Search Results

Where Have the Corn Mothers Gone?: Americans Encounter the Europeans

Mary P. Ryan

in Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American History

This chapter describes how the coordinates of gender differentiation—asymmetry, the relations of the sexes, and hierarchy—were performed in various ways across the wide landscape of North America ... More

This chapter describes how the coordinates of gender differentiation—asymmetry, the relations of the sexes, and hierarchy—were performed in various ways across the wide landscape of North America five hundred years ago. Focusing on pre-Columbian Indian tribes that developed complex societies, it analyzes the differentiation of male and female and the ease of lateral transfer between their roles within Native American cultures. In pursuit of the question “Where Have the Corn Mothers Gone,” the chapter puts the history of gender into play to explain the outcome of the collision between Amerindian cultures and European colonizers.Less

The Apaches

Odie B. Faul

in The Geronimo Campaign

For three centuries before the arrival of the Anglo-American in the Southwest, the Apaches dominated the region, striking terror not only into the hearts of surrounding Indian tribes but also into ... More

For three centuries before the arrival of the Anglo-American in the Southwest, the Apaches dominated the region, striking terror not only into the hearts of surrounding Indian tribes but also into the hearts of the Spanish colonists who ventured into the area. All the Apache bands, including the Navajo, were distinguished from neighboring southwestern tribes by one other feature—their ferocity as warriors. Inhabitants of a hard, cruel land, they became, like it, hard and cruel to everyone except themselves. In fact, their economy, beyond some hunting and gathering, was based on booty gathered in raids.Less

Indian Sacrifice in an Age of Progress

Susan L. Mizruchi

in The Rise of Multicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915

This chapter discusses how the diversity of Indian tribes was reflected in their different responses to the daunting transformation of their circumstances; for instance, by the turn of the twentieth ... More

This chapter discusses how the diversity of Indian tribes was reflected in their different responses to the daunting transformation of their circumstances; for instance, by the turn of the twentieth century, a population estimated at 1.5 million in the seventeenth century had dwindled to 237,000. Some sought spiritual solace in messianic religious movements such as the Sioux Ghost Dances, which anticipated the return of dead relatives and a lost way of life, and the sacred peyote rituals, which combined consumption of hallucinogenic cacti with a Pan-Indian politics that united adherents from various tribes. Others, such as the Cherokees and the Creeks, chose military resistance. Still another option was represented by a considerable Indian leadership, which formed the Society of American Indians in Columbus, Ohio, in 1911.Less

Second Opportunity: The Structure and Architecture of the Constitution

Frank Pommersheim

in Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution

This chapter explores the need of the newly formed union to establish a functioning republic and how this affected Native American Indian tribal sovereignty. It examines how the Constitutional ... More

This chapter explores the need of the newly formed union to establish a functioning republic and how this affected Native American Indian tribal sovereignty. It examines how the Constitutional Convention of 1787 rethought the structure of the federal government in relation to states, which includes the Indian tribes. This chapter also looks at how the newly formed Constitution affected tribal sovereignty and India law. It discusses the Iroquois Confederacy which adopted rules of governance in what became known as the Haudenosaunee Constitution, or the Great Law of Peace.Less

Natives and Interlopers

Robert V. Haynes

in The Mississippi Territory and the Southwest Frontier 1795–1817

This chapter discusses the relations of the southern Indian tribes and the white settlers. Although their relations were generally peaceful in the first decade of the nineteenth century, it was ... More

This chapter discusses the relations of the southern Indian tribes and the white settlers. Although their relations were generally peaceful in the first decade of the nineteenth century, it was entirely the opposite during the American Revolution. The discussion looks at the Five Civilized Tribes, which had an elaborate system of beliefs and characteristics that set them apart from the others. These tribes are the Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Cherokee. The chapter also discusses the different treaties of the American officials with the southern Indians.Less

Tribal Sovereignty and Legal Pluralism

N. Bruce Duthu

in Shadow Nations: Tribal Sovereignty and the Limits of Legal Pluralism

This chapter provides brief legal and historical background for the argument that our nation’s constitutional framework reflects a formative commitment to a legally plural society. From the express ... More

