Nous Sommes Tous Sauvages

The best book about Custer is Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star: Custer and The Little Bighorn.

“Son of the Morning Star makes good reading—its prose is elegant, its tone the voice of dry wit, its meandering narrative skillfully crafted. Mr. Connell is above all a storyteller, and the story he tells is vastly more complicated than who did what to whom on June 25, 1876.” Page Stegner

This book is generally considered one of the half-dozen best written about the American west. (And I intend to go read it again when I finish this.)

The best book attempting to tell the vastly more important Indian side of the story is James Welch’s Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians.

Best line about a historic event on this date

“It wasn’t Custer’s last stand; it was Custer’s last fight,” Medicine Crow said.

“It was Sitting Bull’s last stand. They won the battle that day but lost a way of life.”

From a 2006 article in the The Rocky Mountain News about the history and current issues at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

Geronimo

Several sources give June 16, 1829, as Geronimo’s date of birth. It’s not clear to NewMexiKen that the Apaches were using the Gregorian calendar at that time. And, indeed, one of those sources, The New York Times, stated in its obituary of Geronimo in February 1909 that he was nearly 90 — not 79 as this birth date would indicate. But, he had to be born some time. So why not June 16?

In her excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo, Angie Debo concludes:

Geronimo was born in the early 1820’s near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary [Arizona-New Mexico], probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton. …

He was given the name Goyahkla, with the generally accepted meaning “One Who Yawns,’ why or under what circumstances is not known.

As an adult in battle he was called Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, perhaps because they could not pronounce Goyahkla, or perhaps to invoke Saint Jerome (Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome). The name was adopted for him by his own people.

Read the rest of this entry.

Washita ‘Battlefield’ Misnamed

Yesterday we visited the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. This is the location of Black Kettle’s village of Southern Cheyenne at the Washita River in Indian Territory (now western Oklahoma). On November 27, 1868, the 7th Cavalry attacked the village just before dawn. (This event is portrayed in the movie Little Big Man.)

Here is what took place, as described by James Welch in Killing Custer:

Just before midnight, they crawled to the edge of a bluff which overlooked a river valley. One of the scouts announced he could smell smoke. The other heard a dog bark. Custer could not see anything, and he did not smell smoke or hear the dog. But in the quiet moments of listening, he heard a baby cry. He had found his Indians.

Custer divided his command into four detachments, which would surround the village, north, south, east, and west, and wait for dawn. On his command, they would charge from the four directions.

At first light, Custer turned to the band leader and directed him “to give us ‘Garry Owen’ [his favorite song]. At once the rollicking notes of that familiar marching and fighting air sounded forth through the valley, and in a moment were re-echoed back from the opposite sides by the loud and continued cheers of the men of the other detachments, who, true to their orders, were there and in readiness to pounce upon the Indians the moment the attack began. In this manner the battle of the Washita commenced.”

The “battle” in the village was short, barely fifteen minutes. The soldiers drove the people from their lodges barefoot and half naked, shooting them in the open. Many of the warriors managed to reach the trees, where they began to return fire; a few of them escaped, but after a couple of hours, the firing ceased and 103 Cheyennes lay dead in the snow and mud. Custer reported that they were fighting men, but others said that ninety-two of them were women, children, and old people. Black Kettle, the sixty-seven-year-old leader of the band, and his wife, Medicine Woman Later, who had survived nine gunshot wounds at the Massacre of Sand Creek four years before, had been shot in the back as they attempted to cross the Lodge Pole or Washita River. Their bodies, trampled and covered with mud, were found in the shallow water by the survivors.

The soldiers seized everything in the village—guns, bows and arrows, decorated clothing, sacred shields, tobacco, dried meat, dried berries, robes, and fifty-one lodges—and burned it. In addition, they captured 875 horses and mules. Custer gave the order to slaughter these animals by cutting their throats, but the horses feared whiteman smell and shied away, and after several attempts, the men grew tired. Custer gave the order to shoot the animals instead. Custer himself slaughtered camp dogs. Then the 7th Cavalry took its captives, mostly women and children and old ones, and headed north to its base of operations, Camp Supply.

