Our native traditions 2013

our native

traditions

2013

Table of contents: Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes ...............................4-6 Ioway Tribe ......................... 7 Kialegee Tribe ................ 8-9 Seminole Nation ....... 10-13 Sac & Fox Nation ..... 14-17 Citizen Potawatomi Nation . ...................... 18-22 Choctaw Nation ........ 24-25 Kickapoo Tribe .......... 26-27 Caddo Nation ............ 28-31

This magazine is published

by The Shawnee News-Star in cooperation with The Tribal Nations of Caddo, Cheyenne & Arapaho, Choctaw, Ioway, Kialegee, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Sac & Fox, and Seminole.

PUBLISHER Brian Blansett MARKETING Christina Walker PHOTOGRAPHERS Ed Blochowiak, Tribal Nations & Various Tribal Members GRAPHIC ARTIST Reita Easley

ŠCopyright 2013 GateHouse Media, LLC, 215 N. Bell St., P.O. Box 1688, Shawnee, OK 74802-1688, (405) 273-4200. All rights reserved. No portion of this magazine may be reproduced in whole or in part without written consent from the publisher.

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2013 OUR NATIVE TRADITIONS

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Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Historical Background

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are two separate American Indian tribes federally recognized as one tribal government. While the two Tribes have been administratively joined together by the U.S. Government since the nineteenth century, each tribe maintains a distinct culture and language. The tribal constitution mandates eligible tribal members to possess at least 1/4 Cheyenne or Arapaho blood quantum.

The Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians are of Algonquian linguistic stock representing the western most groups of the large Algonquian family that spread pre-historically over the northern and eastern woodlands of the United States.

The facts of their wandering have been lost in the shadows of pre-history, but the earliest known evidence began around the year 1600. The Arapaho were located east of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, bordering the western end of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The Cheyenne were situated along the east bank of the Mississippi River in what is now southeastern Minnesota. Each tribe lived in permanent, bark or earth covered lodges. Their lives were a mix of hunting and farming, raising crops of corn, beans and squash.

The first known migration in what was to become a relentless “moving about� took place around 1675, with both groups moving westward into the Dakota country. The Arapaho relocated along the headwaters of the Missouri River, while the Cheyenne settled in the same general area of North Dakota. Rather quickly, another move occurred during the early 1700s, further west, but south into the Black Hills of South Dakota. As late as 1724, these uprooted farmers still used dog travois to haul their goods. Even their enemy, the Sioux, still traveled by canoe. By 1770, the Chippewas became sufficiently armed and powerful enough to destroy the main Cheyenne settlement in North Dakota. By 1796, the date which marks the definite beginning of the Plains culture, the Sioux acquired horses. Not too long after, the smallpox epidemic of 1800 eliminated nearly one-half of the Cheyenne Tribe.

In 1804, Lewis and Clark reported some Cheyenne still residing in the Black Hills area. However, another migration was imminent, taking the tribe south to the upper branches of the Platte River in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The first treaty signed by Cheyenne chiefs on behalf of the tribe took place at a gathering in Montana in 1825 on the Teton River. Around 1835, a portion of the tribe separated itself from the main body to become known as the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho, settling along the Arkansas River in Colorado. It is this group that currently resides in

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several of the northwestern counties of Oklahoma.

The year of 1851 marked the final separation of the Southern Cheyenne from the main body, subsequently known as the Northern Cheyenne. As a result of the westward expansion of the whites, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho ceded all of their land claims in Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming to the United States on February 18, 1861 at Fort Wise, Kansas. The United States in turn was to provide a reservation for them on a branch of the Arkansas River in Colorado. The Arapaho tribe was assigned to the eastern portion of the reservation, whereas the Cheyenne tribe was given the western portion. However, the agreement was never consummated.

During the fall of 1863, the whites became alarmed by inflammatory rumors of a general Indian uprising. The

political feelings of Colorado settlers, combined with a highly anti-Indian attitude, prevailed and culminated in the famous attack by white settlers on the Cheyenne Indian encampment under Chief Black Kettle. Many Cheyenne, mostly women and children, were killed during this event.

The event is referred to as the “Sand Creek Massacre.”

Subsequent to the Sand Creek Massacre, the U.S. Government directed all Indians to report immediately to designated military posts. Part of the Arapaho and part of the Cheyenne responded and came in to re-express their desire for peace. As a result, a commission was sent out early in 1865 to meet with them. An agreement was entered into and signed whereby the Cheyenne and Arapaho agreed to relinquish the reservation in southeastern Colorado, which they never occupied, and accept in place thereof a reservation further south in Kansas and Indian Territory. The agreement was formalized under the Medicine Lodge Treaty of October 28, 1867, establishing a reservation which bounded on the north by the Kansas state line and on the east, south and west by the Arkansas and Cimarron River. After moving to this reservation, the described tract was found to be unsuitable for their needs, and many were on the warpath again. Then, by proclamation issued August 10, 1869, President Grant approved the transfer of their original reserva-

tion to the present day western Oklahoma location. The new reservation area was bounded on the east by the 98th degree of west longitude, north by a line contained in an 1886 treaty with the Creek Nation, west by the 100th degree of west longitude, and south by the north line of the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation as established by the 1867 Treaty, and the Washita River. It was this latter area which the Cheyenne and Arapaho occupied as a reservation held in common from 1869 to 1890.

On November 27, 1868, Colonel Custer and his troops ruthlessly attacked one of the Cheyenne villages. Black Kettle was killed and his camp destroyed in one of the bloodiest massacres that occurred in Oklahoma, “The Battle of the Washita.” History refers to this event as a “battle,” however, the soldiers attacked the Cheyenne village while they slept, leaving the Cheyenne unable to defend themselves. Bitterness engendered by this attack was a strong factor in Custer being defeated by Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn, which cost him his life.

In 1870, the first Cheyenne and Arapaho agency was established in Darlington, which is about two miles north of El Reno, Oklahoma. It wasn’t until 1875, five years after the first Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency was established that the Cheyenne retaliation came to an end from a military 2013 OUR NATIVE TRADITIONS 5

point of view. During all these troubled years, the Arapaho generally went out of their way to remain at peace in spite of their own great suffering.

The “Jerome Agreement� of 1890 approved by Act of Congress on March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. 989) provided, in part, for the dissolution of the Reservation and the relinquishment by the Cheyenne-Arapahos of all the lands embraced within the exterior boundaries of said reservation except for allotments to individual Indians and reserves for military, agency, school, school-farms, religious or other public uses.

By letter dated March 30, 1892, M.D. Tackett, United States Special Agent in charge of Cheyenne allotments pursuant to the Act of Congress of March 3, 1891 recommended to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that a schedule of individual allotments and certain reserved areas to be used for schools and agency uses be approved, all of which were legally described in the schedule of allotment. Subsequently, the Secretary of Interior on April 12, 1892, approved the schedule of allotments and reserve area recommendations of Mr. Tackett. From that date, titles to the Agency/School lands

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were in the name of the United States of America held in trust for the use and benefit of the Cheyenne and Arapaho.

In 1984, after the closure of Concho Indian School, the school land was transferred to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in trust. The buildings and water plant were transferred to the Tribes shortly thereafter.

In 1890, as a result of the desire for more land by the white settlers, an Agreement was formalized whereby each Indian was to retain only 160 acres and the excess lands opened to whites. The Cheyenne and Arapaho country was opened for white settlement on April 19, 1892.

In 1937, the Cheyenne and Arapaho organized a government for their common welfare and adopted a Constitution and By-Laws pursuant to the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. Decisions and policies once made by chiefs were enacted in a representative committee of eight (8) members elected for four (4) year terms, on a staggered two (2) year basis.

History of the

Ioway The Iowa, or Ioway, lived for the majority of its recorded history in what is now the state of Iowa. The Iowas call themselves the Bah-Kho-Je which means grey snow, probably derived from the fact that during the winter months their dwellings looked grey, as they were covered with firesmoked snow. The name Iowa is a French term for the tribe and has an unknown connection with ‘marrow.’ Their language is a Chiwere dialect of the Sioux language.

The Iowas began as a Woodland culture, but because of their migration to the south and west, they began to adopt elements of the Plains culture, thus culminating in the mixture of the two.

