Ghost Dances and Ring Shouts:
Lakota and Gullah Nineteenth Century Musical Traditions
in Comparative Perspective
Rónán de Bhaldraithe
A Thesis Submitted for the Award of the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Supervisor: Dr Enrico Dal Lago
Department of History
School of Humanities
National University of Ireland, Galway
October 2013
1
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
5
1. “Go from Your Country”: The Historical Formation of Lakota and Gullah
Culture before 1850
i.
Frontier Environments and Seventeenth century Cultural Contact
ii.
Christianity, Commerce, Conflict and Cultural Change
iii.
“New Dawns”: The Impact of Geographical and Cultural Changes on
Religion
iv.
“Rise From The Earth”: The Re-Emergence of Christianity as Cultural
Coercion
2. “To Subdue and Replenish”: American Christianity and the Lakota and Gullah,
1850-1860
i.
“Heaven and Earth”: Religion and Place in Lakota and Gullah Culture
ii.
“To Seek Refuge”: Lakota and Gullah Cultural Resistance and Appropriation
iii.
“Do not be conformed”: Lakota and Gullah Cultural Adaptabilities
iv.
“Hold to the Traditions”: Lakota and Gullah Cultural Retentions
3. “Swords to Plowshares”: Wars and Cultural Change, 1860-1880
i.
“Noise in the House of God”: Lakota and Gullah Culture in a time of War
ii.
“A Time for Peace” : Lakota And Gullah Culture after the Civil War
iii.
“The People’s Religion“: The Birth of Lakota and Gullah Christianities
iv.
“Savages and the Saved”: Christianity in the Lakota’s and Gullah’s relations
with the United States
4. “Whiter than Snow”: The Assimilation and Isolation of Lakota and Gullah Musical
Traditions, 1880-1900
i.
Lakota and Gullah Society and Culture after 1880
ii.
The Lakota and Gullah and the Federal Government
iii.
Lakota and Gullah Christianities 1880-1900
iv.
The Commodification of Lakota and Gullah Musical Traditions
24
26
32
41
49
58
59
65
71
77
85
86
92
99
107
117
119
126
130
139
5. The Ghost Dance and Ring Shout
147
6. “Lakota and Gullah Musical Traditions in the Early Twentieth century”
i.
“Schoolhouse Songs”: The Education of Lakota and Gullah Children
ii.
“Singing from the same Hymn Sheet”: Lakota and Gullah Christianity in the
Early Twentieth century.
iii.
“From the Sacred to the Stump”: The Secularisation And Politicisation Of
Lakota And Gullah Musical Traditions
Conclusion
Bibliography
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195
2
Acknowledgements
This thesis is a result of four years’ work, during which I received help and support from
many people.
My interest in the history of the United States was aroused after taking two
Undergraduate courses with Dr Enrico Dal Lago at the National University of Ireland,
Galway. One of these focussed on Slavery and Emancipation in America, while the other
was a survey course on Native North America from pre-history to the present. With Dr Dal
Lago’s guidance and encouragement I decided to pursue a PhD which compared the
changes in the musical traditions of the Lakota and Gullah in the nineteenth century.
Throughout the last four years Dr Dal Lago has been relentless in his supervision,
inspiration and support.
I would also like to thank my internal and external examiners, Dr Niall Ó Ciosáin
and Professor Catherine Clinton, for their wisdom and insight both during and after the
Viva. Additionally, I would like to thank the rest of the teaching staff in the History
Department in NUI Galway. I would especially like to thank Dr Gearóid Barry who always
showed an active interest in my topic. Thanks also to the Head of the School of
Humanities, Professor Steven Ellis and the Head of the Department of History, Dr. Róisín
Healy.
Many thanks to those who helped me with my archival research in the United
States. Thanks to the staff at the Southern Historical Collection in the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Baptist Historical Collection at Furman University, Greenville
and the Christianity and Native America Collection at Marquette University, Milwaukee.
In particular I would like to thank Professor Patrick O Neill at UNC, for showing me
around campus and welcoming me into his home and Mark Thiel at Marquette University
for his understanding of my thesis and his endeavour to find me the documents that would
help me. Many thanks also to the staff at the Inter Library Loans department at NUI
Galway on whom I was heavily dependent for much of this study.
My family have been of great support to me. Thanks to my parents Máire and
Pádraic who encouraged and backed me throughout the four years involved in writing this
thesis. Thanks also to Caoilfhionn and Sorcha for the many ways in which they helped me
outside of my studies. Thanks to Béibhinn and Lughán who provided a welcome
distraction from the work, as well as an incentive to finish, especially when weekends were
sometimes taken over with thesis work. Finally, my special thanks to my wife Sharon
whose fortitude, comfort and reassurance ensured that my thesis would be completed.
3
Abbreviations
SCBC
South Carolina and Other Baptist Resources Collection, Special
Collections and Archives, Furman University, Greenville, South
Carolina
SHC
Southern Historical Collection, Louis Round Wilson
Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North
Carolina
CNAC
Christianity and Native America Collection, Special Collections
and Archives, Raynor Memorial Library, Marquette University,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
4
INTRODUCTION
During the nineteenth century, the cultures of Native Americans and African Americans
went through a period of profound change as the United States established itself as a nation
which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and which encompassed the vast
array of cultures and traditions within that territory. The Lakota and Gullah were two such
cultures. This thesis examines change in the musical traditions of the Lakota and Gullah in
the nineteenth century, as their cultures were influenced by the expansion of the American
colonies from the Seventeenth Century and the expansion of the nation of the United States
in the Nineteenth Century. Both the Lakota and Gullah, as peripheral groups to the United
States, responded in comparable ways and took roughly parallel paths of cultural resistance
to this expansion. This resistance entailed the creation of comparable syncretistic cultures,
in particular in both groups’ response to Christianisation. It is for this reason that I chose
the Gullah and Lakota as case-studies for this thesis. The process of syncretism and
cultural adaptation is enhanced by the Lakota’s and Gullah’s distinctive ethnic identities.
In the Lakota’s case this was the result of the strong tribal affiliations of the Sioux Nation,
which compared to other Native American groups sought to preserve ethnic identity
through organised military resistance in the Nineteenth century. In the Gullah’s case, it was
the peculiar conditions of slaveholding in the American South East which created their
distinctiveness, in comparison to other African American slave societies.
The syncretism evident in Lakota and Gullah late Nineteenth Century
culture was especially clear in the creation of religious musical rituals which combined
Christianity with older rituals. The centrality of music in the traditional religions of the
Lakota and Gullah placed their musical traditions at the centre of cultural exchange in this
period. It is for this reason that the musical traditions of both groups are the topic of this
thesis. The Lakota and Gullah responded to the pressures exerted on their musical and
religious traditions, in different ways. However, both ethnic groups attempted to create
syncretistic religious rituals which incorporated their musical traditions into a sanctioned
religious setting and it is this process, and in particular the creation of the Lakota Ghost
Dance and the Gullah Ring Shout, which is the focus of this thesis.
The Lakota, along with the Santee and the Yankton/Yanktonai are a subgroup
of the Sioux. Sometime before 1700, the Lakota began to leave their ancestral home in the
5
Woodlands of Minnesota around the Western Great Lakes, and move Westward onto the
Northern Great Plains. The acquisition of guns from European and Native traders, and
horses from other Native American tribes allowed them to devote themselves to a nomadic
Bison Hunting lifestyle, and to establish a culture distinct from that of the other Sioux to
their East. The acquisition of horses and guns also allowed the Lakota to become the
dominant power on the Northern Plains, which brought them into increasing contact with
the United States in the nineteenth century. After a series of conflicts and treaties with the
United States, the Lakota were confined to the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868, and then
in 1888 to smaller separate reservations, which remain until today.1
The evolution of the Gullah as a distinct cultural group can also be dated to the
late seventeenth century, with the commencement of African slave importations into the
new colony of Carolina in the American South East in 1670. From 1720 mass importations
of slaves from Congo and Angola gave rise to the term Golla or Gullah to describe the
distinct culture they were developing in the Lowcountry. After the Stono Slave Rebellion
of 1739, which was led by Angolans, slaves from this region fell out of favour and from
that point onwards the majority of slaves imported into the American South East were
taken from the rice growing regions of West Africa, in order to work on the expanding
Rice Plantations of the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. However, the term Gullah
continued to be used to describe slaves in the region, regardless of their origin, as the
isolation of the Lowcountry plantations, coupled with the higher ratio of slaves to whites,
allowed a distinct Gullah slave culture to evolve in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.2
1
This move is thought to have been for two reasons. Firstly due to conflict with other Native American
groups in the Great Lakes region, such as the Ojibwe and Cree, who had obtained guns from French Fur
Traders, and secondly in order to pursue a nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of the North American Bison, whose
habitat was contracting onto the Northern Great Plains and around which the Lakota would develop their
culture; See Raymond J DeMallie, “Teton”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.), Handbook of North American
Indians, Vol.13, Part 2, (Plains), (Washington, 2001), p.794; Raymond J. DeMallie, “Sioux Until 1850”, in
DeMallie, Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2, (Plains), (Washington, 2001), pp.719-722;
DeMallie, “Sioux Until 1850”, p.720, p.731; Richard White, "The Winning of the West: The Expansion of
the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Journal of American History, 65, (1978),
pp.322-27.
2
Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, (Madison, 1969), p.122; Elizabeth Donnan,
Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, Vol. 4, The Border Colonies and The
Southern Colonies, Publication No. 409, (Washington D.C, 1935), p.269, pp.316-317, p.321, p.326, p.350,
p.353, p.478, p.513, pp.619-25; Joseph E. Holloway, “The Origins of African-American Culture”, in Joseph
E. Holloway, (ed.), Africanisms in American Culture, (Bloomington, 1990), pp.18-39; Daniel C. Littlefield,
Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina, (Baton Rouge, 1981); William,
Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African Heritage, (Athens, 1999), pp.40-42, pp.86-89; William
Pollitzer, "The Relationship of the Gullah speaking people of coastal South Carolina to their African
Ancestors," in Marquetta L. Goodwine and the Clarity Press Gullah Project (eds.), The Legacy of Ibo
6
The Lakota and Gullah provide two exemplary case studies for a study of the
changes in Native and African American musical and religious traditions in the nineteenth
century United States. Both groups’ distinctiveness and unique position in American
History have made them prime targets for scholars. Studies on the Lakota, have focussed
on their resistance to American Western expansion into their territories, the ensuing Sioux
Wars and ultimately their military defeat by the United States and the Reservation Period.
The Gullah, instead, have been studied in depth by historians who have focused
specifically on their relationship with the United States, in Slavery, Emancipation,
Reconstruction and the Jim Crow periods in the American South. In the mid-twentieth
century scholars of the Gullah and Lakota began to move away from the standard
historiographies, which mostly looked at both ethnic groups’ relationship with the United
States, and focused more on the cultural history of African Americans and Native
Americans. Many of these studies have looked at religion, language, music and dance and
have attempted to describe the process of formation of culture in the histories of the Lakota
and Gullah.
The earliest studies of Lakota culture were written in the late nineteenth century,
and as a result were influenced by the recent conflict between Native Americans and the
United States. The earliest studies of the Lakota, such as Willis Fletcher Johnston's "The
Red Record of the Sioux" (1891), were often military histories that fitted with the historic
perception of the Sioux as warriors. When the culture of the Lakota was acknowledged by
scholars such as Johnston, it was often in regard to the most outwardly visible aspects of it,
such as the widely studied Ghost Dance Movement. However, even studies such as
Johnston’s and James P. Boyd's "Recent Indian Wars" (1891) only dealt with the Ghost
Dance in the context of the Sioux Wars and were compiled from exclusively white sources
which were unsurprisingly skewed. One exception to this was James Mooney's "The Ghost
Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890" (1896) which although dependent on
non-Lakota sources and informants, used information gathered from other native tribes and
treated the Ghost Dance as a religious movement.3
Landing: Gullah Roots of African American Culture, (Atlanta, 1998 ), pp.54-68; Betty Wood, Slavery in
Colonial Georgia, 1730-1775, (Athens, 1984) p.103
3
Willis Fletcher Johnston, The Red Record of the Sioux: Life of Sitting Bull and History of the Indian War of
1890-91, (Philadelphia 1891); Smith, Marian W., “The War Complex of the Plains Indians”, Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society, (1938), Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 425-464; James P. Boyd, Recent Indian
Wars: Under the Lead of Sitting Bull and Other Indian Chiefs, (Philadelphia, 1891); James Mooney, The
7
However the new disciplines of Anthropology and Ethnomusicology encouraged
some scholars to analyse Native American cultural practises in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. The Lakota were among the first ethnic groups to be studied in this
sense. The work of James Owen Dorsey, a protestant Episcopalian deacon who lived
among the Lakota and other Native American tribes began as a linguistic study, but
culminated in a body of work which included more general anthropological analyses of
Lakota culture, such as “Games of Teton Dakota Children” (1891) and “Siouan
Sociology” (1897). Ethnomusicologists such as Alice Fletcher and Frances Densmore's
were also among the first whites to study aspects of Lakota Culture. Densmore's "Teton
Sioux Music" (1918) and Fletcher's "The Shadow or Ghost Lodge" (1882) described in
detail many of the Lakota's songs and dances and explained their practical application in
Lakota society. From the second decade of the twentieth century onwards scholars such as
Clark Wissler (1912) and James R. Walker (1917) expanded on these earlier studies by
providing further anthropological insights into Lakota Music and Ritual. Nevertheless, the
prevailing view of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was that of a "vanishing
race" of Native Americans, whose traditional culture was being lost as they assimilated
into mainstream America.4
In the mid twentieth century James H. Howard and Gertrude P. Kurath
(1959) recognised that “the importance of dance and ceremony in Plains Indian life” had
been overlooked by Scholars and that “dancing and ceremonial activity occupied most of
the Plains Indian's spare time.” Since then scholars such as William K. Powers have
studied Lakota culture and society prolifically, describing their musical and religious
traditions in "The Sioux Omaha Dance" (1962), "Contemporary Oglala Music and Dance"
(1968), and "Oglala Religion" (1977). More recent works have further elaborated on the
processes of cultural contact, and especially cultural resistance. For instance scholars such
Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, (Washington, 1896); Joseph Kossuth Dixon, The
Vanishing Race: The Last Great Indian Council, (New York, 1913)
4
Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, (Washington, 1918); Alice Fletcher, "The Shadow or Ghost Lodge:
A Ceremony of the Oglala Sioux", Peabody Museum Papers 3: (1882), 296-307; James Owen Dorsey,
“Games of Teton Dakota Children”, The American Anthropologist, 4, 329-345, (1891); James Owen Dorsey,
Siouan Sociology, (Washington, 1897); For studies of the Lakota language see: Stephen Return Riggs, James
Owen Dorsey (ed.), Dakota Grammar, Texts and Ethnography, (Washington, 1893); Joseph Kossuth Dixon,
The Vanishing Race, (Washington, 1913); Clark Wissler,. "Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the
Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota,", Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History,
Vol. 11, No. 1, (1912); James R. Walker, “The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of
the Teton Dakota,”Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Volume 16, (1917);
Johnston, The Red Record of the Sioux (Philadephia, 1891); Smith, “The War Complex of the Plains Indians”
(1938); Boyd, “Recent Indian Wars”, (1891); Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of
1890, (Washington, 1890); Dixon, “The Vanishing Race” , (New York, 1913)
8
as William K. Powers developed the study of Lakota Music and Ritual in works like
"Beyond the Vision" (1987), "Voices From The Spirit World" (1990), "War Dance" (1990)
and "Pow-wow" (1994). In 1992 the Ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl emphasised the
retention and preservation of pre-reservation period Native American dance and music
traditions, in spite of the destructive impact of their relationship with the United States on
other aspects of their cultures. Recently James V. Fenelon's, "Culturicide, Resistance, and
Survival of the Lakota" (1998) has looked at the United States "culturicide" of the Lakota
in relation to theories of genocide and cultural domination. Fenelon has also highlighted a
concerted effort by white Americans, religious authorities and Federal and local
governments to rid the Lakota of their traditional cultures, including their music and
traditional religions. Jeffrey Ostler’s “The Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism” (1998)
emphasised Lakota perspectives on their relationship with the United States and paid
particular attention to the Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee massacre. Tara Browner's
"Heartbeat of the People" (2002), has looked at the modern function of Northern Plains
Lakota music in the setting of the Powwow and has emphasised the vibrancy and survival
of this tradition. More recently James Ostler, in “The Lakotas and the Black Hills” (2010),
has looked specifically at the role the Black Hills has played in the conflict between the
Lakota and the United States, and has emphasised the Black Hills importance to Lakota
culture, as the Lakota continue to campaign for their return.5
The earliest studies on African Americans were written in the early twentieth
century, and were like the Native American historiography, heavily influenced by the
politically motivated perceptions of African Americans at that time. Ulrich Bonnell
Phillip's "American Negro Slavery" (1908) conducted an in-depth survey of Slavery in the
American South, but was criticised for its rather benign portrayal of slavery, which
focussed more on the slave-holder than the slave. In Peter Kolchin’s words, Phillips passed
James H. Howard and Gertrude P. Kurath, “Ponca Dances, Ceremonies and Music”, Ethnomusicology, Vol.
3, No. 1 (1959), pp. 1-14; Bernard Katz (ed), 1969, The Social Implications of Early Negro Music in the
United States, (New York, 1969); Carawan, Guy, Carawan, Candie, “Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of
Life? The People of Johns Island, South Carolina. Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs”, (New York,
1966), W.K. Powers, “The Sioux Omaha Dance”, American Indian Tradition Newsletter, Vol. 8, No. 3,
(1962); W.K. Powers, “Contemporary Oglala Music and Dance: Pan-Indianism versus Pan-Tetonism”,
Ethnomusicology, Vol. 12, No. 3, (1968), pp. 352-372; W.K.. Powers, Oglala Religion, (Lincoln, 1977);
Bruno Nettl, “North American Indian music”, in Bruno Nettl et al.,(eds.) Excursions in World Music, (New
York, 1992), p. 260-277; James V. Fenelon, Culturicide, Resistance, and Survival of the Lakota,
(Washington, 1998); William K. Powers, Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, (Norman,
1987), Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal
Georgia, (Athens, 1998); Tara Browner, Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Powwow, (Urbana, 2002)
5
9
crude “generalizations about the life and behaviour of […] slaves.” Similar to the Lakota,
the absence of written sources left by slaves contributed to this imbalance.6 In the 1950s
Kenneth Stampp argued against Ulrich Bonnell Phillips' beliefs that African American
slaves were well treated, reasoning that slavery was designed to maximise profit at the
expense of the slave, highlighting the fact that slaves resisted the system by running away
and by breaking their tools. In 1959, Stanley Elkins' "Slavery: A Problem in American
Institutional and Intellectual Life" was one of the first studies to focus on the slaves, and it
led to an increasing emphasis on studies that looked at slave life and culture, rather than
the economics of Slavery. Yet, despite the ground breaking emphasis on slave culture and
also its novel use of comparison, Elkins' study, claiming that slavery had created an
infantilized slave population, was widely contested.7
Early studies of Gullah culture tended to place emphasis on the language as the
main feature of their cultural distinctiveness. Many of these studies claimed that the
language was a pidgin English spoken only because the Gullah could not perfect proper
English. Other scholars of African American History began to question the beliefs born
from the writings of E. Franklin Frazier (1932, 1939), namely that African Americans had
failed to retain any traces of their African Culture. Melville J. Herskovits in "The Myth of
the Negro Past" (1941) claimed that African American culture was highly influenced by
the West African cultures of the slaves. The pioneering work of Lorenzo Dow Turner on
the Gullah Language (1949) built upon these studies and claimed an African origin for the
Gullah language. However, other scholars such as Guy B. Johnson (1967), disputed
Turner's thesis, arguing instead for a largely white to black cultural transmission,
especially in terms of the Gullah language. Ethnological studies about Gullah music were
also written in this period. N. G. J Ballanta's "Saint Helena Island Spirituals" (1925) and
Lydia Parrish's "Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands" (1942) are two important
examples of this scholarship.8
6
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, American Negro Slavery, (New York, 1908), Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A
Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, (Chicago, 1959)
7
Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South, (New York 1956)
8
Ambrose Gonzalez, The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, William S. Pollitzer,. ,"The
Relationship of the Gullah-Speaking People of Coastal South Carolina and Georgia to Their African
Ancestors", in Goodwine, Marquetta L., The Clarity Press Gullah Project, (eds.) The Legacy of Ibo Landing:
Gullah Roots of African American Culture, (Atlanta, 1998), pp.54-68, at p.59; E. Franklin Frazier, The Free
Negro Family, (Nashville, 1932); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in Chicago, (Chicago, 1932) ;
Frazier, E. Franklin 1939; E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States, (Chicago, 1939);
Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, (Boston, 1958); Guy B. Johnson, quoted in Keith E.
Baird, , "Guy B. Johnson Revisited: Another Look at Gullah", Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1980,
10
Since the 1960s and 1970s, partly as a result of the African American Civil Rights
movement, scholars have increasingly placed slaves at the centre of their studies,
emphasising slave agency in the process. The works of Eugene Genovese, specifically
"Roll Jordan Roll" (1974) have emphasised slave resistance, showing them to be far from
the passive actors that Elkins had portrayed. Genovese has highlighted slave resistance in
the form of religion, music, and language and has singled out the Gullah language as an
example. Lawrence Levine’s “Black Culture and Black Consciousness” (1977) followed
on from Genovese in emphasising African Cultural retentions and claimed that a collective
African American cultural identity had been forged under slavery which contributed to
modern black culture in America. In “Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art
and Philosophy” Robert Farris Thompson also highlighted the “philosophical streams of
creativity and imagination running parallel to the massive musical and choreographic
modalities that connect black persons of the western hemisphere”. Expanding on these
ideas, Sterling Stuckey’s “Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundation of Black
America” (1987) highlighted the existence of a “circle of culture” in slavery in which the
Ring Shout was central, and which would influence the creation of a unified black identity
in 20th C. America.9
Margaret Washington Creel's "A Peculiar People" (1988) has focussed
more specifically on the distinctiveness of the religion of the Gullah people. Creel claimed
that the aim of her study was to look at "the sociohistorical relationship between
community, religion, and resistance as these concepts affected African- Americans during
slavery". She has analysed the relationship between slave religion and slave resistance as
well as at the Gullah's combination of African and European religious practises. In the
1990s, Marquetta Goodwine's "The Legacy of lbo Landing" (1998) and William Pollitzer's
"The Gullah People and Their African Heritage" (1999) looked at Gullah culture
generally, highlighting the language, crafts and family structure as proof of African
cultural retentions. Art Rosenbaum's "Shout Because You're Free" (1998) has focussed on
the Gullah Ring Shout tradition in the Georgia Sea Islands and contextualised this practise
pp. 425-435; Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in Gullah Dialect, (Ann Arbor, 1973); Salikoko S. Mufwene,
and Charles Gilman, "How African Is Gullah, and Why?", American Speech, Vol. 62, No. 2, 1987, pp. 120139; N. G. J. Ballanta, Saint Helena Island Spirituals, (New York, 1925) Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the
Georgia Sea Islands, (Hatsboro, 1942)
9
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, (New York, 1974); Lawrence Levine,
Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, (New York,
1977); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America, (New
York, 1987)
11
within Gullah History. Rosenbaum has highlighted the survival of this tradition by
comparing descriptions from the nineteenth century to the modern shout he witnessed
during the 1990s. In a more recent collection of essays entitled, “African American Life in
the Georgia Lowcountry” (2011), edited by Philip Morgan, several scholars have placed
the Gullah in the context of the wider Atlantic World.10
Both the Gullah and the Lakota were significant participants in the period of
Reconstruction after the American Civil War. Recently historians have looked to move the
focus in the study of Reconstruction away from the South and towards the North and West.
In “Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples and the Projects of a new American NationState” (2013), Steve Hahn highlighted how the Reconstruction period’s focus on
“emancipationism, citizenship and subject status, federal authority, “race relations” and the
‘Indian’ and ‘Negro problems,’ and ‘civilizationism’,” inextricably linked the South and
West. Heather Cox Richardson also investigated the role of Reconstruction era politics in
the relationship between the United States and Native American culture in “Wounded
Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre” (2010), and describes the
formation of an American identity in “West from Appomattox” (2007). This thesis, in its
focus on the link between musical culture and religion and the negotiation of acceptable
cultural retentions in Lakota and Gullah societies in the late nineteenth century United
States builds on these studies and compares the effects of this period on a Native
American culture in the West and an African American culture in the South11.
The focus of this thesis is not the Ghost Dance and the Ring Shout as such, but is
instead the nineteenth century processes which encouraged the Lakota and Gullah to
preserve their musical traditions within the two rituals. The Ghost Dance movement
developed on the Lakota reservations in 1889 at a time of great hardship and cultural
change. Using traditional Lakota ritual music and dance combined with Christian
teachings, the Ghost Dance was a revitalisation movement which sought to use these
10
Margaret Washington Creel, "A Peculiar People": Slave Religion and Community Culture among the
Gullahs, (New York, 1988), p.1; Philip Morgan, (ed.), African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry:
The Gullah Geechee and the Atlantic World, (Athens, 2010)
11
Heather Cox Richardson, “North and West of Reconstruction, Studies in Political Economy”, in Thomas J.
Brown, (ed.), Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States, (New York, 2006);
Heather Cox Richardson, Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre, (New
York, 2010); Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil
War, (New York, 2007); Steve Hahn, “Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples and the Projects of a new
American Nation-State”, The Journal of the Civil War Era, Volume 3, Number 3, 2013, pp. 307-330, at
p.323
12
traditional forms to return Lakota society to an earlier way of living free from white
influence. The movement was however short-lived and died out after its suppression in the
Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. In contrast, the Gullah Ring Shout was a ritual which
lasted, in one form or another, for over two centuries. Based on West and West Central
African ritual dances, the Ring Shout survived the Christianisation of Gullah culture in the
nineteenth century, becoming a syncretistic ritual which acted as a vehicle for preChristian cultural forms, while at the same time being incorporated into the Gullah’s
distinctive Christian worship. While both the Ghost Dance and the Ring Shout were
practised by other Native American and African American ethnic groups, the rituals took
on increased significance in both Lakota and Gullah culture as both groups cultures
adapted to nineteenth century cultural change.
The bulk of the historiography on the Ghost Dance, influenced by accounts from
the period, treated the dance as an extension of the Lakota’s military resistance to the
United States, rather than as an attempt to retain elements of their traditional rituals within
the sanctioned context of Christianity. These studies have often focussed on the massacre
at Wounded Knee, as the endpoint of the movement, rather than on the dance itself as it
existed separated from the white presence on the reservations at the time. By showing the
Ghost Dance to be the culmination of the changes the Lakota’s culture went through since
the early nineteenth century, this thesis places emphasis on the syncretistic and adaptive
nature of the dance, rather than on the militancy it was thought to have had in the earlier
historiography. Much of the historiography on the Ring Shout has looked at the ritual as an
African retention which resisted the influence of white culture in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century Lowcountry and was preserved as such against all odds. These studies
have highlighted the isolation of the Gullah as the driving factor in the Ring Shout’s
retention in the Lowcountry. By highlighting the relationship between the Ring Shout and
the intricacies of Gullah nineteenth century history; this thesis places emphasis on the role
of Gullah Christianity in the preservation of the ritual, rather than on its undoubted
African-ness.
While recent studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the
historical formation of the modern Lakota and Gullah cultures, most of them have not
employed a comparative method. The aim of this study is to use a comparative perspective
to better understand the mechanisms and processes of cultural and religious syncretism that
have had their ultimate expression in the Lakota Ghost Dance and the Gullah Ring Shout.
13
The mid-twentieth century move towards more culturally themed historical
studies has resulted in an increase in awareness of the benefits of comparison in the study
of cultures. A comparative approach to history allows historians to, in Peter Kolchin’s
words, “establish similarities and differences between common processes in two or more
locations or eras” and to "reduces the parochialism inherent in single-case studies by
showing developments to be significant that would not otherwise appear so". In C. Vann
Woodward’s view, comparison throws “new light on old myths”, exposing previously held
beliefs to be false and correcting “assumptions about the relative impact of forces that have
shaped [...] history”. Since the fifteenth century onward, the movement of Europeans
around the globe has led to a prolonged and widespread process of "cultural contact and
transfer". In fact, the comparative study of cultures and their adaptation to this process is a
necessary consequence. As a result, scholars with an interest in acculturation have been
provided with an opportunity for comparative studies between vastly different indigenous
populations in regard to their reactions to European culture. In their 1980 article, Theda
Skocpol and Margaret Somers highlighted the “three distinct logics-in-use of comparative
history”; “macro-causal analysis”, “parallel demonstration” and “contrast of contexts”.
The third category of “contrasting contexts”, involves different societies or cultures being
contrasted in order to highlight their respective individual features. This is the method used
in this thesis, as the Lakota’s and Gullah’s relationship with the United States and
Christianity is contrasted and compared in order to isolate the different methods in which
they adapted their cultures. In 1981, George Fredrickson called for comparative studies to
be at least multi-cultural, claiming that they permit "us to escape, at least to some extent,
from the provincialism and limiting set of tacit assumptions that tend to result from
perpetual immersion in the study of a single culture". In 1996, German Historian Jörn
Rüsen (1996), elaborated on this, claiming that "there is a growing need for intercultural
comparison simply and unavoidably because of the great increase in international and
intercultural communication". The call for intercultural comparison has also recently come
from historians of the American South, such as Peter Kolchin. In his article “The South
and the World” (2009), Kolchin called for the comparison of Southern ethnicities as well
as their “multiple identities (and their formation)”. This thesis uses this opportunity to
compare the formation of a Southern culture, in the form of the Gullah, to that of the
Lakota, who were comparatively isolated from the influence of the South.12
12
George M. Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History,
14
However, few studies have compared Native Americans and African
Americans, despite the opportunities provided by their proximity on the North American
Continent and their similar relationship with Euro-Americans. In the few cultural
comparative studies involving African Americans and Native Americans, the themes of
Religion, Folktales and Music have been prominent. African Americans and Native
Americans have also featured in larger comparative studies of the Frontier or the American
South, but studies that have focussed on them exclusively have been rare.13
Of the many comparative studies involving African American slaves only a
few concentrate on the Gullah. Phillip Morgan's "Slave Counterpoint" (1998) is one
example. It compares two eighteenth century slave communities, one in the South Carolina
and Georgia Lowcountry and the other in the Chesapeake region. Morgan emphasises the
fact that his study is one of structures, rather than a traditional historical narrative, and
argues that the greatest act of slave resistance was the creation of coherent autonomous
slave cultures. Furthermore Morgan also highlights the two-way process of cultural
diffusion of music which occurred in the Lowcountry. Michael Mullin's “Africa in
America” (1992), instead has compared slave resistance and acculturation in the American
South and the British Caribbean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mullin
contends that, while conversion to Christianity lessened the cultural isolation of the Gullah,
the revivalist version of Christianity they chose over the Anglican equivalent was what
allowed them to retain traditional spiritual practises.14
There are few comparative studies in Native American History and even less
that deal directly with Native American life and culture or with the Lakota. In his study,
(New York, 1981), pp.xiv-xv; Kit W. Wesler, “Trade Politics and Native Polities in Iroquoia and Asante" ,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 25, No. 4, (1983), pp. 641-660 ; Jorn Rusen, "Some
Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Historiography", History and Theory, Vol. 35, No. 4,
(1996), pp. 5-22, at p.6; C. Vann Woodward, “The Test of Comparison”, in C. Vann Woodward, The
Comparative Approach to American History, (New York, 1968), pp. 346-359, at p.348; Theda Skocpol and
Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry”, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 2, (1980), pp. 174-197 ; Peter Kolchin, “The South and the World”, The
Journal of Southern History, Vol.75, No. 3, (2009), pp.565-580, at pp.575- 576; Peter Kolchin, Unfree
Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom , (Cambridge, 1987), p.ix
13
Some examples of comparative studies that included Native American and African American cultural
groups include: Robert P Armstrong, Patterns In The Stories Of The Dakota Indians And The Negroes Of
Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana., Ph.D., Northwestern University, (1957); Royal James Hartigan, Blood Drum
Spirit - Drum Languages Of West Africa, African America, Native America, Central Java, and South India,
Phd Thesis, Wesleyan University, 1986; James Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal
Church in the United States and South Africa, Oxford University Press, (New York, 1998)
14
Phillip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and
Lowcountry, (Chapel Hill, 1998); Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in
the American South and British Caribbean, 1736 -1831, (Urbana,1992)
15
“Indians in the United States and Canada” (1998), Roger Nichols has compared the five
hundred year History of Native North Americans from both sides of the North American
border. Moving from the point of contact in the sixteenth century to the modern day he has
contrasted the experiences and relationships between Native Americans and the dominant
Euro-American/Canadian societies and governments. Other studies have attempted to
compare the political and cultural reactions to contact with whites among Native
Americans and indigenous populations in different parts of the world. Kit W. Wesler's
"Trade Politics and Native Polities in Iroquoia and Asante" (1983) compares the Native
American Iroquois and Asante people of the African Gold Coast and claims that both
ethnic groups maintained their historic ascendancy in their regions due to their trading with
Europeans. However the Iroquois, as a result of their lack of central authority and the
relative strength of the Europeans in the region, did not dominate other indigenous groups
in their region as the Asante did. George Frederickson's "White Supremacy: A
Comparative Study in American and South African History" (1981) looks at the
relationships between White Americans and Native Americans and compares the treatment
of the Indigenous populations of America and South Africa.15
The use of comparison in this thesis aims to isolate the significance of the
various relationships, influences and processes in Lakota and Gullah cultural change in the
Nineteenth century. The influence of the United States, Christianity and white culture were
the most significant factors which influenced this change. It is for this reason that this
thesis uses mostly synchronic comparison. By comparing the differences between Lakota
and Gullah methods of cultural adaptation to changes occurring on the North American
continent at fixed moments in time, the prevailing influences of the United States, white
culture and Christianity of that period act as an axis for the comparison. Nevertheless,
similar processes and changes occurred in Lakota and Gullah society and culture at
different times in the period of this study. For that reason diachronic comparison is used in
several instances to highlight the different ways the Lakota and Gullah adapted to similar
events or processes.
The work of Eugene Genovese, Lawrence Levine and Roger Abrahams in
highlighting the importance of using elements of African American expressive culture as
15
Roger Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative Approach, (Lincoln, 1998);
Wesler, "Trade Politics and Native Polities in Iroquoia and Asante" , (1983) Comparative Studies in Society
and History, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 641-660; Fredrickson, White Supremacy, (New York, 1981)
16
historical sources have been particularly important influences on my study. While
Genovese's "Roll Jordan Roll" used aspects of slave oral history, Lawrence Levine devoted
much of his "Black Culture and Black Consciousness” (1977) to folk expression, in the
process emphasising the role that Spirituals and Secular Music have played in expressing
black consciousness. In Roger Abraham’s “Singing the Master” (1994), he uses the
“corn-shucking” ceremonies of Virginia plantations, to show in a novel way the lives of
slaves in that region. Other scholars have also highlighted aspects of African American
expressive culture such as religion, speech, music, songs and have also paid particular
attention to the Gullah Language. In highlighting the advantages of using black expressive
culture as a historical source, Levine has emphasised the importance of recognising "the
richness of expression, the sharpness of perception, the uninhibited imagination, [and] the
complex imagery" present in African American folk sources, without which he believed a
balanced study of African American History was impossible. Similarly, Wilcomb E.
Washburn and Bruce G. Trigger (1996) insist that "oral history [...] has demonstrated that
[..] the Native American past can sometimes be recaptured by the diligent and sensitive
researcher".16
To be sure, neither musical tradition has been treated with the importance they
deserved in the historiography of non-Euro-American cultural groups in the United States.
In American History, music is often little more than a side note less deserving of serious
treatment and historical analysis. However, the centrality of music in African American
and Native American life and culture demands that it be treated as importantly as
established scholarship today, such as land allotment in Native American History or
plantation agriculture in African American History.
Music was entwined with every aspect of Native American life, from prayer to
marking rites of passage, accompanying hunts or battles, or acting as a mediation between
various political and social groupings. Similarly, music accompanied most tasks in the day
to day lives of African Americans, and traditional African beliefs and rituals had music at
their centre. The centrality of music in Native American and African American cultures
explains the importance of the retention of musical tradition in Gullah and Lakota history,
as every effort was made by them to retain songs and dances that may have been neglected,
16
Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, (New York, 1977), p.xi, p.146. p.237; Genovese, Roll
Jordan Roll, (New York, 1974); Wilcomb E. Washburn, Bruce G. Trigger, "Native People in Euro-American
Historiography", in Bruce G. Trigger, Wilcomb E. Washburn, (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Native
Peoples of the Americas. (Vol. 1), North America. (Cambridge, 1996), pp.61-124, at p.61
17
had they not been of such significance. Thus, the importance of music in African American
and Native American societies provides the student of musical traditions in African
American and Native American history with a particularly valuable means of enquiry, and
it is for that reason that this thesis focusses on Lakota and Gullah musical traditions.17
This thesis makes use of the expansive research literature on both the Gullah and
Lakota. Despite their age, George E Hyde’s “Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala
Sioux Indians” (1937) and “Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brulé Sioux” (1961) and
James C. Olson’s “Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem” (1965), remain valuable studies of
Siouan history. Robert M. Utley’s “The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of
Sitting Bull” (1993) provides another perspective on Lakota History. Jeffrey Ostler’s “The
Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee” (2004) and
“The Lakota and the Black Hills” (2010) are some of the most recent contributions to
understanding the complicated relationship both culturally and politically between the
United States and the Lakota. There are also studies which focus more on Lakota culture
and society. James R. Walker’s “Lakota Belief and Ritual” (1991), edited by Raymond J.
DeMallie, and “Lakota Society” (1992), edited by Raymond J DeMallie and Elaine A.
Jahner are almost as valuable as primary sources given Walkers work was largely gleaned
from his interviews conducted with the Lakota during his work as a physician on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in the late Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. William K. Powers’
“Oglala Religion” (1977) and the collection of articles edited by Raymond J. DeMallie
and Douglas R. Parks, “Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation” (1987) are also
valuable contributions to our understanding of Lakota religious traditions. More recently
the wide array of articles in the collection edited by Raymond J. DeMallie in the 13th
Volume of the “Handbook of North American Indians” (2001), contextualise Lakota
culture and society within wider Native American Plains culture. There are also several
studies of the Christian Missionary work among the Gullah which were extremely useful
for this study. Ross Alexander Enochs’ “The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux” (1996)
gives a concise history of the Jesuit presence among the Lakota, and Thomas Foley’s
17
Gloria Young, "Music", in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 13,
Pt.2, Plains, (Washington, 2001), pp.1026-1038, at p.1026; John Bierhorst, A Cry From The Earth: Music of
the North American Indians, (New York, 1979); Shane White, Graham White, Stylin': African American
Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit, (New York, 1998); Levine, Black Culture and Black
Consciousness, (New York, 1977)
18
“Father Francis Craft” (2002), using his personal archive of Craft’s correspondence and
documents, gives an unprecedented account of this important figure’s time with the
Sioux18.
Many studies used in this thesis only touch on Gullah history and culture, and
focus instead on the black population of the United States, or of South Carolina as a whole,
but are nonetheless useful. George Tindall’s “South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900” (1952)
highlights the political and social position of South Carolina blacks in the period after
Reconstruction. Eugene Genovese’s “Roll Jordan Roll” (1974), Lawrence Levine’s
“Black Culture and Black Consciousness” (1977) and Sterling Stuckey’s “Slave Culture”
(1987) in their emphasis on the persistence of black expressive culture throughout the
period of slavery and after were especially relevant to this study. Willie Lee Rose’s
“Rehearsal for Reconstruction” (1964) provided a detailed account of the efforts of
abolitionists and educators in the Lowcountry in the post-war period. Philip Morgan’s
“Slave Counterpoint” (1998) in its comparison between Lowcountry and Chesapeake
Slave communities in the Eighteenth Century, highlights the significance of several
particular factors in the creation of a distinctive Gullah culture. More recently Philip
Morgan’s edited collection “African American life in the Georgia Lowcountry” (2010),
historically contextualises Gullah/Geechee cultural distinctiveness within the Atlantic
World. Other studies which focussed more on Music and Religion include Dena Epstein’s
“Sinful Tunes and Spirituals” (1977) which gives an exhaustive account of slave music
before the Civil War and Eileen Southern’s “The Music of Black Americans” (1997) a
survey of African American music, whose scope extended from 1619-1996, as well as
Albert J. Raboteau’s “Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution” (1978), which highlighted
the Antebellum role of religion in slave society. Margaret Washington Creel’s “A Peculiar
George E. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians, (Norman, 1937); George E.
Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux (Norman, 1974); James Olson, Red Cloud and the
Sioux Problem, (Lincoln, 1965); Jeffrey Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism from Lewis and Clark
to Wounded Knee, (New York, 2004); Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakota and the Black Hills: Struggle for Sacred
Ground, (New York, 2010); Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull,
(New York, 1993); W.K.. Powers, Oglala Religion, (Lincoln, 1977); Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R.
Parks, Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation, (Norman, 1989),
18
19
People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullah” (1988) is still the most
in depth analysis of the formation of Gullah religion.19
Several studies which focus on the Ghost Dance and the Ring Shout were
especially fruitful for this thesis. Alice Beck Kehoe’s “The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and
Revitalisation” (1989) and Rani Henrik Andersson’s “The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890”
particularly influential in their approach to studying the Ghost Dance. L.G Moses “Wild
West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933” (1996) also provided a
valuable account of the commodification of Native American music and dance which
provided a backdrop to the Ghost Dance and its Suppression. For the Ring Shout, Art
Rosenbaum’s “Shout Because You’re Free” (1998) and Margaret Washington Creel’s
“Peculiar People” (1988) were of great assistance. There were also several contemporary
publications written about Gullah and Lakota society and culture which were of particular
use to this study. William Francis Allen’s, Charles Pickard Ware’s and Lucy McKim
Garrison’s “Slave Songs of the United States” (1867), Elizabeth Botume’s “First Days
among the Contrabands” (1893) and Natalie Curtis Burlin’s “Negro Folk Songs” (1918)
illustrated, as much as anything, white views of Gullah Music and ritual in these periods of
time. Burlin’s “The Indian’s Book” (1907) and Frances Densmore’s “Teton Sioux Music”
(1918) also served this purpose for the Lakota.20
19
George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900, (Columbia, 1952); Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll;
Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, (New York, 1977); Stuckey, Slave Culture, (New York,
1987); Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment, (New York, 1964),
Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, (Chapel Hill, 1998); Philip Morgan, (ed.), African American Life in the
Georgia Lowcountry: The Gullah Geechee and the Atlantic World, (Athens, 2010); Dena Epstein, Sinful
Tunes and Spirituals, (Urbana, 1977); Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, (New York, 1977);
Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution, (New York, 1978); Creel, A Peculiar People
(New York, 1988)
20
AliceBeck Kehoe, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalisation, (New York, 1989); Rani-Henrik
Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, (Lincoln, 2008); L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images
of American Indians, 1883-1933, (Albuquerque, 1996); Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free, (Athens,
1998); Creel, A Peculiar People, (New York, 1988); William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and Lucy
McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, (New York, 1867); Elizabeth Botume, First Days among
the Contrabands, (Boston, 1893), p.254; Natalie Curtis Burlin, Negro Folk Songs, (New York, 1918); Natalie
Curtis Burlin, (ed.), The Indian’s Book: An Offering by the American Indians of Indian Lore, Musical and
Narrative, (New York, 1907); Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, (Washington, 1918)
20
Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.’s “Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and
Discourse” (1995) highlights the necessity of identifying the conflicting voices such as
gender, ethnicity, race and class, when writing history. The primary sources used in this
thesis therefore come from a variety of perspectives. For the Lakota they come from Indian
Agents, Missionaries, Explorers, Trappers, Travellers and Traders, as well as from the
Lakota themselves. Despite their inherent paternalism, the federally sponsored reports into
Native American and African American society and cultures, namely the “Final Report of
the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission” (1863-1864), which included the
testimony of freed Lowcountry slaves, and Henry Schoolcraft’s “Information Respecting
the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States” (18521854), which drew on second hand information about Siouan tribes, highlighted the
measures taken by those in American society who were more sympathethic to the Lakota
and Gullah in the mid nineteenth century. Of particular use for this study were the diaries
and correspondence of the missionaries and teachers on the Lakota Reservations in the late
nineteenth and early 20th centuries, in particular those of Francis Craft, Emil Perrig and
Florentine Digmann, held in the Christianity and Native America Collection at Marquette
University, Milwaukee, as well as the reports written by Indian Agents from Pine Ridge,
Standing Rock and Rosebud Reservations. For the Gullah there are accounts by
Missionaries, Slave owners, Travellers, Teachers and Abolitionists. The records of the
Baptist Church Associations in the Lowcountry in the period from 1840-1860, held at the
Baptist Historical Collection at Furman University, in Greenville, South Carolina, were
especially profitable for this study, as were the accounts left by travellers such as Fredrika
Bremer for this period. Later, the diaries and correspondence of the teachers and staff at
the Penn School, such as Laura Towne, held at the Southern Historical Collection, at the
University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, revealed much about the Gullah in the
Reconstruction period21.
Both the Lakota and the Gullah left very little written primary sources
themselves in this period. However this thesis makes use of several memoirs and oral
histories compiled in the twentieth century, such as Black Elk’s account of his life give to
John Neihardt, “Black Elk Speaks: Being The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala
21
Robert F. Jr. Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse, (Cambridge, 1995);
“Final Report of the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission” (1863-1864), Office Of The American
Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, (New York, 1864); Henry Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History,
Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, (Philadelphia, 1854); Fredrika Bremer,
Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, Vol.1, (New York, 1853)
21
Sioux”, (1932) and Susan Bettelyoun Bourdeaux’s “With Mine Own Eyes: A Lakota
Woman Tells her People’s History” (1989), compiled by Lakota Historian Josephine
Waggoner in the 1930s. For the Gullah, I also used the Slave Narratives recorded by the
WPA in the 1930s to attempt to give the Gullah perspective on the cultural changes of the
late nineteenth century. This thesis also makes use of many Ethnohistorical and
Anthropological studies written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as
Frances Densmore’s “Teton Sioux Music” (1918), and Lydia Parrish’s “Slave Songs of the
Georgia Sea Islands” (1942), to attempt to reconstruct the role of music and religion for the
Lakota and Gullah in the second half of the nineteenth century. The bulk of the primary
sources used in this thesis are however written by whites such as slave-owners, Indian
Agents, missionaries and teachers. Nevertheless these sources, when analysed critically,
while keeping in mind the historical context in which they were written, are as valuable as
those left by the Lakota or Gullah. In this way I try to achieve what Berkhofer alluded to
when he claimed that “historical study […] is the combination of the actors’ and observers’
levels of analysis into a unified representation of past reality”.22
The thesis is structured as follows. The first chapter of the thesis compares the
historical formation of the cultures of the Lakota and Gullah as they encountered
Europeans on the North American continent for the first time. The development of both
group’s musical traditions between the seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries forms the
basis of this chapter, which compares the significance of music and religion in the
developing relationship between the Lakota and Gullah and Europeans and the United
States. The second chapter compares how in the 1850s the cultures of the Lakota and
Gullah were influenced by white culture and in particular by Christianity to different
degrees. The increased autonomy granted to Gullah slaves to develop their own
syncretistic Christian ritual in the form of the Ring Shout stands in stark comparison with
the Lakota’s resistance to white culture with the retention of the traditional Sun Dance,
which had no Christian influence whatsoever. In the third chapter I analyse the impact of
22
Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story, (Cambridge, 1995); John Neihardt, Nicholas Black Elk, Black Elk
Speaks: Being The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, (New York, 1932); Susan Bordeaux
Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner, With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman tells her People’s History,
(Lincoln, 1989), p.136; Chandler, Genevieve, (Author), Mills, Kincaid, Peterkin, Genevieve C.,
McCollough, Aaron, (eds.), Coming Through: Voices of a South Carolina Gullah Community from WPA
Oral Histories, (Columbia, 2008); Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, (Washington, 1918); Parrish, Slave Songs
of the Georgia Sea Islands, (Hatsboro, 1942)
22
war and cultural upheaval on the Lakota’s and Gullah’s musical and religious traditions, as
the American Civil War (1861-65) and the Indian Wars on the Plains (1866-1877)
threatened both ethnic groups. The ensuing changes that the two cultures experienced, as
the Lakota began to be confined in reservations and the Gullah slaves achieved freedom,
influenced the retention and development of their musical traditions. The fourth chapter
focusses on the changes that the Lakota and Gullah went through from 1880 to the turn of
the twentieth century, as the Lakota came under the increased influence of the United
States and the Christian Missionaries on their reservations, while the Gullah became
increasingly isolated in the Lowcountry. The opposite processes of segregation in the
American South and assimilation on the reservations and their impact on Lakota and
Gullah musical traditions provide another remarkable contrast at a time in which white
violence against Native Americans and African Americans increased. The fifth chapter
focusses on the difference between the Ghost Dance and Ring Shout rituals and contrasts
their survival and suppression. The final chapter compares the role of music and religion in
the societies of the Lakota and Gullah as they entered the twentieth century. I analyse
briefly the effects of secularisation, politicisation and commodification on both ethnic
group’s musical traditions and also the formation of modern musical identities by both the
Lakota and Gullah
23
CHAPTER ONE
“Go from Your Country”:
The Historical Formation of Lakota and Gullah Culture before 1850
By the mid-nineteenth century the Lakota and Gullah had established relationships with
whites and with American culture that relied on the varying degrees of cultural contact
which occurred in the preceding two centuries. While Gullah culture had formed within the
context of the enslavement of African Americans in the Lowcountry, Lakota culture had
developed with far less degree of American influence. Nevertheless, both cultures
developed as a result of migration and population displacements, which brought them into
contact with diverse ethnic groups. As a result, both cultures relied on traditions of fluidity
and adaptation. On one hand, the importation of African Slaves into the colony of Carolina
in the late seventeenth century had led to the formation of a new African American culture
in the region that was influenced by the diverse African ethnic groups of the slaves, as well
as by the cultures of the Native and Euro-Americans amongst whom they lived. On the
other hand, the Lakota, in their migration away from other Siouan ethnic groups in the
Western Great Lakes region, came into contact with diverse Native American ethnic
groups, and had gradually begun to absorb cultural forms that suited their increasingly
nomadic way of life on the northern Great Plains.
Both the Lakota’s and Gullah’s musical traditions were
inextricably connected to their religious cultures, and music was an inseparable part of
their religious celebrations. When the slaves of diverse African backgrounds, the majority
from West Central Africa and Senegambia, came into close cultural contact in the Carolina
Lowcountry, religion and music were at the forefront of the cultural exchange. Thus,
Gullah culture developed as different African musical and religious traditions combined in
a new African American culture. Also, the Lakota’s cultural contact with other northern
Great Plains tribes was based on the exchange of religious and musical traditions, dances,
24
especially, were methods of mediation and integration in the formation of alliances.
However, in contrast with the Lakota, for the Gullah the most profound influence on their
religious and musical traditions became the adoption of Christian practises. Though
sporadic and geographically variable, Christianity began to permeate Gullah traditions
already from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as it was the religion of
the dominant white population in the Lowcountry. This process accelerated for a period,
with the First Great Awakening and with the associated Evangelical methods of worship.
Conversely the Lakota came into contact with Christianity from a position of strength on
the Northern Great Plains in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Missionaries were often travelling alone when they encountered the Lakota in this period
and were willing to embrace Sioux traditions in these cultural exchanges, allowing the
Lakota a degree of flexibility in their interpretation of Christianity.
Missionaries and laymen often saw the musical cultures of the Lakota
and Gullah as antithetical to Christianity in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Therefore, the musical traditions of both ethnic groups were vilified
as pagan and savage. These attitudes were exacerbated with the violent encounters that
occurred between the Lakota and Gullah and whites in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
century. At this time the Lakota’s scalp dance became well known from the descriptions of
the earliest travellers amongst them, and their war dances and war cries became
synonymous with white perception of them. Also, the African derived musical practises of
the Gullah became associated with violence at this time, as descriptions of slave rebellions
in the Lowcountry included accounts of drumming and dancing.
The Christianisation of the Lakota’s and Gullah’s musical cultures,
therefore, became entwined with the efforts by slave owners, missionaries and later the
American Government to culturally subjugate the two ethnic groups. Missionaries led the
way in attempting to cleanse Gullah slaves of their more African musical traditions. Slave
owners, in contrast, tolerated African retentions only as long as they did not interfere with
the running of the plantations. However, this attitude changed in the 1830s when Southern
Church leaders, reacting to the activities of northern Christian Abolitionists, began to see
the Christianisation of their slaves as a means to preserve the institution of slavery. In
contrast, the musical culture of the Lakota, who were free, came under much less pressure
from American culture. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century that concerted efforts
were made to subjugate the Lakota. As a result, there was very little Christian influence on
25
Lakota musical traditions until the late nineteenth century, whilst exposed to Christianity
from much earlier, the Gullah began to imbed their musical traditions into the celebration
of syncretistic religious rituals with elements of Christianity at this time. By 1850, both
the Lakota and the Gullah had come under some Christian influence, though in different
degrees, as both Southern planters and federal officials in the West cooperated with
missionaries and Church leaders to Christianise the two cultures; a process which was to
have profound effects on late nineteenth century Lakota and Gullah musical traditions.
i.
