heard how the Poncas had been moved off without warning and without reason. Standing Bear was not being allowed to stay; he had lost hg country forever. The same thing might happen to the Omahas.

They had a similar treaty with the United States.

They thought that they owned their lands. They had been improving them and living off them for years. They had spent much money of the tribe, for tools and buildings, and were becoming like white men. The Government had issued papers to them, showing which land each man possessed.

Now they were liable to lose their lands, as the Poncas had lost.

The Omahas hastened to ask white lawyers about it.

They were told that the papers did not show that they owned the land; the papers only showed which lands each man had a right to farm.

The Omahas were Indians, and not white citizens, and could not own lands, man by man. When a man died, his land might be given to somebody else.

Now dread fastened upon the Omaha tribe. They hastened to draw up a petition to Congress, asking that the lands which their men owned or thought they owned be put down on paper forever. They wanted titles such as the white men had, so the lands could be recorded.

Miss Alice Fletcher, from Washington, had been sent to study the Omaha people; and they appealed to her. She helped them. The petition went to Washington, but the months passed without an answer.

Meanwhile Standing Bear and his bag of bones and his party were being taken south, by the soldiers from Fort Crook, Omaha, to the sickly hot country. When they camped on their way, near Omaha, a newspaper man talked with them. His name was Mr. T. H. Tibbles.

The story was printed in the Omaha papers, and at once Standing Bear had many white allies.

The Omaha City people invited him to come in and talk to them; and so he did, in a church that was crowded with listeners. Two lawyers, Mr. Poppleton and Mr. Webster, adopted him as a client; and before the soldiers had started on with him, the lawyers asked the court for a writ of habeas corpus—a challenge to the United States to surrender him, as a person who had been unlawfully arrested.

The United States argued that Standing Bear was an Indian, and that an Indian was not a “person,” under the laws of the United States; he did not have any rights, in court.

Standing Bear had left his tribe, and was nobody, until he returned; and even then, he would be only an Indian.

Standing Bear’s lawyers brought witnesses into court, to state that the Standing Bear party had traveled peacefully, like good citizens; had not even begged along the way.

Standing Bear was told to arise and repeat his story.

Part of it is contained in this chapter. It was a remarkable speech. The people in the court-room believed it. Standing Bear’s heart warmed. He was no Indian; he was a man.

The judge decided. He said that an Indian was a person, and had a right to the courts, and to liberty when he had not done wrong. The Poncas had been unjustly removed by force from their lands, and Standing Bear’s party had been unjustly arrested. Therefore they should be released.

When this word was carried to Standing Bear by his lawyers, he was so pleased that he almost wept.

“Before this,” he said, “when we have been wronged we went to war to get back our rights and avenge our wrongs. We took the tomahawk. We had no law to punish those who did us wrong, and we went out to kill. If they had guns and could kill us first, it was the fate of war. But you have found us a better way. You have gone into court for us, and I find that our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for the tomahawk. I want to lay it down forever.” So he put it on the floor. “I lay it down. I have found a better way. I can now seek the ways of peace.”

He gave the tomahawk to Attorney Webster, “to keep in remembrance of the great victory.”

And a great victory it was, not only for the Poncas, but for all the Indians. Standing Bear’s trip with the bones had gained him many new friends.

Now he traveled straight to the Niobrara, and nobody dared to stop him.

The next winter he made a tour of the East, with interpreters, and with Mr. Tibbles the newspaper ally. He spoke from many platforms, telling of the wrongs of the Indians. The newspapers everywhere spread his talk wider. Soon letters from white people and their societies began to pour into Washington, for the President and for the Congressmen.

As a result, in the spring of 1880 the Senate of the United States sent a commission into the West, to find out if Standing Bear’s stories were really true.

They were true. Therefore the Poncas were told that they might go back to the Niobrara, if they wished. Some did so. They were called the Cold Country Band. Those who were willing to stay in the Indian Territory were granted better lands, and they were paid for the lands that they had lost in the north. They were called the Hot Country Band.

Each band was given titles to the lands held by it. The Omahas, too, won out, and were given titles. They and the Poncas secured the rights of citizens of the United States.

As for Standing Bear, he died, well satisfied and much honored, in 1908, aged seventy-nine, and was buried there near the Niobrara, in ancient Ponca country, where his ancestors slept. He had saved his tribe.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

Book title: Native American History For Dummies

Author: Dorothy Lippert, Stephen J. Spignesi, Phil Konstantin

Book Description:
Call them Native Americans, American Indians, indigenous peoples, or first nations — a vast and diverse array of nations, tribes, and cultures populated every corner of North America long before Columbus arrived. Native American History For Dummies reveals what is known about their pre-Columbian history and shows how their presence, customs, and beliefs influenced everything that was to follow.

