1840(?)–1894
Like Sitting Bull, Gall belonged to the Hunkpapa Lakota branch of the Sioux. He would become famous as a leader of his people during the Battle of Little Big Horn, where subsequent investigation and also excavation have led historians to suppose that Gall was responsible for many of the major tactical decisions regarding the battle, in which the combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne defeated five cavalry companies led by the infamous General Custer.
“Gall” was not his real first name; it was acquired because of a certain exploit. He was reputed to have eaten the gall bladder of an animal. His real first name was Matohinsda, meaning “Bear Shedding His Hair.” Gall was recognized from early on as being not only a great warrior but a great leader, too, and became a war chief when he was still in his early twenties. Working closely with Sitting Bull, Gall became his lieutenant and fled to Canada with him in 1876. Gall came to disagree with Sitting Bull, however, and a little while later returned south, where he surrendered to the U.S. Government in 1880; a year later, he and his people traveled by steamer to the Standing Rock Reservation, where his name is recorded in the 1881 Census along with the names of 229 other Lakota Sioux.
Gall turned from fighting to farming and became a keen exponent of life on the reservation, becoming friendly with the white settlers, including Standing Rock’s agent, James McLaughlin. Gall would also in time turn against his old friend and compatriot Sitting Bull, declaiming him as a fraud. Gall was a rarity among the Sioux in that he ignored the Ghost Dance Movement.
Gall died in 1894 and is buried in Wakpala, South Dakota.
Many of the games played by Native American children, especially boys, emulated the actions of their older brothers, uncles, cousins, and fathers, and were designed to give them early training in becoming warriors. Little boys would have miniature bows and arrows, and played at hitting targets. All children would play games of catch, stilt walking, ball games, and top spinning.
Otherwise, games favored by Natives tended toward the physically active rather than the passive (chess, for example, would be classified as a physically passive game).
Lacrosse has its origins as a Native American sport. The name was given to it by the French Canadian settlers. A particularly skilled and strenuous game, the game was played with a small ball, made of hide, which had to be struck into a goal to score. The two goals were across a playing field of several hundred yards. The ball itself could not be touched with the hands, but had to be thrown from player to player with netted rackets. When played by the Natives, any number of players could take part, from eight to several hundred. The ball itself was considered a sacred object, representing the sun, the moon, and the earth.
The Creek had a game called “chunkey.” Equipment needed for this game included a stick with a curved end and a stone disc. The disc was rolled along the ground, the object of the exercise being to catch the disc with the curved end of the stick.
A precursor to the modern dice game was also played among the Algonquian women. “Dice” made from marked fruit stones or bones were shaken in a basket, each player in turn reached into the basket and removed their hand as though they might be holding the dice, and players had to guess which of the other players’ hands was holding it.
The “Europeanization” of Native Americans, or their Americanization,” was an issue which several successive U.S. Governments sincerely believed was the correct way forward and the best long-term solution to the “problems” posed by the existing indigenous peoples of North America.
This ideal was outlined definitively by George Washington during his terms as President (1789–1797). Washington implemented a policy that aimed to aid the process of what he referred to as the “civilization” of the Native peoples. It made sense to the white men that all Americans—no matter what their origins—should share a common set of morals and cultural values; inevitably, the “correct” set of these values were those of white men.
This “cultural education” did not segue smoothly with the existing Native American values. For example, it was considered necessary to make traditional Native religious ceremonies and practices illegal. It was also made compulsory for Native American children to attend Government boarding schools, which forbade any language other than English, and schooled the children in the Christian faith.
There were six “rules” in George Washington’s civilization plan:
There should be impartial justice toward Native Americans.
The purchase of Native American lands should be regulated.
Commerce should be promoted.
Experiments in civilizing American society or otherwise improving it should be promoted.
Presidential authority for the giving of gifts.
Those who violated Native American rights should be punished.
The Dawes Act, also known as the Allotment Act, was partially intended to have a “civilizing” effect as it aimed to teach the Native Americans the value of owning land and property. Also, agents were appointed to go out and live among the Native peoples to demonstrate the “white” way of living and doing things.