This chapter provides brief legal and historical background for the argument that our nation’s constitutional framework reflects a formative commitment to a legally plural society. From the express recognition of tribal nations in the Constitution, to an early and sustained history of treaty relations with Indian tribes, the conceptual model of intergovernmental relations was premised on legal pluralism. In due course, the trajectory of federal-tribal political relations revealed an early and radical break from this formative ethos of legal pluralism. The following chapters explore the reasons and methods for this departure and ask whether it is possible, or even desirable, to recapture this formative ethos of legal pluralism in modern-day relations.Less

Conclusion: Imagination, Translation, and Constitutional Convergence

Frank Pommersheim

in Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution

This text emphasizes the need for constitutional reform in order to address issues regarding Native American Indian tribe sovereignty. It identifies the Supreme Court and Congress as the main ... More

This text emphasizes the need for constitutional reform in order to address issues regarding Native American Indian tribe sovereignty. It identifies the Supreme Court and Congress as the main culprits in deconstitutionalizing Indian law. It acknowledges the two branches' own confusion regarding the topic by reviewing cases pertaining to Indian law and concerns. It also touches on the idea of treaty federalism by reestablishing a meaningful relationship between the federal government and tribes. The text supports this by citing the works of Russel Lawrence Barsh and James Youngblood Henderson, which contributed to the development of treaty federalism, and the creation of an amendment needing to respect tribal sovereignty.Less

Evening

Gillum Ferguson

in Illinois in the War of 1812

This chapter looks at how, for the Indian tribes, the coming struggle would be one for their very existence. Their population is hard to estimate, because contemporary estimates vary significantly ... More

This chapter looks at how, for the Indian tribes, the coming struggle would be one for their very existence. Their population is hard to estimate, because contemporary estimates vary significantly and, in any case, usually account only for the number of warriors in a tribal group. Nevertheless, it may be fair to estimate that the number of Indians in the territory probably did not far exceed the number of white and black Americans. Except for the remnants of the Kaskaskia and Piankashaw in southwestern Illinois and along the Wabash, respectively, few tribes had permanent villages south of a line drawn across the state through the present Springfield and Decatur, although either war or hunting might carry parties of Indians deep into the southern part of the territory.Less

The Marshall Trilogy: Foundational but Not Fully Constitutional?

Frank Pommersheim

in Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution

This chapter analyzes the following cases: Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. It examines how they established some of the basic principles of Indian law and ... More

This chapter analyzes the following cases: Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. It examines how they established some of the basic principles of Indian law and their enduring legacy and challenges to the modern application of Indian law. It focuses on the issue of land acquisition and how this affects Indian tribal territory and sovereignty. It also discusses the role of cartography and translation in the possibility of harming and dispossessing indigenous people by comparing the situation of the Indian tribes to Ireland and the Middle East, both lands with indigenous people who were powerfully attached to landscape.Less

The Land and Its People: Description of the Lower Lafourche Basin

Nathalie Dajko

in French on Shifting Ground: Cultural and Coastal Erosion in South Louisiana

This chapter provides an overview of the geography and settlement history of Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, beginning with the presence of indigenous peoples at the time of French colonization, ... More

This chapter provides an overview of the geography and settlement history of Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes, beginning with the presence of indigenous peoples at the time of French colonization, continuing through the French, Spanish, and American historic periods, and ending with the modern distribution of ethnic groups on the landscape. It includes a history of the modern indigenous population, who identify as either Houma or one of several other groups: the Pointe au Chien Indian Tribe or one of two branches of the Biloxi Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees, and provides an account of the arrival of Francophone Europeans, including Acadians, to the Lafourche Basin. It also considers the implications that slavery had for both historic and modern demographics. Finally, it describes the modern settlement patterns, the means by which people make a living, and the distribution of ethnic groups in the area.Less

Cultural Practice and Authenticity: The Search for Real Indians in New England in the ‘Historical’ Period

D. Rae Gould

in The Death of Prehistory

This chapter examines what the death of prehistory means for Native Americans in southern New England today. Citing instances where notions of prehistory make difficult attempts to collaborate with ... More

