Author Archives: Seminole Nation, I.T.

Tiny Horrors: A Chilling Reminder of How Cruel Assimilation Was—And Is

child_handcuffs

For such small objects, the child’s handcuffs are surprisingly heavy when cradled in the palms of one’s hand. Although now rusted from years of disuse, they still convey the horror of their brutal purpose, which was to restrain Native children who were being brought to boarding schools. “I felt the weight of their metal on my heart,” said Jessica Lackey of the Cherokee tribe as she described holding the handcuffs for the first time.

Lackey, an alumnus of Haskell Indian Nations University, was working at the school’s Cultural Center & Museum when the handcuffs were unwrapped last spring after being kept in storage for several years. I had heard rumors about the existence of the handcuffs during visits to Haskell over the years and had made numerous inquiries to school authorities about them, but people seemed very reluctant to discuss this touchy artifact. This past summer, however, Haskell agreed to allow a public viewing of the handcuffs. Andy Girty, one of the elders who first blessed the handcuffs when they were given to Haskell in 1989, helped unwrap them for me.

Known as the Haskell Institute in its early years, the school opened its doors in 1884. It was originally founded as an instrument of the final solution to this country’s “Indian problem”; Haskell Institute’s mission then was embodied in the now infamous motto of Captain Richard H. Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” This mind-set led to decades of forced acculturation through brutal military-style incarceration cloaked as education in U.S. Indian boarding schools.

Although begun as a model for assimilation, native students have, over the years, transformed Haskell into a model for self-determination. The school’s early curriculum featured training in domestic and farming skills but has since evolved into four-year university.

Haskell’s Cultural Center & Museum, located on campus, tells the full—and often cruel—story of Haskell’s painful past as well as providing a venue to showcase Native art, culture from the past and present. Opened in 2002, the center features the permanent exhibit Honoring Our Children Through Seasons of Sacrifice, Survival, Change and Celebration, featuring artifacts, photos and letters from the school’s early days.

Among the artifacts currently on display isa heavy iron lock and key for the school jail, which held unruly students. Letters, photographs, copies of early school newspapers and daily menus are among the more commonplace artifacts of early daily life displayed at the museum. One display includes a heavy lock and key from the small on site jail used to punish unruly students. Soon, perhaps, the handcuffs will be included among these artifacts, adding its chilling testimony regarding the practices used by early educators to kill the Indian and save the child.

Not much is known about the diminutive handcuffs, which were donated to the Cultural Center in 1989 by a non-Indian man who described their use to Bobbi Rahder, former director of the Haskell Cultural Center & Museum. “He told us they were used to restrain captured Indian children who were being taken to boarding schools,” says Rahder. The middle-age white man said his father had the handcuffs for years but that he no longer wanted to have them in his possession. “He seemed relieved to get rid of them,” Rahder recalls.

I made many phone calls, but was unable to track down the man, who is said to have lived in Lawrence. According to Rahder, he failed to respond to messages they had left him over the years, and he has not been seen at Haskell since the day he brought the handcuffs to the Cultural Center. “It was all very vague. He didn’t tell us how his father came to have the handcuffs. He showed up one day and donated them to the Center,” she says.

Mysterious donations are common at the Cultural Center. Rahder has witnessed scores of non-Indian donors dropping off important—and often poignant—historical artifacts relating to Haskell. Last year, Roger Bollinger of Pennsylvania donated an 1880s leather-bound photo album containing photos and corresponding identifications of Haskell’s very first students in 1884. This album represents the only known identifiable photos from that inaugural class. Bollinger knew little of Haskell and had no idea how the album came to be in his family’s possession. A supporter of education and cultural understanding, he decided tom donate the album to Haskell.

The handcuffs, however, were different, notes Rahder, who took them from the man. “I was shocked and afraid to touch them,” she recalls.

She says she immediately contacted administrative and spiritual leaders at the school for guidance on handling the handcuffs. Leaders at Haskell were overwhelmed by the brutality of the tiny handcuffs, she noted.

Girty, of the Cherokee Nation, who is a Cherokee language instructor at Haskell and a number of other elders and leaders, conducted a modest ceremony the next day at the school’s medicine fire. His wife, Frances, of the Creek and Choctaw Nations, provided a tiny handmade quilt in which the handcuffs were reverently wrapped before being stored in the Cultural Center’s archives. The handcuffs remained in storage for more than 20 years.

