One of the principal tribes of the seven divisions of the Teton/Lakota tribe of the mighty Sioux Nation. The word Oglala means “to scatter one’s own.”
The Oglala were a matrilinear tribe—that is, any offspring from a marriage were deemed to belong to the clan of the mother, not the father. A married couple would go to live with the family of the wife, and the eldest brother of the mother would assume a protective and fatherly role toward his sister’s children. In addition, the Clan Mother had the right to choose chiefs and, in extraordinary circumstances, to effectively “fire” a bad or ineffective chief.
The first record of the Oglala was noted by the Lewis and Clark Expedition; in 1806 the explorers found some 200 men of the tribe living between the Cheyenne and Bad rivers in South Dakota. A couple of decades later the Oglala were living on both sides of the Bad River and up as far as the Black Hills, and had amicable relationships with both the Europeans and with the neighboring Cheyenne. At the time, the tribe consisted of approximately 1,500 people, of whom 300 were braves and warriors.
The Oglala lived in tipis and subsisted by farming, hunting, and some fishing. There was a trading post at the mouth of the Bad River, and it was here that the tribe frequently gathered. The 1850s saw the tribe living on the Plains between the north and south forks of the Platte River, and a few years later they’d ranged across an even wider territory. By this time relationships with the Europeans were no longer amicable, tested by the settlers’ repeated incursions onto Indian land. In 1854 the tribe were among those who participated in the Grattan Massacre, and from then on the Oglala were greatly feared by the white men. The tribe, along with other Siouxan bands, kept up a constant attack on the emigrants and generally made life very uncomfortable for them. The invasion of the Black Hills by the white men ultimately led to the defeat of General Custer by the Native Americans.
The great Oglala Hunkpapa leader, Sitting Bull, and many of his followers, including the Oglala, fled to Canada after their defeat by General Miles.
Subsequently, many of the Oglala were relocated to the reservations, including the Pine Ridge Reservation (formerly known as the Red Cloud Reservation).
1858–1939
Ohiyesa—a.k.a. Charles Eastman—writing from his unique perspective as a Native American educated in the European style, gives us a compelling insight into the lives of his Native contemporaries.
Ohiyesa (who was named Hakadah at birth) had a Santee Sioux father and a mother of mixed race. When he was only four years old, Ohiyesa became separated from his father and his brothers and sisters during the Dakota War; thinking that the rest of his family were dead, Ohiyesa was adopted by his grandmother and her family. Some 15 years later he was reunited with his father and his eldest brother in South Dakota. Both had embraced the Christian faith and had changed their surname to Eastman; Ohiyesa also converted to the new faith and renamed himself Charles Alexander Eastman, by which name he is possibly best known. A smart boy, Ohiyesa was fortunate in that his father believed in the best education possible for his children, and Charles went on to study medicine at Boston University, becoming the first-ever Native to qualify as a European-style medical doctor.
He then went on to work for the Health Service of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, serving the Natives at the Pine Ridge and Crow Creek reservations, and also treated wounded Indians after the massacre at Wounded Knee.
It was a stroke of bad luck that inadvertently led to an about-turn in Ohiyesa’s life. He tried to establish a private practice after he was “let go” from the Bureau; this didn’t work. Trying to think of ways to make ends meet, his wife, Elaine, suggested he recount stories of his early life. These were printed in a magazine in 1893 and 1894 and were later included in his first book, Indian Boyhood, published in 1902. He wrote ten more books over the course of the next 20 years, helped by Elaine; these accounts of a unique childhood were translated into several European languages and are still in print in various forms today.
Ohiyesa was asked to get involved in a group called the Woodcraft Indians, which was very much akin to the Scout movement. Subsequently, he would be one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America movement. Ohiyesa also got involved in politics, often lobbying for the rights of the Dakota people, and was an aide in Theodore Roosevelt’s plan to help Indians retain their lands by giving them European names. Ohiyesa was also a founder member of the SAI, the Society of American Indians, which served to promote the ideals of the Indian.
Ohiyesa, in old age, settled in a cabin on the shores of Lake Huron, and died of a heart attack at the age of 80.
