3 Cherokee Plant Lore

Extracted from:  Myths of the Cherokee.  Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau  of American Ethnology. Washington Government Printing Office 1902  Recorded by James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee.

PLANT LORE

The division of trees into evergreen and deciduous is accounted for by a myth, related elsewhere, according to which the loss of their leaves in winter time is a punishment visited upon the latter for their failure to endure an ordeal to the end. With the Cherokee, as with nearly all other tribes east and west, the cedar is held sacred above other trees. The reasons for this reverence are easily found in its ever-living green, its balsamic fragrance, and the beautiful color of its fine-grained wood, unwarping and practically undecaying. The small green twigs are thrown upon the fire as incense in certain ceremonies, particularly to counteract the effect of asgina dreams, as it is believed that the anisgi'na or malevolent ghosts can not endure the smell; but the wood itself is considered too sacred to be used as fuel. In the war dance, the scalp trophies, stretched on small hoops, were hung upon a cedar sapling and decorated for the occasion. According to a myth the red color comes originally from the blood of a wicked magician, whose severed head was hung at the top of a tall cedar. The story is now almost forgotten, but it was probably nearly identical with one still existing among the Yuchi, former neighbors of the Cherokee. According to the Yuchi myth, a malevolent magician disturbed the daily course of the sun until at last two brave warriors sought him out and killed him in his cave. They cut off his head and brought it home with them to show to the people, but it continued still alive. To make it die they were advised to tie it in the topmost branches of a tree. This they did, trying one tree after another, but each morning the head was found at the foot of the tree and still alive. At last they tied it in a cedar, and there the head remained until it was dead, while the blood slowly trickling down along the trunk gave the wood its red color, and henceforth the cedar was a "medicine" tree.

Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) paints a Funeral scaffold of a Sioux chief

Karl Bodmer (Swiss Artist, 1809-1893) Funeral scaffold of a Sioux chief

The Sioux ( Dakota), are groups of Native American tribes & First Nations peoples in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.

The Dakota are first recorded to have resided at the source of the Mississippi River & the Great Lakes during the seventeenth century.  They were dispersed west in 1659 due to warfare with the Iroquois. By 1700 the Dakota Sioux were living in Wisconsin & Minnesota, at this time they exterminated the Wicosawan, another Siouan people in 1710. A split of branch known as the Lakota had migrated to present-day South Dakota.  Late in the 17th century, the Dakota entered into an alliance with French merchants.  The French were trying to gain advantage in the struggle for the North American fur trade against the English, who had recently established the Hudson's Bay Company.

The first recorded encounter between the Sioux & the French occurred when Radisson & Groseilliers reached what is now Wisconsin during the winter of 1659–60. Later visiting French traders & missionaries included Claude-Jean Allouez, Daniel Greysolon Duluth, & Pierre-Charles Le Sueur who wintered with Dakota bands in early 1700.  In 1736 a group of Sioux killed Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye & twenty other men on an island in Lake of the Woods.  However, trade with the French continued until the French gave up North America in 1763.

The Pawnee Indians had a long tradition of living in present-day Nebraska.  Their first land cession to the United States took place in 1833 when they sold land south of the Platte River. The Massacre Canyon battlefield near Republican River is located within this area. Forty years & two land cessions later, the tribe lived in a small reservation on old Pawnee land, present-day Nance County. The Pawnees had kept a right to hunt buffalo on their vast, ancient range between the Loup, Platte & Republican rivers in Nebraska & south into northern Kansas, now territory of the United States. They had suffered continual attacks by the Lakota that increased violently in the early 1840s. The Lakota lived north of the Pawnee. In 1868 they had entered into a treaty with the United States & agreed to live in the Great Sioux Reservation in present-day South Dakota. By Article 11 they (also) received a right to hunt along the Republican, almost 200 miles south of the reservation.  Both the Pawnee & the Lakota complained regularly over attacks by the other tribe. An attempt to make peace in 1871 with the United States as intermediary came to nothing.

The Massacre Canyon battle took place in Nebraska on August 5, 1873 near the Republican River. It was one of the last hostilities between the Pawnee & the Lakota & the last battle/massacre between Great Plains Indians in North America.  The massacre occurred when a large Oglala/Brulé Sioux war party of over 1,500 warriors led by Two Strike, Little Wound, & Spotted Tail attacked a band of Pawnee during their summer buffalo hunt. In the ensuing rout more than 75–100 Pawnees were killed, men with mostly women & children, the victims suffering mutilation & some set on fire.

The Pawnee were traveling along the west bank of the canyon, which runs south to the Republican River, when they were attacked. "A census taken at the Pawnee Agency in September, according [to] Agent Burges  "71 Pawnee warriors were killed, & 102 women & children killed", the victims brutally mutilated & scalped & others even set on fire"  although Trail Agent John Williamson's account states 156 Pawnee died. It is likely the death toll would have been higher, for Williamson noted ". . . a company of United States cavalry emerge[d] from the timber. When the Sioux saw the soldiers approaching they beat a hasty retreat, although "Recently discovered military documents disproved the old theory" per the "Massacre Canyon Monument" article. This massacre is by some considered one of the factors that led to the Pawnees' decision to move to a reservation in Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma.  The Pawnee disagree.

