Coyote Warrior

by Paul Van Develder

It is, however, understood that, in making this recognition and acknowledgement, the aforesaid Indian nations do not hereby abandon or prejudice any rights or claims they may have to other lands; and further, that they do not surrender the privilege of hunting, fishing, or passing over any of the tracts of country heretofore described.

  ARTICLE 6. The parties to the second part of this treaty having selected principals or head-chiefs for their respective nations, through whom all national business will hereafter be conducted, do hereby bind themselves to sustain said chiefs and their successors during good behavior.

  ARTICLE 7. In consideration of the treaty stipulations, and for the damages which have or may occur by reason thereof to the Indian nations, parties hereto, and for their maintenance and the improvement of their moral and social customs, the United States bind themselves to deliver to the said Indian nations the sum of fifty thousand dollars per annum for the term of ten years, with the right to continue the same at the discretion of the President of the United States for a period not exceeding five years thereafter, in provisions, merchandise, domestic animals, and agricultural implements, in such proportions as may be deemed best adapted to their condition by the President of the United States, to be distributed in proportion to the population of the aforesaid Indian nations.

  ARTICLE 8. It is understood and agreed that should any of the Indian nations, parties to this treaty, violate any of the provisions thereof, the United States may withhold the whole or a portion of the annuities mentioned in the preceding article from the nation so offending, until, in the opinion of the President of the United States, proper satisfaction shall have been made.

  In testimony whereof the said D. D. Mitchell and Thomas Fitzpatrick commissioners as aforesaid, and the chiefs, headmen, and braves, parties hereto, have set their hands and affixed their marks, on the day and at the place first above written.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  Interviews: James Abourezk, Elizabeth Bell, John Carter, Raymond Cross, Tom Goldtooth, Lori Goodman, Verna Teller.

  4 pressure on tribal governments:In May of 1996, just months after human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by Nigerian strongman Sani Abacha, the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Mine Watch International hosted a ten-day conference in London of leaders of indigenous groups from around the world engaged in battles against multinational mineral conglomerates. Typical of the strategy employed by most, Royal Dutch/ Shell formed an informal partnership with General Abacha and gained unhindered access to the oil fields in the Ogoni people’s homelands. When Saro-Wiwa took the Ogoni’s complaints to the world, a kangaroo court set up by General Abacha found him guilty of treason and executed him on a public square in Lagos. At the WCC conference in London, indigenous leaders reported that the situation in Nigeria was commonplace. In 1998 Amnesty International reported that in Myanmar, formerly Burma, the Mitsubishi and Unocal corporations were funneling money to the military junta to build a gas pipeline with “the slave labor of children.” Unocal has since been sued for its alleged collusion with the junta. For a full discussion of this, see Gedicks, The New Resource Wars.

  4 in August 1999 . . . federal district: Although it has enormous implications for future relations between Indian and white governments, Eloise Pepion Cobell, et al., v. Bruce Babbitt, Lawrence Summers, Kevin Gover has been ignored by the mainstream public. After twice citing Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton for “contempt of court,” Judge Lamberth called the agency “a blight on the Government of the United States.”

  5 By the mid-1990s, the IEN had: Through its contacts with indigenous groups in the International Indian Treaty Council—the largest nongovernmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations—the IEN joined a global network of indigenous and nonindigenous groups that monitor industry and governments.

  5 Dateline: Isleta, New Mexico: The Isleta Pueblo were the first to use Section 517 of the federal Clean Water Act for the purpose of establishing their own water standards on the Rio Grande. Their rights to the river predate claims by the city. The Isleta case was soon followed to the high court by a similar case brought against the Salish and Kootenai tribes of Montana by the state’s governor, Marc Racicot. Here, the tribes were claiming jurisdiction over white residents on the reservation. The Salish and Kootenai also won their appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

  6 what lurks behind the details: In 1987, the Strategic Minerals Task Force urged President Ronald Reagan to declare Indian country a “national sacrifice zone.” The task force, made up entirely of representatives from the extraction industry and right-wing “think tanks” such as the Heritage Foundation, reasoned that the nation’s reservation Indians could be forcibly relocated to America’s large urban centers. For a full discussion of the SMTF’s agenda under the Reagan administration, see Gedicks, The New Resource Wars, pp. 41, 110.

