Kiowa

• The Kiowa occupied the lands of the current Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. They were considered a tribe of the Great Plains which stretch from Alberta in the north to Texas and New Mexico in the south.
  
• Just north of the Black Hills stands a dramatic monolith know to whites as Devils Tower. In a Kiowa tale this strange rock appeared long ago, when seven sisters were chased by a huge bear and sought refuge on a great tree stump. They escaped by rising to the sky, where they became the stars of the Big Dipper. The stump petrified, and to this day the deep gouges left by the claws of the angry bear can still be seen.
  
• The Kiowa name for themselves, kwuda, can be translated as "coming out" and refers to a story about ancestors who ascended from the underworld by climbing through a hollow log. During that journey a pregnant woman got stuck in the log, preventing others from reaching the earth's surface-and explaining why the Kiowa were so few in number.
  
• Among Plains tribes, artisan "guilds" controlled the production of all quillwork and beadwork. Members controlled the highly specialized knowledge needed for certain techniques, and instruction required payment. Those women who were fortunate enough to possess such knowledge were well paid for their creations. The quilling society was a force for stability, then, serving to prevent disruption before it occurred and provding the dreamer with a channel through which to direct her gifts for the benefit of the community.
  
  The Select Woman sisterhood of the Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne came together regularly to pray, eat, and participate collectively on quillwork, and, later, tepee making and beadwork. Their work might stem from a member's vow that she would sponsor a series of tepee-making sessions if someone close to her was cured of an illness or if a friend experienced easy childbirth or if a relative was about to be married.
  
  The proceedings were initiated by special prayers and the burning of sweet-grass incense to bless the outcome of the work. An atmosphere of reverence was maintained as the tepee was cut to shape and sewn, and as its "dew cloth" liners were painted. Tepees accorded this loving attention were adorned with special tassels made of porcupine quills and dewclaws taken from deer. One member of a women's guild would recall that she was carefully instructed by her elders never to disclose any details of the tepees decorator's ceremony in the presence of men.
  
• Most Plains tribs had sacred objects that were unique to their hisory and as essentail to their collective identity as their language....The Kiowa kept a feathered effigy called the Tai-Me. The keeper of the Tai-Me made a smoke offering before the image is exposed in the Sun Dance ceremony. To the Plains Indians the Sun Dance was ageless (though some historians suggest that it appeared around 1700, possibly originating with the Cheyenne)-it was a divine gift from the supernatural world. In any case, by 1750 virtually every Plans tribe practiced some variation of the Sun Dance.
  
• By the early 1830's southern Plains tribesmen began noticing long mule trains rumbling across their territory....They were bound for Santa Fe, where their merchandise could be traded for Mexican silver. Intrigued as well as irritated, warriors of the Kiowa and Comanche, the Cheyenne and Arapaho soon stopped brawling among themselves and joined forces. The Cheyenne and the Arapaho made peace in 1840; the same year the Kiowa and the Comanche, who had stopped fighting each other in 1790, forged a potent alliance.
  
  For the next quarter-century the swift horsemen and stealthy warriors of these southern tribes descended like hawks on the slow-moving pack trains along the Santa Fe Trail and also launched regular rustling forays against the cattle ranches that were proliferating in western Texas and eastern New Mexico. At first these depredations brought new wealth into their tepee circles-silver to be beaten into ornaments, mirrors for dance regalia and silent signaling between war parties, and an occasional Mexican or fair-haired anglo child as an adopted member of the family. However with these riches, diseases were also taken.
  
• In 1853 Thomas Fitzpatrick, a longtime mountan man and fur trapper who had guided the explorer John Fremont to California in the 1840's, arranged a gathering with southern Plains tribes at Ft Atkinson, on the Arkansas River near present-day Dodge City, KS. He met there with Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache representatives, who had been leery of attending the Ft Laramie sesion (held in 1851)-because as one delegate put it, "We have too many horses and mules to risk among such notorious horse thieves as the Sioux and Crow. The agreement they reached called for the tribes to give up buffalo hunting and take up ranching and farming on lands that the government would rent for them in the Leased District, an unsettled portion of Choctaw lands in Oklahoma that the tribe leased back to the government for the relocation of other Indians.
  
  For all the lofty speeches urging intertribal amity at Ft Laramie and Ft Atkinson, this would be the last time that feuding Plains tribes would sit down together peacefully for years. Many of the delegates who signed the treaties were only headmen of individual clans, with no authority to speak for the widely dispersed and highly independent subgroups that were part of the same tribes. The government also failed to take into account how deeply the warrior ethic was ingrained in the Plains culture. Personal honor and tribal territory were prizes to be gained through combat-and such a legacy would not be removed by a few scratches of a white man's pen.
  
