Indian Agent Research Articles

Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World. By Robbie Ethridge. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xiii + 369 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $59.95, paper $22.50

Reconstructing the human and natural environment of the Creek Indians in frontier Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, Robbie Ethridge illuminates a time of wrenching transition. Creek Country presents a compelling portrait of a culture in crisis, of its resiliency in the face of profound change, and of the forces that pushed it into decisive, destructive conflict. Ethridge begins in 1796 with the arrival of U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins, whose tenure among the Creeks coincided with a period of increased federal intervention in tribal affairs, growing tension between Indians and non-Indians, and pronounced strife within the tribe. In a detailed description of Creek town life, the author reveals how social structures were stretched to accommodate increased engagement with whites and blacks. The Creek economy, long linked to the outside world through the deerskin trade, had begun to fail. Ethridge details the Creeks' efforts to diversify their economy, especially through experimental farming and ranching, and the ecological crisis that ensued. Disputes within the tribe culminated in the Red Stick War, a civil war among Creeks that quickly spilled over into conflict between Indians and white settlers and was ultimately used by U.S. authorities to justify their policy of Indian removal. |Reconstructing the human and natural environment of the Creek Indians in frontier Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, Ethridge presents a compelling portrait of a culture in economic, political, and ecological crisis; of its resiliency in the face of profound change; and of the forces that pushed it into decisive, destructive conflict.

The Nez Perce Nation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863 Treaty by Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, W. R. Swagerty

The Nez PerceNation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863Treaty Edited byDennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, andW.R. Swagerty University of Idaho Press, Moscow, 2003. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 406 pages. $50.00 cloth. Reviewed by G. Thomas Edwards Whitman College,Walla Walla, Washington Through extensive research in theNa tionalArchives, theOregon Historical So ciety,theBeinecke Library atYale, and regional newspapers, Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and W.R. Swagerty have compiled essential documents related toNez Perce history from 1858to 1863.This collection also coversmilitary history and themining rush intowhat became Idaho Territory. The Nez Percewere granted a reservation of eleven thousand squaremiles in the Walla Walla Treatyof 1855. During thegold rushof 1861-1863, thousands ofminers, includingmany Orego nians, sought gold intheClearwater and Salmon River watersheds, where they disregarded the treaty and abused the natives. This intrusion alarmed Indian agents, soldiers, editors, and politicians because miners had triggeredIndian wars in the 1850s.The initial,naive response of Indian agents and soldiers to trespassing liquor traders and miners was followed by the impli mentation of unjust government policies. In 1859,Oregon Superintendent of Indian AffairsEdward Geary reported: "TheNez Perces are characterized bymental power, energy of will, bravery and docility, and are larger and more muscular thanmost of the other tribes. ... As a tribe theyhave ever been well affected towards our Government" (p. 37). He warned that the "usual disastrous consequences must ensue" if liquor was introduced to Indians and offered an impossible solution: an official should "examine all packs [as] an effectual check on this iniquitous traffic"(p. 37).Major Enoch Steenwas equally unrealistic, predicting thatwhen soldiers ordered trespassing gold seekers to leave theywould obey rather than violate the law.Geary soonwrote of theneed for an unexplained protective policy that would "be worthy of a great andmagnanimous nation." A failure to actwould result in "death by savage hands . . . and the extirpation of the Indian race" (p. 54).Meanwhile, Indian Agent Andrew J. Cain argued that,because miners could not be barred from theClearwater region and would inevitablyprovoke awar, theNez Perce should surrender all of their "gold bearing country" (p. 53).Many other federal officials, including Geary and Oregon Senator JamesNesmith, advocated for a new treaty thatwould shrink the reservation. In 1861,thebeleaguered Nez Perce permit tedminers onto certain lands on the condition that themilitary would preserve order. Geary informed the military that the Indians opposed the "intrusion of thewhites" and that troops should be quartered near themines "to enable theAgent to prevent the liquor traffic, tobring all offenders to speedy trial, and [to] protect the inhabited portion of the reservation from unlawful intrusion" (p. 86). Soldiers could not, as Geary knew, provide such sweeping service. While officials planned for a new treaty, thousands of prospectors rushed into the reser vation, andmany wrote descriptive letters. One boasted thathis group defied amilitary effort to keep them from "ourwild and uninhabited land" because theydid not need "kinglypasses througha lotof savages" (p.74).Another charged that transportationmonopolists promoted the outrageous "Salmon river excitement" (p. 187). These documents relate Lewiston's emergence 332 OHQ vol. 105, no. 2 as a city, including one visitor's description of itas a place lacking "houses, virtue, decency or comfort; where religion isforgotten,and the law isa farce; where whisky shops, gambling houses and brothels predominate, where blacklegs and traitorsrule everything" (p. 189). Gen. Benjamin Alvord, an admirer of the Nez Perce, voiced concern about both their ill treatment and meddling secessionists. His policies, including troop assignments and the establishment of Fort Lapwai, deserve analysis. Obviously he provided much betterprotection forOregon Trail travelers than he did forNez Perce Indians, but Alvord's role in takingNez Perce land is lesscrucial thanNesmith's support for a new treaty. InMay 1863, the Lapwai Indian Council produced a treatythatreduced the reservation's size to eleven hundred square miles and wid ened the breach between theNez Perce who supported the treatyand thosewho opposed it, including Chief Joseph.The Nez PerceNation Divided includes the council's proceedings and observations by various witnesses. Fearful of the tribe's future,Lawyer, one of theNez Perce who would sign the treaty,reminded council members of "our acts showing our friendship to thewhites, and our respect forLaw" (p. 358). Other pro...