By 1862, shortly after a failed crop the year before & a winter starvation, the federal payment was late. The local traders would not issue any more credit to the Santee & one trader, Andrew Myrick, went so far as to say, "If they're hungry, let them eat grass."  On August 17, 1862 the Dakota War began when a few Santee men murdered a white farmer & most of his family. They inspired further attacks on white settlements along the Minnesota River. The Santee attacked the trading post. Later, settlers found Myrick among the dead with his mouth stuffed full of grass.

On November 5, 1862 in Minnesota, in courts-martial, 303 Santee Sioux were found guilty of rape & murder of hundreds of American settlers. They were sentenced to be hanged. No attorneys or witnesses were allowed as a defense for the accused, & many were convicted in less than five minutes of court time with the judge.  President Abraham Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 284 of the warriors, while signing off on the hanging of 38 Santee men on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. It was the largest mass-execution in U.S. history, on US soil.

Afterwards, the US suspended treaty annuities to the Dakota for four years & awarded the money to the white victims & their families. The men remanded by order of President Lincoln were sent to a prison in Iowa, where more than half died.

During & after the revolt, many Santee & their kin fled Minnesota & Eastern Dakota to Canada, or settled in the James River Valley in a short-lived reservation before being forced to move to Crow Creek Reservation on the east bank of the Missouri. A few joined the Yanktonai & moved further west to join with the Lakota bands to continue their struggle against the United States military.

Others were able to remain in Minnesota & the east, in small reservations existing into the 21st century, including Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, & Devils Lake (Spirit Lake or Fort Totten) Reservations in the Dakotas. Some ended up in Nebraska, where the Santee Sioux Reservation today has a reservation on the south bank of the Missouri.

Those who fled to Canada now have descendants residing on nine small Dakota Reserves, five of which are located in Manitoba (Sioux Valley, Long Plain, Dakota Tipi, Birdtail Creek, & Oak Lake [Pipestone]) & the remaining four (Standing Buffalo, Moose Woods [White Cap], Round Plain [Wahpeton], & Wood Mountain) in Saskatchewan.

Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War) was an armed conflict between the Lakota & the United States Army in the Wyoming Territory & the Montana Territory from 1866 to 1868. The war was fought over control of the Powder River Country in north central Wyoming.

The war is named after Red Cloud, a prominent Sioux chief who led the war against the United States following encroachment into the area by the U.S. military. The war ended with the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Sioux victory in the war led to their temporarily preserving their control of the Powder River country.

The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles & negotiations which occurred in 1876 & 1877 between the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, & the United States. The cause of the war was the desire of the U.S. government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, & the Sioux & Cheyenne refused to cede ownership to the U.S. Traditionally, the United States military & historians place the Lakota at the center of the story, especially given their numbers, but some Indians believe the Cheyenne were the primary target of the U.S. campaign.

The earliest engagement was the Battle of Powder River, & the final battle was the Wolf Mountain. Included are the Battle of the Rosebud, Battle of Warbonnet Creek, Battle of Slim Buttes, Battle of Cedar Creek, & the Dull Knife Fight.

Among the many battles & skirmishes of the war was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, often known as Custer's Last Stand, the most storied of the many encounters between the U.S. army & mounted Plains Indians. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota & other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass & also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, & Arapaho tribes & the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.

The fight was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, & Arapaho, who were led by several major war leaders, including Crazy Horse & Chief Gall, & had been inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake). The US 7th Cavalry, a force of 700 men, suffered a major defeat while under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (formerly a brevetted major general during the American Civil War). Five of the 7th Cavalry's twelve companies were annihilated & Custer was killed, as were two of his brothers, a nephew & a brother-in-law. The total US casualty count included 268 dead & 55 severely wounded (six died later from their wounds), including four Crow Indian scouts & at least two Arikara Indian scouts. The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument honors those who fought on both sides.

That Indian victory notwithstanding, the U.S. leveraged national resources to force the Indians to surrender, primarily by attacking & destroying their encampments & property. The Great Sioux War took place under the presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant & Rutherford B. Hayes. The Agreement of 1877 (19 Stat. 254, enacted February 28, 1877) officially annexed Sioux land & permanently established Indian reservations.

The massacre at Wounded Knee Creek was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota & the United States. It was described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of the Lakota bands of the Miniconjou & Hunkpapa with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers & more than 150 Lakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, & children. It remains unknown which side was responsible for the first shot; some of the soldiers are believed to have been the victims of "friendly fire" because the shooting took place at point-blank range in chaotic conditions. Around 150 Lakota are believed to have fled the chaos, many of whom may have died from hypothermia.