Belonging to the Algonquian language family, the Ojibwe (or Ojibway) were one of the largest and most important members of the larger Algonquian group. The former stamping ground of this woodland tribe encompassed the shores of Lakes Huron and Superior, across Minnesota to North Dakota and including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ontario. The name “Chippewah” or “Chippeway,” which is another name for the tribe, came about as a simple mispronunciation of “Ojibwe.” This word actually means “to roast until puckered” or “puckered moccasin people,” and refers to the puckered seams of the moccasins the Ojibwe wore.
Once part of a group with the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes, together the three were called the “Three Fires.” Unlike other tribes, the Ojibwe had been on friendly terms with the white settlers since the Treaty of 1815. Their distance from the frontiers of the Colonial Wars also probably aided this entente. Because the Ojibwe did good business with the French traders who had arrived in the area, it made sense that they would make an allegiance with the French against the British during the French and Indian War, although they sided with the British during the American Revolutionary War.
The Ojibwe traditionally lived in wigwam homes constructed of birch bark and mats of woven reeds and grass. Seasonal fishing was an important aspect of Ojibwe life, and this diet was supplemented with wild rice, an important food source to the tribe. It was the need to protect this wild harvest that led to the Ojibwe taking up arms against the encroaching Dakota and Fox tribes, stopping their expansion and decimating the latter so badly that they sought safety by aligning themselves with the Sauk. Otherwise, the Ojibwe subsisted by farming in the summer months and by hunting, trapping, and ice-fishing during the winter. The Ojibwe also knew how to harvest the sap from the maple tree and turn it into maple syrup by a process of reduction. They produced large quantities of high-quality syrup, setting up camps in the woods to harvest the sap in the spring. The syrup was packed into birch bark containers called mokoks, which they then buried in the ground either for consumption by the tribe or for trading purposes. After the syrup harvest, the Ojibwe met up in a massed camp for a two-week celebration at Saginaw.
The British managed to oust the French from the Ojibwe territories, and the result of this was a sharp decline in the fur trade. Many of the tribespeople fell on hard times, the men having no choice but to take poorly paid menial jobs in the timber industry.
The writer Henry Schoolcraft married an Ojibwe woman and lived among the tribe. Schoolcraft’s work was drawn upon later as source material by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he wrote the poem “Hiawatha,” which revolved around the myths surrounding an Ojibwe deity named Gitche Manitou.
Not a great deal is known for certain about this courageous Pawnee woman who lived in the 19th century. However, she is famed for her actions (which subsequently gave rise to her name) as a heroine when her village was attacked by bands of Sioux and Ponca. Allegedly, the Pawnee men of the village, caught unawares, tried to run away. Old Lady Grieves the Enemy had other ideas, and picked up a war club and attacked the enemy with gusto. This caused the cowardly men of the village to take action, and for Old Lady to become a role model for feminists.
Originally, the Omaha embraced two tribes: the Omaha and the Quapaw. They inhabited a tract of land very close to what is now Cincinnati, Ohio.
The Omaha, like others, were forced to move, and it was on the journey west that the split occurred, with the Omaha settling close to Missouri and the Quapaw in Arkansas. The Omaha shifted further into Nebraska after a series of conflicts with the Sioux.
It was practice among the tribe to relocate their settlements, consisting of between 50 and 100 homes, to new land every 15 years or so, to give the old land a chance to regenerate. Lodges made of bark were traditional for the Omaha until, after their encounters with the Sioux, they adopted the tipi.
The Omaha were not only hunters, following the buffalo which provided the bulk of what the people needed in terms of food, shelter, and tools, but agriculturalists: among their crops were the staple “Three Sisters” of corn, beans, and squash.
Their first contact with the white settlers would have been in the middle of the 18th century, when they met European fur traders.
The last 20 years of the 18th century saw a tragically swift decline in numbers for the Omaha. A combination of war and the onslaught of the European diseases—including smallpox—left only 300 Omaha in 1802, whereas in 1780 there had been over 3,000.
