Native American Identity in The United States - Historic Struggles

Historic Struggles

Florida State anthropologist J. Anthony Paredes considers the question of Indianness that may be asked about pre-ceramic peoples (what modern archaeologists call the "Early" and "Middle Archaic" period), pre-maize burial mound cultures, etc. Paredes asks, "Would any have been any less awed than ourselves to come upon a so-called Paleo-Indian hunter hurling a spear at a woolly mastodon?" His question reflects the point that indigenous cultures are themselves the products of millennia of history and change.

The question of "Indianness" was different in colonial times. Integration into Indian tribes was not difficult, as Indians typically accepted persons based not on ethnic or racial characteristics, but on learnable and acquirable designators such as "language, culturally appropriate behavior, social affiliation, and loyalty." Non-Indian captives were often adopted into society, including, famously, Mary Jemison. As a side note, the "gauntlet" was a ceremony that was often misunderstood as a form of torture, or punishment but within Indian society was seen as a ritual way for the captives to leave their European society and become a tribal member.

Since the mid-19th century, controversy and competition have worked both within and outside tribes, as societies evolved. In the early 1860s, novelist John Rollin Ridge led a group of delegates to Washington D.C. in an attempt to gain federal recognition for a "Southern Cherokee Nation" which was a faction that was opposed to the leadership of rival faction leader and Cherokee Chief John Ross.

In 1911, Arthur C. Parker, Carlos Montezuma, and others founded the Society of American Indians as the first national association founded and run primarily by Native Americans. The group campaigned for full citizenship for Indians, and other reforms, goals similar to other groups and fraternal clubs, which led to blurred distinctions between the different groups and their members. With different groups and people of different ethnicities involved in parallel and often competing groups, accusations that one was not a real Indian was a painful accusation for those involved. In 1918, Arapaho Cleaver Warden testified in hearings related to Indian religious ceremonies, "We only ask a fair and impartial trial by reasonable white people, not half-breeds who do not know a bit of their ancestors or kindred. A true Indian is one who helps for a race and not that secretary of the Society of American Indians."

In the 1920s, a famous court case was set to investigate the ethnic identity of a woman known as "Princess Chinquilla" and her associate Red Fox James (aka Skiuhushu). Chinquilla was a New York woman who claimed to have been separated from her Cheyenne parents at birth. She and James created a fraternal club which was to counter existing groups "founded by white people to help the red race" in that it was founded by Indians. The club's opening received much praise for supporting this purpose, and was seen as authentic; it involved a Council Fire, the peace pipe, and speeches by Robert Ely, White Horse Eagle, and American Indian Defense Association President Haven Emerson. In the 1920s, fraternal clubs were common in New York, and titles such as "princess" and "chief" were bestowed by the club to Natives and non-Natives. This allowed non-Natives to "try on" Indian identities.

Just as the struggle for recognition is not new, Indian entrepreneurship based on that recognition is not new. An example is a stipulation of the Creek Treaty of 1805 that gave Creeks the exclusive right to operate certain ferries and "houses of entertainment" along a federal road from Ocmulgee, Georgia to Mobile, Alabama, as the road went over parts of Creek Nation land purchased as an easement.