George Custer on the Origins of the Indians
George Armstrong Custer
It is really quite amazing to read through some of the theories produced during the 19th century about the origin of the Native Americans. As I talked about in my last post, I am currently reading the memoirs of George Custer about his life on the plains and his personal experiences with the Indians.
The second chapter in the book Custer uses to paint a picture of some of the various theories of his time on the origins of the Native Americans. He briefly mentions the most widely accepted theory today: they were migratory groups that followed the game into North America from eastern Asia over a land bridge between modern day Russia and Alaska. A couple of other theories he briefly mentions is that they came directly from Africa and that they are simply autochthonous.
Although he briefly mentions these, he spends most of the chapter discussing and giving proofs for a theory in which the Indians are directly descended from the Hebrews. He argues that scientists during his time period had gathered enough behavioral evidence from the Indians to prove that this theory is the most probable. One such proof was that a scientist studying the origins of the Native Americans "once heard an Indian apply the following expression to a culprit: 'Tschi kaksit canaba' -- 'Thou art like unto a Canaanite sinner.'"1
I find this theory to be quite ridiculous. All of the evidence Custer provides is merely circumstantial and behavioral. I have no way of proving whether or not the translation of the above quote in the Indian language is accurate or not, but I am very skeptical. One hundred and thirty years from now they may be laughing at our theories as well, but I think they are based on much more solid ground that those of one hundred and thirty years ago.
------
1. George Armstrong Custer, My Life on the Plains: Personal Experiences with the Indians (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc, 2009), 19.
New Featured Book
I realized today that I haven't changed the featured book for quite a long time. So, I've changed it to another book about Native Americans called The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson. It is a fascinating history of the Native Americans that gives each region of the United States its own chapter from pre-contact with Europeans, to contact and beyond. Wilson did an excellent job writing and it was an absolute pleasure to read. I highly recommend it.
Contact is important, but what about the other tens of thousands of years?
I have to say that I am quite disappointed with my Native American Studies class this semester. I was (apparently naively) assuming that we would focus more on Native American culture and more on the history of the Native American peoples before first contact with the European nations. I was, however, wrong.
We spent the first two weeks covering the pre-contact era and have now suddenly began talking about the first encounters with the Spanish in Mexico. I understand that there is not really a whole lot known about the Native Americans before contact, but there is certainly plenty of available knowledge out there to fill a semester-long course! Of course I also understand that the first contact with Europeans is extremely important because of the incredibly devastating effects it had on Native American culture and society, but I have already heard so much about it, that I really don't want to spend another semester discussing it.
My hope was to learn something of the vast variety of cultures in the Americas before the Europeans destroyed all of them. I have to say I am extremely disappointed in that.
Listening to Our Ancestors
While browsing around the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, I ran across a series of interesting online exhibits. I've only had time to check out one of them, but I would highly recommend looking through them. They provide a very interesting look into Native American culture, art, etc.
Listening to Our Ancestors
Different Stages of Development
Today I was reading The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson and in the first chapter of the book, Wilson brings up a very good point about the "stage of development" of the Native American tribes versus the European cultures. He discusses the fact that from our own Euro-American perspective, we tend to look at Native American tribes as being extremely backwards and as such, to be behind us in the evolutionary ladder of civilization. While this is certainly not a new idea, I would have to disagree with it.
According to Harold Driver in his textbook Indians of North America:
A comparison of rates of cultural evolution in the New World with those in the Old World shows that American Indian cultures developed faster from their first appearance until about 7000 BC... By the time the Indians began to farm... they were only about two thousand years behind the earliest farming in the Old World... From this time on, however, the Indians fell behind...
Driver basically has stated that the American Indians are living in the past and could almost be looked upon as being a window to our past. I highly disagree with this entire theory. While the Europeans may have had superior technology in terms of firearms and farming equipment, they were not in any way superior to the Native American tribes when we compare culture and civilization. Native American culture was extremely rich and thriving by the time the first Europeans arrived in North America.
This misled viewpoint is the validation underpinning the very reasons and excuses Euro-Americans used to displace the native peoples or to force them to adopt 'modern, technologically and evolutionarily superior ways' such as farming instead of hunting and gathering. I think by this time in our own 'cultural evolution,' it is time we disregard this theory entirely and realize that the Native American civilizations were as far advanced in their own stages of development as the Europeans' cultures.
Books about Native Americans
I have posted a new featured book called Native American Testimony edited by Peter Nabokov. This book is a very interesting culmination of testimonials by Native Americans about the coming of the white man. What makes this such a unique volume is that it is told from the perspective of the Native Americans rather than from the Anglo-American perspective with which we are all so familiar.