Frontier Environments and Seventeenth Century Cultural Contact
Both the Lakota and Gullah came into contact with European culture on the frontiers of
colonial America in the seventeenth century. While the Lakota were often the dominant
group in these encounters in the Western Great Lakes region, the Gullah, as slaves were in
a position of subordinance and their culture was, as a result, more vulnerable to the
repressive nature of Lowcountry slavery. Nevertheless, both ethnic groups also interacted
with non-European cultures in these frontier environments. While, in the Western Frontier,
the Lakota participated in voluntary cultural exchange with other Native ethnic groups in
the Great Lakes region, the Gullah were forcibly brought form Africa into a New World
environment of extreme cultural variability, with slaves of vastly different cultural
background often living together. However, both ethnic groups built their cultures on
networks of cultural exchange, creating a fluidity which would later mark their relationship
with the dominant American culture in the nineteenth century.
In the seventeenth century in the Western Great Lakes region, the Lakota were the
westernmost sub-tribal group of the Sioux, and as a result they were often protected from
the negative effects of cultural interaction with Europeans by the other Siouan sub-groups,
and by other Native ethnic groups which had more continuous cultural interaction with
French traders, trappers and soldiers in the region. The French, from their colonised area of
North America, New France, interacted with the native tribes in the region through trade.
When the French Jesuit Missionary Paul le Jeune provided the first written record of the
Sioux’s existence in 1640, he based his writings on information given to him by another
Frenchman, the explorer Jean Nicollet, though it is not known whether Nicollet
26
encountered the Sioux himself. In 1659-60, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médart Chouart,
Sieur de Grosseliers encountered the Sioux, and Radisson referred to them as the “nation
of beefe”, due to their buffalo hunting existence. Radisson and Chouart stayed with the
Sioux for several days, entering into a military alliance with them, and promised to protect
the Sioux from the Cree.1
At this time, the Sioux’s encounters with Europeans were sporadic and short-lived.
On all occasions, the Sioux were the dominant party in these encounters, as the Europeans
travelled alone or in small groups. The encounters themselves were peaceful and marked
the beginning of a process of cultural exchange. Radisson smoked the calumet, in a
traditional pipe smoking ceremony, often a sign of peaceful relations and common to many
Native American ethnic groups. He wrote of the ceremony’s significance, claiming that the
Sioux “chiefly adore the calumet”. Radisson and his party also ate dog and had their feet
greased by the Sioux, and later celebrated the intertribal “feast of the dead”, in which the
French men were dressed in traditional Siouan clothing of Porcupine roaches and Buffalo
robes. Although Radisson and Chouart were fur traders and explorers, they also introduced
the Sioux to Christianity. Radisson, for example, described how he showed two Sioux men
a picture of Joseph, Mary and Jesus.2
After the Sioux’s encounter with Radisson and Chouart, French
Missionaries began to enter the area of the western Great Lakes in which the Sioux lived,
making Christianity a central component of the cultural exchange between the Sioux and
Europeans. Between 1666 and 1702, three Jesuits, Claude Jean Allouez, Jacques Marquette
and Joseph Marest, and one Franciscan named Louis Hennepin made contact with the
Sioux. These meetings were all peaceful and Sioux culture was embraced by the
missionaries. Similarly to Radisson before them, Marquette and Hennepin smoked the
Raymond J. DeMallie, “The Sioux at the time of European Contact, an Ethnohistorical Problem”, in Sergei
A. Kan, and Pauline Turner Strong, (eds.), New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories
and Representations, (Lincoln, 2006), p.242; Quoted in Gideon D. Scull, Voyages of Pierre Esprit Radisson,
Being an Account of his Travels and experiences among the North American Indians, from 1652 to 1684,
(New York, 1943), pp.201-206; Raymond J. DeMallie, “Sioux Until 1850”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.),
Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13 (Plains), Part.2, (Washington, 2001), p.719
2
Scull, Voyages of Pierre Esprit Radisson, pp.201-206, pp.137-140; DeMallie, “Sioux Until 1850, p.719;
Paul Steinmetz, Pipe Bible and Peyote among the Oglala Lakota: A Sudy in Religious Identity, (New York,
1999), p.3; Mark, Thiel, “Catholic Sodalities among the Sioux, 1882-1910”, U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol.
16, No. 2, (1998), pp. 56-77, at p.57; Ruben G., Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,
(Cleveland, 1901), Vol.53, Vol. 51: p.53, Vol. 54: p.193, Vol. 56: pp.115-117,Vol. 59, pp.130-131, p.151,
p.231; John Logan Allen, North American Exploration: A Continent Defined, (Lincoln, 1997), p.95; Louis
Hennepin, John Gilmary Shea, (ed.), A Description of Louisiana by Father Louis Hennepin, translated from
the edition of 1683 and compared to the Nouvelle Decouverte, the La Salle Documents, and other
Contemporaneous Papers, (New York, 1880), p.44, p.84, p.103, p.106
1
27
calumet with the Sioux. In fact, Marquette carried a calumet with him on his travels across
North America, fully aware that he could use it to signal his peaceful intentions. The
Calumet was a ceremonial tobacco pipe, but it also may have had a use in musical
performance, as Hennepin recorded that the Lakota he encountered “had danced the
calumet” with the eastern Sioux and that the nearby Potowatami “had danced the calumet”
with René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the leader of Hennepin’s 1678 expedition.
Jacques Marquette also recorded a “Calumet Song”, sung by the nearby Peoria tribe in
1674. For his part, Hennepin learnt the Sioux language and participated in several other
Sioux rituals including the purification ceremony of the Sweat Lodge, and also a traditional
ceremony in which he was adopted by Sioux Chief Aquipaquetin. However Hennepin’s
position as an outsider, who needed to be culturally deferential amongst the Sioux, was
highlighted by the Sioux’s anger at his praying. Significantly, Hennepin recognised that the
Sioux were “naturally fond of singing” and were far less offended when he chanted his
prayers. This showed Hennepin’s willingness to adjust his religious rituals for the benefit
of peaceful relations with the Sioux, and his recognition that music was an effective
method of introducing the Sioux to Christianity. At the same time, the Sioux were also
willing to participate in the religious ceremonies of the Missionaries. For instance, Claude
Jean Allouez baptised some Sioux children during his time with the tribe.3
It’s clear that the Sioux were in a culturally dominant position in their
encounters with European travellers and missionaries in the seventeenth century and this
was in stark contrast to the African slaves who brought the seeds of Gullah culture to the
New World in the same period, who found themselves in the culturally repressive shackles
of enslavement. The foundations of Gullah culture in America can be traced to the first
importations of African Slaves to the province of Carolina. In the seventeenth century, the
colony of Charlestown was settled by a grant by King Charles II to the British Lords
Proprietors, eight English noblemen who encouraged Barbadian planters to settle the
territory. English, Scots, Irish, French Huguenots, Swiss, Dutch, and Sephardic Jews soon
settled in the Carolina colony. The proprietors offered settlers inducements to import
slaves, twenty acres for every male and ten acres for every female. At least 65 slaves were
brought with the first planters from the Caribbean, chiefly from Barbados. Most of these
DeMallie, “Sioux Until 1850”, p.719; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, Vol.54, p.193; ibid, Vol.59, p.131; ibid.,
Vol.66, p.107, p.338; Hennepin and Shea, A Description of Louisiana, pp.220-221, p.228
3
28
slaves were originally from the Gold Coast region of West Africa. However, in 1674, the
colony's Lord Proprietors began trading directly with Spanish slave traders and by 1690 the
movement of slaves from the Caribbean had been almost completely replaced by slaves
brought directly from Africa. A 1698 Act allowed the open trade of slaves in the colony,
which led to mass slave importations by the turn of the 18th C. As the Carolina colony
grew, the majority of slaves which lay the foundation for Gullah culture, were brought
from the area from Senegambia to the Windward Coast, with less from Angola. Slaves
were a minority in this period, making up about one fourth to one third of the population of
the Carolina colony as a whole.4
The Frontier nature of the South Carolina Lowcountry in the Colonial
period dictated the relationship the early generation of slaves had with whites. Much of the
work undertaken by slaves involved the clearing of land, the cutting of wood, and the
cultivation of food crops. In Ira Berlin’s words, “deerskins [were] the dominant ‘crop’
during the initial years of the colony’s settlement, and slaves worked on “small farms and
isolated cowpens”, rather than on plantations. Also, Lowcountry slaves in the late
seventeenth century often worked alongside European or Native American servants,
enabling race relations which that were far more fluid than they would be in following
centuries. For example, John Smyth, a Carolina merchant planter who died in 1682, left in
his will nine black, four Indian and three white servants. However, some slaves also
worked alongside their owners in this early period, giving rise to what Ira Berlin has called
“sawbuck equality,” in that the slave owner and the slaves took part in the same work.
Berlin claims that “such direct, equalitarian confrontations tempered white domination and
curbed slavery's harshest features.” Philip Morgan also suggests that this early generation
of slaves were, as a result of this close relationship, highly assimilated into the world of the
4
Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion,
(New York, 1974), pp.13-35; Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina, (Cambridge,
2006), pp.13-18; Peter Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina
Lowcountry, 1670-1920, (New York, 1989), pp.13-26; Ira Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolution of AfroAmerican Society on British Mainland North America”, The American Historical Review , Vol. 85, No. 1
(1980), pp. 44-78; William Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African Heritage, (Athens, 1999), p.40,
p.43, p.89; Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in
the Colonial and Antebellum South, (Chapel Hill, 1998), p.22; Agnes Leland Baldwin, First Settlers of South
Carolina, 1670-1700, (Easley, 1985); Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave
Trade to America, Vol. 4, The Border Colonies and The Southern Colonies, (Washington D.C, 1935), pp.
242-243, p.513; Frederic G. Cassidy, "Gullah and the Caribbean Connection", in Michael Montgomery, The
Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the Development of Gullah Language and Culture, (Athens, 1994), pp.16-22,
at p.17; William Pollitzer, "The Relationship of the Gullah speaking people of coastal South Carolina to their
African Ancestors", in Marquetta L. Goodwine, and the Clarity Press Gullah Project (eds.), The Legacy of
Ibo Landing: Gullah Roots of African American Culture, (Atlanta, 1998), pp.54-68; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall,
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links, (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.67
29
planters, as the slaves’ small numbers prevented “autonomous cultural development”.
Morgan insists that many of the slaves “assumed the customs and attitudes of their white
neighbours and acquaintances”, and that the “assimilationist” attitude of early Lowcountry
slaves “diminished […] the African influences that accompanied the later infusion of
African immigrants”. Conversely, supporters of the theory of Creolisation, in which a
multitude of distinct cultures combine to form a new culture, have supported opposing
views on the possibility of cultural continuities with Africa surviving the traumatic
removal of the slaves from Africa.5
In truth, the nature of the frontier economy in the Carolinas also allowed some
slaves a degree of cultural freedom. In Ira Berlin’s words, “rude frontier conditions
permitted only perfunctory supervision”. Slave owners would sometimes leave the running
of farms to the slaves, often living apart from their investments. This was the case for
Virginian Edmund Lister, who remained in Virginia while sending some slaves to farm his
land in Carolina. When Lister died in 1676, his wife sold the land to yet another absentee
Virginia slaveholder. The nature of the slaves’ work, as “cattle chasers” also helped them
gain “full familiarity” with the terrain, which would benefit them in running away from
their owners. The constant problem of slaves running away caused slave-owners to be
wary of abusing their slaves, and this contributed to the increasing level of autonomy
granted to slaves in this early frontier period. This higher degree of autonomy also gave
slaves control over the minutia of their own work, as the “task system” of labour, in which
slaves completed a set amount of tasks per day, developed in the South Carolina
Lowcountry. This system provided the slaves with time for their own use. While the free
time, including Sundays, allowed slaves to garden, hunt, and fish to provide for
themselves, it also inevitably enabled them to practise and preserve traditional African
music and dance. Despite the fact that slave drumming was banned in many New World
5
Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake &
Lowcountry, (Chapel Hill, 1998), p.1, p.5, p.19; Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American
Society on British Mainland North America”, p.55, p.56; Wood, Black Majority, pp.95-131; Peter Horry and
A. S. Salley, “Journal of General Peter Horry”, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine,
Vol. 38, No. 2, 1937, pp. 49-53, at p.52; Herskovits, Melville J., The Myth of the Negro Past, (Boston, 1958);
E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States, (Chicago, 1939); Sidney W. Mintz and Richard
Price, An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-American Past: A Caribbean Perspective, (Philadelphia,
1976); Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas; Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks,
(Chapel Hill, 1998); Paul E. Lovejoy, "Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora," in Paul E.
Lovejoy, (ed.), Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, (London, 2000), pp.1-29; John K. Thornton, Africa and
Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1480-1800, (Cambridge, 1992); Charles Joyner, Letter in
response to C.Vann Woodward, New York Times October 26th, 1989
30
British Colonies, including Barbados, the place of origin of many of the first planters and
slaves who came to Carolina, this was not the case in the early years of the Carolina
colony. In terms of their musical culture then, these ancestors of the Gullah, who were
brought from Barbados, and later from Africa, were comparatively free to practise their
musical traditions in the Carolinas.6
The relationships between the Gullah and Lakota and the French and English
colonists they encountered in the late seventeenth century were clearly influenced by the
frontier environment in which they occurred. The uncertainty of frontier conditions created
a fluid environment in which cultural change could occur. The Lakota were the dominant
party in cultural exchange with French explorers, trappers and Missionaries in the western
Great Lakes region, and this allowed them to attenuate the impact of European culture.
Yet, the slaves who would create Gullah culture, whilst in a seemingly subordinate
position, still managed to participate in a far more balanced cultural exchange than would
be expected, due to the unsettled frontier nature of the Carolina colony. More than in other
parts of the colonial South, the Lowcountry slaves had the opportunity to preserve African
practices and to form new African American cultural traditions that had both African and
European cultural influences. Thus, both the Lakota and the Gullah participated in an
unprecedented period of cultural change. Nevertheless, by the turn of the eighteenth
century, the similarity between the phenomena of cultural exchange occurring between
different European groups and the Lakota and Gullah in frontier conditions began to be
less apparent, as the Carolina colony expanded, while the French presence around the
Great Lakes receded.
Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, p.20; Berlin, “Time, Space and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on
British Mainland North America”, p.56-57; Wood, Black Majority, p.31; Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and
Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War, (Urbana, 1977), p.59; Richard Cullen Rath, “Drums and
Power, Ways of Creolising Music in Coastal South Carolina and Georgia, 1730-1790”, in Steven Reinhardt
and David Buisseret, (eds.), Creolization in the Americas: Cultural Adaptations to the New World,
(Arlington, 2000), pp. 99-130, at pp.107-108
6
31
ii.
Christianity, Commerce, Conflict and Cultural Change
In the period between 1700 and 1750, the cultures of the Lakota and Gullah were
profoundly affected by their contact with Europeans. In both cases, cultural contact relied
on the Europeans’ economic expansion into the North American Continent. The
Europeans’ desire for profit and territorial expansion placed great stress upon the societies
and cultures of both the Lakota and Gullah and led to violent encounters involving both
ethnic groups, encounters that would affect the development of the two cultures in this
period. In the early 18th C. Lakota cultural contact with Europeans remained sporadic. In a
period that witnessed the Sioux’s involvement in intertribal warfare, exacerbated by the
competition for trade in the precious beaver pelts, conditions for Europeans in the region
were dangerous. As a result, the impact of Christian Missionaries on Lakota culture
lessened throughout. Instead, violent encounters between the Sioux and different European
groups dominated early eighteenth century exchanges. At the same time, intertribal warfare
impacted on culture, as the Lakota were pushed westward and away from the woodlands
culture they had shared with other Siouan tribes and towards the Northern Plains. In
contrast, in the Carolina Lowcountry, the relative conditions of peace led to the
stabilisation of the colonial economy, as plantation agriculture took hold and slave imports
rose. Effectively, the new wave of slave imports re-Africanised the entire slave population.
In turn, the rise in slave population, together with the threat of hostile Native American
ethnic groups, led to a fear among colonists of potential slave rebellions. Accordingly,
restrictions were placed on both slaves’ and free blacks’ movements and cultural freedom.
The colonists’ fears seemed well founded when a slave rebellion was suppressed near the
Stono River in 1739, an event that would have a deep impact on the Lowcountry slaves’
musical culture. In general though, while the impact of Christian Missionaries on the
Lakota faded in the early decades of the eighteenth century, the impact of Christianity on
the Gullah rose with the beginning of organised missionary work.
The little contact the Sioux had with Europeans and in particular the French, in
the seventeenth century petered out in the eighteenth century. From about 1700 relations
between the Sioux and the French began to sour. However, by then the Sioux were relying
heavily on European trade products, especially guns, which allowed them to keep peace
with the mid-western tribes. Yet, they often had no direct access to European traders and
32
relied on middlemen such as the Chippewa tribe to acquire the merchandise they needed.
This led to an alliance in which the Chippewa were allowed to hunt on traditional Sioux
hunting grounds in return for the traded goods. However, tensions created by both ethnic
groups vying for the lucrative beaver trade with the French led to the alliance being
continually broken by warfare.7
In the late seventeenth century, Pierre Charles Le Sueur, a French explorer and
trader in beaver pelts, travelled in the Western Great Lakes region and encountered the
Sioux at Lake Pepin, where he tried to mediate between them and the Chippewa. In 1695,
Le Sueur built a trading post at Isle Pelée, and in the same year he escorted a Sioux chief to
Montreal to ask the Governor of New France to send the Sioux more traders. Despite this,
the French Government closed all trading posts west of Michilimackinac, on the Strait of
Mackinac, in 1696. However, illegal Coureurs de Bois continued to trade with the Sioux
without the approval of the French Government, but the volume of trade was significantly
reduced. Le Sueur spent the winter of 1700-1 with some Sioux along the Blue Earth River
at the fort he built there, Fort L'Huillier, to mine what he mistakenly thought was copper.
Displaying their increasing interest in trade with Europeans, the Sioux who lived to the
east of the Mississippi became angered when they believed that Le Sueur intended to trade
from Fort L’Huillier, and that he had not located the fort on the East side of the river.
Sometime later, the fort was fired on and two French Hunters were attacked and robbed.
The western Sioux, to whom the Lakota belonged, and who were increasingly
differentiated from their eastern relatives due to their migration west from the Great Lakes,
denied any responsibility, and the Eastern Sioux paid compensation to Le Sueur. The post
was abandoned in 1702, and for the following two decades the Sioux had no direct contact
with the French. This break in contact lessened the cultural impact of the Sioux’s earliest
contact with the French, as it was not until a generation later that the Sioux would come
into contact with the French again.
Although the Jesuits attempted to resurrect their mission to the Sioux in 1720, their
efforts were abandoned due to continuing intertribal warfare, and it was not until 1727 that
DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, pp.720-722; Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of
the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 65,
No. 2, (1978), pp. 319-343 at p.322; Annie Heloise Abel, “Trudeau’s Description of the Upper Missouri”,
The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Volume 8, No.1/2, (1921), pp.149-179, at p.176
7
33
the Sioux had contact again with the missionaries. On this occasion, after negotiating a
peace between the Sioux and the Chippewa, the French sent two Jesuits and a party of
traders to set up Fort Beauharnois for conducting trade with the Sioux. Nonetheless,
relations would sour once again as the French became involved in intertribal warfare. The
expedition of Pierre Gaultier de Varennes Sieur de la Vérendrye to find the Western Sea
encountered the Sioux in the 1730s. La Vérendrye built two forts around Lake Superior in
order to finance his expedition through trade. However, in allying with a Cree war party
against them, La Vérendrye angered the Sioux. As a result the Mdewakanton Sioux waged
war on all coureurs de bois and French Travellers. In the spring of 1736, a party of Sioux
killed and scalped two Frenchmen, reportedly dancing the scalp dance for two days
afterwards. In the summer of the same year, the Sioux killed 20 Frenchmen, including La
Vérendrye’s son and a Jesuit Missionary. This escalating conflict between the French and
the Sioux led to Fort Beauharnois being abandoned in 1737. In fact La Verendrye wrote in
1744 that it was the war and political instability of the region that made trade between the
French and the Native American tribes impossible; he said: “It will take a long time to
pacify all these tribes who from time immemorial have been deadly enemies”. For the next
sixty years, little is known of the relationship between Europeans and the Sioux.8
More significant to the formation of Lakota culture in the early part of the 18th C.
were the Lakota’s migrations. The Lakota lived for a time around Lake Big Stone and Lake
Traverse near the Mississippi, but they began moving westward by 1718, according to a
map from that year created by cartographer Claude Delisle. Also, according to the Lakota
Winter Counts, the pictorial calendars which recorded significant events in Lakota life, the
Lakota began to dominate the prairies between the Mississippi and the Missouri after the
1720s. After the attack on the French expedition that included Jesuit Missionaries and La
Vérendrye’s son, the Sioux came under intense pressure from the Ojibwe who moved into
Sioux Territory on the Western Great Lakes. In 1740, Ojibwe villages replaced Eastern
Sioux villages around the area where the St Louis River enters Lake Superior, and at Big
Sandy Lake, and by 1745 the Ojibwe had driven the Eastern Sioux from Mille Lacs. As
they moved westward, the Sioux fought with Plains tribes. In 1742 the “Sioux of the
Prairies”, of whom the Lakota were members, were devastated by a combined force of
Assinboine and Cree warriors. However the Sioux, and especially the Lakota, were also
Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations; (Malden, 2003), p.49; DeMallie, “The Sioux until
1850”, p.720; William R. Swagerty, “History of the United States Plains until 1850”, in DeMallie, Handbook
of North American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2, (Washington, 2001), p.267
8
34
voluntarily migrating westward, where they began to dominate the Northern Great Plains
politically. This move involved a change in culture, especially for the Lakota who were the
first to migrate and who would move furthest west.9
The Sioux migration had several reasons. During the Iroquois Wars, in which
the Dutch and the English encouraged the Iroquois to expand their territory in pursuit of
beaver pelts, and which ran from the middle to the end of the seventeenth century, the
Iroquois moved into the area around the Eastern Great Lakes. They drove out tribes such as
the Huron and Ottawa, who in turn moved into the Western Great Lakes region. These
tribes, along with the Illinois, the Fox and other Central Algonquians, who had access to
guns supplied by European traders, attacked the Eastern Sioux, causing them to move west
of the Mississippi to hunt. However, there is no doubt that the Sioux were also attracted to
the lure of involvement in French trade at the trading posts on the Minnesota and
Mississippi rivers to the south of their ancestral homeland in the Minnesota woodlands.
Traders had difficulty reaching the Sioux in their marshy and forested homeland just west
of the Great Lakes. In order to be involved in trade, therefore, the Sioux had to migrate
south. The pursuit of buffalo was another contributing factor to the Sioux Migration
westward. Siouan oral history collected in the nineteenth century claims that the Lakota
were the first Siouan tribe to move from their origin in the northern lakes east of the
Mississippi, followed later by the Yankton and Yanktonai and then the Santee. The
Lakota’s movement was caused by the abundance of buffalo in that region. In fact buffalo
populations were contracting steadily west of the Great Lakes, and in order to avail of the
supply of buffalo meat, the Sioux increasingly had to hunt further west.10
Descriptions from this period increasingly differentiated between the Sioux
of the East, who would later be termed the “Santee” and the Sioux of the West, who would
include some Santee bands as well as the “Yankton” and “Lakota”. As well as the
geographical differences, sources from the period suggest that the Sioux of the West’s
move to the Plains and a more nomadic way of life in pursuit of the buffalo was a clear
According to the Smithsonian Institute: “The Lakota Winter Counts are histories or calendars in which
events are recorded by pictures, with one picture for each year”,
[http://wintercounts.si.edu/html_version/html/, Accessed 03/10/2013]; Ross Alexander Enochs, The Jesuit
Mission to the Lakota Sioux, (Kansas, 1996), p.3; Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations, Vol. 52, pp.213-219;
White, “The Winning of the West”, pp. 319-343; John C. Ewers, Plains Indian History and Culture: Essays
on Continuity and Change, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1997
10
Gibbon, The Sioux, p.48, pp.52-53; DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, pp.719-727; Emma Helen Blair, The
Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes, as described by Nicolas Perrot,
Vol.1, (Cleveland, 1911), pp. 159-162, pp.187-190
9
35
difference between the two. In 1700-1701 Le Sueur described the “Sioux of the West” as
having no fixed villages and travelling by foot, having abandoned their canoes and their
practise of horticulture in favour of living “only by the hunt”. In this way the Lakota’s and
the other sub-groups of the “Sioux of the West” left behind their Woodlands and
increasingly adopted the musical traditions of the tribes who lived on the northern Plains,
many of which were based on the buffalo.11
While Lakota society was affected by the turbulence of the Great Lakes region in
the early eighteenth century, the increased stability of the Carolina colony restricted the
cultural freedom of the Gullah in the same period. By the early decades of the 18th C., the
lives of Carolina slaves were changing as slave owners and settlers moved towards a more
restrictive plantation economy, thereby lessening the comparative cultural freedom granted
to slaves in the colony’s frontier beginnings. Colonists, perhaps influenced by the West
African slaves’ knowledge of rice agriculture, began to recognise the suitability of the
Lowcountry landscape for rice growing and although rice did not become the main staple
crop until the early 1720s, the efforts to make it a plantation crop began in the 1690s. Rice
differed from other crops in its demand for a large labour force, which also meant that it
was more efficient for plantations to be large, and as a result, for large numbers of slaves to
be living in close proximity. Rice also contributed to the development of the “task system”,
in which each slave had a set amount of tasks, and were given control of their own time
once these tasks were finished. This in turn gave the ancestors of the Gullah free time to
engage in cultural activities such as music and traditional African religious rituals.12
As early as 1698, South Carolina legislators had legislated against the “great
number of slaves which do not dwell in Charles Town [who] do on Sundays resort thither
to Drink, Quarrel, Curse, Swear and pro[p]hane the Sabbath”. Perhaps illustrating the
amount of time the slaves had to congregate in the urban centre of Charleston to partake in
these activities, this Act was also, in L.H Roper’s words, a reminder to slaves “of the
proper relationship between blacks and whites” and an attempt to take “harsher steps
DeMallie,“Sioux Until 1850”, p.720, p.725; Gibbon, The Sioux, p.49, White,“The Winning of the West”,
p.321
12
Wood, Black Majority, p.53, p.125; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, p.20; Philip D. Morgan, “Work and
Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700-1880”, The William and Mary
Quarterly, Vol.38, No.4, (1982), pp. 563-599; Judith Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice
Cultivation in the Americas, (Cambridge, 2002)
11
36
against slaves in their effort to maintain control of that relationship”. The white population
of South Carolina were concerned that large slave gatherings would contribute to a
disruption of the peace and productivity of the burgeoning plantation economy. These fears
were exacerbated by the desertion of slaves from militias and their running away to join
Native Americans, or to reach the sanctuary of the Spanish fortification of St Augustine, in
Florida. Nevertheless, fear of attack from the Spanish or from Native Americans
necessitated that slaves be allowed in the colony’s militias. These slaves were often
employed as drummers. A slave named Jeams Ingerson earned a pound a month in 1707 in
return for his “negro drumming for a local militia”. It seems that while Africans were very
keen on the position of the drummer, whites were not as keen on the position. In 1702 the
governor of Carolina remarked that “Sevrall Companys want drummers, and tho- in evry
Beat there are men enough qualified for it yett few or none will doe it”. Peter Wood
suggests that the whites’ reluctance to drum was a result of the fact that they saw
drumming as a black person’s work, illustrating the association of slaves with drums in
early eighteenth century Lowcountry society.13
The religion of the slaves also became a concern in the early 18th C. In
1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) was established
by the Anglican Church to bring Christianity to the British colonies. The first missionary to
the province of Carolina, Reverend Samuel Thomas, sent by the SPG in 1702, requested
bibles “to give to the poor negroes”, and set about bringing Christianity to the slaves. In
1706-1707, Thomas displayed enthusiasm that “many of [the slaves] are desirous of
Christian knowledge”. However, the SPG missionaries were concerned about the misuse
of the Sabbath for traditional African religious and musical ritual. Francis Le Jau, an SPG
missionary in Goose Creek, South Carolina, wrote in 1709 that “I[t] has been customary
among them to have their ffeasts dances and merry Meetings upon the Lords day…I tell
them that …to be admitted to baptism they must promise they’l spend no more the Lords
day in idleness”. SPG Missionaries also complained that the planters objected to their
missionary work. Reverend E. Taylor of St. Andrews, South Carolina, claimed in 1713,
that “the desire of the slaves for instruction was so general that but for the opposition of the
L.H, Roper, “The 1701 ‘Act for the better ordering of Slaves’: Reconsidering the History of Slavery
in Proprietary South Carolina”, William and Mary Quarterly, Volume LXIV, Number 2, (2007), p.395-418;
Rath, Drums and Power, p.108
13
37
owners there seems no reason why the whole of them should not have been brought to
Christ”.14
From the period from 1716 to 1744, slaves from West Central Africa replaced
Senegambians as the majority of those imported to the Lowcountry. This gave South
Carolina’s black population a rare degree of cultural and linguistic homogeneity. In terms
of the formation of an African American culture, the increase in slave imports led to a “reafricanisation” of the colony’s slave society. Philip Morgan claims that at the turn of the
18th C. the assimilationist slave culture of the previous few decades “had little chance to
put down its roots before it was swept aside by a rising tide of African slaves”.
Missionaries also had to contend with this constant “re-africanising” of slave society in the
Lowcountry. In Saint George Dorchester, South Carolina in the early 18th C. the Reverend
Francis Varnod found success in baptising a number of slaves in his Parish. He wrote to
the SPG in 1728 that he had converted about one tenth of the parish’s 1,300 slaves.
However, with the rise in slave imports in the following decade, and the “re-africanisation”
of the slave population, his success was short-lived. His successor in the parish, Reverend
Stephen Roe, wrote in 1741 that only about 3 percent of the now swollen slave population
of over 3,000 were Christians, and by 1749 the Reverend William Coles wrote that there
were no Christian blacks left in the parish.15
The increasing black majority in the colony, in which slaves began to
significantly outnumber whites, created other problems. While slaves had run away,
rebelled and fought alongside Indians against the colonists in previous decades, the
increase in importation from West Central Africa exacerbated the fear of slave insurrection
in the early eighteenth century. The fear of slave drumming, which stemmed from a
knowledge of the use of the drum in warfare in Africa, and which was a feature of the
Caribbean colonies, had by now also reached Carolina. In 1730 a Charleston planter
14
Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, p.20; Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and
Community-Culture Among the Gullahs, (New York, 1988), pp.67-69; Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals,
p.101; Francis Le Jau and Frank J. Klingberg, (ed.), The Carolina Chronicle of Francis le Jau, (Berkeley,
1956), pp.61, 77, 120-121; “Documents concerning Rev. Samuel Thomas, 1702-1707”, The South Carolina
Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1, (1904), pp.21-55, at pp.42; Society For the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Classified Digest, Published by the SPG, London, 1808, p.16;
“South Carolina Clergy to Gideon Johnston”, quoted in Creel, A Peculiar People, p.70
15
Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, p.19, p.422; Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave
Trade to America, Vol. 4, pp. 242-243, p.513; Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African Heritage, 1999,
p.43, p.89; Cassidy, "Gullah and the Caribbean Connection", pp.16-17; John, Bennett, "Gullah: A Negro
Patois I", South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4, (1908), pp.332-347; Pollitzer, "The Relationship of the
Gullah speaking people of coastal South Carolina to their African Ancestors", p.58
38
reported that a group of slaves had planned to “rise and destroy” whites in the region at a
dance in which drumming was a feature. These fears were given credence by the Stono
Rebellion of the 9th of September 1739, when about sixty Angolan slaves killed over fifty
whites. Those who led the rebellion were from Catholic Portuguese Angola and Kongo and
had likely developed syncretistic Christian cultures there. The slaves were reported to be
planning an escape to St. Augustine in Catholic Spanish Florida after the Spanish had
promised freedom to any slaves who escaped from the English colonies. Significantly the
slaves had reportedly used drums during the rebellion and James Oglethorpe, a settler on
the Southern Frontier with Spanish Florida, wrote that the rebelling slaves “set to dancing
singing and beating drums, to draw more Negroes to them”. Richard Cullen Rath, noting
the presence of what was described as a “pushing dance” in the Lowcountry at the time,
also suggests that the slaves who rebelled at Stono, may have honed their fighting skills by
concealing them within a West Central African dance tradition called “sanga” or
“sanguar”, in which dance was used as a method of training for hand to hand combat,
much like Capoeira in Brazil.
Thus, the slaves who rebelled at Stono used their musical traditions as a means to
directly resist their enslavement. In the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, fearful whites
in the colony acted to ensure it would not occur again. They introduced a duty on slave
imports, which all but stopped the trade for a decade. Also, the period after Stono saw a
movement by colonial authorities to repress or eliminate African cultural retentions, which
were now looked at with suspicion by planters and missionaries alike. The New Negro Act
of 1740 outlawed “dangerous weapons, or […] drums, horns or other loud instruments” in
the colony, in fear that they might be used to “give sign or notice to one another of [the
slaves] wicked designs or purposes”. The musical culture of Gullah slaves therefore
became associated with the fears of slave rebellion among the South Carolina white
population. The 1740 Act also forbade missionaries to teach slaves how to read and write.
It was not until changes occurred in the religion of the white population of Carolina that
any further progress in missionary work among the slaves would take place.16
John K. Thornton, “African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion”, American Historical Review, Vol.96,
No.4, (1991), pp.1102-1103; Peter H.Wood, “Anatomy of a Revolt”, in Mark M Smith, Stono: Documenting
and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, (Columbia, 2005), pp.59-72, at p.68; Creel, A Peculiar People,
p.33, p.73, p.76; Darold D. Wax, “‘The Great Risque We Run’: The Aftermath Of Slave Rebellion At Stono,
South Carolina, 1739-1745”, The Journal of Negro History, Vol.67, No.2, (1982), pp.136-147, at p.136;
Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, p.40, p.59; Wood, Black Majority, p.324
16
39
Change did occur with the Great Awakening, the Christian
revitalisation movement of the early eighteenth century, which led to an increase in the
activities of missionaries of dissenting congregations in the American South East. Baptists
had been in the Carolinas since the end of the seventeenth century. As many were slave
owners, they had opposed the religious conversion of the slaves. However Particular
Baptists of Calvinist –Puritan orientation began to embrace the preaching style of
individuals such as George Whitefield and were responsible for the spread of the Great
Awakening in the Lowcountry. According to Margaret Washington Creel, the difficulties
facing South Carolinians in the late 1730s, with the fear of Spanish invasion in 1737, the
spread of yellow fever and smallpox in 1738 and the Stono slave uprising of 1739, made
the region, and the psychological state of its residents, a fertile ground for the revivalist
preaching of Whitefield’s, which sought to attract new converts. On his second trip to
America in 1739, Whitefield attracted thousands to his evangelical tour. While he outraged
many, his preaching in St. Helena Island, South Carolina, in 1739, managed to convince a
few whites to instruct their Gullah slaves. Significantly, Whitefield, seeing the failure of
the Anglican Church to Christianise slaves, focused his attention on the rapidly expanding
population of black Carolinians. Like the SPG before him, Whitefield also objected to the
reluctance of planters to allow religious instruction to their slaves claiming that he had
“great reason to believe, that most of you, on Purpose, keep your Negroes ignorant of
Christianity”. It was thus Whitefield, and the evangelical religion he and his followers
brought to the Lowcountry in the 1740s that would have the most profound effect on
Gullah culture for the following century.17
The early eighteenth century was a time of great change for Lakota and Gullah
society. However, relations between the two ethnic groups and Europeans varied a great
deal in this period. The European trade for Beaver pelts with Native American ethnic
groups in the Great Lakes region created inter-tribal warfare that spilt over and jeopardised
relations between the Sioux and the French, temporarily removing European influence on
Lakota cultural formation and fluidity. This warfare was also a factor in the migration of
the Lakota from the Great Lakes region onto the Great Plains, a move that defined their
cultural fluidity for the following two centuries, as they became increasingly nomadic and
17
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.8, p.73, p.93
40
free from the damaging presence of Europeans around the Great Lakes. In contrast, in
South Carolina, the nascent rice economy would create a more repressive cultural
environment in the Lowcountry as planters and colonists looked to supervise all aspects of
Gullah slave society and culture. Nevertheless, the expansion of rice plantations also led to
an increase in slave imports from West Africa which would “re-africanise” the developing
Gullah culture. French Catholic missions to the Lakota were therefore hindered in the early
decades of the eighteenth century by the unstable and often violent relations between
Native American ethnic groups in the Great Lakes region. In contrast, SPG missionaries
began to attempt to Christianise the Gullah in this same period and sought to curb the
practise of African derived musical traditions in the process. Though fear of a “black
majority”, and the Stono rebellion of 1739, resulted in the attempted curtailment of slave
cultural expression after 1740, the simultaneous expansion of evangelical Christianity in
the Lowcountry provided a vehicle for African religious traditions to be preserved into the
nineteenth century.
iii.
“New Dawns”: The Impact Of Geographical And Cultural Changes On
Religion
After 1750, the Gullah and Lakota underwent changes that had an effect on their cultures
lasting into the mid-nineteenth century. The Lakota’s migration westward intensified, due
to the warfare that occurred in the Great Lakes region, but other factors encouraged them
to move away from their ancestral home to the west of the Great Lakes. The Lakota
became a dominant tribe on the Northern Plains and established a culture that absorbed
elements of those of the other tribes they encountered during their migration. The move
west also removed the Lakota from the direct influence of Europeans, and particularly
missionaries. As a consequence, the Lakota adapted their religious culture to the Plains
environment. The Gullah, in contrast, remained in a close relationship of cultural exchange
with the European and Christian culture of slave owners and missionaries, as well as with
the cultures of newly imported slaves, the bulk of whom came from the rice growing areas
of West Africa after 1740. However, the Gullah also adapted their religious culture to the
reality of the plantation environment and embraced the Evangelical Christianity of the First
Great Awakening. Yet, many slaves remained unaffected by Christianity, and missionaries
41
and church leaders recognised that they needed to adapt and change their methods to truly
bring the slaves to Christianity.
The second half of the 18th C. saw the Lakota continue to move away from
European influence around the Great Lakes, and their migration towards the Northern
Great Plains brought close contact with nomadic Native American cultures. By 1750, the
Lakota had crossed the Missouri River, and, by 1774, all the Sioux had moved west of the
Mississippi, leaving their traditional hunting grounds to the Chippewa. While the
availability of beaver and buffalo was a factor in the move, so was the incentive that,
armed with French guns, the Sioux could displace the tribes to the west from their
profitable hunting grounds. In the course of this movement, the Sioux displaced the
Omahas, Otos, Cheyennes, Missouris, and Iowas, becoming the main providers of beaver
pelts in the region. In 1796, Jean Baptiste Truteau described the Sioux, claiming that they
were the ones “who hunt most for the beaver and other good peltries of the Upper
Missouri”. From their position on the Northern Plains, the Lakota Sioux acted as
middlemen for Western Tribes, bringing their furs to the Santee in exchange for European
trade items.18
The main reason the Lakota could leave their hunting grounds to the East of the
Mississippi to the Chippewa in the 1770s was that they had, by that time, acquired horses
which allowed them to hunt over larger territories to the West and South than ever before.
As important as the acquisition of European firearms was to the Sioux, it was the adoption
of the horse that disseminated from the Southern Plains tribes which allowed the Lakota to
dominate the Northern and Central Great Plains from the late 18th C onwards. The Lakota
acquired horses sometime between 1766 and 1774, probably from the Arikara or
Cheyenne. This acquisition suited the Lakota’s already nomadic lifestyle and in the words
of anthropologist Raymond DeMallie, acted as an “intensifier of earlier cultural patterns”,
in which the Lakota now made use of large territories, not only to maintain their nomadic
existence, but to maintain pasture for their horses. It was in fact, the convergence of the
horse and gun onto their territory on the Northern Plains that allowed the Lakota to
dominate the tribes around them. However depleted buffalo and beaver just West of the
DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, pp.720-722; White, “The Winning of the West”, p.322; Abel, “Trudeau’s
Description of the Upper Missouri”, p.176
18
42
Missouri in the late 18th C. drove the Lakota further west, bringing them into direct contact
with the sedentary villages of the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa. The Oglala Lakota, in
response to the depleted game, settled with the Arikara and attempted to practise
horticulture for a short period. European diseases also played a part in the Lakota's quest
for more hunting territory and their subsequent rise to hegemonic power on the Northern
plains. Smallpox hit the Northern Plains in the late 18th C., decimating the agricultural
villages of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara while leaving the smaller bands of nomadic
Lakota relatively unscathed. The epidemics also forced the Oglala Lakota to abandon the
Arikara and their experiment in Horticulture.19
In the late eighteenth century, the presence of French and
Spanish traders, who had moved up the Missouri to divert the traditional trade routes
downriver and away from British Canada, encouraged the Lakota to focus their complete
attention on hunting buffalo, as the traders wanted buffalo products such as hides and dried
meat, which could now be more easily acquired on horseback. The acquisition of the horse
together with this increase in demand for buffalo products enabled the Lakota to devote
themselves to the buffalo hunt completely and to abandon horticulture or the trapping of
smaller animals. The buffalo, as a result, became a central feature of Lakota culture. More
importantly, the greater and easier movement on the plains, afforded by mounted
nomadism, resulted in the Lakota coming into contact with increasingly diverse native
ethnic groups. This contact provided the Lakota with a wide range of cultural traits
acquired from the large geographic area occupied by the various Lakota bands. The
cultures of tribes such as the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Crow combined with the
Lakota’s in a larger process of intertribal cultural exchange that occurred in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries on the Great Plains.20
The Lakota’s move away from the Great Lakes culture they shared
with the Santee and Yankton/Yanktonai to the nomadic hunting way of life on the Plains
DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, p.727; White, “The Winning of the West”, p.324; Loretta Fowler, “The
Great Plains From The Arrival Of The Horse To 1885”, in Bruce G. Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn,
(eds.), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume 1: North America, Part 2,
(New York, 1996), pp.1-55; Clark Wissler, “The Influence of the Horse in the Development of Plains
Culture,” American Anthropologist Vol. 16, No. 1, (1914); Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains
Indian Horse Cultures,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 90, Issue 3, (2003); Preston Holder, The Hoe
and the Horse on the Plains: A Study of Cultural Development Among North American Indians, (Lincoln,
1974); Frank Raymond Secoy, Changing Military Patterns on the Great Plains, (Seattle, 1966)
20
White, “The Winning of the West”, p.323, p.325; DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, p.727; Raymond J.
DeMallie, “Teton”, in DeMallie (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians Vol.13, Part 2, pp.794-820, at
p.794; William K. Powers, Oglala Religion, (Lincoln, 1982), p.19, p.25
19
43
had a significant effect on Lakota religion. These changing circumstances led to the
adoption of new rituals and creation myths by the Lakota, based on the Buffalo and the
“tumultuous Plains Environment”. The Myth of the White Buffalo Calf Woman for
instance describes how the Sioux received the calumet, a centuries old tradition. However,
this myth is thought to have originated in the late eighteenth or even the nineteenth
century, when the buffalo had become central to the Lakota. The Black Hills were also
given a sacred significance after their acquisition in the late 18th C. Wind Cave, in the
Black Hills became the location for the mythical cave from which all humans arrived onto
the surface of the earth in the Lakota Creation Myth. The Lakota’s newly acquired
territory, and cultural traits, were therefore combined with more traditional elements in the
creation of new cultural forms which would become central to Plains culture in the
following centuries. However, the move away from the Great Lakes also removed the
Lakota from the influence of Christian Missionaries. Any hope of the Jesuits continuing
their work among the Sioux was hampered by the decision taken by the French
Government to ban the Jesuits from New France in 1763. Also, in response to political
opposition in France, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the activities of the entire Society of
Jesus in 1773.21
The mobility and expansion of the Lakota onto the Northern Plains also resulted
in violent battles over territory with other Native American ethnic groups. By the late 18th
C., the Lakota dominated the Missouri River region of the Northern Plains, and began to
make inroads on the Black Hills to the west, contesting the territory between the Missouri
and the Hills with the Kiowa, the Crow and the Arapaho, and eventually driving the Crow
and the Kiowa from the Black Hills altogether. The ability of the Lakota to avoid the
diseases which decimated other Plains tribes made them numerically far superior, giving
them military advantage and allowing them to spread their culture across the Plains.
However, while the power of the Lakota allowed them to dominate surrounding Native
American ethnic groups, it was also this position of strength that would bring them into
direct contact with the new nation of the United States in the nineteenth century.22
21
Steinmetz, Pipe Bible and Peyote, pp.15-16; Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks, Sioux Indian
Religion: Tradition and Innovation, (Norman, 1989), pp.27-28; William K. Powers, “Wiping the Tears:
Lakota Religion in the Twenty First Century”, in Lawrence E. Sullivan, Native Religions and Cultures of
North America: Anthropology of the Sacred, (New York, 2000), pp.105-107; Gibbon, The Sioux, p.133;
DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, p.727
22
White, “The Winning of the West”, pp.325-328; DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, p.732
44
In contrast to the detachment of the Lakota from the Christian influence of Jesuit
Missionaries in this period, by 1750 the evangelical religion of the First Great Awakening
had provided a means to attract Gullah slaves to the Christian churches in the Lowcountry.
Although George Whitefield was critical of the slaves being allowed to “profane the
Lord’s Day by their dancing piping and such”, his evangelical preaching methods
nonetheless appealed to the slaves. While there are no accounts of Whitefield left by
Gullah slaves, the views of slaves from other colonies illustrate what appeal Whitefield’s
preaching had for African Americans. Phyllis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, for example,
described being attracted to Whitefield’s preaching because of its musical quality. Olaudah
Equiano, who was a slave in Virginia, was “very much struck and impressed” with
Whitefield’s exuberant style of preaching. Whitefield’s version of Christianity emphasised
direct individual possession by the Holy Spirit or Jesus Christ. Similar ideas were present
in West African religion where, in Melville Herskovits words, "the god descends to the
head of his devotee, replacing him and thus rendering him unconscious of what transpires
until the deity departs” This more exuberant type of religious celebration, in turn, brought
with it a need for “livelier” music in religious ceremonies. Hymns were written to replace
the scriptural psalms, and these new songs, especially the collections of Dr. Watts,
appealed to black churchgoers. Preachers like Whitefield also introduced outdoor and often
improvised preaching styles to the American South, something which also appealed to the
religious sensibilities of the slaves.23
Notwithstanding the appeal of the new more exuberant celebration of
Christianity born out of the Great Awakening, the Gullah did not abandon traditional
religion. Instead, they incorporated Christianity into their traditional African religions.
However, the missionaries’ acceptance of this slave version of Christianity, which
emphasised singing or the phenomenon of spiritual possession, also indicated their
willingness to meet slaves on a middle ground, in the creation of new syncretistic religious
forms, with aspects of both African and European religious ritual. Presbyterian Minister
Samuel Davies, based in Hanover, Virginia, became active in christianising Southern
slaves, including the Gullah, in the mid-18th C. Around this time, letters written by Davies
Phyllis Wheatley quoted in Frank Lambert, “'I Saw the Book Talk': Slave Readings of the First Great
Awakening”, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 77, No. 4, (1992), pp. 185-198, at p.192; Creel, A Peculiar
People, p.107; Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits, (ed.), The New World Negro, (Bloomington,
1966), p.210; Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans, (New York, 1977), pp.34-40; Melville J.
Herskovits,, “The Southernmost Outposts of New World Africanisms”, American Anthropologist, New
Series, Vol. 45, No. 4, Part 1, (1943), pp.495-510, at p.505
23
45
and his fellow Presbyterians in Virginia and South Carolina show their delight in the
apparent Christianisation of the slaves in their regions. They also began to see the benefit
of emphasising the musical side of religion in order to bring slaves into the church. Davies
wrote in 1751 that he could not “but observe, that the Negroes above all the Human
Species […] have an Ear for Musick”. In fact most often these letters write about the slaves
singing of hymns as evidence of their adoption of Christian religion. The Reverend Hutson
of Beaufort County, South Carolina, which had a large population of Gullah slaves, wrote
in 1758: “I must confess that the vital part of religion among us at this time, seems to be
chiefly among them [the Negroes]….I understand that several of them meet once a week
and spend some time in singing, praying and reading the Bible”.24
Despite these accomplishments for the Presbyterians, their successes
were confined to the areas around their churches and Gullah slaves from other regions
were often still strangers to Christianity. However, the work of the Presbyterians sparked
the Anglican Church into activity. Just as Davies and his missionaries had done, the
Anglicans promoted the singing of hymns as a means to bring the slaves to their church.
William Knox, an absentee Georgia planter who owned many Gullah slaves, wrote in
1768, that “The Negroes in general have an ear for musick, and might without much
trouble be taught to sing the hymns, which would be the pleasantest way of instructing
them, and bringing them speedily to offer praise to God”. In fact, the expansion of slavery
into the Georgia colony in 1751 had a profound impact on Gullah culture. The new colony
provided George Whitefield with an opportunity for missionary work. The Georgia
Trustees, who governed the colony in its first thirty years, took particular interest in the
missionary instruction of their slaves. Influenced by Whitefield’s work in South Carolina,
the slave codes drawn up in Georgia emphasised the need for the slaves’ Christianisation.
The increase in the Lowcountry slave population after 1750 encouraged and hastened the
Christianisation of Gullah slaves, as the colony’s “evangelistic fervour and liberalism” spilt
over to South Carolina.25
The mid-18th C. growth in slave Christianity also laid the
foundation for independent black churches. The first organised African Church was formed
24
Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.81-113; Benjamin Fawcett, A Compassionate Address to the Christian
Negroes in Virginia and other British Colonies in North America, (London, 1756), Appendix, p.37;
“Reverend Hutson in South Carolina, to J.F”, quoted in Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, pp.104-105
25
Quoted in Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, p.105; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.72, p.109; Allen D
Candler, and Lucian L. Knight, (eds.), The Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, Vol.1, p.60,(Atlanta,
1904); Rath, Drums and Power, 2000, p.110
46
in 1775 when the African Baptist Church was founded on the Galphin Plantation in Silver
Bluff, South Carolina. However these early black churches operated under strict
supervision from whites, and were often only allowed to preach to free blacks.
Nevertheless, many slaves in the rural areas of the colony remained unaware of
Christianity. Elhanan Winchester wrote that in Welsh Neck, South Carolina, where he
became minister in 1774, “no attempts had been made in that settlement to convert the
slaves”. In 1779, Alexander Hewatt described the conditions of the slaves in South
Carolina and Georgia, claiming that “the negroes of that country, a few only excepted, are
to this day as great strangers to Christianity, and as much under the influence of Pagan
darkness, idolatry and superstition, as they were at their first arrival from Africa”.
Certainly, there was still reluctance amongst some clergy to convert or instruct slaves in
Christianity. The reverend Samuel Davies wrote in 1758 that “thousands of negroes are
neglected or instructed just according to the character of the established clergy in their
several parishes”.26
The dearth of missionary work to the slaves was exacerbated during the
American Revolution, when South Carolina and Georgia were among the thirteen colonies
to declare independence from Britain. This was partly due to the fear that white
missionaries would "furnish . . . too much knowledge" to the slaves about Governor
Dunmore’s proclamation that promised to free all slaves who would support the British.
During the Revolution the tradition of Lowcountry drumming which had been suppressed
for the previous decades, also seems to have been reinvigorated. Compared to only one
account of a runaway slave who was a drummer in the years from 1735 to 1775, between
1775 and 1780 there were twenty, all of whom were from Charleston. All but one of these
twenty joined the Hessian forces, who fought for the crown, and who used a more
complicated Jannisary military drumming style. The slaves, therefore, used their drumming
expertise in an attempt to achieve their freedom. While the Revolution had a disastrous
impact on Lowcountry and Sea Island plantations, as they were seized and plundered by
British and Hessian forces, for the Gullah the revolution provided an opportunity to escape
slavery, often using their musical traditions to do so. 27
26
Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, (Washington D. C., 1921), pp.41-43; Epstein, Sinful
Tunes and Spirituals, pp.105-107; Alexander Hewatt, Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the
Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, (London, 1779), pp.98-100;
27
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.95; Marcus, Jernegan, 1916, “Slavery and Conversion in the American
Colonies.”, American Historical Review 21, pp.504-527, at p.525; Epstein, Sinful Tunes, p.107; Albert J.
47
The period after 1740 had also seen a change in the areas of Africa from
which slaves were brought to the Lowcountry. From 1749 to 1787, West Central Africans
were overlooked in favour of slaves from the rice growing areas of West Africa, in order to
work on the expanding rice plantations. The revolution also allowed 10,000 slaves to leave
the Lowcountry with the British when they evacuated in 1783, transplanting Gullah culture
firstly to the Bahamas, Nova Scotia and in some cases back to Sierra Leone. However the
closing down of the Slave trade from 1787 to 1804 also contributed to the consolidation of
Gullah culture as an African American Culture in the Lowcountry, as it shielded it from the
diluting effects of “re-africanisation” which had characterised previous decades.28
The paths of the Lakota and Gullah diverged further after 1750, in terms of
the impact of Europeans on their cultural formation. The Lakota migrated westward, away
from the cultural influence of traders, trappers and missionaries, and onto the northern
Great Plains, where they would transform their culture based on mounted bison-hunting
nomadism. Here, they would, instead, be influenced by the many northern plains Native
people they encountered. In contrast, the Gullah would become increasingly influenced by
European and then American Christian culture. Nevertheless, they appropriated the aspects
of these cultures which suited them most. In terms of Christianity, it was the Evangelical
religion of the Great Awakening that had most success among the Gullah; based on this,
missionaries tailored their methods to focus on the aspects of Christianity that the slaves
seemed to favour, in particular hymnal music. While the missionary work of the various
Lowcountry churches increased in this period, Christian missionaries disappeared from
Lakota culture completely, partly due to the restrictions forced on the Society of Jesus, but
also due to the Lakota’s migration west. Instead, Lakota religion adapted to the new
realities of life on the Great Plains, as the Lakota placed the Bison and the Black Hills at
the centre of their religion and rituals.
