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Low Dog
Nov 24, 2009 8:36:40 GMT -5
Post by emilylevine on Nov 24, 2009 8:36:40 GMT -5
I'm not sure which Low Dog this is, I just know that Shan was Looking for a Low Dog that "disappeared" from the Cheyenne River records after 1891. I happened to come across this and thought his moving to Standing Rock might have been the reason why. Maybe a completely different man altogether.Why an Oglala living at CR would then be counted among the Blackfeet at SR, I don't know. My understanding is that Low Dog settled at Cheyenne River after returning from Canada. I think he died there in 1894.
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 22, 2009 22:54:13 GMT -5
Shan I'll keep my eyes open for Low Dog and pass on anything I find.
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 21, 2009 15:44:32 GMT -5
Aurelia One thing that I found in KC that was very useful---and good family documentation of a time period historians don't look at much--are the Emergency Relief Records form around 1935. In a way they're kind of creepy, detailed intrusive information on hundreds of families, how they lived (log house? bathroom? plumbing? number of beds, tables chairs, linens, house clean? sanitary, etc. on and on and on). For Standing Rock each one is an 8.5 x 11 cardboard form divided into zillions of little squares with the information. There is a section for "history" that tells about the husband and wife's parents which is useful. Education, language spoken, etc. Some of the records originally had photographs of the house attached. It gives a real sense of people's lives, and as you write about "dignity" in the face of depression era reservation life, I think you would find these interesting. Have you seen that "Jimmy" has posted an index to these records on Oyate Research (http://oyate1.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=2102) and if you ask he will post some info. I see Poor Buffalos right at the beginning of his list. Also, if you write to NARA they will photocopy anything in good enough condition for 75 cents/copy.
NARA also has records of "home visits" done in 1921 on CR. I made copies of Fred Dupris and some Clowns and a few others.
Send me a personal message with your email and I'll send you the inventories from KC . Do you have or want Mary Traversie/Dupree/Talks Hampton student records? (Sorry if I'm not being too clear, lots of cold medicine.)
Also, have you talked to the folks at Timber Lake Historical Society? You probably have. They have tons of records and photographs in their research building.
I agree completely about some reservations being "an afterthought." And after the 19th century Wars many white historians lose interest altogether, until you get up to 60s and 70s and AIM and then there's just a lot of new romanticism of the situation. And in between is this big blank that's not so pretty that a lot of people don't like to look at. OK, I better shut up now...
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 21, 2009 12:47:33 GMT -5
What I'm attempting to do is find information about the "hunting bands" that were with Sitting Bull that ended up on Cheyenne River. So much of Lakota history is about a few individuals who, granted were important, but there were other leaders. Aurelia, maybe this is some information that would help: At the National Archives in KC, Cheyenne River Res Records, Box 641:Ledger: heads of households, ca. late 1880s, Cherry Creek and Hump's camp Box 646:Ledger, heads of families White Horse Camp, 1892, men by name, women, boys, girls, totals (for ration issues) Box 649Ledger, ration ticket list, 1886, ticket holder name, total in family, boys ages, girls ages, men, women The NARA Cheyenne River records are not as well processed as those for Standing Rock, but I have some inventories if you would like to look at them.