Peter Nabokov has provided us with a collection of testimonials that range from prophesies about the coming of the white man into Native American territory through the end of the twentieth century. As I continue reading through the book, I will probably discuss portions of it that I find interesting here.
This is one of three books which I will be reading for a Native American Studies course I am taking this semester. The other two are The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America by James Wilson and North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account by Alice B. Kehoe.
Death and the Navajos
The Navajos struck fear into every person living in the American southwest since the first Spanish settlements until the American conquest of the southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Their raids on the small villages and towns of present day New Mexico and Arizona were constant and were always devastating. The devastation, however, was generally not in human life, but rather in terms of lost property. Villagers lost most of their flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and horses to the Navajo raids, but rarely were human lives the target of the Navajos' ambitions.
Though they were feared, the Navajos did not generally have a reputation for being a great warrior tribe. The reason for this is that they traditionally had a cultural phobia of death, which is quite detrimental to a warrior-based society. When a person died inside one of their dwellings -- generally a hogan made of mud and wood -- the body had to be removed by bashing a hole in the wall at the point that it faced north and then by dragging the body out of the hole. The hogan then had to be destroyed otherwise its inhabitants would be plagued by the spirit of the deceased and by other evil spirits. Such spirits were believed to upset the delicate balance of nature and wreck havoc upon the living. The Navajos also believed that the presence of death led to witchcraft and other such unwanted entities.
One type of witch that the Navajos feared were called the "Yeenaaldlooshii", or "skinwalkers." According to Hampton Sides in his book Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West,
The Navajos believed in a class of witches called "skinwalkers" who were said to put on wolf pelts and dig up graves. The skinwalkers could be seen prowling around at night on all fours -- they had pallid white faces and red glowing eyes and chanted holy prayers backward to invoke evil deities. They desecrated graves and stole funerary trinkets and jewelry. They removed the dead person's flesh and ground it up to make a lethal poison called "corpse powder," which the skinwalkers blew into people's faces, giving them the "ghost sickness." Even a fingernail paring or a strand of hair from a dead person could be used by a skinwalker to perform diabolical things.
According the Navajo legend, skinwalkers also have the ability to make any animal or human sounds they choose, they can read human thoughts and they can imitate the voice of a friend or relatives to lure innocent victims into their traps. It is also believed that skinwalkers have the ability to take over another person's body if the unfortunate victim is careless enough to look at the skinwalker directly in the eyes.
The Modocs – History and Culture of the Modocs (Part 1)
In the woods in southern Oregon, a man quietly stalks a deer. The summer weather is brutally hot and he sweats profusely. The man is careful to avoid making any sort of noise and is weary not to let his game out of sight. The deer stops in a small clearing and it is the perfect opportunity to strike. The man raises his bow and prepares it with an arrow as he gets ready to shoot. It is vitally important that he does not miss as the deer will provide food for the women and children of his village and the pelt will provide clothing. His thoughts are a blur as he takes aim and lets the arrow go. The time seems to last a small eternity until the arrow finally reaches its deadly mark. The man is a young hunter belonging to the Modocs.
When asked about the Modocs, most people will say they have not heard of them. Compared to better known Native American tribes such as the Cherokees, Apache and Arapahos, the Modocs are a relatively small and mysterious tribe, but their story is nonetheless quite interesting.
Tucked away in the northwest corner of the United States, generations of Modocs lived, hunted and battled for centuries. The Modocs lived in the range from south-central Oregon to northern California, but they primarily lived around Tule Lake (see map) where they fished and ate waterfowl. Gathering was also an important part of the Modoc diet. They gathered camas root, wocus seed and other wild plants and during the summer months they also hunted deer, antelope and bighorn sheep in the high country. Eventually the Modocs adopted some of the ways of the white men such as cattle ranching and they even began working vocational jobs in Fort Klamath, Linkville, Jacksonville and Yreka. For the Modocs, to own horses as a sign of wealth that only those who were in a position of power or earned money from the white men could afford.
The Modoc tribe called themselves the Maklaks. They were part of the Klamath tribes of the northwest and spoke a language of Penution origin. Before 1800 they were part of the Lulacas tribe, but because of an internal dispute about tribute to the chief, the Modocs broke away to form their own tribe. Their villages were mostly autonomous and each had their own leaders, shamans and medicine men, however, when war was upon them, the villages would unite to fight for the common cause against the enemy. During the winter, they would live in earth-covered lodges, or “pit houses,” but the poorer families who couldn’t afford such lodges would live in mat-covered houses. In summer, they lived in domed houses made of poles and matting or lean-tos made of brush. An important part of every village was the sweathouses which served as a community center. Here both men and women would gather for prayer, religious activities and for recreation.