From Europe to the Atlantic coast of America to the Pacific coast of America during the 17C-19C, settlers moved West encountering a variety of Indigenous Peoples on their journeys. Karl Bodmer (Swiss Artist, 1809-1893) developed a remarkable talent for drawing & painting while studying with his uncle, painter & engraver Johann Jacob Meyer. After further studies in Paris, he joined his brother on a sketching trip through Germany in 1832 where he met Prince Maximilian zu Weid. Maximilian, known for his natural history research in the coastal forests of Brazil, was searching for a professional artist to accompany him on his expedition to North America. Bodmer signed a contract with Maximilian &, 3 weeks later, they set sail for America. From 1833-1834, the two traveled up the Missouri River, retracing the 1805 journey of Lewis & Clark. On the expedition, Bodmer depicted some of the same characters that George Caitlin had painted just months before. Bodmer was the last artist able to paint the Mandan Indians in North Dakota before the fatal 1837 smallpox epidemic that nearly obliterated the tribe. He also painted portraits of the Sioux, Blackfeet, Hidatsa, & other tribes, while Maximilian conducted studies & made notes on the botany & zoology of the areas. Before the end of the journey, Bodmer had completed 81 paintings, illustrating Maximillians expedition. Each elegant painting displayed extremely detailed & accurate accounts of Indian ceremonies & everyday life. In 1843, Maximilian's lithographs were published in Travels in the Interior of America.

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Obsessive Documentation of Native Americans

A shameless self-promoter, Catlin purchased this Blackfoot /Siksika medicine man's bearskin & wore it to enliven the presentation of his gallery. (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

George Catlin’s Obsession 

By Bruce Watson  Smithsonian Magazine December 2002

One day in 1805, a 9-year-old boy exploring the woods along the Susquehanna River in south-central New York came face-to-face with an Oneida Indian. The boy froze, terrified. Towering over him, the Indian lifted a hand in friendship. The boy never forgot the encounter or the man’s kindness. The experience may well have shaped George Catlin’s lifework. 

 ......Hundreds of paintings adorn the walls, accompanied by displays of artifacts—a buffalo...Catlin’s paintings & the items he collected have been exhibited together in the manner he displayed them (1837-1850) in salons along the Eastern Seaboard & in London, Paris & Brussels. headdress, arrows, beaded garments. At the center of it all is a lone white man—part showman, part artist—who devoted his life to preserving, in his words, “the looks & customs of the vanishing races of native man in America.”

Though not the first artist to paint American Indians, Catlin was the first to picture them so extensively in their own territories & one of the few to portray them as fellow human beings rather than savages. His more realistic approach grew out of his appreciation for a people who, he wrote, “had been invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, & therefore lost to the world.” Such empathy was uncommon in 1830, the year the federal Indian Removal Act forced Southeastern tribes to move to what is now Oklahoma along the disastrous “Trail of Tears.”

Catlin had little or no formal training as an artist, but he grew up hearing tales of Indians from settlers & from his own mother, who at age 7 had been abducted, along with her mother, by Iroquois during a raid along the Susquehanna in 1778. They were soon released unharmed, & Polly Catlin often told her son about the experience.

Despite a talent for drawing, Catlin (the fifth of 14 children) followed the importunings of his father, Putnam Catlin, & studied law. In 1820, he set up a practice near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he had been born in 1796 (though the family moved to a farm 40 miles away in New York when he was an infant). But he found himself sketching judges, juries & “culprits” in court, & after a few years he sold his law books & moved to Philadelphia to try his hand as an artist.

He earned commissions to paint the leading figures of the day, including Sam Houston & Dolley Madison, but struggled to find a larger purpose to his work. “My mind was continually reaching for some branch or enterprise of the art, on which to devote a whole lifetime of enthusiasm,” he wrote in his memoirs. He found it circa 1828, when a delegation of Indians stopped in Philadelphia en route to Washington, D.C. Captivated by “their classic beauty,” Catlin then began searching for Indian subjects. He felt that “civilization”—particularly whiskey & smallpox—was wiping them out, & he vowed that “nothing short of the loss of my life, shall prevent me from visiting their country, & of becoming their historian.” Although recently married to Clara Gregory, the daughter of a prominent Albany, New York, family, Catlin packed up his paints in 1830, left his new wife & headed west. (The Catlins, by all accounts, adored each other, & Catlin was constantly torn between devotion to his family, which in time would include four children, & his artistic ambitions.)

St. Louis was then the edge of the Western frontier, & Catlin wasn’t there long before he wrangled a meeting with the city’s most illustrious citizen, Gen. William Clark. Having already explored the Louisiana Purchase with Meriwether Lewis, Clark was then the government’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Western tribes. Catlin presented his early portraits to the general & asked for Clark’s assistance in making contact with Indians in the West. Clark was skeptical at first, but Catlin convinced him of the sincerity of his quest. That summer, Clark took Catlin some 400 miles up the Mississippi River to FortCrawford, where several tribes—the Sauk, Fox & Sioux among them—were having a council. Surrounded by gruff soldiers & somber Indians, whose customs were largely a mystery, Catlin took out his brushes & went to work. He would stay in the West six years, though he returned most winters to his family.