“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.”
1829–1909
The name of Geronimo has become synonymous with all the qualities that we think of in the Native American: courage, fearlessness, intelligence, and, of course, superb skills of horsemanship.
A leader of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, Geronimo’s name means “One Who Yawns.” He is famous for the stance he took against the incursions by the United States and Mexico into Apache territories during a period of strife which historians refer to as the Apache Wars. Geronimo fiercely resisted attempts to force Indians onto reservations, and his repeated escapes and the ease with which he seemed to evade the massed forces of the U.S. Army contribute to his legendary status.
Geronimo’s real name was Goyakhla; he was given the nickname “Geronimo” later on in life. He had three brothers and four sisters, and was born into a Bedonkohe Apache family in what is now the western part of New Mexico.
Thousands, if not millions, of Native Americans suffered appalling tragedies at the hands of the European colonists and their subsequent government. But there were other causes of tragedy closer to home, too. When Geronimo was just 29, his three children, their mother, and his own mother were killed by Mexican soldiers. The young man was quick to join in retaliatory attacks on the Mexicans, and was infamously persistent in his raids on Mexican territories and beyond. In later life Geronimo would eventually surrender to the authorities, and became something of a celebrity, but he was never permitted to return to his own land. He died in Oklahoma.
When he was 17, Geronimo married Alope, and they would seem to have lived a relatively peaceable life until their home camp was attacked by the Mexicans some 12 years later. The Mexicans chose what was, presumably, a good moment to kill women and children, since the men were away at the time, trading in the town. Geronimo’s immediate chief sent him to another key Native American leader, Cochise, to summon help against the Mexicans; it was at this time that he was given his nickname, Seeming not to care whether he lived or died, Geronimo completely ignored a hail of bullets from the Mexican side, and repeatedly attacked the armed men with just a knife. The Mexicans shouted appeals to St. Jerome—the Americans, hearing this, assumed they were shouting at the frenzied young man; the name “Geronimo” stuck, as did his reputation for a supernatural invincibility to bullets.
In 1875 Geronimo’s tribe, the Chiricahua, who at the time were living west of the Rio Grande with other Apaches, were commanded to move from their homelands to the dusty, arid deserts of eastern Arizona and the San Carlos Reservation. Geronimo escaped three times; luckily, no blood was spilled during these attempts. However, the following year the Chiricahua were singled out for removal to a different reservation. This time, Geronimo, with a band of Chiricahua, fled to Mexico where he spent the next ten years managing to avoid his would-be captors. These efforts gained Geronimo a great deal of notoriety, no doubt fueled by exaggerated newspaper reports. Geronimo gained a reputation for being the number one “most wanted” fearsome Apache. It took 5,000 U.S. Army soldiers, which amounted to a quarter of the entire Army, working with another 500 scouts (who trawled the outlying territory watching for ambushes and trails), and a further 3,000 Mexican soldiers to run Geronimo and his small band of brothers to ground in 1882. Geronimo’s tactics amount to what we would today refer to as guerrilla warfare.
Geronimo reluctantly agreed to return with his men to the reservation. Here, he settled down to farming, but the peace was short-lived. A prominent Apache warrior named Kayatennae was unexpectedly arrested and incarcerated; this event was the culmination of rumors of further trials and executions. Geronimo thought it wise to escape yet again, and so he fled the reservation with some 109 women and children and just 35 warriors. Yet again Geronimo was forced to surrender, this time to General George Crook, in March, 1886. Yet he escaped once again, surrendering to General Nelson Miles some six months later. This final surrender, the end of Geronimo’s guerrilla tactics, marked the end of an era.
In 1894 the great warrior was transported peremptorily, along with a further 450 Apache men, women, and children, to what amounted to imprisonment at Fort Pickens and Fort Sill, in Oklahoma. A further removal of the small band to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama saw at least a quarter of the Apache perish from diseases to which they had no immunity, including tuberculosis. The man who had the reputation for being the Indian Nation’s finest guerrilla tactician, a freedom fighter, and “America’s most dangerous outlaw” reportedly appeared at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, where he is said to have taken a ride on a Ferris wheel and sold souvenir pictures of himself. A year later he was part of President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade.
