Plains Indian Research Articles

The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures

The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures

Warrior Charisma and the Spiritualization of Violence

Norbert Elias (2001) produced one of the most influential theories on the history of violence in human societies in terms of ‘the civilizing process’. With the transformation of feudalism, the rise of bourgeois society and the development of the modern state, interpersonal violence was increasingly regulated by social norms that emphasized self-restraint and personal discipline. His theory was a moral pedagogics of the body in which the ‘passions’ are self-regulated through detailed social regimes. While his theory is influential, it has also been the subject of systematic criticism. I examine three obvious lacunae in Elias’ theory. First, his theory does not provide an adequate account of the role of religion in the civilizing process, particularly with respect to controlling human violence, and I examine Elias’ theory through a commentary on charisma and the sacred in human society, namely the role of sacred violence. Second, Elias had relatively little to say about the interaction between military technology and interpersonal norms. Modern technology has made it possible, both in peace and war, for the state and modern military institutions to gain control of forms of mass violence that were unimaginable in less civilized societies. We could accept Elias’ proposition about constraint in terms of interpersonal violence, but argue that modern technology has obviously enhanced the capacity of the means of violence in society. This ‘de-personalization’ of violence is consistent with aspects of Elias’ civilization theory. However, the theme of technology was completely understated. Third, apart from Elias’ interest in art and society as a consequence of his teaching appointment in Ghana (1962–4), his theory was primarily concerned to explain aspects of social change in European society. An exploration of the evolution of military violence and charisma among American Plains Indians, especially the Cheyenne, is intended as an elaboration of the debate around Elias’ ‘figurational sociology’. Through an examination of the training of warriors in nomadic Plains culture, their mode of warfare is defined as a form of spiritual violence, because warfare was bound up with religious norms of conduct and their military interaction was highly ritualized. These spiritual technologies are an important illustration of military technologies of self-creation. My account concludes with an examination of the nature of modern conflict between professional armies within an international human rights framework. The democratization of warfare results in the routinization of military charisma and the charismatic hero survives primarily in popular culture as a celebrity.

Le corps à l’épreuve de l’altérité dans la clinique interculturelle

This article intends to give an account of the implication of the body as a support of otherness in the intercultural clinical encounter. The body is replaced in its function of the transmission of cultural values, according to the theory of Mauss, and at once imposes difference (of generations, sex and culture). As a vector of difference, the body of the clinician and that of the patient are involved in an encounter which is, above all, human, subject to their human condition (a mortal being). From this place as human being, the clinician’s body, like that of his patient, is put to the test of otherness in transference and counter-transference such as Devereux demonstrated in his experiment with his patient, the plains Indian. Theoretical knowledge of the culture or psychoanalysis are not sufficient to manage this encounter, which puts to the test the “small primitive” in all of us, and which is reactivated according to the cultural gap which separates us, confronting us with this “stranger” inaccessible to symbolisation. Clinical illustrations taken from our clinical practice and research in the field underscore the effects of this encounter on psychic production and transfero-vs-transferential movements.

From Settler to Citizen: New Mexican Economic Development and the Creation of Vecino Society, 1750-1820

