Not around here much lately, I know. The beginning of the school year, a lingering summer project, and really depressing public occurrences have all played their roles. Today, however, let me share something I found in an old newspaper — I look at those sometimes — that fits into a theme I have worked into Common-Place before: the central and often-overlooked place of Indian affairs in the politics and policy of the Founding era.
The item comes from the New Year’s Day, 1794, issue of Greenleaf’s New York Journal, that city’s most important Democratic-Republican paper. It gives an account of the fighting strength of all the Native American peoples that the U.S. government knew anything about at the time. The tribal names do not quite match up with the ones in use today, and it would difficult to assess the accuracy of the numbers, but the proportions are fairly eye-popping. The unnamed officials thought they were facing more than 58,000 Indian warriors at a time when (according to a message from War Secretary Henry Knox), there were less than 4,000 troops in the whole U.S. army! I guess it is no wonder a frontier military build-up (and Indian war) was the biggest project of Washington’s administration, besides the public finance system that paid for it.
Some may be aware that one of St. Louis’s nicknames is “Mound City.” This moniker developed because of the many Indian mounds of different shapes and sizes that were found in the area when the Usonians started moving in approximately 200 years ago. Many of these were quite sizable, though none were as impressive as the Monk’s Mound over at Cahokia on the Illinois side of the river. (Now it is an archaeological site. Not that long before the French and Spanish hit the Mississippi Valley, Cahokia had the been the great metropolis of northern North America, such as it was.)
The early U.S. arrivals had lots of fanciful theories about the mysterious cultures that created the mounds, but that did not stop them from becoming popular spots on which to build your farm, home, or “entertainment complex.” Then, as the city grew, it became even more popular to flatten the mounds and use the dirt for other purposes. Today there are barely any hills at all in most of St. Louis, much less anything that would justify the appellation “Mound City.” Slightly-Raised-Above-the-Riverbed City would be more like it. (A few miles inland, there is The Hill, the Little Italy of St. Louis where Joe Garagiola, Yogi Berra, and Early Republic historian Rosemarie Zagarri were all raised. The singular article form of the name is a significant clue to the local topography.)
The ex-mounds of Mound City are in the news today because what is thought to be the last remaining St. Louis Indian mound, or the remaining half of it, is up for sale. Located in south St. Louis along the Mississippi, it is locally known as Sugar Loaf Mound and features an elderly couple’s house right on top. Supposedly the house has a nice view of the river, and it must have awesome freeway access — part of the mound was used as fill for I-55 next door. The Budweiser brewery and downtown STL are just minutes away. Get your bid in now, because the Osage Nation is looking at buying the property to preserve it. The Osage would be buttressing what I gather is a somewhat disputed ancestral link between the historical Osage people and the Mississippian mound builders.
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Now playing: Ramsay Midwood – Mohawk River
“Algonkian Indian Influences on Yankee Foodways“:
I saw this public lecture announcement come over one of the early American history email lists and assumed the worst, that someone was blaming New England’s indigenous peoples for Moxie and canned bread, possibly by way of crediting them. But I guess not. Phew! That would be adding insult to injury if I ever saw it.
Actually that lecture sounds quite interesting, and if I lived in Connecticut, I would go to it. The phrase “Yankee foodways” just gave me flashbacks to some of our early experiments with the local, um, cuisine when we first moved out there.
I do not pretend to be an expert on this particular topic or much related to it, but I do wonder how any reaction other than horror is possible at Israel’s decision to launch massive, grossly disproportionate military strikes against what we might call, after John Marshall, one of their domestic dependent nations? And just in advance of a new American presidency that might not be so supportive of such neocon-approved, explicitly bullying tactics. Juan Cole said it:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, outgoing president of the European Union, issued among the more measured responses: “The President of the Republic expresses his lively concern at the escalation of violence in the south of Israel and in the Gaza Strip. He firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation as well as the use of disproportionate force. The president of the republic deplores the significant loss of civilian life and expresses his condolences to the innocent victims and their families.”
Sarkozy “requests an immediate cessation of rocket fire directed at Israel as well as of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and he calls on the parties to exercise self-restraint. He reminds everyone that there is no military solution to Gaza, and demands the implementation of a durable truce.”
This statement, which I seem to be the only news source to present in full in English, seems to me to be the best issued by any head of state on this particular incident, and shames the insensitive and one-sided statement issued on behalf of the US by Gordon Johndroe.
Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.
The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.
Described in such terms, is there any pre-21st century U.S. government that would not have condemned such an action, at least when it was not being conducted against indigenous peoples by the U.S. itself? I would be happy to entertain other terms, but anyone challenging Cole’s description really needs to address the disproportionality issue. Sending fighter jets and tanks against police stations and neighborhoods from which guys have lobbed home-made rockets really does seem to get into the vicinity of infamous historical mismatches like Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia or Andrew Jackson’s wars on the Creeks and Seminoles (especially the Battle of Horseshoe Bend where only the U.S. had cannon).
