of Apache on San Carlos reservation, that on condition of receiving
a sufficient number of horses and blankets for his trouble he would
bring back from the dead two chiefs who had been killed a few months
before. The proposition naturally aroused great excitement among the
Indians. Eager to have once more with them their beloved chiefs, they
willingly produced the required ponies, and when remonstrated with by
the agent, replied that they would wait until the specified time for
the fulfillment of the prediction, when, if the dead chiefs failed
to materialize, they would demand the restoration of the property.
(_Comr., 3._)
Accordingly Nakai′-doklĭ′ni began his prayers and ceremonies, and the
dance was kept up regularly at his camp on Cibicu creek until August,
when it was reported to Colonel E. A. Carr; commanding at Fort Apache,
that the medicine-man had announced that the dead chiefs refused to
return because of the presence of the whites, but that when the whites
left, the dead would return, and that the whites would be out of the
country when the corn was ripe.
As matters seemed to be getting serious, the agent now called on the
commanding officer to “arrest or kill him, or both.” The officer
prepared to make the arrest when Nakai′-doklĭ′ni should come down to
the post to lead the dance which had been arranged to take place in
a few days. The prophet failed to put in an appearance, however, and
messengers were sent to his camp to ask him to come to the fort the
next Sunday. To this message he returned an evasive reply, whereon
Colonel Carr, with 85 white troops and 23 Apache scouts, started for
his camp in Cibicu canyon to put him under arrest. They arrived at the
village on August 30. Nakai′-doklĭ′ni submitted quietly to arrest, but
as the troops were making camp for the night, their own scouts, joined
by others of the Indians, opened fire on them. A sharp skirmish ensued,
in which several soldiers were killed or wounded, but the Indians were
repulsed with considerable loss, including the prophet himself, who was
killed at the first fire. The result was another in the long series of
Apache outbreaks. (_Comr., 4; Sec. War, 1; A. G. O., 2._)
THE POTAWATOMI PROPHET
In 1883 a new religion was introduced among the Potawatomi and
Kickapoo, of the Pottawotomie and Great Nemaha agency in northeastern
Kansas, by visiting Potawatomi, Winnebago, and Ojibwa from Wisconsin.
As usual, the ritual part consists chiefly of a ceremonial dance. In
doctrine it teaches the same code of morality enjoined by the ten
commandments, and especially prohibits liquor drinking, gambling, and
horse racing, for which, reason the agents generally have not seen fit
to interfere with it, and in some cases have rather encouraged it as a
civilizing influence among that portion of the tribes not yet enrolled
in Christian denominations. The movement is entirely distinct from
the Ghost dance, and may perhaps be a revival of the system preached
by Känakûk more than fifty years before. In 1891 the majority of the
two tribes, numbering in all 749, were reported as adherents of the
doctrine. (_Comr., 5, 6, 7; also reports from the same agency for
1887 and 1889._) A large number of the Sauk and Fox, Kickapoo, and
Potawatomi of Oklahoma are also believers in the religion.
In 1885 Agent Patrick says on this subject:
These Indians are chaste, cleanly, and industrious, and would be
a valuable acquisition to the Prairie band if it were not for
their intense devotion to a religious dance started among the
northern Indians some years since. This dance was introduced to the
Prairie band about two years ago by the Absentee Pottawatomies and
Winnebagoes, and has spread throughout the tribes in the agency.
They seem to have adopted the religion as a means of expressing
their belief in the justice and mercy of the Great Spirit and of
their devotion to him, and are so earnest in their convictions
as to its affording them eternal happiness that I have thought
it impolitic so far to interfere with it any further than to
advise as few meetings as possible and to discountenance it in my
intercourse with the individuals practicing the religion. It is not
an unmixed evil, as under its teaching drunkenness and gambling
have been reduced 75 per cent, and a departure from virtue on the
part of its members meets with the severest condemnation. As some
tenets of revealed religion are embraced in its doctrines, I do not
consider it a backward step for the Indians who have not heretofore
professed belief in any Christian religion, and believe its worst
features are summed up in the loss of time it occasions and the
fanatical train of thought involved in the constant contemplation
of the subject. (_Comr., 6._)
CHEEZ-TAH-PAEZH THE SWORD-BEARER
It is probable that something of the messiah idea entered into
the promises held out to his followers by Sword-bearer, a Crow
medicine-man, in Montana in 1887. The official records are silent on
this point, although it is definitely stated that he asserted his own
invulnerability, and that his claims in this respect were implicitly
believed by his people. Cheez-tah-paezh, literally “Wraps his tail”
(also written Cheeschapahdisch, Cheschopah, Chese-cha-pahdish, and
Chese-Topah), was without any special prominence in his tribe until the
summer of 1887, when, in company with several other young men of the
Crows, he participated in the sun dance of the Cheyenne, and showed
such fortitude in enduring the dreadful torture that he was presented
by the Cheyenne with a medicine saber painted red, in virtue of which
he took the title of Sword-bearer. This naturally brought him into
notice at home, and he soon aspired to become a chief and medicine-man.