This chapter examines what the death of prehistory means for Native Americans in southern New England today. Citing instances where notions of prehistory make difficult attempts to collaborate with indigenous populations, as well as limit avenues for understanding indigenous forms of knowledge, the chapter considers the way archaeologists have studied and interpreted native groups of southern New England and calls for the inclusion of newer cultural practices that reveal the dynamic quality of these contemporary cultures in order to better understand both the past and present. It explores the disconnect that exists for many scholars between the imagined Indian and real native people in southern New England and presents examples of more contemporary cultural practices and places on the landscape that are used and created by native people and serve a purpose in their contemporary cultures. Finally, it analyses structures that symbolise connections to a precolonial presence for the Indian tribes of southern New England.Less

1683: The French Build a Fort: (maamistikoošiwa wešihtooka niimihki)

Mark Walczynski

in The History of Starved Rock

This chapter details the construction of Sieur de La Salle's Fort St. Louis atop Starved Rock. Located along the south shore of the Illinois River in LaSalle County, Illinois, the 125-foot-tall bluff ... More

This chapter details the construction of Sieur de La Salle's Fort St. Louis atop Starved Rock. Located along the south shore of the Illinois River in LaSalle County, Illinois, the 125-foot-tall bluff known today as Starved Rock, or Le Rocher to the French, is the tallest and best-known geological feature in the upper Illinois Valley. The strategic advantages of the site, especially during times of Iroquois unrest, were many. The summit of Starved Rock is relatively level when compared to all other sandstone bluffs in the vicinity. It was easily defended by a handful of men, and lookouts could monitor both upstream and downstream approaches to the bluff. With the fort on Starved Rock completed and alliance with the tribes established, La Salle hoped to provide the Indians much-needed trade goods. Having promised the tribes that trade goods would be available at his fort, La Salle was now tasked with procuring those goods and transporting them to Starved Rock. In addition, among the powers and responsibilities specified in La Salle's royal patent was the authority to award land grants to settlers.Less

First Peoples, First Prohibitionists

Mark Lawrence Schrad

in Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition

Armed with a new appreciation for prohibitionism as an anti-imperialist, anti-predatory-capitalist movement for community self-determination, Part III returns us to the United States, where ... More

Armed with a new appreciation for prohibitionism as an anti-imperialist, anti-predatory-capitalist movement for community self-determination, Part III returns us to the United States, where prohibitionism goes back to the very first colonization of North America. Indeed, America’s first prohibitionists were its first peoples: battling against the “white man’s wicked water,” through which their sovereignty was stripped, in the same way as indigenous populations in Africa, South Asia, and Australia. Chapter 9 highlights the role of Miami chief Little Turtle in urging President Thomas Jefferson to enact, in 1802, the first federal prohibition of the trafficking of liquor to native tribes, even while liquor excises had become the primary pillar of state finance of the young republic.Less

Early Contact: From Colonial Encounters to the Articles of Confederation

Frank Pommersheim

in Broken Landscape: Indians, Indian Tribes, and the Constitution

This chapter examines the early contact between European settlers and the Native American Indian tribes, and how these encounters played a role in establishing the foundation and early development of ... More

This chapter examines the early contact between European settlers and the Native American Indian tribes, and how these encounters played a role in establishing the foundation and early development of Indian law and sovereignty. It enumerates the general legal and policy rationales that brought the Europeans into North America in the first place: papal edict, first discovery, sustained possession, voluntary self-subjection of native people, and armed conquest. It discusses the role of commerce and trade in colonization. It also compares the idea of ownership between the two communities and how this led to conflict. Additionally, the chapter describes how the Articles of Confederation of the colonies further strained relations with the tribes.Less

On Cannibals and Christians: The Violent Displacements of Nation Building

Tracy Devine Guzmán

in Native and National in Brazil: Indigeneity after Independence

This chapter focuses on how Brazilian indigenous people suffered significant hardships during the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, despite consorted efforts by locals artists to ... More