Geronimo died in 1909, after an accident in which he was thrown from his horse. He: had to lie in the cold for the greater part of the night until he was found by a friend, by which time he had become gravely ill. Geronimo died while still a prisoner of war.
The Ghost Dance—misnamed, since its original title was the Spirit Dance—was at the center of one of the most prominent and bloody massacres of Native Americans. This incident, which became a watershed moment in the history of the Native American people, was immortalized in the book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
The Ghost Dance was an important new religious movement that brought together many traditional practices which had been carried out for thousands of years. At its heart was a form of circle dance, but a circle dance with a difference—one that its practitioners believed was charged with power if performed correctly and repeatedly. It was said the dance could put an end to the strife and suffering of the Native peoples. This was a dance that could restore the territory of their lost homelands, bring back the buffalo (which had been slaughtered to the point of extinction), bring about peace and, above all, resurrect the thousands of Native American men, women, and children whose lives had been lost through disease and starvation or in battles with the white men. The craze for the dance swept like wildfire through the western United States, reaching as far as California. Sadly, the dance did none of the things that its dancers had believed. The full story is much more intricate and tragic.
By 1886, all the great chiefs were living on their appointed reservations. Every year, it seemed, the territory allotted to the Natives grew smaller, and the promised allowances of meat and other provisions by the U.S. Government got cut down. Some of the Indians, no doubt feeling beaten, tried to assimilate the way of the white man in order to survive.
In 1889 there were two events that pulverized the Native peoples even more. The first was a great drought, which resulted in greatly reduced crops and inevitable hunger and starvation. Then an epidemic of measles swept the reservations, causing the deaths of untold numbers of children who were simply too weak to resist the disease.
All that remained in the depths of such despair, it seemed, was to dream of better times to come, and to hope that those dreams might stand a chance of coming true.
Into the midst of this mood stepped a man of the Paiute tribe named Wovoka, whose anglicized name was Jack Wilson.
On the eve of the New Year of 1889, Wovoka had a dream which, seemingly, provided a simple solution that could put an end to the travails of the Native peoples. In the midst of a bout of fever, in Nevada, Wovoka found himself conversing with the Great Spirit, or Wakan Tanka. The message carried back by Wovoka to his people was that a time was coming when the buffalo would indeed return to their homes in the Plains, and the warriors who had been killed would be restored, living, to their families. The white men would be pushed, peacefully, back into the sea from whence they had come. In order to achieve these miracles, all that the Native Americans had to do was to live morally correct lives, cooperate with the white man, and perform a ritual dance … the Ghost Dance.
This wasn’t the first time such a dance had been suggested as a remedy for many ills: 20 years earlier, another Paiute man, Wodziwob, had made a similar prophecy. So there was already a memory of an earlier precedent, and familiarity with the concept may have made the idea more palatable.
According to Wovoka’s vision, the dance had to take place over a five-day period. He also claimed that he had been given power over the weather, and that he would soon become the leader of the western part of the United States, a sort of counterpart to President Harrison—who, according to Wovoka, would remain in command in the east.
Not all Native Americans adopted the dance readily, even after the Oglala Lakota chief, Kicking Bear, visited Wovoka and gave it his seal of approval. Some were skeptical about Wovoka’s claim that his prophecy was a harbinger of peace. But the message spread fast. Soon there was even a special shirt to be worn during the dance. The shirt was Kicking Bear’s idea, and was painted with magical symbols and designs designed, it was said, to repel the bullets and weapons of the white men.
The dancers danced on, in intense ceremonies that were hidden as far as possible from the eyes of the white men. About 18 months after Wovoka’s original vision, many Sioux were rapidly approaching a state of religious frenzy. Thousands were now taking part in the dance, in which the dancers circled around and around in increasing exhaustion and delirious frenzy. Some claimed that they had indeed witnessed the dead coming back to life and joining in the dance. All “normal” life was interrupted; nothing mattered except the dance.
