Sunshine Skyways

Last week I was in San Francisco, a city that I really like. While there, I had the chance to go to Haight-Ashbury, a place that has an interesting history.

We took a walk yesterday along a walking trail at Little Manatee River State Park and saw this armadillo.

Many facts of Sitting Bull’s death are uncertain, clouded by conflicting accounts of the event. What is certain, however, is that he died from gunshot wounds on December 15, 1890, after being arrested by Indian reservation police.

One of the first official reports of Sitting Bull’s death was the December 15, 1890, telegram from Indian Agent McLaughlin to Indian Commissioner Morgan, which appeared in many newspapers the following day. The telegram states Sitting Bull was killed during a failed attempt by his followers to rescue him from Indian reservation police who had arrested Sitting Bull and were taking him to Standing Rock. The telegram states (The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1890, p. 1):

Indian police arrested Sitting Bull at his camp, forty miles southwest of the agency, this morning at daylight. His followers attempted his rescue and fighting commenced. Four policemen were killed and three wounded. Eight Indians were killed, including Sitting Bull and his son, Crow Foot, and several others wounded. The police were surrounded for some time, but maintained their ground until relieved by United States troops, who now have possession of Sitting Bull’s camp. Sitting Bull’s followers, probably one hundred men, deserted their families and fled west up the Grand river. The police behaved nobly and great credit is due them. Particulars by mail.

The Los Angeles Times (L.A. Times) embellished the above account, and on December 16, 1890, published a story of a fierce battle between non-aggressive reservation police and hostile Indians getting ready to go on the warpath. The article states that either a police officer or one of Sitting Bull’s followers shot and killed Sitting Bull during the chaos that existed during the initial minutes of the fight.

The L.A. Times article reads like a script for a future Hollywood western. The cavalry comes to the rescue (L.A. Times, December 16, 1890, p.1):

[T]he hostiles charged upon the police, firing as they came. A hand-to-hand struggle ensued, during which Sitting Bull, who was not shackled, gave his orders in a loud voice. For several minutes the firing was heavy and deadly. In the furious fusilade Sitting Bull fell out of his saddle, pierced by a bullet, but it is not known whether it was fired by the charging party or police…The hostiles fired with deadly accuracy, and slowly dropped the police from the field. If the cavalry had not come up at this time, it is probable that the force would have been annihilated. The soldiers were quickly into action. A skirmish line was thrown out, and then, kneeling and firing as they advanced, the troops, with machine guns playing over their heads, poured a withering fire into the savages.

The same day as the above article, an L.A. Times editorial celebrated Sitting Bull’s death. The editorial describes Sitting Bull as a “remorseless and implacable savage,” who was “blood-thirsty,” “cruel,” “vengeful,” and “murderous,” and who was “the cause of more trouble to the white man and the white man’s government than any Indian” (p. 6). Given this character description, it is not surprising that the editorial suggests Sitting Bull should have been executed ten years before, upon his surrender in 1880.

The New York Times (N.Y. Times) mirrored the same sentiment in a December 16, 1890, editorial about the event. According to the editorial, Sitting Bull was “one of the most mischievous and turbulent Indians,” who troubled Indian agents and U.S. Army officers. The editorial implied his death was the solution to a nagging problem.

L.A. Times and N.Y. Times’ characterizations of Sitting Bull were representative of the characterizations of him promoted by the Indian agent at the Standing Rock Reservation, military authorities, and government officials in Washington. In a telegram to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the fall of 1890, McLaughlin described Sitting Bull as “a man of low cunning, devoid of …an honorable trait of character, but on the contrary…capable of instigating and inciting others” (Beasley, p. 14). Military authorities produced images of a murderous Sitting Bull and were quick to announce that Sitting Bull’s death was the solution to their problems at Standing Rock and perhaps throughout the Dakotas (Coleman). President Harrison described Sitting Bull as “the great disturbing element in his tribe,” and expressed relief upon receiving word of Sitting Bull’s death (Washington Post, December 16, 1890, p. 1).

The details of Sitting Bull’s death increased and changed for several days after the initial newspaper reports. On December 17th, the N.Y. Times reported that reservation police shot and killed Sitting Bull, which differed from the L.A. Times report of the previous day that he could have been killed accidentally by one of his followers. According to the N.Y. Times article, the shooting of Sitting Bull was a planned response to any attempt to rescue him. The article says, “It is evident that there was, cruel as it may seem, a complete understanding, from commanding officer to the Indian police, that the slightest attempt to rescue Sitting Bull should be a signal to send the old medicine man to the happy hunting ground” (December 17, 1890, p. 1). The same day a Chicago Tribune article suggested Sitting Bull would have been killed whether an attempt was made to rescue him or not (Coleman, p. 231):

That the government authorities, civil as well as military, from President Harrison and General Miles down, preferred the death of the famous old savage to capture
whole-skinned, few persons here, Indian or white, have a doubt. It was felt that Sitting Bull’s presence anywhere behind bars would have been the cause of endless troubles, while should he fall victim to the ready Winchester, the thousands of Messiah-crazed Ghost dancers would rudely realize that his ‘medicine,’ which was to make them bullet-proof, would be worthless…

On December 18th, the N.Y. Times continued to change its account of Sitting Bull’s death and published what it called “the actual details of the fight in which Sitting Bull was killed” (1890, p. 1):

The police under Bull Head, Lieutenant of Police, and Shave Head, First Sergeant, went into camp near Sitting Bull’s village on the night of the 14th, and the next morning went into Bull’s camp and made the arrest. Sitting Bull expressed his willingness to go with them, but wanted to make preparations for the ride, and ordered his horse to be gotten ready. While Bull Head and Shave Head were in the shack where the old chief was getting ready, two bucks enveloped in blankets entered the shack, and throwing off their blankets opened fire on the police… In the fight that followed, Red Tomahawk killed Sitting Bull. Ten or more of Sitting Bull’s followers were killed. Seven police were killed, and Bull Head and Shave Head were desperately wounded, Shave Head dying later.