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 21, 2009 12:32:55 GMT -5
Looking through my notes from KC NARA, I find the following: "Mary Talks was an interpreter at Cheyenne River." (Unusual for a women, but she was a Hampton graduate.) ---Cheyenne River Reservation Records, box 530
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 19, 2009 18:19:07 GMT -5
Waggoner: "These Miniconwoju were settled in the extreme western border of the Cheyenne River Reservation. They were backward in adopting the modes of civilization; they were leading a life after their own fashion a regular tribal life and Indian customs. I visited one summer [1890] where Mrs. Buck Williams was teaching school on Plum Creek, a small branch of the Cheyenne River. Cherry Creek was only four or five miles away. Mary Traversie, who was afterwards Mrs. Dupree, was assistant teacher. She was my schoolmate at Hampton. Nearly every evening we could hear the tom toms beating at Cherry Creek. Once we drove over to see them have a Grass Dance. At this time I saw Big Foot and many other prominent men. "
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 17, 2009 22:45:41 GMT -5
From Elizabeth M. Johnson's book: Black Horse Butte, A Dakota Community, 1909-1950: "Thunder Hawk Camp: Chief Thunder Hawk governed a Grand River colony south of Morristown by Shooter Bridge...village center was a log church, result of Catholic Missionaries, abandoned 1908; cemetery has many graves: Chief Thunder Hawk and his family...some other Indians... some of the hundred families were Archambaults, Flys, Blankets, White Shields, Yellow Earings, Fast Horses, Red Birds." p. 150
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 15, 2009 23:34:33 GMT -5
There is some published background on Clown/Talks/Dupris familes in Ziebach County History. The book can be hard to find, but some of it has been posted most of it online with permission [without the photos]. I won't cut and paste it here since it is copyrighted, but here is the url of the chapter: files.usgwarchives.org/sd/ziebach/history/chap16-1.txt
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 12, 2009 22:46:53 GMT -5
Thought some folks might be interested in this: The Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre announces the 2009 First Nations Language Keeper Conference. This event celebrates and supports language education for First Nation people. The 2009 conference is organized to build upon the advances in knowledge pertaining to language revitalization and retention, teaching and new advances in technology and community language developments. We invite you all to bring your enthusiasm and quest for knowledge, contribution and network with like minded educators, administrators, parents, linguists, community cultural advocates. Information pertaining to Session topics will be in the areas of: • Language Methodologies and Assessment • Language / Cultural Group teachings • Learning through Technology • Cultural Arts For more information about the First Nations Language Keepers Conference please contact: Eva Lerat Phone: (306) 244-1146 Fax: (306) 665-6520 E-mail: conference@sicc.sk.ca www.sicc.sk.ca/
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Post by emilylevine on Nov 10, 2009 22:43:21 GMT -5
There is a lot of Pony Claim information in the Ralph H. Case Papers at the archives of the I.D. Weeks Library at South Dakota State University. I have some photocopies. I have the Cheyenne River claimants info---numbers taken, amount paid, heirs, with some genealogical data. don't know why I don't have Standing Rock. If you have a CR name you want checked, I can do that. Case was the tribe's lawyer and the files have a lot of history on what happened. I think the taking of the horses is an overlooked episode that had a psychically and emotionally devastating effect on all the Lakota reservations.
Also at the National Archives in Kansas City: Cheyenne River pony claims in box 665. manuscript. names, ages, amount paid. some heirship info. Also Standing Rock info in Oversized box 69. I only have part of one sheet copied. Again I can check for names, but LaDonna may have more complete SR records.
from my notes © : "After Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn in June 1876, control of Indian agencies on the northern plains was transferred from civilian to military authority. Ostensibly as a means of denying the Lakota mobility, but clearly as a retaliatory punitive measure, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, commander of the Division of the Missouri, instigated a policy of dismounting the Indians. Additional troops were sent to the various agencies to carry out this policy; the Huŋkpapas and others at Standing Rock had the misfortune of being assigned to the 7th Cavalry, Custer’s unit. Meanwhile, the Commission of 1876 was visiting the Dakota/Lakota agencies in an attempt to force the Indians to cede the Black Hills. At the Cheyenne River Agency, the commissioners tried to allay Lakota fears that their ponies were about to be seized, assuring them that individuals and their property would be protected. In October, after the Commission claimed ownership of the Black Hills for the United States???, Gen. Alfred Terry, commander of the Department of Dakota, was ordered to disarm and dismount the Lakota and Yankton/ai at Standing Rock and Cheyenne River. Terry threatened the Indians with denial of rations when he found that, forewarned, they had removed their ponies to distant pastures. The Indians relented. On October 23, Terry’s men seized 1,222 horses at Standing Rock. When the “pony campaign” ended in May 1877, over 5,000 horses had been seized at Standing Rock and Cheyenne River. The horses were to have been sold at auction and the proceeds used to provide cattle for the Indians. Through disease, incompetent drunken herders, corruption, and outright theft, only 429 of the horses taken from Standing Rock and Cheyenne River made