As revealed formerly in this space, one of my many hobbies is making thematic playlists (and CDs) to listen to while I work, drive, or do pretty much anything else. Partly it is just a way to organize all the digital music that accumulates on one’s hard drive, without resorting to rating everything so that some software can mathematically reproduce my tastes. (Frankly, rating every song is too much like grading or serving on the salary committee.) The themes range from simple to really geeky, and naturally one of them is the American. Blogs are for sharing, and so are the holidays, so here we go.
I am make no representations about the historical value of these songs. Not that many musicians are very accurate historians — oh my no. Yet sometimes they do evoke the right feeling, and even the mistakes are often interesting in terms of what they reveal about popular understanding of history.
The order is roughly chronological, but with some concern for how well the songs flow or contrast sonically. In other words, the numbers are not ratings, but the order they appear on the playlist that I actually listen to. I have had to separate the playlists into periods, so today we have just the start of the Colonial Period. There will be some repeats from the American Indian History playlist posted a while back.
3. Randy Newman – The Great Nations Of Europe — hilarious song, but also the first of many examples on this list of musicians who doubtless consider themselves very critical of European and Usonian imperialism while buying into the “vanishing American” trope concerning this and other continents’ native populations:
4. The Old Haunts – The Old World — somewhat gothic punk Americana, not sure what it means to be about, but I like it, the link goes to their MySpace page, where the song in question is available to play.
This is in response to a post on the H-AMINDIAN discussion list, where I have lurked for many years because of a course I teach. I have only written to that list once or twice, but Paul Rosier of Villanova’s post was too deep in my wheelhouse to ignore. He wrote:
In a no doubt losing effort to stay current with my students, as well as to use a variety of sources in the classroom, I’m compiling a soundtrack for my Fall semester Native American history course. I welcome suggestions of songs written/performed by Native bands or songs in popular culture that can be analyzed in class. I play the songs to get the students going but also to illustrate how Native artists engage music as a medium. I’ll use a Johnny Cash song that deals with the Kinzua Dam crisis. I’d also use Buffy Sainte Marie’s song about Alcatraz to start a Red Power discussion. Widespread Panic has a song call Hatfield which talks about “Indians don’t like us much…” Robbie Robertson cut an album called Music for the Native Americans some time ago. Suggestions for bands/artists other than Indigenous or songs about American Indians?
Well, yes, I do have some. In fact as part of my obsessive thematic playlist-making, referenced here last week, I made myself exactly such a soundtrack several years ago. It was more for myself than to play in class, though every once in while I will burn a CD for a student who wants to do a term paper on “Native Americans in U.S. popular culture,” or some such topic. The current edition of the playlist appears below, with just a few notes for now. Readers should remember that though some of these numbers contain sharp satire or trenchant social commentary, this playlist is chiefly a study in white stereotypes and cultural tropes about American Indians, reflecting the ignorance and projections of the right and the left, East and West, then and now, the well-intentioned and the not so much. The management does not endorse many of the sentiments and images in these songs, but they do make a nice musical companion or extension to such works as Robert Berkhofer’s The White Man’s Indian (1979), Philip Deloria’s Playing Indian (1998), and Brian Dippie’s The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (1982). We do not endorse the musical stylings of Cher either, though the song mentioned is inextricably linked with certain 1970s Midwestern childhoods that could be mentioned.
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS IN U.S. ROCK, POP, AND COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYLIST
1. Waco Brothers – Geronimo (2:31)
2. Bob Wills – Cherokee Maiden (2:56) — introduces to this list the sexually-available “Indian maiden” theme and “tribal” drumming/chanting that recurs throughout this genre; the kids can dance to it!
3. BR5-49 – Cherokee Boogie (2:31)
4. The Dandy Warhols – Big Indian (3:34) – unclear what sort of Indian is referred to here, but I like the song 5. The Nazz – Christopher Columbus (3:23) – earlier, more awesome Todd Rundgren
6. Brad Jones – The Blunderbuss (3:13) – This song is only available on out-of-print & very hard-to-find CDs. I got it from the 1995 power pop compilation Yellow Pills, Volume 3. With apologies (and also compliments) to Mr. Jones, I have uploaded an mp3 of the song for the delectation and edification of that select set of people fascinated with those few occasions when indie pop-rock collides with American history.
7. Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Pocahontas (3:02)
8. Randy Newman – The Great Nations Of Europe (3:25)
9. Too Much Joy – Gramatan (5:28) – 90s alt-rock also-rans; we saw them give a crazed free show on the Esplanade in Boston back during grad school, when free was a crucial advantage for a band, as far as our seeing them was concerned; check out the video below
10. 1910 Fruitgum Co. – Indian Giver (2:42) – a bubble-gum chestnut, to be sure, but a remarkably apt introduction this European stereotype derived (I think) from early misunderstandings of native ideas and practices concerning land ownership; listen while reading the chapter in William Cronon’s Changes in the Land
11. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Indian Giver (3:37) – ditto, but also a Christmas song: “Oh, Santa, don’t tell me you’re an Indian giver, too?”
