Monday, July 2, 2012

The Original Americans




Some of the 500 nations of Native Americans and "First Peoples" that made up North America before the advent of the United States, Mexico and Canada.

"The truth is, we have a story worth talking about. We have a history worth celebrating. Long before the first Europeans arrived here, there were some 500 nations already in North America. They blanketed the continent from coast to coast, from Central America to the Arctic. There were tens of millions of people here, speaking over 300 languages. Many of them lived in beautiful cities, among the largest and most advanced in the world...We can't turn back the clock. But we can open our eyes and give the first nations of this land the recognition and respect they deserve: their rightful place in the history of the world."--- Kevin Costner (actor/director, "Dances With Wolves"--1991 )

57 comments:

  1. I am currently reading "Sign Talker" by James Alexander Thoms and I recommend it and plan to read more by this author. It is about The Lewis and Clark Expedition and written from the point of view of the Native American Scout that was brought along to catch their food and interpret with sign language between Lewis and Clark and the Native tribes. Thom lives in Southern Indiana and is an ex marine who is married to a Cherokee woman. He has written several books. Another one of his I am interested in reading is "Follow the River".

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  2. Sounds very interesting Mary Ellen. I'll look out for that author.

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  3. I visited a Nez Perce Indian Reservation and was at their camp where they have games and set up their teepees. I had a friend that used to be married to a nez perce indian and he took me to their camp and showed me around. This was in Idaho. Very nice people.

    When I moved here to Glide, I found arrowheads and remnants of them thruout our land along the creek. I think its the cow creek or Umpqua indians that lived here.
    http://www.southernoregon.com/glide-idleyld/index.html

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  4. Yes Marty, like many tribes this one had quite a tragic past with the US government from 1873-1877 when they fought a war against the encrouching forces to try and stay on their land in Idaho and Oregon.

    Chief Joseph, famous for his "I will fight no more forever" message, was more of a conciliator than some of the other Nez Perce chiefs. He didn't want a war with the whites, but he got one when gold was discovered on their land and other Nez Perce chiefs fought the white miners.

    Eventually superior numbers of the US Army forced him to try and take 250 of his followers to Canada and join up with other tribes up there. Thirty miles from the border he and his people were stopped by the cavalry, lack of food and the freezing tempratures in upper Montana. Their trek had covered 1500 miles! (Source : Webster American Biographies).

    Thanks for the link. That's a beautiful area.

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  5. This is interesting, I haven't seen a map showing native American territories before.

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  6. There seems to be a lot of fighting going on. Mating season?

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  7. Fabulous picture. I love all the detail in her costume.

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  8. I visited Mi'kmaq (i.e. Micmac) settlements in eastern Canada. They live in straightened circumstances and it struck me at the time that they are still paying the price for backing the wrong colonial power (France) in the Maritimes of 18th century European colonialism.

    These images you have posted should be a reminder to us all that imperialism, colonialism and genocide will come back to haunt us in the end.

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  9. It's one of the best maps I've come across Iri.

    As a school kid more than a few years back, we studied how the Native-Americans of California lived and the impact Spanish and Anglo cultures had on them. Especially the Ohlone peoples who fished and hunted around San Francsico Bay for centuries. They were a mainly peaceful group that engaged in trade among their neighbors.

    I think we were the first generation of kids in Cailfornia state schools to receive a balanced view of the negative impacts of European settlements on indigenous peoples in the Far West.

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  10. There appears to be a bit of a "mixer" (dance) going on. The "bloke" buffalo are showing off as usual...lol.

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  11. It's one of my favorite pictures of Northwest native peoples, Iri Ani.

    "Jennie" as the whites called her was one of the "indians" who managed to stay in her native area after many of her tribe were forcibly relocated to the Grand Ronde Reservation in 1856. I've touched on this in earlier blogs, but this is a good summation and web-site devoted to the Cow Creek (Umpqua) peoples of the southern part of the old Oregon Territory.

    ************

    http://www.cowcreek.com/government-history
    "Efforts were made to remove the Cow Creeks from the area to reservations in northern Oregon. Indian people were promised a wonderful life on the reservation. A young boy was sent to one of the relocation reservations to assess the condition of reservation life. He traveled during the night to avoid being captured. Once he arrived at the reservation, he was terrified by what he saw. Conditions on the reservation were deplorable. His first sight was of an infant sucking on its dead mother’s breast.