During those years, he painted 300 portraits & nearly 175 landscapes & ritual scenes. Back in New York City in 1837, he displayed them salon-style, stacked floor to ceiling, one above the other—row after row of faces identified by name & number... More than a century & a half later, there remains something startling & immediate about the faces. At first glance, they seem condemning, as if daring us to look at them without guilt. But after contemplating them awhile, they appear less forbidding. Catlin called his gallery a “collection of Nature’s dignitaries,” & dignity indeed makes certain individuals stand out. A stately Chief Kee-o-kuk of the Sauk & Fox proudly holds tomahawk, blanket & staff. La-dóo-ke-a (Buffalo Bull), a Pawnee warrior, poses commandingly in full ceremonial paint. Catlin’s landscapes are equally evocative, depicting virgin rivers & rolling hills as if from the air.

Throughout Catlin’s career, journalists tended to praise his work even as some art critics dismissed him as an “American primitive,” calling his artistry “deficient in drawing, perspective & finish.” More controversial was his attitude toward people most Americans then regarded as savages. Catlin denounced the term, calling it “an abuse of the word, & the people to whom it is applied.” He praised Indians as “honest, hospitable, faithful . . . ” & criticized the government & fur traders alike for their treatment of natives. Indian society, he wrote, “has become degraded & impoverished, & their character changed by civilized teaching, & their worst passions inflamed . . . by the abuses practiced amongst them.”

...And what did the men & women who posed for Catlin think of their portraits? Reactions to Catlin’s work varied from tribe to tribe. Sioux medicine men predicted dire consequences for those whose souls he captured on canvas, yet Blackfoot medicine men readily allowed themselves to be painted. The Mandan, awed by Catlin’s ability to render likenesses, called him Medicine White Man. Sometimes his portraits stirred up trouble. Once among the Hunkpapa Sioux on the Missouri River, he painted Chief Little Bear in profile. When the portrait was nearly finished, a rival saw it & taunted, “[The artist] knows you are but half a man, for he has painted but half of your face!” The chief ignored the affront, & when the portrait was done, he presented Catlin with a buckskin shirt decorated with porcupine quills. But the insult led to an intertribal war that claimed many lives. Some Sioux blamed Catlin & condemned him to death, but by then he had moved farther upriver.

In his six years on the prairie, Catlin survived debilitating fevers that killed his military escorts. (He later touted his travels in long-winded accounts published as travelogues.) Though most of his early work was undertaken within a few hundred miles of St. Louis, one journey took him to a place few white men had gone before. In the spring of 1832, he secured a berth on the steamboat Yellowstone, about to embark from St. Louis on a journey 2,000 miles up the Missouri River. Steaming into each Indian settlement, the Yellowstone fired its cannon, terrifying natives, who fell to the ground or sacrificed animals to appease their gods. Catlin was mesmerized by the “soulmelting scenery.” He watched great herds of buffalo, antelope & elk roaming “a vast country of green fields, where the men are all red.” In three months on the Upper Missouri, working with great speed, Catlin executed no fewer than 135 paintings, sketching figures & faces, leaving details to be finished later. In July, near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota, he became one of the few white men ever to observe the torturous fertility ritual of the Mandan tribe known as O-kee-pa, which required young men to be suspended from the top of the medicine lodge by ropes anchored to barbs skewered in their chests. When displayed five years later, Catlin’s paintings of the ceremony drew skepticism. “The scenes described by Catlin existed almost entirely in the fertile imagination of that gentleman,” a scholarly journal observed. Though Catlin was unable to corroborate his observations—smallpox had all but wiped out the Mandan not long after his visit—subsequent research confirmed his stark renderings.

In 1836, despite the vehement protests of Sioux elders, Catlin insisted on visiting a sacred, red-stone quarry in southwestern Minnesota that provided the Sioux with the bowls for their ceremonial pipes. No Indian would escort him, & fur traders, angry about his letters in newspapers condemning them for corrupting the Indians, also refused. So Catlin & a companion traveled 360 miles round-trip on horseback. The unique red pipestone he found there today bears the name catlinite. “Man feels here the thrilling sensation, the force of illimitable freedom,” Catlin wrote, “there is poetry in the very air of this place.”

Except for his run-in over the quarry, Catlin maintained excellent relations with his various hosts. They escorted him through hostile areas & invited him to feasts of dog meat, beaver tail & buffalo tongue. “No Indian ever betrayed me, struck me with a blow, or stole from me a shilling’s worth of my property. . . ,” he later wrote. By 1836, his last year in the West, Catlin had visited 48 tribes. He would spend the rest of his life trying to market his work, leading him to the brink of ruin.