Ross Frank’s examination of New Mexican society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarship on northern Mexico. Frank tells two stories here: one of the economic development of the province in the last decades of the colony, the other of the creation of a distinct “vecino” culture that even today distinguishes the region. From the adversity of the post-1750 period, New Mexican society emerged with a reordered power dynamic and a Hispanic sector that was stronger, more clearly defined, and unquestionably dominant. From the Hispanic perspective, this is a story of renewal and redemption; not so, however, from the perspective of the Pueblo Indians.Eighteenth-century New Mexico was characterized by two distinct economic systems, separated in time by what Frank, borrowing from Oakah Jones, labels the “defensive crisis” of the 1760s and 1770s. The first system, developed in a period of relative Pueblo Indian autonomy, saw Pueblos able to sustain traditional relations of production, withstanding efforts by Spanish officials to reshape the Pueblo economy through repartimiento. The Pueblo world remained relatively unpenetrated, or at least insufficiently penetrated to alter basic relations of production.A period of crisis ensued after midcentury, as New Mexico suffered the “twin afflictions” of raids by Plains Indians and a 1780–81 smallpox epidemic that exacted a disproportionate toll on the Pueblo population. This “defensive crisis” marked the turning point in New Mexico’s economic development. By the mid-1780s, the crisis had passed (at least for the Hispanic sector); peace was achieved with the Plains Indians, the demographic balance shifted in favor of the non-Pueblo population, and the vecino population “emerged … with new economic possibilities and the seeds of a cultural transformation from settlers to citizens” (p. 63). The active engagement of the Bourbon monarchy was critical to the economic revitalization of the province after 1780. Not surprisingly, much of the crown’s interest lay in defense, as both the expansion of a Spanish military presence in the north and the crown’s willingness to negotiate with the Comanches and Apaches in the last decades of the eighteenth century attest. But the Bourbon efforts to foster stability and growth went beyond military solutions; as Frank notes, the Bourbons maintained “an active policy to encourage and aid the growth of a local economy and … integrate it within the larger regional commercial system that emerged” after midcentury (p. 223).Economic development facilitated the transformation of New Mexicans from “settlers laboring for survival on a difficult frontier to citizens living in a social and cultural context they had worked to create” (p. 176). This transformation flattened the racial hierarchy, grouping castas and genízaros together with españoles and in opposition to Pueblo Indians, creating a bipolar world of vecino and “other” in which Pueblos were increasingly marginalized. Vecinos now held the upper hand demographically, socially, and economically. Frank sees a “mature and self-confident vecino generation” emerging after 1780 and moving to assert its role as cultural arbiters of a newly reconfigured New Mexican society. Evidence of this is to be found in the transformations in vecino artisanry—specifically textile weaving, santo production, and furniture making. Frank’s argument stakes out new territory, as he moves away from a narrower reliance on archival sources to look at a society’s production and to “read” it in ways that reveal, far more than can the archival record alone, the growing “sense of self” of the residents of this province.Frank concludes with a treatment of two objects of late-nineteenth-century creation—carved wooden figures representing Santo Jo’ (Saint Job), a conflation of the biblical figures of Job and the suffering Christ. Frank argues that such artifacts reveal how a people have come to define themselves in light of their history. Santo Jo’ tells the story of New Mexico’s late colonial development—a story of adversity and of responses to that adversity when, like the biblical Job, the people of New Mexico were afflicted and then redeemed.This is a fine work of scholarship, marked by its innovative use of material culture to tell a rich and nuanced story of economic and cultural development on the far northern frontier of New Spain. Scholars of the north who have awaited the publication of Frank’s book will not be disappointed.

Risk Factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Among Northern Plains Indians

Iyasu, Solomon; Randall, Leslie L.; Welty, Thomas K.; Hsia, Jason; Kinney, Hannah C.; Mandell, Frederick; McClain, Mary; Randall, Brad; Habbe, Don; Wilson, Harry; Willinger, Marian

La Harpe's Post: A Tale of French-Wichita Contact on the Eastern Plains. By George H. Odell. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2002. Pp. xx, 369. $29.95, paper.

In 1719, French commander Jean-Baptiste Benard, Sieur de la Harpe, together with nine men, ventured into the Prairie Plains, a region previously unvisited by Europeans, to establish trading alliances with the Plains Indians. His journey took him to what is now eastern Oklahoma, where his men spent ten days at an Indian village interacting with peoples of various tribes who later merged into the Wichita tribe. The village was the principal home of the Tawakoni, the most powerful of the Wichita-related tribes. In La Harpe's Post, George H. Odell documents the initial contact between La Harpe's party and these peoples, thereby potentially adding a crucial chapter to the history of the Plains Indians during the early eighteenth century. The information regarding the native population is considered the most significant consequence from this event. Odell takes much of his information from findings obtained during an excavation of the presumed site of the Tawakoni village. Odell ambitiously uses this information to write a reevaluation of the general history of the eastern Plains during this period. The technical aspects of the archeological research, such as the excavation data and statistical analyses, are located in 11 appendixes, as his book is intended for a wide audience.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in Native American Infants

