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...A Forum for American Indian Issues...
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History 
Sat Jan 07, 2012 at 19:03:33 PM PST
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Following World War II, the United States decided that it wanted to sever its relationships with American Indian tribes. In order to do this, it needed to settle all possible legal claims which might arise out of its past dealings with the tribes. Thus, in 1946, Congress created the Indian Claims Commission to adjudicate all claims arising out of fraud, treaty violations, or other wrongs done to the Indians by the government. Under the Indian Claims Commission Act, a tribe could receive full and just compensation for wrongs. It was presumed that most of these claims would deal with land: lands which had been illegally seized from Indian tribes, land which had been purchased from them at less than their true market value, and damages to Indian land by non-Indian intruders.
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Thu Jan 05, 2012 at 15:59:15 PM PST
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When the Dutch and the French, and later the English, began to enter into what would become New York State searching for trading partners in the seventeenth century, they encountered a large, well-organized alliance of tribes known as the Iroquois. The League of Five Nations, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, was composed of five culturally and linguistically similar nations who had come together to promote peace among themselves.
The map above shows the approximate location of the Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes when the Europeans first began to enter the area.
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Wed Jan 04, 2012 at 11:05:18 AM PST
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When the Europeans first began their invasion of what would become known as New England, they encountered people-American Indians-whose origins and existence puzzled them. They were firm in their conviction that they knew the true history of the world and that this history had been written down in their holy book. Since American Indians were not mentioned in their book, they had to come up with some explanation of their origins. Ignoring American Indian oral traditions, they simply superimposed their own creation story on them, regardless of whether it made any realistic sense of not.
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Mon Jan 02, 2012 at 10:07:57 AM PST
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While Europeans tended to build the places they considered to be sacred-churches, statues, memorials-for American Indian people sacred places were often not places constructed by humans, but places which were naturally sacred. In looking at the landscape around them, Indian people did not see a landscape that needed changing, nor did they see it as a landscape which they were to dominate: rather, they saw a landscape filled with living things. The living things within this landscape included the plants and animals, as well as the rivers, the rocks, the mountains, and the hills. Sacred places in the landscape were often portals through which Indian people could make contact with the sacred.
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Sun Jan 01, 2012 at 13:22:59 PM PST
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During the nineteenth century, academics, politicians, teachers, historians, and the general public knew that Americans Indians were a vanishing race, destined to disappear before the relentless superiority of American manifest destiny, greed, private property, and capitalism. More than a decade into the twentieth century, however, American Indians continued to exist and Indian reservations were generally places of great poverty. The nineteenth century policies regarding the administration of Indian affairs continued, and seemed to be more determined than ever to make sure that Indians would disappear. During the twentieth century, many historians and others, believing in the myth of American superiority, actually believed that Indians had disappeared and thus twentieth century Indians are usually invisible in the histories of this century. Looking back to a century ago, to the year 1912, we see that there is, however, an Indian history for this year.
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Sun Jan 01, 2012 at 09:12:53 AM PST
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While the English history of the colonization of Massachusetts often characterizes the Indians as nomadic hunters with no claim to the land, it is interesting to note that the first action of the Pilgrims when they landed in 1620 was to rob an Indian grave of the corn offerings which had been left there. Corn, or maize, as most people know, is not something hunted by nomads, but is a domesticated plant. While the first English colonists survived in the beginning on plant foods raised by the Indians, they often failed to see the Indian fields, as they didn't look like English fields.
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Fri Dec 30, 2011 at 10:44:17 AM PST
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In 1865, some drunken American squatters murdered Pai headman Anasa. In retaliation, Pai raiders attacked several wagon trains, ran off livestock, and shut down the traffic on the road between Prescott and Fort Mohave. In response to these attacks, the U.S. Army created a line of demarcation which declared that all Indians living more than 70 miles east of the Colorado River were to be considered hostile and subject to extermination. Under this declaration, not only were the Pai considered hostile, but also the Yavapai and Western Apache.
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Wed Dec 28, 2011 at 10:33:52 AM PST
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( - promoted by navajo)
The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that "the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne - the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves," and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we'll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 121st Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
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Sun Dec 25, 2011 at 12:58:14 PM PST
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In the United States the concept of insanity has often been associated with notions of racial purity and the racial superiority of Europeans. In 1898, Congress was considering establishing a facility for insane Indians. One senator testified:
"It has been well established that the percentage of insanity is greater among half-breeds than among full-blooded Indians. That is explained by the theory of crossbreeding, that has a tendency to weaken the race. For this reason it is confidently expected by those who have made a study of these conditions, that the rate of insanity will greatly increase as our civilization grows."
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Sat Dec 24, 2011 at 15:21:03 PM PST
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The Hopi had lived in their mesa-top villages in what is now northern Arizona for many centuries before the United States acquired the right to govern the area. They did not, however, sign a treaty with the United States and therefore did not reserve a portion of their homelands for themselves.
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Fri Dec 23, 2011 at 10:01:30 AM PST
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The media has never been fair and balanced when it comes to serving Indian people and reporting on events which impact Indian lives. Many Indian leaders have felt that it is critical for Indians to have media which they control. One example of Indian media can be seen in The Indian Journal, a newspaper born in Indian Territory (later known as Oklahoma).