    "Given the young scout’s information, most of the Cow Creeks resisted relocation efforts. In response to their deft avoidance of relocation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent exterminators to Oregon for the purpose of killing the Cow Creek people. The Cow Creeks remained in seclusion while maintaining their way of life. Eventually, many Cow Creek people married pioneers, miners and fur traders in the area. Names familiar to the south county area were Dumont, LaChance, Rainville, Pariseau, Rondeau and Thomason. Many of these names are still prevalent in the Cow Creek Tribe."

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  12. That must have been a great trip--I hope to take a trip to the northeast USA and see some the Maritime Provinces of Canada someday soon.

    Yes, I imagine the French settlers were generally more interested in cooperation with tribes like the Micmacs.

    Later on, to the south of Canada, many tribes suffered when they backed the British cause in the Americans Revolution and, then again, when forces like those under the great native military leader Tecumseh forged an alliance with the British---only to be abandoned by the British generals when it was more conveinent to make peace with the Americans.

    Haunting is just the right term, AA. Well put. Our own collective history in North America towards people like the Mirmacs is filled with two-faced policies that cannot be swept under the rug: shabby, back-stabbing and murderous intentions that make a mockery of any moral high ground our leaders might try and take against other nations.

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  13. Wow, that really is an impressive colectioon books he has written and reviews he has garnered, Mary Ellen. It's clear to me I have to get a historical novel or two at least of Mr. Thom and delve in.

    Thanks.

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  14. I really like this picture Doug, I wonder who took it?...and where they were going and why?....They seem to have a lot of baggage with them, what a fascinating shot it is.

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  15. They look like the are auditioning for a neolithic cave painting to me and falling out about it.

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  16. I can relate with this one Doug. Indeed...

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  17. This is entirely new history to me Doug. I never realized the history of the native people in your state. Bravo.

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  18. For some reason I know this face in history....

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  19. Tremendous pictures of native american history Douglas.

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  20. I wish I could give you more background on the women themselves here, AA. The photo was taken by Edward Curtis in 1903, probably in the Arizona Territory. Here's a link to Curtis' series: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/american-indians/apache-pictures.htm

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  21. lol...yes, even then it was hard to break into show business unless you knew somebody, AA.

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  22. Things do look rather over-competitive, Jack. :-)

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  23. I should have put up more biographical information with this picture, Jack. This is Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians of Oregon and Idaho. Here's a bit on his history.

    Chief Joseph, famous for his "I will fight no more forever" message, was more of a conciliator than some of the other Nez Perce chiefs. He didn't want a war with the whites, but he got one when gold was discovered on their land and other Nez Perce chiefs fought the white miners.

    Eventually superior numbers of the US Army forced him to try and take 250 of his followers to Canada and join up with other tribes up there. Thirty miles from the border he and his people were stopped by the cavalry, lack of food and the freezing tempratures in upper Montana. Their trek had covered 1500 miles! (Source : Webster American Biographies).

    He was born about 1840 and lived as a chief of his people until 1907.

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  24. Thanks Jack.

    It's a very small part of the sad story of these people, but many survived somehow and came back to their land. I can't imagine myself what they went through.

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  25. Most interesting, I believe I have read on him.

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  26. I'm glad you stopped by, Jack. Thanks for your comments.

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  27. That's good that you were getting a decently balanced view of the Native Americans in school. We actually were not getting a true education about our first nation people (Maori) here when I was at school. What we got was a lot of misinformation, in fact they reckon that anyone who was in our school system prior to the eighties got a very skewed eurocentric view. So we have had to unlearn stuff.

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  28. Yes I remember your previous posts. And oh heck, I just got such a mental picture of the infant on his/hers deceased mother's breasts. Some things are just so wrong.

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  29. When I first looked at this picture I thought he looked like Johnny Cash.

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  30. I was just lucky to have some good teachers, Iri Ani.

    A lot of the advancements in state school in California at least came out of the post-WWII generation who were inspired by the 1960's idealism of the New Frontier and the more radical Free Speech movements in places like the University of California at Berkeley.