This straightforward guide breaks down their ten-thousand-plus year history and explores their influence on European settlement of the continent. You’ll gain fresh insight into the major tribal nations, their cultures and traditions, warfare and famous battles; and the lives of such icons as Pocahontas, Sitting Bull and Sacagawea. You’ll discover:

Packed with fascinating facts about functional and ceremonial clothing, homes and shelters, boatbuilding, hunting, agriculture, mythology, intertribal relations, and more, Native American History For Dummies provides a dazzling and informative introduction to North America’s first inhabitants.

Source: Amazon

With their Hidatsa friends and neighbors, the Mandan Indians lay at the center of trade along the Upper Missouri River, inhabiting what is now central North Dakota. At the time of Lewis and Clark’s arrival, they lived in two villages, Matootonha and Rooptahee. Matootonha was located on the western bank of the Missouri, while Rooptahee was directly north, on the river’s eastern bank. The Corps of Discovery reached the Mandan villages in the fall of 1804 and stayed the winter in Fort Mandan, across the river from Matootonha.

In Mandan culture, the village was the focus of political, economic and ceremonial activity. It represented a collective of households, all striving together to better each family, clan and the village itself. A sacred cedar post stood at the center of the Mandan village, symbolizing the tribe’s primary cultural hero. The post was surrounded by an open plaza, and at the north end of the plaza was the village’s primary medicine lodge. Forty or fifty additional lodges populated the plaza. The more powerful a family was, or the more significant that family’s ceremonial duties were, the closer its lodge would be to the center. On average, 10 people lived in each lodge. Throughout most of the year, the Mandans lived in these permanent lodges. But in the winter, to avoid brutal storms, they constructed temporary lodges in wooded, low-lying areas adjacent to the river.

In fields that surrounded the villages, the Mandans grew their harvests. Crops included corn, beans, squash and tobacco. When the fall came, a diversity of Indian tribes and Europeans descended on the Mandan villages, bringing a rich and varied assortment of goods. At the high point of trade, Crees, Cheyennes, Assiniboins, Crows and even enemy Teton Sioux could be counted among the attending delegations. Everything from meat products to horses to musical instruments was exchanged for Mandan corn.

When the Corps of Discovery entered their world in October 1804, the Mandans seemed receptive to the goals of the expedition. Lewis and Clark’s hope for a Mandan peace with the Arikaras and plan to reside nearby for the winter months were accepted and agreed to by the Mandan leaders. Still, in spite of peace talks between the Arikaras and the Mandans that were orchestrated by the expedition, conflict broke out again between the two tribes as winter approached.

In contrast, relations between the Mandans and the Corps were friendly throughout the duration of the expedition’s stay. The Mandans supplied the Americans with food throughout the winter at their newly constructed home, Fort Mandan, in exchange for a steady stream of trade goods. When food became scarce, members of the Corps accompanied the Mandans on a buffalo hunt. Sheheke and Black Cat, chiefs from Matootonha and Roohaptee, met often with Lewis and Clark, and the Corps participated in a host of Mandan ceremonial rituals. As other tribes unfamiliar with black people had been before, the Mandans were mesmerized by the color of York’s skin, and attributed great spiritual power to him because of it.

Finally, when spring came, the Mandans bid the expedition farewell as the Americans continued on their way.

Mispronounced by Lewis and Clark, these villages now are known respectively as Mitutanka and Nuptadi.

Source: pbs

Book title: Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian

Afterword: Shepard Krech III

Editor: Michael E. Harkin, David Rich Lewis

David Rich Lewis

Foreword: Judith Antell

Book Description:
Native Americans and the Environment brings together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars whose works continue and complicate the conversations that Shepard Krech started in The Ecological Indian. Hailed as a masterful synthesis and yet assailed as a problematic political tract, Shepard Krech’s work prompted significant discussions in scholarly communities and among Native Americans.

Rather than provide an explicit assessment of Krech’s thesis, the contributors to this volume explore related historical and contemporary themes and subjects involving Native Americans and the environment, reflecting their own research and experience. At the same time, they also assess the larger issue of representation. The essays examine topics as divergent as Pleistocene extinctions and the problem of storing nuclear waste on modern reservations. They also address the image of the “ecological Indian” and its use in natural history displays alongside a consideration of the utility and consequences of employing such a powerful stereotype for political purposes. The nature and evolution of traditional ecological knowledge is examined, as is the divergence between belief and practice in Native resource management. Geographically, the focus extends from the eastern Subarctic to the Northwest Coast, from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains to the Great Basin.

