NewMexiKen missed this but I was told at least one Albuquerque TV station included vote totals from the Navajo Nation among returns Tuesday night. (Incumbent President Joe Shirley Jr. defeated Lynda Lovejoy 34,813 to 30,214.)
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Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist M. Scott Momaday has written a review of Hampton Sides’s Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West
“Blood and Thunder” is a full-blown history, and Sides does every part of it justice. Five years ago he set out to write a book on the removal of the Navajos from Canyon de Chelly and their Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo, hundreds of miles from their homeland, where they were held as prisoners of war. But in the course of his research a much larger story unfolded, the story of the opening of the West, from the heyday of the mountain men in the early 1800’s to the clash of three cultures, as the newcomers from the East encountered the ancient Puebloans and the established Hispanic communities in what is now New Mexico, to the Civil War in the West and its aftermath — and all of it is full of blood and thunder, the realities and the caricatures of conquest. By telling this story, Sides fills a conspicuous void in the history of the American West.
NewMexiKen began reading the book the other day and, so far, it’s been very good — excellent reading. For whatever reasons, Sides jumps around in the chronology but, while unusual for a narrative history, it seems to work. It has the effect of seeming to move the story along more rapidly.
I’d noted three passages I found particularly amusing, informative, or resonant:
[S]tories like the one about the mountain valley in Wyoming that was so big it took an echo eight hours to return, so that a man bedding down for the night could confidently shout “Git up!” and know that he would rise in the morning to his own wake-up call.
As a baby in his cradleboard, Narbona [a Navajo leader] probably was not called anything at all, for Navajos, who tended to view early infanthood as an extension of gestation, did not usually give names to their children until specific personal characteristics began to show themselves—Hairy Face, Slim Girl, No Neck, Little Man Won’t Do As He’s Told. Although Navajo parents followed few hard rules about how to name their children, it was generally agreed that the watershed moment when a baby could definitively be said to have passed from infanthood into something more fully human was the child’s “first spontaneous laugh.” First laughter was an occasion for much celebration, and it was the time when many Navajos held naming ceremonies for their young; it is likely that this is when Narbona received his original “war name,” whatever it might have been.
Perhaps to dignify the nakedness of Polk’s land lust, the American citizenry had got itself whipped into an idealistic frenzy, believing with an almost religious assurance that its republican form of government and its constitutional freedoms should extend to the benighted reaches of the continent held by Mexico, which, with its feudal customs and Popish superstitions, stood squarely in the way of progress. To conquer Mexico, in other words, would be to do it a favor.
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If the fence is built, however, it could have a long gap — about 75 miles — at one of the border’s most vulnerable points because of opposition from the Indian tribe here.
More illegal immigrants are caught — and die trying to cross into the United States — in and around the Tohono O’odham Indian territory, which straddles the Arizona border, than any other spot in the state.
Tribal leaders have cooperated with Border Patrol enforcement, but they promised to fight the building of a fence out of environmental and cultural concerns.
For the Tohono O’odham, which means “desert people,” the reason is fairly simple. For generations, their people and the wildlife they revere have freely crossed the border. For years, an existing four-foot-high cattle fence has had several openings — essentially cattle gates — that tribal members use to visit relatives and friends, take children to school and perform rites on the other side.
Read more about how Border Fence Must Skirt Objections From Arizona Tribe from The New York Times.
“Her American Indian name is P’oe Tswa, or Blue Water, but many knew her as Ko’oe Esther, or Aunt Esther.
“She spent much of her childhood living with her grandparents and traveling back and forth in a covered wagon to visit her parents.
“She was a major conservator of the Tewa language, teaching her native language from 1974 to 1989 at schools in Ohkay Owingeh, formerly known as San Juan Pueblo.
“She also helped translate the New Testament of the Bible into Tewa and compiled Tewa dictionaries for pueblos that have distinct dialects of the language…”
Last week she “was honored along with 11 other folk and traditional artists for being named a 2006 National Heritage Fellow, the nation’s highest honor for such artists, the NEA said in a news release. The fellowship includes a one-time award of $20,000.”
