Our Mission Statement

We as a Nation seem to be losing our heritage.  For instance, how many of you know that November is American Indian month? And why isn't it celebrated on television? How any of our children can speak their native tongue? How many of our young could make their own clothing or hunt for their food?

November # 2

November # 1

Years ago knowledge was passed from generation to generation by grandmothers around the campfire.  As times changed, many Native traditions, legends, crafts, and skills were lost.  The heritage of the Anishinaabeg is unimaginably rich.  The Anishinaabe legacy must be preserved! The Anishinaabe Kinoomaagewin Program of Swartz Creek Public Schools has been designed to asssist eligible, enrolled students who are interested in learning more about the rich Anishinaabe culture.  It is dedicated to preserving, through our classes, this knowledge that is precious and unique to our country.  This web site is a current, present day effort to share some of these teachings and accurate knowledge of our culture and way of life with those of you out there who may wish to learn more.   We sincerely hope that you join us, learn with us and enjoy our site.  Miigwech! (History of the program:  The Indian Education Act became effective nationwide in 1972 and began in Swartz Creek Schools in 1975.  This is a Federally funded program and not funded with money from the school district budget.  The program is governed by the Parent Committee. Parents of enrolled students are always needed and welcomed to participate.)

What challenges do the American Indians Face? Five hundred years of aggression, deception, and violence. The American Indians have arguably faced more discrimination than any group in America. The culture of the American Indians is a vibrant one, but their political and economic struggle pose a great threat to their livelihood. To frame their situation more fully, one needs to explore their real situation. Sixty percent of women have Diabetes from malnourishment, half of all children under the age of six live in poverty. The poverty line for a family of four in America is $12,000 dollars a year. The average income is $4500 dollars. Twenty percent of homes lack a functioning toilets and telephone. An average male only receives 32 dollars every two weeks from welfare. The amount of money spent by the government on an average American's health is $2,600 dollars, for a Native American it is $1300 dollars. Thirty-one percent of all American Indians live below the poverty line. Coupled with all of these economic troubles are other governmental limitations. Of 470 treaties signed by congress, the government has gone back on almost all of them. In the last ten years 88 percent of Indians are unemployed. Through all this the Department of the Interior is planning to cut the BIA budget by 46 percent. Amidst the economic strife many Indians have been forced to sell themselves and degenerate their people. In the tourist areas around Mt. Rushmore, there are many situations where you can find "TAKE A PICTURE WITH AN AUTHENTIC INDIAN" advertisements. Economics have forced Indians to deface themselves and their identity. Where this will lead Native American culture in the future is a troubling question. Economics are not the only element threatening the native people. Alcoholis the leading killer of Native Americans today, it's not just a problem from the past. The overwhelming presence of alcohol on the reservation has had a detrimental effect on native populations. Alcohol has especially hit hard at one of the fundamental units in Indian communities, the family. Alcoholism has bred increased violence, sickness, and indolence on the reservation. Thus tearing at the fundamental root of community. Many would also argue that certain Native American college funds have had a negative effect on society. With an increased opportunity for younger Indians to obtain a higher education, an exodus has begun on many reservations. Many students are leaving the reservation for school and not returning. This has created a severe age gap in the reservation family. Today you can find many families with missing generations, having small children and elderly grandparents. This has had a deleterious effect on both the family and the economy, as many gifted, able young bodies are leaving the reservations. This long list of troubles makes the future of the American Indian sound hopeless. To assume this, however, is to sell the people short. For 500 years they have struggled with foreign threats, and still today they survive, as a strong and determined people. In a future, perhaps, with fewer barriers towards their goals they will once again be able to thrive. It has been a strong sense of community and a deep sense of spiritualism that has sustained the People thus far, and it will be in maintaining this culture that the future rests.

The history and legends I've been taught say that the four races of mankind were each put in their own direction on earth by the Creator and each race has its' own responsibility to help both Mother Earth and mankind.  For instance, the Native people were put in the southern direction, the Black were in the west, the White were put in the North and the Yellow (orientals) in the East.  North were responsible for the air, East for the fire, South for the earth, and West for the water.  Each race is supposed to be held accountable for the condition of the item in which the Creator put them.  None of the races have been totally successful in keeping each whole as they were given it, have they? Only the Anishinaabeg attempted to keep their part prior to European contanct. That, my good friends, is what I have been taught and believe and what I teach to my children and students.  My lesson on this here is done.  What follows behind here is what most of the dominant society or culture wishes to believe about the Bering Straights crossing, which I, of course, do NOT believe.  Just to give you some critical thinking issues and skills to consider.  Mii si wi (that is all). Origins of American Indians All human societies have versions of their own origins, and the American Indians are no different. Stories of natural or supernatural creation in the Americas or emergence from another world exist among all Indian tribes and, like the biblical narrative in Genesis, are regarded as matters of faith. Apart from them, and not competing with them, is what is known from the evidence of science and scholarship. Since no remains of a pre-Homo sapiens type have ever been found in the Americas, it is assumed that humans did not evolve in the Western Hemisphere but entered it after the development of modern humans. It is also generally agreed - from the findings of archaeology in Mongolia, Siberia, and North America and studies in physical anthropology, linguistics, and other disciplines - that they came from eastern Asia in one or more migrations, crossing a land bridge that from time to time during the Ice Age connected Siberia with Alaska. The time of the first arrivals is still in question. During the Wisconsin glacial stage, the last seventy thousand or so years of the Ice Age, the periodic formation of glaciers caused the sea levels to fall as much as three hundred feet. At such times, the retreating waters exposed a vast, flat landmass of tundra and grass (which scholars call Beringia) that extended north and south for up to a thousand miles across the area now covered by the Bering Strait and adjacent seas and provided passage between Asia and North America to migrating animals and humans. Conversely, during periods when the glaciers melted and withdrew, the seas rose again, covering the land bridge and preventing movement by land between the continents. It is believed that the bridge existed sometime between seventy thousand and thirty thousand years ago; again, continuously, from twenty-five thousand to fifteen thousand years ago; and, once or twice, between approximately fourteen thousand and ten thousand years ago. At any of these times, it is presumed that small