The Iowa Nation was probably indigenous to the Great Lakes areas and part of the Winnebago Nation. At some point a portion moved southward, where they separated again. The portion which stayed closest to the Mississippi River became the Iowa; the remainder became the Otoe and Missouria.

The Iowa Tribe relocated many times during its history; the mouth of the Rock River in present Illinois, the Root River in present Iowa, the Red Pipestone Quarry in southwestern Minnesota, and the Spirit Lake/Lake Okiboji area of what is now Iowa. For many years they maintained a village near Council Bluffs, Iowa, abandoning it because of aggression by

the Sioux and a desire to locate closer to the French traders. Thereafter, the Iowa lived primarily near the Des Moines River on the Chariton/Grand River Basin.

With the encroachment of white settlers into western lands, the Iowa Tribe Ceded their lands in 1824 and were given two years in which to vacate. Additional lands were ceded in 1836 and 1838, and the Tribe was removed to an area near the Kansas-Nebraska border. The Iowas, once a proud nation whose native lands encompassed an area of the Missouri and Mississippi River Valleys in what is presently Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, now found themselves with a strip of land ten miles wide and twenty miles long.

Subsequent treaties would find this land even further reduced.

Dissatisfaction with their conditions and treatment resulted in a number of Iowa tribal members leaving the KansasNebraska reserve in 1878 and moving to Indian Territory (Oklahoma). In 1883 an Iowa reservation was created there, but Iowas who wished to remain on the land in the north were allowed to do so. Today the two are recognized as separate entities. The Northern Iowa are headquartered in White Cloud, Kansas, while the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma has offices in Perkins, Oklahoma.

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Kialegee

Tribal Town (Etvlwv) Kialegee Tribal Town is one of the 44 tribal towns known in history as the Creek Confederacy of Alabama and Georgia. As with the clan system, the tribal town is matrilineal society, which means clan and town association come from the mother’s side. Along with documented history, oral historian and Elder Jim Wesley stated that Kialegee was derived from the Mvskoke word “eka-lace”. The tribal town warriors were known to cut off the heads of their enemies and throw the heads to the side of the enemy’s body. There are variations of the name in many documents such as kialigee and kealedji. Oral History states that Kialegee people had their own dialect of the Mvskoke language at one time, but has been lost over the years.

The Kialegee descend from the mound-building agrarian people from what is now southeast United States.

They believed that God spoke to the ancestors through a sacred fire. The fire became a symbol that linked the tribal town to God and maintain that fire was the religious core of Kialegee. The original fire was given to Tvkvpvtce, the Mother Etvlwv (Town). The Etvlwv gave birth to the Kialegee fire and several other Upper Creek Etvlwvs. In the 1950’s the Kialegee ceremonial ground was still active until it was put to rest in the same era. The former keeper of the grounds and fire passed away and his son is still living in the area where the fire was originally (Wesley, 1995). Before the removal to Indian Territory, Kialegee was located along the Tallapoosa River in Alabama. Due to the location of Kialegee, the town was considered an Upper Creek town of the Creek Confederacy. Kialegee joined the Redstick warriors in the Battle of Horsebend of the Redstick War of , which led to the defeat and eventual removal of Kialegee and its allies. After the Indian Removal Act of 1827 was passed, Kialegee was forcefully removed to Indian Territory, and the grounds and fire were relocated to Hanna, OK. After the Dawes act was passed with allotments, many Kialegee moved to the Wetumka area.

Oral history states that at one time there was an attempt to relocate the fire to an area in Henryetta, OK and in this attempt, the fire leapt out of where it was being carried and went back to the original grounds in Hanna.

Cheea Harjo was the first Kialegee Mekko (King) to sign a treaty of peace with the U.S government on June 26th, 1796. To recognize this occasion, the first Kialegee Nettv (day) celebration was initiated on June 26, 1996 and is celebrated yearly. Mekkos of Kialegee were also present at the signing of the treaties of 1814, 1818, 1825, 1826 and

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other treaties.

Kialegee is one of only three tribal towns that received federal recognition when the membership voted to approve the constitution and By-laws on June 12, 1941 and the Corporate Charter on September 17th, 1942. It was organized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of Congress in 1936, also known as the Thomas-Rogers act. Oral history states that Roley Canard of Thlopthlocco Tribal Town was instrumental in assisting the tribal town with instructions from Washington on the hearings regarding federal recognition (Wesley, 1995). Recently, amendments to the constitution have been developed. These amendments are under review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and await approval by the tribal town membership.

Kialegee consists of an estimated count of 450 members.

To be a member of the Kialegee Tribal Town, a member has to be ½ to full blood creek and be matrilineal descendent of a Kialegee Tribal Town Member. All matrilineal descendants are automatically enrolled after approval from the enrollment board and doesn’t require approval of the tribal town membership. According to the Constitution, there is also a section that a person can be admitted into the tribal town if the father is Kialegee. Adopted Members must be full blood Indian and married. Admitted and adopted members do require the approval of the town membership at their regular scheduled membership meeting.

The Kialegee Tribal Town seal was designed on a computer with direction from Jim Wesley.

The Eagle stands for strength and future of the tribal town. The fire is the symbolic of the original fire of the ceremonial ground from which the Kialegee have identity. The mound house on the bottom, represent the mound building culture from which the Kialegee trace their descendancy to Georgia and Alabama. The cross is symbolic of the presence of Christianity adopted by the members of the town. The ballsticks divide the categories into four areas and are representative of the four directions of the ceremonial grounds as well as the game of peaceful conflict resolutions between other towns, a symbolism of peaceful aggressive problem solving. The year 1796 is the year that the first Kialegee Mekko signed a treaty with the United States. Wesley (1995)

The Constitution provides for a Business committee so there is over-site of the tribal town’s finances and directives. The Business Committee is governed by a Mekko, 1st Warrior, 2nd Warrior, Secretary and Treasurer, who are elected by the membership. The advisory board, which is part of the Business committee, is appointed by the five elected officers. The officer’s term is two years and every second year in June an election is held. The Tribal Town consists of a few other committees, such as the Education, Health Board, Economic development, and Building/facilities committee. Each one has their own by-laws and goals toward the advancement of Kialegee Tribal Town.

Oklahoma in transporting DHS clientele to various locations.

The Largest portion of Kialegee members belong to the Baptist denomination and attend the traditional churches where mvskoke singing and preaching is still a part of their way of life. Many of the elders still are mvskoke speakers and teach within the homes, of clans, traditional ways, the ancestors who have accomplished or participated in history that Kialegees can be proud of.

The Kialegee Tribal Town was able to purchase land and three buildings in 1997, in Wetumka, OK. Two were used to house programs and one for economic development for the tribe. Later on, construction was also completed on two additional buildings that are located on the property, the tribal courthouse and the Family Life center. A new administration office building was built in 2012 and now houses all the programs except the Transportation program. Kialegee Tribal Town receives grants and funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, Indian Roads Program, Aid to Tribal Government, Child Care development Fund, Indian Child Welfare, HUD, Promoting Safe and Stable Families, LIHEAP and a few other smaller grants that service the area and members. The Kialegee Transportation program has a contract with the State of OUR NATIVE TRADITIONS

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The History

and Culture of The

Seminole Nation of Oklahoma

The history of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma began when Spain first occupied the peninsula known as Florida. When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in 1565, the first permanent settlement in Florida after at least 60 years of sporadic Spanish visitation, he discovered complex cultures sustained by hunting, fishing, farming and raising stock. Tribes from three different basic language groups, the Timuquan, Calusan and Muskhogean occupied Florida and lived in small and well-organized villages.

Seminole County Although today the term Seminole is used, this name originated due to a European misnomer, which categorized a diverse group of autonomous tribes together under the name Seminole.

The Spanish first recognized the indomitable self-preservation of the speakers of the “core language” Mvskoke, and called them cimarrones, or “free people” (Seminole).

Translated through several languages to English, this term came to apply to all of Florida’s initial inhabitants, and their neighbors who later fled to join them when deprived of their own homelands.

The Seminoles absorbed remnants of other Florida tribes into their own. The Oconee were the original “Seminole,” and later included the Hecete, Eufaula, Mikasuki, Horrewahle, Talahassee, Chiaha, and Appalachicola.