Custer’s attack on the village of Southern Cheyennes was hailed as a great victory in the Indian wars.

[The National Park Service says "approximately 30 to 60 Cheyenne" were killed.]

It wasn’t a battle and isn’t a historic battlefield. It was state-sponsored terrorism and should be renamed a national memorial.

Indian Citizenship Act of 1924

Eighty-four years ago today the United States declared: “That all non citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Indians occupied an unusual status under federal law. Some had acquired citizenship by marrying white men. Others received citizenship through military service, by receipt of allotments, or through special treaties or special statutes. But many were still not citizens, and they were barred from the ordinary processes of naturalization open to foreigners. Congress took what some saw as the final step on June 2, 1924 and granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.

The granting of citizenship was not a response to some universal petition by American Indian groups. Rather, it was a move by the federal government to absorb Indians into the mainstream of American life. No doubt Indian participation in World War I accelerated the granting of citizenship to all Indians, but it seems more likely to have been the logical extension and culmination of the assimilation policy. After all, Native Americans had demonstrated their ability to assimilate into the general military society. There were no segregated Indian units as there were for African Americans. Some members of the white society declared that the Indians had successfully passed the assimilation test during wartime, and thus they deserved the rewards of citizenship.

Source: NebraskaStudies.org

It was 24 years before every state enabled Indian citizens to vote.

The states that set the most stringent restrictions on voter eligibility were Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. These states required that voters be not only citizens, but residents and taxpayers as well. In Arizona, the state supreme court in Porter v. Hall, decided in 1928, ruled that Indians should be disqualified from voting because they were under “federal guardianship,” a status construed by the court to be synonymous with “persons under disability.” This decision stood for twenty years until the court finally reversed itself in Harrison v. Laveen.

Source: Encyclopedia of North American Indians

Removal

On this day in 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, a vaguely written piece of legislation later used as a pretext by state and federal authorities to dispossess the few remaining tribes in the southeastern United States — “removing” them to lands west of the Mississippi.

Read more about one of the many chapters of American imperialism at The Edge of the American West.

A Pueblo Mystery

Why did the Ancestral Pueblo people leave Four Corners?

Scientists once thought the answer lay in impersonal factors like the onset of a great drought or a little ice age. But as evidence accumulates, those explanations have come to seem too pat — and slavishly deterministic. Like people today, the Anasazi (or Ancient Puebloans, as they are increasingly called) were presumably complex beings with the ability to make decisions, good and bad, about how to react to a changing environment. They were not pawns but players in the game.

Looking beyond climate change, some archaeologists are studying the effects of warfare and the increasing complexity of Anasazi society. They are looking deeper into ancient artifacts and finding hints of an ideological struggle, clues to what was going through the Anasazi mind.

Read more about from The New York Times.

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

The author Dee Brown was born 100 years ago today. His best known work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, told the story of Indian removal after the Civil War. The book has sold more than 5 million copies and did much to raise the awareness of Americans to a long overlooked part of their history.

Scott Momaday

Pulitzer Prize-winner Scott Momaday is 74 today. He was presented with the National Medal of Arts last year. At first I wasn’t going to reprise this excerpt from House Made of Dawn, but it’s so lovely.

The Navajo Ben Benally remembers a snow-filled day:

And afterward, when you brought the sheep back, your grandfather had filled the barrel with snow and there was plenty of water again. But he took you to the trading post anyway, because you were little and had looked forward to it. There were people inside, a lot of them, because there was a big snow on the ground and they needed things and they wanted to stand around and smoke and talk about the weather. You were little and there was a lot to see, and all of it was new and beautiful: bright new buckets and tubs, saddles and ropes, hats and shirts and boots, a big glass case all filled with candy. Frazer was the trader’s name. He gave you a piece of hard red candy and laughed because you couldn’t make up your mind to take it at first, and you wanted it so much you didn’t know what to do. And he gave your grandfather some tobacco and brown paper. And when he had smoked, your grandfather talked to the trader for a long time and you didn’t know what they were saying and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn’t worth very much, not all the trader gave for it anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything—where you were little, where you were and had to be.