The situation for the Omaha got even worse as the buffalo grew scarcer, since they were being hunted to the point of extinction by the Europeans. The Omaha joined with others in the same situation, forced to rely on the new United States Government for their survival. A treaty dated 1854 saw half of their lands ceded to the Government; the rest was designated a reservation. Later, even this land would be further reduced, given to another tribe, the Winnebago.
The last Omaha chief, Big Elk, died in 1846 and is buried in Nebraska.
One of the five original members of the mighty Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee. The origin of the name Oneida means “People of the Standing (or upright) Stone.” The original stamping ground of the Oneida was the area that is now New York. Oneida County and Lake were named for the people.
There’s a legend describing how the Oneida came by their name. Many decades ago, the people were being chased by an enemy. They found themselves in a woodland where they suddenly became invisible to their persecutors. It was supposed that the Oneida had simply turned into stones to befuddle their enemy.
There are three clans within the Oneida tribe: the Bear Clan, Wolf Clan, and Turtle Clan. The tribe follow a matrilinear system—that is, any offspring are deemed to belong to the tribe of the mother rather than the father.
Although the tribes of the Haudenosaunee advocated neutrality at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, it was not long before events conspired to make them take sides. Four of the tribes—the Cayuga, Mohawk, Onondaga, and Seneca—took the side of the Loyalists, hoping that a British victory would put an end to the European incursions onto Indian land. But the Oneida were geographically closer to the rebel colonists, and so the Oneida allied with them instead. After the war, the tribe would be honored for their efforts on behalf of the colonists.
What amounted to the first reservation was established with the Treaty of Canandaigua, between the Haudenosaunee (including the Oneida) and the U.S. Government. This gave the tribes some 6 million acres of land in the New York area. In common with other land treaties, though, the rules soon changed and the tribe was left with just a fraction of what they had been granted, some 32 acres. A few short decades later the tribe relocated again, to upper Canada, because the United States claimed the land was needed for settlers.
A band of Native Americans, named the Neutrals by the French because of their position during the Iroquois and Huron wars. The name Ongniaahra is immortalized in the names of the famous river and waterfalls of Niagara.
Also referred to as the “People of the Hills,” the Onondaga—or Onontakeka—were one of the original members of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee, founded in the 15th century and still in place today.
The traditional homelands of the Onondaga is in Onondaga County in New York. The leaders of the other tribes in the Haudenosaunee—the Cayuga, Seneca, Mohawk, and Oneida (who were joined in 1714 by the Tuscarora)—met in the town of Onondaga since it was central to all of them. The chiefs still meet there today.
The Onondaga retained their hereditary land, along with the other Nations of the Haudenosaunee, after they signed the Treaty of Canandaigua with the United States; this treaty, which acknowledged their rights to this traditional land, was honored, unlike many others.
Within the Haudenosaunee, the Onondaga are known as the Keepers of the Fire, and are responsible for opening and closing the meetings of the Grand Council.
Leaders of the Onondaga clan, which is matrilineal, are female, known as the Clan Mothers. These women have the power to elect the new chief of the clan when the need arises. They also have the authority to remove a chief who is considered to be ineffective.
Among Native Americans, every single aspect of the universe—a plant, a rock, an animal, or features of the landscape such as lakes, rivers, mountains, and even clouds—has its own spirit. This spirit also has a will of its own, and the ability to influence human experience. For the Iroquois, this spirit was expressed as the Orenda. The Orenda—or Divine Essence—of each person or entity contributed to the Orenda of the tribe as a whole, as well as that of the universe.
The tribe viewed themselves as part of nature, part of the universe, not separate; nothing was inferior or superior, since each had its part to play in making the complete whole.
For the Iroquois, the way that the Orenda communicated with an individual or the tribe was via dreams, hence the vital importance of allowing these dreams to make themselves clear. Understanding this gives us a greater understanding of the vision quest, for example.
A member of the Siouxan language family, the Osage’s stamping ground was originally along the Ohio River, close to modern-day Kentucky. Sometimes the Osage are called the Southern Sioux. Many years of war with the Iroquois, who encroached upon Osage territory, meant that the tribe were forced to migrate to lands west of the Mississippi River, to what are now Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. This shift had been effected by the middle of the 17th century.