Source: Iyasu S, Randall LL, Welty TK, et al. Risk factors for sudden infant death syndrome among Northern Plains Indians. JAMA. 2002;288:2717–2724.Infant mortality among American Indian infants is consistently above the US national average, with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) the leading cause of infant deaths in the Plains Indian region of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. SIDS is defined as the sudden death of an infant younger than 1 year, unexplained through case investigation, including a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and a review of the infant’s clinical history. The SIDS rate was 1.5 per 1,000 live birth for American Indian infants and 0.7 per 1,000 live births for all races combined nationally.1 This multi-institutional study was undertaken to determine prenatal and postnatal risk factors for SIDS among American Indians. A population-based case control study among American Indians in the Plains area from December 1992 to November 1996 included 33 SIDS infants and 66 matched living controls. A standardized parental interview, medical record abstraction, autopsy protocol, and infant death review were utilized. Assignment of the SIDS diagnosis meant that there was no evidence of abuse or neglect. The number of case and control infants who were placed prone to sleep, who shared a bed with parents, or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were similar.The mean age at death of the SIDS infants was 109 days; 51.5% were male and 64.7% died during the autumn and winter months. Adverse maternal behaviors among all infants included smoking during the 3 months prior to pregnancy and smoking throughout all 3 trimesters (the difference between cases and controls was not significant), use of alcohol during the 3 months prior to pregnancy, and alcohol use during each trimester (the difference between cases and controls was significant in the first trimester only). Binge drinking was more common among case than control mothers, with the difference significant for the first trimester (46.7% versus 19.4%). Case mothers consumed an average of 4.5 drinks per day versus 4.1 for control mothers on the days that they drank (P<.08). The percentage of infants put to sleep on their stomachs in the 2 weeks prior to death did not differ between case and control infants. Infants who had 2 or more layers of clothing or covers were at an increased risk for SIDS (unadjusted OR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.4–10.9). Infants whose homes were visited by a Public Health Nurse (PHN) had a significantly lower risk for SIDS than those who were never visited (adjusted OR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1–0.8). This study identifies 1 factor that is and 2 factors that may be amenable to public health action and further research in the prevention of SIDS: 1) visits by PHNs, 2) periconceptional maternal alcohol drinking and first trimester binge drinking, and 3) infant layers of clothing.There are a few published studies reporting a relationship between maternal alcohol use and SIDS, but no reports of a correlation between maternal prenatal alcohol use and the risk of SIDS. Excess thermal insulation for a given room temperature has been previously associated with an increased risk of SIDS, particularly in the presence of coexisting viral illness and prone sleep position.2,3 In a previous report, bed sharing and parental fatigue were thought to be associated with SIDS but that study did not indicate a significant relationship between bed sharing and cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption and SIDS.4Simple social justice requires a response to the finding of such excess mortality to determine if it is, in fact, amenable to public health interventions in this population group.

Access to Food and the Biological Standard of Living: Perspectives on the Nutritional Status of Native Americans.

The Nutritional status of the plains Indians was relatively high because they lived close to a rich supply of proteins: the bison. Same patterns can be observed in other pre- and early-industrial societies.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Risk Factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Among Northern Plains Indians—Correction

Risk Factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Among Northern Plains Indians—Correction

Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas: Rights, Principles and Practice