  6 Dateline: Missoula: With national elections hanging in the balance, and with the Pacific Northwest states holding deciding votes, the Clinton administration finessed the “breaching” question by postponing the decision for another five years.

  7 in October of 1804 . . . five: Lewis and Clark, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Nicholas Biddle, ed., pp. 168- 174.

  7 In his seminal work: Rhonda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, pp. 67- 70.

  7 the artist George Catlin: In 1832, the elderly Clark met with George Catlin before the young artist boarded the steamboat Yellowstone, then set to embark on its maiden voyage up the Missouri to Fort Union. See Catlin, North American Indians, p. 32.

  8 the Papal See was asserting: Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, pp. 23- 40.

  CHAPTER I: HEART OF THE WORLD

  Interviews: Everett Albers, Dorothy Atkinson, Al (Bucky) Cross, Martin (Crusoe) Cross, Michael Cross, Calvin Grinnell, Marilyn Hudson, Ed Lone Fight, Dr. Monica Mayer, Phyllis Old Dog Cross, Ray Quinn, Jr., Dr. Herbert Wilson, Professor W. Raymond Wood.

  11 Martin and 9 million other people: For a firsthand account of “The War of the Worlds” broadcast on the night of October 30, 1938, see Bogdanovich, This Is Orson Welles, pp. 18- 20, 346, and Callow, Orson Welles, pp. 398- 408.

  11 It was October 30, 1938: Ibid.

  11 In the CBS studio in New York: Ibid.

  11 Out in the great beyond: Ibid.

  12 The young couple’s home lacked any: Many memorable works have chronicled the life of the homesteader. Several first-rate accounts are: Sandoz, Old Jules; Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth; and, more recently, Raban, Bad Land.

  12 Temperatures in Elbowoods: Fitzharris, The Wild Prairie, pp. 7- 10. In Short Grass Country, p. 190, Stanley Vestal tells of a four-month period in Dodge City when the wind blew for 1,420 hours and was calm for 27.

  13 A team of government surveyors: Meyer, “Fort Berthold and the Garrison Dam,” pp. 239- 40.

  15 Old State Road Number Eight: This highway has since been renamed North Dakota Highway 37. On its north-south axis, it makes a ninety-degree turn just shy of Lake Sakakawea and runs due east, along the old section lines, to the town of Garrison.

  16 To the dismay of many: For a more detailed account of the life of the homesteaders, see Raban, Bad Land, pp. 195- 223, or, perhaps the most important novel ever written about immigrant life on the High Plains, Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth.

  17 Like their newly arrived neighbors: Meyer, The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri, pp. 5- 9. Meyer’s terminology differs slightly from that of W. Raymond Wood and Preston Holder, but he draws similar conclusions from archaeological data collected in recent decades. Meyer’s “archaic Mandan” were already semisedentary when they began moving up the Missouri River in the tenth century A.D. Evidence from excavations in the Middle Missouri region, in modern-day South Dakota, show that the Mandan were trading for dentalium shell beads in the 1300s. These shells, which were a form of trading currency in pre-Columbian America, are known to have only one source: the seabed surrounding the Queen Charlotte Islands, sixty miles off the coast of
British Columbia.

  Also see Holder, The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains, pp. 29- 42. This is a little-known but excellent analysis of the migration of the prehistoric Village Indians and their interaction with the historic nomads of the plains.

  17 Two centuries before the first French: Wood and Thiessen, Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains, pp. 1- 3.

  17 Comanche of the Southwest brought: Ibid. The first documented contact between the villagers of the Upper Missouri and Europeans came in 1738, but evidence suggests that there may have been earlier encounters (Holder, The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains, p. 9). La Salle’s men mapped the Mississippi River from its mouth, at the Gulf of Mexico, to Minnesota in the mid-1600s. That map was so accurate that today it is almost indistinguishable from a map drawn from satellite photos. Maps drawn in Paris in 1719 from data gathered by surveyors show the location of the Mandan Villages twenty years before the arrival of La Vérendrye.

