ATHAPASCAN
Athapascan refers to a language group, and it represents the most far-flung of the original North American tongues. Athapascan dialects or related languages are spoken by people in the interior of what is now Alaska, on the western coast of Canada, among some tribes in northern California, and by the Navajo and Apache of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.
BLACKFOOT
The Blackfoot people were really three closely allied Algonquian tribes—the Siksikas, or Blackfoot proper; the Bloods; and the Piegans. Siksikas means Black-footed People, and they may at one time have worn black moccasins. The Bloods probably got their name from the vermilion color of their face paint. Piegan means People with Poor or Badly Dressed Robes.
These tribes drifted down from Canada into what is now Montana, driving the Kootenay and Shoshoni before them. They were much feared by early white trappers and fur traders, because they killed all white men who entered their hunting grounds in search of beaver. Though they inhabited the northern edge of the buffalo range, the Blackfoot tribes lived in tipis and hunted bison like other Plains Indians.
The Piegans’ main ceremonials were the sun dance and the All Comrades festival held by the warrior societies..
About 7,000 Blackfoot, 2,100 Piegans, and 2,000 Bloods now live on the Blackfoot reservation at Browning, Montana, at the southern edge of Glacier National Park, and some have joined the Piegan Agency in Alberta, Canada.
BLOOD
(See BLACKFOOT)
BRULE SIOUX
The Brules belong to the Oceti Shakowin—the seven council fires of the Lakota or Teton-wan, the seven Western Sioux tribes. Their name comes from the French word brulé—“burned.” The Brules are very traditional people, maintaining their old customs and rituals, including the sun dance, flesh offerings, the sweat-lodge ceremony, the vision quest, and the so-called yuwipi ceremonies. Many Brules belong to the Native American Church, which follows the peyote cult. Today they occupy Rosebud, a large reservation in southwestern South Dakota.
CADDO
The Caddo belonged to a confederacy of tribes of the Caddoan language family, whose southern members were the Caddo proper, the Wichita, and the Kichai. Its northern representatives were the Arikara and Pawnees. Mostly sedentary planters, the Caddo, as well as the Wichita, lived in large dome-shaped, thatched grass huts, which were first mentioned by members of Coronado’s expedition. Caddoans were once scattered throughout Oklahoma, the Red River area of Arkansas, and northern Texas. About 500 surviving Caddos were eventually settled with the Wichitas in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
CHEROKEE
The name Cherokee probably comes from chiluk-ki, the Choctaw word meaning Cave People. The Cherokee are one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, a term which first occurs in 1876 in reports of the Indian Office; these tribes had their own constitutional governments, modeled on that of the United States, the expenses of which were paid out of their own communal funds. They also farmed after the manner of their white neighbors.
Wealth and fertile land were the Cherokees’ undoing. Under the “Indian removal” policy of Andrew Jackson and Van Buren, troops commanded by General Winfield Scott drove the Indians out of their ancestral lands so that white settlers could occupy them. Herded into the so-called Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, one third of those removed perished on the march, remembered by them as the infamous Trail of Tears.
Most Cherokees now live in Oklahoma, though a small number managed to stay behind. Their population has increased to about 7,000 people, living on about 56,600 acres on the Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina.
CHEYENNE
The name Cheyenne derives from the French chien, “dog,” because of their ritual dog eating. The Cheyenne call themselves Tis-Tsis-Tas, the People. They are an Algonquian Plains tribe that came to the prairies from the Great Lakes region some two to three hundred years ago. They lived in tipis and were buffalo hunters, great horsemen, and brave warriors. They were closely allied with the Western Sioux tribes and fought with them at the Little Bighorn against Custer. Forced after the last battles into a malaria-infested part of the Indian Territory, one group under Dull Knife and Little Wolf made a heroic march back to their old hunting grounds, eventually settling on the Lame Deer Reservation in Montana. Another part of the tribe, the southern Cheyenne, remained in Oklahoma.
CHINOOK
The Chinook lived near the Columbia River in what is now Washington state. They were met and described by Lewis and Clark in 1805, and their trade jargon or lingua franca was widely used throughout the Northwest. Such words as “potlatch” and “hooch” are derived from it.
