North American a Mixed Heritage Land

Part 21 of the series Are Native Americans Relevant?

People of different races have mixed on North America ever since the first Europeans came.  

Since De Soto first arrived in Florida, Africans found refuge in Native American communities.  Throughout Desoto’s rampage from South Carolina to the Mississippi River, African slaves continually escaped and became first Old World settlers.  Native groups remained sanctuaries for escaped slaves. They found their way to the more distant areas of the continent.  

 Some tribes did enslave the runaways, most notably the Creek and Cherokee. When enslaved together, Native Americans and Africans often intermarried.  The first patriot to die in the American struggle for independence was the Native American and African man Crispus Attucks, who was shot in the Boston Massacre 5 March 1770.

According to Spanish observers, 50 percent of the English men in Jamestown had relationships with Native women.  This information was kept out of American histories.

 White settlers frequently left communities to live with the Native Americans.  White captives often refused to leave.  Women in particular were treated much better in Native communities.  This created great theological and cultural problems for the colonial governments.  Several colonies passed laws forbidding this.  In an attempt to stop it, a new American genre of literature was born, accounts written by captives with horrifying details to induce fear of Natives.

The British government encouraged the immigration of Scottish men and their participation in the fur trade in the colonies.  At this period of time, Scottish highlanders were considered almost as savage and uncivilized as the Native Americans.  These traders usually were more successful if they married Native American women. It was a law with the Southeastern tribes. The children often held positions of respect because they knew both worlds. 

In Canada the mixed families created their own society along the Red River in Manitoba, Canada.  Wealthy Scottish traders sent their children back to the home country to be educated.  Sometimes they retired there, taking their Native wives and their mixed-blood children home to Scotland.

Intermarriage was frequent between Spanish soldiers and Native women in Mexico, Florida, and Caribbean.  The Spanish government ignored the need for Spanish women.  Prejudice against Native blood in Spanish America was still common.  People tried to hide their Native background.  Native Americans who could speak Spanish and wore Mexican clothing were called mestizos.  In the 18^th century the Spanish colonial government gave the mestizos a way to become white by selling them certificates of whiteness.

In Alaska Russian male fur traders consorted with Native women.  Their children were given equal rights and Russian citizenship and made subjects of the czar.  After obtaining Alaska, the United States tried to deny their rights. 

Mixed French and Indian people in French Canada are called Métis.  Intermarriage was encouraged early on by the French government and continued after British took control.  Native American women legally became French upon their marriage.  In the western and northern provinces Native females were regularly sold for wives.

A large Métis population developed in western Canada.  It combined Woodland and Plains culture with European.  In the Victorian era, as a result of the Age of Reason and Charles Darwin’s writings on the survival of the fittest species, the people of mixed heritage were looked down upon.  It was thought interracial coupling led to poor morals and behavior and could bring down the European race and the British Empire. 

The educated Métis knew they were not intellectually inferior and wanted equal status and their own land in Canada.  In 1869 Louis Riel first led the Métis to seize Fort Garry in Manitoba.  They established a government in Winnipeg and petitioned for admission to Canada as a new province.  They were not successful.

In 1885 the Métis tried again.  They needed to defend their farms in Saskatchewan after they were driven away from the Red River in Manitoba.  Riel tried to establish a Métis nation again.  He worked through diplomatic and political channels with no success.  Canadian government forces put down the revolt, captured Riel and hanged him 16 November 1885 in Regina.

After the second failure to create their own place in Canadian society, most Métis had to decide whether to be white or Native.  Those choosing to be Native joined Native relatives in the Great Lakes area and the central plains of North American.  Many French speaking families worked for white farmers.  Others moved into Quebec, New England and New York to participate in communities there.

Native American Women Inspire Women’s Suffrage Movement

Part 20 of the series Are Native Americans Relevant?

The prominent female leaders of the Women’s Suffrage Movement—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucretia Mott—were friends and neighbors of Native Americans in western New York State. Stanton, Gage and Mott followed everyday Native activities in western New York. Knowledge gained through their interaction led these women to form the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton visited Oneida women with cousin and social activist Gerrit Smith.  His daughter Elizabeth was the first to stop dressing in constraining and distorting undergarments and the layers of clothing as American society dictated.  The clothes she were very similar to that of traditional Haudenosaunee women.