Among other things, he asserted that no bullet or weapon had power
to harm him. What other claims he made are not known, but his words
produced such an impression, it is said, that for a time every
full-blood and half-blood among the Crows believed in him.
In a few months he had become one of the most influential leaders
in the tribe, when, taking advantage of some dissatisfaction toward
the agent, he headed a demonstration against the agency on September
30. Troops under General Ruger were called on to arrest him and the
others concerned, and in attempting to do this, on November 5, 1887, a
skirmish ensued in which Sword-bearer was killed. His death convinced
his followers of the falsehood of his pretensions, and the tribe, which
hitherto had always been loyal to the government, soon resumed its
friendly attitude. (_Sec. War, 2; A. G. O., 3; additional details from
a personal letter by Colonel Simon Snyder, Fifteenth infantry._)
The action is graphically described by Roosevelt on the authority of
one of the officers engaged. When the troops arrived, they found the
Crow warriors awaiting them on a hill, mounted on their war ponies and
in full paint and buckskin. In this author’s words—
The Crows on the hilltop showed a sullen and threatening front,
and the troops advanced slowly toward them, and then halted for a
parley. Meanwhile a mass of black thunder clouds gathering on the
horizon threatened one of those cloudbursts of extreme severity and
suddenness so characteristic of the plains country. While still
trying to make arrangements for a parley, a horseman started out of
the Crow ranks and galloped headlong down toward the troops. It was
the medicine chief Sword-bearer. He was painted and in his battle
dress, wearing his war bonnet of floating, trailing eagle feathers,
and with the plumes of the same bird braided in the mane and tail
of his fiery little horse. On he came at a gallop almost up to the
troops, and then began to circle around them, calling and singing,
and throwing his red sword into the air, catching it by the hilt
as it fell. Twice he rode completely around the troops, who stood
in uncertainty, not knowing what to make of his performance, and
expressly forbidden to shoot at him. Then, paying no further heed
to them, he rode back toward the Crows. It appears that he had
told the latter that he would ride twice around the hostile force,
and by his incantations would call down rain from heaven, which
would make the hearts of the white men like water, so that they
would go back to their homes. Sure enough, while the arrangements
for the parley were still going forward, down came the cloudburst,
drenching the command, and making the ground on the hills in front
nearly impassable; and before it dried a courier arrived with
orders to the troops to go back to camp.
This fulfillment of Sword-bearer’s prophecy of course raised his
reputation to the zenith, and the young men of the tribe prepared
for war, while the older chiefs, who more fully realized the power
of the whites, still hung back. When the troops next appeared, they
came upon the entire Crow force, the women and children with their
tepees being off to one side beyond a little stream, while almost
all the warriors of the tribe were gathered in front. Sword-bearer
started to repeat his former ride, to the intense irritation of the
soldiers. Luckily, however, this time some of his young men could
not be restrained. They, too, began to ride near the troops, and
one of them was unable to refrain from firing on Captain Edwards’s
troop, which was in the van. This gave the soldiers their chance.