Resume Populations indigenes et zones protegees: droits, principes et pratiques Les populations indigenes, bannies de force, des zones protegees par La 'conservation Coloniale', ont cause des problemes sociaux graves tout en provoquant une reponse vigoureuse. Maintenant, les partisans de la conservation de l'environnement acceptent les progres de la loi internationale qui reconnaissent les droits des indigenes et ont fait changer la categorisation de zone protegee; ceci afin de permettre aux indigenes d'etre proprietaires et d'avoir un pouvoir de controle. Les principes qui reconnaissent ces droits et les Directives qui permettent de les appliquer ont ete adoptes. Des obstacles de taille sont toujours en pratique. Cependant, des exemples positifs laissent voir des solutions. Resumen Gentes indigenas y zonas protegidas: derechos, principios y practica Las poblaciones indigenas excluidas pot la fuerza de las zonas protegidas por la 'conservacion Colonial' causaron problemas sociales serios pero tambien provocaron una reaccion energica. Ahora, los conservacionistas aceptan los cambios progresistas de la ley internacional. Estos cambios reconocen los derechos indigenas y han cambiado la categorizacion de zona protegida. De este modo, se les permite a los indigenas ser propietarios y controlar estas zonas. Se han adoptado principios que reconocen estos derechos y las Lineas Directrices que los aplican. Obstaculos enormes siguen en practica mas ejemplos positivos van sugeriendo soluciones. Colonial Conservation It is easy to forget, now that conservation has become a mainstream concern of the global community and the subject of international treaties, that the idea of conserving nature through the creation of protected areas is a relatively recent invention. The idea was born in the tumultuous rush of land grabbing during the American conquest of the West, when settler families, the US cavalry, gold miners, cowboys and Indians struggled to impose their different visions of life and land use on the continent. One of the first to conceive of the idea of a 'national park' was the artist George Catlin, who ventured into the Wild West in the 1830s to capture through his oil paintings the dignified visages of the 'Plains Indians'. Musing on what he felt would be the inevitable disappearance of the their way of life he wrote: And in future what a splendid contemplation ... when one ... imagines them as they might be seen, by some great protecting policy of government preserved in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes ... A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty! (Catlin 1841: vii, emphasis in original). However, when the first such park was actually created thirty years later, it was during the disruptions of the American Civil War at a time when a devastating series of 'Indian Wars' was being waged to subdue Indian autonomy and realise the country's 'manifest destiny' (Colchester 1994: 2-6). It was this dominant vision of conquest, combined with 'wilderness preservation' (Ibid.), which defined the way the first parks were created in the USA at Yosemite in 1864 and Yellowstone in 1872. As Keller and Turek (1998: 20-22) relate, the startling landscapes of Yosemite, substantially an outcome of Native American land use systems, were proposed for conservation by the very same settlers who, twelve years previously, had waged the 'Mariposa Indian War' against the area's indigenous people--the Miwok. In this one-sided struggle, forces sanctioned by the US Government made repeated attacks on Indian settlements. Villages were burned to the ground to force the Indians out of the area and to starve or freeze them into submission. …

Silver Horn: master illustrator of the Kiowas

Plains Indians were artists as well as warriors, and Silver Horn (1860-1940), a Kiowa artist from the early reservation period, may well have been the most prolific Plains Indian artist of all time.Known also as Haungooah, his Kiowa name, Silver Horn was a man of remarkable skill and talent. Working in graphite, colored pencil, crayon, pen and ink, and watercolor on hide, muslin, and paper, he produced more than one thousand illustrations between 1870 and 1920. Silver Horn created an unparalleled visual record of Kiowa culture, from traditional images of warfare and coup counting to sensitive depictions of the sun dance, early Peyote religion, and domestic daily life. At the turn of the century, he helped translate nearly the entire corpus of Kiowa shield designs into miniaturized forms on buckskin models for Smithsonian ethnologist James Mooney. Born in 1860 when huge bison herds still roamed the southern plains, Silver Horn grew up in southwestern Oklahoma. Son of a chief and member of an artistically gifted family, he witnessed traumatic changes as his people went from a free-roaming, buffalo-hunting culture to reservation life and, ultimately, to forced assimilation into white society. Although perceived as a troublemaker in midlife because of his staunch resistance to the forces of civilization, Silver Horn became to many a romantic example of the real old-time Indian. In this presentation of Silver Horn's work, showcasing 43 color and 116 black-and-white illustrations, Candace S. Greene provides a thorough biographical portrait of the artist and, through his work, assesses the concepts and roles of artists in Kiowa culture.