Source: Amazon

In 1804, travelling northwest from the Mandan village of Rooptahee, it was a short trip to Mahawha, the first of three villages of the neighboring Hidatsas. The Hidatsas, allies of the Mandans, inhabited a stretch of the Knife River in what later became central North Dakota. Along with the Mandans, they formed the hub of trade in the Upper Missouri region, attracting a wide variety of Indian and European traders each fall.

Hidatsa villages were designed in a fashion similar to their Mandan counterparts. Earth lodges were clustered irregularly around a central plaza, and were occupied for approximately 7 to 12 years. A log wall surrounded the village to protect it from invaders. Mahawha was located at the meeting of the Knife and Missouri rivers, and was home to about 50 warriors. The next village to the north, Metaharta, had about 50 lodges, but the northernmost village, Menetarra, was the largest Hidatsa town, with nearly 450 warriors and 130 lodges.

Like the Mandans, the Hidatsas were actively involved in trade with their many visitors. Hidatsa farmers grew corn, tobacco, squash and beans, which they exchanged for everything from meat products to horses. Unlike the Mandans, however, the Hidatsas regularly sent war parties westward against the Shoshones and Blackfeet. They did this not only for wealth, protection and revenge, but for ritual reasons as well. For the Hidatsas, battle was the way that young men established themselves as leaders in the tribe. The Hidatsas’ fighting, among other things, would prove to be at odds with the goals of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

During the expedition’s October 1804-April 1805 stay at Fort Mandan, the Mandans tried to monopolize trade with the Corps, who possessed valuable manufactured goods. To keep the Hidatsas away from the fort, a number of Mandans lied to their Indian neighbors that the Americans planned to raid the Hidatsa villages. When Lewis travelled to the Hidatsa villages to dispel the false rumors, the Hidatsas received him reluctantly. He tried to calm their fears, but did not completely convince the Hidatsas of the Americans’ goodwill. He exacted a promise from the Hidatsa chiefs not to attack the Shoshones and Blackfeet, but a young Hidatsa brave and his war party broke it almost immediately. Even after Lewis’ visit, the Hidatsas remained distanced from the expedition.

Still, the Hidatsas did provide the Corps with a number of benefits, including key information about the route ahead. They also indirectly introduced Lewis and Clark to the French trader Toussaint Charbonneau, and his wife, Sacagawea.

Source: pbs

Native American Stories – Black Hawk

“The Native American Story of Black Hawk
Boy’s Book of Indian Warriors, by Edwin L. Sabin”

The two small nations of the Sacs and the Foxes had lived as one family for a long time. They were of the Algonquian tongue. From the northern Great Lakes country they had moved over to the Mississippi River, and down to Illinois and Iowa. Their number was not more than six thousand. They were a shave-head Indian, of forest and stream, and accustomed to travel afoot or in canoes.

The Foxes built their bark-house villages on the west side of the Mississippi, in Iowa’s “great nose.” They called themselves Mus-qua-kees, or the Red Earth People. They said that they had been made from red clay. Their totem was a fox; and the French of the Great Lakes had dubbed them Foxes—had asserted that, like the fox, they were quarrelsome, tricky and thievish. As warriors they were much feared. They had lost heavily.

The Sacs built opposite, on the Illinois shore, from Rock River down. They called themselves Saukees, from their word O-sa-ki-wug, or Yellow Earth People. They were larger and better looking than the Foxes, and not so tricky; but their bravery was never doubted.

These two nations together drove out the other Indians in this new country. They whipped even the Sioux, who claimed the northern Iowa hunting grounds; they whipped the Omahas, Osages and Pawnees of the west, the Mascoutins to the south, and the Illinois tribes. They were here to stay.

While the men hunted and fished and went to war, the women raised great crops of beans, squashes, melons, potatoes and Indian corn, and gathered the wild rice of the lakes.

Among the Sac leaders was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kiakiak—Big-black-breast, or Black Hawk. Like Little Turtle of the Miamis he had not been born a chief; but he was of the Thunder clan, the head clan of the Sacs.

His father was Py-e-sa, a warrior of the rank of braves, and keeper of the tribal medicine-bag. His grandfather was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder—also a brave.

Black Hawk was born in 1767, in Sauk-e-nuk, the principal Sac village, where Rock Island, Illinois, now stands, north of the mouth of the Rock River.

