The Wild Frontier (10 page)

Indian women sometimes did take part in the fighting. In a battle in Powder River country in 1864 against the Arapaho, one of General Connor’s officers observed, “I was in the village in the midst of a hand-to-hand fight with warriors and their squaws, for many of the female
portion of this band did as brave fighting as their savage lords.”
²¹⁵
When the army was fighting the Modocs in the lava beds in 1872, the soldiers moved close to the Modoc stronghold and were met with fire from both male and female warriors.
²¹⁶
According to Cyrus Townsend Brady, Sioux leader American Horse was trapped by soldiers in 1876 with four warriors and several women and children in a cave. “Even the women had used guns, and had displayed all the bravery and courage of the Sioux.”
²¹⁷
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce reported after the 5-day Battle of Bear Paw Mountain in 1877 that on the first day his tribe had lost “eighteen men and three women.”
²¹⁸

As we have seen, Indian women could be as cruel as Indian men. A U.S. Army captain described how after a battle Cheyenne squaws helped “scalp and torture the wounded, shooting arrows into their bodies and cutting off fingers and toes, even when they were alive.”
²¹⁹

M
ANY AUTHORS
have commented on how much the Indians loved their children. “He is affectionate to his children, careful of them, and indulgent in the extreme,” wrote Roy Harvey Pearce. “His sensibility is keen, even the warriors weeping most bitterly on the loss of their children.”
²²⁰
“The Indians were usually affectionate toward their children,” observed Harold E. Driver, “rarely punishing them, and an Indian mother would treat an adopted white child as her own.”
²²¹
Indian Commissioner George W. Manypenny also praised them in this regard: “His love for his offspring is intense.”
²²²

Infanticide was practiced, however, in many tribes. If the mother died at childbirth and no wet nurse could be found, the infant usually was buried with its mother. If the father died, the mother might kill the baby to free herself for other children. Where illegitimacy was strongly disapproved, the mother might put such a baby to death. Deformed infants were often killed. Infants would sometimes be killed in times of famine.

There were some instances where mothers killed their children because of the exigencies of warfare. Sometimes they would be killed so that the mother could fight without encumbrance. Some Seminole women and children were captured in 1836. One of the women gave her 3 children a drink from a coffeepot. She escaped, but her children remained in captivity. The children were then found dead from poison administered by their mother.
²²³
The same year, the Seminoles were defeated in battle; before they retreated, “they strangled their children by stuffing their mouths and nostrils with mud moss.”
²²⁴
Some of the Creek women trying to escape from their group, which was being removed
to Oklahoma in 1836, killed their young children, perhaps because they might make noise betraying their parents when secrecy and silence were vital.
²²⁵

The elderly sometimes fared no better. Captain William Clark, when he was among the Mandans, heard what happened when an elderly Indian asked for something to ease the pain in his back. His young grandson said it was not worthwhile, “that it was time for the old man to die.”
²²⁶
Later, George Catlin told about being directed by the Indian agent, Major Sanford, to a member of the Puncah tribe, “one of the most miserable and helpless looking objects that I had ever seen in my life, a very aged and emaciated man.” He had once been a chief and was now too old to travel with the tribe, which was going to move to where there was more food. He told Catlin he was “to be exposed,” that is, left to die when the others departed. He sat by a small fire with a few sticks of wood within reach, a buffalo’s skin over his head, a few half-picked bones, a dish of water, and nothing else—nothing even to defend himself with against the wolves.

Before they left, his children gathered around him and he said,

Catlin went to the old chief after this farewell, they talked, they shook hands, the chief smiled, they shook hands again, then Catlin left to catch his steamboat on the Missouri. He returned a few months later and found everything as it had been except that the chief’s skull and some of his bones had been picked clean by the wolves. Catlin concluded that “this cruel custom of exposing their aged people, belongs, I think, to all the tribes who roam about the prairies.”
²²⁸

F
REQUENT ADOPTION
existed among the tribes before and after the settlers came.
²²⁹
Some tribes gave a widow or a mother who had lost a child the option of adopting a captive to replace the lost relative. The person might be inducted into the tribe as an equal or as a semislave. Many settler captives eventually found Indian life so attractive that they resisted being rescued. Frederick Drimmer outlined what often happened:

There was even a “significant number of whites who resisted or declined ‘rescue.’” Benjamin Franklin put the problem this way in 1753:

Eunice Williams was captured by the Iroquois in the 1704 Deerfield raid. Her father found her in Montreal in 1714 and tried to persuade her to leave her Indian husband and return. He said, “She is yet obstinately resolved to live and dye
[sic]
here, and will not so much as give me one pleasant look.”
²³²
Frances Slocum was captured in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania in 1778. She married a Delaware Indian, who left her, and later married a Miami chief. After searching for many years, her brothers found her in 1837 and urged her to return, at least for a visit, but she said, “I can not. I can not. I am an old tree. I can not move about. I was a sapling when they took me away. It is all gone past. I am afraid I should die and never come back. I am happy here.”
²³³

