The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

by David Treuer

  Henry M. Teller, secretary of the interior, had been dead set against the Dawes Act, which he saw for what it was. The “real aim of this bill is to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement,” he wrote. “The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indian are but the pretext to get at his lands and occupy them. . . . If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of humanity, and under the cloak of an ardent desire to promote the Indian’s welfare by making him like ourselves whether he will or not, is infinitely worse.” Nevertheless, he was equally opposed to Indian cultural autonomy. In the preamble to the Code of Indian Offenses that could be tried in the new court, he pointed out “what I regard as a great hindrance to the civilization of the Indians, viz, the continuance of the old heathenish dances, such as the sun-dance, scalp-dance, & c.

  These dances, or feasts, as they are sometimes called, ought, in my judgment, to be discontinued, and if the Indians now supported by the Government are not willing to discontinue them, the agents should be instructed to compel such discontinuance. These feasts or dances are not social gatherings for the amusement of these people, but, on the contrary, are intended and calculated to stimulate the warlike passions of the young warriors of the tribe. At such feasts the warrior recounts his deeds of daring, boasts of his inhumanity in the destruction of his enemies, and his treatment of the female captives, in language that ought to shock even a savage ear. The audience assents approvingly to his boasts of falsehood, deceit, theft, murder, and rape, and the young listener is informed that this and this only is the road to fame and renown. The result is the demoralization of the young, who are incited to emulate the wicked conduct of their elders, without a thought that in so doing they violate any law, but, on the contrary, with the conviction that in so doing they are securing for themselves an enduring and deserved fame among their people. Active measures should be taken to discourage all feasts and dances of the character I have mentioned.

  The marriage relation is also one requiring the immediate attention of the agents. While the Indians remain in a state of at least semi-independence, there did not seem to be any great necessity for interference, even if such interference was practicable (which it doubtless was not). While dependent on the chase the Indian did not take many wives, and the great mass found themselves too poor to support more than one; but since the Government supports them, this objection no longer exists, and the more numerous the family the greater the number of rations allowed. I would not advise any interference with plural marriages now existing; but I would by all possible methods discourage future marriages of that character. The marriage relation, if it may be said to exist at all among the Indians, is exceedingly lax in its character, and it will be found impossible, for some time yet, to impress them with our idea of this important relation.

  The marriage state, existing only by the consent of both parties, is easily and readily dissolved, the man not recognizing any obligation on his part to care for his offspring. As far as practicable, the Indian, having taken to himself a wife, should be compelled to continue that relation with her, unless dissolved by some recognized tribunal on the reservation or by the courts. Some system of marriage should be adopted, and the Indian compelled to conform to it. The Indian should also be instructed that he is under obligations to care for and support, not only his wife, but his children, and on his failure, without proper cause, to continue as the head of such family, he ought in some manner to be punished, which should be either by confinement in the guardhouse or agency prison, or by a reduction of his rations.

  Another great hindrance to the civilization of the Indians is the influence of the medicine men, who are always found with the anti-progressive party. The medicine men resort to various artifices and devices to keep the people under their influence, and are especially active in preventing the attendance of the children at the public schools, using their conjurers’ arts to prevent the people from abandoning their heathenish rites and customs. While they profess to cure diseases by the administering of a few simple remedies, still they rely mainly on their art of conjuring. Their services are not required even for the administration of the few simple remedies they are competent to recommend, for the Government supplies the several agencies with skillful physicians, who practice among the Indians without charge to them. Steps should be taken to compel these imposters to abandon this deception and discontinue their practices, which are not only without benefit to the Indians but positively injurious to them.

  The value of property as an agent of civilization ought not to be overlooked. When an Indian acquires property, with a disposition to retain the same, free from tribal or individual interference, he has made a step forward in the road to civilization. One great obstacle to the acquirement of property by the Indian is the very general custom of destroying or distributing his property on the death of a member of his family. Frequently on the death of an important member of the family all the property accumulated by its head is destroyed or carried off by the “mourners,” and his family left in desolation and want. While in their independent state but little inconvenience was felt in such a case, on account of the general community of interest and property, in their present condition not only real inconvenience is felt, but disastrous consequences follow. I am informed by reliable authority that frequently the head of a family, finding himself thus stripped of his property, becomes discouraged, and makes no further attempt to become a property owner. Fear of being considered mean, and attachment to the dead, frequently prevents [sic] the owner from interfering to save his property while it is being destroyed in his presence and contrary to his wishes.

  The codes were clear: Indian ceremonial life was to be disrupted by Indian police and tried in the Court of Indian Offenses, and adhering to one’s traditions was to be punished with the withholding of rations, the threat of loss of property, and exclusion from the running of tribal affairs. The court was governed by only nine provisions. The first three concerned its makeup and procedures. The court would be composed of the first three officers in rank of the police force at each agency, subject to the approval of the commissioner of Indian affairs (although if the local agent had reservations about their competency, he could appoint the judges himself); the court had to meet twice a month, at a place and time designated by the agent; and the court would “hear and pass judgment upon all such questions as may be presented to it for consideration by the agent.” The other provisions governed what exactly constituted an offense and what the punishment should be for different kinds of offenses:

  The “sun-dance,” the “scalp-dance,” the “war-dance,” and all other so-called feasts assimilating thereto, shall be considered “Indian offenses,” and any Indian found guilty of being a participant in any one or more of these “offenses” shall, for the first offense committed, be punished by withholding from the person or persons so found guilty by the court his or their rations for a period not exceeding ten days; and if found guilty of any subsequent offense under this rule, shall be punished by withholding his or their rations for a period not less than fifteen days, nor more than thirty days, or by incarceration in the agency prison for a period not exceeding thirty days.

