american heritage book of indians

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THE AMERICAN HERITAGE BOOK OF INDIANS

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A redesign of the 1969 published American Heritage Book of Indians

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Page 1: American Heritage Book of Indians

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE BOOK OF

INDIANS

Page 2: American Heritage Book of Indians
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INTRODUCTION

PEOPLE OF THE DAWN

FEATHERED GODS AND PRIESTS

EMPIRES OF THE SUN

PEOPLE OF PEACE

KING OF THE WORLD

WAR IN THE FOREST

THE ANVIL OF AMERICA

THE DISPOSSESSED

THE IMAGE MAKERS

KAYAKERS AND CANNIBAL DANCERS

BEAULAH LAND

FIGHTERS OF THE PLAINS

THE LAST ARROW

RESERVATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND INDEX

7

9

41

73

105

137

161

187

213

237

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333

373

403

418

TABLE OFCONTENTS

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KAYAKERS &CAN NIBAL

DANCERS

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KAYAKERS &CAN NIBAL

DANCERS

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The foreboding wooden mask at left represents a sea monster. It was used in Kwakiutl ceremo-nies on the Northwest Coast.

The Coronation Gulf Eskimos of north central Canada (right) are gathered in summer garb at opening of a stone dam, spearing salmon trout as the fist swim upstream. Another weir without an opening was placed above this one in force evasive fish down to the spear points.

The Northwest Coast Indians lavished the same artistic care on their dress as on their art, as shown at far right by the thunderbird motif and the other familiar designs featured in the flam-boyant costumes of these Tlingits, fully arrayed for a potlatch in Sitka, Alaska.

Eskimo masks, like this one at lower right from Alaska representing the swan that drives whales to the hunter, have the fragile quality of mobiles. Carved out of driftwood, they are held by cer-emonial dancers.

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WESTERING EXPLORATION AND TRADE by sea outstripped that by land, and the strange faraway tribes of the Pacific coast were generally known to eastern America while the nations of the plains and moun-tains in between were still no more than shadowy half-realities. New England deep water sailors of 1800 knew the outlandish whale-hunting Indians of Nootka Sound better, no doubt, than they knew the Indi-ans of New England. Whalers, fur traders, and missionaries has know the fur-clad peoples of the far North for more than 200 years when in 1848 the vanishment of Sir

John Franklin’s great Arctic expedition turned the eyes of the world on the land of the Eskimos. Thirty-eight relief expedi-tions were sent out in the next ten years (it was last discovered that Franklin’s large party had perished to a man, of starvation): 7,000 miles of new Arctic coast line were incidentally explored; and the Eskimos were solidly implanted in the conscious-ness of America and Europe.

Due to their disincentives the Eskimos probably remain the most widely known of all American’s native peoples. European provincials who may ever have heard of the

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Columbus, Eskimos and Europeans com-mingled in an association that lasted for centuries. The Norse, Irish, and Vikings who settled in Iceland from circa A.D. 850 to 1100 planted colonies in Greenland, the far eastern frontier of the New World and the Eskimo world. In contrast to their brief and dreamlike excursions to the coast of North America, Norsemen established settlements in Greenland and lived in some contact with the Eskimos there for

several centuries. These settlements were eventually either wiped out by the Eskimos or abandoned, but until the mid-1300s, if somewhat later, they remained in fairly frequent contact with Europe. But the two peoples met, so to speak, in-cognito, neither realizing that the other was from a different world. Europe was unaware, the Eskimos were unimpressed. A few words of Old Norse or Old Icelandic origin found their way into Greenland Es-

The ink drawing below right was done on reindeer skin by a contemporary Alaskan native artists, George Aghupuk. The panorama montage represents many activities of Eskimo life, ranging from the daily chores of cooking to occasions for celebration or recreation, when a circle forms for singing and dancing. The caribou trappers at upper left, the seal stalkers at lower left, and the ice fishermen at lower right illustrate several of the hunting methods practiced by the Alaskans.