Risk factors for sudden infant death syndrome among northern plains Indians.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is a leading cause of postneonatal mortality among American Indians, a group whose infant death rate is consistently above the US national average. To determine prenatal and postnatal risk factors for SIDS among American Indians. Population-based case-control study of 33 SIDS infants and 66 matched living controls among American Indians in South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa enrolled from December 1992 to November 1996 and investigated using standardized parental interview, medical record abstraction, autopsy protocol, and infant death review. Association of SIDS with maternal socioeconomic and behavioral factors, health care utilization, and infant care practices. The proportions of case and control infants who were usually placed prone to sleep (15.2% and 13.6%, respectively), who shared a bed with parents (59.4% and 55.4%), or whose mothers smoked during pregnancy (69.7% and 54.6%) were similar. However, mothers of 72.7% of case infants and 45.5% of control infants engaged in binge drinking during pregnancy. Conditional logistic regression revealed significant associations between SIDS and 2 or more layers of clothing on the infant (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 6.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-26.5), any visits by a public health nurse (aOR, 0.2; 95% CI, 0.1-0.8), periconceptional maternal alcohol use (aOR, 6.2; 95% CI, 1.6-23.3), and maternal first-trimester binge drinking (aOR, 8.2; 95% CI, 1.9-35.3). Public health nurse visits, maternal alcohol use during the periconceptional period and first trimester, and layers of clothing are important risk factors for SIDS among Northern Plains Indians. Strengthening public health nurse visiting programs and programs to reduce alcohol consumption among women of childbearing age could potentially reduce the high rate of SIDS.

Film Depicts Mother’s Search For Compassion in MH System

Film Depicts Mother’s Search For Compassion in MH System

Learning to be an anthropologist and remaining "Native": selected writings

This prodigious volume represents a landmark assemblage of the significant work of the legendary anthropologist and American intellectual Beatrice Medicine. For half a century, Dr. Medicine has defied stereotypes, racism, and sexism in her life and work while combating the reductive, patronizing views of Americans perpetuated by mainstream anthropologists. This retrospective collection reflects her unswerving commitment to furthering Americans' ability to speak for themselves and deal with the problems of contemporary life. Learning to Be an Anthropologist and Remaining Native includes Medicine's clear-eyed views of assimilation, bilingual education, and the adaptive strategies by which Americans have conserved and preserved their ancestral languages. Her discussions of sex roles in contemporary American societies encompass homosexual orientation among males and females and the warrior woman role among Plains Indians as one of several culturally accepted positions according power and prestige to women. volume also includes Medicine's thoughtful assessments of kinship and family structures, alcoholism and sobriety, the activism implicit in the religious ritual of the Lakota Sioux Sun Dance, and the ceremonial uses of Lakota star quilts. The American is possibly the least understood ethnic minority in contemporary American society, Medicine observes. Her decades of deliberate, generous, dedicated work have done much to reveal the workings of culture while illuminating the effects of racism and oppression on Indian families, kinship units, and social and cultural practices.

Smoking cessation and prevention: an urgent public health priority for American Indians in the Northern Plains.

The purpose of this study was to compare the prevalence of cigarette smoking and smoking cessation among American Indians living on or near Montana's seven reservations to those of non-Indians living in the same geographic region. Data for Montana Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) respondents (n = 1,722) were compared to data from a BRFSS survey of American Indians living on or near Montana's seven reservations in 1999 (n = 1,000). Respondents were asked about smoking and smoking cessation as well as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and selected risk factors. Quit ratios were calculated for both groups. American Indians were more likely to report current smoking (38%) than non-Indians (19%; p < 0.001). Thirty-seven percent of Indian respondents with CVD risk factors reported current smoking, compared with 17% of non- Indians with CVD risk factors. However, there was no significant difference in reported smoking rates between Indians (21%) and non-Indians (27%) with a history of CVD. Indian smokers were more likely to report quitting for one or more days in the past year (67%), compared with non-Indians (43%). Quit ratios were significantly lower among Indians (43%) than among non-Indians (65%). High smoking rates in Indians, particularly among those with other CVD risk factors, demonstrate an urgent need for culturally sensitive smoking cessation interventions among Northern Plains Indians and highlight the need for the Surgeon General's focus on smoking in minority populations.