Raboteau, Slave Religion, The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South, (New York, 1978), p.139; Rath,
Drums and Power, p.110-115
28
Rath, Drums and Power, p.110; Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African Heritage, p.41, p.44; Peter
Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877, (New York, 1993), p.73
48
iv.
“Rise From The Earth”: The Re-Emergence Of Christianity As Cultural
Coercion
After 1800, the Lakota and the Gullah achieved a certain level of cultural stability. The
Lakota were now a dominant force on the Northern Great Plains, expanding their territory
at the expense of other Native American ethnic groups. It was this position of dominance,
and the large territories the Lakota required to sustain their expanding population, which
would ultimately bring them into direct conflict with the United States after their initial
encounters with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the first decade of the nineteenth
century. However, the Lakota would also come in contact again with Christianity in this
period, in a relationship untainted by their disputes with the secular agents of the United
States. In this same period, in South Carolina, the Denmark Vesey conspiracy, which
revealed a planned rebellion against slave owners, led to debates among South Carolinian
planters and Church leaders about the merits of converting the Gullah to Christianity and
allowing them to have their own independent churches. The prevailing belief that only
proper Christian instruction could prevent further disruption to the plantation economy led
to the reinvigoration of missionary work among the Gullah. However, the continued failure
of these missions ultimately led the white Churches to adapt their religion to the cultural
needs of the Gullah and to become more tolerant of independent black worship.
The Lakota Sioux were the dominant force on the northern Great Plains at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. In the first decade of the century, smallpox decimated
the Omaha, who had kept the Lakota from expanding down the Missouri. In their
expansion south and west, the Lakota gradually removed themselves from close cultural
contact with the other Siouan tribes. Pierre Antoine Tabeau reported in 1803 that the
Santee, the Yankton and the Lakota, “regard each other as strangers”. Despite this move,
the Lakota continued to sporadically trade with the Santee and some cultural ties were
maintained. These occurred, for the most part, at large intertribal gatherings for trade at
places like the Blue Earth River in Minnesota and the James River in South Dakota.
Through these trade fairs, the Lakota were responsible for the spread of the horse to the
Santee and to the tribes further east. Furthermore, in the summer time when large numbers
49
of buffalo congregated on the northern Great Plains, Lakota, Yankton and Santee villages
would gather in large encampments at various locations in order to hunt together.29
The Lakota also took part in cultural exchange with nonSiouan tribes at large intertribal gatherings. Travellers on the plains in the early to midnineteenth century, such as Edwin James (1823) and George Catlin (1841), reported these
types of mass gatherings. These meetings also provided the arena necessary for the
dissemination of various dances and ceremonies amongst the Plains tribes. Dances such as
the Midewiwin, a curing ceremony in which only those who regularly received visions
could participate, and the Grass Dance, a shaman’s society dance which evolved into a
men’s society dance among the Lakota, spread from tribe to tribe, with each group
tailoring the dances and associated rituals to their own beliefs and needs, while at the same
time bringing the musical cultures of different areas to each other. Such was the value
attached to these dances that those tribes who adopted them often rewarded the tribe who
brought them with gifts of horses and other goods. The most important of these dances was
the Sun Dance, which was held during the summer when tribes gathered together to hunt
buffalo. The Sun Dance involved prolonged dancing around a tall pole located in an
enclosure, and was sometimes accompanied by bodily sacrifice and piercing of the flesh by
some tribes. This dance spread from tribe to tribe sometime after 1800, varying in
ideology. It is thought to have originated among the Mandan and Hidatsa, but the mounted
Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota were responsible for elaborating and spreading the ritual
across the plains, illustrating the importance of the horse in the dissemination of the Plains
culture.30
After 1800, the hegemony of the Lakota Sioux on the Northern Great Plains
was threatened by the expansion of the early American Republic. The Lewis and Clark
expedition, commissioned by United States President Thomas Jefferson to discover a
waterway which would lead to the Pacific Ocean, and to record the existence of Native
tribes along the way, encountered the Lakota in the early nineteenth century. This meeting
highlighted the traditional role of music for the Lakota as a method to mediate between
White, “The Winning of the West”, pp.325-328; DeMallie, “Sioux until 1850”, pp.725-734
Gloria A. Young, and Erik D. Gooding, “Celebrations and Giveaways”, in DeMallie, Raymond J., (ed.),
Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2, (2001), pp.1011-1012; Edwin James, Account of an
Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountians, Performed in the Years 1819 and 1820, by Order of the
honourable John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long, 2 Vols.,
with an Atlas, (Philadelphia,1823); George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition
of the North American Indians, 2 Vols., (London, 1841); Gloria A. Young, “Intertribal Religious
Movements”, in DeMallie, Raymond J., (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2, p.996
29
30
50
two factions, in this particular case, though it was linked to an attempt to show military
strength. In their journal entry for 26th of September, 1804, Lewis and Clark described
visiting a Lakota encampment, where they witnessed a performance of music and dance,
with "about ten musicians playing on tambourines […], long sticks with deer and goats'
hoofs tied so as to make a jingling noise, and many others of a similar kind". They
described the Lakota men who "began to sing and beat on the tambourine", one of whom
moved forward and sang of the war time exploits of the band's warriors, and the women
who "came forward, highly decorated in their way, with the scalps and trophies of war of
their fathers, husbands, brothers, or near connections, and proceeded to dance the War
Dance". Increasingly, the Lakota were seen as pagan savages who stood in the way of the
expansion of the civilised and Christian United States.31
It was not until 1814, when the Jesuits were restored by Pius VII, that the
Sioux were again exposed to Christian missionaries. In 1823, the Bishop of New Orleans
Louis Duborg entrusted the Jesuits with all the missions for Native Americans as well as
whites on the Missouri River and its tributaries. In 1839, Jesuit Priest Pierre Jean De Smet
met with some Yankton Sioux in an effort to mediate between them and the Potawatomi.
De Smet encouraged the Yankton to make peace in the traditional Native American way,
which was to bring gifts to the families of those Potawatomi they had killed and to smoke
the calumet with them. However, De Smet also made use of this meeting to instruct both
groups on Catholic cathecism. To show their appreciation for De Smet’s work, the
Yankton performed a calumet dance for him. De Smet’s willingness to smoke the calumet
with the Yankton on several other occasions, in turn, helped him gain their trust. De Smet
was aware of the calumet’s significance, saying that “to refuse to accept the calumet […] is
equivalent to a declaration of war, and on the other hand to accept it is always […] a sign
of good harmony”.32
In one of De Smet’s first encounters with the Lakota, in 1840, he and his
translator met some Sihasapa Lakota who greeted him aggressively at first, but who
became friendly on hearing that De Smet was one of the Jesuits they had heard about and
immediately set about smoking the calumet with him. After being invited to the Sihasapa
Lakota camp for a feast, De Smet was given great respect, being carried on a buffalo robe
and seated by the Chief’s side. The Chief asked De Smet to speak to the Great Spirit before
31
32
James P. Ronda, Lewis & Clark Among the Indians, (Lincoln, 2002), p.36-39
Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux, p.3-5
51
they ate, and, as De Smet said a prayer and made the sign of the cross, the Chief and the
men present made their traditional gesture to the Great Spirit. It is clear from this event
that, even in these early stages of contact between the Jesuits and the Lakota, the Jesuits
had good relations with the Lakota, and, that furthermore, both groups were willing to
tolerate each other’s religious traditions in nascent syncretistic ceremonies.33
After De Smet’s departure to the north western tribes in 1841,
Father Augustine Ravoux continued the work of the Jesuits, travelling with some Sioux
bands, including the Hunkpapa, Brule and Sihasapa Lakota, and in the process learning
their language. With this knowledge, Ravoux wrote the first catechism for the Sioux in the
Dakota language, which contained biblical stories, prayers and hymns. Similarly to the
Jesuits before him, Ravoux adapted his methods to fit with the culture of his hosts. He
participated in traditional Sioux rituals and celebrations and attempted to use these events
to teach the Sioux about Christ. Ravoux also wore a black cassock made for him by the
Sioux using deerskins dyed black by the Sioux women. De Smet returned to the Sioux in
1848 to see if a permanent mission there was more plausible after the passing of 8 years.
When De Smet met the Oglala Lakota for the first time in 1849, he was asked by Chief
Red Fish, who had recently had a daughter kidnapped in a battle against the Crow, to pray
for his daughter’s return, illustrating the Lakota’s increasing belief in the efficacy of
Christianity. Despite their increasing troubles with whites, in general, the Sioux also saw
the missionaries as a superior type of white person. Speaking to Augustin Ravoux around
1847, Lakota chief Mato Tope (Four Bears) asked “why, for so many years, our Great
Father (the U.S President) has sent us so many men, and never any one to make known to
us the good things, which have been taught to us by the black gown”. Therefore, the
missionary work of the Jesuits clearly appealed to the Lakota by the nineteenth century.
Furthermore, the Jesuit missionaries were being compared favourably by the Lakota, with
the secular agents of the United States they had contact with.34
While the Lakota made a clear distinction between secular whites and
missionaries, the lines between secular and religious whites in the South Carolina and
33
H.M Chittenden, and A.T Richardson , Life Letters and Travels of Pierre Jean De Smet, 1801-1873, Vol.1,
(New York, 1905), p.190, pp.252-253, Vol.3, p.1011
34
Augustin Ravoux, Reminiscences, Lectures and Memoirs of Monsignor A. Ravoux, (St Paul, 1890), p.17,
p.26, Augustin Ravoux, The Labors of Mgr. A. Ravoux Among the Sioux or Dakota Indians, (St Paul, 1897)
p.6-7; Chittenden, and Richardson, Life Letters and Travels, Vol.2, pp.630-631, Vol.4, p.1585
52
Georgia Lowcountry became increasingly blurred in the early nineteenth century. In 1822,
Lowcountry blacks, both urban and rural, slave and free, and Christian and non-Christian
united in an effort to overthrow slavery. Led by an African Methodist Church leader from
Charleston named Denmark Vesey, the conspiracy clearly used ideology and methods from
both Christian and traditional African traditions. Vesey and his recruits used Old Testament
language to vindicate the violence they had planned, and this retribution even extended as
far as white Methodist ministers in the Lowcountry, whom he deemed to be perverting the
word of God. Despite the strong Christian undercurrent, the urban conspirators understood
the importance of involving the rural majority of Gullah slaves in their plans, In order to
achieve this, Vesey relied on his accomplice Gullah Jack, a traditional African priest and
doctor who recruited Gullah slaves, with whom he sang and prayed “all night”. Although
the alleged conspiracy was foiled by the authorities, it would have a profound effect on the
formation of Gullah culture. Also, despite the role of Christian churches in the organisation
of the conspiracy, the Christianisation of the Gullah would become the dominant
phenomenon in shaping their culture in the early to mid-nineteenth century. 35
The clearly tense atmosphere in the region after the Vesey conspiracy
manifested itself in discussions on slave religion, as two opposing viewpoints emerged in
the white community. One view was that the Christianisation of slaves was dangerous and
further missionary activity should be ceased. This attitude was exemplified by a pamphlet
published by Edwin C. Holland of Charleston, which claimed that whites were dangerously
exposed by “the swarm of missionaries, white and black, […] who […]secretly disperse
among our Negro Population, the seeds of discontent and sedition”. Others saw the
retention of African religious traditions as the source of the conspiracy. In Margaret
Washington Creel’s words, it became the ambition of some South Carolinians, to “destroy
the slaves’ loyalty to a ‘foreign’ belief system”. The Carolina courts saw the trial of the
conspirators as a victory over the old African beliefs. While passing sentence on Gullah
Jack, the court addressed him as follows: “Your boasted charms have not preserved
35
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.148, p.151; Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and
Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831, (Urbana, 1995), p.229; Michael P.
Johnson, “Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators”, The William and Mary Quarterly , Third Series, Vol.
58, No. 4, (2001), pp. 915-976; Robert L. Paquette, “From Rebellion to Revisionism: The Continuing Debate
about the Denmark Vesey Affair”, The Journal of the Historical Society, Vol. 4, Issue 3, (2004), pp. 291
53
yourself and of course could not protect others. Your altars and your Gods have sunk
together in the dust”. 36
Despite no direct evidence, rumours spread that the Emmanuel African
Methodist Epsicopal Church was involved in the Vesey conspiracy. The official report on
the conspiracy said that “Religious fanaticism has not been without its effects on this
project. Some white Church leaders, therefore, blamed black church leaders for corrupting
Christianity to encourage the revolt and were convinced that independent black churches
should no longer be allowed in the city. This standpoint contended that proper Christian
instruction would help avoid another rebellion in the future. Richard Furman, of the Baptist
Convention of South Carolina, claimed that it was in fact the negligence of planters in
giving religious instruction to their slaves that led to the conspiracy. Consequently, only
further Christianisation, uncorrupted by traditional African beliefs, would ensure that
another conspiracy would be avoided. Furman’s doctrine was endorsed by the Governor of
South Carolina, John L. Wilson, who wrote in 1823 that “such doctrines, will […] make
our servants not only more contented with their lot, but more useful to their owners”.37
Still, most Baptist and Episcopalian slave owners in the Lowcountry continued
to resist any religious instruction of their slaves. Missionaries were turned away from
certain plantations by planters, and religious instruction ceased on plantations that had
previously been in favour of the practise. The climate of fear which engulfed the
Lowcountry lasted for years after the Vesey conspiracy, and it was exacerbated by the
discovery of a conspiracy in Georgetown in 1829, and, in the same year, by the publication
by David Walker, a black abolitionist from North Carolina, of a document called
“Walker’s Appeal”, which used a religious argument to call on slaves to violently rebel.
Margaret Washington Creel contends that, in the Lowcountry, in 1830, “the masses of
slaves were not included in Baptist apostolic activity and only nominally represented in a
few white congregations”. While Epsicopalian planters allowed Methodist Missionaries
on their plantations, Baptist planters were reluctant to do the same. However, after 1830, a
36
Epstein, Sinful Tunes, p.195; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.157, p.162
Erskine Clark, Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Lowcountry, (Tuscaloosa,
1996), p.125; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.161, p.164; Richard Furman, “Rev. Dr. Richard
Furman's Exposition of The Views of the Baptists, Relative To The Coloured Population In the United
States, in a Communication to the Governor of South-Carolina” , (Charleston, 1838), p.3
37
54
Baptist Revival influenced by the Second Great Awakening and Richard Furman’s
doctrine occurred in the Lowcountry and led to an increase in interest in baptising slaves.38
In 1837, the Euhaw Baptist Church, in the South Carolina Lowcountry,
highlighted the “spiritual destitution of the coloured people” in the region. In response, the
Savannah River Baptist Association instructed their churches to pay “special attention to
the spiritual condition of the coloured people”. The problems of providing Christian
instruction to rural Gullah slave communities forced Churches to adapt their methods to fit
the situation. In 1831, the Savannah River Baptist Association, recommended that churches
that had no qualified preacher, should “sing, pray, read from the scripture” during their
Sunday Worship. Recognising the important role of music in nineteenth century American
Christianity, in 1833 Hymn writers Lowell Mason and Thomas Hastings published
“Spiritual Songs”, a book of religious songs “for social and private uses”, in which the
authors wrote that “music, it should be remembered, is very variable in its character. What
has been known to edify the people of one age or nation, has often proved insipid to
another”. In 1841, the Hilton Head, and Dawfuskie Baptists requested that the Savannah
River Baptist Association send a missionary to them who was “a man of piety and talents
suited to our coloured population”, displaying an awareness that the Christian needs of the
slaves differed to their own. Increasingly Gullah slaves’ owners, influenced by wider
changes in Christianity outside the Lowcountry, were recognising the need to bring the
Gullah to the Christian churches, and were realising that music was a means to so.39
In 1846, The Savannah River Baptist Association condemned
the “destitution of ministerial services” in their Association, claiming that only a few of
their churches “enjoy the advantage of a pastor, preaching every Sabbath”. They also
worried that 300 professing Christians of Hilton Head and the surrounding plantations
were “almost cut off from religious instruction”, without a minister, and that “a far greater
number in the same region” were without a missionary. In 1849 the Savannah River
Association admitted that their efforts to convert the Gullah were failing. Significantly, the
committee believed that conventional preaching to the slaves would not produce the results
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.165, p.212; David Walker, Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles, together with a
preamble to the coloured citizens of the World, but in particular and very expressly to those of the United
States of America, (Boston, 1829)
39
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes for 1837, Item 24, part 1, p.5, in the South Carolina Baptist
Association Minutes, SCBC; Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, November 28 th, 1831, SBSC;
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, 1841, p.4, SCBC; Thomas Hastings, and Lowell Mason,
Spiritual Songs for Social Worship, (New York, 1837), p.4
38
55
they desired, as it was “beyond the comprehension of their unenlightened minds”. Instead,
they recommended that the missionaries should avail “of every opportunity” to preach to
the Gullah, including offering to minister during the night. Clearly, the Southern Christian
Churches were increasingly recognising the need to adapt their religion to the needs of the
slaves.40
The impact of Christianity on Lakota and Gullah culture increased greatly
in the early nineteenth century. The perceived corruption of Christian teachings in the
Denmark Vesey conspiracy in the eyes of Lowcountry whites added urgency to the efforts
to christianise the Gullah. Religious leaders such as Richard Furman encouraged planters
to christianise their slaves and provided a doctrine in which Christianity sanctioned slavery
in the South. Nevertheless, missionaries and Church leaders on the ground were
increasingly aware that, in order to bring Gullah slaves to the churches, they needed to
provide a version of Christianity that appealed to the slaves’ cultural preferences, and often
this version was based on the singing of hymns. While religious leaders attempted to
merge the christianisation of the Gullah with their enslavement, the secular and religious
presence of missionaries and agents of the Unites States, were increasingly at odds with
each other in the eyes of the Lakota. Missionaries such as Ravoux and De Smet embraced
Lakota culture in order to further their mission, whilst the United States increased the
chances of conflict with the Lakota in its westward expansion, and it’s view that Native
tribes such as the Lakota were “savages” who stood in the way of the expansion of a
Christian nation. Yet, while Christianity was being used to subjugate the Lakota and
Gullah, both cultures embraced Christianity and incorporated its beliefs and practises into
their own religious and musical traditions. It was this appropriation of the religion of the
oppressors that acted as the vehicle for cultural retention of musical traditions against all
odds after 1850.
By 1850, both Gullah culture and Lakota culture had been
influenced by a turbulent two centuries of warfare, migration and fluid cultural exchange
and adaptation. The Lakota had become the dominant political and cultural force on the
northern Plains after their move away from their homeland in the Western Great Lakes
40
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, 1846, p.4-6, SCBC; Savannah River Baptist Association
Minutes, 1847, p.5, SCBC; Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, 1849, pp.7-8, SCBC
56
region. They had adapted their culture to their new environment, and they had participated
in cultural exchange with other Native American tribes. The Gullah too had adapted their
culture to intercultural exchange with disparate African cultures brought to the Carolinas
and Georgia, and to the restrictive institution of slavery. However, while the Gullah culture
had developed against the backdrop of constant cultural negotiation with the Christian
religion of the slave owners, the Lakota culture remained relatively free from Christianity
and from cultural oppression. Nevertheless, by 1850, the Lakota felt the effects of the
expansion of the United States, and the combination of Christianity with American policies
towards African American slaves and Native Americans had serious cultural implications
for both the Lakota and the Gullah in the second half of the nineteenth century.
57
CHAPTER 2
“To Subdue and Replenish”:
American Christianity and the Lakota and Gullah,
1850-1860
In the period 1850-1860 the cultures of the Lakota and Gullah were affected, to contrasting
degrees, by the rise of the United States and by the influence of Christianity. The Lakota
still only sporadically came into contact with Christianity and white culture through the
presence of white migrants on the Great Plains. While the spread of Christianity to Native
Americans, as a people deemed “savage heathens”, was a foundation for the ideology
behind the westward expansion of the United States, the white migrants on the Plains were
not in a position to bring Christianity to the Lakota in the 1850s. The Lakota had by 1850
become the dominant presence on the Great Plains, but they found their position of
strength increasingly threatened by the incursion of westward migrants on their traditional
territory. The intervention of the United States Government in 1851 with the Fort Laramie
Treaty set a process by which the Lakota gradually lost much of their hunting grounds and
set up the conflict between the Lakota and the United States, which would last for another
two decades. For the Lakota, the impact of these events was clearest in the loss of the
territory, landscape and life-ways that were the foundations of their Plains culture,
resulting in turn in a threat on their religious and musical traditions.
In contrast with the absence of missionaries among the Lakota,
Christianisation was highly successful among the Gullah in the period after 1850, as
planters sought to bring their slaves to their churches more than ever. However,
Lowcountry planters used Christianity as a means to preserve slavery in the face of
changes in attitudes towards the “peculiar institution” in the United States, in particular to
the rise of Abolitionism. Nevertheless, influenced by the Baptist revival led by planters in
the Lowcountry in the early decades of the nineteenth century, “black societies” formed in
order to attract slaves to the churches. These societies were a product of the growing
autonomy granted to slaves within the Southern Baptist Convention. Gullah slaves could,
58
then, incorporate their more established African-influenced methods of Christian worship
and musical traditions into a sanctioned religious space.
i.
“Heaven and Earth”:
Religion and Place in the Cultures of the Lakota and Gullah
The impact of Christianity on the Gullah’s and Lakota’s musical traditions differed
significantly in the mid-nineteenth century. The Lakota remained outside the reaches of
sustained missionary contact. However, Christianity acted as the ideological foundation to
the territorial and cultural expansion of the United States onto the northern Great Plains,
where the Lakota were based. This, in turn sowed the seed for the cultural changes the
Lakota would be forced to endure in the later nineteenth century, particularly in regards to
their religious and musical traditions and their perceived incompatibility with Christianity.
In contrast, the increased willingness of Lowcountry planters to allow Christian
missionaries to convert Gullah slaves and the rise in concern for the religious welfare of
the Gullah encouraged the Christian churches and the slave-owners to allow the slaves a
degree of religious freedom. This allowed the Gullah to retain African religious and
musical traditions within their version of Christianity.
The beginning of the 1850s saw a change in the relationship between the
Lakota and the United States Government. Native Americans began to be seen as an
obstacle to the United States expansion onto the northern Plains. This fit into the wider
expansionist policy of the Unites States in which the ideology of “manifest destiny”
outlined that the Unites States would conquer and civilise the native people of North
America and other territories. The term “Manifest Destiny”, first used by journalist John L.
O’Sullivan in 1845, encapsulated the belief of many Americans that the creation of the
United States was a means by which special qualities could be spread over the unclaimed
territories of North America. Manifest Destiny also linked American national identity with
a racial hierarchy in which whites were seen as superior. A speech by Missouri Senator
Thomas Hart Benton in 1846 highlighted the implications of manifest destiny for Native
Americans. Benton believed that only the "white race" had obeyed God by attempting "to
59
subdue and replenish the earth". Benton used the “extinction” of the Native people of the
eastern coast of North America as an example of what would happen if Western tribes
“resisted civilisation”. In Jeffrey Ostler’s words “behind Benton's phrasing were both a
history and future of intentional acts of genocide and ethnocide”. Indeed, these views set
the tone for US policy for the next half century. However Manifest Destiny also saw
American culture and religion as superior to that of the Native American tribes, and
biblically based interpretations of manifest destiny went as far as seeing non-Christian
Native Americans as agents of Satan, who were attempting to obstruct the work of God.
Thus, the religious traditions and rituals of Native Americans and their accompanying
music and dance were increasingly seen as incompatible with the progress of the United
States.1
By 1850, the Western Sioux, the Lakota and Yankton/Yanktonai, were now
numbering 15,000 and were controlling a large area west of the Missouri ranging from the
Platte River in the South to the Yellowstone in the North. Richard White described the
process which brought the Sioux to this dominant position as “the winning of the West”,
highlighting the hegemony and rise of the Western Sioux to become the dominant force on
the Northern Plains, just as the United States would become later. However, in the same
way as the United States saw themselves as a chosen people for the North American
continent, the story of the “White Buffalo Calf woman”, so central to Sioux belief and
ritual in the nineteenth century, also had at its centre the idea that the Sioux were a chosen
people for the northern Plains. In terms of culture, however, the domination of the
Northern Plains by the Lakota and the United States would differ completely. In their
Westward expansion the Lakota made friendly alliances, as well as enemies of the various
native tribes they encountered, but always participated in a process of cultural exchange
that did not suppose superiority over the militarily dominated tribes. This was evident in
the Oglala’s willingness to adopt the agricultural methods of the Mandan Hidatsa and
1
Robert M. Utley, Wilcomb E. Washburn, Indian Wars, (New York, 1977), p.193; Robert M. Utley,
Frontier Regulars: The United States Army and the Indian, 1866-1891, (New York, 1973); Sean Patrick
Adams, The Early Republic: A Documentary Reader, ( Malden, 2008), p.188; Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The
Dakota and Lakota Nations, (Malden, 2003), p.77; Philip Weeks, Farewell My Nation: The American Indian
and the United States in the Nineteenth Century, (Wheeling, 1990); Jeffrey Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S
Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, (New York, 2004), pp.35-p.39
60
Arikara in the late 18th C., and in their adoption of religious as well as musical rituals and
dances from the other tribes they encountered in the mid nineteenth century.2
The need to civilise, assimilate and Christianise Native Americans was central
to ideas of “manifest destiny”, although organised state-led Christianisation would not
occur until later in the century, as the focus for the 1850s was on the concentration policy
in order to allow the vast amount of migrants and railroad workers to travel freely through
the Northern Plains. However, despite the fact that Lakota contact with missionaries prior
to 1850 had been sporadic, the Lakota attached importance to these encounters. Certainly,
the Lakota retained some of the teachings of the missionaries. Augustin Ravoux wrote that,
during the period he spent with the Sioux, he preached to a man for several minutes. When
he had finished he asked the man if he had understood. According to Ravoux, the man
replied “"Yes, […] and the instruction you have given me, is just the same I heard from
you four years ago”. This illustrates that, despite the missionaries’ only sporadic and shortterm contact with the Lakota, the Lakota were internalising their teaching to the extent that
the man Ravoux referred to, remembered his teachings several years later. Lakota contact
with Christianity in the 1850s was still solely from lone missionaries. Pierre Jean De Smet,
who had met and baptised some Lakota in the 1840s, wrote about another missionary,
Father Christian Hoecken, who went to the Western Sioux in 1850, and who baptised some
Yankton and Brule Lakota. According to De Smet, they asked Hoecken to set up a Mission
amongst them, and agreed that they would provide him with food and clothing were he to
do so. Hoecken reported that the Sioux children were starving and poorly clothed, and that
the Sioux hoped that a mission would help them take care of their children.3
As was the case for the Lakota, also for the Gullah, the 1850s were defined
by the close association of religion and social change. Despite the repression they suffered
as a result of the backlash to the 1822 Denmark Vesey conspiracy, the Gullah continued to
develop distinct methods of religious practise, and were now able to institutionalise them
Ostler, The Plains Sioux, pp.22-23; Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the
Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 65, No.2,
1978, pp.319-343; Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, (Lincoln, 1918), pp.63-66; Joseph
Epes Brown, (ed.), The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk 's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, (Norman,
1953), pp.3-9
3
Ostler, The Plains Sioux, p.38-39; Augustin, Ravoux, Reminiscences, Memoirs and Lectures of Monsignor
A. Ravoux, V.G, (St Paul, 1890), p.39; Karl Markus Kreis, Lakotas, Black Robes and Holy Women: German
Reports from the Indian Missions in South Dakota, 1886-1900, (Lincoln, 2007), p.247
2
61
more efficiently in white churches, or in historian Erskine Clarke’s words, in “a church
within a church”. However, despite the success of Charles Colcock Jones in the previous
decades the stricter denominations began to be overlooked by the Gullah in favour of the
Methodists and Baptists. The Reformed Churches, the Presbyterians and the
Congregational Churches required blacks who wanted to join their churches to present
“notes of permission” from their owners. Some of these notes display the motivation of the
planters in wanting their slaves to attend a particular church. Planter Charles Maule wrote
that he was in favour of his servant Betsy joining the church in order to “make her do
better” and that so “she can get out every Sunday”. The wish by slave-owners for the
Church to make their slaves more obedient is clear from many of these notes. Furthermore
these notes show what those churches demanded of their black members, describing the
candidates as temperate, disciplined, orderly and industrious. Frederic Law Olmsted’s
description of a Presbyterian funeral in Charleston in the 1850s highlights the repression of
African American traditions in the Presbyterian Church. He describes a “simple and
decorous” service which was without the shouts and singing that one might have seen at
most African American Funerals of this period. Orderly singing of white hymns was also
the preferred music of these churches. Writing in the Presbyterian Newspaper in 1859, an
unnamed writer, lamenting the loss of black members from the Presbyterian Church,
commented on how “if you never heard Old Hundred, Mear, and Coronation, sung by two
thousand blacks, ... you have yet to learn what an engine music can be made for lifting the
soul above this earth”. However it was the Methodist and Baptists which would have the
greatest success in attracting the Gullah to their churches.4
Despite the rise in planter interest in converting their slaves in the 1840s, the
Savannah River Baptist Association reported in 1851 that there was a fall in membership
of their churches of about 900 in that year, possibly down to the removal of slaves to other
areas of the country. Brother William Richards, the missionary sent by the Association to
work with the coloured population on Hilton Head Island, reported in 1851 that there was a
“cold state of religion in that region”, and that he had only baptised several people in his
time there. After 1853 however, due to the work of the Savannah River Baptist
4
Erskine Clark, Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the South Carolina Lowcountry, (Tuscaloosa,
1996), p.125, p.134, p.135, p.140; Extract from a letter to "Presbyterian" dated April 12, 1859, in Louisa
Cheves Stoney, (ed.), Autobiographical Notes, Letters and Reflections By Thomas Smyth, D.D., (Charleston,
1911); Frederic Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, With Remarks on Their Economy.
(New York, 1856), p.405; William Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African Heritage, (Athens, 1998) ,
pp.135-137
62
Association, and in particular a missionary named I.M.C Beaker, Gullah slaves began to be
converted in large numbers again. In 1853 Brother William Richards, a Baptist Missionary,
reported that the church on Hilton Head was in a “healthy state” and that there was an
increase in those who had “professed a hope and faith in the Saviour”, and many more
awaiting baptism. Lowcountry slaves in general, seemed eager for missionaries. While the
missionary for Colleton County, Brother Michael Hiers, reported on “the destitution of the
low countries” in 1853, he preached to a group of “poor negroes” near the Cumbahee and
Ashapoo rivers that had travelled twenty miles to meet him. Hiers claimed that they
informed him that it was the first time they had a missionary come among them, and asked
him to return again. Baptist Missionaries reported more successes as the decade went on.
In 1856, William Richards reported a further 60 baptisms in the region.5
Part of what made the Baptists so appealing to the slaves was the
fact that they were increasingly allowing their slaves to worship separately from the white
congregations. For instance, in 1856, at the annual meeting of the Savannah River Baptist
Association in Beaufort, the Reverend William Richards, preached to the black Baptists
there “in their own house of worship”. However the trouble in bringing the Baptist faith to
the slaves also increasingly extended to whites in the 1850s. Missionaries also had to travel
to rural white communities, who only had sporadic church services otherwise. There was
also internal conflict and debate over the running of the Baptist churches, and the
behaviour of some white members. The Savannah River Baptist Association encouraged
Sabbath Schools, not only for the slaves of the Lowcountry, but to combat the "declension
and prevailing coldness" and "lack of grace” of its white members. Richards could
therefore only preach to the slaves on Hilton Head once a month, and only reported 3
baptisms in 1858, and 12 in 1859. The slave conversions seemed to increasingly
concentrate on specific areas where white planters showed most interest in converting the
slaves. In fact, outside of the Beaufort region slave conversions to the Baptist faith were
relatively low. By 1859 the Baptists had only 7,000 conversions within the Savannah River
Association.6
5
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, 1851, p.6-7; 1853, p.10-11; 1854, p. 16; 1856, p.11; 1857, 1011; Beaufort Baptist Church Minutes, July 12, 1857, p.2-3, 35; November 7, 1857, p.241-243
6
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes, 1858, p.11, 1859, pp.6-7; Margaret Washington Creel, A
Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs, (New York, 1988), p.219,
p.225; Janet Duitsman Cornelius, Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South, (Columbia,
1999), pp.178-179; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion:The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South,
(New York, 1978), pp.196-210
63
While Missionaries in the Lowcountry were making progress in their aims to Christianise
the Gullah, Jesuit Missionaries on the Northern Plains struggled to establish a permament
mission among the Lakota. Pierre Jean de Smet, the most successful missionary to the
Lakota and other Sioux in the previous decade, found himself involved in the United States
treaty making process instead. While, the Lakota and the other Siouan tribes were open to
the presence of Missionaries like De Smet and Augustin Ravoux, the political and
geographical environment of the Northern Plains hampered the Christianisation of the
Lakota. The relationship between the Lakota and the United States would begin to alter
significantly in the 1850s, and with it threats to Lakota religion and culture would intensify
and persist. The clearest threat to the traditions established by the Lakota over the previous
century and a half, since their move onto the northern Great Plains, was tied to the loss of
the territory they had accumulated by 1850. In contrast, Christianity began to act as a
preserver of Gullah culture in the 1850s as the Churches and denominations which
appealed to the Gullah’s existing religious traditions drew the most converts. The numbers
of slaves being converted reached a high point in the 1850s, as the Baptists and Methodists
in particular offered slaves a desirable outlet for their religious fervour. The absence of a
sustained Christian presence on the northern Plains contrasted with the close relationship
between the master’s church and the Gullah slaves in the Lowcountry, where Christianity,
the slave masters’ religion, was the only sanctioned option available to them. Nevertheless,
the Gullah often selected the Christian churches and methods of worship that they
preferred. While many white church leaders continued to frown upon the religious and
cultural traditions of the Gullah, many were also acknowledging and accepting the
difference between theirs and the slaves’ religion, allowing for the preservation of African
musical culture within the slaves’ Christian worship.
64
ii.
“To Seek Refuge”:
Lakota and Gullah Cultural Resistance and Appropriation
On the Northern Plains, the flooding of white overland migrants after 1850 posed a threat
to the environment and life-ways on which Lakota Culture was based. These migrants also
instigated a series of agreements and clashes between the Lakota and the United States that
led to a loss of much of the Lakota’s territory. As the decimation of the buffalo population
and the introduction of disease by migrants undermined Lakota cultural stability, the
Lakota engaged with the United States in a series of treaties which led to an economic
dependence that lasted into the next century, and which also impacted on their cultural
traditions. Conversely, the Lakota lost control over the cultural traditions they had
developed on the Northern Plains, the Gullah seized more control over their particular
methods of Christian worship in the Lowcountry. The sheer number of Gullah slaves who
joined the Baptist Church, in particular, after 1850, led to the formation of “black
societies” within the white churches, in order to deal with the difficulties of preaching to
such a spread out and rural population. The autonomy gradually granted to these societies
fostered African cultural retentions within Christianity and lay the foundations for the
Gullah Church in the following decades.
After the discovery of Gold in California in 1849, the number of overland
migrants travelling across the Northern Plains increased dramatically, bringing the Lakota
into more contact with the migrants as they travelled along the California and Oregon
trails. Over 26,000 migrants passed up the Platte River Valley in 1849. During the same
period, the Oglala and Brule were decimated by disease, and blamed the presence of the
migrants for it. The Lakota Winter Counts for the winter of 1849-1850 describe the “year
of cramps”, and 1850-51 as “all the time sick with the big small pox winter”, as overland
migrants brought cholera, measles and smallpox. About 500 of the 3500 Brule Lakota died
during these outbreaks. Some Lakota believed that the diseases were intentionally
introduced by whites in order to get rid of the Indians. The heavy traffic on the Oregon
Trail also left deep furrows on the Plains which spread wide, graphically highlighting the
impact of the white migrants on the landscape to the Lakota. When Father Pierre Jean De
Smet travelled with some un-named Indians from the Missouri and Yellowstone River
regions to Fort Laramie in 1851, he reported that having not seen the impact of the trail
65
before, the Indians were overwhelmed by the scale of the path beaten by the migrants. De
Smet said that the Indians believed that a large portion of the whites who lived in the East
must have travelled through their territory, and were shocked when De Smet told them that
it was only a small percentage of the total population of the East.7
In contrast to popular belief, most Indian encounters with overland migrants
were peaceful or cooperative. In Michael L. Tate’s words “patterns of cooperation,
mutually beneficial trade, and acts of personal kindness clearly outnumbered the cases of
contentiousness and bloodshed in the two decades before the Civil War”. Lakota oral
history, in fact recalls instances where the Lakota went out of their way to help vulnerable
white migrants. The encounters between the Sioux and the migrants were, however, far too
fleeting and sporadic for any significant level of cultural exchange to occur between the
two groups, besides the trade and exchange of goods. Nonetheless, the Lakota began to
recognise the threat to their way of life that the flood of migrants represented, and
increasingly this tested their relationship with the migrants and with other whites. The
disappearance of the buffalo, on which the Lakota had based their nomadic culture since
their move from a sedentary existence near the western Great Lakes, shook the very
foundation of mid-nineteenth century Lakota culture. The buffalo was the basis not only
for the Lakota’s creation myth of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, but was also the
inspiration behind many of their religious rituals, men’s and women’s societies, songs and
dances. The Lakota blamed the buffalo’s disappearance on the migrants. The United States
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Thomas H. Hardy, had in 1847 recognised that the
disappearance of the Buffalo would lead to turbulent times on the Northern Plains,
especially as it would drive the tribes to encroach on each other’s’ territories. He wrote in a
report that “the buffalo must soon disappear, and thereby cut off the support of the several
tribes that are currently subsisted by them. As they become scarce, hostile tribes will be
necessarily forced to pursue them into each other’s country, and deadly wars will be
expected to follow”. The United States therefore recognised the catastrophic effect the
disappearance of the Buffalo would have on the Lakota.8
7
Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakota and the Black Hills: Struggle for Sacred Ground, (New York, 2010), p.37-38;
Edwin T. Denig, John C. Ewers,, (ed.), Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, (Norman, 1961), pp.20-22;
Hiram Martin Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West, (Lincoln, 1986), pp.461-462
8
Michael L. Tate, Indians and Emigrants, Encounters on the Overland Trails, (Norman, 2006), Preface, p.x;
Joseph M. Marshall III, On Behalf of the Wolf and the First Peoples, (Santa Fe, 1995), pp.77-79; Robert W.
Larsson, Red Cloud, Warrior Statesman of the Lakota Sioux, (Norman, 1997), p.62; James Olson, Red Cloud
and the Sioux Problem, (Lincoln, 1965), p.6; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, p.xiii; p.285, pp.290-295;
66
Partly as a result of the fear of Intertribal warfare, and to
compensate the Plains tribes for the loss of the Buffalo, the United States organised a large
council at Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail in 1851, and invited most of the Northern
Plains tribes to attend. In Richard White’s view the Fort Laramie Council was both an
effort by the United States to introduce accountability for the attacks on migrants by
marking specific territory for each tribe, and an effort to control tribal politics by
introducing the compensatory payments to the tribes, which could then be paid or withheld
as they saw fit. However, White also suggests that the Council was also the high point of
Lakota power on the plains, and in its aftermath they chose to ignore the boundaries and
prohibition of intertribal warfare that were a part of the treaty. 10,000 Indians attended the
council, amongst them some Brule and Oglala Lakota. The United States, understanding
how well the Jesuit Missionary Pierre Jean De Smet was regarded by the plains tribes,
invited him to attend the council, and to act as an intermediary between them and the
Indian tribes. De Smet received much of this knowledge of the Plains tribes from his
correspondence with the trader Edwin Denig, who he had asked to compile sketches of the
“Manners and Customs” of the Indians. This displays the interest De Smet had in
understanding the culture of the Northern Plains tribes in preparation for his missionary
work with them, an approach that endeared him to them. The Fort Laramie council
mimicked the traditional trade gatherings between native ethnic groups, including giftgiving and pipe smoking ceremonies and De Smet participated in the traditional feasts and
dances that occurred during the council. De Smet also used the opportunity of the council
to attempt to convert some of the Indians. He had a large tent built as a chapel and baptised
several hundred Indian children. An un-named leader of an Oglala Lakota band told De
Smet that up until then they were ignorant of Christianity and had done everything that the
words of the Great Spirit forbid us to do”. The Oglala leader promised that if De Smet
stayed amongst them, they would “try to live a better life in the future”. The council
resulted in a treaty being signed by Native American leaders, most of which were allies of
the Lakota, with the United States, according to which they promised intertribal peace, first
and foremost, but also that they would allow the building of US Army posts on their lands,
and allow safe passage to migrants who passed through. In return, the tribes would receive
financial annuities for fifty years, a system which itself did much to disturb tribal
“Superintendent of Indian Affairs Report”, October 29, 30th congress, 1st session, Executive Document 8,
(Washington, 1847)
67
independence and intertribal relations on the Plains in the coming decades, as the annuities
became a means for the Unites States to control the Lakota and the other Plains tribes.9
In contrast with the increased influence of migrants, missionaries and the
United States on the lives of the Lakota in the early 1850s, the Gullah by this time were
achieving a certain level of cultural independence. Lowcountry Baptist Churches were
particularly focused on bringing the Gullah slaves into their churches. A report by the
Beaufort Baptist Church in 1859 claimed that the “origin and formation” of the “coloured
societies” seem to have been entirely “incidental and without any direct action of the
church” and “voluntary associations for religious worship”. However, the white churches
soon attached themselves to these societies. In order to achieve this, they sanctioned the
formation of the coloured societies, giving slaves a level of autonomy in their celebration
of Christianity and performance of ritual music. The Beaufort Baptist Church report
claimed that the white Baptist Churches attached great “importance” to the societies,
something which was no doubt due to the fact that their black membership had increased to
3400, and they were spread over a 30 mile radius. The societies were also meant to serve
as an intermediary step before slaves became full members of the white Baptist Churches.
In order to be received for proper baptism within one of the churches, Lowcountry blacks
needed to be members of the coloured societies. Although they claimed that the primary
design of the societies would be “to bring the coloured membership of the church under its
efficient watch, care and discipline”, this proved not to be the case. The formation of the
black societies, and the Gullah desire for Baptism, created an environment in which the
Gullah could shape and mould their musical and religious cultures with the ostensible
blessing of the white community of the Lowcountry.10
9
H.M Chittenden, and A.T Richardson, Life Letters and Travels of Pierre Jean De Smet, 1801-1873, (New
York, 1905), Vol.1, p.60, Vol.2, p.678; John C. Ewers, “Literate Fur Trader Edwin Thomson Denig”, The
Montana Magazine of History, Vol.4, No.2, (1954), pp.1-12; Loretta Fowler, “The Great Plains from the
Arrival of the Horse to 1885”, in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Vol.1, Part
2, (Cambridge, 1996), p.32; Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, p.39; White, “The Winning of the
West”, p.340; Ross Alexander Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux: Pastoral Theology and
Ministry 1886-1945, (Kansas City, 1996), pp.13-14; Kreis, Lakotas, Black Robes and Holy Women, p.250;
Ostler, 2004, The Plains Sioux, p.57; Raymond J, DeMallie, “Teton”, in DeMallie, Handbook of North
American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2., (Washington, 2001), p.795
10
“Report on the Coloured Societies”, Beaufort Baptist Church Minutes, October 7 th, 1859, SCBC; Creel, A
Peculiar People, pp.230-231
68
Efforts were made to supervise the coloured societies, by
making the black elders answerable to a local white Baptist brother, and by attaching them
to the local white Baptist Churches, in order to “better exercise discipline” over their
slaves. The white supervisor was to report any violations of church rules, poor conduct or
“immorality” to the Beaufort Association. These attempts to regulate the religious culture
of the slaves were in reality unworkable, and white leaders rarely supervised the societies,
and left the running of the societies to their black assistants, known as “deacons”,
“watchmen”, “elders”, or “leaders”, who retained a significant level of autonomy in the
process. In fact, the practice of appointing white assistants to the black elders was
discontinued later in most churches. Although Carolina law forbid slave religious gathering
without three masters being present, the law was regularly violated in the Lowcountry, and,
as a result, black worship was rarely supervised. The Gullah elders exerted great influence
over Gullah society. Often these appointees were long-time members of the masters’
church, and had a greater understanding, and a more faithful practising of Christianity and
Christian doctrine, keeping in close contact with the Baptist Churches in the decades
leading up to the Civil War. The elders had the last say on whether a prospective candidate
was allowed into the Christian Community, a community which often covered several
closely located plantations. Their duties also involved to “visit, pray with, and exhort the
sick, rebuke the impenitent, counsel the weak, and conduct social meetings for prayer”. In
this way, the elders served Gullah society much like white preachers served the white
community of the Lowcountry.11
However, sometimes the spiritual leaders on the plantations were not the
watchmen or deacons, but rather “spiritual fathers or mothers”, who were not whitesanctioned and who had “the most absolute authority” over the Gullah. These figures often
led the way in syncretistically blending African practises with Christianity, and were a
bane of planters and Missionaries in the Lowcountry. These “spiritual fathers” and
“spiritual mothers” engaged in healing and interpretation of dreams, signs and visions, and
combined these practises with the Christian religion of the Gullah. They were also
associated with a role older than that of the black elders. Fanny Kemble gave an indication
Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.232- 236, p.248, pp.277-297; “Report on the Coloured Societies”, Minutes,
Beaufort Baptist Church, October 7th, 1859, SCBC; Charles A. Raymond, “The Religious Life of the Negro
Slave”, Harpers Weekly, September, 1863, p.479; Rupert S. Holland, Letters and Diaries of Laura M.
Towne, (Cambridge, 1912), p.162; Cornelius, Slave Missions, pp.38-40, Margaret Washington, “Community
Regulation and Cultural Specialisation in Gullah Folk Religion”, in Paul E. Johnson, African American
Christianity: Essays in History, (London, 1994), pp.55-57
11
69
of the influence of elderly women on Lowcountry Plantations, when she described the role
played by a “hideous old negress” named Sinda in the 1830s. Kemble claimed that Sinda
had “passed at one time for a prophetess among her fellow slaves” on the Butler plantation
in Georgia. Sinda had claimed one time that the world was coming to an end, resulting in
the slaves ceasing all work on the plantation until the day of reckoning had passed without
event. In 1862 Laura Towne described the role of “Father Tom” on St Helena Island, in
here diary. She described how “After church Father Tom and his bench of elders examined
candidates for baptism”. In 1864, Towne described “Maum Katie”, a woman she was
acquainted with, who according to Towne, was “an old African woman who remembers
worshipping her own gods in Africa […], a great "spiritual mother," a fortune teller, or
rather prophetess, and a woman of tremendous influence over her spiritual children”.
Around the same time, Harriet Ware encountered another “spiritual leader”, named Old
Peggy at Fripp Point, South Carolina. Ware was told that Old Peggy, along with another
elderly woman named Binah, were the two people “whom all that came into the Church,
had come through”. Therefore the roles of the “spiritual” leaders, and the “deacons”, at
times overlapped, and sometimes complemented each other, and the relationship between
the two represented the syncretism evident in mid-nineteenth century Gullah Religion, as
traditional African leadership roles were transplanted to the newly Christianised Gullah
society.12
While Gullah Christianity had developed sufficiently by 1860 to become
tolerated by Lowcountry whites, it remained distinct from white Christianity. In contrast,
the influence of Christianity on Lakota religion was minimal. In fact, the United States
used the spread of Christianity to justify their westward expansion into Lakota territory.
The United States, in its protection and encouragement of the westward movement of
migrants, also contributed to the destruction of the Lakota’s hold on their northern Plains
territories, instigating the gradual severing of the connection between culture and
environment that had shaped Lakota tradition in the previous centuries. While the Lakota
were gradually removed from their traditional hunting grounds, the Gullah, despite their
12
Holland, Letters and Diaries of Laura M. Towne; Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of Residence on a
Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, (New York, 1863), pp.83-84; Letter, 18/12/1864, in Laura M. Towne
Letters, The Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 336, SHC; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.291; Roger Bastide,
The African Religions of Brazil: Towards a sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilisations, (Baltimore,
1978); Paul Christopher Johnson, “An Atlantic Genealogy of Spirit Possession”, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, Vol.53, No.2, (2011), pp.393-425
70
enslavement, remained the defining human presence in the Lowcountry, especially in the
Sea Islands. Their increasing autonomy in their celebration of Christianity made the latter
the true Sea Island religion. With the sanctioning of “black societies” within the religion of
the slaveholders, the Gullah were given licence to apply their African-derived Sea Island
religious traditions to the organised Christian Churches. In the process, the Gullah took the
modified Christian Churches as social institutions of their own. From this time forward, the
Gullah Church would serve as a foundation for the retention and preservation of Gullah
musical and religious traditions. This stood in stark contrast to the Lakota relation to
Christianity, which stemmed from the separation of the Lakota from their territory and
their cultural traditions in the mid-nineteenth century.
iii. “Do not be conformed”: Lakota and Gullah Cultural Adaptabilities
The gradual loss of hunting grounds instigated by the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty created
division in Lakota society, as bands who accepted annuities contrasted with those bands
who hadn’t even attended the council in 1851. This loss of hunting grounds was
exacerbated by the continuing decline in Buffalo numbers. This, in turn, directly affected
the preservation of the Lakota’s musical and religious traditions, as the buffalo formed the
basis of their culture. The preservation of their most sacred sites, especially the Black
Hills, also became a priority for the Lakota. The Gullah, in contrast, had been granted a
greater level of freedom in the celebration of their religious culture in the 1850s. This
allowed them to reinforce and expand their traditions within the sanctioned environment of
the praise house and black societies. The result was the Christianisation of pre-Christian,
African traditions such as the Ring Shout, and the formation of new Christian traditions
such as the spirituals.
The disappearance of the buffalo on much of the northern Great Plains had a
detrimental effect on the power of the Plains tribes, especially the Lakota, who
increasingly had to go further afield in pursuit of their main food source. In cultural terms,
71
the disappearance of the buffalo was equally significant. The centrality of the buffalo in
Lakota culture cannot be underestimated. As well as making up a large part of their diet,
the animals’ hides were used for clothing, shoes, shelter, and for painting on in decorative
and pictographic pieces such as the Winter Counts which recorded Lakota History. Since
their move onto the Plains in the previous centuries, the buffalo had also become a central
tenet of their religious beliefs and rituals. In terms of Lakota musical culture, the buffalo
hides were used to create instruments such as drums or simple rawhide percussive
instruments, and hunting the buffalo inspired a genre of songs. In the 1850s, The Lakota
continued to associate the disappearance of the buffalo with the presence of white migrants
in their territory. While other factors, such as environmental change, and an expanding
Native population also contributed to the decline in numbers, the Lakota belief in white
culpability was equally well founded.