Kit Carson and the Indians

Carson and the Indians. By Tom Dunlay. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Pp. xxii, 537. Illustrations. $45.00.) Thomas W. Dunlay, writer, historian, and author of Wolves for the Blue Soldiers: Indian Scouts and Auxiliaries with the United States Army, 186090 (1982), has written a valuable study of famed frontiersman Christopher Kit Carson. The book is not a comprehensive biography of Carson, nor is it intended to be. The book's principal intent is to explore how Carson interacted with his Native-American contemporaries. However, the book does more than that. Carson is one of a pantheon of erstwhile national heroes whose reputations have been impugned by the successive waves of revisionist scholarship that have rippled forward from the 1960s. Revisionists have called Carson a genocidal racist (9) and likened him to Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and-believe it or not-Oliver North. Dunlay thoroughly assays these charges by investigating how Carson related to Indians and by contextualizing those relationships with respect to the standards of Carson's time and to the values that Carson personally espoused. As Dunlay himself says, the intention is not to write a simple brief for the defense but to try to understand Carson in his human complexity(17). In 1809, Carson was born into Missouri's hardscrabble, feisty, and fractious Scotch-Irish backcountry. The chronic insecurity of this backcountry promoted an ethic that exalted force above reason and that sanctioned violence as a mechanism for solving problems and defending personal honor. The Scotch-Irish generally had poor relations with the natives, and in all probability, Carson was raised to dislike and fear Indians. It seems, then, that Carson's formative years would have cast him as an Indian-hater. However, such was not the case. In his years as a mountain man, Carson adapted to beyond-the-frontier exigencies. He treated the natives of the Rocky Mountains as situation required: as friends, trading partners, or, especially in regards to the Blackfeet, deadly competitors. Carson married an Arapaho woman who bore him two children, and when she died, he married a Cheyenne. His relations with Indians seemed not to be determined by racial prejudice, and when he did combat Indians, it was within the framework of the law of retribution, a law that all men of the Rocky Mountains-native and white-understood and respected. Dunlay interprets Carson as very much a Middle Ground (43) figure who succeeded because he was able to operate perceptively within a foreign host culture. Carson's chance meeting on a Missouri River steamboat with John C. Fremont put him on a trajectory to national fame. Fremont contracted the services of the experienced mountain man for several western expeditions, and Carson distinguished himself as a savvy (and occasionally violent) guide. Fremont's published reports, which recounted Carson's daring exploits, made Carson a nationally-acclaimed frontier hero and bestowed upon him a reputation of mythic proportions. After he completed his service to Fremont, Carson was appointed as a federal Indian agent in New Mexico. From 1854 to 1861, Carson mediated affairs with various Indian groups including the Utes, the Apaches, and the Indians of Taos Pueblo. During the Civil War, Carson served in the Union Army; at the war's conclusion he decided to assist the army in its campaign against the Navajos. The campaign was orchestrated by the imperious General James H. …