hunting bands from Asia, pursuing migrating herds of Ice Age megafauna across Beringia or along its coasts, could have reached Alaska. Whether these first Americans came at one time or in separate migrations at different periods during the Ice Age, once in Alaska, they and their descendants continued to pursue the Pleistocene big-game animals, following them along ice-free routes on the Alaskan coasts, up the Yukon and other river valleys, and gradually south through corridors that existed from time to time between the Laurentian and Cordilleran ice sheets. Eventually, south of the glaciers, the hunting bands spread to the Atlantic Coast and through Central and South America. From archaeological discoveries, it is certain that human beings were living in almost all parts of North and South America by at least twelve thousand years ago. Still controversial, though gaining increasing acceptance, are various finds from Alaska and the Yukon to Brazil and Chile and from California to Pennsylvania that suggest that humans were present thirty-five thousand years ago or earlier. Although population at first was sparse, here and there bands undoubtedly met one another, combined, divided into new groups, or drove one another into less hospitable and accessible areas. Until the end of the Ice Age, about ten thousand years ago, the people on both continents lived essentially by hunting mammoths, mastodons, outsized bison, and other now-extinct animals and by fishing and gathering wild foods. After the disappearance of the big Pleistocene fauna, deer and other small game were hunted, and the gathering of nuts, berries, grass seeds, and wild vegetables and fruits became more important. With the passage of time, physical and cultural variations began to appear as people adapted to the different environments in which they lived. Population increased, and weapons and tools became more sophisticated and varied. A basic Clovis-type, chipped-stone spear point, named for the New Mexican site in which it was first found but used by big-game hunters in many parts of the hemisphere about eleven thousand years ago, was succeeded by numerous specialized regional and local types. In the millennia following the Ice Age, evolutionary processes and continued migrations within the Americas accelerated the differentiation among the peoples and their developing cultures. Those living along the coasts developed maritime-oriented cultures with economies based largely on harvesting fish and collecting shellfish. In the eastern half of the present-day United States, vigorous Woodland cultures of hunters, gatherers, and fishers emerged, and in the arid West, gatherers of wild foods developed a long-lived Desert Culture. At the same time, more arrivals from Asia, including the ancestors of the Eskimos and Aleuts, seem to have reached North America by crossing the open water in boats. Less likely, but not to be ruled out, is the possibility of accidental contacts from the Old World - boats blown by winds or carried by ocean currents from Japan, China, Polynesia, Africa, or the Mediterranean. No proof has yet been offered of such an occurrence or of its influence on American Indian cultures. More fanciful claims that Indians are descendants of the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Welsh, a Lost Tribe of Israel, or refugees from the lost continent of Atlantis can be dismissed. The invention of agriculture in the Western Hemisphere - occurring separately in Mexico and the Andean and the northern lowland regions of South America about nine thousand years ago - led to the settling down of the horticultural peoples to tend their gardens. Spreading through large parts of both continents, the growing of corn, squash, beans, manioc, and other crops allowed the storage of surplus food, the concentration and growth of populations, the stratification of societies under religious and secular leaders, and a flourishing of arts and crafts. The last three thousand years before the arrival of Columbus saw the rise of advanced, agriculturally based Indian civilizations, with true urban centers, monumental public works, and ruling classes. Many, like the civilizations of the Mayas in Mesoamerica and the Chacoan peoples in the present-day American Southwest, fell before the Europeans came. But some, including the empires of the Aztecs and Incas and a few towns of the resplendent temple mound-building Mississippians in the U.S. Southeast still existed in 1492. Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., The Indian Heritage of America (1968); Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival (1987). Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Indians: Societies and Cultures During the period of European colonization, Native American societies within the present continental United States varied markedly. Despite this diversity, however, almost all the tribes were integrated through interconnecting political, economic, social, and religious obligations provided by extended families or kinship groups. During the next three centuries some of these societies were forced to alter many of their original structures, but others were able to preserve some of their traditional forms. All, however, retained considerable kinship ties, and within both the traditional and the acculturated modern societies, the extended family structures still form the basis for tribal cohesion. In the Northeast most Indian people lived in small bands that came together in the summer to form larger villages. The people planted corn and other vegetables, which were cultivated by women, and they enjoyed a series of ceremonies marking the ripening of crops and the rhythm of the seasons. Some tribes (such as Senecas and Hurons) relied heavily upon agriculture, whereas others (Ottawas, Kickapoos) depended more upon hunting or fishing. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries almost all became dependent upon the fur trade, and by 1750 much of their economic activity focused upon procuring pelts for the Europeans. Their growing association with Europeans and colonists also encouraged a centralization of political power, since whites preferred to deal with a single "chief" rather than a series of band or kinship leaders. Protestant and Catholic missionaries proselytized among the tribes, and some groups were converted. Others integrated Christian doctrines with their traditional beliefs to form new syncretic faiths. By the early nineteenth century most of these northeastern tribes had been forced to sell their lands, and during the 1830s and 1840s they were moved to new territory west of the Mississippi. Today many of their descendants live in Oklahoma where they have continued the acculturation process. Others (Seneca, Chippewa, Menominee) remain on reservations or tribal lands within their old homelands, where they retain many of their cultural patterns. The southeastern tribes were more dependent upon agriculture, and many had been heavily influenced by the Mississippian culture, a complex, pre-Columbian way of life characterized by considerable political stratification, culturewide religious organizations, large burial mounds, and relatively large population centers. Although most adherents of the Mississippian culture were gone by the early 1700s, the southeastern tribes remained a sedentary village people held together through a network of primarily matrilineal clans. Like the northeastern tribes, they marked their calendar with a series of feasts and religious ceremonies. Although many southeastern people (Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws) participated in the British deerskin trade, their adherence to agriculture and later herding (Choctaws) made them less dependent than the northeastern tribes upon the Anglo-Americans. By 1800 intermarriage between white traders and members of the Five Southern, or "Civilized" Tribes (Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles - called "civilized" by whites because they had adopted many white cultural patterns) had produced mixed-blood