Category Archives: Native American customs

Native Americans had created a rich cultural history that was usually disregarded, disdained, and rejected by the larger Anglo-centered population. Native peoples had their own languages, medical methods, religions, rituals and ceremonies, and world outlooks. When the federal government changed its policy from overt warfare, it did not stop trying to destroy Native Americans. The government pursued a policy called “assimilation” which tried to erase all Native American heritage and culture. Fortunately, Native peoples proved themselves stronger than these policies and held on to many of the cultural aspects the government tried to erase.

The Scalp Dance

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Scalp Dance

Women were an integral part of tribal life; they raised and preserved food, cared for children, and accompanied men in battle when necessary. They participated in ceremonies and celebrations as well. Women were sole participants in certain dances, like the buckskin or cloth dance and squaw dance, but they joined men in many other dances.

When men returned successfully from war, the tribe celebrated with dancing. Both men and women participated in the Scalp Dance. Each tribe’s dance was somewhat different, but generally, scalps were brought into the village on long poles which were later decorated. The dancing was exuberant, but since it was a ceremony in a dance format, it followed a certain order and choreography. Medicine men sang and beat drums while women danced in concentric circles around the scalps. Sometimes dancers would mock the scalps or mimic hunting down the person to whom the scalp had belonged. When dancers were tired, a woman who had lost a male relative in battle would narrate the particulars of the battle and how her loved one had died. After that, she might ask “and now whose scalp do I have?” or if she had taken the scalp down to  spread it across her shoulders she would say, “and now whose scalp is across my shoulders?” The sense of victory was an important component of the dance. The dance could continue at intervals for several days or weeks; eventually the scalp was buried or put on the death scaffold of a man who had helped take the scalp.

Paul Kane Picture of Chualpay Women Dancers at a Scalp Dance

Sioux Scalp Dance

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Native American Warrior Women

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Lozan, Native American Warrior Woman

Native American women not only shared political power with men, they sometimes shared in their tribe’s fighting. Though they were certainly not common, female warriors joined in warfare when necessary. Running Eagle became a Blackfoot warrior after her husband was killed, and led many successful raids on Flathead horse herds. Many warrior women entered battle because they had accompanied husbands or other male relatives into a conflict, but Chilhenne-Chiricahua Apache woman, Lozen, decided to become a warrior at a young age. She trained with her brother and developed the gift of finding the enemy. She went by herself to a deserted place and stood with her arms stretched, palms up, to the sky. She turned slowly until a tingling in her palms alerted her to the direction of the enemy’s presence. Lozen was a skilled warrior and scout in addition to acting as a guide to the enemy’s whereabouts.

Unlike Lozan, most women didn’t pursue warfare as a way of life, though they could do so without censure if they wished. But, childless married women often accompanied their husbands into battle zones; this proximity to fighting could bring them into an active role in a conflict, particularly if a husband were killed. Women were often leaders in deciding when a tribe would go to war, and in deciding when to end it. They often decided the fate of prisoners, as well. Women could sentence a prisoner to torture or death, or spare his life. After a battle, women also took a share in the spoils.

Young (perhaps Kiowa) Woman in Buckskin Dress, Bow and Arrow, circa 1895

Six Young Women on Horseback, circa 1895

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Invisible Women

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Indian Women and Children, South Dakota, circa late 1880s, courtesy Library of Congress

Native American women were often dismissed as drudges or near-slaves by European men who saw them working in fields or performing the many chores inherent to village life. European women were seldom viewed much differently, but their reality was quite different. European women had few or no rights, and were under the control of males at every stage of their lives unless they were extremely privileged or exempted in some way due to special circumstances. In contrast, Native American women had political and property rights that protected them and gave them power. Many tribes were matrilineal. A new husband lived with his wife’s family and did not control her property. Unlike European women, Native women could initiate divorces, throw men out of the household, and keep their property.

Unfortunately, European men interested in trading fell back on their own traditional stereotypes and wanted to deal with Native men, only. Consequently, women were pushed to the sidelines of commerce. Europeans wanted to make treaties with men, only, so women were pushed aside in this respect, as well. In far too short a time, Native women reflected the status of European women, much to their detriment.