Saturday night, as Esther Martinez was nearing home on the return from the awards ceremony in Washington, an apparently intoxicated driver crossed the center line and collided with the Dodge Dakota in which she was riding with her daughters.
She died at the scene. She was 94.
Above quotations and information from story in The New Mexican.
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The beginning of an article in The Washington Post:
ALIR JEGK, Ariz. — Elsie Salsido was breast-feeding her baby when Border Patrol agents walked into her house unannounced this summer. “Are you Mexicans?” they demanded.
Salsido’s four other children cowered on the bed of her eldest, a girl in second grade. Night had fallen on this village on Arizona’s border with Mexico, nestled in a scrubland valley of stickman cactuses hemmed in by mountains that look like busted teeth. The agents explained their warrantless entry into Salsido’s house as “hot pursuit.” They said they were chasing footprints, she recalled, of illegal immigrants sneaking in from Mexico, just 1,000 feet away. But the footprints belonged to Salsido’s children — all Americans.
As the United States ramps up its law enforcement presence on the border with Mexico, places like Alir Jegk, a village of 50 families in south-central Arizona, are enduring heightened danger, as they are squeezed between increasingly aggressive bands of immigrant and drug smugglers and increasingly numerous federal agents who, critics say, often ignore regulations as they seek to enforce the law.
Alir Jegk’s experience is complicated by the fact that it is on the second-biggest Indian reservation in the United States, belonging to the Tohono O’odham, or Desert People, who hunted deer and boar and harvested wild spinach and prickly pear in this region before an international border was etched through their land in 1853. Now, the Tohono O’odham Nation occupies the front line of the fight against drug and immigrant smuggling — costing the poverty-stricken tribe millions of dollars a year and threatening what remains of its traditions.
Continue reading from The Washington Post.
On this date in 1680, the surviving Spanish settlers under siege decided to abandon Santa Fe and began the trek to Chihuahua. The Spanish did not return to New Mexico for 12 years.
Colonists from Mexico first settled in New Mexico, north of present-day Santa Fe, in 1598. By the 1620s there were 2,000 colonists taking land and forcing labor from the Puebloans, occasionally executing dozens of Indians for the murder of one settler. In the 1660s a drought further stressed conditions for all, especially as Apaches and others raided the Pueblos. Many Puebloans began to feel that deserting their own religion to accept Christianity had brought on these disasters. There were occasional uprisings, but nothing sustainable until Popé, a San Juan medicine man, began unifying resistance among the various independent Pueblos in 1675.
On August 10, 1680, the Indians launched a unified all-out attack on Spanish settlers. Colonists were killed, churches burned, horses and cattle seized. Priests were singled out and killed in all the Pueblos, including Acoma, Zuni and Hopi (in modern Arizona). About 1,000 survivors escaped to Santa Fe and the town was put under siege on August 12. By the 16th the Indians occupied all of the town except the plaza and its surrounding buildings. According to reports, as they burnt the town the Indians sang Latin liturgy to taunt the Spanish.
Three-hundred-and-twenty-six years ago today the settlers were allowed to withdraw from Santa Fe. When they reached El Paseo del Norte in October, there were 1,946 from of a population that had been about 2,500. About 400 had been killed, another 150 escaped to Mexico independently.
The Puebloans removed all signs of the Spanish — the churches, the religion itself, the crops, even the animals (the horses let loose on the plains, eventually transforming the culture of the Plains Indians). One vestige remained: one man rule. Popé declared himself that man and moved to the Palace in Santa Fe.
Spanish attempts at reconquest failed until 1692.
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NewMexiKen priced a prize winning Hopi Katsina (formerly known as Kachina) at the Santa Fe Indian Market Sunday. A gorgeous piece, about 18 inches tall, perfectly sized for a nicho I have. In the rain, I figured prices would be reduced.