The Eskimo below posed with three prized possessions his kayak paddle, bow, and arrow, was a native of Frobisher Bay in northeastern Canada. Sketched in 1576, it is the earliest known picture of an Eskimo. Near the line of the horizon is an explorer’s ship, contrasting with the sleep kayak just offshore.

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Songfests enliven long winter nights, The drummer (right) was photographed at Coronation Gulf, north of Hudson Bay.

MEN OF

THE ARCTIC

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in Alaska and environs, tentatively dated from 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, and featur-ing the minute, exquisitely tooled micro-blades that are also found in some of the first Eskimo cultures. Even so (pointing up once more the stupendous antiquity of the Eskimos themselves is fairly respectable, since they must have been in their present Arctic homeland at least 2,500 years ago if not considerably earlier; in other words roughly as long as the Romans have been in Rome, and considerably longer than the French have been in France.They have an Asiatic look, but are a physical type unto themselves (average in height, plump, massive-faced, narrow-nosed, longhead-ed) and are not usually classified by an-thropologists as Indians, nor do hey regard themselves as Indians. Anthropologists classify them as Eskimo, and the Eskimos regard themselves as the race of the Inuit, which is to say The People. (The name Es-kimo may come from an Algonquian word meaning “raw-meat-eaters” or then again from a term applied by early French mis-

kimo dialects, a few hammers were made of church-bell metal, a few tubs were coopered (with hoops made of the corset whalebone known as baleen), and a few Greenland Eskimos of the time learned to write a few line in medieval runic rhyme. Otherwise the kayaking life of summer and the snow-goggled life of winter went on as always, and to the New World people of Greenland the generations of intruding Europeans were as if they had never been. This long and bootless contact reveals something of the difficulty of transferring elements from one culture to another, and something of the difficulty of discovering a New World before the discoverer is ripe. The Eskimo are generally reckoned to be relatively recent arrivals among the American peoples. There had been previ-ous inhabitants of the Far North, long be-fore, but whether there were distinct and separate predecessors or remote Eskimo ancestors is not know; the ancient relics of these earliest people constiture the so-called Denbigh Flint Complex, centering

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POLES AND

POTLATCHES

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Nootka native with nose ornament Thompson River fur-trade IndianVancouver Island Cowichan chief

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At left, a war chief of the Chilkats is shown in Euro-pean clothes in the 1885 photograph; he stands with his wife an child beside a stylized carving which probably served as a family symbol.

In 1878 the Haida village of Skidegate (left top) was nearly deserted, its more than 50 totem poles rising like masts in a lonely harbor. At left bottom, two nearly identicle Kwakiutl poles carved to repre-sent the thunderbird and bear mother at Alert Bay, Vancouver Island.

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FIGH TERS OF THE

PL AINS

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FIGH TERS OF THE

PL AINS

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IN THE INDIAN-WHITE CONFLICT that raged across the West following the Civil War, many natives rose to prominence as patriotic leaders of their people. Some were he-reditary chiefs; others were medicine men whose visions and spiritual powers were as important to the Indians as bravery in battle. To the whites, all were enemies to be pursued, defeated, and humbled; but to their people, they were heroes. The portraits of the following pages reflect the implacable hostility, strength, and self-respect of Indians who fought with pride to the end.

Sioux Indians (in order from right to left): Kicking Bear,

Low Dog, Short Bull, Rain in the Face.

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WOLF ROBEWolf Robe (b. 1838-1841, d. 1910), the Southern Cheyenne chief, was forced to leave the open plains in the late 1870s and relocate his tribe on to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Res-ervation in Indian Territory. He was awarded the Benjamin Harrison Peace Medal in 1890 for his assistance in the Cherokee Commission.F. A. Rinehart photographed the chief in 1898, Lancy DeGill photographed him in 1909 (shown to the left). The iconic portrait photographs of Wolf Robe have been popular throughout the last century. Numerous painters and sculptors have, in turn, created artworks based upon these photo-graphs. Although it is unlikely, some people believe his was the model for the Indian Head nickel.