He won the rank of brave when he was only fifteen years old. He did this by killing and scalping an Osage warrior, on the war-trail against these head-takers. After that he was allowed in the scalp-dances.

He went against the Osages a second time. With seven men he attacked one hundred, and escaped carrying another scalp. When he was eighteen, he and five comrades pierced the Osage country across the Missouri River, and got more scalps. When he was nineteen, he led two hundred other braves against the Osages, and killed five Osages with his own hand.

By his deeds he had become a chief.

In a battle with the Cherokees, below St. Louis, his father Pyesa fell. Young Black Hawk was awarded the medicine-bag—”the soul of the Sac nation.”

In the early spring of 1804 a man of the Sac band then living on the Missouri, near St. Louis, to hunt and trade, killed a white man. He was arrested. The Sacs and Foxes held a council and chose four chiefs to go to St. Louis and buy their warrior’s freedom with presents. This was the Indian way.

The chiefs selected were Pa-she-pa-ho, or Stabber, who was head chief of the Sacs; Quash-qua-me, or Jumping Fish; Ou-che-qua-ha, or Sun Fish; and Hashe-quar-hi-qua, or Bear.

They went in the summer of 1804 and were gone a long time. When they returned, they were wearing new medals, and seemed ashamed. They camped outside of Saukenuk for several days, before they reported in council. The man they had been sent to get was not with them.

Finally, in the council they said that they had signed away a great tract of land, mostly on the west side of the Mississippi above St. Louis, in order to buy the warrior’s life; they had been drunk when they signed—but that was all right. However, when they had signed, the warrior was let out, and as he started to come to them, the soldiers had shot him dead.

They still were not certain just what land they had signed away. That made the council and people angry. Black Hawk called the chiefs fools. They had no right to sell the land without the consent of the council. After this, the “Missouri band” of the Sacs kept by themselves, in disgrace.

It was too late to do anything more about the treaty. The United States had it. An Indian gets only one chance—and Head Chief Pashepaho himself had put his mark on the paper. The United States has two chances: the first, on the ground; the second, when the paper is sent to Washington.

Later it was found that Pashepaho and the others had signed away all the Sac and Fox lands east of the Mississippi River! That was how the treaty might be made to read. The payment for many millions of acres was $2,234.54 down, in goods, and $1,000 a year, in other goods.

But there was one pleasing clause. As long as the United States held the land, the Sacs and Foxes might live and hunt there. Any white men who tried to come in were to be arrested and put off.

At any rate, although Black Hawk raged and said that the treaty was a false treaty, it stood. The United States officials who had signed it were men of honest names, and considered that they had acted fairly. But Black Hawk never admitted that.

The United States was to erect a trading post, up the Mississippi, for the convenience of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1808 soldiers appeared above the mouth of the Des Moines River, on the west side of the Mississippi, in southeastern Iowa, and began to build.

This turned out to be not a trading post but a fort, named Fort Belle Vue, and afterward, Fort Madison.

The Sacs and Foxes, and their allies, the Potawatomis and Winnebagos, planned to destroy it, and made attacks.

Black Hawk was sore at the Americans. He listened to the words of Tecumseh and the Prophet, accepted the presents of the British agents who came to see him, and with two hundred warriors marched to help the British in the War of 1812. The British traders had been more generous with the Indians than the American traders. Now the British father at the Lakes saluted him as “General Black Hawk.”

Only Black Hawk’s band went. All the other Sacs and Foxes paid attention to the talk of Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, who was the Sac peace chief.

Like the great Cornstalk, he said to the people that if they were bound to go to war, they should first put all the women and children “into the long sleep, for we enter upon a trail that has no turn.”

He was called a coward by the Black Hawk band; but the other Sacs and Foxes stayed where they were.

“General” Black Hawk fought beside General Tecumseh. He asserted that he was in the big battle when Tecumseh was killed. When be found that the Indians had nothing to gain in the war, he came home. He had done wrong to go at all.

Then he learned that a young man whom he had adopted as a son had been murdered, while hunting, by bad whites. They had seized him, tied him, killed him and scalped him. The young man had not been to war, and Black Hawk could see no reason for the killing. So he set forth in revenge, and fought a battle with the United States Rangers.

He remained unfriendly. It all dated back to the year 1804, and the treaty signed by Pashepaho, by which the Sacs had lost their country.

They loved this country. They especially loved Rock Island, in the Mississippi—where today is located a Government arsenal.