  Any plural marriage hereafter contracted or entered into by any member of an Indian tribe under the supervision of a United States Indian agent shall be considered an “Indian offense,” cognizable by the Court of Indian Offenses; and upon trial and conviction thereof by said court the offender shall pay a fine of not less than twenty dollars, or work at hard labor for a period of twenty days, or both, at the discretion of the court, the proceeds thereof to be devoted to the benefit of the tribe to which the offender may at the time belong; and so long as the Indian shall continue in this unlawful relation he shall forfeit all right to receive rations from the Government. And whenever it shall be proven to the satisfaction of the court that any member of the tribe fails, without proper cause, to support his wife and
children, no rations shall be issued to him until such time as satisfactory assurance is given to the court, approved by the agent, that the offender will provide for his family to the best of his ability.

  The usual practices of so-called “medicine-men” shall be considered “Indian offenses” cognizable by the Court of Indian Offenses, and whenever it shall be proven to the satisfaction of the court that the influence or practice of a so-called “medicine-man” operates as a hindrance to the civilization of a tribe, or that said “medicine-man” resorts to any artifice or device to keep the Indians under his influence, or shall adopt any means to prevent the attendance of children at the agency schools, or shall use any of the arts of a conjurer to prevent the Indians from abandoning their heathenish rites and customs, he shall be adjudged guilty of an Indian offense, and upon conviction of any one or more of these specified practices, or, any other, in the opinion of the court, of an equally anti-progressive nature, shall be confined in the agency prison for a term not less than ten days, or until such time as he shall produce evidence satisfactory to the court, and approved by the agent, that he will forever abandon all practices styled Indian offenses under this rule.

  Any Indian under the charge of a United States Indian agent who shall willfully destroy, or with intent to steal or destroy, shall take and carry away any property of any value or description, being the property free from tribal interference, of any other Indian or Indians, shall, without reference to the value thereof, be deemed guilty of an “Indian offense,” and, upon trial and conviction thereof by the Court of Indian Offenses, shall be compelled to return the stolen property to the proper owner, or, in case the property shall have been lost or destroyed, the estimated full value thereof, and in any event the party or parties so found guilty shall be confined in the agency prison for a term not exceeding thirty days; and it shall not be considered a sufficient or satisfactory answer to any of the offenses set forth in this rule that the party charged was at the time a “mourner,” and thereby justified in taking or destroying the property in accordance with the customs or rites of the tribe.

  Any Indian or mixed-blood who shall pay or offer to pay any money or other valuable consideration to the friends or relatives of any Indian girl or woman, for the purpose of living or cohabiting with said girl or woman, shall be deemed guilty of an Indian offense, and upon conviction thereof shall forfeit all right to Government rations for a period at the discretion of the agent, or be imprisoned in the agency prison for a period not exceeding sixty days; and any Indian or mixed-blood who shall receive or offer to receive any consideration for the purpose herein before specified shall be punished in a similar manner as provided for the party paying or offering to pay the said consideration; and if any white man shall be found guilty of any of the offenses herein mentioned he shall be immediately removed from the reservation and not allowed to return thereto.

  As with the boarding school system and allotment, the Code of Indian Offenses was designed to destroy Indian culture as a means of making Indians American, but Americans on the bottom rung of the ladder. And in each area of intrusion, coercion was written into the law, with power becoming more and more concentrated in the Office of Indian Affairs. The actions and disposition of the government that appointed itself the guardian of Indian futures seemed designed to bring about the very “disappearing Indian” that American culture so mythologized. But it was Indians themselves who made sure this didn’t come to pass.

  The Seeds of Tribal Resistance

  Even as the Friends of the Indian and the Indian Rights Association tried to push the Dawes Act through Congress as a way of helping Indians become civilized, another organization sprang up that was opposed to such measures and committed to including Indians’ points of view in policies that affected them: the National Indian Defense Association (NIDA). The organization was created in 1885 in an effort to debate and ultimately stop the policy provisions of the IRA as it pushed for allotment. NIDA, although it also took as a given the virtues of private ownership and allotment, believed in upholding some tribal rights as well. Its early members included several powerful figures: the Reverend Byron Sunderland, an abolitionist and pastor to Grover Cleveland; anthropologist James Dorsey; former chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court Ammiel Willard; John Oberly, the superintendent of Indian schools for the Office of Indian Affairs; Alonzo Bell, assistant commissioner of Indian affairs; and two other former commissioners, Francis Walker and George Manypenny. They were prescient in seeing that immediate severalty of communal landownership and the assumption of private parcels would retard the civilization process because without tribal governments, and given the abuses rampant in the Indian service, Indians would lack the civil structures and stability necessary to hold on to their land and make something of it—the sine qua non of making Americans of themselves. Thomas A. Bland, a founder of the organization, who had been a longtime advocate for Indian rights, published a monthly journal, The Council Fire and Arbitrator, that detailed the corruption and abuse in the Indian service. In the course of many trips out west, principally to Dakota Territory, he had seen firsthand what happened when land was essentially ripped out from under the feet of Indian people.

