Studying Indians at Dartmouth, Part 1

During the first week of August I attended a Gilder Lehrman American History teacher seminar in which I studied American Indians for a week at Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school, in Hanover, New Hampshire.  This was my second GL seminar and my eighth of these types of seminars overall (the other six were through the NEH).  I have now studied Pilgrims and Indians, George Washington, Mark Twain, FDR, Immigration in New York City, Latinos in California, the Civil War, and now American Indians.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, I made American Indian History my de facto specialization.  It wasn't my specialty at Ole Miss, but I did manage to take a course on it.  Since I don't teach American History, my interest in this subject is not sated through my curriculum.  Thus, this was the perfect opportunity to learn, review, and reframe American Indian History and figure out ways in which I can incorporate it into my World History, Western Civilization, Geography and Civics courses.  Moreover, the professor leading the seminar, Colin Calloway, was a professor whose works I had read as an undergraduate.  He's one of the most prolific professors there is, publishing a new book about once every other year.  So it was a great opportunity to learn from him for a week.

The content in each of these workshops was/is immensely interesting and useful for teachers and is the reason I go. I will highlight some of the content that struck me for one reason or another. 

Part 1: The Content

A. A Brit as an expert on American Indians: Professor Calloway: Back in undergrad, the first time I read the biographical snippet on one of Professor Calloway’s books, I was immediately struck that he was a Brit writing about American Indian History.  That seemed odd.  But then I realized that there are lots of Americans who specialize in British history…or French, Russian, Chinese, African, Latin American, etc, etc.  I had gotten over that, but it’s something he obviously has to address quite frequently.  And it makes more sense one realizes that the United States has had 238 years (1776-2014) of relationships with American Indians.  The British had 260 years (1607-1867 (Jamestown to Canada’s independence) of relationships with American Indians.

Dr. Calloway discussing a Yanktonai Sioux headdress that is in the collection at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth.  The headdress is from the mid 1800s and was probably obtained from southeast South Dakota, northwest Iowa, or southwest Minnesota.  There wasn't a ton of information on it, but it was obviously of great interest to me.

B. Indians in US History: Usually when Indian History is taught, it starts from the East with Columbus, John Smith, the Pilgrims, etc encountering Indians in the East and then Americans interacting with Indians as they moved west.  Instead, Indian History should start in the center of the country, particularly with Indians in the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri River valleys before 1492.  Most teachers don't do this, but I already do, so it was good that my approach was reinforced.

C. Indians and Colonial America: A quote from Dr. Calloway when discussing the interaction between the sexes of each group: "People spend more time in bed together than trying to kill each other."  Titillating, of course, but he said it in the framework of the Iroquois spiritual world in which men and women both had power--men had the power to take life (hunting, war) and women had the power to give life (childbirth, farming).  Thus, before the Iroquois went to war, they would spend days working themselves into an emotional and spiritual state.  Part of this was abstinence because if they were going to take life, they couldn't mix with the force that gives life.  However, Dr. Calloway pointed out that contrary to the popular image of Indians as warriors who scalped white men and raped white women, most of the time they were not in the warrior-mode.  And that's when he made the statement about people in bed.

D. Indian Treaties: When Indians and Europeans started negotiating treaties, they operated under different assumptions concerning the land.  Indians initially believed that they were giving Europeans the opportunity to use the land, not own it or possess.  Indians, of course, would eventually figure out how Europeans and Americans interpreted the treaties.  Indians also had to come to understand the power of the written word.  In Indian diplomacy with each other, there was not the same finality to negotiations as there was when Europeans conducted diplomacy with each other.  Europeans and Americans, however, because of the permanency of the written word, regarded treaties with a finality that Indians didn't.  So even if there wasn't malice on the part of Europeans and Americans, there were often vast cultural differences that were very disadvantageous to Europeans and Americans

E. Indian Gifts: In Indian society, the most powerful were usually the poorest because they gave away everything they had in order to create as many bonds of reciprocity as possible.  To Euro-Americans, gift-giving did not have the same meaning since power came from the accumulation of goods.  This is not as foreign of a concept as it seems.  Modern politicians have made an art of giving things away in order to increase their power.  Modern politicians, however, do not impoverish themselves in the process...

F. Indian Country Before Lewis and Clark: When Lewis and Clark went through Indian country from 1804-1806, they were unsure of what was between the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota and the Columbia River in Oregon.  This area, however, had been significantly affected by guns, smallpox (and other diseases), and horses brought by Europeans only about a hundred years before.  Guns entered the plains from British fur traders in the north.  Horses entered the plains from the Spanish in the south.  Smallpox entered from both directions. The Indian world Lewis and Clark entered had been drastically changed.

G. The three best anecdotes from the Lewis and Clark expedition were all things I'd already taught when I was at IKM (I don't teach them anymore because I don't teach American History): a) Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 in the Mandan villages.  Indians had very different views on sexuality than Americans and Europeans and many Plains  Indians believed that one's power could be transferred via sex.  Clark's slave, York, was believed by many Indians to possess immense power.  So York had a very enjoyable winter... b) One of the biggest problems during the whole expedition was mosquitoes.  The journals are full of complaints about them.  in Lewis's journal, he spelled mosquito thirty-eight different ways!  There was no standard English at the time.  c) There was one point during the expedition when Lewis wanted to speak to a Salish Indian.  So Lewis made a statement in English.  Labiche, one of the men on the expedition, then translated it into French.  Charbonneau, Sacagawea's husband, translated it into Hidatsa.  Sacagawea translated it into Shoshone.  A Shoshone finally translated it into Salish.  So: English-->French-->Hidatsa-->Shoshone-->Salish

H. Cherokee vs Cherokee: We spent a full day learning about Cherokee Removal, but  rather than focusing on the Trail of Tears and horrors and duplicity committed by Americans, Dr. Calloway had us focus on the debate within the Cherokee community.  Among the Cherokee, there were some who begrudgingly and reluctantly accepted removal once it was evident that the only other option was a war against the US they were sure to lose.  Others, however, opposed removal and this split caused significant acrimony within the Cherokee nation.  The division existed, of course, because of the presence of Americans, but Dr. Calloway's point was to complicate our view of history rather than see Indian relations with the US as a simple "Indians are good and Americans are bad" dichotomy.

I. Indian Empires: When we think of empires, it's usually of Rome, China, or Britain.  However, by 1850 the Comanche in the southern plains and the Sioux in the northern plains, because of the horse and gun culture, had also created empires in that they subjugated their neighbors, demanded tribute, and exercised suzerainty over a vast territory.  This mental model is important because it recasts the vision of what was happening in on the plains when Americans began settling there.

J. "Kill the Indian to Save the Man": In the late 1800s, Henry Pratt, the founder of the famous Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Pennsylvania, promoted a policy in which Indian culture would be wiped out in order to assimilate Indians into American society, thus ending Indian culture.  In the 1950s and 1960s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs wanted to promote assimilation and improve Indians' quality of life by encouraging them to move off the reservations and into urban areas.  Ironically, both policies had the effect of strengthening Indian cohesiveness.  Each of these policies brought Indians from different nations together and gave them a common language, English.  These Indians could share with each other their experiences with the US government and American people.  Moreover, they could work together to promote causes, protest injustices, and, most importantly to them, keep their culture alive.