It was indeed a beautiful island for them. It bore grapes and nuts, and they called it their garden. In a cave there, a kind spirit dwelt, who blessed the land of the Indians. The spirit had white wings, like a swan. But in 1816 the United States built Fort Armstrong right on top of the cave, and the good spirit flew away, never to come back. The guns of the fort frightened it.

Black Hawk himself had another favorite spot, upon a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and his village of Saukenuk. Here he liked to sit. It is still known as Black Hawk’s Watch Tower.

After Fort Armstrong was built, and the United States was again at peace with the other white nations, settlers commenced to edge into this Sac country of western Illinois. Although by another treaty, which Black Hawk himself had signed, the treaty of 1804 was repledged by the Sacs and Foxes, this all was United States land, and no settlers had any rights to it.

The Indians were unable to put the settlers off, and trouble arose. Once Black Hawk was taken, in the forest, by settlers who accused him of shooting their hogs; they tore his gun from him, and beat him with sticks.

This was such a disgrace to him, that he painted a black mark on his face, and wore the mark for almost ten years. Only a scalp could wipe it off.

The white trespassers kept coming in. They respected nothing. They even built fences around the corn fields of the principal Sac village, at the mouth of Rock River; they ploughed up the grave-yard there; they took possession of Black Hawk’s own lodge; and when in the spring of 1828 the Black Hawk people came back from their winter hunt, they found that forty of their lodges had been burned.

Up to this time none of the land had been put on the market by the United States. But the Indian agent was trying to persuade the Sacs to move across the Mississippi, into Iowa. That was for their own good. The white settlers were using whiskey and every other means, to get the upper hand.

Chief Keokuk agreed with the agent. He was not of the rank of Black Hawk and the Thunder clan, but he had fought the Sioux, and was of great courage and keen mind and silver tongue. He was an orator; Black Hawk was a warrior.

So the Sacs split. Keokuk—a stout, heavy-faced man—took his Sacs across into the country of the Foxes. Black Hawk’s band said they would be shamed if they gave up their village and the graves of their fathers.

Black Hawk visited some white “chiefs” (judges) who were on Rock Island. He made complaint. He said that he wore a black mark on his face; but that if he tried to avenge the black mark, by striking a white man, then the white men would call it war. He said that the Sacs dared not resent having their lodges burned and their corn fields fenced and their women beaten, and the graves of their fathers ploughed up.

“Why do you not tell the President?”

“He is too far off. He cannot hear my voice.”

“Why do you not write a. letter to him?”

“It would be written by white men, who would say that we told lies. Our Great Father would rather believe a white man, than an Indian.”

The two judges said that they were sorry for the Sacs, but could do nothing.

Now in 1829 the settlers were so anxious to keep the Sac lands at the mouth of the Rock River, that the Government put these on the market. This would dispose of Black Hawk’s people, for they would have no village. Whether the other lands were sold, did not matter.

It was done while Black Hawk and his men and women were hunting. On their return to plant their crops, they learned that their village and grave-yard had been sold to the whites—the most of whom were already there.

So the white people had won out. They in turn asked protection of the Government, from “General Black Hawk” and his band. The Government listened, and ten companies of regular troops were sent to Rock Island in a steamboat, to remove the Sacs, “dead or alive,” to the west side of the Mississippi.

A council was held with Black Hawk at Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island. Black Hawk rose to speak. He said that the Sacs never had sold their lands; it had been a mistake, and that they were bound to keep their village.

“Who is this Black Hawk?” retorted General Edmund P. Gaines, the commander of the troops. “Is he a chief? By what right does he appear in council?”

Black Hawk wrapped his blanket around him and strode angrily out of the council room. But the next morning he made answer.

“My father, you asked yesterday, who is Black Hawk? Why does he sit among the chiefs? I will tell you who I am. I am a Sac, my father was a Sac—I am a warrior and so was my father. Ask these young men, who have followed me to battle, and they will tell you who Black Hawk is. Provoke our people to war, and you will learn who Black Hawk is.”

More troops were called, until there were twenty-five hundred. But seeing so many soldiers marching. Black Hawk took all his people and camped across the Mississippi, under a white flag.

After this Black Hawk was required to sign another treaty, which made him say that he had tried to enlist the Potawatomis, Winnebagos and Kickapoos in a war against the United States. It did not mention the fact that for a dozen and more years the whites had been warring upon him by seizing his lands and ploughing his fields and burning his lodges.

The paper also set him down below the other chiefs, who had left their lands. It set him below Keokuk, and the Fox chiefs—and this hurt him deeply. All the Sacs and Foxes laughed at the idea of Keokuk, and his lowly clan, being placed above Black Hawk and the Thunder clan.

