Loe raamatut: «The Vanishing Race: The Last Great Indian Council»

The Concept

In undertaking these expeditions to the North American Indian, the sole desire has been to perpetuate the life story of the first Americans and to strengthen in their hearts the feeling of allegiance and friendship for their country.

For this purpose two expeditions were sent forth to gather historic data and make picture records of their manners, customs, their sports and games, their warfare, religion, and the country in which they live.

As a result, on Washington's Birthday, 1913, thirty-two Indian chiefs, representing eleven tribes, assembled with the President of the United States together with many eminent citizens and details from the Army and Navy to open ground for the Indian Memorial authorized by act of Congress to be erected in the harbour of New York.

The Indian chiefs assembled, hoisted the American flag, the first time in their history. This act and the flag gave birth to a thrill of patriotism. These warriors of other days laid claim to a share in the destiny of our country. So deeply were these First Americans impressed with a sense of loyalty to the flag that, again under the authority of the President of the United States, a third Expedition was sent forth to every Indian tribe. The purpose of this Expedition was twofold, the linking of every tribe in the country with the National Indian Memorial, and the inspiring of an ideal of patriotism in the mind of the red man – a spirit of patriotism that would lead to a desire for citizenship – a feeling of friendship and allegiance, to be eternally sealed as a convenant in the Indian Memorial.

Here, under the blessing of God, on the shores of our beloved country, where the red man first gave welcome to the white man, this Memorial will stand in eternal bronze, in memory of a noble, though vanishing race, and a token to all the world of the one and indivisible citizenship of these United States.

RODMAN WANAMAKER.

Acknowledgment

FIRST of all, William Howard Taft, President of the United States, gave his sanction to this Expedition, and Hon. Robert Grosvenor Valentine, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, gave his permission to assemble eminent chiefs from the prominent Indian Reservations of the United States, and complemented his courtesy by helpful interest and cooperation. The Superintendents of the various Indian Reservations gave spontaneous and willing service; Major S. G. Reynolds, Superintendent of the Crow Reservation by sympathetic and efficient interest made possible the achievement of the Last Great Indian Council; Hon. Frederick Webb Hodge, in charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology confirmed the data secured. The Hand Book of American Indians made possible the larger scope of the suggestions on Indian dress. The great chiefs who participated in the Council in noble and faithful fashion lived out the history and tradition of their tribes. Heartfelt appreciation is merited and given to all.

Since the publication of the first edition of “The Vanishing Race”, further grateful acknowledgment is accorded. While conducting a nation-wide Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian, embracing 189 tribes and extending over 26,000 miles, the author was adopted into the Wolf clan of the Mohawk nation, – Iroquois Confederacy. They said, “You have traveled so far, traveled so fast, and brought so much light and life to the Indian that we call you ‘Ka-ra-Kon-tie, Flying Sun’.”

THE AUTHOR.

PERSONÆ

Representative North American Indian Chiefs, scouts, and warriors participating in the Last Great Indian Council, held in the valley of the Little Horn, Montana, September, 1909, with their English, tribal, and Indian designations.

chief plenty coups, Chief of the Crow Nation, bearing the Indian name of Aleck-shea-Ahoos, signifying Many Achievements.

chief red whip, an eminent Chief of the Gros Ventres Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Bein-es-Kanach.

chief timbo, or hairless, Head Chief of the Comanche Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Tah-cha-chi.

chief apache john, an eminent Apache Chief, bearing the Indian name of Koon-kah-za-chy, signifying Protector of his Tepee.

chief running bird, an eminent Chief of the Kiowa Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Ta-ne-haddle.

chief brave bear, Head Chief of the Southern Cheyennes, bearing the Indian name of Ni-go High-ez, Ni-go, bear – High-ez, brave.

chief umapine, Head Chief of the Cayuse Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Wa-kon-kon-we-la-son-mi.

