IV. Native American Perspectives 1. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: Mixed Origins, Mixed Education, Mixed Feelings Bonnin was a mixed blood woman who was raised by an Indian mother. At the age of eight, she left her village and was educated in a Quaker boarding school where she learned English and was taught musical skills. a. “The Dead Man's Plum Bush” in Gertrude Bonnin. Impressions of an Indian Childhood (1900). One autumn afternoon, many people came streaming toward the dwelling of our near neighbor. With painted faces, and wearing broad white bosoms of elk's teeth, they hurried down the narrow footpath to Harak Wanbdi's wigwam. (…) Harak Wanbdi was a strong young brave, who had just returned from his first battle, a warrior. His near relatives, to celebrate his new rank, were spreading a feast to which the whole of the Indian village was invited. Holding my pretty striped blanket in readiness to throw over my shoulders, I grew more and more restless as I watched the gay throng1 assembling. My mother was busily broiling2 a wild duck that my aunt had that morning brought over. “Mother, mother, why do you stop to cook a small meal when we are invited to a feast?” I asked, with a snarl in my voice. “My child, learn to wait. On our way to the celebration we are going to stop at Chanyu's wigwam. His aged mother-in-law is lying very ill, and I think she would like a taste of this small game.” Having once seen the suffering on the thin, pinched features of this dying woman, I felt a momentary shame that I had not remembered her before. On our way, I ran ahead of my mother, and was reaching out my hand to pick some purple plums that grew on a small bush, when I was checked by a low “Sh!” from my mother. “Why, mother, I want to taste the plums!” I exclaimed, as I dropped my hand to my side in disappointment. “Never pluck a single plum from this bush, my child, for its roots are wrapped around an Indian's skeleton. A brave is buried here. While he lived, he was so fond of playing the game of striped plum seeds that, at his death, his set of plum seeds were buried in his hands. From them sprang up the little bush.” Eyeing the forbidden fruit, I trod3 lightly on the sacred ground, and dared to speak only in whispers, until we had gone many paces from it. After that time, I halted in my ramblings whenever I came in sight of the plum bush. I grew sober with awe4, and was alert to hear a long-drawn-out whistle rise from the roots of it. Though I had never heard with my own ears this strange whistle of departed spirits, yet I had listened so frequently to hear the old folks describe it that I knew I would recognize it at once. The lasting impression of that day, as I recall it now, is what my mother told me about the dead man's plum bush.

b. From “The Cutting of my Long Hair” in Gertrude Bonnin. The School Days of an Indian Girl (1900). Against her mother's will, the eight-year-old girl leaves her village and goes East with some white missionaries to be educated at a Quaker boarding school, in a place that had been described to her as“the Land of Red Apples”. 1 2 3 4

Throng: crowd To broil: to cook To tread: to walk Awe: sacred fear

The first day in the land of apples was a bitter-cold one; for the snow still covered the ground, and the trees werebare. A large bell rang for breakfast, its loud metallic voice crashing through the belfry overhead and into our sensitive ears. The annoying clatter of shoes on bare floors gave us no peace. The constant clash of harsh noises, with an undercurrent of many voices murmuring in an unknown tongue, made a bedlam5 within which I was securely tied. And though my spirit tore itself in struggling for its lost freedom, all was useless. A paleface woman, with white hair, came up after us. We were placed in a line of girls who were marching6 into the dining room. These were Indian girls, in stiff shoes and closely clinging dresses. The small girls wore sleeved aprons and shingled7 hair. As I walked noiselessly in my soft moccasins, I felt like sinking to the floor, for my blanket had been stripped from my shoulders. I looked hard at the Indian girls, who seemed not to care that they were even more immodestly8 dressed than I, in their tightly fitting clothes. While we marched in, the boys entered at an opposite door. I watched for the three young braves who came in our party. I spied them in the rear ranks, looking as uncomfortable as I felt. (…) Late in the morning, my friend Judéwin gave me a terrible warning. Jeéwin knew a few words of English; and she had overheard the paeface woman talk about cutting our long, heavy hair. Our mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards! We discussed our fate some moments, and when Judéwin said, “We have to submit, because they are strong, “ I rebelled. “No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!” I answered. (…) I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's!