$8000.
Alas, blogging doesn’t pay that well. It was beautiful, down to the detail in the Indian corn.
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Take a look at the rug that won Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market.
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This is the 85th year.
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.
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That’s a part of Cliff Palace, one of the large cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.
Did you answer the question about who lived here with Anasazi? That’s what most people with some familiarity reply. But that term isn’t accurate; indeed, it is offensive to some. More correctly (politically and otherwise) the people who lived in the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and throughout the four corners area from 1100 to 700 years ago are called the Ancestral Puebloans. Their descendants are the Pueblo Indians of modern New Mexico and Arizona.
Anasazi derives from the Navajo words for ancient and enemy. The term was first applied to the cliff dwellings and other deserted settlements by Richard Wetherill, a rancher who was among the first Anglos to explore the area. It was adapted by archaeologists in the 1920s and came into popular usage in part as a result of ranger-led tours and National Park Service literature. In the past decade Ancestral Puebloans has become the generally preferred term.
Click image to enlarge. NewMexiKen photo, August 9, 2006.
The Lakota Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) surrendered to the U.S. Army on this date 125 years ago.
This from a fine, brief biographical essay at AmericanHeritage.com:
On the morning of the July 20, in front of American and Canadian soldiers and a Minnesota newspaperman, Sitting Bull had his eight-year-old son, Crow Foot, hand Brotherton his Winchester rifle. “I surrender this rifle to you through my young son,” said the chief, “whom I [thereby] desire to teach . . . that he has become a friend of the Americans. . . . I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living.”
From an editorial, The MG Dynasty in today’s New York Times:
A Toyota assembled in Kentucky is now old news. Some of us can even live with the idea of a Jaguar sold by Ford. But it’s going to take a while to get used to the thought of an MG coupe built by a Chinese auto company in a factory halfway between Dallas and Oklahoma City.
Luckily, we will have a couple of years to think about it before the first vehicle — a newly designed MG TF Coupe — rolls out of the Nanjing Automobile Group’s new plant in Ardmore, Okla. When that day comes, it will be the first new version of the MG in the United States since 1980 — and from the first auto assembly plant built in this country by a Chinese carmaker.
The Times editorial, which continues, does not mention a most interesting aspect of the plan, however. The land on which the factory is to be built is former Indian land being re-acquired (and put into trust) by the Chickasaw Nation.
The interstate, a nearby railway, an abundance of cheap land and the tax advantages of partnering with a tribe make southern Oklahoma an attractive alternative to the Metroplex, McCaleb said.
This diversification is made possible by the Dawes Act of 1887, which eliminated Oklahoma’s reservations and carved up tribal land into individual allotments.
However, a tribe can buy land anywhere within its former reservation and ask the federal government to put it into trust for the tribe’s benefit.
That gives the tribe immense advantages for economic development.
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“Federal judges wield tremendous power in their courtrooms and a few end up developing the habits of bullies.”
— Rocky Mountain News columnist Vincent Carroll commenting on the removal of the judge in the Indian trust lawsuit
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The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today ordered the chief judge of the district court to reassign the Indian trust case, Elouise Pepion Cobell, et al., v. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior, et al., to a new judge.
In short, in case after case the district court granted extensive relief against Interior, and in case after case we reversed, even under highly deferential standards of review. To be sure, repeated reversals, without more, are unlikely to justify reassignment. But here there is more. For one thing, on several occasions the district court or its appointees exceeded the role of impartial arbiter by issuing orders without hearings and by actively participating in evidence-gathering. For another, the July 12 opinion levels serious charges against Interior and its officials, charges that not only bear no relationship to the issue pending before the court, but also go beyond criticizing Interior for its serious failures as trustee and condemn the Department as an institution.
