The Indian Civil War, Part Two

Troy D. Smith

In my blog post last month, I set the stage for the “Five Civilized Tribes” to get involved in the American Civil War (you might want to re-read that one first!) Now, it is time to see how the war started in Indian Territory.

Each of the Five Tribes were divided between “modernists” who adopted white ways and views and “traditionalists” who had not been as eager to do so. Many of those modernists (though not all) were also mixed blood (with white fathers or grandfathers), and quite a few ran successful businesses or plantations (and owned black slaves). It was common for them, therefore, to identify culturally more with the Southern states than with Northern ones, and to sympathize with the Confederacy. 

Traditionalists, on the other hand, tended to view their tribes’ treaties with the United States as sacrosanct –their word given was their word kept (whether the other side did so or not). In addition, many (though not all) traditionalists either opposed slavery outright or viewed it more from a traditional native approach.

This divide was not the same among all five nations, it fell along a spectrum. At one end of that spectrum you found the Choctaws and Chickasaws, among whom support for slavery and sympathy for the Confederacy was by far a majority opinion. In the middle you found the Cherokees and Creeks, who were both pretty well evenly divided in their support –those divisions falling along the same lines as the previous divisions between pro-Treaty and anti-Removal factions, with those who had opposed Removal most likely to support the Union (but the federal government removed them! one might say… however, it was done at the behest of the Southern states. Those tribesmen most inclined to “take the deal” offered by Southern states during the Removal period were then more likely to support the Confederacy and the South). At the other end of the spectrum we’d find the Seminoles. They had a higher proportion of traditionalists, had violently resisted removal, had more readily accepted runaway slaves into their tribe, and still tended to treat their “slaves” as semi-autonomous.

The U.S. had established several forts in Indian Territory around the time of Removal, and part of the removal treaties was a promise to protect the Indians in their new homeland. Most folks don’t stop and think about this, but when the government removed tens of thousands of Indians from the South to Oklahoma, there were already indigenous people living there who didn’t appreciate their neighborhood becoming so crowded all of a sudden. This included, in the western part of the territory, Comanches and Kiowas (designated “wild Indians” at the time) who were prone to raid their new “civilized Indian” neighbors.

When war began between the U.S.A and the C.S.A., those federal forts were in a tenuous position, located so close to the Confederate states of Arkansas and Texas (and therefore so difficult to reinforce and re-supply if the Confederates attacked.) Federal forces abandoned the forts, therefore, and fell back north to Kansas. Many tribal members viewed this as a violation of the U.S. treaty obligations. Confederate troops moved in and occupied the forts.

Union forces may have retreated from Indian Territory, but the Confederacy looked upon it as a prize –for several reasons. First, there were a lot of valuable resources there, controlled by the Indians –including enough saltpeter mines, it was estimated, to manufacture gunpowder sufficient to supply the entire Confederate Army. There was also the matter of strategic location. The Confederacy had designs on the American Southwest, and if they controlled what is now known as Oklahoma they could cut that region off from the rest of the Union.

The Confederacy definitely wanted to negotiate with the Five Tribes, and gain them as allies.

They sent a diplomatic mission to Indian Territory, led by someone uniquely suited for the task: Albert Pike. Pike was born and raised in Massachusetts, but had spent most of his adult life in Arkansas. He was a newspaperman, a poet, and a lawyer. In that latter capacity he specialized in representing removed tribes in their financial claims against Washington to get full value for the lands they had been forced to cede. He worked, at various times, for the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw nations, and was respected and well-regarded by all of them. 

Pike’s military escort for this mission was led by legendary Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch, now a Confederate brigadier general.

(note: Pike was also a high-ranking Freemason, and is still honored as such. There is also evidence he was highly placed in the Ku Klux Klan after the war.)

Not limited to the Five Tribes, Pike negotiated with the “wild” Comanches and Kiowas. He got them to sign what was essentially a nonaggression pact; they would not be allies of the Confederacy, but would maintain a truce and not attack them. Pike had higher aspirations for the “civilized” tribes in the eastern half of the territory, though, and –meeting with the leadership of all five tribes –had some attractive offers for them.

First, he pointed out that the federals withdrawing from their forts in the region had been a treaty violation. Then, for those Indians who still had a sense of loyalty to the Union because of the treaties the tribes had signed, he argued that was well and good, but with secession the “Union” with which they had signed those treaties no longer technically existed (a point that a lawyer for the other side, had one been present, could have argued against). Then came the enticements. Ally with us, Pike said, and you will get the following:

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                   We will take over the U.S. obligations to you, re: annuity payments for your lost lands.

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                   We will recognize your sovereignty, and your own legal jurisdiction. That is, if for example someone from Texas comes to the Creek Nation and kills a tribal member, we will recognize your right to prosecute him under Creek law (this is something the U.S. NEVER did).

·                

                                        If you agree to raise troops from your tribe for our cause, we will pay to arm and equip them.

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                   We will guarantee that each of your tribes has a seat in the Confederate Congress.