COCHITI
Cochiti is a Keresan-speaking pueblo situated on the Rio Grande south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Cochiti moved to their present reservation from their original home in Frijoles Canyon, now Bandelier National Monument, in New Mexico, and ruins of their old villages can be found on nearby Cochiti Mesa. The population in 1970 was around 500.
Farming, jewelry making, and pottery making are important economic activities. Cochiti is the home of Helen Cordero, the internationally known ceramist, whose pottery group called “Storyteller,” a jolly ceramic figure surrounded by clinging children, is prized by collectors and widely imitated.
COOS
The Coos tribe, for whom Coos Bay in Oregon was named, are now almost entirely assimilated into the surrounding culture. They once occupied the Pacific coastal lands of Oregon.
CREE
The Cree Indians, an Algonquian tribe sometimes called Knisteneau, were essentially forest people, though an offshoot, the so-called Plains Cree, were buffalo hunters. They live mostly in Canada, but a few are now sharing reservations with other tribes in North Dakota. They were first encountered by French Jesuits in 1640, lost their people in a smallpox epidemic in 1776, fought many battles with the Sioux, and suffered a great defeat at the hands of the Blackfeet in 1870.
The Cree lived by hunting, fishing, and trapping. Muskrat meat was one of their staples. According to Denig, who lived among them in the 1850s, they made sacrifices to the sun, the Great Master of Life.
CROW
The Crow were a typical Plains tribe of hard-riding buffalo hunters. They split off from the Hidatsa tribe at some time during the second half of the eighteenth century, some say over a quarrel about buffalo meat; others say as a result of rivalry between two chiefs. The Crow later divided into two bands: the River and the Mountain Crows.
Once semisedentary corn planters who lived in earth huts and whose women practiced the art of pottery, the Crow had already reverted to a nomadic hunting people when they were first encountered by whites. This change probably re-suited from their acquisition of the horse and the gun, both of which made the nomadic way of life easy and glorious. Like other Indians of the Plains, they lived in tipis; reputedly, theirs were the largest of all tribes. They were fierce fighters and skilled at the universal sport of intertribal horse stealing. The Crows were generally friendly to the whites and furnished scouts for the Indian-fighting army.
The Crows now live on their reservation in Montana, not far from the Custer Battlefield.
DIEGUENOS
(See YUMA)
FLATHEADS
The Flatheads are a Salishan tribe encountered by Lewis and Clark in 1805. Their ancestral home was the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, but they did not resist their removal to their present reservation in Montana, where they were absorbed by the related Salish and Kootenay tribes. Though they lived on the edge of Plains Indian culture, the paintings of Father Nicolas Point, who was in charge of their Catholic mission in the 1840s, show them dressed and hunting buffalo like typical Plains Indians, except that some men wear stovepipe hats bestowed upon them by whites. Contrary to popular belief, the Flatheads did not artificially flatten their foreheads.
HAIDA
The Haida (Xa’ida—the People) live on Queen Charlotte Island off the coast of British Columbia. The first European to visit them wa
s Juan Pérez, who arrived in 1774 in the Spanish corvette Santiago, followed in 1786 by the famous French explorer La Pérouse. Contact with Europeans, as usual in most cases, was catastrophic for the Haida, bringing them impoverishment, smallpox epidemics, and venereal diseases.
The Haida were great hunters of whales and sea otters. Canoes were to them, as one visitor remarked, what horses were to the Plains Indians. Their sometimes very large vessels were hollowed out of single huge cedar trunks. The Haida are best known as totem-pole carvers and as the builders of large, decorated wooden houses. Their gifted artists are still turning out splendid masks and other carved objects.
HOPI
Hopi land is an enclave within the much larger Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Their name, Hopitu-shinumu, means Peaceful People, and throughout their history they have lived up to it. They belong to the Uto-Aztecan language family, though the Hopi in the village of Hano, curiously enough, speak Tewa. The founders of Hano were Rio Grande Pueblos fleeing their ancient home under Spanish pressure to seek a refuge among the Peaceful Ones.
The Spaniards made periodic attempts to Christianize the Hopis and fought several battles with them, but eventually left their pueblos alone. They were also the westernmost of the pueblos and therefore hundreds of miles from the center of Spanish power—and intrusion.
