Category Archives: American Indians

Every Historian Who Studies Lewis & Clark Falls in Love with Sacagawea

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But they can’t agree on her name.

The problem is that Sacajawea was Shoshone, but Sakakawea was captured at age 12 by the Hidatsas. So is her name Shoshone or Hidatsa? The problem is further compounded by the fact that Lewis and Clark couldn’t spell. Clark was the most creative — for example, he spelled Sioux no less than 27 different ways in the Journals.

Sacagawea is the official federal spelling. It is considered to be a Hidatsa word meaning “Bird Woman,” though apparently that is not how the Hidatsas spell it.

Sakakawea is the Hidatsa/North Dakota spelling. According to the North Dakota Historical Society:

Official North Dakota policy is to use the “Sakakawea” spelling based largely on the writings of Russell Reid who researched the subject in the early 1900′s. Most of the rest of the United States, however, including the Hidatsa in North Dakota, tend to use the “Sacagawea” version as being closer to the meaning of her given name. The source of debate ever since, the true spelling of her name is difficult for a number of reasons. First of all, Hidatsa is not a written language; Lewis and Clark themselves employed over a dozen different spellings of her name in their journals. Secondly, coming from an oral tradition, the proper spelling of her name presents difficulty because of the phonetics involved. The controversy probably will not be resolved any time soon, but it is probably best to use the spelling that contemporary Hidatsa people prefer.

Sacajawea ia the spelling adopted by Wyoming and some other western states, relying on the Shoshone. According to the web site Trail Tribes:

The Lemhi Shoshone call her Sacajawea. It is derived from the Shoshone word for her name, Saca tzah we yaa. In his Cash Book, William Clark spells Sacajawea with a “J”. Also, William Clark and Private George Shannon explained to Nicholas Biddle (Published the first Lewis and Clark Journals in 1814) about the pronunciation of her name and how the tz sounds more like a “j”. What better authority on the pronunciation of her name than Clark and Shannon who traveled with her and constantly heard the pronunciation of her name. We do not believe it is a Minnetaree (Hidatsa) word for her name. Sacajawea was a Lemhi Shoshone not a Hidatsa. Her people the Lemhi Shoshone honor her freedom and will continue using the name Sacajawea. Most Shoshone elders conclude that her name is a Shoshone word: Saca tzah we yaa which means burden.

Lewis and Clark (or at least Clark) called Sacagawea Janey. Clark raised the boy, John Baptiste Charbonneau (called Pomp by Clark) from age six and arranged for him to be educated in Europe when Pomp was 19.

The best evidence suggests that Sacagawea died in 1812, though some believe she lived until 1884.


The Pilgrims and the Made-Up Americans

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This is Mack’s first Thanksgiving in school, so of course he’s hearing the public school version of the First Thanksgiving story. Some teachers don’t use the correct name for the indigenous people near Plymouth — Wampanoags — or even the preferred generic term — American Indians. They use the presumed politically correct term — Native Americans.

That’s what the teacher says, but what do the children hear?

Mack’s mother Jill reports:

“At school, Mack is learning about the first Thanksgiving. He came home today with a short story about it, which I asked him to read to me. It went well until he got to the first reference to what he called the ‘Made-Up’ Americans.”

First posted in 2006.


Geronimo

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The chief himself was in his late fifties and perhaps decided that it was time to retire from the more athletic activities of his career. Nonetheless, when he finally gave up once and for all, on September 4, 1886, it was a negotiated surrender, and not a capture.

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.

“General Miles is your friend,” said the interpreter. The Indian gave Miles a defoliating look. “I never saw him,” he said. “I have been in need of friends. Why has he not been with me?”

This photograph was 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.

After time in Florida and Alabama, Geronimo and the other Chiricahua Apaches were moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1894. Geronimo, despite remaining a prisoner of war, 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 (above) and Geronimo on exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair (below).

Quotations are from Geronimo! by E. M. Halliday, published in American Heritage in June 1966.


The Dawes Act

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… “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.

This Day in History

The alloment of lands ended in 1934. The problems The Dawes Act created continue.


Well, would ya’ look at that

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Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charles Mason rode out on what is now Sun Point in search of lost cattle 123 years ago today (1888) and found Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. That afternoon, Richard found Spruce Tree House, and the next day, the two men discovered Square Tower House. Al Wetherill, Richard’s brother, saw Cliff Palace sometime the year before, but he did not enter the dwelling, so the credit for “discovering” the dwelling has been given to Richard Wetherill and Charles Mason.

In 1901, Richard Wetherill homesteaded land that included Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo Del Arroyo, and Chetro Ketl in what is now Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Wetherill remained in Chaco Canyon, homesteading and operating a trading post at Pueblo Bonito until his murder in 1910. Chiishch’ilin Biy, charged with the murder, served several years in prison, but was released in 1914 due to poor health. Wetherill is buried in the small cemetery west of Pueblo Bonito.

NewMexiKen took this photo of Cliff Palace in 2006. Click image for a larger version.


Tatanka-Iyotanka

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… was killed on this date in 1890.

Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man. He was born around 1831 on the Grand River in present-day South Dakota. He became a warrior in a battle with the Crow at age 14, subsequently becoming renowned for his courage in fights with the U.S. Army.

In 1874, an expedition led by George Armstrong Custer confirmed the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, an area that had been declared off-limits to white settlement by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. When efforts by the government to purchase the Black Hills failed, the Fort Laramie Treaty was abrogated. All Lakota not settled on reservations by January 31, 1876, would be considered hostile. Sitting Bull led his people in holding their ground.

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‘I will fight no more forever’

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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 134 years ago today, Joseph spoke:

Chief Joseph

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.


Who Lived Here?

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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.

NewMexiKen photo, August 9, 2006. Click for larger version.


The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

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On the Feast Day of San Lorenzo, August 10, 1680, the Franciscan priest Fray Juan Pío left early from Santa Fe to say Mass in the nearby pueblo of Tesuque. A Spanish settler living in Tesuque had been murdered the day before and Pío was preoccupied with reports of an imminent Indian uprising.

Before the day was over, Pío would disappear, his bloodstained shield found, and four hundred Spaniards, among them twenty other Franciscan priests, would be killed. After more than 140 years of submission to Spanish colonial rule, the Pueblos had united with other Indian tribes to revolt against their colonizers. Led by a medicine man known as Popé, they plundered homes and demolished churches and other signs of the Spanish empire, including government documents. The Pueblo Revolt had begun.

Spanish survivors were driven as far south as present-day El Paso. For the next twelve years, New Mexico would remain free of Spanish rule.

From Trouble for the Spanish: The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Humanities, Volume 23/Number 6, November/December 2002

Popé, or Po’pay, is one of two New Mexicans depicted in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.

In 1675 Po’pay and 46 other Pueblo leaders were convicted of sorcery; he was among those flogged, while others were executed. In 1680 Po’pay organized the Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish. According to legend, to coordinate the timing of the uprising, he and his followers sent runners to each pueblo with knotted deerskin strips. One knot was to be untied each day, and the revolt would begin on the day the last one was untied. However, the Spaniards arrested two of the runners, and the pueblos were quickly notified to accelerate the revolt. The attacks began on August 10, two days before the last knot would have been untied. The Spaniards took refuge at Santa Fe; the besieging Indians cut off their water supply but soon permitted them to leave the area. The Pueblo Revolt helped to ensure the survival of the Pueblo culture and shaped the history of the American Southwest.