According to above article, an Indian named Red Tomahawk, who was one of the reservation police, killed Sitting Bull. That fact that Sitting Bull was killed by an Indian who intended to shoot him, as opposed to an Indian who accidentally shot him, was touted as proof that Sitting Bull had enemies among his own people.

A day later on December 19th, the Washington Post (Post) reported it was Bull Head, not Red Tomahawk, who shot and killed Sitting Bull. According to the Post article, Bull Head shot Sitting Bull twice.

Four days after publishing its first report of Sitting Bull’s death, the N.Y. Times continued its assault on Sitting Bull’s character in a December 20th editorial. The editorial describes Sitting Bull as having been “always disgruntled, always an element of discord, to the last degree suspicious and superstitious, and altogether one of those Indians who insist upon their rights but never recognize their duties,” and now deceased, he is a “good Indian.”

Not one of the previously mentioned newspaper articles or editorials laments the death of Sitting Bull. It is described as a rightful death, the outcome of the police acting in self-defense; however, there was a very different perspective as illustrated in a letter from Reverend W.H.H. Murray published in the December 21st issue of the New York World. Murray writes (Bland, p. 25):

The land grabbers wanted the Indian lands. The lying, thieving Indian agents wanted silence touching past thefts and immunity to continue their thieving. The renegades from their people among the Indian police
wanted an opportunity to show their power over a man who despised them as renegades, and whom, therefore, they murdered. And so he was murdered.

The next day a World editor wrote that a member of the Eight Cavalry, Corporal Gunn, supported Murray’s characterization of the event. The editor described Sitting Bull’s death as “organized butchery” (Bland, p. 27).

On December 23rd, the Post continued to revise its account of Sitting Bull’s death when it published a December 16, 1890, telegram from McLaughlin:

At daybreak on Monday morning the 15th, the police went to Sitting Bull’s camp direct to his house, and surrounded the house; a detail was sent into the house where Sitting Bull was sleeping on the floor, the remainder staying outside. They aroused him and announced their purpose, at the same time raising him to a sitting position, and he at first seemed inclined to offer no resistance, and they allowed him to dress, during which time he changed his mind and they took him forcibly from the house. By this time the police were surrounded by Sitting Bull’s followers, members of the ghost dance, and the first shot was fired by ‘Catch-the-Bear,’ one of the hostiles, and the
lieutenant of police, Bull Head, was struck, the fighting then became general in fact, it was a hand-to-hand fight. Sitting Bull was killed, shot through the body and head in the early part of the fight, by Bull Head and Red Tomahawk, each of whom shot at him. Four policeman were killed outright and three wounded, one of the latter dying at the agency hospital this morning…

McLaughlin claims one of Sitting Bull’s followers, Catch-the-Bear, started the fight when he fired the first shot. In this official scenario, the police acted in self-defense when they shot and killed Sitting Bull.

The World continued its assault on the government’s story of Sitting Bull’s death as reported in the Post, N.Y. Times, and many other newspapers. According to a December 28th article in the World, “The impression here is growing stronger every day that Sitting Bull’s death was brought about by deliberate assassination… Were it not for the World’s correspondent’s unearthing the real facts the country would still believe that Sitting Bull was shot by Indian police while resisting arrest. There was no resistance whatsoever. It was a crime, cruel and cowardly” (Coleman, pp. 232, 233).

More facts of Sitting Bull’s death were revealed in testimonies and reports in the months and years that followed. Captain Fechet of the Eighth Cavalry contradicted McLaughlin’s claim that Sitting Bull was killed in self-defense during a fight started by his followers. Captain Fechet writes in a report, “The attempt to arrest Sitting Bull was so managed as to place the responsibility for the fight that ensued upon Sitting Bull’s band which began fighting” (Coleman, p. 232). Captain Fechet’s remark suggests the police wanted to incite the Ghost Dancers into a fight. Combined with earlier remarks that the police and military planned to shoot Sitting Bull if a fight ensued, it follows that the police incited the Ghost Dancers to fight, thus creating the conditions to kill Sitting Bull. It was preferable to Agent McLaughlin and the military that it appeared that Sitting Bull died in a fight as he resisted arrested, instead of being murdered by Indian police.

Fanny Kelly, who was captured and taken prisoner by a Sioux war party, then returned to her husband, lived with Sitting Bull’s band and described him as a man very different from the one described by McLaughlin, military authorities, and officials in Washington. In an 1891 book edited by Bland, Kelly states, “Sitting Bull was a true nobleman, and great man. He was uniformly gentle and kind to his wife and children and courteous and considerate in his intercourse with others” (Bland, p. 27). In the same book, Catherine Weldon, a teacher and missionary who spent much time among Sitting Bull’s people, also describes Sitting Bull as a good man. She writes (p. 29):

Sitting Bull was not treacherous, nor cruel. He was not a liar, nor a murderer, as has been charged. He was a man of true nobility of character and generous deeds. As a friend, he was sincere and true, as a patriot devoted and uncorruptible. As a husband and father, affectionate and considerate. As a host, courteous and hospitable to the last degree. He was a typical Indian, and he held tenaciously to the traditions, of this people as sacred legacy. He distrusted the innovations sought to be forced upon the Indians. He believed that all the white men cared for was to get the Indian’s land from him. He had no faith in Government Commissioners or Christian
missionaries. What he saw of white civilization did not impress him favorably. There was too much avarice and too much hypocrisy in it. He never signed a treaty to sell any portion of his people’s inheritance, and he refused to acknowledge the right of other Indians to sell his undivided share of the tribal lands. For this he was denounced as obstructionist, a foe to progress … His influence with his people was very great. This fact made him unpopular with all who saw in his policy and
influence obstruction to their selfish schemes, hence they demanded his removal.