As a result, in the summers of the early 1850s altercations between the migrants
and the Lakota increased. Migrants reported that the Lakota demanded goods in order to
allow them passage through their territory. In the mid-1850s the Hunkpapa, Shisapa and
Itazipcho became hostile towards fur traders. An employee of the American Fur Company,
Edwin Denig, wrote that the Hunkpapa chief Little Bear had “hatred for the white man”,
and sought to destroy “all traders in the country”. When some of the company’s traders
attempted to set up a winter camp near Little Bear’s encampment, the tribe’s warriors “cut
up the carts, killed the horses, flogged the traders and sent them home”. Denig said that
central to Little Bear’s grievances was that he wanted to end the trade in buffalo, and
return to “a primitive way of life”. In 1854 a dispute over a stray Mormon migrant’s ox,
which was killed for food by some Lakota, left Miniconjou Lakota Chief Brave Bear dead,
and led to the deaths of 29 United States Soldiers near Fort Laramie, in what became
known as the Grattan “Massacre”. In 1855, General William S. Harney set out to exact
revenge on the Lakota who were involved, but instead killed about 86 innocent Lakota,
many of them women and children, and took more as prisoners. Harney’s actions
succeeded in turning many Lakota against the U.S Army and whites in general. At the
centre of this conflict was the understanding by the Lakota that their culture, which was so
heavily dependent on the buffalo, was being threatened by the presence of white migrants
and traders on the Plains.13
Candace S. Greene, “Art Until 1900”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, Handbook of North American Indians,
Vol.13, Part 2., (Washington, 2001), p.1041, 1051; Gloria A. Young, “Music”, in Demallie, Handbook of
13
72
Given the uncertainty that followed the Fort Laramie Treaty, in
which territorial acquisition and loss became an acute concern for many of the northern
Plains tribes, their cultures, so shaped by their Plains environment were also jeopardised
and under threat. To the Lakota, the retention of the spiritually important Black Hills
became their main focus. In August 1857, about five to ten thousand Lakota assembled at a
massive tribal gathering at Bear Butte, where they danced and participated in other
traditional rituals. Bear Butte was a traditional venue for vision quests, a ritual in which
Lakota individuals would pray and fast in order to seek a vision. In Jeffrey Ostler’s words,
the Lakota leaders were hoping “to receive a collective, tribal vision at a time of profound
crisis”. Heartened by the strength of numbers at the gathering some Lakota led by the
Hunkpapa warrior Sitting Bull and Oglala warrior Red Cloud, proposed militant action
against the United States. However, others spoke against resistance and Spotted Tail’s
band was not in attendance. Those who did assemble agreed that the protection of the
Black Hills against white incursion would be a priority for the Lakota in their resistance,
and vowed not to reveal the presence of gold in the hills to whites. They vowed to stop all
whites, except traders from travelling into the Lakota heartland, north of the Platte River
and West of the Missouri. This plan was carried out over the next few years with attacks on
Government Expeditions to the Black Hills. An expedition led by Captain William F
Raynolds in 1859 reported that during their trip through the Black Hills to the Yellowstone
Country as the expedition ascended the Cheyenne River, he could see “fires burning
around us nightly," to him a sign that the Lakota were keeping a close eye on them. Also,
the militant Lakota refused to accept the annuities that had been agreed in the 1851 Treaty,
and threatened or killed those Lakota who did. Increasingly therefore, Lakota tribal unity
was being compromised by the threat to their territory and way of life. However, in spite of
this the Lakota’s participation in the gathering at Bear Butte illustrated their determination
to continue to retain the large intertribal gatherings which were at the centre of their
musical and religious traditions.14
North American Indians, Vol.13, Part 2., (Washington, 2001), pp.1028-1030; Alice Fletcher and Francis La
Flesche, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, (Cambridge, 1893), p.46; Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills,
p.36; Dan Flores, "Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy: The Southern Plains from 1800 to 1850”, Journal
of American History, Vol. 78, No.2, 1991, pp 465-8; Denig, Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri, pp.2627; George E. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians, (Norman, 1937), p.75
14
Stepen E. Feraca, Wakinyan: Lakota Religion in the 20th C., (Lincoln, 1998), Ostler, The Lakotas and the
Black Hills, pp.46-47; Report of the Secretary of War Communicating the Report of Brevet Brigadier
General W. F. Raynolds on the Explorations of the Yellowstone and the Country Drained by That River, 40th
Cong., 2nd Session, S. Ex. Doc. 77, serial 1317, (Washington, 1867-68), pp. 18-33; Rani-Henrik Andersson,
The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, (Lincoln, 2008), p.10
73
The Lakota considered the Black Hills to be highly religiously significant.
Some scholars, such as Stephen E. Feraca, have questioned whether the Black Hills were
important to the Lakota in the early nineteenth century, as they had only recently migrated
there. However, the adaptability of Lakota beliefs and rituals that had accompanied their
move westward in the previous century, made the transplanting of already established
beliefs onto new geographical areas much more achievable than these scholars suggest. In
Jeffrey Ostler’s words “it was second nature for the Lakota to construct a spiritual
geography in and around” the Black Hills. Lakota migration also involved the adoption of
the rituals and beliefs of the other tribes they encountered. Therefore, the incorporation of
white migrants and agents of the United States into their beliefs and rituals was merely a
continuation of their traditions of religious and cultural fluidity. The trader Edward Denig
told of the Lakota belief that there was a “great white giant” under the Black Hills who was
being punished there for being an aggressor on the Plains. Denig wrote that the giant was
"condemned to perpetual incarceration under the mountain as an example to all whites to
leave the Indians in quiet possession of their hunting grounds”. Whether Denig understood
the Lakota who told this story properly, or whether they were being truthful to him, is
questionable, but nonetheless it suggests that the Lakota were actively adapting their
cultural traditions and myths to fit with the reality of their struggle with white
encroachment in their territory.15
In contrast to the increased instability in Lakota society and culture caused by their loss of
territory and their fractious relationships with white migrants and the United States; the
increased autonomy granted to the Gullah in their cultural life allowed them to create
institutions which would provide them with greater political, social and cultural stability.
Praise Houses were built by planters after the increase in interest in the Christianisation of
Gullah slaves after 1840. They were intended as a place of worship for the slaves on the
plantation, curbing the need for slaves to travel to other plantations. However, wherein the
coloured societies were sanctioned by whites in the 1850s the Praise House served as the
Gullah’s central meeting place, where the “leader” could serve as the preacher in a slave
version of the white churches, and where candidates for baptism could be vetted. The
15
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, pp.25-27; Denig, Five Indian Tribes, p.6; Severt Young Bear and
R.D Theisz, Standing in the Light, A Lakota way of Seeing, (Lincoln, 1996), pp.29-30; John, Neihardt,
Nicholas Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, (New York,
1932), p.63, p.105,
74
Praise Houses, therefore, served as the centre of Gullah religious culture, as an arena in
which their religious and musical traditions were sanctioned, but also as a centre for Gullah
slave society, which brought “conformity and spiritual harmony” and, like a church, acted
as a centre of social regulation. They operated a religious court system when discord arose
between slaves on the plantation, and Praise House law was considered the “just-law”.
There was, therefore, disapproval of anyone who went above Praise-House law and to the
master. Acceptance into the Praise-House was also akin to acceptance in the slave
community and was often referred to by the Gullah as “catching-sense”. The Praise House
also became the centre for the creation of Gullah Music irrespective of its relation to
Christianity, and at times fostered music which displayed the slaves’ resistance to slavery.
When James Miller McKim asked a freed slave about the creation of songs within the
Praise House in 1862, he was told that they were composed in the following way:
My master call me up, and order me a short peck of corn and a
hundred lash. My friends see it, and is sorry for me. When dey come to de
praise-meeting dat night dey sing about it.
The Praise House was therefore a space within the plantation for the creation of Gullah
music. 16
The freedom granted to the Gullah through the foundation of the
Praise Houses and the black societies, also allowed them to develop their own version of
Christianity, a version which absorbed some of the African American traditions of the
region. African derived traditions continued to thrive in the Sea Islands and Lowcountry in
general. Whites were well aware of the retention of African practises. Writing in 1857,
W.B Hodgson, a Georgian, wrote about “the Obi practises and Fetish Worship, of the
Pagan negroes early imported into this country, and of which traditional traces may still be
discovered”. The main attraction in membership of the Christian churches for the Gullah
seemed to have been participation in water baptism. Although present in white
16
Beaufort Baptist Church Minutes, November II, 1840 and January 7, 1842, 12; October
7, 1859, SCBC; Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.277-279; William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and
Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, (New York, 1867), p.xviii
75
Christianity, the “water burial” of Baptist Conversion had African equivalents, especially
in the secret societies of West Africa. Significantly, even Methodist converts among the
Gullah insisted on complete immersion, rather than the mere sprinkling of water usually
associated with that denomination. The pre-Christian ritual tradition of “seeking” also
became a necessary step towards acceptance into Gullah Praise Houses. This involved
“soul-grappling, traumatic confrontation between the individual and a higher power, and a
sensation of rebirth”. The acceptance by the elders of this religious experience as authentic
led to full membership in the religious community. “Seekin” was based on the West
African Poro and Sande rituals, in which men and women went through a similar process
as in order to be accepted into a secret society with the aim of “socialization of the
individual and preparation for an active communal role”. Christian missionaries were often
bypassed in this process, and they often opposed elements of the conversion, particularly
the vision quest process of going out to the wilderness.17
Nevertherless, Gullah participation in Christianity was
well established by 1850, and many of the more African traits were omitted. After
travelling in the Lowcountry in 1850, the Swedish traveller Fredrika Bremer compared the
culture of the slaves in the Lowcountry to that of slaves she witnessed in New Orleans and
Cuba. While Bremer noticed the difference in the Gullah’s celebration of Christianity
compared to that of Lowcountry whites; she did not see the difference as particularly
African. Later while travelling in New Orleans, she compares the music and dance she
witnesses here with her experiences in South Carolina. She comments that “In South
Carolina and Georgia, the preachers have done away with dancing and the singing of
songs”. After her visit to Cuba, Bremer compared what she perceived to be a more African
influenced music there, to that which she witnessed in the United States. Writing in
Charleston she claimed that “there is a vast, vast difference between the screeching
improvisation of the negroes in Cuba and the inspired and inspiring preaching of the
Saviour… which I have heard extemporised in the United States”. Evidently then, to a
17
Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry,
(Chapel Hill, 1998), p.620; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.288, p.294-295; Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in
the Gullah Dialect, (Columbia, 1949), pp. 271-75; Margaret Washington, “Gullah attitudes towards Life and
Death”, in Joseph E.Holloway, Africanisms in American Culture, (Bloomington, 1990), p.154; Pollitzer, The
Gullah People and their African Heritage, pp.135-137
76
European observer such as Bremer, the Christianity of the Gullah was far more Christian
than the religious traditions of African Americans in Cuba.18
The relationship between the Lakota and Gullah and white Americans in the
1850s dictated the level of change and adaptation in their religious and musical traditions.
While the Lakota struggled to maintain the place of the buffalo and the Black Hills in their
cultures in face of the negative impact of the white presence on the Northern Plains, they
also adapted their traditions to include the new challenges they faced. The decrease in the
buffalo population threatened the very basis of Lakota culture. However, given the
Lakota’s cultural adaptability, the inevitable white presence on the northern Plains merely
supplemented the myths and traditions that already existed. In contrast, the Gullah were
increasingly granted control of their cultural spaces through the establishment of the Praise
House, which was sanctioned by the churches and the planters and would act as a source of
Gullah cultural developments, in the following decades. Although heavily influenced by
the Christianity of their masters, the Gullah Praise Houses also allowed Christianity to be
layered onto surviving African based traditions, such as the ritual of seeking. In terms of
musical traditions, the Praise House would also act as a forum for the preservation of
existing traditions within the context of the plantation slave society.
iv. “Hold to the Traditions”: Lakota and Gullah Cultural Retentions
The difference between the Christianisation of Gullah and Lakota religious and musical
cultures before 1860 shows clearly in the contrasting traditions of the Lakota Sun Dance
and the Gullah Ring Shout. While the Gullah Ring Shout, an African derived form of
ritual dance, seems to have become more widely practised or at least more visible in this
period, due to its incorporation into the sanctioned Christian settings of the Praise House,
the Sun Dance, a ritual common to many northern Plains tribes, remained a truly preChristian tradition which was at odds with the aims of the United States to Christianise the
18
Fredrika Bremer, Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, Vol.1, (New York, 1853), pp.306310, Vol.2, p.117, p.444; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.234; Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African
Heritage, pp.136-138
77
native peoples of the Plains. The Sun Dance, therefore, became a symbol of resistance and
tribal unity for some Lakota, as divisions began to occur in their population regarding the
merits of resistance against the United States and against Christianity. The Ring Shout,
though, also acted as a cultural expression of Gullah unity and a means to achieve spiritual
cohesion on the plantation.
During the 1850s, the policy of forced removal of eastern Indian tribes was
framed in such a way as to seem like it was for the Indians own good, to stop them
“vanishing”, or being culturally overrun by the pressure imposed on them from the
expansion of the United States. The Lakota were aware of the removal of the Indian tribes
of the East and the military conflict with the United States led some Lakota to turn away
from violence, and to see “white” society and culture as an inevitable endpoint. Spotted
Tail, a member of Little Thunder’s band, who clashed with the United States at the Battle
of Ash Hollow in 1855, was at the time a leader of the militant Lakota. Fearing what
continued resistance would mean for his wife and children who had been captured by the
United States Army at the battle, and for his people as a whole, Spotted Tail decided to
surrender and turned himself in while singing his “death song”. After being spared
execution and spending a year in prison, Spotted Tail became convinced that diplomacy
was the way forward and he and his followers would play a significant role in the
negotiation of culture between whites and the Lakota for the following decades. Even for
those Lakota bands who accepted defeat, or who received annuities, survival on the
northern Plains was becoming increasingly difficult. The United States effort to assimilate
Lakota culture focused on encouraging agriculture. However, many refused to follow the
Indian Agency’s wishes that they take up farming, and suspected that this was a ploy to
confine them to smaller tracts of land in order for whites to acquire the rest. The presence
of overland migrants and United States troops travelling through Lakota territory also
contributed to an increased division between the various Lakota bands and sub-tribes.
Moderate bands were drawn to trading posts on the Platte River to the South in Nebraska
and Kansas, and Eastwards to the Missouri, while those who dealt less with, and were
more hostile to whites remained North and West of there, towards the Black Hills and
beyond, and North to the Powder River and Yellowstone country and into Canada. After
the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851, the “moderate” bands collected annuities at the trading
posts and forts in the South, while the “hostiles” remained North, continuing to depend on
78
the more numerous Buffalo herds there, and violating the treaty by taking territory off
other tribes. For the first time the divisions in Lakota society were being drawn along
cultural lines, as many of the moderates began to believe that “white” and Christian culture
was inevitable, while the “hostile” bands continued to resist the efforts of the United States
to put an end their nomadic existence and its associated religious and musical traditions. 19
In 1856, after ceding the Platte River Valley to the United States, the
Lakota, in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, compensated themselves by taking
the Powder River country from the Crow Indians and expanded their territory further west
into the Big Horn Mountains, removing themselves further from their homeland between
the Platte and the Missouri. As the Lakota encountered other tribes in their move west,
they often intermarried or adopted members these tribes. They also took captives in battles,
usually women and children, and welcomed them into their tribes. On other occasion’s
members of other tribes, faced with the prospect of Lakota raids or harassment,
intermarried and lived with the Sioux, instead. A band of Brulé Lakota called the Wazazi
had emerged from a military alliance between the Lakota and the Ponca/Osage, which was
entered into by the Ponca/Osage for the purpose of self-preservation. Regardless of the
motivation, the willingness of the Lakota and the other Northern Plains tribes to intermarry
and ally, also led to peaceful cultural exchanges and led to a continuation of the cultural
adaptability and fluidity which the Lakota had engaged in for the previous century. Lakota
and Plains musical traditions in general were equally as fluid and “receptive to change” as
songs and dances spread from tribe to tribe. The peaceful cultural exchange with tribes in
this period therefore ensured that the Lakota would continue to adopt new cultural forms,
receiving the important late nineteenth century ritual of the Omaha Dance from the Omaha
or the Ponca sometime around 1860, for example. In fact the Omaha dance, which would
also be called the “Grass Dance”, exemplified the processes of cultural dissemination that
occurred among the Plains Indians, as the Omaha had originally received the dance from
the Pawnee. This dance, originally a warrior society dance, would become the most
popular Lakota dance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and could only be
danced by members of the Omaha Dance Society, who were recognised by their particular
hairstyling and headdress. However the United States policy of concentration, which aimed
Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance, Introduction; George E. Hyde, Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the
Brule Sioux (Norman, 1974), pp.77-81; Ostler, The Lakota and the Black Hills, p.34; Ostler, The Plains
Sioux, p.44, p.168
19
79
at restricting the tribes on different reservations, threatened the networks of cultural
exchange which spread these dances among the plains tribes.20
In 1859, the Indian Office, ordered the Crow to travel 300 miles from
the Powder River Country to receive their annuities at the Upper Platte agency, where their
enemies, the Oglala Lakota lived. At the same time, the trading post at Fort Sarpy had been
abandoned leaving the Crow with no choice but to abandon their homeland around the Big
Horn River and to travel towards Fort Union for trade goods. This, in turn, left their
territory around the Big Horn open to the Oglala Lakota who expanded into the region and
could not be easily removed. From here, the Oglala, accompanied by other Lakota bands
conducted sporadic attacks and raids against the Crow. These attacks often coincided with
the annual large gatherings of Lakota bands which centred around the Sun Dance. In 1859,
once such gathering, 80 camps strong, and led by the Oglala warrior Black Shield attacked
and killed a small band of Crow. The unstable environment caused by the Fort Laramie
treaty of 1851, therefore, facilitated the expansion of the Lakota in this instance, as the
Crow remained West of the Big Horn and North of the Yellowstone from this point
forward. The process of violent interaction with other native tribes also culturally
influenced the Lakota, as was the case in 1852 when they killed an “enemy” who wore a
novel type of headdress. The Lakota adopted this new “four-horned” headdress, and it was
still being worn in 1913 when Frances Densmore photographed the Lakota man named
Swift Dog. On other occasions, violent cultural contact contributed to change in Lakota
musical traditions and was the inspiration for war songs. To those hostile Lakota who
wished to resist the United States and the “civilised” culture they attempted to impose, the
Sun Dance became a particularly important ritual, due to its use as a prayer for an increase
in the Buffalo population, and as a celebration of tribal unity, the two aspects of Lakota
society and culture most threatened by the United States. The Sun Dance also involved
geographically separated bands of Lakota gathering together to perform the ritual, usually
20
Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, p.10; Edmund C. Bray and Martha C. Bray, Joseph N.
Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies, (St. Paul, 1991), p.261; Ostler, The Plains Sioux, p.25; James R. Walker
and Raymond J, DeMallie, (ed.), Lakota Society, (Lincoln, 1982), pp.54-55; Royal B. Hassrick, The Sioux:
Life and Customs of a Warrior Society, (Norman, 1964), p.11-12; Young, “Music”, p.1030; William K.
Powers, American Indian Music, (New Jersey, 1994), p.97; Fletcher and La Flesche, A Study of Omaha
Indian Music, p.46; James H. Howard, “Notes on the Dakota Grass Dance”, Southwestern Journal of
Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1951), pp. 82-85; Clark Wissler, “Societies and Ceremonial Associations in the
Oglala Division of the Teton- Dakota”, in Clark Wissler, (ed.), Societies of the Plains Indians,
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XI, pp.1-99, (New York, 1916) at
p.48
80
at the height of summer, thereby resisting the separation of bands instigated by the actions
of the United States.21
While the Sun Dance was the most visible and defining musical and religious
celebration for the nineteenth century Lakota, the performance of the Ring Shout was the
musical and religious performance which dominated Gullah society. The African-derived
practice became a central part of Gullah Christianity in the mid-nineteenth century. It was
within the context of the increased freedom and autonomy granted to the Gullah in their
Christian celebration with the formation of the black societies and the Praise Houses, that
the tradition of the Ring Shout was retained and increasingly celebrated. Margaret
Washington Creel suggests that perhaps Baptist planters also allowed the ring shout, as
they recognised the benefits such a “release” would have on the temperament of their
slaves. Creel proposes that the Shout can be seen as “a cathartic which enabled slaves to
act out tensions, anxieties, and suppressed facets of themselves in an approved manner”
and that the shout may have acted as “a way of reconciling contradictory tendencies among
individuals”, allowing them to seek “an outlet in a similar type of collective behaviour”.
The shout also provided entertainment for the Gullah, in an approved social setting of the
Praise House, and a “substitute for the social activity they were forced to relinquish”.
However, at a higher level, the Shout also gave the Gullah a spiritual and religious link to
their African-derived religious cultures, while also embracing the new influences of
Christianity.22
The Gullah, and to some extent, the white Missionaries saw the
Shout as “Christian”, despite the fact that it had African derived elements of “possession”
or at least of an altered state of consciousness in its performance. This element was
sometimes attributed to the Shouter being controlled by the “holy spirit”, or the “holy
spirit” taking full possession of the Shouter’s body. Possession had strong African
antecendents, and was a cultural trait which was preserved in forms in different parts of the
New World. Albert Raboteau wrote that “in the Ring Shout and allied patterns of ecstatic
behavior, the African heritage of dance found expression in the evangelical religion of the
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, pp.90-92; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, p.98, p.403; Young, “Music”, p.1030;
DeMallie,“Teton”, p.807; J.R Walker, The Sun Dance and other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the
Teton Dakota, The American Museum of Natural History, (New York, 1917), p.60
22
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.298-299; Art, Rosenbaum, “Shout because you’re Free: The African American
Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia”, (Athens, 1998)
21
81
African slaves”, despite adding that there were “significant differences between the kind of
spirit possession found in West Africa and the shouting experience of American
Revivalism”. Nonetheless, the pre-Christian ritual significance of the Shout was
undoubtedly transferred to the Christian context, as was evident from the restrictions on
those who could participate. While children were taught how to “Shout” from a young age,
actual participation in the ritual was restricted to members of the Praise House. Once
candidates were baptised and given communion, they were full members of the Gullah
Christian community, and only then could they participate in the Ring Shout, which
usually took place in the Praise Houses. Then, new members of the praise house were
initiated by being invited to lead the Shout on their first attendance.23
In 1850, Fredrika Bremer attended a camp meeting near
Charleston and described in these late night celebrations the dancing of a “holy dance”,
which had been forbidden by the preachers and which had been stopped once Bremer and
her white associates were seen. This dance was more than likely a dance in the manner of
the “Ring Shout”, as Bremer describes “a rocking movement of women, who held each
other by the hand in a circle”. Bremer goes on to describe waking up and witnessing black
worshippers singing having continued throughout the whole night. In discussing the
convulsive excitement of the black worshippers with the white preacher at the camp
meeting, Bremer discovered that the behaviour was disliked but tolerated by the preacher
as it led to the conversion of the slaves. While the Shout found a home in the Christian
context of the Praise House and the camp meetings, the outdoor religious services which
became popular during the Second Great Awakening. The songs sung during the Shout
were also different from the Methodist and Baptist Hymns sung during the rest of the
Camp meetings and Praise House ceremonies. They were the “spirituals” composed by the
Gullah themselves, which often had secular themes.24
While the religious and musical celebrations of the Gullah increasingly
represented the cultural freedom being granted to them within the confines of slavery, the
23
Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.297-299; Raboteau, Slave Religion, p.18, pp.72-73; Joseph M. Murphy,
Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora, (Boston, 1994)
24
Bremer, Homes of the New World, Vol. 1, pp.311-312; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.298; Lydia Parrish,
Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, (Athens, 1992); Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black
Folk Music to the Civil War, (Urbana, 1977); Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.202-203; Rosenbaum, Shout
Because You’re Free, pp.38-39
82
tumultuous effects of white presence on the Northern Plains equally affected in the
opposite way, Lakota cultural developments. The Ring Shout became the centre of Gullah
plantation culture and facilitated a greater cohesion and collective spirituality that would
have profound implications in the following decades. In contrast, the divisions occurring in
Lakota society regarding the merits of “civilised” white culture, and the relationship with
the United States, manifested itself in a cultural difference between “hostiles” and those
who followed “moderates”, such as Spotted Tail. These divisions would have important
cultural consequences into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In the 1850s, despite the increasing influence of whites in the lives
of the Lakota, the impact on Lakota musical and religious traditions was minimal.
Throughout the decade, the Lakota continued to mark their treaties, military victories, and
everyday events with traditional ceremonies, and with minimal white influence on their
performance. In fact, for the United States, the Indianess, or savagery, as they saw it, of the
Lakota suited their aims to demonise those Native Americans who stood in their way.
Hence, when the Lakota agreed to allow migrants onto their territory after the Fort Laramie
treaty of 1851, they were portrayed by Indian Agent Twiss of the Upper Platte Agency as
more civilised than the Crow, who still stood in the way of United States expansion in the
north-western Plains. In contrast, the Gullah, already in a position of subordinance, as
slaves, were no longer seen as a serious threat to the stability of the southern plantation
system or to the Lowcountry economy. The desire to Christianise the Gullah slaves became
almost universal among southern Baptists especially. However, the difficulties in bringing
missionaries to the rural Lowcountry encouraged Baptist church leaders to allow the
Gullah some autonomy in their practice of Christianity. This had the effect of providing a
sanctioned Christian environment in which Gullah slaves could retain, preserve and
develop their own musical and religious traditions. Christianity therefore allowed the
Gullah to sustain their own slave communities and, in the process, to preserve their own
distinctive culture. Their particular version of Christianity was therefore inherently Gullah,
and as a result was grounded in the particularities of slavery, Gullah society, and the
Lowcountry environment. In contrast, the society and culture of the Lakota was
increasingly under threat in the 1850s, and their close relationship to the northern Plains
environment was at the centre of this threat. The impact of the decimation of the buffalo
population, and the loss of territory around the Oregon Trail, encouraged Lakota migration
northwards and the adaption of their culture to suit the situation in which they found
83
themselves. The Lakota adapted by incorporating new technologies and ideas into their
own culture, but also by changing and embellishing their own cultural traditions with the
new cultures they encountered. Nevertheless, this adaptability and willingness to
appropriate new cultural forms only slowly impacted their relationship with Christianity.
By 1860, while the Gullah had successfully preserved much of their traditional musical
culture within their celebration of Christianity, the Lakota, through the isolated retention of
their traditional beliefs and rituals, and continued resistance to the United States, had
maintained a divide between their musical traditions and their nascent contact with
Christianity.25
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, p.92; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.280; Fowler, “The Great Plains From The
Arrival Of The Horse To 1885”, p.1; Young, “Music”, p.1032; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music, pp.63-67,
pp.244-283; Natalie Curtis Burlin, (ed.), The Indian’s Book: An Offering by the American Indians of Indian
Lore, Musical and Narrative, (New York, 1907), pp.152-153, pp.159-160, pp.254-257
25
84
Chapter 3
From Swords to Plowshares:
Wars and Cultural Change, 1860-1880
The cultures of the Lakota and Gullah were subjected to extreme disruption due to warfare
and the resulting upheaval in their societies after 1860. The American Civil War (18611865) precipitated the demise of the plantation system in areas of the Sea Islands as early
as 1861, and the emancipation of Gullah slaves in 1863 further influenced the development
of Gullah culture in the next two decades by releasing them from the restrictive institution
of slavery. In the same period, the actions of states and territorial governments against
Native Americans on the northern Great Plains reinforced the desire of many Lakota to
oppose the westward expansion of the United States. After the Civil War, the expansion of
military action against “hostile” Native American ethnic groups in the West led to violent
encounters between the Lakota and the United States, culminating in the Sioux Wars
(1876-1877) and the confinement on reservations that ultimately would result in the
destruction of much of the Lakota’s traditional way of life. While the cultures of the
Lakota and Gullah were affected in different ways by warfare in the 1860s and 1870s, both
their cultures coped with the changes through adaptation, and were influenced by the new
circumstances created by war. After the Sioux war with the United States, the confinement
of the Lakota to reservations restricted their freedom to practise and retain their traditional
cultures, especially their religious and musical traditions. In contrast, the emancipation of
Gullah slaves gave them more freedom to develop their culture, building upon the
traditions they had retained through the previous decades in the Lowcountry. The 1860s
and 1870s, therefore, were decades in which Gullah and Lakota musical and religious
traditions were contrastingly shaped by different levels of cultural autonomy brought upon
the two ethnic groups by the effects of warfare.
85
i.
“Noise in the House of God”: Lakota And Gullah Cultures In A Time Of
War
In the early 1860s, the American Civil War in the South and United States military
expansion on the northern Plains impacted on the societies and cultures of the Lakota and
Gullah to different degrees. As slavery was destroyed by the Civil War in the South, the
musical and religious culture of the Gullah became known to the humanitarian teachers
and missionaries who poured into the region from 1861. Building on the tolerance shown
by Baptist and Methodist missionaries in the previous decade, most of the teachers and
missionaries wrote sympathetically about the music and religion of the Gullah and allowed
them freedom in the practise of these traditions. On the Northern Plains, instead, the
perceived savagery of the culture of the Lakota was used as a means to justify the necessity
for their military subjugation by the United States. The Lakota’s religious and musical
traditions were therefore increasingly targeted by policy makers as obstacles in the efforts
to “civilise” them. As a consequence, the efforts to “Americanise” and “Christianise” the
two ethnic groups achieved contrasting successes in this period and as a result impacted on
their religious and musical traditions to different degrees.
Despite the fact that the conflict between the Lakota and overland migrants
which began in the 1850s, continued into the 1860s, the United States army were forced to
focus on the outbreak of Civil War in the East after April 1861. However, in 1862, the
Santee Sioux in Minnesota rose up against white settlers and engaged the United States
army in conflict. After many Santee were killed and captured, about 4,000 of the tribe fled
in fear into the Dakota Territory, bringing them into closer contact with their Siouan
relatives, the Lakota. In the summer of 1864, the Santee were pursued by the Army and
hundreds of men, women and children were killed. Word of this massacre spread to the
Lakota, radicalising many moderates in opposition to the United States. In Colorado four
months later the Army led an attack on the Cheyenne at Sand Creek, killing over 200. In
1865 the US Army attacked an Arapaho village, killing 35. These attacks drove the
Cheyenne and Arapaho towards uniting with the hostile Lakota bands. The hostile groups
were often led by young members of the various bands, who also emphasised the
importance of retaining Lakota traditions in the face of Americanisation. The most famous
of these Lakota were the Oglala Crazy Horse and the Hunkpapa Sitting Bull. Other Lakota
leaders, such as Oglala leader Red Cloud and Brule leader Spotted Tail, began to seek
86
more peaceful methods of dealing with the Americans. Spotted Tail, angering many of the
hostiles, became the Lakota leader most willing to abandon Lakota cultural traditions and
to embrace the Americanisation of the Lakota in the 1860s and 1870s. The preservation of
Lakota cultural traditions therefore became a central question in the military resistance to
the United States in this period.1
The Black Hills, as the spiritual centre of the Lakota world, became the chief
concern of the hostiles, who feared that outsiders would try to take the hills. In 1865, the
opening of the Bozeman trail, which ran through Lakota territory on the West side of the
Black Hills, led to an expansion of the violence between the hostile Lakota and whites, as
the miners and migrants made their way across the region, and the United States Army
increased their presence there to protect the miners. In 1866, the United States built three
more forts in Lakota territory angering the militants. Led by Red Cloud, the militants
launched a campaign against the forts on the Bozeman trail. Supported by Crazy Horse and
his followers Red Cloud called for the setting of a trap for the United States Army troops at
Fort Phil Kearney. The resulting massacre of the troops led by Colonel William J.
Fetterman left 81 soldiers dead. The response of General William Tecumseh Sherman was
to call for action “with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their
extermination, men, women and children”. However for the time being the United States,
hampered by Reconstruction efforts in the South, continued to attempt to negotiate treaties
with the Lakota and were unable to quell the tribes’ actions against the white presence
North of the Platte as sporadic small-scale fighting continued through 1867.2
After the Civil War ended in 1865, the issue of what to do with Native
Americans in the West came to the fore of political debate in Washington. The national
sense of moral purpose created by the leading role of religious humanitarians in
Abolitionism and in the Reconstruction South also gave the impetus to affect policy
towards the Native Americans on the Plains. Two strands of thought emerged. The first,
advocated by humanitarians, such as the “Friends of the Indians” group, believed that the
hostile Indians had just cause, due to the aggression of the United States Army. They
complained that "in a large majority of cases Indian wars are to be traced to the
aggressions of lawless white men". The Jesuit Missionary Pierre Jean De Smet also blamed
1
Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, (New York, 2010), p.3452; George E. Hyde, Spotted Tail's Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux, (Norman, 1961); Royal B. Hassrick,
The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society, (Norman, 1964), p. 200.
2
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, p.46; James C. Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, (Lincoln,
1965), p.10
87
white interests for the problems with the Sioux. Writing about the role of the Sioux in the
troubles in 1866, De Smet said that “one is compelled to admit that they are less guilty than
the whites. Nine times out of ten the provocations come from the latter”. Instead of
pursuing military victory over the Indians of the West, the humanitarians felt that
acculturation and assimilation to a “Christian Civilisation” would be favourable. They
believed this could be done through education and conversion to Christianity. This of
course meant ridding the tribes of the elements of their traditional cultures they deemed to
be unchristian or uncivilised, in particular their religious and musical traditions. On the
other side, many leaders in the United States Army believed that the Indian problem should
be solved through military subjugation and if necessary annihilation of what they perceived
to be a hostile and inferior race. However the cost of the Civil War meant that Washington
called for military restraint, and looked to negotiate with rather than annihilate the Plains
tribes. Nevertheless, for both the humanitarians and the Army, the destruction of traditional
culture was seen as a central and inevitable component of the future of the Native
American tribes of the West. Thus, the warfare between the United States and the Lakota
in the 1860s highlighted splits in Lakota society between those who wished to preserve
Lakota cultural traditions and to resist white incursions into the Black Hills, and those who
saw United States domination, both culturally and politically as inevitable.3
The path taken by Gullah society in the 1860s would also be determined by warfare. When
the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the Gullah slaves became central in the
political conflict which soon had the issue of the role of African American slaves in
American society at its core. As a result, the musical culture of the Gullah would become
increasingly exposed to outside influence and scrutiny. Just as was the case with the
Lakota, humanitarian voices would lead the way in the United States dealings with freed
slaves in the Lowcountry.
For the Gullah slaves, the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, led to
a disruption of the plantation system which had shaped their cultural formation for the
previous two centuries. The Sea Islands, home of the Gullah, were a stronghold of
3
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, p.46-52; Ross Alexander Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota
Sioux, (Kansas, 1996), p.16; H.M Chittenden and A.T Richardson, Life Letters and Travels of Pierre Jean De
Smet, 1801-1873, Francis P. Harper, Vol.3, (New York, 1905) p.856; Phillip Weeks, Farewell my Nation:
The American Indian and the United States in the Nineteenth Century, (Wheeling, 1990), pp.124-132;
Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, (Lincoln,
1984), Vol. 1, pp.488-90
88
Secessionism. Some of the most powerful Southern planters owned plantations there, and
their wealth, and way of life depended on the upholding of slavery. In a meeting of South
Carolina Statesmen discussing Secession in 1861, one Edisto Island planter threatened that
“If South Carolina does not secede from the Union, Edisto will”. However, the war soon
provided a means for the Gullah to escape slavery, and also to escape the cultural shackles
in which they were placed. Some runaway Gullah slaves joined the Union Forces. The
First South Carolina Volunteers, led by Thomas Wentworth Higginson drew many slaves
from the Lowcountry and the Sea Islands. On the 7th November 1861, the Union Army
captured the Sea Island town of Port Royal. Lands abandoned in the region by fleeing
planters, as well as the remaining slaves and standing crops, were given over to the
Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. He sent a Bostonian Attorney, Edward Pierce
to investigate what could be done in the region and his assessment led to the dispatching
south of volunteer groups which included missionaries, teachers and superintendents for
the abandoned plantations. Abolitionists in the North seized this opportunity to show what
could be achieved by the slaves, if they were freed. Much like what was proposed for the
Native Americans of the west in the same period, the slaves were to be educated, employed
and converted to Christianity in an effort to assimilate them into American society.
However, as a result of the increased white presence in the South, the musical culture of
the slaves also began to be revealed to sympathetic listeners. Northern interest in the
humanitarian work in Port Royal, led to many newspaper reports of what was occurring in
the region. Descriptions of the slaves and their society and culture were, therefore, in
demand, and many of these focussed on musical and religious traditions.4
Defenders of slavery had always used the musical culture of the slaves, and
especially their singing as evidence of their contentment with slavery. Writing in 1860,
Alabama native, a son of slave owners, and a Confederate colonel during the war, Daniel
Robinson Hundley wrote that, “always and every where they are singing and happy, happy
in being free from all mental cares or troubles, and singing heartily”. Contrary to the belief
by Hundley that slave music displayed their happiness in slavery, observers of Gullah
music during this period commented on its pathos and descriptions of death. William
Allen, one of the teachers who went South to Port Royal between 1863 and 1864, wrote
about seeing a young slave, called Margaret singing: “shall I die, I shall die”, followed by
4
Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the
Gullahs, (New York, 1988), p.226, Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil
War, (Urbana, 1977), p.255
89
two young boys who sang “my body rock ‘long feber”, illustrating the connection between
Gullah music and death. Charlotte Forten, an African American teacher who came to Port
Royal in 1862, also wrote about the songs she heard in the Sea Islands. She described how
a group of children sang: “I wonder where my mudder gone; Sing, O graveyard!;
Graveyard ought to know me; Ring, Jerusalem”. Forten commented that it was “impossible
to give any idea of the deep pathos of the refrain ‘Sing, Oh Graveyard’”. The uncertainty
of life in slavery as well as the beliefs brought from Africa, resulted in little fear or
foreboding in Gullah attitudes towards death, something that was evident in their musical
culture. This was often mistaken for a sign of resignation by some of the Northern white
observers. Instead of being a weakness, Gullah attitudes towards death were actually a
source of strength Gullah culture, and especially Gullah music was therefore becoming a
means by which both sides in the Civil War, and both sides in the debate over Slavery
could further their arguments.5
The old notion of the happy singing slave, promoted by Daniel Hundley and
others, persisted in some of the descriptions of Gullah music by Northerners who came to
Port Royal in 1861. Laura Towne described the poor conditions in which the Sea Islanders
on St Helena lived when she arrived there in 1861: “Cleanliness, neatness, homelife were
impossible; everything spoke of discomfort and misery. Yet a happier, jollier set of people
was never seen; song and laughter prevailed, night and day”. Towne also described the
singing ability of the Sea Islanders, claiming that “In their lowest state, they could always
do one thing well – sing”, adding that “at first they sang melody alone, but after having
once being given an idea of harmony, they instantly adopted it”. At the same time
defenders of slavery like Hundley also wrote sympathetically about slave music. He
claimed that “no man can listen to them, […], without being very pleasantly entertained”.
The presence of teachers and missionaries led to an increasing number of descriptions of
the music of the freed Gullah slaves. While the motivation behind the creation of slave
music in the Lowcountry could therefore be argued by pro slavery advocates and
abolitionists, many observers on both sides wrote positively about the musical ability of
5
Daniel Robinson Hundley, Social Relations in our Southern States, (New York, 1860), p.345; William
Francis Allen Diary, cited in Joseph E. Holloway, Africanisms in American Culture, (Bloomington, 2005),
p.168; Charlotte Forten, “Life on the Sea Islands”, The Atlantic Monthly, May 1864, p.666; Creel, A Peculiar
People, p.308
90
slaves. Therefore, as Gullah society and culture was exposed to the North through the Port
Royal Experiment, their music would reach well beyond the Sea Islands and Lowcountry.6
From the moment Northern teachers and missionaries entered the Lowcountry at
Port Royal in 1861, they began to describe and write about the music of the Gullah. These
descriptions highlighted the musical response of the Gullah to the freedom granted to them
by the destruction of slavery. In 1862 Elias Smith’s described a scene from Port Royal:
I witnessed …at Hatteras… a part of forty two men women and children arrived
from South Creek on Pamlico river. After finding themselves among friends, they
joined in singing some of their simple chants and hymns. They walked in slow and
solemn procession to Fort Clark, chanting as they went: “Oh! Ain’t I glad to get out
of the wilderness.7
The emancipation of the slaves outside the areas occupied by the Union
Army in 1863 understandably gave them an even higher level of confidence around those
from whom they had withheld their musical and religious performances previously.
Elizabeth Waties Allston Pringle, a rice planter in Georgetown County, South Carolina
described how shortly after emancipation, she and her mother were locked out of her
brother’s plantation by the freed slaves. On leaving they were confronted by a mob of
slaves, who sang “I free, I free! I free as a frog! I free as a fool! Glory Alleluia!”, as they
danced with “wild gestures”. Thomas Wentworth Higginson also described how the slaves
in Beaufort began singing as soon as the Emancipation Proclomation was read out there on
the 1st January, 1863. Emancipation also gave the slaves religious freedom, and many
chose to leave the white churches of their masters. A description from All Saints Parish in
Waccamaw, South Carolina describes how after the War the slaves stopped listening to the
preacher, and instead “would shout and sing after their own fashion, and surround
themselves with their own superstitions”. Therefore, the musical culture of the Gullah,
Slaves were often portrayed as being “happy” or “merry” due to their singing and dancing, something
which was strongly contested by Abolitionists. See Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, pp.41-45; Laura M.
Towne, “Pioneer Work on the Sea Islands”, p.8, Reprinted from the Southern Workman, July 1901, for
Hampton Institute Press, in the Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 434, SHC; Hundley, Social Relations in
our Southern States, p.345
7
Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment, (New York, 1964), pp.76-83 ;
Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.20-21; Quoted in Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, p.259
6
91
while being exposed to sympathetic Northern ears, was also being released from the
repressive effects of slavery.8
The American Civil War and the wars between the Lakota and the United States
were significant events in the formation of Lakota and Gullah musical culture in the 1860s.
Faced with military encounters, with the United States, Lakota society divided on the
merits of continued resistance. Nevertheless, the rising influence of humanitarians in
Washington led to an emphasis on resolving the conflict with the Lakota through their
christianisation and Americanisation, a process which was threatening Lakota cultural
traditions. There would be no place for the retention of Lakota religious or musical
traditions in this process. The Civil War in the American South, likewise, had an effect on
Gullah cultural formation, as the fall of the town of Port Royal to Union troops led to the
freeing of the Gullah slaves there, and the exposure of their musical traditions to
sympathetic Northern ears. However, in contrast to the Lakota, war gave the Gullah the
prospect of increased cultural freedom in the future as well. As Christianity had already
gradually been adopted in its own particular form by the Gullah over the previous two
centuries, they had a higher degree of control over the process of christianisation and
Americanisation compared to the Lakota, and as such were in a better position to retain
their musical practises within Christianity.
ii.
“A Time for Peace” :
Lakota And Gullah Culture after the Civil War
While the warfare of the early 1860s enacted processes that would influence Gullah and
Lakota musical traditions, the negotiations of peace also provided further challenges to
both ethnic groups in the following years. The United States’ adoption of policies towards
Native Americans that were influenced by humanitarians focused the attention on the
Christianisation and Americanisation of Lakota culture. The Gullah, in contrast, having
control over their already established version of Christianity, became more acutely affected
8
Elizabeth Allston Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, (New York, 1922), p.310; J. Motte Alston, Arney
R. Childs, (ed.), Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, (Columbia, 1999), p.48;
Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, pp.131-132, p.138; William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in
the American Rice Swamps, (New York, 1996), pp.380-384; Yvonne P. Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and
the African American Conjuring Tradition, (London, 2003), pp.125-128; Charles Joyner, Down by the
Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, (Urbana, 1984), pp.226-230
92
by their assimilation into American society as free citizens. Thus, as the Civil War
continued until 1865, the prospect of peace directly affected both ethnic groups’ cultural
traditions. For policy makers in Washington, the anticipation of more war in the West
against Native Americans became undesirable, and they therefore directed efforts towards
a more peaceful resolution. Influenced by humanitarians in Washington, American Indian
policy increasingly looked to culturally, rather than militarily, bring the Lakota and other
tribes of the West in line with the expansionist aims of the Unites States, through the
Americanisation and christianisation of their cultures. In Port Royal, educators and
missionaries were attempting to achieve a similar outcome in their work with the Gullah.
However unlike United States policy towards the Lakota, here the aim was to enable the
Gullah to successfully adapt to freedom. The Gullahs’ established version of Christianity
was seen as sufficiently in line with the aims of the humanitarians. This, in turn, gave the
Gullah more freedom in their practise of traditional music. Nevertheless, some of the
traditions that had survived slavery were still seen as primitive, as for the Lakota’s. Yet,
they were still looked at as curiosities and included in several publications in this period by
those who had come south to Port Royal.
In 1867, influenced by the humanitarians, many of whom had been abolitionists, the
United States Congress created the Indian Peace Commission, which had as its aim the
negotiation of treaties with the Plains tribes to “remove all just causes of complaint on their
part, and at the same time establish security for person and property along the lines of
railroad now being constructed to the Pacific and other thoroughfares of travel to the
western territories” The Commission met with some Lakota, including Spotted Tail in
September 1867. Spotted Tail agreed to settle his people on reservations, and “live like the
white man” as soon as the Buffalo had disappeared from Lakota territory. Later in
November, the Peace Commission requested that the militant Lakota meet with them at
Fort Laramie, but not trusting whites the militants stayed away. By early 1868 the United
States were willing to give up the Bozeman Trail and looked to sign a treaty with the
hostile Lakota. At a council at Fort Laramie in April, Spotted Tail, along with some other
moderate leaders, signed the treaty. For the next few months more and more moderate
Lakota signed the treaty and in November of 1868 Red Cloud reluctantly signed as well.
The treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation as a homeland for the Lakota, granting
them ownership of much of their traditional territory including the Black Hills, in return
93
for the Lakota agreeing not to obstruct any railroads or roads on their territory, or to harass
any white people. The treaty was seen by many Lakota as a victory. However, the agency
set up for the Lakota on the Missouri River distanced the tribe from the buffalo herds,
which were increasingly moving westward from that region. According to the treaty
however, the Lakota were only to hunt on their lands which lay outside the reservation, “so
long as the buffalo shall range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase”. However,
the Lakota and the United States looked at the declining Buffalo differently. To the United
States the decline in buffalo was inevitable, and in this case the land outlined in Article 11
of the treaty, would eventually be open for settlement for white migrants. Many Lakota, in
contrast, still blamed the presence of whites in the region for the decline in game, and as a
result predicted the return of the buffalo should the terms of the Treaty be upheld.9
The 1868 treaty therefore laid the foundations for the destruction of the
Lakota’s traditional culture. It outlined that the Lakota were, in Spotted Tail’s words, to
“live like the white man” on a reservation. The treaty foresaw a time when the Lakota
would need to relinquish their traditional way of life as nomadic buffalo hunters and to
assimilate to American culture, making provision for the possible financial backing of the
“education and moral improvement” of the tribes. Under this vision, there would be no
place for Lakota religious or musical traditions. Assimilation would be achieved by
promising to provide those who signed the treaty with non-traditional clothing, cattle, and
a higher sum of annuity money, as well as seeds and equipment to those who took up
farming. The treaty also detailed that agency buildings, including schools and mission
buildings, be set up on the reservation and outlined that the signatories pledged to “compel
their children […] to attend school”. Nevertheless, there was also an understanding by
some Lakota that their cultural traditions could be retained within the new way of life
proposed by the Commission. In an account by Oglala leader Calico of the treaty
negotiations, he explained that Commissioner John B. Sanborn showed him a picture to
illustrate the future for the Lakota. The picture was of a wooden cabin with a corral and
livestock in it, but with a tepee in the background where stood a Lakota with a feather in
his hair and a pipe bag in his possession. Sanborn explained to Calico that “You can live in
these houses and still live in your old ways”. This illustrates that the loss of their way of
life was a concern to the Lakota signatories at this time, and was also something which the
9
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, p.65; Nathaniel G. Taylor, quoted in Ostler, The Lakotas and the
Black Hills, p.59; Richard R. Levine, “Indian Fighters and Indian Reformers: Grant's Indian ‘Peace Policy’
and the Conservative Consensus”, Civil War History, Volume 31, Number 4, (1985), pp. 329-352; Weeks,
Farewell my Nation, pp.147-151; Prucha, The Great Father, pp.488-495
94
commissioners were aware of. But it also illustrates that to some Lakota the treaty was not
a direct affront to their cultural traditions.10
Nevertheless, hostile Lakota bands, led by Sitting Bull continued to refuse to
sign the Treaty and attacked Fort Buford, on the upper Missouri River, killing and
mutilating two civilians in May 1868. Father Pierre Jean De Smet visited Sitting Bull’s
camp in June 1868, but failed to convince him to sign. After the United States forbade
trade with the Lakota who remained off the reservation, the hostiles became critical of
those who were abiding by the treaty, especially Man Afraid of Horses. However, by the
late 1860s, survival was becoming so difficult for the Lakota, that many felt they had no
choice but to settle on the reservations and accept the annuities. Some Lakota abided by the
treaty and took up farming in order to supplement the annuities. A band who became
known as the Wagluhe (Hangers-on) settled near Fort Laramie in order to practise
agriculture. Others migrated south following the bison. However, there were also more
who moved North and joined the hostile bands of Miniconjou, Hunkpapa and Itazipcho in
the Powder River Country. These divisions between hostiles and those who signed the
treaty, and acquiesced in the United States efforts to Americanise the Lakota, would
continue for the following decades and would increasingly have the retention of their
cultural traditions at the centre of the schism.11
While the non-treaty bands of Lakota continued their violent opposition to the
United States, those who had signed the 1868 Treaty began to embark on their new
relationship with the United States. In reality, this often only involved coming to the
Agencies set up on the Great Sioux Reservation in order to collect their annuities, while
continuing to live a life similar to that which they had lived before 1868. Government
Agency officials attempts to convince the Lakota to embrace “civilisation” by wearing
“civilised” clothing and by taking up farming were making slow progress. The Lakota on
the reservations at times displayed resistance against the Americanisation of their lives. In
1874, on the Rosebud agency, some Lakota used tomahawks to destroy a flag pole
intended for the America Flag. Later, led by Red Cloud, many Lakota refused to be
counted in the taking of a census on the Rosebud Agency. Although some Lakota
attempted agriculture, they were set back by grasshoppers and drought. The Lakota still
10
Jeffrey Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism, From Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, ( New
York, 2004), p.49; Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, p.60; 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty Text,
[http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sioux-treaty/#documents, Accessed 4/10/2013]
11
Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, (New York, 1993), p.78;
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, pp.43-44, p.68
95
had a supplementary source of food in the small herds of Buffalo that remained in the
region, and had the freedom to travel off the reservation to hunt them. This made the work
of the Missionaries and Indian agents difficult. In the early 1870s the market for buffalo
hide led to large numbers of hunters arriving on the Plains, severely limiting the numbers
available to the Lakota.12
While Christianity was being prescribed for the Lakota in the Fort Laramie
treaty of 1868 as a means for them to become civilised, the Gullah had already adopted
Christianity in significant numbers and in this way had adapted their culture to the religion
of the United States. This was especially true of their musical culture, with rituals like the
Ring Shout having been absorbed into Christian settings like the Praise House in the
decades before the Civil War. However, with the Port Royal Experiment, the Gullah were
being christianised to a higher degree than ever before by the missionaries and teachers
who arrived there in 1861, many of whom struggled with the difference between theirs and
the Gullah’s Christianity.
There were undoubtedly some Gullah who were not Christians when
the missionaries and teachers came south to Port Royal in 1861, as is evident from the
numbers who continued to be converted after this time. Laura Towne’s description of
seventy candidates being readied for Baptism at one time in 1862 is illustrative of this fact,
as is the description by teacher David Thorpe from 1863, in which “upwards of one
hundred and forty” people were baptised. However, in 1903, a writer going by the initials
“T.G.W” wrote that, when he arrived at Port Royal in 1861, to his surprise, despite
knowing very little about anything outside growing cotton, corn and sweet potatoes, the
freed slaves knew about Jesus and God. He also attributed their desire for education to
their thirst for knowledge about God and Jesus Christ. Gullah Christianity had also already
pervaded their musical traditions. William Howard Russell claimed that the singing Gullah
boatmen he witnessed in Savannah in 1861 made repeated mention of having to cross the
river “Jawdam”. The following day Russell described how the boatmen were ordered to
sing, and sang “a wild Baptist change about the Jordan” during a fishing trip.13
Ostler, The Plains Sioux, p.54-59; George E. Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux,
(Norman, 1937), p.232
13
Rupert S. Holland, Letters and Diaries of Laura M. Towne, Written from the Sea Islands of South
Carolina, 1862-1884, (Cambridge, 1912), p.79; Thorpe to Mooney, January 25, 1863, Dabbs Papers, Thorpe
Series, SHC; “The Penn Normal, Industrial , and Agriculture School, St Helena, SC”, In Folder 424,
12
96
Some of the Northerners who came south in 1861 saw the Gullah slaves of the Sea
Islands as the most backward of all slaves in the South. Arthur Sumner, a teacher from
Massachusetts, commented that “the negroes of these Sea Islands are the most degraded
slaves South of Dixie’s Line ... a meaner, more ungrateful and unhandsome lot than those
of our district I pray that I shall never see”. The writer going by the initials T.G.W, who
was in Port Royal in 1861, claimed that at that time, the appearance of a “white face was so
rare, as to frighten the children by its novelty”. The isolation of some of the Sea Island
slaves was also alluded to in an encounter the teacher Laura Towne had with a woman and
her child on St Helena in 1861. Towne described the child as being in crying convulsions.
On asking the mother what the matter was, the mother replied that “Him aint neber shum
white face, missus. Him scared”. The Missionaries and teachers who went to Port Royal
also found beliefs there vastly different from their own Christianity. Laura Towne
described how a young girl who came to school with a baby who cried during class, got up
abruptly from her chair. When Towne enquired where she was going, the young girl
responded: “Dis baby – missus- him cry all de time. Me mus a lef him spirit to ma house,
have for go get him”. Despite these pronounced cultural differences, Arthur Sumner was
impressed by the music he discovered among slaves in the Lowcountry. He wrote “Oh, I
wish you and all my friends could have heard these Africs sing! I never listened to more
impressive music than this. The singing was intrinsically good; little songs, strange and
beautiful and their swaying to and fro with the melody, seemed to have a sort of oceanic
grandeur in it”. In April 1861, two weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter, William
Howard Russell, a British journalist, described seeing some Gullah boatmen between Port
Royal and Savannah, who sang “a barbaric sort of Madrigal […], full of quaint expression
and melancholy” which continued through the whole hour-long journey. Certainly, as the
descriptions of their music attest to, the Gullah were culturally very different from the
white Northerners who came to the Port Royal region. Nevertheless the music appealed to
many of them, despite their aims of civilising and assimilating the slaves.14
Despite the level of Christianisation of their culture, non-Christian traditions
were also maintained by the Gullah. Secular musical forms were also reported in the years
Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC; William Howard Russell, My Diary, North and South, (Boston,
1863), p.141-143
14
Arthur Sumner to Lt. Joseph Clark, January 23, 1863, Penn School Papers, vol. 4, SHC; “The Penn
Normal, Industrial , and Agriculture School, St Helena, SC”, In Folder 424, Newspaper Clippings, 19031933, SHC; Laura M. Towne, “Pioneer Work on the Sea Islands”, p.6-.7, Reprinted from the Southern
Workman, July 1901, for Hampton Institute Press, in the Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 434, SHC;
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.21; Russell, My Diary, North and South, p.141-143
97
after 1861. In March 1862, missionary Isaac W. Brinckerhoff described a scene from
Beaufort, South Carolina. He recounted how “One means of amusement to which the
negroes, the irreligious portion of them, are addicted is that of the dance. We found it in
one of the Negro huts […] the congregation consisted of twenty five blacks. One was
fiddling, another was making time on the floor with two sticks, and two were dancing”.