leaders who championed further acculturation. By the 1820s, for example, many mixed-blood Cherokee leaders were raising cotton or other cash crops on large farms or plantations worked by black slaves. The Cherokees had a tribal government modeled after the federal system, with a bicameral council, an elected chief, and tribal courts. Sequoyah, a Cherokee living in Arkansas, had developed a Cherokee syllabary, and the tribe published a newspaper and books in the language. Although the other southern tribes were less acculturated than the Cherokees, they too had adopted many facets of white culture. During the 1830s and 1840s, however, the southern tribes were forced to relinquish their lands and remove to Oklahoma. Intertribal arguments over the removal treaties created political divisions within the tribes, and this fragmentation continued to plague the tribes in the West. There the Five Southern Tribes reestablished their tribal governments, and for some the pace of acculturation quickened. Today, many Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles continue to adhere to traditional values, but others, while maintaining their tribal identities, have become integrated into the American mainstream. In the early contact period two types of tribal societies shared the Great Plains. Ensconced along the banks of major rivers, sedentary tribes such as the Mandan's, Pawnees, and Hidatsas lived in villages of large earthen lodges. They tended fields of maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers, supplementing their diet with bison and other animals hunted on the plains. The village people followed a rich ceremonial life that included such rituals as the Okipa (Mandan) and the Morning Star ceremony (Pawnee), which involved the personal sacrifice of the individual for the benefit of the tribe. Kinship networks entailing a series of obligations and support systems provided the village people with social and political cohesion. Since these communities produced and stored agricultural surpluses, their villages prior to the mid-eighteenth century were major trading and political centers. The plains during this early period were also inhabited by small numbers of wandering pedestrian hunters who would form groups to stalk bison or combine to drive herds of the animals over cliffs or "kill-sites." Carrying their small skin lodges with them, they lived a nomadic existence in search of the herds and may have spent the winter camped on the fringes of the plains or in sheltered river valleys. The introduction of the horse in the eighteenth century had a profound impact upon both societies. For the nomads, the effect was beneficial. Horses enabled them to cover great distances, and hunters could locate and kill the bison more easily. Women's tasks were made easier, too, since horses served as beasts of burden. Because horse-drawn travois could drag heavier lodge skins and longer tipi poles, lodges increased in size and larger quantities of food and household possessions could be kept. More time was now available for creative activity, and skin painting, beadwork, and other artistic endeavors flourished. In addition, the tribes'' ceremonial life was enlarged and elaborated; the Sun Dance became the most important communal religious experience on the plains. The sedentary village people accepted horses, but they refused to adopt a nomadic way of life and now became the target of raids by the bison hunters. As the nomadic tribes (Sioux, Kiowa's, Arapahoe's, among others) flourished, the village people declined, and by the first decades of the nineteenth century the nomads dominated the plains. Indeed, this was their golden era, and their rich and abundant way of life became a cultural magnet, attracting other tribes to share in their lifestyle. Tragically, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, most of these Plains Indians were confined to reservations and subjected to forced acculturation programs by the federal government. Encouraged to abandon their traditional way of life and to become yeoman farmers in a region that would not sustain agriculture, most of the Plains tribes, like other Indian peoples of this period, suffered from disease and a declining birthrate. Recently their populations have increased, and although many of the reservation communities remain economically depressed, they are wellsprings of traditional culture. Many groups have resurrected tribal languages and religious traditions. Others are active in the Native American Church, a pan-Indian religious organization that has incorporated religious traditions from several tribes with Christian doctrines and the use of peyote. Tribal identities among the Plains peoples remain particularly strong. Many of the Native American people living in the desert Southwest have also been able to retain much of their traditional culture. In the seventeenth century, Spanish immigrants into the region were welcomed by pueblo-dwelling villagers who had built adobe settlements along the Rio Grande watershed. Descendants of the Anasazi people, a widespread pre-Columbian cultural complex extending across the Southwest, the pueblo dwellers were agriculturists steeped in a religious ceremonialism that permeated their lives and was closely associated with the geographic features that marked their homelands. Their villages were governed by gender- and age-graded religious societies whose leaders formed a theocracy. Their followers were admonished to live in harmony both with their gods and with their fellow villagers. They wove cotton cloth and produced an abundance of highly decorated earthen pottery. Their villages attracted Spanish missionaries, and some of the Pueblo people converted to Christianity. But their steadfast adherence to many traditional beliefs forced the priests to incorporate them into Roman Catholic ritual. Still residing in their ancestral villages, the modern Pueblo communities remain cohesive units retaining much of their rich ceremonialism. Although many residents work outside their communities, others produce traditional patterns of jewelry and ceramics that are much in demand. Among the Pueblo tribes, the Hopis of northern Arizona remain one of the most traditional Native American communities in the continental United States. The Athabascan-speaking people, Apaches and Navajos, compose the other major southwestern group. Unlike the Pueblos they originally were a hunting and gathering people who supplemented their food supply through horticulture. Ranging across the Southwest, the Apaches lived in brush- and hide-covered wickiups. In the seventeenth century, their acquisition of horses increased mobility and probably diminished their already limited reliance upon horticulture. The Navajos, their close relatives, lived in a similar fashion until they acquired horses and sheep in the same period. Adopting a more sedentary mode of life, the Navajos developed transhumant economic patterns: they followed their flocks and herds into the uplands during the summer and removed them to protected valleys during the winter. They erected hexagonal, dirt-covered Hogan's as residences and began to plant larger fields of beans and corn and small orchards of peach trees. After migrating westward into the canyon and mesa lands of northeastern Arizona, the Navajos grazed their animals on lands radiating out from Canyon de Chelly, a long, Y-shaped, steep-sided canyon near the modern Arizona-New Mexico border. Prospering in their new environment, the Navajos became successful herdsmen, harvesting wool to be woven into cloth. They also became skilled silversmiths. During the nineteenth century they acquired a very large reservation in their homeland where they still reside, scattered across the desert in small communities or individual dwellings. Clan identification remains important and many Navajos still follow traditional cultural patterns. Most are bilingual (Navajo and English), and in recent decades the question of energy development upon the reservations has stirred considerable interest in Navajo politics. The