Blue Jacket: warrior of the Shawnees

Blue jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. By John Sugden (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000; xviii, 362. Cloth, $29.95.) Of all of the patriot chiefs who championed and led armed resistance to Euro-American expansionism, the Shawnee war leader Blue jacket was both one of the most successful and one of the least remembered. In accomplishment, he was equal and arguably perhaps superior to both his predecessor, the Ottawa chief Pontiac, and his successor the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh. But while Pontiac and Tecumseh have both been celebrated in prose, poetry and drama and analyzed in numerous histories and biographies, Blue jacket remained so obscure that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biography deemed him unworthy of an entry. Given the fact that Blue Jacket accomplished a feat that eluded Pontiac and Tecumseh, namely the defeat of a major Euro-American military force, and did so not once but twice (Harmar's army, 1791 and St.Clair's, 1792), that obscurity is hard to explain. In both engagements, he commanded a multi-tribal force recruited through the sort of pan-Indian appeal usually associated with Tecumseh. In the latter battle, those forces inflicted upon the United States a casualty rate (60%) that has not yet been equaled. Mad Anthony Wayne's triumph at Fallen Timbers in 1794 not only ended the power of the northern Indian confederacy; it virtually erased the memory of the formidable opposition led by Blue Jacket and his fellow war chiefs. Part of the reason for the neglect of Blue jacket in the historiography of the period can be attributed to the mistaken belief that the Miami chief Little Turtle was the preeminent leader of the Northern coalition. John Sugden, celebrated biographer of Tecumseh, in this first full-scale biography of Blue jacket, argues persuasively that William Wells, Little Turtle's son in law, systematically overstated the role of both the Miami and their war chief in the confederacy. Wells, a white captive raised by the Miami, was a turncoat who deserted his adopted family to join General Wayne. In his later career as an American Indian agent he earned a reputation for deviousness and dishonesty. Although Wells' re-writing of history prevailed, the contemporary sources clearly describe Blue Jacket as the most prominent of the war chiefs. While neither Little Turtle nor Blue Jacket wielded the sort of power given to Euro-American military commanders-in-chief, Blue Jacket's particular contributions deserve greater recognition. Sugden also demolishes the old story, recently embraced by the novelist Alan Eckert and favored by some historians, that Blue Jacket was white, taken into captivity at a tender age and adopted by the Shawnee. In its command of the documentary evidence and in its careful, judicious respect for both facts and logic, Sugden's Blue jacket is reminiscent of his masterful, prize-winning biography of Tecumseh. Sugden excels in his descriptions and analyses of military engagements. Few writers have his understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Indian warfare. Although Sugden's account of the Battle of Fallen Timbers would have been enriched by consideration of the recent archaeological findings of Michael Pratt, his narrative of this engagement and others is both lucid and insightful. …

I will tell of my war story: a pictorial account of the Nez Perce War

Chief Joseph's exhausted words of surrender, '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', are the accepted end of the Nez Perce War of 1877, in which several bands of Nez Perce attempting to find a new home outside their diminished Idaho reservation clashed with the U.S. military (and occasionally other Indians) along the Clearwater and Big Hole Rivers, and finally at the foot of the Bear Paw Mountains. However, a number of Nez Perce escaped transportation to Indian Territory with Joseph and continued their flight to Canada, with perhaps a hundred eventually joining Sitting Bull's Lakota.I Will Tell of My War Story reproduces, describes, and discusses a remarkable series of drawings by an anonymous Indian artist who fought with Chief Joseph and later reached Canada. The drawings, in red, blue, and black pencil, include portraits of principal participants in the war, battle scenes, and views of Nez Perce camp life and celebrations during the war and after. The drawings are preserved in a small pocket ledger labeled 'Cash Book' on the front, which was acquired by Indian Agent Charles D. Warner in the 1880s.It was willed by him to a family living in northern Idaho, and is now in the collection of the Idaho State Historical Society. Scott Thompson worked closely both with the owners and with members of the Nez Perce community in preparing his manuscript. Thompson's detective work and research methods to identify Nez Perce and other parties pictured in the Cash Book make fascinating reading. He is careful to point out what is speculation and what has been documented or attested to by experts on dress, weapons, ceremony, and other aspects of Native culture.The Cash Book drawings are unique in several ways. They are one of very few firsthand pictorial records of the Nez Perce War, representing an even scarcer record of this war as seen from the Indian viewpoint. They contain invaluable historical and ethnographic information not only explicit in the form of military and Native dress, regalia, and quite graphic battle scenes, but also implicit. The drawings reveal an important stage of cultural adaptation as shown by the mixture of white and Native goods combined in Nez Perce material culture during the 1870s and 1880s, and by the artist's assimilation of white/European drawing techniques such as texture and perspective. The artist combined these drawing techniques with Native art traditions to make exceptionally effective pictorial communications. Scott M. Thompson is an art teacher at Chase Middle School in Spokane, Washington.

A Man of Distinction among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754-1799

A Man of Distinction Among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754-1799. By Larry L. Nelson. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999. Pp. xv, 262. Illustrations, maps. $35.00.) On the surface, Larry L. Nelson's account of British Indian agent Alexander McKee seems part of very old historiography: biographies of relatively low-level government officials on the frontier. One of the more recent, and more effective, of such works is Reginald Horsman's more-than-three-- decades-old study, Matthew Elliott: British Indian Agent (1964). But appearances can be deceiving. With A Man of Distinction Among Them, Nelson reworks this approach by situating his subject within framework established by the most up-to-date scholarship, not only on the upper Ohio Valley and British Indian policy, but also on cultural mediation and frontier interactions. In particular, he relies heavily upon Richard White's influential analysis of the middle ground to understand the world in which McKee acted (The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 [1991]). For Nelson, Alexander McKee was the classic cultural mediator. Nelson presents him as the mixed-race child of an Irish immigrant fur trader and Shawnee woman (it seems probable that she was white captive who had been raised by the Shawnees). Born around 1735 on the western Pennsylvania frontier, McKee grew up at time and place when the barriers of race, culture, and nation were permeable. In the late 1760s, he married Shawnee (though, like his mother, she appears to have been white adoptee). McKee maintained dual existence, with homes and stores in both native villages and white settlements until at least the late 1770s. Unlike most cultural mediators, however, McKee was, Nelson argues, not marginal man whose standing in each of the cultures in which he operated was always tenuous (xiii). Instead, he was highly respected in both worlds. With the outbreak of war in the upper Ohio Valley in the mid-1750s, McKee began to serve the British government as an interpreter and envoy. Over the next four decades, he rose through the ranks of the British Indian department, acting as agent, commissary, and, for the final years of his life, deputy superintendant and inspector general. At the same time, he engaged in the fur trade, speculated in land, and operated store. These activities placed him at the center of Anglo-Indian relations during the Seven Years War, Pontiac's Rebellion, Dunmore's War, the American Revolution, and the continuing war between the Ohio Indians and the United States that persisted until the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville. In Nelson's appraisal, McKee was a figure throughout these decades (x). It is in elaborating McKee's pivotal role in these events that Nelson suggests the promise and reveals the shortcomings of this book. For much of his service, McKee was critical-if not the only-conduit between the British government and some native villages and groups. …

Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts.

For more than four centuries, Europeans and Euroamericans have been making written records of the spoken words of American Indians. While some commentators have assumed that these records provide absolutely reliable information about the nature of Native American oral expression, even its esthetic qualities, others have dismissed them as inherently unreliable. In Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts, William Clements offers a comprehensive treatment of the intellectual and cultural constructs that have colored the textualization of Native American verbal art. Clements presents six case studies of important moments, individuals, and movements in this history. He recounts the work of the Jesuits who missionized in New France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and textualized and theorized about the verbal expressions of the Iroquoians and Algonquians to whom they were spreading Christianity. He examines in depth Henry Timberlake's 1765 translation of a Cherokee war song that was probably the first printed English rendering of a Native American poem. He discusses early-nineteenth-century textualizers and translators who saw in Native American verbal art a literature manque that they could transform into a fully realized literature, with particular attention to the work of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indian agent and pioneer field collector who developed this approach to its fullest. He discusses the scientific textualizers of the late nineteenth century who viewed Native American discourse as a data source for historical, ethnographic, and linguistic information, and he examines the work of Natalie Curtis, whose field research among the Hopis helped to launch a wave of interest in Native Americans and their verbal art that continues to the present. In addition, Clements addresses theoretical issues in the textualization, translation, and anthologizing of American Indian oral expression. In many cases the past records of Native American expression represent all we have left of an entire verbal heritage; in most cases they are all that we have of a particular heritage at a particular point in history. Covering a broad range of materials and their historical contexts, Native American Verbal Art identifies the agendas that have informed these records and helps the reader to determine what remains useful in them. It will be a welcome addition to the fields of Native American studies and folklore.

Snoqualmie Ethnicity: Community and Continuity

This study seeks to analyze the extent to which the Snoqualmie Indians have maintained a sense of identity and community in the presence of severe opposition, including the loss of aboriginal villages, reduction in subsistence resources, and persistent pressure for assimilation. It proposes to measure the membership's perception of their identity and community in several significant areas: social networks, political participation, tribal leadership, religious symbols, and symbols of identity. Three divisions of this document include a section addressing the theoretical idea of ethnicity and community, a section describing individual perceptions of social organization and ethnic boundaries in the 1990s, and a section analyzing responses to a survey questionnaire on identity and community. Many Snoqualmie Indians continue to live within their aboriginal territory, the Snoqualmie River drainage system, between Monroe and North Bend, Washington, some twenty-five miles east of the city of Seattle. The Snoqualmies signed the Point Elliott Treaty, ratified April 11, 1859, which granted the tribe reservation lands. They were prohibited from moving to the reservation due to inadequate subsistence resources, poor soil for agriculture, and lack of governmental funds.' In 1937, Indian Agent E. M. Johnston proposed a 10,240-acre reservation at the mouth of the Tolt River, but World War II erupted and the national emergency took precedence.2 Nevertheless, the Snoqualmies are listed in the Congressional Record in 1953 as a recognized tribe. However, at some later date the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in direct disregard of congressional powers, dropped the Snoqualmies from the federal list of recognized tribes without any record or rationalization of the action.4 Consequently, the Snoqualmies went through the governmental process and received federal recognition on August 22, 1997. Their recognition is now being challenged in the Indian Review Court. Additional data concerning the history and social organization of the Snoqualmies is available in several professional journals.5 Kenneth D. Tollefson is emeritus professor of anthropology at Seattle Pacific University. Martin L. Abbott is professor of sociology and dean of the College of Arts and Science at the same university. Tollefson has done extensive research among the Duwamish, Snoqualmie, and Tlingit Tribes and was formally adopted into each tribe.