According to Weldon, Sitting Bull’s family and others who were eyewitnesses described to her the death of Sitting Bull. Weldon’s description of the event contrasts sharply with McLaughlin’s telegrams: (Bland, pp. 29, 30):

A squad of agency police under command of Bullhead went under cover of night to arrest Sitting Bull. The military were close by to support the police, if necessary.
Bullhead and his party arrived before daylight, and entered Sitting Bull’s house without being discovered. Sitting Bull and his family were in bed. Bullhead called out “Sitting Bull, are you here?” “Yes, answered the Chief, “How.” Bullhead then lit a match and discovering the chief, he dragged him from the bed. He made no resistance but asked to be allowed to dress. Then Crowfoot, Sitting Bull’s youngest son, a mere boy, and Catch the Bear, gave the alarm. Immediately Bullhead shot Sitting Bull through the heart. Another policeman, Red Tomahawk, put a ball in his head. Not content with this they then beat his head to a pulp, and then rifled his pockets. Crowfoot, who had hid under a bed, was dragged out and killed though he was unarmed, and begged for his life piteously. His skull was crushed and four balls fired into his body. The fight now became general. Though Sitting Bull’s friends were so completely surprised that many of them did not have even a knife with which to defend themselves. The troops came up almost immediately, and then the fighting ceased.

Current newspapers and other media continue to publish contrasting descriptions of the death of Sitting Bull. For example, an article by Harriman in the April 25, 1999, issue of The Virginian-Pilot says (p. M14), “On the 15th, Sitting Bull, the most illustrious of all Indian leaders and the most uncompromising as well, was taken into custody and shot to death by Indian police when he resisted.” The article does not describe the death as a murder or assassination; Sitting Bull is killed because he resisted arrest. However, an April 8, 1995, article by Sharkey in the London, England, newspaper, The Guardian, says (p. T27), “Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the Lakota’s greatest leaders, were both assassinated.” The 1999, 2nd edition of Religious Leaders of America, agrees with The Guardian article and says Sitting Bull was assassinated. A 1991 article in Canadian Dimension (Dimension) by Taylor says (p. 13), “Early on December 15, 1890, 43 Indian police surrounded Sitting Bull’s cabin, but in the commotion which followed his arrest, he was shot and killed.” Later in the Dimension article, the death is described as a murder.

Current Indian scholars give different accounts of the death of Sitting Bull. Angie Debo’s account suggests Sitting Bull was killed by Bull Head. She does not say if Bull Head, “the wounded man,” intended to or accidentally shot Sitting Bull. Debo writes (p. 291):

On December 14, 1890, McLaughlin on orders from Washington sent thirty-three of his police to arrest the Chief, while two troops of cavalry marched out to support them if necessary. Before dawn the next morning the police quietly entered his house and took him into custody. The camp sprang into life and more than 150 fanatic dancers began to surround them. One of them shot and fatally wounded a policeman, and the wounded man then shot Sitting Bull. A fight followed, in which even the women participated with knives and clubs. Four of the police were killed and another badly wounded, while the ghost dancers lost seven besides Sitting Bull and three wounded. The cavalry arrived, and the dancers were subdued.

Dee Brown’s account varies from Debo’s in many respects. Debo says 33 police were at Sitting Bull’s camp, Brown says 43. Debo does not say if Bull Head intended to shoot Sitting Bull, Brown says he did not. Debo suggests only Bull Head shot Sitting Bull, Brown claims Red Tomahawk delivered the fatal shot. Brown states (p. 437):

Just before daybreak on December 15, 1890, forty-three Indian police surrounded Sitting Bull’s log cabin. Three miles away a squadron of cavalry waited as a support force if needed. Lieutenant Bull Head, the Indian policeman in charge of the party, found Sitting Bull asleep on the floor. When he was awakened, the chief stared incredulously at Bull Head. “What do you want here?” he asked. “You are my prisoner,” said Bull Head. “You must go the agency.” Sitting Bull yawned and sat up. “All right,” he replied, “let me put on my clothes and I’ll go with you. He asked the policeman to have his horse saddled. When Bull Head emerged from the cabin with Sitting Bull he found a crowd of Ghost Dancers gathering outside. They outnumbered the police four to one. Catch-the-Bear, one of the dancers, moved toward Bull Head. “You think you are going to take him,” Catch-the-Bear shouted. “You shall not do it!” “Come now,” Bull Head said quietly to his prisoner, “do not listen to anyone.” But Sitting Bull held back, making it necessary for Bull Head and Sergeant Red Tomahawk to force him toward his horse. At this moment, Catch-the-Bear threw off his blanker and brought up his rifle. He fired at Bull Head, wounding him in the side. As Bull Head fell, he tried to shoot his assailant, but the bullet struck Sitting Bull instead. Almost simultaneously, Red Tomahawk shot Sitting Bull through the head and killed him.