Additionally, through intermarriage, traditional cultural adoption practices and treaty obligations, runaway and “freed” slaves were absorbed also. The term “cimarrones” spoken by the Spanish was initially transliterated by the Creek as “semvlon.” “ Semvlon” eventually morphed into “Semvnole” (pronounced sem-uh-no-lee by native speakers even today) and thus we have the term that would describe the various Indian tribes in the State of Florida.

Although a relatively large contingency of Seminole were able to hold out in the Florida Everglades during the Indian Removal Era and Seminole Wars, the majority were relocated to Indian Territory along with the other “Five Tribes” of the southeast.

Today the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is located in Seminole County, Oklahoma. The entire county of Seminole is a portion of the original Seminole Nation jurisdiction, and covers approximately 633 square miles. The county is a checkerboard of tribal trust property, Indian allotments, restricted Indian lands, and dependent Indian communities.

Native Americans make up 22% of the population of Seminole County.

According to the Seminole Nation Tribal Enrollment Office, the total enrollment of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is approximately 19,000 members.

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The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized tribal nation with a government anchored by a band system –comprised of 12 traditional bands (Ceyvha, Eufaula, Fushutchee, Hecete, Hvteyievkle, Mekusukey, Nurcup Harjo, Ocese, Rewalks, Tallahassee, Tom Palmer and Tusekia Harjo) and two freedman bands (Bruner and Dosar Barkus).

Clan Law In ancient times the people aligned themselves with certain animal and other supernatural spirits to assist them in enduring a hardship they were experiencing. Upon doing so, a vow was made promising a commitment by the individuals associated with their particular being to remain in association from that point forward. For the majority of Seminole people, this clan association had been maintained into modern times.

Clan Law and kinship are highly revered and held in great respect within the spiritual and ceremonial world among the Seminole people. Clan law traditionally governs every aspect of tribal life, from the spiritual to the social.

Clans are matrilineal as they are inherited through one’s mother. If a person’s mother is of the Wotkvlke or raccoon clan, and the father is of the Hulpvivlke or alligator clan, then said person would be of the raccoon clan. However, this person would also be related to the alligator clan, as this is what the person’s father was. In turn, all other raccoon clan people and alligator clan people would be said to be that person’s relations, and would be referred to as aunts and uncles, if the age of a fellow clansman was relative to that of the mother and father, or brothers and sister if the age of the clansman was relative to that of the child him/herself.

Historically, the Seminole based the ability to take a spouse on clan relationships. There is never to be intermarriage of clans.

Historically, many marriages were arranged according to

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clan strength, or need for renewing life into a dormant clan.

Although there are various creation stories that relate the hierarchy of the various clans, each clan holds essential qualities that pertained to a specific job or position held in the ceremonial ground, was well as at home. Each clan had a special talent, was well as a balance of weaknesses for various aspects of the spiritual world.

Ceremonialism For Seminole people who continue to observe pre-Christian ceremonial practices, life revolves around activities at the “ceremonial or stomp grounds. “In modern times these are religious centers where ceremonial dances, dinners and ball games take place mainly during weekends throughout the spring, summer and early fall months.

Originally the individual tribes or etvlwv, as they are termed in the language, that would come to comprise the confederacy known as the Seminole Nation would physically organize themselves around the ceremonial ring. Seminole ceremonialism guided every aspect of Seminole life. Although not as complete, ceremonial teachings still continue to guide those who actively participate in modern times.

Today the “ceremonial cycle” consists of four or five dances throughout the “dance season” of which Green Corn or Posketv-rakko (Big fast) is the most important. Depending on the ceremonial ground, Green Corn can last from four days (Thursday – Sunday) to seven days (Sunday –Sunday). During Green Corn, was well as other ceremonies, the participating members must commit themselves to dancing, fasting, medicine taking, work and other activities that are to be performed. The purifying herbal medicine is accompanied by “scratching” of the participants’ bodies. Generally administered to the arms and legs, but not limited to these areas, of the participants, “Scratching” is performed to alleviate spiritual and medical ailments by strengthening the individual.

Green Corn can be likened to the combined equivalent of the holidays of Thanksgiving, Easter and New Years.

missionaries, and to encourage participation, layouts, beliefs, and customs of the ceremonial grounds exist within aspects of Indian churches. Church meeting are held every four Sundays and referred to in the community as “Fourth Sunday.”

Church meetings are all day services with multiple visiting preachers who conduct sermons.

Traditional Seminole church hymns are sung before, during and after sermons. Songbooks, bibles, and dictionaries in the language were also documented at this time and are used today.

The Muskoke language was used pervasively within the churches until the late 1950s, when English began to be used intermittently. Today, sermons are conducted both in English and the Muskoke language.

During Green Corn strained relationships are to be reconciled and the wrongs that occurred during the year are to be forgiven. The nighttime songs include such things as recognition of tribal ancestors, spiritual entities, historical events, thanksgiving and well wishing or prayers for the coming year. Daybreak on Sunday marks the completion of the Green Corn ceremony and the beginning of the new year for the ground members.

Seminole Churches The Seminole Nation also has approximately twenty churches, referred to as Indian churches, active within the community. These churches were founded in the late 1800s by

WWW.SNO-NSN.GOV OUR NATIVE TRADITIONS

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SAC & FOX NATION

The Sac and Fox arrived in Indian Territory in what is now the State of Oklahoma in November of 1869. Payne, Lincoln, and Pottawatomie counties in Oklahoma are under Sac and Fox jurisdiction.

The Sauk and the Fox were two distinct but related tribes who allied in the 1700s. The Sac and Fox are Algonquin and are a Woodland tribe who originally came from Canada. Former homelands include the states of New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska, with presence in Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

The Sac and Fox are now divided among three individual sovereign nations: the Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma (Sauk), the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa (Fox), and the Sac and Fox Nation of the Missouri in Kansas (Sauk).

Some Sac and Fox protested the validity of the Treaty of 1804, which later was one of the factors of the Black Hawk conflict in 1832. Black Hawk was a war leader who said the signatories of the Treaty of 1804 did not have the authority to sign treaties, and he gave no credence to the terms of that treaty.

He later agreed to move from Rock Island, Illinois, which had been the home of the Sauk for over a century, to what is now Iowa with the agreement from the American government that it would provide food for the tribe since crops and fields had been left behind in Rock Island. The American government failed to comply, so Black Hawk, followed by women, children, and elders, returned to Rock Island for the food. This was not an act of war although Black Hawk and his warriors had to employ military tactics to divert the attention of the pursuing army and militia away from his people. A captain in the Illinois militia was a man named Abraham Lincoln, serving in what would be his only military experience.

The Sac and Fox of the Mississippi (River) shared a reservation in the southern part of Kansas until 1857 when the Fox sold all their belongings to purchase land in Iowa and established a settlement there. The Sauk of the Mississippi moved to Indian Territory after the Civil War. The Sauk of the Missouri remained on their separate reservation in the

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northern part of Kansas.

In 1887, only eighteen years after the Sac and Fox came to Indian Territory and were still going on buffalo hunts and war parties, Jim Thorpe was born. Jim Thorpe won the Pentathlon and Decathlon in the 1912 Olympics, where the King of Sweden called him the Greatest Athlete in the World. Native people did not have citizenship in the United States until 1924, so when Jim Thorpe won his medals in 1912 he was a citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation but was not an American citizen.

Jim Thorpe attended the Sac and Fox Agency’s boarding school, located on the tribal grounds south Grey Eyes of what is now Stroud, Smithsonian Institution Oklahoma. The school no longer remains and the land now hosts the Sac and Fox Nation tribal headquarters.

The tribal flag honors Black Hawk and Jim Thorpe and recognizes all the countries with whom the tribe allied: the United States, Britain, Spain, and France .

The Sac and Fox Nation is a nation within a nation. The United States of America, in accordance with the Constitution of the United States and reaffirmed by recent presidents, has a government-to-government relationship with tribes.

The government of the tribe used to be conducted by tribal councils of either peace chiefs or war chiefs, depending on whether the tribe was at war or in peace.

Today our government consists of a Business Committee elected by the tribal membership. The Business Committee is comprised of a Principal Chief, Second Chief, Secretary, Treasurer, and Committeeperson.

The Sac and Fox Nation retains its tribal identity through

some tribal members’ adherence to traditional beliefs and practices, the protection of its burial and sacred sites and homelands, and the preservation of its language.