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Fancy our having given a dinner party at this sand-bag castle on the plains, miles and miles from a white man or woman! The number of guests was small, but their rank was immense, for we enter-tained Powder-Face, Chief of the Arapa-hoe Nation, and Wauk, his young squaw, mother of his little chief.

Two or three days ago Powder-Face came to make a formal call upon the “White Chief,” and brought with him two other Indians—aides we would call them, I presume. A soldier offered to hold his horse, but he would not dis-mount, and sat his horse with grave

dignity until Faye went out and in per-son invited him to come in and have a smoke. He is an Indian of striking per-sonality—is rather tall, with square, broad shoulders, and the poise of his head tells one at once that he is not an ordinary savage.

We must have found favor with him, for as he was going away he an-nounced that he would come again the next day and bring his squaw with him. Then Faye, in his hospitable way, invited them to a midday dinner! I was almost speechless from horror at the very thought of sitting at a table with an Indian, no matter how great a chief he might be. But I could say nothing, of course, and he rode away with the un-derstanding that he was to return the following day. Faye assured me that it would be amusing to watch them, and be a break in the monotony here.

They appeared promptly, and I be-came interested in Wauk at once, for she was a remarkable squaw. Tall and slender, with rather a thin, girlish face,

very unlike the short, fat squaws one usually sees, and she had the appear-ance of being rather tidy, too. I could not tell if she was dressed specially for the occasion, as I had never seen her before, but everything she had on was beauti-fully embroidered with beads—mostly white—and small teeth of animals. She wore a sort of short skirt, high leggings, and of course moccasins, and around her shoulders and falling far below her waist was a queer-shaped garment—neither cape nor shawl—dotted closely all over with tiny teeth, which were fas-tened on at one end and left to dangle.

High up around her neck was a dog collar of fine teeth that was really beau-tiful, and there were several necklaces of different lengths hanging below it, one of which was of polished elk teeth and very rare. The skins of all her clothing had been tanned until they were as soft

A LETTER

REGARDING

POWDER FACEWRITTEN BY FRANCES ROE, 1873

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as kid. Any number of bracelets were on her arms, many of them made of tin, I think. Her hair was parted and hung in loose ropes down each shoulder in front. Her feet and hands were very small, even for an Indian, and showed that life had been kind to her. I am con-fident that she must have been a prin-cess by birth, she was so different from all squaws I have seen. She could not speak one word of English, but her lord, whom she seemed to adore, could make himself understood very well by signs and a word now and then.

Powder-Face wore a blanket, but underneath it was a shirt of fine skins, the front of which was almost covered with teeth, beads, and wampum. His hair was roped on each side and hung in front, and the scalp lock on top was made conspicuous by the usual long feather stuck through it. Chief Powder-Face, who is really not old, is respected

by everyone, and has been instrumental in causing the Arapahoe nation to cease hostilities toward white people. Some of the chiefs of lesser rank have much of the dignity of high-born savages, partic-ularly Lone Wolf and his son Big Mouth, both of whom come to see us now and then. Lone Wolf is no longer a warrior, and of course no longer wears a scalp lock and strings of wampum and beads, and would like to have you believe that he has ever been the white man’s friend, but I suspect that even now there might be brought forth an old war belt with hanging scalps that could tell of massa-cre, torture, and murder. Big Mouth is a war chief, and has the same grand phy-sique as Powder-Face and a personal-ity almost as striking. His hair is simply splendid, wonderfully heavy and long and very glossy. His scalp lock is most artistic, and undoubtedly kept in order by a squaw.