    Civil Rights, Women's Rights and long-overdue atttention to Native American peoples were all drawing big news by the 60s and early 70's .

    The school districts got the message even if the textbooks were still behind the times a bit. (Hence the luck in my having good teachers more often than not.)

    I had a teacher (Mrs. Hogg), for instance, who supported a student committee's suggestion that our Castro Junior High School* Yearbook be dedicated to all Native peoples.

    *The school was named for a teacher named Elvira Castro by the way, not Fidel. :-)

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  31. LOL!

    I don't know if Chief Joseph could have sung "I Walk the Line" as well as "The Man in Black" , but I wouldn't have put anything past him.

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  32. Yes, that is one inhumane detail that stays with one--among many others.

    It was but one episode in a shameful period in the annals of early contact between settlers and indigenous people who wanted only to live on the land they had known as their home.

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  33. Wouldn't that be 'A Boy Named Sioux' Doug?

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  34. If that how they dispose of the corpses of plain Indians what do they do with the good lookin' ones Doug?

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  35. When he comes home from school I wonder if he takes all that gear off and pops on a blazer and straw boater to race around the garden playing his favourite game Cowboys and English Public-School Toffs....behind the rockery you can here a little voice saying 'oh...you ghastly beasts I'll tell Matron of you if you don't desist forthwith' ...just a thought Doug

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  36. Thanks for that link Doug, amazing pictures, I especially liked the Grass House but they are all very interesting

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  37. LOL, AA, and "Ouch, why didn't I think of that?"

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  38. lol...Excellent question, AA. It appears the really good looking ones were given a party attended by all the "smart" people, then sent by dogcart to the West Coast to Los Angeles and the Happy Hunting Ground Boneyard.

    It was later taken over by the whites and the name was changed to Forest Lawn Cemetary, which one of Hollywood's most famous paleface citizens, Humphrey Bogart, once called "Disneyland for Stiffs".

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  39. The little "brave" does look like a budding public school prefect, AA. I can see his countenance was such I'm sure the little snot's parents put him down for Eton or Harrow the day he was born.

    That was very funny, AA.

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  40. Thanks AA. Glad I could find the link. I was very impressed by Curtis's work and the basic dignity of the people despite the dire straits.

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  41. Oh good it wasn't just me then :P

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  42. lol what a wonderful description...I bet Tonto is in there, a fine looking Indian he was Doug, no doubt about that...

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  43. I always liked the Blackfoot best when I was a kid, I liked their name....

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  44. Me too.


    Their tribal name reminds me of a New Zealand Rugby team.

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  45. One thing about Bogart: he was as good with a quip as he was handling a "gat" on a film soundstage.

    As for Jay Silverheels--who indeed was the celebrated and handsome "Tonto" of many a Saturday afternoon tv adventure--he was actually born in Ontario Canada at the Six Nations Reservation. A star athlete in Lacrosse and other sports, he racked up a lot of film and television credits but was of course typecast forever as the Lone Ranger's faithful sidekick.

    While Mr. Silverheels worked sporadically after the show and the movies with the Masked Man ended, he also used this familairity to his advantage in promoting greater awareness of the plight of Native People.

    He died at 68 in Woodland Hills California, near Los Angeles, in 1980. Eschewing Forest Lawn for some reason, his ashes were scatterd over the Six Nations land back in Ontario.

    I'm not sure about his horse's final resting place.

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  46. lol it does a bit. Or even the wheelblacks, hehe

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  47. I wouldn't want any of my lads* playing a match against either "team", Iri Ani.

    *If I was captain of a squad of rugby players that is. :-)

    There was a movie called "Invictus" Clint Eastwood directed with Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. In one scene, they showed the NZ "All-Blacks" doing a native war dance at mid-field before the game. Very intimidating

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  48. Oh yes, the "war dance" is called a Haka. That particular Haka is Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka Ora! Ka Ora! (It is Death! It is Death! It is Life! It is Life!). Ka Mate is a precolonial traditional chant from a famous warlike chief Te Rauparaha. I posted a blog on that Haka, way back, here is the link if you are interested.

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