Indigginest peoples day

 

Happy Indigeonous Peoples Day a day late and Colombus day a day eartly.  We hat a Ponca Indian mentor son who was 15.  One day he heard that I had been hand-digging a trench for a water line, and my back was killing me. “I’ll help!”  and he did handsomely, helping me finish a forty foot trench 2 feet deep.  Where did he learn to dig?  Well, before his mom got on drugs and his dad died, his grandfather used to get him to help digging and said, “Hayna, we are the indigginest people.”  Ahem.  Indian joke.

            Colombus was a great navigator and adventurer, but a horrible governor.  His colony of Hispanola didn’t grow or produce much for 40 years after his discovery.  It wasn’t entirely his fault.  Europeans carried Euro-Asian diseases that the native Americans hadn’t seen.  One of the reasons we know the Vikings had little luck establishing a post in N. America is that the Indians didn’t get sick.  Little contact.  Secondly, Colombus left governors over the colony who lorded it over the natives, making them slaves.  But their constant dying from diseases made the Spanish think them weaklings and Africans were imported.  The Spanish were a proud people who had just defeated the Muslims in Spain and didn’t want to get their hands dirty.  That was for the servants to do.  Thirdly, the central planning of the Spanish government dictated how many ships brought supplies and took back trading goods each year.  Thus there was no room for the beef cattle that flourished in Mexico, only hides. This led to a surplus of cattle that were just left to wander off and populate Tejas. 

            But the natives routinely enslaved others and had since time memorial.  Sometimes authors say that they treated slaves better, like family, but that seems to be only true of very nomadic tribes like those of the plains.  The Aztecs warred constantly in order to have human sacrifices.  One such “fest” had 20,000 killed in one day.  The Spanish didn’t respect the natives, but what else is new?  This history of the world if full of slavery and disrespect and conquest.  African Bantus genocided most of Africa 2000 years ago.  They had agriculture and the hunter-gatherers couldn’t compete.  Yet remants of these people live in small enclaves in Africa today—pygmys, Nilo-Saharans, bushmen, Madagascarans, Watusis, etc.  Thus modern anthropologists list 6 to 16 separate races in Africa who differ from Bantus more than Caucasians and Mongoloids do. And Bantus loved slavery, as did Chinese, S. Asians, Polynesians and native Americans.  

            The Spanish system of plantations (Haciendas) and absentee landlords, was also nothing new, but it was so inefficient that free and individual farmers and traders of British extraction beat the competition.  Christianity transformed displaced people, gave them hope and education, spawned science and engineering, and instilled a sense of fairness everywhere it went.  Sometimes it was a slow transition, but it has been the driving force of change throughout history.  Those of us who once dug ditches have come a long ways. "Don't call me no victim," Hayna used to laugh.  Now if you can say that given his tragic childhood, you are making it.   

Pocahontas, the real story

 This is a result of the best research I can muster about, perhaps the most significant person in American history, who made British colonies possible and USA.

Disney made a great movie about her but much of the legend isn’t true at all. The real story is much better! Her real name wasn’t Pocahontas.  That was a nickname which meant “Little Playful One”. Her real names were Amonute and Matoaka. But she liked Pocahontas. Daughter of Chief Powhattan of the Algonquin Indians’, they lived along the Virginia coast.  In 1607 when she was about 12, English settlers landed at Jamestown. She was curious and visited the new people, learning English.

            Why did the English want to settle in Virginia?  Columbus found America and then some other Spanish warriors-of-fortune conquered two huge Indian empires—the Aztecs and the Incas.  They found gold and silver, beans and corn and shipped it back home to Spain making the country very rich.  Other nations wanted to get rich too, so they tried to settle the Caribbean and North, what is now USA and Canada.  In those northern areas, they fished and traded for furs with the Indians. The first time the British tried to settle in America was Roanoke, a small group of people were left in North Carolina in 1584.  But a few years later, their settlement had disappeared.  The Carolina coast is a bad place to choose because a barrier bar reef island off the shore wrecks ships and hides the rivers necessary to find a settlement.  In 1607 the English tried once more, knowing that if they failed, the Spanish would expand into this area.  They settled  63 on the Virginia coast and claimed land from 35 to 45 degrees latitude.  It was named Jamestown after the king, James I.  Here were the Algonquins and Pocahontas.

            Most Indian women had little gardens where they raised vegetables and berries.  That way they didn’t have to go miles to gather these things.  Women did all the “farming”.  Men hunted and fished. There were no farm animals. But the Algonquin men helped a little with planting corn, squash and beans.  They grew these all together with the beans and squash climbing over the corn, called “3 Sisters” agriculture. The English men did the farming.  When they saw a new plant they dreamed of planting a big field. The Englishmen rotated crops, used manure and had iron tools like axes and hoes. This is a big reason why the Europeans succeeded in taking over much of America.