Traditional tribal members still follow a clan system governed by hereditary clan chiefs. Clans include and have included the Fish, Thunder, Wolf, Bear, Fox, Deer, Bear Potato, Snow, Elk, Ocean, Peace, Warrior, and Beaver.

Clan membership is patrilineal, and babies generally receive their “Indian names” in the spring after their birth.

Birth order also determines which social group to which the baby belongs, the Oskush or the Kisko. The two societies engaged in friendly rivalries during social activities.

The Sac and Fox Nation now numbers approximately 4000 enrolled tribal members.

More information can be obtained through the Sac and Fox Nation website: www.sacandfoxnation-nsn.gov. Contact information is: Sac and Fox Nation, 920883 S. Hwy 99 Bldg A, Stroud, Oklahoma 74079. Telephone: (918) 968-3526.

THE MANY HOMES WE ONCE HAD Northeastern Missouri was once part of the huge Homeland of the historically-affiliated Sac/Sauk (“People of the Yellow Earth”) and Fox/Meskwaki (“People of the Red Earth”) Indians.

Since the 1600s, the Sac and Fox established homes across mid-America, living along the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and along both banks of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. The currents of those waters symbolize movement and change for a people who, like great lakes and grand rivers, are timeless.

THE MANY HOMES WE HAVE TODAY For most of thre 19th century, various groupings of Sac and Fox people moved many times, trying always to find new homelands where they could be left alone and find peace.

Today, they live on three officially recognized homelands—one in Iowa, one in Kansas, and one in Oklahoma.

Mark Duncan’s Camp at the Sac and Fox Pow Wow, no date Less Bass Collection, Sac and Fox Nation of OK

Sac and Fox Bark House

Babeshikit and Pa-ship-aho, no date

National Museum of the American Indian - Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

Delphine Foreman Making Fry Bread, 1976 Sac and Fox News

Bark Lodge belonging to John Slick, Tama, Iowa

National Museum of the American Indian - Smithsonian Institution

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The Story of the Twelve Boys Oral history by Francis (Chilbe) Scott and Grover Foster Edited by Henrietta Massey and Sandra Massey

AT THE BEGINNING OF TIME ...

...when the Sac and Fox people came from the East they saw only the Sun shining on a barren land. There were no mountains, no water, no trees, no rock, no animals, no birds, no humans, nothing but the flat ground. The people wondered how they were to survive in such a place without food, water, or shelter.

In one of the families were twelve brothers. The Twelve Boys set out to find food and water and to discover what might be found out in the land. They walked for many miles and days but found nothing.

Then one day they encountered an elderly man and woman sitting beside their path. The old couple asked each of the boys what he sought and what he desired.

Each boy said he wanted to serve his people.

1. The first boy said, “I want to bring my people the gift of water, that they may continue to survive.”

“You can serve your people as you want,” said the old couple.

“You can sacrifice your physical life here, and in return you will receive life everlasting as the Water spirit. Water is life. All living beings are dependent on water to sustain life. All natural water ways serve as the lifeline of his Grandmother Earth.”

The first boy accepted. “It will be an honor to serve my people as the Water Spirit.”

smoke tobacco but will keep none of it for Himself. Instead, the Creator gives it all to the care of the Sac and Fox. You can serve your people as the Sacred Tobacco, the Creator’s gift to the Sac and Fox.” “The responsibility of planting and reaping must be taken care of by a special man in the tribe, and all men must follow the rules that govern the usage of this special tobacco. When Sac and Fox people wish to speak to the Creator, they first offer Him a smoke. Through the Sacred Tobacco is the door opened to offer prayers in ceremonies, for help, for family, home, safe travel, and daily aid.”

The second boy felt honored to so serve his people, an honor he still carries today.

3. The third boy said, “I want to bring my people the gift of shelter, warmth, medicine, and fruit.”

“You will begin the Tree nation,” said the old couple. “Each tree species is related and has a male and female of each tree who can start a family. Through the Tree Spirit, all trees continue their specific responsibilities, though each individual tree completes a life cycle and depends on its children to carry on. Older trees are the grandmothers and grandfathers to the people.”

The third boy accepted the honor. Even today, before a Sac and Fox cuts down a tree, he makes an offering of the Sacred Tobacco to thank the third boy for his sacrifice and explains his need for the wood.

4. The fourth boy said, “I want my people to have the gift of knowledge and prayer.”

The old couple said, “Rock carries all the knowledge of Grandmother Earth and humanity. Your first job is to create the hills and mountains. The cycle of the Rock family can be seen in the various rocks and their layers, and rocks house substances such as gold and coal. Rock supports the crust of Grandmother Earth. Because of his knowledge, Rock is used in Sac and Fox ceremonies. Flint rock is the Chief of the Rock Nation and his spark lights the sacred fires.”

The Water Spirit represents life and is the Lead Spirit in ceremonies. Sac and Fox people offer prayers of gratitude to the Water Spirit in recognition of the boy’s sacrifice and the life it brought to the people.

The fourth boy said, “I will gladly serve my people in this way.”

2. The second boy said, “I want to bring my people the gift of communication with the Creator.”

The old couple told him, “An unwanted spirit can be from the accumulation of daily stress, adversity, ill will, bad luck, or hard times. The Cedar Spirit will know if a heart is sincere

The old couple told the second boy, “The Creator likes to

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5. The fifth boy said, “I want to bring my people the gift of cleansing and purification to keep their spirits strong and healthy.”

and can remove a bad spirit ad protect the people by cleansing.

Cedar will lift the spirit of one who is sad or grieving You will remain green all the year round to remind the people that Cedar is an everlasting living spirit and always there when needed.”

The fifth boy said, “Thank you for this honor.” The Sac and Fox still use Credar to purify ourselves and our homes as well as to aid healing in times of sorrow.

6. The sixth, seventh, and eighth boys said, “We want to bring our people the gift of food and nourishment, that they may never hunger.”

“Corn, Bean, and Pumpkin are the favorite foods of the Creator,” said the old couple. “Through your sacrifice, He gives these three foods to humanity. You and your families have a kinship with all foods and will forever feed your people.

Through the Corn, Bean, and Pumpkin spirits Sac and Fox people can receive blessings.”

the old couple. “Through this spirit the animals have offered themselves to provide food, shelter, and clothing. The sacrifice of All Wild Animals is so important to humanity that the people will also form clans as a relationship and kinship to an animal spirit and honor their contributions.”

“My heart is glad to serve as the Spirit of All Wild Animals for my people,” said the tenth boy, “and to honor our fourlegged brothers and sisters.”

Today the Sac and Fox are born into clans named for the water and animal life and receive their Indian names from them.

9. The eleventh boy said, “I want to bring my people gifts from the sky.”

“There is life and purpose for All Things That Fly,” said the old couple. “There are birds who fly the highest and nearest to our reator and carry our prayers to Him. There are birds who carry medicine, who provide food, who are guardians, and who can give warnings. All the birds, insects, and flying things keep our Grandmother Earth fruitful and healthy and bring messages from the Creator to those who can understand them.”

“We are happy to have the honor of feeding our people.” said the sixth, seventh, and eighth boys. Corn, beans, and pumpkin are the lead foods in ceremonies, and the Sac and Fox offer prayers of thanks and appreciation to the sixth, seventh, and eighth boys.

“I thank you that I may serve as the Spirit of All Things That Fly,” said the eleventh boy.

7. The ninth boy said, “I want to bring my people the gift of a healthy evnironment through life in the water.”

Today the Sac and Fox still keep aware of the messages from and hold sacred the feathers of the winged people.

The old couple said, “The Fish Spirit represents all those who live in the waters. Many families live in various parts of the land and oceans. You contribute to the health of the land and sea through your interaction with plant and animals. The Fish world is a huge world of its own and is vitally necessary to all of humanity, so much so that the people will form a kinship with the Fish and become a clan, a family, so named.”

10. The twelfth boy said, “I want to help keep Grandmother Earth healthy as a gift to my people.”

“Thank you,” said the ninth boy. “I am honored to be the Fish Spirit. The Sac and Fox still depend on all who live in the waters for physical and spiritual health and have many uses for the reeds that grow along the waters.

8. The tenth boy said, “I want my people to have the gift of many brothrs and sisters who will help them in their lives through provision and protection.”

“The Spirit of All Wild Animals is in all four-leggeds,” said

The old couple said, “The Spirit of All Things That Crawl has the responsibility to aid in the environmental cycles that keep Grandmother Earth healthy. All Things That Crawl not only walk upon the surface of this grandmther but also live within her body and tend to the foods and medicines that come from her.”