chief tin-tin-meet-sa, Chief of the Umatilla Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Wil-Lou-Skin.

chief runs-the-enemy, Chief of the Teton Sioux, bearing the Indian name of Tok-kahin-hpe-ya.

chief pretty voice eagle, Chief of the Yankton Sioux, bearing the Indian name of Wambli-ho-waste.

chief white horse, Chief of the Southern Yankton Sioux, bearing the Indian name of Sung-ska.

chief bear ghost, Chief of the Crow Creek Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Mato-Wanagi, signifying the Ghost of a Bear.

chief running fisher, an eminent Chief of the Gros Ventres Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Itn-tyi-waatyi.

bull snake, an eminent Crow warrior and scout, bearing the Indian name of Ear-Ous-Sah-Chee-dups, signifying Male Snake.

mountain chief, Chief of the Blackfoot Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Omaq-kat-tsa, signifying Big Brave.

chief red cloud, Chief of the Ogallalla Sioux, bearing the Indian name of Marpiya-Luta.

chief two moons, Head Chief of the Northern Cheyennes, bearing the Indian name of Ish-hayu-Nishus, meaning Two Moons or Two Suns.

white-man-runs-him, Chief of the Custer scouts, an eminent Crow warrior, bearing the Indian name of Mias-tas-hede-Karoos, signifying The White Man Runs Him.

hairy moccasin, a noted Custer scout, of the Crow Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Esup-ewyshes.

curly, a noted Custer scout, of the Crow Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Shes-his.

goes-ahead, a noted Custer scout, of the Crow Tribe, bearing the Indian name of Basuk-Ose, signifying Goes First.

INDIAN IMPRINTS A GLIMPSE BACKWARD

We are exchanging salutations with the uncalendared ages of the red man. We are measuring footsteps with moccasined feet whose trail leads along the receding sands of the western ocean. A bit of red colour set in immemorial time, now a silent sentinel, weeping unshed tears with eyes peering into a pitiless desert.

Life without humour is intolerable. The life of the Indian has been a series of long and bitter tragedies. There is a look in his face of bronze that frightens us, a tone lights up the gamut of his voice that makes it unlike any other voice we have ever heard – a voice that will echo in the tomb of time – a Spartan courage that shall be regnant a millennium beyond the Thermopylæ of his race.

We have come to the day of audit. Annihilation is not a cheerful word, but it is coined from the alphabet of Indian life and heralds the infinite pathos of a vanishing race. We are at the end of historical origins. The impression is profound.

A vision of the past and future confronts us. What we see is more wonderful than a view the points of which can be easily determined. We behold a dead sea of men under the empty and silent morning, a hollow land into which have flowed thousands upon thousands – at last the echo of a child's cry. The door of the Indian's yesterdays opens to a new world – a world unpeopled with red men, but whose population fills the sky, the plains, with sad and spectre-like memories – with the flutter of unseen eagle pinions. A land without the tall and sombre figure worshipping the Great Mystery; without suns and snows and storms – without the scars of battle, swinging war club, and flashing arrow – a strange, weird world, holding an unconquered race, vanquished before the ruthless tread of superior forces – we call them the agents of civilization. Forces that have in cruel fashion borne down upon the Indian until he had to give up all that was his and all that was dear to him – to make himself over or die. He would not yield. He died. He would not receive his salvation by surrender; rather would he choose oblivion, unknown darkness – the melting fires of extermination. It is hard to think this virile, untamed creation has been swept like hurrying leaves by angry autumn gusts across the sunlit plains into a night without a star.

The white is the conquering race, but every-whither there is a cry in the heart to delve into the mystery of these ancient forerunners. This type of colour holds the eye, rivets and absorbs the interest.

