American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In the late nineteenth century, when the US government embarked on an educational program to teach English to American Indian students, there were few if any trained teachers of English as a second language in public schools in the United States. Immigrant groups that wielded some political power, such as German speakers, created their own schools, which were staffed with teachers who spoke the students’ languages. In contrast, poor immigrant children, if they attended school at all, were typically drilled in English by the same teachers in the same material as English-speaking children, even though they could not understand the teachers’ instructions. Given that teaching English and teaching through English were necessarily trial-and-error processes, the issue of language and language instruction pervaded the annual reports of the commissioner of Indian affairs at the turn of the century. While there is a growing body of literature on American Indian education in the late nineteenth century, including historical overviews and studies of particular schools, as well as the occasional study dealing with the US government’s language policy at the turn of the twentieth century, no detailed investigation exists of the methods teachers actually employed in order to teach English to American Indian students when this first nationwide English-as-a-second-language program was instituted. This study is a contribution to that history. To learn how English was taught at the time the US government was increasing its involvement in American Indian education, this article examines the second-language program developed at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia beginning in 1878. Hampton was not representative of all off-reservation boarding schools. Founded as a school for freed slaves and focusing on the African American population, it was not designed exclusively for American Indian students.

On 27 August 1994, Lakota elder Nellie Zelda Star Boy Menard was honored by her family and friends in a special ceremony at the Rosebud fair. The list of her extensive accomplishments in the arts was recited by relative Noah Broken Leg. Menard was honored once before, but this time as a young girl. Her family venerated her in a special ceremony. At the age of fifteen, Menard underwent a traditional girl’s puberty ceremony. Born on 3 June 1910 in Belvidere, South Dakota on the Lakota (Sioux) Rosebud Reservation, Menard is one of very few living tribal members to experience this honorary ceremony. As Nellie says, “They don’t do that [puberty ceremony] anymore. That’s a thing of the past.... So very few people go through that .... I was the only girl [in my family] for a long time, so that’s how come I went through that.” No firsthand Lakota accounts of this ceremony have been published to our knowledge and only a handful of eyewitness accounts exist. In the early 1980s, Menard transcribed her memories of the iinati awicalowanpi and tapa wankayeyapi ceremonies. She did this in response to a request by a Swiss gentleman who purchased her beaded ball, which was used in her ceremony: This is the ceremony they [my family] had for me when I first had my period going on 15 years old. First they put up a tent away from the house-I would say about 50 yards or hearing distance. I am to stay in this tent with my grandmother, my mother’s mother [Helen Long Warrior Leads the Horse].

For the nation, there is an unrequited account of sin and injustice that sooner or later will call for national retribution. -George Catlin, 1844 One of the more pernicious myths shrouding the realities of Indian-white relations in the United States is that the United States has historically comported itself according to uniquely lofty legal and moral principles when interacting with “its” indigenous peoples. The idea has been around in the form of official rhetoric since at least as early as 1787, when Congress, already pursuing a practical policy going in exactly the opposite direction, used its enactment of the Northwest Ordinance as an opportunity to pledge itself to conducting its Indian affairs in “utmost good faith.” As President Harry S. Truman would put it 159 years later, it should be “perfectly clear.. .that in our transactions with Indian tribes we have.. .set for ourselves the standard of fair and honorable dealings, pledging respect for all Indian property rights.” In 1985, the late Wilcomb E. Washburn, then preeminent “American Indianist” historian for the federal government’s Smithsonian Institution, waxed a bit more expansive when he observed that “[because US. Indian policy is.. .supportive of Indian values and aspirations, questions that in other countries would not arise are the subject of intense debate in the United States.... [Hence,] in broad, general perspective, one is impressed with the extraordinary recognition to the now powerless Indian tribes of this country not only to maintain a secure trust-guaranteed and tax-free land base, but to exercise aspects of sovereignty that normally derive from the control of territory held by a powerful sovereign.”