These were, surprisingly, very good terms. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was equally surprised, as he had not authorized them and believed the Confederate Congress would never agree to them all. In the long run, it didn’t matter, since the Confederacy lost. In the short term –it worked. Pike was able to get the leaders of almost all the tribes to sign a treaty of alliance, even the Seminoles. There was only one holdout.

John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Ross, who had been in office 34 years, was a traditionalist. This was true even though he was, by blood, 7/8 Scottish, and was a slave-owner. He had been backed for chief in 1827 by the principal traditionalists of that time, and had resisted ceding his people’s homeland until the bitter end: his own wife perished on the Trail of Tears, dying of exposure after giving her blankets away to freezing children. While not a member of the traditionalist Keetowah Society (some of whom were abolitionists), he was strongly supported by them. His counterpart among the modernist Cherokees was his longtime opponent Stand Watie, who had been part of the pro-Treaty faction during the Removal period and had barely escaped an assassination attempt upon the nation’s arrival to Indian Territory.

Ross met with Pike and McCulloch, but stressed to them his determination to remain neutral in the coming conflict. There were many reasons for this: his people were divided on the subject; he was still making frequent trips to Washington to get the rest of the money owed to his people, and signing an alliance with the Confederacy would risk losing all claim; like many of his people, he preferred to honor his people’s treaties; and, most importantly, a point of geography. The Cherokee Nation was in the northeastern corner of Indian Territory, sharing a border with Kansas. If the Union Army decided to invade Indian Territory, his nation would be where it happened, and his people would take the heaviest brunt of the fighting. In contrast the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who were most eager to join the fight on the side of the Confederates, lay farther to the south.

The Confederate representatives were not pleased at all. Pike and McCulloch made a point of immediately having a meeting with Ross’s rival Stand Watie, whose pro-Confederate sympathies were well-known. The implication to Ross was clear: Just like in the lead-up to Removal, if you won’t sign our treaty we know Stand Watie will. This was probably primarily meant as a threat to Ross’s political standing among his own people, and he may have recognized it as such, but it also brought a new factor into the discussion for him.

After the Trail of Tears, the anti-Removal faction who supported John Ross and the pro-Treaty faction who had followed Stand Watie’s family fought bitterly for over a decade. It started with the assassinations of Watie’s brother Elias Boudinot, their cousin John Ridge, and their uncle (and leader) Major Ridge. After that, there was an ongoing bloody feud, tantamount to a civil war, in the newly located Cherokee Nation (other principal combatants included the Starr family, some of whom would be famous half-a-century later as Wild West outlaws). After much death on both sides, a peace had been negotiated, and all involved came together to form a unified Cherokee government, followed by a decade of relative peace and prosperity.

Pike’s threat of negotiating with Watie instead of Ross threatened to re-ignite the Cherokee civil war.

John Ross, therefore, agreed to a compromise. He would call for a national referendum of the Cherokee people, and allow them to vote on whether to ally with the Confederacy or not. The vote was held, and the pro-Confederates won. John Ross, reluctantly and against his own judgment yet with a desire to represent the will of his people and maintain tribal unity, signed the alliance treaty. While significant portions of each tribe opposed the alliance –including a minority even among the Choctaws and Chickasaws –the official tribal governments of all Five Tribes had joined themselves to the Confederate cause.

Ross’s longtime ally Opothleyahola, the traditionalist Creek chief, was deeply saddened that his old friend was casting his lot with the Confederacy, which Opothleyahola refused to do despite being in a similar situation (supported by traditionalists but outvoted). Opothleyahola and Ross had been on different sides in the Creek War of 1813-1814 (Ross fought among Andrew Jackson’s Cherokee allies against the Red Stick Creeks), but as fellow traditionalists had been on the same side since the Removal period. Opothleyahola had supported the death sentence carried out on William McIntosh, who was a Creek version of Major Ridge (having signed away the tribal lands).

Opothleyahola made it clear that he would not personally support the alliance his people had made with the Confederacy. Pro-Union people started streaming to his camp –at first the traditionalist Creeks, but then Seminoles, Chickasaws, and a few Choctaws… as well as free blacks and runaway slaves.

Meanwhile, the Native American Confederate army was being raised and quickly taking shape. Uniformed soldiers were equipped from all Five Nations. The two initial Cherokee regiments were commanded by Colonel John Drew (whose men were mostly full bloods loyal to John Ross) and Colonel Stand Watie (whose troops were mostly mixed-blood modernists loyal to Watie). The two initial Creek regiments were commanded by the sons of William McIntosh (Daniel and Chilly), whose father had died at Opothleyahola’s command. Albert Pike was commissioned brigadier general, a rank held later in the war by Stand Watie.