From all of this evidence, “an objective observer is left with the overall impression,” Microsoft I, 56 F.3d at 1463, that the district court’s professed hostility to Interior has become “so extreme as to display clear inability to render fair judgment,” Liteky, 510 U.S. at 551. What distinguishes this case from one in which a judge has merely become “exceedingly ill disposed towards [a party which] has been shown to be … thoroughly reprehensible,” id. at 550-51, is, most certainly, not any redeeming aspect of Interior’s behavior as trustee. Rather, what distinguishes this case is the combination of the content of the July 12 opinion and the nature of the district court’s actions. Given these seemingly unique circumstances, and given that “justice must satisfy the appearance of justice,” Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 14 (1954)—that is, reasonable observers must have confidence that judicial decisions flow from the impartial application of law to fact, not from a judge’s animosity toward a party—we conclude, reluctantly, that this is one of those rare cases in which reassignment is necessary.
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… took place 130 years ago today. Dee Brown wrote the following for The Reader’s Companion to American History:
In 1876, under command of Gen. Alfred Terry, Custer led the Seventh Cavalry as one force in a three-pronged campaign against Sitting Bull’s alliance of Sioux and Cheyenne camps in Montana. During the morning of June 25, Custer’s scouts reported spotting smoke from cooking fires and other signs of Indians in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Disregarding Terry’s orders, Custer decided to attack before infantry and other support arrived. Although scouts warned that he was facing superior numbers (perhaps 2,500 warriors), Custer divided his regiment of 647 men, ordering Capt. Frederick Benteen’s battalion to scout along a ridge to the left and sending Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalion up the valley of the Little Bighorn to attack the Indian encampment. With the remainder of the regiment, Custer continued along high ground on the right side of the valley. In the resulting battle, he and about 250 of his men, outnumbered by the warriors of Crazy Horse and Gall, were surrounded and annihilated. Reno and Benteen suffered heavy casualties but managed to escape to a defensive position.
Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star is generally regarded as the finest book on the battle; indeed, one of the finest on western American history. James Welch’s Killing Custer tells the story more from the Indian perspective.
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William and Mary yesterday filed an appeal with the NCAA, which last month ruled that the nickname “Tribe” coupled with a logo including feathers could be viewed by Native Americans as offensive.
“Present NCAA determinations of mascot policy - what is allowed and what is forbidden - are neither comprehensible nor capable of being sensibly defended,” Gene R. Nichol, W&M’s president, wrote in a cover letter addressed to Myles Brand, the NCAA president.
In the appeal, W&M points out that the NCAA has made exceptions to its policy, allowing Florida State to remain the “Seminoles,” Utah to remain the “Utes,” and other schools to keep Native-American nicknames or imagery because those schools were granted permission to do so by specific tribes.
“To put it bluntly, the NCAA is now a complicit partner in the practices it seeks to condemn,” states a W&M-produced summary of the 21-page appeal. The appeal contends that W&M’s “nickname and logo are a natural expression of the College’s unique history and location.”
W&M established a school to educate Native Americans in 1697. That school operated for seven decades.
…“Few will understand why the College - where athletes regularly don Phi Beta Kappa keys at commencement, gain admission to competitive graduate and professional programs in unusually high numbers, and avoid the corrupting misconduct that too often mars university sports programs elsewhere - has made it to the top of the NCAA’s regulatory agenda,” Nichol wrote to Brand, the NCAA president.
“It would make more sense to study and export William & Mary’s approach to athletics than to penalize it.”
Jill and Emily, official daughters of NewMexiKen, are alumnae of The College of William and Mary. Jill was employed in the athletic department for several years.
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.
In its obituary of Geronimo, The Times provided this quote:
Gen. Miles, in his memoirs, describes his first impression of Geronimo when he was brought into camp by Lawton, thus: “He was one of the brightest, most resolute, determined-looking men that I have ever encountered. He had the clearest, sharpest dark eye I think I have ever seen, unless it was that of Gen. Sherman.”