Brinckerhoff alludes further to the “un-christian” make-up of this dance when he adds that
“O that the light of civilisation and Christianity may soon enter their darkened minds”.
Despite the critical observations of the likes of Brinckerhoff, the Gullah Church, as an
already Christian Church was very much left to its own devices after Emancipation.
Church Elders were left in control, and the descriptions of the teachers at Port Royal
convey an image of a particularly unique church, in many respects. Laura Towne, for
instance, described the process of examination conducted by a Gullah elder named Father
Tom, who “examined” about seventy candidates on how they prayed, before they were
given baptism. Even in the white churches, the Gullah were given a level of control over
their Christianity after emancipation. Schoolteacher David Thorpe described how, at a
mass baptism he witnessed in the Lowcountry in 1863, Mr.Phillips, the white minister,
sought approval from “Old Pa Tom”, the Gullah elder, before allowing each candidate to
be baptised. Another “leader” from William Fripp’s plantation near Port Royal, named
“Siah” performed the water baptism with Mr Phillips.15
Sometimes the intricacies of Gullah Christianity got in the way of the missionaries
and educators work at Port Royal. The African derived tradition of “seeking” conversion to
Christianity, which became the process of initiation into the Gullah Church, continued after
the Civil War and Northern Missionaries complained that children were being removed
from school when they were seeking, sometimes for months at a time. Elizabeth Botume,
writing from Hilton Head in the years after she arrived there in 1864, claimed that the
children were not “allowed to do much of anything else” except for pray during this period,
in fear that they would “be turned back”. Botume wrote about a conversation she had with
one woman, whose daughter had been “hanging her head and trying to pray these three
months”, and hadn’t “got through yit”. The control the Gullah displayed over their
Christianity was also evident from the elements of Christian theology they adopted in this
period. Closed communion, in which only those who are members of the church could
receive communion, was one such element which caused some debate among the Gullah
15
Brinkerhoff, quoted in Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, p.140; Holland, Letters and Diaries of Laura
Towne, p.79; Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.293-294
98
and white missionaries in the Port Royal area during and after the Civil War. Many of the
missionaries and school teachers who went to Port Royal were not Baptist or Methodist,
with some being Unitarian or Episcopalian. Laura Towne wrote that the Gullah in Port
Royal had been informed that “no one who taught different doctrines” should be allowed
“to stand in the pulpit”, and “had no right” to come to church communion. Some Gullah
objected, highlighting that white Baptists and Episcopalians communed together in the
Lowcountry. However other Gullahs objected to Towne, a Unitarian, and some other
teachers attending their services, and argued among themselves whether the teachers
should be admitted. These events illustrate the control the Gullah had over their church in
this period, despite the presence of the teachers and missionaries.16
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 set in stone the beginning of the process to
Americanise Lakota culture and foretold a time when the elements of traditional cultures
which would be deemed un-American or un-Christian would be restricted or outlawed.
However, as the Treaty was being signed by some, “hostile” Lakota bands continued to
refuse to cooperate with the United States, and increasingly their opposition would
manifest itself in cultural resistance as well as military resistance, through the preservation
of their religious and musical traditions. In contrast the Gullah, now free from slavery,
were in a position whereby their cultural traditions, which built on two centuries of slavery
and generations of exposure to Christianity, were relatively free to develop. Although
missionaries and teachers in Port Royal were engaged in a project to Americanise the
former slaves, they were equally willing to allow for the retention of traditions particular to
the Gullah. This was clearest in the tolerance of the Gullah’s version of Christianity, in
which much of their musical traditions were preserved.
iii.
“The People’s Religion”: The Birth of Lakota and Gullah Christianities
During the period in which the United States looked to peacefully resolve the conflict with
the Plains tribes, the Lakota’s relationship with Christianity was still in its infancy. The
policy that emerged, envisioned that the spread of Christianity would have a central role in
peaceful relations with the Plains’ tribes. However, Christianity had always been seen as
16
Elizabeth Botume, First Days among the Contrabands, (Boston, 1893), p.254; Holland, Letters and
Diaries, p.92; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.296; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, p.74
99
being at odds with traditional Lakota religion and as a result the process of christianisation
was far from peaceful. In contrast, by the time the missionaries and teachers went to the
Lowcountry during and after the Civil War, the Gullah had long established their own
version of Christianity, and from that point forward they retained the elements of their
traditional religions which they saw as appropriate to their Church worship. The place of
music in both ethnic groups’ societies would also be determined by its relationship with
Christianity, and as a result the Lakota and Gullah would have contrasting success in their
efforts to preserve their musical traditions in the 1870s.
The influence of the humanitarians on United States Indian policy came to fruition in 1869,
when President Grant built on the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty and enacted his “Peace
Policy”, which would temporarily and theoretically side-line the military pursuit of the
Native Tribes, in favour of peaceful efforts at “civilising” the tribes. Central to the Peace
Policy was the allocation of reservations to Churches and denominations, the majority of
them Protestant. Thus, the Catholic Church felt aggrieved at this decision. Given their
historical association with missionary efforts in the region, they felt that they should have
been given thirty eight of the seventy two agencies created. Instead, they received only
seven. Other churches, such as the Methodists, which had never conducted any missionary
work in the region, fared much better, with fourteen agencies. Nonetheless, Jesuit missions
among the Lakota resumed in the early years of the Peace Policy. Pierre Jean De Smet
baptised several hundred Lakota on the Missouri River in 1870. Yet, the long-term effects
of these baptisms were minimal and further progress would require on-reservation
missions. Two Jesuit missionaries were sent to the Standing Rock Agency in 1871, but left
a few weeks later. In contrast, missionary Thomas Riggs was successful in setting up a
permanent Congregational mission at the Cheyenne River Reservation in 1872. While the
Peace Policy had intended to bring a Christian way of life to the Lakota, in reality the
1870s saw bickering and competition between the various denominations entrusted with
“civilising” the various tribes, and very little successful missionary work.17
The role of missionaries in the Lakota’ dealings with whites
laid the foundation for future Christianisation. Pierre Jean De Smet, in particular, who had
visited the Lakota as a missionary in the 1830s and 1840s, and who played a key role in
treaty negotiations at Fort Laramie, would become an important figure in the Lakota’s
17
Ostler, The Plains Sioux, pp.56-57; Thomas W. Foley, Father Francis M. Craft: Missionary to the Sioux,
(Lincoln, 2002), p.11; Francis Paul Prucha, Documents of United States Indian Policy, (Lincoln, 1977), p.134
100
christianisation. When, in 1868, Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Chief, refused to negotiate
with white people, De Smet made a special request to the Chief to negotiate, which was
accepted. The Sioux saw De Smet and the other Jesuits as being separate from the Army
and the US Government officials they had encountered. De Smet’s meeting with Sitting
Bull as well as other Lakota chiefs, such as Black Moon, Two Bears and Red Cloud
convinced them to make peace and meet at Fort Rice in North Dakota to negotiate. A
letter signed by Major General William Harney, Commisioner John Sanbourn and Major
Genreal Alfred Terry highlighted the importance of De Smet in negotiations with the
hostile Sioux bands. In this letter, the men express their “high appreciation of the great
value” of De Smet’s actions” without which the results of the negotiations would be
impossible. After twenty years among the Sioux, Pierre Jean De Smet had gained the
nickname “Big Medicine Man” from them. They trusted him above all other whites,
claiming that he was the only white without a “forked tongue”. The Government agent at
Fort Sully, C.T. Campell noted how in 1867 “The appearance among [the Sioux] again of
Father De Smet has an astonishing influence. They adopt his religion, made plain to them
by his peculiar zeal”. The Lakota certainly differentiated between the De Smet’s Jesuit
“black robes” and other churches or denominations, such as the Presbyterian or
Episcopalians. De Smet’s adopted brother Two Bears made a speech at the Fort Rice
Council in 1868, in which he said: “when we are settled down sowing grain, raising cattle
and living in houses, we want Father De Smet to come and live with us, and to bring us
other Black-robes to live among us also; we will listen to their words, and the Great Spirit
will love us and bless us”.18
Central to the appreciation the Lakota had for De Smet was
his willingness to embrace their cultural traditions. De Smet did have a certain degree of
respect for Native Americans and their traditional religions, and this was recognised by the
Lakota. Writing in 1866, after almost 30 years as a missionary among the Plains tribes De
Smet claimed that Native Americans were “generally considered as low in intellect, wild
men thirsting after blood, […] debased in their habits and grovelling in their ideas”, but
that in truth they displayed “order in their national government [and] in the management of
their domestic affairs, zeal in what they believe to be their religious duties […] and often a
display of reasoning powers far above the medium of uneducated white men”. He added
that “their religion, as a system, is far superior to that of the inhabitants of Hindostan or
18
Chittenden and Richardson, Life Letters and Travels, Vol.3, pp.203-204, p.909; ibid., Vol.4, p.1585-1588;
Harney and Terry are quoted in Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux, p.16
101
Japan”. Central to this opinion was De Smet’s high regard for the Native American belief
in a “Great Spirit” akin to the Christian God. He used the term Wakan Tanka
interchangeably with the word “God”. By doing this, De Smet allowed the Sioux to believe
that Christianity and their traditional religion were connected and that christianisation was
merely a natural progression for them. However, the good relations between De Smet and
the Government officials he acted as an intermediary for soured with the enactment of
President Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace Policy in 1869, and the associated disregard given to
Catholic Missions. Nevertheless, the work done by De Smet would ensure that the Lakota
were open to a missionary presence, despite their poor relations with secular whites and the
United States. It was therefore the willingness of the Jesuits to syncretise Christianity to
the traditional religion of the Lakota that led to their being favoured over the other
churches.19
It was, however, the Episcopalians who were given the bulk of the Lakota
Reservations in the Peace Policy, including Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and
Crow Creek. They took a hard line on the retention of Lakota traditions. In 1870 the first
annual Episcopalian Niobrara Convocation was held at the Santee Agency. Here it was
decided that the practise of the Indians of “holding property in common” and to “preserve
Tribal relations and live in villages” was making it “impossible to civilise them or to firmly
establish Christianity among them”. It was also decided that it was “impossible for the
Indian tribes to live any longer as Indians”, illustrating the Epsicopalians’ aims to rid the
Lakota of their traditional cultures. The Niobrara Convocations were however intended to
serve the same social functions as the Sun Dance, which was opposed by the Episcopalian
missionaries. However the Convocations did away with the Sun Dances ceremonials. In
1872, William Hobart Hare, the Bishop of the Episcopalian Church’s Jurisdiction of
Niobrara exemplified the Episcopal Church’s view on Lakota traditions when he wrote that
“these Sioux Indians are heathens […] lying cold on the Church’s bosom” Hare, therefore,
recognised the Lakota’s predicament, and saw that his Church was in a position to help,
and perhaps instil amongst the Lakota a dependence on the church. The Episcopalians
believed they were making progress by 1872, when a missionary described the agency at
Crow Creek, where over 2200 Brule lived with 1200 Yanktonai, claiming that the Indians
there were turning their backs on “their own medicine men”. However, at the Lower Brule
Reservation, where the Brulé Lakota lived, the Episcopalian Reverend Joshua Cleveland
19
Chittenden and Richardson, Life Letters and Travels, Vol.3, p.18; pp.904-905
102
wrote in 1872 that the Lower Brule Indians, 1500 in number, were “spending their time,
wholly in feasting, [and] dancing”. Tensions on the agencies were still high in this period,
with the Missionaries and the Indians having different priorities. Weze, a Yanktonai leader
at the Crow Creek agency, complained in 1872, that their demands were not being heeded
by agency officials and missionaries: “We think it strange that you should speak of
schools when we asked for other things first. We cannot eat schools and churches." Yet the
Episcopalians made progress in their mission, and used music to further their aims. In
1876, at the Spotted Tail Agency, one year after the mission was set up, the Episcopalians
established “singing schools” in the Dakota and English languages, in order to teach the
Lakota youth Christian Hymns The Episcopalians therefore saw the opportunity in using
music as a means to Christianise the Lakota.20
While the Jesuits and Episcopalians made progress, albeit slow, in Christianising the
Lakota, there remained large numbers of Lakota who were unwilling to even submit to the
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, and whose disregard for the Peace Policy would bring them
into continued violent contact with the United States towards the end of the 1870s. Even
those Lakota who accepted the missions on the reservations partook in a process of cultural
exchange in which they effectively held onto the religious and musical traditions of their
ancestors. The Episcopalian missionaries understood this, and as a result took a lighthanded approach to the Christianisation of the Reservations, using music as a tool of
conversion.
In contrast to the tentative steps being taken by the missionaries among the
Lakota, by the late 1860s, missionaries to the Gullah dealt with a heavily Christianised
ethnic group. The Gullah were by now using the infrastructure of the Christian Churches in
the South as social institutions within which Gullah musical culture could be preserved. In
contrast to the pressure the Lakota felt from the white churches to abandon their religious
traditions, the Gullah would receive most pressure from the autonomous and independent
African American Churches, which would attempt to curb the retention of African derived,
or “primitive”, musical traditions within a Christian setting.
20
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, That They May Have Life: The Episcopal Church in South Dakota, 18591976: (New York, 1977), p.10, p.76 ; Quoted in Sneve, That They May Have Life, p.7; Quoted in Sneve, That
They May Have Life, p.44-45, Quoted in Sneve, That They May Have Life, p.9; Rani Henrik Andersson, The
Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, (Lincoln, 2008), p.163; Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner,
With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman tells her People’s History, (Lincoln, 1989), p.136
103
After the Civil War ended in 1865, many of the missionaries and
teachers who had come to Port Royal in 1861 remained in the region. During the
Reconstruction period, from 1863-1877, as was the case all over the South, the Christian
churches became centres of African American cultural preservation and development,
while also becoming a political voice for freed slaves and the black population in general.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston was rebuilt in 1865, forty three
years after the church was burned down after the Denmark Vesey conspiracy. In Savannah,
Georgia, in December 1865, a recent arrival, former fugitive slave from Boston, Aaron A.
Bradley, spoke at the Second African Baptist church in the city. He spoke just after the
Church leader Garrison Frazier, and condemned the attitudes of Frazier, who had told the
city’s black population that they should not steal. Bradley insisted that, since black people
were the source of all wealth in the region that they would not be stealing if they took that
which they had produced themselves, during the two centuries of slavery. He also told the
congregation to resist any attempts to remove them from the land they had occupied on the
regions’ plantations. The Black churches had therefore become more politically powerful
because of the Civil War and the Emancipation proclamation and began to influence
African-American culture in the Lowcountry to a higher degree. However some, like
Bradley objected to the reluctance of the African American churches to truly represent the
freedpeople of the South.21
Given that the African American Church in the South was without question, the most
important social and political institution for African Americans in the decades after the
Civil War, its influence on post-war cultural change was profound. The African American
Churches often attempted to distance themselves from the African derived cultural forms
of many of its members. The first Southern born A.M.E Bishop, Henry McNeal Turner,
compiled a Hymn Book between 1868 and 1873. Addressing the other Bishops of the
A.M.E at the beginning of the book, Turner insisted that hymns provided by ministers of
the A.M.E church were “carelessly prepared in the main” and as a result were rejected for
inclusion. Turner included “Old Zion” songs, in a section for use at “Revivals”. Conscious
that this may have offended some of the Bishops, he insisted that “they must remember
that we have a wide spread custom of singing on revival occasions, […] Spiritual Songs,
most of which are devoid of both sense and reason, and some are absolutely false and
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.275; Jacqueline Jones, “A Spirit of Enterprise: The African American
Challenge to the Confederate Project in Civil War-Era Savannah”, in Philip Morgan, (ed.), African American
Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Gullah Geechee and the Atlantic World, (Athens, 2010), p.188-223, at
p.206-207; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, (New York, 1988)
21
104
vulgar”, and that to “remedy this evil, and to obviate the necessity of recurring to these
wild melodies” he added the time honoured and precious old songs. A.M.E Bishops like
Turner, therefore, sought to impose their cultural preferences on the southern African
American population as a whole through the structures and rituals of the organised
Church.22
Bishop Daniel A. Payne, leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in
Philadelphia wrote in his memoirs of his efforts to do away with the Ring Shout in the
Southern communities he visited. After one particular sermon in an undisclosed location,
Payne described how:
after the sermon they formed a ring, and with coats off sung, clapped
their hands and stamped their feet in a most ridiculous and heathenish
way. I requested the pastor to go and stop their dancing. At his request
they stopped their dancing and clapping of hands, but remained singing
and rocking their bodies to and fro. This they did for about fifteen minutes.
I then went, and taking their leader by the arm requested him to desist and
to sit down and sing in a rational manner. I told him also that it was a heathenish
way to worship and disgraceful to themselves, the race, and
the Christian name.23
Payne’s criticism of the Shout highlights how the religious traditions of the Gullah must
have seemed to the leaders of the African American Churches, and stood in stark contrast
to the level of tolerance displayed by many white missionaries and teachers.
Disapproval of the more African religious celebrations also came from
within the Gullah community, as their church elders began to see the Shout as an
undesirable cultural retention. In 1867, William Francis Allen quoted an article from the
Nation (NewYork) of May 30, 1867, which called the shout "a ceremony which the white
clergymen are inclined to discountenance, and even some of the colored elders try
sometimes to put on a face of discouragement”. African American reformed churches,
more than the Methodists and Baptists, would also take the orderly type of religion
“The Hymn Book of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Being a Collection of Hymns, Sacred Songs
and Chants, Designed to supercede all others hitherto made use of in that Church”, Folder 1019, Guy
Benton Johnson Papers, SHC
23
Daniel Alexander Payne and C.S. Smith (ed.), Recollections of Seventy Years, (Nashville, 1888), pp.253254
22
105
prescribed to them and apply it to their ethos and worldview, allowing their churches to
become centres for orderly education in the post-Civil War South, and to reject the more
frenzied side of African American worship. Nevertheless, the relative autonomy now
allowed to the Gullah freedmen ensured the spread of small local Baptist and Methodist
churches in Sea Island communities, such as on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, and guaranteed
that Gullah musical traditions could be preserved within a Christian context in these rural
communities, at least.24
As part of President Grant’s Peace Policy, Churches were given access to the
Lakota Reservations by the late 1860s. However the Lakota had varying relationships with
the different churches involved. The historical relationship they had with Jesuit
Missionaries, led to them favouring the Jesuits, and especially the work of Pierre Jean De
Smet, whom they believed had their best interests at heart, and who showed great respect
for Lakota religious traditions. The Episcopal Church on the other hand, immediately set
about demonising Lakota ritual practises and attempted to do away with them on their
reservations. Similarly, by the mid-1860s, Gullah Religion, although relatively free from
interference from whites, was beginning to face stronger opposition from the hierarchy of
the African American Church, which had become a more powerful institution after the
Civil War, and in many ways represented the African American population of the South.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, especially, spoke out against, and attempted to
repress, what they saw as the more African –derived traditions of Gullah Christianity, such
as the Ring Shout. They also attempted to rid their congregation of songs they deemed to
be inappropriate, such as the Gullah’s shout songs, by writing Hymn books. Nevertheless
both the Gullah and Lakota continued to practise their musical and religious traditions,
adapting them to fit with the new circumstance in which they found themselves.
24
Quoted in Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because You're Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in
Coastal Georgia, (Athens, 1998), p.22; Erskine Clark, Our Southern Zion: A History of Calvinism in the
South Carolina Lowcountry, 1690-1990, (Tuscaloosa, 1996), p.134; Allison Dorsey, “The Great Cry of our
People is Land: Black Settlement and Community Development on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, 1865-1900”, in
Philip Morgan, African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry, (Athens, 2010), pp.243-245
106
iv. “Savages and the Saved”:
Christianity in the Lakota’s and Gullah’s relations with the United States
Despite the differences in the path taken to Christianisation, the process of
Americanisation in both the cases of the Gullah and Lakota also focused on the education
of children in both ethnic groups. The influence of humanitarians on United States policy
towards Native Americans and the Peace Policy of President Grant gave religious
denominations on the reservations the responsibility of educating and assimilating Lakota
children. Similarly, in the Lowcountry, the setting up of the Penn School in 1862 was an
attempt to bring the morals and habits of the culture of Protestant America to the Gullah.
The teachers at the schools on and off the Lakota reservations, and those at the Penn
School used music to culturally assimilate Lakota and Gullah children. However, the role
of the humanitarians and missionaries in the efforts to reach a peaceful resolution to the
conflict between the United States and the Lakota after 1870 jeopardised relations between
the Lakota and the missionaries, as the United States violated the terms of the 1868 treaty.
The attempts by the United States to gain access to the Black Hills hardened the opposition
of many of the hostile Lakota against the United States, and drove more Lakota from the
reservations to join them.
The Peace Policy was threatened by the search for Gold in the Black Hills,
which intensified in the early 1870s. Although settler expeditions in search of gold in the
Black Hills had been planned in 1866 and 1877, the United States government warned
them against it. Again in 1872, an association from Sioux City Iowa proposed an
expedition to the Black Hills, and in 1873 the legislature of the Dakota Territory petitioned
congress to allow a scientific research expedition into the Hills, and to confine the Lakota
to reservations away from the Black Hills. However, the Lakota wished to remain close to
the cultural and spiritual centre of the Black Hills. As it happened, the agencies at which
the Lakota were to receive their annuities and rations from the United States Army, were
intentionally located on the Eastern side of Lakota territory, at Fort Randall, and at the
mouths of the Cheyenne and Grand Rivers. The Oglalas and Brule objected, wanting their
107
agencies to be closer to the Black Hills. To achieve their aims, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud
led a delegation of Oglalas and Brule to Washington to speak with President Grant. While
they succeeded in having their agencies located further West, near the Black Hills, the
Lakota left this meeting demoralised. The location of the new Red Cloud Oglala agency
however drew criticism from many Lakota who feared that it would draw the attention of
the United States to the Black Hills, and further negotiations moved the agency further
south on the Nebraska/Wyoming border.25
The cultural importance of the Black Hills to the Lakota in this period can be seen
in the Lakota spiritual leader Black Elk’s description of a vision he received as a nine year
old in 1873. In his retelling of the vision to the poet John Niehardt in 1930, Black Elk
addressed many of the concerns of the Lakota at this time. His description of how he
destroyed drought in the vision, for example, illustrates the difficulties the Lakota were
experiencing with regards to drought and agriculture in this period. Black Elk’s vision also
highlighted the fears Lakota had for their future in the early 1870s, as he foresaw a time
where many Lakota children were sick and pale and part of a “dying nation”, where Lakota
villages were in poverty, and horses were starved. However, his vision informed Black Elk
that he would cure the country of its “sickness”, and it also contained hope for a brighter
future, as he saw how eventually many horses and buffalo, would make the people happy
again. The spirit encountered by Black Elk in his vision then brought him to the “centre of
the earth”, which Black Elk said was Harney Peak in the Black Hills, illustrating the
importance of the hills to the Lakota in the early 1870s. Again in 1875, the now eleven
year old Black Elk went into the Black Hills on a vision quest, where he learnt that it was
his duty to save the Hills. Unsure of his ability to do so, he nonetheless came back from the
vision determined to do his utmost to save the Hills, and would in a few years take up arms
against the United States to do so. However, while the importance of the Hills to the
Lakota was being disputed by many whites, in order to justify their dispossession, there are
many accounts of at least a Lakota presence in the Hills during this time, and in fact some
of these accounts illustrate the use of the region as a place of cultural significance. In 1875,
for example, Colonel Richard Dodge was part of a geological expedition into the Black
Hills. He described coming across a Lakota “medicine lodge”, which may have been a
sweat lodge, or a Sun Dance enclosure.
25
Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, p.187; Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, pp.70-74
108
In 1873, the United States became more involved in the tensions over
the Black Hills when General Phillip Sheridan called for a Military Fort to be built there in
order to “secure a strong foothold in the heart of Sioux country, and thereby exercise a
controlling influence over these warlike people.". Sheridan’s proposal of an expedition to
explore the possibility of a fort in the Hills was approved, but he also aimed to explore the
possibility of abundant natural resources in the region. Although disputed by other
members of the expedition, its leader General George Armstrong Custer announced that he
had found gold in the Black Hills that August, and word quickly spread. By the spring of
1875, the Gold Rush to the Black Hills had begun, and by August 1500 miners were in the
Hills. Although the Army attempted to keep intruders out of the Hills, they were powerless
against the numbers involved.26
By 1875, even the humanitarians who had backed President Grant’s Peace
Policy were growing impatient with the continuation of violent skirmishes between the
Native tribes of the West and white settlers. Six years after the policy was initiated, very
few Lakota had chosen to settle and pursue agriculture, or had converted to Christianity.
Indeed, their failure to embrace American civilisation was used as an excuse to remove the
Black Hills from their possession. The botanist with Custer’s expedition, A. B. Donaldson,
claimed that “the grand and beautiful Eden just discovered” should not be left to “the most
obstinately deprived nomad that bears the ‘human form’ divine”. While the perceived
cultural “backwardness” of the Lakota was used to justify their actions, it was the
Government’s inaction in regard to the presence of miners in the Hills, that damaged the
policy of civilisation and prolonged the preservation of “uncivilised” customs, as many
moderate Lakota, followers of Spotted Tail, and Red Cloud, left the reservations and joined
the hostiles of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Even those Lakota who had signed the treaty
were “violently opposed” to white presence in the Black Hills. The government agent on
the Cheyenne River Agency reported that the Lakota there showed “dissatisfaction and
discontent” at news of Custer’s expedition into the Hills and claimed that even those who
had been “most friendly and appreciative”, were now showing signs of “incipient
hostility”.27
Significantly, those who left the reservations to go to the hostile camps were
joining Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho who were preserving their traditional cultures in
26
Ostler, The Black Hills, p.78-79, pp.80-89; John, Neihardt, Nicholas Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks: Being
The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, (New York, 1932), p.61
27
Ostler, The Black Hills, p.88-91; Hyde, Red Cloud’s Folk, p.216
109
the face of the United States attempt to “civilise” them. As he prepared to militarily defend
the Black Hills in 1875, Sitting Bull turned to Wakan Tanka for aid and prepared to take
part in a Sun Dance at Rosebud Creek, during the Summer Solstice. As a continuation of a
long-held tradition of intertribal gathering for ritual participation, this Sun Dance was an
example of the culturally unifying power of plains music and dance. Although the Sun
Dance was historically intended to ensure good buffalo hunting for the various tribes, this
particular dance was an effort to spiritually unite the various bands and tribes allied against
the hostility of the United States. The cultural diversity of the hostiles was seemingly an
issue that concerned them. Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg remembered his time with the
Hunkpapas, claiming that “they were almost like strangers to us. We knew of them only by
hearsay from the Ogallalas and the Minneconjoux”. It was therefore of significance that the
shared culture of the Sun Dance was seen as a suitable way to unite otherwise disparate
bands of Plains Indians. At the mouth of Muddy Creek, the participants in the Sun Dance
laid out the four tribal circles and the calumet was smoked to unify the Hunkpapa with the
other bands and tribes present. Sitting Bull performed a special dance with “themes of
Intertribal unity and triumphant conquest”. Sitting Bull’s dance also told him that “the
Great Spirit has given our enemies to us. We are to destroy them". All those attending then
joined in a “song and dance” at the ceremony’s closing. The hostiles also displayed their
opposition to the white incursions into the Hills in song. At the 1875 White River council
in September, the non-treaty bands sent a delegation led by Little Big Man. On their way to
the White River they sang a song:
The Black Hills is my land and I love it
And whoever interferes
Will hear this gun.
It was clear that the opposition to the expansion of the United States was intrinsically
connected to the preservation of the tribes’ cultural traditions.28
Yet, many Lakota began to believe that they would have no choice but to relinquish
the Black Hills and to accept the promise of increased annuities from the United States.
Sometime around September 1875, Crazy Horse went on a vision-quest. Less positive than
Sitting Bull’s vision, Crazy Horse saw a time when all the Lakota were confined to
28
Kingsley M. Bray, Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, (Norman, 2008), p.190; Thomas B. Marquis, Wooden Leg:
A Warrior who fought Custer, (Minneapolis, 1981), p.177; Utley, The Lance and the Shield, pp.122-123
110
reservations and living in poverty, and where there were no more Buffalo. In December
1875, the United States ordered all Lakota living outside the reservations to return to the
reservations by the end of the coming January, and threatened force to those who refused.
By May, 1876 three columns were converging on the non-treaty Indians. However, on
hearing of the increased army presence in the region, many young men left the reservations
to join the non-treaty bands. In June, Sitting Bull held another Sun Dance on Rosebud
Creek, attended by 3000 Lakota, Dakota and Cheyenne. Offering one hundred pieces of
flesh sacrifice from his arm, he prayed to Wakan Tanka to save his people and to provide
more Buffalo. Dancing until he fell unconscious, he had another vision, which predicted a
Lakota victory. After the Sun Dance, the Lakota triumphed in a skirmish with General
Crook’s troops, and bolstered by more recruits from the agencies, the hostiles by late June
numbering seven thousand, defeated General Custers’s troops at Little Big Horn. 29
After the Battle of Little Big Horn, newspapers in the eastern United
States increasingly began to portray the battle between the United States and the Lakota, as
the battle between Christian Civilisation and Lakota “savagery”. The American public
called for revenge on those who had killed Custer, the “Christian Knight”. In August, the
United States Congress moved to force the Lakota to relinquish all non-reservation land, as
well as the reservation land west of the 103rd parallel, which included the Black Hills.
Some leading humanitarians reluctantly supported congress, believing that the help the
Lakota would receive after surrendering the Hills and returning to the reservations would
hasten their civilisation and conversion to Chrisitianity. Gradually, some of the hostile
bands agreed to give up the Black Hills in return for increased Government annuities. By
October, 230 leaders of the Lakota, Santee, Yanktonai, Arapaho and Cheyenne had signed
the commission’s agreement. Sitting Bull and the non-treaty bands were highly critical of
those who signed the treaty. Skirmishes between the hostiles and the United States
dwindled, and Sitting Bull and his followers moved north into Canada to seek refuge for
the winter. Most of the hostiles however, faced with a harsh winter and little game,
surrendered to the agencies. In May 1877 Crazy Horse and 900 of his followers rode into
the agency at Fort Robinson Nebraska and surrendered.. By the end of the 1870s, the
process of “civilising” the Lakota had begun. Some Lakota began participating in
29
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, pp.92-98
111
reservation agriculture, and the first Lakota children, including four of Spotted Tail’s sons,
were sent to the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1879.30
While it is easy to equate military surrender with the acceptance of the inevitable
loss of culture by the Lakota, this is not necessarily the case. Even in the process of
agreeing to submit to the United States Army and to stay on the reservations, the Lakota
continued to use their musical traditions to assert their independence and to remember their
resistance to the United States. As Crazy Horse’s people made their way to the Red Cloud
Agency to surrender, they sang, what white observers thought were “hymns of peace”.
Jeffrey Ostler however believes it to be more likely that these were songs recounting
“deeds of war”. In July 1877, Crazy Horse also led a large Sun Dance near the agencies, at
which they re-enacted the Battle of Little Big Horn. Sun Dances were held by the Lakota
on a few occasions that same summer, in a display of tribal solidarity in the face of
“Americanisation”.31
However, divisions did develop in Lakota society in this period, based on
the policies of “civilisation” on the reservations. In St Meinrad Abbey in Indiana, Abbot
Martin Marty, Catholic Bishop of the Dakota Territory, saw the missionary potential of the
reservations. He established St Benedicts Mission in Fort Yates, near Standing Rock
Agency in 1876. In 1877, Marty visited Pine Ridge and Rosebud, and met with Lakota
chiefs Spotted Tail and Red Cloud, who asked him to send priests to educate their people.
However, with his hands tied by the directions of the Peace Policy, Marty was restricted to
sending priests to Standing Rock, as Pine Ridge and Rosebud were earmarked as
Episcopalian Agencies. Spotted Tail then took his request to Special Indian Agent W.J.
Pollack in Washington. With the support of the other leaders on Rosebud, Spotted Tail
presented Pollack with a petition asking that the Episcopalians be replaced with Jesuit
Black Robes. Although his request was denied, Spotted Tail continued to embrace the aims
of the Peace Policy, especially in terms of religion and education, sending several of his
children and grandchildren to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. In having the
support of several other Lakota leaders, Spotted Tail’s actions illustrate that many Lakota
were willing to embrace the new life set out for them by Government Officials and
Missionaries. At the very least, Spotted Tail and his followers were reluctantly accepting
that their old way of life was now unviable. However many other Lakota leaders on
30
Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills, pp. 98-114; Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.), The Sixth Grandfather:
Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt, (Lincoln, 1994), p.169; James O. Gump, The Dust Rose
like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux, (Lincoln, 1994), p.131
31
Ostler, The Plains Sioux, pp.83-90
112
Rosebud, led by Crow Dog, were bitterly opposed to the Missionaries and Government
Officials present amongst them, and a division began to appear in Lakota society between
“traditionalists” and “progressives”, which persisted in the following decades.32
While the process of “civilising” the Lakota was hampered by their military
resistance to the United States expansion into their territory, by the late 1870s most of the
Lakota were resigned to reservation life and were beginning to send their children to be
educated as Americans. However, even in the midst of this process, the Lakota retained
their traditional musical and religious traditions, in the face of the calls to Christianise and
civilise people perceived by many Americans to be “savages”. In contrast, the Gullah saw
their children’s education as their right as a free people, and they willingly sent their
children to schools such as Penn School near Port Royal from its inception in 1862, taking
part in the process in the movement to educate and elevate African Americans in the South,
on the road to becoming United States citizens. Crucially however, the musical traditions
of the Gullah played a part in this process and were occasions seen as evidence of their
success.
The Penn School was set up by the teachers and missionaries in Port Royal to
carry out their work of educating and Christianising the Gullah population. It was funded
by Abolitionists, and named after William Penn, founder of the Quaker settlement in
Pennsylvania. The teachers sent to the Sea Islands in 1861 saw the education of Gullah
children as a means to remove them from slavery and to prepare them for freedom.
However, some existing aspects of Gullah culture were described favourably by the
Northern Missionaries and educators. Charlotte Forten wrote about the incredible manners
she witnessed in Port Royal. She wrote that “these people are exceedingly polite in their
manner towards each other” and that “they have really what the New-Englanders call
‘beautiful manners’ ”. Forten’s comments highlight the perception some Northeners had of
the Gullah, and also of how wrong these perceptions were. In fact, many of the traditions
of the Gullah began to be looked upon favourably by the very people who went to Port
Royal to civilise them, even in the early years. This is especially true of the Ring Shout,
which appealed to many of the Northerners who witnessed it in this period, despite coming
under attack from the hierarchy of the Black Churches. Laura Towne, although describing
32
Foley, Father Francis Craft, pp.13-14
113
the ritual as a “savage and heathen dance”, seemed to appreciate the ring shout she
witnessed in April of 1862. She described:
Three men stood and sang, clapping and gesticulating. The others shuffled along on
their heels, following one another in a circle and occasionally bending the knees in
a kind of curtsey. They began slowly, […] the song getting faster and faster, till at
last only the most marked part of the refrain is sung and the shuffling, stamping,
and clapping get furious. The floor shook so that it seemed dangerous. […] it was
astonishing how long they continued and how soon after a rest they were ready to
begin again. […] They kept up the "shout" till very late.
In 1864 another Port Royal educator, Charlotte Forten described a “praise-meeting” she
attended, at which a Shout took place.
Maurice, an old blind man, […] sings with the greatest enthusiasm. […] The large,
gloomy room, with its blackened walls, —the wild, whirling dance of the
shouters,[…]the figure of the old blind man, whose excitement could hardly be
controlled, […] all formed a wild, strange, and deeply impressive picture, not soon
to be forgotten.
Forten also positively juxtaposed the Gullah methods of singing with the hymns being
taught at Port Royal after 1861, claiming that “the church-hymns which the Northern
ministers have taught them, […] are far less suited to their voices than their own”. To
Forten the musical culture of the Gullah, in this Christian context, deserved to be
preserved.33
Nevertheless, the Shout began to be seen as a harmless curiosity by the
missionaries and teachers in Port Royal. By 1863, Laura Towne was allowing the children
in her care to perform Shouts for her, and after living among the Gullah for a few more
years, she grew to appreciate the Shout, describing how she “went to a fine Shout today”.
The Music of the Gullah was also increasingly described sympathetically, and in the late
1860s Gullah music was being included in printed collections of African American Music,
such as William Francis Allen’s “Slave Songs of the United States” (1867), and in other
33
Holland, The Letters and Diary, p.22; Forten, "Life on the Sea Islands", p.672
114
publications such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s “Army Life in a Black Regiment”
(1869), an account of his time with the First South Carolina Volunteers. As the years
progressed, however, the missionaries used music to instill their cultural sensibilities in the
school children. They taught them Evangelical Christian Hymns by the leading
contemporary Hymn writers of the day, such as Ira David Moody and Dwight Lyman
Sankey. The teachers at Penn also taught the children songs that represented the moral
standards they expected of their students. Among these, were the “Penn School Song”,
song to the Londonderry Air, which extolled the value of the school on a “rough and
rugged road”. Laura Towne, writing in 1870, described how, after forming a temperance
group on the Sea Islands, she and her colleagues began to teach “temperance” songs to the
Gullah schoolchildren.34
After almost ten years of freedom and a white missionary presence
in the Sea Islands region around Port Royal, the Gullah there had been subjected to various
efforts to Christianise and Americanise their religious and musical traditions. Yet, there
remained vestiges of older African derived cultural traditions up until the 1880s, especially
among the older generation, and particularly in isolated areas of the Sea Islands. A writer
for Harpers Monthly travelling on St Helena Island in 1878, wrote that “it may at least be
conceded that freedom and education are certainly producing a gradual improvement in the
mental condition of the negroes on St Helena Island”, adding that “Miss Town” had “done
much to instruct the rising generation of the Island”. The writer went on, however, to claim
that the “old negroes still retain many of their superstitions”, outlining that “obeah
worship”, the brand of sorcery associated with the Caribbean, and “a terror of sorcerers”
still existed. The writer makes a clear distinction between the belief systems and practises
of the older and younger generations of St Helena blacks, claiming that the younger “walk
on a higher plain of scepticism”. Certainly the older generation of Gullah also seemed out
of reach to the missionaries and teachers on the Sea Islands after the Civil War, and many
continued to preserve traditional practises. In 1874, Laura Towne described Dr. Jacob, a
man who had “poisoned enough people with his herbs and roots, and magic” and who
Creel, A Peculiar People, p.299; John David Smith, “The Unveiling of Slave Folk Culture, 1865-1920” ,
Journal of Folklore Research , Vol. 21, No. 1, (1984), pp. 47-62; Laura Towne, Letters from February 20th,
May 29th, 1870, and November 26th, 1876, in Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 336B, SHC;” Penn School
Song”, Folder 255 in the Penn School Papers #3615, SHC; “Temperance Song”, Folder 255, Penn School
Papers #3615, SHC; Holland, Letters and Diary, p.217; William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware and
Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States, (New York, 1867)
34
115
remedied people with “spells and incantations”. Evidently then, the pre-Christian traditions
of the Gullah were surviving alongside Christianity in the mid-1870s.35
Indeed, traditional Gullah music continued to thrive in non-Christian settings as
well, and in the harsh realities of the “freedom” of the Reconstruction South. On Amelia
Island in Florida, the same writer for Harpers Monthly witnessed in 1878, “a rustic music
band […] drumming on boxes and blowing on tin trumpets”. He described the performance
as having “not much music”, but “certainly a rhythm in the stroke”. The group of boys
were playing to earn money from the guests staying at the Hotel in Fernandina, indicating
that Sea Islanders were using music as a means to make a living in this region. The writer
also described the rice fields near Savannah Georgia in 1878, detailing how the “negroes
build their rude shanties on the dikes and hummocks in the midst of the rice swamps, and
dance and play on their one-string fiddles”. Music, secular or religious, was an ever
presence in Sea Island life in the difficult decades after the Civil War. In an 1875 hanging
of two black men in Beaufort, for example, the men asked the assembled crowd “to pray
and sing with them” before their execution. Music, then, continued to be preserved in all
aspects of Gullah life, not just within a Christian setting, in the Lowcountry up until
1880.36
In the 1860s and 1870s, the education of young Lakota and Gullah children was
seen by the humanitarian reformers as a means to imbue them with American ideals and
culture. While the education of Gullah children was associated with their newfound
freedom from slavery and was conducted by missionaries and teachers sent to the
Lowcountry after 1861, the education of Lakota children was tied to their Americanisation,
the policy of concentration on reservations and the loss of traditional culture. The move to
“civilisation”, as defined by the United States, the humanitarians and the Churches was
therefore not as difficult a step for the Gullah as it was for the Lakota, whose cultural
traditions were seen as savage and uncivilised in the 1860s and 1870s. Those teachers and
missionaries sent south to Port Royal, in fact, began to appreciate Gullah music, and in
particular its use in a Christian setting. On the other hand, cultural resistance on the
S.G.W Benjamin, “The Sea Islands”, in Harpers Monthly, November, 1878, pp.839-862, at p.859; Laura
Towne, Letter from February 15th, 1874, in Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 336B, SHC
36
Benjamin, “The Sea Islands”, p.847, p.853; Laura Towne, Letter from April 19 th, 1875, in Penn School
Papers #3615, Folder 336B, SHC
35
116
Lakota’s part was inevitable, and it slowed down the program of “civilisation” and
“assimilation.”
The contrasting backdrops to these processes were an important factor in Lakota
and Gullah cultural formation in this period. The progressive policies of Reconstruction in
the Lowcountry, which allowed the Gullah to live in peace with the Missionaries, Teachers
and other whites, stood in stark contrast to the conflict between the Lakota and the United
States which reached its peak in the Sioux Wars of 1876-1877. The Lakota’s military
resistance distanced them from those who worked towards a peaceful resolution to the
conflict between them and the United States.
While the 1860s and 1870s were a time when Lakota society divided over the
merits of “white civilisation” and Christianity, they were also a time when Gullah society
developed significantly. The continued aggression of the United States expansion into
Lakota territory also reinforced and increased Lakota opposition to the attempted
Americanisation and Christianisation of their society and culture. In contrast, the right to
education and religious freedom was seen by the Gullah as a product of their emancipation,
and, as a result education and Christianisation encountered little opposition.
117
CHAPTER 4.
“WASH ME WHITER THAN SNOW”:
THE ASSIMILATION AND ISOLATION OF LAKOTA AND GULLAH MUSICAL
TRADITIONS
1880-1900
By 1880, the societies of the Lakota and Gullah were diverging in the way they were
influenced by the United States and American Culture. For the following decades, both
ethnic groups would employ contrasting methods to preserve their musical cultures within
the changed environment they found themselves in. As the Lakota became confined to
their reservations, their religious and musical cultures were far more open to the repressive
influence of missionaries and Indian Agents in the government sanctioned process of
“Assimilation” of their society. The difficulties experienced by the Lakota in the transition
to reservation life also forced them to relinquish aspects of their traditional cultures in
order to maintain the rations and annuities they received from the United States. In
contrast, the Gullah became increasingly separated from the cultural influence of
missionaries and teachers, compared to the two previous decades, as the impact of
Reconstruction on the Lowcountry gradually declined. As Redeemer Democrats took
control of most of the Southern States and began to enact “Jim Crow” laws which
segregated the races, the Gullah were progressively more isolated in the Sea Islands and
Lowcountry and were in the large part left alone to develop their own culture free from
outside influence.
Nevertheless, these differences did not affect musical cultures in the way it may
have been expected. The culture of the Gullah, by now overwhelming Christian,
maintained and preserved their musical traditions within the context of the Christian
Churches, as the retention of more African traits was increasingly shunned by middle class
blacks, by African American church leaders, and by the younger generations. In contrast,
118
the Lakota, by resisting the imposition of Christianity on their culture, retained their
musical traditions separate from its influence.
Both ethnic groups’ musical cultures would also become commodified for
white audiences in this period, as they were increasingly seen as interesting relics of the
past. The Lakota participated in the Wild West Shows, which romanticised the old West
and regarded Native American culture as archaic and savage. On the other hand, aspects of
Gullah musical tradition, in particular the Spirituals and the Ring Shout, were also
commodified by groups such as the Fisk Jubilee singers and in minstrel shows of the time,
and seen as representative of the Antebellum South. In both cases, the commodification of
musical traditions occurred during a time in which their authenticity and relevance to late
nineteenth century America was being questioned.
These processes would inform the intensity and methods with which
the Gullah and Lakota practised their musical traditions in the 1880s and 1890s. The
increased suppression of Lakota musical and religious culture in favour of Christianity
resulted in the formation of the syncretistic Ghost Dance movement, and ultimately led to
the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890, as the Lakota attempted to retain aspects of their
traditional culture. The suppression of the Ghost Dance movement led to the final
separation of traditional Lakota music and religion from Christianity, as the Lakota
engaged in what William K. Powers has called “dual religious participation”. In contrast,
the freedom granted to the Gullah in regard to their musical and religious traditions,
paradoxically as a result of the rise of the segregation system, allowed them to successfully
establish a distinctly Gullah Christian music, based on the Ring Shout, which, even though
syncretistic, had at its core traditions that were still at odds with white Christianity and
African American Christianity outside the Lowcountry.1
i.
Lakota And Gullah Society And Culture After 1880
The 1880s and 1890s were a period in which the influence of American Culture on the
Lakota and Gullah would take divergent paths. This resulted, in part, from the difference
between the Lakota’s and Gullah’s degrees of social freedom in this period, which related
to the level of cultural contact they had with whites and dictated the level of cultural
1
William K. Powers, Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, (Norman, 1987), pp.94-125
119
retention they were capable of. The Lakota were, by 1880, more dependent on the Federal
Government through the annuities that had been agreed in the treaties of the previous
decades, and as a result of the curbing of their nomadic bison hunting life. This
dependence led to fractures in Lakota society which were often based on the merits of
retaining pre-reservation cultural traditions. The policy of Assimilation which was enacted
by the United States government in this period sought to destroy the traditional cultures of
the Lakota and other Native American ethnic groups through the prohibition of traditional
religious rituals and musical performances and through the schooling of Indian children. In
contrast, since Reconstruction, the Gullah were increasingly socially and economically
autonomous in the Sea Islands and Lowcountry despite the profound changes their society
had gone through since the Civil War. The rise of the Democratic Party in the South after
1877 ultimately led to the rise of the Segregation system (Jim Crow) in the South. While
this was not as severely felt in the heavily African American Lowcountry and Sea Islands,
areas which retained a greater degree of political and economic autonomy, Segregation
paradoxically helped to foster a social and cultural unity that protected Gullah culture from
the influence of white Southerners and from changes in wider African American culture in
the South.
After the end of their military resistance to the territorial expansion of the United States in
the late 1870s, in the early 1880s the Lakota were increasingly settling on the Great Sioux
Reservation around the agencies assigned to them. Sitting Bull, the last leading militant
Lakota resisting confinement on the reservations, had returned from Canada with his
followers in 1881, and was sent to the Standing Rock Agency in 1883. However the
retention of the Lakota’s pre-reservation cultural traditions such as the Sun Dance,
remained a bone of contention between them and government agents, and the move
towards a sedentary existence became a source of conflict within Lakota society, as
disparate bands and tribes were brought together on the reservations. Lakota bands that had
been divided over the previous two decades on how to deal with the United States and the
attempted destruction of their societies and cultures, found themselves sharing the
relatively small area of the reservations. Mixed blood families, who had traditionally lived
a more “American” life than full bloods, often adapted to reservation life better, and as a
result rifts developed between both these communities as well. Agency officials also
intentionally played Lakota chiefs off each other in order to lessen their political power. By
1880 there were 30 Lakota chiefs at the Pine Ridge agency, for example. The agent there,
120
Valentine McGillicuddy, working on the slogan “every man his own chief”, attempted to
lessen the powers of these chiefs and emphasise the equal political power of all Lakota,
with the aim of preparing the Lakota for owning land individually. All these divisions
made for a turbulent political climate on the reservations which only served to exacerbate
the trauma Lakota society and culture was experiencing at the time.2
Nevertheless, divisions were fluid, and those who were more amenable to
reservation life in the 1870s did not necessarily maintain that outlook into the 1880s.
Spotted Tail, who in the 1870s believed the Lakota should learn to “live like the white
man”, was by 1880 becoming disillusioned with reservation life. In fact both he and Red
Cloud were becoming isolated on the reservations. According to agent McGillicuddy, the
Indians were “holding councils day and night, looking toward the final deposing of Red
Cloud as Chief”. In June of 1880 Red Cloud and Spotted Tail visited the Oglala and Brule
Children at the Carlisle Indian School, the Government backed Boarding School for Native
Americans which emphasised cultural assimilation for its pupils. Red Cloud and Spotted
Tail were dismayed by what they saw at the School, leading to Spotted Tail taking some of
his own children home with him. After their visit the superintendent of the School, Richard
Henry Pratt, claimed that both men made speeches that were “offensive and prejudicial to
the discipline of the school”. Spotted Tail and Red Cloud were hereon seen as opponents of
the program of “civilisation” and efforts were made to isolate them politically. Crow Dog,
Swift Bear, Two Strike, and White Thunder complained to the Episcopal Missionary on
Rosebud, William J. Cleveland, that they had been angered by Spotted Tail’s withdrawal
of support for the Carlisle School. Tensions within Lakota society over the
Americanisation of Lakota culture, were therefore leading to splits between various tribal
leaders, allowing the United States therefore to divide and conquer the Lakota.3
The United States’ policy of Assimilation became the most significant
development in its relationship with the Lakota in the late nineteenth century. After the
Peace Policy was seen as a failure after the Indian Wars of the late 1870s, the United States
increasingly looked to other means with which to deal with the “Indian Problem”. The
Lakota, along with other Native American ethnic groups retained much of their traditional
Raymond J. DeMallie, “Teton”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.), The Handbook of North American Indians,
Vol.13 (Plains), Part 2, (Washington, 2001), p.812; Robert M, Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and
Times of Sitting Bull, (New York, 1993), p.211-247; James C. Olsson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem,
(Lincoln, 1965), p.270
3
MacGillicuddy to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 27 th, 1880, quoted in Olson, Red Cloud and the
Sioux Problem, p.270; Jeffrey Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to
Wounded Knee, (New York, 2004), p.197-198; Olson, Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, p.270
2
121
cultures, despite the Peace Policy’s best efforts to “Christianise” and “Americanise” them.