Opothleyahola and his motley collection of Unionists felt threatened by the Confederate forces coalescing around them. He sent a letter to President Lincoln, asking for sanctuary in Union Territory. Meanwhile, a Confederate brigade was being sent to give Opothleyahola’s group one last opportunity to change their minds, at gunpoint if necessary. It was commanded by Douglas Cooper, who had before the war been the U.S. Indian Agent to the Choctaws and Chickasaws. In addition to those two tribes, the brigade included three Texas regiments, John Drew’s Cherokee regiment… and the Creek regiment led by Daniel McIntosh.

The confrontation was about to begin.

Next time: the Flight of Opothleyahola

Troy D. Smith is a history professor at Tennessee Tech, where he teaches Native American History, Environmental History, and the U.S. West. As an author of western fiction, he is a past winner of the Peacemaker Award and two-time winner of the Spur Award. His award-winning novella Odell's Bones centers on the Civil War in Indian Territory; one Spur judge described it as "reading like a lost chapter of Lonesome Dove."  

The Indian Civil War, Part One

Troy D. Smith

The Civil War in the American West does not get a lot of attention compared to the events east of the Mississippi, even though a lot of very significant things happened out there. I would argue that even less is known by the average American about a specific part of the West: what we now know as Oklahoma, and at that time was Indian Territory. In fact, the average person (though this does not hold true for many of those reading this post) is surprised to learn that there were American Indians fighting in that war. In organized military units, and in uniform.

When those interested in Western history do think about Indians during that conflict, they think of more “traditional” circumstances: the U.S. Army (and sometimes the Confederate Army) fighting Apaches and Navajos in the Southwest, Comanches in Texas, Cheyenne and Arapaho in Colorado, Sioux in Minnesota. Those things happened, but I’m talking about North vs. South.

Roughly a quarter-century before the war, the “Five Civilized Tribes” of the American South (Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles), along with some smaller groups, had been removed west of the Mississippi, many of them against their will. There they re-established themselves, setting up governments and working to repair the rifts that had grown within their tribes by the experience. Among all five tribes –but especially the Cherokees and the Creeks –there had been bitter division during the removal period, with one faction in each tribe wanting to remain in their ancestral homeland and a second faction accepting the government’s deal for land and signing the treaties that led to the whole tribes’ removal. Those in the first group often viewed those in the second group as sell-outs, even traitors, and in both tribes some of the individuals who signed the treaties were killed by members of their own nations. Among the Cherokees, famously, these two factions were the Ross Party (loyal to Principal Chief John Ross, and unwilling to leave their homes) and the Ridge Party, also known as the Treaty Party (led by Major Ridge, his son John, and his nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie). For several years after removal, the Cherokees engaged in an unofficial civil war of their own, with a lot of bloodshed, until finally the two factions –and a third faction which had accepted the government’s terms much earlier and come West –came together again as a unified Cherokee Nation.

A lot of folks also don’t know that the Five Tribes had, by the 19^th century, adopted the American-style plantation slavery, also called chattel slavery, buying black slaves in large numbers. Many of those who made the brutal winter trek known as the Trail of Tears had been the black slaves of the Cherokees.

The two factions of each tribe, one acquiescing to removal and the other resisting it, can be classified along other lines, as well. Those who were willing to “take the deal” also tended to be what I call “Modernists,” individuals who were willing to adopt (white) American ways of doing things in order to adapt to their new reality. These Indians often dressed and spoke like their white neighbors, and many operated small businesses. They also were usually the ones who used chattel slaves.

The other faction of each tribe, which had resisted removal for as long as possible, were what I shall refer to as “Traditionalists.” While they may have made some changes, such as no longer wearing the old top-knot hairstyles, they had held on to as many traditional ways as possible, and often spoke little or no English. They tended to live up in the hills, surviving by hunting and subsistence farming. When they had slaves, they did not treat them as chattel (non-human property) but rather in the kinship slavery manner that was traditional for most North American tribes. This meant they were treated as members of the household with less status, and were often eventually adopted into the tribe. Among the Cherokees in particular, however, Traditionalists were often abolitionists as they considered “modern” American-style slavery as a violation of their traditional views.   

In most cases the Modernists were biracial “mixed bloods”, the offspring of Indian mothers and white fathers who had married into the tribe and taught their children European ways, whereas the Traditionalists were usually “full bloods” (“half-breed” was not considered an acceptable term by them then or now). This was not always the case, however. Major Ridge, leader of the Modernists (until soon after removal, when he was killed), had spoken hardly any English. John Ross, leader of the Traditionalists (and of the Nation), was 1/8 Cherokee and spoke hardly any Cherokee. Nevertheless, Ross was backed by the Traditionalists, and –his suit and tie notwithstanding –he backed them.

I mentioned that Major Ridge was killed. So was his son John and his nephew Elias Boudinot (the first Cherokee newspaper editor). Boudinot’s brother Stand Watie was the only leader of the Treaty Party to remain, surviving the assassination attempt on him. John Rollin “Yellow Bird” Ridge, son of John Ridge and grandson of Major Ridge, later moved to California and became the first Native American novelist (and also the first California one), writing a book in 1854 about the adventures of Mexican bandit Joaquin Murieta (I suppose in a way this also made him a Western Fictioneer.)