Men are fast coming to recognize the high claim of a moral obligation to study the yesterdays of this imperial and imperious race. The preservation of this record in abiding form is all the more significant because all serious students of Indian life and lore are deeply convinced of the insistent fact that the Indian, as a race, is fast losing its typical characters and is soon destined to pass completely away. So rapidly are the remaining Western tribes putting aside their native customs and costumes, their modes of life and ceremonies, that we belong to the last generation that will be granted the supreme privilege of studying the Indian in anything like his native state. The buffalo has gone from the continent, and now the Indian is following the deserted buffalo trail. All future students and historians, all ethnological researches must turn to the pictures now made and the pages now written for the study of a great race.

It is little short of solemn justice to these vanishing red men that students, explorers, artists, poets, men of letters, genius, generosity, and industry, strive to make known to future generations what manner of men and women were these whom we have displaced and despoiled. Indisputable figures, the result of more than five years of painstaking research on the part of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, place the decrease of Indian population in the United Sates, north of Mexico, since the coming of the white man, at 65 per cent. They have gone from the forests and plains, from the hills and valleys over which they roamed and reigned for uncounted ages. We have taken their land, blotted out their faith and despoiled their philosophy. It has been the utter extinction of a whole type of humanity. The conquering Anglo-Saxon speech has swept out of existence over a thousand distinct languages. These original Americans Deserve a Monument. They have moved majestically down the pathway of the ages, but it culminates in the dead march of Saul.

The record of the North American Indian has naught to do with the tabulation of statistics, the musty folios of custom reports, the conquests of commerce. He has never walked up to the gates of the city and asked entrance to its portals, nor subscribed himself as a contestant in the arena of finance. He has had no share in the lofty ideals of statecraft, nor the spotless ermine of the judiciary. He lived and moved and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines – where birds sung their matins and the “stars became tapers tall”; where the zitkadanto – the blue bird – uttered its ravishing notes. He sought the kat-yi-mo – the “enchanted mesa” – as the place of prayer, the hour in which to register his oath. On the wide extended plain, rolling green, like the billows of the ocean, he listened for wana'gipi tah'upahupi – “the wings of the spirits.” In wana'gi ta'canku – the milky way – he saw the footprints of departed warriors. His moccasined feet penetrated wa-koniya – “the place where water is born” – the springs that gushed forth to give life, and refreshing to all the earth. Canhotka ska – the “white frost” – became the priest's robe as he petitioned at the sacrament of winter. The universe to him became a sounding-board of every emotion that thrilled his being. He found in its phenomena an answer to his longings and the high expression of every fervour of his soul. We cannot understand this, because the Indian chased the ethereal, the weird, the sublime, the mysterious: we chase the dollar. He heard the voice of nature; we listen for the cuckoo clock of commerce.

The camera, the brush, and the chisel have made us familiar with his plumed and hairy crests, but what of the deep fountains of his inner life? What did he think? How did he feel? What riotous impulses, or communion with the Great Mystery, carved his face of bronze? These no scientist, no discoverer, no leader of expeditions have ever borne into the light. No footprints along the trail can spell out for us his majestic mien, his stolid dignity, his triumphant courage, his inscrutable self-poise, and all of these dyed with a blood-red struggle for survival such as crowns no other page of American history.

To gain this close measure of the Indian mind, his friendship and confidence must not suffer eclipse. It is a superlative task, for the inner Indian shrine is crossed by only a favoured few. The Indian is averse to being photographed, for he feels that every picture made of himself by so much shortens his life. He looks at his portrait, then feels of his person; he realizes that he has not lost a hand or a foot, but feels most profoundly that his soul will be that much smaller in the future world. His medicine is sacred, and you may not interrupt the daily tenure of his life without destroying some ceremonial purpose. It is meaningful, therefore, that these red men allowed us daily communion. This story is then simply instinct with the Indian's inner self: how we sat with him in his wigwam, and amid his native haunts, surrounded by every element of the wild life we were to commemorate; how his confidence was gained, and he was led to put aside his war-shirt and eagle feathers, and pull in twain the veil of his superstitious and unexplained reserve and give to the world what the world so much craves to know – what the Indian thinks and how he feels.