Sequoyah High’s Success Energizes Tribe

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — If not for basketball, Angel Goodrich and her school, Sequoyah High, would be as easy to overlook as the dusty farming towns that freckle northeast Oklahoma. Goodrich, a shy sliver of a guard, is the face of the Lady Indians, who are the three-time defending state champions in their classification and a rising force on the national scene.

They opened the season ranked in the top 10 in Sports Illustrated’s national poll. And this week they will participate in the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix. Sequoyah is the first all-Indian school to receive one of the coveted invitations.

Read more about Sequoyah High’s Success, its players and coach.

Nobles, 46, is cross between Bobby Knight and the father of Hannah Montana. He puts his players through the wringer with his exacting standards, especially when it comes to boxing out for rebounds and trapping on defense. But then, after every game, Nobles collects the uniforms and takes them home to wash because the one washing machine on campus is always being used.

Though there is this error.

During the playoffs, Bush’s husband, David, does the radio play-by-play of the games in Cherokee, the language created by Sequoyah, the Indian for whom the school is named. It can be a challenge, he said, because many basketball terms are not easy to translate. For instance, he describes a foul as a crime.

Sequoyah, of course, didn’t create the Cherokee language. He developed an alphabet for it (and thus writing).

Interesting stuff

Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes

Yellowstone Needs Tums

Weighing In, Shula Has Heavy Words.

NewMexiKen still thinks the NFL should have taken the win from the Patriots if they had wanted to end this Spygate stuff.

12,000 and other idle chatter

NewMexiKen has 11,999 songs (tracks) in my iTunes library. And while I have more CDs to import, I thought I should celebrate by getting something special from the iTunes store for number 12,000. Any ideas?

I spilled a lot of bird feed yesterday and this morning the film crew for the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is sizing up my backyard — a dozen mourning doves, sparrows, finches, a partridge or two, scrub jays.

Apple stock rose more than 8 percent in the first hour this morning on yesterday’s earnings report of $1.01 a share. I keep thinking it’s peaked and “now” would be a bad time to buy — and it’s up nearly 30% in a month. As Jimmy Jones sang:

Oh you need timin’
A tick a tick a tick of good timin’
Timin’ timin’ timin’ timin’
Timin’ is the thing it’s true
Good timin’ brought me to you

Big fuss because J.K. Rowling told an audience Dumbledore was gay. That’s a surprise? Didn’t people read the books?

The Cleveland Indians logo, Chief Wahoo, has got to go. Can you imagine them getting away with that type of a caricature with African or Asian-Americans or Hispanics (think of the fuss over Sambo or the Frito Bandito)?

Overnight Annie and SnoLepard added some interesting pairs in the comments to the Whom would you rather be? list.

Chaco Canyon just got closer

Friday!

That’s when The University of New Mexico and the National Park Service plan to open the 1.5 million-piece Chaco Collection at the university’s Hibben Center, said Wendy Bustard, the collection’s curator.

The collection includes items such as prehistoric pottery, stone and bone tools, sandals and matting, Bustard said, but isn’t limited to those items. The items range in age from A.D. 850 to A.D. 1200.

Santa Fe New Mexican

Chaco Canyon served as a major urban center of ancestral Puebloan culture. Remarkable for its monumental public and ceremonial buildings, engineering projects, astronomy, artistic achievements, and distinctive architecture, it served as a hub of ceremony, trade, and administration for the prehistoric Four Corners area for 400 years–unlike anything before or since.

National Park Service

Thanks to dangerousmeta! for the link — and the heads up.

Another look at Columbus Day

Oglala Lakota journalist Tim Giago says Stop trying to rename ‘Indians’. Giago’s whole essay merits your time, but I especially liked this paragraph:

I am a firm believer that most historians are wrong when they credit Christopher Columbus for coining the word “Indian” because he thought he was landing his ships in India. In 1492 there was no country known as India. Instead that country was called Hindustan. I think that is closer to the truth that the Spanish padre that sailed with Columbus was so impressed with the innocence of the Natives he observed that he called them Los Ninos in Dios. My spelling may be wrong on the Spanish words, but the description by the padre means something like “Children of God.”