In the years just before the Civil War, Traditionalist Cherokees formed a somewhat secret society to try to keep their old ways alive, and to resist efforts by both whites and Modernists to make them change. They called it the Keetowah Society. Keetowah, also spelled Kituwa, was the Cherokee town in North Carolina (near the present day home of the Eastern Band) that Cherokees considered their “mother town,” the first Cherokee community from which the others had spread. The Cherokee, or Tsalagi, people also had in the past sometimes referred to themselves as Ani-Kituwa, “people of Kituwa.” The very usage of that town’s name, therefore, implied a strong connection to tradition. They were also called “Pin Indians,” from their practice of wearing two crossed pins on their lapel as a marker. Keetowah Society members, it should be noted, tended to be bitterly opposed to slavery.

Some of the Modernists had a secret society of their own. Stand Watie had organized a Cherokee chapter of the Knights of the Golden Circle, which was a sort of pre-war version of the Ku Klux Klan that had chapters throughout the South. They were dedicated to the spread of slavery to new territories.  The “Golden Circle” of their name referred to the area around the Caribbean, so conducive to sugar plantations and other enterprises, which many Southerners wanted to grab and claim for the U.S. as they had done with the territory taken from Mexico. Southerners –including Jefferson Davis –had financed filibuster attempts to take Cuba and some Central and South American countries.

Thus, even though the Cherokees and other tribes had technically settled their internal differences, leading to the 1850s being a prosperous “Golden Decade” in Indian Territory, old  scores had not really been completely forgotten and the stage was set for America’s coming national conflict to also become an Indian Territory civil war.

In next month’s entry, we will begin the hostilities.

Writing about Indians When You're Not One- PART TWO: BALANCE

 

Troy D. Smith

There is a Lakota expression that no doubt some of you are aware of: mitakuye oyasin. This phrase has traditionally been used in Lakota prayers, and since the Lakota language has, in the 20^th century, become in some ways an unofficial lingua franca of the Pan-Indian movement (and Powwow Circuit), the expression is known and used by Indians of many tribes, and their non-Indian allies.

Its literal meaning is something akin to “all my relations,” another way of saying “we are all related.” Even though every Indian tribe, and every region, differs from others, there are some basic principles that practically every indigenous nation of North America shares (the same way that there are certain European cultural traits, even though specific European nations and regions might differ in significant ways.) One of these principles is eloquently summed up by mitakuye oyasin: everything is connected. Not just all human beings, but each human being and all other forms of life, and the earth itself. It’s like we are all strands on one big web; vibrations on one strand will affect the whole thing, one way or another.

Knowledge of this connectedness leads to an overarching need to maintain balance at all times, in every way, and this need is reflected in many aspects of American Indian religion, culture, and daily life. Failure to understand the concept of balance among native nations led many European settlers –and many non-Indian writers –to misunderstand the thoughts and actions of Indians. In Part One of this series, I talked about KINSHIP; this time around I’m going to expound on that sense of balance and how it has been (and continues to be) manifest in American Indian culture.

The most obvious manifestation is in regard to consumption and interaction with the physical environment. Most modern audiences are aware that, traditionally, Indians have been known for “not taking more than they need, and using everything they take.” This is the ideal (although, like all ideals, it has not always been lived up to.) This is why Indians of most tribes had rituals in which they thanked the spirit of the animals they hunted for providing them with food; failure to do so would upset the balance, and the spirit would punish the hunter –or his village, since Indians had a sense of community responsibility.

As I said, that was the ideal. Some scholars speculate that the “mega-fauna” that once proliferated in North America (mammoths, for example) may have disappeared due to overhunting –though others argue that climate change at the end of the last glacial period played a larger role. Some historians have suggested that the American bison may have already been on the road to extinction due to Indian hunting practices –whether that’s true or not, one can’t deny that the tactic of goading entire buffalo herds to plunge off cliffsides (when your tribe can only use a fraction of that meat) does not not fit the general idea of Indians as ecologists. Nor can it be denied that, once Southeastern tribes became heavily invested in the deerskin trade in the 18^th century, deer were overhunted nearly to extinction.

Such practices, though, can probably best be described as aberrations from the cultural ideal of balance. Another, and related, application of balance pertained to agriculture and property. In most tribes, a person gained prestige –not by how much they accumulated –but by how much they gave away. A successful raid on an enemy horse herd might provide you with several new mounts that you could give as gifts when you got back home, gaining status in the tribe. Of course, if you were a young man, you could parlay those horses into a new wife –in which case your new father-in-law would have horses to redistribute and prestige to gain. Excess agricultural goods were often considered the property of the village in general, and were redistributed according to everyone’s relative needs. Among the Cherokees, for example, at the annual Green Corn Ceremony after the harvest, each family was given the amount of grain it was estimated they would need for the year, and everything that was left over was burned as a sacrifice to the spirits. Tribes in the Pacific Northwest redistributed wealth via a ceremony known as the potlatch.