Matilda Joslyn Gage had Onondagas as neighbors.  In 1875 Gage wrote articles for the New York Evening Post on the Iroquois, stressing equality of women.  In 1893 she wrote “Women, Church and State,” quoting from Schoolcraft and other ethnologists of Native American culture.  She compared and contrasted the treatment of women in American society and Native American society, especially the Haudenosaunee.  She thought the Native Americans should be the inspiration for women in suffrage movement.

Lucretia Mott and husband James were members of the Indian committee of the Philadelphia yearly meeting of the Society of Friends.  For many years they worked with Senecas to set up school and farm and save territory from land speculators.  In 1848 Mott spent a month as a witness to the reorganization of the Seneca government and to the Seneca women’s participation.  That July she and Stanton held the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

Alice Fletcher was the first anthropologist to live with Native Americans.  In the Fall of 1881, she traveled out to stay with them in the Dakota Territory.  Her experience prompted her to speak and compare the rights of Native women and American women at the 1888 International Council of Women.  Unfortunately she did not believe that Native Americans as a group had equal rights and that they could not survive if they retained their own culture and influenced the infamous Native American boarding schools that continued into the 1970s.

Navajo Code Talkers Responsible for Battle of Iwo Jima Success

Part 19 of the series Are Native Americans Relevant?

The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle fought in the Pacific Theater of World War II and resulted in some of the heaviest fighting.  Iwo Jima was strategically important.  The island was part of the Japanese inner line of defense in the Ogasawara Islands.  It provided an airbase for Japanese aircraft to intercept long-range B-29 Superfortress bombers and provided a safe haven for Japanese naval units. In addition, it was used by the Japanese to stage air attacks on the Mariana Islands from November 1944 to January 1945. It also served as an early warning station which radioed reports of incoming bombers back to mainland Japan, allowing Japanese air defenses to prepare for the arrival of American bombers.

In addition to rendering Iwo Jima useless to the Japanese forces, the Allies wanted the island for an air base to support long-range bombing missions against mainland Japan. Because of the distance between mainland Japan and U.S. bases in the Mariana Islands, the capture of Iwo Jima would provide an emergency landing strip for crippled B-29s returning from bombing runs. The seizure of Iwo would allow for sea and air blockades, intensive air bombardment and the destruction of the enemy's air and naval capabilities.  By war's end, 2,400 B-29 bombers carrying 27,000 crewmen made unscheduled landings on the island.

One Marine Corps signal officer summed up the situation after the war: "Were it not for the Navajo Code Talkers, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima and other places."  The Japanese, who were skilled code breakers, were baffled by the Navajo language. The Japanese chief of intelligence, Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue, said that while they were able to decipher the codes used by the U.S. Army and Army Air Corps, they never cracked the code used by the Marines. 

On October 15, 2008, the "Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, H.R. 4544" was signed by President Bush and became public law. This act required the issuance of medals to recognize the dedication and valor of Native American code talkers with the exception of the Navajo Code Talkers who received their Congressional Meals of Honor and recognition on July 26th and November 24th of 2001.

In the iconic photo at the top, Ira Hayes from the Pima Nation was the first marine on the left.   The attention the photo brought to him made him very uncomfortable and he never got past the guilt of surviving the war when others didn't.  

Native American Code Talkers Brought Success to The Allies

Part 18 of the series Are Native Americans Relevant?

During World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the U.S. Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb talking in the Choctaw language. Investigating, Lawrence found eight Choctaw men in the battalion. Eventually, fourteen Choctaw men in the Army's 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code. They helped the American Expeditionary Forces win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France, during the final big German push of the war. Within 24 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service, the tide of the battle had turned. In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack.

Adolf Hitler (Native name “He Smells His Mustache”) knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I. He sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II.  However, it proved too difficult for them to learn the many languages and dialects that existed. Because of the Nazi German anthropologists' attempts to learn the languages, the U.S. Army did not implement a large-scale code talker program in the European Theater.

Fourteen Comanche code talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy, and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division during further European operations.  Two Comanche code talkers were assigned to each regiment, the rest to 4th Infantry Division headquarters. Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the Comanches began transmitting messages. Some were wounded but none killed.