            Pocahontas was thrilled with what she learned.  The new people had cool stuff.  They had interesting food and clothes that would keep you warm in winter.  Algonquins wore nothing above the waist in summer and in winter wrapped themselves in a blanket.  For two years Pocahontas made new friends and learned English.  But Jamestown had troubles.  Most of the settlers were soldiers who guarded the village and they didn’t think they had to work at farming or building.  Only about 20 men and 6 women actually worked to raise crops or hunt.  A year later, Captain John Smith arrived and found the colony starving and idle.  He got tough and told everybody they must work.  He traded for food with the Algonquins, then left.  There is a myth that Pocahontas saved Smith by laying her head on his when the Indians were going to kill him, but it is unlikely, and wasn’t told until over a hundred years later. John Smith kept an official log and never mentioned it.  However, Pocahontas was a spunky girl who served as Smith’s translator.

            Matoaka disappeared from the settlement for 3 years.  The family’s oral story says she was married to another Indian man and had a baby girl.  The baby died and somehow tragically so did her husband.  In 1612 she suddenly appeared at Jamestown again, befriending the women there.  There were some violent disagreements between the Powhattan Algonquins and the English.  Fights broke out and the Indians took several settlers hostage.  In return, the settlers took Pocahantas hostage.  After almost a year, a peace was agreed to and all hostages were released.  But Pocahontas wanted to stay in Jamestown.  While she was under arrest as a hostage, she was guarded by the chaplain of the soldiers, Reverend Whitaker.  When he shared the gospel, that all people sin and that sin gives us a messed-up life, it resonated with the young widow and she deeply wanted to be a Christian, a believer in Jesus.  And on Jan. 14, 1614, she was baptized and took the Christian name of “Rebecca”.  She was the first native American in the lands north of Spanish America to become a Christian, the first Protestant (Anglican is Luther’s theology). Then she met John Rolfe, a young man who had lost his wife and child just as Rebecca had lost spouse and child.   We know that by about the time of Valentine’s Day, 1614, she and John Rolfe decided to get married.  They were married in April of that year.  And in 1615 she had a baby boy, Thomas. 

            Of course everyone knows what happens when a new baby is born.  The grandparents had to come see the new baby! So Powhattan and his two wives came to Jamestown for a visit.  The settlers put on a big feast and other Indians were invited warmly.  Thus began almost 20 years of peace and goodwill between the two peoples.

            But Jamestown still had a problem.  They had no reason to exist since they couldn’t produce anything of value to sell back home.  No gold, no silver were found. Furs and fish were not very valuable.  Rebecca asked John what they could do.  He told her that tobacco was a pricey trade item back in England.  How to grow it? That was a no-brainer for an Algonquin woman! She showed him how to plant, harvest and cure the leaves.  So Rolfe raised a huge amount of tobacco and shipped it back to England where it brought a profit of 12,500%.  Suddenly Jamestown had something to sell and it saved the colony.  In 3 years John Rolfe and Pocahontas grew rich and others started raising tobacco as well.

            The Rolfes grew famous in England. In 1616 they sailed to Britain and were feated as the wonderful people who had made Jamestown profitable.  They met the king. And for the winter, they lived with Rolfe’s family in England.  The English were very interested in how she became Christian and wanted very much to convert the natives of America.  In March 1617, the Rolfes set sail for America but before they even got to the mouth of the Thames River, Pocahontas became very ill.  They stopped and took her ashore where she died of unknown causes.  She was just 21.  Her dying words were, “I am going to heaven but I still have my husband John and Thomas.” It was the tragic story repeated thousands of times as Indians died of Old World diseases when Europeans came.

            Meanwhile, in Jamestown, many things were happening. In 1619, a slave ship which had endured a terrible storm came floating into the bay.  The Jamestown people didn’t like slavery and helped the sailors repair the boat just so they would leave quickly.  As payment, the ship dumped 20 sick slaves for farm labor.  The settlers signed contracts with the Africans to be indentured servants, that is, someone who agrees to work for free for a time period, like a slave.  But things didn’t go well.  The winters were cold and all the Africans died tragically within a few years. 

            That same year, the British crown hit upon the idea that they could exile convicts to Jamestown. Many had mental problems but others were determined to turn their lives around with faith and farming.  A ship of poor women arrived as well, available for the price of 125 pounds of tobacco. Settler-families started to emerge.  And on July 30, 1619, the first General Assembly of Virginia met in the Jamestown Church.  The colony designed a miniature parliament.  There was nothing like it in all the Americas, the First Popular Legislature.  At a time when kings were thought to have divine rights, this was an important telling of America’s future.  And by the way, proud Rolfe descendants are numerous in Virginia today.  Do we know what Pocahontas looked like?  There were no cameras then and no one painted a picture of her.  But there is a picture painted of her niece with her little boy 50 years later.  Everyone said how much her niece looked like Pocahontas.  Here it is.