The point is, balance requires that everyone be provided for equally. Early European colonists could not wrap their minds around this attitude, which they considered wasteful and unnatural. Conversely, when Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, he was flabbergasted when he saw starving and homeless children in Eastern cities. How could this be possible? In his culture, either the whole tribe prospered or the whole tribe suffered. Either way, they did it together, as one community.

Thomas Jefferson understood that the secret to defeating the Indians was disrupting these traditional approaches. As early as the late 1700s, when Jefferson became the first U.S. Secretary of State, he was recommending that all tribes be removed west of the Mississippi; however, he believed it would be morally wrong to physically force them to do so, therefore he had an alternate plan. Establish government funded trading posts in Indian country, and introduce the natives to certain goods –sugar, coffee, manufactured goods –which would start off as luxuries but quickly come to seem like necessities. Then introduce the Indians to the concept of credit, which they’re not going to understand at first… once they are deeply in debt, call in that debt, and their only choice will be to sell off their lands to pay it (so much more civilized an approach!)

In other words… manipulate the Indians into abandoning their tradition of maintaining balance. The same approach was used when getting Southeastern tribes entrenched in the slave trade (raiding other tribes for captives they could sell as slaves to the English) and the deerskin trade.

Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Indian spiritual leaders preached that their people’s only hope was to abandon the white man’s way of doing things and go back to the traditional ways –including an appreciation for balance. Prophets from Neolin to Tenskwatawa to Handsome Lake to Whitepath to Wovoka made this call.

Balance also comes into play when discussing justice. If you kill another member of your tribe, you must forfeit your life; a kinsman of the victim can assume the role of Blood-Avenger and execute you. If you cannot be found, a close relative will do in your place. The blood price does not absolutely have to be paid by you personally, but by your family or clan –again, community rather than individual responsibility.

In most cases, the guilty party did not attempt to escape justice –knowing that to do so would doom a family member instead. Among the Choctaws, executions were very ritualized… the killer would appear at the appointed place of execution (he was given an extension if an important ball game was coming up- this was the South, after all), along with a second- usually a brother or close friend. The killer was dispatched with a single blow to the head –a bullet in later eras –and his second would catch him and gently lower him to his burial shroud, spread on the ground. Although technically illegal in the late 1800s, many Choctaws continued to do things the traditional way- one recorded account tells of a promising Choctaw baseball player, bound for the majors, who came home to Indian Territory to answer with his life for a drunken killing. Another tells of a Choctaw enlisted in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War who took leave in order to go home for his execution.

Balance must be kept.

Of course, some accused killers kept an eye to their own self-preservation; Cherokee James Vann was a creative example. Vann, the son of a Cherokee woman and a Scottish trader, was a prominent warrior during the Chickamauga Wars. While in his late teens, he killed the member of another clan during a drunken brawl, and was therefore liable for blood revenge. His mother’s brothers hid him out. Finally, when he ventured out one day with one of those uncles, a dozen or so members of the opposing clan closed in on them, prepared to take their revenge. Vann quickly drew his pistol –and blew his own uncle’s brains out. The other clan members were surprised and frustrated (though not as much as the uncle)… they immediately realized there was now nothing they could do, and no way they could touch the impudent young warrior. They had lost a member of their clan, and now a member of the killer’s clan was dead. Balance was restored. I imagine, however, that Vann had trouble finding traveling companions after that.

The same principle applied in war. If another tribe attacked you and killed five of your people, you were obligated to raid them back, and kill five of theirs. Of course, sometimes the young warriors in the retaliating party would go overboard and kill more than five of the enemy, so there would be a vengeance raid coming their way later. This is why many tribes were in a perpetual state of war –but suffered relatively few deaths each year. The goal was not to find your enemy then annihilate them –it was to restore balance (again, this was the ideal, and sometimes there were large-scale casualties. Especially after the arrival of Europeans, when tribes started jockeying for favored trading status and sometimes decided to get rid of their rivals –but these cases indicated the abandonment of traditional principles.)

Once tribes started interacting with European (and later American) settlers, cultural differences would lead to further friction. Let’s say some miners kill half-a-dozen Indians. Those Indians’ tribesmen were not necessarily going to go to the trouble of finding the specific miners who committed the deed; they were going to kill the first half-dozen or so white people they found. Conversely, if some Indians attacked a farm and killed a family, and the local white authorities demanded that the specific killers be handed over, they were usually not going to be met with cooperation. The idea of having no choice but to find the specific killers was foreign to the Indians. Guilt and responsibility belonged, not to the individual, but to the community –and so did the responsibility of maintaining balance.    

Next time - August 10 -my subject will be "Indians Are People."

[Troy D. Smith is Assistant Professor of History at Tennessee Tech, where he teaches American Indian history.]