Some have argued that Sitting Bull was an accident victim, killed when Bull Head accidentally shot him. Vine Deloria and Ward Churchill argue Sitting Bull’s death was a political assassination, not an accident. I agree with Deloria and Churchill.







REFERENCES:

1. Beasley, Conger, Jr. 1995. We Are a People in This World: The Lakota Sioux and the
   Massacre at Wounded Knee. The University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville.
2. Bland, T.A., ed. A Brief History of the Late Military Invasion of the Home of the Sioux. The National Indian Defense Association, Washington, DC, 1891.
3. Brown, Dee. 1991. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American
   West. Henry Holt and Company, New York.
4. Churchill, Ward. 1998. Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians. City Lights Books, San Francisco.
5. Coleman, William S.E. 2000. Voices of Wounded Knee. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
6. Debo, Angie. 1970. A History of the Indians of the United States. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
7. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988. Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
8. Gale Group. 1999. Religious Leaders of America, 2nd edition.
9. Harriman, Stephen. April 25, 1999. “Indians Win the Battle, Lose the War; Custer’s Last Stand Made The Flamboyant Soldier Immortal, but it Signaled The End of The Indians’ Independence” in The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA). April 25, 1999, p. M14.
10. Philadelphia Inquirer, The. December 16, 1890. “Sitting Bull Killed.” P. 1.
11. Los Angeles Times, The. December 16, 1890. “His Last Sit; Reclining Bison Killed by the Indian Police; The Old Reptile Taken by Surprise and a Hot Fight Ensues.” P. 1.
12. -------------------------. December 16, 1890. Untitled Editorial. P. 6.
13. New York Times, The. December 16, 1890. “The Last of Sitting Bull; The Old Chief Killed While Resisting Arrest.” P. 1.
14. -------------------------. December 16, 1890. “Exit Sitting Bull” (editorial).
15. -------------------------. December 17, 1890. “The Death of Sitting Bull; Story of the Old Medicine Man’s Last Fight.” P. 1.
16. Sharkey, Alix. April 8, 1994. “Indian Giver” in The Guardian (London). P. T27.
17. Taylor, Walt. 1991. “Wounded Knee 1890 – Unquenchable Spirit 1990; History of Wounded Knee” in Canadian Dimension, vol. 25, no. 1, January.
18. Washington Post. December 16, 1890. “Sitting Bull Shot.” P. 1.
19. 
    --------------------. December 19, 1890. “Death of Sitting Bull.” Pp. 1, 4.
20. --------------------. December 23, 1890. “Sitting Bull.” P. 1.

This post is about historical arguments for and against the General Allotment Act of 1887, which is also known as the Dawes Act after its Senate sponsor, Henry A. Dawes. Under the Dawes Act (Act), American Indian tribes lost legal standing and their communal lands were divided among individual members. The Act was intended to facilitate Indian assimilation into the broader society, however, as it undermined tribal life, it did not increase Indian acceptance by Euro-American society (Senier, 2000). The Act cost American Indians two-thirds of their land, and much of what remained was rendered effectively useless as it was inherited by successive generations (Bobroff, 2001).

There are more historical documents from people who supported the passage of the Act than from those who opposed it. Among its proponents were common beliefs that communal land ownership was a primitive system, which stunted socioeconomic development, and Indians needed a system of private property ownership to become civilized (Steel, 2000). Speaking at the Lake Mohonk Conference in 1883, apparently about the Cherokees, Dawes said (Debo, 1968, pp. 22, 23):

The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own. There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not own adollar. It built its own capitol … and it built its schools
and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. It is Henry George’s system, and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can
own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.[1]

Implicit in Dawes’ argument are the beliefs that private ownership of land increases individual (and national) wealth because it rewards an individual’s hard work, and communal ownership encourages laziness because a good worker subsidizes the indolent.[2] The conservative economic faithful sermonized that communal land ownership stifled competition and individualism, which were necessary for economic growth. According to Ezra A. Hayt, in 1879, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, common ownership of land “prevented individual advancement,…spirit of rivalry, and the desire to accumulate property for personal use of comfort which is the success and advancement in all white communities (Prucha, 1973, p. 80).[3]

Images of lazy Indians were produced and circulated as evidence of a system of property rights that had to be changed. One of these images appears in the recently rediscovered and republished novel, Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891), by Muscogee writer, S. Alice Callahan. The main character, Wynema, argues that allotment would be a good cure for the lazy Indian. She says:

We should have our own homes, and contrary to ruining our fortunes I think it would mend them …There are so many idle, shiftless Indians who do nothing but hunt and fish; then there are others who are industrious and enterprising; so long as our land remains as a whole, in common, these lazy Indians will never make a move toward cultivating it; and the industrious Indians and ‘squaw men’ will inclose as much as they can for their own use. Thus the land will be unequally divided, the lazy Indians getting nothing because they will not exert themselves to do so; while if the land were allotted, do you not think that these idle Indians, knowing the land to be their own, would have pride enough to cultivate their land and build up their homes?

Wynema’s position on allotment mirrors the argument given by “pro-allotment reformers and so-called Red Progressives,” who contended that lazy Indians, not U.S. government policy, were to blame for Indian poverty (Senier, 2000, p. 426).[4] The attack on “lazy Indians” was an attack on Indian men and the traditional sexual division of labor in Indian societies. Indian societies were noted for divisions of labor in which women were the farmers and male economic production was mostly limited to hunting, fishing, and trading (Hoebel, 1978; Trigger, 1990; lecture notes).[5] The Act’s proponents accepted the Euro-American belief that farmers are and should be men, not women, and Indian men should be yeoman farmers on allotted land.

