The American Indian, The Story of Us

12/25/2024

"The Ghost of Christmas Past' 🎄

Who was this man, named Christmas, born 225 years ago today? How is it that he lived, and died, in Miami County, Kansas?

The perseverance and fortitude of the early settlers of New France flowed through the blood of Christmas Dagenet. He descended from generations of men who enjoyed compatibility with the Native Americans and accepted them, their culture, their lifestyle, and their hand in marriage without any attempt to assimilate them. It has been said that these unions blended and created a distinct culture that was more than two halves.

Christmas Dagenet was born along the Wabash River near Terre Haute, Indiana on Christmas Day in 1799. In a letter to the Honorable John C. Calhoun, Christmas described the condition of his birth as follows: “I had my birth among the Wea, my mother [Mechinquamesha} being sister to Jackon, chief of that nation. My father, Ambrose Dagenet, was born in Kaskie of French parents and has resided among the Piankashaw and Wea all his life and followed the occupation of [fur] trader among them…” It is in this letter that Christmas explains that his uncle would not lead his people to new lands. Christmas would become the last hereditary chief of the Wea tribe.

Historical accounts describe him as "handsome, always wearing a white shirt with gold buttons, possessed wealth (as French-Canadian male descendants often did), land, horses, cattle and a two-story brick home in Indiana.' Educated and fluent in several woodland Indian dialects as well as French, English and Spanish, Christmas served the Wea nation and U.S. government at the Treaty of St. Mary in 1818. Later, he was recommended by William Clark to work for the U.S. government as an interpreter.

Throughout the next three decades as chief and sometimes interpreter, Christmas led 1400 Wea, Piankashaw and Miami people in seven to eight trips to the designated “Indian Territory” that is now Miami County, Kansas. His last trip was in 1846 when he served as interpreter for the Miami Tribe.

It is interesting to note that the tribal chiefs who possessed French- Canadian heritage were actually exempt from removal. If they did accompany their people to Kansas, they returned quickly to their homes in Indiana. Christmas did not do this…he remained and moved his family from Indiana to Kansas. In 1847, the Wea tribe suffered greatly from cholera. Early in 1848, Christmas Dagenet died from the disease. The handsome Christmas Dagenet who had his birth among the Wea also died among them.

Addendum
Christmas Dagenet married Mary Ann Issacs, a full-blooded Brotherton, in 1819. After his death, Mary Ann married Baptiste Peoria in Paola, Kansas. Baptiste was Chief of the Peoria and became Chief of the Confederated Tribes. Mary Ann died in 1883 and was buried with Christmas in the Wea Cemetery southeast of Louisburg, Kansas.

Contributor
Jeanne Dagenet
Great-great granddaughter of Christmas and Mary Ann Dagenet

Paintings of Christmas and Mary Ann by Jan Asleson, Spirit Wings Design

10/19/2024

When Nothing Was Left But Courage!
Miami County, Kansas..."Indian Territory!"

A region conceived as "the Indian country" was specified in 1825 as all the land lying west of the Mississippi. Eventually, the area now known as Miami County, Kansas, became part of the "Indian Territory" that would receive tribes forcibly removed from their homelands in order to make way for white settlements. Some came by their own free will; some were forced by bayonet and arrived barefoot and ragged during the bitter, wind whipped pre-winter months. Many carried a handful of dirt from their lost sacred lands...that dirt and courage was all that was left.

There were seven emigrant tribes partly or wholly in Miami County. Come and view the remnants of the Shawnee, Wea, Piankashaw, Peoria, Kaskaskai, Pottawatomie, and Miami. Our recently renovated and enlarged museum covers a period of time from the fossils to the fairs. Miami County's history encompasses the Indian removals, the Civil War, Underground Railroad and abolition period, settlers, and World Wars...and much more.

Browse on your own if you prefer or engage the staff in conversation. There will be a staff member present who descends from one of the area's chiefs and can share both facts and family tales.

Come and enjoy yourselves. Paola is a unique, beautiful, and historic town with an envious town square....much to do with a special atmosphere!

Image

Native American Woodland Tribe painting representative of the cultures of the emigrant tribes of Miami County.

07/31/2024

Wearing his ❤️ for the world to see!

"Nez Perce Boy" (1903)
Photo by Edward H. Latham

At the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington, seven year old Tyee was dressed in his finest garments, a reflection of both his family’s love and their respect for their culture. Notice the heart...it means the same then as it does now. This heart and the photograph itself is a poignant reminder of a vibrant culture that was the target of a systematic program of genocide.

Source
Repository University of Washington Libraries

07/23/2024

Sacred Land, Sacred Buffalo

While there were hostilities between the U.S. government and white settlers with Indians in Kansas before the Civil War, the Plains Indians became a major concern after 1865. At that time, the white settlers began to encroach upon the traditional hunting grounds of the Plains tribes, including the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Comanche, in great numbers. While there were many factors that caused the hostilities, the major issue among the tribes was the wanton destruction of the buffalo, which was the life-blood of their culture.