Although the Cultural Center displays a number of artifacts related to the harsh treatment of early Indian students at Haskell, the handcuffs were simply too painful to be addressed, opined Rahder. She says elders blessed the handcuffs and instructed her to put them away. She did as she was told, trusting that students and faculty would one day decide on the appropriate treatment of this painful artifact. The handcuffs languished in the archives of the center until this past summer.

As word of the handcuffs began to leak out over the past few years, students and faculty began discussing the importance of acknowledging their existence and putting them on display. For whatever reason, no one at the school has been willing to take the lead in the handling of this powerful artifact, but with the approval of Haskell administration, Girty agreed to unwrap them for ICTMN.

For Lackey the handcuffs are a tangible example of the painful history between Native people and the U.S. “The history of our genocide has been so swept under the rug by the mainstream. People need to see the impact that these policies had on us,“ she  says.

According to Girty, who was a student at Haskell in 1959, there are many stories of the brutal means used by authorities to bring and keep students at school in its early days. For instance, reservation authorities would hold back Native families’ food rations if they refused to allow children to be sent to early boarding schools, he noted. “If those handcuffs could talk, they would tell some terrible stories,” he says.

Steve Prue, spokesman for Haskell, says there are no immediate plans regarding how the handcuffs will be presented to the public, nor how they will be displayed. He agrees with students that the handcuffs are an appropriate item to be included in displays of other Haskell artifacts at the Cultural Center. “It’s good to have these sorts of things on display in the Cultural Center,” he says. “They tell the story of who paid the price for us to be here now.”

  

Dreaming With The Ancestors

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Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women’s roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider’s perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In Dreaming with the Ancestors, Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.

Mock reveals a unique maroon culture, forged from an eclectic mixture of religious beliefs and social practices. At its core is an amalgam of African-derived traditions kept alive by women. The author interweaves documentary research with extensive interviews she conducted with leading Black Seminole women to uncover their remarkable history. She tells how these women nourished their families and held fast to their Afro-Seminole language — even as they fled slavery, endured relocation, and eventually sought new lives in new lands. Of key importance were the “warrior women” — keepers of dreams and visions that bring to life age-old African customs.

Featuring more than thirty illustrations and maps, including historic photographs never before published, Dreaming with the Ancestors combines scholarly analysis with human interest to open a new window on both African American and American Indian history and culture.

Sorghum Days Festival

History, Food and Fun under the Autumn Sun!

Scanning the area newspapers in the fall of 1976, the casual reader wouldn’t find much mention of the first Wewoka Sorghum Festival. Even the most attentive reader would be hard-pressed to discover more than the occasional reference to the forthcoming festivities. If you had an interest in the newly formed “Seminole Nation Historical Society,” you might have caught a three-sentence blurb buried deep in the Sunday, September 29th edition of the Wewoka Daily Times noting that October 2nd had been set aside by the Museum as the official date for the celebration. (With no mention of it becoming an annual event.) Most humbling of all, however, was the meager attention after the event. In fact, the only follow-up coverage was extended to Jake and Jesse, the mules that turned the mill!

Sorghum

How things have changed! Three decades later, the Wewoka Sorghum Festival has evolved to become one of the most anticipated rural festivals in Oklahoma. Now firmly situated the fourth Saturday in October, attracting publicity, as well as a crowd, is no longer an issue. With attendance upwards of twenty thousand, visitors of all ages trek to Wewoka each October to experience “History, Food and Fun Under the Autumn Sun!”

It’s not just tourism we attract, though. Along the way we’ve won a few awards and garnered quite a bit of attention for our community. In addition to being featured on television and in news magazines such as Discover Oklahoma, Sorghum Day has been highlighted by regional magazines such as “Country Life” and “Oklahoma Today.” The festival has also been honored with a Redbud Award by the tourism department for being one of the best events in the state. Sorghum Day also contributed to Frontier Country Marketing Association choosing Wewoka as their “Tourism City of the Year” in 2003. Not bad for an event that started on an initial investment of one hundred dollars.