Navajos are the nation's largest Indian tribe. During the early colonial period California held a larger Indian population than any other region, with the population concentrated along the coast and in the great interior valleys. Characterized by relatively small tribes or political units, the native peoples spoke many tongues and manifested a variety of cultural patterns. Most, however, were hunters, fishers, and gatherers, who often relied heavily upon the seasonal catches of salmon or the gathering of acorns. In the eighteenth century the tribes along the southern coast were forced into the Spanish mission system, and during the latter half of the nineteenth century the interior tribes were almost annihilated by the influx of Anglo-American settlers. During the twentieth century, however, economic opportunities in California attracted large numbers of Indian migrants, with both the Los Angeles basin and the San Francisco Bay region supporting relatively large urban Indian communities. North of California, along the coast of Washington and Oregon, seafaring fishermen, Chinook and Salish, harvested a large variety of marine life and developed one of the most successful hunting and gathering cultures in the world. They lived in large wooden plank structures amid such material abundance that they developed institutional mechanisms, like the potlatch, for the redistribution of wealth. (Potlatches were ceremonies in which individuals gave away much of their wealth in return for the esteem and veneration of their fellow tribespeople.) Skilled woodworkers, they exhibited a fine artistry in intricately carved masks, wooden beams, and totem poles, the last reflecting the clan affiliation of the inhabitants in the extended family residences. These coastal dwellers suffered considerably from diseases introduced during the nineteenth century, but many small reservation communities persisted. Some still rely upon fishing while others have relocated in Seattle, Portland, and other cities in the region. Although Native American cultures and societies underwent many changes after the period of initial European and American contact, most tribes retained at least some of the parts of their culture that they considered most important. Government-defined blood quotas aside, within the tribal communities "being Indian" is still defined in cultural terms. Each tribe remains unique, and the definition of tribal identity continues to reflect their diversity. Jules B. Billiard, ed., The World of the American Indian (1974); Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America (1961). R. David Edmunds See Also: Missionaries Serra, Junípero Indians: Warfare In spite of many differences, the universality of the art of war is demonstrated by a study of the causes of conflict and the battle methods used by American Indian tribes. As in all armies, hierarchy of rank was important, and rank was determined by demonstrated bravery and proficiency. Most of the tribes had a war leader with lieutenants to aid him. Dress and insignia indicated rank and experience in battle. Accompanying the warriors on long marches or during sieges was a commissary force of hunters to supply food and other requirements. Rituals and dances fanned the martial spirit and celebrated victories. And like many soldiers the world over, warriors carried some sort of amulet into battle to guard them from harm. Occasionally they raided neighboring tribes for stores of food or for women or slaves. Early in the eighteenth century, for example, Creek Indians, serving as mercenaries for British colonists, attacked and captured several villages of Yamasee and other tribes who were sent to slavery in the Carolinas. Causes of war varied from tribe to tribe, but usually involved territorial rights, retaliation for aggressive acts, or rituals marking young males'' coming to manhood through the performance of brave deeds. If the rituals resulted in the slaying of members of another tribe, a revenge attack was almost certain, and this could escalate into tribal warfare. When Europeans brought the horse to North America early in the sixteenth century, that animal became the most prized object for raiders and made it possible for a young man to prove himself by capturing an enemy's horse rather than having to kill the man. The capture of horses often resulted in running fights, in which other deeds could be performed that added to a warrior's status. An individual's standing in a tribe was also measured by the number of captured horses in his possession. Territorial disputes between tribes had little to do with land ownership; rather, they concerned the wild game and food plants on the land. For example, food shortages during the seventeenth century brought the Pequot into conflict with the Niantic, Narragansett, and other tribes of southern New England. Fearing the presence of the Pequot, the colonists in the area supported the opposition tribes, including a dissident branch of the Pequot - the Mohegan led by the legendary Uncas. So many Pequot were killed or scattered that the tribe virtually ceased to exist. Any tribe occupying territory with particularly rich food resources was liable to attack by other tribes wandering in search of the essentials of life. >From the beginning of European colonization to the ceding of the last tracts in the Far West, Indians had difficulty comprehending the Euro-American concept of ownership of land. But after their living space was taken by artful treaties and removal was forced upon them, they often resorted to war. Examples include the uprising during the 1670s that was planned for almost a decade by Metacom in New England and is known as King Philip's War. Two hundred years later, the Sioux and Cheyenne on the northern plains were fighting to recover their holy Black Hills. Red Cloud of the Teton Sioux succeeded in holding for almost a decade lands claimed by them along tributaries of the Yellowstone River, but military expeditions and rapid settlement eventually forced the Plains Indians onto reservations. Efforts by some chiefs to unify tribes for war did little to slow the spread of European settlement. In the seventeenth century, Popé brought the Pueblos together to fight for independence from Spanish rule. During the revolt they killed hundreds of Spaniards and forced the survivors out of their towns. But because of dissension among the Pueblos and attacks from other tribes, the alliance collapsed. Within a dozen years the Spaniards had returned. In the 1760s Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, organized an alliance to drive the British from his people's Ohio valley homeland, but it failed. Early in the nineteenth century, Tecumseh persuaded warriors from at least fifteen distantly separated tribes to join his confederacy, but they too could not stop the onrush of settlement across Ohio and Indiana. Only the Iroquois League, a highly advanced combination of tribes in New York State, was able to withstand, for almost two centuries, the efforts of Europeans to seize their living space. The Mohawks, Cayugas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas - and later the Tuscaroras - were agricultural peoples, living on land rich in crops, venison, and furs. Long before the coming of Europeans, they had put together a federation (similar to the confederation that created the United States). This provided them with a central government that was peaceful in intent but if necessary could apply military pressure to defend against their neighbors, the Hurons and Algonquins. After colonization began, the French, English, and Dutch learned to respect the fierceness of Iroquois resistance. The Iroquois were among the first Indians to obtain firearms by trading furs and corn. But they overextended their range in search of furs for trading, and the resulting conflicts gradually weakened the league. After the outbreak of the revolutionary war, the Iroquois split into factions. Neutrality failed, and many allied with the British. Their lands became battlegrounds; fields and granaries were