Writing About Indians When You're Not One

Writing western fiction often means writing about cowboys and Indians. Now, some of us have direct ranching experience and others do not. For those of us whose ranch experience is limited, there is clearly a need to do a lot of research so we at least have some idea what we're talking about. And that does require a good bit of effort. But at least, for most of us, it is only a specific profession and lifestyle, and subculture, we have to learn, not an entire culture that is foreign to us.

Not so with Indians, unless we happen to be one. It is possible to do a large amount of reading and research, and get many technical details right, and still misinterpret or incorrectly characterize some very basic cultural elements of how Indians think and act. Some western/historical fiction authors, nonetheless, have done an excellent job of writing "from the outside" about indigenous peoples. It's a very long list, and includes people like Don Coldsmith, Win Blevins (who, if I recall, does have some Cherokee heritage), Lucia St. Clair Robson, Terry Johnston, Michael Blake, Douglas Jones, and many others -including several of our WF members.

I am not an American Indian, but I have done a lot of research on the subject, including writing a dissertation and earning a Ph.D in it. I teach American Indian history at Tennessee Tech University. I also know a lot of Indians, some of 'em pretty well -some of them also academics, but many of them not. Which is all just a way of getting at the subject of this blog: my goal today is to share with you some basic facts about Indianness that a lot of us wasicu writers miss when we write about them.

I'm going to start with the term "Indian." Sometimes people hear me talking about Indians, and feel the need to correct me- "You mean Native Americans! They are not from India!"

Well, no, they are not from India, and they are native Americans. Since about 1970, Americans have been taught -initially by anthropologists -that calling indigenous peoples "Indians" was both insulting and inaccurate, and we should call them "Native Americans" instead. So, for the most part, we have learned to do just that.

Thing is, around 1995, a poll was taken of people who had self-identified as indigenous on the census, asking which term they preferred. 37% said Native American, but 50% said American Indian (the remainder had no preference.) From what I've seen, I'd say the tilt toward "Indian" has become even more pronounced since then. Since that is the case, scholars who study indigenous peoples have begun using Indian much more than Native American, as a reflection of the actual desires of the people in question. Most Indians, of course, prefer to be called by the name of their tribe or nation; but sometimes, especially for legal purposes, there is a need for a term describing them as a larger group. Why on earth, one might wonder, would they object to "Native American"? The most common reason I've heard is that none of the well-meaning white folks who decided their name should be changed ever bothered to ask them what they thought about it, so Native American is every bit as much an externally imposed generalization as Indian -at least, some say, they were used to the first one. So now academics have the well-deserved task of convincing people it's okay to switch back to a terminology they only dropped in the first place because academics told them to.

Now, on to some things that are more likely to come up in our western fiction.

It is difficult for us non-Indians to understand just how important tribe is to tribal members, in the past and in the present as well.

What is a tribe? It is, essentially, a group of related people. More specifically, a group of clans. In fact, most Indian tribes traditionally placed a great taboo on marrying within your own clan, as a way of keeping the gene pool sufficiently broad. It is KINSHIP, then, that defined (and continues to define) Indians. That kinship was usually literal -even if very extended -but it could also be fictive. That is, a person could enter into your kinship circle without being literally related to you -usually by an adoption ceremony.

In many tribes, only the people within your kinship circle were actually people, or at the very least, it was possible to have peaceful dealings with someone only if they were within your kinship circle (this is why many tribes gave themselves names that translated as The People, The Real People, or The Human Beings.)

Sometimes captives could be adopted into the tribe. At any rate, in order to have diplomatic or trade dealings with outsiders, they had to become insiders somehow.

Let us consider Pocahontas and Captain John Smith.

We all know John Smith's side of the story. He was captured by Powhatan Indians, and their chief was all set to have him executed... but then the chief's daughter, clearly smitten with the dashing English captain, begged for his life and her wish was granted (remember, we know this story because Smith recorded it. Modesty was not his strong suit.)

But let's try to look at it from the Indian perspective.

Chief Powhatan had been working at establishing hegemony in the tidewater region. Along come these new folks, the English... they might be a serious threat. On the other hand, they might be potential allies or at the very least trade partners. But they are outsiders and thus enemies. How to rectify that?

Captives are often adopted as members of the tribe. It is the women of the tribe, not the men, who decide which captives would live and which would die. Sometimes elaborate rituals were acted out, in which potential trade or diplomatic partners were symbolically adopted and brought INTO the kinship circle.

That interpretation actually makes more sense than the one John Smith believed, and which has been passed down to all of us... because of some very basic cultural misunderstandings.

Another important factor to consider is that about three-quarters of North American tribes were matrilineal, not patrilineal like Europeans. That is to say, their lineage was traced through the mother, not the father. When a couple got married, the husband left his clan or tribe and joined that of his wife. Of course, the other one-quarter of tribes WERE patrilineal. For example: Creek Indians were matrilineal, and Shawnees were patrilineal. If your mother were Creek and your father were Shawnee, you would actually have a valid claim of membership in both tribes. But if your mother were Creek and your father were Cherokee (another matrilineal tribe), then you were Creek. Not half-Creek... there was no such thing. Because it's all about the kinship circle. Either you are IN it, or you are NOT, you cannot be halfway.