5 6 7 8

Bedlam: loud noises creating a feeling of chaos or madness To march: to walk in military style Shingled hair: hair cut short Immodest: displaying parts of one's body in a sexually provocative way

2. N. Scott Momaday: Seeing the Land from a Native American Perspective. The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) The Kiowa tribe began migrating from western Montana in the 1700s: they moved southeast of the Yellowstone River, migrating from the mountains to the plains, and subsequently became one of the nomadic tribes of the great plains (Wyoming, South Dakota). They allied with the Crow tribe, from whom they acquired the horse and the Sun Dance. Later, the tribe lost their rights to the United States government. In 1837, they were forced to sign a treaty with the government that allowed Americans to travel through Kiowa and Comanche lands, and in 1867, the Kiowa were forced onto a reservation as a result of the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Oklahoma became the Kiowa’s homeland. In 1990, 9,500 Kiowa still live in the United States.

Thomas Moran. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. 1898.

The Devil's Tower, Wyoming

The Native American Legend of Devil's Tower

Rainy Mountain, Oklahoma

N. Scott Momaday. The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969). In this autobiographical narrative, the author and narrator returns to Rainy Mountain (Oklahoma) where his grandmother has just died. After this the author goes on pilgrimage to the Northern territories that used to be the land of his grandmother's tribe, in the Yellowstone mountain (Montana and Wyoming) and in the Black Hills region (Wyoming and South Dakota). He thus walks in the steps of his ancestors, starting from Yellowstone, crossing the Black Hill area and visiting the Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Although my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the immense landscape of the continental interior lay like memory in her blood. She could tell of the Crows 9, whom she had never seen, and of the Black Hills, where she had never been. I wanted to see in reality what she had seen more perfectly in the mind's eye, and traveled fifteen hundred miles to begin my pilgrimage. Yellowstone, it seemed to me, was the top of the world, a region of deep lake and dark timber, canyons and waterfalls. But beautiful as it is, one might have the sense of confinement there. The skyline in all directions is close at hand, the high wall of the woods and deep cleavages of shade. There is a perfect freedom in the mountains, but it belongs to the eagle and the elk10, the badger11 and the bear. The Kiowas reckoned their stature by the distance they could see, and they were bent and blind in the wilderness12. Descending eastward, the highland meadows are a stairway to the plain. In July the inland slope of the Rockies is luxuriant with flax13 and buckwheat14, stonecrop15 and larkspur16. The earth unfolds and the limit of the land recedes. Clusters of trees, and animals grazing far in the distance, cause the vision to reach away17 and wonder to build upon18 the mind. The sun follows a longer course in the day, and the sky is immense beyond all comparison. The great billowing19 clouds that sail upon it are shadows that move upon the grain like water, dividing light. Farther down, in the lands of the Crows and the Blackfeet, the plain is yellow. Sweet clover takes hold of the hills and bends upon itself to cover and seal the soil. There the Kiowas paused on their way; they had come to the place where they must change their lives. The sun is at home on the plains. Precisely tere does it have the certain character of a god. When the Kiowas came to the land of the Crows, they could see the darl lees of the hills at dawn across the Bighorn River (…) Not yet would they veer southward toward the caldron of the land that lay below; they must wean their blood from the northern winter and hold the mountains a while longer in their view. They bore Tai-Me20 in procession to the east. A dark mist lay over the Black Hill, and the land was like iron. At the top of a ridge I caught sight of Devil's Tower upthurst21 against the grey sky as if in the birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust and the motion of theworld was begun. There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man; Devil's Tower is one of them. Two centuries ago, because they could not do otherwise, the Kiowas made a legend at the base of the rock. My 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

When the Kiowa left the Montana mountains in the 17th and 18th century, they became the allies of the Crows, a tribe of the plains who initiated them into the culture and religion of the plains (horse riding, the Sun Dance Ritual) The elk: l'élan Badger: blaireau Ici: la nature sauvage des montagnes Flax: plante de lin Buckwheat: sorte de blé noir Stonecrop: orpin (résineux) Larkspur: pied d'alouette (plante) To reach away: to expand, to reach distant objects To build upon: to grow on Billows: great waves The sacred being who aids the Kiowa in times of trouble. Upthrust: dressée vers le haut, vers le ciel

grandmother said: Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run up – on his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified; they ran, and the bear after them. They came to the stump of a great tree, and the tree spoke to them. It bade them climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise in the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. It reared again the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the stars of the Big Dipper. From that moment, and so long as the legend lives, the Kiowas have kinsmen in the night sky. Whatever they were in the mountains, they could be no more. However tenuous their well-being, however much they had suffered and would suffer again, they had found a way out of the wilderness. 3. Native American Photographers: Lee Marmon. Lucy Lewis, Acoma Potter (1961)

Richard Ray Whitman, States of Pervasive Indifference (1993)