Allotments of land were not a new idea. The Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts “had insisted that the praying Indians each take up a plot of ground and become farmers like their white neighbors” (Deloria and Lytle, 1983, p. 8). Farming was considered to be a good Christian occupation, as it required long hours of work.[5] As whites contended that Indians needed to be Christianized, allotment and farming were promoted as tools to obtain their conversion and salvation.[6]

Pro-allotment groups were largely composed of eastern educators and politicians, who, without question, accepted the Euro-American patriarchal model of agrarian civilization and possessive individualism (Champagne, 1994; Senier, 2001). They argued that Indians, particularly Indian men, had to change. Hiram Price, Commissioner of Indian Affairs in President Cleveland’s first administration, said (Prucha, 1973, p. 94):

Give the Indian his land in severalty. Let him feel his individuality and responsibility, and a sense of proprietorship. Encourage him to go to work and earn his living and provide for the future wants and necessities of himself and family, and abandon his shiftless, do-nothing, dependent life.

Allotment supporters also offered another reason: it was necessary to protect the Indians. Two books by Helen Hunt Jackson promoted this argument. The first, A Century for Dishonor, chronicled the U.S. government’s unfair treatment of American Indians, and is associated with the creation of Indian Rights associations (Seiner, 2001). Jackson and Indian Rights groups argued that allotment and citizenship would give Indians the land and other rights they needed to survive. The second, the 1884 bestseller, Romona, used a romance plot — between a mixed-blood heroine, Romona, and a full-blood Indian hero, Allesandro — to advance a protest against white encroachment and brutality. The two young lovers elope; then as they strive to live peacefully and self-sufficiently, they are continuously forced by white settlers to leave and rebuild their home and lives somewhere else. Finally, the book ends tragically when a racist white settler murders Allesandro. Allotment supporters used Romona to generate sympathy for Indians, who had adopted the Euro-American lifestyle, but were tormented by whites that continuously threatened to and did take their lands (Senier, 2001). Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Haut, suggested the Act would save Indians (like Romona and Allesandro) by giving them the protection they needed from land-hungry whites (Prucha, 1973, p. 80):

The experience of the Indian Department for the past fifty years goes to show that the government is impotent to protect the Indians on their reservations, especially when held in common, from the encroachment of its own people, whenever a discovery has been made rendering the possession of their lands desirable by whites.

Critics rejected Haut’s contention that the government could protect individual rights, but not collective rights. The government could have upheld and enforced the legal rights of Indians, collectively, to their lands (Washburn, 1971; Senier, 2001). The government did not respect nor understand Indian collective rights, particularly ownership of communal lands, and had no incentive to protect these rights.

The government and white settlers’ notions of property were based on John Locke’s notion that land ownership resulted from improvements made to the land (Wright and Gitelman, 1991). Although Indians made ecological changes to the land, such as by hunting and burning the underbrush, these improvements were judged as illegitimate and subsequently rejected (Cronon, 1983). Indians did not own the land because they were not situated on a fixed plot of land — farming it and using it to produce; or in other words, they did not own it because they did not inhabit the land like Europeans (Senier, 2001; Cronon, 1983).

The prospect of “freeing up” surplus lands after the Indians had received their allotments was promoted unabashedly in 1881 by then Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz. Schurz said the surplus lands would be a way to “open to settlement by white men large tracts of land now belonging to the reservations, but not used by the Indians” (Senier, 2001, p. 42). Alice Cunningham Fletcher, a strong supporter of speedy and forced allotment and an Indian agent, argued that Indians had far more land than they needed and whites had far less land than they needed (Senier, 2001). Of course, white settlers favored the Act because it would offer them land.

Alexander Lawrence Posey, a Creek Nation member, supported allotment under the prevailing circumstances of the time; however, he argued that all Creek land should be allotted to Creeks and none sold to outsiders (Littlefield and Hunter, 1993). Critics of the Act predicted that it would make it easy for a government with a history of stealing Indian land to take prime land and give it to whites, while allotting marginal lands, less suited for agriculture, to Indians.

In its initial form, allotment was supposed to require the approval of at least two-thirds of a given tribe, but that proposal changed once pro-allotment groups determined that tribal acceptance was a threat to U.S. sovereignty (Senier, 2001). Allotment would be forced with no consideration for treaties that identified tribes as sovereign nations with fixed land boundaries.

Critics of allotment contended that allotment would reduce, not improve, economic conditions for Indians. Statements by two characters in Wynema: A Child of the Forest illustrate the argument that allotment would be devastating. First, Genevieve, one of the main characters, says (Callahan, p. 52):

This sounds like the lands will be allotted whether the Indians like or no. I cannot see the matter as it has been presented by you, and as the papers advocate it, my idea is, that it will be the ruin of the poor, ignorant savage… Were the land divided, these poor, ignorant, improvident,
short-sighted Indians would be persuaded and threatened into selling their homes, piece by piece, perhaps, until finally they would be homeless outcasts, and then what would become of ‘Poor Lo!’ None of his white brothers, who so sweetly persuaded away his home would give him a night’s shelter or a morsel of food.

Second, Gerald Keithly states that allotment would be disastrous for those tricked by white men into selling their land, and many would be tricked.