I like to explain it this way. Let's say you are a Creek man in the 1700s, and you have two sisters. A runaway slave comes to your village, and your people decide to welcome him in... and he marries your sister. He is now a member of your tribe. Then later a white trapper comes into the village, perhaps a man who is unhappy with life in the settlements and prefers to live on the frontier- and he marries your other sister, thus also becoming a member of your tribe.

Now, to a European/American colonist, there would be three men: a red man, a black man, and a white man. But to the Creek Indians, there would simply be three Creek Indians. They look different from one another, but they are all inside the kinship circle, so they are all Creeks and so are their children.

This would change by the mid-19th century, as Southern tribes became "civilized", and terms like mixed-bloods and full-bloods would come into play. But that was not those tribes' traditional way of looking at things. Nor was it the way Plains tribes looked at things, until well after they were forced onto reservations.

Here's another historical example: the first French colonists who dealt with the Choctaws (like all those nations later called the Five Civilized Tribes, they were matrilineal.)

"We come to you from your Great White Father across the waters," the French said, because to them a father was the ultimate authority figure. "We give you these gifts." The gifts were to prove how wealthy and powerful the Great Father was, and instill both a sense of fear and a sense of obligation in the Choctaws. "We gave you this stuff and you accepted it, so we expect you to do what we tell you."

The Choctaws happily took their gifts, and didn't do a single thing the French told them to.

Because in the Choctaw worldview, the greatest male authority figure in your life was either your mother's eldest brother or your maternal grandfather. You're in THEIR clan/tribe, not your father's. (Ever notice how many stories have Indians being taught by their maternal grandfather? This is why.) Your father, on the other hand, was this guy who came around now and then and gave you presents and was your buddy, not the guy who laid down rules and punished you if you disobeyed them. The French are from the Great Father? Then of course they are giving us presents, that is a father's job. It's not his job to tell us what to do -so take the gifts, smile politely, then ignore him. But if the French had said they were from the Great Uncle across the water, there might have been a clearer understanding on the Choctaws' part of what the French were trying to do.

Now, here's something that bothers me sometimes. When discussing Cherokee leader John Ross, textbooks always say things like "Even though John Ross was only 1/8 Cherokee, he was accepted as their leader." That simple statement displays a basic lack of understanding about how Indian tribes worked at the time being discussed. Especially that "even though" part... and the "only"...because adding those words makes it seem very extraordinary indeed that such a man would become the leader of the Cherokee Nation. In fact, some people in the 19th century (and since) have believed that Ross's "white" blood gave him an intrinsic superiority that allowed him to rise to the top- the same thing was said of other Southern Indians, including the Creek leader Alexander McGillivray.

So let me tell you a little bit about John Ross's ancestry.

In 1740, a 20-year-old Scottish fur trader named William Shorey married a 15-year-old Cherokee girl named Ghigooie, from the Red-Tail Hawk Clan. It was common for Cherokees to marry their daughters to fur traders, because that brought the trader into the kinship circle and made it permissible to have dealings with him. Well, that couple had a daughter, and later she was married to another Scottish fur trader. THAT couple had a daughter, and SHE was married to yet another Scottish trader. And that couple had a son that the mother called Guwisguwi, which was the name of a mythical bird, but that the father called John Ross.

Now, the average American at the time looked at John Ross and said "how is this guy chief of the Cherokees? He's actually 7/8 Scottish!" And, in fact, Americans STILL say that, whether in history books or in the classroom.

But here's how the Cherokees saw it.

Ghigooie of the Red-Tail Hawk Clan of Cherokees had a daughter, Anna. Since the Cherokees are matrilineal, Anna was... Cherokee. Anna had a daughter named Mollie. Since Anna was a member of the Red-Tail Hawk Clan, so was her daughter. Not a 1/4 member; you were either a member, or you were not. Mollie had a son named John Ross; his mother was a Cherokee of the Red-Tail Hawk Clan, and therefore so was he. In fact, it was some of the most traditionalist members of the Cherokee leadership that endorsed Ross for Principal Chief... because he, like they, was Cherokee.

This was not just a Southeastern Indian phenomenon. Quanah Parker was the son of a Comanche man and a white woman who had been captured and adopted as Comanche when she was a child. Quanah's followers did not consider him "half-Comanche," but Comanche,  like them. The list could go on.

My point is this. RACE WAS NOT AN INDIAN CONCEPT. It was a white concept. Race only became an Indian concept after any given tribe/nation started adopting the white man's way of thinking about things.

Consider the Lakota word for white people: wasicu. It literally meant "grabs the fat", as in someone who comes into your camp and with whom you are therefore obligated to share your food, but who rudely immediately grabs the very best for themselves. The word had nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with perceived cultural attributes.

