Nez Perce and thief treaty
 Nez Perce had helped Lewis and Clark
 Invited a mission to be established at
Lapwai
 Most remained peaceful during plateau
Indian wars
 1855 treaty Nez Perce secured large portion
of traditional home lands in Oregon and
Idaho
 And settled on a reservation there
 1860 miners moved onto land looking for
gold in the Bitterroot Mountains
 Began establishing towns such as Lewiston,
Elk River, and Florence
 Office of Indian Affairs agreed to remove
miners
 Superintendent of Indian Affairs Calvin Hale
among others met in 1863 at Lapwai council
 In return for removing miners Hale proposed
shrinking reservation by nearly 7 million
acres
 Nez Perce refused and
reminded Hale et al about 1855
treaty
 Most of leaders then left the
council
 One local leader, Lawyer,
negotiated with Hale
 June 9, 1863 Lawyer signed
treaty
 Other Nez Perce bands referred
to this as “Thief Treaty”
 June 16, 1873 President Grant
signed an executive order
giving Hinmahtooyahlatekht’s
 (Thunder rising over Loftier
Mountain Heights)
 Band the Wallowa Valley
 Better known as Chief Joseph
 Problem
 Executive Order gave lower end of valley to
Joseph’s band
 Not the upper end where they lived
 June 10, 1875 Grant rescinded order
 Many officials agreed that the bands claims were
good
 No real movement made against the Nez Perce
until after death of Custer
 1876 General Howard ordered to force non treaty
bands onto reservation
 November 1876 council at Fort Lapwai
 No resolutions made
 May 3, 1877 second
Lapwai Council
 Toohloolhoolzote
appointed to speak
 Many times he tried to
explain the relationship
between the Nez
Perce and the region
 Until Howard replied
 “Let us here no more
of it but come to
business at once”
VIDEO CLIP
1887
 Movement onto reservations
 Accompanied by “progressive”
actions began to work on Native
Americans
 Education one main area
 Another to encourage/force Native
Americans to act like white people
 To break apart the centre of Native
American cohesiveness
 The
reservation
 The very
institution used
to assimilate
and control
Native
Americans
years before
 1887 Congress
passed the General
Allotment Act
 Known as the
Dawes Act
 Plan was to abolish
reservations
 Allot lands to
individual Indians
as private property
 Policy supported by, and helped by,
those who
 A) wanted to help the Indians
 B) wanted to destroy the Indians
 For
 A) this would allow for faster
assimilation
 B) would create free land for whites
 (Indians didn’t know how to use it anyway)
 Act named after Senator
Henry Dawes of
Massachusetts
 “Discontent with the teepee
and the starving rations of
the Indian camp in winter is
needed to get the Indian
out of the blanket and into
trousers, - and trousers
with a pocket in them, and
with a pocket that aches to
be filled with dollars”
 Merrill Gates Board of Indian
Commissioners
 “A vast pulverizing engine
to break up the tribal mass”
 Theodore Roosevelt
Dawes Act Main Provisions
 1. The President was authorized to assign
allotments of 160 acres to heads of
households, with lesser amounts to younger
persons and orphans
 2. Indians were to select their own lands, bit if
they failed to do so, the agent would make the
selection for them. Reservations were to be
surveyed and rolls of tribal members prepared
prior to allotment
 3. The Government was to hold title
to the land in trust for twenty-five
years, prevent its sale until allottees
could learn to treat it as real estate.
 4. All allottees and all Indians who
abandoned their tribal ways and
became “civilized” were to be
granted citizenship
 5. “Surplus” reservation lands could be sold
Twilight of the Indian
1897
 Law remained in force from 1887 to
1934
 Main effect strip Indian people of
Millions of acres
 Indians whose lands were allotted
 Became U.S. Citizens
 So……
 Their lands could now be taxed
 Protections slowly disappeared
 1902, congress allowed Indian heirs to sell
inherited land without approval from
secretary of interior
 1906, burke act Indians whom secretary of
Interior deemed “competent” could be
granted fee simple
 i.e. no longer had to wait 25 year before
they could sell allotments
 1914 “competency commissions”
established
 Often competency was linked to blood
quantum
 Some Native Americans were able to
defeat allotment by selecting allotments
“with agendas other than assimilation
in mind”
 They viewed and used the space in
Native American ways
Telling Indian History
 “The whole country is one
vast winter count. You
can’t walk a mile without
coming to some family’s
sacred vision hill, Sun
Dance circle, and old
battleground, a place
where something worth
remembering happened”
 Mary Crow Dog Lakota
 Native American landscape told
the story of the past
 For the Cherokee the Tennessee
river was the “long man”
 His head in the mountains his feet
in the ocean
 Along this landscape were
locations that told of the past
 “I would like for them to forget that this country
– the great United States – even exists. I
would like for them to go back to a time when
there was only the Creek and the Choctaw and
the Chickasaw and the Cherokee in this area.
Back to a time when there were no massive
roads and cars. And to go out and to just feel,
and to listen to the voices of the past.”
 Story-teller Freeman Owle,
 when asked how visitors to the Cherokee Heritage
Trail should understand the landscape and history
Kiowa
 Kiowa tradition tells that People entered
the world through a hollow log
 “in the bleak northern mountains”
 In present day western Montana
 Late 17th C began to migrate southward
 Headed to black hills
 Befriended Crows
 Acquired horses and their
 “ancient nomadic spirit was suddenly
free of the ground”
 Acquired Tai-me
 Sacred sun dance doll
 And the religion of the plains
 Pushed out of black hills by
Cheyenne and Sioux
 Moved south through Wyoming
 Towards Ouachtia Mountains in Oklahoma
 By early 19th C had become allied with
Comanche and dominated the southern
plains
 Ranging across





Western Oklahoma
Northern Texas
Northeastern New Mexico
Southeastern Colorado
Southwestern Kansas
 We can plot that movement on a modern map
 We can see the shift in location over time
 But what does it mean?
 “In the course of that
long migration they had
come of age as a
people. They had
conceived a good idea
of themselves; they had
dared to imagine and
determine who they
were”
 N. Scot Momaday
 Part of that act is telling
the stories of the
landscape
 Video II
Winter count
 Tribal historians of plains
compiled calendars of
events
 Those significant to the
community
 Often known as winter
counts
 Usually painted on Buffalo
robe in a spiral pattern
 NMAI
 Most calendars
 record things such as
 small pox epidemics
 “the winter when the stars fell”
 Meteor shower in November 1833
 But also things of local tribal
importance like horse raids, or a Sun
Dance
 But may ignore major battle with US
 Chronicle we will now look
at records Kiowa history
over a period of 60 years
 Begun by Kiowa named
Dohasan in 1832
 When he died carried on by
his nephew, also Dohasan
 Originally painted on hides
 2nd Dohasan maid copy on
paper given to
 Captain Hugh L. Scott of 7th
Cavalry
Dohasan Calendar
 1) 1832-3 Black wolf Killed by
Americans
 2) Osage attack on Kiowa camp,
Osage cut of heads of victims
 3) meteor shower of winter 1833
 Black lines = dead vegetation = winter
 Summer = Sun Dance Lodge with
door
 4) dieses kills many 1839-40
 5) figure over Sun Dance Lodge –
doubled over with Cholera
 6) Cholera 1849
 7) Timber Hill Winter = Treaty of
Medicine Lodge 1867
 8) Horse eating Sun Dance =
buffalo so scarce Kiowa had to kill
and eat horses
 9) Drawing of cow
= buffalo gone
Kiowa begin to
lease land to
cattlemen
 10) measles
epidemic 1892,
began in
reservation school