Tribal Estates: A Comparative and Case Study

Land, or some other form of a tangible estate which includes water, property, and other natural resources, is indispensable to the economic and social well-being of tribal people. The concept of tribe, as used in a secondary sociopolitical sense, has some notion of a common culture and territory (Fried 1975; Hunter and Whitten 1976:393-94; Service 1971:101; Sturtevant 1983:6). Dislocated tribal people generally seek some tangible estate in order to maintain their common fund and their system of values. For example, when tribal estates were lost through contact with superior political powers, such as the U. S. federal government, Native Americans continued to perpetuate their cultures and press claims to some tangible estate. This article compares three types of cases in which Native Americans have sought to regain some semblance of their former estates. One, the Tulalip Federated Tribes of Washington (Tulalip Tribes), represents the mainline tribes that signed treaties, moved to reservations, reorganized in the 1930s, and received government services. The Tlingit and Haida represent a second type: those nontreaty tribes that lost their civil rights under federal control but eventually regained a semblance of their former estate through congressional action. Those treaty tribes that never received any tribal reservation or allotments on other reservations, and have yet to achieve any tangible estate, like the Duwamish, represent the third type. Since the Duwamish are the focus of this document, a special section will analyze data that demonstrate the extent to which the Duwamish people exist as a distinct polity and culture in the most urbanized area in the state of Washington. Clarence Bagley (1929:183-86), noted Washington State historian, states that neither the American government nor the American people ever took the Indian treaties seriously, but viewed them more as makeshift adjustments to temporarily avoid trouble than as permanent settlements. In 1857, Indian Agent Paige urged the federal government to set aside a reservation for the Duwamish near the Lake Fork of the Duwamish River, on the site of a former military post (Indian Claims Commission 1974:37). However, the proposed Fort Dent site never materialized as a reservation because some 170 local settlers sent a petition to Congress to oppose it. This petition charged that a reservation would do great injustice to this section of country (Washington Superintendency 1824-1881). Over a century later, the Duwamish are still seeking compensation for their aboriginal land according to agreements made in the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855. In the 1960s, some compensation was made to the Duwamish Tribe in the sum of $62,000, awarded by the Indian Claims Commission for the loss of 54,990 acres of land (Indian Claims Commission 1962:2). But the money was never given to the Duwamish Tribe. Instead, the federal government made a per capita disbursement to approximately 1,148 descendants of Duwamish Indians, some 75 per cent of whom were neither on the tribal rolls nor had any ties to the Duwamish Tribe (L'Esperance 1964). The Duwamish Tribal Council contends that because the treaty was a corporate document, not an individual contract, the sum should have been given to the tribe to be used for tribal projects, rather than to individuals to be used for personal concerns. THE TULALIP TRIBES The Tulalip Tribes are those descendants of Puget Sound who signed the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855 and moved to the Tulalip Reservation. This reservation consisted of some thirty-six sections... for the purpose of establishing thereon an agricultural and industrial school...with a view of ultimately drawing thereto and settling thereon all the living west of the Cascade mountains...provided however, that the President may establish the central agency and general reservation at such other point as he may deem for the benefit of the Indians (Point Elliott Treaty 1855 Art. …

The Original Distribution of Bois D'Arc. Part I: Texas

Early historical explorations of the American frontier discuss many tree species and their uses, yet rarely mention bois d'arc (Maclura pomifera). Several important early expeditions sent by President Thomas Jefferson into the southwestern frontier provide the first evidence for the natural and culturally influenced range of the species. Bois d 'arc was important in the trade of Native Americans, specifically used for bow wood. As early as 1804, John Sibley and Merriwether Lewis reported to President Jefferson about bois d 'arc, drawing on information derived from transplanted saplings and reporting that the source was ca. 300 miles away (i.e., along the Red River?). John Sibley, a temporary United States Indian Agent along the Red River in the early nineteenth century, reported a source of bois d'arc wooden bows among the Caddos of the Red River. With these bows they conducted a lively trade among Plains and southeastern Indian groups.