Indian Woman Fetching Water, circa 1936, courtesy Library of Congress

Native American Women in Third Class Railway Coach 1895, courtesy Library of Congress

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Finer Things

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Seneca Women Selling Beadwork at Niagra Falls

When explorers and settlers first came to the New World, they brought beads with them. These items were small, lightweight, and (hopefully) useful trading goods. Native Americans had used beads before contact with whites, but they valued the new, unusual beads that the Europeans brought. Glass beads, usually made in Venice, Italy, were something Native Americans could not manufacture on their own, and were highly valued. Early trade beads were large, but eventually, tiny “seed” beads were introduced, and Native Americans used them on buckskin and cloth.

Different tribes developed different preferences for bead colors and ornamentation styles. Sioux Indians preferred chalk white or blue background colors, and various shades of blues and greens for design.The Crow liked blue and a color called Cheyenne Pink for their backgrounds, with red, dark blue, yellow, green, and sometimes purple design colors. Native American women invented two methods of using beads: loom beading and applique embroidery. For looms, they fastened birch bark with holes in it over bow-shaped branches and threaded rows of beads through the holes. Women created distinctive patterns from chains of beads in rows and columns; these patterns became associated with different groups so that an Indian man could be identified from a distance based on the bead color and pattern of his clothing.

Nineteenth Century Beaded Vest

Apache Bead Loom

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Gender Roles

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Female-Owned Tipi

Europeans found much to puzzle them when they first met Native American populations; the last two posts have discussed their surprise that Native Americans did not own property or animals. Europeans also misinterpreted Native American gender roles. Native American women were busy people. Women didn’t just tend a small kitchen garden, they farmed–planting, hoeing, and harvesting the village crops of corn, squash, and beans. On the Plains, Indian women also set up and dismantled tipis, collected firewood, preserved meat, took care of children, cooked, fetched water, and made clothing. It seemed like an enormous workload compared to the hunting men did (plus clearing fields for planting, completing religious and spiritual ceremonies, and war-making, among other tasks). Europeans normally observed men’s hunting role alone, and for this reason, frequently criticized Indian men as lazy, and Indian women as down-trodden and over-worked.

What Europeans seldom realized was that Indian women were more powerful than they appeared to be on the surface. Unlike European women who had few rights, Indian women often owned whatever possessions the family had. Women had the right to demand a divorce, and in a 180-degree turn from the European system, it was the male who was left without possessions. Rather than being patronized as delicate creatures with limited stamina and intellectual powers and prone to error and emotional bondage as European women were, Indian women were respected for their value to their villages. They were much more involved in village decision-making than their European counterparts, and often made life-and-death decisions concerning prisoners of war and adoption. Until Europeans forced cultural changes that transformed Indian society into the European mold, Indian women had an unusual degree of power.

Two Comanche Girls

Comanche Camp

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Animal Kingdom

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Native American Farming, circa 1920, courtesy Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas

White settlers to New England had different ideas about animals than Native Americans, as well as different ideas about land ownership (see last post). Native Americans did not own animals, except for a loose affiliation with dogs and horses, and perhaps tame fowl in some areas. Settlers, on the other hand, brought domesticated livestock with them, which they considered private property. Native Americans were prepared to respect these new animals, but didn’t understand the ownership of another creature.

These differing views led to clashes when Native Americans sometimes hunted livestock or kept a wandering animal for their own use. Tobacco farmers, in particular, let their hogs roam in the forest and eat fallen acorns and nuts. Often, these pigs went wild and tore up Native American corn crops. But, when they killed these feral pigs, Native Americans found themselves somehow in the wrong. Clashes over livestock allowed whites to justify pushing tribes further out from the perimeter of white settled areas. Eventually, this mentality led to a justification for Native American  removal from areas of white settlement.

These contrasting world views of property rights (land and animal) could not be reconciled. Whites found Native American ways inexplicable and “uncivilized.” Some humanitarians called the Dawes Act the “Indian Emancipation Act,” because it gave Native Americans their own private property, which they hoped would lead Indians on the road to civilization.

