Chief Spotted Eagle Sans Arc Sioux

Spotted Eagle's Village was the last great leather lodge village seen on the Yellowstone. These lodges were pitched in the fall of 1880 near Fort Keogh when the Spotted Eagle hand numbering nearly 2500 people of the Sioux nation surrendered to General Nelson Miles. At this point in time, most lodges in other camps were made from White Man's canvas. This is also the village where Rain-In-The-Face was a prisoner of war and where Huffman smuggled him away from the camp and into his studio where numerous photographs were made of him

The Sun Dance

The Sun Dance is a religious ceremony practiced by a number of Native American tribes, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Each tribe has its own distinct practices and ceremonial protocols, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing of traditional songs in the tribe's native languages, praying, drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and in some cases piercing of skin on the chest, arms or back. Most notable for early Western observers was the piercing many young men endure as part of the ritual.

The object of being pierced is to sacrifice one's self to the Great Spirit, and to pray while connected to the Tree of Life, a direct connection to the Great Spirit. Breaking from the piercing is done in one moment, as the dancer runs backwards from the tree at a time specified by the leader of the dance. A common explanation, in context with the intent of the dancer, is that a flesh offering, or piercing, is given as part of prayer and offering for the benefit of one's family and community.

Though only some Nations' Sun Dances include the piercings, the Canadian Government outlawed some of the practices of the Sun Dance in 1880, and the United States government followed suit in 1904. However, the ceremony is now again fully legal (since Jimmy Carter's presidency in the United States) and is still practiced in the United States and Canada. Some dancers do not do pierce at all, such as the Shoshone in Wyoming. They may pierce if they desire to. A Sundancer must commit to dancing for four years.

American Indian Teepee

American Indian Teepee

Since many Native American Indians were nomads at one point, and many would travel and move with the buffalo that would serve as a food staple for them, they had to have housing that was easy and quick to move, this is one of the reasons that certain plains tribes created the American Indian teepee. For the times the teepee was an ingenious invention and still to this day when you really analyze how the teepees were constructed, it is still quite amazing for the primitive times.

The Native people made the American Indian teepee out of an armful of small but strong trees all cut to equal lengths. They would tie these together with a rope type material that was made from animal sinew and then they would use an animals hide to cover the hand made frame. A door was also made out of a piece of the hide and there was also and inner layer of animal hide, so both sides of the frame of the American Indian teepee were covered. When finished the teepee was an A-frame structure and the top would have flaps that could be opened or closed to allow smoke to escape. The base was also made wider so there would be plenty of room for the fire.

Fire was another integral part of the Native American Indians lifestyle, so the creation of the American Indian teepee was perfect since it allowed the Indian people the ability to have their own fires to cook with in their homes. The other great thing about the teepees was the fact that they were so mobile, and the nomadic tribes could just take them apart very quickly and move them as they followed the buffalo. Other times the American Indians would have to move their homes quickly to avoid the stampeding buffalo, which would occur frequently since they lived in such a close proximity of the buffalo. The buffalo hide was the main hide that the American Indian teepee would be made from, and many times the tribal families would decorate the outside of their teepees with their family of tribal symbol.

Native American Warriors

Blackfoot warrior


Native American Warriors

The art of war was a common part of life for ancient Native Americans. Native American warriors were an integral part of every Indian tribe, and were considered brave heroes.

In most tribes Native American warriors were sculpted from birth. In fact, legend has it that after birth a future warrior’s umbilical cord was often buried on the battle field. This would signify that the child was born a warrior, and would dedicate his life to fighting for his people. In fact, some tribes a young Native American was only considered a man once he had made his first killing.

Many ancient Native American warriors wore the skin and hide of animals. This battlefield attire usually included a headpiece that was made from a head of a real animal. This apparel had both practical and spiritual origins. The animal skins would help the warriors hide from their enemies, and Native Americans also felt that it kept them closer to nature. They thought that this would help protect them.

Native American warriors would often use homemade weapons. One of the most common was the spear, which was little more than a sharpened stick, measuring two feet long.

Before going to battle the tribe would usually have a celebration for the Native American warrior. This celebration would consist of dancing, singing, and praying for the safe return of the fighter. At this time the warrior would paint his face with the blood of a sacrificial animal. This was thought to keep the fighter safe during battle.

A similar celebration would be given once the warrior had returned having beaten the enemy. During this celebration, warriors were often presented the feathers from an eagle to acknowledge their accomplishments. These feathers would then be proudly displayed in a headdress. The warrior with the most feathers was usually considered the bravest and most accomplished.

Modern Native American Woman Warrior

Oklahoma Army National Guard Maj. Vickie Morgan Jones, a Seneca Indian, posed for this painting called "Heritage of Valor" by visual artist and Oklahoma state senator Enoch Kelly Haney. Haney painted Jones pictured as a Seneca woman righteously defending her camp with a club in hand. In the upper right of the painting is a shadow of helicopter pilot Jones in her flight suit as a 20th century Native American protecting her homeland. Photo of painting courtesy of Maj. Vickie Morgan Jones

Seneca Indian Army Maj. Vickie Morgan Jones, the first woman in Oklahoma and first American Indian woman in the nation to become a helicopter pilot. She said she was also the first woman to complete air assault school.