Then a very unusual thing happened. The great Hunkpapa chief, Sitting Bull, invited Kicking Bear to visit him at his remote home at the Standing Rock Reservation, with the purpose of learning the Ghost Dance. Sitting Bull was skeptical about the powers of the dance, but knew that his people set great store by it, and that the movement had gained colossal momentum in a short space of time. He became personally involved in the rituals.
If the white officials had been bemused at first by the Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull’s interest rapidly turned bewilderment into alarm for the U.S. authorities. And the situation on the ground for the Native peoples wasn’t getting any easier. In early 1890, the U.S. Government yet again smashed up a treaty with the Lakota, and in so doing broke up the Great Sioux reservation into five chunks, greatly reducing the overall land available to the Native Americans. Intent on dismantling tribal relationships and ways of life, the reduction in land was carried out partly to accommodate new white settlers, and partly to make the Indians conform to the standards and ways of the settler. Indian children were given an English education and primed in the Christian faith; any native traditions, in general, were discouraged, if not actively forbidden. Although the English settlers were meant to be training the Indians in farming practices, neither party could have taken into account the arid climate in South Dakota, and there simply wasn’t enough to eat for everyone. In its wisdom the U.S. Government then made further cuts to the rations of the already starving Indians. This, in turn, further encouraged the desperate ritual of the Ghost Dance.
Kicking Bear was forced to depart from Standing Rock and the great chief Sitting Bull. In November of 1890, troops were ordered out to the Sioux reservations, and by early December a third of the entire U.S. armed forces were on alert. Still the dances didn’t stop; James McLaughlin, head of the Standing Rock Agency, now claimed that Sitting Bull was the real force behind the movement; furthermore, McLaughlin said the great Hunkpapa chief was dangerous and should be arrested. This opinion was not shared by Valentine McGillycuddy, the former Indian agent at Standing Rock; he was dispatched to investigate what was going on at the Sioux reservations, and he advised patience:
“I should let the dance continue … The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians … if the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.”
Despite McGillycuddy’s reasonable approach, the Government chose to heed McLaughlin’s warning instead, and on the morning of December 15, Sitting Bull’s remote home at Standing Rock was surrounded by 43 policemen who were actually members of his own people, the Sioux. When they entered Sitting Bull’s cabin he was asleep. Lieutenant Henry Bull Head woke the chief and peremptorily announced that he was arrested, and must accompany the police back to the Agency. Although Sitting Bull was peaceable and agreed to come quietly, he became upset when the policemen began pushing him around and then started to search his house. In the meantime, word had somehow got out about what was happening, and over 150 of the chief ‘s supporters had gathered outside. When Sitting Bull appeared, people started shouting in his support; Sitting Bull was being manhandled toward his horse when he suddenly declared that he wasn’t going to go with his captors, and appealed to the crowd to help him. In the ensuing chaos, one of the men on Sitting Bull’s side, named Catch the Bear, shot and hit Lieutenant Bull Head. Bull Head in turn shot at Sitting Bull; at the same time another of the Sioux police force, Red Tomahawk, also shot Sitting Bull in the head. (Sitting Bull had previously reported receiving a message from a bird, telling him that he would be killed by one of his own tribe. The prophecy came to pass.)
Now another thread joins the story. After Sitting Bull was shot, many of the Hunkpapa surrendered, but others fled to other reservations. Thirty-eight of these, starving and afraid, joined another chief, Big Foot, also known as Spotted Elk. Big Foot was also under surveillance by the Army since he was, like Sitting Bull, considered to be among the Ghost Dance “troublemakers.” Already rattled and made nervous by this surveillance, when Big Foot heard the dreadful news about Sitting Bull he immediately assumed that he would be the next to be arrested and potentially killed, and so led his people—some 333 families, of which perhaps 100 were adult male warriors—away from their camp on the night of December 23, with the intention of joining up with other Sioux chiefs. By December 28, the Army had caught up with the straggling band of terrified Indians; Big Foot himself, sick with the fever of pneumonia, was being carried in a wagon and had no strength left to fight or protest when the Army forced them to detour toward a small encampment at the Pine Ridge Agency. Because the day was getting dark, they set up camp on the banks of a small creek called Wounded Knee. The U.S. troopers surrounded the camp from the hills around, keeping a watchful eye lest there should be any escapees. More reinforcements arrived during the night; by the morning of December 29, 500 U.S. Government soldiers, armed with rifles, surrounded the band of disheveled Indians.
