Jessica Crabtree

“…The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself…”

- Chief Seattle

The famous oration by Chief Seattle is believed to have been made in 1854; the venue was supposedly a public meeting called by the governor in Seattle, Washington to discuss the transfer of native lands to the whites. There, the chief of the local Suquamish and Duwamish tribes stood up to deliver his eloquent final word on the massive changeover taking place in his world.

It’s been touted as one of the most compelling environmental messages ever spoken, a moving plea from an Indian watching his culture and his natural homeland disappear. Millions of copies have sold across the world; it’s been used throughout the media, from radio to movies to books (including an appearance in an Al Gore book). But a closer look may reveal a disappointing past to this iconic bestseller.

The speech with many faces

There are several versions of the speech in circulation, so obviously they can’t all be right. And each is littered with subtle anachronisms and other textual flaws that raise red flags about their authenticity.

The most popular (and most quoted) version was written by Texas professor Ted Perry as part of a screenplay for a 1972 film called “Home.” It was this version that soon became a war-cry for environmentalists – and the one that contains the biggest gaffs.

Buffalo and iron horses?

“…I’ve seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive…”

Readers will notice that Chief Seattle speaks of the “iron horse” or railroad. The first railroad in Washington was built by the Cascades Railroad Company in 1858 – several years after Chief Seattle supposedly delivered his speech. The Transcontinental Railroad wasn’t completed until 1869.

Above all, the “lament over the buffalo” is a dead giveaway. Chief Seattle lived in the Pacific Northwest – not the Great Plains – and never traveled beyond his homeland. We all know there are no buffalo anywhere near the Puget Sound. But I doubt it would have been as effective if the chief was quoted mourning over a diminishing seafood population. That just wouldn’t sell.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie Smoke Signals where Victor tries to teach his friend Thomas the “stoic” Indian look:

Victor: You gotta look mean or people won’t respect you. White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean. You gotta look like a warrior! You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo!

Victor: What! You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish? This ain’t “Dances With Salmon” you know!

This illustrates how much the stereotype of the Plains Indians has permeated the white view of Native Americans. In the perception of many people, Indians = vast herds of buffalo roaming the prairie, wild ponies running through the wind, and tepees silhouetted against the sunset. One image becomes a mass-scale stereotype of all Indians, everywhere. Then, out of sight, out of mind: no more buffalo, no more tepees = no more Indians – thus the “vanishing race.” Cut and dry, two-dimensional thinking.

This is the kind of thinking that is projected all through the Chief Seattle speech. And it’s perhaps one of the biggest indicators that it’s nothing more than a fake – well-intentioned, perhaps, but still a fake.

A troubled history (continue reading…)

July 26, 1796: Birth of painter George Catlin

George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, into the large family of a Revolutionary War veteran. His mother’s and grandmother’s accounts of their experiences as Indian captives may have sparked his early fascination with Native Americans that later became a lifelong passion. As a young man he abandoned a law career to accompany expeditions researching and documenting indigenous peoples throughout North and South America.

During the 1830s, he traveled extensively through the Midwest and the Great Plains, where he spent weeks and months at a time among the Indian nations of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys – becoming one of the first Europeans to do so. The notes and drawings he compiled during this tour formed the basis of his collection of documentary paintings, which he later published in a two-volume work entitled Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. He amassed a huge collection of artifacts and kept a detailed record of the customs and appearances of the Native American peoples he encountered. His total output consisted of more than 600 original paintings and over 700 drawings and sketches, making him one of the premier painters of Native Americana.

Catlin attempted unsuccessfully to sell his portfolio to the United States government as a public historical exhibit; eventually he sold his original works to a private collector. He spent much of his later career traveling, writing memoirs, and marketing his work in European tours. He died in New Jersey in 1872; his works were later donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

About His Work

George Catlin is certainly not a painter who became famous solely on account of his artistic skills. In technical terms, his works range from mediocre to downright primitive, as some critics have labeled it. What drove his career was an almost obsessive desire to portray Native Americans from across the continent in the most original setting possible.

Like Edward Curtis, he felt compelled to portray the appearance and customs of peoples whom he felt were a “vanishing race.” In some cases, this proved to be fateful; for example, his extensive work among the Mandan barely preceded a smallpox epidemic that reduced their number to a mere handful. As a result, Catlin’s depictions of the Mandan are valuable today because no artist after him was able to produce such a successful pictorial record of them.

Above: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas; Below: Mandan Buffalo Dance

There is much controversy over the duplicity in Catlin’s portrayals of Indians. On one hand, his genuine appreciation of Native Americans fueled his eagerness to preserve their cultural record; on the other, he stooped to using white models in Indian apparel for some paintings, and staging performing acts similar to later wild west shows as part of his marketing scheme. Both of these contributed to spreading and reinforcing damaging stereotypes that are still prevalent today.

Right: Sha-kó-ka (“Mint”), a Mandan girl (1832)

The fact remains that his personal mentality in regards to American Indians was far ahead of his time. Whatever his motives in promoting his own work, and his means for marketing it, his profound respect for the cultures he encountered was remarkable, and would have still been uncommon a generation or more ahead of his time.