When she was 19, the Army major said, she considered following her father's footsteps into the Air Force, but decided she "wasn't mature enough to make a commitment like that." Then, a few years later during a time of "self- discovery," she joined the Oklahoma Army National Guard's 279th Infantry Regiment on March 24, 1978, and as her self-discovery evolved, she became heavily involved in American Indian religious ceremonies.

I did talks last year to schools in my area, educating them about Ira Hayes (a Pima Indian Marine who helped raise the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War II), Navajo code talkers and our Medal of Honor recipients," she noted. "Also, many individuals have never been to a powwow. We have beautiful dances that have meanings."

Her father, Carl Glass Sr., was a full-blooded Cherokee. He retired as an Air Force senior master sergeant in 1968. Her mother, Cordellia Bernice Conner, the product of the Seneca-Cayuga and Quapaw tribes, was a licensed practical nurse. "Both of my parents have left this world for one better," Jones said.

Medicine Wheel

Medicine Wheel

To understand the significance of the medicine wheel, we need to go back to a time when most Indian nations were constantly at war with each other. Tribes were obsessed with wiping out their "enemies." Then a dramatic shift in perception occurred, and a peace was realized, which lasted for a period of 150 to 200 years. This long truce was the result of a great Iroquois chief, (sounds like Agonawila), later to become Hiawatha, who urged the tribes to cease the madness of brother killing brother, and formed an alliance, which came to be known as the Confederation of Nations. The Confederation recognized that Indian peoples were more alike than different. Even though they spoke different dialects, they had the same basic belief systems and followed similar traditions.

An important part of this transformation was the medicine wheel, which was placed in front of every tepee, and decorated in special symbols, colors, and stones, to let people entering the tribe know about its inhabitants. The medicine wheel was a reflection of an individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and it gave people guidelines to follow for personal growth. It told people what they needed to learn and what they needed to teach. Everyone was ordered to work on themselves, or else leave the tribe. After several generations of this work, people lost the concept of blame and anger. This, in turn, resulted in the longest peace in modern history.

Brother Eagle Soaring, from Arizona, explains the powerful impact of the medicine wheel: "If I said to you, ‘Does anyone ever make you angry?’ you would say yes. But in reality, this is totally impossible. You choose to be angry by the way you process the event. This is something you were taught to do as a child. If you could imagine not one person in all of New York City having the concept of anger, that’s what it was like during that time period of no wars before the white man came."

The medicine wheel is a circle divided by a cross to create four directions--the north, east, south, and west. A forerunner to astrology, each person is represented somewhere within that circle, depending upon their birth date. That placement is associated with a special moon, power animal, healing plant, color and mineral, as outlined below. Though more complex in actuality, here Brother Soaring Eagle gives an overview of the special meanings the medicine wheel can have for individuals:

Apache Wedding Prayer

Apache Wedding Prayer

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.
Now there will be no loneliness,
for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons,
but there are three lives before you: his life, her life and your life together.
Go now to your dwelling place to enter into your days together.
And may all your days be good and long upon the Earth.

Apache women / Maa-ya-ha (Grandmother Nellie)

Maa-ya-ha (Grandmother Nellie)

The maternal grandmother of Ernestene Cody Begay, Maa-ya-ha, was born around 1879 into the band of Western Apaches living near Cibecue Creek. She knew a great deal about herbs, was an accomplished basket weaver, farmer and midwife. She also served as an attendant during many Sunrise Dances. Maa-ya-ha had ten children with her husband, Eskin-na-chik

Maa-ya-ha's mother was present at the battle at Cibecue in 1881. When fighting broke out she was told to hide and not to move as people ran everywhere. She remembered running with her shoes under her arm and suddenly realizing that they had been shot. She spent hours hiding under a bush until it became dark and she saw smoke coming from the wickiups and heard voices.

Maa-ya-ha's life was difficult when she was very young and food was scarce. Later on, however, she and her husband made a good life for themselves as skilled farmers and ranchers. Community members often turned to the couple for help. Maa-ya-ha died in 1970.

Great Apache Chiefs / Geronimo

Geronimo (Spanish for Jerome, applied by the Mexicans as a nickname; native name Goyathlay, `one who yawns'). A medicine man and prophet of the Chiricahua Apache who, in the latter part of the 19th century, acquired notoriety through his opposition to the authorities and by systematic and sensational advertising; born about 1834 at the headwaters of Gila River, New Mexico, near old Ft Tulerosa. His father was Taklishim, `The Gray One,' who was not a chief, although his father (Geronimo's grandfather) assumed to be a chief without heredity or election. Geronimo's mother was known as Juana.