Meskwaki (Sac and Fox) men used their language against the Germans in North Africa. Twenty-seven Meskwaki, then 16% of Iowa's Meskwaki population, enlisted in the U.S. Army together in January 1941.
Journalists tend to concentrate on the participation of Navajo men in the code talkers.  They were not the only code talkers in World War II.  Below is a table summarizing the participation of Native American men in the military as code talkers.

 Philip Johnston proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajos, and was one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently.  Early in 1942, Johnston staged successful tests under simulated combat conditions for the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and the military started recruiting Navajo men.  The code talkers’ primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios. They also acted as messengers, and performed general Marine duties.

Native Americans Have Highest Record of Service in American Military

Part 17 in the series Are Native Americans Relevant?

Native Americans have supported militarily the interests of the ruling European colonial governments and later the United States of America since the 1600s.  They have served in Queen Anne’s War, the French & Indian War, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom.  They have the highest record of service per capita than any other ethnic group in the United States.

In Native cultures adults, especially the men, have had the responsibility of serving and protecting their people.  Integrated into the cultures was also treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.  Warriors were encouraged to reenact activities afterward as part of the celebration.  Native people also used dream therapy and sweat lodges to work out emotional problems.

Mohican men served in Rogers’ Rangers during the French & Indian War.  In the painting below, two Mohican scouts are behind Major Robert Rogers on the right.

 During the American Revolution, there were units of Lenape, Oneida and Stockbridge warriors.  Men served individually in other units as well.

In the War of 1812 1,000 Native American men served.  There were more than 100 companies, detachments or parties.  They came from the Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, Shawnee, Chickasaw, Stockbridge tribes.

Native Americans served in the U.S. military during the wars with the Seminoles and Winnebagos, the Black Hawk War, the Creek War and the Mexican War.

In the Civil War Native American men served in 3 Confederate Native units and 1 Union.  Native men served individually as well.  Stand Watie, a Cherokee and Confederate brigadier general, was the last officer to surrender.

In World War I more than 12,000 Native American men served, 6,000 were volunteers.  The casualty rate was 5 times higher for Native men. This act of patriotism persuaded Congress to pass the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.  Approximately six hundred Native men from Oklahoma were assigned to the 142th infantry, 2^nd Texas-Oklahoma National Guard Division.  They served in France and 4 members were awarded the Croix de Guerre.  

 By the end of World War II, 24,521 reservation Natives, not officers, and 20,000 off-reservation Natives had served.  This was more than 10% of Native population, 1/3 of all able-bodied Native men.  In some tribes the percentage as high as 70 percent.  Several hundred Native women served in the WACS, WAVS and Army Nurse Corps.  Together they were awarded 81 air medals, 62 silver stars, 57 bronze stars, 44 distinguished flying crosses and 2 Congressional Medals of Honor. 

By 1945 150,000 Natives had participated in the war effort.  Forty thousand Native women and men worked in defense industries.  They bought $50 million in war bonds.

  Alaska natives were involved in territorial defense.  The Indian Service sent 1,119 of 7,000 employees into service.  Twenty-two employees died, 7 won Silver or Bronze Stars.  In 1942 Japanese troops captured 45 Aleuts on Altu.  Only 24 returned. 

In the Korean Conflict, 10,000 Native men and women served.  They came home to find Cowboy and Indian movies popular and to see their cultures mocked and their representatives dying regularly on the big screen.  The Navajos served at Taejon, Chonan, Chonai, the Kum River, Chochiwon. Pusan, Sinanju, Asan and the Uijongbu Corridor.

More than 42,000 Native Americans served in Vietnam.  More than 90 percent were volunteers.  They were more likely to see moderate to heavy combat.

Native American military troops have seen active duty in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Persian Gulf.

In 1990 before Operation Desert Storm, 24,000 Natives men and women were in the military.  Approximately 3,000 Native Americans served in the Gulf War. 

By 2000 there were almost 190.000 Native military vets. 

In July 2005 24,000 Native Americans were serving in active duty, including almost 3,900 women.  Native Americans were approximately 2 percent of the active duty force, nearly 50 percent in the Navy, 20 percent in the Marines, 19 percent in the Army and 12 percent in the Air Force.  Three percent of the Native population aged 20-44 were serving, as compared to 2 percent of the total American population.