• In the mid 1860's and the southern Plains, the Leased District in Oklahoma became a staging area for the relocated tribes to launch raids against Texas settlers and northern Mexico homesteads. The government was only temporarily successful in persuading the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho to cease their raiding, while even a full-scale military campaign against the Kiowa and Comanche could not control their marauding along the Texas frontier.
  
• The last major peace treaty negotiations between the US government and the Plains Indians were held in 1867. The first meeting took place in the valley of Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas, where Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa-Apache delegations convened once again with white peace commissioners on the full moon of October. An unusual feature of this gathering was its extensive coverage by East Coast newspapermen, many of whom were seeing Indians in the flesh for the first time. Readers across the country were captivated by accounts of Indian personalities and engravings of the huge cottonwood arbors under which bedecked chiefs and uniformed generals sat down to negotiate.
  
  In attendance were upwards of 5,000 Indians, led by a virtual roll call of the most celebrated southern Plains chiefs....From the Kiowa there was the dignified but resolute Satanta, or White Bear, who had grave misgivings about the treaty terms and expressed them bluntly....The final Medicine Lodge Creek treaty created two large reservations in Indian territory-one for the Kiowa and Comanche in the Leased District, and one for the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the Cherokee Outlet-for the containment and pacification of these southern tribes.
  
  On paper, at least, the peace chiefs agreed to stop interfering with rail and wagon traffic across the Plains and to conform to the rules and routines of reservation life controlled by an Indian agency. This would include, among other things, compulsory church attendance, white-run schooling for their children, periodic subsidies of flour and sugar and cattle-and most alien of all, learning to till the soil for a living.
  
• In the first 10 months following the 1867 Medicine Lodge treaty, the southern Plains Indians continued to raid other tribes, even venturing so far as to attack Navajo camps along the Pecos Rvier. Angry over the promised but undelivered cattle and blankets at their new Ft Cobb agency, Kiowa and Comanche warriors raided the herds of their reservation neighbors to the east. A vast cultural gulf separated these frustrated Plains newcomers from the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which had been removed to Indian Terirtory from the Southest 30 years earlier. One spokesman, an irate Chickasaw governor demanding federal protection, wrote: "No less than 4,000 head of horses have been taken out of the country by these very naked fellows....The wolf will respect a treaty as much as Mr. Wild Indian." There were 60-odd tribes that eventually settled in beside the firstcomers.
  
• Released after his eight year confinement in 1894 in the old Spanish fortress in St Augustine-Ft Marion, Geronimo accepted an offer from the Kiowa and Comanche to share their reservation in Indian territory and spent his final years as a farmer outside Oklahoma's Ft Sill.

Kickapoo

• Inhabiting just east of Lake Erie, west of Lake Michigan, the Kickapoo were south of the Mascouten, north of the Miami and Shawnee. They would undergo drastic changes for about 200 years following the 1600's (the first appearance of European fur traders and colonists) due to violence, dispersal, and relocation.
  
• The Kickapoo followed the Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society, originated by the Ojibwa. They would initiated members into the knowledge and rituals of the Mide religion. As part of the initiation ceremonies, a leader recounted stories of the origin of the people near the salt seas who had been guided west by a sacred shell. Mide priests kept birchbark maps of the migration route with symbolic markings that indicated the songs and procedure for stages of the initiation rites. The Midewiwin promoted the knowledge of herbal medicine and advocated balance in all aspects of life.
  
  There were medicines to attract animals to traps and snares and to lure fish; love medicines, cures for respiratory problems and a whole catalog of human ailments, as well as contraceptive and abortion-inducing medications, insect repellents, and cures for poison ivy and snakebites.
  
• During the Beaver Wars during the middle of the 17th century, the Miami of Wabash River country pushed into southwestern Wisconsin and formed a loose coalition with the Kickapoo.
  
• During the War of 1812, the local Kickapoo fought back when the American veterans were paid in land warrants instead of cash after land agents "bought" plots along the Wabash and Illinois rivers.
  

Kwakiutl

• Early inhabitants of the northwest developed a culture based on the natural bounty of warm ocean currents and maritime rain forests. This was one of the most naturally abundant regions on earth, and the ease of living there left the people time to devote to material culture-wood carving, totem poles, large wooden houses, and sea-worthy log canoes. They developed an economy of plenty and a society built on surplus.
  