When the officers approached the Indians to confiscate their weapons, some of them were wearing their colorful, “magic,” bullet-resistant shirts. One young man—who was deaf, and didn’t know what was happening, refused to cooperate. A struggle ensued. A gun was fired; no one knew which side it belonged to, but this was enough for a panicked U.S. officer to give the order to open fire. Chaos ensued, with the Natives grabbing back the confiscated guns where they could, so they could fight back. They were no match for the artillery guns mounted on the hill that overlooked the camp, however. Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were killed by their own army’s guns. Some 153 Sioux were dead, too; the majority of these were women and children.
The events at Wounded Knee shocked, horrified, and outraged the American public. The shock waves continue to this day.
An important figure in the mythology of the Wabanaki and Abenaki peoples. The name Glooskap translates as “the man made from speech alone.” There are many different stories about Glooskap’s heroic acts.
Glooskap is the “good” aspect of the universe, in juxtaposition to the “bad” of his brother Malsumis. Glooskap is day, light, positive energies; Malsumis is night, dark, negative energies. Latter-day Abenaki superstition dictates that Glooskap, responsible for the delicate balance of nature, is angry with the white settlers for upsetting that balance, particularly in the overhunting and abuse of the buffalo.
For the Penobscot, Glooskap actually made mankind, molding human figures from the mud taken from the banks of the Penobscot River, which he also created.
Glooskap is a key figure in Mi’kmaq creation myth, believed to have created the earth itself, overcoming his evil brother, who set out to damage the beautiful mountain ranges and rivers that Glooskap created. Glooskap, according to one story, vanquishes his evil twin by transforming him into stone. To the Mi’kmaq people, Glooskap legendarily introduced the art of making ceramics, tobacco, fire, canoes, fishing nets, and a moral compass, the ability to differentiate between right and wrong.
Ingenious in using every part of the animal, glue was made from various sources and in various ways. The muscular tissues of the neck of the buffalo, boiled for days, made a good glue. Boiled bones, horns, and hoofs also made a strong glue. The sturgeon had a gland in its lower jaw which contained a gluelike substance. Trees, too, provided sticky stuff. The mesquite tree’s resin, the corm of certain plants, all provided glues. The pitch from certain evergreen trees made a wonderful glue called bigiu.
See Pictograph
A fundamental part of the constitution of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois League, the Great Law of Peace is also known as the Gayanashagoya. The law was not written down in words, but conveyed by symbols displayed on wampum belts and also as an oral tradition.
The Great Peacemaker, Dekanawida, was the author of the Great Law. The five tribes that initially belonged to the Iroquois League (or Confederacy, as it is also called) were the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. The constitution was founded sometime between the 11th and 12th centuries. The Confederacy was joined by the Tuscarora people in the early 18th century.
There are 117 articles of the Great Law of Peace; many of these articles are believed to have had a powerful influence on those who authored the tenets of the U.S. Constitution—a fact which was officially acknowledged by Congress in 1988.
See Dekanawida
Iroquois and Lenape legends describe the Great Serpent Mound as having been built by the Allegheny people. Academics, however, debate this. It is likely that this disagreement, and others surrounding the mysterious Great Serpent Mound, will never be resolved. What is clear, however, is that the construction is of great importance, a historically significant site, attested by its status as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Located in Adams County, Ohio, the Great Serpent Mound twists and curls its way for just over 1,348 feet, at its highest approximately 3 feet high. It is the largest image of a serpent, made in such a way, to be found anywhere on the planet.