The Osage were evidently a tall race, sometimes up to 7 feet tall, as described by the painter and recorder of all matters to do with Native Americans, George Catlin. Other accounts describe them as fierce and also handsome. The tribe not only hunted the buffalo twice every year, but farmed, too. They planted corn, beans, and squash as well as a variety of other vegetables, and gathered harvests of wild berries and nuts.
First encountered by the French, who recorded this contact in 1673, the Osage had acquired the horse by the 1690s and traded with the French to get more of these animals. The Osage were dominant over other Native American peoples in the area. The Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 recorded meeting the Great Osage people along the Osage River; they numbered some 5,500 men, women, and children.
In 1808 the first treaties between the Osage and the United States came into effect, when the tribe gave up lands in Missouri; some of the tribe headed to western Missouri, others headed for Oklahoma. Subsequently, there was conflict when the white men dispatched the Cherokee to live on lands already granted to the Osage. In exchange for giving up their lands, the Osage were promised help in establishing farms and homes; however, this help was not forthcoming. To add insult to injury, the lands allocated the Osage were further reduced. Not only that, but the white settlers continued to encroach on Osage lands.
In 1879 the Osage were further displaced, following a ruling that the rest of the Osage land in Kansas should be sold and the proceeds used to relocate the tribe to the Indian Territory. However, the tribe managed to delay moving long enough for a change in the Government, and negotiated with Ulysses S. Grant, the new President, for a better price for their land: rather than 10 cents an acre, Grant allowed the tribe $1.25 per acre instead. With this money, the Osage managed to buy their own reservation. After years of hardship, via the efforts of their chief James Bigheart, the Osage managed to retain mineral rights to their own lands; shortly afterward, oil was found and the tribe became one of the richest in the United States. After 1906, the individual income of the Osage was higher than that of anyone else on the planet.
“They could not capture me except under a white flag. They cannot hold me except with a chain.”
1803(?)–1838
One of the most legendary Seminole chiefs, Osceola (a.k.a. “Black Drink Singer” and also William Powell) was born around 1803 in Creek country, on the Tallapoosa River. He had some white blood, given that his paternal grandfather had been from Scotland. When his mother remarried following Osceola’s father’s death, her new husband was also a white man, named William Powell—a name that would sometimes be applied to Osceola.
Although he had not been born to be chief, Osceola came to the forefront of his tribe when the United States tried to force the Seminole to move out of Florida and onto the reservation in Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The Government had been trying to “evict” the Seminole ever since they bought Florida—the Seminole’s traditional territory—from Spain at a price of $5 million in 1821. The Indian Removal Act effectively enabled the Government to force the Indians onto the reservations, but the Seminole were vehement in their resistance. Osceola took charge of his people, leading that resistance from the age of 33.
A handsome, elegant, and well-dressed man with a somber countenance, an effective orator as well as a skilled war strategist, Osceola, fighting from the swampy Everglades, managed to mastermind several battles against the white army. During the course of these battles he killed the U.S. Indian agent, punished anyone found to be colluding in any way with the enemy, and became a strong figurehead for the Seminole resistance. Outwitting the Government troops several times, Osceola was deceived during peace negotiations with the U.S. Government. Despite the so-called “truce,” he was hit over the head, tied up, and imprisoned at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, where he died at the age of just 38 (just over three months after he entered the prison). Something of a celebrity, Osceola’s time in captivity was relatively comfortable since he was housed in the Officers’ Quarters and often received visits from wealthy Americans. His death—and the treachery that was at the root of it—were reported around the world, and it’s fair to say that at the time of his demise he was the world’s most famous Native American. His treatment at the hands of the U.S. Government was considered to be appalling, even at the time.
1801–1871
Born into the Wahpeton Sioux at Swan Lake in Minnesota, John Otherday has his place in history because of the aid he gave, and the friendship he offered, to the white men. Otherday was very keen to adopt the ways of the white men, even dressing like them and adopting Christianity. Unusually, he even married a white woman (it was much more common for white men to marry Native women, rather than the other way around).
During the great Sioux Outbreak of 1862, Otherday managed to guide a party of 62 white people out of danger. He then put on a white suit and went out to fight his own people.