The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S. Curtis

The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S. Curtis

Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory

Contrary Neighbors: Southern Plains and Removed Indians in Indian Territory

The Chaco Mission Frontier: The Guaycurúan Experience

The Chaco Mission Frontier is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of anthropologically informed, documented histories of missions in the Americas. James Saeger’s expertise focuses on the interior lowlands of South America, in particular, the riverine and plains environment of the Chaco, lying in the modern nations of Paraguay, Argentina, and a small portion of southeastern Bolivia. The Guaycurúan ethnic bands who people Saeger’s story, unlike their better-known Guaraní cousins, were principally hunter-gatherers who managed and derived their subsistence from the semiarid environment of the Chaco. Throughout the detailed, descriptive chapters that focus both thematically and chronologically on economy, society, politics, and religion, Saeger reveals his thorough knowledge of the region, its geography, and its archives. This book is an attempt to evaluate the mission as an institution as much as it is an ethnohistory of the Guaycurúan peoples and cultures that provide the substance of Saeger’s study.The Chaco Mission Frontier presents two parallel, central arguments: first, it addresses the issue of change and continuity in the Guaycurúan’s colonial experience before and after entering mission reductions; secondly, it enters the debate on whether the missions were oppressive of the indigenous peoples who lived in them and destructive of their cultures, or vehicles for the survival of native communities and for new cultural formations. On the first point, Saeger argues cogently for continuity, stressing that the Guaycurúans who settled in Jesuit missions during the second quarter of the eighteenth century had already experienced gradual but irreversible changes in their material culture and environment, due mainly to the introduction of European livestock and to their own hunting for trade. Thus, mission communities provided a setting for Mocobis, Abipones, Mbayás, Tobas and other groups to sustain their already altered cultural practices. His examination of the economic life crafted by missionaries and Guaycurúans systematically considers different skills and types of labor performed by both men and women in terms of the points of continuity with pre-mission lifeways. Guaycurúan raiding and warfare never ceased and, together with native mobility, conditioned the mission experience.Saeger built the concluding chapter of the book around a thoughtful dialogue with David Sweet’s essay, “The Ibero-American Frontier Mission in Native American History” published in E. Langer and R. Jackson, eds., The New Latin American Mission History (1995). Sweet raised a forceful challenge to traditional epic treatments of missions as civilizing institutions, emphasizing more recent findings of demographic decline, “infantilization,” “deculturation,” and separation of indigenous peoples from their natural environment. Saeger argues cogently that conquest and missionization should not be conflated, and revisits Sweet’s revisionist salvo with a point-by-point comparison with his findings specifically on the Chaco missions of the Guaycurú, noting that a number of Sweet’s arguments are not factually or interpretively applicable to his case. This raises the question of Guaycurúan exceptionalism in reference, for example, to the relatively late periodization of these missions and the physical mobility of their neophytes. Saeger does not, however, engage the wider historiographical context established by the substantial literature published during the last two decades on missions throughout the Americas, nor does he draw comparisons with histories of colonial missions in other areas of the world on such issues as conversion and ethnic identity.Saeger frequently raises descriptive comparisons with, for example, Plains Indians of North America, in terms of trading and raiding patterns, or nineteeth-century governmental policies of assimilation or containment. These particular references, while informative, do not constitute a comparative matrix nor are they geographically or thematically consistent. Frontier, despite its prominent place in the book’s title, is not treated analytically in this study, in reference either to the intersecting boundaries of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism or to the transitional ecological and cultural zones of the Gran Chaco. Saeger’s findings will contribute, however, to future synthetic treatments of frontiers and borderlands in the Americas.