The Reservations themselves were seen as a part of the problem in the failure to assimilate,
as they allowed the Lakota to retain their traditional cultures away from the influence of
white Americans. The Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, which allowed the United
States to divide the reservations between individuals of the various tribes and to take the
remainder, set in motion the process which resulted in the break-up of the Great Sioux
Reservation in 1889 which would confine the Lakota to smaller reservations. However the
policy of Assimilation worked on many other levels as well. The Schooling of children on
the reservations by missionaries, and in government boarding schools and industrial farm
schools, as well as in off-reservation Boarding Schools like Carlisle attempted to remove
the next generation of Lakota from the less desirable aspects of their cultures. The Children
were made to cut their hair, to wear non-traditional clothing and to speak in English. In
Commisioner of Indian Affairs, Thomas J. Morgan’s words the schools encouraged
Indians “to abandon their paint, blankets, feathers, and savage customs”. The schools also
emphasised non-traditional music for the children. The program for the 13th Annual
Entertainment from the St Francis Mission Boarding School, from 1899, illustrates the
types of music being taught to the Lakota school children. The instruments being played
included the violin, cello, viola, bass, bugle, mandolin, organ and piano, and the music
included waltzs, fiddle tunes, hymns, as well as contemporary American songs.4
In contrast to the increasingly divisive atmosphere of the Lakota Reservations,
the Lowcountry and Sea Islands were becoming a sanctuary for African American culture
in the 1880s. In other areas of South Carolina, the freedom and opportunity of
Reconstruction began to be whittled away after the rise of the Democrats in the
Gubernatorial election of 1876, and the Compromise of 1877. However, the Lowcountry
stood out as a place in which African Americans held on to political and economic power,
as well as cultural freedom. The coastal counties of Georgetown, Beaufort and Berkeley,
continued to resist white supremacy and to retain Republican Congressmen. In particular
4
Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920, (Lincoln, 2001),
pp.42-44; Rani-Henrik Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, (Lincoln, 2008), p.4; DeMallie,
“Teton”, , p.814; Quoted in Francis P. Prucha, Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the ‘Friends
of the Indians’, 1880-1900, (Cambridge, 1973), p.311; “13th Annual Entertainment of St. Francis Mission
Boarding School”, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1/1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC; Kathie Marie Bowker,
The Boarding School Legacy: Ten Contemporary Lakota Women tell their Stories, Doctorate Dissertation,
Montana State University, Bozeman, (2007); David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American
Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928, (Lawrence, 1995)
122
Robert Smalls, a Gullah Civil War hero who became known as “the Gullah Statesman”
after he was elected to Congress during Reconstruction, came to represent the strength of
Gullah cultural resistance in this period, speaking to his Lowcountry constituents in the
Gullah dialect and remaining a congressman until 1887. With men such as Smalls
defending Gullah civil and political rights, the Gullah maintained a degree of political and
cultural independence in this period, in comparison to African Americans in other parts of
the South.5
In fact, the Lowcountry towns of Charleston and Beaufort became centres for African
American cultural retreats for other South Carolinian blacks. Religious organisations and
other secular societies and groups travelled in large numbers to the Lowcountry in this
period. Despite the higher level of cultural and political freedom in the Lowcountry, the
Gullah were very aware of the ways in which white supremacy had begun to manifest itself
in the South. In 1880 Ishmael Williams, the young preacher at the Brick Church on St
Helena Island, told his congregation of the poor treatment of blacks in the Columbia
Penitentiary, claiming that “the Democrats must think there is no hell for bad people, for
they make a hell of that prison." Laura Towne remembered how Williams told them that
“Men are there chained with their necks in an iron collar and joined to ankle chains.”6
Over the twenty year period between 1880 and 1900, Democrats would
attempt to disenfranchise the entire black population of South Carolina. The Eight Ballot
Box Law of 1882 attempted to disenfranchise the mostly illiterate South Carolinian black
population, requiring voters to place their ballots in marked boxes. The farmers' movement
started by Ben Tillman in 1886 was also based on racial animosity towards blacks. Tillman
and his followers continued to disenfranchise blacks and overturned Reconstruction laws
forbidding segregation on public transport in 1888, opening the doors to “Jim Crow”
segregation in the state. Up until then there was very little segregation in public places. In
1898 the first bill was passed that would provide for segregation on railways in the state.7
White church leaders in Charleston, also played their part in the rise of white
supremacy. Writing about former slaves in 1898, the Reverend W.H. Johnson claimed that
“Freed from the control of his owner, and wickedly put on civil equality with him, his
5
George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900, (Columbia, 1952), pp.54-58
J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation,
(Baltimore, 2001), p.78-79; Laura Towne letter, May 23, 1880, Letters of Laura Towne, Typescript, Vol.2,
p.509, Penn School Collection, Folder 336 B, SHC
7
Paul Escott and David R. Goldfield, (eds.), Major Problems in the History of the American South, Vol
II, The New South, (Lexington, 1990), pp.182–183; Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, p.82, p.180-182,
pp.294-295; The New York Age, April 25, 1885; Charleston News and Courier, April 3rd, 1885; Charleston
News and Courier, January 11, 1898; Charleston News and Courier, February 2, 1890
6
123
natural lawlessness and savagery were asserted and constantly involved him in crime.” In
Beaufort in 1899, Judge Christie Benet, acting on his own accord, ordered his courtroom to
segregate racially, insisting that “God Almighty never intended […] that the two races
should be mixed”. By 1900 then, Christianity was being used as justification for
segregation in the Lowcountry South. However black religious leaders in the lowcountry
led the way in resisting the tide of white supremacy. Responding to the campaign by white
political leaders to “assist” the emigration of blacks from the state, J.H.M Pollard, the
rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Charleston wrote to the Charleston News and
Courier, insisting that:
All this talk of the superiority of the one race and the inferiority of another, and of
the impossibility of two different races occupying the same territory […] is the
merest bosh intended only to satisfy the vain machinations of unjust men.
In reality however on the overwhelmingly black Sea Islands, segregation had little effect,
and if anything only consolidated the African-ness of Gullah Christianity and culture
there.8
Unlike the Lakota, who were becoming economically dependent on
the United States through the annuities system, the Gullah were becoming more
economically autonomous in this period. Over time, distinct and socially cohesive Gullah
towns and communities formed allowing the Gullah to survive independently, and
avoiding the damaging practise of sharecropping that was so widespread in other areas of
the South. On Ossabaw Island, in the Georgia Lowcountry, many refused to sharecrop for
whites and fought to retain the lands they had acquired. By 1880, the Gullah on Johns,
James, Wadmalaw and Edisto Islands owned over 10,000 acres. Land ownership became a
priority for the Gullah. William Holloway, the editor of the Charleston “New Era”
newspaper advised his readers in April 1883, that:
Nothing can be accomplished, by waiting for somebody to do something for you, or
for some political change to effect a benefit in your behalf. The wiser plan is to get
to work yourself, […] Nothing is more important than getting a home 9
8
Charleston News and Courier, January 11, 1898; Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, p.82, p.180-182, p.295,
p.302; Charleston News and Courier, February 2, 1890
124
The Gullah also found employment in various professions after Reconstruction.
James Aiken, a former slave from Hilton Head transported cotton, watermelon and oysters
to Savannah in sailboats. Others worked as longshoremen in towns such as Port Royal,
Charleston or Savannah, or raised “horses, hogs, turkeys and guineas”. Rice agriculture
continued despite the destruction caused by the abandonment and neglect of plantations
after the Civil war. However, in Liberty County, Georgia in 1881, the overseer for the rice
plantation of a Rev. John Jones' complained that the workers would not “clear ditches or
repair banks as asked” and that if he was to force the workers to do the work, "it would
result in my running them off of the place to other places where they would have it their
way." The Gullah in this period were therefore enjoying an unprecedented level of
economic freedom.10
The political turbulence of the late nineteenth century threatened the development of
Lakota and Gullah culture in this period, as social cohesion was undermined, and profound
changes were occurring in both societies. While the complete transition to confined
reservation life threatened the structure of the previously nomadic Lakota society, the rise
of white supremacy after the end of Reconstruction threatened the advancements the
Gullah had made after Emancipation. However, in contrast to the divisions in Lakota
society, Gullah society remained comparatively intact and united. Instead, Gullah society
and culture was threatened from outside, and in particular from the movement towards
white supremacy in the South. The degree to which the Lakota and Gullah were affected
by these changes was dictated by the extent of their dependence on whites. The economic
independence of both ethnic groups differed completely in this period, and as a result
affected their autonomy. The Lakota became increasingly dependent on the annuities
9
Fran H. Marscher, Remembering the Way It Was on Hilton Head, Bluffton, and Daufuskie, Volume Two,
(Charleston, 2007), p.25.; Allison Dorsey, “The Great Cry of our People is Land: Black Settlement and
Community Development on Ossabaw Island, Georgia: 1865-1900”, in Phillip Morgan, (ed.), African
American Life in the Georgia Lowcounty: The Atlantic World and the Gullah/Geechee, (Athens, 2010),
p.246; Charleston News and Courier, April 22nd, 1880; Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, p.103
10
Marscher, Remembering the Way It Was, p.14, p.25.; Dale Rosengarten, “Spirits of Our Ancestors: Basket
Traditions in the Carolinas”, in Michael Montgomery, (ed.) The Crucible of Carolina: Essays in the
Development of Gullah Language and Culture, University of Georgia Press, (Athens, 1994), p.142, p.150;
Harris, Deep Souths, p.24; Thomas F. Armstrong, “From Task Labor to Free Labor: The Transition Along
Georgia's Rice Coast, 1820-1880”, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 4, (1980), pp.441-443;
Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas, (Cambridge, 2002)
,p.103
125
system that accompanied their confinement on the reservations, and were being forced to
use their cultural traditions as bargaining tools in the harsh reservation environment, while
the ability of the Gullah to thrive in the Lowcountry freed them from restrictive
sharecropping and cultural interference from whites.
The policies of the United States and of the local governments towards the Lakota
and Gullah in this period were also contrastingly different. The policy of Assimilation on
the reservations foresaw that the Lakota would gradually become more like whites and lose
their native traditions, while the policy of Segregation in the American South aimed at
removing African Americans from contact with whites. The Lakota’s move to a sedentary
existence resulted in a vacuum of leadership, as various tribes and factions battled for
control of the reservations, encouraged by the Indian agents who wished to weaken the
power of traditional chiefs. These tensions often found release on the fault lines created by
the Government’s policy of Assimilation. The merits of assimilating to United States
culture or of abandoning cultural traditions became a point of conflict in Lakota society, as
was the case when Spotted Tail removed his children from the Carlisle Indian School. In
contrast, in the post-Reconstruction South, the African American Church became an even
more important institution, which acted as a political and cultural hub, retaining social
cohesion in turbulent times. When Gullah society and culture was threatened by the
collapse of Reconstruction, the rise of the Redeemer Democrats and the introduction of
Segregation, it was the Gullah Churches which filled the void, allowing the Gullah to
preserve and develop their culture in an otherwise turbulent South, free from any
interference from white society.
ii. The Lakota and Gullah and the Federal Government
The changes happening within Lakota and Gullah society in this period occurred during a
time in which the Federal Government became increasingly active in violent oppression
and culturicide of minorities in the United States in the 1880s and 1890s, as efforts were
made to contain Native and African Americans. The introduction of the Segregation of
African Americans from whites in the South and the Assimilation of Native Americans
within the confines of the Reservations in the west, both legitimised violence against the
Lakota and Gullah. Recently scholars have linked the extermination of Indian tribes’
sovereignties in the west with the emancipation of slaves in the South. Steve Hahn has
126
claimed that this created an “imperial Nation-state” on the North American continent.
Heather Cox Richarson also linked the lynching of African Americans, the violent
suppression of Native Americans and of organised labourers, with the United States’
violent actions in the Philippines. It is against this backdrop of a Federal Government more
inclined to meet opposition with violence that Lakota and Gullah cultural change occurred
in the late nineteenth century11.
The period from 1880-1900 was a time when the United States, became obsessed
with civilising “barbarian” lands and people. It was also a time when Native Americans
and African Americans faced an unprecedented level of “barbarization” which contributed
to violent conflicts as well as attacks on their traditional cultures. Alan Trachtenberg has
described the post-Civil War United States as a “newly reborn nation”, which was
“distinctly a white nation, ready to enforce its whiteness by violence”, while Elliot West
has described the same period as a period of “racial disarray”. The increased immigration
from Europe and the awareness of immigrant origins, also led to terms more readily
associated with Native Americans, such as “tribe”, being used denigratingly for immigrant
groups, as well as for African Americans. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 went as far
as forbidding Chinese Immigrants altogether, on the grounds that they were a “nonassimilating race”. This period also saw a rise in violent confrontations involving the
Labour Movement as the problems of industrialisation and the growth of cities became
more pronounced. According to Trachtenberg the “underlying motive” of late nineteenth
century racial thinking was to “maintain the inequalities that followed from black slavery
and the suppression of native self-determination”.12
This was also a period in which “scientific racism” came to the fore and became a
means for some to give empirical support to a hierarchy of "superior" and "inferior"
people. As the United States justified their overseas imperialism with racism, just as it had
done in its subjugation of Native Americans, racial tensions within the United States were
heightened. Increased participation in social movements to “secure basic rights and social
justice” among ethnic minorities, women, workers, and African Americans exacerbated
11
Heather Cox Richardson, West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War,
(New York, 2007), p.328; Steve Hahn, “Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples and the Projects of a new
American Nation-State”, The Journal of the Civil War Era, Volume 3, Number 3, 2013, pp. 307-330, at
p.309
12
Alan Trachtenberg, Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930, (New York,
2004), p.xii, p.xv, p.219; Elliot West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly, No.34, Vol. 1,
(2003), pp. 7-26; John Soennichsen, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, (Santa Barbara, 2011), p.156, Najia
Aarim-Heriot, Chinese Immigrants, African Americans and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848-1882,
(Urbana, 2003), p.215
127
these tensions, with often violent results. For many Americans, “national identity” was
inseparable from “racial identity”, and therefore the cultures of European Immigrants, as
well as of Native and African Americans were seen as a threat to whiteness in the late
Nineteenth century United States. In fact, the conflict between whites and other cultures
was held up as a bed rock of the American experience. Fredrick Jackson Turner’s 1893
“Frontier Thesis”, argued that the United States was built on the frontier settlers' early
encounters and struggles with Native American groups, and that American "character"
developed as a result of this conflict. Here, in this newly re-imagined nation, the old ideas
of manifest destiny, where Anglo Saxon Christians would dominate and spread their
culture were reinvigorated. Therefore, immigrant, Native American and African American
cultures were seen as a threat to the nation. Journalist Jacob Riis, in his study of immigrant
neighbourhoods in New York published in 1890, believed immigrant clustering in these
neighbourhoods was a stumbling block to their assimilation to American culture.13
Just as Riis was critical of the immigrant clustering, some commentators on Indian
Policy saw the reservations as detrimental to Indian assimilation. Richard Henry Pratt, who
had founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, believed off-reservation
schooling for Indian children would have a greater effect on the assimilation not only of
the children, but of Indian society as a whole. In reality the boarding school experience
had a harmful effect on Native American society and culture. The violent changes to the
lives of Native American children, including the separation from their families, the cutting
of their hair, as well as enforced changes in their clothing, language and culture, were seen
by many whites as a desirable feature of the boarding school experience. Luther Standing
Bear, a Lakota, described how in 1883 at the age of fifteen, he led a marching band of
other Native American children from the Carlisle Indian School, across the Brooklyn
Bridge for it’s opening, an exhibition of the progress being made in assimilating Native
Americans through the “civilising” of their musical traditions . The white supremacist
attitudes of whites towards the Lakota and their culture were best exemplified by James
McLaughlin, the Agent at the Standing Rock reservation in the 1880s and 1890s. In his
account of his time on the reservation he wrote of being proud to have been able to bring
the Indian “to a realization of the domination of the white man and the impending
extinction of their race as an element in the great affairs of men”. He added that “When the
13
Trachtenberg, Shades of Hiawatha, p.xiv, p.xx, p.22; Fredrick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American
History, (New York, 1935); Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New
York, (New York, 1890)
128
first white placed his foot upon the shores of this continent, it was predestined that he
should come into the inheritance of the Indian. And there is no use quarrelling with the
processes of natural law”. Central to the beliefs of men like McLaughlin was the belief
therefore, that traditional Lakota culture needed to be obliterated for the sake of mankind,
and this ultimately led to Sitting Bull’s botched arrest and the suppression of the Ghost
Dance at Wounded Knee in 1890. Of Sitting Bull’s death, McLaughlin wrote that “Sitting
Bull's medicine had not saved him, and the shot that killed him put a stop forever to the
domination of the ancient regime among the Sioux of the Standing Rock reservation." 14
In contrast to the calls to end the segregation of Native Americans on
the reservations, whites in the American South increasingly attempted to violently
segregate African Americans. Whites wrote about the “problem” of the coloured line in
terms of having to let blacks know their “place” in southern society. African Americans
who did not know their place were often described as “uppity” or lacking in etiquette.
However, as innocent as these indiscretions often seemed, the punishments meted out for
Southern blacks in response were often violent and were usually deadly in the case of more
serious accusations such as rape. Although the Seas Islands and Lowcountry saw a much
lower amount of racial violence between 1880 and 1900 than other areas of the South,
there were several lynchings and the threat of violence was still real as Southern States
attempted to disenfranchise black voters. Part of the reason that there were fewer incidents
in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands was that there were far fewer whites and in particular
that white and black sharecroppers were not living alongside each other, as was the case in
other areas of the South. There was also a longer tradition of black community activism in
the South. In fact in 1899 in Darien, McIntosh County, Georgia the black community
organised to defend a black man, Henry Delegale from public lynching after an accusation
of rape. Building on a tradition of black political organisation and activism, which had
been led by black senator Tunis Campbell in the period of Reconstruction, McIntosh
county blacks defended the Darien Jail in which Delegale was being held until the army
could escort him to Savannah. It was against this backdrop that traditions such as the Ring
Shout were preserved in the Lowcountry. In fact, the “civilisation” of African American
traditions such as the Ring Shout, as advocated by Bishop Daniel Payne, came at a time
14
Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean. A Keller, Lorene Sisquoc, Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian
Educational Experiences, (Lincoln, 2006), p.13; Lucy Maddox, Citizen Indians, Native American
Intellectuals, Race and Reform, (New York, 2005), p.71-72; Jon Reyner, Jeanne Eder, American Indian
Education, A History, (Norman, 2004), p.143-144; Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux, (Lincoln,
1975), p.171; James McGlaughlin, My Friend the Indian, (Boston, 1910), p.190, p.221
129
towards the end of the 19th Century when even black leaders such as Booker T.
Washington increasingly accepted white supremacy, and called for gradual assimilation of
the black population. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech of 1895, as it later
became known, asked African Americans to tolerate the inequalities of the South in order
to focus on economic improvement.15
The increase in Federal suppression of dissenting voices through violence in
the late nineteenth century United States therefore had a profound impact on Lakota and
Gullah culture. The desire of the Federal Government to contain the Lakota on
reservations, and to enforce cultural change in which assimilation to white Christian
culture was paramount, led to the suppression of Lakota cultural independence at Wounded
Knee. Although, the Gullah were comparatively freer from federal and state led violence in
the Lowcountry, their cultural sovereignty was threatened from within the wider African
American community, in particular from the hierarchy of the African American Church. In
fact, for both groups, the connection between Christianity and their cultural independence
would become increasingly significant as the twentieth century came to an end.
iii. Lakota And Gullah Christianities 1880-1900
In both the cases of the Lakota and the Gullah, Christianity and its relationship with preChristian traditions served as an important social mediator in the last decades of the
nineteenth century. The means by which this occurred differed for the two communities.
The restrictive spaces of the Lakota reservations and the supervising presence of Indian
Agents and missionaries contrasted completely with the increasing isolation and
segregation, felt by the Gullah in the Lowcountry. Although at places such as the Penn
School, missionaries and teachers continued to culturally interact with the Gullah, for the
large part the Gullah were able to develop their religious and musical cultures free from
white influence. In contrast, the Lakota faced increasing scrutiny in their practise of
religion and development of their musical traditions, and these differences would affect the
relationship between Christianity and Music in the development of the ethnic groups’
15
J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation,
(Baltimore, 2001), pp.75-76; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “The Darien "Insurrection" of 1899: Black Protest
During the Nadir of Race Relations”, The Georgia Historical Quarterly , Vol. 74, No. 2 (1990) , pp. 234253, at p.234;, Terence Finnegan, A Deed so Accursed: Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 18811940, (Charlottesville, 2013), W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South, Georgia and Virginia,
1880-1930, (Urbana, 1993), p.130; Raymond W. Smock, Booker T. Washington: Black Leadership in the
Age of Jim Crow, (Chicago, 2009),p.206
130
musical cultures into the twentieth century. The nature of Lakota and Gullah Christianities
in this period is, therefore, central for the understanding of the development of the two
musical traditions.
While the society and culture of the Lakota was seriously threatened by
their confinement on the reservations, the Gullah churches, and the Gullah methods of
religious celebration beceame distanced from the wider African American Churches of
other areas of the South and the United States, whose leaders increasingly frowned upon
the African-ness of Gullah religion.
In 1881, the Secretary for the Interior Carl Schurz, himself an immigrant
Catholic from Germany, allowed all the religious denominations that had been excluded in
the Peace Policy back onto the reservations. While Standing Rock was a Catholic Agency
under the Peace Policy, Congregationalists and Presbyterians began to make progress there
after 1881. Father Joseph A. Stephan, director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions
since 1884, and previous agent on Standing Rock, later complained that the Protestant
Churches were exploiting the good work achieved by the Catholic Missions in the Peace
Policy years. There was a definite sense by the Catholic Missionaries that they were
preferred by the Lakota, which led to the continuation of interdenominational rivalry after
1881. Years later, in 1897, in an article in the “Irish World”, Catholic Missionary Father
Francis Craft claimed that the symbolism and mysticism of native culture was “more in
sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church than with any other Christian body”. There was
also tension between secular and religious white interests on the reservations, especially on
Standing Rock, between Agent James McLaughlin, himself a practising Catholic, and
Joseph Stephan, the Protestant director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. The
secular white presence on Standing Rock was also a thorn in both the Sioux and the
Churches’ sides, as traders, settlers, and federal officials looked to profit from the Federal
investment on the Reservations. The Agent at Pine Ridge, Valentine McGillicuddy,
complained in his annual report for 1881, that white men on the reservations were
providing alcohol to the Lakota, and that the alcohol was the root of most of the problems
on the reservation.16
16
Francis P Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, (Lincoln,
1995), p.524; Thomas W. Foley, Father Francis Craft: Missionary to the Sioux, (Lincoln, 2002), p.15, p.119;
DeMallie, “Teton”, p.814
131
However, as the Lakota became confined to their reservations after 1880,
their cultures became subject to the restrictions imposed on them by Indian Agents and
Missionaries. Increasingly their religious and musical traditions were seen as intrinsically
connected by whites. In their efforts to Christianise and Assimilate Native Americans, their
musical traditions were therefore progressively targeted as antithetical to “civilisation”. In
April 1883, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price outlawed traditional dances and
healing ceremonies, making their practise punishable with fines or jail time. Secretary of
the Interior Henry Teller, in the same year, claimed that a "few non-progressive, degraded
Indians, […] are allowed to exhibit before the young and susceptible children all the
debauchery, diabolism, and savagery of the worst state of the Indian race". Especially
diabolic, according to Teller was "the continuance of the old heathenish dances." Such
occasions, he claimed, "are not social gatherings for the amusement of these people, but,
on the contrary, are intended to stimulate the warlike passions of the young warriors". In
his end of year report, the agent on the Rosebud Reservation in 1883, James G. Wright
wrote that, compared to 1882, the “peculiar customs” of the Lakota were dying out. The
“‘tom-tom’ for the dance”, he claimed was “not heard so frequently; it is forbidden and
entirely silenced on Sunday, when a year ago it was more noticeable than on any other day
of the week”. He also claimed that the “barbarous festival, known as the Sundance”, had
lost ground. With the threat of the loss of their rations, the Lakota were forced to comply.
Red Cloud would later remark:
The white men try to make the Indians white men also, it would be as reasonable
and just to try to make the Indians skin white as to try to make him think and act
like a white man. But the white man has taken out territory and destroyed our
game, so we must eat the white man’s food or die
However, the other natural outcome of the Bureau of Indian Affair’s policies against
Lakota musical and religious traditions was that these traditions were increasingly hidden
from white observers and performed clandestinely. Father Craft, who lived among the
Lakota from 1883, later wrote about the widely held belief that if one would “ask an Indian
about his customs or his religion, […] he is sure to deceive you”. In this way, the Lakota
removed their musical and religious traditions from the policing of the reservation agents
132
and missionaries, and as a result separated their traditions from Christianity, the only
sanctioned religion on the reservations at the time.17
The policies of Indian agents and missionaries in the 1880s were in stark
contrast to the relationship built up by earlier Jesuit Missionaries to the Lakota, who had
emphasised the need to adapt Christianity to the already existing traditions of the Lakota.
Some of the Christian Missionaries after 1880, most noticeably Father Craft, attempted to
continue in this way. A disciple of Roberto De Nobili, the seventeenth century Jesuit who
had pioneered the methods of missionary adaptation in India, Craft immersed himself in
native culture after arriving on Rosebud. He was adopted into Spotted Tail’s family,
dressed in traditional dress, he learnt the Lakota language, and smoked the calumet. He
also defended the Omaha Dance, claiming that it was “common to all Dakotas, Poncas,
Omahas, Winnebagos […], just as we ourselves have many different dances common to
many nations”. This resulted in Craft being at odds with the Indian Agents, as well as his
religious superiors. Craft attempted, over a period of several years in the 1880s and 1890s,
to establish an Indian Congregation of Benedictine Sisters, but met with opposition from
his religious superiors at every turn, and with no support in the American Catholic
hierarchy or a papal approbation, the group fell apart by 1896. The Episcopalian Indian
Agent on Rosebud, James G. Wright, also wrote about his suspicion of Craft’s methods in
his annual report, and outlined how he favoured the work being conducted by the
Episcopalian Missionary William J. Cleveland. In April 1884 Wright accused Craft of
taking a group of Lakota to Valentine, Nebraska and allowing them to perform an Omaha
Dance. The methods of the Jesuits, while continued to some degree by Craft, were out of
place on the reservations of the 1880s and 1890s, where the policy of Assimilation had
come to dominate Indian-white relations. Nevertheless the Lakota had by 1880 established
their preference for the Catholic Missions. In 1879, the agent on Rosebud, Cicero wrote
that “The Episcopalians are becoming unpopular both with the Indians and the whites",
and claimed that the Episcopalians struggled to find pupils for their schools.18
Quoted in Sam A. Maddra, Hostiles?: The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, (Norman,
2006), p.16; “Hovering Eagle – The Daily Journals & Papers of Rev. Francis M. Craft, 1863-1888 [volume
4]”, p.1, Thomas W. Foley Research Papers, Folder 1, Box 4, Series 2, CNAC; Jacqueline Shea Murphy, The
People have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories, (Minneapolis, 2007), p.60;
DeMallie, “Teton”, p.814; Maddra, Hostiles?, p.15; Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to
the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1883, Government Printing Office, (Washington, 1883), p.43
18
Foley, Father Francis M. Craft, p.18-23, pp.101-150; Peter J. Rahill, The Catholic Indian Missions
and Grant's Peace Policy,1870-1884, (Washington D.C, 1953), p.284
17
133
The Lakota and the other Sioux therefore struggled to adapt their traditional
religions to reservation life. In many ways Christianity supplanted traditional religious
rituals, dances and musical traditions. Yankton Sioux Episcopalian, Ella Deloria, who was
born in 1889, described the effect the restrictive reservation environment had on Sioux
religious traditions in the late nineteenth century:
and what good was it now anyway, in pieces? The sun dance – without its
sacrificial core, festive war dances – without fresh war deeds to celebrate […]
And then the church came and filled that emptiness
While some Sioux held onto the Sundance and continued to preserve its traditions
clandestinely, Deloria’s words illustrate the hopelessness the transition to life on the
reservations instilled in the Sioux, and the vacuum into which the Christian Missionaries
arrived.19
While the impact of Christianity on Lakota culture was still in its infancy in
the 1880s, the place of the African American Church, as the “most universal and highly
organised” African American Institution after the Civil War built on several decades of the
Gullah’s gradual Christianisation, and this continued into the 1880s. However, the relative
freedom experienced by the Gullah allowed them to create a version of Christianity which
suited their own religious and musical traditions, and which was distinct from other
African American Churches in the South during this period. Gullah Christianity continued
to flourish and develop independently from white churches in the period after
Reconstruction. Churches were formed in most small communities. Religious celebration
provided social cohesion for the Gullah in the late nineteenth century. Living in the rural
Sea Islands, the church became the centre of Gullah society. In George Tindall’s words
“Church services provided a regular outlet for the spiritual, emotional, and social instincts
of the people, and special events, like the “singing convention and the camp meeting,
brought people together from wide areas and provided relief from the monotony of isolated
19
Quoted in Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, That They May Have Life: The Episcopal Church in South
Dakota, 1859-1976, (New York, 1977), p.4
134
existence”. By the late nineteenth century Gullah Christian Churches had become potent
institutions, driving social and cultural change after the end of Reconstruction.20
By the second half of the 1880s, the development of Gullah culture
in the Lowcountry was coming under scrutiny from the African American population of
the South itself. Indeed it was the African American Church in its role as the most
important social institution among African Americans in the South that took exception to
certain aspects of Gullah culture. Writing in 1888, Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, Senior
Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was critical of the methods of worship
of some members of his Church. Central to his grievances were the performance of songs
and dances he deemed unsuitable. He gave an example of one of the “corn field ditties” he
had heard:
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
If God won't have us, the devil must.
"I was way over there where the coffin fell;
I heard that sinner as he screamed in hell.
Though the lyrical content of the songs was influenced by Christianity, other aspects of
their performance did not sit well with Payne. He denounced the fact that “prayer was
only a secondary thing” to the singing of these songs. Despite this, Payne did believe that
music had an important role in African American Christianity. In 1885 he wrote “A
Treatise on Domestic Education”, in which he claimed that:
these divine hymns and songs often make us, for the time being, forgetful of
all earthly cares, sorrows, and fears, by strengthening our faith in God
Payne’s preference for hymns over the more African Spirituals isolated elements of his
own Church. One such hymn was “Whiter than Snow”, written by Irishman James L.
Nicholson, and whose lyrics included the line: “Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than
Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, pp.282-283; Dorsey, “The great cry of our people is land”, p.244-245;
Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs,
(New York, 1988), p.322; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the American
South, (New York, 1978), p.320
20
135
snow”. Other African American Church leaders however objected to the use of this hymn.
Henry McNeal Turner, a Bishop of the A.M.E Church in Georgia, forbade his
congregation to sing “Whiter than Snow”, claiming that they could wash themselves clean,
but not white. Payne, and the hierarchy of the African American Churches, could be seen
as being in favour of cultural assimilation, as they favoured the less African elements of
African American worship. Some scholars such as Margaret Creel have been critical of
the role of the African American Church in this period, claiming that the “acceptance of
segregation after freedom, without a struggle, owed much to the creeping conservatism
within the black church”. Whether Payne and his supporters were taking their lead from
white church leaders is debatable, but it is certainly true that whites were equally critical of
the behaviour of Gullah Christians in the 1880s. The exuberant preaching style of black
preachers was the anthisesis of what many white church leaders thought preaching should
be. In a letter directed at black preachers in Charleston, in September 1886, Dr. A. Toomer
Porter, white pastor of St. Mark's Church in the city wrote: “Do stop these repeated socalled religious scenes, singing and loud praying, and stentorian preaching. God is not
deaf, and I don't suppose all the congregations are, and need not be 'hollered' at so”.21
However Gullah traditional, or more African-derived religious customs continued to
be preserved after Reconstruction. These involved the use of traditional conjurers and
medicines, practises that were frowned upon by many whites and African Americans. An
account by Albert Jenkins, a Savannah man described his use of a “Dr Buzzard” in 1893.
He recounted the story years later to the Georgia Writer’s Project, part of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration:
Fus muh foot swell up, den muh leg. It wuz so bad I couldn walk. A man tole me
tuh go tuh Doctuh Buzzud, a root doctuh. Doctuh Buzzud gimme some root
medicine an in no time I wuz all right.
Gullah religion also retained a little of its Antebellum secrecy, especially when it came to
allowing whites to observe aspects of it. In 1899 Marion Alexander Haskell, a South
Carolinian musician and educator, in her description of the singing of both Upcountry and
21
Daniel A. Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years, (Nashville, 1888), p.255; Daniel A. Payne, A Treatise on
Domestic Education, (Cincinnati, 1889), p.35; Jon Michael Spencer, Black Hymnody: A Hymnological
History of the African American Church, (Knoxville, 1992), p.11-12; Creel, A Peculiar People, p.326;
Quoted in Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro American Folk Thought from
Slavery to Freedom, (New York, 1977), p.164
136
Lowcountry South Carolina blacks, wrote that “The negro feels that the white man's
religion is very different from his own, and is sensitive about submitting to an
uncomprehending critic a sacred thing, which he fears may be ridiculed, or at best regarded
as strange and peculiar”. However, the Gullah’s reluctance to perform their religious
celebrations in front of whites was perhaps less to do with a fear or ridicule and more to do
with the rituals proper observance. Haskell, perhaps realising this, also wrote that “one can
sometimes steal, unobserved […] into a camp-meeting and hear the spirituals sung there,
but a white presence is very apt to disturb the workings of the "Sperrit," which must come
upon the assemblage in full force to make the meeting a real success”.22
Gullah musical culture continued to be closely associated with their
Christianity in this period. Marion Alexander Haskell also wrote that “The musical talent
of the uneducated negro finds almost its only expression in religious song, […] it is
considered vanity and sinfulness to indulge in song other than that of a sacred character”.
Haskell differentiated between the religious songs of Gullah Christians and those of
African Americans outside the Lowcountry, claiming that “the coast negro sings them as
personal experiences, and frequently alters them to suit his own conceptions”. The Gullah
had therefore clearly distinctive religious and musical traditions to those who were familiar
with the cultures of African Americans in South Carolina during this period. The close
relationship between the Gullah’s music and their Christianity was also evident.23
The relationship between the Lakota and Gullah’s musical traditions and
their Christianity provides the clearest contrast in both ethnic groups’ cultures during this
period. After 1880, the Lakota were only really beginning to embark on a prolonged
relationship with Christianity, after the sporadic encounters of the previous two centuries.
The presence of missionaries on the reservations since the 1860s had yielded little in terms
of lasting conversions. However, the opening up of the reservation system as the
exclusionary aspect of the Peace policy was ended, allowed Catholic missionaries onto the
Lakota reservations that had been demanding “Black Robes” in the previous decades.
Although the Churches continued their alignment with the United States policy of
demonising traditional religions, as was evident in the 1883 “Code of Indian Offences”,
22
Marion Alexander Haskell, "Negro Spirituals," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 58
Issue 4, (1899)., p.577; Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia
Coastal Negroes, (Athens, 1986)
23
Haskell, “Negro Spirituals”, p.577
137
individuals such as Father Francis Craft worked in a more flexible environment in his day
to day business. The outlawing of Lakota religious and musical traditions, in 1883, in fact,
had the effect of separating these traditions from the nascent Christianity of many Lakota
converts, as important rituals such as the Sun Dance were driven underground.
In contrast, the Gullah continued their tradition of Christianity, which had been formed
over the previous centuries, and which had African American practises at its centre.
Although some aspects of Gullah religious culture, such as conjuring, were retained as
separate from Christian Churches, for the large part the lives of the Gullah, including their
musical traditions, revolved around their observance of Christianity. Both Marion
Alexander Haskell and Father Francis Craft alluded to the secrecy of Lakota and Gullah
religion. Yet, the two ethnic groups’ motivations for hiding their traditions differed. The
Lakota, facing the coercive influence of Indian Agents and missionaries were left with no
choice but to preserve their religious traditions and dances clandestinely. The Gullah were,
instead, reluctant to involve whites in their religious rituals for fear that this would impede
their effectiveness. This difference highlights the contrasting situations of Lakota and
Gullah religious and musical traditions in this period, as the Gullah could dictate the
degree of white influence over their cultures, whereas the Lakota had to alter the practise
of their rituals as a result of pressure from whites.
The relationship between the Lakota and Gullah and the various churches
and denominations with whom they had contact also contributed to their adoption of
Christianity and Christian influenced rituals. From the seventeenth century onwards, it was
the Jesuits, with their traditions of missionary adaptation, best exemplified by Augustin
Ravoux, Pierre Jean de Smet and Frances Craft, who appealed most to the Lakota. These
missionaries, by taking part in traditional Lakota rituals and by allowing syncretistic
practises to thrive on the Lakota Reservations attracted many new converts. In contrast, the
stricter methods of conversion employed by the protestant denominations when they
arrived after the Peace Policy in 1870 led to the Lakota demanding that they be replaced by
Jesuits. Gullah religion was also based on their preference for particular churches and
denominations. In the mid eighteenth century, it was the exuberant methods of worship
pioneered by George Whitefield which stood in contrast to the Anglican Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and which first appealed to Lowcountry slaves.
Later, in the nineteenth century, it was the non-conformist Protestant churches, the
Methodists and the Baptists, who attracted Gullah slaves into their congregations with their
tolerance of evangelical methods of worship, while non-evangelical denominations such as
138
the Presbyterians alienated slaves. Late nineteenth century Lakota and Gullah
Christianities were therefore built on two centuries of their choosing which Christianity
best suited their already existing religious cultures.
However the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church later impeded the work of
missionaries among the Lakota, especially Father Francis Craft. When Craft attempted to
form his Congregation of Native Sisters in the 1880s and 1890s, it was the American
Catholic Hierarchy which impeded him, ensuring that the Lakota remained subordinate
within the Catholic Church in the late nineteenth century. In contrast, the relative freedom
enjoyed by Gullah Methodists and Baptists in the late nineteenth century allowed them to
appoint their own preachers and deacons, and to retain the more African traditions within
their more independent protestant churches, despite the objections of men like Bishop
Daniel Payne.
iii. The Commodification of Lakota and Gullah
Musical Traditions
Despite the continuing demonization of Lakota musical and religious traditions in the
1880s, whites were also increasingly looking at Lakota culture with curiosity in this period.
The belief of the “Vanishing Indian”, in which Native American tribes’ cultures were seen
as incompatible with modern America, allowed the commodification of Native American
culture for white audiences, as it was a spectacle that was no longer threatening, but it was,
instead, entertainment. The Wild West shows, which became popular both in the United
States and in Europe, included the recreation of Indian traditions with both music and
dance for white audiences. In the same period, building on the explosion of interest in
African American, and in particular Gullah culture, after Emancipation, the spirituals of
the Lowcountry also became popular in the United States and abroad, allowing vocal
groups to bring these traditions to a wider audience. The African American ring shout,
which was most widely practised in the Lowcountry in the late nineteenth century, was
also staged in the Minstrel Shows of the period.
Remarkably, while both Lakota and Gullah musical traditions were being
commodified, their authenticity was simultaneously being questioned and they were
increasingly seen as outdated relics of a bygone past. Anthropologists, ethnographers and
139
music scholars of the late nineteenth century were increasingly interested in the religious
and musical traditions of ethnic groups such as the Lakota and Gullah. However these
traditions were discussed and studied as though they were destined to disappear, in a type
of “salvage ethnography”. While both the scholars and the wider American public
considered Lakota and Gullah traditions to be archaic, the Lakota and Gullah engaged in
preserving them within the changing American culture of the late nineteenth century.
These developments influenced how the Lakota and Gullah practised their music in this
period.24
Despite the opposition to musical traditions on the reservations, there was an increasing
appreciation of Native American culture amongst the American public in general in the last
two decades of the nineteenth century. It is clear that some secular whites, outside the
reservation at least, enjoyed or encouraged Lakota dancing. Father Crafts’ trip to Valentine
where the storekeeper kept a drum for the Lakota to use and the residents came out to
throw coins at the drummers, illustrate this fact. At the same time Buffalo Bill Cody was
re-packaging Indian dances as commodities which could be sold to white audiences. In
1884, “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” included “scalp and war dances,” as part of the
performance, and hired Lakota men to perform. In 1885 Cody hired Sitting Bull to perform
and in the following year, a re-enactment of “Custer’s Last Fight” included several Lakota
who had taken part in the actual battle. In 1887, Black Elk performed in front of Queen
Victoria in England. He remembered performing the Omaha Dance, which had been
outlawed on his home reservation of Pine Ridge, and had been repackaged as a “War
Dance”, for the Queen. Gratified by Victoria’s response, the “women’s and the men’s
tremolo” were sent out, and then they “all sang her a song”. Queen Victoria also apparently
sympathised with the dancers. In recounting his experiences to John Neihardt in the 1930s
Black Elk claimed that the Queen said: “If I owned you Indians, […] I would never take
you around in a show like this.25
While it is possible to see Lakota’s involvement in the Wild West
Show as being exploitative, as Queen Victoria did, the men who participated had various
motivations for doing so. Describing his time in the show, Black Elk claimed that he joined
24
Phillip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, (New Haven, 1999), p.90
Foley, Father Francis M. Craft, p.22-23; Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, p.60, p.62,
p.76; DeMallie, “Teton”, p.815; Raymond J. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings given
to John G. Neihardt, (Lincoln, 1985), pp.249-251; L.G Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American
Indians, 1883-1933, (Albuquerque, 1996); Linda Scarangella McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West
Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney, (Norman, 2012)
25
140
to “see the great water, the great world, and the ways of the white men”. Other Lakota
participants were of course motivated by financial rewards or prestige. Kills Enemy Alone,
an Oglala, wrote a letter home claiming that he went to Europe “to see if I can make some
money”. Red Shirt, a Lakota member of the European Tour claimed that “our people will
wonder […] when we return to the Indian reservation and tell them what we have seen”.
However others saw an opportunity in the Wild West Shows to, in Rita Napier’s words,
partially continue their old way of life “while avoiding the fate of forced acculturation as
farmers on the reservation”. Black Heart, a Lakota performer explained the appeal of the
Wild West Shows to Indian Commissioner R.V. Belt in November 1890:
We were raised on horseback; that is the way we had to work. These men furnished
us the same work we were raised to; that is the reason we want to work for these
kind of men.
Therefore the Wild West Shows allowed the Lakota to retain aspects of their prereservation life that would have otherwise seemed impossible. In 1899, the acting agent at
Pine Ridge Reservation reported to the Commissioner for Indian Affairs that “the boys in
the day school […] speak longingly of the time when they will no longer be required to
attend school, but can let their hair grow long, dance Omaha, and go off with the show”.
The agent saw the Wild West Show as a retrogressive step for the young Lakota men and
as a means for them to escape the program of assimilation which was part of reservation
life for the Lakota.26
However at the same time that the Lakota men were performing in Wild West
shows, many critics of on-reservation dancing were claiming that they were “fake” and
vestiges of a by-gone era of Lakota culture. These efforts built upon the prevailing notion
of the “Vanishing Indian” which permeated policy making and discourse of Native
America in the late nineteenth century. In 1896 the “Friends of the Indian”, a group of
reformers, made up of white church leaders, social reformers and government officials,
who campaigned for the assimilation of Native Americans, met at a conference at Lake
Mohonk in New York. Here, Merrill E Gates, the president of Amherst College spoke,
Kills Enemy Alone, Letter to Little Whirlwind, written from Paris 1899, quoted in Rita G. Napier, “Across
the Big Water: America Indian Perceptions of Europe and Europeans, 1887-1906”, in Christian F. Feest,
Indians and Europe, an Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays., (Lincoln, 1989), p.383; Napier, “Across the
Big Water”, p.385; Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1899, Government Printing Office,
(Washington, 1899), p.42
26
141
claiming that the work of the “Friends of the Indian” could be seen as “letting go the
Indian of romance, and learning what the real Indian is and how to help him to intelligent
citizenship, to civilization, and to Christianization”. To the “Friends of the Indian”, the
solution to the Indian Problem would be found in assimilation, rather than in cultural
revitalisation. They saw the customs which were being retained in the Wild West Shows as
vanishing traditions being kept alive artificially by an American public who were
romanticising the “Old West”. The staging of Lakota dances in Wild West Shows, can
however also be seen as an effort to consign them to the past by whites, as a part of a
mythical West which could be sold as a commodity, but could no longer exist as an
authentic part of Indian culture. This idea of a “Vanishing Indian” was given credence by
the increase in anthropological studies of Native American culture during the late
nineteenth century, for example Alice Fletcher's 1882 study, "The Shadow or Ghost
Lodge", which described in detail many of the Lakota's songs and dances as well as
explaining their practical application in Lakota society.27
While white audiences began to see Lakota musical traditions as commodities in
the late nineteenth century, Gullah musical traditions were also being commodified for
white audiences in the same period. Since Emancipation African American music had
become more widely known to Americans outside the South, allowing many to make a
living out of music and dance. In the census of 1890, 1,490 African American actors and
showmen were counted. Certainly, there were many more whose main occupation was not
in music or performance but who were also employed as such. There were also many
musicians who would not identify themselves as actors or showmen. Minstrelsy was the
foremost occupation of African American entertainers in this period, and also the highest
paid. Nevertheless, the Gullah were far removed from the towns and cities in which most
of these entertainers made their living. However, in the Minstrel shows of the late
nineteenth century the African American Ring Shout, still a living tradition in many areas
of the South, particularly in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands, though frowned upon by
27
Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, p.54-61; Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting
of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, (Lake Mohonk Conference, 1897), p.8; Moses,
Wild West Shows, 1996; Maddra, Hostiles?; Ryan E. Burn, ‘“Sioux Yells” in the Dawes Era, “Lakota Indian
Play”, the Wild West, and the Literatures of Luther Standing Bear’, American Quarterly, Vol.62, 3, 2010,
pp. 617-637; Christina Welch, “Savagery on show: The popular visual representation of Native American
peoples and their lifeways at the World’s Fairs (1851–1904) and in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (1884–1904)”,
Early Popular Visual Culture, 9:4, 337-352, 2011; W. J. McGee, “The Siouan Indians, a Preliminary
Sketch”. Bureau of American Ethnology, 15th Annual Report 1893-94, “Washington D.C., 1897”; James
Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, (Washington,1896)
142
many whites and African American Church leaders like Daniel Payne, was secularised and
commodified in the “Walkaround”. In 1914, Henry Edward Krehbiel wrote that: “a secular
parody of [the shout] can easily be recalled by all persons who remember the old-fashioned
minstrel shows, for it was perpetuated in the so-called "walk-around" of those
entertainments”. The “Walkaround” involved all the performers in the show appearing for
a finale in which they sang and paraded around the stage. The Ring Shout’s secularisation
in the Walkaround, also led to it being incorporated into many more secular dances such as
the Cakewalk, the Big Apple and the Charleston.28
Although the missionaries and teachers who came South to the Lowcountry
during the Civil War wrote and published extensively on the musical traditions of the
Gullah in the 1860s and 1870s, during the 1880s and 1890s the spirituals of the
Lowcountry were brought before a wider audience through the popularity of non-Gullah
groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers. During the same period more and more scholars
wrote about the role of music in the Lowcountry South. Just as in the Lakota case however,
the authenticity and necessity of the retained traditions of the Gullah was questioned by
many. In her 1899 article on the difference between Lowcountry and Upcountry spirituals,
Marion Alexander Haskell wrote:
The negroes of South Carolina are simply following the customs
of their savage ancestors, and are unwittingly perpetuating the fetishism so deeply impressed. Some of the negroes on the coast islands
[…] afford an illustration of the long survival of customs the meaning of which
has been quite forgotten by those practising them
Indeed, to many whites the spirituals came to represent African American culture of a bygone era. White authors such as Joel Chandler Harris used spirituals to create authenticity
in descriptions of the Old South. In her 1899 article for Century Magazine, Marion
Alexander Haskell, reported that the spirituals of South Carolina, “a species of folksong as
interesting as it is unique” were being abolished by the “education of the negro”, claiming
also that “as the negro becomes educated he relinquishes these half-barbaric, but often
28
Burton W. Peretti, Lift Every Voice:The History of African American Music, (Lanham, 2009), p.49; Art
Rosenbaum, “Shout because you’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia”,
(Athens, 1998), pp.37-40; Mark Knowles, Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing, (Jefferson, 2002),
p.62; Mark Knowles, The Wicked Waltz and other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the
19th and early 20th Centuries, (Jefferson, 2009), pp.140-141
143
beautiful, old words and melodies, and their place is taken by the denominational hymns
and the Moody and Sankey songs, which are becoming more and more popular wherever
schools have sprung up”. Paying particular attention to the “coast negroes upon whom the
yoke of civilization rests but lightly”, Haskell claimed that here spirituals survived the
strongest and that hymns were “regarded as the sacred property of city churches and those
who have attained greatness through knowledge of reading, writing, and figgahs".29
Scholarly interest in Gullah culture and in particular Gullah music also continued in
the last two decades of the nineteenth century. In 1899, in an address at the Hampton
Institute in Virginia, Lucy Laney, a black educator from Augusta Georgia, asked black
writers to go to the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina to study African Americans
in their “original purity”. Charles Colcock Jones Jr, former slave-owner and Confederate
Military leader, published Gullah Folk Tales in his “Negroe Myths from the Georgia
Coast” in 1888, and A.M.H Christensen, the daughter of Massachusetts abolitionists, who
had moved to South Carolina during the Civil War, emphasised the African origin of
Gullah culture, when she published “Afro-American Folk Lore: Told Round Cabin Fires
on the Sea Islands of South Carolina” in 1893 and “Spirituals and ‘Shouts’ of Southern
Negroes” in 1894. However in many of these cases, the traditions of the Gullah were also
seen as dying traditions, which would only be preserved in such publications.30
The period from 1880 to 1900 was one in which the societies and cultures of
the Lakota and the Gullah took divergent paths. Although the end of Reconstruction
signalled a move towards a more precarious existence for many African Americans in the
South, the Gullah were comparatively less affected by the rise of white supremacy and the
introduction of Jim Crow Laws and Segregation in the Lowcountry. Aided by the progress
achieved under Reconstruction, the Gullah were able to become economically and
culturally autonomous in this period, resisting in large part the move towards the
sharecropping system that had spread all over the American South and remaining relatively
Rosenbaum, Shout because you’re Free, p.40; H. Carrington Bolton, “Decoration of Graves of Negroes in
South Carolina”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 14, 1891, p. 214; John Jr. Lovell, “The
Social Implications of the Negroe Spiritual”, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 8, No. 4, 1939, pp. 634643, at p.635; Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus: His Songs and his Sayings, (New York, 1892); Haskell,
"Negro Spirituals,", p.577
30
Harris, Deep Souths, pp.183-184; Charles Colcock Jones Jr., Negroe Myths from the Georgia Coast,
(Columbia, 1888), A.M.H Christensen, “Afro-American Folk Lore: Told Round Cabin Fires on the Sea
Islands of South Carolina”, (Boston, 1892); A.M.H Christensen, “Spirituals and ‘Shouts’ of the Southern
Negroes”, Journal of American Folklore, 1894, pp.154-155; Jan Harold Brunvand, American Folklore: An
Encyclopedia, Garland Publishing, (New York, 1996), p.296
29
144
isolated. In contrast, after 1880, the Lakota became confined to the reservations and the
agencies provided for them in the treaties they had signed with the United States. The
hardship that accompanied the loss of their traditional way of life affected the Lakota’s
preservation of their cultural traditions. Faced with the coercive and supervisory presence
of Indian Agents and missionaries, the Lakota’s musical and religious traditions were
especially vulnerable as they were seen as threatening to the project of Assimilation.
The stark difference between the degrees of development in Lakota and Gullah
Christianities by 1880 is one of great significance. By 1880, the Gullah had been gradually
exposed to Christianity for two centuries, and this had allowed them to tailor the religion to
their own African-derived musical and religious traditions. In contrast, the Lakota were
only beginning their prolonged exposure to Christianity through the missionaries on the
reservations and they would face an intensity of cultural repression never felt by the Gullah
in the Lowcountry.
Nevertheless, the Lakota’s and Gullah’s musical traditions began to attract
the interest of whites, both in the United States and in Europe. The commodification of
musical traditions for these audiences occurred in combination with their demonization
within their true contexts of Lakota and Gullah religious ceremonies. This
commodification was also matched by the increased questioning of the authenticity of such
traditions. Yet, the contrasting economic and social realities of Lakota and Gullah lives
determined the outcome of the pressures that were being applied to their cultures. The
Gullah’s isolation in the Lowcountry, where even the hierarchy of the African American
Churches had little authority, ensured that the syncretistic tradition of the Ring Shout could
continue relatively unhindered by the disapproval of Church leaders and middle class
blacks well into the twentieth century. In contrast, the desperate situation of the Lakota
reservations created a tinderbox of cultural repression whose spark became the spread of
the syncretistic Ghost Dance movement and which ultimately resulted in the massacre of
over one hundred and fifty Lakota at Wounded Knee in 1890.
The commodification of Gullah and Lakota music in the late nineteenth century
was tied to the white American culture’s consignment of both traditions to the past, as
relics of the Old West and of the Antebellum South. Scholars in the developing fields of
Anthropology and Ethnomusicology looked with increased interest at the musical and
religious cultures of both the Lakota and Gullah, and attempted to record them before they
disappeared or were assimilated into modern American society. Yet, these traditions were
very much alive, and in the case of the Gullah were openly flourishing. The Lakota’s
145
musical traditions, though, remained at odds with the program of Assimilation on the
reservations, and would come under more intense pressure in this period.
However, the Lakota Ghost Dance that occurred in the late 1880s attempted to
reinvigorate Lakota society by making use of traditional music and dance culture in a
syncretistic religious movement. Conversely, while the Gullah were comparatively free to
practise their particular musical traditions, the hierarchy of the African American
Churches, which were the foundation of Gullah society, continued to frown upon the more
“traditional” aspects of Gullah religion, especially the Ring Shout.
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CHAPTER 5
The Ghost Dance and Ring Shout
The Lakota Ghost Dance and the Gullah Ring Shout were rituals that had evolved over
different time-scales, and had existed in isolation from another in different regions of the
United States. However, by 1890 both the Ghost Dance and Ring Shout represented the
long periods of cultural change experienced by the Lakota and Gullah since the
Seventeenth Century. Although the Ghost Dance, only existed among the Lakota for two
years, it built on musical traditions developed over centuries of cultural change and
adaptation. The Ring Shout also built on centuries old African traditions transported to the
New World by slaves. In the slave societies of the Southern plantations, the Ring Shout
acted as a link between African religious rituals and the newly Christianised culture of the
slaves. Nevertheless the performance of both rituals in the late 19th century represented
similar responses to the processes of assimilation and segregation occurring in the United
States at the time.
By the late 1880s, the Lakota had become largely dependent on the agencies for food.
However, the government rations were often delayed or fell short of what they should have
been. Cattle were delivered to the reservations alive, but poor conditions and the cold
winter weather on the Northern Plains, led to them to lose large amounts of weight before
they were slaughtered by the Lakota, in what were effectively mock Buffalo hunts and an
attempt to hang onto pre-reservation cultural traditions. However after 1880, the
reservation officials began to butcher the cattle for the Lakota, without providing them
with the hides or the organs, in what one reservation official called a “civilised” manner.