Another captive who refused to return to settler civilization was Cynthia Ann Parker, mother of Comanche chief Quanah Parker. She was captured in Texas in 1836 by Caddos Indians when only 9 years old. The Caddos sold her to the Comanches, and she became the wife of a Comanche chief, by whom she had 3 children. She preferred Indian life to settler life. She was recaptured, but died 4 years later.
²³⁴
Angie Debo observed that “no other tragedy of frontier life brought such anguish [as
Cynthia’s kidnapping], no other phase of Indian warfare aroused such hatred as this capture of children.”
²³⁵

Children below the age of 12 taken captive by Indians were easily assimilated or Indianized, but older children often retained the desire to return to their families.
²³⁶
Those who had been captive for many years eventually took on Indian dress, talk, thought, and values. Frequently they took on an Indian identity. Such captives often faced prejudice if they returned to white society. Many never found themselves completely accepted or assimilated there.
²³⁷

Why did some captive settlers not want to return? Several reasons suggest themselves. Gary L. Ebersole observed that

Indian child-rearing practices may also have been a factor. The maxim “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was followed by most settler parents. In many families, children were viewed primarily as a source of labor and were exploited as such. One 12-year-old who had been forced by his father to watch sheep alone for long periods of time joined an Indian band after Indians had glowingly described to him a life of hunting, fishing, and riding and even promised him a pony if he would come with them. He did.
²³⁹

Another reason white captive males might not want to return was that, as Alexander Kellet put it in 1778, “Indian maidens positively desire white men because they are better lovers and know what women want.”
²⁴⁰
From what he had seen, Indian men treated their wives coldly; therefore, Indian women “are consequently very prone to European attachments, where they are agreeably surprised by a fondling and dalliance which is quite novel to them, and not the less captivating.”
²⁴¹

J. Norman Heard, in his book
White into Red
, concluded, “The number of captives living out their lives with Indians was probably considerably smaller than the number restored to their white families.”
²⁴²

——

T
HE INDIAN
certainly had a sense of humor. William Brandon quoted a writer in the 1800s who said about one tribe, “Wit, merriment and practical jokes enliven all their gatherings.”
²⁴³
The Indian humor has come down to us as a black humor sometimes, perhaps because of the circumstances out of which it arose.

One day in 1808, Tecumseh called William Henry Harrison
*
a liar. Harrison drew his sword, the soldiers aimed their guns at the Indians, and the Indians raised their tomahawks at the soldiers. Harrison declared the meeting ended, and no one was hurt. The next morning, Tecumseh apologized. Harrison then visited the Indian camp, where the two sat on a log. Tecumseh kept scooting over toward Harrison; Harrison kept moving away, but finally reached the end of the log and objected to Tecumseh. Tecumseh laughed, saying that was what the white man was doing to the Indians.
²⁴⁵

Indian removals to Oklahoma began in the 1830s. Eventually more than 25 tribes went there, and many others were shifted to new locations. Sioux chief Spotted Tail asked, “Why does not the Great Father put his red children on wheels, so he can move them as he will?”
²⁴⁶

Around 1850, an Indian agent told Kiowa chief Little Mountain that the government was going to teach the Indians how to farm. The chief’s reply was that he hoped that since the government was so generous it would also send the Indians some land that would grow corn, since they had no such land on the reservation.
²⁴⁷

A Paiute Indian told this story about his grandfather, who was a big eater. A white man who watched him eating at a barbecue said he wished he had the Indian’s appetite. The Indian replied, “You white people took our buffalo, and our women, and our land. You took everything we had. You want our appetite too?”
²⁴⁸

The Sioux orator Red Dog, who was overweight, spoke at Cooper Institute in New York in 1870. His comments about his size had a bite to them:

Many have commented on the eloquence of the Indians. In discourse, wrote Clark Wissler, “they proceeded in a fine manner, often rising to high levels of oratory.”
²⁵⁰
And Peter Matthiessen lauded Indians as “a people who prize eloquence as the great gift of the oral tradition.”
²⁵¹

John Logan, also known as James Logan and Tahgahjute (His Eyelashes Stick Out), was a Mingo, an Iroquois living in Ohio or Pennsylvania. In 1744, a mob of settlers murdered several Mingo Indians, including members of Logan’s family, near present-day Steubenville, Ohio. British governor John Dunmore and Logan met to negotiate. Logan opened the meeting with these words: