Native Voices

Sources in the Native American Past

Mark Nicholas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315509358
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire des débuts de l'Amérique

Integrates Native American perspectives into American history Native Voices is a source reader that covers the entire span of Native American history. It offers documents for readers to evaluate the Native Voice across the American continent and in parts of Latin America. Each document sheds light on Native North America and provides readers with the Native American perspective of their history. The organization of Native Voices and its readings are designed to correlate with First Americans: A History of Native Peoples, MySearchLab is a part of the Nicholas program. Research and writing tools, including access to academic journals, help students understand Native American history in even greater depth.

CHAPTER 1

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HISTORY FROM THE NATIVE AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW

CHAPTER OUTLINE

▪ Introduction

▪ Controversy: Native Americans and Science

▪ Native American Voices about Their Beginnings

INTRODUCTION

The history of the peopling of the Americas raises many questions that spark intensive debates among two oftentimes opposing segments of American society: the scientific community and native peoples themselves. Some of the most important questions are when and how the ancestors of present-day indigenous peoples populated the Western Hemisphere. Rather than offer the prevailing scientific point of view found in almost every U.S. history textbook—about the Bering Land Bridge, glacial recession, and Siberian migrants as big game hunters—this chapter tries something else. It tries to engage readers in the debate about human origins in the Americas from the native perspective. Many Native Americans see their stories that talk about relationships between animals, humans, places, and time—their “ways of being” as opposed to the science’s “ways of knowing”—are all they need about themselves and their origins. Scientists, however, look to archaeology and other disciplines. Archaeologists, in particular, theorize about waves of migrant peoples coming to North and South America once glacial ice receded and opened the Bering Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska. Sometime between roughly 14,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Bering Land Bridge was indeed free of ice, as geological core samples of the Bering Strait waters have confirmed. If there was a pathway open, science argues, the ancestors of present-day Native Americans were the ones who made the difficult journey, along with the large game that they hunted such as bison and mastodons. Once these initial migrations ended, cultural and social practices developed and changed over thousands of years. Archaeological excavations of community settlements and sites where indigenous peoples killed animals yield evidence that has been tested by various methods including radiocarbon dating, geological samples of sediments, and tree ring dating. Bringing the data together, scientists now have a timeline of indigenous development in North America. Beginning with hunter-gatherers who hunted the big game to extinction, the timeline ends with the emergence of complex, agricultural societies, before the arrival of Europeans. Each document—some by historians and native activists, and others, the oral stories from Native Americans about where they came from—tries to have readers think about Native American perspectives on their origins.

CONTROVERSY: NATIVE AMERICANS AND SCIENCE

Native American Memories of Their Origins¹

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Widely recognized for his many books about Native Americans, Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) challenged academics as well as the public to work toward better ways of interpreting and writing about Native American origins and identities. In this selection, Deloria asks readers to think beyond the prevailing scientific arguments about native origins. Deloria wants readers to consider native oral stories in a different way: as rich sources on various North American geological activities dating thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

In correcting inadequate theories such as the Bering Strait migrations or the big-game hunter “overkill” we inevitably come into conflict with the prevailing scientific paradigm. The points of conflict spread out from anthropology to archaeology and then to paleontology in a disconcerting manner. Evolutionary biology, as represented by the field of paleontology, has been in an incestuous relationship with geology ever since the Darwinians wrested the symbols of authority from the theologians. Therefore, as we raise questions about glaciation, land bridges, and the disappearance or transformation of megafauna, we are led into an examination of some aspects of geology ….

Three basic concepts stand in the way of examining the traditions of Indians in a fair and intelligent manner: “myth,” and its progeny “euhemerism” and “etiology.” “Myth” is the general name given to the traditions of nonWestern peoples. It basically means a fiction created and sustained by undeveloped minds. Many scholars will fudge this point, claiming that their definition of myth gives it great respect as the carrier of some super-secret and sacred truth, but in fact the popular meaning is a superstition or fiction which we, as smart modern thinkers, would never in a million years believe.

Within the broad classification of myth are two subcategories of story-line creations: “euhemerisms” and “etiological” myths. The euhemerism is a narrative which contains some participation of the supernatural that is wholly constructed by primitives and which they insist is historically true. For decades the Trojan War was believed to be a euhemerism until Heinrich Schliemann began to dig tells in Asia Minor and proved the conflict to have a historical basis. An etiological myth is a narrative made up to explain something which people have observed or which they wish to explain in familiar terms. Looking at various kinds of landscapes, in the etiological format we simply assume that primitive and ancient people would make up a story, based on their knowledge of nature, to account for waterfalls, volcanos, rivers, and so forth. Most of modern science is, in fact, etiological myth, since we cannot explain fossils, we cannot explain sedimentary deposition, and we cannot explain the causes of glaciation.