Some have wondered what motivated Geronimo to fight so fiercely. Perhaps this from his autobiography (written with S.M. Barrett in 1905) explains a little:
In the summer of 1858, being at peace with the Mexican towns as well as with all the neighboring Indian tribes, we went south into Old Mexico to trade. Our whole tribe (Bedonkohe Apaches) went through Sonora toward Casa Grande, our destination, but just before reaching that place we stopped at another Mexican town called by the Indians Kas-ki-yeh. Here we stayed for several days, camping outside the city. Every day we would go into town to trade, leaving our camp under the protection of a small guard so that our arms, supplies, and women and children would not be disturbed during our absence.
Late one afternoon when returning from town we were met by a few women and children who told us that Mexican troops from some other town had attacked our camp, killed all the warriors of the guard, captured all our ponies, secured our arms, destroyed our supplies, and killed many of our women and children. Quickly we separated, concealing ourselves as best we could until nightfall, when we assembled at our appointed place of rendezvous–a thicket by the river. Silently we stole in one by one: sentinels were placed, and, when all were counted, I found that my aged mother, my young wife, and my three small children were among the slain. There were no lights in camp, so without being noticed I silently turned away and stood by the river. How long I stood there I do not know, but when I saw the warriors arranging for a council I took my place.
Thompson and Lugthart developed a series of full-color historical maps of Montana, beginning with one of the earliest American Indian maps of a portion of Western Montana all the way through to the present. …
The historical maps show an evolution of discovery, place names and the migration of the people living on the land. Each mapmaker from each era contributes to the history of the landscape.
“Each map is a story unto itself,” Thompson said.
NewMexiKen loves maps, and thinks historical maps in particular would be good to collect once I receive my Powerball winnings.
The NCAA, in a letter to college president Gene Nichol, said it agreed that the nickname “Tribe” wasn’t offensive, but combined with the logo showing two feathers “transforms that use from one associated with ‘togetherness,’ ’shared idealism,’ and ‘commitment’ to stereotypical reference to Native Americans.”
I guess NewMexiKen will have to get rid of my William & Mary logo mousepad. (Both NewMexiKen daughters are graduates of William & Mary.)
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Via the Arizona Daily Star, a reasonably even-handed examination of the Indian trust lawsuit.
The Albuquerque Journal seems to have trouble with math, claiming in an article by Paul Logan Saturday that the Gathering of Nations “attracts more than 150,000 people and members from more than 500 tribes.”
How do 150,000 people attend a 3-day event in an 18,000 seat arena?
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The Gathering of Nations is North America’s largest Indian powwow. Held annually at the University Arena (The Pit) in Albuquerque, it attracts Indian dancers from all over the U.S. and Canada.
They call them “fancy dancers” for a reason.
Two generations of fancy dancers.
Ready for the Grand Entry.
Just before the Grand Entry a bald eagle is carried around the arena floor, faced in each of the four directions, its hood removed and its wings spread. Magnificent (but hard to photograph well from my vantage point).
When the Eagle Staff enters the arena to begin the Grand Entry, everyone stands.
The Grand Entry is without a doubt the single most colorful event NewMexiKen has ever seen.
A little something new among the traditional, a baseball cap tops one young man’s colorful array.
Everybody needs to look their best at the Gathering.
Vendors of Indian arts occupy a large tent outside the arena. And no Gathering of Nations would be complete without a gathering of Pendletons (in this case a rack of vests for sale).
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NewMexiKen attended North America’s largest powwow this evening — the Gathering of Nations here in Albuquerque.
I’ll attempt to show some of the color later, but for now share the sentiment I’m sure many in attendance feel.
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This is the weekend for North America’s largest powwow, the Gathering of Nations right here in Albuquerque.
Click to learn more — and view hundreds of colorful photos from previous Gatherings, and much, much more.
Click here for a schedule of New Mexico Pueblo feast days and other tribal events.