Following the natural curve of the land, the serpent’s head, with its open mouth, lies at the eastern end of a long hollow oval; the body coils seven times, completed by a loosely spiraled tail.
Questions have, of course, been raised as to the actual purpose of the mound. Excavations have revealed no remains, human or otherwise, so it was not used as a burial site, although there are burial mounds close to the site of the mound. Serpents and snakes were, and are, important totem animals for many Native American tribes, so the mound could have been constructed in obeisance to a serpent-god. It is also possible that the site was intended as a sort of calendar, a way of marking the seasons. In 1987 it was discovered that the head area of the serpent is aligned to the sunset of the summer solstice; it has also been posited that the whorls of the tail might align to the solstices and the equinoxes, of which there are two each year. Previously, enthusiasts conjectured that perhaps the curves in the body of the snake were compatible with lunar alignments or the seven planets known to the ancient peoples.
The mound was first mapped by Europeans as early as 1815, and first described in published form in 1848. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, was the result of the authors’ survey for the Smithsonian Institution a couple of years earlier.
See Wakan Tanka
It would be impossible to describe every single ceremony pertaining to the Native Americans. The Green Corn Ceremony, however, was one of the most important annual events for the peoples who lived in the southeast. Essentially a harvest festival, the Green Corn Ceremony was held when the corn was ripe. Another name for the ceremony is the postika, a Creek word meaning “to fast.” Abstinence from food did indeed form a part of this ritual, which lasted for a total of four to eight days, but then so did feasting, dancing, and ritual rebirth or renewal.
We have information about the Green Corn Ceremony from contemporary accounts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, notably that of the trader James Adair, who penned a very detailed description of a celebration in Oklahoma. John Howard Payne, a playwright, gives an account of the last Green Corn Ceremony by the Creek in Indiana prior to their removal to the Indian Territory. There are other accounts, and although some details differ, the rituals do follow a general pattern, in the same way that every latter-day Native American family will celebrate certain festivals in ways that are unique to them, while the main pattern of the festival remains the same.
As soon as the first green corn was considered to be ripe, the community gathered together in the main area of their village. The ceremony started with a feast in anticipation of the fasting that would follow. The newly ripened corn was never eaten at the feast.
After the fun of the feast, there followed the fast, which lasted from 36 to 48 hours. Women, children, and the elderly were allowed to eat a little at certain times, but the men’s fast was stricter. While they observed the fast, the men made themselves useful by repairing public buildings, and the women cleaned and renovated their homes, symbolic of welcoming the new green corn into their midst. All public areas, particularly the central square, were considered to be sanctified areas for the duration of the ceremony and were kept scrupulously clean and well-swept. Animals and children were not permitted to wander around aimlessly, since the main square was also used as the focus for the most important events of the Green Corn Ceremony, especially the dances (some of which lasted all night) and the speeches; these took the line of forgiving any past annoyances and looking forward to a clean slate in the coming year. The general emphasis was on positivity, renewal, forgiveness, and thankfulness.
The men drank a variety of sacred drinks during the course of the postika. Although detail is scant, it is possible that some of the herbs were intended as an emetic, making the men vomit, again a symbol of cleansing and renewal. This particular drink was named “The White Drink,” since the color was associated, then as now, with purity and renewal; the drink itself, however, was actually dark in color.
Another key episode in the Green Corn Ceremony was the rekindling of the sacred fire in the central plaza. The fire itself—as in many cultures, not just the Native American—symbolized the sun, the giver of life. Those celebrating the Green Corn believed that the fire became more corrupt as the transgressions of the community polluted it; its rekindling was another act of renewal and cleansing. Prior to the event, all the fires in the village were either allowed to burn out or were deliberately extinguished; the sacred fire was resparked, and the world, effectively, renewed.
After this, another feast, and this time the new green corn was part of the bounty. The fires of the community were then relit using branches from the central sacred fire.
This ceremony is by no means a relic of the past; tribes, particularly the Upper Creek in Oklahoma, still celebrate it today.
The Caddo and the Wichita people often lived in green houses; these were constructed of a series of posts outlining a circle, about 10 to 15 feet in diameter, with a domed roof. The space between the posts was filled with bundles of grasses and reeds.