Band of Feral Pigs

Sketches of Indian Life

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Land of Plenty

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New England Home

Native Americans had a different approach to land than Europeans. Settlers in the New World were often surprised to find a lack of land ownership among Native peoples. Europeans were familiar with the  idea of common grazing land that entire villages used, but individuals also owned plots of land and livestock.

In the New England area, Native Americans settled in advantageous areas near water and game, and may have used fire to burn off forest for agricultural use. They cleared land by girdling–removing a strip of bark around the circumference of trees to kill them–or by cutting trees down. After living in an area for ten years or so, the land and game would become scarcer, and bands would move on to new land. The old land was left empty for up to fifty years to allow a return of nutrients, and then might be used again.

White settlers, in contrast, wanted to stay on a particular plot of land  that they owned. This led to many problems as they depleted the soil with intense agriculture, and contended with a growing population. The only way to give everyone property  was to push out to new lands. Unfortunately, settlers acquired additional  land at the expense of the Native Americans already occupying the newly desirable territory.

Girdled Trees

Native American Farming

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Lighter Jobs

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McLean Asylum for the Insane

Work was considered essential for patients’ well-being and cure in insane asylums. For patients to get well, they needed peace, an unvarying routine, and light tasks that would occupy their minds. Though much of patients’ work helped the institution itself by defraying labor expenses, most superintendents also believed in its therapeutic value.

Often, patients could work on projects they actually enjoyed, and sometimes earn money from them. Since a goal of treatment was to enable an individual to rejoin society, working for money was not discouraged. At the McLean Asylum, women did plain sewing, but also fancy work that they sold. At the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, female patients did beadwork for money. A man named M. B. Viken wrote to Dr. Hummer in 1927 to ask if he could get a beaded belt that he had bought at the asylum years earlier, repaired. By that time, however, Hummer had no occupational therapy at the asylum other than chores. He sent regrets that he could not accommodate the request.

Psychiatric Patients Making Toys, circa WWI

Shoshone Women Doing Beadwork, courtesy Princeton University Digital Library

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Indian Slave Life

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Seminole Negro Indian Scouts, 1889, courtesy NY Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Indian-owned slaves worked hard, but under somewhat different conditions than slaves in the South. Black families were often allowed to live together even if they had different masters, and were seldom broken up. They were allowed to learn to read and write, and slaves who could speak English were valued as interpreters. Though they were clearly owned by their masters, slaves under Indian control were not dehumanized or treated cruelly as a matter of course.

Slavery was still slavery, however, and Indian-owned slaves rebelled against their masters just as they did in the South. Slaves of the Cherokee Nation tried to escape to Mexico in 1842, though they were not successful. In 1850,  a band of about 300 Seminoles and black Seminoles were successful in establishing a small free settlement in Mexico that attracted other runaway slaves. Some of the Seminole Indians went back to the U.S., but the black Seminoles remained in Mexico until after the Civil War. By the 1870s, the U.S. Cavalry in Texas accepted black Seminoles into their ranks as Seminole Negro Indian Scouts.

Black Seminole Army Scouts along Mexican Border, circa 1900, courtesy University of Texas, San Antonio

Lt. John Bullis, Commander Seminole Negro Indian Scouts at Ft. Clark, Texas, courtesy Ft. John L. Bullis

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Indians and Slaves

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The Five Civilized Tribes

Indian Territory may have seemed a world away from the slave-holding South, but slavery was introduced there in 1830. Some of the slaves who ran away from southern slave states were received as free people by tribes in the Territory. However, all tribes except the Seminole eventually began to buy slaves. In the 1830s, about 3,000 African-Americans lived in Indian Territory. Most of them were slaves.

Indian farmers used slaves to help them cultivate their crops. Some masters had large tracts of land, but most Indians were subsistence farmers who worked as hard as their slaves. In the 1830s and 1840s, slaves came with Indians who were removed from the their eastern lands. The Cherokee held about 1,500 slaves, the Chickasaw Nation about 1,200, and the Creek Nation about 300. There were about 8,000 slaves held by Indians by the time of the Civil War. After the war, tribes abolished slavery.

Slaves of Indians, 1893, courtesy Library of Congress

John Taylor (African-American) and Dick Charlie (Ute), 1880-1910?, courtesy Library of Congress

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