  18 When the French explorer Sieur de La Vérendrye: Ibid., and Smith, The Explorations of the La Vérendryes in the Northern Plains, pp. 26, 33, 51.

  18 and Spain: Adorno, álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and DeVoto, The Course of Empire, pp. 11- 18. He writes: “The story of Cabeza de Vaca is incredible and would have to be considered myth except that it is true.” The fantastic stories that grew from de Vaca’s seven-year adventure prompted Coronado to mount his fabled search for the Seven Cities of Cibola.

  18 Winter would come early: What anthropologists call the Little Ice Age spanned a period of four centuries, beginning in the mid-1400s and lasting into the mid-1800s. At the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition, average winter temperatures on the Upper Missouri were fifteen degrees colder than in the late twentieth century. In 1804, subzero temperatures lingered for months and dropped as low as minus fifty. Clark marveled at the physical resilience of his native hosts, who would often sleep out on the plains with nothing more than a buffalo robe to keep them warm. Clark also notes that the women in the village bathed in the river every morning, even when they had to break the ice. See Lewis and Clark, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Nicholas Biddle, ed., pp. 172- 205.

  18 A single village was commonly home to a thousand: Thompson, David Thompson’s Narrative, Richard Glover, ed., pp. 171- 177. In their survey of early expeditions, Wood and Thiessen (Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains) relied on both La Vérendrye’s estimates and those of David Thompson, who visited the villages at the Knife River in December 1797. He was intent on ascertaining their latitude for the purpose of mapping the region. Wood and Thiessen found that Thompson’s population estimates were the most reliable of all the early explorers.

  19 To the good fortune of: Rhonda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, pp. 67- 112, is the most authoritative source, though there is general agreement among modern historians that Lewis and Clark owed whatever successes that came from their adventure to the generosity of the Mandan people, whose extensive caches of food got the Corps of Discovery through the severe winter of 1804. Also see Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, and Peters, Women of the Earth Lodges.

  19 Corps of Discovery: Wood and Thiessen, Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains. In Table I of the appendix, Wood and Thiessen include a chronological list of twenty-five French, Spanish, and English expeditions that preceded the Corps of Discovery to the Mandan Villages.

  19 the sexual hospitality: Although a number of historians have written on this subject, no one has done a better job of framing the cultural perspective than Rhonda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, pp. 62- 66.

  20 Bird Woman was adopted: From interviews with Marilyn Hudson, tribal historian, and from the Cross family lineage. Bowers, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization, also contains a number of interesting reminiscences about Cherry Necklace that Bowers collected from interviews with elders in the 1920s.

  20 feudal Europe was languishing: Erbstosser, The Crusades, pp. 43- 49. Writer Charles Mann asked five anthropologists where they would have preferred to live in 1491, Europe or the Americas. They all answered . . . the Americas. Mann, “1491.”

  21 Disease and famine ravaged: Ibid., and Riley-Smith, The Oxford History of the Crusades. Also, Cox, The Crusades, or Treece, The Crusades.

  21 Centuries of favorable: Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned. For a full discussion of this debate, see Mann, “1491.” While social scientists will probably never agree on specific population numbers in the pre-Columbian Americas, ethnographers do agree that material conditions in the Americas were significantly better than those found in Europe at the same time.

  21 Sometime around the beginning: From an interview with professor W. Raymond Wood on the early migration of the Mandan up the Missouri River. Also, Will and Spinden, The Mandans, and Schlesier, Plains Indians, A.D. 500- 1500.

  22 a dispute between the Hidatsa leaders: Meyer, The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri, p. 10, and Wilson, Notes on the Hidatsa Indians.

  22 The continent’s central lowlands: Holder, The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains, pp. 2- 10.

  22 The Mandan had learned to exploit: The Mandan’s gradual migration up the Missouri during the mild neo-Atlantic period allowed the horticulturists to get established in their settlements before the Little Ice Age set in.

  22 This narrow geologic niche: Holder, The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains, pp. 2- 3. Also see Webb, “The American West,” pp. 25- 31. Webb breaks the North American continent into three contiguous regions . . . north, south, and west. The west itself is broken into three subregions: plains, mountains, and Pacific slope. “If we do not understand the West,” writes Webb, “it is because we perversely refused to recognize this fact; we do not want the desert to be there.”

