Justin Gage – We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us

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Justin Gage – We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us: Native Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2020)

This excellent book will be eye-opening for some as it explores the networks of communication that developed among tribes during the early reservation period. While the government, agents and missionaries felt the teaching of writing in their own language and English would hurry the end of the old ways, Native American leaders saw it as an advantageous skill to help their people navigate this new world but also used it to communicate with others on different reservations and those sent to schools in the east, with the result that this often strengthened friendships and alliances and helped spread information and knowledge of injustice.

It is sometimes easy to see the pre-1880 decades consisting purely of warfare against the white man and among various tribes, but a closer look often shows times of peace, trading and the development of alliances, even if these neither lasted that long nor had much consistency, as in the relationship between the Arikara and Lakota. During the early reservation years, these periods of friendship increased, though this is not to say confinement to reservations put a complete end to conflict between tribes; for example, the Crow and Blackfoot continued raiding each other for horses almost up until the end of the 1880s and Sword Bearer and his followers returned to the Crow agency in a boisterous celebratory fashion after a successful raid on the Blackfoot shortly before his ‘outbreak’ in October 1887. However, overall this may be seen, I guess, as the birth of Pan-Indianism, as tribes who often fought with each other or, in some cases, had little or no contact, began to communicate and visit with each other to share grievances and culture. As the Ute headman Catoomp said, “We are all one people now.”

Tribes journeyed to see each other, with or without the permission of their agents, who were often suspicious of their motives. Gage discusses visits made by the Lakota to the Utes in the 1880s, for example, which surely paved the way for the band of Utes who sought refuge in South Dalota in 1906. See amertribes.proboards.com/thread/2526/utes-south-dakota

Agents were often opposed to such visiting; Sitting Bull’s visit to the Crow in 1886 was blamed for some headmen stalling on allotment talks later that year, after he had petitioned the Indian Office in order to obtain permission to go to Montana, and during the Sword Bearer outbreak a year later, suspicion fell (unfairly) on the Hunkpapa again, as well as on another former enemy, the Northern Cheyenne at Tongue River, with whom the Crow was in contact.

Despite the frequent inter-tribal raiding, some Lakota had visited with the Crow on and off for years, even before confinement to reservations and that increased post-1880. In fact, I recall reading (maybe Mike Cowdrey) that those embroidered and beaded buckskin jackets that Crow men wear in several Goff photographs were more than likely derived from the Lakota, probably originating among Dakota/Lakota ‘Metis.’ Young Man Afraid of his Horses had Crow relatives and when freedom to visit was threatened, he, along with Red Cloud and Little Wound wrote (in other words, got someone to write) to President Cleveland in 1888 saying, “We do not want the gates closed between us.” Young Man Afraid explained the issue clearly in a letter (written by Inspector of Annuities M.W. Day) to General Crook when he said, “We were at war with one another; you made us stop and be friendly; we now want to keep up this friendship and stop and visit each other so we can talk of things that are of interest, and what is best for our common welfare.” And, of course, it was this “common welfare” that the whites perceived as threatening and some agents, like James McLaughlin at Standing Rock, began to censor mail.

In the 1860s and 70s, the tribes saw the railroads as bringers of death, destruction and change. Buffalo were shot in huge numbers along the railroads, which, when complete, split the herds up; trains brought more settlers and troops. As Gage notes, though, in the 1880s, Indians began to use the railroads to travel from one reservation to another, causing panic and fear as they feasted and danced together, aired grievances and, in the eyes of many agents, neglected their farms, schools and work.

All this dovetails nicely with the emergence of the Ghost Dance as messages in both English and native languages were communicated from reservation to reservation and people travelled – at least partway - by train to see Wovoka and then back to spread the word to their own tribes and to others.

Gage presents overwhelming evidence of the significance of the tribes’ use of telegraph, mail, English and the railroads to counter the attempts by the government and various agents to suppress the development of native culture during this period. During the Ghost Dance, Lakota were aware of troop movements and of the way events were being distorted and exaggerated by the press because some could read the newspapers and leaders put putting forth their version of events to the American public by speaking to the Washington Star in January 1891, where Big Road explained, “All the dance trouble here was caused by Agent Royer and his policemen telling stories about us that were not true.”

This is an essential work, not merely on the Ghost Dance*, but for an understanding of tribal resistance (and growth) during the early reservation period. It’s based on his PhD dissertation, Intertribal Communication, Literacy, and the Spread of the Ghost Dance, which can be accessed here: www.academia.edu/90770314/Intertribal_Communication_Literacy_and_the_Spread_of_the_Ghost_Dance

See also Alex Carroll’s Ghost Dancing and the Iron Horse: Surviving through Tradition and Technology www.academia.edu/1074158/Ghost_Dancing_and_the_Iron_Horse_Surviving_through_Tradition_and_Technology

*Though it should certainly go on the list of the best recent books on the subject, along with Louis Warren’s God’s Red Sun, Rani-Henrik Andersson’s The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, Heather Cox Richardson’s Wounded Knee and David W. Grua’s Surviving Wounded Knee.

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nativeamericannetworks.com/goandtellallthetribes/