 

 

 

The Lost cities of Gold

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, governor of New Spain in 1541 decided to explore in a hunt for Cibola, the 7 cities of gold.  He took 1100 men, 1000 horses, herds of cattle, sheep and hogs, and set off north.  Raping and plundering across Arizona and New Mexico, they found nothing, but captured a slave, nicknamed Turk. Turk knew nothing of Cibola but he knew a city of gold, Quivira.  Everyone lived wonderfully and drank from gold cups.  Coronado headed east across the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma then north until they found what Turk was telling them about.  It was a system of villages of the Wichita Indians (Spanish called them Rayados) from Great Bend to Arkansas City.  Indeed their pottery was beautiful, people were living well, and they grew golden corn.  Furious, Coronado ordered Turk’s death and demanded the people there use a language they could not comprehend (Spanish) to swear allegiance to a leader they could not conceive (King of Spain). After 2 years Coronado had this to write, “What I am sure of is that there is not any gold.”

            Juan de Padilla, a friar who had been on the expedition, returned with 2 Indian converts and a Portugese soldier, Andres de Campo.  That marked the first Christian mission effort of a people north of Mexico. Soon the Kaws invaded their ill-fated mission and killed Padilla, and enslaved the others.  Those 3 eventually escaped, but it took them 5 years to travel to the Gulf of Mexico.  The reason was that to do penance, they carried a large wooden cross the entire route.  60 years later, Juan de Onate became governor of Northern New Spain and returned to Quivira in hopes of uncovering hidden riches.  His soldiers battled the Wichitas there in 1601—still no gold.  Then a few years ago, a kid from Arkansas City found a cannonball in the Walnut Valley bottoms east of the city. It came to the attention of Donald Blakeslee of WSU who studied all manner of artifacts found when KDOT built the 77 highway bypass across the bottoms.  Coronado and Onate’s old reports had just been re-translated and were more illuminating.  The Arkansas City site, Etzanoa, was a dead ringer for the location of Quivira (had been disputed for years), a settlement of 20,000 people. There are 4 miles of Indian settlements along the bottoms, more downriver, and then more “cities” all the way up the Arkansas to Great Bend. 

            Prior to horse culture, the Great Plains were almost uninhabited.  Wichitas were ancient plains people who learned 3-Sisters agriculture—corn, beans, and pumpkins grown together.  No potatoes. Those were wild plants.  Topeka is the Kanza word for “a good place to dig potatoes”.  The Wichitas also cultivated tobacco, pecans and hunted bison.  Evidently, their farming kept them fed when buffalo hunting was poor.  The villages were totally unguarded as there were few enemies across miles of empty prairie.  Kaws and Osages were an exception.  Wichita language is Caddoan, a common root language of many Great Plains dwellers including the Pawnee of northern Kansas and Nebraska.  Rayados means “striped” in Spanish.  Wichitas tattooed their faces in stripes and often around the eyes.  Thus they named themselves Kitikiti’sh meaning “racoon-eyed”. Some spoke a dialect called Kee-chi which is how the suburb of the city of Wichita, Kechi, is pronounced (ending in long “I”).  They traded widely, were more advanced in corn agriculture, and lived in permanent houses of grass thatch bound together by ribs that glowed golden in the sun.  Turk, it turned out, had actually told the truth.

            With numbers in the tens of thousands, they much outnumbered the semi-nomadic groups like Comanches, Kaws, Osages and Apaches but were often on the losing end of their raids. With much diminished numbers from disease and harassment, they retreated south in the 1700s along the Arkansas River into Kay county, OK and to Wichita Falls, TX. When Spain took over the Louisiana Purchase area, 1763, they targeted and destroyed Wichita settlements to destroy Indian trade and subjugate the plains people. By 1868, the population was recorded as being just 572. By the time of the census of 1937, there were only 100 Wichita officially left—the tribe that almost disappeared. After 1890 many joined the Ghost Religion, a mix of Christianity and their traditional beliefs in spiritual experience.  Today, about 2000 descendants farm and ranch on allotted land in Delaware Country, OK and just about everyone you meet seems to be a Methodist. A fellow Republican from Jay, OK, told this author, “When we have our church’s Thanksgiving it’s a real thanks to God that a remnant of us survived.” Meanwhile, Etzanoa is rapidly becoming one of the most important archeological digs in N. America, as of 2020, undiscovered by tourists and the media.