INTRODUCTION This paper examines the role of white traders in two distinct locations: the Navajo Reservation in the United States and the Transkei, a former reserve in South Africa. Despite historical, cultural, and geographical differences, the imposition of colonial rule and the establishment of reservation structures in both regions meant that the indigenous populations endured many common experiences. In these situations, opportunities were present for a class of entrepreneurs to position themselves as intermediaries between these populations and the outside world, thereby becoming agents of change. These activities expanded and contracted in response to changing internal and external conditions. This paper’s intention is to further uncover the forces at work in the process of capitalist development in peripheral areas through a comparative analysis of these situations. TRADERS AND INCORPORATION World-system theorists use the term incorporation or broadening to describe the process whereby peripheral areas are absorbed into the global capitalist system controlled by the core nations. Primarily an economic process, incorporation is shaped by many related factors, including but not limited to: the social organization and culture of the people being incorporated; the role of the region in the world economy; historical epoch; and the driving incentive-such as land, labor, or raw materials-of the incorporating society.

The Walpole Island First Nations Reserve (#46), or Bkejwanong (the place where water divides), in Ontario is the southernmost reserve in Canada. Approximately 740 square kilometers in size, Walpole is home to 2,300 permanent residents-out of a band membership of 3,100-from the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi nations. This community is situated in the extreme northeastern corner of the mouth of the St. Clair River. The river flows south from the outflow of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, sixty-four kilometers to Lake St. Clair (see Figure 1). Walpole Island is a bird-foot-shaped land mass that is surrounded by water on all three sides: the St. Clair River on the northwest, the Chenail Ecarte or Snye River on the northeast, and Lake St. Clair on the south. These waters and their tributaries are primarily responsible for having fashioned the six islands (from east to west: St. Anne, Walpole, Squirrel, Potawatomi, Bassett, and Seaway) that compose Walpole Island as well as three other American islands: Harsens, Russell, and Dickinson, which complete this delta system. Walpole Island circumscribes the Canadian portion of a larger Lake St. Clair wetland delta. It is connected to the Canadian mainland by a swing bridge and to the United States by boat or ferry. Walpole Island’s being poised on the Canada-United States boundary at Canada’s southernmost border informs a collective identity, one that is also fortified by the community’s status as unceded. This status is the result of the fact that Walpole Island was left to Native people as their home by default, although no treaty was ever signed that designated the current land mass as theirs. Partly as a result of this history and also due to its proximity to the major urban centers of Detroit, Windsor, and Sarnia, Walpole Island has had to struggle to maintain itself as a distinct cultural area.

Indian claims to land have continued to occupy the courts and the US Congress. While the era of the larger territorial claims adjudicated by the Indian Claims Commission has passed, many surviving cases remain unresolved and others focus on new or continuing issues. This mini-symposium reports on the viability of settlement acts; the gnawing questions of surviving aboriginal title; the conflict over submerged lands; the status of adjudicated cases for which tribes have refused monies; the convoluted issues of acknowledgment, landlessness, and land restoration; the quest for access, use, and protection of cultural resources; tribal efforts and judicial frustrations over land consolidation; and the special case of Hawaiian lands. Case studies include the Zuni, Catawba, and Coeur d'Alene . Lest one believe too strongly that the nation is returning a quantum of acreage to Indian communities, readers should keep in mind that Indian land claims still remain in motion and that now and then limited land restoration does occur. For those who might worry that we are returning the continent to the tribes, fear not; the modicum of acreage restored is miniscule against the square miles of extinguished territory.