“Then I am thankful to be able to help her and my people as the Spirit of All Things That Crawl,” said the twelfth boy. The crawling people often lead the Sac and Fox to healing herbs and plants.

11. “Remember that the Creator is behind each gift given,” say the old couple now. “He gave humanity a pristine world to inhabit. Abuse of those with whom you share the world is an abuse unto yourself. In all living things are living spirits.

Remember the Twleve Boys who sacrificed themselves that all may live.”

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Citizen

Potawatomi Nation

The Potawatomi are among the Algonquian speaking people who occupied the Great Lakes region from prehistoric times through the early 1800s. Oral traditions explain that the ancient Potawatomi people were once part of an immense group that had traveled down the eastern shores of North America along the Atlantic Ocean. This large group, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and the Potawatomi all constituted a single tribe. This larger group later split at Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada and went their separate ways.

Through early historic records, it has been confirmed that the Potawatomi were living in Michigan and had established an autonomous tribal identity at least 500 years ago.

Scholars have debated the origin and translation of the word ‘Potawatomi’ for many years. Nevertheless, the Potawatomi people firmly believe that the Ojibwe applied the term to them, meaning “the people of the place of the fire.” They believe this name was given to them because they retained the original council fire once shared by all three tribes. Today,

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the Citizen Potawatomi refers to itself as the Nishnabe, or ‘True People.’

During the mid-1650s, French traders visited the tribe and found them growing corn, gathering wild rice, and harvesting an abundant supply of fish and waterfowl from the western waters of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. The Potawatomi used a unique mastery of the birch bark canoe for essential transportation. A French trader, named Jean Nicolet, established first contact between Europeans and the Potawatomi in 1634 at a place that is now called Red Bank, on the Door Peninsula on the western shore of Lake Michigan.

At the height of the Fur Trading Era, which spanned an entire century, the Potawatomi controlled a huge tribal estate that included Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and a small portion of Ohio. This was accomplished through long-standing leadership and savvy business skills. The Potawatomi were simply not satisfied with trapping furs. Instead, they

returning to their entrepreneurial traditions before they were subjected to yet another ruinous governmental policy.

In 1861, the experimental allotment act was unleashed on the Potawatomi. Between 1838 and 1861, the Mission Potawatomi had been placed on the same small reserve with the Prairie Potawatomi.

The Prairie Potawatomi had ventured west onto the Great Plains at a much earlier period than the Mission Band, interacted with the Sioux and adapted different lifeway’s.

Treaty of 1861

entered a competition with the Ottawa for a share in the role as middleman for trade into the Green Bay area. Using their entrepreneurial skills, they began to hire other local tribesmen to collect and trap the furs that they once procured. In turn, they would sell or trade the furs to the French, thus expanding their tribal control and estate over a vast area.

By 1800, tribal villages were displaced by white settlements and pushed to the outskirts of the Potawatomi tribal area.

It was during the Removal Period of the 1830s that the Mission Christian converts were forced to leave their homelands in the Wabash River Valley of Indiana. From Indiana, the Mission Band was forced to march across four states, more than 660 miles, to a new reserve in Kansas. Of the 850 Potawatomi people forced to remove, more than 40 died along the way and more died after arrival in Kansas. Most of the dead were children and they were left in unmarked graves spanning the four state area.

The event is known in Potawatomi history as the “Potawatomi Trail of Death” and took place from September - November 1838.

In November of 1861 more than seventy Potawatomi men and women met with federal agents on the Potawatomi reservation in Kansas to sign a treaty that would forever alter their community’s relationship with the U.S. government. The 1861 treaty stipulated that tribal members decide whether they were among the “numbers of those desiring lands in severalty” or part of the faction who wished to continue holding their lands in common. The treaty promised that allottees, or those who took private land, would have plots that were “set apart for the perpetual and exclusive use and benefit of such assignees and their heirs.” It stipulated that to enjoy the privilege they must “cease to be mem-

After arriving in Kansas, the tribe experienced a brief period of prosperity, OUR NATIVE TRADITIONS

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destitute. A number of factors contributed to their downfall, including the unclear process of reaching their new status as landowning citizens and a lack of safeguards written into the legislation. Most detrimental were the taxes required of the Citizen Potawatomi because the state of Kansas began taxation in contradiction to the terms of the treaty and many of the Potawatomi did not understand the system.

bers of said tribe, and shall become citizens of the United States.” Those who chose allotment and U.S. citizenship became the Citizen Band of the Potawatomi.

In 1861 there were 2,170 Potawatomi living on the 576,000 acre reservation in Kansas, most had endured two or more removals in the previous thirty years. Of this number 1,400 ultimately chose to take land allotments and the rest chose to continue holding their land communally on a reservation reduced to eleven square miles. The two years following the signing of the treaty seemed to unfold as the government hoped. Many individuals made efforts to claim their allotments and advance toward citizenship, including improving their land by building houses and tilling new fields. The Potawatomi’s Indian agent reported in September 1862 that “within the last nine months there has been erected on the reservation, by individual members of the tribe, between sixty and eighty log dwelling-houses, and hundreds of acres have been reclaimed from their native state and made to teem with the products of the husbandman.” By the end of the year there were roughly two thousand acres under cultivation.

The 1861 treaty ultimately provided neither the security from removal nor the basic rights for which the Citizen Band hoped. Additionally, it did not achieve the federal government’s goal of assimilating the Citizen Potawatomi into Euro-American society. By 1867 a majority of those who accepted allotment and citizenship were dispossessed of their land and nearly

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By the end of the 1860s, most of the officials in the OIA realized that their grand social experiment of assimilation through private land ownership and U.S. citizenship was largely a failure among the Citizen Potawatomi. Making a Native American a landowner and citizen in name did not translate into the individual’s success or assimilation as a farmer in practice. The federal government’s efforts were not a total loss, however, because their attempts to acculturate Indians often delivered the political and economic results desired by non-Indians, regardless of the Native American’s success.

Kansas was a thriving young state and railroad companies and non-Indian settlers took possession of a significant amount of the Potawatomi’s former land holdings. A small percentage of the Citizen Potawatomi succeeded as independent farmers and businessmen and thrived in their new conditions. Far more, however, were quickly engulfed by adverse conditions and outside pressures from non-Indian

Records don’t indicate whether the brothers sold their allotments in Kansas, or lost them through fraud.

Yet, the fact that they were able to finance their emigration to Indian Territory suggests that they sold at least a portion of their land and that the sale of land generated enough money that the two men and their families were able to afford the journey from Kansas to Indian Territory.

settlers and corporate interests who desired their land and wanted them out of Kansas.

Moving to Indian Territory The provisions for the Citizen Potawatomi’s move to Indian Territory were stipulated in a treaty signed on February 27, 1867. Signatories and the OIA agreed that a delegation of Citizen Potawatomi would accompany the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Indian Territory and select a tract of land, not exceeding thirty miles square. The treaty stipulated that they would buy the reservation with the proceeds from selling their “surplus” lands in Kansas at one dollar per acre to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.

In the winter 1868 a group of Citizen Potawatomi made a failed attempt to travel to Indian Territory to select a new reservation. The water was too high and roads were impassable. The following winter, in 1869, another party of Citizen Potawatomi traveled to Indian Territory and selected a tract of land that became the site of the Citizen Potawatomi reservation. They chose a section of land that encompassed thirty square miles from the north fork of the Canadian River to the south fork. The eastward flowing Little River, which was little more than a creek, divided the reservation almost evenly in half. The land lay just west of the Seminole reservation and had an eastern boundary at the Indian Meridian.

Once the Citizen Potawatomi selected land for the new reservation they could begin the process of settling their affairs in Kansas and relocating to the Indian Territory.

The earliest families to make the journey to their new reserve arrived in Indian Territory in 1872. Since they paid for the move themselves, these families were among the more affluent Potawatomi families who were able to move from Kansas and included members of the Anderson, Melot, Clardy, Pettifer, Bergeron, and Toupin families. An Anderson family history notes that the Citizen Potawatomi brothers, John and Pete Anderson, had land holding in Kansas valued at $2,000.