07/12/2024

After a decades-long quest, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation is finally reclaiming a piece of its homeland.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government flooded 156,000 acres of the tribe's reservation in North Dakota. More than 300 families -- more than 80 percent of the membership at the time -- were forced out of their homes to make way for the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. The upheaval contributed to language and cultural loss as well as a decline in health because a community hospital was closed and wasn't replaced until 2011.

"We will sign this contract with a heavy heart," George Gillette, the tribe's chairman said at an emotional ceremony in 1948 in Washington, D.C., where he can be seen crying in a photo published by the Associated Press. "With a few scratches of the pen, we will sell the best part of our reservation. Right now the future doesn't look too good to us."

The Obama administration agreed to return nearly 25,000 acres around Lake Sakakawea, which represents only a portion of the lost land, to its rightful owner.

Source
https://indianz.com/news/2016/12/20/north-dakota-tribe-recovers-ancestral-la.asp

07/07/2024

An Ojibwe woman. 1908. Wisconsin.

Oh, the stories she must have been able to tell.

Photo by R. J. Kingsbury.

07/06/2024

Paula, Isleta Pueblo girl.
New Mexico. ca. 1900-1920.

The Puebloans, or Pueblo peoples, are Native Americans in the Southwestern United States who share common agricultural, material, and religious practices. Among the currently inhabited Pueblos, Taos, San Ildefonso, Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi are some of the most commonly known. Pueblo people speak languages from four different language families, and each Pueblo is further divided culturally by kinship systems and agricultural practices

Photo by H.S Poley.

Source - Denver Public Library.

06/26/2024

Blackfoot and Tom Turned Up Nose...

Blackfoot people were considered militaristic, strong, and warrior-like. They had coming-of-age ceremonies, primarily for young men who would become warriors. Bravery and dedication to the family and the tribe were celebrated.

Image 1

Tom Turned Up Nose with his grandchildren, Hilda Low Horn, Gabriel Duck Chief, Violet Brass, and Anne Duck Chief - Blackfoot (Siksika) - circa 1940

Source

Indigenous Histories II

Blackfoot Tribe | Facts, Traits & Culture

06/23/2024

Grandfather Rock Goes Home ..

TecKaeAtion in Kansas never forgot their sacred, Grandfather Rock!

The massive red Siouxan quartzite boulder was deposited at the intersection of the Shunganunga Creek and Kansas River near Tecumseh by glaciers during the last ice age, Pursel said. It remained there for hundreds of thousands of years until 95 years ago when settler-Americans “were conspiring to move what they thought was a 10-ton boulder.” One group wanted to move it to the statehouse grounds in Topeka, but the other group successfully moved it first and relocated it to Robinson Park in Lawrence.

Nearly 400 people attended a rematriation celebration Saturday at the Scared Red Rock’s new home: on Kaw land at Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park near Council Grove.

The park “was part of the last reservation the Kaw people had in Kansas before they were completely removed to Indian Territory,” said Sydney Pursel, citizen of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.

Source

'The Lawrence Times,". June 22, 2024

06/19/2024

Iroquois War Tools...

Iroquois hunters used bows and arrows. Iroquois fishermen generally used spears and fishing poles. In war, Iroquois men used their bows and arrows or fought with clubs, spears and shields.

Other important tools used by the Iroquois Indians included stone adzes (hand axes for woodworking), flint knives for skinning animals, and wooden hoes for farming. The Iroquois were skilled woodworkers, steaming wood so they could bend it into curved tools. Some Iroquois people still make lacrosse sticks this way today.

06/14/2024

Sometimes souls seek peace...

FRENCH ACADIE: AN 'ALMOST-SYMBIOTIC' RELATIONSHIP WITH FIRST NATIONS

The French colony in Acadia — located on the peninsula of what is now Nova Scotia — was essentially founded in Mi'Gmaq territory. Setting up their agricultural fields, not by taking over the lands of its first inhabitants, but by draining coastal swamps with ditches, the Acadian pioneers were not intruding into their reservoirs or their semi-nomadic lifestyle moderated by hunting and fishing.

Based on commerce and a respectful spirit of territorial co-neighbourhood, a good understanding was natural between these groups. This one dates back to the founding of Port-Royal by the French in 1605 and was maintained throughout the following decades by its first humanist colonizers including the first chief Samuel de Champlain, Pierre Dugua de Monts, Jean de Poutrincourt, Marc Lescarbot and of course Isaac de Razilly.

The settlers in Acadia differ in many respects from their cousins in the St. Lawrence Valley, but they shared the same spirit of concordance in how to cooperate with First Nations. For the eminent historian and specialist geographer of Acadia, Andrew Hill Clark, a "harmonious modus vivendi" had taken place between the Acadians and the Mi'gmaq, emphasizing a "quasi-symbiotic relationship of mutual tolerance and support between the two cultures".

In this harmonious context, the region was the scene of an intimate ethnic mingling with Native people and mixed unions multiplied rapidly, sometimes even involving French in high ranking.