destroyed. After the war, those who had not fled to Canada or westward were confined to reservations. Even with a strong government, the Iroquois civil leaders were never able to control their warriors or change their ancient manner of fighting. To Iroquois warriors, war was individual combat. They did not concentrate their forces on command, as the Europeans had since the days of the Romans. Nor did any of the tribes maintain a standing army as European nations did. Service as a warrior was voluntary, and although there were long-standing enmities between certain tribes, protracted wars were almost unknown. War parties varied greatly in size, but most of them were not much larger than a modern-day platoon. After the warriors and their leaders made a decision to organize a war party, volunteers were called for, and the war chief selected his lieutenants. Four or five days of fasting or feasting, prayer, dancing, singing, and other rituals might follow, and then after weapons were carefully inspected, paint applied to the body, and the proper amulets collected, the warriors departed. Scouts went out two to four miles ahead of the party, reporting back to the war chief if they found wild game or traces of the enemy. When scouts sighted an enemy village, they quickly brought back information about its location, the number of lodges and horses, and the existence of suitable cover for an attack. If for some reason the party lost the element of surprise, or someone observed a bad luck sign or reported having a warning dream, the attack might be abandoned. But when the war chief decided upon an attack, the time most likely was at daybreak. Various signals directed the advance of the warriors - movements of hands, lances, or guns, or the sounding of eagle-wing or turkey-bone whistles. For signaling over long distances on the spacious plains, the warriors used smoke signals and flashing mirrors. The Woodland Indians in the East fought mostly on foot, faithfully obeying their war leaders as they silently set ambushes or prepared for surprise assaults upon villages. But from the moment of the signaled attack, each warrior fought independently, seeking honors for himself. In the West, after the introduction of horses, the Plains Indians fought mostly mounted, and although sometimes described as the finest light cavalry in the world, they seldom charged in shock formations. Each horseman attacked as he pleased, often recklessly daring the fire of soldiers by seeking close combat in order to win honors by "striking coup." Warriors of the plains made their coup sticks from wooden poles, usually willow; about six feet long, and decorated with eagle feathers or bits of animal skins. Striking an enemy with a coup stick or weapon was the highest symbol of bravery, ranking above killing or scalping. George Grinnell, who lived with and studied the war customs of several Plains tribes, believed that the ceremony of counting coup was a survival of the times before Indians used arrows, when they fought hand-to-hand with clubs and sharpened sticks. Scalping is a war practice that dates from antiquity. Before colonization, some North American tribes scalped their war victims, and some did not. The coming of Europeans undoubtedly accelerated the custom. In the struggle for control of North America, various nations offered bounties for the heads of enemy Indians or soldiers. Scalps were easy to remove with European metal knives and easier to transport than heads. Before they had access to muskets and other firearms, the warriors'' weapons were arrows, clubs, tomahawks, knives, and lances. Arrows were as varied as the tribes, but the heads were generally of two types - narrow and tapering like a lance or triangular. The latter were used in war, the heads often being loosely attached to the shafts so they would remain in the wound when the shaft was withdrawn. Some tribes cut grooves down the shafts to facilitate the flow of blood from the wound. In close encounters, a warrior trained from youth as a bowman could fire far more rapidly and accurately than an enemy armed with a muzzle-loader. After the introduction of breech-loaders and more rapidly firing rifles, arrows could be used effectively only in surprise attacks followed by swift withdrawals. The war club was in general use across America and differed in material, shape, and decoration. A length of wood with a knob at the end was common among tribes of the forest. Sharp bits of stone or bone were added to the head; as metal became available blades and spikes were used. In the East war clubs developed into tomahawks, a hatchet-shaped weapon that was originally made of stone. After the Europeans came, the blades were metal, some actually made in Europe. Because of its war symbolism, the tomahawk was buried to represent peace and dug up for war. To obtain greater range, especially on the plains, warriors used lances - poles as long as twelve feet or more with large stone or metal points shaped like arrowheads. Usually they were decorated with fur, eagle feathers, and strips of beads. During the Civil War, tribes from Indian Territory fought on both sides. This experience, combined with years of observing uniformed soldiers in battle, gradually brought on modifications in their own comportment. In 1834, while approaching a Comanche village with a company of dragoons, George Catlin witnessed the maneuvers of several hundred warriors who galloped out at full speed to meet them. "As they wheeled their horses," he reported, "they very rapidly formed in a line, and] dressed [like well-disciplined cavalry." In 1867, George Armstrong Custer was similarly impressed with the defensive posture of a Cheyenne force outside a tipi village on the Kansas plains: "Most of the Indians were mounted; all were bedecked in their brightest colors, their heads crowned with the brilliant warbonnet, their lances bearing the crimson pennant, bows strung, and quivers full of barbed arrows.... In the line of battle before us there were several hundred Indians, while farther to the rear and at different distances were other organized bodies acting apparently as reserves." Such developments in warfare came too late to have any substantial effects, although they played some part in the Indian victories in 1876 at the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn. Angie Debo, A History of the Indians of the United States (1974); Thomas E. Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains (1972); William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., Handbook of North American Indians, 20 vols. (1977-). Dee Brown See Also Uncas Indians: Indian-White Wars Suspicion and hostility, stemming from technological and cultural differences as well as mutual feelings of superiority, have permeated relations between Indians and non-Indians in North America. Intertribal antagonisms among the Indians, and nationalistic rivalries, bad faith, and expansionist desires on the part of non-Indians exacerbated these tensions. The resulting white-Indian conflicts often took a particularly brutal turn and ultimately resulted in the near-de-struction of the indigenous peoples. Warfare between Europeans and Indians was common in the seventeenth century. In 1622, the Powhatan Confederacy nearly wiped out the struggling Jamestown colony. Frustrated at the continuing conflicts, Nathaniel Bacon and a group of vigilantes destroyed the Pamunkey Indians before leading an unsuccessful revolt against colonial authorities in 1676. Intermittent warfare also plagued early Dutch colonies in New York. In New England, Puritan forces annihilated the Pequots in 1636-1637, a campaign whose intensity seemed to foreshadow the future. Subsequent attacks inspired by Metacom (King Philip) against English settlements sparked a concerted response from the New England Confederation. Employing Indian auxiliaries and a scorched-earth policy, the colonists nearly exterminated the Narragansetts, Wampanoags, and Nipmucks in 1675-1676. A major Pueblo revolt also threatened Spanish-held New Mexico in 1680. Indians were also