Life outside the agencies had also changed dramatically. In 1870, the white population of
the Dakota Territory numbered 5,000. By 1880, it had risen to 134,000, including 17,000
in the Black Hills region, the spiritual home of the Lakota. With survival difficult and their
surroundings and cultures changing beyond recognition, the Lakota were put in an
increasingly desperate situation. While the hardship of reservation life drove some Lakota
to the Christian Churches others looked for more traditional solutions. One example was
the Ghost Dance, which spread from the Great Basin tribes to the Lakota reservations,
following the traditional method of cultural dissemination from tribe to tribe on the
147
Northern Great Plains. The dance was also an attempt by the Lakota to adapt to the
destruction of their traditional culture during the 1880s. Their chief religious celebration,
the Sun Dance, had been outlawed in 1883, and the hardship of that decade pushed the
desperate Lakota towards the hope of the Ghost Dance Movement, not only for the
resurgence of their traditional way of life, but also of retaining traditional methods of
worship including dancing and chanting.1
The Ring Shout was a syncretistic form of worship which was influenced by
Christianity, Islam as well as West African ritual practise. The word “shout” is thought to
have come from the Arabic word “saut” which described the circular fervent dance around
the Kabaa in Mecca. In the new world it had become a ritual performance shared by slaves
of non-Islamic heritage, such as those from West Central African who were brought in
their thousands to the Lowcountry in the 18th and nineteenth century. During its time in the
Lowcountry the shout became a syncretistic ritual within the Christianising culture of the
Gullah. Later, the Ring Shout was preserved within the sanctioned environment of the
Praise House on the slave plantations. While the ring shout pre-dated Christianisation of
the slaves, it took on an added significance within the context of the Slave Church and the
Praise House. Although the shout was tolerated as Christian by Missionaries and planters,
to the Gullah the shout was part of a Christianity that was exclusively theirs. The shout
occurred away from white eyes in the praise houses and the music that accompanied the
shout was not the hymns that were sung in the Church service, but the Spirituals which
were the Gullah’s own creation. Charlotte Forten, a Port Royal teacher described how “at
the close of the Praise-Meeting, they all shake hands in the most solemn manner”, but then
“as a kind of appendix, they have a grand "shout" during which they sing their own
hymns”. Only those who had been converted and accepted into the Praise House
Community could dance the Ring Shout. Although non-members might know how to
dance the Shout, it was not until they were accepted as members that they were allowed to
1
Jeffrey Ostler, The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, (New York, 2010),
pp.111-112; Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, (New York,
1993), p.235; Foley, Father Francis Craft, p.86; Rani Henrik Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890,
(Lincoln, 2008); Alice Beck Kehoe, The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalisation, (New York, 1989);
Raymond J. DeMallie, “The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account”, Pacific Historical Review,
Vol. 51, No. 4, 1982, pp. 385-405; Sam A. Maddra, Hostiles: The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bills
Wild West Show, (Norman, 2006); L. G. Moses, “"The Father Tells Me So!" Wovoka: The Ghost Dance
Prophet”, American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, (1985), pp. 335-351
148
participate in the ritual. New members would, in fact, often be asked to lead the Shout on
their first night. 2
The Jesuit Missionary Father Francis Craft’s first experience of the Ghost Dance, was
on an occasion he travelled from Rosebud to Pine Ridge. His description of the dance was
surprising, as he described it as “all right, quite Catholic and even edifying”. However not
all religious leaders were as sympathetic as Craft. On October 20th 1890, the Sioux Falls
Press printed a statement from the Episcopal Bishop of the Niobrara Jurisdiction, Bishop
William Hobart Hare, describing the Ghost Dance Movement. Hare wrote that:
old heathen ideas with snatches of Christian truth and have managed to excite an
amount of enthusiasm which is amazing […] I look upon the movement as the
effort of heathenism grown desperate to restore its vigor […] Many of the
missionaries have long been expecting such a struggle
To the Church leaders and Missionaries the Ghost Dance was therefore seen as an affront
to their mission of Christianisation and Assimilation. While the Ghost Dance religion
“borrowed” some of its beliefs from Christianity, it was in actual fact a ritual movement
grounded in Native American tradition, and an attempt to use syncretistic beliefs and
rituals to combat the awful conditions on the reservations at the time. In his description of
the Lakota Ghost Dance, Lakota man George Sword claimed that the Lakota believed that
the dance’s creator, the Paiute named Wovoka, was the son of the Christian God, and that
he had markings, on his feet, hands and back, in what was clearly a reference to Christ’s
stigmata. The Ghost Dance songs also displayed a Christian influence, as some of them
spoke about the Messiah or the Father and to the promise of eternal life. Nevertheless, the
Ghost Dance also retained aspects of the Sun Dance, such as the attaching of offerings to a
“sacred tree”, thereby representing an effort by the Lakota to retain elements of their
musical traditions within a sanctioned religious culture. Revitalisation movements which
featured religious prophets (Wovoka in this case) were not a new phenomenon in North
America. Similar movements had occurred among the Pueblo Indians in the late
seventeenth century and among the Iroquois and Shawnee in the early nineteenth century.
Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition of Coastal
Georgia, (Athens, 1998), p.3; Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and
Community Culture among the Gullah, (New York, 1988), p.297-298
2
149
All these cases occurred when the native societies were going through a period of profound
change.3
Perhaps because of its gradual evolution, the Ring Shout was more tolerated by
Christian Missionaries than the Ghost Dance was. In some instances the Ring Shout was
the only music or dance tolerated by slave-owners or missionaries. On the Hopeton
plantation in Glynn County Georgia, Methodist Missionaries outlawed music and dance,
but allowed the slaves to participate in the “shout” after religious services. Although
eighteenth- century Methodism involved a more physical expression of religious fervor,
which had been influenced by the First Great Awakening, by the Nineteenth century this
method of worship was in decline. William Capers, superintendent of Methodist missions
in the South, asked for slaves to be allowed to "be themselves" as they worshipped in their
churches. Therefore, religious cultural retentions were tolerated by many planters and
missionaries, even if other aspects of slave culture were not. The British Geologist Charles
Lyell spent some time on the Hopeton plantation in this period and described how:
At the Methodist prayer-meetings, they are permitted to move round rapidly
in a ring, joining hands in token of brotherly love, presenting the right hand and
then the left, in which maneuver, I am told, they sometImes contrive to take
enough exercise to serve as a substitute for the dance, it being in fact a kind of
spiritual Boulanger
Baptist planters also tolerated the shout as harmless behaviour and in some cases believed
that the shouts served as "periodic releases for the slaves”. In Margaret Creel’s words, the
shout ritual can therefore be seen as “a cathartic which enabled slaves to act out tensions,
anxieties, and suppressed facets of themselves in an approved manner”4.
While the Ghost Dance and Ring Shout’s relationship to Christianity, as well as the
response of missionaries to the rituals differed, they both shared some characteristics in
3
M.A DeWolfe Howe, The Life and Labours of Bishop Hare: Apostle to the Sioux, (New York, 1912),
pp.236-237; Thomas Foley, Father Francis Craft, 2002, p.85; James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion
and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, (Washington, 1896), p.797; Gloria A. Young, “Intertribal Religious
Movements”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.), The Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13 (Plains),
Part 2, (Washington, 2001), pp.996-1010, at p.1001; Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, p.23,
pp.57-58; Anthony F.C Wallace, "Revitalization Movements," American Anthropologist , Vol. 58, No. 2
(1956) , pp. 264-281, at p.264; Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion, 657- 763.
4
Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1849), Vol.1, pp.269-270; Creel,
A Peculiar People, p.298
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their performance. The Ghost Dance itself, involved a round dance, a large circle of
dancers standing side by side and moving in a clockwise direction for several hours at a
time. The leader of the dance, often called a prophet, would wave an eagle wing fan in the
dancer’s faces as well as shining mirrors in their eyes. This coupled with the hypnotic
effect of the dancing and singing, and the fasting of the dancers, would induce trances,
where the dancers would be brought to the afterword to see their departed relatives living
in a place where plenty of bison also roamed. Afterwards the trances were recalled and
preserved in the creation of “Ghost Dance Songs”. These songs, transcribed by Emma C.
Sickels, a schoolteacher on Pine Ridge, displayed the hopes the Ghost Dancers had for the
return of the Buffalo Hunt, and their wish to meet their dead relatives again. Essentially,
the beliefs associated with the Ghost Dance predicted that Native traditions would
overcome the pressures of American “civilisation”. The dance itself was the means through
which these aims could be achieved.5
Trances and visions were not a new phenomenon in Lakota religion. For the
Lakota, visions helped the practitioner to “find direction” in their life. Pre-Christian rituals
often had trances and visions as their objective. The “Vision Quest” was one of the most
important coming of age ceremonies for the Lakota, in which the participant removed
themselves from their community and fasted in isolation, usually in a place of spiritual
significance or natural beauty. Most often practised by men, the participant received a
medicine bundle and a song, and then had their visions interpreted by “medicine men”. In
the Sun Dance, the most important Lakota ritual, the participants suspended themselves
from a large pole with rawhide and sticks which pierced their skins. Again, the “dancers”
fasted, and coupled with the piercings this was intended to cause hallucinations and
visions. The Sun Dance was also a ceremony of renewal and regeneration which was
intended to ensure the buffalo would remain plentiful. The Ghost Dance therefore clearly
combined traditional Lakota beliefs and ritual practises with Christian elements in a new
syncretistic ritual. 6
Gloria A. Young, “Intertribal Religious Movements”, in Raymond J. DeMallie, (ed.), The Handbook of
North American Indians, Vol.13 (Plains), Part 2, (Washington, 2001), pp.996-1010, at p.1001; Andersson,
The Lakota Ghost Dance, pp.57-58; Richard W. Voss, Robert Prue, “Vision Quest”, in Leeming et al.,
Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, (New York, 2010); Foley, Father Francis Craft, p.86
6
Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, p.51; Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, pp.172-203;
Neihardt and Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, 160-216; DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather, p.III-41;James R.
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 176-91
5
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Despite the fact that whites, including the missionaries and teachers who came
South during the Port Royal Experiment, looked at the ring shout as a “pagan” and
“savage” dance, the Gullah maintained that the Shout was a religious ritual, and that each
step and movement was of spiritual significance. Although there were variations, the truest
type of ring shout, as described by Musicologist Dena Epstein, involved participants
moving around in a circle, without crossing or lifting their feet, accompanied by a group of
singers. A letter from a white teacher, who went to St Helena Island on the South Carolina
Coast to educate the freed slaves in 1862, described the shout as “a slow religious trot,
accompanied by loud singing of a few lines repeated over and over again” with the end of
each line sung “marked by a peculiar jerk of the body.” The ring shout was in fact a
manifestation of traditions of possession trance that were brought to the New World by the
slaves. Participants in the Gullah ring shout achieved an altered state of consciousness, and
became possessed as they reached the climax of the shout. It was interpreted as an
“unusual behavior inspired and controlled by an outside agent” (in the Christian setting it
was the Holy Spirit), or else it was seen as the participant’s personality being completely
displaced by the Holy Spirit inhabiting their body. Accounts of the shout describe three or
four people standing outside the ring singing clapping and gesticulating, while participants
in the ring itself shuffled along on their heels, following each other in a circle, never
crossing their feet and slightly bending the knees, in what Laura Towne described as “a
type of curtesy”. The ring shout starts off slowly, but becomes faster and faster until “only
the most marked part of the refrain is sung and the shuffling, stamping and clapping get
furious." Calling the shout she witnessed a “savage, heathenish dance”, Towne described
how the floor “shook so that it seemed dangerous”. The dancers, after a long period of time
would rest briefly, but then continue on with the shout for an “astonishing” length of time.7
The clearest difference between the Ghost Dance and Ring Shout of the late
nineteenth century was in their suppression and survival. The difference in the context in
which both the rituals occurred also contributed to the contrasting responses by whites to
both rituals. Of concern for the United States Government was that the Ghost Dance would
7
Creel, A Peculiar People, pp.298-299; Epstein, Dena J., Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to
the Civil War, (Urbana, 1977), p.286; W.C.G, (William Channing Gannett), Educational Commission for
Freedmen, 1st Annual Report, (Boston, 1863), p.25; Robert Simpson, The Shout and Shouting in Slave
Religion of the United States, Southern Quarterly, Vol.23, No.1, (1985), pp.34-37; Sciela S. Walker,
Ceremonial Spirit Possession in Africa and Afro-America (Leiden, 1972), pp3-9, pp.52-58; H. G. Spaulding,
"Under the Palmetto," Continental Monthly 4 (August, 1963), pp.197-200; Holland, Letters and Diaries,
pp.22-23
152
encourage revolt among the Indians on the Reservation, and troops were dispatched to Pine
Ridge in November. In the tense weeks that followed, Sitting Bull was shot in a botched
arrest attempt, heightening tensions further, leading to the U.S Army’s fear of “a genuine,
full-fledged Indian War”. Father Francis Craft blamed Agent McLaughlin for Sitting Bull’s
death, and in an article for the “Freeman’s Journal”, he wrote that “all this Indian trouble
can be traced […] to its true cause, starvation, abject misery, and despair, the cause of
which is the outrageous conduct of the Indian Department for many years”. After Sitting
Bull’s death, several hundred Hunkpapa set off from Standing Rock to the Cheyenne River
Reservation. Although most returned, about one hundred continued in order to join up with
Big Foot’s Miniconjou Band, 350 strong, who were on the way to Pine Ridge Reservation.
Big Foot’s band was intercepted at Wounded Knee Creek outside Pine Ridge. Father Craft
accompanied Colonel James W. Forsyth, commander of the 7th Cavalry, to Wounded Knee
late on the 28th of December. Early the next morning Craft negotiated with the Miniconjou
as Forsyth began the process of their disarmament. After a stand-off, a confused and deaf
Miniconjou called Black Fox fired off his weapon. The resulting gunfight, in which the
Hotchkiss guns perched over Wounded Knee creek were fired on the Miniconjou, led to
the deaths of over 150 Lakota. The massacre at Wounded Knee led to the demise of the
Ghost Dance among the Lakota. The Suppression of the dance was therefore not only a
blow to the cultural and political freedom of the Lakota on the reservations, but it was also
a blow to the Lakota’s efforts to syncretise their musical traditions within the sanctioned
religion of Christianity. From that point forward Lakota Christianity would, in large part
become part of a system of what William K. Powers has called “dual-religious
participation”8.
While the reinvigoration of Lakota musical and religious traditions in the
form of the Ghost Dance in the late 1880s led to the Wounded Knee Massacre, the
preservation of Gullah musical traditions in the Lowcountry South never attracted such an
antagonistic response from whites or from other African Americans. Nevertheless, the
practise of the Ring Shout began to be seen as an archaic African-derived tradition which
had no place in the African American Church. Unlike the Ghost Dance, the Ring Shout
8
Foley, Father Francis Craft, p.86; Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance; Kehoe, The Ghost Dance:
Ethnohistory and Revitalisation; DeMallie, “The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account”, pp.
385-405; Maddra, Hostiles; Moses, "The Father Tells Me So!", pp. 335-351; David Lindelfeld,
"Syncretism," World History Connected, November 2006
<http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/4.1/lindenfeld.html> (28 Aug. 2013).
153
was an established tradition by the late nineteenth century and had rarely faced State or
Federal opposition in the two centuries it had existed in North America. Instead it had been
Missionaries and Church leaders, which had opposed it as being un-Christian. With
Emancipation and then Segregation, the influence of white Church leaders in the
Lowcountry had disappeared and instead it was only the hierarchy of the African American
Churches who opposed the Ring Shout by the late nineteenth century. Unlike the
spirituals, which although seen as a relic of the past, were tolerated and elevated as an art
form in the late nineteenth century, the Ring Shout was denigrated by many. Lucy Laney,
the same woman who had asked black scholars to study the culture of the Gullah on the
Sea Islands, campaigned against the “Egypt Walk” celebration of African American
Churches in Georgia. The “Egypt Walk” was, in many scholars’ view, the same as the
Ring Shout. James Weldon Johnson, the black scholar, poet and author who grew up in
Jacksonville Florida in the late nineteenth century, collected and disseminated the spirituals
of the South, but did not value “shout songs” at all. Johnson described the Shout as he
remembered it from growing up, writing that the “shout songs”, were “not true spirituals,
nor even truly religious; in fact they are not actually songs. They might he termed quasireligious or semi-barbaric music”. Johnson wrote that the “’Ring Shout,’ in truth, is
nothing more than the survival of a primitive African dance”. He also claimed that in the
late nineteenth century:
the "ring shout" was looked upon as a very questionable form of worship. It was
distinctly frowned upon by a great many colored people. Indeed, I do not recall
ever seeing a ‘ring shout’ except after the regular services. […] The more educated
ministers and members, as fast as they were able to brave the primitive element in
the churches, placed a ban on the ‘ring shout’.
In fact many church leaders were also negatively associating the spirituals with
the shout and were attempting to replace the spirituals with more refined hymns. Art
Rosenbaum claims that Daniel Payne’s abhorrence of folk-style songs as well as his
rejection of “heathenish" dancing (shouting) was probably shared by most highly educated
members of the black clergy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries”.
Rosenbaum points out the irony in the fact that while the black clergy were criticising the
retention of the spirituals in this period, at the same time, “through the performances of
such polished groups as the Fisk Jubilee Singers”, the spirituals “were gaining acclaim as
154
an art form”. Daniel Payne’s criticism of the shout probably contributed to the Gullah’s
increased reluctance to perform the shout in front of outsiders, as mentioned by several
observers. Lawrence Levine certainly believes that this was the case. However, in reality
the influence of African American Church leaders like Payne on the rituals of the Gullah
Church in the late nineteenth century was minimal9.
Historian Sterling Stuckey wrote that: “By the late nineteenth century it was too
late for African religion-and therefore for African culture-to be contained or reversed
because its advocates were practically the entire black population in America. The
essential features of the Ring Shout were present in one form or another and hardly a state
in the Union was without its practitioners following slavery. Moreover, the Shout
continued to be the principal context in which creativity occurred”. However the “African
Religion” as outlined by Sterling Stuckey, was overwhelmingly Christian and AfricanAmerican rather than “African”. In reality it was the African-American-ness of the religion
of Southern blacks, even those who were comparatively more African like the Gullah,
which was irreversible after two centuries of development, and the influence of a myriad of
African cultures. While, as Stuckey suggests, the essential features of the Ring Shout, as an
African cultural retention, were present all over the South, these traditions had been more
successfully retained within the Christian Religion of the Gullah10.
The Ghost Dance movement was an effort to re-invigorate pre-Christian Lakota
traditions in a time when they were in decline. In contrast, after two centuries of gradual
Christianisation the Gullah identified their religion as Christian, and they instead focussed
on preserving musical traditions such as the Ring Shout. The Ring Shout was also seen as a
pre-Christian African tradition by many whites as well as black leaders, despite the fact
that by the late nineteenth century it had been incorporated into Christian celebration.
Gullah cultural resistance, therefore, took the form of the preservation of Africanness in
the Gullah version of Christianity. The Ring Shout, though, was preserved within the
context of a white-derived Christianity, albeit an African-influenced version. In contrast
with this, the Lakota, whose experience of Christianity was only several decades old by the
Paul Harvey, Freedom’s Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War
through the Civil Rights Era, (Chapel Hill, 2005), p.115; Harris, Deep Souths, p.194; James Weldon Johnson,
The Book of American Negro Spirituals, (New York, 1925), pp.32-33; Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re
Free, pp.40-41; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, p.165-166; Marion Alexander Haskell,
"Negro Spirituals," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Volume 58 Issue 4, (1899)., p.577; Parrish,
Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, p.55
10
Stuckey, quoted in Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free, p.17
9
155
end of the nineteenth century, associated the relatively new religion of Christianity with the
destructive impact of the white presence on the Northern Plains, and, as a result, looked
mostly to their own pre-Christian traditions when they embraced the Ghost Dance to resist
the changes on their lives enforced by whites at the end of the nineteenth century.
Despite the Commodification of aspects of their musical traditions, the
Gullah and Lakota continued to face the demonization of other aspects of their religious
and musical cultures. The Lakota dances, while sanctioned in the repackaged setting of the
Wild West Shows, were outlawed on the reservations. The Lakota, as a result, attempted to
preserve their religious and musical traditions away from the eyes of whites, or to
reinvigorate them in acceptable forms. The profound changes that were forced upon their
society in this period ultimately resulted in their desperate attempt to return to the prereservation way of life. This is the background that explains the rise of the syncretistic
Ghost Dance movement which spread to the Northern Plains in the late 1880s. In contrast
with the Lakota, the Gullah were not forced to abandon their musical traditions to the same
degree. Nevertheless, the disapproval by the hierarchy of the African American Churches
and by the African American middle classes of rituals such as the Ring Shout was a reality
in the Lowcountry South. In light of this, the undeterred persistence of the Ring Shout
illustrates the degree of cultural autonomy of the Gullah in the late nineteenth century.
The difference in retention or lack of retention in regard to the two
traditions of the Ring Shout and Ghost Dance is symptomatic of the relation that the
Lakota and Gullah had with Christianity and with the United States in the late nineteenth
century. The Lakota’s Ghost Dance, although containing syncretistic Christian elements,
was not deemed acceptable in the culturally repressive atmosphere of the reservations, in
which assimilation was the aim of Indian Agents and missionaries. Instead, the Lakota
turned to a system of “dual religious participation” which continued well into the 20th
century, in which they took part in Christian sacraments, while also retaining traditional
practises such as the use of medicine men and vision seeking through the Sun Dance and
other rituals. In the Lowcountry South, where segregation led to a minimum influence of
whites over the Gullah, the syncretism of the Ring Shout was seen instead, as an
acceptable means of cultural adaptation established over the two centuries of African
American presence in the region. The hierarchy of the African American churches, though
opposed to the Ring Shout, was itself a product of this rich history of syncretistic
adaptation, and did not have sufficient political or cultural influence over the Gullah to
impose a different type of change.
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CHAPTER 6
Lakota and Gullah Musical Traditions in the Early Twentieth Century
By 1900 the societies of the Lakota and Gullah entered a period of relative stability. The
fractious relationship the Lakota had with the United States Indian Agents and
Missionaries improved in the early decades of the twentieth century in comparison to the
previous two decades. The increased commodification and general awareness of Lakota
and Gullah musical traditions continued into the twentieth century against the backdrop of
changing social and political realities.
The attempts to Christianise and Americanise both ethnic groups’ musical
traditions by teaching non-traditional music to Gullah and Lakota children in schools run
by white teachers, missionaries or agents of the United States continued into the twentieth
century. As part of this process, teachers and missionaries attempted to use music as a
method of instilling the morals and values of the United States in education of the children.
The Penn School on St Helena Island and the on and off-reservation schools for the Lakota
also attempted to curb the practise of traditional forms of music amongst the children and
encouraged more acceptable forms of music through the teaching of European instruments
and performance of European derived musical styles.
However, as both the Lakota and Gullah were increasingly willing to participate in
Christianity and in the wider Americanisation of their societies, the suppression of their
religious and musical traditions was also lessened somewhat in this period. For the Lakota,
the Sioux Catholic Congress, which had begun in the late nineteenth century, built on the
Catholic missionaries’ willingness to embrace Sioux custom, and incorporated elements of
the forbidden Sun Dance into its rituals. However, while the negotiation of acceptable
cultural retentions in the Sioux Catholic Congresses allowed the Lakota to retain certain
practises related to their traditional religious rituals, their musical traditions continued to be
excluded in favour of Christian Hymns. Nevertheless, in day to day life on the
reservations, the retention of traditions by Lakota catechists and in the Lakota sodalities
often went unchecked. Increasingly, opposition to Lakota musical celebration in the
157
twentieth century, was based not on its perceived contradiction to Christianity, but on its
association with other cultural retentions that were seen as disruptive to the programme of
Assimilation pursued by the United States. In contrast, by the early twentieth century, the
Gullah had successfully retained a degree of control over their version of Christianity and
instead of facing opposition from the United States they continued to face criticism of their
African-derived religious traditions from within African American society. In the
Lowcountry South, in fact, missionaries and school teachers were willing to embrace the
Ring Shout as part of Gullah Christianity since the time of Emancipation. Instead, criticism
of the Ring Shout from within the African American community would lead to the
restriction of the tradition to smaller and more rural Gullah churches. However, the
geographic isolation of the Gullah from twentieth century cultural changes within African
American society in the South allowed them to preserve these traditions for longer. As a
result the Sea Islands and Lowcountry became synonymous with the ritual of the Ring
Shout.
The early twentieth century was also a time in which Lakota and
Gullah musical traditions were increasingly part of the wider politicisation,
commodification and secularisation of Native American and African American musical
traditions. The increased value the commodification attached to these traditions gave the
Gullah and Lakota enhanced political power and a reinvigorated cultural identity. This was
a development that would lay the foundation for significant political movements later in
the twentieth century. The Lakota made use of their musical traditions in the negotiation of
acceptable forms of musical performance, as the commodification and secularisation of
Native American music reached its high point in the early twentieth century. The Gullah,
in contrast, were at the fringes of the secularisation and commodification of African
American musical traditions. However, the music of the Gullah, in particular the Spiritual,
was given worldwide attention by the recognition given to them by musicians, composers,
and scholars. The Spirituals were also considered significant cultural traditions by African
American Intellectuals, who saw the Africanness of Gullah culture, in particular the
Spirituals, as a source of pride and as a means to proclaim African identity in the early
twentieth century United States.
158
i.
Schoolhouse Songs:
The Education of Lakota and Gullah Children through Music
In the early twentieth century, a concerted effort was made by the United States
Government, as well as by Missionaries and Humanitarians to Americanise both the
Lakota’s and Gullah’s cultures. A large part of these efforts was focused on the Schooling
of Lakota and Gullah children, which had begun in the nineteenth century. Since the 1860s
and 1870s, the Gullah and Lakota children had been educated by Missionaries. The
twentieth century saw a rise in the number of Lakota children in both the Reservation
Mission Schools and the off-Reservation Boarding Schools and in the number of Gullah
children in schools such as the Penn School in St Helena Island. These educational
institutions, in their efforts to Americanise Lakota and Gullah families, influenced the
performance and practice of music of this younger generation. Teachers also used music to
impose the ideals of white American society on the Lakota and Gullah schoolchildren,
most notably in regards to religion, work, thrift and temperance.
In the early twentieth century, the Federal Government’s and Christian
churches’ policy of Assimilation that had begun in the late nineteenth century began to
apply to various aspects of Lakota society and culture. Jesuit Missionaries increasingly had
to deal with the destructive forces of alcoholism on the Lakota reservations in this period.
In 1907, Father Emil Perrig described having to rescue a child from being beaten by her
drunken Lakota parents. The missionaries therefore encouraged temperance among their
schoolchildren and at the Catholic Sioux Congress of 1910, many Lakota took a
temperance pledge, and temperance societies were formed. The reluctance of the Lakota to
participate in the work involved in their move to a sedentary agricultural existence became
another concern of Jesuit missionaries and Indian agents alike. Father Eugene Buechel, at
Holy Rosary Mission, argued in his sermons to the Lakota that work and thrift were an
essential part of religion, claiming that it was “the law of God that we should work”.
However, the Jesuit Mission Schools extended their program of Americanisation to the
musical traditions of their school children, teaching them Christian Hymns, in both the
159
English and Lakota languages. The mission schools also taught the children how to play
European style Instruments, and the “well drilled orchestra with piano and organ” gave
several performances a year, which included non-traditional songs and performance styles.
A letter from a young Lakota man from Pine Ridge, to an off-reservation friend in 1898,
described how they had a “fine band” there, in which he and his cousin played the cornet
and clarinet. This education of Lakota Children through music fit into the wider process of
Assimilation that was occurring in the Unites States in this period, one which was seen as a
necessary pre-cursor to their achievement, in Frederick E. Hoxie’s words, of “partial
membership in the nation”. The acceptance of the Lakota as participants in United States
society, therefore, was based on their abandonment of certain cultural traditions.11
For the Lakota, the off-reservation Boarding Schools would significantly
affect the preservation of traditional culture. In 1896, the United States Congress
dramatically reduced the amount of funding for Mission Schools on the Reservations,
preferring to fund the off-reservation Boarding Schools instead. Those who ran the offreservation schools were also usually Protestants of various denominations, and the drive
to educate Lakota children off the reservations was seen by the Catholic Church to be
motivated by the anti-Catholic sentiment of the Office of Indian Affairs, many of whose
officials were also members of the anti-Catholic American Protective Association. Lakota
parents campaigned against the off-reservation boarding schools, writing letters
complaining of Government harassment which had the intention of forcing them to send
their children to these schools. Due to the economic hardship on the reservations at the
beginning of the twentieth century, the only option open for many Lakota parents was to
send their children away, especially when rations were removed for those children who
chose the Mission schools. Indian children were expected to shed any aspects of their
traditional cultures when they arrived at Boarding School, including their musical
11
Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920, (Lincoln,
1984); Emil Perrig Diary, July 27th, 1907, Series 7/1, Box 19, Folder 8, Holy Rosary Mission Archives ,
CNAC; “Great Catholic Sioux Congress of 1910”, The Indian Sentinel, 1911, p.6; Ross Alexander Enochs,
The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux: A Study of Pastoral Ministry, (Kansas, 1996), p.37; The Indian
Sentinel, 1908, p.30; Florentine Digmann Diary, November, 1886, Series 7/1, Box 16, Folder 10, Holy
Rosary Mission Archives, CNAC; Reverend Florentine Digmann to Dr. Charles E. McChesney, August 3 rd ,
1900, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC; Reverend Florentine Digmann to Dr.
Charles E. McChesney, August 3rd , 1900, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC;
Florentine Digmann, 1927, “St Francis Mission”, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 7, Box 5, Folder 12,
CNAC; Otto B. Eagle to Bessie F. Butler, January 7th 1898, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1/1, Box 1,
Folder 1, CNAC; 13th Annual Entertainment of St. Francis Mission Boarding School, St. Francis Mission
Archives, Series 1/1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC; Florentine Digmann, 1927, “St Francis Mission”, St. Francis
Mission Archives, Series 7, Box 5, Folder 12, CNAC; Jon Allan Reyhner and Jeanne Eder, American Indian
Education: A History, (Norman, 2004)
160
traditions. Violations of these rules led to measures, including the withholding of food and
water, confinement, and corporal punishment. Young Lakota children, being removed from
their families, were, therefore, also removed from their own cultures and educational
traditions.12
Similar to the Lakota Schools, the Penn School in St Helena, South
Carolina, was based on a model of schooling for Gullah children which emphasised the
importance of hard work and thrift for its students. In 1900, the Penn School became the
Penn Normal, Agricultural and Industrial School with an industrial arts curriculum, a move
that was representative of the wider movement in African American education from an
academic to a vocational curriculum, with the focus on assimilation and social integration.
Although the teachers at the Penn school had also emphasised the importance of
temperance since its beginning in the 1860s, the early twentieth century temperance
movement led to an increase in the emphasis on temperance in descriptions of
advancement of African Americans in the South. In 1903, a writer, called T.G.W, claimed
that the Penn School had made the people of St Helena, as “temperate and moral as the
average country communities in the North, and far superior to many portions of Rhode
Island and Delaware”. Indeed, when the temperance of the islanders was threatened by the
plan to build a dispensary there in 1907, Ellen Murray, the principal of Penn School, wrote
a protest to the Beaufort Gazette Newspaper. In the early twentieth century programs for
the School Performances of the Penn School, many of the performances by the School
Children show a clear effort to instil the values of temperance in the children, and the local
public, through the use of song.13
The Penn School also undoubtedly attempted to control the performance of
traditional song and dance among students in much the same way as the Lakota Schools
did. The 1905 “Circular of General Information” for students, for example, outlined that
dancing was forbidden on school grounds. The perceived success of the School by
outsiders was often related to the performance of music, and to the school’s efforts to
mould the musical cultures of its students. An article in the Wilmington Morning News
12
Kathy Marie Bowker, The Boarding School Legacy, Ten Contemporary Lakota Women tell their Stories,
PhD Dissertation, Montana State University, 2007, p.2; Enochs, The Jesuit Mission, p.40-41
13
Wilbur Cross, Gullah Culture in America, (Westport, 2008), p.48; Michael C. Wolfe, The Abundant Life
Prevails: The Religious Traditions on St Helena Island, (Waco, 2000); Booker T. Washington, Up from
Slavery, (New York, 1901); W.E.B, Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, (Chicago, 1903); “The Penn Normal,
Industrial , and Agriculture School, St Helena, SC”, Penn School Papers, Collection 03615, Series 3, Folder
424, (Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933), SHC; “A Protest”, Penn School Papers, Series 3, Folder 424, SHC;
“Temperance Meetings Programs 1912-1914”, Penn School Papers, Series 2, Folder 364, Vol.27, SHC
161
from April 4th 1907, describes how, each morning in the Penn School chapel, “the soft,
melodious voices of the children” sang hymns of “joy, of praise and longing”, and the
writer added “how wise it is to thus preserve them”. Music continued to be an important
feature of the Penn School into the second decade of the twentieth century, as was the case
in the 1914 Exhibition. A newspaper report describes how the Penn School Quartette,
“sang delightfully” at the exhibition, where the whole school took part in a “cantata” called
“The Whole Year Round” in an effort to bring non-traditional music into Gullah culture.14
While Lakota children were being forced from their reservations and into
Boarding Schools in large numbers, Gullah culture was relatively unaffected by the
schooling of children in local schools. Although both the Penn School and the onreservation Lakota Boarding Schools taught American musical traditions to their children,
they were also run by missionaries and teachers who came from traditions more
sympathetic to Gullah and Lakota musical traditions. This was in stark contrast to the offreservation Indian Boarding Schools, whose aims built on United States Indian policy to
rid the children of their native traditions in favour of assimilation to American culture.
However, in both the cases of the Lakota and Gullah, the schooling of children used music
to instil American and Christian ideals in their communities, most clearly in the Penn
School’s use of temperance songs, and in both cases through emphasis on non-traditional
Christian Hymns.
ii.
Singing from the same Hymn Sheet:
Lakota and Gullah Christianities in the Twentieth Century
The efforts to assimilate the Lakotas’ and Gullahs’ cultures through the schooling of
children built on the continuation of nineteenth century efforts to assimilate both
communities through Christianisation. The Sioux Catholic Congresses, which had begun in
1890, increased in size and frequency in the twentieth century. Christianisation of Lakota
culture was at their core. Nevertheless, the Lakota were allowed to retain elements of their
“Circular of General Information”, in the Penn School Papers, Collection 03615, Folder 434, SHC; “Visit
to Islands, A Wilmingtonian Describes Trip through St. Helena and Dahtaw”, Folder 424, SHC; “Penn
School Closed”, In Folder 424, SHC
14
162
culture in syncretistic rituals developed for the Congresses. Regarding the Gullah, after the
nineteenth century attempts from within the African American community to rid African
American Christianity of the Ring Shout, they also continued to worship in their own
traditional way withstanding pressures from both outside and within their own
communities and retaining a more African derived method of worship.
By the early twentieth century, the Sioux Catholic Congresses had become
an annual celebration of Catholic Sioux life. In terms of music, the Congresses gave a
platform for the performance of Christian hymns and of band music by the schoolchildren
of the Mission Schools, illustrating the progress in the Christianisation and
Americanisation of the Lakota’s musical cultures. The missionaries among the Lakota
always placed emphasis on the power of music to bring the Lakota to their churches.
Father Emil Perrig, the Jesuit Missionary at St Francis Mission on the Rosebud
Reservation, described how an entire mass on December 8th 1907 was sung by those
present. Indeed, music seemed to play a very important part in the Congresses themselves,
as a 1916 description of the Sioux Congress held at the Yankton Reservation attests. An
article describing the Congress in the Indian Sentinel, a newspaper published by the
Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, claimed that “the voice of song and prayer can be
heard in the various camps, the church, or the general meeting place at most any hour”.15
At the same time, there also seemed to be a tolerance of particular
Lakota traditions by missionaries in this period, or at least a resignation to their inevitable
retention. Emil Perrig described how on February 14th, 1908, no Lakota sodality meeting
occurred, as the Indians were at an Omaha Dance at the Indian Dance House. Missionaries
were also willing to take Lakota names, as was the case with Henry Westropp, who was
known to the Lakota as Little Owl. Westropp recalled an interesting sequence of events
which illustrates the mosaic of rituals which accompanied Lakota Christianisation.
Sometime around 1912, he and Black Elk, who had become a Lakota catechist, working
alongside the missionaries, were returning from baptising several Lakota, a ritual referred
to as “scalping” by Black Elk. As they approached the cabin of another catechist, Silas
Fills the Pipe, Black Elk asked Westropp to “sing the war song, the song of victory”, to
which Westropp agreed, ending it with “a few whoops”, which brought Silas out to
“The Sioux Congress”, Indian Sentinel, Vol.1, No.2, 1916, p.27; Emil Perrig Diary, December 8th, 1907
Series 7/1, Box 19, Folder 8, Holy Rosary Mission Archives , CNAC; “Indian Congresses”, The Indian
Sentinel, 1916, p.23; Mark Thiel,“Catholic Sodalities among the Sioux, 1882-1910”, U.S Catholic Historian,
Vol.16, No.2, (1998), p.56-77; Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux, p.53
15
163
investigate. Silas said “I thought the way you had sang that you killed some white people”,
to which Black Elk replied “Yes we have taken the scalps of a few devils”. Westropp may
have preferred that the Lakota sang Hymns to celebrate their Christianity, but he was
willing to afford Black Elk a traditional song as a means of celebration. While this
encounter also highlights the internalisation, on Black Elks part, of Christian teachings
regarding Baptism, the ability of Westropp to accompany Black Elk in traditional Lakota
singing to celebrate the baptisms illustrates the inherently syncretistic religious
environment of the Reservations at this time, where traditional Lakota beliefs and practises
combined with those of the Christian Missionaries.16
This tolerance of Lakota religious culture was also extended to the
musical traditions used by the Lakota in the occurrence of death. When Jesuit Father
Aloysius Bosch died in 1903, some Lakota women were allowed to sing the “death song”.
In 1910, Father Florentine Digmann described how, after he had given the last rites to a
Lakota man, the other Lakota present “began their mourning howl, inside and outside of
the tipi, nearly all night long”. Also in 1910, Father Westropp and Chief Big Head
promised each other that should one of them die, the other would cry over their corpse in
the Lakota tradition. Westropp again saw no contradiction in allowing this tradition to
continue while planning to give the Lakota man a Christian burial, and likewise Chief Big
Head found a way to retain Lakota traditions while accepting Catholic funeral rites.
Although Missionaries cooperated with Government officials in most aspects of the
assimilation of the Lakota, they clearly adhered to Jesuit missionary traditions in certain
aspects of their work. In their daily lives on the reservations, Jesuit priests were, for
instance, willing to conduct mass and prayer services in the Dakota Language. Indeed, the
training of Father Schmid in the Dakota language in 1901, as described by Father Emil
Perrig in his diary, displays how the missionaries envisioned the use of the Lakota
language in their preaching would be long term. Missionaries like Emil Perrig also
continued to refer to the Lakota Catholic Sodalities they were overseeing as “omniciye”,
the Lakota word for “council”, illustrating their willingness to Christianise the Lakota in a
syncretistic manner.17
16
Emil Perrig Diary, February 14th, 1908, Series 7/1, Box 19, Folder 8, Holy Rosary Mission Archives ,
CNAC; Henry Westropp, 1912, “Bits of Missionary Life Among the Sioux”, p.8, in Holy Rosary Mission
Archives, Series 7/1, Box 23, Folder 13, CNAC
17
Quoted in Alexander Enochs, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux, p.107; Henry Westropp, 1910, “In
the Land of the Wigwam”, p.12, in Holy Rosary Mission Archives, Series 7/1, Box 23, Folder 12, CNAC;
Emil Perrig Diary, January 6th, March 3rd, 1901, July 8th, 1906 Series 7/1, Box 19, Folder 8, Holy Rosary
164
At the same time, the syncretism central to Lakota Christianity extended beyond
their relationship with the Jesuits. At the 1910 congress at Standing Rock, the Apostolic
Delegate Diomede Falconio was presented with a Lakota sacred tobacco pipe as a gift.
Again, in 1916, the director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, William Ketcham
was given a tobacco pouch, illustrating on both occasions the appreciation for Sioux
culture and religious traditions, which pervaded the Congresses. The Congresses also
displayed the missionaries’ willingness to allow the retention of some Lakota customs. The
structure of the Congress enclosures from 1911 and 1920 was modelled on the Sundance
grounds with an enclosure of pine boughs, with a large pole at the centre. While the pole
was used by Sundancers to suspend themselves from, at the Congresses it acted as a
flagpole for the American flag. A description by a Jesuit of the 1919 Congress also
described the use of a side entrance “through which, according to Indian etiquette,
everyone who wished to be present, must enter and leave”. The missionaries also used the
similarity between the spilling of blood at the Sundance and Christ’s crucifixion, to appeal
to the Lakota. Florentine Digmann, writing in 1907, remembered how Bishop Martin
Marty took “occasion, from the cruelties of the Sun Dance to appease the Great Spirit, to
point out to them our divine Saviour hanging from the tree to atone for our sins”.18
In contrast to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century syncretistic
incorporation of Lakota tradition into Christianity, the African-derived musical traditions
of the Gullah had been incorporated into Christian celebration since the 18th C. This
process had reached a high point in the years immediately following Emancipation, as
Christian missionaries and sympathetic northerners embraced the slaves’ musical
traditions, and the Gullah danced the Ring Shouts and sang their spirituals openly.
However, by the end of the nineteenth century, with the African American Churches
attempts to abandon slave traditions, the Ring Shout and the singing of older Spirituals
became less common in African American churches in the South. Still, despite objections
from the hierarchy of the African American Churches, the Gullah continued to practise the
Ring Shout in a Christian context. Most likely because of their isolation, the Sea Islands, in
Mission Archives , CNAC; Emil Perrig Diary, January 8th, 1908, Series 7/1, Box 19, Folder 8, Holy Rosary
Mission Archives , CNAC
18
“The Great Catholic Sioux Congress of 1910”, The Indian Sentinel, 1911, p.7; Alexander Enochs, The
Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux, p.59; Florentine Digmann, “The Catholic Indian Schools: St Francis”,
Indian Sentinel, 1907, pp.21-22
165
comparison to the rest of the South, retained these traditions for much longer. Ring Shouts
certainly lasted into the second decade of the twentieth century, even in the larger towns of
the Lowcountry. A source written in 1917 at a Beaufort Church describes how at a New
Year’s Eve Service “one swarthy black man, unable to stand his salvation any longer,
[leapt] upon the floor and [began] to move slowly with an undulating shuffle which
gradually [grew] faster and faster”, all the while singing a spiritual. The author goes on to
describe how:
Louder and louder grows the spiritual, faster and faster come the shouts, as with
cries of exaltation, one by one’, the congregation spring upon the floor, until it is
covered with writhing, twisting bodies19
However, as the twentieth century progressed, Spirituals and Ring
Shouts went into decline in the larger established churches, even in the Lowcountry. Ring
Shouts were restricted to the praise houses in the small island communities that were free
from interference from Church leaders. The objection to the more African elements of
African American Christianity, instigated by Church leaders such as Daniel Payne in the
nineteenth century, persisted into the twentieth century. Ethnologist Lydia Parrish
explained that the reluctance of the Gullah to perform ring shouts in the second decade of
the twentieth century was a result of the influence of “the more fashionable Negro
preachers”, who were conforming to white Christianity and criticising the old slave
traditions. In fact, the absence of any significant white Christian presence on many of the
Sea Islands allowed the Gullah to escape some of these cultural influences. The decline of
white churches on the Sea Islands was witnessed first-hand by a visitor to St Helena Island
in 1911, who came upon the ruins of an old Episcopal Church made from “Oyster Shells
and Lime”. The writer claimed that even the “oldest colored inhabitants” of the island only
knew that in their grandparent’s time “rich buckra had meetings” in the church.20
Elsie Clew Parsons described an occasion in which she witnessed a
Praise House meeting on St Helena Island, but was told by the elder there that it was
doubtful if those who attended would “raise a shout” as they were reluctant to perform in
Ruth Batchelder, “Beaufort, of the Real South”, Travel, 28, 1917, p.47, in the Penn School Papers #3615,
Folder 435, SHC; J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of
Segregation, (Baltimore, 2001), pp.184-185
20
Richard Carroll, “Negroes on the Coast of South Carolina”, Charleston News and Courier, 15/03/1911, In
Folder 424, Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC; Lydia Parrish, “Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea
Islands”, (Athens, 1942), p.55
19
166
front of whites. While Lydia Parrish claimed that the Shout did persist among “the country
Negroes” especially during the Christmas holidays, she also claimed that the Gullah on St.
Simon’s Island were reluctant to perform the Shout for her for the first few years she lived
amongst them, believing that they were afraid that she would ridicule it, and that the
younger generation of Gullah considered the shout and the associated Spirituals as oldfashioned. She wrote:
Why they should have been so secretive about such a pastime I cannot understand,
unless—because the style of dancing is unlike ours—they were afraid I might laugh
at it.
Indeed, when Lydia Parrish published her “Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands” in
1942, she claimed that it was through her “persistence plus a little money” that the Ring
Shout had survived over the previous few decades. Whether this was the case or not,
Parrish’s experiences on St Simon’s displayed a profound change in the performance of
traditional music and dance among the twentieth century Gullah. Yet, while these
experiences may have been symptomatic of the Gullah’s resistance of outside cultural
influences in the early twentieth century, there was also evidence that the Gullah were
content with their peculiarities. A Folk tale from the Sea Islands called “Buh Hawss En'
Buh Mule”, collected by Ambrose Gonzalez in 1918, describes a horse who makes fun of a
mule because of his short ugly tail. In the end the mule’s short tail stands him in good
stead. The tale, in Lawrence Levine’s view is based on the Gullahs’ contentment with
being different from outsiders, and their reluctance to bridge that difference.21
In general, the Christianisation of both the Lakota and Gullah cultures
continued and persevered into the twentieth century. Yet, while the Lakota continued to
negotiate the extent of their Christianisation with the missionaries on the reservations
through the retention of non- Christian musical traditions within the context of
Christianity, the Gullah fought to retain their well-established African American Christian
traditions against the tide of Americanisation within the African American Churches.
21
Elsie Clew Parsons, Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, S.C., (New York, 1923), p.206; Parrish, Slave Songs of
the Georgia Sea Islands, p.55; Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro American
Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom, (New York, 1977), p.152; Ambrose Gonzales, The Black Border,
Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, (Columbia, 1922), pp.219-220
167
While the Ring Shout was disappearing from other areas of the South, the Gullah retained
this tradition, albeit less frequently and in a less open manner. As a result, the Lakota
continued to shape the version of Christianity that suited their culture in the early twentieth
century, creating a distinct Lakota Christian tradition. In contrast, the Gullah’s distinctive
Christian traditions were eroded from within the African American community. Still, the
ultimate result was that the Gullah version of Christianity, similarly to that of the Lakota,
eventually became a unique and distinct syncretistic religion.
iii.
From the Sacred to the Stump:
The Secularisation and Politicisation of Lakota and Gullah musical traditions in the
early Twentieth Century
Despite the continuous Christian influence on Gullah and Lakota musical traditions in the
early twentieth century, the versions of Christianity of both ethnic groups came under
pressure from the wider secularisation of American society. The Lakota’s relatively
nascent Christianity was tempered by their desire to retain non-Christian traditions, most
notably in the form of dances and by the opportunity given to them to do so in secular
environments on and off the reservations. Gullah Christianity, on the other hand, was well
established by the early twentieth century, and the secularisation of their musical traditions,
consequently, was at a much lower level, coming from outside their communities.
Nevertheless, both cultures’ musical traditions felt the impact of the trend towards
modernisation, secularisation and commercialisation that characterised early twentieth
century America.
The politicisation and secularisation of the musical traditions of
the Lakota and Gullah were inextricably linked with their commodification, which
occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Progressive ideals in American
music led activists to attempt “to claim secular music as a reform tool” in order to
“promote social and cultural linkages and ‘American’ ideals”. In 1895, Czech composer
Antonin Dvorak wrote in an article for Harper’s Weekly that in America, “inspiration for
truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies or Indian chants”, in an
example of an outsider encouraging the commodification of what was deemed an “exotic”
tradition . Interest in Gullah and Lakota musical traditions from as far afield as Europe,
168
therefore, drove change in both cultures in the early twentieth century. As a result,
American scholars and musicologists such as Natalie Curtis Burlin increasingly looked to
Native American and African American music in their search for an “American” musical
identity. Both the Lakota and Gullah’s musical traditions, as a result, were influenced by,
and in turn influenced, wider American cultural movements, to different degrees. As the
outside world increasingly looked to their musical traditions as exotic commodities to be
bought and sold, the Lakota and Gullah continued to refine these traditions in order to
adapt to the political environments of the early twentieth century. Building on their
nineteenth century participation in the Wild West shows, the Lakota brought their
traditions to a wider audience, allowing them to politicise their dances. For the Gullah, the
“discovery” of spirituals in the late nineteenth century, instead, led to an increased interest
in their musical traditions, which continued into the twentieth century, in scholarly circles,
but also internationally and among the wider American Public. While Lakota and Gullah
music and dances were often staged and repackaged for these new audiences, these
different types of performances nonetheless gave both the Lakota and Gullah a sense of
power through the retention of their musical traditions.22
In the early twentieth century, Missionaries and Indian agents were increasingly aware of
the Lakota’s use of secular holidays to preserve their traditions. Jesuit Missionary
Florentine Digmann recognised that the 4th of July Celebrations, which were meant to be a
“teaching of patriotism”, were instead used as a vehicle to retain Lakota traditional dances.
Tribal Fairs also acted as a forum in which the Omaha Dance could be preserved and
practised. The dance was permitted in this context, since the Fairs were introduced in the
late 1880s in order to encourage agriculture and ranching among the Lakota. The Indian
Rights Association however associated this continuation of traditional dances with Lakota
efforts to maintain a pre-reservation way of life. In their 1900 report, the Indian Rights
Association singled out the Omaha Dance, claiming that “the nonprogressive forces in
Indian life center around the Omaha Dance, […] The expression of that life is found in the
dance, in Indian superstition, in legends, in the hunt, in the memories of Indian warfare,
with its cruel tale of murder, pillage, and lust”. Therefore in 1913, in an effort to suppress
22
Derek Vaillant, Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873-1935, (Chapel Hill, 2003),
p.2; Michelle Wick Patterson, Natalie Curtis Burlin, A Life in Native and African American Music, (Lincoln,
2010), p.9; Antonin Dvorak, “Music in America”, Harpers New Monthly Magazine, February 1895, pp.429434
169
the dances, the Commissioner of the Indian Office demanded that all reservations hold
their fairs on the same day, reducing the opportunity to engage in traditional dances. The
Commissioner also asked that fairs include band concerts and athletic contests, with the
intention of eroding the popularity of the Omaha Dance. Instead, it was the fairs
themselves which faded in popularity, and they disappeared completely on the Pine Ridge
and Rosebud reservations by the late 1920s. In this way, the Lakota’s emphasis on
retaining the Omaha dance came in direct opposition to the policies of the Federal
Government, and in this way they resisted the efforts towards their “Americanisation”.23
While sometimes objecting to the musical traditions of the Lakota, it
was mostly the practises which accompanied Lakota dances that Indian agents and
missionaries objected to. In 1901, Indian Commissioner William A. Jones wrote, “Indian
dances and so - called Indian feasts should be prohibited. In many cases these dances and
feasts are simply subterfuges to cover degrading acts and to disguise immoral purposes”.
Also, in 1901, Jesuit missionary Florentine Digmann wrote, “The Indian dances, though
not immoral themselves, are in my opinion, the greatest obstacle in the way of civilising
and Christianising these people”. Digmann went on to describe the centrality of the dances
in the retention of other traditions, claiming that “they are and remain the living tradition,
keeping alive old habits”. For example, in the early twentieth century, “Give-aways”,
large ceremonies of gift-giving, were common, and served to redistribute wealth on Lakota
reservations, thereby maintaining tribal harmony. Giveaways were therefore particularly
antagonising to agents and missionaries, as their communal nature went against the values
of thrift and the policies of allotment and individualisation of the Office of Indian Affairs.
In Jesuit priest Father Florentine Digmann’s belief, the aim of the giveaways for the
Lakota was “to beat their neighbour in generosity” by giving away their possessions and he
claimed that any Lakota not participating in the giveaways was “decried as a ‘dog’ and ‘no
indian’”. Digmann specifically highlighted the negative role of Indian dances in the
preservation of the tradition of giveaways. For the Lakota, instead, the giveaways built on
traditions of pooling resources and providing for the neediest in their communities in times
of hardship. The early twentieth century was a particularly difficult time for the Lakota
reservations. Therefore, the assimilationist policies, in particular those which encouraged
23
John Troutman, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, (Norman, 2012), pp.32-33;
Reverend Florentine Digmann to Dr. Charles E. McChesney (Published in the Report of the Comissioner of
Indian Affairs), St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC; Eighteenth Annual Report of
the Executive Committee of the Indian Rights Association (1900), p.18–20, quoted in Jacqueline Shea
Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, (Minneapolis, 2007), p.70; Mark Thiel, “The Omaha
Dance in Oglala and Sicangu Sioux History, 1883-1923”, Whispering Wind, Vol.20, (1990), p.9
170
individualisation of agriculture through land allotment, were completely at odds with the
reality of life on the harsh Northern Plains and also with the communal traditions that the
Lakota had cultivated over the previous centuries. The Lakota, therefore, made use of their
dances to resist assimilation and to preserve the traditions which were most relevance to
their life on the reservations.24
The Office of Indian Affairs, for its part, attempted to control the
Lakota on the reservations by coercive means such as withholding rations. In this way, it
was extremely difficult for the Lakota to resist the policies of assimilation and allotment.