There has been a long tradition in western fiction and drama of portraying the "half-breed" as someone who was part-white and part-Indian, but accepted by neither, because he was not fully one or the other. This IS how white people would have considered him, because they had such an investment in the idea (especially in the 19th century) of "purity" of race. But it is unlikely that his own tribe would have considered him that way, especially if it were a matrilineal tribe and his mother was Indian, or if his white parent of either sex had been adopted into the tribe. It would be very non-Indian for a writer to assume that Indians would feel the same way about racial purity that white people of the time did. That's just the sort of cultural misunderstanding I was thinking of when I mentioned how easy it is for us non-Indians to make mistakes; heck, western writers have been making that mistake for generations.

As an example of how we can try to be more aware, I offer my Wolf Creek character Charley Blackfeather (Plug!! Book 5 is due out very soon!) Charley's father was a runaway slave who married a Seminole woman in Florida. This makes Charley, to his own people, a Seminole, since his mother was one. But to the average American he encounters in and around Wolf Creek, he is a "half-breed." In fact, he confuses some of them, because they're not sure whether he's a black man or an Indian. He is both -but culturally, he is Seminole.

Note: Of all the "civilized tribes", the Seminoles were the most reluctant to develop a racialized hierarchy that debased blacks. Why? Because they were the least "civilized" (mostly because their swampy homeland enabled them to resist domination by whites for the longest of any Southern tribe.) Nineteenth century reality: being "civilized" meant learning to treat blacks as inferiors, thus the more "traditional" a tribe was, the less likely they were to pay much attention to wasicu ideas about race.

I had intended to cover several subtopics in this post.... but so far I've only covered my first bullet point. I guess I'll have to make this a series... that being the case, I'll wrap this one up and await your comments.

SIX SENTENCE SATURDAY--FIRE EYES BY CHERYL PIERSON

I’ll start off the “SIX SENTENCE SATURDAY” feature here at our new and improved Western Fictioneers blog. I had to go ahead and include the rest of the paragraph for it to make sense, so I guess we can call it “SIX SENTENCE OR FIRST PARAGRAPH SATURDAY” to make it fit.

This is from my debut novel, FIRE EYES. Here’s the story of what happened: Three years ago in May, 2009, my debut western historical romance, FIRE EYES, was published by The Wild Rose Press. I was thrilled! Finally, my dream had come true, with the help of a wonderful editor and publishing company.

When I got my first box of books, I sat and gazed at the covers—just like any first time author would. My husband teased me about “rubbing off the paint”—but I was so proud of them, and justifiably so. A lot of very hard work had gone into that story, not just from my perspective, but also from many other people. My editor at The Wild Rose Press, Helen Andrew, was wonderful. She really explained in detail why certain things couldn’t stand and had to go or be changed.

But part of what ‘had to go’ was important to the story, in my mind. Still, there were company guidelines to be followed, and neither of us could do anything about that. So we worked together to find a way to take out the parts that made it more “western” than “romance” and still came out with a fine story.

However, in the spring of 2012, I asked for my rights back for FIRE EYES and got them. I submitted the story to WESTERN TRAIL BLAZER. I was able to re-edit the book and add in much of what I’d had to take out or rewrite in the first version, and it was released with a brand new Jimmy Thomas cowboy cover and lots of renewed interest.

The book is available now at Amazon, Lulu, Monkeybars, Barnes and Noble, Sony and Apple and many other retailers.

I’m very happy about breathing new life into this wonderful story. Once again, when my print copies arrived, I sat on the floor and ‘rubbed the paint off’ all over. I’m so grateful that I’ve had two chances to get my story out there—another thrill, a second time around!

The set up: Kaed Turner, U.S. Deputy Marshal, has followed a younger, more inexperienced deputy, Mitch Beckley, who had set out to pursue a ruthless gang of border raiders in Indian Territory. He’s caught up with him, all right. The gang has captured Beckley and is killing him slowly and mercilessly. From where Turner sits, he can also see something else—the green deputy isn’t the only captive. Andrew Fallon’s gang has stolen two young Choctaw girls Turner knows well—the granddaughters of the chieftain who raised him. Alone with no backup, there’s not much he can do for Beckley. His focus has to be on the two young children.


"Don't kill me! Please!"
God, Beckley, don't beg.
The other marshal's tortured screams ripped through Kaed Turner like a war lance. And he couldn't do one damn thing to save Mitch Beckley. Right now, he had no choice but to sit where he was and listen to the young marshal's pleas, knowing that Beckley was going to die, no matter how he begged. Even though Kaed was tempted to do something, walking into Andrew Fallon's camp would be suicide for him. He had to wait. Hunker down here in this damn undergrowth, hide, and wait.


Blurb:
Marshal Kaed Turner is given a rare second chance at love with the mysterious woman the Choctaw call “Fire Eyes.” But can he quiet the ghosts from his past and protect the love that was stolen from him once before? There’s only one way: Kill outlaw Andrew Fallon, along with the murdering band of men he leads.




FIRE EYES


Cheryl’s Amazon Author Page