On September 23, 1837, the New YorkCommercial Advertiser announced the opening of an exhibit featuring lectures by Catlin, Indian portraits, “as well as Splendid Costumes—Paintings of their villages—Dances—Buffalo Hunts—Religious Ceremonies, etc.” Admission at Clinton Hall in New York City was 50 cents, & crowds of people lined up to pay it. When the show closed after three months, the artist took it to cities along the East Coast. But after a year, attendance began to dwindle, & Catlin fell on hard times. In 1837, he tried to sell his gallery to the federal government, but Congress dawdled. So in November 1839, with Clara expecting their second child & promising to join him the following year, Catlin packed his gallery, including a buffalo-hide tepee & two live bears, & sailed for England.

In London, Brussels, & at the Louvre in Paris, he packed houses with his “Wild West” show. He hired local actors to whoop in feathers & war paint & pose in tableaux vivants. In time he was joined by several groups of Indians (21 Ojibwe & 14 Iowa) who were touring Europe with promoters. Such luminaries as George Sand, Victor Hugo & Charles Baudelaire admired Catlin’s artistry. But general audiences preferred the live Indians, especially after Catlin convinced the Ojibwe & the Iowa to reenact hunts, dances, even scalpings. In 1843, Catlin was presented to Queen Victoria in London, & two years later, to King Louis-Philippe in France. But renting halls, transporting eight tons of paintings & artifacts, & providing for his Indian entourage—as well as his family, which by 1844 included three daughters & a son—kept the painter perpetually in debt. In 1845, in Paris, Clara, his devoted wife of 17 years, contracted pneumonia & died. Then the Ojibwe got smallpox. Two died; the rest went back to the plains. The next year his 3-year-old son, George, succumbed to typhoid.

In 1848, Catlin & his daughters returned to London, where he tried to drum up interest in installing his gallery on a ship—a floating “Museum of Mankind”—that would visit seaports around the globe. But his dream came to nothing. He lectured on California’s gold rush & sold copies of his paintings, using the originals as collateral for loans. In 1852, his funds exhausted, the 56-year-old Catlin was thrown into a London debtor’s prison. His brother-in-law came to take Catlin’s young daughters back to America. The dejected artist later would write that he had “no other means on earth than my hands & my brush, & less than half a life, at best, before me.” He again offered to sell his gallery (which Senator Daniel Webster had called “more important to us than the ascertaining of the South Pole, or anything that can be discovered in the Dead Sea . . . ”) to the U.S. government. But Congress thought the price too steep, even when Catlin lowered it from $65,000 to $25,000. Finally, late that summer, Joseph Harrison, a wealthy Pennsylvania railroad tycoon for whom Catlin had secured a painting by the American historical artist Benjamin West, paid Catlin’s debts, acquired his gallery for $20,000 & shipped it from London to Philadelphia. It sat there in Harrison’s boiler factory, while Catlin—who had repaired to Paris with a handful of watercolors & a few copies of his originals that he had hidden from his creditors—set out to rebuild his life, & his gallery. From 1852 to 1860, he bounced between Europe, the Pacific Northwest & South & Central America painting Indians from the Amazon to Patagonia. Or did he? Some scholars, dubious because of the wildness of the accounts & the lack of documentation, doubt that he left Europe at all. Inany case, by 1870 the dogged artist had completed 300 paintings of South American Indians & had re-created from sketches some 300 copies of his original Indian Gallery portraits. “Now I am George Catlin again,” he wrote his brother just before returning to America in 1870. He exhibited his “Cartoon Gallery,” as he called the copies & his South American & other later works, in 1871 in New York City, but it did not draw crowds. The show, however, earned Catlin a powerful ally when it moved to the Smithsonian Institution later that year.

Although Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry thought Catlin’s paintings had “little value as works of art,” he needed them: a fire had just destroyed most of the Smithsonian’s collection of Indian paintings (works by John Mix Stanley & Charles Bird King). Henry offered Catlin both support & a home. For nine months, the artist, in his mid-70s, white-bearded & walking with a cane, lived in the SmithsonianCastle. In November 1872, Catlin left Washington to be with his daughters in New Jersey. He died there two months later at age 76. Among his final words were, “What will happen to my gallery?” Seven years after his death, Harrison’s widow gave the works acquired by her husband (some 450 of Catlin’s original paintings & enough buckskin & fur, war clubs, pipes, & more, to fill a third of a freight car) to the Smithsonian. The gallery was displayed there for seven years starting in 1883...

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Sioux War Party

George Catlin (1796 –1872) A Sioux War Party

The Sioux ( Dakota), are groups of Native American tribes & First Nations peoples in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.

The Dakota are first recorded to have resided at the source of the Mississippi River & the Great Lakes during the seventeenth century.  They were dispersed west in 1659 due to warfare with the Iroquois. By 1700 the Dakota Sioux were living in Wisconsin & Minnesota, at this time they exterminated the Wicosawan, another Siouan people in 1710. A split of branch known as the Lakota had migrated to present-day South Dakota.  Late in the 17th century, the Dakota entered into an alliance with French merchants.  The French were trying to gain advantage in the struggle for the North American fur trade against the English, who had recently established the Hudson's Bay Company.