  When the ancestors of the Kwakiutl people of the Northwest coast settled down for winter, they organized feasts known as potlatches, parties designed to display the wealth taken from the waters and forests. A chief would show fabulous hospitality to a rival chief from a neighboring clan-and in so doing threaten the other's bankruptcy, since the guest was honor bound to repay the favor. Thus the ancestral Kwakiutl built a culture in which clans and families were tied together in webs of mutual indebtedness that lasted generation after generation as did the communities of substantial log houses that they built.
  
• Geographically, the Kwakiutl were south of the Heiltsuk (Bella Bella) and Nuxalk (Bella Coola). They were directly north of the Nuu-chal-nuth (Nootka) on Vancouver Island on the Northeast coast.
  
• From the rain forest came the wood of the majestic red cedar-strong, aromatic, and resistant to rot. Massive cedar logs formed the framework of native houses, and split cedar planking sheathed their sides. The hull of each canoe began as a single cedar trunk, which the boat builders felled, scooped out with stone tools, then steamed to shape. Cedar boxes, intricately carved, served as storage space, household furniture, and containers for food and fish oil.
  
  Clothing and blankets were woven from cedar bark, which Northwest Coast women softened by pounding, then cut into strips. Split cedar root (along with spruce root and grasses) became the raw material for the region's superb basketwork, with mesh so tight that the baskets held water. And a cedar-root raincoat kept the wearer dry in any weather.
  
• In each community the social order was built on family status. Centuries ago, as the coast people's forebears settled in, certain families gained control of the best fishing grounds, berry patches, and cedar groves, thus appropriating most of the wealth. In time, as the rights to these assets passed from one generation to the next, a complex social hierarchy developed that contrasted sharply with most other cultures in native North America.
  
  At the top stood a handful of aristocratic families-the taises, or chiefs of the wealthiest lineages and their close relatives. Some might be warriors, others powerful shamans, and still others trade chiefs who controlled the lines of commerce with other tribes or villages.
  
  Below these elite families were their more distant relatives-the michimis, or ordinary people. Unlike their rich cousins, who almost never soiled their hands in labor, the non-elite relatives did much of the community's physical work. They felled the cedars, built the houses, hunted the game, repaired the fish weirs. On occasion, an artisan of unusual skill-a Kwakiutl woodworker famous for his carvings on canoes, for example-might rise above his normal station. But as a rule, rank was dictated by birth.
  
  Except for the slaves. Up and down the coast, slavery was the bitter consequence of defeat in battle. Ambitious nobles would raid distant villages, looting valuables and seizing hostages. High ranking prisoners might be sent home in exchange for a ransom payment, but all others remained the property of their captors. They were generally well treated. Slaves lived in the houses of their owners, ate the same food, and performed the same day-to-day tasks as other villagers. But their lives were always in jeopardy. When erecting a new family house, for example, some chiefs observed a custom of burying the body of a freshly killed slave under each corner post.
  
  There was no mistaking who belonged where, particularly among the northernmost tribes. A high-ranking Tlingit spoke with grave authority, and he dressed in style. On ceremonial occasions he draped his body in a handsome fringed cloak of cedar bark and mountain goat hair, worked with intricate designs, and wore a broad-brimmed hat emblazoned with family insignia. Sometimes he wore a seashell or a ring in his nose.
  
  High ranking women proclaimed their status by the size of their labret, a shelflike wooden plug inserted hoizontally into the bottom lip. The labret forced the lip to protrude, and it generated a flow of saliva-an effect that repelled the first European visitors. But to most people along the coast, the bigger the labret, the higher its wearer's status.
  
  Within each village the more powerful lineages took precedence. But the chief of every household automatically held noble rank. He presided from a raised platform along the rear wall, opposite the door, where he lived with his wife and younger children; an elaborately carved screen often separated this private space from the rest of the building. Other families in the household, all related to the house chief, lived along the two side walls in order of rank. Slaves laid their blankets near the entrance.
  
  Social standing told only half the story, however. Each household chief belonged to one of several hereditary clans-Owl, Whale, Sea Lion, Beaver, and others-in which everyone was presumably descended from a common ancestor. Additionally, communities were divided into two groups of roughly equal size....usually Raven or Eagle or in some Wolf or Raven.
  