I will fight no more forever

With 2,000 U.S. soldiers in pursuit, Chief Joseph led fewer than 300 Nez Percé Indians towards freedom at the Canadian border. For over three months, the Nez Percé outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers traveling over 1,000 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. On October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph, exhausted and disheartened, surrendered in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, 40 miles south of Canada.

Library of Congress

Surrendering to Gen. Nelson Miles 130 years ago today, Joseph spoke:

I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say “Yes” or “No.” He who led the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

Now here’s a hall monitor with some street cred

NewMexiKen has been reading Angie Debo’s excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo. I recommend it. Here’s a couple of trivial items I thought were interesting.

When Geronimo’s and Naiche’s (son of Cochise) bands were consolidated at Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, in 1887 and 1888, the post doctor was Walter Reed. Yes, THE Walter Reed.

A school was eventually set up at the Alabama camp, where the Apaches were prisoners of war — men, women and children. Geronimo reportedly monitored the children’s attendance and deportment, walking up and down the aisles with a stick.

I’m thinking many of our schools today could use Geronimo patrolling their classrooms.

The Apaches were relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1894.

Update: Finishing the biography, amused to learn when that Geronimo traveled he would sell photos and autographs and even the buttons off his coat. He’d sell the buttons to people gathered to see him come by at the train station, then before the next station he’d sew on a new set of buttons.

Geronimo also rode in Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in March 1905. The Apache would have been about 75, nearly 76. It was said he could still vault onto his pony. This NewMexiKen post has a photo of Geronimo taken at the St. Louis Fair in 1904. He died in 1909, about age 80.

Geronimo

Geronimo and Naiche (son of Cochise) surrendered to Gen. Nelson Miles on this date in 1886 at Skeleton Canyon, near the Arizona-New Mexico line just north of the border with Mexico. It was the fourth time Geronimo had surrendered — and the last. With them were 16 men, 14 women and six children. The band was taken to Fort Bowie and by the 8th were on a train to Florida as prisoners of war.

Click image for larger version of this photograph (above) taken at a rest stop along the route to San Antonio. Naiche is third from left, Geronimo third from right (with the straw hat) in the front row. He was probably in his late 50s.

Geronimo and the others were moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1894. Geronimo eventually became a marketable celebrity, paid to appear at expositions and fairs. He died at Fort Sill in 1909, about age 80.

Also pictured are Geronimo at his third surrender in March 1886 and Geronimo on exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. (Click each for larger version.)

Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop

A writer for The New York Times visits Isleta, Laguna and Ácoma pueblos — Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop.

Today, these three pueblos are connected by freeways. Isleta and Ácoma have their own casinos. But each community still preserves its ancient identity. Eighty years after Cather’s novel was published and more than 150 since the events she recounted, it is possible to use her narration as a visitor’s guide. One warm March day, paperback in hand, I found my way to all three pueblos, grateful for Cather’s sensitivity to the great beauty and mystery of the Southwest and for her ability to bring to life the characters who had encountered one another in the same landscape so long ago.

I wonder why the writer failed to note that Laguna has two casinos.

Link via dangerousmeta!.

Most politically incorrect headline of the day, so far

The Day Santa Fe Emptied Out

That Albuquerque Journal online headline refers to August 21, 1680, when the Spanish were forced to abandon Santa Fe.

Emptied out? Well, only if you ignore the several thousand Pueblo Indians that remained in the area and the leader of the revolt, Popé, who personally occupied the Palace of the Governors.

The Santa Fe Indian Martket

… is this weekend.

Each year the Santa Fe Indian Market includes 1,200 artists from about 100 tribes who show their work in over 600 booths. The event attracts an estimated 100,000 visitors to Santa Fe from all over the world. Buyers, collectors and gallery owners come to Indian Market to take advantage of the opportunity to buy directly from the artists. For many visitors, this is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and learn about contemporary Indian arts and cultures. Quality is the hallmark of the Santa Fe Indian Market.