a key factor in the imperial rivalries among France, Spain, and England. In King William's (1689-1697), Queen Anne's (1702-1713), and King George's (1744-1748) wars, the French sponsored Abnaki and Mohawk raids against the more numerous English. Meanwhile, the English and their trading partners, the Chickasaws and often the Cherokees, battled the French and associated tribes for control of the lower Mississippi River valley and the Spanish in western Florida. More decisive was the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The French and their Indian allies dominated the conflict's early stages, turning back several English columns in the north. Particularly serious was the near-annihilation of Gen. Edward Braddock's force of thirteen hundred men outside of Fort Duquesne in 1755. But with English minister William Pitt infusing new life into the war effort, British regulars and provincial militias overwhelmed the French and absorbed all of Canada. But eighteenth-century conflicts were not limited to the European wars for empire. In Virginia and the Carolinas, English-speaking colonists pushed aside the Tuscaroras, the Yamasees, and the Cherokees. The Natchez, Chickasaw, and Fox Indians resisted French domination, and the Apaches and Comanches fought against Spanish expansion into Texas. In 1763, an Ottawa chief, Pontiac, forged a powerful confederation against British expansion into the Old Northwest. Although his raids wreaked havoc upon the surrounding white settlements, the British victory in the French and Indian War combined with the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, soon eroded Pontiac's support. Most of the Indians east of the Mississippi River now perceived the colonial pioneers as a greater threat than the British government. Thus northern tribes, especially those influenced by Mohawk chief Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant), generally sided with the Crown during the American War for Independence. In 1777, they joined the Tories and the British in the unsuccessful offensives of John Burgoyne and Barry St. Leger in upstate New York. Western Pennsylvania and New York became savage battlegrounds as the conflict spread to the Wyoming and Cherry valleys. Strong American forces finally penetrated the heart of Iroquois territory, leaving a wide swath of destruction in their wake. In the Midwest, George Rogers Clark captured strategic Vincennes for the Americans, but British agents based at Detroit continued to sponsor Tory and Indian forays as far south as Kentucky. The Americans resumed the initiative in 1782, when Clark marched northwest into Shawnee and Delaware country, ransacking villages and inflicting several stinging defeats upon the Indians. To the south, the British backed resistance among the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Choctaws but quickly forgot their former allies following the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783). By setting the boundaries of the newly recognized United States at the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, that treaty virtually ensured future conflicts between whites and resident tribes. In 1790, Miami chief Little Turtle routed several hundred men led by Josiah Harmar along the Maumee River. Arthur St. Clair's column suffered an even more ignominious defeat on the Wabash River the following year; only in 1794 did Anthony Wayne gain revenge at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Yet resistance to white expansion in the Old Northwest continued as a Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, molded a large Indian confederation based at Prophetstown. While Tecumseh was away seeking additional support, William Henry Harrison burned the village after a stalemate at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Indian raids, often encouraged by the British, were influential in causing the United States to declare war on Great Britain in 1812. The British made Tecumseh a brigadier general and used Indian allies to help recapture Detroit and Fort Dearborn (Chicago). Several hundred American prisoners were killed following a skirmish at the River Raisin in early 1813. But Harrison pushed into Canada and won the Battle of the Thames, which saw the death of Tecumseh and the collapse of his confederation. In the Southeast, the Creeks gained a major triumph against American forces at Fort Sims, killing many of their prisoners in the process. Andrew Jackson led the counterthrust, winning victories at Tallasahatchee and Talladega before crushing the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Alaska and Florida were also the scenes of bitter conflicts. Native peoples strongly contested the Russian occupation of Alaska. The Aleuts were defeated during the eighteenth century, but the Russians found it impossible to prevent Tlingit harassment of their hunting parties and trading posts. Upon the Spanish cession of Florida, Washington began removing the territory's tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River. But the Seminole Indians and runaway slaves refused to relocate, and the Second Seminole War saw fierce guerrilla-style actions from 1835 to 1842. Osceola, perhaps the greatest Seminole leader, was captured during peace talks in 1837, and nearly three thousand Seminoles were eventually removed. The Third Seminole War (1855-1858) stamped out all but a handful of the remaining members of the tribe. In the United States, the removal policy met only sporadic armed resistance as whites pushed into the Mississippi River valley during the 1830s and 1840s. The Sac and Fox Indians were crushed in Black Hawk's War (1831-1832), and tribes throughout the region seemed powerless in the face of the growing numbers of forts and military roads the whites were constructing. The acquisition of Texas and the Southwest during the 1840s, however, sparked a new series of Indian-white conflicts. In Texas, where such warfare had marred the independent republic's brief history, the situation was especially volatile. On the Pacific Coast, attacks against the native peoples accompanied the flood of immigrants to gold-laden California. Disease, malnutrition, and warfare combined with the poor lands set aside as reservations to reduce the Indian population of that state from 150,000 in 1845 to 35,000 in 1860. The army took the lead role in Oregon and Washington, using the Rogue River (1855-1856), Yakima (1855-1856), and Spokane (1858) wars to force several tribes onto reservations. Sporadic conflicts also plagued Arizona and New Mexico throughout the 1850s as the army struggled to establish its presence. On the southern plains, mounted warriors posed an even more formidable challenge to white expansion. Strikes against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahos, Comanches, and Kiowas during the decade only hinted at the deadlier conflicts of years to come. The Civil War saw the removal of the Regulars and an accompanying increase in the number and intensity of white-Indian conflicts. The influence of the Five Southern, or "Civilized" Tribes of the Indian Territory was sharply reduced. Seven Indian regiments served with Confederate troops at the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862). Defeat there and at Honey Springs (1863) dampened enthusiasm for the South, although tribal leaders like Stand Waite continued to support the confederacy until the war's end. James H. Carleton and Christopher ("Kit") Carson conducted a ruthlessly effective campaign against the Navahos in New Mexico and Arizona. Disputes on the southern plains culminated in the Sand Creek massacre (1864), during which John M. Chivington's Colorado volunteers slaughtered over two hundred of Black Kettle's Cheyenne and Arapahos, many of whom had already attempted to come to terms with the government. In Minnesota, attacks by the Eastern Sioux prompted counterattacks by the volunteer forces of Henry H. Sibley, after which the tribes were removed to the Dakotas. The conflict became general when John Pope mounted a series of unsuccessful