They instantly responded with a volley, and Edwards’s troop
charged. The fight lasted only a minute or two, for Sword-bearer
was struck by a bullet and fell; and as he had boasted himself
invulnerable and promised that his warriors should be invulnerable
also if they would follow him, the hearts of the latter became as
water, and they broke in every direction. (_Roosevelt, 1._)
+Chapter VI+
THE SMOHALLA RELIGION OF THE COLUMBIA REGION
SMOHALLA
I have only one heart. Although you say, Go to another country, my
heart is not that way. I do not want money for my land. I am here,
and here is where I am going to be. I will not part with lands, and
if you come again I will say the same thing. I will not part with
my lands.—_Umatilla Chief._
We have never made any trade. The earth is part of my body, and I
never gave up the earth. So long as the earth keeps me I want to be
let alone.—_Toohulhulsote._
Their only troubles arise from the attempts of white men to
encroach upon the reservations. I verily believe that were the
snow-crowned summits of Mount Rainier set apart as an Indian
reservation, white men would immediately commence jumping
them.—_Superintendent Ross._
About the time that the Paiute were preparing for the millennial
dawn, we begin to hear of a “dreamer prophet” on the Columbia, called
Smohalla, who was becoming a thorn in the flesh of the Indian agents
in that quarter, and was reported to be organizing among the Indians a
new religion which taught the destruction of the whites and resistance
to the government, and made moral virtues of all the crimes in the
catalog. One agent, in disregard of grammar if not of veracity,
gravely reported that “the main object is to allow a plurality of
wives, immunity from punishment for lawbreaking, and allowance of all
the vices—especially drinking and gambling—are chief virtues in the
believers of this religion.” (_Comr., 8._)
This was bad enough, but worse was behind it. It appeared that Smohalla
and his followers, numbering perhaps about 2,000 Indians of various
tribes along the Columbia in eastern Washington and Oregon, had never
made treaties giving up any of their lands, and consequently claimed
the right to take salmon in the streams and dig kamas in the prairies
of their ancestral country undisturbed and unmolested, and stoutly
objected to going on any of the neighboring reservations at Yakima,
Umatilla, or Warmspring. There is no doubt that justice and common
sense were on the side of the Indians, for by the reports of the agents
themselves it is shown that the dwellers on the reservations were
generally neglected, poor, and miserable, and subjected to constant
encroachments by the whites in spite of treaties and treaty lines,
while at the same time that agents and superintendents were invoking
the aid of the military to compel Smohalla’s followers to go on a
reservation these same men were moving heaven and earth to force the
Indians already on a reservation to give up their treaty rights and
remove to another and less valuable location—to begin life anew under
the fostering care of the government until such time as the white man
should want them to move on again.
These matters are treated at length in the annual reports of the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, with the accompanying reports of
superintendents and agents in charge of the reservations concerned,
from 1870 to 1875. With regard to the Umatilla reservation, to which
most strenuous efforts were made to remove the “renegades,” as they
were called, Agent Boyle reports in 1870 (_Comr., 9_) that the Indians
are “dispirited ... in consequence of the oft-repeated theme that their
farms are to be taken from them and given to the white settlers.” He
continues, “It is hardly to be expected that the Indians can retain
this reservation much longer unless the strong arm of the government
protects them. Daily I am called upon to notify the white settlers that
they are encroaching upon the Indian lands.” He advises their removal
to a permanent reservation, “knowing as I do that they must go sooner
or later.” Again, “The agency has been established for the space of
ten years, and I regret exceedingly that I have been most completely
disappointed with what I see about me.” In discussing the removal of
the Indians to a new reservation, Superintendent Meacham says of a
considerable portion of them that it “would suit them better to be
turned loose to look out for themselves.” (_Comr., 10._)
In 1873 Agent Cornoyer reported that the Indians numbered 837, by the
census of 1870, which he believes was as correct as could then be
taken, but “this number I think is now too high.” He continues:
Of the appropriation of $4,000 per annum for beneficial objects,
not one single dollar of that fund has been turned over to me since
September, 1871; and of the appropriation for incidental expenses
of $40,000 per annum for the Indian service in this state, only
$200 of that appropriation has been turned over to me during the
same period of two years.... I would also beg leave to call your
attention to that portion of my last annual report wherein I called
the attention of the Department to the unfulfilled stipulations of
the treaty of June 9, 1855, with these Indians. (_Comr., 11._)
Commissioner Brunot, in 1871, stated that the estimated number of
Indians coming under the provisions of the treaty at the time it was
made in 1855 was 3,500, and “by the census taken in 1870 the number was
1,622”—a decrease of nearly one-half in fifteen years. Of these only
about half were on the reservation, the rest being on Columbia river,
“never having partaken of the benefits of the treaty.” On the next page
he tells us what some of these benefits are: “Maladministration of
agents, and the misapplication of funds, the failure of the government
to perform the promises of the treaty, and the fact that the Indians
have been constantly agitated by assertions that the government
intended their removal, and that their removal was urged for several
years in succession in the reports of a former agent, thus taking away
from them all incentives to improve their lands.” (_Comr., 12._)
In 1871 a commission was sent to Umatilla and other reservations, which
gave the Indians a chance to speak for themselves. The Cayuse chief,
described as a Catholic Indian, in dress, personal appearance, and
bearing superior to the average American farmer, said:
This reservation is marked out for us. We see it with our eyes
and our hearts. We all hold it with our bodies and our souls.
Right out here are my father and mother, and brothers and sisters
and children, all buried. I am guarding their graves. My friend,
this reservation, this small piece of land, we look upon it as
our mother, as if she were raising us. You come to ask me for my
land. It is like as if we who are Indians were to be sent away and
get lost.... What is the reason you white men who live near the
reservation like my land and want to get it? You must not think so.
My friends, you must not talk too strong about getting my land. I
like my land and will not let it go.
The Wallawalla chief said:
I have tied all the reservation in my heart and it can not be
loosened. It is dear as our bodies to us.