In these years of trouble, the Black Hawk band had killed or abused no white settlers. The so-called “war,” on their part, had been a war of words and fences. Now they soon were to take up the hatchet.

They had been expelled over the river in this year 1831 too late for planting crops. The white settlers declined to share with them, from the fields at the village of Saukenuk. One night some of the Sacs crossed “to steal roasting-ears from their own fields,” as they said. They were shot at by the settlers, and driven off.

This made more bad feeling.

Black Hawk had sent his head warrior, Nah-po-pe, or Soup, up to Canada, to ask council from the British “father” there. He had been “General Black Hawk” in the British army, and thought that he deserved help.

But the United States and Great Britain had been at peace many years. The British father told Nahpope that if the Sacs never had sold their land, of course they had a right to live upon it. That was all.

On the way back, Nahpope stopped to see Wa-bo-kieshiek, or White Cloud, who was half Sac and half Winnebago, and a great medicine-man or prophet. He had a village at his Prophet’s Town, thirty-five miles up the Rock River, in Illinois.

White Cloud pretended to rival the Open Door of the Shawnees. He fell into a trance, and cut several capers, and spoke a message from the Great Spirit. Let Black Hawk go to war. The Great Spirit would arouse the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis and the British, and the Americans would be driven away! White Cloud said this out of his own heart, which was black toward the Americans.

He invited Black Hawk to visit him and the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis, raise a summer crop and talk with the Great Spirit.

Much rejoiced, Nahpope hastened to tell the news to his chief. When Keokuk heard it, he advised Black Hawk to stay at home. The prophet White Cloud was a mischief maker and a liar.

Black Hawk was inclined to listen, and to wait until he was more certain of the other nations who might join with him. But the young men of his band were hot. Unless he did something, Keokuk would appear to be stronger than he. His people looked to him to get back their village and their grave-yard. The black mark on his face had not been wiped off.

None of Keokuk’s Sacs or the Foxes would help him. So in April of 1832 he took his men and their families and started up the river from Fort Madison, Iowa, for Rock River. The warriors were on horses, the women and children in canoes.

By the last treaty that he had signed, Black Hawk had promised not to cross to the east side of the Mississippi without the permission of the United States. Now he said that he was going up the Rock River, to the country of the Winnebagos, his friends, to visit among them and plant corn and beans.

On the way up the Rock River he was ordered back, by word from General Henry Atkinson, commander at Fort Armstrong.

Black Hawk replied that he had a right to travel peacefully, the same as white persons. He was going to the Winnebago country, for the summer.

The general sent another word, that if Black Hawk did not turn arc and, soldiers would make him turn around.

Black Hawk replied that he was at peace and would stay at peace unless the soldiers attacked him. He told his men not to fire first.

Pretty soon he met some Winnebagos and Potawatomis. They said that their nations never had sent him any message talking war. They wished no trouble with the United States. Wabokieshiek had lied.

So Black Hawk decided to give his guests a dog-feast, and then return home. He was an old man of sixty-five, and he was too weak to fight alone. He was getting tired.

He had made camp one hundred miles up the Rock River, near Kishwaukee, a few miles below present Rockford, Illinois. By this time, early in May, all Illinois was alarmed; the regulars and militia were on his trail. They gathered at Dixon, about forty miles down the river from his camp.

Major Isaac Stillman took two hundred and seventy-five mounted militia, to scout for Black Hawk. They arrived at Sycamore Creek, within eight miles of him, and did not see his camp. But Black Hawk knew that they were there.

He sent out three young men with a white flag, to bring the American chiefs to the camp, for a council; then they would all go down-river together. He sent out five young men to follow the three, and see what happened.

Only three of the five came back. The three with the white flag had been taken prisoners, and the soldiers had chased the others and shot two.

Black Hawk prepared for war. He had but forty men with him; the rest were out hunting. Presently here came all the white soldiers, galloping and yelling, to ride over him. They were foolish—they seemed to think that the Sacs would run.

But Black Hawk was old in war. He laid an ambush—his forty warriors waited, and fired a volley, and charged with the tomahawk and knife, and away scurried the soldiers like frightened deer.

They fled without stopping forty miles to Dixon’s Ferry. They reported that they had been attacked by fifteen hundred savages. They left all their camp stuff. Fourteen soldiers had been killed—but no Indians, except those sent by Black Hawk to treat for peace.

“Stillman’s Run,” the battle was called.