  The distinction between the two sides was as basic as the difference between day and night. All Ravens, no matter how distant their blood relationship, felt a sense of spiritual kinship and commonly addressed each other as "brother" or "sister." At the same time, neither side could get along without the other. When a Raven chief wanted to build a new house or erect a totem pole, he would appeal to his Eagle counterpart, who then sent workmen to do the job. The very survival of the tribe depended on such cooperation, since marriage could occur only across group lines: Ravens wed Eagles, never other Ravens.
  
• The most dramatic celebration of family pride was the potlatch, an elaborate ritual of feasting, dancing, storytelling, and gift-giving that was a vital part of every Northwest Coast society. Whenever an important family moved into a new house, the occasion demanded a potlatch. So, too, did any dynastic event-a birth or a marriage, the death of a chief, the succession of an heir. Sometimes a clan leader would host a potlatch to repay a debt or erase a shame. No honors or titles were deemed valid until the recipient gave a potlatch "to make my name good," as the saying went.
  
  The festivities could last for days or even weeks. There would be formal speeches recounting the family legends, dance performances, a display of heirlooms and family emblems-all certifying the right of the host to his titles and privileges. Finally, he would hand out presents, divesting himself of blankets, animal pelts, carved boxes, shell necklaces, cartons of fish oil, weapons, and-most valuable of all-engraved metal slabs called coppers. The more lavish his generosity, the more honor he gained for himself and his lineage. some truly great chiefs were said to have distributed all they owned, then burned down their houses and executed their slaves. Such willful extravagance was the ultimate social gesture, worthy of enduring praise and esteem. (In practice, at least some of the wealth given out at potlatches came back to the owner, since the principal guest was honor bound to host a potlatch in return.)
  
  Potlatches were generally held in winter, when the coastal people turned from hunting and fishing to a virtually nonstop round of festivals and ceremonies. It was the season of spirits and demons, of mythic beings from distant worlds who arrived in the villages to the accompaniment of rattles, drums, and eerie whistles, inspiring awe and terror among viewers. Secret dance societies marked the occasion with ancient and sacred rites.
  
  No ceremonies were more renowned than those of the Hamatsa Society, or Cannibal Dancers. In Kwakiutl lore, a fearsome creature known as Cannibal-at-the-North-End-
  of-the-World would abduct certain high-born young men and women, imbuing them with spiritual power-and a craving for human flesh. In the Hamatsa Dance, these initiates would dash in from the forest, naked except for a few hemlock boughs, and in a frenzy of hunger lunge at bystanders, attempting to bite them. A struggle ensued in which the society's senior members seized the novices and forced thm to control their hideous urges. Once pacified, they were inducted into the society. (See the Kwakiutl Winter Dances for further details.)
  
  When Europeans first witnessed these rites, they assumed that the Kwakiutl and others practiced cannibalism. That may once have been so, but by modern times it was mostly illusion-a very realistic illusion. One observer in the 1890's noted that the dancers, instead of biting their victims, would lop off tiny chunks of skin with a hidden knife. Later in the ceremony, the skin would be returned (lest it be used for witchcraft) along with a formal apology and a handsome gift.
  
  Other Kwakiutl winter ceremonies created their own dramatic effects. In the Warrior of the World Dance, the female ogre Toogwid came attended by ghostly puppets and a double-headed serpent, Sisiutl, who flew through the air (assitants pulled it with invisible strings between two rafters). Suddenly, a lieutenant drove a wooden spike into her skull. Blood spurted. Her eyes popped out of their sockets and dangled by thin threads.
  
  This, too, was stagecraft. The "spike" was part of an ingenious wooden harness that fit over Tooguid's head, concealed by a wig. Its blunt end showed on one side, its point on the other; there was nothing in between. Bladders of seal blood provided the gore, and seal eyes suspended from the wig created the illusion that her own eyes had dropped out. After exposing her bloody corpse to the audience, Toogwid had the spike removed, and she stood reincarnated in all her former glory.
  
• While land-based fur trade in the early 1800's opened new opportunities for those who lived close to the inland forests-the Tsimshian and Kwakiutl most dramatically-it spelled disaster for some others. Several tribes on the west coast declined due to visits from sea captains as there were few fur-bearing animals on the islands.
  
  During the fur trade era, most whites came only briefly to the Northwest Coast, conducting their business and then departing. Even in the trading posts of the giant fur companies, the permanent foreign population remained small. As a tiny minority dependent on the goodwill of their native hosts, the white traders tended to treat the local population with a certain respect. Bonds of genuine affection gradually took hold. Many of the whites took Indian wives. Then, in scarcely more than a decade, everything changed.
  