Memorable hours these under clear Montana skies, or at the midnight hour by the dim campfire light, the rain beating its tattoo on the tepee above our heads – surrounded by an army of shining tepees, like white ghosts of the plains, while these pathetic figures told the story of their lives. The warrior of other days gave himself up to mirthful tale, to boyhood's transports, to manhood's achievements, to the wild chase of the hunter, to the weaponry and woes of savage warfare, to the hallowed scenes of home life, to the primitive government of the tribe, and the busy and engaging activities of the camp; finally, to the royalty of the Great Council, when the chiefs assembled in solemn conclave to hold communion, to say a long and last farewell.

Months of arduous labour were spent in the effort to make a comprehensive and permanent record of an old-time Indian council. For this purpose eminent Indian chiefs were assembled in the Valley of the Little Big Horn in Montana, from nearly every Indian tribe in the United States. This council involved permission and unstinted aid from the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Washington, the cooperation of the Indian superintendents on all the reservations; the selection of the most distinguished chiefs – chiefs eminent for ability and honourable achievement among their tribes. The council involved the necessity of interpreters from each tribe, for they could only talk in the sign language. It involved the construction of a primitive council lodge along the lines of history and tradition, and again, the reproduction of primitive customs and traditions, both in paraphernalia, costume, and conduct.

These imprints are the trail marks left by this Great Council of Chiefs – the last Great Indian Council that will ever be held on American soil. The story most faithfully records the idiom and phrasing and atmosphere of the Indian's speech as it came from Indian lips. The language of the landscape where the Indian made his home, where he fought his battles and lived his life, where this solemn council was held, is manifest in the accompanying photogravures. On the Indian trail, we may note as a hint of the many, a few of his imprints.

HIS RELIGION

The life of the Indian is one vast and glittering mosaic of rite and ritual. His warfare, his dress, his medicine, his ceremonies, his wooing, and his dying are all of them expressive of a dominant idea that pervades his life and controls his purpose. He lives constantly and absorbingly in a mystic land. He is beckoned by unseen hands and is lured into the realms of mystery by the challenge of voices silent to all other ears. His dress is studded with resplendent colours significant of the green earth, the blue sky, and the cry of his soul for a place in the great beyond. Like the high priest of old, he wears on his breast the fiery filaments of his faith.

The Indian sits in the tabernacle of the mighty forest or on the heights of some deserted and wind-swept mesa, beats his tomtom or drones song upon song, prays to the Great Mystery, pleads with the fires of the sun to give him strength and life and health, and calls the sun his father. The whispering winds tell his tale to the clouds. He peers into the depths of the stars, watches the aurora as the death dance of the spirits, answers the high call of the thunder as the voice of the Great Mystery, utters the cry of his soul to the lightnings – the arrows of taowity – communes with the rivers and the lakes, the moon, and the legion of wild beasts, and all of it with a pitiful longing that his days of fasting and his vicarious devotion may bring upon his life and his tribe the favour of the gods.