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Sixty percent of the Mexican people are mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish), 30% are Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian, 9% are white and 1% are other. The percentage with Indian heritage is even higher among the people of Guatemala and Honduras. (Source: CIA - The World Factbook)
If 90% of Mexicans have American Indian origins, then, of course, 90% of Mexican-Americans also have some American Indian origins. It follows then that instead of 4 million American Indians and Alaska natives in the U.S. (as identified in the 2000 Census), there are easily more than 30 million persons with some American Indian ancestry.
So, all together now, who are the immigrants?
From a report in The New York Times:
Today, there are more than 50 tribal-owned courses in some 17 states, with several more under construction. From the San Carlos Apache tribe’s Apache Stronghold Golf Club in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona to the Mohicans’ Pine Hills Golf and Supper Club in the Wisconsin woods, tribal courses have changed Indian country’s physical and cultural landscape, helped diversify the tribes’ casino-dependent economies and given American golf some of its finest new playgrounds.
In nearly every case, the courses sit near the tribes’ casinos, whose profits have allowed some American Indian nations to pay in cash for their golf ventures, which run about $5 million to $9 million.
But many of the tribal courses are so good that they are hardly seen as mere casino amenities. Twin Warriors Golf Club, on the Santa Ana Pueblo north of Albuquerque, is ranked 49th on Golf Digest’s 2006 list of the best 100 publicly accessible courses in America. Thirty miles north, near Española, N.M., the Santa Clara Pueblo’s Black Mesa Golf Club was named the 62nd best modern (post-1960) design by Golfweek, which also gave the 93rd spot to the Barona Band of Mission Indians’ Barona Creek Golf Club near San Diego.
“I think the tribal courses are probably the single most impressive force in golf architecture over the last 10 years,” said Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture critic. “I’ve been impressed with every one.”
Nowhere in America has tribal golf had more impact than in New Mexico, which has the equivalent of nine 18-hole courses on six reservations. By any impartial golf standard, they are uniformly challenging and well-maintained and have a restorative solitude. All but one are found roughly between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, at 5,000 to 7,000 feet, built along mountain foothills or near the banks of the Rio Grande in the fragrant piñón-and-juniper high desert, which still surprises some tourists who come expecting arid desolation.
There’s more worth reading in this well-done article.
By the way, those who know far more about golf than I, don’t consider Twin Warriors, good as it is, to be the best public course near Albuquerque. First place usually goes to Paako Ridge (not mentioned in the article because it isn’t Indian-owned).
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Oh, by the way, Governor Kempthorne, welcome to the Indian Trust litigation.
First it was Cobell v. Babbitt. Then it became Cobell v. Norton. After confirmation of Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne as the new Interior secretary, it will be Cobell v. Kempthorne.
The judge in this, the individual Indian trust class action lawsuit, has already found both Secretary Babbitt and Secretary Norton in contempt (though an appeals court overturned the latter).
The New York Times published two articles (Sunday and Monday) on drug trafficking in Indian Country.
… was authorized on this date in 1931.
Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, the cultural resources of Canyon de Chelly–including distinctive architecture, artifacts, and rock imagery–exhibit remarkable preservational integrity that provides outstanding opportunities for study and contemplation. Canyon de Chelly also sustains a living community of Navajo people, who are connected to a landscape of great historical and spiritual significance–a landscape composed of places infused with collective memory.
Canyon de Chelly is unique among National Park service units, as it is comprised entirely of Navajo Tribal Trust Land that remains home to the canyon community. NPS works in partnership with the Navajo Nation to manage park resources and sustain the living Navajo community.
From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, February 11, 1805:
Meriwether Lewis:
The party that were ordered last evening set out early this morning. the weather was fair and could wind N. W. about five oclock this evening one of the wives of Charbono was delivered of a fine boy. [1] it is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had boarn and as is common in such cases her labour was tedious and the pain violent; Mr. Jessome informed me that he had freequently adminstered a small portion of the rattle of the rattle-snake, which he assured me had never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child; having the rattle of a snake by me I gave it to him and he administered two rings of it to the woman broken in small pieces with the fingers and added to a small quantity of water. Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth perhaps this remedy may be worthy of future experiments, but I must confess that I want faith as to it’s efficacy.