It was Rotarian Paul Dodd that purchased the mill back in the fall of 1975. He wanted to contribute something to the newly opened Seminole Nation Museum and was considering a buggy. As Dodd said, “All of them were gone, so I offered to give them a mill I had heard of.” For one hundred dollars, Dodd purchased the then seventy-five year-old mill from Wewokan Otis Wall. Dr. Claude Knight, also a Rotarian and a co-founder of the Museum, suggested that the mill be refurbished and used to demonstrate the production of molasses. In October of the following year, the Museum and Rotary Club made that very thing happen, and a little over forty gallons of syrup was sold. Today, the Museum still oversees the production of the sorghum and currently sells upwards of four hundred gallons of the sweetener as its major annual fundraiser.

Jake & Jessie

Thanks to the tireless efforts of many local individuals, each autumn brings a new crop of sorghum and a new and larger crowd to our hometown…exceeding the greatest expectations of the festivals humble beginnings. As always, the cane is planted in the spring, not to be harvested until “it’s just right” and “high as an elephant’s eye” ready late in October. The cane was originally grown by the late James Harrod, but currently that duty falls to Wewokan Dan Houser. Houser, whose father Clifton fed the mill with cane for over a quarter of a century, took over growing the cane when Harrod retired several seasons ago. The “Sorghum Patch,” as it has affectionately come to be known, is now located just north of Wewoka on land provided by the Jearl Smart family. Good irrigation, quality soil and hard labor have been producing an excellent crop the last few years.

Since the late 1980s, the Wewoka Chamber of Commerce has worked to shape Sorghum Day into the modern festival we know today. Building on the foundation established by the Museum and Rotary Club, the Chamber has created new events and attractions to broaden the appeal of the festival and opened the experience to new generations of visitors. The parade, banquet, car show, golf tournament, pageant, craft booths and 5K run are all programs run by the Wewoka Chamber. In addition to these duties, the Chamber also works to market and promote the festival on a regional and national level. The diligent work of the Chamber has not only served to grow the festival, but, in partnering with the Museum, it has ensured the event a strong and viable future.

Looking back over the last three decades, the community of Wewoka can realize much pride in its Sorghum Festival. The small event that some thought would never make in, or was too labor prohibitive to be practical, has endured and evolved. The one hundred dollar investment that Paul Dodd made on an autumn weekend in 1975 has been nurtured with a lot hard work and the spirit of volunteerism and has grown and flourished. Now in the hands of a new generation of caretakers, the festival, much like the cane it celebrates, has a strong and lasting future.

Grave Houses of the Mvskoke Creek – Traditions and Assembly Book

Throughout the Mvskoke and Seminole Nations, at the older country churches, you will occasionally find an old cemetery and there you will find grave houses. A small scale house built and placed over the grave of a departed loved one, shingled and painted all set for a spirit…

Arbeka Indian Methodist Church Cemetery

Arbeka Indian Methodist Church Cemetery

Coming Soon!

Grave Houses of the Mvskoke Creek – Traditions and Assembly Book

Look for details at Seminole Nation, I. T. to order your copy.

Mvto!

Edmund Harjo – Seminole Code Talker

Edmund Harjo

Edmund Harjo

During the dark, early days of World War II, American military commanders were desperate for a code that could not be cracked by the Japanese. The solution rested in the obscure languages spoken by Native American tribes, unfathomable to the Japanese. Native American code talkers, as they became known, were able to transmit messages quickly and securely, giving American forces a critical edge.

While the contributions of Navajo Code Talkers have been honored by Congress and featured in films, the role of dozens of other Native American tribes has been overlooked. But on November 21, 2013, Congressional Gold Medals, the nation’s highest civilian honor, were awarded honoring the service of hundreds of overlooked code talkers from 33 tribes.
Native American calls and whoops of pride echoed through Emancipation Hall when tribal representatives, some wearing headdresses or other traditional clothing, received the medals in front of an audience of hundreds. Few of the code talkers are still living, and only one was present for the ceremony.
Edmund Harjo, 96 a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, served as a radio man with the 195th Field Artillery Battalion in France. Harjo, who attended in a wheelchair and received an ovation from the audience said afterward that the honor was appreciated but belated.

‘If I was young, I would enjoy it,” he said.

It’s a long time coming, ‘said Leroy Shingoitewa, 71. a member of the Hopi Tribe who has several uncles who served as code talkers.
“When the came home, they didn’t talk much about it, ” he said. “Finally, it’s become known.”