These primitive men hold time and money and ambition as nothing. But a dream, or a cloud in the sky, or a bird flying across the trail from the wrong direction, or a change of the wind will challenge their deepest thoughts. To the Indian mind all signs are symbolic. Their ceremonies are as complicated as any of ancient Hebrew or Greek tradition. The Indian aspires to be a great hunter, he seeks fame as a noble warrior; he struggles for the eagle feathers of distinction, but his greatest longing is to become a Medicine Man and know the Great Mystery. All medicine people of the tribes carry on their necks, or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred thing used in their magic practices – the claw of a bear, the rattle of a snake, a bird's wing, the tooth of an elk, a bit of tobacco. Every Indian carries his individual medicine, and his medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he finds a feather at wrong angle in his path, his medicine is bad for that day. The Indian fasts and dances and chants, using his mind, his spirit, and his body as pliable instruments in the making of his prayer. He finds in the veritable exhaustion of his body the spirit path made clear for his dreams, until the very stars seem as the eyes of the gods, and the sighing of the pines comes to him as the rustle of eagle wings to bear his spirit to loftier realms. Instead of the common acceptation that the Indian has no religion whatever, every single act of his life carries with it some ceremonial function, and his whole being is surrounded by a shining host of ceremonial spirits. The Indian goes with prayer thoughts to the water. His bath is a sacrament. He cuts the long supple willow withes that grow on the banks of the stream, enters the sharpened end into the soil, bends and ties the feathery tops into an arch; over the arches thus made he throws his blankets; meanwhile, gathered stones have been heated in the burning fire. These stones glowing white with heat are placed in a tiny pit underneath the covering of this booth, now to be called his sweat bath. First one stone until four have been counted are placed by the attendant in the pit, and then the fiery pile is thrown in promiscuous fashion on the heap. The Indians enter the closed covering, the ceremonial pipe is smoked, a gourd of cold water is handed to each; they then disrobe, the attending priest lowering the blanket over the entrance. Cold water is then poured over the heated stones, filling the enclosure with steam. In silence they commune with the Great Mystery until one of their number is blessed with a vision; then a call is made and the attendant lifts the blanket, almost immediately lowering it again. This action is repeated until the vision has been vouchsafed four times, when they all come forth and plunge into the river. These sweat baths are always located on the banks of a flowing stream. The Indian sees in every ripple of the flashing water that comes to meet him a shining token of the medicine he has seen in his vision. They then repair to the wigwam and listen in solemn silence to the chanting cadences of the Indian who has been favoured.

The curling smoke from the long-stemmed pipe breathes forth the fumes of war or the pale quiet of peace. With his pipe he pacifies the elements. On festal occasions, or when the camp rejoices at the joys of harvest, the priest smokes his pipe, blowing the smoke first to the earth, then to the sky, to the north, the south, the east, and the west, in token of gratitude for the favour of the gods. With the pipe the Indian also seals his councils.

The Indian buries his dead upon some high elevation, because it is a nearer approach to the spirit world. They bury on scaffolds and in trees that in some mute, sorrowful way they may still hold communion with their loved and their lost. At the grave they go to the four points of the compass and mourn, singing all the while a weird chant. They bury with their dead all of the belongings of the deceased, the playthings of the Indian child, for the Indian boy and girl have dolls and balls and baubles as does the white child: you may see them all pendent from the poles of the scaffold or the boughs of a tree. When the great Chief Spotted Tail died they killed his two ponies, placing the two heads toward the east, fastening the tails on the scaffold toward the west. The war-bonnets and war-shirts are folded away with the silent dead; then follow the desolate days of fasting and mourning. In some instances hired mourners are engaged, and for their compensation they exact oftentimes the entire possessions of the deceased. The habitation in which the death occurs is burned, and many times when death is approaching the sick one is carried out so that the lodge may be occupied after the loved one has been laid to rest. The grief of the sorrowing ones is real and most profound. They will allow no token of the departed to remain within sight or touch. In their paroxysms of sorrow the face and limbs are lacerated, and often the tips of fingers are severed. Until the days of mourning are over, which is for more than a year, they absent themselves from all public gatherings. The bereaved fold themselves in a white blanket, repair to some desolate hillside overlooking the valley, the camp and the distant weird scaffold, and sit, amid cloud, sunshine, and storm, with bowed head, in solemn silence. White blankets are worn by the mourners as they move through the camp, significant of the white trail of the stars whither the Indian feels his loved ones have gone.

The Indian has a sublime idea of creation. He loves the brown earth and calls it his mother, because it has creative power and because it nourishes. And thus we might gather in from the thirty-two points of the compass the forces operant in earth and sky, and each would become a herald of the Indian's life of faith.