Dissent was practically impossible on the reservations. However, music and dance
provided a medium through which the Lakota could resist. From 1900-1920 dancing in fact
became, in Historian John Troutman’s words, a “political device” for the Lakota with
regards to Federal Policy, and allowed them to manipulate “tropes of citizenship and
patriotism […] in order to reassert some control over the arena of the reservation
environment”. During the early decades of the twentieth century, native musical
performative traditions on the Great Plains multiplied. New social dances spread from tribe
to tribe, while traditional dances were re-invigorated, although moving underground in
some instances. After being performed in secret for many years, after 1900 the Sun Dance
began to be renewed and performed openly among Native American ethnic groups, and at
least some Lakota kept the tradition alive secretly until its formal renewal later in the
twentieth century. This renewal was, in the words of JoAllyn Archambault, “a potent
signal of the renewed Indian Identity and cultural nationalism” that attracted scores of
Indians as well as non-Indians to the celebration of the dance.25
In the early twentieth century, Indian culture also became highly
romanticised by the antimodern primitivism movement in American society. This
movement led white Americans who had grown disillusioned with the urbanisation and
modernism of the early 20th. C United States, to turn to Native American culture as a
24
Directive issued by W.A Jones, Commissioner, on October 16 th, 1902, Reprinted in Wilcomb E. Washburn,
The American Indian and the United States, A Documentary History, (New York, 1973); Reverend
Florentine Digmann to Dr. Charles E. McChesney (Published in the Report of the Comissioner of Indian
Affairs), St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 1, CNAC; Troutman, , Indian Blues, p.4, p.26;
Florentine Digmann Diary, November 21st, 1899, Series 7/1, Box 16, Folder 10, Holy Rosary Mission
Archives, CNAC
25
Troutman, Indian Blues, p.4, p.8, p.17, pp.20-21; Severt Young Bear and Ronnie Theisz, Standing in the
Light, A Lakota way of Seeing, (Lincoln, 1996), p.55; Michelle Wick Patterson, “‘Real’ Indian Songs: The
Society of American Indians and the Use of Native American Culture as a Means of Reform”, American
Indian Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2002, pp. 44-66; Marie Therese Archambault, “Sundance”, in Raymond J.
DeMallie, (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.13 (Plains), Part 2, (Washington, 2001), p.988
171
representation of a simpler, more traditional way of life. Also, the Indianist Movement in
classical music popularised Indian-based melodies. As pointed out by John Troutman,
Native Americans also embraced these conceptions of Indianness in order to serve their
own interests. Even the reservation missionaries began to acknowledge the important role
of Lakota tradition in the early twentieth century, and they moved towards preserving their
difference. Despite the program of Americanisation to which the Lakota Mission Schools
subscribed, individuals like Florentine Digmann were aware of and vocal about the
importance of the Lakotas’ cultural difference. Writing in 1900, Digmann claimed that the
Indian was “not a degenerate nor underdeveloped white man”, adding that instead “his
emotions, tastes, ideals and viewpoint are far removed from that of the white man”. In
contrast to the assimilationist views expressed earlier by Captain Richard Henry Pratt of
the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, in which he spoke of the necessity to “kill the Indian
[…] and save the man”, Digmann said the aim of the missionaries was “not to make [the
Indian] a good white man, but rather to make him a good Indian”.26
Late in the nineteenth century, wider tensions over the separation of
Church and State in the United States made it more difficult to outlaw Native American
religious traditions as being antithetical to their Americanisation. This was also made more
difficult by the overt adoption of Christianity by many Native Americans, even though
they remained politically and culturally at odds with other aspects of the process of
“civilisation”, and, in Jacqueline Shea Murphy’s words “threateningly Indian”. The
transfer of Indian dances from the reservations onto the stage of Wild West Shows in the
late nineteenth century had served to remove the “dangers that American Indian dance
practices were seen to pose to the United States”, just as efforts to Christianise and
Americanise Lakota musical traditions were failing to do. Therefore, as United States
policy towards the musical traditions of the Lakota aimed at secularising them, the Lakota
attempted to turn those very same traditions into commodities for non-native audiences.27
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show continued its nineteenth century
success and toured Europe several times before William Cody’s death in 1917. While
many Lakota dramatized old battles in these shows, dressing in traditional clothing, and
performed traditional dances in order to authenticate the performances, by the turn of the
twentieth century the reform organisation, The Indian Rights Association was concerned
Troutman, Indian Blues, p.14; Florentine Digmann, 1900, “The Catholic Indian Mission Schools”, St.
Francis Mission Archives, Series 7, Box 5, Folder 8, CNAC; Florentine Digmann, 1900, “The Catholic
Indian Mission Schools”, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 7, Box 5, Folder 8, CNAC
27
Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, p.79
26
172
about the effects that the Wild West Shows had on the civilising mission among the
Lakota. In 1899, the Annual IRA report claimed that the Wild West Shows were “the
foster father of those barbarous customs, modes of life, and habits of thought which Indian
education justly aims to destroy”, and that it was “worse than folly for the government to
say to the Indian child, through the school: Think, dress, act like a civilised white man; and
then to say, through the show business: Think, dress, act like a savage Indian”. In 1900, the
IRA annual report claimed that “There is no agency more powerful to conserve the old and
bad, to oppose and obstruct the new and good, than the Indian show business. The Indian
who takes part in it must wear his hair long, paint his face and represent the fierce
excitement, the savage deeds, of the old life.” Missionaries were also critical of the Wild
West Shows, seeing them as an obstacle to the Christianisation of the Lakota. In 1907,
Florentine Digmann wrote about a 72 year old Lakota man whom he was going to baptise,
but who instead went away with a show. The following year, an article in the Indian
Sentinel complained that the practise had “a very bad influence on the development of their
character”.28
Still, with the permission of the Indian agents, Lakota dancers continued
to participate in the show. In 1917, “Buffalo Bills Wild West Show” toured the United
States and Europe, hiring hundreds of Lakota as well as Pawnee and other plains Indians.
Therefore, displays of Indianness were tolerated and welcomed by some elements of white
society, as long as they occurred as commodified performances in the proper arenas.
Despite the restrictions under which Lakota dances operated, and the opposition they faced
from various groups, the Wild West Shows provided the Lakota who were participants
with a sanctioned opportunity to dance the Omaha Dance, for example. Indian Officials,
while objecting to the Wild West Shows as a threat to their aims of Christianising and
assimilating the Lakota, nevertheless still preferred them over the preservation of
traditional dances and religious ceremonies on the reservations. The United States
Government, therefore, colluded in the commodification of Native American Traditions in
order to both maintain the containment of Native ethnic groups on their reservations and
temper the resistance of those groups through the controlled practise of their traditions.
Yet, the Lakota were not restricted to dancing only in the Wild West shows and the
28
Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, p.70; Reverend Florentine Digmann to Francis
Deglmann, August 13th, 1907, St. Francis Mission Archives, Series 8, Folder 1, Box 8, CNAC; “Holy Rosary
Mission”, The Indian Sentinel, 1908, p.28
173
revitalisation of traditional dances continued on the reservations in direct opposition to
government efforts to suppress them there.29
Simultaneous to the Wild West Show’s elevation of Lakota dance
traditions, the younger generation of Lakota embraced new musical forms, and in many
cases abandoned old musical traditions. Many Native Americans, having received their
training in the Mission Schools and Boarding Schools, travelled the United States working
as musicians in the early twentieth century. Young Lakota men and women returning from
Boarding Schools also brought with them a white influenced dancing style in the Two-Step
Dances. These dances, such as the “Owl Dance”, although still seen as “Indian Dances” by
the Officials of the O.I.A., attracted opposition from within Lakota society, as the older
generation of Lakota disliked the dancing of men and women in couples. Some believed it
would lead to sexual promiscuity or immorality. Indeed, the younger generation of Lakota,
allied with the Indian agents, sometimes acted against the older generations’ preservation
of musical and dancing traditions.30
In 1916, the new Superintendent of the Rosebud Reservation
reorganised the Tribal Council, allowing younger men to sit on the council and to vote on
resolutions. He complained that the old Council had only been “partially elective” and had
served to “foster traditional dances”. The changes had the effect of superseding the “typical
old-time dance leaders and would-be Indian Chieftains” of the older generation who had
been influential in the previous Tribal Council, and who were in the Superintendent’s view
“holding back the younger element of the Tribe”. The Superintendent later reported that as
a result of these changes “the old time neighbourhood dances” were being “very largely
done away with”. While it is unclear why the Council were getting rid of the
neighbourhood dances, it was certainly the wish of the Superintendent that they would do
so, and he was willing to induce the Lakota to abandon their dances by threatening the
withdrawal of annuities or rations. In 1919, the Superintendent told the Reservation’s
farmers that they should advise the Lakota that any camp which organised an unauthorised
meeting or dance would be “dealt with in annuity payment”. This manipulation of Lakota
musical traditions by the Superintendent was significant in that it occurred with the
29
Alan Trachtenberg, Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930, (New York,
2004), p.39; Murphy, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing, p.60, pp.71-72, p.75; Troutman, Indian
Blues, p.15
30
Troutman, Indian Blues, p.13, p.15
174
cooperation of a group of younger Lakota men, who had become distanced from the prereservation musical culture of the older generation.31
The increased commodification, politicisation and secularisation that
characterised Native American musical traditions occurred also in regard to African
American musical traditions in the early twentieth century. However, the Gullah, in
contrast with the Lakota were at the fringes of this process. Their geographic and cultural
isolation in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands removed them from many of the changes that
occurred elsewhere in the South and in the United States in general.
In the early twentieth century, stereotypical views of African Americans
as lazy and wasteful dominated outsiders’ views of Gullah Culture, and as a result affected
the performance of musical traditions. These views applied also to descriptions of the
Gullah language. In 1908, in one of the first studies of the language, John Bennett called
the language a “grotesque patois…. the quite logical wreck of once tolerable English”.
Later in 1922, the writing of Ambrose Gonzalez summed up attitudes to Gullah culture in
the interim. Gonzalez claimed that the language was “slovenly and careless in speech”.
Gonzalez’s view exemplified, in Lawrence Levine’s words, the belief in the Negro’s
“characteristic laziness”. Indeed in a collection of Folklore from the South Carolina Sea
Islands, Elsie Clew Parsons recounted being told by a Gullah man, that “Dere is not’in de
matter wid us[…] but bad grammar”. The younger generation of Gullah seemed to be
internalising the criticisms of Gullah culture they received from outsiders. In 1919, Parsons
came upon a group of young Gullah girls, who were dancing “Juba”, a traditional African
derived method of dancing, using limbs as percussive instruments. When she approached
the girls they stopped and turned instead to sing “The Farmer in the Dell”. In Lawrence
Levine’s view this displayed the girls’ “defensive and self-conscious” attitude towards
their own musical culture.32
While the Wild West Shows represented the clearest example of the
commodification of Lakota musical traditions, the Minstrel Shows, which had begun in the
1830s and continued into the early twentieth century, illustrated the commodification of
African American music and dance traditions for a white audience. The evolution of the
31
Thomas Biolsi, Organising the Lakota: The Political Economy of the New Deal on the Pine Ridge and
Rosebud Reservations, (Tucson, 1999), p.46-49
32
John Bennett, "Gullah: A Negro Patois I", South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1908, pp.332-347, at
p.336, p.338; Ambrose Gonzalez, The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast, (Columbia,
1922), p.10; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, pp.148-149; Parsons, Folk-Lore of the Sea
Islands, , p.xx, pp.199-200; Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, pp.141-144
175
Minstrel Shows perpetuated a stereotypical and commodified version of African American
music, born in the Antebellum South, into the early twentieth century. However, the early
twentieth century also saw the evolution of distinctly African American musical traditions
such as Jazz and Blues. These new musical traditions provided a means to proclaim a
distinctive African American identity and to resist assimilation into a society that was
openly hostile to African American culture. Unlike the Minstrel Shows, these newly
commodified African American musical traditions were tailored for a black audience and
were, in fact, a continuation of African musical traditions that had survived Slavery. Early
Blues singers toured all over the South East, playing in Tent Shows in all but the smallest
towns, and to mostly black audiences. Commercial leisure outlets such as Dance Halls
were also on the rise in this period. These gave African Americans places to congregate to
experience the new music and dance forms in a secular environment, which resisted both
Christianisation and Americanisation. These dance halls, in fact, drew criticism from many
whites, as well as from the black middle class, who associated them with diverse “tensions
and anxieties” about “race, class and sexuality”. While the relation of the Minstrel Shows,
Jazz and Blues to Gullah Musical traditions was always largely tenuous, the
commodification of the Spiritual related far more acutely to the musical traditions of the
Gullah in the early twentieth century, as spirituals were very much alive in the Lowcountry
and Sea Islands at this time.33
In 1903, W.E.B Du Bois, echoing Dvorak’s calls for an American
Folk Music, wrote that “the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of Human
experience born this side of the seas”. After 1900, white audiences and scholars desired a
more “authentic” African American music leading to an increase in interest in African
American spirituals. The increased awareness of the Spirituals also contributed to the
adoption of Gullah musical traditions by whites, similar to the way Indian melodies were
being incorporated into Indianist Classical music. The Ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis
Burlin wrote an “American Battle Song” in 1918 to embody “the ideals” for which
America entered the First World War. Basing her song on the St Helena Island Spiritual
33
Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, (New York, 1995);
William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Black Face Minstrelsy and Antebellum American
Popular Culture, (Urbana, 1999); Sarah Meer, Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic
Culture in the 1850s, (Athens, 2005); Bruce Bastin, Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast,
(Urbana, 1986), p.31; Tera W Hunter, “‘Sexual Pantomime’, The Blues Aesthetic, and Black Women in the
New South”, in Ronald M. Radano and Phillip V. Bohlman, Music and the Racial Imagination, (Chicago,
2000), p.145
176
“Ride on Jesus”, Burlin claimed that it was fit that the “nobler music of the Negro” should
form the basis of the hymn, since other forms of black-derived music, namely Ragtime,
were being sung by troops, and were being “spread far and wide” by the Great War. Burlin
added that she chose to base the song on a Spiritual since Spirituals had “sprung from men
who best know how to value freedom”, and because they were the African American
population’s “immortal gift to Freedom’s cause”.34
Similar to the way Lakota dances became increasingly political in the
early twentieth century, the singing traditions of the Gullah were central to politically
charged debates on the development and place of African American traditions in the
United States in the same period. The re-discovery of African American Spirituals in the
early twentieth century was tied to an increasing awareness of the distinctiveness of a
wider African American culture. Nowhere was this distinctiveness clearer than in the Sea
Islands of the South East. While some scholars of the late 19th, such as Richard
Wallaschek, claimed that the Spirituals, so widely publicised after the emancipation of the
slaves, were largely influenced by white religious music, scholars such as Henry Edward
Krehbiel disputed these views, and gave the spirituals an African American origin, at a
time when white society was also attempting to reclaim and withdraw the civil and
political rights that African Americans in the South had achieved in the Reconstruction
years. To W.E.B Du Bois the Spirituals were a means for African Americans to express the
“troubles” they had, the difficulties they experienced and the grievances they held with the
social and political situations they found themselves in. Du Bois’ views on the African
American Spiritual represented an increasing sense of understanding in the African
American community that their musical traditions were an important vehicle in the
advancement towards full inclusion into an otherwise exclusive white, Anglo-Saxon
American society. Since Jim Crow Laws and racial discrimination prevented black
acceptance in the South, the commodification of African American music, and the appeal
of the music to a white audience represented an alternative path towards inclusion to
some.35
Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, p.178; Dena J. Epstein, “Black Spirituals: Their Emergence into Public
Knowledge”, The Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 10, No.1, (1990), pp.58-64, at p.59; Natalie Curtis
Burlin, “Hymn of Freedom” in the Penn School Papers #3615, Folder 435, SHC
35
Richard Wallaschek, Primitive Music: An Inquiry into the Origin and Development of Music Songs,
Instruments, Dances and Pantomimes of Savage Races, (London, 1893); Henry Edward Krehbiel, AfroAmerican Folk Songs: A Study in Racial and National Music, (New York, 1914); Du Bois, The Souls of
Black Folk, p.177-188; George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, (Columbia, 1952), pp.291-302; Harris,
Deep Souths
34
177
However, in contrast with the Lakota, who were at the forefront of the
early twentieth century changes in wider Indian musical culture, the Gullah largely
withstood the secularisation and commodification of African American music in this
period. In the Lowcountry South, in fact, the isolation of the Gullah led to the preeminence and retention of the older African American musical styles such as the Spiritual
and the Ring Shout. The cultural isolation of the Gullah occurred simultaneously with their
increased segregation and political disenfranchisement in the Jim Crow South. It was
reported in 1903 that of the 900 coloured men of voting age on St Helena Island, only 100
were eligible to vote, due to “political frauds”. In her 1918 collection of Negro Folk
Songs, Natalie Curtis describes the Spirituals of the Sea Islands as “old”, and the Sea
Island black population as “primitive”. As an authority on black music in the South in this
period, these comments by Curtis Burlin suggested that the musical traditions of the Sea
Islands were less affected by modernising changes in this period compared to that of other
areas of the South.36
Most recently, scholars have agreed that the isolation of the Sea Islands
allowed them to remain relatively untouched by outside cultural changes in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The “Isolation” and “freedom from interference”
of St Helena Island, for instance, allowed the Penn School to thrive, thereby enabling the
Island’s black residents to “rise steadily, morally and industrially”, according to one writer
of the time. Another writer claimed in 1905 that the isolation of St Helena enabled the
coloured population there to avoid being “tempted to leave the farms and flock to the cities
and towns”. This isolation, thus, kept the Gullah free also from the influence of white
culture. Aside from the teachers at the Penn School, most of the inhabitants of St Helena
Island were African Americans. Writing in 1901, a few days before her death, Laura
Towne claimed that when blacks from other areas of the South complained of mistreatment
by whites, Sea Island blacks replied: “It’s different here, brother. The white people here is
our teachers and friends”. In fact both St Helena and Ladies Island seemed to resist
assimilation with the mainland, and to revel in their isolation, when the vast majority of
their inhabitants voted against the building of a bridge that would connect them to the
mainland at Beaufort, in 1914.37
The Penn Normal, Industrial , and Agriculture School, St Helena, SC”, In Folder 424, Newspaper
Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC; Natalie Curtis Burlin, Negro Folk Songs, (New York, 1918), p.28, p.34
37
Cross, Gullah Culture in America; William Pollitzer, The Gullah People and their African
Heritage,(Athens, 1999); Joseph E. Holloway, “The Sacred World of the Gullahs”, in Holloway, Joseph,
(ed.), Africanisms in American Culture, (Bloomington, 1990); The Penn Normal, Industrial , and Agriculture
36
178
Outsiders were also becoming aware of the effect the isolation of the Sea Islands had
on the preservation of African cultural traits there. In 1899, at a discussion about Negro
literature at Hampton Institute, a speaker claimed that researchers could travel to the Sea
Islands of Georgia and South Carolina to find “the link between the Africans and the AfroAmericans”, where “they could study the Negro in his original purity”. The speaker then
compared the Sea Islanders with other African Americans whom she claimed, had become
“Anglo-Saxon Africans”. The Gullah and their distinctive culture were therefore being
held as a model of African retention in this period as well. Certainly, the Gullah were well
aware of the difference between their culture and urban African American culture in the
early decades of the twentieth century. Elsie Clew Parsons recalled a story told to her,
which reflected the economic reality of life on the Sea Islands, where more and more
young people left for the Northern and Southern Cities in the second decade of the
Twentieth C. The story was about a young Gullah couple that moved to New York, and, in
the process, learned “to talk proper”. The Gullah were therefore aware that cultural contact
with the world outside the Sea Islands would lead to change in their own culture. Perhaps,
because of this awareness, the Gullah were increasingly reluctant to share their distinctive
cultural traits with outsiders.38
In the early twentieth century, the most profound changes that occurred in Lakota
and Gullah musical traditions were significant in that they stemmed in a lesser measure
from the process of Christianisation that had begun in the previous decades. Lakota and
Gullah musical traditions were increasingly seen as distinct from their versions of
Christianity. In the case of the Lakota, this distinction was created by the missionaries’ and
Indian agents’ tolerance of certain Lakota non-musical rituals, together with an intolerance
of many dancing and musical traditions on non-religious grounds. The Lakota too were
content to entertain Christianity while simultaneously retaining traditional beliefs and
rituals, in what William K. Powers has called a “dual religious participation”, in other
words, the simultaneous yet separate practise of two religions. In addition to the dualreligious participation, however, the Lakota removed some new musical and dance
School, St Helena, SC”, In Folder 424, Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC; “Development on Sane
Lines”, In Folder 424, Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC; Towne, Laura M., “Pioneer Work on the Sea
Islands”, p.8, Reprinted from the Southern Workman, July 1901, for Hampton Institute Press, in the Penn
School Papers #3615, Folder 434, SHC; “Bridge Election Held Tuesday, and The Bridge Will Be Built”,
The Beaufort Gazette, 05/02/1914, In Folder 424, Newspaper Clippings, 1903-1933, SHC
38
Quoted in Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, p.148, pp.151-152; Parsons, Folk Lore of the
Sea Islands, p.134
179
traditions from the debate over their Christianisation by secularising them. By using
secular celebrations such as the 4th of July to practice these dances, the Lakota ensured
their survival. Also, with the Wild West Shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the Lakota, with the consent of the federal government used white interest in
their traditions to commodify, and therefore, preserve some traditional dances. These
processes of preservation elevated traditional music to a status of practice as a political
tool, allowing the Lakota to resist, defy, but also make use of, the policies of
Christianisation and assimilation employed by the missionaries and the by Federal
Government. 39
In contrast with the Lakota, the Gullah were a peripheral community in
terms of commodification and secularisation of African American music in the United
States. Their isolation in the Lowcountry Sea Islands removed them from the development
of the Minstrel Shows in the nineteenth century, as well as of Jazz and Blues in the
twentieth century. However, as a result of their isolation, the Gullah were able to preserve
the Ring Shout and the Spiritual for longer than African Americans in other areas of the
South. When white audiences looked for a more “authentic” African American music in
the early twentieth century, Gullah musical traditions were held as being untainted and
truer to the African American heritage. In this way, the Gullah spiritual was also elevated,
by W.E.B Du Bois especially, to a position where it was a source of black pride and where
it could be used as a means to highlight the successful struggle of African Americans at a
time when they faced renewed repression in the Jim Crow South.
The early twentieth century provided new arenas for the Lakota and Gullah to
develop their musical traditions. The Lakota embraced new spaces within which they
performed their traditional dances in the form of the Wild West Shows, Agricultural Fairs,
and national holidays. The Gullah on the other hand, with their established Christian
traditions, confined the practise of their Ring Shouts to their Praise Houses and churches,
and they became less willing to share these traditions than they had been after
emancipation.
Although Catholic missionaries sometimes tolerated the retention of Lakota music
and dance, in the Sioux Catholic Congresses it was only in subtle syncretistic rituals that
Lakota culture could survive. Therefore, the preservation of traditional Lakota music and
William K. Powers, “Dual Religious Participation: Stratagems of Conversion among the Lakota”, in
Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, (Norman, 1987), p.94; David Lindelfeld,
"Syncretism," World History Connected November 2006
[http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/4.1/lindenfeld.html, Accessed: 5 October, 2013]
39
180
dance culture could not occur within the framework of the Mission Schools, or the
Catholic Churches, which encouraged the Americanisation of the Indian. Instead, Lakota
traditions, including Music and Dance, were preserved in secular arenas. While Christian
Hymns, though often sung in Native languages, were also simultaneously sung in the
Churches on the reservations, these musical performances in a Christian setting were not
Lakota traditions, but based on traditional European and Anglo-American Hymns. In this
way, by secularising their musical traditions, the Lakota succeeded in sheltering the
traditional religious significance of their musical performance from the effects of
Christianisation. While the Wild West Shows had encouraged the Lakota to sing and dance
in a traditional manner since the 1880s, the future of Lakota music and dance would be
secured later on by the development of new secular arenas such as the Intertribal
Powwows, which spread in the mid-twentieth century, and which would bring Lakota, and
Northern Plains musical traditions in general, to a wider American public.
In contrast, the Gullah, by the mid-nineteenth century, had already
incorporated many of their musical traditions into the celebration of Christianity, albeit a
peculiarly African American version of Christianity. When the efforts at Americanisation
came for the Gullah after the Reconstruction period, most notably in centres like Penn
School, they did little to threaten the musical culture they had established in the previous
centuries. This was a musical culture that had developed within the only arena they had
access to while they were slaves, the Christian Church. Although the Gullah’s religious
and musical traditions were also put under pressure by the modernisation of African
American Churches, the Gullah continued to use the Ring Shout, albeit less frequently and
in a more secretive manner. As a result, their musical traditions became a peculiarity,
confined to small rural Sea Island communities. The out-migration of African Americans
from the rural South that continued for the rest of the twentieth century, then led to the
modernisation of the new and secularised early twentieth century musical traditions of Jazz
and Blues, and eventually it left the Spiritual and Ring Shout as vestiges of nineteenth
century African American Religious Celebrations.
181
CONCLUSION
Between 1850 and 1920 the Musical Traditions of the Lakota and Gullah developed in
parallel fashion at a time when both cultures were confronted with the influence of an
expanding and culturally and politically transforming United States. However differences
in the Lakota’s and Gullah’s cultural formations, geographic locations, and relationships
and conflicts with other ethnic groups and outside influences, in particular from
Christianity, led their musical traditions to take strikingly divergent paths at different
points in their histories. The study of similarities and difference in this process and in the
development of the musical traditions of the Lakota and Gullah brings into focus various
aspects of the two cultures. The Lakota and the Gullah shared especially some of the same
outside cultural influences, and employed similar methods of cultural adaptation. However,
they also differed in their cultural development, in particular in the relationship of their
musical traditions with Christianity and in their use of Syncretistic rituals. By highlighting
these differences, this thesis aimed to identify the distinct factors that shaped both cultures.
Both the Lakota’s and Gullah’s musical traditions had experienced similar processes in
their development up until the early twentieth century, and both had similar starting points.
The early nineteenth century musical cultures of both ethnic groups were inextricably
connected with their religious traditions, as music was seen, in both cases, as a necessary
component in the execution of religious rituals. Both the Lakota’s and Gullah’s cultures
were also influenced in large part by their voluntary and forced their migrations, which
began in the late seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century, slaves brought from a
multitude of West and West Central African geographical areas had been forced to live
together for two centuries on Lowcountry plantations, where new African American
traditions had arisen from the various cultures the slaves had brought with them to the New
World. The nineteenth century culture of the Lakota was also influenced by their
seventeenth century migration from their ancestral home, which they had shared with the
182
Santee and Yankton/Yanktonai Sioux around the Western Great Lakes. Gradually moving
further onto the Northern Great Plains, the Lakota had become increasingly nomadic and
removed from the more sedentary lifestyle of the Santee and Yankton/Yanktonai, who had
remained further east.
However, although the migration of the Lakota was in part due to the warfare
between them and other Great Lakes tribes who had been armed by Europeans, their move
to the Northern Plains had been a voluntary one. In contrast, the Gullah had been forcibly
brought to the United States as slaves and removed from their cultural origins in West and
West Central Africa. The process of enslavement impacted heavily on the preservation of
the Gullah’s cultures in the New World as families were separated and individual slaves
from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds came together. While the Lakota’s migration
involved contact with the cultures of various Northern Plains tribes, this cultural exchange
occurred without the level of oppression experienced by the Gullah.
The earliest encounters between both the Lakota and the Gullah and the Europeans
occurred in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in frontier environments in
which cultural exchange was relatively fluid. The Lakota who moved west in the late
seventeenth century incorporated aspects of the cultures of the Plains tribes they
encountered. As was the case for the Gullah, the Lakota’s cultural contact with other
northern Plains tribes was often based on the exchange of religious and musical traditions.
Dances, in particular, were used as a means of mediation and integration between tribes.
The result was the formation of a Lakota culture distinct from those of the other Siouan
tribes that remained further east. In the Lowcountry South, slaves of different ethnicities
lived and worked together, sometimes with Native American or European indentured
servants alongside them. Ultimately, the formation of a distinct African American culture
involved the creolization of these disparate elements. Religion and music were at the
forefront of this cultural process, and as Gullah culture developed, African musical and
religious traditions combined and influenced it.1
The Lakota and Gullah first came into cultural contact with Christianity in
the 1660s and 1670s respectively. However, the Lakota only had sporadic and random
encounters with French fur traders, missionaries and travellers in this period. In
Richard Cullen Rath, “Drums and Power, Ways of Creolising Music in Coastal South Carolina and
Georgia, 1730-1790”, in Steven Reinhardt, and David Buisseret, (eds.), Creolization in the Americas:
Cultural Adaptations to the New World, (Arlington, 2000), pp. 99-130, at pp.107-108;
1
183
comparison, the restrictive nature of slavery ensured that the Christianity of the slave
owners was a more persistent presence in the lives of the Gullah who were confined to the
Lowcountry plantations. The Lakota were also in a dominant position in these cultural
encounters, since the French were outsiders in Lakota territory. This ensured that the
Lakota dictated the elements of Christianity they adopted and that the missionaries adapted
their Christianity to appease the Lakota. In practise, the sporadic encounters between the
Lakota and the French were not frequent enough to have a lasting impact on Lakota
culture, and between 1702 and 1727 the Lakota had little contact with Europeans. When
they came in contact with French missionaries and traders again in the late 1730s and early
1740s, their relationship was jeopardised by intertribal rivalries based on trade, which often
resulted in violent encounters in the region and this ensured Christianity had little influence
on Lakota culture. In contrast, the Anglican missionaries of the Society of the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts attempted to prescribe a rigid version of Christianity for the
Gullah and attempted to abolish the African-derived music and dances practised on the
Sabbath. An increase in slave importations from the relatively culturally homogeneous
West Central African region from 1716 to 1744 also led to the “re-africanisation” of the
slave population of the Lowcountry, and the receding of Christian influence on the
developing Gullah culture, a major factor in the occurrence of the Stono Rebellion of 1739.
However, the Evangelical worship associated to the First Great Awakening, which
occurred in the late 1730s and 1740s, appealed more to the Gullah, as men such as George
Whitefield preached to them in an exuberant manner more in line with West Central
African religious traditions.
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the impact of
Christianity on both the Lakota and Gullah cultures was increasing. The founding of the
United States unleashed a pattern of westward migration in the early nineteenth century
which would profoundly alter Lakota society and culture. Christian missionaries still had
contact with the Lakota, but their encounters encouraged cultural interactions in which
both groups took part in each other’s rituals. Also, this type of contact was often more
peaceful than many other Lakota-white relations during this period, and the Lakota built a
lasting relationship with Jesuit missionaries, that stood in stark contrast with the
increasingly hostile relationship between the Lakota and the United States. Also, the
Gullah built their relationship with Christianity on the careful selection of elements of
Christian worship that appealed to their cultural sensibilities. During the early nineteenth
184
century, the Second Great Awakening led to a surge in religious activity in the
Lowcountry. Slaves increasingly attended the Christian churches of their masters while
also participating in their own syncretistic religious meetings away from whites on
plantations. The formation of African American churches in towns such as Charleston
provided a cultural centre for the Gullah in which their religious musical traditions could
thrive. However, the Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822 led to a renewal of the
suppression of Gullah Christianity, as slave owners again saw their participation in religion
as a threat to the plantation system and debated the merits of allowing their slaves access to
Christian worship. Nevertheless, by 1850 both the Lakota and Gullah had adapted their
religious and musical traditions to the increasing influence of white American culture, and
especially Christianity, on their societies.
The cultural changes the Lakota and Gullah experienced from 1650-1850 were
based on prolonged periods of migration, population displacement, and cultural contact
with diverse ethnic groups and cultures. In both cases the Lakota and Gullah displayed a
willingness to adopt new cultural practises, in the Lakota’s case from the various Native
American groups they encountered, as well as the earliest Christian Missionaries and
European explorers, and in the Gullah’s from the various African ethnicities brought to the
Lowcountry as slaves, and from the Christian Missionaries that appealed to them. While
the recent historiographies of the Lakota and Gullah in the nineteenth century have
emphasised the culturicide of the Lakota and the Gullah’s cultural retentions, it is clear that
since the mid eighteenth century, Lakota and Gullah cultures were especially fluid and
adaptive. Much of the Historiography treats Lakota and Gullah culture as it was in the mid
to late nineteenth century, as static and unchanging. These studies base this presumption on
the Anthropological studies which created an unchanged ethnographic present in the late
nineteenth century. The truth is that Lakota and Gullah culture had undergone two
centuries of comparatively rapid cultural change in which they adapted to the cultures of
the various ethnic groups, including European, they encountered. The increased period of
white-influenced cultural change that occurred to both groups after 1850 was in no way
more profound or destructive as that which went before it in the previous two centuries2.
2
Fenelon, Culturicide, Resistance, and Survival of the Lakota, (Routledge 1998); Herskovits, Melville J, The
Myth of the Negro Past, (Boston, 1958)
185
In the mid-nineteenth century United States, Christianity and white culture
impacted on Lakota and Gullah cultures in different degrees. Despite the increasing
presence of white Americans on the northern Plains, their impact on Lakota religious and
musical traditions was still minimal. Throughout the 1850s, the Lakota continued to
practise their traditional ceremonies without any significant outside cultural influence.
However, their traditions were increasingly seen as a threat to United States expansion and
civilisation and were, as a result, portrayed as savage and dangerous. In contrast, the
Gullah, who were in a position of sub-ordinance on Lowcountry plantations, were allowed
to develop their particular version of Christianity largely unhindered and with the approval
of slave owners. Their isolation on rural plantations also allowed them to create their
particular methods of worship, which included the Ring Shout and the singing of
Spirituals. The creation of black societies then gave Gullah slaves a level of autonomy
from their master’s churches, allowing them to have a recognised institution in which they
could preserve and develop their musical and religious traditions as well as strengthen their
communities.3
In contrast with the Gullah, the society and culture of the Lakota were
increasingly threatened and undermined by the white presence on the Northern Plains in
the mid-nineteenth century, and their association with the northern Plains environment was
at the centre of this threat. The impact of the decline in the buffalo population and the loss
of territory led to a transformation of Lakota culture to suit the new circumstances.
However, although the Lakota continued their process of adaptation, their willingness to
appropriate new cultural forms only slowly applied to Christianity. While the Gullah had,
by 1860, syncretised their musical traditions into their celebration of Christianity, the
Lakota mostly retained their traditional beliefs and rituals and persistently resisted the
expansion of the United States. This maintained a separation between their musical
traditions and their burgeoning relationship with Christianity throughout the 1850s, thereby
restricting any need for the creation of syncretistic rituals.4
After 1860, the societies and cultures of the Lakota and Gullah experienced
intense disruption due to warfare. The American Civil War led to the demise of slavery in
areas of the Sea Islands in 1861 and was followed by the emancipation of all the slaves in
3
Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the
Gullahs, (New York, 1988)
4
Raymond J. DeMallie, “Teton”, in Raymond J DeMallie, (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.
13, Plains, Part 3, (Washington, 2001), pp.794-820
186
1863. This profoundly influenced the development of Gullah culture in the following
decades, as they achieved an unprecedented level of cultural freedom. Their distinct culture
was also exposed to outsiders, as their musical traditions were described and published in
accounts written by sympathetic Northerners in the Lowcountry. In the same period,
violent encounters between the United States and Native Americans on the northern Great
Plains reinforced the resistance of the Lakota to the Westward expansion of the American
Republic. When the Civil War ended, the focus of the United States military effort turned
to those Native American ethnic groups they deemed “hostile”, leading to a series of
conflicts between the Lakota and the Federal Government. This conflict led to the Lakota’s
eventual confinement on the Great Sioux Reservation, a policy that had at its core the
ultimate planned annihilation of the Lakota’s traditional way of life.5
While the cultures of the Lakota and Gullah were transformed in
different ways and to different degrees by warfare in the 1860s and 1870s, both cultures
adapted to the new circumstances created by war. After the Lakota war with the United
States came to an end in the late 1870s, the ensuing confinement of the Lakota to the
reservations restricted their ability to practise and retain their traditional cultures, in
particular their religious and musical traditions. In contrast, the freedom granted to the
Gullah by the taking of Port Royal in 1861, and the arrival of Northerners sympathetic to
their musical traditions, and then by the subsequent dismantling of slavery, gave the Gullah
the ability to strengthen the traditional elements they had retained and developed through
the centuries of slavery in the Lowcountry. The 1860s and 1870s were, therefore, a time
during which Gullah and Lakota musical and religious traditions were shaped by the
contrasting degrees of cultural autonomy brought about by warfare and its aftermath.
The 1860s and 1870s though, were also a period during which the education
of Lakota and Gullah children became a means to instil American ideals and culture in the
ethnic groups. While the education of Gullah children was a product of their freedom from
slavery and was, as a result, conducted at first by missionaries and teachers sent to the
Lowcountry during the Port Royal Experiment, the education of Lakota children was
associated with their forced move to the reservation and the resulting policies that aimed at
destroying their traditional culture. The policies of Assimilation, as defined by the United
5
Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, (New York, 1993)
187
States, by humanitarians and by churches was, therefore, not as profound a change for the
Gullah as it was for the Lakota, whose cultural traditions were seen as inherently
uncivilised in the 1860s and 1870s. In contrast many of the teachers and missionaries who
went south to Port Royal began to appreciate Gullah music. Among the Lakota, this period
also witnessed divisions over the merits of white civilisation and Christianity. In contrast,
Gullah society developed through the building of institutions that strengthened their
communities and also preserved their traditional culture. The continued aggression of the
United States towards the Lakota only reinforced and increased Lakota resistance to the
attempted Americanisation and Christianisation of their society and culture. This stood in
stark contrast with the Gullah’s belief in and enthusiasm for the right to education and
religious freedom, which they saw as a consequence of their emancipation.6
After 1880, the Gullah and Lakota continued to take divergent paths in terms of their
relationship with the white population of the United States. The Lakota were increasingly
restricted by the terms of the treaties they had signed with the United States, due to their
dependence on government annuities. The hardship they experienced in this period also
affected the retention of their pre-reservation cultural traditions as their music and religion
continued to be seen as threatening to their assimilation by the Indian Agents and
missionaries who supervised the distribution of the rations on the Reservations. In contrast,
aided by the progress achieved under Reconstruction, the Gullah were able to become
increasingly economically and culturally autonomous, resisting in large part the move
towards the system of sharecropping that had spread all over the American South, creating
a relationship of dependency between African Americans and white landowners. In
practise, the Gullah remained geographically and culturally isolated in the Lowcountry.7
The development of Lakota and Gullah Christianity up to the turn of
the twentieth century is of particular significance. Gradually exposed to Christianity for
two centuries, the Gullah, by 1880, had established their own Christian culture within
which their own African-derived musical and religious traditions had been preserved. In
contrast, Lakota Christianity was still only in its infancy in 1880, and through the strong
6
Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction:The Port Royal Experiment, (New York, 1964); Jeffrey
Ostler, The Plains Sioux and U.S Colonialism, From Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee, (New York, 2004)
7
Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920, (Lincoln, 1984);
J. William Harris, Deep Souths: Delta, Piedmont and Sea Island Society in the Age of Segregation,
(Baltimore, 2001)
188
presence of missionaries on the reservations, the Lakota were now subjected to a level of
cultural repression never felt by the Gullah in the Lowcountry. Despite this difference,
both Lakota and Gullah musical traditions experienced a rise in interest from both
American and European scholars in this period. The resulting commodification of the two
musical traditions occurred simultaneously with the demonization of the rituals and
practises associated with music in the two traditional contexts, while the authenticity of
Lakota and Gullah traditions were also questioned. The stark differences between the
economic and social realities of Lakota and Gullah lives in this period also affected the two
ethnic groups’ musical traditions. The isolation of the Gullah in the Lowcountry removed
them from the influence of whites and of the black middle class, in particular the hierarchy
of the African American Churches. This ensured that the practise of the Ring Shout could
continue relatively unhindered into the twentieth century. In contrast, the inhibiting and
coercive atmosphere on Lakota reservations led to the spread of the Ghost Dance in the
late 1880s, which ultimately led to the massacre of over one hundred and fifty Lakota at
Wounded Knee in 1890.8
However, many scholars, as noted by Raymond DeMallie tend to misunderstand
the Ghost Dance movement. He claimed that just as: “To dismiss the ghost dance as only a
reaction to land loss and hunger does not do it justice, to dismiss it as merely a desperate
attempt to revitalize a dead or dying culture is equally unsatisfactory”. This study instead
places the Ghost Dance within the context of a turbulent two centuries of cultural change,
not only for the Lakota but for many Native American, African American and EuroAmerican peoples on the North American Continent. As the Lakota and the United States,
(often using Christian Missionaries as Intermediaries) came into cultural contact, both
groups adapted their traditions to each other. It was only with the conflict of the Indian
Wars and the eventual military subjugation of the Ghost Dance that a truly syncretistic
religious movement among the Lakota was stifled. In contrast, the success of the
syncretistic Ring Shout in the Lowcountry, so often attributed to the cultural resistance of
the slaves, or to the isolation of the Gullah is more clearly understood in the context of the
more gradual Christianisation which occurred there, in which the Ring Shout survived as
much due to its toleration by whites as a harmless Christian ritual. By comparing the Ghost
8
James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, (Washington, 1892-93); Rani
Henrik Andersson, The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, (Lincoln, 2008); Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because
You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia, (Athens, 1998); Margaret
Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs, (New
York, 1988)
189
Dance to the Ring Shout in the Lowcountry, the importance of religious denominations,
relationships with whites, traditions of cultural fluidity, and pace of cultural change and
Christianisation are emphasised9.
While many scholars have highlighted the retention of isolation of the Gullah as the
reason for the retention of more African cultural traits such as the Ring Shout, the contrast
between the Lowcountry and the Lakota reservations in the late nineteenth century points
to other factors of significance. No more isolated than many other rural areas of the South,
it was in fact the ability of Lowcountry blacks to resist the tide of white supremacy,
through their economic independence, and tradition of black activism since the
Reconstruction period which allowed them to withstand the negative effects on their
culture. In a period in which the Lakota were also subjected to the drive for the
“civilisation” and assimilation of non-whites, they in their less politically and economically
independent position on the reservations paid the ultimate price when the Ghost Dance
stood in defiance of the program of assimilation.
In the early twentieth century, the influence of Christianity on Lakota and
Gullah musical traditions had waned in comparison to the late nineteenth century. In fact,
Lakota and Gullah musical traditions were increasingly secularised in this period. Some
aspects of Lakota ritual traditions were tolerated by missionaries, such as the use of the
Sun Dance enclosure, while the musical aspects of the rituals were not allowed. Other
dances, such as the Omaha Dance were tolerated in a commodified setting, within the Wild
West Shows, while some dances were restricted because they interfered with the program
of assimilation. While participating in Christianity, the Lakota nevertheless retained
traditional beliefs and rituals in a “dual religious participation”. The Lakota also
increasingly developed new musical and dancing traditions in secular arenas, thereby
removing them from the influence of Christianity. In the same period, the Lakota also used
musical traditions as a political tool, in order to counter the policies of Christianisation and
Assimilation to their own benefit. Traditional Lakota music and dance secularised further
DeMallie, Raymond J., “The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account”, Pacific Historical
Review, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1982) , pp. 385-405; Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture, Nationalist theory and the
Foundations of Black America, (New York, 1987)
9
190
in the mid twentieth century as new musical performance traditions such as the Powwows
spread after the Second World War.10
In contrast, the Gullah remained detached from the movement towards the
commodification and secularisation of African American music in the United States in the
early twentieth century. They remained culturally isolated in the Lowcountry and Sea
Islands as the development of new African American musical forms such as Jazz and Blues
occurred elsewhere in the United States. This same isolation allowed the Gullah to
preserve the Ring Shout and the Spiritual as contemporary musical practises at a time when
they were disappearing in other areas of the South. In contrast with the Lakota, for the
large part, these Gullah traditions were preserved within the context of Christianity, albeit
a distinct version of Gullah Christianity. Nonetheless, these same traditions were also
being seen as examples of “authentic” African American music in the early twentieth
century and were increasingly a source of cultural pride for African Americans outside the
Lowcountry and Sea Islands in opposition to Jim Crow policies. In fact, as the twentieth
century progressed, the influence of Lowcountry music increased and eventually became
central to the African American Civil Rights Movement of the mid twentieth century.11
The early twentieth century also provided new arenas for the Lakota and
Gullah to develop their musical traditions. While the Lakota embraced new spaces within
which they performed their traditional dances in the form of the Wild West Shows,
Agricultural Fairs, and National Holidays, the Gullah, on the other hand, with their
established Christian traditions, confined the practise of the Ring Shout to their Praise
Houses and churches, and in the early twentieth century became less willing to share these
traditions than they had been right after Emancipation. While this contrast can in part be
attributed to the comparative freedom and isolation experienced by the Gullah in this
period, which allowed them full control over their practise of Christianity, the Lakota’s
willingness to remove their musical traditions from their traditional places of performance
William K. Powers, “Dual Religious Participation: Stratagems of Conversion among the Lakota”, in
Beyond the Vision: Essays on American Indian Culture, University of Oklahoma Press, (Norman, 1987),
p.94; John W. Troutman, Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934, (Norman,
2009); Gloria A. Young and Erik D. Gooding, “Celebrations and Giveaways”, in Raymond J. DeMallie,
Handbook of North American Indians, Vol.33, Plains, Part 2, (Washington, 2001) pp.1011-1025, at p.1016
11
W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks, (Chicago, 1903), p.178; Dena J. Epstein, “Black Spirituals:
Their Emergence into Public Knowledge”, The Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 10, No.1, 1990, pp.58-64
10
191
was also a result of their proven ability to keep their musical and religious traditions
separated from Christianity.12
Overall, it is the different role of Christianity in the changes that occurred in
Lakota and Gullah musical traditions in the period 1850-1920, that provides the most
compelling case for comparison. Music, as a central component of Lakota and Gullah
religious traditions, necessarily acted as a cultural buffer zone between their traditional
religions and Christianity. The successful or failed incorporation of non-Christian musical
traditions into Christianity was a way for the Lakota and Gullah to ameliorate the negative
effects of Christianisation on their cultures in the 18th and nineteenth centuries. As a result,
their musical traditions absorbed the disparate pressures that the two cultures were exposed
to and consequently changed and adapted in various degrees.
The contrast in the Lakota’s and Gullah’s nineteenth century adoption of Christianity
explains the different roles that Christianity had in the early twentieth century in relation to
their musical traditions. For the Lakota, it was not until the late nineteenth century that
prolonged missionary activity allowed for the spread of Christianity. In contrast with this,
late nineteenth century Gullah Christianity built upon the two centuries of gradual
Christianisation of Lowcountry slave society. Gullah Christianisation also occurred in a
much more fluid and less repressive religious environment than that of the Lakota
reservations at the end of the century. The continuous importation of slaves to Lowcountry
plantations as well as the ebb and flow of missionary and church activity in the plantation
areas, from the early days of the Carolina colony up until the Civil War ensured that
Gullah slaves had both the time and the opportunity to relate their own cultural traditions
to their developing syncretistic Christianity. In comparison, the dichotomy of the religious
situation on the Lakota reservations, one in which traditional Lakota religion was
effectively juxtaposed to Christianity in the late nineteenth century, encouraged the dual
religious worship of the Lakota and also hindered the formation of a truly syncretistic
Lakota Christianity at this time.
12
L.G Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933, (Albuquerque, 1996);
Linda Scarangella McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney,
(Norman, 2012); Lydia Parrish, “Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands”, (Athens, 1942); Elsie Clew
Parsons, Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, S.C., (New York, 1923)
192
By the early twentieth century, the remnants of the African musical cultures
brought to the New World by the slaves in the Lowcountry and Sea Islands were almost
wholly contained within the syncretistic tradition of Gullah Christianity in the form of the
Ring Shout and the Spirituals. In contrast, by the same time, the music and dance traditions
of the Lakota were almost completely detached from Christianity. While the Lakota
preserved pre-Christian religious ceremonies such as the Sun Dance, which acted as
vehicle for the preservation of their musical traditions, their Christianity took a more rigid
form and was instead influenced by the religious rituals of the missionaries on the
reservations.
In using the comparative method, this thesis, has aimed to highlight the significance of the
different strategies the Lakota and Gullah used to preserve and develop their musical and
religious traditions in face of the profound cultural and social change that occurred in the
United States, specifically between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
While the Gullah and Lakota experienced these changes separately in distant geographical
areas and came into contact with often unrelated missionaries and Churches,
representatives of the United States and ordinary white people, the strategies that the two
ethnic groups adopted in dealing with these transformations are highlighted in terms of
opportunity and significance by the comparative perspective adopted by the present study.
While earlier studies have tended to emphasise the importance of acculturation and
cultural persistence in the formation of Lakota and Gullah culture in the nineteenth
century, by highlighting the similarities and differences between Lakota and Gullah
cultural change in this period, this study places a greater emphasis on the more subtle
processes at work. While the slaves brought to the Lowcountry in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries undoubtedly brought aspects of their traditional cultures with them on
the middle passage, when the relationship between the slaves and the masters is compared
to that between the Lakota and the earliest European travellers in the Great Lake region,
the relatively unhindered cultural formation of the Lakota in this period is brought into
relief. The persistence of the white presence among the slaves manisfested itself in the
earlier and more widespread Christianisation of the Gullah, compared to the Lakota. While
this might lead one to believe that the Gullah were more acculturated as a result of this,
comparing the late nineteenth century Christianities of both groups shows that what it
193
allowed the Gullah to do was to gradually retain their more African ritual practises, such as
the Ring Shout, within their Christianity. In contrast the relative isolation from white
culture enjoyed by the Lakota in the early nineteenth century meant that when they were
eventually confined to the reservations in the late nineteenth century the impact of
conversion to Christianity was greater. This in turn led to the creation of a cultural
revitalisation movement in the Ghost Dance, whose suppression contributed to the
separation of Christianity from traditional ritual practise.
Comparing the Lakota and Gullah has shown that throughout the period of my
study both groups used similar processes of cultural retention. Yet this resulted in very
different outcomes for both groups. By employing a long term perspective, my study has
highlighted the reason for these outcomes. Central to these different outcomes has been the
longer and more unbroken period of cultural contact between slaves in the Lowcountry and
whites, allowing for gradual cultural change which led to nineteenth century Gullah culture
being seen as less threatening than that of the Lakota. This longer process of cultural
change also allowed Gullah culture to become more adaptable to the cultures of Southern
whites. In contrast, the relatively short period of time between the Lakota’s defeat in the
Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s and their confinement on reservations, contributed to
the volatile cultural environment that resulted in the Wounded Knee massacre. The Gullah,
in contrast were participants in a longer process of inclusion rather than exclusion. Despite
the strain of segregation and white supremacy, by the late nineteenth century they were
increasingly seen as Americans. In contrast, the Lakota because of their relatively recent
prolonged contact with whites were seen as outsiders, who posed a real threat to the United
States until their political defeat in the Indian Wars. Their resulting confinement on
reservations had the effect of alienating them from American society instead of
assimilating them.
Later on, in the second half of the twentieth century, both ethnic groups would
participate in wider African American and Native American movements, that attempted to
achieve the granting of full Civil Rights in a much changed United States. Although the
Lakota and Gullah filled different roles within these movements, their religious and
musical traditions again took centre stage. The similarities and differences between their
roles and degrees of participation, and also the roles of music and religion in these
movements, invite further comparative research.
194
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
Southern Historical Collection,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
The Penn School Papers, #3615,
Folder 255, Folder 336, Folder 336B, Folder 364, Folder 424, Folder 434, Folder 435,
Guy Benton Johnson Papers,
Folder 1019
Christianity and Native America Collection,
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
St. Francis Mission Archives
Series 1/1, Box 1, Folder 1
Series 7, Box 5, Folder 8, Folder 12,
Series 8, Box 8, Folder 1
Holy Rosary Mission Archives
Series 7/1,
Box 16, Folder 10
Box 19, Folder 8
Box 23, Folder 12, Folder 13
195
Thomas W. Foley Research Papers
Folder 1, Box 4, Series 2
South Carolina and Other Baptist Resources Collection,
Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina
Savannah River Baptist Association Minutes
1831, 1837, 1841, 1846, 1847, 1849, 1851, 1853, 1854, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859,
Beaufort Baptist Church Minutes
1840, 1842, 1857, 1859
196
SECONDARY WORKS
Aarim-Heriot, Najia, Chinese Immigrants, African Americans and Racial Anxiety in the United
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NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS
The New York Age, April 25, 1885
Charleston News and Courier:
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February 2nd , 1890
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1916, “Indian Congresses”,
215
216