Background by Journals editor:
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau would have a varied and lengthy career on the frontier, starting with his role as the youngest member of the Corps of Discovery. Clark nicknamed him Pomp or “Pompy,” and named Pompey’s Pillar (more properly Clark’s “Pompy’s Tower”) on the Yellowstone after him in 1806. Clark offered to educate the boy as if he were his own son, and apparently took him into his own home in St. Louis when the child was about six. In 1823 he attracted the notice of the traveling Prince Paul of Wurttemburg, who took him to Europe for six years. On his return to the United States he became a mountain man and fur trader, and later a guide for such explorers and soldiers as John C. Frmont, Philip St. George Cooke, W. H. Emory, and James Abert. He eventually settled in California and died in Oregon while traveling to Montana in 1866.
Source: Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online February 11, 1805
… “An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations…” was approved by President Grover Cleveland on this date in 1887.
Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands. Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land.
The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings.
The alloment of lands ended in 1934. The problems The Dawes Act created continue.
At Daily Kos, writer mbw tells one side of the Indian trust litigation story. This problem has been festering for 119 years, but somehow now it’s the fault of the current Administration. No issue is black and white — and issues in Indian country are particularly nuanced.
This incomplete and one-sided report seems to me to be a particularly good example of what passes for reporting in today’s media, mainstream or blog. But, as DailyKos is a big-time website, NewMexiKen thought mbw’s report should be noted.
Update: “mbw” is MB Williams at Wampum.
In a review where she calls The New World the “first necessary film of this young year” and describes Q’orianka Kilcher as “the sensational newcomer,” Manohla Dargis waxes poetically on film-making and imagery.
In the 1950’s, the young turks at Cahiers du Cinéma advanced an idea that cinema is not literature, but instead expresses itself visually through the mise-en-scène. The image of laundry hanging on a line or of a pair of empty shoes in a film by Yasujiro Ozu matters as much as the dialogue; those are no more decorative than the image of birds taking flight in “The New World.” The images don’t exist apart from the narrative; they are the narrative, adding layers and moods, imparting philosophies of life. In one film, the shoes convey a sense of profound loss, the ache of human impermanence; in the other, the birds speak to the idea that the world is not ours for the taking.
One of the pleasures of returning to a favorite film is that you are no longer as captive to the plot; you need not pay as close attention to who is saying what and why, and are therefore free to see - perhaps for the first time - how a filmmaker makes meaning with the images. Something I didn’t fully appreciate until I saw “The New World” a second time was how Mr. Malick uses physical space to contrast two separate world views. Indeed, the entire meaning of the film is conveyed in a single sublime edit that joins a shot of the grubby settlement as it looks from outside its walls - and framed inside an open door - with its mirror image. As the camera looks through the same door, this time pointed out, we see how the settlers would have viewed the beautiful wide world from inside a fort that was every bit as much a prison as their own consciousness.
Miss Kilcher, “Pocahontas,” 14 when the film was shot, was born in Germany. Her father is Quechua-Huachipaeri Indian (Peru), her mother Swiss.
Virginia Heffernan reviews the PBS four-part edutainment series on the French and Indian War that debuts this evening. An excerpt:
She [co-executive producer Laura Fisher] has set out to render in lavish particulars the story of the strange war between the French and British empires for control of the Ohio River Valley in the 1750’s and 60’s. The war was triangulated: American Indians, for whom the valley was a homeland, played the empires against each other, eventually tipping the balance of power in favor of the British. The Indians’ strategy, diplomacy and unorthodox military tactics are the chief focus of this program, which attends closely to their considerable role in the war. (Graham Greene, the actor and Oneida Indian whose ancestors fought in the war, serves as narrator.)