As a reward for his continual support of the white men’s cause, and because of the courage he had shown, Otherday was given the then-huge sum of $2,500. With this money he bought a farm, which he later sold in favor of relocating to a reservation in South Dakota. Here, the Indian agent constructed a house especially for him.
Of the Algonquian family, the Ottawa originally lived around the area of the Great Lakes, and in particular the shores of Lake Huron. Odawa means “trader,” and this woodland tribe of Native Americans were indeed well known for their buying, selling, and bartering. They traded in pelts and furs, tobacco and other flowers and herbs, mats and rugs, cornmeal, and various plant oils, including sunflower oil. However, the people referred to themselves in their own language as “the original people.”
A warlike people, the Ottawa sided with the French settlers against the English, and formed a confederation—named the Three Fires—with the Potawatomi and the Ojibwe. Among the Native American peoples whom they considered to be enemies were the Iroquois, Shawnee, and Miami. Despite their anti-British stance, some of the Ottawa moved into northern Ohio so that they could be part of the lucrative fur trade with the British, who had an agenda beyond mere bartering: they wanted to build their own settlements and fortifications.
Perhaps the most famous of the Ottawa tribe was Pontiac. During the war named after him, Pontiac led an attack on the British in 1763 with the aim of driving them out of the Ottawa ancestral territories. Although Pontiac managed to crush nine out of the eleven British forts situated in the region of the Great Lakes, they failed to destroy Fort Detroit or Fort Pitt. The British army forced Pontiac’s men to make peace.
The Ottawa fought on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War, and when the British were forced to surrender, the Ottawa continued to fight the Americans. They were defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, and a year later had surrendered most of their territory in Ohio. In 1833 the Chicago Treaty saw the rest of the land in Ohio ceded to the U.S. Government and the tribe moved west, settling on a reservation in Oklahoma.
1820–1880
An important leader of the Ute, who was chief at the time when the Ute were being forced into signing away the rights to their land in Colorado during the time of the Gold Rush in the 1870s. The Ute had been strong supporters of the white men, even during their skirmishes with other Native American peoples, such as the Navajo.
Ouray, a multilinguist who understood and could speak both Spanish and English as well as a number of Native American dialects, had a capable grasp of the law, too. He was able to negotiate complex issues in order to protect the rights of his people, and was known for his friendly and helpful attitude toward the white people. Kit Carson regarded Ouray as one of the finest men that he had ever met.
Ouray’s only son had been taken during one of the fights against the Sioux in 1863; the U.S. Government had made great efforts to try to locate and recover the boy. It was rumored that the child had been passed into the hands of the Arapaho; he was never found, but Ouray’s relationship with the whites never faltered. Even he, however, was unable to prevent the unrest among the Ute, who were becoming increasingly angry at the white men, who were seen as greedy for land and gold. There was also a further irritation for the tribe in the form of the Indian agent, Nathan Meeker, whose methods were heavy-handed, especially in his desire to convert the Ute to Christianity; the tribe were quite happy with their traditional beliefs. Their resentment of Meeker meant that the tribe also refused to learn to farm, another aspect of white life that Meeker was keen that the Natives should conform to. Meeker felt it necessary to call upon troops to help him; the troops ignored these requests until Meeker was attacked, physically, by a medicine man named Canella. Then, 150 troops were sent in to try to quell any potential unrest.
Supporters of Canella rode out to head off the column of U.S. Army forces; before anyone could speak, guns were fired; one of the key army leaders, Major Thornborough, was shot, and the situation escalated, resulting in the Ute besieging the Army men for a week. Reinforcements dispelled the Indians, but not without casualties: 13 soldiers were killed and three dozen further men were wounded. When the Army arrived at the Agency, they found the murdered corpse of Meeker; his wife and children had been taken hostage. The situation threatened to become very nasty, but the Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz, chose to try once more to make peace.
Ouray was the man chosen to calm things down. He skillfully managed to have the hostages released, and the Ute rebels were liberated. Thus, a possibly dangerous situation for both the Ute and the Army was defused.
Ouray died at the youthful age of 46.