The first recorded encounter between the Sioux & the French occurred when Radisson & Groseilliers reached what is now Wisconsin during the winter of 1659–60. Later visiting French traders & missionaries included Claude-Jean Allouez, Daniel Greysolon Duluth, & Pierre-Charles Le Sueur who wintered with Dakota bands in early 1700.  In 1736 a group of Sioux killed Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye & twenty other men on an island in Lake of the Woods.  However, trade with the French continued until the French gave up North America in 1763.

The Pawnee Indians had a long tradition of living in present-day Nebraska.  Their first land cession to the United States took place in 1833 when they sold land south of the Platte River. The Massacre Canyon battlefield near Republican River is located within this area. Forty years & two land cessions later, the tribe lived in a small reservation on old Pawnee land, present-day Nance County. The Pawnees had kept a right to hunt buffalo on their vast, ancient range between the Loup, Platte & Republican rivers in Nebraska & south into northern Kansas, now territory of the United States. They had suffered continual attacks by the Lakota that increased violently in the early 1840s. The Lakota lived north of the Pawnee. In 1868 they had entered into a treaty with the United States & agreed to live in the Great Sioux Reservation in present-day South Dakota. By Article 11 they (also) received a right to hunt along the Republican, almost 200 miles south of the reservation.  Both the Pawnee & the Lakota complained regularly over attacks by the other tribe. An attempt to make peace in 1871 with the United States as intermediary came to nothing.

The Massacre Canyon battle took place in Nebraska on August 5, 1873 near the Republican River. It was one of the last hostilities between the Pawnee & the Lakota & the last battle/massacre between Great Plains Indians in North America.  The massacre occurred when a large Oglala/Brulé Sioux war party of over 1,500 warriors led by Two Strike, Little Wound, & Spotted Tail attacked a band of Pawnee during their summer buffalo hunt. In the ensuing rout more than 75–100 Pawnees were killed, men with mostly women & children, the victims suffering mutilation & some set on fire.

The Pawnee were traveling along the west bank of the canyon, which runs south to the Republican River, when they were attacked. "A census taken at the Pawnee Agency in September, according [to] Agent Burges  "71 Pawnee warriors were killed, & 102 women & children killed", the victims brutally mutilated & scalped & others even set on fire"  although Trail Agent John Williamson's account states 156 Pawnee died. It is likely the death toll would have been higher, for Williamson noted ". . . a company of United States cavalry emerge[d] from the timber. When the Sioux saw the soldiers approaching they beat a hasty retreat, although "Recently discovered military documents disproved the old theory" per the "Massacre Canyon Monument" article. This massacre is by some considered one of the factors that led to the Pawnees' decision to move to a reservation in Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma.  The Pawnee disagree.

By 1862, shortly after a failed crop the year before & a winter starvation, the federal payment was late. The local traders would not issue any more credit to the Santee & one trader, Andrew Myrick, went so far as to say, "If they're hungry, let them eat grass."  On August 17, 1862 the Dakota War began when a few Santee men murdered a white farmer & most of his family. They inspired further attacks on white settlements along the Minnesota River. The Santee attacked the trading post. Later, settlers found Myrick among the dead with his mouth stuffed full of grass.

On November 5, 1862 in Minnesota, in courts-martial, 303 Santee Sioux were found guilty of rape & murder of hundreds of American settlers. They were sentenced to be hanged. No attorneys or witnesses were allowed as a defense for the accused, & many were convicted in less than five minutes of court time with the judge.  President Abraham Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 284 of the warriors, while signing off on the hanging of 38 Santee men on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. It was the largest mass-execution in U.S. history, on US soil.

Afterwards, the US suspended treaty annuities to the Dakota for four years & awarded the money to the white victims & their families. The men remanded by order of President Lincoln were sent to a prison in Iowa, where more than half died.

During & after the revolt, many Santee & their kin fled Minnesota & Eastern Dakota to Canada, or settled in the James River Valley in a short-lived reservation before being forced to move to Crow Creek Reservation on the east bank of the Missouri. A few joined the Yanktonai & moved further west to join with the Lakota bands to continue their struggle against the United States military.

Others were able to remain in Minnesota & the east, in small reservations existing into the 21st century, including Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, & Devils Lake (Spirit Lake or Fort Totten) Reservations in the Dakotas. Some ended up in Nebraska, where the Santee Sioux Reservation today has a reservation on the south bank of the Missouri.

Those who fled to Canada now have descendants residing on nine small Dakota Reserves, five of which are located in Manitoba (Sioux Valley, Long Plain, Dakota Tipi, Birdtail Creek, & Oak Lake [Pipestone]) & the remaining four (Standing Buffalo, Moose Woods [White Cap], Round Plain [Wahpeton], & Wood Mountain) in Saskatchewan.

Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War) was an armed conflict between the Lakota & the United States Army in the Wyoming Territory & the Montana Territory from 1866 to 1868. The war was fought over control of the Powder River Country in north central Wyoming.

The war is named after Red Cloud, a prominent Sioux chief who led the war against the United States following encroachment into the area by the U.S. military. The war ended with the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Sioux victory in the war led to their temporarily preserving their control of the Powder River country.