Black Hawk sat down to smoke a pipe to the Great Spirit, and give thanks. Two of the flag-of-truce party came in. They had escaped. The third young man had been shot while in the soldiers’ camp.

The Black Hawk band took the blankets and provisions left in the soldiers’ camp, and proceeded to war in earnest. Of what use was a white flag? They sent away their families. Some Winnebagos, hearing of the great victory, enlisted.

Now Black Hawk was much feared. General Atkinson fortified his regulars and militia, at Dixon’s Ferry. More volunteers were called for, by the governor of Illinois. The Secretary of War at Washington ordered one thousand additional regulars to the scene, and directed General Winfield Scott himself, the commander of the United States army in the East, to lead the campaign.

For a little war against a few Indians there were many famous names on the white man’s roll. Among the regulars were General Scott, later the commander in the war with Mexico; Colonel Zachary Taylor, who had defended Fort Harrison from Tecumseh—and probably Black Hawk—in the war of 1812, and who was to be President; Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston, who became a Confederate general; Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who commanded Fort Sumter in 1861; and among the volunteers was Captain Abraham Lincoln.

Black Hawk had about five hundred braves, mainly Sacs and Foxes, with a few Winnebagos and Potawatomis; but when twenty-five hundred soldiers were chasing him through the settlements, he stood little show.

After several skirmishes, and one or two bad defeats, his people were eating horse-flesh and bark and roots. To save them, he planned to go down the Wisconsin River, in southwestern Wisconsin, and cross the Mississippi.

He put his women and children and the old men on rafts and in canoes. They started but soldiers fired into them, from the banks, killed some and drove the rest into the forest. Many died there, from hunger.

Black Hawk and his warriors, and other women and children, had cut across by land. When they came to the mouth of the Bad Axe River, at the Mississippi above the Wisconsin, the armed steamboat Warrior met them. Sioux were upon the western bank.

Black Hawk decided to surrender. He again raised the white flag, and called out to the captain of the Warrior that he wished a boat sent to him, so that he might go aboard and talk peace.

Perhaps the Winnebago interpreter on the Warrior did not translate the words right. At any rate, the captain of the Warrior asserted that Black Hawk was only trying to decoy him into ambush. He waited fifteen minutes, to give the Indian women and children that much time to hide; then he opened on the white flag with canister and musketry. The first cannon shot “laid out three.” In all, he killed twenty-three.

Black Hawk fought back, but he could not do very much against a steamboat in the river.

So he had been unable to surrender, or to cross the Mississippi. His people were frightened, and sick with hunger and wounds. The next morning, August 2, he was working hard to get them ready to cross, when General Atkinson’s main army, of four hundred regulars and nine hundred militia, fell upon him at the mouth of the Bad Axe.

The Indian women plunged into the Mississippi, with their babes on their backs—some of them caught hold of horses’ tails, to be towed faster; but the steam-boat Warrior was waiting, sharp-shooters on shore espied them, and only a few escaped, into the hands of the Sioux.

In two hours Black Hawk lost two hundred people, men and women both; the white army lost twenty-seven in killed and wounded.

This finished Black Hawk. He got away, but spies were on his trail, and in a few weeks two Winnebago traitors captured him when he gave himself up at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

He expected to die. He had turned his medicine-bag over to the Winnebago chief at the village of La Crosse, Wisconsin—and he never got it back.

He made a speech to the Indian agent, General Joseph Street, at Prairie du Chien. He said:

You have taken me prisoner with all my warriors. I am much grieved, for I expected to hold out much longer and give you more trouble before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general understands Indian fighting.

I fought hard, but your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like bees in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me; I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire.

That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead. He is now a prisoner to the white men; they will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian.

He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his people, against the white men, who have come year after year to cheat him and take away his lands.

You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians and drive them from their homes.

An Indian who is as bad as the white men could not live in our nation; he would be put to death and be eaten up by the wolves. The white men are poor teachers; they shake us by the hand, to make us drunk, and fool us. We told them to let us alone, but they followed us.

Things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forests; the springs were drying up and our women and children had no food. The spirits of our fathers arose and spoke to us, to avenge our wrongs, or die.

Black Hawk is satisfied. He will go to the land of spirits, content. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there and praise him.

He is a true Indian and disdains to cry like a woman. He does not care for himself. He cares for his nation. They will suffer. His countrymen will not be scalped; the white men poison the heart. In a few years the Indians will be like the white men, and nobody can trust them. They will need many officers to keep them in order.

Goodby, my nation. Black Hawk tried to save you. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been stopped. He can do no more.