Update: The first two hours (of four) were shown January 18th (remainder January 25th). NewMexiKen watched and it was good, though somewhat slow-paced. Greene’s narration explains most of what is happening in a useful but not burdensome way. The Indian role and agenda is demonstrated more thoroughly than ever before in a production of this type.
NewMexiKen assumes (but has no documentation) that I may well have had ancestors fighting for both the English and French sides.
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 Click image to enlarge.A wonderful sampling of Pablita Velarde’s artwork is online. |
Thanks to dangerousmeta for the pointer.
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NewMexiKen spent much of the afternoon with M. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, a superb novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. It’s my fourth complete book since Thursday.
In compelling language, Momaday tells the story of Abel, an American Indian veteran who returns home to his pueblo in 1945. In telling Abel’s story we learn also stories about Abel’s grandfather, the priest, women in Abel’s life, friends. All this takes place in Walatowa, a fictional pueblo whose geography resembles the actual Pueblo of Jemez, the surrounding mountains and canyons, and in Los Angeles among relocated Indians.
And, while the story is moving and meaningful, it is Momaday’s language that soars. Abel at Valle Grande in the Jemez Mountains (truly, in real life, one of the world’s great scenic wonders):
Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.
Or this, the Navajo Ben Benally remembering 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.
Awesome book; simply awesome.
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Larry McMurtry’s Oh What a Slaughter, mentioned just below, does make at least one interesting claim:
The movies, by their nature, favor only a few stars, and only a few national heroes. Of the thousands of interesting characters who played a part in winning the West, only a bare handful have any real currency with the American public now. Iconographically, even Lewis and Clark haven’t really survived, though Sacagawea has. With the possible exception of Kit Carson, none of the mountain men mean anything today. Kit Carson’s name vaguely suggests the Old West to many people, but not one in a million of them will have any distinct idea as to what Kit did.
The roster of still-recognizable Westerners probably boils down to Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, and perhaps Wild Bill Hickok. …
Skimpy as the image bank is for white Westerners, it is even skimpier for Indians. My guess would be that only Sacagawea, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo still ring any bells with the general public. Crazy Horse, who never allowed his image to be captured, is still important to Indians as a symbol of successful resistance, but less so to whites. Even a chief such as Red Cloud, so renowned in his day that he went to New York and made a speech at Cooper Union, is now only known to historians, history buffs, and a few Nebraskans.
At the broadest level, only the white stars Custer, Cody, and Bill the Kid, and two tough Indians, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, are the people the public thinks about when it thinks about the Old West.
NewMexiKen would add Wyatt Earp, but otherwise thinks McMurtry is correct. Anyone feel differently?
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The following is from The Library of Congress, posted on the Today in History page for this date last year, but not available this year:
On December 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, some 500 soldiers of the United States Seventh Cavalry opened fire on approximately 350 Lakota (Sioux) Indians of Chief Big Foot’s Miniconjou band. At the end of the confrontation, between 150 and 300 Sioux men, women, and children, including Chief Big Foot, were dead. This event marked the end of Lakota resistance until the 1970s. Apart from the few minor skirmishes that followed, the Wounded Knee massacre ended the Indian Wars.
In many ways, the massacre resulted from the Ghost Dance movement. The movement was led by a Paiute named Wovoka who claimed to have had a vision that the “Old Earth” would be destroyed and a new one created in which Native Americans could live as they had before the coming of the European. He preached that the only way to survive the impending apocalypse would be to faithfully perform the Ghost Dance and the ceremonies associated with it.
The Hualapai Nation is building the Grand Canyon Skywalk: “Upon completion, the Glass Bridge will be suspended 4,000 feet above the Colorado River on the very edge of the Grand Canyon.”
The semi-circular Skywalk will jut 70 feet out over the canyon with glass bottom and sides. Completion is expected in June.
You first.
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