The Arikara War: The First Plains Indian War, 1823

Journal Article The Arikara War: The First Plains Indian War, 1823 Get access The Arikara War: The First Plains Indian War, 1823. By Nester William R.. (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2001. vi + 256 pp. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index. $30, cloth; $18, paper). Anthony McGinnis Anthony McGinnis Lyons, Colorado Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Western Historical Quarterly, Volume 33, Issue 2, Summer 2002, Page 225, https://doi.org/10.2307/4144815 Published: 01 May 2002

Fluidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art

The American Indian Quarterly 26.4 (2002) 559-604 [Access article in PDF] Fluidity of Meaning Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art Douglas A. Schmittou and Michael H. Logan The history of Indian-white relations reveals a seemingly endless succession of losses endured by Native Americans: their autonomy, most of their lands, and much of their traditional cultures. By 1900 the population of peoples indigenous to North America had fallen from a precontact base estimated as high as 10,000,000 to an all-time low of 375,000 for the continent and 237,196 for the United States.1 For many smaller tribes the synergistic effects of introduced diseases, indiscriminate slaughter, famine, and cultural disruption proved to be insurmountable. Their fate, sadly, was extinction, with the Yahi of northern California being the most widely known case of white-induced Native American genocide.2 Tribes managing to escape this plight weathered the same hardships in addition to new ones: relocation, broken treaties, economic dependency and racism, imprisonment, forced schooling, and denial of our country's constitutional rights. Native Americans today are the heirs, more so victors, of five centuries of brutal mistreatment by the U.S. government, state militias, and, earlier, American-born colonists as well as colonists, military troops, and explorers from Britain, France, Spain, and other foreign countries. Given the undeniably harsh nature of Indian-white relations, the emergence of flag imagery in late-nineteenth-century Plains Indian art represents one of the most intriguing paradoxes confronting scholars who specialize in the analysis of Native American material culture.3 Use of the flag motif was neither an infrequent nor geographically isolated practice among Indian peoples during the late 1800s and early 1900s. An examination of the two major publications on this topic—Toby Herbst and Joel Kopp's The Flag in American Indian Art and Richard Pohrt's The American Indian, the American Flag —reveals that nearly forty tribes from nine different culture areas utilized flag imagery to a greater or lesser degree.4 Many northeastern tribes, as well as the Navajo of the Southwest, used the flag motif primarily on objects that were to be sold in the curio trade. Flag imagery, however, appears most commonly in Plains Indian art and, more specifically, in Lakota (Teton or western Sioux) quill embroidery [End Page 559] and beadwork. Of some three hundred objects illustrated in the aforementioned volumes, approximately 60percent are of Lakota manufacture. The statistical dominance of the Lakota becomes even more obvious through a rank ordering of tribes by the number of specimens attributed to them by these authors. Ranking third are the Ottawa with nine items, most of which are wall plaques or small boxes made of birchbark. The Navajo ranked second with nineteen specimens, all of which are woven blankets or rugs. The overwhelming leader, however, are the Lakota, with a total of 166 pieces bearing flags or other symbols of the United States. Moreover, most Lakota objects exhibit signs of wear, an indication that they were crafted for internal consumption and not for sale to whites.5 Statement of Problem An obvious, yet perplexing, question emerges from the historical context within which flag imagery developed: Why would oppressed peoples adopt the preeminent symbol of their oppressors and employ it as a design element in their decorative arts? Previous investigators have been no less struck by this dilemma. Herbst and Kopp, for example, state that "It has always seemed curious and contradictory that Native Americans who fought so valiantly and tenaciously against the encroachment of the United States should use the symbol of that government to decorate their clothing and belongings."6 Pohrt remarks similarly that "It seems somewhat incongruous that the Sioux, who resisted white domination so long and so well, should be the leaders in the use of patriotic symbols in their arts and crafts."7 Why, then, did the Lakota develop a virtual monopoly on the use of the flag motif while their neighbors, the Crow and Pawnee, rarely, if ever, depicted flags in their beaded art? The latter question...