Gerald Keithly was right. Millions of acres of tribal lands were lost through fraud (Champagne, 1994). In a 1903 letter, Posey writes (Littlefield and Hunter, 1993, p. 119):

For more than a year, Creeks had made accusations that large land-trust companies were at work in the Creek Nation, acquiring options on large numbers of Creek allotments by fraudulent means. By the summer of 1903, rumors were rife that corruption was wide-spread among officials of the Justice and Interior departments in Indian Territory. The growing scandel indicated that those officials, including members of the
Dawes Commission, were engaged in large-scale land speculation, particularly in the Creek Nation. The process of allotment provided opportunities for the materially ambitious to make money in real estate ventures.

Despite supporters’ predictions that the Act would benefit Indians, it didn’t. Land reserved for Indians was often the harshest and least productive. When, by chance, Indians received better land, it was “often seized by force, trickery, or dubious foreclosure” (Shaw, 2000). When Indians tried to pool their resources and act together to achieve economies of scale, the government stopped them from doing so (Bobroff, 2001).

The policies established by the Dawes Act ended 47 years after its creation with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Robert Chicks, President, Stockbridge-Munsee Community of Mohican Indians, summarizes the Act’s effects:

During those 47 years, the federal government took away over 90 million acres of tribal lands that were previously guaranteed to tribes by treaties and federal law. This was over two thirds of the land base, and over 80 percent of their value, as the best and most productive lands were the first to be taken. The remaining tribal lands, if any were left, were discontinuous, fractionated, and difficult to use for any economically productive purposes such as grazing or agriculture. The effects of the Allotment Era were devastating to tribal communities economically and socially, and the effects continue to this day.

ENDNOTES:

1. Henry George was a nineteenth century political economist who argued that private ownership of land did not raise the masses out of poverty because the unequal distribution of land created an unequal distribution of wealth. The small numbers that owned much of the land received most of the wealth. George argued for communal ownership of land.
2. In neoclassical economics, this is the so-called "free rider problem".
3. Generosity and economic equality, which were organizing principles for many tribes, were to be replaced by selfishness and inequality.
4. Essentially the same argument can be made today against social welfare. The stereotypical welfare recipient is constructed to be an unmarried black woman with children, who is poor because she does not want to work. This woman and women like her unfairly take money from hard-working and respectable inndividuals. Recipients of corporate welfare, however, are popularly described as deserving.
5. On the other hand, it was believed that Indian men who traditionally hunted and fished had too many leisure hours, which led to consorting with the Devil. The same judgment was not applied to English aristrocrats and other members of the leisure class.
6. Biological, cultural, and religious racisms were combined. Then, as now, the missionaries did not reflect upon the religious racism inherent in the Christian need to convert non-Christians so as to save them.

References:

1. Brobroff, Kenneth H. “Retelling Allotment: Indian Property Rights and the Myth of
   Common Ownership,” Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol.54, No. 4, May 2001, pp. 1557 – 1623.
2. Callahan, S. Alice. Wynema: A Child of the Forest, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1997. Originally published in 1891 by H. J. Smith and Company, Chicago. (This is probably the first novel written by a woman of American Indian descent.)
   
3. Champagne, Duane, Ed. Chronology of Native North American History from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present, Gale Research Inc., Washington, DC, 1994.
4. Chicks, Robert. “Statement of Robert Chicks, President, Stockbridge-Munsee Community (of Mohican Indians)” before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, June 19, 2001.
5. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New
   England, Hill and Wang, New York, 1983.
6. Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run Deep: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1968.
7. Deloria, Vine Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle. American Indians, American Justice, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1983.
8. George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth, The Remedy,15th Anniversary Edition, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, New York, 1937.
9. Hoebel, E. Adamson. The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains, 2nd Edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, New York, 1978).
10. Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr. and Carol A. Petty Hunter, Eds. The Fus Fixico Letters, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1993.
11. Senier, Siobhan. Voices of American Indian Assimilation and Resistance: Helen
    Hunt Jackson, Sarah Winnemucca, and Victoria Howard, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2001.
12. 
    -------------------. “Allotment Protest and Tribal Discourse: Reading Wynema’s Successes
    and Shortcomings,” The American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3, June 22, 2000.
13. Steel, Michael. “Trying to Right a Century of Wrongs,” The National Journal, Vol. 32, No. 36, September 2, 2000, p. 2725.
14. Shaw, Jeff. “Bitter Harvest: Indian Farmers Allege Years of Discrimination at the USDA,” In These Times, October 2, 2000, p. 20.
    
15. Trigger, Bruce G. The Huron: Farmers of the North, 2nd Edition, Harcourt Brace Javonovich College Publishers, New York, 1990.
16. Washburn, Wilcomb E. Red Man’s Land/White Man’s Law, 2nd Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1971.

The two most two popular images of American Indian women are Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian woman who saved the life of and fell in love with Captain John Smith, and the quiet squaw enslaved to her husband.[1] Other less popular images are the exotic oversexed seductress and the viscous torturer of prisoners (Bataille and Sands, Green, Harjo and Bird). None of these images accurately depicts the lives of American Indian women. The fullness and complexity of American Indian women’s experiences have been reduced to simplistic images that are consistent with a patriarchal perspective of what women should be as in the case of Pocahontas or what women become in an uncivilized society.