From the French for “big belly,” the Gros Ventre people were not given this name because they were fat, but either because of their location—on what is now the South Saskatchewan River and which used to be called the Big Belly River—or because of a misunderstanding on the part of the French settlers in translating their sign language. There were originally two or three bands of Native Americans that were described as Gros Ventre.
One of the tribes with the name Gros Ventre were also known as the Atsina.
The ancient history of the Gros Ventre Atsina (also known as the Gros Ventre of the Prairies) suggests that the tribe were living in the Great Lakes region some 3,000 years ago, part of the Arapaho, and of the Algonquian language group. Tragically, in the 19th century the white man’s disease, smallpox, eradicated 75 percent of the tribe. The remainder were subject to continual attacks by the Sioux, so sought the protection of the Blackfoot, with whom they became associated.
The Gros Ventre of the Missouri, or Hidatsa, were part of the Sioux, and belonged to the Siouxan language family. They lived on a tributary of the Missouri River in North Dakota. The tribe split into two sometime in the 18th century, possibly because of a disagreement between two chiefs over who should receive the prime part of a buffalo (the stomach), after a hunt. The splinter tribe became the Arapaho.
The Gros Ventre and the white men first encountered one another in the middle of the 18th century when, as mentioned, they suffered their first wave of casualties due to smallpox.
The traditional weapon of the Native American was the bow and arrow, used both in battle and in hunting. The white settlers, however, had a more powerful weapon: the gun. Initially, the Native Americans were justly afraid of these guns, which, to those who had never witnessed the explosive retort of a firearm before, must have seemed to possess almost a supernatural provenance. Even in the midst of this fear, however, the Native coveted the new weapon. And when he finally managed to acquire it, the Native rendered the instrument mysterious rather than commonplace by applying to it the epithet “medicine iron.”
Despite now owning the gun, at first the Native continued to carry his bow and its quiver of arrows, which did have advantages over the medicine iron. Up to six arrows could be shot in the time it took to load one of the early guns. Also, the mechanics of the gun were beyond anything the Native had ever experienced, and so it was impossible for him to repair. Another major disadvantage of the new weapon was that the only source of either bullets or powder ammunition was the white man, until the Department of Indian Affairs issued treaties allowing the Natives to have ammunition on condition it was used only for hunting.
In the same way that horses enabled Natives to move further and faster, the acquisition of guns meant that they could hunt and kill—both animals and people—much more effectively. Aside from stealing the weapons, Natives got hold of them from the French and English trappers and fur traders so that they would be able to acquire significantly greater numbers of beaver pelts, etc. Despite the treaties excluding the gun from any uses other than the slaughter of animals, the Native was naturally keen to use his gun to defend himself from human enemies as well as in hunting.
In the late 1860s the gun most commonly used by the Plains Indians was the muzzle-loading rifle manufactured by Leman and Son (and also by J. Henry and Son). They were sold to the Natives by licensed traders until 1868, when such trade was made illegal, although guns were handed out for free as an incentive for Natives to sign various treaties. These guns are now rare collectables, known as “treaty issue guns.”
1725(?)–1794(?)
A key chief of the Seneca Nation, Guyasuta was a great diplomat as well as a warrior. Born in New York, he moved to Ohio with his family when he was still a child. Details of Guyasuta’s life are somewhat sketchy, but it is possible that he was a scout when George Washington was a younger man, since Washington spoke later in life of remembering him. Guyasuta’s most prominent role was in Pontiac’s Rebellion.
Although the Iroquois’ official status during the period of rivalry between the French and British colonists was neutral, the Seneca in the area, including Guyasuta, tended toward the side of the French since they were alarmed at the rate of British encroachment onto their territory.
However, during the American Revolutionary War, Guyasuta, like most of the Iroquois people, took the side of the British against the colonists, although the latter had done their utmost to bring him to their cause.
After the war was over, Guyasuta used his diplomatic powers to help establish peaceful relations with the new United States Government, although he died not long after.