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Wed Dec 21, 2011 at 09:56:33 AM PST
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The nineteenth-century wild west shows did a great deal to firmly entrench the stereotype of the American Indian in American culture. This stereotype, loosely based on generic Plains Indian cultures, portrays Indians as savages, as a vanishing people destined to go extinct in the face of American superiority, and hindrances to the inevitability of Manifest Destiny.
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Tue Dec 20, 2011 at 16:55:11 PM PST
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When the Yavapai came under the jurisdiction of the United States following the acquisition of what was to become Arizona, they were a loose association of locally organized groups speaking mutually intelligible but nevertheless distinct sub-dialects. Traditional Yavapai territory stretched from the San Francisco Peaks in the north, to the Pinal Mountains in the east, and to the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers in the southwest. Following the discovery of gold in Yavapai territory in 1863, the American government and the Americans who settled in Yavapai territory began plotting the removal of the Yavapai from their traditional territory.
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Mon Dec 19, 2011 at 21:37:11 PM PST
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While the mainstream art world did not begin to recognize American Indian art as a distinctive art form until the twentieth century, during the late nineteenth century the market for American Indian arts-or more accurately, arts and crafts-began to develop. This market included pottery, weavings, drawings, paintings, and other items. The new market was driven by tourism, trading posts, museums, and wealthy collectors. During this time, American Indian art began to shift from tribal art in which artifacts were produced primarily for tribal members to ethnic art in which artifacts were purchased by non-Indians.
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Mon Dec 19, 2011 at 08:35:39 AM PST
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During the nineteenth century, expositions and world fairs were seen as a profitable way for communities to promote themselves while educating the masses. Since Indians were seen as a vanishing people at this time, Indians were often an important attraction at these events. The 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition held at Omaha, Nebraska, was no exception. The goal of the Exposition was to showcase the development of the West, from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast. Indians were, of course, a part of this story, though usually seen as hindrances to development.
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Sat Dec 17, 2011 at 22:33:22 PM PST
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While reservations were lands which were initially reserved for exclusive Indian use, the United States has often administered these lands with the intention of assimilating the Indians into American culture. In dealing with the Indian nations, which the Constitution and the Supreme Court had declared to be sovereign entities known as "domestic dependent nations," the United States government preferred to establish totalitarian dictatorships and to destroy any remnant of aboriginal democracy. The Bill of Rights, and the Constitution to which they were attached, were not seen as applicable on the reservations.
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Fri Dec 16, 2011 at 08:12:06 AM PST
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The oldest, largest, and most representative group of American Indians and Alaska Natives is the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Many people also feel that it is today the most politically influential Indian organization in the United States. The NCAI started in the 1940s.
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Thu Dec 15, 2011 at 09:40:24 AM PST
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When cultures are under stress, particularly when that stress is coming from forced change outside of the control of the people in the culture, a messiah or prophet may emerge who will provide a religious solution to the problems. In 1875, the Yavapai were forced by the United States government to walk from their homelands to the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, a distance of nearly 200 miles. San Carlos had been established as a reservation for the Apache and the United States mistakenly believed that the Yavapai were an Apache band. Once on the reservation, their freedoms were reduced as the United States sought to impose cultural genocide on them.
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Tue Dec 13, 2011 at 09:12:23 AM PST
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In 1851, the U.S. Army sent out an exploratory party into northern Arizona. The Yavapai response to this party was to flee and stay out of sight. In one instance, the American scouts surprised a Yavapai party gathering piñon nuts. The Indians immediately fled and then watched from a distant hill as the invaders plundered their camp. When the Americans encountered a second abandoned camp, they left a tobacco offering instead of looting it.
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Sun Dec 11, 2011 at 21:20:25 PM PST
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For the American Indian nations east of the Mississippi River, the Revolutionary War was a time of great turmoil, deceit, and disaster. Both the British and the American rebels sought assistance from and alliance with the Indian nations. While both armies sought Indian warriors, both armies also attacked Indian villages, including those which were trying to stay neutral in the conflict. The war divided many Indian nations, with some Indians favoring one side, some favoring the other, and many expressing the idea that this was not their war. One of the Indian nations impacted by the Revolution was the Lenni Lenape (also known as the Delaware) whose traditional territory included New Jersey, New York (west of the Hudson River and the western end of Long Island), eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and northeastern Maryland.
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| In Memoriam |
In honor of my mother, THE FLORA SOMBRERO LIND NAVAJO ENDOWMENT FUND has been set up to accept your donations.
This scholarship endowment has been established at the American Indian College Fund to honor Flora Sombrero Lind, as an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation who was born at Inscription House, Arizona of the Many Goats clan circa 1925. This scholarship endowment is funded by Flora's family and friends who want to see Navajo students pursue higher education and carry on their great Navajo heritage.
Please leave a comment here if you donate.
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| About |
Native American
Netroots
...a forum for the discussion of political, social and economic issues affecting the indigenous peoples of the United States, including their lack of political representation, economic deprivation, health care issues, and the on-going struggle for preservation of identity and cultural history
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