Southwestern Association for Indian Arts

As for NewMexiKen, it’s Taos this weekend. High temp 88º, low 55º. Or maybe Red River, high 83º, low 49º. Fall!

Feast at Jemez Pueblo

Today the Pueblo of Jemez (Walatowa) is celebrating “Nuestra Senora de Los Angelas Feast Day de Los Persingula” with a feast and corn dances. The Pueblo, which is normally closed, is open to the public.

Jemez is pronounced “Hay-mess” or traditionally as “He-mish”.

The events today originated with the pueblo at Pecos, which was abandoned in 1836 when its remaining residents moved to Jemez.

Jemez Pueblo publishes this guide about feast day etiquette:

* Enter a Pueblo home as you would any other - by invitation only. It is courteous to accept an invitation to eat, but do not linger at the table, as your host will probably want to serve many guests throughout the day, thank your host, but a payment or tip is not appropriate.

* Pueblo dances are religious ceremonies, not performances. Please observe them as you would a church service, with respect and quiet attention. Please do not interrupt non-dance participants by asking questions or visiting with friends.

* During a dance is not the time to conduct business or loudly socialize. Many Pueblo members only have a chance to see certain dances once a year and may have traveled many miles to participate.

* Please refrain from talking to the dancers. Do not approach dancers as they are entering, leaving or resting near the kiva.

* Applause after dances is not appropriate.

History of the Pueblo of Jemez

Pine Ridge

The Frugal Traveler continues his U.S. travels, this week on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Geronimo

Several sources give June 16, 1829, as Geronimo’s date of birth. It’s not clear to NewMexiKen that the Apaches were using the Gregorian calendar at that time. And, indeed, one of those sources, The New York Times, stated in its obituary of Geronimo in February 1909 that he was nearly 90 — not 79 as this birth date would indicate. But, he had to be born some time. So why not June 16?

In her excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo, Angie Debo concludes:

Geronimo was born in the early 1820’s near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary [Arizona-New Mexico], probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton. …

He was given the name Goyahkla, with the generally accepted meaning “One Who Yawns,’ why or under what circumstances is not known.

As an adult in battle he was called Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, perhaps because they could not pronounce Goyahkla, or perhaps to invoke Saint Jerome (Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome). The name was adopted for him by his own people.

Read the rest of this entry.

Perspective

NewMexiKen means absolutely no disrespect to the victims at Virginia Tech and their families — I think I have made quite clear my strong sense of loss over this tragedy at a place I know.

But if journalists, essayists and bloggers are going to continue to call this the worst shooting in American history, then I am going to have to suggest that they read a little about Wounded Knee, 1890, when as many as 350 Lakota men, women and children were killed.

American Horse: There was a woman with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce, and the women and children of course were strewn all along the circular village until they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that its mother was dead was still nursing, and that especially was a very sad sight. The women as they were fleeing with their babes were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were very heavy with child were also killed. All the Indians fled in these three directions, and after most all of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there.

Lakota accounts of the massacre at Wounded Knee (1891)

Skywalkers

Click image for larger version. Photo is from Los Angeles Times Travel.

Send me a postcard

Shortly after noon on Wednesday, the last few feet of a steel and glass skywalk was rolled out over the southwest rim of the Grand Canyon, a 2-million-pound engineering marvel that the Hualapai Indians hope will boost tourism to their remote ancestral land and provide the impoverished tribe with a desperately needed economic boost.

With sage burning and tribal members playing gourds, spiritual leader Emmett Bender blessed the cantilevered horseshoe-shaped skywalk, which will jut out 70 feet from the canyon rim and dangle 4,000 feet above the canyon floor. He called the structure “the white man’s idea.”
. . .