expeditions onto the plains in 1865. Regular units, including four regiments of black troops, returned west following the Confederate collapse. Railroad expansion, new mining ventures, the destruction of the buffalo, and ever-increasing white demand for land exacerbated the centuries-old tensions. The mounted warriors of the Great Plains posed an especially thorny problem for an army plagued by a chronic shortage of cavalry and a government policy that demanded Indian removal on the cheap. Winfield S. Hancock's ineffectual campaign in 1867 merely highlighted the bitterness between whites and Indians on the southern plains. Using a series of converging columns, Philip Sheridan achieved more success in his winter campaigns of 1868-1869, but only with the Red River War of 1874-1875 were the tribes broken. Major battlefield encounters like George Armstrong Custer's triumph at the Battle of the Washita (1868) had been rare; more telling was the army's destruction of Indian lodges, horses, and food supplies, exemplified by Ranald Mackenzie's slaughter of over a thousand Indian ponies following a skirmish at Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, in 1874. To the north, the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahos had forced the army to abandon its Bozeman Trail forts in Red Cloud's War (1867). But arable lands and rumors of gold in the Dakotas continued to attract white migration; the government opened a major new war in 1876. Initial failures against a loose Indian coalition, forged by leaders including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, culminated in the annihilation of five troops of Custer's cavalry at the Little Bighorn. A series of army columns took the field that fall and again the following spring. By campaigning through much of the winter, harassing Indian villages, and winning battles like that at Wolf Mountain (1877), Nelson A. Miles proved particularly effective. The tribes had to sue for peace, and even Sitting Bull's band returned from Canada to accept reservation life in 1881. Another outbreak among the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne, precipitated by government corruption, shrinking reservations, and the spread of the Ghost Dance, culminated in a grisly encounter at Wounded Knee (1890), in which casualties totaled over two hundred Indians and sixty-four soldiers. Less spectacular but equally deadly were conflicts in the Pacific Northwest. In 1867-1868, George Crook defeated the Paiutes of northern California and southern Oregon. In a desperate effort to secure a new reservation on the tribal homelands, a Modoc chief assassinated Edward R. S. Canby during an abortive peace conference in 1873. Canby's death (he was the only general ever killed by Indians) helped shatter President Ulysses S. Grant's peace policy and resulted in the tribe's defeat and removal. Refusing life on a government-selected reservation, Chief Joseph's Nez Percés led the army on an epic seventeen-hundred-mile chase through Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana until checked by Miles just short of the Canadian border at Bear Paw Mountain (1877). Also unsuccessful was armed resistance among the Bannocks, Paiutes, Sheepeaters, and Utes in 1878-1879. To the far southwest, Cochise, Victorio, and Geronimo led various Apache bands in resisting white and Hispanic encroachments, crossing and recrossing the border into Mexico with seeming impunity. Many an officer's record was scarred as repeated treaties proved abortive. Only after lengthy campaigning, during which army columns frequently entered Mexico, were the Apaches forced to surrender in the mid-1880s. The army remained wary of potential trouble as incidental violence continued. Yet, with the exception of another clash in 1973 during which protesters temporarily seized control of Wounded Knee, the major Indian-white conflicts in the United States had ended. Militarily, several trends had become apparent. New technology often gave the whites a temporary advantage. But this edge was not universal; Indian warriors carrying repeating weapons during the latter nineteenth century sometimes outgunned their army opponents, who were equipped with cheaper (but often more reliable) single-shot rifles and carbines. As the scene shifted from the eastern woodlands to the western plains, white armies found it increasingly difficult to initiate fights with their Indian rivals. To force action, army columns converged upon Indian villages from several directions. This dangerous tactic had worked well at the Battle of the Washita but could produce disastrous results when large numbers of tribesmen chose to stand and fight, as at the Little Bighorn. Throughout the centuries of conflict, both sides had taken the wars to the enemy populace, and the conflicts had exacted a heavy toll among noncombatants. Whites had been particularly effective in exploiting tribal rivalries; indeed, Indian scouts and auxiliaries were often essential in defeating tribes deemed hostile by white governments. In the end, however, military force alone had not destroyed Indian resistance. Only in conjunction with railroad expansion, the destruction of the buffalo, increased numbers of non-Indian settlers, and the determination of successive governments to crush any challenge to their sovereignty had white armies overwhelmed the tribes. Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 (1969; reprint, 1977); Robert M. Utley, Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891 (1973). Robert Wooster See Also: Bacon's Rebellion Black Hawk Black Hawk War Colonial Wars Crazy Horse Custer, George Armstrong Geronimo Joseph (Chief Joseph) King Philip's War Philip (King Philip) Pontiac Sitting Bull Tecumseh Indians: Indian-White Relations Indian-white relations in the period following the arrival of Columbus can be seen variously as the continuation of a normal process of migration by humans from one part of the world to another, as a genocidal assault by more powerful intruders upon weaker, more "primitive" peoples, or as the process by which Western civilization and Christianity were transferred from the Old World to the New. Whichever perception is adopted will be in accordance with one's cultural, epistemological, and emotional preconceptions. The Europeans who followed Leif Eriksson's Norsemen at the turn of the tenth century (and gave us the first recorded account of European relations with the native peoples of North America) and those who followed Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century were greeted warily by the native population (in a friendly fashion in the case of Columbus's first voyage), but relations soon turned to hostility and war. In the Spanish case at least, the source of the hostility was Spanish cruelty and greed spurred by the realization that those living in the Caribbean basin were unable to defend themselves from the technologically superior newcomers. This conclusion derives from the evidence provided by the Spanish themselves, however much these accounts were exploited by Spain's rivals in the New World, whose hypocrisy often concealed similar cruelty and greed. Spain and Portugal had a century's head start on France, England, Holland, and Sweden in establishing relations with the peoples of the newfound world; thus the two countries had first choice of which lands to conquer, colonize, and exploit. Although we tend to think of Latin America today as a poor third world area, in the sixteenth century these lands were considered the richest and most desirable because of their valuable resources and their extensive populations who were soon forced to serve the Europeans as slaves, servants, or dependent trading partners. The present areas of the United States and Canada were considered by the Iberian powers the least desirable portions of the New World, hardly worth colonizing except to prevent northern European nations from establishing bases from which to harass the Spanish and Portuguese. Because of the absence of both mineral wealth and subservient populations