E. Adamson Hoebel’s The Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains is an example of American Indian women being denied the fullness and complexity of their experiences. In Hoebel’s account, Cheyenne women did not go into battle, were not medicine women, and were never tribal leaders. However, Grinnell suggests otherwise in his The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life. There are accounts of women fighting, charging the enemy and counting coup (Grinnell, p. 157, Volume I).[2] Furthermore, Grinnell suggests the possibility that Cheyenne women may have played more prominent roles in the political decision-making and spiritual activities of the tribe but if so, their roles would have changed over time. Grinnell cites the “traditions of women chiefs and of women who have possessed remarkable mysterious powers or have shown great wisdom in council” to support the theory that Cheyenne women could have been more prominent in political and spiritual affairs of the tribe (p. 156, Vol. I).

Buffalo Calf Trail Woman[3] and Yellow Haired Woman[4] were two Cheyenne women warriors who should not be overlooked. Buffalo Calf Trail Woman “had killed in battle and had ridden against the soldiers of both Generals Crook and Custer (Sandoz, p. 17). She saved her brother at the Battle of the Rosebud. According to an account found in Stands in Timber and Liberty (pp. 188, 189),[5]

Some of the bravest Cheyenne warriors — White Shield, Comes in Sight, White Bird, and the Sioux Red Cloud and Low Dog — were riding back and forth letting the soldiers shoot at them. Louis Dog was watching and he said he couldn’t see how the soldiers missed them… Comes in Sight’s horse was shot when he was halfway across the gap. He landed on his feet running zigzag. His sister had ridden with the warriors that day. She was watching him and saw the soldier scouts start down to kill him. She came on the run as soon as his horse somersaulted over, and Comes in Sight jumped on behind her and they got away. The Cheyennes named the battle for that. They always call it ‘Where the Girl Saved Her Brother’.”

As told by John Sipes, Jr., the great, great grandson of Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, in an interview for Rocky Mountain PBS, she was born in 1844 in Yellowstone country, Wyoming.[6] Buffalo Calf Trail Woman was a warrior and owned a warhorse. She was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, 140 pounds, and was a great rider known for her “stamina to ride and ride and keep fighting.”[7] She was enough of a military threat to the United States that she became a prisoner of war.[8]

Yellow Haired Woman was an outstanding warrior as well. She made a direct stand in an important battle between her people and the Shoshonis in 1869 (Neithammer). According to Neithammer, Yellow Haired Woman was in the midst of the battle when she rode up to a Cheyenne and Shoshoni that were engaged in a struggle. Yellow Haired Woman “dismounted, drew her butcher knife, and stabbed the Shoshoni twice” (Neithammer, p. 168). Yellow Haired Woman later killed a Shoshoni prisoner by stabbing him through the armpit, and then scalped him.

Women who could shoot a rifle or bow, such as Buffalo Calf Trail Woman and Yellow Haired Woman, fought the enemy. According to Sandoz (p. 62), “Buffalo Calf Road and Yellow Woman gave their small ones to the others with babies... Then the two went gravely to the rifle pits, where Bull Hump’s Leaf and several other women who could shoot the guns or bows were already waiting.”

Some Cheyenne women who followed male warriors into battle did not fight but sang instead (Sandoz). Nonetheless, these women were in the midst of the fighting. One such Cheyenne woman was Pretty Walker who was said to be able to “go calmly into the path of bullets as her father” who was Chief Little Wolf (Sandoz, p. 18).

It follows that if Hoebel ignores women warriors, he would not mention stories of a women warrior society. Grinnell offers partial support for the existence of a women warrior society; however, he suggests that women who have been in battle may have constituted a class instead of a society.

Support for a women warrior society appears in the interview with Sipes,
book by Niethammer, and a recent obituary. According to Sipes,

[T]he warrior women had their own guild, had their own songs, their own medicines, war shields. [Buffalo Calf Trail Woman] did carry a war shield which was part of her
preparation for war. The Old Ones say that she had her own medicine that was given to her by a medicine, well it would
not have been a medicine man, it would have been a medicine woman that worked in that guild of the warrior women which
is as I explained, they had other Cheyenne warrior ladies that did fight also.

According to Niethammer, the women warrior society was a small society of Cheyenne women, most of whom had been to war with their husbands. The society was said to hold secret meetings, which no one else could attend. Yellow Haired Woman became eligible for the women warrior’s society when she killed and scalped the Shoshoni prisoner (Niethammer). The third piece of evidence comes from an obituary for Florence Whiteman who was believed to be the last member of the Northern Cheyenne women warrior society, known as the Elk Scrapers (Newsday, April 25, 2001).

Only a chosen few were admitted into the women warrior society. According to Sipes, one could request membership, but one had to qualify to be accepted. Once accepted, the society would start to train her. “It was big training” (Sipes). At the same time, these women were having babies and maintaining their lodges.

Acknowledgement of women warriors and a women warrior society puts into question Hoebel’s depiction of Cheyenne women. All of the warrior societies were by and for men according to Hoebel. Any female participation was restricted to “four virgin daughters of tribal chiefs as maids of honor to participate in their ceremonies and to sit in the midst of the circle of war chiefs when they meet in common council. Select girls of ‘the very best families’ who exemplify the Cheyenne ideal of chastity and perfect conduct are thus held up for others to emulate” (Hoebel, p. 41). What he produces is an image of women as saints or Miss America/Miss Cheyenne contestants. “Womanhood, though it is denied direct access to power and authority, receives high deference and reward” (Hoebel, p. 41).

Hoebel is not the only historian/anthropologist who has marginalized American Indian women in the military, spiritual-medical and political life of a tribe. The United States’ Bureau of Indian Affairs (Bureau) would not recognize women chiefs and the Bureau actively disenfranchised tribal women through dissolution of traditional social structures (Green). From the sixteenth to the twentieth century little was written about Native American women who resisted colonialism and were leaders of their tribes (Bataille and Sands).