Everything began to go downhill for the Modocs when the first contact with the white men was established. In 1826, the Hundon’s Bay Company trading brigade established a trading station on the Dalles of the Columbia where slave trading was quite common. The Modocs received horses, firearms, clothing and other goods from the white men as payment for helping with the trading business and in exchange for slaves. Finding the trading business quite fruitful, the Modocs began to establish trading businesses of their own. They began to trade and sell lumber from their native lands and, because of their knowledge of the land and connections throughout the area, they also began to setup freighting routes for the white men. By August 1889, there were 20 tribal teams profiting in the freighting business.
Since the white men could not pronounce the Modocs’ native names, they began giving them English nicknames. The most famous of these nicknames is that belonging to the chief Keintpoos, “Captain Jack,” who would play a significant role in events to come...
Check back soon for part 2!
The Modocs – Introduction
“Well, I tell you what I will do. I give you twenty-five head of ponies if you take my place today, as you say Heaven is such a nice place. Because I do not like to go right now.” These were the words of the Modoc chief Keintpoos – or “Captain Jack” as he was nicknamed – spoken to the Christian minister on the day that he was hanged.
The story of the Modoc tribe and their eventual submission to the white Americans is quite a heroic one. Unlike many other tribes, the Modocs were generally not hostile towards the whites when they first began to invade and eventually settle on their land. For many years this pleasant relationship was sustained with the Modocs adopting several white traditions and trade between the two societies flourishing.
Unfortunately, as quite often occurs, all good things must come to an end. The US government rounded up the Modocs and displaced them to a reservation with their traditional enemies, the Klamath tribe. Relations between the US government and the Modocs quickly deteriorated. Unable to bear living with their hated enemies, a group of Modocs lead by Captain Jack left the reservation and fled to their native land near Tule Lake. Captain Jack’s flight from the reservation eventually led to military action between the Modocs and the US government and ultimately ended in defeat for the Modoc peoples.
Indians and the Imperial Powers of Europe
At the university library, I came across a book by the title A Companion to The American West, edited by William Deverell, and have been slowly working my way through it. The book is a series of essays that talk about what the American west is, how the west is defined and how the definition of the American west has changed throughout the course of American history, starting of course with the landing and settlement of the first colonists from Europe.
The first essay, "The Making of the First American West and the Unmaking of Other Realms" by Dr. Stephen Aron, professor at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), gives a basic overview of what the "first American west" was and the repercussions the settlement of the first American west had on the native Indian population. Dr. Aron discusses the breaking of the threshold that was the Appalachian Mountains into the wild countries of what is now Kentucky and Tennessee. The Native Americans were naturally opposed to this violation of their territory and to help fend off settlers and other men, such as Daniel Boone, the Indians turned to the competing European imperial powers for help.
After the American Revolution, Britain was a key ally for the Native Americans despite the dishonesty that plagued their relationship and the eventual abandonment of the Indians by the British. They not only supplied the Indians with resources and firearms, but they were a confidence booster for the Indians. Some of the more fortunate Indian groups, such as the Iroquois in northwestern New York, were able to take full advantage of competing European interests in the Americans. The Iroquois were situated between the French interests in the north (what is today Quebec) and English interests in the south. This strategic positioning meant that they were effectively immune from domination by one European power or the other. This “borderland geography”, as Dr. Aron calls it, gave the Iroquois a militaristic advantage as well as a natural economic advantage. The fur trading industry blossomed to the point that the population of animals that supplied the fur began to significantly dwindle to dangerously low levels.
Indeed, these were most certainly positives for the native peoples, but an unseen enemy wiped out nearly half of the Iroquois population by the seventeenth century. The exposure to so many of the Europeans left the Indians vulnerable to diseases and plagues that brought the Iroquois to their knees faster than any European power could have.
The French Revolution also had an impact on the Native Americans. Western tribes such as the displaced Shawnees who had come to reply on British and Spanish support for their cause against the ever-encroaching Americans were suddenly left to fend for themselves. Both the British and Spanish monarchies were engaged in conflict with the new French regime and consequently decided to abandon their position against the American government and concentrate their efforts closer to home in Europe. The Indians suddenly found themselves alone in their fight and, without a strong confederacy amongst the Indian groups, were quickly succumbed by American forces. Led by General Anthony Wayne, the Americans forced the Indians to give up much of what is Ohio today.
The European abandonment of the Native Americans was a crucial turning point in American history. The Indians would never again have such an advantage against the Americans.
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