“We Have Always Been the Frontier”

In Colin G. Calloway’s essay “We Have Always Been the Frontier” he explains that the Shawnee Indians, living in the Ohio Valley as the American Revolution began in earnest, were a tribe consisting of several or more divisions, each allied with the British or American colonialists.  “The Maquachakes and Kispokis wanted peace, but most Chillicothes and Piquas remained cool to the Americans and favored joining [other divisions] including the Mingoes [in resisting].” These divisions were further exacerbated when, in 1768 at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the larger and more powerful Iroquois negotiated their lands out from under them, prompting the Shawnee to “form a Confederacy”. While most Shawnees preferred to stay neutral in the Revolutionary War, as a strategy for resistance and survival, their location “between the frontiers of Virginia and Kentucky” led to interactions with the British and American armies that was characterized by assaults, destruction of property, and broken promises by both imperialist allies.  By 1779, some divisions including the Thawekila and Kispoki had opted to move further west to Missouri, even as hostile tribes there resisted their efforts.  And in 1780-1782 General George Rogers Clark mounted destructive attacks in Shawnee country, causing a great deal of pressure on these groups to resist while trying to maintain cultural and traditional ways of life.

“Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People”

Donna L. Akers acknowledges that most Western history is told from the viewpoint of white conquerors in her essay “Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People”. As an alternative, she suggests, scholars can turn to Native sources for a broader understanding of historical events, including the forced march of the Indian Nation out of Mississippi and onto reservations in the west, known popularly as The Trail of Tears.  The Choctaw recognized their connection to their homeland by recreating the mound from which, in Choctaw cosmology, all life had sprung, called the Nanih Waiya, and interred to it the bones of their ancestors, representing the strong sense of community and importance of place to the tribe.  Compounding their fear of leaving these long-inhabited lands was the notion that “the west…was the Land of the Dead.” When the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek of 1830 was negotiated, which was the legal implement used for relocating the Choctaw out of the Mississippi area, “multitudes [were] so distressed with their prospects as to sit down in a kind of sullen despair”. All told, 20 percent of the Choctaw nation died on the forced march, and another 20 percent died after arriving, due to cold, hunger, and starvation.  On the night of November 13, 1883, a large meteor shower seemed to confirm that the Great Spirit was angry with them for having left their homelands, and the remaining Choctaw “named the season ‘the Winter that the Stars Fell,’” “Removal, as experienced by Native people, was an official U.S. policy of death and destruction that created untold human pain and misery.”

“Backdrop for Disaster: Causes of the Arikara War of 1823”

In March of 1823, fur trader William Ashley began a trip up the Mississippi river with a group of mountain men.  Along the way, in present-day South Dakota, Ashley and his group met the Arikara, with whom they attempted to trade.  In addition to offering goods in exchange for horses, Ashley, the prior year, had also promised to send a permanent trading partner to the Arikara community, and establish a trading post there.  But after trading broke down the following day, Arikara warriors attacked the trappers, prompting Colonel Henry Leavenworth to mount a “rescue effort and retaliatory expedition.” By August Leavenworth had secured a peace agreement with the Arikara, but after leaving the Arikara villages were burned to the ground by other fur traders, for revenge.  Roger L. Nichols notes in his essay “Backdrop for Disaster” that the Arikara had for many years prior to this ‘Arikara War’ been under enormous pressure due to epidemics and fighting with other, area tribes.  By 1795, smallpox had decimated the Arikara, driving the number of the tribe’s villages, each of which was home to different bands within the tribe, down from approximately 32 to 2.  To make matters worse, conflict brought about by changes in trading patterns – the introduction of Western goods and livestock into the trading network – was a threat to all the agriculturalist tribes, including the Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, and their common enemy, the Sioux.  The introduction of trading posts further agitated neighboring tribes, in that Indians in the region that were traders and warriors began to take on greater political significance, eroding the traditionally peaceful, community-focused leadership that chieftains had traditionally overseen.  With this inter-tribal warfare, the precipitous drop in population exerting pressures, and the broken promises of traders like Ashley, the Arikara, per Nichols, were primed to lash out at any perceived slight or grievous behavior on the part of invading European colonizers.  It was under these powder keg-like conditions that Ashley returned to Arikara lands and met the wrath of the tribe when they understood that he was not sincere in his dealings with them.  For this reason, what appeared as an unprovoked attack by the Arikara, when considered through the eyes of the area tribes, was in fact the product of a long succession of events that pressured the tribe into acting.

References

Nichols, Roger L. The American Indian: Past and Present. 6th ed. Norman, Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.