Fourteen wagons filled with supplies and eager, yet anxious, Citizen Potawatomi set out for their new homes in Indian Territory with little idea about what they would encounter and how they would succeed in supporting their families. The obvious challenges of living in a state that was hostile to its Indian population, like Kansas was, induced some to move. It also motivated them to stick together in their new homes. Most of these earliest arrivals settled together in a small community they called Pleasant Prairie near the center of the reservation. By the end of the year, the population of the budding community was a mere twentyeight people. It was not immediately obvious to these early emigrants or to the hundreds of Citizen Potawatomi who followed in their wake that they would soon face fierce challenges to their land tenure, their individual rights, and even their identity as Native Americans. Though given their past experiences, many could have guessed that the transition to a new land would not be an easy one. Their first major challenge would be a fight to determine their rights as members of two separate populations: the US and their tribal nation.

1891 Land Run In 1890, the Citizen Potawatomi unwillingly participated again in the allotment process implemented through the Dawes Act of 1887. With this Act, the Citizen Potawatomi were forced to accept individual allotments. In the Land Run of 1891, the remainder of the Potawatomi reservation in Oklahoma was opened up to ‘white’ settlement. It is estimated that over half of the 900 square mile reservation was simply given away by the government.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 22, 1891, more than twenty thousand anxious settlers, all “armed like a walking arsenal,” gathered on foot, horseback, and with wagons at a predetermined starting line, awaiting the sound of the bugle that would change their lives. Each one of these individuals hoped to be lucky enough to claim one of the seven thousand available one hundred and sixty acre plots, carved out of the “surplus” lands of the recently allotted Citizen Potawatomi, Iowa, and Sac and Fox reservations.

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a well-established town and one of five crossings for the Canadian River. George Young owned a general store and a saloon in the town.

Present Day Citizen Potawatomi Nation The latter part of the 20th Century and the early years of the 21st Century have been a period of great success for the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In fact, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is the largest of the eight federally recognized Potawatomi tribes and the ninth largest tribe in the United States. Under sound leadership and with a tribal membership base of more than 30,000, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation has experienced growth in administration, tribal enterprises and its community outreach programs.

The Citizen Potawatomi, some of whom travelled to the starting line to watch the action, saw thousands of acres of land that the federal government pledged would be for the “exclusive use and occupancy” of their tribal members pass from the tribe to the hands of non-Indian settlers in one day.

This contest for recently relinquished Indian lands was one of seven land runs that occurred in Indian and Oklahoma Territories between 1889 and 1895.

More than three hundred thousand acres of “surplus” land on what used to be the Citizen Potawatomi reservation was opened to the land run.

Towns in Pottawatomie County Several towns in Pottawatomie County started out as settlements that built up around early Citizen Potawatomi allotments. A few of these towns include: • Pleasant Prairie – est. in 1871 by seven of the first Potawatomi families to move to Indian Territory. The town was known as Pleasant Prairie from 1871 to 1881, in that year the town of Wagoza was established on the site. They are near the present-day town of Wanette.

• Isabella – a short-lived town that was named for the wife of Joshua Clardy, a Citizen Potawatomi tribal member who owned the trading post in the town, which was established on his allotment. The name was quickly changed to Clardyville to better represent Joshua Clardy.

• Burnett – founded by William Griffenstein who was married to Citizen Potawatomi tribal member Catherine Burnett, she was the daughter of Potawatomi headman Abram Burnett.

• Anderson – the town was on allotment land that belonged to the Anderson family. It ceased to be a town in 1894.

• Young’s Crossing – Established in southern Pottawatomie County by George Young, who was married to a Citizen Potawatomi woman. It was

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From a beginning in 1970 with only two-and-one-half acres of tribal land held in common and less than $1,000 in cash assets, the Nation has grown to have a $522 million economic impact in the State of Oklahoma. This includes $68 million in wages and benefits which directly supports more than 2,000 jobs and purchases contributing to a $377 million impact on the local economy.

In recent years, careful planning and prudent use of revenues generated through Indian gaming and various business enterprises have made possible resurgence in the Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s prospects. Economic development which benefits the entire community is in the best interest of both tribal members and non-Indians. To this end, the Nation’s business and gaming endeavors produce many positive results, including job creation, the attraction of tourism revenue, and the reduction of poverty and unemployment.

Citizen Potawatomi Nation has several tribal enterprises, including the largest tribally owned grocery store, Community Development Corporation and First National Bank. These enterprises allow Citizen Potawatomi Nation to be the largest employer in Pottawatomie County with more than three times as many employees as the next largest employer.

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Choctaw

NATION

The Choctaw are native to the Southeastern United States and members of the Muskogean linguistic family, which traces its roots to a mound-building, maize-based society that flourished in the Mississippi River Valley for more than a thousand years before European contact.

and forced the Choctaw to cede millions of acres of land. In 1830, the United States seized the last of the Choctaw’s ancestral territory and relocated the tribe to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. The Choctaw were the first to walk the Trail of Tears. Nearly 2,500 members perished along the way.

Although their first encounter with Europeans ended in a bloody battle with Hernando de Soto’s fortunehunting expedition in 1540, the Choctaw would come to embrace European traders who arrived in their homeland nearly two centuries later. By the time President George Washington initiated a program to integrate Southeastern Indians into European American culture following the Revolutionary War, many Choctaw had already intermarried, converted to Christianity and adopted other white customs. The Choctaw became known as one of America’s Five Civilized Tribes, which also included the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole.

Despite the many lives lost, the Choctaw remained a hopeful and generous people. The first order of business upon arriving in their new homeland was to start a school and a church. They drafted a new constitution. And when the great potato famine befell the people of Ireland, the Choctaws collected money to help alleviate the country’s suffering.

Trail of Tears The Choctaw signed nine treaties with the United States before the Civil War, beginning with the Treaty of Hopewell in 1786 – which set boundaries and established universal peace between the two nations.

Subsequent treaties, however, reshaped those borders

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Oklahoma The Choctaw entered a new era post Civil War, when the United States ceded 2 million acres of Indian land, abolished commonly held tribal lands and created the Oklahoma Territory. It set up the Dawes Commission to register Indian families and parcel out individual plots of land. In 1889, the Oklahoma Territory was opened to white settlement. The ensuring land run overwhelmed the Choctaw Nation. The Choctaw suffered thefts, violent crimes and murders at the hands of whites and other tribal members.

Code Talkers Despite their struggle to survive as a nation during much of the 20th century, the Choctaw continued to serve their country. During World War I, Choctaw servicemen worked with the U.S. Army to pioneer a code based on their native language. The Choctaw code talkers helped the American Expeditionary Force win several key battles in France during the German’s final push, which in turn helped to end the war.

homa was scheduled for termination when Congress repealed the law in 1970, citing the policy’s documented failure in helping Native Americans.

The repeal galvanized a new generation of Choctaw.

In 1971, the tribe held its first popular election of a chief since Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907.

During the same decade, it established a tribal newspaper, enrolled more Choctaw and launched a movement to preserve the Choctaw language. The 1970s also marked congressional passage of the Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act, which gave the Choctaw power to negotiate and contract directly with the federal government for services that benefited its people most.

If the 1970s set the Choctaw in a new direction, the 1980s paved the Nation’s future. During this decade, a new Constitution was ratified by a vote of the people, providing for an executive, legislative and judicial branch of the government. On the economic front, the Choctaw opened a Bingo hall in Durant that would eventually become a successful resort and lead to new casinos. The tribe also launched new business enterprises, planned new schools, initiated educational programs and scholarships, and established new health centers.

Self Determination From the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s, the United States pursued a policy of Indian termination, whereby the rights of sovereign tribes were eliminated and Native Americans were assimilated into mainstream America. The Choctaw Nation of Okla-

Today, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is nearly 200,000 strong and self sufficient, dedicated to improving the lives of its people. As they continue their long journey through history, the Choctaw’s future looks brighter than ever.

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The Kickapoo people

of Oklahoma

The name Kickapoo (Kikapua) means “Stands on the earth.”

The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized sovereign Kickapoo Nations in the United States.

The other two nations are the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas who reside in Eagle Pass, Texas; and the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas who reside in Horton, Kansas. Current populations in each nation: Oklahoma-2,676 members; Texas-845 members; Kansas-1,643 members. Today, many Kickapoo families live throughout the rural and urban areas of Oklahoma, Pottawatomie, and Lincoln counties. Some families still reside in their allotted lands near the Kickapoo Tribal Headquarters located 2 1/2 miles North of the City of McLoud, OKlahoma.