The Hopis have been planters of corn since time immemorial, skillfully coaxing their crops to thrive even in desert sands. In the traditional partition of labor, the women made pottery and wove beautiful baskets, while the men did the weaving and hunting.
INUIT
The Inuit are the native inhabitants of Greenland and the North American subarctic regions. The more familiar name Eskimo, meaning “those who eat their food raw,” was actually a term used by neighboring Indians. The Inuit are hunters who chased seals, walrus, caribou, and an occasional polar bear. On land they move with the help of dogsleds; on the water they use their kayaks and umiaks, open boats made with wooden frames and skins. While they can still build igloos when and if they have to, today most live in European-style houses with electricity and other modern conveniences. Today the Inuit live all through the Arctic, with major settlements in Alaska, Greenland, and northern Canada, and a few have crossed the Bering Strait and settled in Siberia.
IROQUOIS
The name Iroquois, meaning “real adders,” is of Algonquian origin. The Iroquois referred to themselves as We Who Are of the Extended Lodge. They are not a tribal group at all, but an alliance of tribes that dominated the vast area stretching from the Atlantic Coast to Lake Erie, and from Ontario down into North Carolina. According to tradition their league was formed about 1570 by the efforts of Hiawatha, a Mohawk (not to be confused with Longfellow’s romantic hero), and his disciple, Dekanawida, a Huron by birth. The original Five Nations confederacy was made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, tribes which before that time had often been at war with each other. In 1715 the Tuscarora joined the league, and from that time the Iroquois have been known as the Six Nations. The league formed a democratic tribal republic with councils of elected delegates. Chiefs were elected from nominations by the tribe’s matrons, and acted with the consent and cooperation of the women of child-bearing age.
ISLETA
Isleta is the southernmost pueblo, situated about twelve miles south of Albuquerque. Approximately 2,000 Isletans occupy their reservation of some 211,000 acres. The Franciscans established a monastery at Isleta as early as 1629. In 1681 Spaniards commanded by Governor Otermin destroyed Isleta as a punishment for having taken part in the Great Pueblo Revolt. The village was rebuilt and resettled early in the eighteenth century by Tiwa Indians who had taken sanctuary among the Hopis.
The people of Isleta speak Tiwa, in the Kiowa-Tanoan linguistic family. A government report of the 1890s calls the Isletas industrious farmers who raise cattle and maintain large vineyards; they probably learned to cultivate grapes, a rare activity among Indians, from the Franciscan monks who came from California.
JICARILLA APACHE
(See APACHE)
KALAPUYA
The Kalapuyans were a group of tribes who once occupied the Willamette Valley in northwestern Oregon and practiced a mild form of slavery. Marriage was arranged by purchase. The Kalapuya also flattened the fronts of their heads by “fronto-occipital pressure.” In 1824 their population was decimated by epidemics introduced by whites.
KAROK
The Karok (from karuk—“upstream”) called themselves Arra-Arra, meaning Men or Humans. A tribe of salmon fishers, they lived along the Klamath River between the more numerous Yurok below and the Shasta above them. Due to the absence of redwood in their own area, they made no canoes but bought them from the Yurok. Their culture closely resembled that of their Hupa and Yurok neighbors.
KWAKIUTL
The Kwakiutl are a tribe of Indians which, with the Nootka, belonged to the Wakashan language group. Kwakiutl, according to some linguists, means “beach at the north side of the river,” though some tribal elders translate it as “smoke of the rivers.” They are located on Vancouver Island and along the coast of British Columbia.
The Kwakiutl used to live in large painted houses decorated with carvings, and their elaborate totem poles and masks are famous. They fished and went to war in huge canoes often painted and decorated with carved prow figures. They gave solemn potlatch feasts, during which a slave was sometimes clubbed to death with an ornamental “slave killer” to show the owner’s contempt for property. They waged war for prestige as well as to capture slaves.
The Kwakiutl had secret societies, such as the Cannibal society, whose members were supposed to have power from the Cannibal Spirit of the North and who put on a spectacular—and strictly ceremonial—cannibal (hamatsa) dance. Today the Kwakiutl fish with modern boats and equipment; they also work in canneries and the timber industry in British Columbia.