When it was decided, in 1876, in consequence of depredations committed in Sonora, of which the Mexican government complained, to remove the Chiricahua from their reservation on the south frontier to San Carlos, Ariz., Geronimo and others of the younger chiefs fled into Mexico. He was arrested later when he returned with his band to Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, and tilled the ground in peace on San Carlos reservation until the Chiricahua became discontented because the Government would not help them irrigate their lands. In 1882 Geronimo led one of the hands that raided in Sonora and surrendered when surrounded by Gen. George H. Crook's force in the Sierra Madre. He had one of the best farms at San Carlos, when trouble arose in 1854 in consequence of the attempt of the authorities to stop the making of tiswin, the native intoxicant.

During 1884-85 he gathered a band of hostiles, who terrorized the inhabitants of south Arizona and New Mexico, as well as of Sonora and Chihuahua, in Mexico. Gen. Crook proceeded against them with instructions to capture or destroy the chief and his followers.

In Mar. 1886, a truce was made, followed by a conference, at which the terms of surrender were agreed on; but Geronimo and his followers having again fled to the Sierra Madre across the Mexican frontier, and Gen. Miles having been placed in command, active operations were renewed and their surrender was ultimately effected in the following August. The entire band, numbering about 340, including Geronimo and Nachi, the hereditary chief, were deported as prisoners of war, first to Florida and later to Alabama, being finally settled at Ft Sill, Okla., where they now reside under military supervision and in prosperous condition, being industrious workers and careful spenders. (J. M. C. T. )

Great Apache Chiefs / Mangas Coloradas

Mangas Coloradas (Span: `red sleeves') . A Mimbreno Apache chief. He pledged friendship to the Americans when Gen. S. W. Kearny took possession of New Mexico in 1846. The chief stronghold of the Mimbremo at that time was at the Santa Rita copper mines, south west New Mexico, where they had killed the miners in 1837 to avenge a massacre committed by white trappers who invited a number of Mimbrenos to a feast and murdered them to obtain the bounty of $100 offered by the state of Chihuahua for every Apache scalp. When the boundary commission made its headquarters at Santa Rita trouble arose over the taking from the Mimbreno Apache of some Mexican captives and over the murder of an Indian by a Mexican whom the Americans refused to hang on the spot: The Mimbrenos retaliated by stealing some horses and mules belonging to the commission, and when the commissioners went on to survey another section of the boundary the Indians conceived that they had driven them away. In consequence of indignities received at the hands of miners at the Pinos Altos gold mines, by whom he was bound and whipped,- Mangas Coloradas collected a large band of Apache and became the scourge of the white settlements for years. He formed an alliance with Cochise to resist the Californian volunteers who reoccupied the country when it was abandoned by troops at the beginning of the Civil war, and was wounded in an engagement at Apache pass, south east Arizona, that grew out of a misunderstanding regarding a theft of cattle. His men took him to Janos, in Chihuahua, and left him in the care of a surgeon with a warning that the town would be destroyed in case he were not cured: According to one account, soon after his recovery he was taken prisoner in Jan., 1863, by the Californians and was killed while attempting to escape, goaded, it is said, with a red-hot bayonet (Dunn, Massacres of Mts., 365, 374, 382, 1886), while Bell (New Tracks, ii, 24, 1869) states that in 1862 he was induced to enter Ft McLane, New Mexico, on the plea of making a treaty and receiving presents. The soldiers imprisoned him in a hut, and at night a sentry shot him under the pretext that he feared the Indian would escape.

Great Apache Chiefs / Cochise.

A Chiricahua Apache chief, Although constantly at feud with the Mexicans, he gave no trouble to the Americans until after he went, in 1861, under a flag of truce, to the camp of a party of soldiers to deny that his tribe had abducted a white child. The commanding officer was angered by this and ordered the visiting chiefs seized and bound because they would not confess. One was killed and four were caught, but Cochise, cutting through the side of a tent, made his escape with three bullets in his body and immediately began hostilities to avenge his companions, who were hanged by the Federal troops. The troops were forced to retreat, and white settlements in Arizona were laid waste.

Soon afterward the military posts were abandoned, the troops being recalled to take part in the Civil war. This convinced the Apache that they need only to fight to prevent Americans front settling in their country. Cochise and Mangos Coloradas defended Apache pass in southeast Arizona against the Californians, who marched under Gen. Carleton to reopen communication between the Pacific coast and the east. The howitzers of the California volunteers put the Apache to flight . When United States troops returned to resume the occupancy of the country after the close of the Civil war, a war of extermination was carried on against the Apache.

Cochise did not surrender till Sept., 1871. When orders came to transfer his people from Canada Alamosa to the new Tularosa reservation, in New Mexico, he escaped with a hand of 200 in the spring of 1872, and his example was followed by 600 others. After the Chiricahua reservation was established Arizona, in the summer of 1872, he carne in, and there died in peace June 8, 1874. He was succeeded as chief by his son Taza. The southeastern most county of Arizona bears Cochise's name.