It is possible to separate non-Western traditions from the mainstream of science and keep them comfortably lodged in the fiction classification because most of them contain references to the activities of supernatural causes and personalities and are not phrased in the sterile language of cause and effect, which has been the favorite language of secular science. It is unfair to do so, however, when scientific writers have complete license to make up scenarios of their own which could not possibly have taken place and pass them off as science and therefore as superior to other traditions.

In the early 1970s, Dorothy Vitaliano attempted to show that some information possessed by ancient peoples and the non-Western tribal groups, and classified as “myth,” might indeed be useful. She began to match some accounts with modern geologic knowledge to create a new discipline which she called geomythology. Geomythology, according to Vitaliano, is an effort “to explain certain specific myths and legends in terms of actual geologic events that may have been witnessed by various groups of people.” In a very real sense, linkage of traditions and legends with present-day knowledge might provide some additional data for scientific experimentation; it would also verify the historical basis of the legend, take it out of the category of folklore, and give it some real status. ■

The Bridge of the Gods²

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Native Americans of present-day Washington and central Oregon have a story passed down about an ancient rock bridge. At one time this sacred rock bridge passed over the Columbia River. Volcanic eruption many years ago collapsed the bridge into the river where the Dalles is presently located. The Dalles earns its name from the rocks that formed a gorge and rapids along the Columbia River where native peoples of the Pacific Northwest met and traded long before white people arrived. Native Americans say they have used the Dalles as a greeting place for 10,000 years. And native peoples have explanations as to how the rock bridge gave the Dalles its unique shape when Mount Saint Helens and Mount Hood quarreled with each other. Both mountains erupted in anger, “threw fire” at each other, and hit the bridge, which then fell into the Columbia River. Such stories are striking as they seem to suggest that the ancestors of native peoples of the Pacific Northwest witnessed and kept stories about geological events long before European colonization.

Several Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest have traditions regarding a geological formation which they say once existed west of The Dalles dam on the Columbia River. One version of the story suggests that the Columbia River once went underground, presumably as it passed below the Cascade Mountains, finally emerging near the coast. This phenomenon is not unusual, since the Humboldt River “sinks” in several places in Nevada as it moves west toward the Sierra Nevadas.

In 1921, a very old Wishram woman, well over a century old, who could remember when Dr. John McLoughlin established Fort Vancouver in 1825, told her tribe’s story of this formation. The underground tunnel was frequently used by the Indians to avoid climbing the Cascades when traveling to the Pacific Ocean. “Whenever a party of Indians reached this long tunnel,” she said, “they would fasten their canoes together, one behind the other, so that they would not crash against each other in the darkness. Then they would pray to the Great Spirit for courage and guidance as they paddled through the long, dark tunnel.” Some scholars, including Vitaliano herself, have expressed skepticism about this geological formation, claiming that the sides of the present Columbia gorge do not indicate the possibility of any bridging structure having been there.

Many tribes have stories about the Bridge of the Gods and when these accounts are compared, the Wishram version seems to be the earliest. The most frequently repeated narrative suggested that Mount Hood and Mount Adams quarreled (usually over a maiden, since all old tales are eventually romanticized) and began to hurl hot rocks at each other. The conflict became so intense that the bridge over the river collapsed, in effect freeing the river from its underground course and creating the present-day Columbia.

Vitaliano suggests that an earthquake was involved and dumped a massive amount of material into the Columbia to form The Dalles. Geologic evidence suggested that there was once a giant landslide between Table Mountain and Red Bluffs which did block the Columbia. I suspect that a couple of places along the Columbia could qualify as the location and that all versions of the story refer to one or the other site….

Surely the Indians had seen the Cascade volcanos erupt. If we can only suggest that they marked the occasion of two volcanos erupting simultaneously by making up a story about a bridge across the Columbia River, which would have no connection whatsoever with volcanos no closer than fifty miles, what possible motivation can we suggest? Combining many geological formations in an etiological myth might be a way to deal with the fact of creation. But it seems unlikely that so many tribes would put together the same basic narrative about the site unless there was some reality behind the tale.

Therein lies the difficulty in approaching the oral traditions of Indians from a Western scientific perspective: instead of postponing judgment and viewing the anomaly as a prospect for future research, conclusions are drawn prematurely, are almost always in favor of rejecting the Indian account, and the usefulness of the tradition is lost. Instead, we are given doctrinal assurances that Indians made up the story.

MOUNT HOOD

One of the two volcanos cited in the Bridge of the Gods story, involves the giant Indians … so we know that the time period, if this story holds up as a historical memory, is very early. We will take portions of [the Indian] narrative which deal with the geomythological points

Years and years ago, the mountain peak south of Big River was so high that when the sun shone on its south side a shadow stretched north for a day’s journey. Inside the mountain, evil spirits had their lodges. Sometimes the evil spirits became so angry that they threw out fire and smoke and streams of hot rocks. Rivers of liquid rock ran toward the sea, killing all growing things and forcing the Indians to move far away.

The chief did battle with the evil spirits by throwing rocks down into a crater on the mountain. The battle continued for many days until:

The rivers were choked, the forest and the grass had disappeared, the animals and the people had fled.

The chief knew he had failed to protect the land and sank down upon the ground in exhaustion and discouragement and was soon covered by the lava flow.

When the earth cooled and the grass grew again, they [the people] returned to their country. In time there was plenty of food once more. But the children, starved and weak for so long, never became as tall and strong as their parents and grandparents.

It is said that the chief’s face can be seen on the northern face of the mountain.

According to the story, the shadow of the mountain was so great that it cast a shadow that extended a day’s walk to the north. The present-day Mount Hood does not cast such a shadow, so this element of the story may also testify to much earlier times than we can anticipate. “Although there is no historical record of activity of Mount Hood, the geologic evidence suggests that it may have erupted as recently as a century ago.” We should not, at least for the sake of investigating the tradition, assume that the eruption had to have been in recent historical time. It may well have been a very long time ago.

The key to interpreting this legend, it seems to me, is in the casual mention of the size of things. The Indians are large, Mount Hood casts a long shadow, and the tunnel under the Cascades is a tunnel not a bridge. The Indians are reporting accurate facts in their story, but modern interpreters, without telling us what limits they are putting on the story, narrow the possible interpretations to the modern time period and thereby lose the essence of the information which the story contains. No present formations on either side of the river indicate a bridge, but such evidence could easily have been destroyed completely by the gigantic floods that once scoured the Columbia River valley. Almost certainly this legend cannot be referring to an eruption within historic times, since it would take a long time to restore the land and entice the people to come back near Mount Hood to live. ■

The Way of the Human Being³

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Calvin Luther Martin lived among as well as taught present-day Alaskan peoples. Elders told him stories about bears, elk, and moose that talk. When statewide animal conservationists arrived in the Yukon, the Yupiit, known for being pacifists, verbally attacked scientists who wanted electronic collars attached to the necks of moose and bear to study their mating patterns. As elder Paul John explained to Martin, then the board of conservationists, animals such as bears and moose think and act like independent beings, and had since the beginning of time. The Yupiit have always treated animals as independent beings so their patterns of hunting and living respected the animals. Paul John’s attack against the conservationists, as told by Calvin Martin, reveals important differences between indigenous peoples and the scientific community.

Now and then, the Fish and Wildlife people in Bethel invite their native advisory board (of which Paul John is a member) to attend a bit of bureaucratic theater called a meeting, where the Yupiit are asked if they would kindly advise the U.S. government on wildlife policy. (“Yupiit” is the plural form of “Yup’ik.”) This pleases the Yupiit, who are treated briefly like big shots, although they know that their Uncle Sam isn’t really listening to what they have to say. The meeting is very decorous and utterly official. There is a long table, a gavel, a chairman, and Robert’s Rules of Order.

But the language is wrong.

The meeting is barely under way when Paul John (who is being interpreted in English) suddenly delivers a long passionate speech on that problematic word “subsistence,” as in that phrase “subsistence hunting.” Washington and its bureaucrats in Alaska are fond of the phrase. Paul John says that he thinks “people” (he’s being delicate) can’t understand what natives mean when they use the word. He recites that when his son was in college he was once asked by friends what all this “subsistence” business was about, anyway. The young man explained and from that day on was ostracized. It must have been a sizzling explanation.

Paul John was struggling to explain something. Here the Yupiit at his table were being asked to approve bureaucratic guidelines for dividing up moose “resources,” and some were even haggling over interregional access to these “resource...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 History from the Native American Point of View
• 2 Natives and Newcomers: Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
• 3 The Seventeenth-Century Spanish Borderlands and Eastern Woodlands
• 4 The Eighteenth Century to 1763 in Times of Peace and War
• 5 The Indians’ Revolution: Across the Continent
• 6 A New Order and Expansion West 1820–1850
• 7 Native Americans and the Civil War
• 8 Native Americans and Wars for the West
• 9 Perseverance and Revival
• 10 Native Americans, the Great Depression, and World War II, and the Reorganization of Indian Country, 1930–1950
• 11 Resurgent Indians, 1960–1980
• 12 Native Americans into the Twenty-First Century
• Index