in the areas north of Mexico, the English, French, Dutch, and Swedish set up colonies at the beginning of the seventeenth century that were primarily extensions of their own societies and dealt only intermittently with the surrounding native populations. The natural growth of these colonies provided increasing military and economic power vis-à-vis the Indians, whose numerical superiority in the first half-century in almost every colony was lost in the second half-century as European diseases and warfare took their toll. Cruelty and greed were prevalent in the early history of all the northern European nations'' dealings with the Indians, but the picture was not entirely one-sided: treachery and cunning existed on both sides. Cultural differences - the failure of each side to understand the assumptions of the other - led to frequent misunderstandings that in turn led to warfare. One of the most elementary forms of misunderstanding, for example, was the anger felt by the Indians over the colonists'' allowing their cattle and hogs to roam in unfenced freedom. The consequence was often the destruction of the Indians'' corn, which led to the Indians'' killing the offending animals, which led to retaliation by the settlers upon the Indians who had killed the animals, and so on. And too often those retaliating failed to discriminate between the Indians who were responsible for the "offense" and those who were not. While Spain and Portugal exploited the labor (through slavery and serfdom) of the large populations of the areas they settled, the northern Europeans made only limited use of Indian labor. Rather, they wanted land; if it had not been acquired through war or simple occupation, they sought to purchase it. But often the Indians assumed they were conferring on Europeans only the right to use the land without losing their own right to continue to use it for hunting, fishing, or gathering food. Northern European governments soon prohibited their colonists from making such purchases for fear that the contracts would compromise the royal assertions of ultimate sovereignty over all the lands. With the destruction or subordination of most of the coastal tribes, England and France, the two most successful of the northern European colonial powers, extended their jurisdiction into the interior, the English across the Appalachian Mountains hemming in their coastal settlements, and the French down the St. Lawrence River and up the Mississippi. The French, from their interior position, hoped to confine their English rivals to the coastal regions. The French were more adept at forging alliances with the powerful Indian nations in the interior, though they were not averse to wars of extermination, such as that against the Natchez in the Mississippi valley. Because the French had fewer settlers than the English, they tended to rely on a network of military and trade alliances with the Indians rather than developing agricultural and commercial settlements to match those of the English. With the destruction of French power in the great war for empire that raged across North America and Europe during the 1750s and 1760s, the situation of the Indians was weakened. They were no longer able to play off one European power against another but had to confront England directly. Only with the coming of the American Revolution did they recover the opportunity to play a balancing role. But, unfortunately, most tribes chose to side with the loser, and the victorious Americans treated the Indian nations who had fought with the British as defeated foes. Great Britain made no attempt to secure Indian rights in treaty negotiations with the Americans, and even the objections of Spain (America's wartime ally) that the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River remained Indian territory were dismissed by the victorious revolutionaries. But treating the Indians as defeated enemies was not an entirely successful tactic. After the tribes of the Old Northwest had inflicted a number of stinging setbacks upon the U.S. Army, the new American nation formulated a more moderate policy toward the Indians. The United States recognized the right of the Indian nations to exist as autonomous entities but sought to buy as much of their land as possible. Even the Indian allies of the Americans were pressured to sell off large portions of their lands. As the United States grew in power in the early nineteenth century, several Indian nations such as the Cherokee were overwhelmed and sent on forced marches to the so-called Indian Territory (later Oklahoma) with significant loss of life. The "Trail of Tears" of the Cherokee migration to the Indian Territory in the 1830s became an enduring symbol of white injustice toward the Indians, particularly since the removal was carried out despite the Cherokee Nation's legal victory over the state of Georgia in the Supreme Court. Most of the Indians in the eastern United States now moved West, either voluntarily or under duress, with a few remaining in small pockets near their original homelands. The health and longevity of the Indians had suffered a steady decline since the arrival of the Europeans, for the whites carried diseases, such as smallpox and measles, for which the Indians had no immunity. The diseases and the numbers affected by them are a subject of intense debate among scholars. Estimates of Indian population before the arrival of whites have increased over the years, sometimes by as much as ten times the earlier estimates. Henry Dobyns put the number at some 10 to 12 million in North America north of Mexico and 90 to 112 million for the entire Western Hemisphere. Most scholars have discounted such high estimates, although conceding that earlier estimates (such as the traditional figure of about 1 million for the present area of the United States) were probably too low. In any event, the steady decline of the Indian population in the United States reached its low point of 228,000 in 1890. This decline coincided with the loss of tribal lands and tribal authority, particularly under the General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act) of 1887. This act imposed a system of individual land ownership upon many of the Indian tribes with the government selling off the surplus lands to white settlers for the presumed benefit of the tribes (some western tribes were exempted or not forced to comply). Contemporary Indians often cite the Dawes Act as legislation that could and should have been avoided, but that is probably an unrealistic assessment. The vast landholdings of small impotent tribes simply could not have been maintained against the millions of well-armed whites moving west. The land rush in 1889 into the Indian Territory (which became Oklahoma as a result) is an example. Even the staunchest friends of the Indian were convinced that the tribes could not survive unless they gave up much of their land claims and secured a portion in severalty (individual allotments) with the security of a "white man's [fee simple] title." Although the popular impression during those years was that the Indians were a "disappearing race," the twentieth century saw a dramatic reversal of almost all indexes of decline. Health problems came under increasing control, and diseases like tuberculosis were nearly eliminated. But alcoholism, or alcohol-related events such as car accidents, became the principal cause of death among Indians: no one has determined why Indians seem to be so susceptible to alcoholic stress, and the debate between those favoring a genetic explanation and those a cultural one continues. The gradual loss of Indian tribal authority was suddenly reversed in 1934 with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act, which addressed the strengthening of tribal life and government with federal assistance. Although it was subject to bitter debate both at the time and later, the evidence is conclusive that the act, the product of The Reader's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright© 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.