The Great Sioux War of 1876, also known as the Black Hills War, was a series of battles & negotiations which occurred in 1876 & 1877 between the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, & the United States. The cause of the war was the desire of the U.S. government to obtain ownership of the Black Hills. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, settlers began to encroach onto Native American lands, & the Sioux & Cheyenne refused to cede ownership to the U.S. Traditionally, the United States military & historians place the Lakota at the center of the story, especially given their numbers, but some Indians believe the Cheyenne were the primary target of the U.S. campaign.

The earliest engagement was the Battle of Powder River, & the final battle was the Wolf Mountain. Included are the Battle of the Rosebud, Battle of Warbonnet Creek, Battle of Slim Buttes, Battle of Cedar Creek, & the Dull Knife Fight.

Among the many battles & skirmishes of the war was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, often known as Custer's Last Stand, the most storied of the many encounters between the U.S. army & mounted Plains Indians. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota & other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass & also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, & Arapaho tribes & the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the Little Bighorn River in the Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern Montana Territory.

The fight was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, & Arapaho, who were led by several major war leaders, including Crazy Horse & Chief Gall, & had been inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake). The US 7th Cavalry, a force of 700 men, suffered a major defeat while under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (formerly a brevetted major general during the American Civil War). Five of the 7th Cavalry's twelve companies were annihilated & Custer was killed, as were two of his brothers, a nephew & a brother-in-law. The total US casualty count included 268 dead & 55 severely wounded (six died later from their wounds), including four Crow Indian scouts & at least two Arikara Indian scouts. The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument honors those who fought on both sides.

That Indian victory notwithstanding, the U.S. leveraged national resources to force the Indians to surrender, primarily by attacking & destroying their encampments & property. The Great Sioux War took place under the presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant & Rutherford B. Hayes. The Agreement of 1877 (19 Stat. 254, enacted February 28, 1877) officially annexed Sioux land & permanently established Indian reservations.

The massacre at Wounded Knee Creek was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota & the United States. It was described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of the Lakota bands of the Miniconjou & Hunkpapa with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers & more than 150 Lakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, & children. It remains unknown which side was responsible for the first shot; some of the soldiers are believed to have been the victims of "friendly fire" because the shooting took place at point-blank range in chaotic conditions. Around 150 Lakota are believed to have fled the chaos, many of whom may have died from hypothermia.

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Medicine Man

George Catlin, Mah-tó-he-ha, Old Bear, a Mandan Medicine Man, 1832, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

George Caitlin wrote of the day he painted this Medicine Man, "At twelve o'clock, “having used the whole of the fore-part of the day at his toilette,” George Catlin wrote, Old Bear arrived at the artist’s lodge “bedaubed and streaked with paints of various colours, with bear's grease and charcoal, with medicine-pipes in his hands and foxes tails attached to his heels [and] with a train of his own profession, who seated themselves around him . . . He took his position in the middle of the room, waving his eagle calumets in each hand, and singing his medicine-song . . . looking me full in the face until I completed his picture, which I painted at full length.” The artist painted Old Bear at a Mandan village in 1832. 

(George Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 15, 1841; reprint 1973)

Brief Reading List for Native Americans & Medicinal Plants

See:

Bean, Lowell J. Saubel, Katherine S. Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian Knowledge and Usage of Plants

Densmore, Frances. How Indians Use Wild Plants for Food, Medicine and Crafts.

New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1974

Duke, James A.Handbook of Northeastern Indian Medicinal Plants

Gilmore, Melvin R. Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region 

Goodrich, Jennie and Lawson, Claudia, and Lawson, Vana P. Kashaya Pomo Plants (Sonoma County, CA)

Gunther, (Jeanne R. Janish Illustrator) Ethnobotany of Western Washington: The Knowledge and Use of Indigenous Plants by Native Americans

Harrington, John P. Tobacco Among the Karuk Indians of California (Bureau of American Ethnology Series)

Hart, Jeff, (Jacqueline Moore Illustrator) Montana Native Plants & Early Peoples

Herrick, James W.  and Snow, Dean R. (Editor) Iroquois medical botany. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Hutchens, Alma R. Indian Herbalogy of North America; The definitive guide to Native medicinal plants and their uses. Shambhala: Boston. 1973

Hutchens, Alma R. A Handbook of Native American Herbs; the pocket guide to 125 medicinal plants and their uses. Shambhala: Boston. 1992

Kavasch, Barrie Native Harvests; Recipies and Botanicals of the American Indian. Random House, Vintage Books: NY. 1979

Moreman, Daniel E. Geraniums for the Iroquois: A Field Guide to American Indian Medicinal Plants

Reichard, GA. Navaho religion: a study of symbolism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Stark, Raymond. Guide to Indian Herbs

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuni Indians and Their Uses of Plants

Strike, Sandra S. Ethnobotany of the California Indians: Aboriginal Uses of Californias Indigeneous Plants