His confidence in the character of Indian society as a whole was boundless. “The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied,” Catlin asserted. Towards the end of his career, he remarked, “No Indian ever betrayed me, struck me with a blow, or stole from me a shilling’s worth of my property.” And this at a time when Indians were still perceived largely as inferior humans predisposed toward aggression and brutality. (continue reading…)

June 25, 1876: Battle of Little Big Horn

There’s not much about this event that hasn’t been said – both true and not so true. It has been studied more extensively, and become more entrenched in popular culture, than possibly any other encounter between Indians and US forces. Maybe that’s because it involved so many influential figures – General Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse – or maybe because it was so shocking to Americans when it occurred that it was instantly and permanently seared into the public memory. Whatever the reasons, our understanding of the conflict and the events surrounding it have changed dramatically through time. The technologies of forensic archaeology and ballistics have reconstructed the course of events on the Greasy Grass, from the movements on the field to weapons used and the nature of the combat.

Perhaps the biggest change in perception is the shift in bias. The role of the US military, and of Custer in particular, is no longer so glorified as it once was, and the Indians not so vilified. We’ve come to understand how the hunger for gold in the forbidden Black Hills motivated the Custer Expedition of 1876. And with more Native accounts coming to light – and being heard – our understanding of the events on the ground has become more objective and comprehensive.

These changes are relatively recent, however. For most of the 20th century, discussing the legitimacy of US Indian policies was strictly taboo – and so was challenging the objectivity of “official” accounts. (continue reading…)

Finders Keepers? Adulteration of Native American Cultures in the Name of Profit: an essay by Marchell J. Wesaw

#2: My Take on Thanksgiving

Holidays almost invariably stir up a lot of emotionally-charged issues. The volatile mix of relatives, religion, and politics inevitably leads to a lot of vitriol – and sometimes with good reason. Holidays in our modern culture tend to gravitate either towards crass commercialism or romanticized idealism, often combined with a convoluted view of history. In the case of Thanksgiving, gratitude and togetherness are excellent things to celebrate so long as they are not tinged with antiquated political propaganda and racial stereotyping. When this happens – intentionally or not – the results can be damaging.

In a bitter irony, the whole story of Thanksgiving shrouds what is possibly history’s worst case of ingratitude. No version of the Thanksgiving story would be complete without an account of the horrific sequel that occurred only a generation later. We all know the story of Squanto and the Wampanoag chief Massasoit befriending the Pilgrims and saving them from starvation, and later sharing the seminal “first Thanksgiving.” But few realize that many of the same Pilgrims who grew up in the shadow of that festive occasion later murdered Massasoit’s son and paraded his head through Plymouth in a second “unofficial” Thanksgiving; and that the very same Wampanoag with whom they had pledged friendship were brutally hunted and killed or sold into slavery. In a bitter irony, the whole story of Thanksgiving shrouds what is possibly history’s worst case of ingratitude. It’s hard to find another instance where a country’s ideals stand so high while its history is so contaminated with whitewash, treachery, and genocide. And the worst part is, most of us are completely disconnected with the reality of our past and the true context in which we commemorate it.

It’s easy to understand why so many Indians object to the popular form of Thanksgiving. On face value it seems to celebrate the successful European colonization of America and the exploitation of its bountiful resources at the expense of dispossessing an entire race – and to add insult to injury, it seems to commemorate the Indians’ generosity in helping the process along! Mainstream America eagerly incorporates Indians into its holidays, its entertainment, as sports mascots – almost casually, as if they are the intellectual property of the United States, part and parcel of the American mythology, and not real people who are part of living, sovereign nations. We love to include the Indian stereotype – without the price of telling the full story. (continue reading…)

#5: That’s Not What They Looked Like!

Here’s a typical traditional image of the holiday from the turn-of-the-century painting “The First Thanksgiving” by J.L.G. Ferris. How many mistakes can you find?

For starters:

• The Indians in the painting are dressed like Plains Indians, like the Lakota or Comanche. For various reasons, the stereotypical Plains Indian has become the catch-all image for every Indian culture – but it’s completely incorrect. The Wampanoag Indians at the first Thanksgiving lived on the coasts of New England and had a completely different culture based on the available resources of that region. (Which also means they didn’t hunt buffalo or live in tepees.)

• The painting indicates that Indian women were present. This too is incorrect, as the reason the Wampanoag had joined the Pilgrims in the first place was to make sure the loud noises and gun volleys coming from the settlement weren’t signs of something being wrong. Their sachem or leader Massasoit arrived unexpectedly with around 90 warriors – and only once they established all-clear did they participate by bringing a contribution of fresh game – a sign of continuing friendship.

• Need I mention the way the Pilgrims are dressed. Obviously this painting is highly glamorized. The Pilgrims had suffered from poverty both in England and during their stay in Holland; how did their condition improve so much after a year of sickness and starvation in America? Notice the gentleman in black: he’s a clergyman, but over time the image of the Pilgrims as a saintly lot of devout people resulted in the notion that they all dressed in black clerical clothes. Of course Pilgrims weren’t the only people who came over on the Mayflower – the group called “Strangers” included mercenary soldiers (such as Miles Standish), merchants, and adventurers. They weren’t religious and didn’t get along with the Pilgrims at all.

Of course the best part is that the Indians are sitting down doing nothing while the Pilgrims condescendingly serve them. Note the woman on the left, teaching the “squaw” how to serve a meal like a proper civilized lady. And the fellow directly below them: “Me teachum red man how eat with fork”… how much do you want to bet that the Pilgrims didn’t even have silverware?

Test your own knowledge of the historical Thanksgiving event – see what other inaccuracies you can spot.