During the twenty years between 1970 and 1990 the Zuni Tribe of New Mexico made several major claims relative to their aboriginal land and the interests they hold in that land. They claimed title to some lands, interests in other lands-a sixty-mile easement for a quadrennial religious pilgrimage, for example-and damages as a result of lands permanently lost to them. As a result of their demands for justice, three pieces of legislation were passed by the US Congress, two major land-claim cases went before the United States Claims Court (Zuni Indian Tribe v. United States), and one major case was tried in federal district court in Arizona (United States v. Plutt) . More than two dozen experts from disciplines as diverse as palynology and lexicography prepared extensive written expert testimony for submission to the various courts. Tens of thousands of pages of exhibits were also submitted in support of the expert reports and by 1990, in what has to be one of the greatest litigative triumphs of an American Indian tribe, the Zuni had won virtually 100 percent of the demands they made twenty years before. During the period in which the tribe pursued both the litigation and legislation, experts conducted what may be the most intense study of a semi-arid landscape- an area sacred to the tribe- and claimed that though these areas were now under the control of others, title should reside with the Zuni Tribe.

On 27 October 1993 President William Clinton signed the Catawba Land Claim Settlement Act. By the stroke of his pen, this legislation ended over thirteen years of litigation by extinguishing the claim of the Catawba Indian Tribe to 144,000 acres of highly developed South Carolina land and trespass damages for the 140 years the Catawba have not possessed the land. At the same time, this legislation also provided a variety of federal and state benefits to the Catawba. The thirteen-year history of this litigation was indeed extraordinary in more respects than the length of its existence. During that time, the case was before the US Supreme Court once, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals seven times-six of those times by the entire court sitting en bum-and the Supreme Court of South Carolina once. In addition, there were numerous hearings before the US District Court in South Carolina, presided over by Senior Judge Joseph Willson from the western district of Pennsylvania, specifically appointed to the case by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Warren Burger.

COEUR D’ALENE DEPENDENCE ON ITS WATER RESOURCES The Coeur d’Alene Tribe, known as Schee-chu-umsh in their own Interior Salish language, had an aboriginal territory of about 4 million acres, which included the centrally located Lake Coeur d’Alene, the Coeur d’Alene River, and the St. Joe River (Figure 4) The lakes and rivers within tribal territory were integral to the tribe’s cultural survival. Throughout their history, tribal members depended on their lakes and rivers for physical and spiritual well-being. Lake Coeur d’Alene,the Coeur d’Alene River, and the St. Joe River not only formed the heart of the tribe’s territory, but also acted as the crux of their cultural life. In other words, the tribe had a fundamental dependence on these water resources. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe depended on the water resources of the Coeur d’Alene River, St. Joe River, and Lake Coeur d’Alene in the location, establishment, and occupation of their villages. The three divisions of the tribe occupied at least thirty-three villages on the banks of or near these bodies of water upon which the tribe depended for survival. Eyewitness observers have provided detailed descriptions of Coeur d’Alene villages on the banks of the rivers and lake for over 150 years.

There is little doubt that Indian communities, recognized and unrecognized, will continue to assert claims to traditional lands. After all, this nation, whether begrudgingly or benignly, did open the door to tribal quests for restoration of and recompense for lost lands. Evidence indicates that not all aboriginal territory constitutes irredeemable America, despite decades of litigation. Moreover, decisions of the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) and the courts have not conclusively extinguished every acre of original or recognized title lands-for example, treaty rights to hunt and fish on so called extinguished lands survive in various parts of Indian Country. As long as there is a public domain, many observers contend, it will represent territory that at least western tribes can look to for legitimate redress. Of the more than 500,000 acres that have been reconveyed-Blue Lake to the Taos and extensive plateau lands adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park to the Havasupai, to name a few-most acreage has come from the public domain. In fact, it would be well-founded to argue that there may be sufficient grounds to reopen some of the claims cases heard and decided by the ICC. For some time now, Indians and their champions have addressed the issues surrounding land restorations. Kirke Kickingbird and Karen Ducheneaux reminded us in 1973 that the Trail of Broken Treaties, which took place in fall 1972, had advocated a permanent land base for Indian communities. They shared the contention that the tribes needed a total of 110 million acres-"simply a formula attempting to restore the ratio of Indians-to-acreage that existed in 1887.”