  23 Little could they imagine: Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, pp. 104- 114, and Mann, “1491,” p. 13.

  23 By the twenty-first century: Mann, “1491,” pp. 13- 15. Mann examines the most current scientific explanations for how crops first cultivated in the pre-Columbian Americas transformed cultures around the world.

  23 In hopes of bringing order: Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, pp. 62- 64.

  24 The Vatican’s discovery-era conquests: Ibid., pp. 74- 86. Also, for an intimate encounter with the thinking of the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth century, see Suarez, Selections from Three Works of Francisco Suarez.

  24 historic debates in the great ecclesiastical universities: White, Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery. For a critical examination of the debates that arose in Valladolid between Victoria and Las Casas, see Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, pp. 93- 108.

  Williams makes the following observation about the links between discovery-era international law and federal Indian policy: “While Victoria’s extensive contribution to European international law’s conception of American Indian rights and status is not in controversy, a lively scholarly debate has long raged over the Dominican’s [Las Casas] sometimes asserted status as ‘the real founder of modern international law.’” Felix Cohen, the leading twentieth-century scholar on Indian rights and status in United States law, has cemented permanently in the minds of United States Indian law scholars the notion that Victoria was principally responsible for providing “a humane and rational basis for an American law of Indian affairs.”

  What is not debated, however, is that international law took shape in the minds of the scholastic thinkers of Spain. Williams explains Cohen’s deference to Victoria as the father of international law based on the work of the “unimpeachable” legal scholarship of James Brown Scott, who served as the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace foundation’s Division of International Law and was the editor of its publication, The American Journal of International Law. He was also editor of a series of tests entitled Classics of International Law. Williams cites Scott’s caveat on Victoria’s preeminence in the founding of modern international law:

  The general editor is unwilling to allow the volume to get to press without a tribute in p
assing to the broad-minded and generous-hearted Dominican, justly regarded as one of the founders of International Law, and whose two tractates here reproduced are, as Thucydides would say, a perpetual possession to the international lawyer. Victoria’s claims as a founder of the Law of Nations must unfortunately be based upon these two readings taken down by a pupil and published after his death, without the professor’s revision and in a very summary form. They are sufficient, however, to show that International Law is not a thing of our day . . . nor indeed the creation of Grotius, but that the system is almost as old as the New World. In the lecture by Victoria on the Indians, and in his smaller tractate on War, we have before our eyes, and at hand, a summary of the modern Law of Nations (Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, pp. 114- 115).

  24 “preserved the legacy of 1,000 years”: Ibid., p. 317.

  24 “Doctrine of Discovery”: Ibid., pp. 325- 326.

  26 by enacting the Flood Control Act of 1944: Flood Control Act of 1944, U.S. Public Law 534. This law is fully explored in Lawson, Dammed Indians, and, Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters.

  27 In less than five years: Though the true figures of the dust bowl exodus can never be known, this is a conservative estimate. See Thornthwaite, “Climate and Settlement in the Great Plains,” p. 179.

  27 During the dry months of summer: Ibid.

  29 Old Dog and his half brother, White Duck: Curtis, The North American Indian. Curtis’s photos of Old Dog and White Duck are in the appendix, where he compiled the biographies of individual tribal members.

  31 Psychologists studying the long-term effects: Duran, with Duran and Yellow Horse Brave Heart, “Native Americans and the Trauma of History.” Also Friesema and Matzke, “Socio-Economic and Cultural Effects.”

  CHAPTER II: SAVAGES AND INFIDELS

  Interviews: Scott Bosse, Marilyn Cross, Raymond Cross, Philip Key, Jesus O’Suna, Charlie Rae, Bud Ullman, Wendy Wilson.

  36 While the Columbia Basin accounts: For a current discussion of the Columbia River Basin dams, see Grossman, Watershed. Also, for a remarkable “white paper” prepared by the Idaho Statesman newspaper in Boise, Idaho, see “Dollars, Sense, and Salmon,” Idaho Statesman.