The Kickapoo people are a resilient nation who have continued to maintain their culture and way of life as passed down by their ancestors despite the past oppressions of warfare, removal from homelands, exploitation, and the accelerating changes of mainstream culture. The Kickapoo people have the determination of maintaining their tribal identity and language. Prior to the European Invasions, the Kickapoo inhabited the North-Central area of the United States (near the Great Lakes region), and come from the Algonquian group of woodland tribes. The Kickapoo were first mentioned in history in the early 1600’s moving from lower Michigan to southeast Wisconsin. In the mid 1700’s, due to the increasing eastern invasion of white settlers, and the

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Kickapoos’ will to continue their way of life, they made their journey to Illinois. In the late 1700’s, during the Revolutionary War, the Kickapoo made allegiance with the Americans under the promise of General George Rogers Clark, who stated that “no American colonists would settle within the Kickapoo territory”. Unfortunately, for the Kickapoo and other tribes, General Clark made “broken promises,” and their hopes of land that would be open and free fell short. Immediately after the Revolutionary War, The American government’s plan was to get rid of all Native Americans by death or assimilation. One plan was to force tribes into areas to confine each tribe to a specific area. In this regard, the Kickapoo were forced to sign treaties giving up 13 million acres of land, and were removed from the original homelands to areas selected by the U.S. government. If the Kickapoo elders would have refused to sign the treaties, they would all have been killed or imprisoned by the U.S. government. Treaty after treaty by the Americans drastically reduced amount of land originally promised in Kansas. Eventually, much of the land promised to the Kickapoo was sold for railroads and for white settlement. During this process the Kickapoo split up into groups. Many Kickapoo families who objected to the cession of their lands, fled to Mexico to avoid the aggressive invasion, and the “assimilation” into white American culture.

In 1873, under the command of Colonel MacKenzie, the U.S. 4th Calvary attacked a Kickapoo Village in Mexico. About

40 Kickapoo were forced to return to “Indian Territory.” The Kickapoo prisoners were held in Fort Gibson. “Indian Territory” was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their homelands to make way for white settlement. It was initially considered unsuitable for white colonization. In 1883, a reservation of some 100,000 acres was assigned to the Kickapoo in what are now parts of Lincoln, Pottawatomie, and Oklahoma Counties. In 1891, the Kickapoo once again were forced to sign an agreement for the cession of the reservation to the United States and for an allotment of land to each member of the tribe.

This is due to the Allotment Act of 1887. The purpose of the Allotment Act of 1887 in Indian Territory (what is now the state of Oklahoma) of this federal policy was to divide communally held Indian tribal lands into individually owned private property, and was the culmination of American attempts to destroy tribes and their governments and to open Indian lands to settlement by non-Indians and to the development of railroads. The original 100,000 acres was split into 285 allotments of 80 acres of land per allotment. The Kickapoo lost 77,200 acres.

despite all they have had to endure. The Kickapoo Language is still the main language spoken in many households; and the culture is prevalent and strong, mainly due to Kickapoo elders keeping Kickapoo ways strictly for their people.

In 1889, after realizing “Indian Territory” had valuable land for agriculture, ranching, and other opportunities; the government began authorization of white settlers to move into lands previously designated to Native American people. On April 22, 1889 at 12:00 PM, 50,000 white settlers raced to claim land of 2 million acres in “Indian Territory.” In 1907 Indian Territory ceased to exist when Oklahoma became a state.

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The

Caddo Nation

Of the two tribes that can call Oklahoma their ancestral territory the Caddo Nation is one of them. The Caddo cultural landscape includes eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northwest Louisiana, and northeast Texas. It was not until 1859 that the Caddo were forcibly removed to southwest Oklahoma from Texas. Of note, “Texas” is a Hasinai Caddo word meaning “friend.”

Sah-cooh (Sun) who would soon bring them up into the light.

Neesh said that soon he would have to leave, that the people would have to choose a leader among themselves. The chosen leader would have to be strong, brave, and wise. He would be called Kah-dee (leader). The people spoke among themselves to determine who would be this Kah-dee. Ta-Sha (Wolf) stood up and said“ Neesh should be our leader, for he is wise and powerful.. The people agreed and decided that Neesh would be their first leader.

Soon Neesh told the people to gather, that he had an important message for them. He said that very soon he would lead them from out of the darkness and into the light, that he knew the way and he would show them all how to go to this new world of light. Neesh divided the people into groups and each had its own leader. He warned that you must not look back and should keep moving forward without hesitation, for those to stay behind would be permanently in darkness.

For the journey the man was given the drum, pipe, and fire.

The women were given corn (kitsi) and pumpkin (coo-nooh cah-ke-cus-ni). To the beat of the drum the first Caddo people came from out of the darkness and into the light.

Some elders say that this is where the Red River and Mississippi River meet.

The past can be understood in two contexts. By studying the “prehistoric” past, of which there is no written record, and the “historic” past, which has a written record. This is not to suggest that the Caddo didn’t have a “history” just because they didn’t write it down. It is important to note that the Caddo, along with many other tribes, have an oral history that predates many written languages. The first Caddos were mostly hunters and gatherers who came to create permanent settlements, utilized farming techniques, and built ceremonial and burial mounds as part of their worship and to commemorate their dead. The distinct Caddo culture we know today, pottery making, mound building, burial rituals, songs, and dance date back to 800 A.D. The federally recognized “Caddo Nation” is today comprised of many bands such as the Kadohadacho, or “True Chiefs” and from where the Caddo Nation gets its name. There were also the Hasinai, Hainai, Natchitoches, Nacogdoches, Nabedache, Ais, Namidish, Yatasi, Tula, Nanatsoho, Nasoni, and Nadarko. All these bands were linked together by common language, intermarriage, geographical area, creation story, and political bonds, among other aspects of their culture and history.

Caddo creation story: In the beginning Caddo people lived in complete darkness, no sun, no candles, no fireflies. Soon a man came, his name was Neesh (Moon), he told the people to prepare themselves for

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First Contact with Europeans Like many Europeans who came to the New World, Hernando De Soto came in search of riches and fame. In the 1500’s southeast North America was in control of Spain and King Charles I wanted to explore what riches that territory held. De Soto was commissioned by King Charles I to lead an expedition from Florida to Mexico. He set out from Spain in 1538 with six ships and a crew of Spanish and Portuguese sailors.

Once on land the expedition continued on a westward path, plundering Native villages, through Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, until they came upon Caddo territory in 1541. De Soto overthrows the Tula band of Caddo pillaging food stockpiles and making slaves of some to act as guides. De Soto’s private secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel wrote of the Tula, they were “the best fighting people that the Christians met with.” To commemorate this encounter a full sized bronze statue of an Indian was erected at Caddo Gap near Norman, Arkansas.

In 1666, Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle lead a French expedition across the plains in Texas. When they came upon the Hasinai village in northeast Texas it was large and populous, covering some fifty miles. La Salle and company crossed immense herds of buffalo, meadows with groves of fruit trees and vines. Father Douay, the religious authority in the group, exclaimed, “…we entered countries still finer than those they

had passed, and found tribes that had nothing barbarous but the name.”

1803 Louisiana Purchase In 1803, the United States paid France 15 million dollars for the Louisiana Territory. But there was a major dispute as to whether Texas was included within the Louisiana Purchase boundary. U.S. officials knew of the great relationship that the Chief of the Caddo, Dehahuit, had with the Hasinai in Texas and realized the importance of making friends with him. To ensure that the Caddo would stay friendly to the new Americans the U.S. offered Dehahuit $200 in rations and gifts. Not only did the Americans want to stay friendly with the Caddo to work as mediators, but also they had heard of the reputation of the Caddo as warriors. A report from John Sibley, an Indian Agent in Natchitoches, Louisiana noted

that the Caddo “…are looked upon somewhat like Knights of Malta, or some distinguished military order. They are brave, despise anger or death, and boast that they have never shed white men’s blood.”