Powder Face, Arapaho

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The massacre of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and more than 250 men of the Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1867, was a great shock to the nation. About 1898, Kicking Bear, an aging verteran of the battle, was asked by artist Frederic Remington to paint this pictographic version of the fight. Custer appears at left center in yellow buckskin with his familiar long locks, although he has his hair cropped before the battle. The rising figures outline at top left represent departing spirits of dead soldiers. In a village at lower right, Sioux women prepare a victory dance for their triumphant war-riors. The four central standing fig-ures are (left to right): Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa medicine man; Rain-in-the-Face; Crazy Horse, leader of the Oglalas and the artist Kicking Bear, whose footsteps circle one of his vic-tims, an Army Indian scout. A space is reserved for Gall, disgraced by

CUSTER’S

LAST

STAND

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THIS IS A

NECKLACE

OF FINGERS.The necklace of human fingers was taken during a cavalry raid on a Cheyenne village in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains, five months after the Custer Massacre. The grim trophy, consist-ing of eight left-hand middle fingers of In-dian enemies killed in battle, was considered a source of powerful medicine to its ower.

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DURING THE QUARTER CENTURY between 1866 and 1891, the United States Army fought more than 1,000 engagements with Indians. In the angry conflicts, 2,571 white men—military and civilian—were killed or wounded. The Army estimate of 5,519 In-dian casualties was only a guess.

When gold was found in Colorado in 1859, prospectors poured across tribal hunting grounds south of the Platte River. In the resulting hostility, troops drove the Indians about, slaughtered the buffalo, their principal food supply, and at Sand Creek and elsewhere almost wiped out whole villages of Indians.

“THIS IS A

GOOD

DAY TO

DIE!”

Retaliating Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho created a reign of terror along with Platte before they were pushed north of that river. Then in the mid-1860s, white men tried to open the Bozeman Trail that led through Indian hunting grounds in Wy-oming to newly established mining centers in western Montana. The Sioux under Red Cloud resisted, and when the Army built forts to protect the route, angry Indians, shouting “This is a good way to die!” at-tacked the garrisons and travelers on the road and finally forced the evacuation of the forts. But white men kept coming, and the wars raged on. “The more [Indians] we

In the fury of plains warfare, white participants often described how mounted Indians, whom they called the best cavalrymen in the world, would dash through gunfire to swoop up a fallen brave. Frederic Remington’s painting above captures the drama of such an incident.

can kill this year,” said William Tecumseh Sherman in 1867, “the less will have to be killed in the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be main-tained as a species of paupers.”

In 1847, when gold was found in the Black Hills, the heart of the Sioux domain, the Indians faced their last stand. After trying unsuccessfully to but the Hills, the government sent troops to force the Indi-ans onto reservations. Under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Sioux and their allies braced for the greatest battle of all.

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VANISHED

DREAMSCUSTER’S DEFEAT was considered a na-tion disgrace; galvanized into action, the government after 1876 moved with deter-mination to subdue all hostiles. By 1881, the last of the warring plains bands had been gathered in reservations, and the In-dians had nothing left but their dreams led to a last brief conflict. In January, 1889 a Nevada Paiute named Wovoka announced that an Indian Messiah was coming. He would bring back the Indian dead and even the vanished buffalo. The whites would disappear and the Indians would once more be masters of their land. To speed

the event, Wovoka called upon his follow-ers to perform a trancelike dance. The Ghost Dance cult swept across the West and gained many disciples among the Sioux. Alarmed by the threat of renewal hostilities, the government attempted to suppress the Ghost Dance and disarm its practitioners. At the height of the tension, Sitting Bull was killed. Then, on Decem-ber 29, 1890, a misunderstanding between soldiers and Indians waiting to surrender

at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota touched off a massacre of some 300 Sioux men, women, and children. Something more than the fighting ended at Wounded Knee. Much of the Plains Indian’s spirit, pride, and hope died there, too, escaping like a puff of warm breath into the bitterly cold air of a winter day.

Spotted Elk, (1826 - December 29, 1890), was the name of a chief of the Miniconjou Lakota Sioux. He was a son of chief One Horn and became a chief upon the death of his father. He was a highly renowned chief with skills in war and negotiations. He was given the derogatory name of Big Foot by an American soldier at Fort Bennett. In 1890 he was killed in South Dakota. Pictured to the left is his frozen body at Wounded Knee.

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