Three years in the making and topping $30 million in cost, the 30,000-square-foot skywalk, which will open March 28, will allow 120 visitors at a time to walk out over the canyon rim to look at the gorge through glass walls and through a glass floor at the bottom of the canyon, nearly four-fifths of a mile below.

The Washington Post

NewMexiKen gets nervous looking over the railing from Jill’s landing into her family room.

An Unjust Expulsion

The Cherokee Nation’s decision to revoke the tribal citizenship of about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe is a moral low point in modern Cherokee history and places the tribe in violation of a 140-year-old federal treaty and several court decisions. The federal government must now step in to protect the rights of the freedmen, who could lose their tribal identities as well as access to medical, housing and other tribal benefits.
. . .

Advocates for the expulsion say it is about self-determination. But the tribal history makes clear that it is about discrimination — and that it is illegal. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has been curiously silent, should bring the Cherokee government into compliance with the law and require it to restore the tribal rights of the expelled members.

The New York Times

Indian Trackers vs. Smugglers

Somewhat interesting article from The New York Times. It begins:

TOHONO O’ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — A fresh footprint in the dirt, fibers in the mesquite. Harold Thompson reads the signs like a map.

They point to drug smugglers, 10 or 11, crossing from Mexico. The deep impressions and spacing are a giveaway to the heavy loads on their backs. With no insect tracks or paw prints of nocturnal creatures marking the steps, Mr. Thompson determines the smugglers probably crossed a few hours ago.

“These guys are not far ahead; we’ll get them,” said Mr. Thompson, 50, a strapping Navajo who follows the trail like a bloodhound.

At a time when all manner of high technology is arriving to help beef up security at the Mexican border — infrared cameras, sensors, unmanned drones — there is a growing appreciation among the federal authorities for the American Indian art of tracking, honed over generations by ancestors hunting animals.

And you think gasoline is expensive

In the Navajo community of Pueblo Pintado, some 30 families scattered around the community have to haul their drinking and washing water long distances.

The water comes out of pipes 30 miles away in Lybrook or 43 miles away in Crownpoint, said Rena Murphy, coordinator at the Pueblo Pintado senior center.

Sometimes, when the drive is too much or no vehicle is available, Murphy lets residents fill up small containers at the center. “My elderlies,” she said, “when they run out of water, will bring 5 gallons and 10 gallons to the senior center.”

The Pueblo Pintado water haulers are among an estimated 63,500 people on the Navajo Nation who lack running water. Some drive as far as 100 miles in their trucks to fill water tanks, Navajo Nation statistics show.

As gasoline prices rise, hauling water is increasingly expensive. Taking into account the gas and time required to haul water, Navajo Nation water planners estimate that in 2003 it cost tribal members at least

$16,000 per acre-foot, or almost $5 per gallon.

The New Mexican

‘Who Is Cherokee?’

The Cherokees, so proud that they survived the racism and greed that forced them to leave the East and settle in Oklahoma, are embroiled in a debate that is dredging up some of the most painful chapters of their history. The fundamental question they are asking is: Who is Cherokee? And it is raising ugly accusations of racism, from both inside and outside the tribe.

At issue is a group barely known outside of Indian country, the Freedmen. These are the descendants of black slaves owned by Cherokees, free blacks who were married to Cherokees and the children of mixed-race families known as black Cherokees, all of whom joined the Cherokee migration to Oklahoma in 1838.

The Freedmen became full citizens of the Cherokee Nation after emancipation, as part of the Treaty of 1866 with the United States. But in 1983, by tribal decree, the Freedmen were denied the right to vote in tribal elections on the ground they were not “Cherokee by blood.”

They sued, and in December won their challenge. But that has prompted a bigger fight. On Saturday, the Cherokee Nation is holding a special election — believed to be the first of its kind — to decide, in essence, whether to kick the Freedmen out of the tribe.
. . .

“There are Freedmen who can prove they have a full-blooded Cherokee grandfather who won’t be members,” said Ms. Vann, president of the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes. “And there are blond people who are 1/1000th Cherokee who are members.”

The New York Times

I say vote to kick ‘em out of the Tribe and then make them wear a yellow Star of David.