LIPAN APACHE
(See APACHE)
LUMNI
The Lumni are a Salishan tribe of northwestern Washington. Their culture was that of a typical coastal tribe: salmon was their main food, and their ceremonies revolved around salmon and fishing. The women made fine baskets and were renowned for their special dog-hair blankets. The Lumni fought annual ceremonial battles with the Haida for the purpose of capturing slaves. These encounters are still remembered in the yearly stommish, or “warrior,” ceremony which includes canoe racing, dancing, and a salmon steak barbecue. Some 700 Lumnis and related Nooksacks now live on the 7,000-acre Reservation with headquarters at Bellingham, Washington.
MAIDU
The Maidu are a northern California tribe, now living above the San Francisco Bay Area. They are known particularly for their exquisite basketry.
MALISEET
The name Maliseet or Malecite comes from the Micmac words malisit, “broken talkers,” or mahnesheets, “slow tongues.” An Algonquian family, the Maliseet were part of the loosely knit Abnaki confederation in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Maine. Linguistically they were closely related to the Passamaquoddy. Champlain met them in 1604 and wrote: “When we were seated they began to smoke, as was their custom, before making any discourse. They made us presents of game and venison. All that day and the following night they continued to sing, dance, and feast until day reappeared. They were clothed in beaver skins.” By 1904 the Maliseet were reduced to about 800 people in New Brunswick and Quebec provinces, Canada.
METIS
The Métis, who are part French and part Indian, live in Canada. Their name comes from the French métis, “mixed.” The Ojibway called them wissakodewinini, “burned trees” or “half-burned wood man,” alluding to their part-light, part-dark complexions. Some Métis have adopted Indian customs and speak a patois made up of native, French, and English words. Some consider themselves white Canadians; others proudly call themselves Métis and stress their Indian ancestry. Their tales show marked European influences.
MICMAC
Micmac comes from migmak
or nigmak, meaning “allies.” The Micmac are a large Algonquian tribe of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. They were first visited by Cabot in 1497; in fact, the three Indians he took back to England were probably Micmacs. The Micmacs were expert canoeists and fishermen. Fierce and warlike, they sided with the French during the French and Indian Wars.
Ml WOK
The Miwok, whose name means Man, were a central California tribe of Penutian stock, living between what is now the modern city of Fresno and the Sierras. They ate nuts, acorns, even grasshoppers; fished; and hunted deer and rabbit. They lived in conical houses made of poles, and their women used communal, many-holed grinding stones to make meal from seeds, nuts, and acorns. Their mystery ceremony was the kuksu dance, in which the participants wore feathered headdresses. The Miwok had a rich mythology and, before the gold rush, were a large tribe occupying 100 villages. They are now practically extinct.
MODOC
The Modoc, meaning “southerners,” are of Penutian stock and speak a language nearly identical with that of the Klamath tribe. They lived around the lower Klamath Lake in southwestern Oregon and fought hard and long when the government tried to force them onto reservations. Led by Chief Kintpuash, called Captain Jack by whites, they holed up in the Lava Beds, a region of basalt rocks, deep crevasses, and many caves, in the so-called Modoc War of 1872–1873. They defended themselves for months against thousands of soldiers equipped with cannon. After their surrender, the Modoc leaders were hanged, supposedly for killing two members of a U.S. peace mission. Part of the tribe was removed to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma; others were settled on the Klamath Reservation, where a few hundred survive to this day.
MOJAVE
The Mojave (or Mohave) form the most numerous and warlike of the Yuman tribes living on both sides of the Colorado River. Described by early travelers as handsome, athletic, and brave, they cultivated corn, squash, pumpkins, beans, and melons; gathered piñon nuts; and caught fish. They used to paint and tattoo their bodies, and they cremated their dead. They lived in scattered four-sided stick, brush, and mud dwellings and stored their grain in cylindrical flat-roofed structures. At first they welcomed the Spaniards, but later resisted fiercely when the invaders tried to force the white man’s way of life upon them. The Mojaves and their cousins, the Chemehuevis, now share the Colorado River Reservation in Arizona, roughly 270,000 acres supporting slightly less than 2,000 people.
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