After this, Black Hawk had little authority among the Sacs and Foxes. They respected him, but they looked only to Keokuk for orders and advice. Keokuk was made rich by the United States, as reward; he gave out the goods and monies; he ruled, for he had followed the peace trail.

The Black Hawk prisoners were put in charge of Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, at Fort Crawford. Then they were sent down by steamboat to Jefferson Barracks, at St. Louis.

There were Black Hawk, his two sons—Nah-se-us-kuk or Whirling Thunder, and Wa-saw-me-saw or Roaring Thunder; White Cloud, the false prophet; Nahpope, the head brave; Ioway, Pam-a-ho or Swimmer, No-kuk-qua or Bear’s-fat, Pa-she-pa-ho or Little Stabber; and others.

They were forced to wear ball and chain.

“Had I taken the White Beaver [who was General Atkinson] prisoner, I would not have treated a brave war chief in this manner,” complained Black Hawk.

Keokuk, the successful, was kind and tried to get the prisoners freed. But they were sent on to Washington, to see the President. Resident Andrew Jackson understood Indians, and Black Hawk was pleased with him.

“I am a man; you are another,” he greeted, as he grasped President Jackson’s hand.

“We did not expect to conquer the whites,” he explained. “They had too many houses, too many men. I took up the hatchet to avenge the injuries to my people. Had I not done so, they would have said, ‘Black Hawk is a woman. He is too old to be a chief. He is no Sac.’”

From the last of April until June 4 the Black Hawk party was kept in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Then the Indians were started home. They were given a long tour, to show them the power of the United States.

They stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo and Detroit. The white people crowded to see the famous Black Hawk and to hear him speak. He received valuable presents. He was treated like a chief indeed, and his heart was touched.

When he arrived at Fort Armstrong again, on Rock Island, where he was to be freed, his heart had somewhat failed. The village of Saukenuk had long ago been leveled in ashes; he returned, a chief without a people.

Keokuk came, to attend this council, and to receive him back into the nation. Keokuk arrived riding grandly in two canoes lashed side by side; a canopy over him and his wives with him, and medals on his breast.

That was rather different from ball and chain, and old Black Hawk’s head sank upon his chest. He felt as bitter as Logan the Mingo had felt.

Before he finally settled down in a lodge built near Iowaville on the lower Des Moines River, Iowa, he made other trips through the East. Keokuk went, also—but it was “General Black Hawk” for whom the people clamored.

He died on October 3, 1838, at his home. His last speech was made at a Fourth of July banquet, at Fort Madison, Iowa, where he was a guest of honor.

“Rock River was a beautiful country. I liked my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it as we did. It will bear you good crops.

“I once was a great warrior. I am now poor. Keokuk put me down, but do not blame him. I am old. I have looked upon the Mississippi since I was a child. I love the Great River. I look upon it now. I shake hands with you, and hope you are my friends.”

These were some of his words.

He was seventy-one when he died; a spare, wrinkled old man with sharp, fiery face and flashing eye. He picked out his grave—at a place about half a mile from his cabin, where, he said, he had led his Sacs in a great battle with the Iowas.

All his people, and the neighboring whites, mourned him. He was buried sitting up, clad in the uniform given him at Washington, by the Secretary of War. We wore three medals, from President Jackson, ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the City of Boston. Between his knees was placed a cane presented to him by Henry Clay, the statesman; at his right side was placed a sword presented to him by President Jackson.

All his best things were buried with him. They included tobacco, food and moccasins, to last him on a three day’s journey to spirit land.

The grave was covered by a board roof. A United States flag, and a post with his name and age and deeds, were erected over him. A picket fence twelve feet high was built around the grave.

He left an old wife—the only wife that he had ever taken. He thought a great deal of her. He rarely drank whiskey, he fought it among his people; he was opposed to torture; he had treated prisoners kindly; he had waged war in defense, as he believed, of his own country; and altogether he had been a good man in his Indian way.

His bones were dug up by a white doctor, and strung on a wire to decorate an office in Illinois. Black Hawk’s sons did not like this, and had the bones brought back. They were stored in the historical collection at Burlington, where in 1855 a fire burned them.

Black Hawk probably did not care what became of his old bones. He was done with them. The white race had over-flowed the land that he loved, and the bones of his fathers, and he had ceased fighting.

Source: warpaths2peacepipes

Book title: Native Plant Stories

Author: Joseph Bruchac

Book Description:
These mythical stories draw upon legends from eighteen Native American tribes and illustrate the importance of plant life in Native American traditions.

Source: Amazon