It was the case of Charles Saint-Étienne de La Tour, who had three daughters of a semi-Gmaq woman married in 1626, as well as Baron Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin, who arrived in 1665, who married Marie-Mathilde Madokawando, the daughter of an Abenaki chief described as "beautiful and accomplished". Several of the eleven children of the couple married in well-established French families, including the Mius d’Entremonts and the Damours, who also maintained close ties with First Nations. A family well-known for its interpreters was founded by Claude Petitpas when he married, in 1686, Marie-Thérèse, a woman from Mi'Gmaq. The couple had seven children.

As part of his research, the French historian Rameau de Saint-Père (1820-1899) noted a strong tendency among Acadians to mingle with and live with First Nations, especially in the first generation of settlers. However, whenever a family member married Indigenous people or métis the records disappeared.

Historian Arthur Bailey argues that between 1607 and 1675, there were very few Acadian families who did not have native blood in their veins.

Several contemporary observers also noted the intercultural influences between Indigenous and Acadian. An anonymous letter published in London in 1758 provides such a description of those who had just been brutally deported from their countries by British armed forces: "They were a mixed race, that is, most of them came from marriages or courting of wild women with them." the first settlers".

On his part, missionary Pierre-Antoine-Simon Maillard estimated in 1753 that at this rate it would not take 50 years before the Acadians were so mixed with the Mi’gmaq and the Wolastoqiyik that it would be impossible to distinguish them.

In many respects, war and imperial rivalries will shape the fate of Acadians and Maritime First Nations. Located at the mouth of the Saint-Laurent River and due to its state of the northern border of the British colonies, Acadia will prove to be a strategic region hotly disputed by the French and the English.

As for the Mi’gmaq and Abenakis, facing the threat from northern New England, they will fight fierce battles against the English settlers and frequently the Acadians will fight valiantly alongside them as allies and brothers in arms.

Source

The New Forgotten World: http://marco-wingender.ca/

Illustration credit: Alfred Jacob Miller

06/13/2024

Birth of Sacred White Buffalo Calf...

The reported birth of a rare white buffalo in Yellowstone National Park fulfills a Lakota prophecy that portends better times, according to members of the American Indian tribe who cautioned that it’s also a signal that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals.

“The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,” said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle.

06/12/2024

The Wondrous Zuni Pottery

Three Zuni women displaying pots, Inter-Tribal Ceremonial, Gallup, New Mexico
Photographer: Wyatt Davis
Date: 1935 - 1940

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06/10/2024

Crow children, 1910
Girl's dress is adorned with elk teeth.

A Native American tribe of the Great Plains, the Crow traditionally lived in what is now Montana. They spoke the language of the Siouan family and called themselves the Absaroka, meaning “children of the large-beaked bird,” after a native bird of the area. The name Crow is a European misinterpretation of that word.

06/09/2024

Most Effective Sniper of WWI

Francis Pegahmagabow, MM, was the most decorated Indigenous soldier of the First World War. An Ojibwa from the Wasauksing First Nation, Pegahmagabow was an extremely skilled scout and the most effective sniper of the First World War. He served with the 1st Canadian Infantry Battalion from 1914-1918.

For his service, Pegahmagabow was one of a small number of Canadian soldiers, 39 in total, to have received the Military Medal with two bars. His Military Medal was awarded in 1916 for his previous two years of service as a messenger under dangerous conditions, and his subsequent bars were awarded for feats of bravery during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 and during the Hundred Days Campaign in 1918.

Following the war, Pegahmagabow returned to Canada, later becoming Chief of the Wasauksuing First Nation, as well as an activist for Indigenous rights.

Pegahmagabow’s medals and his Supreme Chief of North America headdress are on display in Gallery 2 of the Canadian War Museum.

Corporal Francis Pegahmagabow
George-Metcalf Archival Collection
CWM 20040035-006

Source

Canadian War Museum FB

06/05/2024

06/05/2024

The Dismal Demise in Kansas

EXIT THE BUFFALO
From The Kansas Daily Commonwealth, Topeka, November 26,1872
FROM THE FRONTIER
A Herd of Buffaloes 10 miles long and 2 miles wide
make a Charge on a Construction Party

Fourteen Hundred Killed in one Day...

Dodge City, Kansas.,25

Special dispatch to the commonwealth:

"The buffaloes are moving south and crossing the Arkansas River. Twenty miles west of Dodge an immense herd of the creatures, covering an extent of country two miles in width and ten in length, were passing by the construction train. Fourteen were run over and killed by the engine. Two hours were consumed by the construction train endeavoring to get through this herd. Several calves were run over and injured, and the construction men, while in the act of capturing some of them, were charged upon by several hundred buffalo and barely escaped with their lives. Every ravine is full of hunters, and camp fires can be seen for miles in every direction. The hides and saddles of fourteen hundred buffalo were brought town to-day.
A. P. Baldwin

Source

Kaw Mission and Last Chance Store Museum, Facebook

06/02/2024

Evening at Blackfeet camp. Montana. Early 1900s.

Glass lantern slide by Walter McClintock.

Source - Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library