The Umatilla chief said:
Our red people were brought up here.... When my father and mother
died, I was left here. They gave me rules and gave me their land
to live upon. They left me to take care of them after they were
buried. I was to watch over their graves. I do not wish to part
with my land. I have felt tired working on my land, so tired
that the sweat dropped off me on the ground. Where is all that
Governor Stevens or General Palmer said [i. e., that it was to be a
reservation for the Indians forever]? I am very fond of this land
that is marked out for me.... Should I take only a small piece of
ground and a white man sit down beside me, I fear there would be
trouble all the time.
An old man said:
I am getting old now, and I want to die where my father and mother
and children have died. I do not wish to leave this land and go
off to some other land.... I see where I have sweat and worked in
trying to get food. I love my church, my mills, my farm, the graves
of my parents and children. I do not wish to leave my land. That is
all my heart, and I show it to you.
A young chief said:
I have only one heart, one tongue. Although you say, Go to another
country, my heart is not that way. I do not wish for any money for
my land. I am here, and here is where I am going to be.... I will
not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same
thing. I will not part with my lands.
The commissioner who was conducting the negotiations, after enumerating
the promises made to the Indians in return for the lands which they had
surrendered under the original treaty of 1855, tells how some of these
promises have been fulfilled:
... A miserably inadequate supply of worn-out agricultural
implements. A group of eight or ten dilapidated shanties used for
the agency buildings. The physician promised has never resided
upon the reservation, but lives and practices his profession at
Pendleton. The hospital promised (fifteen years ago) has not yet
been erected.
Of their ever-living grievance Colonel Ross, superintendent of the
Washington agencies, says:
Their only troubles arise from the attempts of white men to
encroach upon the reservations. A mania prevails among a certain
class of citizens in this direction. I verily believe that were
the snow-crowned summits of Mount Rainier set apart as an Indian
reservation, white men would immediately commence jumping them.
(_Comr., 14._)
JOSEPH AND THE NEZ PERCÉ WAR
We first hear officially of Smohalla and his people from A. B. Meacham,
superintendent of Indian affairs in Oregon, who states, in September,
1870, that—
... One serious drawback [to the adoption of the white man’s road]
is the existence among the Indians of Oregon of a peculiar religion
called Smokeller or Dreamers, the chief doctrine of which is that
the red man is again to rule the country, and this sometimes leads
to rebellion against lawful authority.
A few pages farther on we learn the nature of this rebellion:
The next largest band (not on a reservation) is Smokeller’s, at
Priest rapids, Washington territory. They also refused to obey my
order to come in, made to them during the month of February last,
of which full report was made. I would also recommend that they be
removed to Umatilla by the military. (_Comr., 15._)
Three months before this report Congress had passed a bill appointing
commissioners to negotiate with the tribes of Umatilla reservation “to
ascertain upon what terms they would be willing to sell their lands and
remove elsewhere,” and Meacham himself was the principal member of this
commission. (_Comr., 15._)
In 1872 Smohalla’s followers along the Columbia were reported to number
2,000, and his apostles were represented as constantly traveling from
one reservation to another to win over new converts to his teachings.
Repeated efforts had been made to induce them to go on the reservations
in eastern Oregon and Washington, but without success. We are told now
that—
They have a new and peculiar religion, by the doctrines of which
they are taught that a new god is coming to their rescue; that all
the Indians who have died heretofore, and who shall die hereafter,
are to be resurrected; that as they will then be very numerous and
powerful, they will be able to conquer the whites, recover their
lands, and live as free and unrestrained as their fathers lived
in olden times. Their model of a man is an Indian. They aspire to
be Indians and nothing else.... It is thought by those who know
them best that they can not be made to go upon their reservations
without at least being intimidated by the presence of a military
force. (_Comr., 17._)
We hear but little more of Smohalla and his doctrines for several
years, until attention was again attracted to Indian affairs in the
northwest by the growing dissatisfaction which culminated in the Nez
Percé war of 1877. The Nez Percés, especially those who acknowledged
the leadership of Chief Joseph, were largely under the influence of
the Dreamer prophets, and there was reason to believe that an uprising
inaugurated by so prominent a tribe would involve all the smaller
tribes in sympathy with the general Indian belief. As soon therefore
as it became evident that matters were approaching a crisis, a
commission, of which General O. O. Howard was chief, was appointed to
make some peaceable arrangement with the so-called “renegades” on the
upper Columbia. The commissioners met Smohalla and his principal men
at Wallula, Washington territory, on April 23, 1877, and as a result
of the council then held these non-treaty tribes, although insisting
as strongly as ever on their right to live undisturbed in their own
country, yet refrained from taking part in the war which broke out a
few weeks later.