it to auction. Of the money received, only a portion actually went toward stock for the tribes. Standing Rock received 315 cows and 8 bulls. The Lakota worked for years to receive compensation for their stolen horses. In 1892, the government began to pay the people at these two agencies for over 5,000 head. Additional “pony claims” from Standing Rock and other agencies dragged on until 1944. In the end, the government paid compensation for over 8,000 pony claims totaling more than $320,000. This generally neglected piece of history had an emotionally and physically devastating effect on the Indians that few historians besides Waggoner have appreciated. See Richmond L. Clow, “General Philip Sheridan’s Legacy: The Sioux Pony Campaign of 1876” and Forrest W. Daniel, “Dismounting the Sioux.” The Sioux hired attorney Ralph H. Case to pursue their pony claims (as well as petitioning for the Black Hills Claim). Case’s files on these claims are held by the I.D. Weeks Library at the University of South Dakota. Of particular interest are a printed list of “Cheyenne River Agency Claimants” and the settlements made to them or their heirs; “Sioux Pony Claims” presented by Case which includes interviews with Indians relating how soldiers stole elk tooth dresses, beads, moccasins, and whatever other personal items that caught their eye during their seizure of guns and horses; and finally, a number of letters to Case from individuals like the following from Kate Blue Arm written April 30, 1943 (original in Lakota): I write this letter to you in haste. My Grandfather gave up some horses for which I now ask for money compensation. This happened many years ago. It was told at the time that a settlement will be made for the ponies on the value of Forty Dollars in money for each pony and I now ask for settlement. There were Five ponies in all. It was the Soldiers that took these horses. I ask that you investigate this claim for me. I am in dire hardship for want of food, clothing and other necessities. I am living in dire need of these necessities. This is all. I shake hands with you. I am Kate Blue Arm Please answer me."
Waggoner ©: "The hillsides were a black mass of moving horses, thousands of them were being driven in from every direction. They were held west of Fort Yates. Mother, my sister, and I climbed the hill near Yates where many others had gone to view the [?] of horses across the Missouri River where some of the Yanktonais were living all up and down Cut Tail Creek that empties into the river opposite Fort Yates. In a few days the horses were taken toward Bismarck. There were many fine horses among the herd; they were not all Indian ponies. The Indians had been breeding up their horses till they had a good quality of running horses, horses that could compete with any Kentucky-bred race stock. A few Indians specialized in pinto stock, others raised bays, roans, or blacks, according to the stallions that were kept. So great was the pride in owning a herd that the owners just fairly lived with them. It was the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. The grooming, the pampering, and even painting ornaments on their pet horses. Horses were driven down to water twice a day and taken out to fresh fields of pasture as though they didn’t know enough to go to water. I have seen Indians talk to their horses as though they were human. ....There were a few halfbreed boys employed on this horse raid to drive them to Minnesota from where they were sold. The Standing Rock horses were taken to Minneapolis and sold, but the other reservation horses from Cheyenne River, Fort Thompson, Crow Creek, Rosebud, and Oglala agencies were taken south toward Omaha where they were auctioned off. At Standing Rock, John Fleury from Fort Thompson was employed to help to drive the horses. When he came back he boarded with us for a while. He told us they got to the railroad with about half what they started with. The horses were continually stolen. Many fine teams were sold to farmers who came looking for a bargain for little or nothing. There was one young fellow selling teams to the livery barns at Bismarck and to the grading camps right along. No one questioned where he got his horses. All through the fall of 1876 and part of 1877, there were straggling herds coming in every now and then. Wagonloads of guns and ammunition was hauled in. All the ammunition went to the military, but the old guns were stored at the agency warehouses. They were there for years. I don’t know what became of them. The guns were old and useless, rusty and most of them broken. So the horses were all gone. The life, the hope, the pride of the Indian was gone with them. The sole dependence of them. It was like losing your father and mother to them. No one in this machine age could ever understand the love between master and horse. The love of a man toward a spirited, courageous horse was wonderful. It was like the love for a beloved child, only a man is dependent on a horse. My sister and I and other children would climb the hill back of Fort Yates. We could see the wind-whipped tipis on the dust beclouded prairies for miles away without a horse moving around. Here and there we could see men and women laboriously dragging wood home or carrying small quantities on their backs. Every tent seemed to be silent except where children were crying for food. Silence because there was no enjoyment in talking, no enjoyment in singing, only a wailing song at times came with the wind, a song of grief and regret." PLEASE NOT REPRODUCE
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Post by emilylevine on Oct 27, 2009 17:09:17 GMT -5
Welcome obemaunoqua52! By saying Miigwitch, you're just saying "thank you," right? em
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Post by emilylevine on Oct 19, 2009 21:57:32 GMT -5
A number of winter counts show the crow/Crow incident in 1820-21 and the Star Sounding Passed By as occurring in 1821-22.