Shadow Catcher by Charles Fergus

Reviews 253 her own parents are resolved, and her efforts to begin a writing career become more disciplined and productive. Logue’s story is also a contemporary one in other ways. Her central charac­ ters are Gabrielle and Jerry, who have grown up in the sixties and are now (inl982-83) struggling with the issues of early middle age. They leave behind the financial security and the rat race of California life to begin anew as entrepreneurs in the northern Idaho woods: a computer business in the base­ ment, writing table in the bedroom, yoga class in the living room. Descriptions of nature are minimal, but there’s a strong sense of the felt presence of nature and the seasons, a growing personal identification with life process that is liberating and nourishing. The novel will appeal most to baby-boomer women. Some readers may find the structure unconvincing: the apparent realism of an epistolary novel in an era when the writing of long letters is not realistic, and the effect of too intense self-examination and self-involvement when there are comparatively few refer­ ences in the letters to the issues in the lives of the recipients. Nonetheless, the author has succeeded in giving us some sense of the distinctive personalities and lives of the three recipients of these letters, and the narrator’s self-story is convincingly presented. BARBARA HOWARD MELDRUM University ofIdaho Shadow Catcher. By Charles Fergus. (New York: Soho Press Inc., 1991. 308 pages, $19.95.) Mixing history and fiction for political or didactic purposes is always a tricky business. Once again, this proves so in Charles Fergus’ socially-concerned first novel. Shadow Catcher is the story of Indian agent James McLaughlin—the man who gotSitting Bull. The time is 1913, eve of the First World War. Mastermind of Custer’s defeat, Sitting Bull has been dead for 23 years. McLaughlin, now an old man, cannot forget his role in Bull’s death and that, in turn, is the gist of the tale. While on a train tour of the American West, the much-renowned McLaughlin dictates his autobiography to a young Bureau of Indian Affairs stenographer. Major McLaughlin, a straightforward, honest man, has devoted his life to preparing the native American for coming to terms with white America. As the Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian makes repeated flag-waving stops at impoverished Indian reservations, McLaughlin’s mood darkens, and he dwells more and more on the final days of Sitting Bull. 254 Western American Literature The ultimate destination of the Wanamaker Expedition is the Dakotas’ Standing Rock reservation, where, in 1890, Sioux reservation police killed Sitting Bull in an early morning shoot-out. Dispatched by McLaughlin to arrest Bull for his part in the emerging Ghost Dance troubles, the tribal police lose control of the situation and bloody disaster follows. This reader wanted to like Shadow Catchera great deal more than he finally did. First novelist Fergus has carefully researched his topic, and he writes well. Place description and historical detail are among the novel’s strengths. Unfor­ tunately, depth of characterization is not. Fergus has a great character in McLaughlin, but he fails to allow the old man to come to life. McLaughlin and the other characters, both true-life and fictional, represent political points of view, more so than flesh and blood people. The author’s politics overwhelm his better instincts as a storyteller. Consumed by the idea that native Americans received a raw deal from white America, Fergus, for the most part, fails to take Shadow Catcher beyond that brutal fact. If he had, he could conceivably have created both the social state­ ment that he has, as well as a literary work of lasting power. JAMES B. HEMESATH Adams State College Sudden Country. By Loren D. Estleman. (New York: Doubleday, 1991. 182 pages, $15.00.) Sudden Country is the most recent effort by the prolific Loren D. Estleman, whose other Westerns (or “frontier novels” as they are called on the dust jacket—shades of Louis L’Amour) include Aces andEightsand Bloody Season. The narrator of the novel is a thirteen-year-old boy (must they always be...

Creating indian lands: the boundary of the salt river indian community

Pima and Maricopa Indians lived in central Arizona along the Gila River when the first whites arrived. Because whites removed much water upstream on the Gila, these agricultural Indians were in dire straits throughout the 1870s. About half migrated to the Salt River Valley where there was considerably more water. Cultural clashes and conflict over land led to troubles between whites and Indians, and the government established a particularly large reservation as a temporary measure to protect Indian rights. Considerable political quarreling developed over this reservation, and most whites (Arizona authorities, local citizens, military officers, land speculators, an Indian agent, and others) tried to get the reservation size reduced. The Indians concerned, plus government officials, would have preferred returning water to the Gila Reservation, but such a move would have taken considerable time, and Arizonans were opposed to the idea. The large reservation was soon abolished and a much smaller one established for the Pimas and Maricopas in the Salt River Valley. This smaller reservation has been expanded slightly over time.

"Right in the Midst of My Own People": Native American Women and the Field Matron Program

IN JANUARY 1892 INDIAN AGENT Major George LeR. Brown asked Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) for assistance with Pine Ridge reservation population. Little more than a year after Sioux attempts to reclaim a fading tribal past ended tragically at Wounded Knee, he found precious little evidence of individual or community progress toward civilization. The agent, arguing that the pressing need [here] is for better homes and better cooking, requested appointment of a field matron.1 Implementing an innovative Indian Service program begun in 1890, field matrons promoted assimilation through intensive domestic work with Indian women. Brown believed that Julia Kocer was an ideal candidate for post. Interested in introducing tribal women to ways of Women, she appeared to personify certified civilizer reformers and OIA policy makers hoped to attract to program. Major Brown saw Kocer as a potential catalyst for change at Pine Ridge. The OIA, however, did not share his enthusiasm.2 Neither impeccable qualifications nor genuine interest could alter fact that Julia Kocer differed from other prospective field matrons. They were all Anglo-Americans. Educated, competent, and respectable, she was a mixed-blood Arikara Indian. The first Native American field matron might have been Julia Kocer. Assimilated and concerned with welfare of her Arikara peers, she clearly represented new Indian woman OIA hoped to create.3 Nonetheless, field matron corps remained closed to women like her until 1895. Then, Indian women could join AngloAmerican women in helping their tribal peers accept White Woman's [sic] road. From 1895 to 1905, they played an active and occasionally prominent role in civilization work. Neither their participation nor their visibility, though, could guarantee a permanent place in program. While field matrons continued their work on reservations until 1930s, Native American involvement declined rapidly after 1905. The story of Native American field matrons is a special, albeit abbreviated, chapter in larger history of field matron pro-

Indian Agent and Wilderness Scholar: The Life of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

Indian Agent and Wilderness Scholar: The Life of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.

Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months' Experience as an Indian Agent, 1869-1870

Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months' Experience as an Indian Agent, 1869-1870

Review: Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months Experience as an Indian Agent, 1869-70 by D.C. Poole

Review: <i>Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months Experience as an Indian Agent, 1869-70</i> by D.C. Poole

Political Organization of the Duwamish

Anthropological studies have largely ignored the political implication of the ecology of the Puget Sound Indians. Most writers insist upon limiting the political organization of this region to near or at the local village level (Kroeber 1971:396; Ballard 1929:35; Spier 1936:5; Barnett 1938:119; Ray 1939:89; Underhill 1944:174; Collins 1950:334; Smith 1967:68; Riley 1974:79; Onat 1984:89; Suttles 1988). This view apparently ignores a plethora of historical data, much of which is native testimony and eye-witness accounts (Jones 1853:9-10; Gibbs, 1855, 1877; Hill 1856; Bancroft 1890; Grant 1891; Browning 1893; Costello 1895; Carlson 1903; Whitfield 1926; Bagley 1929; Harrington 1907-1957; Haeberlin and Gunther 1930). To arbitrarily assign these historical data to the imaginations of historians (Underhill 1945:174) or to some king-making venture (Collins 1950:341; Riley 1974:74; Lane 1975:31) is simplistic and misleading. History argues that there were great councils like this hosted by Chief Pat Kanim at Penn's Cove, Whidbey Island, in 1848, which was attended by thousands of Indians and their leaders several years before government officials arrived and supposedly gave them their political organization. Did the whites these Indian leaders or did they merely give recognition to some of their existing leaders? This is the crux of the problem. Garretson (1962:16) states that Colonel Simmons was appointed by Gov. Stevens on March 22, 1854, to serve as the Indian agent for the Puget Sound to or chiefs as one of his many duties. Anthropologists tend to accept the appoint and ignore the recognize part. Anthropological studies of the Puget Sound generally misunderstand the political organization of the Puget Sound Indians because they overlook the synergistic effects of five important ecological considerations: area topography, food resources, level of technology, population density, and political organization. These five elements are treated as interdependent variables in this study to ascertain their collective effect upon the political organization of the pretreaty Puget Sound Indians. Data for this study are taken from the Duwamish Indians of the greater Seattle area and used to describe the level of political organization that emerged from the interaction of these five variables.

Indian Agent and Wilderness Scholar: The Life of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

Indian Agent and Wilderness Scholar: The Life of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

John Johnston and the Friends: A Midwestern Indian Agent's Relationship with Quakers in the Early 1800s

John Johnston and the Friends: A Midwestern Indian Agent's Relationship with Quakers in the Early 1800s Max L. Carter* Most Friends have at least a superficial acquaintance with the nearlegendary history of relations between Quakers and the Indians of North America. The icons of West's painting of Penn and the Indians at the so-called Treaty of Shackamaxon, Hicks' "Peaceable Kingdom," and the painting "None Shall Make Them Afraid" hang in many Quaker institutions and homes. The stories of early frontier Friends who "left the latch-string out" and were left unmolested by marauding Indians are still retold, and many are familiar with John Woolman's trip to an Indian village during the French and Indian War "to learn from them." Fewer may be aware of the work for Indians undertaken by individuals such as Anthony Benezet, Albert Smiley, and Ruthanna Sims, institutional responses at Tunessasa, New York, White's Institute in Indiana, and the various missions in Oklahoma, or Grant's "Quaker Policy" for reforming the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Much has been written recently by historians Clyde Milner II ( With Good Intentions and a chapter in Churchmen and the Western Indians) and Robert Berkhofer, Jr. (Salvation and the Savage) that has expanded the knowledge of Quaker work among the Indians, while also restoring a little humility to Friends' opinions of themselves! One participant in the drama of Quaker-Indian relations that most do not know about, however, is the subject of this essay. John Johnston, a non-Friend but possessing Quaker connections, served as Indian factor and agent in Indiana and Ohio during the years corresponding to Baltimore, Ohio, and Indiana Yearly Meetings' Indian work in those states, primarily with the Miami and Shawnee tribes. His sympathy for Friends, understanding of the Indians, and wise handling of his agency helped contribute to the measure of success Quakers enjoyed in their midwestern work between 1804 and 1833. As will also be seen, Johnston's experience with Friends in their Indian work led him to formulate suggestions for a just United States Indian policy that featured the participation of Friends. John Johnston (1775-1861) was born in Ireland of Huguenot stock, a fact which may have significance, if Frederick Norwood's thesis * Max Carter teaches religion and geometry at Friends' Central School. 37 38Quaker History on the mental make-up of refugees can be applied.1 In 1786 he emigrated to America, arriving first in Philadelphia but eventually finding his way to the frontier where he supervised the transportation of goods in General Anthony Wayne's army from 1792 to 1795. During 1795 he was also briefly in the company of Daniel Boone in Kentucky.2 Not counting his brief sojourn with the Quaker-born Boone, Johnston's first recorded encounter with Friends occurred during the winter of 1799-1800. During that time he boarded with the Quaker Osborn family in Philadelphia and often accompanied them to meeting. One such occasion was especially eventful, as he relates in his Recollections. At the first meeting following the death of George Washington, Johnston heard a Friend by the name of Potts share the following incident. Potts lived on a farm adjoining the Valley Forge encampment of the Continental Army. One day he heard a noise in the bushes and, drawing near, saw Washington on his knees in earnest prayer to God. He knew then that the American cause would succeed.3 John Johnston's contacts with Friends were to become even more intimate in 1802 when he eloped with Rachel Robinson, a Philadelphia Quaker, and was married by a Lutheran minister in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.4 Travelling further west, the newlyweds settled at Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Johnston became the first factor5 of the newly established Indian agency there. It was in this position that Johnston first became involved with the Quaker work among midwestern Indians. This work had its roots in a minute of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 1795, which asked, 1 . Norwood's book, Strangers and Pilgrims, makes the point that refugees, having been once "pilgrims and strangers" in the land, take a peculiar view of life and are often more sympathetic to other "strangers." One might note in this...