In 1806 Thomas Jefferson commissioned two explorers, Thomas Freeman and Dr. Peter Custis, to traverse the newly bought Louisiana Territory. Two Caddo guides become members of the expedition, Tulin and Talapoon. At Caddo Lake, Freeman and Custis met with the Caddo leader Dehahuit to assure him and his people that they were there on a friendly mission and that the Americans wanted good relations with them. He agreed that forming a mutual relationship with the Americans was of benefit and warned them that a few Spanish soldiers had said that they had plans to attack them at the Red River. Custis noted this encounter by describing the Caddo as “…without the least appearance of savage ferocity” but also knew they could use their bow and arrows “with astonishing dexterity and force.” He allowed three of the Caddo in his charge to serve as guides through their country, two of which were named Cut Finger and Grand Osages.

For helping the Americans the Spanish led one thousand troops into the Caddo village, insulted Dehahuit, cut down the American flag they were flying on a pole in the middle of the village, and took two young captives to use as guides.

Of Dehahuit, John Sibley surmised, he was “…a man of more importance than any other ten Chiefs on this side of the Mississippi with my Agency.”

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debris along the Red River. It formed Sho-we-tat by floating driftwood and live trees that tumbled into the Red River when rain washed away the soft banks, snagging the trees on the sandbars and bends in the river. This gigantic logjam prevented the Red River from being navigable, except for small canoes. The U. S. government wanted the Great Raft broken up so trade and farming could commence. Formation of the Great Raft worked in favor of the Caddo still living in Louisiana; if no travel occurred up and down the Red River, then white farmers and businessmen would have no interest in their land. In 1829, Congress allotted funds for a project to begin removal of the Great Raft to allow access through the Red River. This attempt was unsuccessful; as soon as the logjams in the southern end were broken more debris would build in the north.

In this same year, the U.S. Indian Agent assigned to the Caddo, Jeheil Brooks, wrote the President but instead of asking for stricter laws to reinforce the Caddo territory boundary he suggested “…the necessity of extinguishing the Indian title to all such land prior to the removal of the raft.” In essence, requesting all land still in possession of the Caddo should be removed from them prior to the raft project being finished. In this way white farmers, settlers, and land speculators could legally buy up Caddo land. If the Great Raft was opened the benefits would go to the Americans not the Caddo.

In 1830, Colonel Henry Shreve invented a battering-ram steamboat that would break up the Great Raft. In 1833, he began the project. If the Caddo had been equipped with farming implements as was requested 20 years earlier, they would have been very prosperous, for as mentioned Caddo people were agriculturists. But because they lacked the necessary equipment to farm, hunting game had become scarcer, and the encroachment by tribes and white settlers alike, forced them to travel farther to hunt. Because the U.S. government did not keep these encroachments from happening and denied the Caddo the services they needed, the Caddo Chiefs had no choice but to cede their land and move away. In 1835 the Caddo wrote a letter to President Andrew Jackson that stated, “…we have held a great council, and finally come to the sorrowful resolution of offering all our lands to you which lie within the boundary of the United States, for sale, at such price as we can agree upon in council with the other”.

On January 28th, 1835, President Andrew Jackson endorsed the request and appointed a commissioner to ensure that the

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land cession is completed and that the treaty contained no reservation in its wording. The Caddo were being removed from their lands of a thousand years with no place to go.

In the land cession agreement nearly one million acres of land would be ceded for the price of $80,000 in money and goods. The Caddo would initially be paid $30,000 in goods and horses and $10,000 a year for the next five years. They had one year from the date the treaty was signed to leave, “…and never more to return to live, settle, or establish themselves as a nation, tribe, or community of people.”

The Caddo people grieved for their loss of homeland. Tarshar, a Chief among the Louisiana Caddo reasoned: “My Children: For what do you mourn?

Are you not starving in the midst of this land? And do you not travel far from it in quest of food?

The game we live on is going further off, and the white man is coming nearer to us; and is not our condition getting worse daily? Then why lament for the loss of that which yields us nothing but misery? Let us be wise, then, and get all we can for it, and not wait till the white man steals it away, little by little, and then gives us nothing.”

Four months after the Caddo in Louisiana signed the treaty, Texans revolted against Mexico. In 1834 there were nearly 20,000 Americans living in Mexico and independence was a common discussion. At this time it was estimated that there were 14,200 American Indians living in the Republic of Texas.

Although riches were promised, the Caddo kept neutral of the war between the Texans and Mexicans.

1859 Removal from Brazos Reserve into Indian Territory From the piney woods of their original homelands, the Caddo were pushed westward to the dusty red plains and prairies by numerous anti-Indian policies of the Republic of Texas and received much of the same from the newly formed state of Texas.

The Brazos Reserve, near Graham, Texas, was set aside for the federal Indians under the control of the U.S. government in the state of Texas. 36,000 acres of land was leased by the state to the federal government to be used exclusively by the tribes. However, in the summer of 1859, the Caddo, along with several other tribes were forced to remove once again from their homes under threat of being killed. The situation was so bad that United States Indian Agent Robert S. Neighbors led all the reserve tribes to an area of Indian Territory near present day Anadarko, Oklahoma, where their tribal complexes are today. On his return back to Texas, he was shot

after and can be bought at many auction houses and websites. Unfortunately, because these funerary objects are so highly prized for their artistic value, looting continues across the country to this day. In 1990 a federal law was passed to return funerary objects and other American Indian artifacts and human remains back to their respective tribe or Native Hawaiian Organization from museums, universities, and various federal agencies. This federal law is called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

The Caddo Nation Today:

in the back and killed for helping the tribes.

Pottery: Caddo people are widely known for their beautifully crafted pottery. Many of the Caddo pots were created for utilitarian reasons such as to hold water or to cook in, but some have sacred ceremonial purposes. Caddo people believe that when you die you must travel on a journey to the next life. During this journey to the next life there are dangers and obstacles.

So to help them on their journey Caddos were buried with the items they would need, such as food, water, a knife, bow and arrow, and toolkits to make pottery.

Throughout the United States the history of looting American Indian graves has been vast and extremely damaging especially to the Caddo people. The Caddo have been one of the most heavily impacted tribes by this illegal activity. In Spiro, Oklahoma for example there are many mounds. These mounds were created by Caddo people as memorials to the individual buried within. Spiro Mounds State Park was a ceremonial center and some of the original mounds contained graves. In the 1930’s, during the Depression, these mounds were looted heavily; looters would even stick dynamite in the mounds, blow them up, and collect whatever artifacts they believed would be of value. Today, Caddo pottery, much of which are considered sacred and funerary objects, is still widely sought

The Caddo Nation today is still a thriving community with over 6,000 enrolled members in and out of Oklahoma. Caddo people today have many clubs, organizations, and Caddo individual tribal members working on projects to ensure that their culture lives on and that the next generation knows their history and traditions. One such group is the Hasinai (Our People) Society that was formed to preserve traditional Caddo culture. The main programs are the annual summer youth camp, weekly classes that emphasizes instruction by tribal elders and community members, and a youth color guard. They regularly travel across the state of Oklahoma, as well as Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas to participate in cultural dances and activities. Another club working to preserve Caddo traditions is the Caddo Culture Club. The Caddo Culture club was founded in 1988 with the intent to work toward preserving Caddo songs and dance. The club sings the traditional Caddo Flag Song, as well as sings and dances the Turkey Dance, Duck Dance, Fish Dance, Alligator Dance, Swing Dance, and Bear Dance. They travel and perform throughout Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In the third week of June the Caddo Culture Club holds its own dance at the tribal complex’s dance ground in Binger, OK. The premier contemporary Caddo pottery maker that spearheaded pottery revitalization is Jeri Redcorn. Jeri Redcorn is a self-taught Caddo pottery maker who uses her knowledge of traditional Caddo pottery making to help showcase Caddo culture and pass the knowledge to younger generations. She has won numerous accolades for her work including 1st and 2nd place in traditional pottery at Red Earth, 1st Place in Traditional Pottery and Best in Class at the Southeastern Art Show and Market. Most notably one of her pieces housed at the Smithsonian was chosen by the President and First Lady to be displayed in the Oval Office of the White House.

Another notable Caddo pottery maker is Chase Kahwinhut Earles, who inspired by the pottery of his Caddo ancestors, works to educate and carry on the culture of his people.

The culture of the Caddo is still living strong among present day Caddo people and will continue to do so. Caddo people love to share and educate other people about their history and culture. If you are ever in the area or feel inclined to learn more do not hesitate to visit the Caddo Nation Heritage Museum in Binger, OK, come to a dance, or seek out the various books that can be found about the Caddo.

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