Taylor, Lyda Averill Paz. Plants Used As Curatives by Certain Southeastern Tribes

Turner, Nancy J. Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples (Royal British Columbia Museum)

Turner, Nancy J. Food Plants of Interior First Peoples (Royal British Columbia Museum)

Vogel VJ. American Indian medicine. University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

Wyman Leland Clifton Wyman and Harris, Stuart Kimbal. Navajo Indian Medical Ethnobotany (University of New Mexico Bulletin Anthropological Series, Vol 3, No 5)

George Catlin (1796–1872) - Medicine Man's Medicinal Plants

George Catlin, Mah-tó-he-ha, Old Bear, a Medicine Man, 1832, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum

A Medicine Man was equipped with a number of objects that helped him to communicate with spirits in other worlds. They used dances, gestures & sounds as the symbolic powers of Medicine Man to enter the spirit world. The means & powers by which the Medicine Man practiced his role included:

Trance State - Knowledge of the Trance State & the use of trance-inducing methods & techniques to go on vision quests & incite tribe members

Symbolic Regalia & Sacred Objects - The use of symbolic regalia & sacred objects such as the calumet, or pipe, in Medicine Shamanistic ceremonies & rituals

Ceremonial Clothes - Wearing ceremonial clothes, such as amazing costumes worn by the Medicine Men Skinwalkers

Masks - The Medicine Man of some tribes also used masks that were believed to hold spiritual powers & would identify them with the spirits in other worlds & activate their powers.

Symbolic magic - incantations, prayer sticks, feathers, war dances, rain dances & hunting dances with the use of rattles & drums to incarnate the spirits of nature & amplify their power

Fasting & cleansing rituals

Rite of Passage Rituals - where he advised on the significance of the Power Animal revealed on a or on a  Spiritual Journey or in Vision Quests & provided sacred contents to be placed in Medicine Bags

War Paint - Medicine Men often chose certain markings & symbols for warriors during the application of the War Paint. This afforded the wearer with "Magic" for power & protection by drawing on natural powers & combining these with the power of the warrior

The term Medicine Man generally refers to is a priestly healer & spiritual leader of Native American tribes who believed that physical nature might be brought under the control of man, in the person of a Medicine Man. Native American tribes adhered to a wide range of beliefs, ceremonies & rituals regarding communication with the spiritual world in which their religious leader enters supernatural realms particularly when the tribe is facing adversity or need to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community including sickness.

The term Medicine Man is not used by Native Americans.  The word "medicine," associated with the Native Indians, means mystery. Each tribe has a word or term of their own construction that is synonymous with mystery or mystery man. Their principle deity, the Great Spirit, is also referred to as the Great Mystery.

The Medicine Man is believed to have a spiritual connection with animals, supernatural creatures & all elements of nature. Spirits were believed to inhabit the rivers, lakes, mountains, trees, plants, sky, stars, sun, animals, insects, fish, flowers & birds. The belief & practice of Native American Indians  incorporates a number of beliefs such as Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Fetishism & Ritualism. These beliefs, taken as a whole, have strong religious connotations. This belief system, & the role of the Medicine Man, is particularly associated with primitive cultures of hunter gatherers who believed that every natural object is controlled by its own independent spirit, or soul.

The Medicine Man used both good & bad spirits. The good spirits helped men & the bad spirits were liable to wreck havoc & harm on people & their tribes. It is the bad spirits that cause trouble, suffering, sickness, death & disease. When a man became ill, it was believed that a bad spirit had entered his body & taken his soul away. Native Americans wished to gain power over these spirits. If a Medicine Man had control over the spirits, he became extremely powerful.

The Medicine Man would know protective chants & words & have a special knowledge of objects which he carried in a Medicine Bag & would disarm bad spirits & protect their owners. This type of knowledge is what the Native Americans mean by “medicine” or “mystery.”  The Native Americans who spent their lives in trying to gain such knowledge are referred to as Shaman, medicine people, mystery men, or a Medicine Man.

The Medicine Man used appropriate words, chants, objects, dances & rituals to protect men from evil spirits - his role is that of opponent to the bad spirits & of guardian to the ordinary man. The role of the Medicine Man differs from tribe to tribe as there are some regional & tribal variations to their beliefs in Shamanism. There are, however, several common roles that are shared by every Medicine Man. A Medicine Man was a healer, communicator, educator, prophet, & mystic.

The Medicine Man provided help & advice to members of the tribe, for which he was paid.  He was an educator & historian, the keeper of myths, legends, traditions & tribal wisdom.

The Medicine Man was a healer. He possessed supernatural Spiritual Healing powers & the ability to treat sickness caused by evil spirits - hence the Westernized name "Medicine Man."

The Medicine Man was a prophet. He had the ability to perform various forms of prophecy. He was a mystic & possessed the ability to leave the body & communicate with the spirit world. In many tribes, including the Cheyenne & the Sioux, the Medicine Man also had the role of the head warrior or war chief which made him the most  influential man of the tribe.