Nez Perce and thief treaty Nez Perce had helped Lewis and Clark

Invited a mission to be established at Lapwai

Most remained peaceful during plateau Indian wars

1855 treaty Nez Perce secured large portion of traditional home lands in Oregon and Idaho

And settled on a reservation there

1860 miners moved onto land looking for gold in the Bitterroot Mountains

Began establishing towns such as Lewiston, Elk River, and Florence

Office of Indian Affairs agreed to remove miners

Superintendent of Indian Affairs Calvin Hale among others met in 1863 at Lapwai council

In return for removing miners Hale proposed shrinking reservation by nearly 7 million acres

Nez Perce refused and reminded Hale et al about 1855 treaty

Most of leaders then left the council

One local leader, Lawyer, negotiated with Hale

June 9, 1863 Lawyer signed treaty

Other Nez Perce bands referred to this as “Thief Treaty”

June 16, 1873 President Grant signed an executive order giving Hinmahtooyahlatekht’s (Thunder rising over Loftier

Mountain Heights)

Band the Wallowa Valley Better known as Chief Joseph

Problem Executive Order gave lower end of valley to

Joseph’s band Not the upper end where they lived June 10, 1875 Grant rescinded order Many officials agreed that the bands claims were

good No real movement made against the Nez Perce

until after death of Custer 1876 General Howard ordered to force non treaty

bands onto reservation November 1876 council at Fort Lapwai No resolutions made

May 3, 1877 second Lapwai Council

Toohloolhoolzote appointed to speak

Many times he tried to explain the relationship between the Nez Perce and the region

Until Howard replied “Let us here no more

of it but come to business at once”

VIDEO CLIP

1887

Movement onto reservations Accompanied by “progressive”

actions began to work on Native Americans

Education one main area Another to encourage/force Native

Americans to act like white people To break apart the centre of Native

American cohesiveness

The reservation

The very institution used to assimilate and control Native Americans years before

1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act

Known as the Dawes Act

Plan was to abolish reservations

Allot lands to individual Indians as private property

Policy supported by, and helped by, those who

A) wanted to help the Indians B) wanted to destroy the Indians For A) this would allow for faster

assimilation B) would create free land for whites

(Indians didn’t know how to use it anyway)

Act named after Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts

“Discontent with the teepee and the starving rations of the Indian camp in winter is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers, - and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars” Merrill Gates Board of Indian

Commissioners

“A vast pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass” Theodore Roosevelt

Dawes Act Main Provisions 1. The President was authorized to assign

allotments of 160 acres to heads of households, with lesser amounts to younger persons and orphans

2. Indians were to select their own lands, bit if they failed to do so, the agent would make the selection for them. Reservations were to be surveyed and rolls of tribal members prepared prior to allotment

3. The Government was to hold title to the land in trust for twenty-five years, prevent its sale until allottees could learn to treat it as real estate.

4. All allottees and all Indians who abandoned their tribal ways and became “civilized” were to be granted citizenship

5. “Surplus” reservation lands could be sold

Twilight of the Indian 1897

Law remained in force from 1887 to 1934

Main effect strip Indian people of Millions of acres

Indians whose lands were allotted Became U.S. Citizens So…… Their lands could now be taxed

Protections slowly disappeared 1902, congress allowed Indian heirs to

sell inherited land without approval from secretary of interior

1906, burke act Indians whom secretary of Interior deemed “competent” could be granted fee simple

i.e. no longer had to wait 25 year before they could sell allotments

1914 “competency commissions” established

Often competency was linked to blood quantum

Some Native Americans were able to defeat allotment by selecting allotments “with agendas other than assimilation in mind”

They viewed and used the space in Native American ways

Telling Indian History

“The whole country is one vast winter count. You can’t walk a mile without coming to some family’s sacred vision hill, Sun Dance circle, and old battleground, a place where something worth remembering happened” Mary Crow Dog Lakota

Native American landscape told the story of the past

For the Cherokee the Tennessee river was the “long man”

His head in the mountains his feet in the ocean

Along this landscape were locations that told of the past

“I would like for them to forget that this country – the great United States – even exists. I would like for them to go back to a time when there was only the Creek and the Choctaw and the Chickasaw and the Cherokee in this area. Back to a time when there were no massive roads and cars. And to go out and to just feel, and to listen to the voices of the past.”

Story-teller Freeman Owle, when asked how visitors to the Cherokee Heritage

Trail should understand the landscape and history

 

Kiowa

Kiowa tradition tells that People entered the world through a hollow log

“in the bleak northern mountains” In present day western Montana Late 17th C began to migrate southward Headed to black hills Befriended Crows

Acquired horses and their “ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly

free of the ground” Acquired Tai-me Sacred sun dance doll And the religion of the plains Pushed out of black hills by

Cheyenne and Sioux

Moved south through Wyoming Towards Ouachtia Mountains in Oklahoma By early 19th C had become allied with

Comanche and dominated the southern plains

Ranging across Western Oklahoma Northern Texas Northeastern New Mexico Southeastern Colorado Southwestern Kansas

We can plot that movement on a modern map We can see the shift in location over time

But what does it mean?

“In the course of that long migration they had come of age as a people. They had conceived a good idea of themselves; they had dared to imagine and determine who they were” N. Scot Momaday

Part of that act is telling the stories of the landscape

Video II

Winter count Tribal historians of plains

compiled calendars of events

Those significant to the community

Often known as winter counts

Usually painted on Buffalo robe in a spiral pattern

NMAI

Most calendars record things such as small pox epidemics “the winter when the stars fell”

Meteor shower in November 1833 But also things of local tribal

importance like horse raids, or a Sun Dance

But may ignore major battle with US

Chronicle we will now look at records Kiowa history over a period of 60 years

Begun by Kiowa named Dohasan in 1832

When he died carried on by his nephew, also Dohasan

Originally painted on hides 2nd Dohasan maid copy on

paper given to Captain Hugh L. Scott of 7th

Cavalry

Dohasan Calendar

1) 1832-3 Black wolf Killed by Americans

2) Osage attack on Kiowa camp, Osage cut of heads of victims

3) meteor shower of winter 1833 Black lines = dead vegetation = winter Summer = Sun Dance Lodge with

door

4) dieses kills many 1839-40 5) figure over Sun Dance Lodge –

doubled over with Cholera 6) Cholera 1849 7) Timber Hill Winter = Treaty of

Medicine Lodge 1867 8) Horse eating Sun Dance =

buffalo so scarce Kiowa had to kill and eat horses

9) Drawing of cow = buffalo gone Kiowa begin to lease land to cattlemen

10) measles epidemic 1892, began in reservation school