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Post by emilylevine on Oct 15, 2009 13:36:35 GMT -5
Waggoner makes a curious statement about Gray Eagle's ancestry: She not only says that he was born a Mnicowoju, but that he was an adopted Blackfeet captive. does anyone have any insight into either of these claims?
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Post by emilylevine on Oct 11, 2009 10:25:22 GMT -5
jinlian, great thoughts. I knew you could help out here. Looking through the winter counts that I have copies of I have found some interesting entries: 1. "The British Museum Winter Count" [often attributed to Blue Thunder (Yanktonai)], but Howard says that although it is similar in content, he doesn't believe it is Blue Thunder's: [picture of a crow (bird) outside the top of a tipi] "Kangi ot'a t'api. lit. Crows many they-died. For this winter the pictograph is a tipi with a dying crow fluttering near its top. The counts of the Blue Thunder group and No Two Horns note the same event for this year. Blue Thunder: 'Going to camp that time on Cherry Creek place. Many crow birds flew around tipis and died, lean and starved. So cold they fell dead out of the skies.' Blue Thunder Variants I, II and III 'Camped on Cherry Creek. Lots of Crows died there.' No Two Horns 'Cold. The crows tried to look into the lodges for a place to stay.' [Howard goes on to give the familiar location of Cherry Creek on the Cheyenne River res and then notes similar events listed for other years on other counts]. "The British Museum Winter Count," James H. Howard, in Occasional Paper No 4 , Britsih Museum, 1979. See also Howard, 1960, "Dakota Winter Counts as a Source of Plains Indian History," in Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 173 , Anthropological Papers, No. 61 . 2. "Iron Shell's Winter Count": "Crow Indian killed inside a tipi (1820). The enemy Crow was killed killed within the Sioux camp." from The Sioux , Royal B. Hassrick, appendix A. These are just a few examples. I'm sure there's more. It seems too big of a coincidence that in the same year that crow birds died while hanging around a camp, a Crow Indian was killed in a Sioux camp----and there was a fight where Lakota killed Crows at their camp. There has got to be some misinterpreting. (Also, while crows are really smart birds, I've never heard of them trying to get in someone's house to stay warm.) Usually in winter counts when someone is killed, the word "kte" is used, unlike here where we have "ot'a", to die inside of. But of course, the original winter counts were only the pictures, so someone could have written the Lakota a little differently. It could also imply that the Crows died in their village or in their lodges when the Lakota attacked them. It could be that there was a creek called Cherry Creek by the Lakota out there in Harding county. A quick look now on maps doesn't show one, but there are lots of creeks around Crow Butte with obvious white man names that may very well have replaced a creek once called Cherry. So maybe we have lots of misinterpretations of winter counts. I don't know. Just some thoughts. See also these sites for mention of the incident: www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMZT1www.billynorman.com/theranch.htmEm
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Post by emilylevine on Oct 10, 2009 23:38:11 GMT -5
Two items: 1. "Crow Indians. An Algonquin tribe of Indians residing in Montana, but who prior to 1822 occupied the valley of the Little Missouri River in northwestern South Dakota. In a great battle fought at 'The hills where the Crows were killed,' in that year, the Sioux defeated the Crow with awful massacre and drove them from the region." --Doane Robinson. Encyclopedia of South Dakota, 1925. p. 149 2. "Long before the white people came to the area, there was a great battle between the Dakota and Crow Indians on the hill now called Crow Butte, located in Harding county. Many relics of that fight were found around the base of the hill and its name is a translation of the Dakota Paha Kangiokute." Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve. The Dakota Heritage: A Compilation of Indian Place Names in South Dakota. 1973. p.29. [also called Dakota's Heritage]
Not much, but a few additional tidbits. jinlian: anything about this from the Crow side of things that you know of?
An aside: If I remember right, Josephine Waggoner had a relative who died while journeying west with her band. They were near Crow Butte so she was "buried" on top of the butte (scaffold). Her dogs wouldn't leave the spot, so they shot them to leave them with her.
Em
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