The United States first used Native American code talkers during World War I in October 1918, when the country used Choctaws to transmit messages confounding to the Germans. The idea was reborn during World War II, when the Marine Corps recruited several hundred Navajos to serve in the Pacific.
The Army used Comanche to develop a secret code based on their language, while members of other tribes were assigned to special native language communication duty.

Estimates place the number of Native American code talkers who served in the two wars at more than 400, according to the Defense Department. The code talkers’ role was kept classified for many years. “They returned heroes, but without a hero’s welcome,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.). Navajo code talkers, who served in the largest numbers, were awarded the gold medal in 2001 at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda presided over by President George W. Bush.

In subsequent years, congressional representatives from states with large Native American populations, including Oklahoma and South Dakota, pushed for recognition of other tribes. Congress passed legislation authorizing gold medals to other tribes in 2008, but it took years for the Pentagon to research which tribes were eligible because no central records about code talkers exist.

Tribes and nations honored include the Comanche, Cherokee, Sioux, Choctaw, Hopi, Kiowa, Creek, Oneida, Osage, Pawnee, Ponca, Pueblo,
Sac and Fox, Seminole, Apache, Crow, Tlingit, Chippewa, Menominee and Mohawk.

The code talkers “embraced their cultural heritage and used it to prevent highly sensitive wartime messages from being intercepted by the enemy, ” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw Nation and co-chair of the Native American Congressional Caucus. More tribes could be added based on further research, but with the code talker numbers dwindling and their immediate families aging, officials decided not to delay further, according to congressional aides.

“It’s a great feeling down here,” said Robert Atchavit, a Comanche from Oklahoma, patting his heart.

 

 

New Ways to Trace Your Native Ancestry

BIA School Records

In the 1880s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established 26 non-reservation boarding schools in 15 states and territories for vocational education. The first federally funded off-reservation school was Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Created in 1879, it existed until September 1, 1918. More than 10,000 students from 140 different tribes from all over the United States attended Carlisle. One of its most famous alumni was Sac and Fox athlete Jim Thorpe (1888-1953), who won gold medals in the 1912 Olympics.

The National Archives holds many records about these BIA-operated schools and the students who attended them.  Most of these non-reservation schools created and maintained a case file for each student. Family history researchers will discover that students were often sent to schools by the Indian Agency, which had jurisdiction over their tribe. Specific BIA-operated schools can be found by the state with information about the years and material available.

First, search the state-by-state Guide to Record Group 75, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs online.

Then to request Indian Student Case Files, contact the National Archives facility that holds the records for the pertinent school. That information will be found at the link above. For example, if your ancestor attended Pipestone Indian School (1894-1959) in Minnesota, the records will be found at the National Archives in Kansas City.

When submitting a request to the National Archives, include the individual’s date of birth, as well as variant spellings of his or her name. Additional information, such as the names of parents or tribal affiliation, may be helpful in identifying a match. While the specific documents can vary widely, the records may include applications for enrollment, medical examination forms, attendance and grade reports, examples of student work, newspaper clippings, documents related to student employment, and correspondence. Photographs generally do not appear in student case files.

Military Service and Pension Records

American Indians have served in the U.S. Armed Forces since the Revolutionary War and have participated in every major conflict, including both sides of the American Civil War. They provided unique services such as being U.S. Army Indian Scouts and the U.S. Army and Marine Corps code talkers in both World Wars. Many of the older military records are digitized, indexed, and fully searchable on Ancestry.com and/or Fold3.com (subscription online services). Online access to both of these websites is free at all National Archives research facilities.

The service and pension records of these men and women can be found at the National Archives.

Prior to 1917: These records are located at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and can be requested by fax or by mail.

From WWI through today: These records are located at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, by fax or by mail.

Pictures of Native Americans

The National Archives also has pictures which show Native Americans, their homes and activities. Pictorial records have been deposited in the National Archives by 15 government agencies, principally the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of American Ethnology, and the United States Army. English names of individuals have been used, with Native or secondary designations in parentheses.

All of the pictures described are either photographs or copies of artworks. Any item not identified as an artwork is a photograph. Whenever available, the name of the photographer or artist and the date of the item have been given. This information is followed by the identification number. The pictures are grouped by subject. Tribal names as specific as possible have been incorporated into the descriptions where known and where appropriate and an index by tribe follows the list at the website.

Myra Vanderpool Gormley is credentialed as a Certified Genealogist ℠ by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (1987-2012), retired (2012).