  The governments of Canada and the United States settled a long-standing boundary dispute in 1846, in effect opening the region to settlers. Before long, shiny yellow nuggets began showing up at the trading posts. There was a ripple of excitement over some gold deposits found in 1852 in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Then a true bonanza followed on the Fraser River in 1857.
  
  White settlers poured in by the boatload: prospectors from England, the eastern US, and California, then tradesmen, innkeepers, shipping agents, carpenters, farmers, bankers, brewers-all the supporting characters of a full-fledged gold rush. The effect was devastating. These new immigrants, unlike the whites of fur trade days, viewed the region's native inhabitants as "dirty, nasty-smelling creatures" with swarthy complexions and bodies that stank of fish oil. (Few settlers seemed to notice that most Indians bathed regularly in the ocean, and whites rarely.) Native customs were regarded with scorn; native art seemed "grossly obscene." A few years earlier, when a group of 500 Haida had paddled into Victoria, hoping to trade, they so alarmed the fledgling colony that Governor James Douglas (himself a former trader married to the granddaughter of a Cree chief) begged them to leave.
  
  But still more Indians came, and the pressures multiplied. Most settled in squalid slums on the city's outskirts, elbow to elbow with white laborers and roustabouts. Alcohol flowed freely, and minor disputes exploded into ethic violence. A cry went out for the Indians' removal. "How much longer are we to be inflicted with the intolerable nuisance of hideous, half-naked, drunken savages...reeling about and shouting?" demanded an angry letter to a Candian newspaper in 1859.
  
  Equally dismaying was the growing trade in female flesh. In the past, native chiefs had occasionally made village women available to European traders and explorers, with no taint of dishonor. The trade goods obtained in return would be handed out at the next potlatch. Now village women, usually slaves or commoners, would spend their nights "earning blankets" (as the saying went) at Victoria's brothels and dance halls. Returning home with their pay, some carried the deadly seeds of syphilis.
  
  Other diseases also took a dreadful toll. Malaria, influenza, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and the like had struck periodically since the early days of the fur trade. Now came a smallpox epidemic that raged through the Victoria slums in 1862. In the crowded conditions of the native shantytowns, it spread like an invisible, poisonous fog. The authorities seized the opportunity to evict the inhabitants and burn their houses.
  
  The refugees fled up the coast to their old villages, bearing the infection with them. Travelers reported seeing bodies festering along the shoreline, with canoes, blankets, and guns scattered nearby. The disease touched almost every village on Vancouver Island and on the mainland opposite. The death count among the Nuu-chal-nuth, Kwakiutl, and Coast Salish reached one in three. Among the Haida, so many died that entire communities ceased to function. The one exception was Sitka, where the Russian authorities had seen fit to vaccinate all residents, Tlingit and white alike. Elsewhere, down the length of the Northwest Coast, an estimated 20,000 native people died
  
• Protestant missionaries arrived on the heels of the Hudson's Bay company to convert the local population of the Northwest Coast. None cut a wider swath than William Duncan, an Anglican lay preacher who came to Ft Simpson in 1857 to preach to the Tsimshian. Though impressed by the natives' intelligence and artisitc skill, Duncan was appalled by just about everythng else-the rites of the shamans, the extravagance of the potlatches, the cannibalistic dances at the Winter Festival, and the rising levels of drunkennesss and prostitution. To save the Tsimshian from the dual temptations of "pagan" traditions and modern vice, Duncan saw only one rememdy. He would isolate his congregation in a separate community built on principles of strict Christian virtue.
  
  He picked Metlakatla, site of the abandoned shimshian winter camp. In May 1862 he moved in with just 58 converts; two days later the smallpox epidemic reached Ft Simpson, and hundreds more were suddenly inspired to join him. Metlakatla soon developed into a thriving Victorian town of more than 1,000 souls living in tidy rows of two family frame houses....So successful was Metlakatla that it became a model of other missionary endeavors. The community contines to flourish until 1887, when Duncan, following a dispute with the Anglican bishop, left town and moved across the border to Alaska with 823 followers. Obtaining a land grant from the US government, he promptly found New Metlakatla, a close replica of the old, and propelled it to similar heights of virtue and prosperity.
  
  Some people resisted the invasion of the missionaries, to be sure, and clung fast to their own traditions. Potlatches among the tribes of British Columbia became so lavish and wasteful-in the eyes of white authorities-that in 1885 the Canadian government outlawed the practice entirely. It continued in secret until the ban was finally lifted in 1951.