It is ironic that Hoebel states (p. 87), “Human perception and human evaluation are colored and shaped by the underlying cultural postulates which are the foundation of knowledge and belief,” yet he does not admit that his knowledge of the Cheyennes is colored and shaped by a European-American cultural lens. Instead, he argues the Cheyennes’ experiences are shaped by their culture. Hoebel implicitly suggests that he is a scientific observer, and what he knows about the Cheyennes is the Truth, which is not influenced by any culture.[9]

Hoebel’s omission of Cheyenne women warriors and medicine women is consistent with patriarchal views that a woman’s realm is in the home, where she prepares food, makes clothes, bears children, prepares the tipi, and quietly supports her husband. He also understates the significance of the Cheyennes’ matrilineal society. Hoebel is not unique in this regard. Many historians/anthropologists have distorted matrilineal, matriarchal, and matrifocal societies. According to Bataille and Sands (p. xi),

Because matrilineal and matriarchal societies were both mysterious and threatening to the Euro-American patriarchal system, most early documentation of Indian women’s experience is misinformed and ethnocentric, more attuned to the colonists’ norms for female behavior than to the actuality of indigenous cultures or any interpretation of them Indian women might have articulated.

Images of American Indian women as princesses and saints, slaves to tribal men, exotic seductresses and viscous torturers appear to be more acceptable than images of American Indian women as tribal chiefs, medicine women and warriors based on the popularity of the former images. In her bibliography about Native American Women, Green states that the two hundred years of occasional and derogatory writing about Native American women before 1900 produced few details about Native American women; however, the references to Pocahontas produced Pocahontas novels, plays, biographies and critical literature for the twentieth century. Written accounts and oral histories by American Indian women and men were ignored in favor of “the mythologizing found in diaries, missionary accounts, travel tales and popular folklore (songs, stories, etc.) and the mythology grew without reference to those accounts that eschewed mythology” (Green, pp. 2,3).

There were Cheyenne women warriors. Women like Buffalo Calf Trail Woman, Yellow Haired Woman and others that could shoot a gun or bow were mothers, wives and warriors. That is not a myth. Some Cheyenne women fought courageously in battle for their nation against other American Indian tribes and United States military forces acting for a U.S. government bent on taking their land and eliminating the Cheyennes’ way of life. The myth is that American Indian women were and are Pocahontas and saints, slaves, seductresses and torturers.

ENDNOTES:

1. Examples of early nineteenth century images are Alexis de Tocqueville's 1831 description of American Indian women as living in complete servitude, Francesco Arese's 1837 description of Sioux and Menominee women as slaves of their husbands, and Frederick Marryat's depiction of Indian women as hard-working women who never complain and are "amply recompensed by a smile from their lord and master in the evening" (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/detoc/fem/indian.htm). The Walt Disney cartoon film Pocahontas shows an American Indian woman with a Barbie-doll-like figure, who is more brown-skinned than red, and whose love is so great that she falls in love with the enemy. She is truly the noble savage wanting and needing to be civilized by a patriarchal society charmed by her beauty and innocence.
2. In fairness to Hoebel, one could argue that he does suggest women were warriors when he states, "Women, too, gather to count coup on the enemy" (p. 21). However, he does not elaborate and the statement becomes hidden.
3. Also called Buffalo Calf Road Women, Buffalo Calf Woman or Mochis.
4. Also called Yellow Woman or Ehyophsta.
5. This story is also found in Grinnell, p. 157, Volume I.
6. Mr. Sipes is a Cheyenne Chief and Cheyenne historian.
7. Buffalo Calf Trail Woman survived the Sand Creek Massacre, but lost her entire family. During the slaughter, she picked up her father's rifle and was able to escape. She kept the rifle and in time used it against the U.S. Army. No doubt the memories of the horrors perpetrated by the Colorado militia at Sand Creek contributed to her fighting spirit.
8. Another story about Buffalo Calf Trail Woman fighting soldiers appears in Viola.
9. Unlike the rationalists who believe that theory or knowledge determines experience, Hoebel is an empiricist. He implicitly suggests that his knowledge comes from objective observations. However, he fails to see that knowledge shapes experience and experience shapes knowledge, and that all knowledge is subjective.

Bibliography

1. Bataille, Gretchen M. and Kathleen M. Sands. American Indian Women: A Guide to
   Research, Garland Publishing, Inc., New York, 1991.
   
2. Green, Rayna. Native American Women: A Contextual Bibliography, Indiana University
   Press, Bloomington, 1983.
   
3. Grinnell, George Bird. The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Ways of Life,
   University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1972.
   
4. Harjo, Joy and Gloria Bird. Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native
   American’s Writings of North America, W. W. Norton & Company, New York,
   1997.
   
5. [ ] . Obituary for Florence Whiteman, Newsday, April 25, 2001.
   
6. Sandoz, Mari. Cheyenne Autumn, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1966.
   
7. Sipes, John Jr. “Interview with John Sipes, Jr” for Rocky Mountain PBS Documentary
   Tears in the Sand. http://www.karma.org/tears/interv2.html
   
8. Stands in Timber, John and Margot Liberty. Cheyenne Memories, 2nd ed., Yale
   University Press, New Haven, 1998.
   
9. Viola, Herman J. It is a Good Day to Die: Indian Eyewitnesses Tell the Story of the
   Battle of the Little Bighorn, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1998.