12. Raiders – Indian Reservation (2:52) – blew my mind in the 1st grade carpool
13. The Dillards – Lonesome Indian (1:48)
14. Johnny Preston – Running Bear (2:38)
15. The Black Lips – Navajo (2:38) — this is almost brand-new, but identical in sentiment to Johnny Preston or Bob Wills from the 1950s; it does include a whole list of tribal names besides Cherokee, so that may be some kind of advance 16. Dean Martin – Not Enough Indians (3:28) — so offensive on so many levels
17. Cher – Half-Breed (2:44) – flashbacks to 5th grade trips to the roller rink 18. Buffalo Springfield – Broken Arrow (6:14) – more Neil Young
19. Sufjan Stevens – The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself In the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, “I Have Fought the Big Knives…” (2:14)
20. Treat Her Right – Trail of Tears (3:41)
21. Widespread Panic – Blue Indian (4:54)
22. John Anderson – Seminole Wind (3:57)
23. John Hiatt – Seven Little Indians (4:08)
24. Last of the Mohicans soundtrack (Trevor Jones) – Main Title (1:44)
25. Cotton Mather – Last Of The Mohicans (2:14)
26. Neil Young – Cortez The Killer (7:30)
27. Buddy Miller – With God on Our Side (9:12) — a Bob Dylan song, of course
The sequence is based on what sounds best to this listener. Lyrics can usually be found by Googling the artist and song title and “lyrics,” but you takes your chances choosing which of the many squirrelly lyrics sites out there to use. The song times are given because that’s how WinAmp generates playlists. Sources will be provided on request in the comments.
I will add more links later, but for now, here’s Too Much Joy with one of their few semi-serious numbers, “Gramatan”:
Per the historian’s creed, it does pay to actually check the primary source before spouting off about something.
There was an AP story this morning headlined “Colorado resolution compares Indians’ deaths to Holocaust.” (I have posted the text of the story after the jump.) While I actually tend to support official apologies and reparations and such, I started to write a post complaining about the needless, Ward Churchillian provocation of dropping the H-word on every event in human history where a lot of people got killed. It seemed like the kind of thing that was more likely to engender anger, misunderstanding, and cynicism than heightened awareness of real historical crime.
The only problem with the post I was going to write was that it was the AP that dropped the H-word, not the Colorado legislature. The story seemed to be missing a real money quote, so I looked up the resolution in question. It turned out to be a rather mild piece that referenced the Holocaust only as one of several cases of ethnic genocide that Colorado lawmakers had already memorialized. Here’s an excerpt:
21 WHEREAS, The Colorado General Assembly has recognized and
22 memorialized the victims of genocide in Europe against the Jews, in the
23 Middle East against the Armenians, and in Africa against the Sudanese;
24 and
25 WHEREAS, A common element in genocide is the creation of a
26 myth that the victims are in some way not part of the human family; and
27 WHEREAS, This element was present in the European treatment
28 of the American Indians, as well; now, therefore,
29 Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Sixty-sixth General Assembly
30 of the State of Colorado, the House of Representatives concurring herein:
31 (1) That we, the members of the General Assembly, express our
32 grief at the millions of deaths of American . . .
Now, I don’t fully endorse the accuracy of every historical interpretation embedded within the resolution, but it seemed quite reasonable and unobjectionable as such things go. It was the Associated Press headline, which ran in newspapers across the country, that turned the resolution into something Euro-Americans could be offended by, Jews and gentiles for their own reasons.
This story is today’s example (of one of them) of the media’s habit of finding or creating racial little scabs to pick. Whether born of laziness or malice I could not say, but the chief effect of little offenso-nuggets like this is to give middle-class white readers additional excuses to feel huffy and complacent and self-serving in their views of American society and American history.
Reading a student master’s thesis draft, I learned of a crazy piece of giant historical sculpture that I have somehow missed out on seeing. As a fan of such things, though a properly appalled one, I invite anyone travelling through the Ronald Reagan Country of north central Illinois to stop by the town of Oregon, Illinois, and take in the 48-foot cement statue overlooking the Rock River. I will get there someday.
Completed by the awesomely-named sculptor Lorado Taft in 1911, the monument was entitled “The Eternal Indian” and purports to depict the Sauk war leader and popular culture hero Black Hawk, looking more generically “Indian” than Sauk or Black Hawk-like to my eyes. He is, however, very big, “the largest stand alone cement statue in the United States,” according to the local who took the modern photo at the bottom of the post. It may not be a very good likeness, but at least Black Hawk can have the satisfaction of knowing that his hated rival, the accomodationist chief Keokuk, has a much more embarrassing statue: only a fourth as high and dressed up in a highly inappropriate Plains Indian war bonnet that makes him look like the chief on F-Troop.
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