This chapter focuses on how Brazilian indigenous people suffered significant hardships during the early nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, despite consorted efforts by locals artists to romanticize the idea of Indianness. The chapter finds that the Indian tribes and other indigenous people were mercilessly exploited by landowners, foreign traders, and colonial settlers. These people lost their rights and identities under the onslaught of landowners and other outsiders who grabbed their land and enslaved their children and women. The whole community was victimized during the Paraguayan War fought from 1865–1870. Some of the Indian tribes were cannibalized and enslaved during this period. The chapter also finds that these developments and merciless exploitation had an adverse impact on the demographic structure of the indigenous people in Brazil during the mid-twentieth century.Less

Landscapes of Desire: Melancholy, Memory, and Fantasy in Deborah Miranda’s The Zen of La Llorona

Mark Rifkin

in The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination

In 1978, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) adopted a set of procedures to recognize Native peoples as tribes for the purposes of inclusion within the regulations and protections of federal Indian ... More

In 1978, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) adopted a set of procedures to recognize Native peoples as tribes for the purposes of inclusion within the regulations and protections of federal Indian law. Such an act presents the fact that having a way to acknowledge peoples as tribes promises redemption from the bad, monocultural past. The recognition process does more than set the terms and dimensions of the particular legal status of “Indian tribe”; it regulates acceptable forms of collective desire and ways of portraying the relationship between the past and the present. This chapter cites Deborah Miranda’s work, The Zen of La Llorona, which demonstrates forms of Indigenous subjectivity that exceed the parameters of federal recognition. Miranda’s poetry uses figures of absence and landscape to represent how seemingly individual states of feeling record a collective history of survival-in-erasure.Less

“Every Woman Deviating from the Code”: Cultural Lag, Moral Contagion, and Social Disintegration

Maureen A. Molloy

in On Creating a Usable Culture: Margaret Mead and the Emergence of American Cosmopolitanism

This chapter discusses Mead's least well known work, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932). Located in the American Midwest—far from her usual ethnographic locus in the Pacific—the book ... More

This chapter discusses Mead's least well known work, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932). Located in the American Midwest—far from her usual ethnographic locus in the Pacific—the book provides a compelling contrast to the exoticized and eroticized “natives” of the other ethnographies. Mead, whose Pacific ethnographies are marked by denial of Euro-American imperialism's effects, was unable to refute colonization's impact on the “Antlers.” Indeed, the book's little reception reflects both the difficulties America had in coming to terms with its internal empire and Mead's dismissal of the study's usefulness for anthropology because the culture was broken.Less

“The Acts of Forgetfulness”: Indigenous Women’s Legal History in Archives and Tribal Offices Throughout the North American West

Katrina Jagodinsky

in Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women's Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946

This book has explored how Indigenous women used territorial legal regimes in the North American West. It has discussed six Native women's strategies of recovery and efforts toward political and ... More

This book has explored how Indigenous women used territorial legal regimes in the North American West. It has discussed six Native women's strategies of recovery and efforts toward political and corporeal sovereignty and what they signify about alliance building, direct communication, and persistent advocacy. This concluding chapter describes the archival and community work that made it possible for the author to make intimate and important depictions of Native women's legal history. It highlights the “acts of forgetfulness” that have placed Indian women's legal history beyond the scope of western historians in the hope that scholars will be encouraged to find more evidence of Indian women's contributions to western history in local and state archives. It also chronicles the author's experience working with the Indian tribes and communities represented in this book.Less

Going Native

in From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame

This chapter presents the various controversies related to the restoring of native names. Changing the names of Devils Tower in Wyoming will not be easy as Plains American-Indian tribes have ... More

This chapter presents the various controversies related to the restoring of native names. Changing the names of Devils Tower in Wyoming will not be easy as Plains American-Indian tribes have different legends and different names for the tower. The local tourism industry adamantly resists any change, and to block a possible name change, the outfitters and motel operators persuaded the representatives in Congress to introduce bills banning renaming. The ploy works because the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, according to its bylaws, does not render a decision on a name or its application if the matter is also being considered by Congress or the Executive Branch of the United States. Opponents of the efforts to restore Native American names for prominent peaks often cite multiple indigenous names as a reason to keep the current toponym.Less