  In 1868, at the end of what came to be known as Red Cloud’s War, the Teton Lakota had been able to force the U.S. government to create a “Great Sioux Reservation” that encompassed all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River and parts of North Dakota and Nebraska. But with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills (claims that were greatly exaggerated by the federal government), the United States had almost immediately abrogated that treaty. War boiled up again, culminating in the decimation of the Seventh Cavalry by the Lakota and their allies at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Immediately after the battle, various Lakota leaders were induced to sign a treaty that deprived them of the Black Hills, although it was clear that the Lakota weren’t aware that this was a provision of the treaty. In part because of the government’s exaggeration about the gold discoveries, white people flooded into South Dakota. In 1883, Congress sought to reduce the Great Sioux Reservation by half and replace it with five smaller reservations. The remaining land was opened up to settlement and grazing. The fraud inherent in these actions was so blatant that something like a public outcry was raised, and it was loud enough to cause the government to empanel a commission (including Senator Henry Dawes) to investigate. The commission found that the federal negotiators had cajoled and coerced and threatened the Lakota so much that even by the standards of the day their actions could only be considered reprehensible. But the commission nonetheless recommended that the breakup of the reservation proceed. Bland—who counted Red Cloud among his friends, and vice versa—was outraged, and he made his outrage known to the public in The Council Fire and Arbitrator and among the reformers and legislators involved in the issue.

  When Dawes resubmitted his legislation to Congress in December 1885, the IRA and the NIDA, which had engaged in vicious fights over its provisions, were given a chance to debate their views in front of the House Indian Committee. Bland noted that efforts to push through allotment policy might not have the Indians’ best interests at heart, especially in South Dakota. He drew attention to the fact that Henry Dawes had a significant financial interest in the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, which had obtained a right-of-way agreement with the Lakota—in fact, the bill as it had subsequently evolved differed from the 1884 version only in this regard. Bland also noted that J. C. McManima, from Pierre, was lobbying both for the passage of the allotment act and for South Dakota statehood, often in the same breath. NIDA ultimately argued that the allotment act was geared more to the benefit of the railroads than the Indians, as it gave the Indians no choice in what land they would get, and the price the government was willing to pay for the “surplus” land was criminally low. NIDA’s efforts bore fruit in the final edition of the bill, which included clear language stating that trib
es would have to agree to allotment beforehand. Additionally, allotment would not proceed “in severalty.” Indians would have twenty-five years before the title of their allotments would revert to them as truly private property; until that time, the land would be held in trust for them by the government. These changes helped give the Indians at least some wiggle room (though not enough) in an otherwise disastrous policy.

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  IN 1863, THE RED LAKE Band and Pembina Band of Ojibwe were induced by Alexander Ramsey, governor of Minnesota, to sign a treaty ceding roughly eleven million acres of prime woodlands and prairie on either side of the Red River. The Treaty of Old Crossing promised them considerable annuities and the right to hunt, fish, and travel in the ceded area in exchange for what Ramsey described as the “right of passage” for oxcarts and wagon trains headed west.

  Old Crossing Treaty Map, 1863

  The wording of the treaty—misrepresented by Ramsey and not adequately translated to the chiefs—was clear enough, as was the intent. The government was after nothing less than extinguishing Ojibwe claim to the whole region, as the next thirty years would prove. The chiefs who signed the treaty saw that their good faith had been misplaced, and they grew deeply suspicious of the government thereafter.

  What the government didn’t comprehend, perhaps, was the unique nature of leadership at Red Lake. The Red Lake and Pembina Ojibwe were the westernmost bands of Ojibwe argonauts who had, for centuries, pushed and fought and negotiated and traded their way from the Eastern Seaboard through the Great Lakes and into the headwaters of the Mississippi watershed. Ojibwe society was, in those years, very much shaped by the roles of hereditary clans. Membership in a clan—a spiritual as well as practical kind of kinship—was passed down through the father’s line, and inclusion in a given clan conferred, among other things, somewhat specific social roles. The Loon Clan was a clan of leadership, civil chiefs, as were the Crane and Turtle Clans. Bear Clan people functioned as a tribal police force and warrior society and made up the great majority of the tribe at Red Lake, serving as warriors and chiefs who protected the front edge of the Ojibwe empire, where a state of nearly constant warfare with Dakota, Ho-Chunk, and Cree prevailed. These chiefs included the leaders who had been so badly betrayed by the signing of the Treaty of Old Crossing, among them Medwe-ganoonind (He Who Is Spoken To), Wemitigoozhiins (Little French Man), and Meskokonayed (Red Robed).