It's What We Want

I"» V-¿£.l·:·;·' , VI fe· ML '¦ int It's What We Want by Charles Brashers When settlers from North Carolina and Virginiamoved across theline into Cherokee hunting grounds and went so far as to build a bunch of cabins even on the banks of the Watauga River, John Stuart, King George's Indian agent at Charles Town, and Alexander Cameron, his assistant, sent them strong talking papers and threatened to bring their redcoat army to force the greedy Americans back. We Cherokees were shocked by the idea. How could anyone think of raising the war hatchet against people of the same tribe, who spoke the same language and followed the same customs? Stuart and Scotchie sent us a talk, saying we should be patient and not take up the war-axe ourselves. But the whites were still on our 41 land. They were interfering in our lives, and we didn't like it but didn't quite know what to do about it. Our Head Man, Oconostota, the Great Warrior, sent Stuart a talk saying, "We think the Virginia People don't hear your talks nor mind, nor do they seem to care for King George's. . .. We would that they would move offourlands and let us alone; it's what we want." "My voice is forwar!" Dragging Canoe said in council, not waiting his turn to speak. "Forty strong warriors of Mialaquo -town are ready to take up the bloody war-axe with me and strike the blackpole. We arereadytodrivethemoff Cherokee lands. There are fifty warriors in Tuskegee, a hundred in Toqua, a hundred in To-ma-tli, not to mention over two hundred here in Chota. I say we are not weak. We are fourteen towns here in the Over-the-Hills district alone. And there are the Valley Towns, our brothers; and the Middle Towns; and the Chickamuga Towns. We do not have to quail against the wall and wait for them to come even to our door. They have crossed the tine; let us go and kill them." But Oconostota did not give permission for a raid. He pointed out that we have so little powder and lead, and, when that is gone, their guns will be far superior to our war-axes. Then there would be anotherof those disasters that Dragging Canoe is a little too young to understand. Or too hardheaded. The tribe listened to the old man, for he has no battle scars on his back. He has always faced his enemies. Of course, Atta-kulla-kulla, the Little Carpenter, and his niece, Nanye-hi, the Ghigau, Beloved Woman, are for conciliation . They have relatives among the whites, and they both speak the language. Theywill sayrenegotiate. Livepeacefully with them as brothers. Marry with them. Come to know them as we know each other. Taska-ya, the Conjuror of Chota, has cast his divining stones, but the red stones and black stones and white stones were all mixed together every time he cast them. There wasn't much there to read. And we, the Cherokees, hardly know what to do. We have to know that the power and knowledge of our ancestors who still live here, whose bones are buried here, are in and with the Cherokee spirit. We have to have the Thunder, the power of the Spirits, if we are to influence the whites to lay down their enmity and pick up the good will of a friend. If that's what we want. We have asked the spirits in all the directions to be with us, just as you must when you are remaking ceremonial tobacco . Ifyou've ever done that, you know how good it is. You start with ordinary brown tobacco from the earth. In the slit of time between the top and bottom rim ofthe sun coming up, you hold up the tobacco and say the four charms. From the East, which is Red and which contains the powers ofcreativity, success, life-giving, you ask that your beginnings may be bright. From the North, whichisBlue and which contains the powers of suspicion, defeat, trouble, you ask that your decisions may be made with caution and a just pessimism...